GEO 793 GEOGRAPHY OF TORONTO
LECTURE 9 [ NEIGHBOURHOOD POVERTY
Dr. Abednego Aryee
Department of Geography
Toronto Metropolitan University
INTRODUCTION
 Twenty years ago, most 'poor' families in Toronto lived in
mixed-income neighbourhoods.
 Fuelled by the need to make their cities more globally
competitive, city and national governments are recognizing
the need to tackle growing poverty concentration.
 Beginning with the ‘New Deal for Communities’ in 1998 in
Britain.
 In the United States, the Empowerment Fund supports
business investment and job creation in distressed
communities.
 A study was carried out to obtain a much better
understanding of what has been happening to Toronto’s
neighbourhoods over the past two decades.
 The concentration of neighbourhood poverty in Toronto
been increasing.
 Toronto is one of the primary economic engines in the
country, and we cannot afford to let its neighbourhoods
drift further and further into deepening poverty.
CONTENT
 INTRODUCTION
 DOES NEIGHBOURHOOD MATTER?
 THEORIES OF NEIGHBOURHOOD EFFECT
 NEIGHBOURHOODS AS SPRINGBOARD OR SNARE
 MEASURES OF POVERTY
 REASONS FOR GROWING POVERTY
 CHANGING CHARACTER OF HIGHER POVERTY
NEIGHBOURHOODS
 POVERTY REDUCTION
DO NEIGHBOURHOODS MATTER
 One school of thought would have it that local
neighbourhoods are less important today because they have
been replaced by ‘communities of interest’.
 Neighbourhoods still have great importance for most people.
 Among the decisions that people make in their lives, few are
more important than where they choose to live and raise their
families.
DO NEIGHBOURHOODS MATTER
 In a City of Toronto report, it states that;
 Attracting the very mobile labour and intellectual capital
that drives regional economic development.
 The need to address the marginalization of the poor in our
cities, as a critical element of the broader reinvestment
needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of our cities.
 There is also the question of how growing up in a poor and
marginalized community may affect the life chances of
children and youth.
GEO 106: Fall 2012
S.L. Laskin
Prof.
PLACES OF STATUS AND STIGMA
“Bridal Path”
$17.5 million
“Rosedale”
$13.8 million
“Forest Hill”
$12.9 million
“Bay Street Corridor”
$18.8 million
GEO 106: Fall 2012
August 2011
http://www.torontorealestateboard.com
 Surrounding the core of the old City of Toronto, is the inner
suburbs – the former municipalities of Etobicoke, York, North
York, East York and Scarborough.
 In the outer suburbs are cities like Mississauga, Markham,
Richmond Hill, and Whitby.
LEVELS OF POVERTY
 Lower Poverty: 0-12.9% (below the Canadian average poverty
rate of economic families in 1981).
 Moderate Poverty : 13.0-25.9% (above, to nearly double the
national 1981 average).
 High Poverty 26.0 -39.9% (double the national 1981 average to
39.9%).
 Very High Poverty 40% + (more than three times the national 1981
average).
THEORIES OF NEIGHBOURHOOD EFFECT
1. THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED
 The Truly Disadvantaged has informed much research on how
neighborhoods affect children, youth, and families.
2. COLLECTIVE SOCIALIZATION OR SOCIAL INTERACTION
MODELS
 Collective socialization or social interaction models focus on
the presence (or absence) of prosocial adult role models for
children—for instance, the protective effect of “old heads”.
3. INSTITUTIONAL MODELS
 Institutional models emphasize both the quality and
regulatory capacity of social institutions, such as schools and
law enforcement agencies.
THEORIES OF NEIGHBOURHOOD EFFECT
4. SOCIAL COMPARISON
Social comparison models emphasize the detrimental
consequences of (perceptions of ) deprivation or
competition.
5. EPIDEMIC/CONTAGION MODELS
Epidemic/contagion models highlight the power of
peers—youths’ immediate friends and more distant
age-mates—in the transmission of norms.
NEIGHBOURHOODS AS SPRINGBOARDS
OR SNARE
 Life course theory is attuned to issues of time, process, and
context. It emphasizes the interplay between macrolevel
influences—especially of history, demography, and
policies—and individual-level biographies.
 Disadvantage experienced early in life can set into motion a
series of cascading socioeconomic and lifestyle events—
“chains of risk”
 Neighborhoods affect residents’ possibilities for future
success.
MEASURES OF POVERTY
 Income measures
Newly available data shows that 20.2% of Toronto’s
population or 543,390 people live on low incomes.
 Material deprivation
In monitoring poverty, income measures should be
combined with material deprivation measures so that
financial and non-financial needs are considered.
 Disaggregated data
The Census data shows that low income is higher among
many racialized groups.
POVERTY IN THE MIDST OF PROSPERITY
 Toronto houses 40 per cent of Canada’s head offices, and has
an impressive array of highly competitive industry clusters,
including financial services, bio-medical, aerospace, and
automotive.
 In 2000, it ranked as the 7th best place to live in North America,
by the Places Rated Almanac, based on job markets, cost of
living, educational standards, quality of public transportation,
health care, recreational facilities, and crime rates.
 Yet, there is a deep unease in Toronto, as there are other cities
in the country, about whether they can truly keep up with the
competition from other cities.
REASONS FOR GROWING POVERTY
 The impact of economic restructuring on vulnerable workers.
 The loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector.
 The high cost of urban living.
 An erosion of the social safety net.
ACTIVE RECREATION
City of Toronto 2017
City of Toronto 2017
CHANGING CHARACTER OF HIGHER POVERTY
NEIGHBOURHOODS
A. The age composition within higher poverty
neighbourhoods
 Of importance is the extent to which vulnerable groups like
children, youth, and seniors have grown in number.
 The numbers of adults also increased by 100%, youth by 60%,
but the number of seniors increased by a much smaller
percentage (36%).
 In many parts of the inner suburbs, where there has been a
great intensification of neighbourhood
poverty, there is a lack of community services
and facilities for the youth.
B. The Lone-parent population
 Lone-parent populations are drawn to the parts
of the city which offer the least expensive
accommodation.
 The number of lone-parent families now living in higher
poverty neighbourhoods has increased.
 A large proportion of lone parents are immigrants.
C. The newcomer population
 Immigration is vital to the Canadian economy and to
population growth.
 For decades the Toronto region has been one of the main
destinations of choice of newcomers to Canada, and until
the 1980s, most achieved income levels similar to Canadianborn residents
within a relatively short number of years.
 In the last ten to fifteen years, a number
of changes have taken place.
D. The visible minority
 The term ‘visible minority’ is still used by government to
describe non-European groups,
but in cities like Toronto proportion of visible
minorities is increasing.
 What is deeply concerning is the growth in poverty within
visible minority families.
 The size of the non-visible minority family
population in higher poverty neighbourhoods also
increased over the twenty years.
E. Unemployment rates
 Unemployment rates is higher in poverty
neighbourhoods.
POVERTY REDUCTION
 Canada was one of the 150 countries to adopt a set of goals
to end poverty.
 It aim to reduce poverty by 50% by 2030.
 The vision of Opportunity for All is to eradicate poverty
because we are all better off when no one is left behind.
 The question is will there be a time in human history when
there will be zero poverty?