Discuss the significance of the “Three Cities” interpretation of Toronto

Economic polarization in Toronto in various regions of great wealth and extreme poverty are even more acute than anecdotal reports suggest, in accordance with the University of Toronto researchers. The use of detailed census data to chart changes in 30 years in the neighborhood level, they created a vivid and disturbing new image of the city in which the traditional areas of mixed income are reduced to a simple buffer between the increasingly wealthy core and the poorer suburbs. Observations are not new, but it has not been presented with such authority or drama, as in the new analysis, titled The Three Cities in Toronto: Income Polarization among Toronto area, 1970-2000. "It frankly surprised us," said lead author David Hulchanski, director of the University Centre for urban and community studies. "We knew that shift. This is not new. We do not know how dramatic it was." Newly matched data, "explains a lot about us and what happens to us," according to Professor Hulchanski ", and it's sad." The most striking trend is the looming extinction, on average, mixed-income neighborhood that once defined Toronto. In 1970, two thirds of the census tract reported incomes in the middle range for the city as a whole, the study said. By 2001 this had fallen to a full third: only 32 percent of census tracts in the 21 st century city can be described as average. Some areas went headed once poor but now chic "inner city" south of Bloor Street. But much more went in the opposite direction, headed by former suburbs built for the vanishing of the average family.

In 1970, only 18 percent of the census tract of Toronto reported individual incomes between 20 percent and 40 percent below the city average. By 2001 this proportion had more than doubled to 41 percent. By 2020, according to a study will likely be more neighborhoods with a "very high" income (17 percent) than average (only 10 per cent). Just as two-thirds around Toronto were middle income in 1970, two thirds will have low or very low "income in 2020. The changing face of poverty shows surging to the north while the more affluent, mostly white elite has a kernel. Post-war suburb in rapid decline. "This is an undesirable landscape, quite frankly," Prof Hulchanski said. "People with money do not want to live there. It was built for middle-income people that existed in 1971, but they went on and died." The result of the "urban landscape, which has a 30-year history of rejection from people who have no choice ", according to the report. Contrary to expectations, the data show the same trends occurring in the suburbs, although at a slower pace. The inescapable conclusion, according to Professor Hulchanski, is that middle-income Toronto does not just go to 905. They disappear. "There have always been rich and poor areas of the city, but we see many, many more poor parts of town - and in a ...