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This study looks at the changes in 10 Canadian CMAs between 1981 and 2001 and builds on the work of other Canadian researchers to show how the extent, location and nature of gentrification processes have continued since the 1970s. The analysis of census data from 1981 and 2001 identifies gentrifying tracts and compares them with the neighbourhoods that are recognised by local housing market analysts as gentrifying and with the neighbourhoods that are clearly not gentrifying. Gentrification between 1981 and 2001 involves between 5 and 12 per cent of all tracts in the CMAs and about 25 per cent of inner-city tracts depending on the CMA examined and the definition of gentrification used. The spatial pattern of tracts gentrifying between 1981 and 2001 is more extensive than areas known to have gentrified during the 1970s. The extent of gentrification does not vary by city size. The profiles of gentrifying tracts show large increases in their proportion of young adult households, dramatic reductions in household size, rapid increases in university educated population, and had more mobile populations between 1981 and 2001. The gentrification of the inner city reduces population density while increasing dwelling unit density. Gentrification in Canada is changing the composition of the inner city but is not repopulating the inner city and it is contributing to the overall decentralisation process in Canadian cities.

The analysis of a number of Toronto sub-populations consistently points to differences in the home-ownership rates between visible minorities and whites. People of African or Caribbean origin have a much lower chance of being home-owners compared to whites after controlling for differences in income levels, housing preferences and household characteristics. Differences in tenure profiles are reduced at higher income levels but the home-ownership deficit remains. Economic factors explain only a small part of the large difference. Cultural and institutional factors may determine how the tenure options are perceived and valued by different groups of people living in the same city. Biases in perceptions matter as they affect the extent to which people can gain from the direct and indirect subsidies offered to home-owners. The differences may be indicative of underlying problems some minorities face in gaining access to urban resources. Measures of home-ownership deficits among the black and Caribbean suggest the need for social policy that goes beyond income maintenance and housing subsidies groups to help equalise their social and economic opportunities.

This study analyses the distribution of home workers across the three largest urban regions in Canada and shows how they differ across sex of home worker, household type, income level, occupation and industry. The highest proportion of home workers is in art, culture and recreation occupations followed by management, the field dominated by men. Women home workers make the financial, secretarial and administrative occupations the third-largest group of home workers. The spatial distribution of home workers follows a sectoral form. While the characteristics of inner-city and suburban home workers differ, the differences are the same as for commuters. Rather than creating a completely new locational pattern, home work appears to reinforce existing urban forces of centralisation by professionals and continued decentralisation by the middle classes and those seeking larger estates, such as those in management occupations. The study suggests that the increasing trend towards home work is not dispersing cities, but allows greater locational flexibility within already-existing urban spatial patterns.