Close Together and Worlds Apart: An Analysis of Changes in the Ecology of Income in Canadian Cities

Abstract

The volatile social status of older neighbourhoods has been a concern of both scholars and politicians for some time. Three competing hypotheses, representing different interpretations of past trends and contrasting scenarios for the future, have dominated recent research: the impoverishment (decline), Mite (gentrified) and persistence (stability) models . This paper examines these three models with respect to changing income distributions between and within Canadian metropolitan areas and their inner cities from 1950 to 1985 . All three hypotheses are found to be wanting. It is shown that the direction of change in inner cities differs markedly among the metropolitan areas, and that while inner-city-suburban contrasts continue to grow in most cities, in a few places these contrasts are overwhelmed by internal diversity and by new clusters of suburban poverty and inner-city wealth . The emerging ecology of income and social status is much more complex and variable than any single hypothesis or research paradigm can encompass .

Rising inequality in Canada: A regional perspective

“…Early efforts to develop a conceptual framework to help us understand the causes of inequality long ago established that there is no overarching or general theory of income distribution (Lydall, 1979;Osberg, 1981). Rather, several competing explanations are offered and, as Bourne (1993) and Chakravorty (1996) argue, studies of inequality must ultimately address an array of contextual factors that shape the distribution of earnings. In general, we can distinguish four broad sets of mechanisms in the literature that potentially explain the recent rise in inequality: explanations tied to changes in (i) local labor market and economic conditions (i.e.…”

Has the concentration of income and poverty among subsurbs of large US metropolitan areas changed over time?

“…In the newer MSAs of the south and west, the troubled suburbs were semi-rural and agricultural. Bourne (1993), in his study of Canadian suburbs, found that suburbs which had been primarily residential, and had functioned as "bedroom communities," were less likely to experience increasing poverty than those with industrial bases similar to the central city.…”

La dynamique sociorésidentielle d’une ville latino-américaine : Puebla au Mexique

“…Les analystes de l'espace urbain s'intéressent depuis longtemps à la structure interne des villes, au processus d'expansion et à la mobilité sociorésidentielle des ménages, comme en fait foi l'abondance des écrits sur ces thèmes (voir entre autres Burgess, 1925 ;Hoyt, 1939 ;Harris et Ullman, 1945 ;Griffi n et Ford, 1980 ;Bourne, 1989Bourne, et 1993. Il reste que les modèles classiques développés par Burgess (1925), par Hoyt (1939) et par Harris et Ullman (1945) font peu référence aux villes latino-américaines (fi gure 1).…”

“…MacLachlan (1998), à l'instar de Bourne (1993), utilise les données sur le revenu dans son évaluation de la répartition des inégalités sociales dans l'aire métropolitaine de Mexico. Face aux contraintes de la publication partielle des données sur le revenu par aire géostatistique de base (AGEB : la plus petite unité de dénombrement publiée dans le recensement mexicain) 2 et face aux changements de défi nition des classes qui rendent les comparaisons presque impossibles, l'auteur opte pour une autre échelle géographique.…”