DIVERSITY’S RUSH TO THE SUBURBS
Toronto is more diverse than ever, but downtown is falling behind the ’burbs — a trend an expert says could lead to isolation, inequality
Ritika Chaudhary loves Little India. She’s been in Canada for six months, and whenever she gets homesick for Delhi she heads to Gerrard St. E., where she has a part-time job.
“The food, the people, the culture, it reminds me of India,” she said, while helping the owners at Indian Rasoi restaurant, near Coxwell Ave., set up for lunch. But when it came to finding a place to live, the 18-year-old Seneca student settled on Scarborough.
Next door to the restaurant in Chandan Fashion, owner Jatinder Pal Singh says he has seen “lots of change” in the neighbourhood.
When he opened the clothing store in 1984 there was a large Punjabi community in the area.
“The community is less here now,” he said. Many of his customers now live in the suburbs, he said, adding that they still come down to his shop when they need bridal or formal wear, following the store’s popular Instagram account, which has more than 25,000 followers.
Toronto prides itself on being a jewel of multiculturalism, with more than half of residents now identifying as visible minorities, according to the 2016 census.
“I’m OK with gentrification, but it has to be done right.”
JAMAAL MYERS COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
But when you break that down along the lines of Toronto’s six former municipalities, downtown has fallen behind, especially compared to suburbs like Scarborough.
As part of an occasional series this summer, the Star is taking a closer look at the megacity, 20 years after amalgamation, and some of its old divisions. A gulf is growing between a whiter downtown and everyone else, and that can mean downtown loses vibrancy, while ethnic enclaves farther away can become isolated, says one expert.
In 1996, before amalgamation, census numbers show that old Toronto had a visible minority population of 28 per cent.
By 2016, that number grew to 34 per cent. But in Scarborough over the same period it went from 51 per cent to 73 per cent, Etobicoke 29 to 43 per cent, and North York 39 to 60. East York jumped from 31 to 43 per cent, and York from 34 to 45 per cent.
Meanwhile the percentage of old Toronto residents who are immigrants fell during the same period, from 41per cent to 33 per cent, while in Scarborough it grew from 51 to 57 per cent, and Etobicoke 43 to 46 per cent. It dipped slightly in York over the same time frame, from 50 to 48 per cent, and stayed steady in East York, at 41 per cent.
Chaudhary chose Scarborough because it still has slightly lower rent. And although you can still get Kashmiri tea, silk saris in vivid colours, and copies of the Pakistan Post in Little India, the neighbourhood, like many of downtown’s ethnic enclaves, is changing.
Zhixi Zhuang, an associate professor at Ryerson University’s school of urban and regional planning, said immigrant communities such as the South Asian one in Little India began to shift to the suburbs 20 to 30 years ago, seeking more space, and cheaper housing.
As these ethnic communities got stronger, with their own shopping centres, places of worship and professionals who speak their language, many newcomers started bypassing downtown.
She said the risk is people may become so far apart they stop talking to each other, leading to possible tensions, isolation and inequality. Meanwhile, Zhuang says downtown Toronto is losing the passion, energy and entrepreneurship that newcomers (and ethnic enclaves such as Little India) bring.
There’s a “huge gap” between the city and suburban immigrant communities that planners and officials need to figure out how to bridge, she said.
“I think the bigger question for us now is, so what, how are we going to respond to this reality?” Zhuang said. “That really keeps me up at night.”
When Shah Bukhari arrived at Pearson airport from Lahore, Pakistan, in 2001, a Punjabi taxi driver told him to head to Gerrard St. He’s been working the counter at Kohinoor Foods, across the street diagonally from Singh’s clothing store, for about a dozen years.
“Before it’s a lot of Asian people who live in this area and Asian people have more business on Gerrard St. E.,” he said. Now, there are lots of people from many different communities, and a few new bars and coffee shops have opened nearby.
“The Asian businessmen, they lose business, that’s why they move,” he said, pausing to ring up a mango for a customer.
Usha George, director of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement, said higher housing and rental prices in Toronto proper, even in the suburbs, are already pushing new immigrants into the 905 and beyond.
But “that does not necessarily mean that downtown will be devoid of that diversity that we want to have,” she said.
Anecdotally, she’s noticed young professional children of immigrants are moving back into the downtown core whether to rent or own, as they “want to be where the centre of the action is,” and can afford higher prices with some help from mom and dad.
Downtown as defined by the borders of the old city of Toronto is still more diverse than Canada (22.3 per cent visible minority), and places such as Burlington and Oshawa (both 16 per cent).
But when looking at diversity, it’s Scarborough, not Toronto, that seemingly becoming the shining beacon.
While there are neighbourhoods that are largely made up of one ethnic group, there are also neighbourhoods with several different groups prominently represented, such as the one where Jamaal Myers, a 35year-old community organizer and former corporate lawyer, now lives.
Myers grew up in Scarborough and recently moved to near Neilson Rd. at Hwy. 401, a neighbourhood where more than 85 per cent of residents identify as visible minorities: 17 per cent Black, 16 per cent Chinese, 9 per cent Filipino and 32 per cent South Asian, according to the 2016 census.
“Scarborough’s not only diverse, but it’s integrated, which I think is a big part of the story that people don’t see,” he said. “My friends growing up were Polish, Filipino, West Indian and Sri Lankan.”
At the same time, “there’s definitely a sense that Scarborough is sort of the forgotten part of Toronto,” cut off from transit infrastructure and city hall. Myers worries that disconnect will be even more stark under the new plan to combine wards.
“You have the poorer visible minority area that’s going to be combined with the whiter more affluent middle class area, whose interest do you think they’re going to be representing on council?”
Myers spent 7-1/2 years in New York City, where he started to find all the neighbourhoods looked the same. He hopes Toronto is not heading in the same direction.
“I’m OK with gentrification, but it has to be done right,” he said, such as making sure people in the neighbourhood aren’t forced out by high rents and prices and can enjoy some of the benefits of new development.
“When you’re losing the people that make the neighbourhoods interesting that’s when you sort of lose your soul,” he said.