The difference, I suspect, is the speed of gentrification now. In many ways gentrification can be a good thing. If your city is not growing and improving, then it’s shrinking and falling apart.We have seen these shrinking cities in much of the Rust Belt in the United States since the 1950s. They don’t grow and change. Subsequently, many neighbourhoods fall into disrepair. Jobs are low paying, and citizens leave the city – mostly the middle class and rich. Poverty prevails. In Toronto, neighbourhoods have been revitalized. Gentrification has allowed them to grow as communities. Take the Wychwood Barns as a community hub. Consider the impressive rise of Leslieville and the Junction where many independent businesses grew, and where community involvement in the local schools made them better. Consider toxic industrial land turned into development for condos creating more housing and revenue for Toronto. There’s no doubt that gentrification has made Toronto, in many ways, a more interesting and more beautiful city. And the amount of good restaurants is now so impressive, it’s impossible to keep up.
Still, gentrification has its downside. It has made affordability an issue.Housing has become a crisis. Homelessness has become a crisis. The problem with rapid change is that the fallout from that can take much longer to work itself out. That’s why there is more homelessness in a richer city and more crowded transit in a growing city. Gentrification, I think, is not really something you can fully control. You can pass certain legislation, on rent controls for example, but it won’t improve affordability. At the end of the day, people want to live here, and the demand pushes gentrification and rapid change. Not just here in Toronto, but in a lot of other cities like Hong Kong, Melbourne, Barcelona and Buenos Aires. But where do we go from here if we continue on this speedy gentrification growth? Well, let’s look at San Francisco. Why there? Because it’s probably one of the most gentrified cities in the world over the past 20 years. It would make Toronto’s gentrification seem rather humble. It’s technically a city of less than a million people, but the influx of wealth into Northern California has created an uber-gentrification (pun intended). The incomparable teck boom of this area has put gentrification on steroids. A town once known for hippies, artists, outcasts, gold rush pioneers and a city to move to after you come out to your parents has become a city with the highest concentration of wealth in the world. It’s an area of high paying jobs, soaring real estate prices that would make Toronto feel like a bargain. It also has booming residential and commercial construction and a vibrant street life. Here’s a few things on San Francisco to prove my point:
- There is a shortage of social workers, waitstaff, and teachers (paid less in the U.S.) because they cannot afford to live there. It is difficult to find simple shops like a hardware store, a shoe repair store, dry cleaners and an indie music club because commercial rents are so high. It has the lowest percentage of children, 13.4 percent, of any major American city, and is home to about as many dogs as humans under the age of 18. As a dog owner with no kids, I’m ok with this stat, but it does indicate that it’s difficult to raise a family here.
- A median $1.6 million U.S. ($2,160,000 CDN) for a single-family home and $3,700U.S. ($4995 CDN) monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
- A very visible homeless crisis of 7,500 residents in a city of 882,000.
- Billionaires are everywhere. In fact the Bay area has more billionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world. One out of every 11,600 residents.
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