The changing place of condominiums across a metropolitan area, 1970–2015

By definition, all condominiums share social features and challenges of governance, but they have inspired two separate narratives: as suburban, often gated, communities and as downtown high-rises or conversions. In Canada, as elsewhere, research has focused on large urban areas, neglecting subtly different dynamics in smaller centres. The purpose of this case study of mid-sized Hamilton, Ontario, was to assess whether and how those dynamics are different across a whole metro area, using newspapers and building permit data. It tracks the changing place of condo developments and conversions across Hamilton since 1970. For decades, most developments were suburban town (row) houses; since 2000, downtown revival has included conversions and taller, new-build projects. It argues that early developments and conversions reflected a “value gap” in relation to purpose-built rental apartments. Led by a migrant arts community, recent centralization has exploited an inner-city “rent gap,” coupled with a popular reassessment of urban living.     

Are new patterns of low‐income distribution emerging in Canadian metropolitan areas?

Recent studies on urban poverty in Canadian cities suggest a growing spatial concentration of poor populations within metropolitan regions. This article assesses trends in the intra‐urban distribution of the poor population from 1986 to 2006 in eight of Canada's largest cities. We consider five well‐known dimensions of segregation, as identified by Massey and Denton (1988) , in order to examine changes in the spatial distribution of poor populations within metropolitan areas: evenness, exposure, concentration, clustering, and centralization. These indices were calculated for low‐income populations at the census tract level using data from five Canadian censuses. Although each metropolitan area has distinctive characteristics, we were able to identify some general trends. The results suggest that, in 2006 compared to 1986, low‐income populations lived in more spatially concentrated areas, which were, at the same time, socioeconomically more homogeneous and more dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, we observed that over the last twenty years areas of poverty have been located, for the most part, in neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown cores. Nevertheless, we found that poverty has mostly increased in suburban areas located outside inner‐city neighbourhoods. Growing socioeconomic homogeneity and dispersion of low income areas in metropolitan areas reveal new spatial patterns of urban poverty distribution. These findings should be cause for concern as social isolation in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods could affect the life chances and opportunities for the residents of those areas.     

Equitable Approaches to Local Economic Development

Central city economic development during the 1980s and 1990s resounded with the theme of "public-private partnerships" putting together new downtown hotels, sports stadiums, and festival marketplaces. Yet, as city after city proclaimed its "renaissance" and "rebirth," poverty and unemployment increased in many of the same cities. Economic disparities also increased between central cities and their suburbs. These contrasting patterns of growth and decline were often reflected in local economic development struggles over downtown versus neighborhoods, economic development as job generation versus real estate development, and the rich and powerful versus the poor and marginalized. In some cities, these concerns often were articulated by African-American, Latino, and blue-collar communities and their activist supporters. They led to new development strategies designed to balance more equitably the costs and benefits of local economic development. The new strategies included opening government to previously excluded constituencies, linking downtown development to neighborhood development managed by community development corporations, and balancing development across economic sectors. This article reviews efforts in several cities to implement redistributive urban planning and local economic development policies. It concludes with three possibilities for improving broader equity outcomes in future local economic development.     

A HISTORIC NEIGHBOURHOOD AS ARTS SPACE: THE LITTLE INDIA EXPERIENCE

Many cities around the world are redeveloping their neighbourhoods as arts and cultural precincts. Urban industrial zones and lower‐income residential areas have taken on new life as arts neighbourhoods in a bid to attract high‐yield visitors, propel their creative industry and brand themselves as attractive to investors and residents. This article has two aims. Conceptually it explores the notion of arts urbanization – the creation of arts spaces in cities and the socio‐spatial dynamics which they embody. Empirically, the concept is tested using the case of Singapore's Arts Housing Scheme. Under this scheme, historic ethnic precincts take on new roles as arts and creative belts. While the scheme has yielded some success by way of fostering spaces of identity and inspiration for artists, it has also generated social concerns and spatial challenges. Singapore's Little India offers an empirical setting to explore this concept. The paper argues that geography matters to the arts and that arts‐led urbanization creates distinct spatial configurations in cities. For this reason, a greater understanding of and research into arts neighbourhoods and their socio‐spatial dynamics are essential if we are to aspire to sustainable and sensitive development of cities and their creative communities.     

CAN WE GET OLD HERE? SENIORS' PERCEPTIONS OF SEASONAL CONSTRAINTS OF NEIGHBOURHOOD BUILT ENVIRONMENTS IN A NORTHERN,WINTER CITY

Populations around the world are ageing. In response, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed initiatives to encourage cities and regions to become age‐friendly for seniors. This work examines WHO's age‐friendly domains in the context of a northern, winter city in Canada. The urban centre of Edmonton, Alberta experiences both a climate characterized by long, cold winters and a sprawling, built environment with very low population densities. The research found that seniors did report a difference in built environment preferences in summer and winter and that some of those preferences match the elements of the eight WHO domains. However two additional important findings also emerged. First, winter weather was the dominating concept for discussion of the environment regardless of the time of year, and these weather concerns conflated seniors' perceptions of public–private spaces, pointing to the need to carefully examine how this conflation might influence civic participation. Second, participants almost unanimously spoke to the need to make individual adaptations in order to navigate their environments as their mobility decreased. In other words, instead of expecting environmental adaptations to meet their changing needs, seniors accepted and individually managed – to the best of their ability – the ongoing challenges. These findings provide empirical results that can be used to develop supportive built environments in winter cities, with an emphasis on ‘upstream’ health geography and public health imperatives that enable safe and vibrant neighbourhoods to support healthy aging, which has implications for geographers, planners, and public health personnel.     

Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney (1988–2015)

Provision of public services by state governments rather than municipalities is considered an important urban governance factor preventing deeper levels of socio‐spatial inequality in Australian cities. The paper examines the spatial patterns of investment by the New South Wales state government in a wide range of services and infrastructure in metropolitan Sydney over 28 budget years from 1988/89 to 2015/16. We examined the relationship between volume and type of investment in infrastructure and services, and considered a local area's socioeconomic characteristics, distance from the central business district, and designation as a strategic site in metropolitan plans. Despite an overall redistributive approach favouring relatively disadvantaged areas, the most disadvantaged suburbs in metropolitan Sydney had significantly lower levels of investment. When funding was directed to the most disadvantaged suburbs, it was often in the form of new social housing development, reinforcing both the concentration of poverty and disadvantage in resource access. The findings suggest that this is a case of under‐investment by the state government in areas already populated by disadvantaged communities rather than a market‐driven process whereby disadvantaged households move into poorly resourced neighbourhoods.     

The Old and the New: Qualifying City Systems in the World with Classical Models and New Data

Zipf's rank‐size rule, lognormal distribution, and Gibrat's urban growth models are considered as summarizing fundamental properties of systems of cities. In this article, they are used as statistical benchmarks for comparing the shapes of urban hierarchies and evolutionary trends of seven systems of cities in the world including BRICS, Europe, and United States. In order to provide conclusions that avoid the pitfalls of too small samples or uncontrolled urban definitions, these models are tested on some 20,000 urban units whose geographically significant delineations were harmonized in each country over 50 years between 1960 and 2010. As a result, if the models appear not always statistically valid, their usefulness is confirmed since the observed deviations from empirical data remain limited and can often be interpreted from the geohistorical context of urbanism proper to each world region. Moreover, the article provides new free software which authorizes the reproducibility of our experiments with our data bases as well as with complementary data.     

Urban sprawl in Spain: differences among cities and causes

Urban sprawl has a major impact on the environment, public health and the socio-economic evolution of cities. The causes are numerous, being mainly related to the generalized use of the automobile in modern cities. Urban sprawl has been especially relevant in US cities since the 1950s, rapidly spreading to other cities in the rest of the world. This paper studies the case of Spain using recent data. Spanish cities have grown rapidly over the 90s and 2000s. The country has completed the process of urbanization and has suffered the effects of a major real estate bubble. In this context, we are interested in measuring and explaining where and why urban sprawl has appeared in Spanish cities. Digital mapping carried out around the year 2000 providing full coverage of Spain is used to calculate an Urban Sprawl Index. It is applied to all urban areas and municipalities throughout the country, providing an objective, comparable measurement of sprawl and identifying which areas are most affected by this phenomenon. A second stage of analysis is conducted in an attempt to explain the causes of the differences in sprawl among Spanish cities with a regression model based on the literature. We have found that the cases most affected by sprawl are the latest urban developments on the Mediterranean coast as well as certain areas in the vicinity of large cities: the mountains to the north of Madrid and the coastline near Barcelona and Valencia. In some cases, urban sprawl is starting to become a problem for the environment and urban sustainability, with important consequences for the future evolution of the affected cities.     

Multiple Suburban Publics: Rethinking Community Opposition to Consolidation in Sydney

Since the late 1980s urban consolidation has become the dominant strategic planning paradigm across Australian cities; however, sites of densification are increasingly becoming sites of community resistance and conflict. In the context of the Sydney Metropolitan Strategy, this paper explores Ku‐ring‐gai in Sydney's northern suburbs as a site of community resistance centred on opposition to urban consolidation. Moving beyond more traditional constructions of community resistance as a form of NIMBYism, we present here a typology of community resistance groups and explore the complex relationships between these groups, which are used to challenge development. In addition we draw on understanding of urban publics to explore the ways in which these groups attempt to engage and act on behalf of a diverse set of publics operating across scales.     

The specifics and spatial structure of circular migration in Russia

Abstract

This article aims at distinguishing recurrent population movements within the territory of the Russian Federation between urban localities of different sizes and rural areas in connection to the processes of urbanization, suburbanization, and de-urbanization. Incomplete urbanization and the strong polarization of socio-economic space in Russia have resulted in two powerful contradictory population flows: centrifugal seasonal sub- and de-urbanization and centripetal labor migration from rural and small towns to large urban centers. The article discusses three forms of recurrent population mobility in Russia: (1) daily commuting of urban and rural inhabitants within metropolitan areas; (2) commuting to large cities and their suburbs for long-term employment intervals (weekly, monthly, etc.), (3) second-home commuting to countryside dachas. Unfinished urbanization in Russia not only attracts rural and small towns’ population to major cities but also keeps it within the latter. It slows down the real de-urbanization and induces specific dachas (second-home) suburbanization/de-urbanization, with these processes being closely interrelated. An opportunity to earn money in cities together with the impossibility of moving to major centers due to expensive housing encourages households to remain in small towns and rural areas. Meanwhile, inhabited rural localities (even ones distant from cities) attract seasonal population (dachniks).     

Overcoming obstacles on the peri‐urban fringe: young people making new geographies

Understanding contemporary youth lifestyles is a challenge for urban planners and geographers. Young people's everyday needs are complex, and urban spaces in new outer city developments offer unique spaces for shaping their identities. Juxtaposed with affordances of digital technologies, the physical location of home exists in a fluid landscape. Overcoming obstacles, such as access to public transport, places to socialise, and meet their peers, is characteristic of the everyday young person's experience. Knowing how young people decide where to go for personal space, as well as who to ask for personal advice, was the aim of this study. The study was conducted with samples of young people growing up in the rapidly growing peri‐urban northern suburbs of the Australian city of Melbourne. A survey questionnaire was administered to a gender‐balanced sample aged 12–15 years (n = 523) with follow‐up interviews to better inform the results. Logistic regression and factorial analyses of variance reveal their favourite places to be ‘my’ bedroom, being with friends, the park, and the café. Although not the focus of this study, some gender differences were noted. In addition to innovative use of space, the results show the positive influences on their well‐being of trusted family and friends. Young people's geographies offer transdisciplinary insights that highlight their creative usage of these new urban spaces. They offer a new imaginary for geographical education and research.     

Mapping schools' NAPLAN results: a spatial inequality of school outcomes in Australia

This article identifies spatial dimensions of educational outcomes using maps of the 2016 Grade 5 reading results for Australia's National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy for all Australian schools. A geographical information system (GIS) was used to overlay schools' results onto suburbs' advantage or disadvantage to visualise spatial patterns. We then examined the extent to which school results “cluster” in socio‐economically advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs and considered the consistency of spatial patterns for results across major cities. That work illustrates both how GIS can foreground educational inequality and how “the spatial” is more than corollary for student socio‐economic status. Results show substantial differences between urban and remote areas and towns of different size. Maps of cities visualise spatial “clustering” patterns of school results, with most schools in advantaged suburbs having high results and almost no schools in disadvantaged suburbs having high results. Educational outcomes strongly align to local socio‐demographic characteristics, and parallel host communities’ levels of advantage or disadvantage. Differences between public and private schools are less significant than within‐sector differences for schools in advantaged or disadvantaged locales. Patterns in all cities are consistent—schools in advantaged suburbs predominantly have high results, whereas non‐government schools generally perform better than government schools in disadvantaged suburbs. Most concerning is the persistent and increasing trajectory of results in advantaged, and more so in disadvantaged suburbs, of all cities since the first National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy in 2008. Ameliorating spatial inequality between primary schools is one of the greatest challenges for Australians.     

CONCEPTS OF THE INNER CITY AND RECENT TRENDS IN CANADA

This essay evaluates the explanatory power of two current models - ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ - of the evolution of inner cities. This in done in the light of data on socioeconomic trends that affect residential areas in the cores of the nine major Canadian metropolitan regions. The centrifugal model focuses on the attraction of suburbs on central city residents; the centripetal concentrates on the lure of some inner-city neighbourhoods for certain middle- and upper-income households. While the Canadian trends support some propositions of the models, they seriously challenge others, us models seem unsuitable for explaining Canadian urban reality. They fail to account for the relative socioeconomic stability of core neighourboods in major Canadian cities and the dissociation between trends in their residents' incomes and in housing values. Cet article évalue le pouvoir d'explication démontré par les ébauches théoriques qui visent à faire comprendre l'évolution des quartiers situés à l'interieur des centres urbains. Cette évaluation se sert de données relatives aux tendances socio-économiques qui marquent les secteurs résidentiels situés au coeur des neuf plus grandes zones métropolitaines du Canada. Deux modèles dominent ce champ d'étude: il y a d'abord le modèle ‘centrifuge,’ qui postule une attraction des banlieues exercée sur les résidents de la ville centrale; puis le modèle ‘centripète,’ qui explique l'attrait qu'exercent ces quartiers sur certains manages a moyens et hauls revenus. Alors que les tendances observées dans les agglomérations canadiennes viennent donner du poids à certaines propositions de ces modèles, elles présentent également un défi de taille à certaines autres. Les difficultés ressenties dans l'application de ces deux modèles paraissent relever de l'inadaptation de modèles conçus aux Etats-Unis à la réalité urbaine canadienne. Ces modèles sont considérés particulièrement inaptes à expliquer la relative stabilité socio-économique des quartiers des grandes agglomérations canadiennes et à rendre compte d'un écart grandissant entre lesrevenus de leurs résidents et la valeur des unités de logement qui s'y trouvent.     

Are the home values and property tax burdens of permanent homeowners affected by growth in housing rentals and second homes: Evidence based on big data from Florida

Homeowners who make their homes their primary residence have resisted the entry of rentals into their neighborhoods and cities. Possible reasons underlying this resistance are that rentals reduce the property values, increase the property tax burdens, and raise the price of public services for these homeowners. We relate the market values of single-family homes occupied by permanent homeowners, the effective property tax rate of these homeowners, and the tax price they pay for public services to shifts in their city's housing units toward a variety of different types of rentals and second homes. Our analysis is based on large panels of Florida homes containing hundreds of thousands and millions of observations. Our results show that increases in the share of a city's housing units used as rentals or second homes reduce the home values, increase the property tax burdens, and raise the public services prices of homeowners who permanently reside in single-family homes. Impacts vary in magnitude among single-family, condominium, and mobile homes used as rentals and second homes. Estimated impacts are the strongest for share increases in single-family rentals and second homes.     

Ghettos in Canada's cities? Racial segregation,ethnic enclaves and poverty concentration in Canadian urban areas

Recent literature suggests a growing relationship between the clustering of certain visible minority groups in urban neighbourhoods and the spatial concentration of poverty in Canadian cities, raising the spectre of ghettoization. This paper examines whether urban ghettos along the U.S. model are forming in Canadian cities, using census data for 1991 and 2001 and borrowing a neighbourhood classification system specifically designed for comparing neighbourhoods in other countries to the U.S. situation. Ecological analysis is then performed in order to compare the importance of minority concentration, neighbourhood classification and housing stock attributes in improving our understanding of the spatial patterning of low-income populations in Canadian cities in 2001. The findings suggest that ghettoization along U.S. lines is not a factor in Canadian cities and that a high degree of racial concentration is not necessarily associated with greater neighbourhood poverty. On the other hand, the concentration of apartment housing, of visible minorities in general, and of a high level of racial diversity in particular, do help in accounting for the neighbourhood patterning of low income. We suggest that these findings result as much from growing income inequality within as between each visible minority group. This increases the odds of poor visible minorities of each group ending up in the lowest-cost, least-desirable neighbourhoods from which they cannot afford to escape (including social housing in the inner suburbs). By contrast, wealthier members of minority groups are more mobile and able to self-select into higher-status 'ethnic communities'. This research thus reinforces pleas for a more nuanced interpretation of segregation, ghettoization and neighbourhood dynamics.     

CHINESE COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY IN THE TORONTO CMA: NEW DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS AND IMPACTS

This study, which examines recent development patterns of Chinese commercial activity in the Toronto CMA, yielded three major discoveries. First, new development in the past 15 years brought about not only a proliferation of ethnic Chinese businesses, but also considerable changes in business structure: the traditionally predominant restaurants and grocery stores declined substantially in proportion, but businesses that provide various types of consumer services expanded greatly. This indicates that the Chinese community has been steadily building a more complete and more self-sufficient ethnic economy. Second, while Toronto's three central-city Chinatowns have remained, most new developments occurred in the suburbs. Consequently, the spatial organization of Chinese commercial activities has become multinuclear, and their rapid spreading has begun to modify Toronto's traditional retail landscape. The third, and perhaps the most revolutionary, characteristic of the new development is the shift from unplanned retail strips to planned shopping centres, with the change of ownership from leasing of retail space to selling of store units. The new occupancy system, known as condominium retailing, is new to Canada and is associated only with ethnic Chinese retailing. In importance, condominium retailing has challenged both the conventional leasing system that has governed the development and operation of North American shopping centres over the past 40 years and long-established local planning systems. L'étude des nouvelles tendances du commerce chinois dans la région métropolitaine de recensement de Toronto a mis en évidence trois faits essentiels. Premièrement, le développement des 15 dernières années s'est traduit non seulement par une multiplication du nombre des commerces chinois, mais aussi par un bouleversement de la structure commerciale: les restaurants et les épiceries, jusqu'alors prédominants, ont vu leur importance relative diminuer au profit de magasins qui offrent des services aux consommateurs. Ceci reflète le fait que l'économie forgée par la communauté chinoise est de plus en plus autosuffisante. Deuxièmement, alors que les trois Chinatowns du centre de Toronto se sont maintenus, la plupart des nouveaux développements ont eu lieu en banlieue. Par conséquent, l'organisation spatiale des activités commerciales chinoises est devenue polynucléaire. Cette rapide propagation commence à modifier le paysage traditionnel du commerce de détail torontois. Troisièmement, et c'est peut-être là le fait le plus marquant, l'étude a révélé une révolution complète du mode d'organisation et de propriété des magasins. Aux groupements spontanés se sont substitués des centres commerciaux au sein desquels les commerçants ne sont plus locataires mais propriétaires de leur espace de vente. Ce système, que l'on pourrait baptiser le « condominium commercial » est un nouveau phénomène au Canada et ne concerne, pour l'instant, que les commerces chinois. Néanmoins, par son succès, le « condominium commercial » a remis en question les systèmes traditionnels de planification locale, aussi bien que le système classique des baux, qui a présidé au développement des centres commerciaux nord-américains au cours des 40 dernières années.     

Entre industrie et tourisme: L'évolution du paysage baieriverain à Saguenay,Québec

Between industry and tourism: The evolving landscape of La Baie in Saguenay, Québec La Baie is a borough of the newly amalgamated city of Saguenay, which is defined by its past industrial and maritime development. This area encompassing the Ha! Ha! Bay is characterized by a lush natural landscape, contrasting sharply with the haphazardly built environment and urban fabric. The demolition of the Port‐Alfred pulp and paper mill and the cruise ship terminal project offer the possibility to improve and harmonize this former municipality's landscape. In this article, we will discuss the evolution of the borough's landscape patterns through glimpses of the maritime and tourist tradition, industrial base and the design of downtown commercial space.     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

Closed Condominiums as Urban Fragments of the Contemporary City

Contemporary cities have witnessed the emergence of new real-estate products in which gated communities and closed condominiums (CCs) can be included. The proliferation of these urban products is worldwide, with similar patterns that are analysed in this paper according to five perspectives of analysis: physical, economic, social, political and cultural. These perspectives cross-cut some of the main issues of discussion of the contemporary urban debate associated with private residential developments. These developments seem to appeal to an increasing number of social groups and have been able to adapt to different planning systems. With a smaller scale, these developments emerged in Portugal in the form of CCs, and are analysed in a case study in Greater Oporto. The purpose of this paper is to present the Portuguese singularities of this phenomenon in comparison with the worldwide dimension. In our case study we find some important particularities strongly associated with the Portuguese planning system. Some of these particularities have negative impacts on the surrounding urban landscape. As a result, CCs demand specific planning policies to counteract the negative consequences they are likely to generate in local social and urban fabrics. In the absence of these policies, CCs, as well as other private residential developments, are likely to contribute further to an increasingly fragmented and divided urban landscape.     

Selling Urban Housing in London. Can High-density Urban Living Be Sold to a Sceptical British Public? Distinction,Mobility, and Control over Environment

Marketing materials from brownfield housing developments in London are analysed in order to evaluate the extent to which the British government's 'urban renaissance' goals can overcome public scepticism and a historical distaste for high-density urban living. A case study of Tunnel Wharf in Rotherhithe is presented along with a broader analysis of marketing materials from other developments. These marketing efforts suggest that urban living can be successfully sold to some segments of the British public, in large part by playing to cities' natural strengths. However, these sales pitches rely heavily on appeals to such themes as exclusivity and the ability to control one's environment, and thus raise broader questions about the viability and coherence of the urban renaissance vision. Specifically, it is suggested that the psychological response to increased urban densities may imply possible trade-offs between the preservation of countryside and the promotion of 'urbanity' in cities.