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.

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

The growing Hispanic and Asian populations in most major North American cities have drastically transformed the urban demographic landscape to become racially and ethnically diversified. We review literature on multiethnic cities by focusing on three important aspects of urban structures and processes: racial and ethnic residential patterns, ethnic businesses, and the performance of racial and ethnic groups in the labor market. Although the literature has identified many factors that shape these urban structures and processes, our discussion specifically focuses on the effects of multigroup contexts on urban structures and processes. We focus and compare four major racial and ethnic groups: whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Specific ethnic subgroups of all four groups are also discussed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/29737721

Multiethnic Cities in North America

The effect of residential capital through immigration on the internal structure of cities and housing markets has become of increasing importance. This study examines the effects of immigration on Vancouver's residential housing market as the city became increasingly influenced by global processes and the arrival of skilled and wealthy migrants. The changing determinants of housing demand are analyzed for recent immigrants and the rest of the population using Statistics Canada data for two time periods. Intraurban spatial dimensions of the changes in housing demand are examined using tract data. The analysis reveals a de-coupling of local housing from labour markets as recent immigrants' housing consumption became less tied to their local labor market participation. Labor market income measured in national datasets becomes less instructive in explaining housing market outcomes and neighborhood change if immigrants arrive with established wealth and continue to earn unreported income outside the country.

The Globalization of Urban Housing Markets: Immigration and Changing Housing Demand in Vancouver

This study demonstrates that conventional expectations concerning patterns of residential spatial assimilation by racial minority immigrants are likely to be altered under conditions of persistent high levels of immigration. While cross-sectional studies conclude that the traditional assimilation model fits the experience of racial minority immigrants to Canada, a different picture emerges from longitudinal changes at the group level. Using a pseudo-cohort approach, it is shown that, for some racial minority immigrants, the level of residential dissimilarity from Whites in Canada's gateway cities has risen with time. Moreover, residential proximity to Whites is becoming less salient as a marker of spatial assimilation. Differences among racial minority groups in residential distribution and exposure to own-group neighbours only reflect variations in the degree of own-group preference and capacity to build affluent ethnic communities.

Spatial Assimilation of Racial Minorities in Canada's Immigrant Gateway Cities:

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Housing and location of young adults, then and now : consequences of urban restructuring in Montreal and Vancouver

The present study designs a new classification scheme of neighbourhood ethnic transition and uses this scheme to examine the residential patterns of visible minorities in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas. Based on 1986 and 1996 census tract profile data, this study finds that the conventional invasion-succession process of neighbourhood ethnic transition is generally not applicable to major visible minority groups in large Canadian cities. However, divergent patterns of ethnic transition have emerged among visible minority groups. Blacks tend both to live in, and move into, neighbourhoods with low socio-economic status (SES). South Asians also tend to live in neighbourhoods with low SES, but they do not become further concentrated in such neighbourhoods. In contrast, the Chinese population increases more rapidly in neighbourhoods with higher SES. Resume: La presente etude propose un nouveau plan de classification des transitions ethniques dans les quartiers, qui sert a examiner les modeles de repartition residentielle des minorites visibles dans les trois regions metropolitaines les plus importantes du Canada. A. partir des donnees des profils de secteurs de recensement pour 1986 et 1996, l'etude a pennis de determiner que le processus conventionnel d'invasion/succession pour ce qui est des transitions ethniques dans les quartiers ne s'applique generalement pas aux principaux groupes de minorities visibles clans les grandes villes canadiennes. Toutefois, des modeles divergents de transitions ethniques so sont manifestes parmi des groupes de minorities visibles. Les personnes de race noire out tendance a vivre et a after s'installer dans des quartiers ou le statut socioeconomique (SSE) est faible. Los Sud-Asiatiques oat aussi tendance a vivre dans des quartiers ou le SSE est faible, mais n'ont pas tendance a s'y concentrer davantage. Par contre, la population chinoise augmente plus rapidement dans les quartiers dont le SSE est eleve. ********** Since the 1970s, the visible minority population has bean dramatically increasing in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas that have accommodated most of Canada's new immigrants. This increase in the visible minority population through immigration is profoundly affecting the racial make-up of urban neighbourhoods. Changes in neighbourhood ethnic composition often transform the physical and social characteristics of neighbourhoods, affect the 'way of life' established by long-term residents, and frequently generate tensions within local space (Ray et al., 1997). It is therefore of important social significance to examine neighbourhood ethnic transition and its relationship with neighbourhood socio-economic status under the condition of rapid increases in visible minority populations. The present study investigates the residential patterns of visible minority populations in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas. Specifically, has the substantial increase in the visible minority population led to increased co-residence of visible and white populations within neighbourhoods or has it created more racially concentrated neighbourhoods? In addition, is transition in neighbourhood racial composition closely related to neighbourhood socioeconomic status? Ethnic Transition Among Neighbourhoods: A Literature Review Many studies on neighbourhood ethnic transition in the US have been centred on the compositional stability of racially mixed neighbourhoods. In their pioneering analysis of neighbourhood racial transition in the city of Chicago in the 1940s, Duncan and Duncan (1957) propose an invasion-succession model of neighbourhood racial transition. This model suggests an inevitability of white-to-black change in racially mixed neighbourhoods. Once blacks penetrate an area inhabited exclusively by whites, the number and proportion of blacks in the neighbourhood would continuously increase, while the white population would continuously decrease until a complete turnover of population from white to black occupancy takes place (Duncan and Duncan, 1957). …

Feng Hou

Papers

Neighbourhood ethnic transition and its socio-economic connections