A Place to Stand on Your Own Two Feet: The Role of Community Housing in Immigrant Integration in Montréal, Quebec

Research on the housing conditions of immigrant households has tended to focus on their spatial distribution in metropolitan areas, the discrimination they face in the search for housing, and their housing trajectories, in particular their access to homeownership.  Little research has been done on what role, if any, housing plays in their integration in their host society.  This research tests the hypothesis that community housing, in which tenants participate actively in the management of their buildings, gives immigrants social contacts and skills that help in their integration.  The authors conducted interviews and focus groups with renters, homeowners and housing specialists in order to understand better what respondents understand by “integration” and to investigate the possible causal relationship between life in community housing and social integration.  The findings both support and contradict the original hypothesis and are the basis for recommendations for community housing developers. The most important lesson to be drawn from the research is that participation in in-house activities in community housing are not necessarily a positive factor in social integration—it may actually be perceived negatively by some immigrants—and are clearly secondary to questions of housing quality and affordability

Development Controls in Toronto in the Nineteenth Century

Histories of contemporary development control tend to situate its beginning in the first or second decade of the twentieth century, when modern zoning bylaws were adopted. Yet, as some researchers have pointed out, building and land-use regulations took shape in the nineteenth century and even earlier. This paper focuses on controls set by the City of Toronto between 1834, when it was incorporated, and 1904, when it adopted bylaw no. 4408, which is seen by many as the first step taken by the city toward modern zoning. In technical terms, it appears that a coherent, though minimal, apparatus of land-use regulation was already in place by the 1860s. Over the course of the nineteenth century, building codes and nuisance laws display the growing intervention of public authorities in the development of the industrial city. Municipal control over material production and over human activity diversifies and finds expression in increasingly complex ordinances. In political terms, the bylaws reveal a growing concern with socio-spatial differentiation and with the protection of property values rather than with health and safety. The incremental development of land-use regulation suggests that, even though North American cities borrowed from each other and from their European counterparts, they constructed zoning locally, in accordance to local needs, resources, and constraints (economic, political, and legal) and in a piecemeal fashion, one bylaw, one amendment at a time.Les études historiques de l’urbanisme réglementaire contemporain tendent à situer ses débuts durant la première ou deuxième décennie du vingtième siècle, quand les règlements de zonage modernes furent adoptés. Or, comme l’on remarqué certains chercheurs, les règlements de construction et d’utilisation du sol ont pris forme au dix-neuvième siècle et même avant. Ce travail examine les mesures de contrôle mises en place par la municipalité de Toronto entre 1834, quand elle fut constituée, et 1904, quand elle adopta le règlement no 4408, que l’on voit souvent comme le premier pas de la Ville vers le zonage moderne. En termes techniques, il semble qu’un appareil cohérent, bien que minimal, de réglementation de l’utilisation du sol fut déjà présent dès les années 1860. Durant le courant du dix-neuvième siècle, les codes de la construction et les lois sur les nuisances montrent l’intervention grandissante des autorités publiques dans le développement de la ville industrielle. Le contrôle municipal de la production matérielle et de l’activité humaine se diversifie et s’exprime dans des arrêtés municipaux de plus en plus complexes. En termes politiques, les règlements révèlent un souci croissant de la différentiation socio-spatiale de la ville et de ses valeurs foncières, plutôt que de ses problèmes de santé et de sécurité. Le développement graduel de la réglementation de l’utilisation du sol suggère que les villes nord-américaines, bien que portées à emprunter des pratiques les unes des autres et de leurs vis-à-vis européennes, ont construit le zonage sur place, en accord avec des besoins, ressources et contraintes (économiques, politiques et légales) locaux, et en avançant petit à petit, un règlement, un amendement à la fois