The traditional view of North American suburbs is that they are populated by those on relatively high incomes who own their single-family home. Mark Williamson and Robert Walter-Joseph report on a new study which challenges the established view of where suburban life is located. They write that by studying all of Canada’s 26 major metropolitan areas, researchers found many central city neighborhoods which exhibited high proportions of suburban-style living, as well as peripheral areas that had more urban characteristics. They write that ‘suburbanism’ is as much about where income is concentrated as it is about aspects of the built form. It is not solely about being outside a city center

Walter-Joseph, Robert

Williamson, Mark

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blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/07/21/how-suburban-ways-of-living-are-shaping-the-geography-of-income-in-canadian-cities/How suburban ways of living are shaping the geography ofincome in Canadian citiesThe traditional view of North American suburbs is that they are populated by those on relativelyhigh incomes who own their single-family home. Mark Williamson and Robert Walter-Josephreport on a new study which challenges the established view of where suburban life is located.They write that by studying all of Canada’s 26 major metropolitan areas, researchers found manycentral city neighborhoods which exhibited high proportions of suburban-style living, as well asperipheral areas that had more urban characteristics. They write that ‘suburbanism’ is as muchabout where income is concentrated as it is about aspects of the built form. It is not solely aboutbeing outside a city center. In both the US and Canada, gentrification, income polarization and the condo development boomsince the 1980s have led to increasing socioeconomic diversity across our urban centres. We areseeing high-income residents moving back into the traditionally lower-income inner city at thesame time as lower-income earners are moving to the suburbs.These trends have renewed interest in the geography of income, as some have speculated thatwe will eventually see a complete reversal of the income structures of the past, with inner cities becoming muchwealthier than their surrounding suburbs.Much of the evidence for these trends is based on an understanding of the suburbs and inner city as distinct andseparate places. But given the increasing complexity of neighborhoods, this dichotomy is unable to capture thediversity contained in the suburbs. In a recent study, Canadian researchers Markus Moos at the University ofWaterloo and Pablo Mendez at Carleton University created a complementary definition of the suburbs based onthe characteristics – or ‘ways of living’ – in the places where people reside, rather than just the geographiclocation. Based on this definition, they ask whether there is in fact a diversity of income in suburban ways ofliving. They find that higher income households are spreading to new parts of the city, bringing suburban ways ofliving to unexpected locations and redefining the meaning of contemporary suburban living. But what exactly is meant by a ‘suburban’ way of living? The researchers operationalize the concept throughthree key dimensions: built form, tenure type and commute mode. The popular image of the suburban lifestyle, aswell as the scholarly perspective, is generally associated with high proportions of single-family dwellings,homeownership and automobile use.Using census data at neighborhood level geographies, eight categories of neighborhoods were created based onvarious combinations of the three dimensions. Categories are based on their relation to the metropolitan averagefor each variable, with an above average score indicating a higher degree of suburbanism. Figure 1 shows theeight neighborhood types, ranging from least (Category 1: areas that fall below metropolitan averages on allindicators) to most suburban (Category 8: areas that exceed metropolitan averages on all indicators).Figure 1 – Neighborhood categories  Maps of these categorizations provide a pictureof where suburban ways of living are mostprevalent. This is available for all 26 majormetropolitans areas in Canada, but only thelargest are shown here (see Figures 2 through4).Figure 2 – Toronto Figure 3 – VancouverFigure 4 – MontrealA few things are apparent from this analysis. First, the size of the suburban population in the Canadianmetropolitan system is substantial. In all of the metropolitan areas studied, between 32 to 55 percent of thepopulation lived in Category 8 suburbs. But at the same time, 13 to 33 percent lived in the Category 1 areas (themost urban), suggesting there is a degree of polarization occurring in the types of places we live in, with fewpeople living in the neighborhoods that are neither fully suburban nor fully urban.Second, high rates of homeownership occur throughout the metropolitan landscape, not only in peripheral areas.In case study cities, homeownership grew from 56 to 65 percent between 1981 and 2006. Interestingly, a largeshare of this growth occurred in the inner city, where intensification, gentrification and ‘condofication’ have led towhat have sometimes been called ‘vertical suburbs.’ This is not meant to overstate this relatively recentmanifestation of downtown suburbanism, however: the neighborhoods within ten kilometres of the centralbusiness district still had the lowest ownership rates in 2006.Finally, the maps show a high degree of complexity and spatial variability in the suburbanisms studied.  There arecentral city neighborhoods exhibiting high proportions of suburban ways of living and also peripheral areas thatare more urban than the metropolitan average. This suggests that defining suburbs based on distance from thecentre may not be the best approach to capture how suburban ways of living relate to actual locations in themetropolitan landscape.So the location of suburbanisms is complex, occurring both downtown and within the periphery, but are suburbanways of living correlated with income? Figure 5 shows a clear gradient in household income across the eightcategorizations. Regression results find that all the built form/tenure/commute variables are correlated withincome. Category 8 neighborhoods – the most suburban – show the largest statistical association, indicating thatthe combination of the three suburbanism indicators together explains more about where income is concentratedthan each of these variables on their own.Figure 5 – Distribution of pre-tax household income bracket by suburbanism categorySource: Calculated using Statistics Canada data, 2007 (2006 Census). Adapted from: Moos,M. & Mendez, P. (2014). Suburban ways of living and the geography of income: Howhomeownership, single-family dwellings and automobile use define the metropolitan socialspace. Urban Studies, pp. 1-19.Categories 3, 6 and 7 have the next highest explanatory power in most of the metropolitan areas studied. Thecommon denominator in all of these groups is higher than average homeownership rates. This indicates thattenure explains more about where income is concentrated than either of the other two variables. While this mayseem like an intuitive link, it is an important finding when considering the broad dispersal of homeownershipevident in the maps. Higher-income households are spreading to new geographies, including the inner city, viaownership tenure.In comparing findings between metropolitan areas, the size and economic structure of the city is important. Inmost of Canada’s largest urban centres (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary), the relationship betweensuburban ways of living and income is much weaker than it is in smaller metropolitan areas and those that aremore economically dependent on their manufacturing sector. In large post-industrial cities, gentrification anddowntown revitalization through condo development have drawn wealthy households into the inner city andundermined the traditional suburban-affluence connection.From a policy perspective, there are important implications in these findings. Despite claims that suburbs arebecoming more diverse in terms of their socioeconomic composition, this research suggests that across 26distinct metropolitan areas, suburban ways of living remain consistently associated with higher incomes. Yetsuburbanization, as defined by Moos and Mendez, no longer only means living at the urban fringe, nor does itsuggest a complete reversal of traditional patterns: in the contemporary metropolitan landscape, suburban waysof living, and homeownership in particular, are prevalent both at the periphery and in the central city.The strong association between homeownership and higher incomes – and conversely renting and lowerincomes – suggests that the continued promotion of ownership in housing policy comes at the expense of lessaffluent residents. This problem is particularly acute in urban revitalization and intensification efforts, which canresult in a marginalization or displacement of lower-income renters. Possible responses include publicreinvestment in the rental sector, the promotion of cooperative housing, or requirements on new condominiumdevelopments to include a share of low-income housing units. By directly considering the relationship betweenhousing tenure and affluence, these policies could help stem potential displacement and allow access to centralcity living for a wider range of incomes.Finally, this analysis should remind North American policymakers and researchers of the limitations of defining thesuburbs as a geographically fixed ‘place’. While distance from the city centre does explain a lot about wheresuburbanism is occurring, the researchers also find a wide range of suburban and urban ways of living occurringin unexpected locations throughout the metropolitan landscape. Suburbs are not homogeneous landscapes butrather, they contain particular patterns of living that may be associated with particular forms of housing, tenure andcommuting patterns. The empirical method developed by Moos and Mendez provides an opportunity to lookbeyond mutually exclusive spatial entities and consider a complementary approach to understanding thegeography of suburban ways of living.Featured image credit: Evan Leeson (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)This article is based on the paper, ‘Suburban ways of living and the geography of income: How homeownership,single-family dwellings and automobile use define the metropolitan social space’, in Urban Studies. Please read our comments policy before commenting.           Note:  This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of U.S.App– American Politics and Policy,nor of the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1HXOZ5U _________________________________ About the authors Mark Williamson – University of WaterlooMark Williamson is a student in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo and aresearch assistant on Professor Markus Moos’ Generationed City research project. Robert Walter-Joseph – University of WaterlooRobert Walter-Joseph is a graduate of the Master’s of Planning program at the University ofWaterloo and a research assistant with Professor Markus Moos.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

How suburban ways of living are shaping the geography of income in Canadian cities

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