Quote:
Originally Posted by memph
It's does get a little tricky as you're leaving city limits to apply the quadrant model though. Within pre-1950 Toronto in particular, there are very substantial differences in wealth between the quadrants but in the 905 it's much more uniformly middle class.
Woodbridge isn't really less wealthy than Richmond Hill or Thornhill, and seems wealthier on average than Central North York. The Chinese of Milliken, Markham and eastern Richmond Hill often came to Canada with pretty good education levels, and sometimes a fair bit of accumulated wealth, but often brought along elderly relatives that have less of either. They seem to struggle due to the major cultural adjustment including english fluency, but their kids seem to do very well in school and should be quite fluent in english so the next generation will likely be fairly wealthy.
It's not just Durham having fewer blue collar workers than Peel as a whole. But even if you compare individual municipalities and their median or average incomes... ok lets say you exclude Brampton which is somewhat lower-middle class. Durham Region is still higher income than Mississauga, and if you exclude Oshawa, it's higher income by a significant margin.
However, Ajax, Pickering and Whitby are much more less distant bedroom suburbs compared to Mississauga, especially Mississauga south of the 401 and east of the Credit River which is much more mature and integrated into the GTA. That part of Mississauga should be more like Scarborough in some ways, but it seems to be more desirable.
Pickering, Ajax and Whitby also have higher median incomes than Vaughan Richmond Hill and Markham, and except Ajax, also have higher average incomes. Despite that Durham Region has cheaper housing than Peel, and significantly cheaper housing than York. Perhaps it's less about Durham being attractive to the wealthy as unattractive to the poor. York and Peel have better transit, more varied housing options, and better blue collar employment opportunities, partly thanks to better transport connections for trade (airport, railyards, highways).
Meanwhile Halton is far enough from the blue collar employment of Vaughan and Peel that the working class wouldn't want to live there, but the office parks of Mississauga are closer. It has similar housing options to Durham - ie mostly single family - and due to being older, a lot of large lots. Transit for the working class is pretty poor, and is mostly based on commuter rail to downtown Toronto (similar to Durham).
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I would agree the 905 is more solidly middle class and the quadrants model makes less sense than in Toronto. The very wealthiest and the poor after all are in 416 mostly.
Woodbridge is pretty affluent but it's also in the traditional NW Italian migration path. Until the 1980s and 1990s, Italians were mostly working class but over the last generation or so they have become increasingly affluent. At the same time, Woodbridge affluence is largely made up of "non-traditional" sources in business, the construction industry, real estate developers etc. not doctors, lawyers and the like.
I think it also makes sense to see York and Peel as more "inner" 905 and Halton and Durham as more "outer 905" in terms of the relationship to Toronto, urban form etc. From that vantage point Halton and Durham is the more relevant comparison (Scarborough in some ways is the eastern counterpart to both Etobicoke and Mississauga in these comparisons).
Durham is home to the better-off "white working class" so to speak (i.e. white people without degrees). It's like Suffolk County on Long Island or something. Incomes are high, but educational attainments and share in professional-managerial occupations aren't really. Only 22% in Durham are university graduates (way below the GTA average), compared to 38% in Halton (York is also 38% and Peel is 32%).