Stop using "Northeastern", "Midwestern", "Sunbelt" etc. for Canadian cities?

[Docere]

There are still sizable numbers in "old" Brampton I think. Maybe a bit around the Etobicoke lakeshore too.

Italians seem to be spreading out too, to places like Innisfil and Wasaga Beach.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

There are still sizable numbers in "old" Brampton I think. Maybe a bit around the Etobicoke lakeshore too.

Italians seem to be spreading out too, to places like Innisfil and Wasaga Beach.

A trend where both Anglo-descent people and Italians alike move away from the city around the time the city grows in visible minority %, would be interpreted in the US as evidence of "white flight".

But Canadian trends in suburbanization don't resemble US "white flight" as it's likely that both whites and non-whites alike flee the city due to costs and not to avoid one another (after all, even the Chinese have suburbanized as far north as Newmarket and South Asians, Blacks etc. have also moved eastward and north of Scarborough, to Pickering, Ajax etc.).

Another thing you won't see much discussion of in Canada, unlike the US, is the idea that Italians, Greeks, Polish, and "ethnic whites" participate in white flight. In NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc. you get "ethnic whites" seeing themselves as "whites" in opposition to "non-whites" like Black or Hispanic Americans. In Canada, it'd be odd to have an Italian resident of Vaughan and an Anglo-Canadian resident of Whitby both seeing themselves as "whites" fleeing a non-white Toronto.

Well, you'd rarely get an Italian and Anglo-Canadian seeing themselves as one "group" in opposition to say a Jamaican or Chinese. In Canada, you'd more often have the Italian, Chinese and Jamaican lumped together as "multicultural Canadians" by the Anglo-Canadian rather than the Anglo-Canadian and Italian seeing themselves as "white Canadian" in contrast to the Jamaican and Chinese. Not so stateside.

[Docere]

Part of the reason for that is that the "white ethnic" cities like NYC and Chicago weren't very "WASP" 100 years ago. So by the time the white flight era occurred the "WASPs" wouldn't have been fleeing. It would have the Irish, Italians and Poles and so on fleeing working class neighborhoods.

(Interestingly Jews moved to the suburbs too but they're not usually "accused" of engaging in white flight).

I'm also not at all convinced that "white flight" is a mass phenomenon in Canada, certainly nowhere close to the scale you saw in US inner city neighborhoods. What you're describing in Canada and what happened in the US is more than a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind and hence shouldn't be lumped under the same term.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

Part of the reason for that is that the "white ethnic" cities like NYC and Chicago weren't very "WASP" 100 years ago. So by the time the white flight era occurred the "WASPs" wouldn't have been fleeing. It would have the Irish, Italians and Poles and so on fleeing working class neighborhoods.

Didn't the "WASPs" themselves often flee the working class neighbourhoods when the "white ethnics" came in, who in turn later flee when Black or Hispanic demographics arrive. So it's really kind of history repeating itself as another group that comes in, drives the locals to "flee" because of changing demographics.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

I'm also not at all convinced that "white flight" is a mass phenomenon in Canada, certainly nowhere close to the scale you saw in US inner city neighborhoods. What you're describing in Canada and what happened in the US is more than a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind and hence shouldn't be lumped under the same term.

Is this something that should not be lumped together under the same name either?

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...46&postcount=1

Using the most original American usage of the term, does only the 50s and 60s "white flight" which involved legal and institutionalized racism (eg. redlining etc.) and its continued legacy to today, count as the main "mass phenomenon"?

Also, would "white flight" really be restricted to the black-white dynamics unique to the US at the time -- or does "white flight" cover responses to Hispanic/Asian or other non-white demographics too?

[Docere]

Probably. The area around Kensington Market and College St. would have been pretty Anglo-Celtic in 1900 I suspect (like 95% of Toronto's population), but by 1920 that area would have been predominantly Jewish and Italian.

Similarly, Boston's North End was Irish before it became Boston's Italian immigrant neighborhood I think.

Before the 1840s pretty much everyone in Boston was of English origin so whatever parts of Boston that were developed then would have been "WASP." Obviously they spread further out as the Irish came, and then the Irish did the same when other mass immigration from southern and eastern European occurred.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Is this something that should not be lumped together under the same name either?

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...46&postcount=1

Yeah, I was using the terminology of the article when I posted that.

[Capsicum]

Perhaps there should be a more general term than "white flight" to describe "people leaving or vacating to another area due to demographic change or because they dislike the newcomers" that's broad enough to cover WASP Bostonians in the 19th century fleeing the Irish, or 1980s Anglo-Canadians fleeing Scarborough, without the connotation of "white flight" in the US which focuses much more on the long-standing white/black dynamic and particular institutionalized structures (like redlining, blockbusting) that may not be present in other cases (where it's only people leaving in response to demography but there's no institutional backing or favour for/against one group as opposed to the other).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

But for instance, as we've discussed before in some of the millions of English vs French Canada cultural discussions, it's not so much betwen Toronto and Montreal where these differences in culture & lifestyle & attitudes & political views exist in starkest contrast today - it's between Barrie and Trois-Rivières, or Rouyn-Noranda and Grand Prairie. Gone are the days where the stereotypes of fun-loving, free spirited-but-poor Montreal; buttoned-down, hardworking Toronto; and hippy dippy Vancouver actually bore at least some semblance of insight. Much of their modern character has all since coalesced into that of the prosperous, worldly North American metropolis. In the smaller centres on the other hand, that change has not been as dramatic.

The Montreal-Toronto pairing is often brought up on SSP Canada but I don't really feel it that much on a broad level. I guess if you only hang out with the Arcade Fire-type crowd on the Montreal side you might be able to defend a "separated at birth" type of scenario for the two cities, but I honestly don't really think that holds true across the broader demographics of the two cities. By the same standard I could hone in on the francophone element in Ottawa (adding in bridge-hoppers from Gatineau) and equally beef up the similarities and affinities between those two cities.

Of course, I am not suggesting Toronto-Montreal equals Chennai-Helsinki here.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Asian megacities and the booming metropolises of the developing world were the first thing that came to mind for post-war urbanity, but I think those are obviously different enough from the conditions that exist in North America to not really be worth the comparison - especially there are still enough local examples of post-war, non-sunbelt-ish urban development.






Note that I said increasingly, not that it's necessarily actually reflective of how most people are living.

Certainly, among some circles one can seamlessly bounce between Tokyo and Mexico City and New York and Paris and be enveloped in the same sort of cultural milieu, though that is obviously not the case for the majority - even if there are a few global cultural references and trends that have become near universal.
.

It's quite astute of you to bring this up. I agree that this "globalist class" of people does exist and is growing. At one point about 20 years ago my wife and I were more or less candidates for membership in this class. I guess we screwed up.

Anyway, these people are more numerous in the major world cities for sure, but that doesn't mean that that's the only place where they can or do live.

At the moment one of my very best friends is living that lifestyle (he bounces back and forth between Canada and abroad) in a European city that's about the same size as Halifax. Maybe even a bit smaller. This does not mean you can live this way in any city or place regardless of size, but certainly the places where it's happening are way more numerous than the A-list of major world cities.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Of course, I am not suggesting Toronto-Montreal equals Chennai-Helsinki here.

Which Canadian city is Chennai and which is Helsinki in this pairing?

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's quite astute of you to bring this up. I agree that this "globalist class" of people does exist and is growing. At one point about 20 years ago my wife and I were more or less candidates for membership in this class. I guess we screwed up.

Anyway, these people are more numerous in the major world cities for sure, but that doesn't mean that that's the only place where they can or do live.

At the moment one of my very best friends is living that lifestyle (he bounces back and forth between Canada and abroad) in a European city that's about the same size as Halifax. Maybe even a bit smaller. This does not mean you can live this way in any city or place regardless of size, but certainly the places where it's happening are way more numerous than the A-list of major world cities.

It's interesting that people are talking about how modern technology and globalization is actually geographically concentrating skill and talent more rather than less, while I remember reading ideas from the past about how the reverse was predicted to be true -- technology was said by some to be able to even out disparities, and give advantages to far-flung places that would cancel out the big cities' advantages.

Remember how there was a time people argued that computers and cyberspace would allow much more numbers of people to work from home and allow communication (eg. videoconferencing) that transcends geographical barriers? Some then even argued that big cities wouldn't be able to hold all the big jobs as there's less of a reason to physically commute to concentrations in a physical location. People could also take and give orders much more quickly, be they bosses and employees, clients and customers, who all didn't have to be near each other. Now access to big cities and concentration of jobs is argued to be more important not less. What happened to that prediction?

[Docere]

It's a beautiful day here in this Sunbelt city!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Docere

It's a beautiful day here in this Sunbelt city!

Hope you didn't forget the SPF 50!

[Docere]

In the "Canadian white flight" analogy, does an Italian Canadian moving from NW Toronto to Vaughan get more of a "free pass" for not being "racist" than one that moves to Barrie (because he/she wants to be with their "fellow Italians" rather than unspecified "whites")?

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

In the "Canadian white flight" analogy, does an Italian Canadian moving from NW Toronto to Vaughan get more of a "free pass" for not being "racist" than one that moves to Barrie (because he/she wants to be with their "fellow Italians" rather than unspecified "whites")?

Well, I presume that Italians moving to Vaughan might be viewed in cultural, rather than "racial" terms -- ethnoburbs can sometimes be seen as a reflection of the "cultural mosaic", where people move to where the cultural amenities or shared cultural communities are and thus not seen as examples of racial segregation.

While wanting to be with unspecified "whites" might be seen more as a racial preference, and get more criticism.

I mean, it's like the comparison of reactions someone would get for saying they're "proud to be Irish" or "proud to be Hungarian" versus "proud to be white".

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The Montreal-Toronto pairing is often brought up on SSP Canada but I don't really feel it that much on a broad level. I guess if you only hang out with the Arcade Fire-type crowd on the Montreal side you might be able to defend a "separated at birth" type of scenario for the two cities, but I honestly don't really think that holds true across the broader demographics of the two cities. By the same standard I could hone in on the francophone element in Ottawa (adding in bridge-hoppers from Gatineau) and equally beef up the similarities and affinities between those two cities.

That's not really what I mean, but rather more broadly the way people generally live and think is more similar between the big cities (and so as to not get in trouble with Someone here, some of the more "metropolitan"-acting small cities like Halifax) than it is between the smaller, more local centres. I'm thinking in terms of things like the type of places people live, the way they commute, the jobs the work at, the restaurants they eat at, the things they do for fun, the kinds of people they know, the political views they hold...that sort of thing - is much closer between Toronto and Montreal (or Vancouver) than it is between say, Cornwall and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

They're certainly not carbon copies (yet), but the big cities of Quebec and Anglo Canada and the US and beyond share more commonalities with each other than their hinterlands do with their respective Anglo/Francophone/American/international counterparts.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

That's not really what I mean, but rather more broadly the way people generally live and think is more similar between the big cities (and so as to not get in trouble with Someone here, some of the more "metropolitan"-acting small cities like Halifax) than it is between the smaller, more local centres. I'm thinking in terms of things like the type of places people live, the way they commute, the jobs the work at, the restaurants they eat at, the things they do for fun, the kinds of people they know, the political views they hold...that sort of thing - is much closer between Toronto and Montreal (or Vancouver) than it is between say, Cornwall and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

They're certainly not carbon copies (yet), but the big cities of Quebec and Anglo Canada and the US and beyond share more commonalities with each other than their hinterlands do with their respective Anglo/Francophone/American/international counterparts.

I understand that, but my next question would be: is Montreal-Toronto a closer pairing than Montreal-St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Toronto-Cornwall.

My guess would be that for some things it might be, but for a lot of things, it is not.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I understand that, but my next question would be: is Montreal-Toronto a closer pairing than Montreal-St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Toronto-Cornwall.

Probably, at least when it comes to how people actually live, rather than say, cultural references & consumption. People in Cornwall or St-Jean-sur-Richelieu aren't too likely to be taking the subway to work, or living in condos, or working in tech or media or finance or government or academia, or be immigrants, or to walk to local stores or live in an urban neighbourhood, or go to nice restaurants and cool bars, hang out in the park, engage in esoteric interests, that sort of thing.

Though, Montreal-St-Jean-sur-Richelieu also probably has a lot more in common than does Toronto-Cornwall - Quebec generally has a lot less of a "drop" in cultural amenities and general metropolitan accoutrements (as well as demographic profile) between it's big and small cities than Ontario does. Places like Cornwall may as well be in a different country from the GTA.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Probably, at least when it comes to how people actually live, rather than say, cultural references & consumption. People in Cornwall or St-Jean-sur-Richelieu aren't too likely to be taking the subway to work, or living in condos, or working in tech or media or finance or government or academia, or be immigrants, or to walk to local stores or live in an urban neighbourhood, or go to nice restaurants and cool bars, hang out in the park, engage in esoteric interests, that sort of thing.

Though, Montreal-St-Jean-sur-Richelieu also probably has a lot more in common than does Toronto-Cornwall - Quebec generally has a lot less of a "drop" in cultural amenities and general metropolitan accoutrements (as well as demographic profile) between it's big and small cities than Ontario does. Places like Cornwall may as well be in a different country from the GTA.

In spite of all the bitching about "Toronto Domination" in (Anglo-)Canada and talk of the Montreal-vs.-ROQ divide, Quebec and even some francophone areas outside of it are arguably much more dominated by Montreal than anything Toronto exerts beyond the Golden Horseshoe.

A huge proportion of Quebec culture and the cues associated with it comes out of Montreal. Most of it in fact. And even authentically regional cultural stuff that gains widespread traction usually transits through Montreal before getting beamed out to Abitibi, Gaspé, Roberval and Caraquet.

As much as some people might hate the notion, in many ways as francophones in this country we're all kind of living in the suburbs and outer exurbs of Montreal.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by Acajack

A huge proportion of Quebec culture and the cues associated with it comes out of Montreal. Most of it in fact. And even authentically regional cultural stuff that gains widespread traction usually transits through Montreal before getting beamed out to Abitibi, Gaspé, Roberval and Caraquet.

As much as some people might hate the notion, in many ways as francophones in this country we're all kind of living in the suburbs and outer exurbs of Montreal.

The relative dominance of Montreal (almost 50% of the population of Quebec) probably accounts for this. The competition from the Anglosphere is simply much larger, especially from the largest English-speaking country in the world next door. Montreal's competition is France, but that is mitigated by distance.

I'd imagine somewhere like Copenhagen or Stockholm exhibits a similar effect on their populations.