Income maps for 8 CMAs
 

For Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. This is based on 2012 taxfiler data, not the 2011 NHS.

http://neighbourhoodchange.ca/docume...-cmas-2012.pdf

Poor Montreal! :(

Unless you're in upper Westmount, the second wealthiest census tract in the country.

Poor Hamilton! The only city with no wealthy inner-city districts. Interesting outlier.

The Toronto map is also a great representation of where transit is good and where it sucks.

Why do you say this? I see lots of blue areas in the city, and some of the red areas are industrial parks and the east-end refineries.

Good find. Winnipeg looks about as I'd expect it to. Downtown and north central areas are the lowest income areas, the wealthy areas are mostly scattered around the periphery with a few central beachheads.

Interesting how the West Exchange is ranked as a low income area while the East Exchange is near the top.

So do these CMAs have follow the "donut" or "favored quarter" (wedges) model?

Yeah... Montreal doesn't look much worse than Toronto.

I'm not usually concerned when Edmonton is left out of lists, but its lack of inclusion in this particular set of data maps is actually baffling.

Biggest surprise is that Calgary's lowest income areas are so concentrated in the NE.

It's not a surprise to anyone from Calgary. Next time you visit take a drive in the NE. You'll understand immediately. The more ramshackle parts of Temple, Applewood etc. are the closest thing to a ghetto besides Forest Lawn in this city.

Something something east of Deerfoot north of Glenmore ;)

I didn't realise just how big the Winnipeg CMA was.

Also I did not know south Westdale was poor. The rest of the west end is so well off I thought it was too (maybe it's all the Mac students?).

Yeah, what gives?:shrug:

I have this impression of sketchy places in Calgary being somewhere where a person wouldn't smile back at you if you made eye contact.

I don't know Calgary at all, aside from bits of downtown and the airport area. My cousin lives there. I should give you her address and have you evaluate it. She used to live in Sarnia.

Poor Richmond, I hope those guys get out of poverty soon.

Low annual income but high personal net worth maybe? ;)

Yeah I figured someone would point out Ogden in the SE. Basically everything on the east side north of that.

:haha::haha::haha:

We may not be Edmonton level but there are sketchier parts of the city. Nothing like the States though.

I've been through the NE side a few times, but mostly the commercial / industrial parts and never found them to be "representative" of lower-income areas, but I've never been in the residential areas there, maybe that's where it's more noticeable.

Is there a similar set of maps for a standard income across all metros? I'd be more interested to see how they compare apples-to-apples, rather than as a relative within the respective metro...

It's important to remember these are maps of relative income within the CMA against its average. Calgary's average is almost $20,000 more than than many of the others, so the relatively poor here may be more average in the Canadian average.

Or reporting real incomes:cheers:

Vancouver has Winnipeg incomes with San Francisco housing prices.

The business areas are like any other. It's the residential side you see it on.

No, low income.

Most of the Chinese nouveau riche live on the west side of the City of Vancouver, and also in West Vancouver on the hills.

The central part of Richmond has a lot of cheap apartments, and then middle income Chinese people living in new condo developments that aren't necessarily as wealthy as people make them out to be.

True, but then the purchasing power parity of $50,000 in Winnipeg and Halifax is completely different from the PPP in Toronto or Vancouver.

OK, thanks for the précision. I would never have thought of that about Richmond.

See Wpg/Hamilton for reference.

^ I'd rather see real data, but thanks for trying to be helpful.

Agreed, it is quite misleading. For example.

Very low in Montreal is ~$13,600 to ~$25,000.

Very low in Calgary is ~$29,600 to ~$38,000.

Middle income in Montreal is ~$33,300 to ~$50,000.

Middle income in Calgary is ~$50,000 to ~75,000.


Another point in regards to Richmond, (and Surrey for that matter) is for individual income they would do poorly, but for household income they would likely fair better, as the demographics that live in those places typically live in larger households.

I said so because Montreal, from what I saw, had the lowest average per capita income of all those cities.


Montreal: $41 597,
Winnipeg: $42 033,
Vancouver: $43 101
Halifax: 44 106,
Hamilton: $45 512,
Toronto: $46 666,
Ottawa: $50 592,
Calgary: $63 322,

It's weird, "poor" Richmond (where I recently stayed for about a week, at the Sheraton right on Westminster Hwy near Richmond's urban core) looked nicer and more vibrant to me than some of the middle or even upper income areas in Winnipeg.

Some areas just don't show this stuff as readily, I suppose.

EDIT: I guess there is that relativity factor too as noted in the posts just before mine.

A lot of it would depend on how closely census tracts track actual areas of wealth. For example, in Winnipeg wealth tends to be strung out along the rivers, in many cases (almost everywhere but in Tuxedo and, to a lesser extent, River Heights). Some of the wealthiest areas in the city were a block or two from where I grew up in St. Vital but they are submerged in our larger middle class neighbourhood and don't show at all on the map. In Toronto, there isn't much of that -- rivers and shorelines barely influence neighbourhood development and wealthy areas were developed in convenient census-sized blocks (more like Tuxedo in Winnipeg).

Also, if you have a bunch of students, public housing, a trailer park or a big retirement home somewhere in a census district, it would presumably skew the averages as compared to a nearly identical district that lacks such things. Maybe it is something like that which leads to the odd result of Norwood being allegedly on a higher plane of income than Riverview in Winnipeg. Prestige-wise, I would have put those two neighbouring districts in the opposite order.

As mentioned, you have to understand the dynamics of the area. Some areas have low incomes, but those incomes stats do not take into consideration families where the main earner is working in another country and sends money to Canada.

You see this in Scarborough, where some areas have this going on. So areas with $600,000 houses have poverty level incomes. But it is because many are working in Asia and send money to Toronto for the family members living here.

I am very cautious with these numbers and other studies like this, because they tend to paint whole areas as poverty stricken, when they are not. My own area is listed as "low income", despite the fact that the average family income is over $100,000 in my area.

That's a very interesting point. The reality of what's going on in this great experiment of a city is pretty interesting, but not many people are paying attention. I think a lot of policy makers and commentators are oblivious to what's actually happening anywhere that's more than a mile or two away from Yonge or Bloor-Danforth.

Here you can look up census tract incomes for Toronto (not exact but as a % of the CMA income), though the Beaches and much of the east end is cut off.

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hal...-t-expert.html

Tract 86 (North Rosedale) has an average income of about $325K, the highest in the country.

These maps also do not show the extreme mix going on in many parts of Toronto. Most of Toronto's inner suburbs were developed under the METRO Toronto government planning policies, which did an outstanding job of mixing incomes.
The result is you have people of all incomes living next to each other, however it brings down the average income.
That UofT study is another study which I am cautious with, because they list certain areas as poverty stricken, when they are not.

Do they actually call these areas "poverty stricken" or just report the average income by CT?

Surprising that Vancouver's proportion of dark red is 2nd least, only behind Halifax, which has none. Goes against the gap-between-rich-and-poor narrative.

The red part of Richmond where it's wrapped by the yellow to the west is actually the wealthiest part. The yellow region is actually less wealthy, but also less Asian (so data propped up by local incomes). The average house in Richmond is $1.27 million. In before cornholio/whatnext says "money laundering" :rolleyes:

It seems where there is a higher % of immigrant population, the incomes are lower.

Toronto -> Brampton, Scarborough, Markham, Etobicoke etc
Vancouver -> Surrey
Calgary -> NE

But as someone else said earlier, household incomes would probably not be that low since household size would be larger in these communities generally

Top of the food chain

Toronto $325 262
Montreal $313 641
Calgary $231 125

Interesting how the Calgary CMA has the highest proportion of very high census tracts (13%) and the highest proportion of very low census tracts (11%). Meaning by this measure it's the most unequal CMA.

Interesting to note that there's a lot of "Scarborough spillover" in southern Markham but very little red in Vaughan (i.e. the 416/905 boundary is much sharper). This is perhaps due to Vaughan's rather late development.

Apart from the way income is reported by immigrants (which I'm agnostic about - because it's hard to prove or disprove, at least using census statistics), another thing to keep in mind is that while Richmond may not be where many of wealthy Chinese people live, it is a place where many wealthy Chinese people shop and entertain - if they are "doing Chinese stuff".

So many of the Chinese restaurants and business/services are located in Richmond, and the large Chinese population in the southern part of the City of Vancouver use Richmond as their commercial centre. If you see expensive cars rolling around, those might not necessarily be people living in Richmond.

Another reason you might have gotten the impression that Richmond is quite wealthy is because Vancouver and the South Coast of BC has a culture (and climate) that supports good landscaping.

Planting flowers and ornamental plants in front of low income apartment complexes makes a huge difference in outward appearance. The other city that always struck me as having meticulous landscaping - and always appeared "richer" than it really was - was Phoenix. You would never guess from the desert xeriscaping and well-positioned cacti in front of strip malls and gas stations that Phoenix is actually a pretty poor metropolitan region by US standards.

Why are you going to such efforts to cover up blatant tax evasion? Yes, Chinese in Vancouver proper are richer, but Richmond is still a suburb with $1,000,000+ average house prices, and that rise has come with massive Chinese immigration. I remember when Richmond was seen like Langley is today.

^ It has to be more than just landscaping. Between the attractive new buildings, loads of apparently thriving (and yes, mostly Asian-oriented) storefront businesses and the sort-of posh vibe given by things like Richmond Centre mall, the various parks around the area, the nice cars and what not, it all feels quite nice. Yes, there are definitely pockets of shabbiness (mostly in the form of some dingy industrial buildings here and there), and once you go farther south you start to run into some slightly run down residential areas.

But at all times in Richmond I felt like I was in nice, pleasant surroundings with a strong sense of social order. By contrast, in some of the poorer parts of Winnipeg, you know you're in a poor and oftentimes rough area...

Had a bit of a look at the "very low income" area of Surrey. Seems like this is mostly "McMansions", often 4000+ sf homes, built about <25 years ago and worth about $700,000-$1,100,000.

However, if you look at the actually census data you start to understand. Ex this section of the neighbourhood:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.12920...7i13312!8i6656
Bound by 70a Ave, 127a St, 68a Ave and 126 St.

If you count the number of houses on google maps, there's 99 of them. However, according to census data, this area contains 272 dwelling units, of which 246 are occupied, with a total of 1046 residents. So in other words, the typical house is actually a triplex or at the very least a duplex (avg 2.75 units/house) and is home to an average of 10.6 residents.

The census data also reports that this neighbourhood contains no single family homes, only duplexes (8% of units) and low rise apartments in buildings with 3+ units (92% of units).

If you look at the 28 GTA census tracts that slipped from low to very low income between 2005 and 2012, the housing characteristics are rather different from those that were very low income in 2005 or earlier.

Here's the map of when different GTA census tracts became very low income.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NXewOV0ia...onto%2Bmap.png

For the ones that slipped to very low post-2005, only 35.30% of units were in apartment buildings of >2 units, less than the average for the CMA as a whole!

For the census tracts that slipped between 1990 and 2000, 80.64% of units were in apartment buildings of >2 units.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hTdiWNAl_...50.03%2BPM.png
http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca...-shifting.html

Due to the cost of living though, I would argue someone making 40K in Montreal is doing quite decently but 40K in Toronto or Vancouver is basically a poverty wage...