Exlusionary zoning and segregation in Canada

[Bytor]

It's really easy to find articles or books on this topic about the USA, but I am struggling to find anything about in Canada. I spent 30 minutes googling yesterday, an dthe closest thing I found were some academic articles from Canadian university professors but talking about American cities.

Has anybody seen any Canadian takes on this topic?

[Acitta]

It's really easy to find articles or books on this topic about the USA, but I am struggling to find anything about in Canada. I spent 30 minutes googling yesterday, an dthe closest thing I found were some academic articles from Canadian university professors but talking about American cities.

Has anybody seen any Canadian takes on this topic?

I found this link by searching for "Redlining in Canada".

[tomh009]

It's really easy to find articles or books on this topic about the USA, but I am struggling to find anything about in Canada. I spent 30 minutes googling yesterday, an dthe closest thing I found were some academic articles from Canadian university professors but talking about American cities.

Has anybody seen any Canadian takes on this topic?

I found this link by searching for "Redlining in Canada".

The article didn't have much data, apart from the Africville history (a very regrettable history, but not really anything to do with exclusionary zoning or redlining). And a comment that in downtown Toronto there isn't much affordable housing, but that, too, is a different problem.

There really isn't much data, no. It may be happening to some extent in Canada, too, but the framework that enabled it in the US doesn't exist here, so I would certainly expect it to be less common. But that's just an assumption.

[plam]

The article didn't have much data, apart from the Africville history (a very regrettable history, but not really anything to do with exclusionary zoning or redlining). And a comment that in downtown Toronto there isn't much affordable housing, but that, too, is a different problem.

I read a book about Africville. The teardown was terrible but the reason people were concentrated there was somewhat related to exclusionary zoning. Probably worth reading a book about its history to find out more about exclusionary zoning in Canada. Also the other related thing is probably about land settlement patterns for First Nations.

[Bytor]

It may be happening to some extent in Canada, too, but the framework that enabled it in the US doesn't exist here, so I would certainly expect it to be less common.

The only framework that is required is the use of zoning. When you define things like minimum set-backs or lawn sizes, you increase the size of the property needed for a house which increases the price, and so on. When immigrants, indigenous, and people of colour are poorer than white people, this results in suburbs being disproportionately white. Requiring developers to build parks and other similar features decreases the amount of land in a neighbourhood that can be sold off as housing, which means the sale prices go up for the developer to recover their costs, increasing the barrier for entry. There's many more was that zoning regulations caused segregation while never, ever once mentioning race or skin colour.

Also we have to do is look at the demographic history Canadian cities to see that those same patterns that happened in the USA happened up here, too, so I think it's naïve to assume that it happened less up here.

[plam]

It may be happening to some extent in Canada, too, but the framework that enabled it in the US doesn't exist here, so I would certainly expect it to be less common.

The only framework that is required is the use of zoning. When you define things like minimum set-backs or lawn sizes, you increase the size of the property needed for a house which increases the price, and so on. When immigrants, indigenous, and people of colour are poorer than white people, this results in suburbs being disproportionately white. Requiring developers to build parks and other similar features decreases the amount of land in a neighbourhood that can be sold off as housing, which means the sale prices go up for the developer to recover their costs, increasing the barrier for entry. There's many more was that zoning regulations caused segregation while never, ever once mentioning race or skin colour.

Also we have to do is look at the demographic history Canadian cities to see that those same patterns that happened in the USA happened up here, too, so I think it's naïve to assume that it happened less up here.

I'm not going to say that Canada is innocent here but there were, in addition to zoning, discriminatory lending practices etc in the US which don't explicitly exist in Canada. So I think it is worth teasing out the role of various differences. It's not just money. It's also cross burnings.

[Acitta]

I found this link by searching for "Redlining in Canada".

The article didn't have much data, apart from the Africville history (a very regrettable history, but not really anything to do with exclusionary zoning or redlining). And a comment that in downtown Toronto there isn't much affordable housing, but that, too, is a different problem.

There really isn't much data, no. It may be happening to some extent in Canada, too, but the framework that enabled it in the US doesn't exist here, so I would certainly expect it to be less common. But that's just an assumption.

The article stated that there isn't much race-based data being collected or studies being done in Canada.

[tomh009]

We certainly have poor neighbourhood but due to our demograpics, they are less clearly segregated than in the US. Let's take the example of Jane & Finch -- a famous one, although not really related to zoning. It's 25% black but also over 20% white (ie European) and over 20% Asian (south, southeast and Chinese). What we tend to get is concentrations of immigrant populations in poorer neighbourhoods, and those populations' ethnic makeup tends to reflect the recent immigration patterns (which has had a fairly small European component in recent decades).

And, as a counter-example to exclusionary zoning I give you Brampton: what was predominantly a white town has by now about 45% south Asian population -- and also about 15% black population. Similar examples also exist in Toronto and Markham for other ethnic groups.

I do understand, and also have a concern, with zoning rules that increase the costs, whether it be setbacks or parking minima. I just haven't seen data on zoning rules and segregation in Canada.

[dtkmelissa]

I read House Divided a few years ago. It didn't have a ton of data as I recall but I think it did at least look at some of those issues - though the book is mostly focused on ideas for ways forward, so it may not be that helpful. I know the author of The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein is very interested in all of this, but I believe, like you said, his work focuses solely on the US unfortunately.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4237...se-divided

[nms]

The lack of exclusionary zoning in Ontario and likely Canada probably has a lot to with the 1950 Canadian Supreme Court Judgement on Noble vs. Alley.  In a 6-1 decision, the Court struck down the following covenant on the property deed in the case:

(f) The lands and premises herein described shall never be sold, assigned, transferred, leased, rented or in any manner whatsoever alienated to, and shall never be occupied or used in any manner whatsoever by any person of the Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood, it being the intention and purpose of the Grantor, to restrict the ownership, use, occupation and enjoyment of the said recreational development, including the lands and premises herein described, to persons of the white or Caucasian race not excluded by this clause.

As a result, according to Wikipedia, "the Legislative Assembly of Ontario passed an Act that declared such restrictive covenants to be "void and of no effect," but it only applied to ones created on or after March 24, 1950, its date of Royal assent."[/url]

This, of course, didn't preclude things like Toronto clearing out a large part of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ward,_Toronto]the Ward to make way for the New Toronto City Hall, nor as others have pointed out, a systemic exclusion within cities or regions where people could neither afford to live nor effectively live in an area (eg a lack of mixed styles and sizes of housing or a lack of transportation connections to employment zones).