Subdivided

City-Building in an Age of Hyper-Diversity

Jay Pitter, John Lorinc

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781770564435
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Using Toronto as a case study, Subdivided asks how cities would function if decision-makers genuinely accounted for race, ethnicity, and class when confronting issues such as housing, policing, labor markets, and public space. With essays contributed by an array of city-builders, it proposes solutions for fully inclusive communities that respond to the complexities of a global city.

Jay Pitter is a writer and professor based in Toronto. She holds a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University.

John Lorinc is a Toronto-based journalist who writes about urban affairs, politics, and business. He co-edited The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood (Coach House, 2015).

NOTES

Introduction, Jay Pitter

1. Not his real name.

2. J. David Hulchanski, ‘The Three Cities within Toronto: Income Polarization among Toronto’s Neighbourhoods, 1970–2005’ (Cities Centre, University of Toronto and St. Christopher’s House, 2010), www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/curp/tnrn/Three-Cities-Within-Toronto-2010-Final.pdf.

3. Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Equality (Henry Holt, 2006).

4. Tuna Tasan-Kok, Ronald van Kempen, Mike Raco and Gideon Bolt, Towards Hyper-Diversified European Cities: A Critical Literature Review (Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, 2013).

5. Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,’ Stanford Law Review, vol. 43 (1993), p. 1241.

Identity and the City, Beyhan Farhadi

1. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press, 1990).

2. Evelyn Peters, ‘Aboriginal People in Urban Areas,’ in Urban Affairs: Back on the Policy Agenda, eds. Caroline Andrew, Katherine Graham and Susan Phillips (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), pp. 45–70.

3. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, ‘Fact Sheet – Urban Aboriginal Population in Canada,’ www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100014298/1100100014302 (see also www41.statcan.gc.ca/2007/10000/ceb10000_003-eng.htm).

4. See Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2007).

5. See Wayne Roberts, ‘Whose Land?,’ NOW, July 11, 2013, nowtoronto.com/news/whose-land.

6. According to the Public Relations Society of America, ‘Pigeonholing occurs when qualified individuals are assigned to projects that relate to their race – regardless of whether they are experts in that group’s expectations and needs or if they even identify with that group.’ www.prsa.org/Intelligence/Tactics/Articles/view/6C-030440/101/Diversity_Dimensions_Pigeonholing_A_trap_for_pract.

7. Laura Cockburn, ‘Children and Young People Living in Changing Worlds,’ School Psychology International, vol. 23, no. 4 (2002), pp. 475–485.

8. The data supports her experiences of systemic discrimination, as students of Somali descent not only face marginalization in their Toronto communities, but, as a result, drop out and face expulsion at significantly higher rates than their peers. See Katie Daubs, ‘TDSB’s Somali Task Force Recommends Better Student Support,’ Toronto Star, August 30, 2013.

9. See also Stephen Michalowicz, ‘The City Known as Dixon,’ Torontoist, December 11, 2008, torontoist.com/2008/12/a_place_called_dixon/.

10. Susan Fainstein, ‘Cities and Diversity,’ Urban Affairs Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (2005), pp. 3–19.

11. Katherine Graham and Susan Phillips, ‘Another Fine Balance: Managing Diversity in Canadian Cities,’ in Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada, eds. Keith G. Banting, Thomas J. Courchene and F. Leslie Seidle (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), pp. 155–194. See this source for an excellent overview of the literature on diversity in Canadian cities, as well as a discussion about the various ways cities approach and respond to diversity. For the purposes of this essay, I am referring to diversity as pluralism – the coexistence of peoples with different beliefs, traditions, values and interests. This may or may not be limited by identity categories, though; as Graham and Phillips point out, ‘evidence suggests that most urban municipalities neither collect much information on diverse communities – beyond the basic census data that comes across their desks – nor make effective use of what is available.’ (See also Beth Moore Milroy and Marcia Wallace, ‘Ethnoracial Diversity and Planning Practices in the Greater Toronto Area: Final Report’ [CERIS Working Paper 18; Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement, 2002].)

Doing Immigrant Resettlement Right, Doug Saunders

1. Kare Vernby, ‘Inclusion and Public Policy: Evidence from Sweden’s Introduction of Noncitizen Suffrage,’ American Journal of Political Science, vol. 57, no. 1 (2013).

Wasauksing–Vancouver–Toronto, Rebekah Tabobondung

1. As was the case throughout Latin America, North American Indigenous peoples also survived a history of colonization that included an onslaught of racist, genocidal policies. Unlike in Guatemala, during the last century the Canadian state has been reluctant to outright mass-murder Native people. Instead, other gross human rights violations, such as the legislated residential schools and the banning of ceremonies such as the Sundance and Potlatch have been inflicted (Royal Commissions on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996).

2. Heather Howard-Bobiwash, ‘Toronto’s Native Roots,’ First Nations House Magazine, issue 1, p. 6.

3. ‘The Doctorine of Discovery Is Less of a Problem than Terra Nullius,’ A Reconciliation Project, July 16, 2012, reconciliationproject.ca/2012/07/16/.

4. Statistics Canada, 2006 Census. However, it is commonly estimated that there are over 60,000 Aboriginal people living in the GTA, which accounts for those who choose not to self-identify to Statistics Canada.

5. Well Living House Governance, Well Living House Counsel of Grandparents, St. Michael’s Hospital.

How We Welcome, Sarah Beamish and Sofia Ijaz

1. We acknowledge the original peoples and traditional caretakers of this land, including the Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabe and Wendat peoples. Refugee resettlement in Canada takes place on lands from which Indigenous peoples themselves have been forcibly displaced by the settler population, of which we are a part. We do not mistake the absence of war here for peace.

2. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone who, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Identity and the City: Thinking Through Diversity
• Doing Immigrant Resettlement Right
• Wasauksing–Vancouver–Toronto: My Path Home
• How We Welcome: Why Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program Undermines Place-making
• Finding Space for Spirituality
• Navigating the City with an Invisible Illness: The Story of Dorothy
• Culture and Mental Illness
• Neighbourhood Watch: Racial Profiling and Virtual Gated Communities
• Accessing Education: An Immigrant’s Story
• Policing and Trust in the Hyper-Diverse City
• Three Questions about Carding
• An Overburdened Promise: Arts Funding for Social Development
• Designing Dignified Social Housing
• Walking Through Loss: A Critical Visit to an Old Neighbourhood
• Reconsidering Revitalization: The Case of Regent Park
• Model Citizens
• A Tale of Two – or Three – Cities: Gentrification and Community Consultations
• Mobility in the Divided City
• Toward More Complete Communities: Business Out of the Box
• Going Beyond Representation: The Diversity Deficit in Local Government
• Brampton, a.k.a. Browntown
• Life in the City In-Between
• Conclusion
• Notes