GENTRIFICATION IN RECESSION: SOCIAL CHANGE IN SIX CANADIAN INNER CITIES, 1981-1986

Abstract

The relationship between inner-city gentrification and the restructuring of metropolitan economies toward employment in the advanced services is well established. In this context, the paper examines the effects of the 1982-1983 recession, the deepest in Canada in 50 years, upon the incidence of gentrification in six major Canadian cities. Contrary to expectation, the rate of gentrification through the 1981-1986 period accelerated over the rate through the economically more buoyant years of the 1970s, although regional variations were more pronounced. This finding is explained by the more resilient metropolitan labor market in advanced services, even in times of national recession. A second objective of the paper is to examine the spatial patterning of gentrification within the six inner cities. Census tracts that underwent social upgrading during 1981-1986 are far more diverse than the more conservative pattern of the 1970s, where upgrading expanded wave-like from established middle class areas in the inner city. Neighborhood attributes that were effective predictors of gentrification in the 1970s are far less significant in the 1980s. The geography of gentrification has become more complex because, as a social process, it has become more chaotic. The overall effect, however, is that in Canadian cities with rapidly growing employment in the advanced services there are relatively few areas of private housing in the inner city that are likely to be immune from the impact of gentrification in the future.