These five Toronto neighbourhoods share a mayor and city council but little else. They are morphing in radically different directions, with increasingly sharp contrasts in income, skin colour, opportunities and more.

The Star has, in a first, applied the income-disparity findings of University of Toronto professor David Hulchanski to specific neighbourhoods, mapping data from 1970 to 2012 to probe what has happened there. From 531 “census tracts,” we chose these five: West Humber-Clairville in northwest Etobicoke; Niagara-Queen-King in the southwest core; Allenby-Forest Hill; Leslieville; and Malvern in northeast Scarborough. The populations of these tracts range from 2,800 to 9,130.

Hulchanski’s “Three Cities” research revealed that Toronto has quickly changed from a mostly middle-income metropolis to the equivalent of three distinct cities — a prospering high-income core, a shrinking middle-income belt and swaths of suburb with plunging incomes. Underlying causes of the polarization include, Hulchanski says, deliberate tax and social policy changes that redistributed income upward, the disappearance of well-paid, unionized manufacturing jobs, dramatically rising housing costs and racial discrimination.

It is the growing separation of rich and poor, white and non-white and similar socio-economic polarizations within Toronto that worry Hulchanski and Mayor John Tory. The healthiest cities with the most opportunities for all, most research suggests, are in nations that have a much smaller income gap and neighbourhoods mixed in many ways.

Concentrations of poverty, in Toronto’s case in the inner suburbs, can trigger negative impacts on resident’s job prospects, their health and the crime they suffer, and presents challenges for agencies that provide them services.

Click here if you cannot see a map of the data.

A closer look at the neighbourhoods:

West Humber-Clairville: This northwest suburb saw residents’ average salaries plummet from middle to very low at $27,684, in 2012.

The visible-minority population shot from 34 to 81 per cent, with one in three residents having South Asian heritage. Top ethnic origins were East Indian, Filipino, Canadian, Italian and Chinese.

There was a significant jump in home ownership. The area had the most social housing of the five. Two-thirds of residents drove or got a lift to work.

Almost all others rely on public transit.

“This is a (spread-out) area with few bus lines,” Hulchanski says. “If you want mobility beyond your few streets, you need a car.”

He sees this as an area in transition. Postwar European immigrants who had settled into well-paid union jobs tended to be replaced, starting in the 1980s, by newcomers from places such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

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Most would have had enough skills to get through the federal immigration point system, but faced well-established problems getting credentials recognized. Meanwhile, the pool of well-paying blue-collar jobs evaporated.

Niagara-Queen-King: Income in this southwest downtown neighbourhood near Lake Ontario surged from very low, about half the city average, to a little above average.

The number of visible minority residents stayed fairly stable at a little less than one-third. About half the people got to work by car with the rest on public transit. The ranks of kids and seniors shrank.

Home ownership surged, while rentals dropped steeply. There was an influx of white-collar workers, most childless. The number of people in the “artist” employment category increased from virtually none to 11 per cent.

“The inner city geography is such that land in this area wasn’t used very much,” Hulchanski says.

“Is it gentrification if there wasn’t much there before? You get a highrise condo community built, people with pretty high incomes, no kids, in a very different community than the St. Lawrence (mixed income) area built on the other side of downtown. Gentrifiers tend to be white, but that might not hold in the future.”

Allenby-Forest Hill: The established midtown neighbourhood was a model of stability in everything except income, which shot way up. Three-quarters of residents owned their homes, most of them single-family with almost no condos.

The ratio of white-collar workers jumped while the small pool of manufacturing workers continued to evaporate. Two-thirds of residents drove or got a lift to work. Most residents were couples with children.

“This area hasn’t changed much but because, in Canada and Toronto, we are polarized — there are more really well-paying jobs at one end and more low-paying jobs at the bottom,” Hulchanski says.

“The only thing that has changed here is the income and this reflects the growing inequality. This is a group that was doing well and, in the redistribution of income that began in the 1980s, they have benefited.”

Leslieville: The central-east neighbourhood, formerly working class with rooming houses and modest single-family homes, got a strong jolt of gentrification. It moved firmly into the “City No. 1” category of neighbourhoods with rising average income.

While modest by Forest Hill standards, paycheques jumped from 69 per cent of the city average to markedly better than the average, with an average $54,051 a year in 2012.

The area maintained its ethnic mix, mainly due to a large Chinese population. Top origins reported by residents in 2006 were: Chinese, English, Irish, Scottish and Canadian.

Home ownership jumped, along with the percentage of professionals and artists. Slightly more residents got to work by car than public transit, but 11 per cent walked and 6 per cent biked — the highest of the five census tracts.

“This is a classic case of gentrification,” Hulchanski says. “The artists come in first, then the more affluent people and the higher housing prices follow, and then the artists are priced out.”

Malvern: Toronto’s northeast corner is a near-duplicate of West Humber-Clairville, with plummeting average income. There was also a remarkable near-disappearance of white people from these suburban streets, built for the postwar middle class.

“It’s simply showing the imbalance of skin colour in this city,” Hulchanski says. “You wonder if there’s a tipping point, where there are virtually no whites and that scares others off.

“You also have recent immigrants telling others where to settle. Definitely, white people are not choosing to live there. I think some people in ethnic minorities are living there by economic necessity, based on housing costs, while others are there based on relationships with other residents.”

Despite the fact that the average resident earned less than $2,225 a month, 64 per cent drove or got a lift to work. One-third took public transit and, with few employers nearby, virtually nobody biked to work.

Hulchanski says: “If you can afford a car, you get one if there isn’t good public transit.”

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