A map created by Social Planning Toronto reveals that the proposed cuts and closures in the city’s 2012 budget are “disproportionately” located in low-income neighbourhoods.

Forty-two of the 75 location-specific cuts — or 56 per cent — are in impoverished areas, according to the organization.

“(There’s) really great concern about creating a city that is a less equitable city, a less just city, a less compassionate city,” said senior researcher Beth Wilson. “I don’t think anyone voted for that.”

Wilson compiled statistics for the map using information from city budget documents and economic data from its most recent 2006 report on low income. The location-specific cuts do not represent all the proposed service cuts.

For instance, TTC bus routes are not mapped, and are likely to affect people living in the suburbs, as well as lower-income citizens who don’t own cars, Wilson said, adding that she plans to update the map as more information about the cuts becomes public.

The organization wants to put a stop to the $88 million in proposed cuts, and is calling on Mayor Rob Ford’s administration to put the city’s unexpected $139 million budget surplus to use.

“The idea of putting away that money for a rainy day when you’re throwing homeless people out of shelters, and you’re closing the libraries earlier in the community, closing down rec centres — I think we’ve got our rainy day now,” Wilson said.

The cuts are both damaging and unnecessary, she said.

“We’re seeing it as really unnecessarily creating a crisis,” she said. “The whole direction that the city is going in is really going to hurt a lot of people.”