Alan Walks

The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas

Housing in‐affordability is a growing problem within Canadian urban areas. This research asks an as‐yet unanswered spatial question: where do those suffering high rates of housing affordability stress reside and what do the spatial patterns imply about policies intended to address this housing problem? This paper tabulates and maps the spatial distribution of households that pay excessive amounts of their income for rent in order to identify locations within metropolitan regions where housing affordability stress is greatest. It is found that significant unevenness characterises the spatial distribution of housing affordability problems in major Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Only a minority of places conform to the North American stereotype that concentrates this problem near the city centre. Where some CMAs have concentrations of the problem in the inner city or, alternatively inner suburb, other metropolitan areas exhibit a more diffuse pattern of housing in‐affordability. The locus of the problem is also variable depending on whether the household is of the family or non‐family type. The interpretation of the uneven patterns relates broadly to features of supply and demand that have been identified in previous research. From both a policy and theoretical perspective this work demonstrates that greater attention needs to be paid to the spatial aspects of housing affordability and to the related, economically‐induced risk of homelessness in Canadian metropolitan areas.

Suburbanism as a Way of Life, Slight Return

Much attention has been given to increasing dominance of the post-war suburbs, and the concomitant rise of ‘suburbanism’ in ways of life in the ‘post-metropolis’. However, the meaning of suburbanism is rarely specified and there have been insufficient attempts to theorise its relationship to the urban. Drawing on the dialectical analyses of Henri Lefebvre, this article presents a theory of suburbanism as a subset of urbanism, with which it is in constant productive tension. Six distinct dimensions of the urbanism–suburbanism dialectic are identified, derived from extrapolating Lefebvre’s urban theory into second- and third-order analyses. These aspects of suburbanism are conceptualised not as static characteristics but as qualities that dynamically flow through, rather than define, particular places. Suburbanism is thus conceptualised separately from those places often termed suburbs, opening up the potential for interaction between these dimensions and the lived realities of everyday urban life and politics.

Castles in Toronto’s Sky: Condo-Ism as Urban Transformation

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the evolution and spatial dynamics of condominium development in Toronto, the largest housing market in Canada and the site of a rapid take-up of condominium tenure and construction over the last 40 years. The article probes the most influential policies that fostered and regulated condominium growth, and explores the implications for the continued restructuring of the city. A host of factors, including neoliberal state policies, have played a decisive role in fostering what we term condo-ism, referring to an emerging nexus of economic development, finance, and consumption sector interests that have coalesced around condominium construction and culture. Policies have redirected growth to the urban core, channeled capital investments and young residents, and promoted gentrification, ultimately transforming the character of Toronto’s central business district. The article explores these changes, and discusses their implications for contemporary emerging forms of capitalist urbanization and restructuring of the city.

The political economy of mortgage securitization and the neoliberalization of housing policy in Canada

The Canadian case represents a distinct variety of financialization under capitalism, one conditioned by the structure of its mortgage markets and the dominant role played by the state in the process of mortgage securitization. Securitization has been a key component of the neoliberalization of housing policy, with new state roles in the insuring, directing and funding of residential mortgage-backed securities both undergirding and justifying the federal shift from the provision of social rental housing toward supporting a rental market increasingly characterized by private sector individualunit landlord-investors. It was primarily the states control over, and utilization of, the securitization process that maintained the solvency of the financial system in the face of the global financial crisis. However the resulting rapid uptake of liabilities on behalf of both the state and households brought forth new contradictions, necessitating new policy experimentation and reregulation, to which securitization was once again directed and which now articulate the political economy of housing in the country.

Stopping the ‘War on the Car’: Neoliberalism, Fordism, and the Politics of Automobility in Toronto

Abstract This article interrogates the politics of automobility in Toronto under the regime of mayor Rob Ford, who came to power in 2010 promising to ‘stop the war on the car.’ The election of Ford, and the thrust of his subsequent agenda, came as a surprise to many in the city, due to Toronto’s reputation as a cosmopolitan diverse transit-friendly global city. The Toronto case study allows for the analysis of the relationships between Fordism, automobility, and the politics and rationalities of neoliberalism. Instead of seeing neoliberalism as something external or imposed, its contested politics are rooted in diverging social and economic interests directly derived from Fordism and the system of automobility, with opposing political-economic factions both drawing on different elements of neoliberalism. Authoritarian populist neoliberal regimes like the Ford administration in Toronto, and the roll-back austerity they promote, are not antithetical to automobile Fordism, but on the contrary represent an attempt to protect and reinvigorate it in the face of the forces of de-industrialization and financialization. As such they receive their support from social groups irrevocably invested in the continuation, and irrationalities, of the Fordist system of automobility. This has implications for how the politics of neoliberalism might unfold in the future.

From Financialization to Sociospatial Polarization of the City? Evidence from Canada

Abstract Financialization is a key attribute of globalized neoliberal capitalism. Among other things, it is associated with rising household indebtedness, which has certainly been true in Canada. Another widely recognized trait of neoliberal capitalism is growing social inequality and polarization. However, despite growing awareness and understanding of the relationships between debt and inequality at the household, national, and international scales, it remains unclear what role household debt may have in fashioning patterns of income segregation within the metropolis and how it may be related to processes of urban economic restructuring. This article seeks to fill this gap through an empirical analysis of the spatial distribution of household debt and its relationship to prevailing patterns of neighborhood income inequality within Canadian metropolitan areas. The effects of household debt in either ameliorating or exacerbating prevailing levels of income segregation are analyzed, after which the metropolitan-level factors that are associated with regressive neighborhood distributions of debt are examined. The implications of the results for understanding the relationship between financialization and predominant patterns of urban economic restructuring are then discussed.

Homeownership, Asset-based Welfare and the Neighbourhood Segregation of Wealth

Abstract The asset-based welfare approach, which has foremost encouraged homeownership, has led to rising homeownership rates, house prices and household debt levels. While this shift has helped raise the net worth of some among the middle and working classes who own property, the implications for the spatial distribution of wealth in cities have not yet been explored. This paper examines the spatial implications of the rise of policies promoting asset-based welfare, by examining statistically how variables related to homeownership rates and housing prices relate to measures of urban wealth segregation among neighbourhoods. Canadian cites are used as the main case study for the empirical analysis. The findings suggest that while homeownership in general has an equalizing effect, rising rates of homeownership (and to some extent, rising house prices) are associated not with greater spatial equalization and dispersal of wealth, but instead with greater spatial segregation and concentration of wealth within cities.

The politics of bicycle lane implementation: The case of Vancouver's Burrard Street Bridge

ABSTRACT Shifting commuters out of cars and into active modes of transportation such as bicycling is necessary if communities and cities are to become more environmentally sustainable. Coupled with the resistance of drivers to change modes is a resistance on behalf of the politicians they elect to support the building of infrastructure for active transportation, particularly when this means taking resources away from the dominant automobile-based mode. Before scholars promote specific policies or methods for dealing with such issues, it is necessary to understand what strategies have been successful and unsuccessful in attaining a shift of resources into active transportation infrastructure such as bicycle lanes. Vancouver presents a case study of both such strategies. In 1996 a pilot project aimed at transferring a lane on the Burrard Street Bridge from cars to bicycles failed and ended in political acrimony. However, another such pilot attempted in 2009 was successful with the lanes made permanent shortly afterward. This article documents what transpired and analyzes the reasons for the initial failure and the subsequent realization 13 years later. The Burrard Street Bridge story provides lessons for how bicycle lanes, even those that take space away from cars, might be implemented in other contexts, given the reality of a politics that favors a status quo dominated by automobility.

Neoliberalization through Housing Finance, the Displacement of Risk, and Canadian Housing Policy: Challenging Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis

Abstract The precise relationships between neoliberalization, financialization, and rising risk are still being debated in the literature. This paper examines, and challenges, the Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) developed by Hyman Minsky and his adherents. In this perspective, the level of financial risk builds over time as participants orient their behavior in relation to assessments of past levels of risk performance, leading them to overly optimistic valuation estimates and increasingly risky behavior with each subsequent cycle. However, there are problems with this approach, and many questions remain, including how participants modify their exposure to risk over time, how risk is scaled, and who benefits from changes in exposure to risk. This paper examines such questions and proposes an alternate perspective on financial instability and risk, in light of the history of risk management within Canada’s housing finance sector. The rise of financialization in Canada has been accompanied by shifts in the sectoral and scalar locus of risk within the housing sector, from the federal state, to lower levels of government, third-sector organizations, and finally, private households. In each case, the transfer of risk has occurred as participants in each stage sought to reduce their own risk exposure in light of realistic and even pessimistic (not optimistic) expectations deriving from past exposure, contradicting basic assumptions of Minsky’s FIH. This is the process that has driven the neoliberalization of housing finance in Canada, characterized by the socialization of lender risk while households increasingly take on the financial and social risks relating to shelter.

A review of Debt to Society: Accounting for Life under Capitalism by Miranda Joseph

There is no question that contemporary neoliberalism has been characterized by increasing indebtedness, in many forms and at different scales. But just what is debt, and what are its social and cul...