[URBAN NOTE] "What ails Little India?"

[rfmcdonald]

According to blogTO's Robyn Urback, the problem with downtown Toronto Little India neighbourhood, east-end Gerrard Street is that the suburbanization of South Asians is leading to the creation of diasporic neighbourhoods far removed and independent from Toronto's first Indian neighbourhood.

Little India on a Monday afternoon is a ghost town. Granted, it's the off-season. Plus, on days like today, when it feels like -15°C and the wind is blowing furiously across Gerrard Street East, I can understand why the sidewalks aren't overflowing with pedestrian traffic. But the storefront windows covered with newspapers and scattering of "For Lease" signs, several within one block west of Coxwell Ave., give the impression that something is amiss.

After speaking with several restaurant owners along the bazaar, the consensus seems to be that competition outside of Toronto--such as in Brampton and Mississauga--is sucking up the business Gerrard's Indian Bazaar once enjoyed exclusively.

It's very bad now," one of the owners of Moti Mahal tells me as we chat by the buffet of his nearly empty restaurant. "Even the weekends aren't good. Everyone is struggling." The restaurant has been a fixture in Little India for several decades, undergoing a remodel about five years ago. "Now there is just so much competition; in Malton, in Rexdale, Mississauga. Now we have to rely a lot on tourists." He says he's noticed the change happen over the past few years, and at its worst over the past seven or eight months. "I'm hoping more festivals or something can revive the area."

I get a similar impression talking to the men at Nitya, the restaurant that moved into the space previously occupied by Skylark Restaurant. "There's an Indian bazaar in Brampton, an Indian bazaar in Mississauga, an Indian bazaar in Markham. So people can find places to shop closer to their homes." Though Nitya has been around for under a year, its owner is an area veteran, and these men say there's been a marked different in recent years. "There's been fewer people," one says. "Especially when people hear in the news that the DVP is under construction, the Lakeshore is under construction, it becomes very difficult to come out here, so they stay in their communities. Plus parking is bad and they don't want to risk getting a ticket."

I've blogged a fair bit about Little India, mainly in terms of it being somewhat folkloric and not cutting-edge. This diffusion of South Asians away from Little India is even happening downtown--in 2008 I blogged about the coalescence of a "Little Bangladesh" further to the north on Danforth Avenue. Outside of Toronto, the demographics of South Asian-origin communities can be quite concentrated, with more than a quarter of Brampton's population speaking Punjabi as their mother tongue. Even in the city of Toronto itself, relatively cheaper real estate prices make the growth of diasporic neighbourhoods easier--I know that when taking the bus from Warden subway station to Shakespeare's vet, I see fairly extensive Afghan and Tamil concentrations. Combine that with, as commenters suggest, a conservatism on the part of the local business association preventing the influx of the sorts of businesses--Tim Horton's, say--that don't cater to a traditionally South Asian population, and the neighbourhood's decline and eventual regentrification as a South Asian-flavoured community seems inevitable.