[URBAN NOTE] "We need to reframe how we talk about our city"

[rfmcdonald]

Idil Burale's Spacing Toronto essay, reacting to a Toronto Life feature about Toronto's increasingly problematic inner suburbs is necessary commentary on an important discussion.

While I laud Toronto Life for taking an interest in the plight of those who live across the subway track, the magazine told the story in a way that feeds directly into the familiar media narrative about the inner suburbs, and which Toronto Life claimed it wanted to avoid: vertical poverty, under-resourced schools, immigrant struggle and gang warfare.

Is Toronto responsible for the over-crowded schools that resulted from Mike Harris era cuts to education, and which have yet to be replenished by the Liberal government? Did Toronto fail to ensure the safety of these neighbourhoods, or are gangs a symptom of the high youth unemployment? Who is failing whom?

The problem that I have with this feature is twofold: First, it paints a singular narrative of the inner suburbs, and provides insufficient analysis as to why things are the way they are. Second, it is unjustifiably alarmist[. . .]

Is Toronto Life saying we should ‘fix’ the inner suburbs in order to avoid social unrest? This kind of alarmist rhetoric merely undermines the capacity of the inner suburbs. Rather, we should seek to remedy inequitable access to opportunity and mobility within our city because people deserve better regardless of their social status, income, and neighbourhood, not out of fear of what they may do, if we don’t.

We need to stop talking about Toronto’s inner suburbs as if they were monolithic and interchangeable. The neighbourhoods in these former municipalities are as economically diverse and disparate in lived experiences as those in any other city.