Toronto Gerrymandering and its Effects on Representation
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
By Gillian Chisholm
affordability, gerrymandering, toronto, representation,
This project has been designed to investigate the recent gerrymandering of city council wards in Toronto, Canada, that occurred in June, 2018.
On June 7, 2018, the province of Ontario, Canada, held an election to vote on a new premier. The winner, Doug Ford, is a known politician in his hometown of Toronto; however, this was his first time on the provincial stage. His brother was once a mayor of Toronto, and Doug had run for Mayor in the last election, being defeated by the current mayor John Tory. Ford has a long-standing relationship with local Toronto politics, but after losing the mayoral election his political views on the city became increasingly vocal and negative. After winning the provincial election off of his populist-conservative views, one of his first orders of business for the province targeted solely Toronto - he announced he would slash Toronto city council by nearly half, changing the number of wards from 44 to 25, and doing so by gerrymandering the wards to be the same as the federal and provincial electoral boundaries in Toronto which he recently won the provincial election off of. This gerrymandering legislation was officially put forward on the same month as the upcoming mayoral election at the end of October, 2018, and therefore, residents were forced to vote on nominees based on this new ward structure and who they were unfamiliar with. Below is a map of the 25 ward system imposed on top of the previous 44 ward system.
As you can see, previously existing wards were not merged with others; instead, old wards were split off into multiple new ones. This caused immense confusion, not only for the residents but for the council nominees as well. Many people were unable to vote on their previous councillors, and were forced to vote on individuals who had never represented their areas before. As well, councillors had no experience representing certain areas of the new wards they were running for.
In addition, the City of Toronto proudly describes itself as a ‘city of neighbourhoods’ with a neighbourhood count totalling 140, all of which have individualistic characteristics that make them special to all others. In the previous 44 ward system, there was an average neighbourhood count of 3 within old ward boundaries; however, in the 25 ward system, there are no less than 5 different neighbourhoods represented in each ward, with some forcibly placing 11 different neighbourhoods within one boundary area.
Not only does this decrease representation and stretch the abilities for councillors to advocate for all areas in their ward, it hides and dilutes the areas of most need. The most wealthy area in Toronto is the Bridle Path - the neighbourhood where the rapper Drake is building his 35,000 square foot mansion, which he purchased for $6.7 million and is completely re-building. Within the new 25 ward system, The Bridle Path is now in the same ward as one of the least wealthy areas of Toronto, Flemingdon Park, where average incomes are over $600,000 less than those living in The Bridle Path. Now the new Ward 15, in which Flemingdon Park and The Bridle Path have been forcibly merged, claim that average incomes in the ward are $215,158 - nearly $167,000 more than average incomes in Flemingdon Park alone. Needless to say, this will result in less investment for servicing the needs of neighbourhoods like Flemingdon Park by the City of Toronto.
This will also impact Toronto’s tenant population. Because homeownership has become so much more difficult to achieve in the city in the last few decades, the majority of younger residents and low-income Torontonians have relied on the rental market. However, rents have been dramatically changing over the last few years in the city, ultimately forcing many longstanding Torontonians to leave the city to find affordable homes. In the cartomap below, there are four layers that can be turned off and on to see rent change in the city. The first layer shows 2011 median rents per ward in the 44 ward system. The second layer displays the median rents in 2016, and the third displays the rate of change of median rents per ward from 2011 to 2016. While one ward only saw a 7% increase in its median rent, the ward with the greatest change saw just over a 30% increase in median rents in only 5 years. With the instability of rent costs, fleeing the city for appropriate rents to income is a survival tactic that is commonly used. Lastly, the fourth layer in this map displays the median rents in 2016 for the 25 ward system. While the areas of higher rents are concentrated in the same general areas between the 44 ward and 25 ward system, representation of affordable and unaffordable rents in the 25 ward system is skewed by either a diluting or concentrating effect of rent prices in the larger wards. The 44 ward layers show a more detailed account of where affordable homes are needed, and where they must be preserved. On the other hand, the 25 ward system displays many wards in which change or investment may not seem necessary to the city as they are displayed as more similar to the city wide averages.
Finally, another force changing the fabric of the city and ultimately pushing people outside of city limits for affordable homes is through directed area improvements targeting low income neighbourhoods. In the map below there are 5 layers. The base layer shows each neighbourhood’s median rents. In addition, the Neighbourhood, Business and Waterfront Development Area layers show where city policies are focusing investment in. As you can see, by turning on and off the improvement area layers, these plans fit perfectly within the boundaries of the existing low-income neighbourhoods proving that city policy is an active part to the gentrification of these neighbourhoods in which lower-income residents are still able to afford. Lastly, the layer named ‘Cultural Hotspots,’ comes from a dataset found on Open Data Toronto, in which city officials mapped out ‘areas of interest’. As is clearly shown, the cultural hotspots are located in lower-income areas, which I believe to be a tool to increase foot traffic to justify their plans for ‘improvement areas’ for gentrification. As a resident of Toronto myself, my skepticism lays in the fact that there are not any cultural hotspot data points located in the central area of downtown Toronto - a large area where the majority of city investment has previously gone for tourism and attractions in the past.
While these localized improvement areas are done on a city-scale and may not initially seem to have a provincial hand in it, the gerrymandering of Toronto has allowed for a small and concentrated amount of like-minded, conservative councillors into city hall chambers to ultimately make these policy decisions for the entire city’s future. Now that Toronto has a more conservative-heavy council representation then I have ever seen - with fewer representatives in total - their decisions have and will continue to impact the needs and livelihoods of residents of greater need in the city.