Canada and the World Backgrounder articles from May 2004

Canada and the World Backgrounder archives from May 2004

Turning good ideas into reality can be a hard sell.(Introduction)
May 1, 2004... Experts tell us that the strongest communities are those with a mixture of uses, filled with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Yet, in our behaviour and planning, we seem determined to ignore the expert advice. Apart from a few...

Overtaxed and underfunded: Canada used to have model cities, but funding cutbacks have knocked them down fore decades.(Cities)
May 1, 2004... A century ago, 80 percent of Canada's population was rural; today, 80 percent of the country's 31 million people lives in towns and cities, and that figure is expected to reach 90 percent by the year 2020. Between 1996 and 2001, almost all of...

Doughnut cities: everybody connected with urban planning has known for decades that allowing suburbs to spread is not a good idea, yet suburban growth continues.(Suburban Sprawl)
May 1, 2004... Until the 1950s, Canadian cities were compact and tended to grow upwards, not outwards. The reason was that not many people owned cars so they depended on public transportation to get about. Living close to a streetcar line, bus route, or train...

Stopping the rot: a sure sign that a community is in decline is loss of civic pride. This shows up in a variety of ways--litter becomes a problem, sidewalks aren't cleared of snow, graffiti appears, participation in elections declines.(Civic Pride)
May 1, 2004... You can skip the vacuuming for a week, and the place doesn't look too bad. But, leave the housework for more than a couple of weeks and home begins to look a mess. An untidy room is a magnet for more clutter; unwashed dishes seem to attract...

Preservation struggle: some of Canada's small communities are doing just fine, but many have been losing population for decades. Job opportunities are few and young people leave for cities. Meanwhile, cities are spreading to meet what used to be separate rural communities, turning them into bedroom (commuter) communities.(Communities-Rural)
May 1, 2004... Places like Gabriola Island in British Columbia are among the country's most appealing communities. The lush vegetation, easy-going lifestyle, and warm climate have attracted several thousand residents to the island, which had only a few...

Urban clusters: new waves of immigration have transformed the face of urban Canada. And, with a lower birth rate, the country will need more immigrants to keep the population from declining.(Communities-Immigrants)
May 1, 2004... A hundred years ago I most immigrants to Canada were British. Between 1896 and 1905, the Canadian government started actively recruiting non-British immigrants from Poland, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia, mostly to farm the Prairies. They began...

People over cars.(car-free city areas)
May 1, 2004... Among the most common city scenes are daily traffic jams. An estimated 10 million Canadians hit the road every day just to go to work. Some neighbourhoods want more parks than pavement. Neighbourhoods such as the Beaches in Toronto, an older...

Social polarization.(rich and poor)
May 1, 2004... Despite the advantages of mixed neighbourhoods, there is some indication that poverty is on the rise. According to a report in 2002 by Toronto's United Way, the number of middle-income families in the city declined by 8.2% in the 1990s, as the...

Private enclaves.(planned communities)
May 1, 2004... Some people are not shutting cars out of their neighbourhoods but they're closing themselves off in what have been dubbed "master-planned communities" run by private housing associations. According to the Community Associations Institute,...

Another extreme.(cruise ships)
May 1, 2004... Cruise ships have become communities of a kind, and some of them are more than just floating hotels. The World of ResidenSea, for example, launched in March 2002, is a luxury ship that's a resort community as well as a permanent residence for...

It's a right.(Housing--Introduction)(housing is a human right)
May 1, 2004... Shelter is a basic human right. It's laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 of this United Nations document says that: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself...

Hot property.(Housing--Market)
May 1, 2004... Everywhere in the Western industrialized world, housing has become a commodity. To many people a house is an investment that they expect to increase in value with the aim of selling it at a profit. In developed countries, the net worth of most...

Entry level homes.(Housing--Condominiums)
May 1, 2004... Often a family's first housing market experience comes in the form of a condominium. The reason is simple; condos are usually the lowest priced form of home ownership. In most cases, the condo owner owns the inside of their unit to half...

The price of shelter.(Housing--Cost)
May 1, 2004... Almost everyone has to borrow money to buy a home. A lucky few can go to the Bank of Mom and Dad for a low-cost loan--for everyone else there's the mortgage. A mortgage is similar to a loan, but there are some wrinkles in the fine print...

The rental market.(Housing--Affordable)
May 1, 2004... To some a house means a two-storey entrance hall, cathedral-ceiling living room, dining-room to seat a dozen or more, multi-media room, half a dozen bedrooms, and bathrooms everywhere. To others it's a few pieces of plywood and some cardboard...

The government factor.(Housing--Policy)
May 1, 2004... Housing is one of those things in Canada that suffers from too much government. Federal, provincial, and municipal levels all have a hand in housing, meaning that agreements involve a large number of partners. This has a tendency to produce...

No fixed address.(Housing--Homeless)
May 1, 2004... Homelessness has become a major problem in Canada. Nobody knows for sure how big a problem, only that it is big, and getting bigger. * An estimated 50,000 people live on the streets permanently. Social workers guess that another 250,000...

The no-rent option.(Squats)(shack towns in Vancouver and Toronto)
May 1, 2004... Squatters are homeless people who take over abandoned or empty buildings and live in them. One of the most famous squats was in the old Woodwards department store in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Once a retailing mecca for Vancouverites,...

Down and nearly out.(Emergency Shelters)
May 1, 2004... On any given winter night in Canada's largest city about 4,300 people sleep in emergency shelters. The numbers go down in summer, because many of the homeless would rather sleep rough outside than inside an emergency shelter. The number of...

Housing--databank.
May 1, 2004... Percentage of Canadians who own the home in which they lived in 2000: 67% Portion of these who had paid off their mortgages: half Percentage of Canadians living in government subsidized housing in 2000: 4% Average housing expenditures...