A City-Region Growing Apart? Taking Stock of Income Disparity in Greater Montréal, 1970-2005

This report documents the changing overall spatial patterning of wealthy, poor and middleincome neighbourhoods in the Montréal Census Metropolitan Area, focusing on changes in the average individual incomes (from all sources) of residents aged 15 and over, relative to those of the CMA as a whole. We wanted to determine whether there has been a growth in the relative numbers of high-income neighbourhoods and low-income neighbourhoods, and whether the number of middle-income neighbourhoods has shrunk in relative or absolute terms. We also tracked areas where income growth or decline has been particularly striking compared to income change in the CMA as a whole to determine if there are clusters of neighbourhoods that are getting wealthier, getting poorer or remaining similar to the average for the city-region as a whole, and if so, where they are. We then examined the main features of these zones of change and stability using key indicators such as university degree and recent immigrant status, because of their relevance to employment and earnings. Finally, we examined these changes in relation to the linguistic geography of Greater Montréal. We found that for the CMA as a whole, there is only a weak trend toward income polarization between census tracts by incomes and only a slight shrinkage in the share of middle income census tracts. However, the findings differ between its two main subregions, the Island and the off-island suburbs. On the Island of Montréal, the number of middle-income tracts has decreased: by 2005, in fewer than half of census tracts are individual incomes close to the metropolitan average. Despite gentrification in the old urban core, the patterns suggest that uppermiddle- income earners have mainly opted to live in off-island suburbs. Meanwhile, the share of low-income tracts on the Island is higher than for the CMA as a whole. It is only in the off-Island suburbs that we see a steady increase in the share of tracts in the highest income band, accompanied by an increase in the share of tracts in the low income band. Although the vast majority of tracts were still in the middle category in 2005, this group has shrunk somewhat. The off-Island region as a whole is becoming more diverse in terms of income levels, but there is no evidence of polarization. Using the terms developed for the study of the Three Cities in the City of Toronto, we mapped the trends. “City #1” consists of neighbourhoods in which average individual incomes increased by more than 15 percent above the metropolitan rate between 1970 and 2005. “City #2” consists of neighbourhoods that have remained relatively stable, with income changes within plus or minus 15 percent of the metropolitan average. “City #3” consists of neighbourhoods where the average income of the population fell by more than 15 percent relative to the growth of the metropolitan average income between 1970 and 2005. Nearly one in five of Greater Montréal’s census tracts has become more affluent over our study period. These include some of the Island’s pre-existing elite and upper-middle-class areas (such as Westmount and most of Outremont). “City #1” also includes districts that have experienced gentrification (especially the Plateau Mont-Royal, Old Montréal and adjacent sectors). Most of the other sectors that have increased in incomes are located in an (incomplete) outer-suburban ring, such as Varennes, Saint-Julie, and Boucherville on the South Shore, and Blainville on the North Shore, all of which now rank among Greater Montréal’s highest-income municipalities. By comparison, in 2005, 30 percent of Greater Montréal census tracts fell into “City #3.” Most of these tracts are located in postwar inner suburbs largely comprising poor- to modest-quality low-rise apartment buildings. Speaking a non-official language at home is much more common in “City #3,” some parts of which have become major zones of concentration of recent immigrants (e.g., Parc-Extension, Côte-des-Neiges, parts of Montréal-Nord, Cartierville, and Saint- Laurent, and the southern part of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce). “City #3” also includes many of the traditional working-class areas (e.g. Mercier and parts of Rosemont in the east end, Saint- Pierre and parts of Verdun and Côte-Saint-Paul in the southwest). These have become zones of concentration of individuals vulnerable to long-term unemployment or confined to the margins of the labour market, and unable to gain entry to the “knowledge industries.” Overall, the eastern parts of the “450” suburban ring located on both the North and South Shores, form a contiguous middle-to-upper-income block that has become wealthier over the study period. Incomes have also increased greatly in the inner-city ring around Mount-Royal, but apart from the old elite neighbourhoods on the slopes of the Mountain, few of these census tracts have as yet exceeded middle-income status, and in many, gentrification is far from complete. Impoverishment has set in in many census tracts in the postwar suburbs, including some in the older parts of the off-Island suburbs of Laval and Longueuil. The contiguous area of decline in northeast Montréal now forms a strikingly large poverty concentration comprising census tracts that were mostly middle-income at the beginning of the study period. Finally, we tracked how income distribution changed within each of the “three cities” of Greater Montréal during each of the three decades. In “City #1,” we see the effects of gentrification in the rapid decline in low-income tracts in the 1990s, as well as a distinct shift into the very-highincome category. “City #2” displays a fairly stable income distribution over time, although with a notable shift from middle to low income occurring in the 1970s. In “City #3,” few high income tracts remain while the growth of the low-income categories mirrors the decline of the middleincome group. Both of these downshifts are most likely related to the growth of the low-income immigrant population. We conclude that as of 2006 the spatial separation between the “cities” of increasing affluence and increasing poverty is much less stark than in Toronto and Vancouver. In particular, neighbourhoods that are relatively stable in terms of income levels and where residents with middleincomes are in the majority are found all over the Montréal Census Metropolitan Area. Nevertheless, the expansion of contiguous zones of poverty and affluence raises spatial-equity challenges with implications for housing and transportation policy