Abstract

Background

Researchers, policy makers, and urban planners require tools to better understand the complex relationship between gentrification and health. The Gentrification, Urban Interventions and Equity (GENUINE) tool is an open-access, map-based tool that allows users to explore measures of gentrification for Canadian cities and incorporate them into their work.

Data and methods

The phenomenon of gentrification has manifested differently across cities. The GENUINE tool was developed to include four distinct gentrification measures that have been used in the United States and Canada and that rely on different combinations of change in census indicators related to income, housing, occupation, education and age. The measures were computed for all census tracts within the 36 Canadian census metropolitan areas to identify gentrifiable areas in 2006 and those that gentrified between 2006 and 2016.

Results

Depending on the measure, by 2016, 2% to 20% of census tracts had experienced gentrification, corresponding to between 2% (418,065 people) and 17% (4,266,434) of the Canadian population living in gentrified areas. Generally, metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million people had a greater proportion of their population living in gentrified areas (2% to 18%) compared with metropolitan areas with fewer than 250,000 residents (1% to 14%).

Interpretation

With attention on healthy cities only expanding, GENUINE provides pan-Canadian indicators of gentrification, which can be an integral part of solution-oriented research and advancing cities toward designing healthy and equitable communities.

Keywords

gentrification, neighbourhood, housing, income, urban change, measurement, equity

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.25318/82-003-x202100500002-eng

Findings

Urban renewal provides huge potential for improving population health in cities, but it may also carry unintended consequences for health equity. Health inequities may be reinforced by a lack of investment in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and also by unexpected gentrification processes. Gentrification is an area-level process in which formerly declining, under-resourced neighbourhoods experience reinvestment and in-migration of increasingly affluent new residents. There may be a multitude of consequences when the physical, social and economic environments of neighbourhoods are transformed by the gentrification process. In Canada, both the causes and consequences of gentrification have been explored in studies that shed light on who benefits from and who is harmed by such neighbourhood changes. Within Canadian cities, gentrification may be signalled by specific built-environment changes, such as greater access to rapid transit systems and green space, which have been associated with gentrifying areas. The social fabric of neighbourhoods is impacted by gentrification through declining social mix, ethnicity diversity and immigrant concentration, as well as by increasing housing evictions. However, increased collective efficacy might also be a result. Policy makers, city planners, and researchers require consistent, reliable data and tools for documenting gentrification to inform the design of healthy cities. [Full article]

Authors

Caislin L. Firth (caislin_leah_firth@sfu.ca) is with Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia. Benoit Thierry (benoit.thierry@crchum.qc.ca ) is with Université de Montréal/Centre de recherche du CHUM, Pavillon S, Montréal, Québec. Daniel Fuller (dfuller@mun.ca ) is with Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Meghan Winters (mwinters@sfu.ca ) is with Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia. Yan Kestens (yan.kestens@umontreal.ca ) is with Université de Montréal/Centre de recherche du CHUM, Pavillon S, Montréal, Québec.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Margaret de Groh, PhD, and the Public Health Agency of Canada for their support in developing GENUINE and for reviewing this manuscript.

Funding

All authors were supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) under the INTErventions, Research and Action in Cities Team (INTERACT) grant (award number IP2-1507071C) and Sustainable Healthy Cities: The Interplay between Urban Interventions, Gentrification, and Population Health (award number PJT-165955). The content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the CIHR. Meghan Winters was supported by a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award. Daniel Fuller was supported by a Canada Research Chair in Population Physical Activity. Yan Kestens was supported by a CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Urban Interventions and Population Health.

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