Too Many Dreamers-Not Enough Realists

Second and third, and sometimes fourth, generation social housing tenancys is an example that the cradle to grave mentality of social in-activists and socialist politicians at all levels is not working.

Urban dream deferred
April 10, 2007
Royson James

They've lived in Regent Park, Flemingdon Park and Rexdale, and the farther they moved away from downtown, the less connected they were to their neighbours.

Community centres are farther away in the inner suburbs. And connections are too dependent on the car. But this, too, is true. Fear fuels alienation. To survive, many try to shut out the "bad influences" of the neighbourhood.

Now, this family lives in a high-risk neighbourhood with one goal in mind – get out as soon as possible.

Many do. And there are tens of thousands on waiting lists to take their places.

Tonight's public forum – A View from the Inner Suburbs – looks at urban life in the communities outside downtown Toronto but inside its boundary.

The view is murky, blurry.

Do these neighbourhoods in old Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke work to improve or impair the lives of residents? Do traditional, downtown concepts of "neighbourhoods" and "communities" have traction outside the core?

Are we even asking the right questions? For example, does it matter if you have to travel to get to a bank or the grocery store or doctor? Or does fear of crime trump all efforts to build social cohesion and connections at street level?

And what drives the crime? Lack of recreation facilities? Or poverty and underemployment and the struggle for survival that breeds discontent, anger, deviance and, finally, disaster.

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