Week 20 - Urbanization & Homelessness PowerPoint Flashcards
URBANIZATION
Refers to the transformation of a society from
rural to urban. The more a population grows, the more people live in urban areas – as urban populations rise, rural ones tend to drop.
*indutrial Revolution brought on urbanization
*increase in population, more urbanilzation population
*increase in urbanalizaed population; decrease in rural population
Reason:
- migration - job opportunities
- Rural areas are turning into Urban areas
What constitutes an “urban area”?
According to Statistics Canada, urban areas constitute a minimum population of 1000 people, combined with a population density of at least 400 people per square km
High population density
- megacities
What are “megacities”?
- Urban areas with 10 million residents or more
https://www.youtube.com/watchv=JDS_BqDeZ4k
- In 1950, New York and Tokyo were the only megacities
- By 1980, they were joined by Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Osaka
- In 2010, over 20 megacities were spanning almost every continent
- By 2017, there were 32 megacities
- By 2030, it is estimated that there will be 41 megacities which will house almost 10% of the world’s population
SUBURBS?
*SUBURBS – Urban areas surrounding central cities
*SUBURBANIZATION – the development of urban areas outside of central cities and the movement of populations into these areas
*Why do people move to the suburbs?
- afford to buy home
*Suburbs & Commuting
https://globalnews.ca/news/7392667/real-estate-canada-suburbs-commutes/
C O N S E Q U E N C E S O F
U R B A N I Z AT I O N
The consequences of urbanization are sometimes referred to using the term “Urban Sprawl”
Specific Consequences:
- Environmental footprint
- loss of green open spaces
- displacement of wildlife
- traffic and noise
*largely determined by cultural patterns of production and consumption - developped nations more industrial = larger footprints
- Poverty and unemployment (housing crises more likely to exist in urban centres)
- toronto increasingly unaffordable
- kingston housing crisis
- Transportation and Traffic Issues
- high pollution
- air quality
- car accidents
- public transportation
SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE URBAN LIFE
How do we address issues of urbanization?
- Improvements to infrastructure
- Gentrification – revitalizing neighbourhoods
- Incumbent upgrading – improving transportation, affordable housing, green spaces, etc.
THE DARK SIDE OF GENTRIFICATION
FUNCTIONALISTS ON CITIES
Organic vs. mechanical solidarity (Durkheim)
Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft (F. Tonnies)
Organic vs. mechanical solidarity (Durkheim)
Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft (F. Tonnies)
Close knit community where strong personal ties unit members
vs.
Large and impersonal, social relationships are rational and not naturally ocuring
Gemeinschaft – a close-knit community in which strong personal bonds unite members
- Pre-industrial societies that used agricultural means of production – tight knit and strong, communities more stable & people engaged in social relationships naturally
Gesellschaft – a community that is large and impersonal, with little commitment to the group or consensus in values
- Rational forms of social relationships
- Reno-viction - landlord evicts tenants to renovate housing
- Want to charge higher rental price for their new units
- Evicted people now forced to live in a community where rental is much higher
*Rent control: 2.5% for the same tenant each year.
* Landlord don’t want to be limited
*However if you kick out tenant and raise price, perfectly legal.
C ON F L I C T
T H E OR IS T S ON
C I T IE S
- Cities are capitalist machines, sites of mass economic inequality
*Contrast between wealthy and those living in slums - Internationally, corporations urbanize previously rural areas in search of cheap labour
- Conflict theory: Nation goes into others to search for cheep labour, industrializing them
- Poor populations increasingly displaced due to gentrification
- Low income groups displaced by gentrification
- Money ultimately dictates how cities are designed
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISTS ON
CITIES
- Cities can make us individualistic and divide us
- However, they can also bring marginalized communities together
*due to larger population sizes and urbanization, can be easier for marginalized groups to find their cummunity in urban areas vs more rural ones:
Ex. Cultural pockets in Toronto
HOMELESSNESS IN CANADA
According to data from the 2020-2022 Point in Time (PiT) Counts, approximately 32,000 people in Canada experience homelessness in a given night. The majority (63%) stay in shelters.
It is estimated that over 235,000 people experience homelessness per year in Canada.
VISIBLE VS. HIDDEN HOMELESSNESS
What is visible homelessness?
- Homelessness you can SEE. (e.g., tent cities, people sleeping rough, people staying in shelters or accessing other housing-related social services)
What is hidden homelessness?
- bouncing between homes
- couch hopping
- tend not to request services; not get captured by homelessness stats
- these individuals may not consider themselves to be homeless
- refers specifically to people who live “temporarily with others but without guarantee of continued residency or immediate prospects for accessing permanent housing.” Often known as “couch surfing,” this describes people who are staying with relatives, friends, neighbours or
strangers because they have no other option. They generally are not paying rent and it is not a
sustainable long-term living arrangement, but they do not have the ability to secure their own
permanent housing immediately or in the near future. (Canadian Observatory on Homelessness) - Why is it “hidden”? Because people in these circumstances tend not to access homelessness
services & do not get tracked by standard stats as a result. Such individuals also often do not
consider themselves to be “homeless”
SOCIETAL RESPONSES TO VISIBLE
HOMELESSNESS
Vitae (2010)
Critiques the Safer Cities Initiative (SCI) in LA and its effect on removing “visible homelessness
SCI takes the approach that the solution to crime and poverty is the expand law enforcement and make it more aggressive when targeting poor and vulnerable populations (rather than investing in social spending)
SCI failed to reduce homelessness and contributed to high costs of policing with, at best, minimal crime reductions
_________________________________________
Ontario Safe Streets Act – similar to SCI, came into effect in 2000 under Mike Harris conservative government
*Has the effect of criminalizing homelessness and the activities that unhoused people engage in as a means of survival (subsistence strategies)
*The aggressive pan handling and squeejying
*You are fined
*99% of fines unpaid
_________________________________________
Hostile Architecture - Hostile architecture is an urban-design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully guide or restrict behaviour in order to prevent crime and protect property. It is often referred to as “anti- homeless” architecture.
HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE IN MY
COMMUNITY
the stones under bridges
- the arm divider in benches so people cant sleep on it.
P E RC E P T I O N S O F
P E O P L E E X P E R I E N C I N G
H O M E L E S S N E S S ( K I M
E T A L . 2 0 2 3 )
The authors use Goffman’s theorizing on Stigma to understand how individuals perceive people experiencing homelessness (PEH)
Created a program to capture all tweets containing the word “homeless” from April to June 2013 (N= 1,750.000)
Selected random sample of 1000 tweets from the larger dataset then created a codebook to analyze the tweets for themes
Determined there is a “stigma theory” of homelessness, where people attribute undesirable characteristics to PEH (including that PEH are unhygienic, socially deviant, sexually aggressive or deviant, threatening and violent)
* People use these undesirable characteristics (the stigma of being unhoused) to as a way to justify homelessness - PEH deserve to be homeless because of these multiple stigmatized identities.
Sociological Question – How do attitudes about unhoused people impact societal responses for addressing homelessness?
W H O I S I M PAC T E D BY H O M E L E S S N E S S ?
LGBTQ2S+ YOUTH
- 25-40% of youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBTQ2S+
- Queer youth often have difficulty finding shelters where they feel safe and respected. They experience high rates of identity-related
discrimination and violence in shelters. - Shelters may feel unsafe for their population
- feel uncomfortable disclosing identities due to violence
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
- According to PiT Counts, approximately 1/15 Indigenous people in urban centres experience homelessness compared to 1/128 of the general population
WOMEN
- While homelessness used to be an issue that primarily impacted men in Canada, estimates now suggest that women make up over 1/3 of those who are unhoused. Women often do not experience homelessness in the same way as men – the pathways into homelessness and trajectories while homeless are often different
- Research kind of just starting as men historically more homeless
- intimate partner violence - key funnel into homelessness
- Woman very accompanied by children
DISABLED FOLKS
- Evidence to suggest that individuals with disabilities are overrepresented in homeless population in Canada, especially when disability intersects with other marginalized identities
- In Pan-Canadian Women’s Housing and Homelessness Survey, it was found that 79% of the sample of women and gender diverse people reporting housing need or homelessness had a disability
- In my own research – 15/18 trans and gender diverse participants discussed, unprompted, one or more disability (intellectual, physical, learning)
_______________________________________
WHY ARE THESE GROUPS IMPACTED?
As sociologists, we may investigate why
these groups are disproportionately
impacted by homelessness
What are the CAUSES of homelessness for these groups? What are the CONSEQUENCES?
How do societal institutions, norms, and biases contribute to homelessness for certain groups of people?
