Toronto's Postwar Little Italy

Urbanethniclandscapeshavereceivedlittleattentioninthe immigrationandethnicstudiesandculturalgeographyliteratures.Marxist historical materialism, speculations on modern(ist) urbanism and assimilation have either denied or neglected the study of ethnic landscapes in the city. A small body of literature on the ethnic use and meaning of space is beginning to emerge which shows that ungrounded theoretical speculation can misinform us about both ethnicity and the buitt environment' This study of retail facades in Toronto's post-war Little Italy addresses the debate and shows that more empirical case studies are needed before \Ye can theorize the urban landscaPe. The retail strip along st. Clair Ave. around Dufferin st' rvas the focal. point of post-war Italian immigration to Toronto' Although the strip n'as mostly built up in the second decade of this century, documentary photographs from the Toronto Real Estate Board's Multiple Listing service show that it changed little before Italian immigration' Property assessment data for the City of Toronto show a rapid ethnic succession from Britishorigin and jewish to Italian for st. clail stores, providing information on tenure, business type, and occupants, names. \{ith this information, I r,vas abletocontactltalian-originmerchantsalongSt.Clairforinformant interviews on their renovations and the changing identity and meaning of St' Clair. Usingthephotographs,Iconclud.ethatSt.Clairisanurbanethnic land.scapeforanumberofreasons:Itaiianimmigrationand entrepreneurship brought visible changes to the original Georgian idiom of the strip, namely the widespread use of stucco, marble/granite and tile' Georgian features were also removed and/or replaced' vestibules were coopted for plate glass windows, cafe windows installed to serve sidewalk patrons and new outdoor patios for ca{es and restaurants' These changes can be explained by the pre-migratory experiences of Italian immigrants and the public quality of Italian culture' I could further support this conclusion with information from my interviews. The interviews revealed that retail facades and the streetscape is imbued with ethnic pride and tensions. Merchants spoke of their pride and preference for ltalian-style renovations, work which was usually done with the aid of family and community members. Merchants' also told me about their dislike for the aesthetic choices of non-Italian entrepreneurs. It quickly became clear that retail facades were being used as a vehicle to express discontent with st. Clair',s previous population and the visible minorities that are novv beginning to dominate the area numerically' TheprocessandmeaningofchangebehindSt.Clair,sretailfacades ultimately speak of the strip's territorial history' Ethnic pride and community involvement helped to change its original identity' Yet this is balanced by ethnic bigotry expressed as discontent for the aesthetic preferences of others' Thus,incontrasttothedominanttheoreticalviewpointsontheurban landscape,themeaningandvisibleaPpeafanceofSt.Clairhasbeen influenced by ethnic relations to produce an urban ethnic landscape'Master of Arts (MA

The Canadian urban housebuilding industry: Firm size structure and production methods in Ontario, 1945--2000

The North American housebuilding industry is central to the production of urban space and the provision of housing. Yet surprisingly, housebuilding has received little scholarly attention in the housing, urban studies and industrial organisation literatures. Most of the major studies of the industry appeared in the early postwar years. These early studies interpreted the industry in terms of the preferred model of industrial organisation at the time, a model based on Fordist economies of scale, vertical integration and a highly segmented division of labour. Housebuilding's many small firms, labour intensive methods and subcontracting seemed underdeveloped, even backward, to observers. However, recent industrial restructuring has called into question the superiority of Fordist methods and permits a reinterpretation of housebuilding. This thesis provides such a reinterpretation based on a review of the organisation of housebuilding in North America since WWII and a case study of the industry in Ontario and its major urban region, Toronto. The case studies of Ontario and Toronto are based on quantitative and qualitative data sources and are combined with published and unpublished sources on housebuilding throughout North America since WWII. The principal sources used in this study are Canadian industry trade journals, a census of builders in the Province of Ontario from 1978 through 1998 provided by the Ontario New Home Warranty Program, and corporate interviews with a selection of builders in the Toronto region. As in North America since WWII, the case studies of Ontario and Toronto show that housebuilding remains a deconcentrated industry of small and transient firms. Entrepreneurs face few barriers to entry primarily because they can rely on a decentralised social system of production subcontracting. This permits a constant stream of new firms but also supplies many of the eventual exits as well. As such, housebuilding remains persistently deconcentrated while its firms experience constant turnover. On these grounds, criticisms of housebuilding by early observers are well-founded. Firm transience in an industry which supplies the most important commodity to the majority of North Americans continues to be a serious problem. However, interpretations of the small building company and its production methods as backwards were misplaced. Observers failed to appreciate the importance of the conditions of production and the market for new houses. The need to move production from site to site, to accommodate varied housing styles, weather, climate and market cyclicality all have consistently made production subcontracting an attractive method of operation. Indeed, many of the long-criticised features of housebuilding have come to be debated, and endorsed, in the literature on industrial restructuring in recent decades. For these reasons, housebuilding cannot be interpreted as backwards. This study joins a growing body of literature which argues against the notion of an optimal end state to industrial development. Industrial organisation may vary through time and across space. In remaining persistently deconcentrated by many small firms using extensive subcontracting methods, housebuilders merely represent efficient responses to the product and market conditions they face.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD

Open Data in London: What Is It and How Is It Used?

The intent of the open data movement is to provide freely available online data for analysis and innovation by scholars and the public. It recently has made some notable achievements, such as last year\u27s decision by the World Bank to provide all its data for free. Last fall, the City of London (Ontario) launched an open data beta web site, following in the tracks of other Canadian municipalities

Spatial analysis of air pollution and childhood asthma in Hamilton, Canada: comparing exposure methods in sensitive subgroups

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Variations in air pollution exposure within a community may be associated with asthma prevalence. However, studies conducted to date have produced inconsistent results, possibly due to errors in measurement of the exposures.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A standardized asthma survey was administered to children in grades one and eight in Hamilton, Canada, in 1994–95 (N ~1467). Exposure to air pollution was estimated in four ways: (1) distance from roadways; (2) interpolated surfaces for ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and nitrous oxides from seven to nine governmental monitoring stations; (3) a kriged nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) surface based on a network of 100 passive NO₂monitors; and (4) a land use regression (LUR) model derived from the same monitoring network. Logistic regressions were used to test associations between asthma and air pollution, controlling for variables including neighbourhood income, dwelling value, state of housing, a deprivation index and smoking.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were no significant associations between any of the exposure estimates and asthma in the whole population, but large effects were detected the subgroup of children without hayfever (predominately in girls). The most robust effects were observed for the association of asthma without hayfever and NO₂LUR OR = 1.86 (95%CI, 1.59–2.16) in all girls and OR = 2.98 (95%CI, 0.98–9.06) for older girls, over an interquartile range increase and controlling for confounders.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings indicate that traffic-related pollutants, such as NO₂, are associated with asthma without overt evidence of other atopic disorders among female children living in a medium-sized Canadian city. The effects were sensitive to the method of exposure estimation. More refined exposure models produced the most robust associations.</p

Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Cosmological Parameters

We forecast the main cosmological parameter constraints achievable with theCORE space mission which is dedicated to mapping the polarisation of the CosmicMicrowave Background (CMB). CORE was recently submitted in response to ESA'sfifth call for medium-sized mission proposals (M5). Here we report the resultsfrom our pre-submission study of the impact of various instrumental options, inparticular the telescope size and sensitivity level, and review the great,transformative potential of the mission as proposed. Specifically, we assessthe impact on a broad range of fundamental parameters of our Universe as afunction of the expected CMB characteristics, with other papers in the seriesfocusing on controlling astrophysical and instrumental residual systematics. Inthis paper, we assume that only a few central CORE frequency channels areusable for our purpose, all others being devoted to the cleaning ofastrophysical contaminants. On the theoretical side, we assume LCDM as ourgeneral framework and quantify the improvement provided by CORE over thecurrent constraints from the Planck 2015 release. We also study the jointsensitivity of CORE and of future Baryon Acoustic Oscillation and Large ScaleStructure experiments like DESI and Euclid. Specific constraints on the physicsof inflation are presented in another paper of the series. In addition to thesix parameters of the base LCDM, which describe the matter content of aspatially flat universe with adiabatic and scalar primordial fluctuations frominflation, we derive the precision achievable on parameters like thosedescribing curvature, neutrino physics, extra light relics, primordial heliumabundance, dark matter annihilation, recombination physics, variation offundamental constants, dark energy, modified gravity, reionization and cosmicbirefringence. (ABRIDGED

Identifying Vulnerable Populations through an Examination of the Association Between Multipollutant Profiles and Poverty

Recently, concerns have centered on how to expand knowledge on the limited science related to the cumulative impact of multiple air pollution exposures and the potential vulnerability of poor communities to their toxic effects. The highly intercorrelated nature of exposures makes application of standard regression-based methods to these questions problematic due to well-known issues related to multicollinearity. Our paper addresses these problems by using, as its basic unit of inference, a profile consisting of a pattern of exposure values. These profiles are grouped into clusters and associated with a deprivation outcome. Specifically, we examine how profiles of NO(2)-, PM(2.5)-, and diesel- (road and off-road) based exposures are associated with the number of individuals living under poverty in census tracts (CT's) in Los Angeles County. Results indicate that higher levels of pollutants are generally associated with higher poverty counts, though the association is complex and nonlinear. Our approach is set in the Bayesian framework, and as such the entire model can be fit as a unit using modern Bayesian multilevel modeling techniques via the freely available WinBUGS software package, (1) though we have used custom-written C++ code (validated with WinBUGS) to improve computational speed. The modeling approach proposed thus goes beyond single-pollutant models in that it allows us to determine the association between entire multipollutant profiles of exposures with poverty levels in small geographic areas in Los Angeles County

Firm Size Structure in North American Housebuilding: Persistent Deconcentration, 1945-1998

In this paper I document and analyse the evolving firm size structure of the housebuilding industry in North America since World War 2, and place it in a wider context of industrial organisation. This is done first by synthesising the literature on housebuilding, particularly secondary data, to outline the industry\u27s firm size and market share distributions. Second, the literature is extended with new and original data on the housebuilding industry for the province of Ontario, supplied by the Ontario New Home Warranty Program. The data are a complete annual census of builders in the province from 1978 through 1998. Using standard measures of industrial concentration and firm size classifications common to the housebuilding literature, Ontario is placed in the Canadian and North American contexts, to outline how housebuilding has evolved since World War 2. The main findings are that housebuilding shows no long-term trend toward rising market concentration. Rather, the industry\u27s structure appears to change in cycles, while the largest firms have neither the growth rates nor the longevity to produce high levels of concentration common in other industries. On the basis of these findings, I suggest how insights into the firm size structure of housebuilding may benefit from, and contribute to, our understanding of social systems of production and discuss directions for future research