Taking the Pulse: Gauging Neighbourhood Change in Toronto's Downtown West End
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The goal of Taking the Pulse: Gauging Neighbourhood Change in Toronto's Downtown West End was to construct, administer, and analyze a household survey that will provide St. Christopher House (SCH) with a better understanding of the issues facing the residents they serve. This research was designed to address three main questions: • How do the residents perceive the changes occurring within the neighbourhood? • How are these changes affecting their way of life in terms of housing, commercial activity, new residents, and safety? • What can be done to respond to these perceived changes? This research allowed residents to voice their concerns and views about neighbourhood changes. These concerns and views will be translated into policy and planning recommendations for the city, as well as for SCH, the main social service provider in Toronto's West End. To inform this research, 108 surveys were completed in the South Parkdale, Little Portugal, and Niagara neighbourhoods. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed are homeowners, and 55% of respondents are between 35 and 65 years of age. Our sample presented a relatively high household income with 30% of the respondents earning above $80,000 a year. Our findings are divided into themes that address housing market, commercial activity, perceptions about new residents in the neighborhoods, and safety. These themes were defined by reviewing current literature on gentrification, consulting with our client and advisors, and assessing community concerns and demands. The changes occurring in the three neighbourhoods are indicators of gentrification. We believe that the three neighbourhoods are at different stages of gentrification. People are aware of the dynamics of the changes in housing and commercial activity and perceive that gentrification affects them both positively and negatively. The Niagara neighbourhood, compared to Little Portugal and South Parkdale, has undergone the greatest change in terms of commercial activity and the influx of higher-income residents. Centre for Urban and Community Studies• University of Toronto• www.urbancentre .utoronto.ca vi Taking the Pulse Low-income residents tend to be more vulnerable to changes in the housing market and commercial adivities than more affluent residents. We provide recommendations for SCH and the City of Toronto including suggestions for housing, local economic development, community-based adivities, advocacy, and safety. The findings of this report will provide the building blocks for a larger study on gentrification by the Centre for Urban and Community Studies and St. Christopher House and a bridge between the concerns of neighbourhood residents, SCH, and the municipal policy makers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".