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Housing and Location of Young Adults, Then and Now: Consequences of Urban Restructuring in Montreal and Vancouver

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Housing and Location of Young Adults, Then and Now: Consequences of Urban Restructuring in Montreal and Vancouver HOUSING AND LOCATION OF YOUNG ADULTS, THEN AND NOW: CONSEQUENCES OF URBAN RESTRUCTURING IN MONTREAL AND VANCOUVER by MARKUS MOOS BES, The University of Waterloo, 2004 MPL, Queen’s University, 2006 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) February 2012 © Markus Moos, 2012 Abstract Young adults, 25 to 34 years of age, decide on housing, residential location and commuting patterns in an altered context from when the same age cohort entered housing markets in the early 1980s. Neo-liberalization reduced the availability of low- cost, rental housing, and post-Fordist restructuring increased labour market inequality. Societal changes contributed to decreases in household size and delay in child bearing. This thesis asks how the contextual changes factor into young adults’ housing decisions in the Montreal and Vancouver metropolitan areas where restructuring occurred differently, and discusses implications for equity and sustainability. The young adult residential ecology is increasingly concentrated into higher density and amenity-rich neighbourhoods, particularly near transit in Vancouver. The trends are explained by shifts toward the service sector, declining real incomes and growing inter-generational wage inequalities that reduce young adults’ spending power in housing markets, especially in Vancouver with its speculative land market and wealthy immigrants. Holding other characteristics constant, young adults in Vancouver are less likely to reside in single-family dwellings than detached, row or apartment units. In Montreal the trend is toward single-family living. Commuting distances and modes are similar between Vancouver and Montreal but multiple-person households and those with children have longer and more automobile-oriented commutes in Vancouver. The changes reflect higher increases in housing costs and densities in central areas in Vancouver. Montreal has more sustained government support for housing, a larger rental sector and therefore less rampant increases in housing costs. The restructuring of Vancouver’s housing market makes it more difficult than in Montreal to keep accessible the more ‘sustainable’ locations to households of all sizes. Household structure and life- cycle stage, not social status alone, determine location and the commute. A greater sustainability challenge in Montreal will be to stem the shifts toward ownership of single-family dwellings. Generally, young adults’ housing outcomes are more evidently shaped by their position in the labour market, which is increasingly determined by educational attainment. The thesis works conceptually within structuration theory, noting how contexts shape demand but are themselves re-shaped by changing demand. Both contextual and neo-classical arguments have relevance to the overall argument. ii Preface Chapter Three is in part a modified version of an article that has been previously published by the author, with Andrejs Skaburskis, and is reprinted with permission from Urban Geography, Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 724-749. ©Bellwether Publishing, Ltd., 8640 Guilford Road, Columbia, MD 21046. All rights reserved. The student, Markus Moos, identified the research question, prepared the manuscript and conducted the majority of the analysis of research data and writing. Input from the co-author relates mostly to questions of research design and use of data from previous collaborative work. The thesis also builds on published research conducted by the student as part of his larger research project. These publications are acknowledged below for their conceptual overlap and use of similar literatures and methods in the research. For instance, the statistical models estimating permanent income and housing consumption included in Chapters Two and Six, and the literature describing the approach, are derived and substantially modified versions from research previously published: Moos, M. & Skaburskis, A. (2008). The probability of single-family dwelling occupancy: Comparing home workers and commuters in Canadian cities. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 27(3), 319-340. ©SAGE Publications Inc. All rights reserved. http://jpe.sagepub.com/content/27/3/319 Moos, M. & Skaburskis, A. (2009). Workplace restructuring and urban form: The changing national settlement patterns of the Canadian workforce. Journal of Urban Affairs, 32(1), 25-53. ©John Wiley and Sons. All rights reserved. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2009.00476.x/full Components of the following publications draw broadly on the research conducted for this thesis, and do not pertain to a specific chapter: Barnes, T., Hutton, T., Ley, D. & Moos, M. (2011). Vancouver: An entrepreneurial economy in a transnational city. In L. Bourne & T. Hutton (Eds.). Canadian Urban Regions: Trajectories of Growth and Change (pp. 291-328). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Skaburskis, A. & Moos, M. (2010). Cities as Land Markets. In T. Bunting, P. Filion & R. Walker (Eds.). Canadian Cities in Transition: New Directions in the Twenty-First Century 4th Edition (pp. 225-242). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Quastel, N., Moos, M. & Lynch, N. (Under review). Sustainability as density and the return of the social: The case of Vancouver, British Columbia. Urban Geography. iii Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... iv List of Tables .............................................................................................................. vi List of Figures .......................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... x Dedication ................................................................................................................... xi Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................ 1 1.1 The Role of Context in Residential Location ..................................................... 7 1.2 The Case Study Cities ....................................................................................... 12 1.3 Methodology: A Research Narrative of Place .................................................. 23 1.3.1 Data sources and geography ..................................................................... 28 1.4 Thesis Overview ............................................................................................... 32 Chapter Two: The Changing Cities ........................................................................ 35 2.1 Defining the Young Adult Cohorts ................................................................... 39 2.2 Young Adult Cohorts in Specific Times and Locations ................................... 43 2.3 Reduced Government Involvement in Housing ............................................... 48 2.3.1 Concurrent changes in the organization of production ............................. 51 2.4 Inner City Revitalization ................................................................................... 56 2.5 Coordinating Land Use and Transport as a Sustainability Strategy ................. 62 2.6 Paying More for Housing ................................................................................. 77 2.6.1 Data summary and preparation ................................................................. 80 2.6.2 A geography of expenditure patterns ......................................................... 87 2.7 Discussion ......................................................................................................... 91 Chapter Three: Global Restructuring and Housing Demand .............................. 94 3.1 Housing and Labour Market Dynamics in a Global Context ........................... 98 3.1.1 The changing profile and settlement patterns of immigrants .................. 102 3.2 Measuring Housing Demand and Neighbourhood Transition ........................ 104 3.3.1 Multivariate analysis of the user cost of housing .................................... 117 3.4 Neighbourhood Transition .............................................................................. 126 3.4.1 Changing housing stock characteristics .................................................. 127 3.4.2 Dwelling values and neighbourhood change .......................................... 135 3.5 Discussion ....................................................................................................... 141 Chapter Four: The Changing Metropolitan Economies and the Young Adult Labour Force ..................................................................................................... 145 4.1 The Young Adult Labour Force ..................................................................... 149 4.2 The Income Distribution ................................................................................. 157 4.3 Generational Income Gap ............................................................................... 167 4.3.1 Income determinants
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