Immigration, Polarization, or Gentrification? Accounting for Changing House Prices and Dwelling Values in Gateway Cities

Past research has identified immigration, social polarization, and gentrification as factors with significant impacts upon price movements and other housing characteristics in gateway cities. This study attempts to compare the effects of these three factors in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada's primary gateway cities, over the period from 1971 to 1996. The paper describes house price changes from Multiple Listing Service rolls and changes of dwelling values in census tracts, and interprets visual evidence for the effects of the three factors. The observed centralization of price gains is then sharpened in a univariate and multivariate analysis of changes in dwelling values for census tracts in each metropolitan area. While there is consistency in the spatial patterns of changes in housing prices and dwelling values between the two cities, there are differences in the importance of the three processes at different times and places. Moreover, strong effects at the metropolitan scale become much more blurred with spatial disaggregation.