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作者

来源

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH,Vol.41,Issue2,P.298-317

语言

英文

关键字

legal geography; inner suburbs; urban governance; local law; municipalities; poverty; housing; jurisdiction; socio-legal studies; COMMON-SENSE; LAND-USE; TORONTO; GENTRIFICATION; CITY; TERRITORY; GEOGRAPHY; PARKDALE; DECLINE; CANADA

作者单位

[Freeman, Lisa] Kwantlen Polytech Univ, Dept Criminol, Surrey, BC V3W 2M8, Canada. Freeman, L (reprint author), Kwantlen Polytech Univ, Dept Criminol, Surrey, BC V3W 2M8, Canada. E-Mail: lisa.freeman@kpu.ca

摘要

This article examines the legal geography of municipal bylaws regulating rooming houses in the City of Toronto. Using a legal geography analysis of Toronto's rooming house licensing bylaw, I argue that this bylaw is a ghost jurisdiction that designates part of the city as illegal and has implications for governance of the inner suburbs. In so doing, I push the debate on legal geography forward by suggesting that we, as urban scholars, take the temporal seriously in our analysis of space. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, archival data and participant observation, I analyse seemingly mundane legal mechanisms through the case study of suburban rooming houses. Overall, in this article I make three contributions. First, I demonstrate how a temporal analysis is important to legal geography inquiries of uneven regulation and spaces of poverty. Second, I suggest that studies of legal governance are integral for redefining suburban governance amidst socio-economic decline in the inner suburbs. Third, I argue that studying urban legal mechanisms in the suburbs is essential for moving beyond downtown analytical frameworks and is needed to address how low-income suburban tenants, a large majority of whom are racialized newcomers, are unevenly regulated and unfairly governed by local government.