As Premier Doug Ford’s decision to invoke the notwithstanding clause to cut council almost in half reignites talk of the urban-suburban divide, the Star finds the old differences aren’t what they used to be. In the occasional series One Toronto, we look at what divides us and what we share, no matter where the ward lines fall.Every day, a small army of service workers in neighbourhoods across Etobicoke and Scarborough board buses, start their cars and climb on the subway to pour the coffee, change the sheets, and serve the food downtown.Toronto’s core, with its restaurants, bars, retail stores and tourist attractions, is full of service-sector jobs. But many of the people who do them aren’t living anywhere near their workplace.As part of an occasional series this summer, the Star is taking a closer look at the megacity, 20 years after amalgamation, and some of its old, and new, divisions.This dynamic of lower-paid suburban workers servicing downtown’s bankers, lawyers and “creative class Sunshine List professionals” is turning the city into a kind of “Downton Abbey,” according to one researcher who’s studied the phenomenon. It’s a divide that could lead to labour shortages in the core — as service workers forced to commute farther and farther lose the incentive to take those positions.“The comparison to Downton Abbey is that you have the lords and ladies living upstairs and then you have this cadre of people who support them,” said John Stapleton, innovation fellow at the non-profit Metcalf Foundation, of the PBS period drama about an upper-crust Edwardian family with a houseful of servants.“But the joke is at least with Downton Abbey you got to live there.”Statistics Canada data from the 2016 census shows the so-called suburban-urban divide is true to stereotype when it comes to occupations — with old-school white-collar and blue-collar jobs divided by neighbou ...
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