Faith-based Ethnic Residential Communities and Neighbourliness in Canada

摘要

Faith-based ethnic neighbourhoods are growing rapidly across the Greater Toronto Area and other metropolitan areas of Canada. These residential communities are a type of enclave that develops around places of worship, and are inhabited predominantly by congregants of one faith who may or may not be of a single ethnic origin. Although still in existence across North America, such religious residential communities were more common around Catholic and Protestant churches up until the first half of the last century. In the past 50 years or so, improved transportation and greater freedom of choice in religious matters led to the decline in faith-based communities. Recently, however, we have seen their resurgence, mainly among ethnic groups and the followers of non-Christian religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. The implication of religion as an idiom of the formation of new neighbourhoods and the social connectedness within these neighbourhoods has never been studied in planning and geography.