Recent Trends of Ethnic Chinese Retailing in Metropolitan Toronto

As the population diversifies in many North American cities due to increased immigration, ethnic retailing has become an important and increasingly visible component of the local retail economy. To date, business geographers have paid little attention to ethnic retailing. This paper attempts to redress this gap by providing a spatial analytical study of the demand for and supply of ethnic retail in the largest Canadian urban market, Toronto. The findings highlight that since the late 1990s, ethnic Chinese retailing in the Toronto market has continued to expand. Three key trends are identified. First, there has been a resurgence of food retailing and growth of modern large-scale supermarkets. Second, developments have begun to shift away from clusters of exclusive ethnic retailing towards a mix with mainstream businesses. Third, a new corridor of ethnic Chinese retailing has developed forming the geographical center of an emerging Chinese-dominated ethnoburb. DOI: 10.4018/jagr.2013010104 50 International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, 4(1), 49-66, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. central-city Chinatowns remained in operation, most developments occurred and even expanded in the suburbs. Consequently, the spatial organization of Chinese commercial activities had become multi-nuclei and their rapid spread had begun to modify Toronto’s traditional retail landscape. The third, and the most revolutionary, characteristic of the ethnic Chinese development was the shift from unplanned strips to planned shopping centres accompanied by a change in ownership from the leasing of retail space to selling of store units to store keepers. This type of occupancy system, known as condominium retailing, was new to Canada and associated primarily with ethnic Chinese retailing. In importance, condominium retailing challenged both the conventional leasing system that had governed the development and operation of North American shopping centres over the past fifty years, and the long established local planning systems. Since the late 1990s, ethnic Chinese retailing in the Toronto CMA has continued to evolve and three trends emerged. First, there has been a resurgence of food retailing and a flourish of modern and large-scale supermarkets. Second, developments have begun to shift away from clusters of exclusive ethnic retailing towards a mix with mainstream businesses in the same plaza, and non-ethnic Chinese developers are playing an important role in creating such mixed business plazas. Third, a new corridor of ethnic Chinese retailing has begun to emerge along the north border of the City of Toronto with its suburban municipal neighbor, the City of Markham, becoming the geographical center of a fledging Chinese-dominated ethnoburb. These recent trends are the focus of the present study. Sociologists and social geographers have studied ethnic businesses (of which retailing is an important component) for a long time as part of settlement patterns and economic participation. Their studies are, however, often conducted from the perspectives of ethnic entrepreneurship and class resources (Waldinger et al., 1990; Light & Gold, 2000). Business geographers have paid little attention to ethnic retailing. This study, which takes the approach of spatial analysis of demand and supply, intends to bridge the gap in the literature of business geography and may encourage comparative studies to be conducted in other North American cities, such as Vancouver, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The paper starts with a literature review of ethnic entrepreneurship and ethnic economy to establish the theoretical context and to identify research gaps. This is followed by a spatial analysis of demand and an estimation of the Chinese consumer market in the Toronto CMA. The three recent trends of Chinese retail supply are then examined in detail. UNDERSTANDING ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ETHNIC ECONOMY Ethnic businesses have existed in immigrantreceiving countries for over a century. Yet, ethnic entrepreneurship and the ethnic economy did not become a serious area of research until the early 1980s and onward (see such seminal works as Bonacich & Modell, 1980; Light, 1984; Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; Light & Rosenstein, 1995; Light & Gold, 2000). Ethnic entrepreneurs refer to those immigrants who own and operate their own businesses, and whose group membership is tied to a common cultural heritage or origin (Yinger, 1985; Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; Zhou, 2004). An ethnic economy is defined as consisting of ethnic employers (including the self-employed) and their co-ethnic employees (Bonacich & Modell, 1980; Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990), that exist when “any immigrant or ethnic group maintains a private economic sector in which it has a controlling ownership stake” (Light & Gold, 2000, p 9). An ethnic economy has traditionally depended on the existence of a co-ethnic consumer market. The scholarly literature offers an abundance of theories to derive possible explanations for the preponderance of business formation by certain ethnic groups. Yet, studies to date have been limited to examining ethnic entrepreneurship and economic integration of newcomers in the immigrant-receiving countries. Little attention 16 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the publisher's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/recent-trends-ethnic-chinese-