Canadian Journal of Urban Research
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Downtowns that Work: Lessons from Toronto and Chicago
Full text linkAmong downtowns of North American metropolitan regions, two have performed especially well in terms of the presence of employment, residential development and diversity of land uses over the last decades: those of Toronto and Chicago. This paper concentrates on the factors responsible for their success. It reviews the history of the two downtowns since World-War-II, giving special attention to the capacity ‘macro-decisions’ have of creating path dependencies. Identifi ed macro-decisions include strategic investments in downtown-focussed public transit and improvements to the diversity and amenities of the downtowns. Th ere are important differences in the approaches taken in the two downtowns. Th ese relate in part to organizational specifi cities. If in Toronto institutional structures and political coalitions play a major role in explaining the adoption of policies favourable to the downtown, in Chicago it is the priorities of powerful mayors that loom largest. The paper proposes a multicausal model, which shows how numerous decisions of diff erent nature, along with their interactions and consequences, have contributed to positive downtown outcomes in the two cities. The main lesson from the two cases is that downtown success cannot be improvised as it is the outcome of long chains of policies, which interact positively with market trends, favouring core areas
More Continuity than Change? Re-evaluating the Contemporary Socio-economic and Housing Characteristics of Suburbs
Full text linkSuburbs that developed in metropolitan Canada post-World War II have historically been depicted as homogeneous landscapes of gendered domesticity, detached housing, White middle-class nuclear families, and heavy automobile use. We find that key features of this historical popular image do in fact persist across the nation’s contemporary metropolitan landscape, particularly at the expanding fringes and in mid-sized cities near the largest metropolitan areas. Th e findings reflect suburbanization into new areas, point to enduring social exclusion, and recall the negative environmental consequences arising from suburban ways of living such as widespread automobile use and continuing sprawl. However, the analysis also points to the internal diversity thatmarks suburbanization today and to the growing presence of suburban ways of living in central areas. Our results suggest that planning policies promoting intensification and targeting social equity objectives are likely to remain ineff ective if society fails to challenge directly the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers behind the kind of suburban ways of living that fit popular imaginings of post-World War II suburbs in central areas. Our results suggest that planning policies promoting intensification and targeting social equity objectives are likely to remain ineffective if society fails to challenge directly the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers behind the kind of suburban ways of living that fit popular imaginings of post-World War II suburbs
Comparing Nineteenth and Twenty-first Century Ecological Imaginaries at Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm
Full text linkThis article examines the dynamic relationship between national and local imaginaries in Ottawa through two treed landscapes at the Central Experimental Farm: the Dominion Arboretum and the Fletcher Wildlife Garden. Established a century apart and located side by side on the Farm’s eastern edge, the Arboretum and the Wildlife Garden off er two visions of science and the place of humans in the world. Where the Arboretum was planted to support national imaginaries of settlement in the west, the Wildlife Garden supports a local geographic imaginary and restoration ethic that privileges native flora
Preserving Ottawa’s Metropolitan Nature: How the 1970 Gatineau Park Planning Controversy Transformed the National Capital Commission and its Conservation Park
Full text linkAlthough the National Capital Commission claimed to administer Gatineau Park according to a conservation policy, the 1960s saw numerous urban-type developments in the park and NCC planners emphasizing the park’s recreation potential. Th is paper describes how the 1970 Gatineau Park planning controversy sparked by conservationists opposed this policy reversal and forced the NCC to abandon blueprint planning. This paper then examines relations between the NCC conservationists from the time of the planning controversy to the first Gatineau Park master plan. Drawing from Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation, it is argued that, during its transition to participatory planning, the NCC placated conservationists, receiving their input but not alwaysinfluenced by it. Thus, conservationists were disappointed by the first master plan, both its process and content. While they continue to play an important watchdog role in the park’s management, and regularly participate inNCC planning exercises, conservationists have been unable to secure protective legislation for Gatineau Park. The status quo remains, such that the NCC can alter park policy without parliamentary oversight. Meanwhile, the park’s wilderness character remains threatened by urbanization pressures
Bylaw Battles: Explaining Municipal-Provincial and Municipal-Federal Win-Rates
Full text linkMunicipal bylaws are routinely contested in court on the grounds that they are “ultra vires” or beyond the legal authority of the municipality. Many of these challenges allege that the municipal exercise of power infringes on federal or provincial powers as assigned by ss. 91 and 92 of the British North America Act, 1867. These conflicts have not been systematically studied and we address this lacuna by surveying the reported cases of municipal-federal and municipal-provincial conflicts in the LawSource database of Canadian judgments. Our preliminary finding—that challenges on federal grounds are much more likely to succeed than those on provincial grounds—requires an explanation. After factoring some disparities in the case sets (including a disproportionate number of zoning cases in the provincial context), we argue that the persistent difference in win-rates is due to a greater acceptance of municipal autonomy in the provincial context (despite their origins as “creatures of the province,” a number of provincial statutes have granted broad authority to many municipalities) whereas the federal conflicts run more clearly against constitutionally-defined interests. We conclude by considering this asymmetry and its significance for Canadian multi-level governance
Opportunities and Barriers to Promoting Public Transit Use in a Midsize Canadian City
Full text linkThis paper reports results from a survey of commute patterns of Queen’s University employees, the second largest employer based in the midsize city of Kingston, Ontario. Very few systematic analyses of travel behaviour have been reported for midsize cities (i.e., population 100,000 to 500,000). Our survey results indicate that the vast majority of the survey respondents remain firmly entrenched in using a private automobile as their primary commute mode. More than 50% of the employees commute by car, and only 5% commute by transit year round. An interesting finding is that there is some mode switching between private automobile and public transit by season, i.e. drive to work during spring and summer seasons and take public transit during fall and/or winter. These seasonal transit users could potentially be encouraged to use transit more regularly with appropriate interventions. The findings also reveal that unavailability of daily or weekly parking permits on campus forcesthe employees to purchase monthly car-parking permits. This is problematic since possession of a monthly parking permit becomes a strong motivation to drive to work regularly, and a strong barrier to even occasional use of public transit. The respondents suggested employer-subsidized transit passes, a more reliable transit schedule, and higher parking costs would encourage them to use public transit more
Exploring the Socioeconomic Composition of Wind Farm Communities in Ontario: Implications for Wind Farm Planning and Policy
Full text linkThis research explores the socioeconomic composition of sixteen wind farm communities in Ontario, Canada, for wind farms commissioned between 2006 and 2012. Past research has shown that wind farms are disproportionately developed in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas and that socioeconomic factors influence wind farm support, an important factor in wind farm planning. This research finds that wind farm communities do not exhibit characteristics of disadvantage compared to host counties. Investigating the association between when wind farms were commissioned and community-scale characteristics, this research observes that communities with wind farms operational before 2009 had significantly lower median income compared to communities with wind farms operational after 2009. This provides one perspective on how community-scale characteristics may shape wind farm planning, specifically the influence of local opposition and financial incentives on the location of wind farm developments
Streets Paved with Gold: Urban Expressway Building and Global City Formation in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Full text linkMontreal, Toronto and Vancouver are Canada’s most signifi cant locations of global city formation today. Their distinctive spatial development and mobility mix were greatly infl uenced by decisions regarding inner-city expressway building. This article explores the hypothesis that choices made regarding how to move motor vehicles through Canada’s three major metropolitan areas between 1960 and 1980 can be better understood by examining the dynamics of global city formation in these jurisdictions. Montreal implemented a comprehensive expressway network to align with its status as Canada’s leading global city during the 1960s. Toronto’s attempt to complete an expressway network was partial, reflecting fragmentary global city aspirations during the 1970s. Vancouver, where global city ambitions only began to form during the 1980s, cancelled urban expressway plans and became Canada’s ‘freeway-free’ major city. New insight into the structure of these cities can be gained when a global city analytical framework is applied to their urban expressway development experience
National Style in the Architecture of Parliament: Whose Nation, Whose Style?
Full text linkIn this article, I address the notion of “National Style” in the architecture of Canada’s Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Writing in 1968, Alan Gowans named High Victorian Gothic as the national architectural style of Canada, citing Parliament among his prime examples. His work appeared in a volume titled The Shield of Achilles, which considered the role that Victorian-era themes and values played in shaping Canada. The volume was published shortly after Canada’s Centennial celebrations and captured some of the nationalist sentimentthat characterized mid-20th-century Canada. Architectural historians today have largely dismissed the idea that Victorian Gothic is Canada’s National Style in the way that Gowans suggested (see particularly Thomas 1997, 2004, and 2011). But the argument still carries weight in some circles; and as Canada approaches its Sesquicentennial, the issue warrants re-examination. Does this style speak to a particular identity, and if so, whose? How have these buildings been interpreted over the years? What messages do they encode? To whatextent do these messages diverge from the urban setting in which the buildings are located? These questions tie in to discourses around what it means to be Canadian, highlighting the confl icts between an identity rooted in Northern European (generally British) ethnicity and numerous other identities that popular interpretations of the Gothic style have excluded
Feeding the “Greenest City”: Historicizing "Local," Labour, and the Postcolonial Politics of Eating
Full text linkEmploying a feminist “post”-colonial analysis, this text reflects on the invisibility of racialized agricultural labourers, and the ways in which temporary foreign worker programs reinscribe racial hierarchies and historical functions of empire. In establishing a context for present-day exclusions, I examine emerging research on Chinese farming in what is now Vancouver, roughly from the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1885) to the end of the “exclusion era” (1947). Offering a counter-narrative to the assumption that ‘local food’ is inherently more ethical and sustainable, this analysis interrogates idealized notions of local food production. Highlighting continuities between historical racial hierarchies and contemporary state-sanctioned exclusions, I assert that inequalities are not coincidental by-products of the agricultural system but are central to Canadian food production. The existence of temporary foreign worker programs is the latest solution to critical “cheap” labour shortages and the permanent demand for this labour in the agricultural sector