Canadian Cities

This collection offers an in-depth look at municipal voting behaviour during local elections in eight of Canada's largest cities.

Since the 1970s, Aboriginal people have been more likely to live in Canadian cities than on reserves or in rural areas. Aboriginal rural-to-urban migration and the development of urban Aboriginal communities represent one of the most significant shifts in the histories and cultures of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The essays in Aboriginal Peoples in Canadian Cities: Transformations and Continuities are from contributors directly engaged in urban Aboriginal communities; they draw on extensive ethnographic research on and by Aboriginal people and their own lived experiences. The interdisciplinary studies of urban Aboriginal community and identity collected in this volume offer narratives of unique experiences and aspects of urban Aboriginal life. They provide innovative perspectives on cultural transformation and continuity and demonstrate how comparative examinations of the diversity within and across urban Aboriginal experiences contribute to broader understandings of the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state and to theoretical debates about power dynamics in the production of community and in processes of identity formation.

A long-standing market-leading text for urban geography courses with a Canadian perspective, Canadian Cities in Transition, now in its sixth edition, continues to examine the critical issues and major transformations taking place in urban Canada. Examining all facets of Canadian cities,including historical evolution, dynamics of economy, environmental impacts, urban lifestyles, cultural makeup, social structure, infrastructures, governance, planning, and appearance, the text is crafted to help the next generation address the urban problems they are inheriting and find solutionsfor them. With new chapters on digital cities and sustainable development, as well as new and expanded coverage of contemporary issues such as accessibility, gentrification, and the rise of the creative class, the new edition offers a comprehensive and current study of Canadian cities, written byCanadians for Canadians.

The region is back in town. Galloping urbanization has pushed beyond historical notions of metropolitanism. City-regions have experienced, in Edward Soja’s terms, “an epochal shift in the nature of the city and the urbanization process, marking the beginning of the end of the modern metropolis as we knew it.” Governing Cities Through Regions broadens and deepens our understanding of metropolitan governance through an innovative comparative project that engages with Anglo-American, French, and German literatures on the subject of regional governance. It expands the comparative angle from issues of economic competiveness and social cohesion to topical and relevant fields such as housing and transportation, and it expands comparative work on municipal governance to the regional scale. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars of urban and regional governance, the volume covers conceptual topics and case studies that contrast the experience of a range of Canadian metropolitan regions with a strong selection of European regions. It starts from assumptions of limited conversion among regions across the Atlantic but is keenly aware of the remarkable differences in urban regions’ path dependencies in which the larger processes of globalization and neo-liberalization are situated and materialized.

The contributors to this volume demonstrate the richness and diversity of the social landscapes and communities in Canadian urban centres, emphasizing changes which occurred in the period from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s. The nineteen non-technical and integrative essays include reviews of the literature, empirical studies, and discussions of policy issues. CONTENTS Introduction * The Social Context and Diversity of Urban Canada -- David F. Ley and Larry S. Bourne Part One - Patterns: People and Place in Urban Canada * Evolving Urban Landscapes -- D.W. Holdsworth * Measuring the Social Ecology of Cities -- W.K.D. Davies and R.A. Murdie * Demography, Living Arrangement, and Residential Geography -- J.R. Miron * Urban Social Behaviour in Time and Space -- D.G. Janelle Part Two - Contexts: Social Structure and Urban Space * Migration, Mobility, and Population Redistribution -- E.G. Moore and M.W. Rosenberg * The Emerging Ethnocultural Mosaic -- S.H. Olson and A.L. Kobayashi * Work, Labour Markets, and Households in Transition -- D. Rose and P. Villeneuve * Housing Markets, Community Development, and Neighbourhood Change -- Larry S. Bourne and T. Bunting Part Three - Places: Selected Locales * Integrating Production and Consumption: Industry, Class, Ethnicity, and the Jews of Toronto -- D. Hiebert * Past Elites and Present Gentry: Neighbourhoods of Privilege in the Inner City -- David F. Ley * From Periphery to Centre: The Changing Geography of the Suburbs -- L.J. Evenden and G.E. Walker * The Social Geography of Small Towns -- J.C. Everitt and A.M. Gill Part Four - Needs: Social Well-being and Public Policy * Social Planning and the Welfare State -- J.T. Lemon * The Meaning of Home, Home Ownership, and Public Policy -- R. Harris and G.J. Pratt * Homelessness -- M.J. Dear and J. Wolch * Geography of Urban Health -- S.M. Taylor * Changing Access to Public and Private Services: Non-family Childcare -- S. Mackenzie and M. Truelove * Cities as a Social Responsibility: Planning and Urban Form -- P.J. Smith and P.W. Moore

Claiming Space: Racialization in Canadian Cities critically examines the various ways in which Canadian cities continue to be racialized despite objective evidence of racial diversity and the dominant ideology of multiculturalism. Contributors consider how spatial conditions in Canadian cities are simultaneously part of, and influenced by, racial domination and racial resistance. Reflecting on the ways in which race is systematically hidden within the workings of Canadian cities, the book also explores the ways in which racialized people attempt to claim space. These essays cover a diverse range of Canadian urban spaces and various racial groups, as well as the intersection of ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Linking themes include issues related to subjectivity and space; the importance of new space that arises by challenging the dominant ideology of multiculturalism; and the relationship between diasporic identities and claims to space.

At 5 percent, Canada’s population growth was the highest of all G7 countries when the most recent census was taken. But only a handful of large cities drove that growth, attracting human and monetary capital from across the country and leaving myriad social, economic, and environmental challenges behind. Quietly Shrinking Cities investigates this trend and the practical challenges associated with population loss in smaller urban centres. Maxwell Hartt meticulously demonstrates that shrinking cities need to rethink their planning and development strategies in response to a new demographic reality, questioning whether population loss and prosperity are indeed mutually exclusive.

“Our voices scrubbed out and forgotten. There are those who research and write about sex workers who often forget we are human.” —Amy Lebovitch Shawna Ferris gives a voice to sex workers who are often pushed to the background, even by those who fight for them. In the name of urban safety and orderliness, street sex workers face stigma, racism, and ignorance. Their human rights are ignored, and some even lose their lives. Ferris aims to reveal the cultural dimensions of this discrimination through literary and art-critical theory, legal and sociological research, and activist intervention. Canadian cities are striving for high safety ratings by eliminating crime, which includes “cleaning” urban areas of the street sex industry. Ironically, sex workers also want to live and work in a safe environment. Ferris questions these sanitizing political agendas, reviews exclusionary legislative and police initiatives, and examines media representations of sex workers. This book has much to offer to educators and activists, sex workers and anti-violence organizations, and academics studying women, cultural, gender, or indigenous issues.