Cities Of Canada Theoretical Historical And Planning Perspectives

This volume examines urban Canada in three parts; the modern urban structure; Canadian urban development; Canadian urban prospects.

This collection of original essays serves both the historians and geographers who seek a deeper understanding of Canada's urban past, and the planners, politicians and citizens who seek to preserve or to change their cities today.

As the federal government's recent 'New Deal for Cities' suggests, the importance of cities is now widely recognized. Large urban centres are seen at once as primary engines of the economy and as concentrations of societal problems: poverty, homelessness, criminality, environmental degradation. Calls are thus mounting not only for the allocation of more resources but for the adoption of new policies, grounded in urban realities, that will enable Canadian cities to function more effectively. This third edition of Canadian Cities in Transition has been completely revised and updated. Examining the uneven development and uncertain future of Canadian cities, 41 specialists in the field-urban geographers, political scientists, urban planners, civil engineers-offer state-of-the-art understanding of everything from the evolution of the Canadian urban system to site-specific design, problems of transportation and infrastructure, the containment of urban sprawl, the impacts of immigration and gentrification, and the sustainability of cities-both environmentally and economically. The 27 chapters are supported by abundant illustrative material-maps, tables, figures, and photographs-and followed by two appendices, one discussing the changing nature of urban research and the other presenting essential data on Canada's census metropolitan areas. In addition, for the first time this new edition includes a comprehensive bibliography. Required reading for students of Canadian urban geography and urban studies, Canadian Cities in Transition: Local Through Global Perspectives will also be an invaluable resource for anyone concerned about the future of Canada's cities. Book jacket.

Kathryn Chase Merrett celebrates 100 years of the Edmonton City Market in this groundbreaking local history. A History of the Edmonton City Market brings a comprehensive study of a long-lived and much-loved institution to life by seamlessly integrating details of the City Market with wider contexts of urban, economic, and cultural studies.

Counter to prevailing theories among urbanists which seek to explain urban phenomena on the basis of common characteristics of cities, this thesis argues that every city, because of its environment and its own peculiar history, differs from every other city in significant ways and that these differences are more revealing of the inner nature of cities than are their commonalities. To confirm this proposition requires a comparison of the similarities and differences among cities and the demonstration that there are, indeed, essential ditferences among them which account for telling differences in their governance, development and outlook. Comparisons of cities in the same socio-economic and cultural milieu, the same time-period and the same geographic location would be most persuasive: significant differences among such cities are not normally to be expected and, if found, would support the thesis. Accordingly, three cities in the prairie region of Canada which meet these stipulated criteria - Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary - were chosen as the subject cities of this study. The study examines the salient features of the physiography and history of the prairie region, the nature of the city planning function, the notion of a prairie regional personality, and the histories of the three subject cities. It finds that because of constitutional, statutory and historic factors, the common role of city government is administrative rather than policy-making; that the planning function is, in effect, an administrative instrument which simply expresses the city council's politico-economic orientation; and that the "master plan" is an ineffectual planning device. City government could become a true policy-making government if its statutory context were changed, but such a change is most unlikely. The planning function, however, could be made much more effective with some simple by-law changes. The study's principal finding is that although all three cities shared a common environment and had common characteristics at the outset, they diverged widely from each other during the course of their historical evolution until they became unlike each other, each with its own particular characteristics. These unique traits were embedded in the inner nature of each city and are expressed in its distinctive governance, communal ethos, planning function and development process. It surely follows, then, that the fullest understanding of any city, as well as solutions to its problems, must be sought in its own inner nature, not in synoptic urban theories or other cities' practices.

This collection of essays focus on subjects which formed the basis of his life's work -- the changing character of Canadian landscape and society, and the urbanization of that society, including aspects of its historical evolution, its present spacial forms and current social issues.

Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews among a segment of Toronto's inner-city, middle-class population, Caulfield argues that the seeds of gentrification have included patterns of critical social practice and that the 'gentrified' landscape is highly paradoxical.