Governing The City

This report presents a typology of metropolitan governance arrangements observed across OECD countries and offers guidance for cities seeking for more effective co-ordination, with a closer look at two sectors that are strategic importance for urban growth: transport and spatial planning.

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.

Governing Compact Cities investigates how governments and other critical actors organise to enable compact urban growth, combining higher urban densities, mixed use and urban design quality with more walkable and public transport-oriented urban development. Philipp Rode draws on empirical evidence from London and Berlin to examine how urban policymakers, professionals and stakeholders have worked across disciplinary silos, geographic scales and different time horizons since the early 1990s.

This book is about the role that ideas, institutions, and actors play in structuring how we govern cities and, more specifically, what projects or paths are taken. Global changes require that we rethink governance and urban policy, and that we do so through the dual lens of theory and practice.

This book presents the latest research on three issues of crucial importance to Asian cities: governance, livability, and sustainability. Together, these issues canvass the salient trends defining Asian urbanization and are explored through an eclectic compendium of studies that represent the many voices of this diverse region. Examining the processes and implications of Asian urbanization, the book interweaves practical cases with theories and empirical rigor while lending insight and complexity into the towering challenges of urban governance. The book targets a broad audience including thinkers, practitioners, and students.

Today more than ever, cities matter to the economic and social well-being of the vast majority of Canadians. Canada's urban centers are simultaneously the engines of the national economy and the places where the risks of social exclusion are most concentrated, making innovative and inclusive urban governance an urgent national priority. Governing Urban Economies is the first detailed scholarly examination of relations among governmental and community-based actors in Canadian city-regions. Comparing patterns of municipal-community relations and federal-provincial interactions across city-regions, this volume tracks the ways in which urban coalitions tackle complex economic and social challenges. Featuring an inter-disciplinary group of established and up-and-coming scholars, this collection breaks new ground in the Canadian urban politics literature and will appeal to urbanists working in a range of national contexts.

In stark contrast to the dysfunctional megacity of today, The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was a city that worked. Some refer to this period from 1954 to 1998 as Toronto's "Golden Age". This book traces the growth and governance of the city from its creation in 1834 through its successful Metro years to why and how the decision was made to establish the present megacity while at the same time either accidentally or deliberately turning the Ontario government into both a provincial government and a regional government, as well, for a significantly enlarged Greater Toronto Area. Then it urges the provincial government to initiate a long over-due review of the governance of the city aimed at returning it to a city that works either by way of a de-amalgamation, as successfully achieved in Montreal, or at the very least by a decentralization of local responsibilities.

In our urban world, cities are where most of us experience how our economies and societies are organised and the inequalities which result. This textbook introduces ideas, theories, concepts and examples to help us understand the political and policy challenges of governing cities, centred on the principal challenge of how to make our cities more equitable. It poses critical questions – about how cities are governed, by whom, according to what values, and for whom – and draws from a wide range of urban scholarship. The ‘how’ covers urban politics and the policy instruments which result. The ‘by whom’ addresses power relations within and beyond the city and the tensions between different priorities and values. The ‘for whom’ centres equity and the role of citizens and collective action in how we are governed. In addressing these questions, the book provides an overview of the core theories of urban politics and governance, thinks about what happens at different scales, and examines new forms of citizen activism which herald alternatives for cities. It is a unique introduction to students, policymakers and practitioners who want to understand and seek to improve urban politics and policy.