Larry S. Bourne

Alternative Perspectives on Urban Decline and Population Deconcentration

The author reviews and summarizes some of theories that have been developed to account for trends in industrialized countries toward reduced rates of urban growth and to a spatial redistribution of population. An attempt is also made to identify features common to these theories although the author suggests that what is occurring is too complex and diverse a phenomenon to be encompassed in a single explanatory framework. (ANNOTATION)

REURBANIZATION, UNEVEN URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND THE DEBATE ON NEW URBAN FORMS

There is a continuing debate over the consequences of the dispersed form of urban development in North America and whether this leads to an underutilization of land, buildings, and infrastructure in older cities and suburbs. As a means of contextualizing that debate, this paper reviews the international literature on the costs of alternative urban forms and assesses the potential contribution of reurbanization as both a market process and a planning strategy. The assumed benefits of reurbanization are critically evaluated, and systematic barriers to more adaptive reuse and more efficient forms are documented. The paper concludes that although there is a general consensus that older built environments and infrastructure are misused, undervalued, and deteriorating, there is little agreement on how extensive the problems are or what to do about them. There is even less evidence that the principal underlying cause—the prevailing culture of regulation and thus the uneven playing field for urban development—wil...

The Migration–Immigration Link in Canada's Gateway Cities: A Comparative Study of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver

In this paper we explore the links between internal migration and international immigration in Canadas three largest metropolitan areas. In particular, we use a place-specific approach to test the displacement hypothesis that the migration behaviour of the less-well-educated native-born population is sensitive to the inflows of immigrants. Based on analyses of microdata from five consecutive censuses covering the period from 1981 to 2001, we find that the migration–immigration relationships are complex, often subtle, and inconsistent across the three cities. Growth in the immigrant population is correlated with an increased out-migration rate among the less-well-educated native-born population, but only in Toronto and Vancouver. This correlation, however, is not independent of changes in housing prices. We also find no consistent support for an alternative hypothesis that economic restructuring accounts for the net out-migration from immigrant gateway cities.

On Schools of Thought, Comparative Research, and Inclusiveness: A Commentary

This article offers a critique of the common practice of labeling an institution or group of people as a distinct school of thought, ideology, or methodology, and calls for more open, inclusive, and comparative research in urban geography. The former argument highlights the negative effects of within-group dialogue and its inherent exclusionary tendencies, whereas the latter stresses the role of context and contingency in understanding our cities. Examples are drawn from the experience and characteristics of North American cities to illustrate the crucial importance of national institutions, politics, culture, and geography in shaping those cities, and the challenges involved in writing theory and defining an inclusive research agenda.

Urban Geography in Transition: A Canadian Perspective on the 1980s and Beyond

The history of most academic disciplines reveals distinct periods of research activity characterized by competing intellectual paradigms, varying student interest and volatile public awareness. This paper asks whether the 1980s was one of those periods for Canadian urban geography. One perspective views the 1980s as a rather dry valley of declining interest, productivity and relevance. In effect, the decade served as a transition period from the vibrancy of urban research in the 1960s and 1970s to the pluralism and renewed urban interest of the 1990s. To test these propositions five indices were developed to measure levels of activity and output in Canadian urban geography and related fields, from the 1960s to the present: government funding, the number and composition of academic journals, government publications, and membership in academic and professional organizations. The results are mixed, but revealing. There is no clear valley of decline in the 1980s, no single trajectory in the evolution of urban geography, and no apparent resurgence of interest or activity during the 1990s. Instead, research activity in the sub-field appears to have declined, to have become more fragmented and dispersed, and to have been subjected to the effects of increased privatization and professionalism. The concluding section explores the reasons for this experience, and emphasizes the fundamental importance of context and timing—changing national social conditions, the political climate and the growth of the urban system under study—in shaping the urban agenda generally and Canadian urban geography in particular.

Taking the pulse of the subdiscipline: the state of urban geography in Canada

It is a pleasure to accept an invitation to write about a subject to which I have devoted most of my professional career. My initial reactions to the questions posed by the organizers of this symposium on the state of urban geography as a subdiscipline are conditioned by this professional experience as well as by personal history. Those reactions reflect the origins and trajectory of my career, the time (1960s) and place (Chicago) of my doctoral training, and the political attitudes, ideologies, institutional structures and social settings (of Canada) in which I have lived and worked. In one sense, these views represent a voice from the continent’s northern periphery and they reflect my position as a senior member of the academic community in Canada. But they also should offer a counterbalance to the frequently narcissistic views of the dominant urban research communities of the United States and United Kingdom. Specifically, my views are also shaped by the fact that I have spent almost my entire academic career in an interdisciplinary environment, initially in an urban research institute (the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto) and subsequently in a graduate professional planning program administered within the Department of Geography. This experience has served to emphasize the elastic and often arbitrary boundaries between disciplines, while at the same time strengthening my appreciation of the contributions of geography as a core discipline in the study of urban phenomena. Those contributions are not dependent on particular sets of subjects or objects, research methods or distinctive schools of thought, but rather reflect an approach to understanding, conceptualizing, analyzing and ultimately improving the quality of the urban world around us. In this paper, I attempt to take the pulse of urban geography through an empirical assessment of the state of the subdiscipline in Canada. I do not, however, intend to engage in philosophical or methodological debates that others in this volume will address. What, then, is urban geography? I assume that there are as many definitions of urban geography as there are participants in this symposium. For me, urban geography is both a way of thinking about places (in this case urban places) and, more broadly, about processes (in this case urbanization and urban growth) and a commitment to praxis. The attributes that continue to define urban geography as an exciting and intellectually

The Canadian Urban System: Urban Canada Goes Global

Over the last 60 years (since 1951), Canada has been transformed from a British colony with a significant francophone component into a multiethnic society with trade links throughout the developed world. Much of this evolution has been due to the response of a series of federal governments that have opened the door to immigration and to international trade – notably through the NAFTA agreement with the United States and the recent treaty negotiated with the European Community. In this sense Canadians have become more optimistic and open to change. At the same time, the current organization of government discourages innovation at the municipal level. Municipalities are defined, and their powers restricted, by the provinces in which they are embedded. These restrictions moderate any variations in urban growth rates and constrain the possibilities for municipal innovation.