Trudi E. Bunting

The Successful Few: Healthy Downtowns of Small Metropolitan Regions

Abstract In the face of increasing suburbanization during the past half century, most downtowns have experienced decline, particularly those of small metropolitan regions. A survey of planners (both practitioners and academics) and other urban professionals has sought to identify small metropolitan regions considered to have successful downtowns and the factors associated with this success. Only a small number of such North American metropolitan regions were perceived as possessing a very successful or successful downtown. Factors that characterize such success are described. We conclude that revitalization policies should concentrate on niche markets that show little interest in homogenized suburban activities. More specifically, planners should focus on the retention and enhancement of the distinct physical characteristics that clearly distinguish downtowns from suburban environments. More and more U.S. cities and towns are coming to realize the benefits of greater street connectivity: reduced traffic on arterial streets, more continuous and direct routes, better emergency vehicle access, and improved utility connections. Here is an excellent overview of recent efforts by communities across the U.S. to increase street connectivity. The authors look at the motivation behind such efforts, the wide variety of issues raised, and the different approaches taken to resolve them. Planners, decision makers, and neighborhood residents will gain a better understanding of the concept of connectivity and how it applies in their own communities. Ideally, the jobs available in a community should match the labor force skills, and housing should be J. available at prices, sizes, and locations suited to the workers who wish to live in the area. Some argue that the market is the mechanism that will achieve a balance between jobs and housing. Jerry Weitz researched several types of jobs-housing imbalance and concluded that, in fact, the market failed to achieve such balance in three out of four scenarios. Weitz explains the details of jobs-housing balance– a planning tool that local governments can use to achieve a roughly equal number of jobs and housing units or households, resulting in overall community improvements.

The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas

Housing in‐affordability is a growing problem within Canadian urban areas. This research asks an as‐yet unanswered spatial question: where do those suffering high rates of housing affordability stress reside and what do the spatial patterns imply about policies intended to address this housing problem? This paper tabulates and maps the spatial distribution of households that pay excessive amounts of their income for rent in order to identify locations within metropolitan regions where housing affordability stress is greatest. It is found that significant unevenness characterises the spatial distribution of housing affordability problems in major Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Only a minority of places conform to the North American stereotype that concentrates this problem near the city centre. Where some CMAs have concentrations of the problem in the inner city or, alternatively inner suburb, other metropolitan areas exhibit a more diffuse pattern of housing in‐affordability. The locus of the problem is also variable depending on whether the household is of the family or non‐family type. The interpretation of the uneven patterns relates broadly to features of supply and demand that have been identified in previous research. From both a policy and theoretical perspective this work demonstrates that greater attention needs to be paid to the spatial aspects of housing affordability and to the related, economically‐induced risk of homelessness in Canadian metropolitan areas.

Canada-U.S. Metropolitan Density Patterns: Zonal Convergence and Divergence1

The paper compares density patterns of the three largest Canadian metropolitan regions with those of a sample of 12 U.S. urban areas with comparable populations. It verifies if such patterns support claims of Canadian urban distinctiveness prevalent within this countrys research literature. Findings indicate that regional differences among U.S. cities are as important as cross-national distinctions. Measures of centrality and overall density place observed Canadian metropolitan areas within the same category as older U.S. East Coast metropolitan areas. Inter-city comparisons of historically and geographically defined zones suggest a period of cross-national convergence before World War II, when the inner city was developed, followed by a period of divergence from the 1940s to the 1970s, when the inner suburb was built. The development of the outer suburb, which began in the early 1970s, marks a return to cross-national convergence. These results question the continued relevance of the literature on the distinctiveness of Canadian urbanization.

Intensification and Sprawl: Residential Density Trajectories in Canada's Largest Metropolitan Regions

This study investigates the balance between forces of standardization and differentiation in the evolution of residential density in Canadas four largest metropolitan regions between 1971 and 2006. The leading factors of standardized development are the continentwide postwar adaptation of urban form to the automobile and growing housing space consumption. The influence of these factors is manifested in increasing convergence in the density levels of the four metropolitan regions as one moves from older to newer zones. Nonetheless, inherited urban forms, topography, economic and demographic performance, and land-use and transportation policies all have the potential to shape distinct density patterns. Each metropolitan region presents a specific density trajectory: Toronto registers a pattern that can be qualified as stable and recentralized; Montreal emerges as a decentralizing metropolitan region; Vancouver shows clear signs of intensification; and in Ottawa-Hull the trajectory combines decentralization and stability. These different metropolitan trajectories offer lessons for intensification strategies. Findings suggest that continentwide tendencies are shaped by features specific to each metropolitan region, and that successful intensification policies must build on those features.

Decentralization or recentralization? A question of household versus population enumeration, Canadian Metropolitan areas 1971 - 1996

The author considers patterns of population growth and density occurring in Canadian metropolitan areas (CMAs) over the 25-year period 1971–96. Two different sets of data, population and household, are examined with the aid of distance-decay density gradients and enumeration of intrazonal change in census tracts defined as core area (census tracts immediately adjacent to the central business district), inner city, and suburban. Important differences are found when household data are used in lieu of population data. In the core and inner city, household change points towards an overall pattern of recentralization and, in the suburbs, to intensification of development—albeit muted. This contrasts with an accentuated trend to decentralization witnessed in the population-based analyses. The author concludes that centralization is an active force in most CMAs, although it is not as strong a force as decentralization. It is also suggested that there is great diversity between the twenty-two CMAs that make up the dataset. Most important is the demonstration that evidence based on population trends alone is not sufficient to gauge changing patterns of intrametropolitan population distribution.

Patterning in Urban Population Densities: A Spatiotemporal Model Compared with Toronto 1971–2001

We build on the literature on population-density distributions, but translate the consensus cross-sectional progression into a three-dimensional and six-stage geographic information system (GIS) based ‘volcano’ model. Visual comparison and descriptive statistics show Torontos recent density patterns to be very similar to those suggested by the model: the central density cluster has reversed its decline, while peripheral clusters have developed at increasing distances from downtown. Local autocorrelation (LISA) allowed areas of significant clustering and diversity to be mapped, and strong conformity was found between the model and Torontos empirical patterns. Overall, density levels throughout the metropolitan area are homogenizing and randomizing, even while inner-city redensification and peripheral densification proceed.

Socio‐Economic change within the older housing stock of Canadian cities

Abstract Traditional neo‐Classical economic theories of change in the older, inner city housing stock are primarily based on assumptions of a filtering down’ of housing quality and occupant households. As an alternative, this paper develops an approach that relies on societal and metropolitan transformations to explain the changing role of older, inner city neighbourhoods. It uses Statistics Canadas Household Income, Facilities and Equipment files for the years 1976 and 1986 in order to identify proportionate change in the characteristics of households occupying housing built before 1940 against those found throughout Census Metropolitan Areas. Most changes invalidate filtering down assumptions. Increases in incomes, the proportion of younger households, education levels, high status employment, all contribute to bring socio‐economic characteristics within older housing closer to the CMA norm. The paper considers the role protective zoning has played in inducing this form of upgrading. Attention is also ...