|
Article Excerpt
During the 1996-2001 census period, almost half (45.0%) of the 140 urban areas in Canada witnessed population decline. Small urban areas were the hardest hit, while large urban areas all grew. Given this uneven pattern of growth, our research examined the English-language literature in eight Canadian journals to determine whether the issues of decline and no-growth in urban areas in Canada are being confronted in academic urban geography, planning and policy-related literature. Our approach and findings are reported in four sections. We start with a brief overview of the increasing unevenness in the Canadian urban system. We then discuss the journals selected for this research and our methodology for classifying the 275 articles obtained. The third section presents the results of our classification and identifies the key patterns and trends in the literature. We show that while implicitly recognizing the uneven geography of contemporary Canadian urban development, Canadian urban research is fixated on large metropolitan areas, with an emphasis on Southern Ontario. In the fourth and final section, we conclude with a description of the small number of articles that do discuss urban decline and no-growth either implicitly or explicitly. These articles recognize that most Canadian urban places will not grow in the future; they form a starting point for policy-making and planning that distances itself from the growth mentality. Our overall conclusion however, is that when policy-makers and planners seeking solutions for urban areas facing stagnation and decline turn to the literature they may be told why they are in decline, but they are offered no guidance beyond denial. The near total absence of explicit attention to decline and stagnation in the academic writing indicates an urgent need for further policy and research attention.
Au cours de la periode de recensement 1996-2001, pres de la moitie (45,0%) des 140 regions urbaines canadiennes ont vu leur population diminuer. Les petites regions urbaines furent les plus touchees, tandis que les grandes regions urbaines ont toutes connu une certaine croissance. A la lumiere de cette tendance inegale, nous avons examine la litterature anglophone produite par huit journaux canadiens afin de determiner si les problemes de declin et de stagnation dans les regions urbaines du Canada sont abordes dans les articles academiques traitant de la geographie, de la planification et des politiques urbaines. Notre approche et nos conclusions sont presentees en quatre volets. Nous decrivons d'abord brievement l'inegalite croissante observee dans le systeme urbain canadien. Ensuite, nous discutons des revues examinees dans le cadre de nos recherches et nous expliquons la methodologie utilisee pour classifier les 275 articles retenus. Le troisieme volet presente les resultats de notre classification et identifie les principales tendances dans la litterature. Nous demontrons que la recherche urbaine au Canada reconnait implicitement l'inegalite geographique du developpement urbain contemporain dans le pays, mais elle se concentre surtout sur les grandes regions metropolitaines, notamment la region sud de l'Ontario. Dans le quatrieme et dernier volet, nous presentons une description d'un petit nombre d'articles qui explorent le phenomene du declin et de la stagnation urbains, de maniere implicite ou explicite. Ces articles reconnaissent que la plupart des endroits urbains canadiens ne connaitront aucune croissance dans l'avenir et forment un point de depart pour l'elaboration de politiques et la planification qui s'eloigne d'une mentalite axee sur la croissance. Cependant, nous concluons qu'au moment ou les decideurs et les specialistes de la planification cherchent des solutions pour aider les regions urbaines confrontees a la stagnation et au declin, ils trouveront des articles expliquant pourquoi leur region est en declin, mais on ne leur proposera aucune aide au-dela du deni de la realite. L'absence quasi totale d'attention explicite aux phenomenes de declin et de stagnation dans la litterature academique revele un besoin urgent d'attention au niveau des politiques et de la recherche.
**********
Throughout the last decade of the 20th Century and into the first decade of the 21st Century, growth in urban Canada has become increasingly focused on five mega-urban regions: the Greater Toronto Area, Greater Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Vancouver-Victoria and the Lower Mainland B.C., and the Central Alberta corridor (Calgary to Edmonton). These five regions secured more than 68% of all population growth in the 1990s, and by 2001, over 57% of Canadians lived in the 15 largest CMAs (Bourne and Simmons 2003). Most urban centers in the rest of the country witnessed close to zero growth or population decline, and there is every reason to believe that this trend will continue. While the Canadian urban geography and planning literature does recognise this system-wide pattern of uneven growth, declining urban areas have yet to be treated as a category worthy of focused research and discussion. This lacuna in the literature informs, and is informed by, a wider urban development project that proceeds in Canada, as in the rest of the world, on the assumption that continued growth is normal and achievable.
This paper reports on an examination of the urban geography, planning, and policy-related literature in eight Canadian academic journals. Specifically, we sought to determine whether the increasingly uneven pattern of growth in the Canadian urban system has received significant attention in the academic and policy literature. We examined journal articles published between 1994 and 2005, classifying each according to their implicit or explicit stance towards urban growth and decline. Our approach and findings are reported in four sections. We start with a brief overview of the increasing unevenness in the Canadian urban system. We then discuss the journals selected for this research and our methodology for classifying the articles obtained. The third section presents the results of our classification and identifies the key patterns and trends in the literature. In the fourth and final section we conclude with a description of the small number of articles that do discuss urban decline and no-growth either implicitly or explicitly. These articles recognize that many Canadian urban places will not grow in the future and form a starting point for policy-making and planning that distances itself from the mentality that "growth is the elixir that cures all ills, from potholes to poverty, and that any city that is not growing rapidly is being 'left behind' and is 'off the map'" (Leo and Anderson 2005). (1)
The Canadian Urban System
Of the 140 urban areas (2) in Canada, 45% witnessed decline during the 1996-2001 census period (see Table 1). (3) Small urban areas were the hardest hit; 54.8% declined, with the largest decline occurring in Prince Rupert (-12.1%). As a whole, this was the only urban class to experience overall decline with a -0.3% aggregate change in population during the last census period. However, decline was not limited to small urban areas. One-third of middle size urban areas declined with the largest decline occurring in Cape Breton (-7.2%). Large urban areas were the only urban class to contain no declining urban areas. The intensified unevenness within the Canadian urban system, since at least 1990, reflects several powerful economic and demographic trends that are likely to persist.
Globalization, de-industrialization and industrial restructuring have devastated some urban areas while others have been able to take advantage of this transformation (Norcliffe 1994; Barnes et al 2000). The structural shift towards a 'knowledge economy' favours producer services, finance, insurance and real estate, and the high-tech industry (Bourne 1995, 2000). These economic shifts tend to favour large metropolitan regions, in particular Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, due to their...
|
