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Canadian municipalities have direct or indirect control or influence over approximately 52% of greenhouse gas emissions. As early as 1988, some Canadian municipalities embraced the challenge of climate change and through municipal programs recorded emissions reductions. Given the recent publication of the Government of Canada's climate change plan which clearly emphasizes a prominent role for municipalities in meeting greenhouse gas emission reductions, and equally, the federal government's declared intent to provide further financial support to cities and communities through its ‘New Deal for Cities and Communities’, it is important to consider the potential role that Canadian municipalities can take in responding to climate change, and most importantly, the barriers they face in responding. Based on these observations, this paper presents evidence from a survey of 392 Canadian municipalities (all municipalities with populations of more than 10,000 people) conducted between the summer of 1998 and spring of 1999. The survey provides information on a key issue, which despite the date of the survey remains centrally relevant today: barriers to Canadian municipal response. Building on both quantitative and qualitative results from the survey data and updated information on the number of municipalities participating in Federation of Canadian Municipality (FCM) climate change programs, the paper concludes with recommendations as to how municipal capacity to respond to climate change can be increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial efforts in housing and community development have been focussed onto the West Broadway neighbourhood of inner city Winnipeg in order to stem processes of decline. This paper focuses on the effects of housing work in which residential buildings have been purchased and / or renovated with the support of public or philanthropic resources. Beyond the upgrading of housing stock and the provision of improved quality accommodation, the impacts of such housing work are poorly understood. The paper seeks to document and interpret the relationship in space and time between supported housing work and improvement to the stock undertaken without support. It finds that in some cases in West Broadway, assisted housing work appears to have had a stabilizing influence on the local area and in others there are indications that private sector activity has concentrated near assisted interventions. Indications of gentrification pose particular tasks for community development workers and funding agencies in West Broadway and provide lessons for this work in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context marked by globalization and rapid urbanization in metropolitan regions, new issues appear and generate new forms of governance, which in turn aim at elaborating new territorial strategies. The similarities of the French and Québécois political agendas for metropolitan reforms are the basis of this paper. The comparison evaluates up to what point these new Marseilles and Montreal metropolitan approaches are innovative forms of urban planning. The Marseilles metropolitan network is characterized by the projet métropolitain (metropolitan project) approach, which fits in the now familiar strategic planning trend, whereas via its metropolitan institutions Montreal is working out a schéma métropolitain (land use and development plan), which appears closer to a "traditional approach." The political-institutional profiles resulting from the metropolitan reforms in Marseilles and Montréal differ but share the common difficulty of creating a workable forum for discussion on a metropolitan scale. These two metropolises thus illustrate the reappearance of a practice of metropolitan planning that is less spatially based than that developed during the 1960s, more strategic, but not yet completely collaborative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]