Search

In our day, leaders involved in ingenious sustainable development projects plan spaces and implement practices that are beneficial to the environment. These initiatives represent a fertile source of information on the competences linked to environmental design that we should nurture in our students. In view of improving our understanding of the competences that should be developed in environmental education (EE), this study sought to identify the competences used by leaders who participated in five sustainable development projects (in sustainable urban planning and forestry). The analysis of documents and data from individual interviews revealed that the main competences (cognitive, social and affective) used by the leaders interviewed, depended on creative, complex, flexible, longitudinal, adapted, patient, collaborative, humanistic and environmental planning. Finally, this study, of which we present the effects on EE, shows that leaders use competences which are associated with creative individuals.

In this article, we examine the development of a new, experiential learning human geography and planning course at a smaller campus in Newfoundland, Canada. Our interest is twofold: to consider how pedagogical approaches can be transferred between a large urban campus and a small-town location; and to examine the benefits and complications of such transfers through a reflective examination of the resulting experiential learning program. The article captures the experiences of students, faculty, and university engagement staff in the deployment of the course. From these perspectives, we situate the decision to transfer an existing program across universities, the nuances of adapting such programs to the local context, and the challenge of meeting student desires for experiential learning amidst experimental pedagogical approaches. The paper concludes by suggesting that transferring pedagogical models across locations requires flexibility in terms of ensuring that new modules fit existing program constraints, and that such transfers have the potential to both challenge and positively transform experiential learning processes.

Designing for the needs of people with impairments has rarely been a significant feature of urban planning theory and education. Given the role of urban planners as shapers of the built environment and public policy, the prevalence of negative and misinformed attitudes among planners toward impaired populations has been highlighted as requiring study. This paper reports on the effectiveness of lecture-based awareness training and active impairment simulation activities with regard to their respective influence on the attitudes of urban planning students toward people with impairments. Using an established attitude assessment instrument (the Attitudes Toward Disablement Scale), pre and post-awareness training data were collected from 200 urban planning students. Results suggest that awareness training can result in significant attitude changes while, contrary to published literature and prior assumptions, impairment simulations have a moderate effect on student attitudes. The paper concludes with recommendations for planning education and professional practice. (Contains 3 tables.)

A growing number of cities around the world have now developed urban digital strategies to speed up the pace of change, and more importantly to move their digital planning and policymaking from ad-hoc to an integrated and strategic approach. The paper provides a cross-national comparative study, based on recently developed urban digital strategies in Brisbane, Australia and Vancouver, Canada. The aim is to understand if and how urban digital strategies align with broader strategic planning in the two cities. To do so, the paper combines policy analysis with interviews of a selection of stakeholders in both cities. The lessons learned can be transferred to all cities interested in integrated digital planning for successful strategic urban outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how policymakers interpret and deploy cultural economy approaches within municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans. Focusing on the 33 largest municipalities in Ontario, Canada, we conduct a keyword analysis of 63 municipal planning documents, supplemented with key informant interviews with economic development and cultural planning staff. Our analysis reveals that the use of cultural economy approaches in economic development and cultural plans varies depending upon city size, municipal governance structure and municipal organizational structure. However, despite the widespread use of cultural economy ideas in planning documents, we conclude that its uptake in municipal policymaking fails to reflect its professional and scholarly popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper contributes to the present reflection on the transformation of the suburb by investigating the capacity of large multifunctional suburban centres (LMSCs) to provide public transit- and walking-conducive environments within the suburban realm. To this end, it investigates land-use and commuter journey patterns of the 13 largest suburban multifunctional centres in Canada. The study exposes difficulties in using LMSCs as recentralization instruments meant to "urbanize" the suburb by making it more public transit- and walking-oriented. It points to tensions within LMSCs between playing the role of activity centre and adopting land-use configurations conducive to public-transit use and walking. The stronger is the centrality role of an LMSC, the more it is overtaken by automobiles from its dispersed suburban surroundings. Alternatively, LMSCs can generate weak centrality effects while performing as effective transit-oriented developments. The paper concludes by highlighting difficulties in overcoming suburban transportation and land-use path dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a growing literature on the integration of environmental discourses into urban development schemes, this paper charts the urban development of LeBreton Flats, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. An industrial neighbourhood expropriated as part of a post-war urban renewal project, LeBreton Flats is being redeveloped in line with green, mixed-use urban planning principles. The paper investigates how national narratives are intertwined within urban development practices and argues that historically and geographically embedded expressions of national nature first used to justify post-war expropriation are being adapted as part of urban neo-liberal naturalised practices of central-city redevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates issues of national identity and multi-level governance within Confederation Boulevard, the heart of Canada's National Capital Region. We develop a framework that combines the literature on cultural districts and multi-level governance and analyse the plans written by the National Capital Commission (NCC) from the 1980s to the 2010s. Through the lens of cultural districts, we focus on urban form as a whole, instead of considering just specific artifacts or buildings, and uncover how over time the NCC is designing a representation of national identity moving towards multiculturalism. Moreover, the lens of cultural districts delineates a space for multi-level governance revealing the emergence of dynamics of negotiation among different levels of government towards territorial cooperation. This analysis of Confederation Boulevard contributes to the literature on planning capital cities beyond the specific case, adding to our understanding of (1) urban representation of national identity and (2) dynamics of a layered governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of real estate developers in shaping land use legislation, land use planning and property law. The conceptual framework draws on third-phase institutionalism and socio-legal theory to examine actors and ideas that influence knowledge and practices of land use, planning and property. This paper confronts absences in planning theory that overlook the role of real estate developers in disputes over land, especially their role in shaping the legislative framework governing land use. The argument is that property law is not simply an objective system of rules interpreted by lawyers, judges and the courts. Neither is it a singular concept protecting private property rights. Rather, it is a complex concept and institution that emerges in practice through political processes, such as social movements, the exercise of power and influence by elite actors, and strategic acts by political actors navigating diverse and competing agendas. The empirical evidence informing this argument derives from case study research of land conflicts on the Oak Ridges Moraine in the Toronto region, Canada, with particular attention given to the relationship between real estate developers, social movement actors, and politicians involved in resolving the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that our urban centres have been dominated by the private car for a hundred years, this paper asks what is next for Canadian cities. Previous research on the future of urban mobility, and specifically city planning and autonomous vehicles, has been from an American or Australian context. Working from a uniquely Canadian perspective, this paper fills a gap in the research by analyzing data from twenty-six semi-structured interviews with Canadian planning professionals from Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto. The interviews discuss how Canadian planners are preparing for new technologies, including autonomous vehicles, and increased privatization. We recommend that large cities move forward with autonomous vehicle research with a goal of improving mobility for all, while ensuring a strong agreement framework with all for-profit mobility providers is in place that requires robust data sharing agreements and appropriate consultation with municipalities before, during, and after launching. Further, planners should further embrace the political realities of their positions and advocate for equitable mobility for all residents both in their day-to-day work and in public engagement settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CAD$1 billion transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood from Canada’s largest public housing site to a mixed income community is likely to inform the next several decades of public housing redevelopment policy both nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on the process and impacts of large-scale redevelopment, in the context of attempts to build a physically and socially inclusive neighbourhood incorporating non-market and market housing in downtown Toronto. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 32 Regent Park community leaders and other key decision makers, the paper explores how resident engagement and leadership development opportunities impact redevelopment processes in mixed income initiatives. Results focus on three key emerging areas of both strength and concern: (1) efforts to build community alongside the redevelopment as an integral, evolving and place-specific strategy; (2) the impacts and challenges of both a strong institutional environment in Regent Park and a sense of weak institutional memory; and (3) formal and informal leadership and mentorship opportunities and their contribution towards the development of engagement and cohesion in Regent Park. The opportunity for low-income housing initiatives to support knowledge building and learning, preservation of institutional memory and local leadership development is significant in the context of examining physical and social redevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gordon Joseph Culham (1891–1979), a landscape architect and town planner, was instrumental in the professionalization of both his disciplines in Canada. He helped lead the disorganized practitioners of the 1930s into the modern age and enabled them to assume their professional role in the improvement of Canada's urban centres. The discovery of an archive of Culham's papers provides a previously unavailable insight into the conceptualization and creation of the professions of landscape architecture and town planning in Canada. Culham characterized this as leading a ‘useful life’. He prepared, practiced and enjoyed the power associated with the professions he helped found in leading this useful life. He was a Harvard graduate who worked with the greatest landscape architectural firm in America, the Olmsteds and with the premier British town planner, Thomas Adams. Culham returned to his homeland on the eve of the Depression with an unrivalled reputation. He brought with him a strong sense of professionalism and helped elevate a small, dispirited community of Canadian landscape architects and town planners into one united organization for almost two decades. Professional specialization was an inevitable outcome but Culham continued to bridge the divide between his chosen fields throughout his ‘useful life’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Greater Vancouver region (Canada) tensions exist where urbanization encroaches onto agricultural land. A recently issued white paper proffered ideas to stimulate discussion on land-use plans and public policies to encourage and enhance agriculture while accommodating a doubling of the region's population. It evoked a visceral response from local and regional politicians, planners and agrologists who saw it as an heretical attempt to undermine land conservation. Proponents saw innovative strategies to ameliorate entrenched antipathy between competing perspectives. The core arguments and corresponding critique, outlined in this paper, bring to light elements of a broader debate about the vitality and sustainability of agriculture in British Columbia, as elsewhere, centring on issues of food security (supply) and food sovereignty (control) within two competing agricultural paradigms: human-scale agri-food systems and conventional industrial agri-business. Municipal enabled agriculture (MEA) is advanced as a catalyst for the full integration of the agri-food system within the planning, design, function, economy and community of cities and vice versa. MEA can make significant contributions to local and regional economies and has the potential to alter the way communities are designed to reduce unsustainability, planned to incorporate resilience, and organized so that they flourish socially and culturally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a methodological tool – the women's safety audit – initially developed in Canada, but which has been adapted and used in many regions of the world. The women's safety audit allows participants to identify safe and unsafe spaces and recommend how the unsafe spaces can be improved. In doing so, the women's safety audit privileges the experience of women living in a neighbourhood as ‘experts’ in their own field. Based on interviews with six organizations in Europe, Africa and Asia and on an analysis of written sources, the paper examines some of the applications, outcomes and challenges of this methodology. The findings suggest that the audit is adaptable to local contexts, can be effective for bringing about environment changes, empowering women and alerting the public and authorities to the shared responsibility for ensuring the safety of women.Security Journal (2009) 22, 205–218; doi:10.1057/sj.2009.1; published online 18 May 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether it's a big city or a small town, all Canadian municipalities have core issues that their elected politicians are concerned about. Regardless of size, the daily business of a municipality must be managed and policies determined about such bread-and-butter issues as garbage collection, snow removal, wastewater and sewage, fire protection, economic development and fixing potholes. However, when size increases, so do the layers of issues that engage municipal politicians. This paper examines the results of a cross-Canada survey of more than 1,000 mayors and councillors from communities ranging in population size from 5,000 to more than two million. With an increase in population size, the numbers and complexity of issues creep up as well. Tiny municipalities typically aren't concerned with issues such as immigrant settlement, homelessness and public transit. Those issues are much more pressing for larger municipalities. A focus on some types of issues, such as public transit, grows right alongside population growth. The physical size of large municipalities means they contain a population whose needs are naturally more diverse than they are in smaller cities, towns and villages, thus shifting politicians' concerns to such things as homelessness and climate change. However, issues such as relations with Indigenous people and climate change also tend to hold regional, not just municipal, importance. They may be extremely important to a small municipality because of its geographic location and less important in a larger municipality located elsewhere. For example, municipal politicians in British Columbia reflect regional concerns with their emphasis in the survey on the importance of tackling homelessness, affordable housing, climate change and Indigenous relations. Yet, next door in Alberta, Indigenous relations and climate change ranked in the survey as being of low importance, along with climate change, despite the presence of two cities in the province with populations hovering around the million mark. The number one issue for municipalities regardless of size is economic development, since job creation and attracting investment are key for a healthy municipality regardless of its location or size. And nearly every politician surveyed listed planning, water supply and transportation infrastructure (roads, highways and bridges) as being of deep importance to their communities. Of almost equal importance in the survey were a second slate of issues including emergency planning, parks and recreation, public health, solid waste removal and policing. The results of this survey are intended to lay the groundwork for future researchers who want to focus on specific problems in the area of urban policy-making. Those who want to study the bread-and-butter issues can do so among a wide range and size of municipalities, knowing that these issues are vital to all. Those with an interest in homelessness and immigrant populations can focus on the big cities while being assured they are not missing out on key points among smaller communities. This survey will be highly beneficial for researchers in urban policy issues as it will help them to decide where to look and exactly what to look for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the recognition of marginalized social groups has become widely accepted as an important consideration for contemporary planning, the particular challenge of Indigenous recognition has barely registered in urban planning contexts. In this paper, we use a discursive and interpretive analysis of urban planning texts from Victoria, Australia, and British Columbia, Canada, to illustrate how the ‘contact zone’ between Indigenous peoples and urban planning is produced and reproduced through texts. Discursive processes serve to bound and limit the recognition of Indigenous rights and interests, allowing only very small and shallow zones of contact in each place. Our findings from these cases show that these processes arise from quite different orders of discourse, and two social fields: Indigenous recognition and urban planning. The discourses present in both fields really matter for how the contact zone is persistently bounded to established territorial, political and administrative orders. In identifying these boundaries, our paper opens up new ways of thinking about, and engaging in, boundary-crossing work in planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Canadian Studies is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper centres on the content of metropolitan-scale plans of the six largest Canadian urban regions. Plans in all these regions promote intensification and alternatives to automobile use, and thus adhere to smart growth and sustainability principles. In all cases save one, reliance on nodal development is the preferred manner of achieving intensification and ensuring its co-ordination with public transit services. Meanwhile, however, results point to differences in the stage of development of metropolitan planning strategies. The paper concludes by reflecting on the wide adoption of the nodal model in metropolitan plans. It interprets this popularity as the outcome of the ability of nodes to achieve intensification and reduced car reliance objectives, while conforming to prevailing planning and institutional capacity. The effectiveness of the nodal approach and other broad metropolitan planning concepts rests in their capacity to procure a metropolitan structure for the other scales at which urban planning is practised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1957 Gordon Stephenson prepared an urban renewal study for the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He epitomised the foreign professional expert hired to diagnose urban ills and prescribe solutions. This paper examines the tension between humanistic moral values and rational scientific approaches in Stephenson's study and seeks to identify some of the influences on his thinking and methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present the results of an experiment in architecture, engineering, and art in the form of a month-long nomadic spectacle in mid-western Canada. Responding to the cultural, economic, and geographical boundaries that limit many rural and urban communities' access to contemporary art, five artist run centers called for proposals to use a 1976 Airstream trailer to carry art performances, contemporary films, and art making workshops to several communities in Manitoba. The project presented in this paper describes how the ongoing material research by the author, exploring the architectural and cultural potentials of temporary structures, was used to create a unique venue for the presentation and participation of art through an inclusive community-based building event. In this project, design was not carried out by the architect alone, but by the community who was invited to help construct curving, flowing structures that bare little likeness to traditional architecture surrounding them. This paper will describe the value of the ephemeral within the perceived concreteness of the everyday, and how architecture and design are not just descriptors of a place, but a performative and communal act of place making through the temporary events that give rise to their form and meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban centers serve as hubs of human innovation and as places where different ideas and cultures come together. Third spaces, where the public meets outside of the workplace and the home, have been identified as particularly important to urban vitality. Though many such centres are long established, dynamic third spaces have emerged where reuse and regeneration of urban space has occurred. This paper explores three Canadian renewal projects that have been successful to various degrees at developing urban spaces with a diversity of activity. The paper explores the urban form involved, discussing the history of the spaces, approaches to barriers, the integration of the 'natural', and the role of public markets at each site. The sites are explored as loci of innovation and discussed in terms of the spatial capital they create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government agencies and other organizations responsive to a diverse constituency face enormous challenges in identifying priority sites for relocation, expansion, or new development. Of paramount importance is establishing transparent decision processes that reach accountable, defensible, and wise outcomes. Unfortunately, documented examples of successful approaches to evaluation, prioritization, and site selection are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to both offer a descriptive case study and an intellectually rigorous, fundamentally practical “best practice” approach for identifying priority sites. By employing value-focused thinking and decision analysis techniques to a complex site selection problem, we present a way to address common challenges such as potential technical and nontechnical knowledge conflicts, distinguishing between “facts” and “values,” incorporating uncertainties, generating criteria weights, making trade-offs and building consensus across interests. Our approach is contextualized in a Canadian government case study of relocating a $300 million dollar facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refines the Canadian portion of the definitive Master List of Design Projects of the Olmsted Firm, 1857–1950 . This correction then informs a consideration of this American firm’s influence on Canadian planning and landscape architecture. The paper also offers a broader perspective on the transfer of ideas during the early days of the parks movement, planned community expansion, and town planning. It is already well known that Olmsted Sr was one of the leading advocates for urban change throughout North America. To this social consciousness, the Olmsted sons and their associates, who did most of the firm’s work in Canada, added a good measure of business acumen. Their Canadian practice was sustained by public projects, most notably in town planning and suburban development, and numerous private residential commissions. The Olmsteds played a key role during the formative period of the Canadian planning which saw the creation of the Commission of Conservation in 1909. As well as the direct influence they exerted in their 95 projects in Canada, and their persuasive writings and public addresses, they counselled many cities to adopt formalized planning processes and agencies. Their former employees, and one could argue, ‘disciples’, also played leading roles in establishing town planning and landscape architecture in Canada. Three in particular, Frederick Todd, Rickson Outhet and Gordon Culham, established thriving Canadian practices. Overall, it is arguable whether the Olmsteds were the most influential foreign landscape design and planning professionals, given the contributions in particular of the British planner Thomas Adams. However, they were the most prolific foreign practitioners in terms of the number of projects and the legacy they passed on to the country’s founding town planners and landscape architects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a recent popularization of 'Smart Growth' planning in North American cities. Based upon the aim to decrease the impacts of sprawled regional development on the natural environment, a focus of Smart Growth planning is the intensification of both population and physical development in existing urban areas. Faced with the creation of a new Official Plan for the City of Toronto, municipal planners have chosen urban intensification as the vision for planning in Toronto over the next thirty years. This paper examines the nature of intensification planning in Toronto through an analysis of the language of urban intensification found in the Official Plan vision report. Within this report, emphasis is placed upon the role of intensified development and compact population growth as a solution to the environmental problems of urban sprawl. This paper argues that the environmental aspects of intensification provide a more acceptable public rationale for future intensification processes in Toronto; moreover, that the main rationale for intensification in Toronto is not to solve regional sprawl but to create compact urban districts in order to enhance the economic and physical revitalization of the city. The language of intensification in the Official Plan vision report suggests that urban intensification, particularly in Toronto's downtown core, is a strategy for the development of more 'livable' and vibrant residential and commercial areas. The emphasis on intensified development is geared towards the attraction and maintenance of private investment and skilled labour and is a central part of the City of Toronto's vision of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Widely known as Vancouver's ‘skid road’ the Downtown Eastside struggles with the pressures of socio-spatial polarisation. While the neighbourhood has experienced deepening poverty, widening disadvantage, the entrenchment of an open air drug market, epidemic levels of HIV/AIDS and rising crime rates, it has also undergone extensive residential and commercial revitalisation. This paper explores, qualitatively, the City of Vancouver's policy and planning role in the spatial and temporal collision of both upgrading and downgrading within this single urban neighbourhood. Particular attention is paid to the unintended geographic and social impacts of municipal policy and the challenges faced by the city in attempting to address the conflicting expectations of community interests and the possibility of diametrically opposed, yet equally possible, neigh-bourhood futures. The paper points to the necessity of continued research on the local dynamics, policy implications and scale of intra-urban socio-spatial polarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses listings of residential real estate properties in Kiev, Ukraine to develop a picture of the principal underlying dimensions defining this market. It is possible to obtain valuable information about the structure of this important market from private sources. The paper reviews the history of the residential housing sector in Ukraine and explains the attributes real estate agencies use to characterize this market. The property listings provided by a private Kiev real estate agency are used to create a database for factor analysis. The results of the analysis are used to compare Kiev residential real estate with a study looking at housing dimensions in Canada and England. In light of the principal components of Kiev residential real estate, the authors present implications and suggest guidelines for decision makers in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) can be produced from a broad range of anthropogenic activities at different spatial and temporal scales. In particular, emissions from urban area are an import source of GHGs. City is a complicated system consisting of various component and processes. Efforts have been made to reduce urban GHG emissions. However, there is a lack of available methods for effective assessment of such emissions. Many urban sources and factors which can influence the emissions are still unknown. In the present study, the GHG emissions from municipal activities was assessed. A model for the assessment of urban GHG emissions was developed. Based on the collected data, a case study was conducted to evaluate urban GHG emissions. The comprehensive assessment included the emissions from transportation, electricity consumption, natural gas, waste disposal, and wastewater treatment. There was a variation for GHG emissions from these sectors in different years. This study provided a new approach for comprehensive evaluation of urban GHG emissions. The results can help better understand the emission process and identify the major emission sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the creation and the subsequent meaning of ‘redevelopment areas’ in Toronto in the 1950s. The city passed a bylaw in 1952 that defined blighted areas as suitable for redevelopment. One of these areas was the downtown district that runs between Wood and Wellesley streets. The history of the Wood-Wellesley redevelopment area between 1952 and 1957 was important in several ways: it built on but differed from similar activity in the USA; it discursively reflected the needs of the city to refashion itself as a modern landscape; it provided the city with the tools to turn planning ideas into action; and it gave developers the forum by which they could push for specific areas of the city to be opened up for investment. Politically calculated and heavily contested visions of urban space, redevelopment areas such as Wood-Wellesley were used by the state and developers to physically reconstruct Toronto’s downtown area for private capital, to create a new modernist landscape, and to reproduce new and to reinforce existing social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policies of mixed-tenure redevelopment have been widely adopted and are promoted as a means of attenuating the harmful effects of concentrated urban poverty. In this paper, we examine the case of Toronto's Regent Park neighbourhood, the first large-scale mixed-tenure redevelopment of a public housing community in Canada. Using data from 24 qualitative interviews with residents of both tenures, we provide a descriptive account of conditions in the redeveloped portion of the neighbourhood, describe resident experiences and attitudes towards the policy of tenure mix, and assess the proposition that tenure mix can benefit residents of public housing. We find that tenure mix enjoys strong support from residents of both tenures, particularly among a subset of market residents, and find indirect evidence that tenure mix has increased the social capital of some tenants. We conclude that the physical renewal of the neighbourhood is most responsible for improved residential satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the relationship between urban design and household recycling practices in Canadian cities. A growing body of research links urban design with residents’ transportation behaviour, such as rates of driving and use of public transportation. However, the effect of urban design on other forms of environmentally sustainable behaviour has not been as widely explored. Recycling is an important aspect of sustainability and the recycling activities of urban residents require further attention. We examine the relationship between urban design and recycling practices at the census metropolitan area (CMA) level in Canada using aggregated data merged from three secondary sources: the 2005–2006 Household and the Environment Survey conducted by Statistics Canada; the 2006 Census; and Gordon and Shirokoff ’s (2014) classification of Canada’s urban neighbourhoods. The results demonstrate that there is a significant relationship between urban development patterns and household recycling practices at the CMA-level, when controlling for demographic factors. We conclude that urban design is related to residents’ sustainability behaviours in multiple, complex ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the historical geographies of Toronto's Church and Wellesley Street district and Sydney's Oxford Street gay villages are important in understanding the contemporary transformations currently ongoing in both locations. LGBT and queer communities as well as mainstream interests argue that these gay villages are in some form of "decline" for various social, political, and economic reasons. Given their similar histories and geographies, our analysis considers how these historical geographies have both enabled and constrained how the respective gay villages respond to these challenges while opening up particular possibilities for alternative (and relational) geographies. While there are a number of ways to consider these historical geographies, we focus on three factors for analysis--post World War II planning policies, the emergence of "city of neighborhoods" discourses, and the positioning of gay villages within neoliberal processes of commodification and consumerism. We conclude that these distinctive historical geographies offer a cogent set of understandings by providing suggestive explanations for how Toronto's and Sydney's gendered and sexual landscapes are being reorganized in distinctive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with increasing urbanization and uncertainties linked to climate change, the scientific community has integrated the concept of resilience into urban management practices. Once revolutionary, now a buzzword, resilience is a concept that is difficult to transform into an integrated tool that stakeholders accept and adopt. This paper offers a perspective on the different interpretations of resilience, its difficult implementation and the tools that seek to operationalize it. The underlying questions are how these tools are appropriated by urban managers and territorial decision-makers, and how the theoretical concept can be translated into resilient urban development. This research paper reviews the work on resilience and investigates its use and operationalization, comparing two different approaches – organizational (Canada) and holistic (France) – that aim to clarify and operationalize resilience. These theoretical approaches have been combined to create workshops for urban managers so they can move from theoretical results to practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than ten years after the water contamination events of Walkerton, ON, (2000) and North Battleford, SK, (2001) the practice of source water protection (SWP) remains a topic of policy development in Canada. SWP is a land and water planning process designed to prevent contamination of untreated water at the source. While many Canadian jurisdictions at all levels of government continue to adopt SWP plans and policies there is relatively little research on the effectiveness of SWP plan implementation. h rough key informant interviews, this paper examines factors that facilitate and constrain SWP plan implementation based on the South Saskatchewan SWP Plan initially adopted 2007. Water in the western Prairie Provinces has been described as being in a condition of impending crisis in terms of both quality and quantity. The results confirm the importance of developing SWP plans as well as the importance of building local capacity to implement these plans. Capacity gaps in the areas of technical, institutional, financial, and social capability were found to be significant barriers to SWP plan implementation in the South Saskatchewan. This paper suggests more effective plan implementation will result from improved access to data, training, and educational opportunities; greater enforcement of government legislation and regulations; and greater linkages and networks between organizations with similar objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on a case study of delineating census tracts (CTs) in the Census Metropolitan area of London, Ontario, Canada. The procedure for defining the actual pattern of CTs by a local committee and Statistics Canada has involved such consideration as the compactness of CTs and their population-based and area-based uniformity as well as some subjective aspects. The actual pattern shows that compactness of CTs has been achieved at the expense of uniformity in population and areal sizes. The paper proposes an integer-coded multiobjective genetic algorithm for aggregating census units with the expectation of obtaining a higher level of compactness and population/area uniformity of CTs through an optimization technique. Square-shape and circular-shape compactness of CTs are examined under different scenarios. The results indicate that the proposed genetic algorithm can provide solutions that are considerably better in terms of the Pareto-optimality principle than the actual pattern of CTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to increase the sustainability of transportation in cities, streets must provide infrastructures that favor active and public transportation modes. However, the current decision-making processes in transportation projects do not always explicitly take into account sustainable transportation requirements and often ignore concerns that may arise in other fields such as environmental protection, health, or urban design. The proposed framework in this paper aims at integrating sustainability in a decision-making process by creating better collaboration and communication between professionals of such disparate fields. The framework is based on group workshops, problem structuring, multi-criteria decision aiding and geographic information systems. It was applied in Quebec City, Canada. The objective of the workshops was to identify higher priority streets that should be redesigned as Complete Streets, a popular movement that advocates "streets for everyone" in North America. To facilitate communication and use for future decisions, the results of the analysis were integrated and presented in a geographic information system. As a result, this user-friendly tool is currently used to support decision-making by Quebec City officials who must choose the streets to be redesigned as Complete Streets while ensuring transparency and traceability. Such an approach may better support policies to make the transport system more sustainable by integrating various considerations, being transparent and improving communication of the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary planners see mixing residential, retail and other compatible uses as an essential planning principle. This paper explores the challenges that planners, developers and municipal councillors encounter in trying to implement retail uses as part of the mix in suburban areas in three Canadian cities. The study finds that planners employ evolutionary theories of urban development to naturalise their normative visions of walkable and sociable communities. By contrast, developers point to consumer behaviour to explain why planners’ ideas on mix do not work. In a society where people shop at big-box outlets, making the local café or pub commercially viable proves increasingly challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rise and rise of sustainability in urban and social policy circles has transformed the discursive terrain of urban politics. In 2009, Gunder and Hillier argued sustainability is now urban planning's central empty signifier, offering an overarching narrative around which practice can be oriented. This paper takes up the notion of sustainability as an empty/master-signifier, arguing that the recognition of its nominal status is central to understanding how it operates to produce ideological foundation. Drawing upon a series of interviews and focus groups with urban and social policy makers and practitioners in Vancouver, Canada, Zizek's 1989 critique of the cynical functioning of contemporary ideology is used to interpret the city's engagement with sustainability. Focusing on 'social sustainability' it is argued that sustainability has provided a quilting point that has enabled new social and urban policy-related partnerships and organizational agendas to be developed. However, this coherence remains unstable and plagued by questions of signification due to the radical negativity of the master-signifier, where efforts at definition and agreement are haunted by the non-presence of sustainability. It is argued that this framing of sustainability as ideological conduit in Vancouver helps explain the co-presence of transformative rhetoric and business-as-usual. Using Zizek's critique of cynical reason in contemporary ideology, interview data is drawn upon to show how many practitioners seek to distance themselves from sustainability, but at the same time continue to act it out anyway. In conclusion, the sobering politics of Zizek's critique of contemporary ideology are considered in the light of growing urban problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although municipalities across Canada have adopted principles of new urbanism, smart growth, and sustainability in their planning and policy documents, new suburbs continue to reveal the influence of conventional development practices. This paper examines challenges to implementing new planning principles and reveals some of the ways that the development market selectively resists planning objectives in three Canadian urban areas. Interviews with planners, councillors, and representatives of the development industry indicate that, while land cost pressures contribute to increasing suburban densities, developers may challenge planning principles related to urban form and function. The study finds that weak political commitment and market pressures frustrate planners' desires to create accessible and open communities. Conceptual distinctions between planning approaches important to theory become blurred in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores why Toronto's policies for improving pedestrian conditions are not better reflected in the design of arterial streets as the city tries to refashion them into pedestrian-oriented 'Avenues'. Professional frameworks shaping street design date from the first half of the 20th century and reflect a consensus between the fields of planning and engineering. Recently, this consensus has broken down in terms of the design of arterial streets. The role of engineering standards in this story has been told, but this study also examines how other institutionalized practices continue to operate making design changes difficult. Understanding why this occurs has lessons beyond Toronto and is intended to help cities to better match street-making practices to new visions of pedestrian-oriented streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noulan Cauchon (1872-1935) was a founder of the Town Planning Institute of Canada and the Ottawa Town Planning Commission. He played a significant role in the planning of Canada's capital city in the early twentieth century. This article traces the evolution of Cauchon's planning ideas and their place within the Canadian planning profession, based upon his numerous public lectures, newspaper and journal articles. He was a close ally of Thomas Adams during the 1914-26 campaign to extend town planning across Canada. Cauchon's background as a railway engineer influenced his City Scientific approach to planning, which contrasted with the City Beautiful proposals for the capital produced for the federal government. This City Scientific approach became the dominant mode of planning in Canada after 1918. Cauchon produced a comprehensive zoning by-law and many small-scale planning schemes for the Ottawa area. Few of his proposals were implemented by the municipality, which deferred to the national government on most planning issues during this period. But Cauchon's ideas influenced the early evolution of the profession in Canada and the redevelopment of the national capital after 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]