Canadian cities and the American example: a prologue to urban policy analysis

Abstract

Abstract: The developmental pattern that characterizes metropolitan areas in the United States often serves as a basis for evaluating the condition of Canadian cities and attributing a distinctive thrust to Canadian urban policy. To be meaningful, however, comparative evaluations have to take account of the way government activities have helped to shape U.S. metropolitan areas over an extended period of time. A criticism implicit in much US. urban analysis is that government activities have persistently contributed to large inequalities in the social and economic condition of metropolitan area municipalities. In Canada, by comparison, interjurisdictional equalization has played a larger role in federal‐provincial relations than it has in federal‐state relations in the United States. It also seems to have influenced the way provincial governments dealt with municipalities during the 1960s and 1970s. At the present time, however, provincial governments are allowing the governmental systems of metropolitan areas to become more fragmented. They are also under pressure to reduce or abandon their efforts to equalize services and property tax burdens among municipalities. How they respond to that pressure will help to determine how closely the development of Canada's metropolitan areas conforms to the pattern of urban development characteristic of the United States.

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