GEOG 340: DAY 12
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Chapters 10 & 11
HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS
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Based on feedback from you, here’s what I propose for
the mid-term and associated weightings: keep
attendance & participation at 10%, make the
presentation on the reading worth 15%, make the
neighbourhood filtration/ change exercise worth 15%,
while the major project and the final would remain 35
and 25% respectively. For those who have already done
the presentation, we could take that mark and the
neighbourhood exercise and average them.
We have Natasha presenting today, as she was unable
to present on Tuesday.
I got ahead of myself and was presenting on Chapter
11 when we were just starting Chapter 10, so I will
touch on any bits that Diego didn’t address from 10
and then finish up Chapter 11.
Just a reminder that the neighbourhood filtering/
change assignments are due on Tuesday the 15th.
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ON THE HOUSING
FRONT…
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CHAPTER 10: THE HIGHLIGHTS
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The book talks, assuming a U.S. Context, about
five distinct periods of urban governance:
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Laissez-faire and economic liberalism (1790-1840)
Municipal socialism and the rise of machine
politics (1840-1875)
Boosterism and the politics of reform (1875-1920)
Egalitatarian liberalism and metropolitan
fragmentation (1920-1945)
Cities as growth machines and service providers
(1945-1973)
o In the first period, free enterprise tended to
dominate, government was weak (and corrupt),
and the lower classes tried to wrest some power
from the economic elites.
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CHAPTER 10: THE HIGHLIGHTS
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The role of municipalities was limited to a few basic
functions and, in Canada – even more than in the
U.S. – municipalities were subordinate to higher
levels of government, in this case the provinces.
Initially, they had very limited access to revenue, but
this changed once they started to incorporate (see
Figure 10.3).
In the second stage, municipalities took a more
aggressive and expanded approach to the numerous
urban problems as the working classes developed
more clout (mostly in regions with a strong industrial
base). Dubbed ‘municipal socialism,’ this involved
providing essential infrastructural services, including
even soft services such as libraries. However, political
“machines” also emerged, some of which lasted well
into the 1960s.
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TWO CORRUPT MACHINE POLITICIANS
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STAGE 3: BOOSTERISM AND REFORMISM
Under the cover of reform of corruption and the
‘moral decline’ attributed to increased immigrant
populations, the middle and upper-class Ango
Saxon elites sought to wrest back control, and to
make economic interests predominate.
 There were also campaigns against gambling,
prostitution, and dissolute behaviour (often seen
as aided and abetted by alcohol) and for better
housing. Women, in particular, led the temperance movement that eventually led to Prohibition
from 1920 to 1933.
 This led to active bootlegging and rum-running
industries, including from Canada.
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Province/Territory
Provincial
Prohibition Enacted
Repealed
British Columbia
1917
1921
Alberta
1916
1924
Saskatchewan
1917
1925
Manitoba
1916
1921
Ontario
1916
1924
Quebec
1919
1919
1856
1856
1917
1927
Nova Scotia
1921
1929
PEI
1901
1948
Yukon
1918
1920
Newfoundland (not part
of Canada until 1949)
1917
1924
New Brunswick
Source: Wikipedia
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THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN EXPERTS
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Cities began to require
the services of more
specialists –
accountants, engineers,
planners, and
architects.
There were attempts to
de-politicize urban
governance and to
apply the principles of
scientific management.
Especially, with the
inauguration of
streetcar systems,
annexations proceeded
apace.
Original boundaries of
Chicago
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THE FOURTH PERIOD: LIBERALISM AND
FRAGMENTATION
The fourth period was that of Fordism in housing
(or at least the start of it) and in the production of
automobiles. Suburbanites began to resist
annexation, preferring to remain independent of the
big city.
 The loss of much of the middle class weakened the
tax base and economic viability of the core cities,
while migration from overseas and down South
placed an ever-greater burden on their resources
(see Figure 10.7).
 The Euclid decision of the Supreme Court in 1926
gave municipalities the power to zone land uses. In
Canada, provinces delegate that power to
municipalities.
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THE FOURTH AND FIFTH PERIODS: LIBERALISM
AND
FRAGMENTATION/ GROWTH MACHINES, ETC.
The New Deal partly arose from the stronger
political urban constituency and heralded a new
alliance between blue collar workers and liberal
reformers.
 After the war, the phenomenon known as the
“growth machine” emerged that was preoccupied
with growth and development at all costs. With
apologies to Eisenhower, I have called it the
“residential-industrial” or “commercial-industrial
complex,” denoting the alliance between developers,
local politicians, and the business community in an
‘old boys’ club.’ Nanaimo for decades has been a
textbook case.
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THE FOURTH AND FIFTH PERIODS: LIBERALISM
AND
FRAGMENTATION/ GROWTH MACHINES, ETC.
Figure 10.8 indicates some of the constituencies
involved.
 By the 1960s, more and more groups were dissatisfied
with the results of growth machine politics – victims
of freeways and of urban renewal, those outraged by
the destruction of heritage icons like Penn Station, the
civil rights and Black Power movements (and similar
movements among
Hispanics).
o Inspired by the ideas
of Jane Jacobs and
others, new urban
social movements
emerged which challenged
the status quo.
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THE FOURTH AND FIFTH PERIODS: LIBERALISM
AND
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FRAGMENTATION/ GROWTH MACHINES, ETC.
A downside of this was that it wasn’t only the
oppressed who became newly empowered. So too did
the relatively privileged and they learned how to
influence the political process as well, as manifested
in so-called NIMBY and BANANA movements.
Discussion question: people who might be
characterized as NIMBYs are often reacting against
insensitive, lousy development in the past, and a lack
of genuine consultation and involvement. But at the
same time, from a sustainability point of view,
keeping the status quo exactly as it is is not a viable
option. So: how to be sensitive to democracy and to
take into account the need for new, more dense urban
forms and other potentially unpopular measures, such
as mixed income housing, mixed use, and restrictions
on the automobile?
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THE SIXTH PHASE: ENTREPRENEURIAL POLITICS
AND NEO-LIBERALISM
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Beginning in the early-to-mid 70s, governments at all
levels began experiencing what has been called “the
fiscal crisis of the state.” New York City nearly went
broke, for instance. Public infrastructure declined and
people began to spend more time creating their own
private paradises of home entertainment systems,
private security systems, and private schools for their
children. Moreover, gated communities and suburbs
that could opt out of the financial problems of the
central city were only too happy to do so.
Detroit is a poster child for the fiscal crisis described
on p. 247.
With a decline in senior government funding,
governments, municipalities were forced to rely on
public-private partnerships, and on fees and taxes
from developers.
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THE SIXTH PHASE: ENTREPRENEURIAL POLITICS
AND NEO-LIBERALISM
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As middle class incomes stagnated, it became a hard
sell to raise property taxes, and the middle class was
increasingly open to the siren song of neo-liberalism
that blamed social problems on so-called “freeloaders.”
So-called “taxpayers’ revolts” forced massive cuts in
local services and in the number of municipal
employees. In recent years, states have voted in
legislation that allows them to break the backs of the
public employee unions.
Many public services were also privatized, less so in
Canada.
Especially, in the U.S., one also saw the emergence of
“privatopias” – master-planned communities that
homogeneous, exclusive, and controlled down to the
tiniest detail.
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THE SIXTH PHASE: ENTREPRENEURIAL POLITICS
AND NEO-LIBERALISM
 The rest of the chapter reviews
a host of issues – the fact that
homeowners tend to be
conservative because their
house is their biggest financial
asset, that there is often conflict
over new housing styles
(‘McMansions’) being inserted
into more traditional neighbourhoods, that many
reasonably well-paid people like
nurses and firefighters can’t
afford to live in the cities where
they work, & the emergence of
Smart Growth as an alternative
to either no growth or sprawl.
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THE SIXTH PHASE: ENTREPRENEURIAL POLITICS
AND NEO-LIBERALISM
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We’ve also seen a tendency to
remove ‘undesirables,’ such as
homeless people from city streets
and parks, and the efforts of cities to
sell themselves to investors through
offers of city-owned land, tax relief,
and major amenity provision. Again,
Nanaimo provides some interesting
examples of this. This is part of a
large effort at ‘re-branding.’
As we’ve discussed before, middleclass professionals have rediscovered
the advantages of urban living.
At the end of the chapter, the
authors offer three models of urban
power: elitism, pluralism, and hyperpluralism. Which one do you think
best fits the reality of Nanaimo?
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REMAINDER OF CHAPTER 11
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Many innovative, if not very successful,
urban programs were initiated in the
U.S. in the heady ‘60s, such as Economic
Opportunity Act, Head Start, and Model
Cities, along with funding for transit.
Also, in 1970, there was the start of
environmental legislation (National
Environmental Protection Act).
Enormous growth in the planning
profession, in planning schools, and in
the profession’s esprit de corps. The first
planning school in Canada was
established at UBC in 1951 by Peter
Oberlander, now deceased. His wife, still
practicing in her ‘80s, is one of Canada’s
leading landscape architects.
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THE ETHOS OF THE AGE
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The book expresses it well: “There was an evangelical spirit to
the whole profession. Cities should be better places. They
could be…. Equipped with the latest developments in social
science… – behavioral theory, regional economics, regional
science, quantitative geography, systems analysis, and
transportation modeling – the stage was set for a golden age
of planning on a truly heroic scale. Cities everywhere were
recast through strategic plans based on the modernizing
principles of strict separation of land uses, slum clearance,
large scale civic and commercial renewal projects, urban
expressways and, in Europe, new towns and public housing
schemes.
“Too often, though, the result was a complex of slab-like
buildings and parking structures, often in the Brutalist style
of reinforced concrete, with pedestrians separated from traffic
on elevated walkways and windswept flights of stairways….
[I]n her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities….
[Jane Jacobs] argued that….[l]eft to planners…city
landscapes ‘…will be spacious, parklike, and uncrowded….
They will be clean, impressive, and monumental. They will
have all the attributes of a well-kept, dignified cemetery.’”
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NEO-LIBERALISM
By the mid-to-late ‘70s, the notion that governments could do anything to assist cities in a
positive way that had been abandoned and, under
Reagan, federal funding for cities was slashed;
everything was to be left to the free market.
 Another challenge was the property rights
movement, whereby property owners took
governments to court for exercising their regulatory
powers over private lands. This was never a big
movement in Canada.
 This was also the period that saw major
redevelopment of industrial and working-class
neighbourhoods such as the London Docklands and
Battery Park in New York.
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Docklands and Battery Park
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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
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In recent years planners have begin to abandon the dogma
of single use in favour of mixed-use development. This has
tied in with the healthy cities movement, which argues that
mixed uses and pedestrian-friendly environments make for
healthier residents and reduced health care costs.
Some jurisdictions, especially in Europe, have created
sustainable precincts and neighbourhoods, such as Vauban
in Freiberg that minimize car use and are kid-friendly, cooperate, and with abundant public space (see
http://www.eltis.org/index.php?ID1=7&id=61&video_id=111).
They have also, along with politicians – in some
jurisdictions – tried to overcome dysfunctional regionalism
by practicing revenue-sharing within regional units, as in
Minneapolis-St. Paul. A big issue, more generally, is how to
balance local municipal autonomy with rational regional
development. In my own view, BC’s system of regional
districts is too weak.
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