Frameworks for Locational Decision-Making in National Urban Strategies: A Review

Preliminary paper prepared for discussion at a Conference on National Urban Settlement Systems and Strategies, held at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Schloss Laxenburg, Austria December 16-19, 197

Urban growth and population redistribution in North America : a diverse and unequal landscape

This paper is a revision of a report originally prepared for and submitted to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, as a contribution to the Institute's monograph on global settlements. The entire monograph is to be published in 1996.This paper, written for an international audience, provides an overview of trends in urbanization and population redistribution in the US and Canada over the post-war period. Emphasis is placed on the massive scale and rapidity of urban growth and the uneven consequences that flow from that growth. The paper argues that new urban hierarchies are emerging as a result of economic restructuring and demographic change, and in response to intense international competition. In parallel, urban forms and living environments have become increasingly dispersed, diverse and fragmented. This, in tum, will likely produce wider differences in social attributes and economic well-being between cities at the national level and among communities within the same metropolitan regions. The paper concludes that levels of social inequalities and political tensions in urban North America are likely to increase

Forecasting land occupancy changes through Markovian probability matrices: a central city example

Environment Study under a grant from Bell Canada Ltd

On the spatial structure of metropolitan areas in Canada : a discriminant analysis

How similar (or different) are Canadian metropolitan areas in terms of their internal form and structure? As part of an on-going project on the changing properties of urban areas, this paper asks whether it is possible to differentiate among the entire set of 3,088 census tracts in urban Canada with respect to: a) their position in the urban size hierarchy; b) their regional location, and c) their situation within the urban area (inner city, older and newer suburbs). The results, based on 14 index variables and using discriminant analysis, confirm that it is indeed possible to identify common properties and then to classify tracts according to their relative location. As expected, tracts in the largest metropolitan areas, and in B. C. and Ontario, are the most distinctive, while those in the smallest size category and the prairies are the least distinctive. Similarly, new suburban tracts are the easiest to classify while the older suburbs are the most difficult. There is, however, considerable variation around these averages, suggesting the importance of both local environment and different paths of development

Designing the future : a perspective on recent trends and emerging issues in Ontario's urban environment

This paper is based on a report submitted to the Policy and Program Development Secretariat of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing of Ontario. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Ministry.In Ontario, as elsewhere in the industrial world, changes in the chemistry of urban development have undermined many of our expectations of the future and set in motion a re-evaluation of existing policy priorities. This paper examines some of the sources of change, as they are expressed in Ontario's urban environments, and identifies areas in which future urban problems might arise. The broad issues reviewed include the potential effects of a restructuring of local economies and labour markets, increased housing inequalities and residential segregation, inter-community relations and social unrest, the squeeze on local public finance and the deteriorating environmental-ecological balance. The concluding section looks at alternative scenarios on future urban forms and the consequent policy responses

Spatial Patterns and Determinants of Land Use Change in Metropolitan Toronto

Supported by the Canadian Council on Urban and Regional Research and the Connaught Fund of the University of Toront

Internal structure of the city, readings on urban form, growth and policy

xi, 629 p.; 23 cm.

Canadian cities in transition: new sources of urban difference

Cities, increasingly, are the principal arenas in which global, national and local forces intersect.Canadian cities are no exception. Those cities are currently undergoing a series ofprofound and irreversible transitions as a result of external forces originating from differentsources and operating at different spatial scales. Specifically, this paper argues that Canadiancities are being transformed in a markedly uneven fashion through the intersection ofchanges in national and regional economies, the continued demographic transition, andshifts in government policy on the one hand, and through increased levels and new sourcesof immigration, and the globalization of capital and trade flows, on the other hand. Theseshifts, in turn, are producing new patterns of external dependence, a more fragmented urbansystem, and continued metropolitan concentration. They are also leading to increased socioculturaldifferences, with intense cultural diversity in some cities juxtaposed with homogeneityin other cities, and to new sets of urban winners and losers. In effect, these transitionsare creating new sources of difference - new divides - among and within the country=surban centres, augmenting or replacing the traditional divides based on city-size, location inthe heartland or periphery, and local economic base