The Divergence and Convergence between Canadian and American Cities - Research Paper Example

The Divergence and Convergence between Canadian and American Cities Introduction In the recent decades a new and major disparity has arose between the American cities and their counterparts in Canada. Cultural differences created different patterns of settlement (Barry, Dickerson & Gaisford 1995). In Canada the wing of the colonial power was important. Missionaries, commercial groups, and police authorities forged strategic locations, building citadels that were commercial units, police headquarters, and Christian operation all in one (Hall 1998). In the United States, the territories neighboring the Appalachians were inhabited by ranchers, farmers, and prospectors aiming for financial success and anew life (Hall 1998). Thomas Jefferson, straight from the conquests of the American Revolution, contemplated on the perfect city plan for the American metropolis (Poitras & Rienner 2001). It was expected of him to link democratic values with orthodox Greek forms. The plan of Thomas Jefferson for Washington DC revitalized the undifferentiated framework and democratically homogeneous colonial cities of Classical Greece (Poitras & Rienner 2001). Jefferson was reasonably disappointed when President Washington preferred the more hierarchical structures of L’Enfant for the new metropolis (Doran & Drischler 1996). No such disagreement occurred in Canada. Canada was merely a triumphant and fairly strong colony of the British Empire where ideas of the Enlightenment movement were slower to break through (Hall 1998). However, in spite all that, several scholars have argued that Canadian and American cities had become almost similar by the 1940 (Gordon & Lee 2003). Studies of twentieth-century aerial photographs confirm an indistinguishable city form. Land use and urban populations were comparable (Gordon & Lee 2003). The ongoing similarity of the pre WWII American and Canadian city seems to be triggered by technology instead of ideology, culture, and economy (Flaherty & Manning 1993). According to one scholar, “The only truly significant difference we find between the modern American city and its Canadian counterpart is the dramatic disparity in per capita expenditure on highways. This seems to have affected the economic playing field in both obvious and unanticipated ways” (Gordon & Lee 2003, 4). The American and Canadian City: How Different or How Similar? The common trends of transportation and land use in American cities are apparent: growing suburbanization of housing and employment together with increasing use of personal vehicles (Lindsey 2002). In truth, the two apparently strengthen each other. Better earnings trigger the demand for housing and private transportation (Lindsey 2002). These two contained and are contained by suburbanization. In that case, auto-dominated is a more appropriate definer than ‘sprawl’ (Richardson & Gordon 1999). However, there are several other contributing and matching factors. Travel and communication expenditures have been dwindling for several years (Gordon & Lee 2003). More businesses are footloose in terms of location, making it doable for jobs to trail behind individuals into the cities (Gordon & Lee 2003), rather than individuals having to relocate where businesses had decided to locate. Settlement Patterns Agglomerate economy remained. Instead, they are evident in a large number of housing agglomerations with a broader spatial domain caused by lower rates of communication and transportation (Miller & Lubuele 1997). Figures from the 2000 U.S. survey prove that the suburbanization of the inhabitants persists. The cities nowadays house half of the total population (Gordon & Lee 2003). Patterns such as this keep on occurring against a backdrop of increasing growth regulations and complementary attempts to control the path of expansion and settlement away from fringe and low-density territories, all over the United States (Gordon & Lee 2003). It seems that these have not had their planned outcome. There are numerous sources of information that substantiate this argument. The 2000 Population Census showed a decade-long population increase (Holcombe 2002). Majority of the large cities did not cope even though most of their towns developed as rapidly or more rapidly (Holcombe 2002). Of the major cities, only a few notably surpass national growth. None of this is actually astonishing because rural-to-urban migrations have been continuing for some time (Sperling & Sander 2004). This phenomenon is clarified by the lifestyle preferences of most people, triggered by advance technologies, particularly declining costs of transportation and communication (Sperling & Sander 2004). Certainly, increasing technological progress have caused costs of communication to fall to such a level that a number of scholars have marveled why grouping of any form continues (Gordon & Lee 2003). Yet, as always, the aspects are intricate and difficult to reduce to only one narrative. With regard to population, scholars have emphasized that areas outside the center of metropolises normally develop most rapidly (Pucher & Lefevre 1996). Urbanization and economic growth have strengthened each other throughout the years. However, the proximity’s operational definition keeps on evolving (Kan & Strong 2006). Social organization thru transactions has been made possible when distances were minimized; social organization thru the exchange of knowledge is similarly enhanced (Kan & Strong 2006). Exchange of ideas has both community and economic implications. The advantages of diffusion are strengthened by improved connectivity, such as inexpensive modes of transporting people, products, and particularly ideas (Kan & Strong 2006). The inexpensive rates of transporting ideas are now approaching zero (Gordon & Lee 2003). This substantiates the figures, which shows considerable decentralization, a great portion of it away from cities generally and particularly from their centers (Gordon & Lee 2003). The prevailing patterns in American settlement trends are widely known to involve the following (Gordon & Lee 2003): i) the westward movement of population and employment, in more recent decades to the Sunbelt; ii) persistent rural-urban migration of jobs and people to the cities; iii) suburbanization (and, more recently, exurbanization) out of cities (p. 7). The literature on the characteristics of population growth in America has detailed different cycles of re-urbanization and de-concentration over the recent decades (Bourne 2000). The 1970s were believed to be a period of de-concentration with growth rates of metropolitan areas dwindling over those of nonmetropolitan areas (Bourne 2000). In the 1980s, the reversal reversed which were thought to be a period of urban restoration (Holcombe 2002). As previously indicated, many people have believed the recent decade as a time of metropolitan renaissance. With regard to urban travel trends in the United States, the patterns are also prominent. The escalating use of vehicles is in agreement with the settlement trends explained above; as previously discussed, they are jointly supporting (Miller & Lubuele 1997). Diffused development and auto travel persist to support and balance each other. What makes the current patterns of travel fascinating is that they continued despite of increasing policies developed to support greater densities and ‘compact’ growth (Miller & Lubuele 1997). Astonishingly, there is a major debate over how American urban transportation and settlement patterns compare to other urbanized countries, particularly those of Canada (Gordon & Lee 2003). Take into account the following examples of perspectives, a number of them suggesting bleak disparities with the American cities (Gordon & Lee 2003): 1) Urban transportation planning in Canada contrasts so sharply with that in the U.S. that it can serve to place the issue in perspective… Canadian and American cities differ markedly and across well-defined dimensions (p. 6). 2) Canadian cities have been quite successful in avoiding the crisis situations facing many cities in the USA. Canada’s progressive land use and transportation policies have produced cities and urban transport systems distinctly different from those in the USA (p. 6). 3) … the Vancouver CBD accessibility gradient is increasing sharply while the exact opposite trend is most pronounced in Los Angeles. This provides at least strong anecdotal evidence in support of the Goldberg-Mercer hypothesis of a distinct, more compact, urban form in Canada than in the U.S., and calls for further research… (p. 6). Comparing and contrasting several national aggregates of Canada and the United States show numerous parallels. Since per capita GDP disparities are exposed to fluctuations in exchange rate, the suggested lead of U.S. may be deceptive (Sperling & Sander 2004).The participation rates of the labor force of U.S. and Canada are nearly similar (Sperling & Sander 2004). Autos per capita of the U.S. are slightly above that of Canada but the latter has more public roads per capita, maybe somewhat caused by its slightly bigger vicinity (Sperling & Sander 2004). Rates of homeownership are almost similar. Two-decade urbanization patterns for Canada and the U.S. are nearly parallel (Gordon & Lee 2003). The rough indicator of population densities in urban areas implies slight disparities (Richardson & Gordon 1999). In most recent years, and possibly in contrast to anticipations, Montreal and Toronto did not prevail over all urban areas in the U.S. with regard to general population density (Richardson & Gordon 1999). The settlement patterns discussed can be characterized as auto-oriented pattern (Bourne 2000). While the vast number of employees in both countries depends on the automobile for their everyday commute, use of transportation in Canada is greater than in the United States (Bourne 2000). Of bigger concern is the Canadian pattern. Current information from the 2001 Canadian Survey shows the most current commuting and settlement patterns in Canada (Gordon & Lee 2003). Majority of their conclusions substantiate this point. Take into account these points: “… workers are no longer concentrated primarily in core municipalities, but are spreading across suburban municipalities” (Gordon & Lee 2003, pp. 9-10). The population of employees in suburban metropolises has been enlarging at a more rapid rate over the recent decades than those employed in central towns (Richardson & Gordon 1999). Roughly 1.8 million employees are in suburban towns in 1981 (Gordon & Lee 2003, 10). This figure increased by 63% by 2001; the population of employees in core towns enlarged by just 7% during this period, from 1981 to 2001 (p. 10). It seems that the most current information on Canada weigh in on the character of American urban development—despite of policies in Canada, many intended to evade this consequence (Holcombe 2002). It is hard to oppose the belief that preferences affect policies. This assumption is still valid with the potential requirement that policy disparities can confirm a delay, whereby American form of development in Canada is basically slightly slowed (Bourne 2000). In contrast to the arguments of some scholars, it may be correct to take into account the contemporary North American city in the end (Gordon & Lee 2003). Indeed, it may also be likely to argue in terms of the contemporary globally developed metropolis. Urban Poverty The major and possibly most significant of the structural growths claimed to be at the core of intense urban poverty is drastic immigration, industrialization, and urbanization (Banting & Hoberg 1997). Just as they carried out in American cities, Canadian cities developed unusually fast, particularly after the Second World War (Banting & Hoberg 1997). The typical annual growth rate of Canada’s urban population between 1951 and 1971 was the highest among the members of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Throughout this era, urbanized Canada’s population almost doubled (Flaherty & Manning 1993). A wave of immigrants was linked to drastic growth and also linked to the growth of intense urban poverty in Canada and the United States (Goldberg & Mercer 1986). In the period after the two World Wars and around the turn of the century a vast number of immigrants came into Canada, hence by 1971 entirely 15% of the overall population were foreign settlers (Massey & Eggers 1990, 1156). A large number of poor immigrants transferred into urban areas where they were mainly concentrated in central territories (Massey & Eggers 1990). Entirely 30% of the inner city population of Canada by 1986 was foreign settlers, which was nearly twice the overall national standard of 16% (Sperling & Sander 2004, 92). The outcome of this phenomenon was heightened geographic differentiation anchored in ethnicity, race, and occupation within the cities of Canada (Reynolds 1992). Industrial collapse is another underlying component in theoretical accounts of intense urban poverty (McFate 1991). At this point the facts are reliable and abundant in both the United States and Canada. Huge bilateral transactions, similar industrial arrangements, parallel demographics, similar employee salaries, and almost similar productivity levels between Canada and the U.S. all imply that the economy of America is a very reliable indicator of its Canadian equivalent (Doran & Drischler 1996). Failure of manufacturing in the 1970s was also included (Bourne 2000). In Canada’s previous industrial hubs, manufacturing jobs decreased radically. Manufacturing’s national share in GDP started to dwindle in Canada by the 1960s (Bourne 2000). This collapse heightened by the 1980s, until by 1972 the core cities of Canada had lost 10% of their manufacturing jobs (Bourne 2000, 104). The most prominent decline was in the axis of Quebec and Windsor, which had formerly comprised 80% of the manufacturing production of Canada (Reynolds 1992, 128). Specifically, the manufacturing unit of Montreal experienced some progress in the towns and significant drop in the core cities (Sperling & Sander 2004). The outcome for cities such as Hamilton and Montreal was sizable boosts in the unemployment rates within the central cities (Sperling & Sander 2004). Even though several of these manufacturing employments were displaced by service occupations, the salaries given in the service sector were usually insufficient to sustain a household above the poverty threshold (Jencks 1991). Hence, the average income of families in core cities decreased between 1970 and 1985 (Jencks 1991, 118). The response to this industrial development and collapse was expected. American and Canadian cities lost exclusive inhabitants. In the United States, the resettlement was mainly white and mainly middle- and upper-class (Barry et al. 1995). In Canada, even though there was slight change in racial aspects, the migration process in the former industrial centers of Canada was identical to that in the cities of America (Barry et al. 1995). More than half of the core cities of Canada lost sizeable populations (Poitras & Rienner 2001). Indeed, suburbanization, as shown by growth of population in the set of scales, was more articulated in Canada. In general, the proportion of the population of Canada residing in urban areas increased until the 1970s and afterward started to decline (Poitras & Rienner 2001). The population of the twelve major core cities of Canada dropped by 37% between 1951 and 1986 while that of remote territories grew by 200% (Miller & Lubuele 1997, 738); the impact was quite erratic. Although more recent service-focused metropolises such as Edmonton developed, former industrial centers such as Montreal suffered economic slowdown and population decline (Bourne 2000). From 1966, the city center of Montreal started to lose inhabitants as the peripheral towns experienced increased in population that were stimulated by migration of the middle class (Bourne 2000). By 1971 the percentage of the central cities of the overall urban population of Montreal had declined by 13%. It dropped a further 11% in the subsequent years (p. 102). From 1951 to 1985, the central city population of Montreal dropped from 219,700 to 93,000 (Banting & Hoberg 1997, 88). The inner-city housing decline was indicative of this population decrease and industrial collapse (Gordon & Lee 2003). 57% of the houses in core municipalities were more than 40 years old, in comparison to 15% in the peripheral regions in 1986 (Bourne 2000, 103). As the core city in Montreal lost its appeal with investors, infrastructures and buildings became outmoded and distasteful to upper- and middle-class families; this heightened the migration (Bourne 2000). Another step toward intense urban poverty in Canada and the United States was a chain of governmental regulations and projects that accelerated the tempo of core urban migration and further enlarged the racial and class features of this exodus (Smith 1923). While many scholars point out that the growth of concentrated urban poverty was mainly an outcome of private market factors, particular governmental projects have strengthened suburbanization of jobs and enlarged the increasing concentration of minorities and underprivileged in inner cities of Canada and the United States (Massey & Eggers 1990). Policies on public housing have probably been the most important factor (Massey & Eggers 1990). Even though governments of Canada were by no means overtly prejudiced in their policies, the regimes of Canada and the U.S. did aid the escalation of concentrated urban poverty by financing uptown home ownership and by putting cheap public housing within core municipalities (Miller & Lubuele 1997). Consequently, 60% of Americans and 63% of Canadians were homeowners by 1983 (Reynolds 1992, 129). On the contrary, merely 14% of the houses in the core cities of Canada were owned in 1986 (Bourne 2000, 105). Urban restoration was also a detrimental effect of government policy. Canada followed the lead of the United States in the 1960s and implemented major federal squatters’ area demolition projects (Leman 1980). This move further intensified poverty, as inadequate new cheap housing was built, and poor inhabitants were compelled to resettle into nearby slums (Leman 1980). There are two further commonalities between the governmental organizations of Canada and the U.S. that are connected to heightened urban poverty (Sperling & Sander 2004). First, dissimilar from all other services, education is sponsored and carried out at the local level in Canada and the U.S., Quebec not included. This greatly adds to the reasons for affluent towns to discriminate poor settlers (Sperling & Sander 2004).The second important similarity is in fiscal differences between suburb and core city. In Canada and the U.S., suburbs have a tendency to have more resources than core cities (Sperling & Sander 2004). As assessed by urban per capita expenditures or revenues, the total fiscal difference between suburbs and core cities is significantly large in the U.S. and Canada (Gordon & Lee 2003). Nonetheless, there are major disparities between Canada and the United States’ government organizations that may have brought about a minor deviation of outcomes (Banting & Hoberg 1997). Major among these is the disintegration of American cities. While there was one government for every 2,000 citizens in 1979, there was a single government per 4,000 citizens of Canada (Jencks 1990, 128). Just as significant is the fact that several urban areas in Canada have combined power in city or regional administrations that may be better capable of organizing attempts between suburbs and core cities (Jencks 1990). On the contrary, the disintegration apparent in the urban system of the U.S. may result in greater differentiation between cities and as a result to a greater proportion of concentrated urban poverty in the country (Bourne 2000). Connected to the disintegration of American cities is the increase in zoning decrees, which have sustained most uptown residential areas for small housing and have successfully monitored the poor residents in the U.S. (Kan & Strong 2006). This kind of selective zoning has also been emphasized in Canada. Nevertheless, it is probable that selective zoning is not that widespread in Canada because provinces have retained power over property law (Kan & Strong 2006). Continuing experience with comparatively high poverty rates is also a major component that may be linked to the presence of concentrated urban poverty in the U.S. and Canada. Similarities between the United States and Canada usually contrast national poverty incidences in the two countries (Gordon & Lee 2003). Nevertheless, the U.S. and Canada sit hand in hand at one end of the industrialized, prosperous countries in that they both have prolonged familiarity with significant poverty levels. Katherine McFate (1991) has shown that the U.S. and Canada had the ‘highest post-transfer poverty rates’(p. 38) in the industrialized Western world that she studied. Even those investigations that emphasize the disparity between the rates of poverty of the two countries assume that the rates of poverty vary by at least 3% when the identical poverty threshold is applied in both nations (McFate 1991, 38). While it is a fact that the much bigger social welfare plan of Canada has considerable lessened the predicament of poverty in that nation, it is also apparent that post-transfer poverty incidences in the U.S. and Canada are comparatively high, in comparison to countries in Western Europe (Leman 1980). If the governments of the U.S. and Canada, similar to those of many countries in Western Europe, were to choose to allocate a bigger portion of their resources openly to the underprivileged, wide-ranging concentrated urban poverty basically would cease to exist. This concise discussion of structural trends in the United States and Canada has proven that the two nations have developed quite similarly. The structural mechanism that functioned to differentiate the population by race and income and to generate concentrated urban poverty in the American soil is also true in Canada. It implies that dense urban poverty may also be wide-ranging and prevalent in Canada. Conclusions When architect anywhere in the world recommend highly concentrated settlement, they fail to address the issue of the ‘high’. In fact, there is no set of knowledge that is relevant to steer them. Top-down architecture is dependent on the knowledge problem of the architect, as notably argued by Hayek (Gordon & Lee 2003). Cities included. Holcombe (2002) has argued that the immense duty of city planners be made simpler by having them concentrate on architecture, circulating these plans, and facilitating the restoration of free land markets. However, the level to which major top-down city planning can satisfy the denigration of Hayek is indefinite. City planning, even if it could, normally requires vast public spending and is unavoidably politicized. To be certain, the step towards privatization of communications and transportation also includes politics and has never been simple (Gordon & Lee 2003). This essay has discussed details of ever more parallel settlement trends in Canada and the U.S. to indicate that lifestyle choices affect policymaking in both nations. This obscures more the ‘Smart Growth’ plan in the United States (Kan & Strong 2006). Maybe its objectives should be reevaluated or guidelines much more effective than the ones currently operation in Canada and the United States should be learned and summoned. However, to aim for the latter would be to confront the difficult criticisms of Hayek (Gordon & Lee 2003). Socialism in the twentieth century has been illustrated as an Industrial Counter-revolution (Angus & MacIver 1938). It was prompted by the confusion brought about by unparalleled drastic change and liable for much more damages than benefits. In the new millennium, people are much more doubtful of arguments for systematic planning. Suggestions for top-down controls of land use while the world is detaching from them should be regarded with much vigilance (Hall 1998). The information discussed in this essay helps to facilitate just that. The theoretical perspective that clarifies the escalation of dense urban poverty in the United States, should also foresee the level and characteristic of dense urban poverty in Canada. Hence the author predicts concentrated urban poverty in Canada to be widespread and to be dispersed along exact racial and spatial aspects. Specifically, former manufacturing metropolises of the axis of Quebec and Windsor should be the most affected (Jencks 1991). Within this cluster, urban areas that have quite narrowed occupational differentiation outside of production should endure the broadest concentrated urban poverty. Poverty rates in the provinces should also impact upon this dispersal (Jencks 1991). With poverty rates significantly greater than those in Ontario, the provinces of Quebec, Prairie, and Atlanta should be more vulnerable to dense urban poverty (Richardson & Gordon 1999). Urban areas with a high percentage of minorities should have greater fractions of dense urban poverty, and dense urban poverty within urban areas should be linked with the percentage of ethnic minorities in a particular land. Cities such as Winnipeg with a stable and powerful metropolitan or regional governing body should have less city legal or fiscal disparity and hence less extreme poverty densities (Bourne 2000). Ultimately, with regard to intra-city spatial dispersal, the author foresees that dense urban poverty will be situation within core municipalities adjacent to industrial centers where settlers originally relocated, and outside of suburban vicinities where the well-off have inhabited. References Angus, H.F. & R.M. MacIver. 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