Canadian Cities and the New Regionalism

Abstract

AbstractIn the United States, the new regionalism was invented because the old regionalism had proven politically impossible to implement. For Canadian cities, provincial legislatures have frequently imposed various institutional reforms many of which are highly relevant to the concerns of at least some American new regionalists. Canadian policy-makers have recently shown great interest in the tenets of the new regionalism, even in places where old regionalist structures have long been established. The Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), the Greater Toronto Services Board, and the Montreal Metropolitan Community are all institutions with which American new regionalists should be familiar. The GVRD has been criticized in Canada for being too weak The fact that the GVRD rests somewhere between the old and the new regionalism is just one of many reasons why it merits more attention from both Americans and Canadians who are concerned with the effective governance of our city-regions.