Abstract
In 2005, David Wolfe and Meric Gertler initiated a comprehensive study of growth and governance in Canada’s largest city-regions (metropolitan areas). The 14 chapters of this modestly priced book, written by 23 university-based authors, summarize the main findings of that ambitious study. The prevailing theme is a widely noted paradox: While economic processes increasingly operate at the global level, the economic success of individual cities increasingly depends on local matters. Given the hypercompetitive and disruptive nature of today’s global economy, the editors claim that social character will largely account for any future success that can be achieved by Canada’s largest cities. In recognizing the singular importance of attracting and retaining high-quality human capital, they focus on the density and diversity of social and economic networks, the quality of life for urban residents, and the amount of inclusion and engagement that exists in local decision making. The editors also contend that only through collective action, involving both private and public agents, can social character be upgraded in these city-regions.
The material throughout this book is informed by three well-known literatures. First, the ideas of Richard Florida on the creative class—stressing talent, technology, and tolerance—are especially visible. In Canada’s case, it is widely accepted that the amenity-poor peripheral regions will never enjoy the same advantages as the amenity-rich central regions, either in attracting new, young talent or in developing thick labor markets. In fact, both academic researchers and federal policy makers have confronted the nation’s unbalanced development problems for decades, and Canada has crafted various programs, including equalization payments among the provinces, to help even out its persistent spatial welfare disparities (Lithwick & Paquet, 1968). Moreover, some of this book’s contributors are openly skeptical that “Florida factors” are as relevant for the nation’s small cities as they are for its large ones. Another literature informing the book’s authors—and one spearheaded in economic geography by people like Allen Scott and Ann Markusen—emphasizes the recent rise of the so-called cognitive cultural industries. These knowledge-intensive industries include information and financial management, scientific research, conception and design, image creation, the media arts, and entertainment. Today, when addressing the issue of economic diversity, it often makes more sense to talk about a city’s mix of occupations than it does its mix of industries. In recent times, severe dislocations have not only occurred in Canada’s metropolitan labor markets (as some industries have risen while others have fallen), but many inner-city land and port uses in those metropolitan areas have had to be reconfigured with the exit of traditional (and often polluting) manufacturing activities. A third literature informing the material of the book is the widespread research on those factors that induce geographic concentration in economic activity. This includes one stream of thought initiated by Michael Porter that examines industry clusters, and a second stream revitalized by Jane Jacobs that examines the role of local spillovers (knowledge and other) in industry performance. Clusters and spillovers often confer economic benefits on colocating firms; both concepts have been popular with policy makers and development practitioners for some time. In fact, industrial clusters and spillovers have become so widely accepted that Porter and Jacobs, and their various colleagues, are rarely mentioned by the various authors in this volume.
Chapters 2 to 6 look at the recent experiences of Canada’s very largest cities. Wolfe and Allison Bramwell first look at Toronto, which is far and away the nation’s most important economic and decision-making hub. When compared to the United States, this city-region (whose population now exceeds 6 million) combines the financial importance of New York and Chicago with the media-entertainment importance of New York and Los Angeles. The metropolitan area houses one world-class university and several other well-known tertiary institutions, and it benefits immensely from having the nation’s most important international airport. The chapter is most interesting for showing how this powerful urban economy reinvented itself several times during the 70-year postwar period. Surveys indicate that, in recent times, many creative people, including fashion designers and actors, have moved to or stayed in Toronto because of its high quality of life, as widely indicated in the annual reports prepared by agencies like Mercer and The Economist. The authors make note of various local synergies, including how the ascendancy of financial administration in the 1990s induced a downtown commercial building boom, which in turn led to higher demands for creative people working in building design and in high-rise construction technology. Surprisingly, the following chapter on Montreal, written by Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay and two colleagues, says very little about the political uncertainty that severely affected that city during the 1980s and 1990s, and which caused that city to fall from its long-held position as a rival to Toronto. But during this period some suburban areas actually flourished following (often subsidized) investments in the aerospace and biopharmaceutical industries, while other locations, mainly close to downtown, became marginalized with the departure of old industries. Today Montreal houses several national champions in the creative industries, including Bombardier in transportation and SNC Lavalin in engineering. Although the prevailing political uncertainty caused the city to miss a couple of building cycles, some parts of downtown that eventually faced the bulldozer were fortunately saved by nongovernment groups that mobilized to preserve the city’s historic character. Montreal, too, is rightfully proud to offer a distinctive quality of life that includes several internationally known festivals (e.g., jazz, humor) and a vibrant arts district called the Quartier des spectacles. Greater Vancouver, in comparison, began experiencing extreme shocks to its housing market not long after trade relations were intensified with Asia during the 1980s. Tom Hutton and Trevor Barnes summarize how the city’s Living First program has not only included innovative design in high-rise communities but also the enhancement of the public realm through a proliferation of new restaurants, coffee shops, craft breweries, and other lifestyle amenities. Governance was changed to accommodate this vision, and land-use planners now place more weight on neighborhood inputs and less weight on codified regulation. Moreover, Vancouver’s green and high-tech industries have enjoyed substantial success through a “build to sell” mentality, where the small aggressive firms of the local economy exhibit a lot of churning and no visible national champions emerge like Microsoft or Starbucks in nearby Seattle. In recent times, considerable job growth has taken place in the media and entertainment (including video games) industries where an unfavorable exchange rate with the U.S. dollar has been a blessing for exports. However, the authors are surprisingly mute about the possible effects of excessively high property prices, where key stakeholders like university faculty and medical researchers will likely decide to leave the city-region in the quest for more favorable financial circumstances (Saxenian, 1983).
Then chapters 7 to 14 look at the recent experiences of Canada’s medium- and small-sized cities. Readers familiar with regional learning will enjoy Tara Vinodrai’s discussion of the Waterloo region in southern Ontario. Here is mention of the classic technology transfer mechanisms: university spin-offs, high mobility in the local labor markets, and networks facilitating firm learning. She points out that the most famous regional spin-off, Blackberry, was not really a university spin-off, and claims that current performance in the region depends much more on local entrepreneurial support than in the past. Two chapters that examine the growth experiences of other Ontario cities share a common perspective that deserves to be highlighted. Neil Bradford, writing on London, and Betsy Donald and Heather Hall on Kingston, claim that their cities are of the more “ordinary” type and that this poses special challenges to innovation in today’s high-tech era. Each cites Todtling and Trippl (2005), who suggested that challenges to development exist along three different dimensions: (a) lock-in problems, where actors resist changing their traditional mindsets; (b) organizational constraints, where labor markets are especially thin and knowledge does not easily pass between workers; and (c) internal fragmentation, where weak institutions and networks impede good governance. While both Ontario cities claimed some manufacturing in the past, until recently London prospered by housing the national headquarters for several insurance companies and Kingston prospered by having a mix of universities (public and military) and correctional facilities. Both cities are currently experimenting with collective action as they seek local solutions to ensure success in today’s hypercompetitive globalized economy. Finally, Yves Bourgeois discusses the current situation in Moncton, a small, slow-growing city in New Brunswick. His theme is local resilience—one that certainly makes sense given widespread global concerns about climate change, terrorism, and economic shocks (Richardson, Park, Moore, & Pan, 2014). Here the author touches on a variety of resiliency strategies, including promoting diversity in local industries and occupations, reducing “absentee landlords” who have little or no stake in the city-region, and forging cooperative links with other small places. He also notes that creative migrant workers, who have either temporarily or permanently moved from larger cities, have significantly upgraded the local knowledge base of Moncton.
In general, the book is both interesting and informative. The editing, including organization, is very good and the various chapters flow along seamlessly. Readers unacquainted with Canada not only get a short historic profile of many of the nation’s most important city-regions but also get a reasonably unbiased view of the recent social and economic events transpiring in those metropolitan areas. That said, this reviewer would have liked a little more balance in geographic coverage—6 of the 13 cities are located in Ontario—although the domain of a large project like this depends entirely on the pool of willing participants. A chapter on Edmonton, in Alberta, would have been nice, as its economy is somewhat different from that of Calgary, and that city also functions as a gateway to Canada’s northern territories with its scattered indigenous peoples. Another chapter on fast-growing Kelowna, in British Columbia, could have highlighted the partnered innovations taking place in a vibrant wine and tourism economy that is radically transforming the entire Okanagan region. Two appendices supplement the chapters and the first of these, which provides 2011 data for both socioeconomic indicators and leading industry specializations, is helpful. However, the second appendix, which consists of maps of the various metropolitan areas, has very limited value. At the very least these maps should have indicated the locations of the leading industry clusters; they also could have denoted the main features of infrastructure in the 13 metropolitan areas. Another shortcoming of the volume is the complete absence of either a subject or author index.
My other general comment relates to the particular methodological approach adopted for this project. Each chapter in the book constitutes a case study and any comparative perspective is lost because few references are made to other Canadian cities, and even fewer references are made to American (or other) cities. Furthermore, like quite a lot of writing on this topic, the terms innovation and creativity are used rather loosely and the underpinnings of economic growth are never fully articulated (Shearmur, 2012). Very little consideration is given to matters such as patents or business start-ups, both of which can be counted to see how these might vary systematically (in space and time) across Canada’s city-regions. To be more specific, there are no attempts to model how the volume of patents is related to the size and complexity of the metropolitan economies, and there are no attempts to model how employment tends to lag behind new business formation in those various economies (Fritsch, 2015; Varga & Horváth, 2015). Of course, seeking precise answers to these somewhat narrower questions would have required the consideration of many more city-regions in this study of recent growth and governance in urban Canada.