Canadian Urban Growth Trends : Implications for a National Settlements Policy [1 ed.] 9780774857833, 9780774801409

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Canadian Urban Growth Trends

Human Settlement Issues is a continuing series of publications dealing with the recommendations of the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat '76 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Habitat and Land Planning and Building Down Under The Challenge of Squatter Settlements Settlement Planning and Development Canadian Urban Growth Trends

Human Settlement Issues 5

CANADIAN

GROWTH

URBAN

TRENDS

Implications for a

National Settlement Policy Ira M. Robinson

Published in association with

The Centre for Human Settlements at the University of British Columbia

1981 UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA PRESS VANCOUVER AND LONDON

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS: IMPLICATIONS FOR A NATIONAL SETTLEMENT POLICY

©The University of British Columbia 1981 All rights reserved

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Robinson, Ira M. (Ira Miles), 1924Canadian urban growth trends (Human settlement issues; 5) Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-7748-0140-9 1. Cities and towns—Canada—Growth. 2. Urbanization—Canada. 3. Urban policy—Canada. I. University of British Columbia. Centre for Human Settlements. II. Title. III. Series. HT127.R62 307.7'6'0971 C81-091097-7

ISBN-0-7748-0140-9 Printed in Canada by John Deyell Company Willowdale, Ontario

CONTENTS

Illustrations

vi

Tables

vii

Foreword

H. PETER OBERLANDER

Preface

ix

xiii

1 Misconceptions about Present and future Canadian Urbanization: 1 Conventional Wisdom 2 Recent Urban Growth Trends

8

3 Reasons for Changes: Some Tentative Hypotheses

43

4 The Future Pattern of Settlement

55

5 Planning for the Emerging Settlement Pattern: Problems and Opportunities

78

6 Need for a National Settlement Policy

99

Epilogue: Some Research and Information Needs

129

Notes

134

Appendix: Habitat '76 Recommendations for Settlement Policies and Planning

148

Bibliography

152

ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates

following page 62

1. Educating for the Future 2. Downtown Ottawa 3. Waiting for the Bus 4. A Place to Play 5. A Vancouver Marina 6. Moving Day 7. Multiple Housing 8. The Wave of the Future? Figures 1. Urban Growth Slows Down

23

2. Where Canadians Live

25

3. Major Problems, Needs and Opportunities in Canada's Emerging Pattern of Settlement by Typical Types of Community Growth Situations

82

4. Objectives of a National Settlement Policy by Type of Emerging Community Growth Situation, and Potential Federal Policies and Programmes

116

TABLES

1. Selected Population Forecasts of Census Metropolitan Areas, for 1976 and 2001 and Actual Population, 1976

5

2. Components of Population Growth, Canada, by Intercensal Periods, 1851-1976

9

3. Number and Percentage Distribution of Population by Broad Age Group, 1921-1976, and Projected 1981, 1991, and 2001

12

4. Dependency Ratios, Canada, 1931-1976, and Projected, 1991 and 2001

13

5. Population by 15-Year Age Groups for Urban Areas by Size, Rural Non-Farm, and Rural Farm Population, 1971 and 1976

15

6. Provincial Growth Rates and Interprovincial Migration, 1961-1976

21

7. Urbanization Trends, 1851-1976

24

8. Population of Principal Regions of Metropolitan Development, 1901-1976

27

9. Population of Census Metropolitan Area Central Cities, 1971 and 1976

29

10. Population of Metropolitan Areas' Central Cities, Inner Cities and Suburban Communities, 1971 and 1976

30

11. Population Change in Metropolitan Inner Cities, 1961-1976

31

12. Population Concentration in Census Metropolitan Areas, 1951-1976

33

13. Population of Individual Census Metropolitan Areas, 1951-1976

35

14. Metropolitan Concentration by Regions, 1961-1976

36

15. Population of Urban Areas by Size Class, 1971 and 1976

39

16. Population Change by Major Settlement Type, 19661971 and 1971-1976

40

17. Population Change, by Community Type, Province of Alberta, 1966-1971, 1971-1976

42

FOREWORD

Settlement distribution and foreseeable changes in their relationships to each other are of the utmost significance for Canada's future. Canada's communities are interdependent and therefore highly interactive. They constitute a dynamic system; which is subject to public policies and can be managed in the interest of national, regional and local goals and objectives. Over many years public policy vis-a-vis Canada's urban communities was accepted as a response to larger national policies of a social and economic nature. It is the declared view of most governments, particularly at the federal level, that economic and social policies can and should be determined for Canada as a whole and that the settlements within its border will adjust accordingly. It was not realized that each of these and related policies had measurable and specific implications on where people chose to live, work, and find satisfaction with their lives. The locational implications of national policies and their particular impact on existing and future settlements was only vaguely perceived and often disregarded as secondary to national objectives. In a sense, the settlements of Canada grew up in response to national, economic and social policies and were treated as the residue of larger national concerns. The residue approach to policy consequently results in communities badly serving national goals and objectives. They are often subject to remedial programmes to alleviate the unforeseen or undesirable implications of national policies, instead of playing a vital and dynamic role in supporting and building a united country. Against this background a group of experienced academics and professionals examined the current state of Canada's settlement system and its emerging tendencies. The 1971 and 1976 Canada Census formed a point of departure, particularly the relevant statistical trends that have shown that the growth of metropolitan centres over the past decade has been below the national percentage increase. While the population of Canadians residing in the small and medium-sized cities has increased, the population in the metropolitan areas of Canada has ix

x

IRA M. ROBINSON

declined in relative terms. For example, in British Columbia, the growth rate of Vancouver has fallen off, while a number of towns in the interior have grown more rapidly than the national population. It is one of the major research commitments of the Centre for Human Settlements to pursue these intertwining relationships between policy formulation and population distribution in the context of Canadian settlements. The Centre was established in the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of British Columbia in recognition of the national and global significance of the issues raised at the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements convened in Vancouver in 1976. The Centre's mandate includes continuing research and dissemination of the issues raised at the Habitat Conference and highlighting solutions to these issues in the context of Canada and elsewhere. The Centre pursues its mandate through a programme of invitational seminars involving academics and professionals and attracting scholars-in-residence to spend varying amounts of time on the campus for research and teaching. Professor Ira Robinson was the leading participant in the invitational seminar on "Urban Settlement Distribution: The Dynamics of Canada's System" that met at the UBC Centre for Human Settlements in the fall of 1979. His presentation was the basis for this substantially expanded manuscript, which deals at length with Canadian urban growth trends and related public policy implications. Those invited to the seminar were also acutely aware of the declining interest in Canada's settlement system by the federal government and its diminished commitment to managing the system as a whole exemplified by the recent dissolution of the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs. While the ministry's function may no longer be a federal priority, the issues of urbanization and the resulting critical problems have not diminished. The qualitative and quantitative distribution of Canada's population throughout its settlement system is an urgent and continuing challenge to policy formulation. The Centre for Human Settlements was fortunate in being able to attract a broad range of outstanding professional and academic participants to its seminar representing many government, university, and industrial/commercial institutions concerned with population, migration, and their special consequences throughout the settlement system. The emphasis throughout the discussion was on identifying current and emerging trends, relating them to policy needs with special emphasis on the west as an important component of the total dynamics of the Canadian system. Population distribution and resulting expansion or decline of settlements in a country that is rapidly approaching a zero population growth underlines public policy issues concerned with immigration and migration as well as programmes addressing industrial location and regional disparities.

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

xi

A decade ago, apparently supported by the 1971 Census, academics and professionals seemed to agree that Canada was heading into a future of three mega-cities—Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver—with the rest of the country in between becoming areas of declining population and empty spaces. This perception has now been called into question, but extensive work has yet to be done to identify a coherent alternative outlook and trace policy implications. Dr. Robinson is professor of urban planning in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary and a highly regarded and well-established scholar in the field of urbanization and community planning. Previously he taught at the University of British Columbia and University of Southern California and was visiting professor at the Hebrew University, the Technion, the University of Haifa, and the Technical University of Berlin. His teaching, research, and publications span thirty years of productive scholarship and have resulted in a substantial contribution to professional practice and its literature. His books include Decision-making in Urban Planning, published in 1972, and (with W. T. Perks) Urban and Regional Planning in a Federal State: The Canadian Experience, published in 1979. It was a pleasure to convene the seminar and to encourage Dr. Robinson to expand his lead paper in the light of the lively and well-informed discussion of his colleagues. The Centre for Human Settlements is grateful to all those who participated in the seminar and who have subsequently critically reviewed Dr. Robinson's manuscript, particularly Professor Brahm Wiesman, Director, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, and Professor Gerald Hodge, Director, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University. It is our hope that this publication will substantially illuminate the current debate on urban growth trends in Canada and government's responsibility for public policies. Dr. Robinson's book joins a series of publications which together attempt to articulate settlement issues and focus public attention on the urgent need for governmental policies to manage the settlement process which sets the stage for a successful resolution of social and economic problems in Canada and elsewhere. Dr. Robinson's book is an important contribution to the relevant literature and the Centre is proud to present it in its series on Human Settlement Issues. H. PETER OBERLANDER Director Centre for Human Settlements

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PREFACE

The accelerated urbanization trends the world over since World War II have resulted in an increasing concern for and interest in urban problems and in the development of a whole variety of policies for dealing with them. Some of this concern and interest has focused on the national level of responsibility in urban affairs and on the need for national policies to deal with urban problems. Most major developed countries and many in the Third World have initiated efforts at the national level to rationalize and integrate existing policies and programmes, and where necessary to institute new ones, related to urban growth. In most cases these national policies and programmes are designed to ameliorate problems related to the form and structure of urban areas, such as urban sprawl, rehabilitation of the older, declining portions of the inner core areas, provision of open space, and development of new communities. In a few instances, however, this concern has led to the formulation at the national level of comprehensive and long-range strategies for influencing and controlling the urbanization pattern as a whole, that is, the rate and distribution of urban growth. Britain, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands are a few of the countries which have instituted broad policies for regulating urbanization. While the specific urban problems and processes in these various countries differ in detail, the goals of their national urbanization policies tend to have similar themes.1 Three in particular stand out most prominently: 1. The desire to reduce or at least limit the increasingly massive social and environmental consequences of continued concentration of population (and employment opportunities, social services, and decision-making as well) in a few metropolitan centres; xiii

xiv

IRA M. ROBINSON

2. The desire to raise living standards above some minimum standard in disadvantaged cities and regions, and, as a corollary of 1, to reduce the expanding inequalities between growing and disadvantaged urban areas and regions; 3. The maintenance of aggregate economic growth at rates commensurate with rising social needs and aspirations, at the same time conserving scarce natural resources. These goals have been incorporated in what has come to be variously called a "national urban growth policy" or a "national settlement policy." (For reasons discussed later in this monograph, the latter term is preferred by this writer.) The interest in and concern for formulating, at the national level, a national settlement policy received added impetus as a result of the work of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat), held in Vancouver in June 1976. Among the many issues addressed in the Declaration of Principles, as well as in the specific recommendations for national action and international co-operation, the need for each country to develop, at the national level, an integrated national policy for human settlements and the environment was stressed. (See the Appendix for the relevant principles and recommendations related to this issue.) Canada is not among those countries that have seen fit to develop national settlement policies, notwithstanding the fact that it is one of the most urbanized countries in the world and certainly has not been immune to the many problems associated with accelerated urbanization. This is not to say that there have not been proposals along these lines in the past; indeed, during the 1960's and early 1970's, Canadian urban studies literature was full of proposals for a national policy designed to limit the growth of the three national metropolises (Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver) and deconcentrate the growth into new towns, satellite cities, and growth pole centres. There was also in the early 1970's a vague commitment on the part of the federal government, through the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, to the principle of deconcentration.2 But, as the Canadian delegation to Habitat acknowledged in one of the documents submitted to the conference, "Canada has not had and does not now have a human settle-

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

XV

ments policy that encompasses both the individual dwelling and the national distribution of population and economic activity."3 Nor did the Canadian documents specify a need for a national policy on human settlements. For example, there was a definite attitude in the Canadian delegation (also implied in the official documents) that national settlement planning implied too much government control and was appropriate only for unitary systems with centralized planning at the national level.4 The delegation's Co-chairman, in his speech to the plenary session of the conference, noted that as a federal state, the several levels of government all have significant responsibilities for human settlements and that coherent and effective policies in Canada can only be achieved through inter-governmental co-operation.5 Presumably, the necessary co-operation has not materialized thus far and is not expected to in the near future. What is strange about the Canadian documents is that while they indicated neither the existence of nor the need for a national settlement policy, with a few exceptions, they all forecast a continuation of the past urbanization trends into the twenty-first century, trends which in other countries have led to the formulation of such policies: expanding urban growth, continued concentration of that growth in the major metropolises, and decline of small towns and rural centres. What is perhaps even stranger is that, in fact, at the very same time that these forecasts of massive future urbanization were being made, changes were occurring in the pattern of settlement reflecting just the opposite. As demonstrated in Chapter 2, analysis of the 1976 Census data shows that in the early 1970's urban growth was slowing down, as was the growth of many metropolitan areas; the rural population appeared to have stabilized, and small towns and rural centres all across the country were growing rapidly. Those responsible for preparing the Canadian documents to Habitat were not the only ones who did not notice these changes; most other researchers, urbanists, and public officials were also making the same sort of forecasts during these years. While considerably more research is needed, the available evidence on the reasons for the changes, plus additional factors on the horizon, such as the possible impacts of the energy crisis, point to a likely continuation of these trends, at least through the

xvi

IRA M. ROBINSON

1990's. After all, similar trends are also underway, even more pervasively, in the United States and most West European countries, indicating that these urbanization trends may be a new feature of post-industrial societies. Given a continuation of these trends toward deconcentration of population and the absence of the massive urban growth that was once expected, it might be argued, as some have already done, that the very reasons traditionally used to justify national regulation of urbanization trends no longer exist, that the slowing of growth of the largest metropolitan areas and the deconcentration of this growth into small and medium sized urban centres are occurring naturally and do not require governmental intervention at the national level. And, if you add other considerations—for example, continued inflation and economic uncertainty, slowdown of over-all population growth, increased provincial and regional pressures for greater autonomy—the probability, let alone the need for a national settlement policy, becomes even more remote. To the contrary, an underlying purpose of this monograph is to argue that these very trends and emerging factors make such a policy even more necessary than before. The key feature of the emerging settlement pattern is diversity of community growth rates, ranging from rapid growth to slow growth and zero growth, even absolute decline of communities of different sizes.6 Each of these situations presents special problems and opportunities, which suggest the need to deal with all aspects of settlement change and not just settlement crises or urban growth as such. It is necessary to recognize and more fully appreciate now, after a decade or so of preoccupation with the big cities, that the wellbeing of residents in all sizes and types of settlement is interrelated. This means, in particular, that it is vital to explicitly consider the smaller towns and cities in the national system of settlements if Canada is to develop and implement sensitive and effective policies and programmes for settlement development. While this is being recognized in several provincial/regional strategies that are in place or evolving, it is not, as yet, at the federal level. In the development and implementation of a national settlement policy for Canada, it is clear that the federal government should have the key role. As discussed in Chapter 6, the federal government, through its various policies and programmes, both directly and indirectly has an impact on the rate and distribution

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

xvii

of settlements and population. So, at a minimum, if the various federal actions were co-ordinated, there would be a considerable advance towards implementing a comprehensive long-range settlement strategy. But a truly national policy should encompass the interests and activities of all participants in urban affairs, especially the provinces; in short, it should be a policy which represents some kind of consensus. Here, the present prospect is not as promising, for, as discussed in Chapter 6, most of the important preconditions for such a policy to be developed, and most importantly, implemented, do not exist. However, the situation, as in the case of most public policies, is not intractable; changes in the attitudes of Canadians or in political leadership at the national level, or in the British North America Act (Canada's constitution) could certainly alter this prospect. The purpose of this monograph is to open a debate and dialogue among all those responsible for or concerned with urban development in Canada regarding the urgent need for a national settlement policy. It is organized as follows: Chapter 1 describes the misconceptions and "conventional wisdom" that were prevalent during the late 1960's and early 1970's which led most researchers, planners, and public officials to misread the future direction of urbanization. Chapter 2 details the changes that are occurring in the pattern of settlement and in other demographic characteristics (especially age composition), as revealed by an analysis of the 1976 Census. In Chapter 3, the writer offers his hypotheses and conjectures about the reasons for these changes; and in Chapter 4, his prediction of the nature and characteristics of the emerging spatial pattern. Chapter 5 identifies and discusses the special problems (and opportunities) the metropolitan areas expected to undergo slow growth, zero growth, or actual decline are likely to face, as well as the small towns and rural centres that will be growing rapidly in the next decade or so. Chapter 6 presents the author's case for a national settlement policy (including a fairly detailed description of relevant federal policies and activities) and an analysis of the feasibility of Canada achieving a consensus of all relevant jurisdictions and interest groups for a national policy. The Epilogue outlines some of the key research and information needs, if Canada is to successfully confront the new circumstances inherent in the emerging settlement pattern.

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Canadian Urban Growth Trends

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I MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT PRESENT AND FUTURE CANADIAN URBANIZATION: CONVENTIONAL

WISDOM

During the 1960's and continuing through the early 1970's, academic researchers, public officials, planners, and federal government departments concerned with Canadian urban development were forecasting continued rapid urban (and population) growth by the years 1991 and 2001 and were arguing that the major urban problem facing the nation was the continuing rapid growth of its largest cities and metropolitan areas, in particular the Big Three: Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. At the same time, these forecasts indicated that the growth of smaller centres all across Canada would show a further relative decline. Most of the forecasts generally drew on a similar set of assumptions about urbanization trends and future urban prospects which were based on the conventional wisdom and empirical data of the 1950's and early 1960's,1 but which are no longer correct or appropriate—as we have discovered from the 1976 Census data. The major key assumptions or positions underlying these forecasts were the following: 1. National population growth in general and urban growth in particular will continue at a high rate in the coming decades, although perhaps not as rapid as previously. By 2001, the population was expected to reach around 34 million, with the urban component constituting between 85 and 95 per cent of the total. 2. The huge population growth expected will continue to be concentrated in the metropolitan areas, especially in the Big Three. Specifically, it was assumed and forecast that the combined population of the metropolitan areas would run to around 60 per cent of the total, with over one-third located in the three national metropolises. 3

4

IRA M. ROBINSON

3. Continued urban growth in general and metropolitan concentration in particular would be based primarily on the emptying of the rural areas and the decline of small towns all across Canada, but especially from the Atlantic region, Quebec, and the Prairies. 4. The established industrial and financial heartland of the nation, focused primarily in central Ontario, will continue to increase its dominance over the national economy, especially at the expense of the peripheral regions of the country, by capturing the benefits as well as incomes derived from agglomeration economies and technological innovations. Perhaps the most well-known of these forecasts was included in the highly influential and often quoted "Lithwick Report," which was commissioned and published by the federal government.2 The researchers forecast that urban growth, including concentration in the three national metropolises, would continue at a rapid rate. Table 1 gives the Lithwick forecasts for the individual Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA's).3 There were also several forecasts prepared for the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs during the early 1970's which, using 1971 and earlier Census data, likewise forecast continued urban growth and concentration of this growth in the major metropolitan areas. One such forecast, published as recently as 1976 (but presumably prior to the availability of the 1976 Census data), projected fairly high growth rates for most of the CMA's by the years 1991 and 2001, although not as rapid as Lithwick and his associates projected (see Table 1 for the 1976 Ministry of State for Urban Affairs [MSUA] forecasts fo the year 2001). The MSUA forecast also projected the populations for the individual CMA's for 1976 (as noted, before the 1976 Census data had become available); these are also shown in Table 1, together with the actual 1976 figures for these areas. A comparison of columns 1 and 2 shows big differences in the aggregate metropolitan populations and for individual CMA's. MSUA has since revised its long-term forecasts for metropolitan area growth, taking into account the 1976 Census figures (also included in Table 1). As can be seen, these revised forecasts, both in aggregate and for individual CMA's, are considerably different from those in its 1976 forecast.

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

5

TABLE 1 Selected Population Forecasts of Census Metropolitan Areas for 1976 and 2001, and Actual Population, 1976 Population, 1976 (in OOO's) Projected Actual (1976 MSUA)1 (Census)2 Toronto Montreal Vancouver Ottawa- Hull Winnipeg Edmonton Quebec City Hamilton Calgary St. Catharines-Niagara Kitchener- Waterloo London Halifax Windsor Victoria Sudbury Regina St. John's (Nfld.) Oshawa Saskatoon Chicouti mi-Jo nquie re Thunder Bay Saint John (N.B.) Total Sources:

2,846 2,858

1,223 667 562 558 522 526 475 321 252 313 235 278 215 177 143 139 N/A 132 135 113 107

12,797

2,803 2,802

1,166 693 578 554 542 529 470 302 272 270 268 248 218 157 151 143 135 134 129 119 113

12,796

Projected Population, 2001 (in OOO's} MSUA Lithwick MSUA 3 (1970) (1976)4 (1977)5

4,178 4,424

1,806 1,098 926 1,104 889 825 864 N/A 435 474 444 370 414 206 326 199 N/A 299 N/A N/A 187

3,901 3,566 2,226

3,339 3,027

1,094 675 952 793 675 1,010 417 402 481 303 382 371 307 151 174 N/A 162 144 117 108

1,485 1,015 664 872 741 604 828 361 443 325 319 262 313 187 198 188 197 159 135 135 129

18,414

15,770

1

T. H. Yoo, "Interim Canadian Metropolitan Population Projections, 19712001," Plan Canada, 16, no. 2 (June 1976): 72-88. 2 1976 Census of Canada. See Table 12 below. 3 Harvey Lithwick, Urban Canada: Problems and Prospects (CMHC: Ottawa, 1970) 4 T. H. Yoo, "Interim Projections, 1971-2001." 5 Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, Recent Trends in the Growth of Canadian Urban Centres.

These assumptions and forecasts were of more than strictly academic interest at the time. The image of continued urban (and population) growth (especially of the major urban centres) widely accepted in the late 1960's and early 70's—what came to be termed the "crisis" of urban growth—became the basis for a range of political and policy responses or at least proposals for action. Canadian urban studies literature from this period is full of proposals for limiting the growth of the three national metropolises and deconcentrating the growth into new towns, satellite cities,

6

IRA M. ROBINSON

and growth pole centres. For example, Lithwick and his associates proposed the building of new communities. Most of the preliminary documents submitted by the Canadian representatives to Habitat 1976 as well as their speeches reflected this type of thinking. Also, it was during this period that the federal government, through MSUA, committed itself to the principle of limiting the growth of the largest urban areas and redistributing that growth to about a dozen medium-sized centres across the country. And, at least two provincial governments (Alberta and Manitoba) actually put into effect a deconcentration policy of a sort in the early 1970's. These forecasts of the late 1960's and early 1970's and the proposals and policy responses to them were appearing at the very time that the situation was actually changing markedly. The 1976 Census was to reveal that major shifts seem to have taken place, since 1966 and especially since the 1971 Census, in the over-all rate of urban growth and, most importantly, in certain spatial aspects of urban growth and that if these changes were to continue, there would be a completely different situation in the coming decades than what had been forecast in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Yet, in practically every published work on Canadian urbanization today, even works published during the 1970's, there is no indication of these changes; the literature is replete with statements and forecasts about continued rapid urban growth in Canada, in particular of the major metropolitan areas, and the decline of rural areas and smaller cities and towns, as if these were inexorable trends.4 An exception that should be noted, and a curious one at that, is a statement in one of the documents prepared by the federal government for Habitat 1976—curious because several of the statements in this contradicted the basic conclusions in most of the other documents. In one section, concerned with future settlement distribution in Canada, a table is included showing, for ten of the CMA's, the annual growth rates for the period 1966-73. The information came from the special 1966 Census, the 1971 Census, and Statistics Canada inter-censal estimates for 19671970 and 1972-1973. Based mainly on analysis of this data, before the results of the 1976 Census were available, the report points out that the decline in the growth rates of certain metropolitan areas, in particular Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, may por-

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

7

tend an overall slackening of metropolitan growth pressure and cautioned against "the common assumption [usually based on 1960's data] that continued high rates of metropolitan growth are inevitable."5 While acknowledging that several metropolitan areas will continue to experience robust growth (though likely at a declining rate), the report warned that "there is little in current data, however, to suggest a rate of growth in the largest cities on the scale experienced over the last two decades." But this warning was clearly an exception to the then prevailing forecasts. The shifts taking place were apparently undetected or overlooked by most urban researchers, urban experts in government, and public officials because of their adherence to the conventional wisdom—for otherwise, one wonders, how they could have made the forecasts and proposals for urban reform that they did in the 1970's.6 Indeed, in a highly respected report on Canadian urbanization published in 1977, even the 1976 Census data—admittedly still in preliminary form at the time—were ignored.7 The preface notes that the latest statistics presented in the report are for 1971 and that, while some of the 1976 Census data were available, "for consistency's sake, the editors decided against inserting [them] . . . . The trends are clear without them." But, as will be detailed later, the trends were by no means clear. What is particularly strange about this whole affair is the paucity of published research and analysis based on the 1976 Census data in the three years that it has been available. The work of Bourne and his associates at the University of Toronto,8 Hodge and his colleagues at Queen's,9 Robinson,10 and a recent MSUA report11 are exceptions. There has also been a strange silence in the popular media about the recent urban growth trends. Most importantly, there still appears (as of this writing) to be no recognition, at least officially, by the federal or provincial governments of the new trends underway, least of all any acknowledgement of the different policy implications which these trends require in contrast to those of the past.12 Can it be that the conventional wisdom of the past is still pervasive in Canada?

2 RECENT URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

As suggested above, analysis of the 1976 Census data reveals that some significant changes have been taking place recently in the spatial pattern of urbanization and the rates of growth in urban areas—changes that most public officials, statisticians, and planners did not anticipate, were not aware of, and in some cases even ignored when the facts were known. The following pages detail these changes as revealed by the 1976 Canada Census. Recent changes in the rate and spatial pattern of urbanization must be seen within the backdrop of a declining rate of national population growth, changing demographic characteristics, and regional population shifts. Thus, before dealing with the key urban growth changes that took place between 1971 and 1976, it would be useful, first, to briefly summarize these background trends. SLOW-DOWN IN NATIONAL POPULATION GROWTH

Canada's declining rate of population growth is actually not recent; it has been underway since about 1957. Average growth rates in Canada declined steadily from 3 per cent per annum in the early 1950's to slightly less than 1.3 per cent in the 1971-1976 period.1 The recent rate of growth is the lowest recorded in this century except for the 1930's, the decade of the Great Depression (Table 2). (As can be seen in Table 2, growth rates were also low during the depression of the 1890's.) The reasons for the recent decline are now fairly well known. First, as in most western countries, fertility rates have been declining sharply in recent years and are now at their lowest level in over fifty years. The crude birth rate is now less than 16 per thousand, compared to 28 in the 1951-56 period. The total fertility 8

TABLE 2 Components of Population Growth, Canada, by Intercensal Periods, 1851-1976

Period 1851-1861 1861-1871 1871-1881 1881-1891 1891-1901 1901-1911 1911-1921 1921-1931 1931-1941 1941-1951* 1951-1961* 1961-1971 1971-1976

Natural Increase as Share of Total Growth

Pop. at Beginning of Period (OOO's)

Increase in Period (OOO's)

Average Annual Growth Rate1 (%)

(%)

2,436.3 3,229.6 3,689.3 4,324.8 4,833.2 5,371.3 7,206.6 8,787.9 10,376.8 11,506.7 14,009.4 18,238.2 21,568.3

793.3 459.6 635.6 508.4 538.1 1,835.3 1,581.3 1,588.8 1,129.9 2,502.8 4,228.8 3,330.1 1,424.3

3.3 1.4 1.7 1.2 1.1 3.4 2.2 1.8 1.1 2.2 3.0 1.8 1.3***

77.0 132.6 108.5 128.7 124.2 55.9 80.3 85.5 108.1 92.3 74.5 78.3 42.9**

External Net Migration as Share of Total Growth (%) 23.0 -32.6 - 8.5 -28.7 -24.2 44.1 19.7 14.5 - 8.1 7.7 25.5 21.7 57.1**

*The figure for the beginning of the 1951-1961 period includes the population of Newfoundland. Calculations for the 1941-1951 period do not include the 361,000 people that Canada gained when Newfoundland entered Confederation. **1976 only-based on Statistics Canada, Vital Statistics, October-December 1976. ***The growth rate for 1976 alone was also 1.3% (estimated). 1 Average annual rates used throughout this paper were crudely calculated and not "compounded." They were calculated by: population in later year =100% -J- number of years. 1 r v population in base year 7 Source: Cols. 1 and 2—Canada Yearbook (1974), Table 4.1; Cols. 4 and 5—calculated from data in Canada Yearbook (1974), Table 4.2. Population Figures for 1971-1976 period, from Statistics Canada, 1976 Census of Canada, vol. I.

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IRA M. ROBINSON

rate in 1974 had dropped to 1.88 children per woman, which is below the normal replacement rate.2 Canada is now one of twenty-six countries which, because of their current net reproduction rates, are close to achieving zero population growth (excluding the effect of external migration).3 Despite the entry of the post-war baby boom population into the high fertility age groups during the 1970's, there is no evidence that the total fertility rate is apt to turn upward. And while there is some indication that it has not continued to decline since 1975, it seems highly unlikely that, given current changes in the status, attitudes, and expectations of Canadian women, the trend toward fewer children and smaller family size will be reversed. The second factor responsible for the declining national population growth rate is the lower rate of net foreign immigration in recent years; the rate has been declining since the 1960's, and sharply since 1974. Historically, immigration has been a major contributor to Canada's population growth; for example, 20 per cent of Canada's population growth between 1961 and 1971 was the result of immigration. But, at the same time, it has been a distinctively cyclical phenomenon; there were post-war peaks in 1957, 1967, and 1974. As a result of tightened immigration regulations, undoubtedly reflecting in part the high recent unemployment in Canada, the average intake of new immigrants has been reduced from a high of around 220,000 in 1967 to 150,000 in 1976 and 115,000 in 1977. The commonly referred to target of a net external migration balance of 100,000 persons annually, used in most population forecasts of the early 1970's, now appears to be on the high side. Most of the forecasts are now assuming an annual net external migration rate of only 60,000 in the future. As a consequence of the availability of the recent data on fertility rates and external migration, government officials and demographers are revising their earlier forecasts, and these now point to a smaller population by the year 2001 than previously anticipated. For example, it is now assumed that Canada could attain a stable state population by the middle of the next century.4 CHANGING DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS Age Structure

For the first fifty years of this century, the Canadian population was growing "older" in the sense that the median age in-

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

11

creased each decade from 22.7 years in 1901 to 27.7 in 1951. Until 1946 the aging was the result of longer life expectancy and declining fertility. With the end of World War II, there began a rapid increase in fertility, rising to a total fertility rate of 3.95 in the middle of the "baby boom" (1959), and then, by 1966, had declined to the 1941 level of 2.8. The effect of the baby boom has been to create large humps in the 1976 age distribution, showing up in the 0-19 and 20-24 age cohorts (see Table 3). These humps will persist for another thirty to fifty years as the younger cohorts move into successively older brackets. The effects of the baby boom will be especially prominent in the expected age profile of 2001, where the young cohorts occupy the age group from 35-54. Also, the 45-64 year olds are expected to increase by nearly 67 per cent by 2001, while the population over sixty-five nearly doubles to around 3.3 million people. Irrespective to what happens to fertility rates in the future, these projections of the older age groups may vary in percentages but not in actual numbers since the people comprising these cohorts have already been born and most live in Canada. Thus, the Canadian population will continue to become older, with the median age forecast to be 35.7 by 2001, almost ten years more than in 1971. As an index of shifting political influence, the median age of voters is expected to be 38.8 in 1986 and a remarkable 45.8 in 2001.5 The relationships between the various broad age groups in the population are often viewed in terms of dependency ratios, typically calculated for "youth" and "old-age" in relationship to the working age population. These are good (though crude) measures of a society's needs for social, medical, educational, housing, and other facilities, and of its ability to meet these needs. In Table 4, the age group 0-19 has been used for youth (often 0-14 is used), because this provides, it would seem, a more accurate assessment of youth-dependents, since the trend is for a higher proportion of young people to complete high school, thus remaining dependent on those of working age for a longer period of time. Further, while some analysts commonly use 70 years and over for the old-age group, the category 65 years and over has been used for the calculations in Table 4. As Table 4 shows, the dependency ratios, as one would expect, have varied over the years, reflecting the changing age structure. A turning point seems to have been 1961, when both the youth

TABLE 3 Number and Percentage Distribution of Population by Broad Age Groups, 1921-1976, and Projected, 1981, 1991, and 2001 20-44

0-19

Year

Number

1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1976 1981 1991 2001

3,828.1 4,321.8 4,318.5 5,308.6 7,624.5 8,495.3 8,241.4 7,685.8 7,554.1 7,581.3

Per cent 43.7 41.7 37.5 38.0 41.9 39.4 35.8 32.0 28.4 26.7

Number 3,219.4 3,742.6 4,279.5 5,130.3 6,054.6 7,305.3 8,351.3 9,526.6 10,042.4 10,744.6

45-64 Per cent 36.6 36.1 37.2 36.7 33.2 33.9 36.3 39.7 41.5 37.9

Number 1,320.3 1,736.2 2,140.7 2,484.2 3,168.0 4,023.2 4,395.5 4,556.9 5,079.0 6,702.0

65 +

Per cent 15.0 16.7 18.6 17.7 17.4 18.7 19.1 19.0 19.1 23.6

Number 420.0 576.1 768.0 1,086.3 1,391.2 1,744.5 2,002.3 2,272.3 2,916.0 3,341.8

Per cent 4.8 5.6 6.7 7.8 7.6 8.1 8.7 9.5 11.0 11.8

Source: L. Auerbach and Andrea Gerber, Implications of the Changing Age Structure of the Canadian Population: Perceptions 2 (Ottawa: Science Council of Canada, 1976), p. 8, Table 11.1.

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

13

and aged ratios were at their highest: 83 youth and 19 aged for every 100 working age adults. Following that, they dropped. In 1971, there were 75 children and 15 aged persons for every 100 working age adults, and, in 1976, the comparable ratios were 65 and 15. As implied in the previous discussion, by the 1990's and on to the year 2001, a shift will occur from a youthful-dependent to an elderly-dependent population. The age dependency ratio is expected to rise steadily, while the youth dependency ratio is projected to fall dramatically. By 2001 there should be 43 children and 19 aged for every 100 working adults. But because child dependency will be reduced much more, in quantitative terms, than old-age dependency, the total dependency ratio is expected to lessen. TABLE 4 Dependency Ratios, Canada, 1931-1976, and Projected, 1991 and 2001 Year

Youth Dependency Ratio

Old-Age Dependency Ratio

Total

1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1976 1991 2001

79 67 70 83 75 65 50 43

10 12 14 19 15 16 19 19

89 79 84 102 90 81 69 61

Notes:

1

Youth dependency ratio is the number of young people (age 0-19) per 100 adults in the working age group, 20-64. The old-age dependency ratio is the number of persons 65 years and over per 100 adults of working age, 20-64. 2 The 1991 and 2001 figures are based on Population "C" Series forecasts of Statistics Canada. This forecast assumes a fertility rate of 1.8, net migration of 60,000, and expectation of life at birth of 78.2 years for males and 78.4 years for females.

Source: L Auerbach and Andrea Gerber, Implications of the Changing Age Structure of the Canadian Population: Perceptions 2 (Science Council of Canada, 1976), p. 8, Table 11.1.

As expected, there are differences in the age structure between urban and rural areas and between various sized urban centres. Also, these different types of areas experienced changes in their age distribution between 1971 and 1976, reflecting the changes in the age structure of the Canadian population as a

14

IRA M. ROBINSON

whole in these five years. Table 5 summarizes the data for 1971 and 1976. As can be seen in Table 5 the percentage of youth, 0-14 years old, increases as the size of the urban centres decreases. Also, the proportion of youth in both the rural non-farm and the rural farm populations are similarly as high as in the smallest urban centres. The opposite situation obtains in the older youth and younger adults (15-29) and the younger middle age adult groups (30-44), where the proportions tend to decrease as the size of urban centres decreases; they are also lower in the rural population. The pattern is somewhat similar for the older middle age adults (45-59), that is, the proportion decreases with decreasing size of urban centre; it is also lower in the rural non-farm population than in larger urban centres. On the other hand, the proportion of rural farm population in this age group is the highest. Those over sixty tend to concentrate in the smallest urban centres and the rural non-farm population. Farm areas, along with the largest metropolitan areas, have the lowest proportions of elderly persons. Table 5 shows that between 1971 and 1976, the general tendency for the population to age is reflected in the changing proportions in the various age groups by different size urban centres and with respect to the rural population; namely, in all size centres as well as the rural population, the proportion of youth has declined somewhat and the proportion of elderly has increased in the five-year census period. The differentials discussed above can be attributed to differences in natural increase and the pattern of migration, both internal and international. For example, fertility rates in metropolitan areas tend to be lower than in non-metropolitan areas, which is a partial explanation of the lower proportion of youth in the largest urban centres and the high proportions noted in the smallest centres and in the rural population. In addition, the stream of job-seeking migrants to the large urban centres and metropolitan areas in earlier periods caused in these places an increase in the proportion of adults and a decrease in the proportion of children and aged persons. However, some large urban centres, especially those with favourable climates, for example, Victoria), attract retired people. Also, the large proportions of senior citizens in rural non-farm areas and the smallest

TABLE 5 Population by 15-Year Age Groups for Urban Areas by Size, Rural Non-Farm, and Rural Farm Population, 1971 and 1976 (In Percentages) 30-44 1971 1976 18.4 17.8

0-14 1976 1971

1971

1976

Canada, total

29.6

25.6

25.9

28.1

Urban Areas by size 500,000 + 100,000-499,999 30,000- 99,999 10,000- 29,999 1,000- 9,999

28.3 26.4 28.6 28.8 30.8 31.2

24.4 23.0 24.8 24.5 26.4 26.9

26.6 26.6 27.2 27.2 26.2 25.4

28.7 28.7 29.3 29.3 28.9 27.4

18.4 19.5 18.2 17.5 17.9 16.6

Rural Non-Farm

33.7

29.7

24.1

26.6

Rural Farm

33.3

29.7

23.2

25.7

15-29

45-59 1976

1971

60-74

75 + 7977 1976 3.1 3.3

15.0

15.2

8.6

1976 9.4

18.7 19.9 18.0 17.8 17.8 16.9

15.1 16.0 14.8 15.2 14.0 14.0

15.4 16.1 15.4 15.4 14.1 13.9

8.5 8.6 8.1 8.4 8.0 9.1

9.4 9.2 9.1 9.7 9.3 10.5

3.1 2.9 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.7

3.4 3.1 3.4 3.4 3.5 4.4

15.8

17.3

13.6

13.5

9.4

9.7

3.4

3.1

15.9

17.0

17.9

18.6

7.7

7.4

1.9

1.6

Source: 1971 Census of Canada—Populations: Age Groups (Cat #92-715 Vol. 1, Part 2); 1976 Census of Canada—Populations: Demographic Characteristics (Cat #92-823)

1971

16

IRA M. ROBINSON

urban centres probably reflects internal migration of these persons, particularly older women, to these areas, which may be a result of the search for different lifestyles and amenities. These motivations are probably also responsible for the internal migration flow of young families to rural non-farm areas adjacent to towns and cities; a fact which partially explains the high proportion of children in the rural non-farm population. The fact that the elderly are less likely to migrate than younger people means that in the future the cities will likely continue to receive more young than old migrants. However, if the population as a whole continues to age (as expected), and if many of the larger cities and metropolitan areas are apt to experience a slowdown if not an actual decline in their growth, and if it is the young people in a slow growth situation who tend to migrate out of an area, then a completely different situation is likely to be faced by the larger urban centres—one in which they may be left with a much older population than would normally have resulted under a growth situation. Moreover, amenity areas that may attract a high proportion of the elderly as well as the young will find it difficult to care for these two "dependent" groups. The expected changes in age structure of the population as a whole, and specifically for urban and rural areas, will have, of course, enormous implications for Canadian public policies with respect to the provision of social services (especially education and health), housing demand, labour force needs, economic development, and political voting patterns, to mention but a few areas. The consequences of these impacts for cities and urban areas, and their implications for urban and regional planning and policy, are discussed in a later chapter. Household Formation and Household Size

In determining future housing and other needs, what happens to household formation and household size is obviously important. At one time, planners used certain rules of thumb for estimating and/or forecasting. For example, it was generally assumed that percentage increases in numbers of new households formed bore some direct relationship to rate of population growth. Also, a standard often used was that "one new household is created for every three people added to the population." Further, it was generally assumed that all (or at least most) households consisted of

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

17

families, specifically a husband and wife and two or three children. Current data and future projections indicate that not only are there deviations in general from these rules, but there are differences over time and considerable variations among different size urban centres and among metropolitan areas. Changes in the 1971-1976 period illustrate these variations from accepted standards. The 1971-1976 period witnessed an enormous surge in the number of new households in Canada. The number of private households increased by 1.1 million,6 an increase of around 18 per cent, while the total population increased by around 1.4 million people, or 6.6 per cent. In other words, during these five years, one new household was created for every 1.3 persons added to the population. At the same time, average family size declined, from 3.7 in 1971 to 3.5 in 1976, and, similarly, average household size declined, from 3.5 to 3.1.7 Perhaps most important was the trend toward non-family households,8 which constituted 18.8 per cent of all Canadian households in 1971 and increased to 21 per cent in 1976. For urban areas, the proportion in 1976 was 23.3 per cent, and, as one might expect, it was highest in urban centres of 500,000 and over, at 24.8 per cent.9 In short, the number of households headed by primary individuals (widowed divorced, and other single persons) and comprising persons living alone or unrelated individuals living together has increased enormously. What are the reasons for these changes, and, most importantly, can we expect them to continue in the future? The current surge of household formation is attributable to two factors. First, the large cohort of young adults born during the post-war baby boom period from 1946 to around 1963, who during the early 1970's were and still are passing through the prime child-bearing and household-forming ages (roughly 20 to 30). As noted earlier, the proportion of the Canadian population in the 20-35 age group is at an all-time high. A second factor is the high proportion of nonfamily households created by this large baby-boom cohort, discussed further. The smaller family size is related directly, in the first instance, to the low fertility rates. Also, there has been a substantial increase in the number of single or lone-parent families. According to the Census, the proportion of lone-parent families, most of which are

18

IRA M. ROBINSON

headed by women, increased during the five-year period by 17 per cent, while the proportion of traditional husband-wife families/households increased by only 13 per cent. The decline in average household size and the increase in nonfamily households are the result of higher standards of living, changing age structure, different attitudes towards marriage, child-rearing, working women, and shifts in values and lifestyles. Changes in our society encourage more adults—both young and old—to set up their own households, so that for each sex and age category in the population, the proportion of people heading their own households (the headship rate) has been increasing. For example, the economic well-being of young, single adults, permitting many of them to leave home earlier than heretofore, combined with the tendency for young people to remain single longer than they did in the past, increases their propensity to establish separate households in non-family living situations, as perhaps a transitional stage before forming their own families. The elderly are also forming their own households in increasing numbers. The death of a spouse no longer automatically means moving in with children or relatives, as it once did. Moreover, the number of "survivor" households that are female is increasing. Female life expectancy is greater than male, and thus there are more widows, each facing a longer period without a mate and likely childless (those women now about to enter old age passed through the prime child-bearing ages during the low-fertility years of the Depression)—all of which foreshadows a tendency to live alone.10 And, because increasing numbers of the elderly, including widows, are covered by pension and retirement plans, living alone is economically feasible for larger numbers. In short, the rising incidence of single-parent families, two or more unrelated people living together, and people of all ages living alone indicates the extent to which lifestyle options have been widened by affluence and the relaxation of social norms. But, what about the future? Notwithstanding all said above, forecasting the future number and size of households is fraught with uncertainty. A continuous interplay operates between the demographic and economic circumstances that shape the typical cluster of people who live together as a household and the social, cultural, and attitudinal changes that have broadened the types of living arrangements and companionship that society condones. That interplay is difficult to forecast with any precision.

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

19

However, what is fairly certain is that through the 1980's, the number of new households will increase substantially at a much higher rate than population growth, partly as a result of the postwar baby-boom generation continuing to form new households, and partly as a result of the expected continuation of some of the recent changing living arrangements. Headship rates should continue at a high level through the early 1980's and then decline through the rest of the 1980's and early 1990's.11 Most of these will be families, but a substantial number will be non-family households, continuing the recent trend. Family size and average household size will continue to decline. For example, a forecast for all of Canada shows household size declining to 2.54 by 2000;12 and one prepared for Alberta projects average household size from 3.26 in 1976, to 2.86 by 1986 and 2.71 by 2001.13 Starting in the mid-1990's, the rate of new household formation is probably going to start dropping sharply because: (a) there were low birth rate levels in the late 1960's and early 1970's; (b) the bulk of the baby-boom generation will have passed through the household-forming phase by then. The implications of these expected changes in household formation and composition, especially for housing demand and the spatial distribution of population, are discussed in a later chapter. Two-Worker Families

A demographic variable that is bound to have profound effects on many aspects of Canadian society is the recent proliferation of two-worker and, in many instances, multi-worker families. The traditional division of labour in the Canadian family had the husband as the sole producer of earned income, while the wife contributed to the family's economic well-being largely through homemaker tasks. This model of husband-breadwinner/wifehomemaker is increasingly being replaced by the multi-worker family, in which, most typically, the husband and wife are workers, and in some cases the husband or wife and another family member. The change in family work patterns can be traced most dramatically to World War II, when there was a massive influx of women into the labour force. Since then the labour force participation rate of women in general, and wives in particular, has increased

20

IRA M. ROBINSON

enormously, as has the closely related proportion of husband-wife families with two or more workers. Underlying this long-term rise of the working wife has been an important shift in the age pattern of labour force participation: the increases in the proportion of working wives have been noticeably concentrated at progressively younger ages. The rise in the number of working wives used to depend heavily on changes in women's activities after child-bearing. Today, many more wives are working at younger ages and concurrently with rather than after child-bearing. Most importantly, perhaps, the attachment of working wives to the labour force is less often temporary compared with that of their counterparts a decade or two ago. A high proportion of working wives, even in families with preschool-age children, are employed full-time. This greater attachment, of course, makes for more advancement in careers and means higher family incomes— for example, the median income of families with working wives has increased faster than for families in which wives were not in the paid labour force. Most observers believe the trend toward multi-worker families will continue, on the grounds that it reflects underlying social and economic changes in our society that are likely to continue.14 As such, this trend will have enormous implications for a variety of urban issues, not least in importance being the potential impact on commuting patterns and residential location preferences and, thus, on the pattern of settlement. These implications are discussed in later chapters. REGIONAL SHIFTS IN POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT

Recent data, by provinces, reveal that substantial shifts in interregional growth and migration flows took place in 1971-76 (see Table 6). From 1971 to 1976, Ontario's population increased about 7 per cent, but the highest growth rates were recorded by Alberta and British Columbia, each with 13 per cent. During the same period, Quebec's population grew by only 3.5 per cent. (See Table 6 for the changes in the other provinces.) Further, of the total Canadian population increase during the same period (about 6 per cent), 40 per cent went to Ontario, 35 per cent to the four Western Provinces, 15 per cent to Quebec, and 9 per cent to the Maritimes. It is clear that Quebec is slowly losing ground to the

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

21

rest of the country in terms of population. It is also clear that growth rates have been falling in the historic industrial heartland of the country (southern Ontario and Quebec) and in British Columbia and increased in the traditional peripheral regions (the Atlantic provinces and the Prairies). These changes are evident also in the data on inter-provincial migration, where it is seen that net inter-provincial migration to British Columbia during the period dropped while that to oil and natural gas rich Alberta increased substantially. On the other hand, Ontario shifted from a positive balance of over 150,000 inter-provincial migrants in 1966-71 to a loss of around 38,000 in the 1971-76 period. The Quebec situation is complex. Its outmigration from the late 1960's to the early 1970's was high, and preliminary data for 1977 indicate that the net outflow continued. The obvious explanation for this is the political uncertainty in the province following on the election of the Parti Quebecois government in November 1976. However, one cannot discount the possible influence of increasing unemployment in the province (especially in its textile industries) and the attractions of the West (which have affected all of eastern Canada). TABLE 6 Provincial Growth Rates and Interprovincial Migration, 1961-1976 Average Annual Growth Rate1 Net Inter-provincial Migration2 1966-71 1966-71 1971-76 1971-76 1961-66 -19,344 Newfoundland 1.4 -1,856 -15,213 1.2 + 3,754 -2,763 Prince Edward Island -2,970 0.6 3.6 + 11,307 -16,396 Nova Scotia 0.9 -27,125 1.0 New Brunswick -19,596 + 16,801 1.3 0.6 -25,679 Quebec 0.7 -122,735 -77,610 0.9 -19,866 Ontario -38,559 1.5 +85,369 + 150,712 2.1 Manitoba 0.5 0.7 -40,690 -26,828 -23,470 Saskatchewan -0.6 -0.01 -81,398 -42,094 -40,753 Alberta 2.3 +58,571 2.6 -1,984 + 32,008 British Columbia 3.3 + 114,966 2.6 +77,747 +92,285 Sources:

l

Calculated from 1961 Census of Canada, Population: Rural and Urban Distribution, Bulletin 1-7; 1966 Census of Canada, Population: Rural and Urban Distribution, Vol. 1 (1-8); and 1976 Census of Canada. 2 Statistics Canada, International and Interprovincial Migration in Canada: 19611962 to 1975-1976, Catalogue 91-208.

One of the more important developments in this period has been the positive net migration balance registered by the Mari-

22

IRA M. ROBINSON

time provinces for the first time since the depression of the 1930's. Traditionally, the extent of out-migration from the Maritimes has risen and fallen according to the job opportunities available in the industrial heartland of Ontario and Quebec. With these provinces suffering the same sustained employment downturn as most other manufacturing areas in the developed world in recent years, it is perhaps not surprising that migration from the Maritimes has slowed down. Thus, there is some evidence of a return to or at least a greater retention of existing residents in peripheral and hinterland regions which were formerly consistent net exporters of population. Among other consequences, there is a slight decline in the extent of regional population concentration and economic domination by central Canada. SLOWING DOWN IN OVER-ALL RATE OF URBANIZATION

The rate or level of urbanization (as measured by the proportion of population considered urban) slowed down in the 1971-76 period.15 While the urban population in the 20-year period 195171 grew by 86 per cent (that is, at an average annual rate of growth of 4.3 per cent), in the 1971-76 period it grew by slightly less than 6 per cent, or at an annual growth rate of only 1.2 per cent (the latter figures are based on the 1976 definition of urban population and 1976 boundaries as outlined in Table 7 and Figure 1). As a consequence, the proportion of the total population now considered urban actually declined slightly between 1971 and 1976, from 76 per cent to 75.5 per cent. From 1851 to 1911 the urban population doubled every twenty years. It took thirty years, from 1911 to 1941, for it to double again, and then only twenty years, from 1941 to 1961 (Table 7). As noted, beginning in 1961 the rate of urbanization began to slow down, so it is not expected to double again for forty years, that is, not until 2001. During the 1971-76 period, the rural population increased by an average annual rate of almost 2 per cent, a sharp contrast to the rural growth rate over the past twenty-five years. As a result of this increase, the rural population now constitutes almost a quarter of the total population of Canada. The growth in the rural population was not the result of an increase in farm population (in fact, it declined), but in the rural non-farm population.

Average Annual Growth Rate (percentage) (non-geometric)

Source/Table?.

Figure 1: Urban Growth Slows Down

24

IRA M. ROBINSON

TABLE 7 Urbanization Trends, 1851-1976

Year 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1971# 1976#

Urban Population (OOO's)

319 510 675 1,008 1,440 1,894 3,013 4,166 5,448 6,409 8,742 12,712 16,411 16,400 17,367

Average Annual Urban Populatior Rate of Growth as Percent of over Decade Total Population % % 13.1 15.8 6.0* 18.3 3.2 23.3 4.9 4.3 29.8 3.0 34.9 6.1 41.8 0 3 .0 47.4 3.1 52.5 1.8 55.7 3.6 62.4 4.5 69.7 2.9 76.1 76.0 1.2* 75.5

Urban Settlements of 10,000 Persons or More Number

% of Total Population

8* 10 12 13 22 28 42 50 59 65 78 105 124

10.0 10.6 11.9 14.0 18.6 26.8 34.6 40.0 45.6 47.6 52.8 60.0 65.0 71.6 72.7

161* 171*

* Includes CMA's, census agglomerations of 10,000 persons or more, and municipalities with 10,000 persons or more located outside CMA's and census agglomerations. # Throughout this study, this symbol indicates that the data for 1971 and 1976 are based on 1976 Census area definitions. Source: Cols. 1, 2, and 3: for 1851-1971, Canada Year Book (1974), Table 4.11; for 197l# and 1976#, 1976 Census of Canada; Cols. 4 and 5: 1851-1971, from L. S. Bourne, "Some Myths . . ." (1977), Table 1; for 1971# and 1976#, calculated from data from 1976 Census of Canada.

The latter increased at an average annual rate of almost 3 per cent, and, as a consequence, the rural non-farm population now constitutes one-fifth of the total Canadian'population (see Figure 2). As a structural and spatial process, urbanization will certainly continue, but at a much reduced rate of growth. The proportion of the Canadian population living in urban centres is unlikely to reach the 90-95 per cent many forecasters predicted in the late 1960's. It is now assumed that it will probably stabilize at about 85 per cent (in the year 2001). Along with the slowdown in over-all urban growth since 1966, two other major changes in the spatial distribution of the urban population occurred: (a) concentration of population in the metropolitan areas, especially the largest ones, slackened; and (b) a

Figure 2:Where Canadians Live (percentages)

Source: Table 10. and Canada Yearbook, 1974.

26

IRA M. ROBINSON

large number of small towns and rural centres all across the country experienced rapid growth. The changes in the spatial distribution of the urban and rural populations between 1961 and 1976 are graphically summarized in Figure 2. The detailed changes between 1971 and 1976 are discussed next. METROPOLITAN CONCENTRATION SLACKENING Metropolitan Areas

Perhaps the most useful indicator of urbanization changes is the trend to "metropolitanization," the process by which a nation's population concentrates in its major cities and metropolitan areas. A metropolitan area, conceptually, is a complex of closely related centres of population located within daily commuting distance to the central city, or urban core, and thus consists of two main parts: the central city and the nearby centres, usually called suburbs, with economic or other linkages closely oriented to that of the core.16 The 1931 Census of Canada first recognized the phenomenon of the metropolitan area when it began to collect statistics on the "greater city." The 1951 Census adopted the term "census metropolitan area" (CMA), and in each Census since then this term has been used. The 1961 Census identified seventeen CMA's, the 1971 Census, twenty-two, and in 1976 Oshawa was added to the list, so that as of now there are officially twenty-three CMA's. Most of the data presented and analysed in this monograph deal with these CMA's, as defined by Statistics Canada.17 However, because the term only became operational in 1951, where data on metropolitan areas are presented for prior years the term "principal regions of metropolitan development," as first coined by Stone in his classic study of urbanization in Canada, is used.18 As in most developed countries, one of the characteristic features of Canadian urban development in the past has been the emergence and growth of large cities and metropolitan areas. Whereas in 1901 there were only two cities with a population exceeding 100,000, there were eight in this category by 1941, sheltering 23 per cent of all Canadians. Since World War II, larger cities have continued to grow and increase. By 1966, there were twenty-five with a population of at least 100,000 and, of these, more than half were in excess of 200,000 people.

TABLE 8 Population of Principal Regions of Metropolitan Development, 1901-1976 Principal Metropolitan Regions Halifax Montreal Quebec Hamilton London Ottawa-Hull Toronto Windsor Winnipeg Calgary Edmonton Vancouver Saint John Kitchener- Waterloo Sudbury Victoria Total % of Urban Population % of Total Population

1901

1911

1921

1931

51 415 117 79 52 103 303 22 48 8 15

58 616 133 112 61 133 478 32 157 56 48

51 53 16

54 63 30

1,333 70.4 24.8

2,031 67.4 28.2

75 796 158 154 74 168 686 66 229 78 87 224 61 75 43 64 3,038

79 1,086 207 190 87 197 901 117 295 103 116 338 63 90 58 70 3,997

72.9 34.6

73.4 38.5

(Population in 000' s) 1941 1961 1951

1966

1971

134 1,504 297 266 129 296 1,264 163 357 156 211 562 78 126 110 122 5,775

210 2,571 437 457 254 529 2,290 238 509 331 425 933 104 192 137 175 9,792

223 2,743 481 499 286 602 2,628 259 540 403 496 1,082 107 227 155 196 10,927

99 1,216 241 207 97 236 1,002 129 302 112 136 394 71 99 81 86 4,508

70.3 39.2

66.1 41.2

193 2,216 379 401 227 457 1,919 217 477 279 360 827 98 155 127 156 8,488

66.8 46.5

66.5 48.9

66.6 50.7

1971 #

251 2,729 501 503 253 620 2,602 249 550 403 496 1,082 107 239 158 196 10,939

66.7 50.7

1976# 268 2,802 542 529 270 693 2,803 248 578 470 554 1,166 113 272 157 218 11,683 67.3 50.8

Source: Figures for 1901-51, from Leroy O. Stone, Urban Development in Canada, 1961 Census Monograph (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1967), Table L.5, p. 278; for 1956, 1961, 1966 and 1971, from 1971 Census (Canada Year Book, 1974, Table 4.9); for 197l# and 1976#, from 1976 Census (Statistics Canada, Population: Geographical Distributions (Cat. 92-806). For urban population, see Table 7 above. For total population, see Table 1 above. JO ^r

28

IRA M. ROBINSON

At the same time, as can be seen in Table 8, the sixteen principal regions of metropolitan development were absorbing a larger and larger percentage of the total population and of the urban population increase as well, beginning in 1901, right up to 1966, when they contained around 48 per cent of the total population. The twenty two CMA's identified in the 1971 Census (and based on their 1971 boundaries) had a similar experience since 1951 (see Table 12). In 1966, the CMA's in aggregate contained 52.2 per cent of the total population; in the period 1951-66, the population of these CMA's had increased by 63.5 per cent, or at an average annual rate of 4.2 per cent (while the overall national population average during this period was 2.9 per cent). Then, beginning in the late 1960's, the degree of population concentration in the nation's metropolitan areas appears to have slackened. Between 1966 and 1971, the metropolitan areas' annual growth rate declined to 2.7 per cent and in the early 1970's, to 1.3 per cent (the latter was just about the national population rate and slightly higher than the urban population as a whole). As a consequence, the proportion of the total Canadian population residing in these CMA's, which was 55.6 per cent in 1971, did not change at all in the succeeding five years (see Table 12). In fact, the proportion actually declined slightly between 1971 and 1974, according to inter-censal estimates for those years. This slackening of metropolitan concentration is reflected in several other changes in urban spatial distribution, to be discussed next. Central Cities and Inner Cities Decline

As in the United States, the central cities in Canada's metropolitan areas are not growing as fast as they once did, and recently many of them experienced an actual decline. Between 1971 and 1976, the aggregate population of all central cities actually declined slightly less than 1 per cent, from 6,234,000 to 6,179,000. Nine of the central cities grew at a rate lower than the overall urban growth rate for the 1971-1976 period (that is, less than 5.8 per cent); another nine experienced an actual decline, including, for example, Toronto (11 per cent), Montreal (10 per cent)19 and Vancouver (4 per cent); and only six grew at a rate higher than the overall urban population (see Table 9). The slowing down or decline in population growth of central cities continues a trend

29

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

that started during the 1950's and continued throughout the 1960's. During that time, the exodus from the central cities to the surrounding suburban communities was especially noticeable. TABLE 9 Population of Census Metropolitan Area Central Cities, 1971 and 1976 Central City (listed by 1976 size) Montreal Toronto Winnipeg Calgary* Edmonton Vancouver Hamilton Ottawa London Windsor Quebec Regina Saskatoon* Kitchener St. Catharines Halifax Thunder Bay Oshawa Sudbury St. John's (Nfld.) Saint John (N.B.) Niagara Victoria Chicoutimi-Jonquiere

Population in 000's 1971 1976 1,214.3 712.8 535.2 403.3 438.6 426.3 309.2 302.3 223.2 203.3 187.8 139.5 126.4 117.0 109.7 122.0 108.4 95.0 100.4 88.4 89.0 64.8 61.8 55.5

1,080.5 633.3 560.9 469.9 461.3 410.2 312.0 304.5 240.4 196.5 177.1 149.6 133.7 131.9 123.3 117.9 111.5 107.0 97.6 86.6 86.0 67.3 62.6 57.7

Average Annual Change (%) 1971-76

-2.2 -2.2 0.9 3.3 1.0 -0.8 0.2 0.1 1.5 -0.7 -1.1 1.4 1.1 2.5 2.5 0.7 0.6 2.5 -0.6 -0.4 -0.7 0.7 0.2 0.8

* Central city boundaries coterminous with census metropolitan area boundaries. Source: 1976 Census of Canada

In the 1971-1976 period decentralization increased, with the suburban communities continuing to gain population relative to the central cities (see Table 10). They grew, in aggregate, by 15.1 per cent, from slightly more than 5.5 million persons to 6.6 million. As a consequence, the aggregate population of all central cities, as a proportion of the aggregate metropolitan areas' population, declined from 52 per cent to 48 per cent, and the suburban population went from 48 per cent to 52 per cent of the total.

IRA M. ROBINSON

30

When the performance of the so-called metropolitan "inner cities" is examined, the extent of decline is even worse. The "inner city" is broadly defined in a recent study as the older central area (or areas) of a census metropolitan area, and therefore includes the central core (or central business district) plus a surrounding band of mature residential districts usually of pre-war housing stock.20 As can be seen in Table 11, all metropolitan inner cities lost population during the five year period, 1971-1976, the average population decline being 14 per cent, with ranges from 3 per cent in Victoria to 23 per cent in St. John's. The greatest relative losses were experienced by two of the three Maritimes metropolitan inner cities, St. John's and Saint John. Population decline in the inner cities, as in the case of the central cities, is not a recent phenomenon, having actually started in the 1950's and, as seen in Table 11, continued throughout the decade of the 1960's, and speeded up in the early 1970's. Over the entire fifteen years, only two inner cities (Kitchener and Oshawa) did not register a loss in its 1976 population compared with its 1961 population. The leaders in population losses during this period, in relative terms, have been again St. John's and Saint John, with London, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Halifax, and Regina not far behind, population losses in these inner cities ranging from 25 per cent to 38 per cent of their 1961 populations. TABLE 10 Population of Metropolitan Areas' Central Cities, Inner Cities, and Suburban Communities, 1971and 1976

1971

Central Cities Suburbs* Census Metropolitan Areas * Inner Cities

1976

No. (OOO's)

Total

%of

No. (OOO's)

Total

%of

% Change, 1971-76

6,234.2 5,749.8

52.0 48.0

6,179.3 6,616.7

48.3 51.7

- 0.9 15.1

11,984.0 3,660.0

100.0 30.5

12,796.0 3,159.0

100.0 24.7

6.8 -13.7

* Communities outside central cities, but within boundaries of census metropolitan areas. 1 Based on 1976 Census metropolitan area boundaries. Source: Central Cities, Suburbs, and Census Metropolitan Areas—1976 Census of Canada. Inner Cities—Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, The Canadian Inner City, 1971-76: A Statistical Handbook (Ottawa: Policy Development Division, CMHC, 1979).

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

31

TABLE 11 Population Change in Metropolitan Inner Cities, 1961-1976 Inner City (listed by 1976 size of central city) Montreal Toronto Winnipeg Calgary Edmonton Vancouver Hamilton Ottawa-Hull London Windsor Quebec Regina Saskatoon Kitchener St. Catharines- Niagara Halifax Thunder Bay Oshawa Sudbury St. John's (Nfld.) Saint John (N.B.) Victoria Chicoutimi-Jonquiere

1961-1971

-6.4 5.1 -16.1 1.2 n.a. n.a. 0.7 -17.6s -15.1 0.7 -10.1 -13.3 -16.1 17.7 1.5 -12.2 n.a. 8.9 -8.9 -17.8 -13.2 n.a. n.a.

1971-1976 (percentage)

-11.5 -11.0 -13.6 -9.9 -6.0 -5.6 -11.6 -14.9 -16.0 -13.5 -13.5 -14.2 -7.4 -12.3 -10.5 -12.4 -7.6 -6.1 -15.6 -23.1 -19.8 -3.0 n.a.

1961-1976

-17.2 -6.4 -27.5 0 Q -o.o n.a. n.a. -11.0 -28.6*

-28.7 -12.9 -22.3 -25.6 -22.3 3.2 -9.2 -26.3

n.a. 2.1 -23.1 -37.8 -30.4 n.a. n.a.

* Ottawa only Source: 1961-1971: Mark Shrimpton and Christopher A. Sharpe, "An Inner City in Decline: St. John's, Newfoundland," Urban History Review, IX, no. 1 (June 1980), Table II, p. 96. 1971-1976: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, The Canadian Inner City, 1971-1976: A Statistical Handbook (Ottawa: CMHC, 1979). 1961-1976: Shrimpton and Sharpe, "An Inner City . . ."

Canada's inner cities had a total population of slightly over three million persons in 1976, representing 25 per cent of the total CMA population which is 5 per cent less than the proportion in 1971 (Table 10). Inner city population losses have been caused, in the first instance, by out-migration to the suburbs (decentralization) and to areas beyond metropolitan area boundaries (deconcentration). But, declining fertility rates have also played an important role. For example, in the St. John's inner city the fertility index (number of children aged 0-4 per 1,000 women aged 15-44) declined from 40.6 in 1971 to 35.5 in 1976, and this resulted in

32

IRA M. ROBINSON

13 per cent loss of children aged 0-4.21 About a third of St. John's total decline in the 1971-1976 period is estimated to be attributed to reduced levels of fertility, while the rest is a result of out-migration.22 The Big Three

At the top of the list of CMA's are the Big Three—Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Combined, they contain about 30 per cent of the total Canadian population. Their individual growth rates between 1971 and 1976 varied. The Toronto area, which grew by 7.7 per cent, now edges out Montreal, which grew by only 2.7 per cent, as the biggest CMA. Vancouver, which grew by 7.8 per cent, is now close to the 1.2 million size (Table 13). A special concern of public officials, planners and urban researchers during the 1960's and early 1970's was that the Big Three would continue to absorb most of the future urban growth and that, as a consequence, public policies and actions were needed to counter this expected trend. However, the 1976 Census data show that this is no longer happening. As a group, the Big Three grew by 5.6 per cent between 1971 and 1976, less than the national population (6.6 per cent). As a consequence, the proportion of all Canadians living in the three major metropolises declined slightly in the five-year period, from 29.7 per cent to 29.4 per cent (see Table 12). And, while each of the Big Three certainly did grow in the five-year period—in absolute terms, substantially, and, in relative terms, higher than the national population average, in the case of Toronto and Vancouver—the fact is that since 1966 they have not been growing as fast as earlier. As seen in Table 13, their annual average growth rates in each five-year period since 1966 were much lower than before. Other CMA's

After the Big Three come the twenty other 100,000-plus CMA's. About 26 per cent of Canadians live there. As a group, these CMA's increased by 8.2 per cent in the 1971-76 period. They too experienced an exodus to the suburbs; while their city cores increased, as a group, by 4.5 per cent, their suburbs combined went up by 16.2 per cent.

TABLE 12 Population Concentration in Census Metropolitan Areas, 1951-1976 Population of 3 national metropolises* (in OOO's) Population of CMA's** (in OOO's) Total Canadian Population (in OOO's) % in 3 national metropolises % in all CMA's Total Urban Population % in 3 national metropolises % in all CMA's

1951

1961

1966

1971

1971 #

1976#

3,387 6,394 14,009 24.2 45.6 8,818 38.4 72.5

4,962 9,191 18,238 27.2 50.4 12,700 39.1 72.4

5,794 10,454 20,015 28.9 52.2 14,722 39.3 71.0

6,454 11,874 21,568 29.9 55.1 16,400 39.3 72.4

6,414 11,984 21,568 29.7 55.6 16,400 39.1 73.1

6,772 12,796 22,993 29.4 55.6 17,367 39.0 73.7

* Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver ** The 23 CMA's identified in 1976 Census. The figures for 1951-1971 are based on the 1971 boundaries; for 197l# and 1976#, based on 1976 boundaries. Source: 1951, 1961, 1966 and 1971—Canada Year Book, 1974; 197l#and 1976#, 1976 Census of Canada.

34

IRA M. ROBINSON

If the performance of these CMA's is examined, it can be seen that most of them have experienced declining rates of growth since the early 1960's, and especially since 1966, compared to the previous years. Table 13 lists, for each of the other census metropolitan areas (as well as the Big Three), as defined by the 1976 Census, the annual average rates of growth for four periods: 1951-61, 1961-66, 1966-71, and 1971-76. In practically all instances, the growth rate for each of the latter three periods shows a decline from the preceding period. Looking at the 1971-76 period, it can be seen that Calgary, Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Oshawa, Ottawa-Hull, and Victoria all increased by more than 10 per cent in the five-year period, that is, more than 2 per cent annually. But as Table 13 also shows, seven of the twenty other CMA's grew either at the same rate or more slowly than the national annual average rates of population and urban growth, that is, at or less than 1.3 per cent during these five years. Moreover, two areas, Windsor and Sudbury, actually experienced absolute, though slight, population declines. Metro Dwellers by Regions

Another useful measure of metropolitan concentration is the proportion of population in each of Canada's major regions which reside in its metropolitan areas. The distribution of CMA's by major regions is as follows: Atlantic, 3; Quebec, 4; Ontario, 9 (including all of Ottawa-Hull); Prairies, 5; and British Columbia, 2. Until 1966 the proportion of each region's population residing in metropolitan areas was increasing, except for British Columbia. Between 1966 and 1971, the proportion in Ontario declined, as did B.C. again, but in the Atlantic, Quebec, and Prairie regions it continued to increase. Since 1971, the Atlantic and Prairie regions continued to experience an increase in their proportions and British Columbia a decline. However, in Ontario and Quebec, the proportion remained the same during the fiveyear period. These data are outlined in Table 14. In summary, then, what is significant about the data presented above on the growth changes in the CMA's (including the Big Three) since the late 1960's is that population decline in the urban core is behaving somewhat differently in the 1970's from

TABLE 13

Population of Individual Census Metropolitan Areas, 1951-1976 Census Metropolitan Areas (listed by size in 1976) Toronto Montreal Vancouver Ottawa-Hull Winnipeg Edmonton Quebec City Hamilton Calgary St. Catharines- Niagara Kitchener- Waterloo London Halifax Windsor Victoria Sudbury Regina St. John's (Nfld.) Oshawa Saskatoon Chicoutimi-Jonquiere Thunder Bay Saint John (N.B.) All CMA's

Average Annual Growth Ragtes

1951

1956

1961

1,261.9 1,539.3

1,571.9 1,830.2

1,919.4 2,215.6 826.8 457.0 476.5 359.8 379.1 401.1 279.1 257.8 154.9 226.7 193.4 217.2 155.8 127.4 113.7 106.7 N.A. 95.6 127.6 102.1 98.1 9,190.9

586.2 311.6 357.2 193.6 289.3 281.9 142.3 189.0 102.5 167.7 138.4 182.6 114.9 80.5 72.7 80.9 N.A. 55.7 91.2 73.7 80.7 6,393.8

694.4 367.8 412.7 275.2 328.4 341.5 201.0 233.0 128.7 196.3 170.5 208.5 136.1 107.9 91.2 92.6 N.A. 72.9 110.3 87.6 88.4 7,747.1

Population in OOO's

(Non-geometri)c

1966

1971

1971$

1976#

1951-61

1961-66

1966-71

1971-76

2,289.9 2,571.0 933.1 528.8 508.8 425.4 436.9 457.4 330.6 285.5 192.3 253.7 209.9 238.3 175.3 136.7 132.4 117.5 N.A. 115.9 133.0 108.0 104.2 10,454.6

2,628.0 2,743.2 1,082.3 602.5 540.3 495.7 480.5 498.5 403.3 303.4 226.8 286.0 222.6 258.6 195.8 155.4 140.7 131.8 N.A. 126.5 133.7 112.1 106.7 11,874.5

2,602.1 2,729.2 1,082.3 619.9 549.8 496.0 501.4 503.1 403.3 285.8 238.6 253.0 250.6 248.7 195.8 157.7 140.7 131.8 120.3 126.4 126.4 114.7 106.7 11,984.3

2,803.1 2,802.5 1,166.3 693.3 578.2 554.2 542.2 529.4 469.9 301.9 272.2 270.4 268.0 247.6 218.2 157.0 151.2 143.4 135.2 133.7 128.6 119.2 113.0 12,795.7

5.2 4.4 4.1 4.4 3.3 8.6 3.1 4.2 9.6 3.6 4.4 3.5 4.0 1.9 3.6 5.8 5.6 3.2 N.A. 7.2 3.4 3.8 2.2 4.4

3.9 3.2 2.6 3.1 1.3 3.6 3.0 2.8 3.7 2.1 4.8 2.4 1.7 1.9 2.5 1.5 3.3 2.0 N.A. 4.2 0.8 1.2 1.2 2.7

3.0 1.3 3.2 2.8 1.2 3.3 2.0 1.8 4.4 1.3 3.6 2.5 1.2 1.7 2.3 2.7 1.3 2.4 N.A. 1.8 0.0 .7 .5 2.7

1.5 0.5 1.5 2.4 1.0 2.3 1.6 1.0 3.3 1.1 2.8 1.4 1.4 -0.4 2.3 -0.4 1.5 1.7 2.5 1.1 0.3 0.8 1.2 1.3

Note: Figures for 1951, 1956, 1961, 1966, and 1971 based on 1971 boundaries; for 197l# and 1976#, based on 1976 boundaries. Also, because the list is based on those urban areas considered CMA's in 1976, this explains why it includes some which had less than 100,000 population in earlier years. Source: 1951, 1956, 1961, 1966, and 1971: Canada Year Book (1974), Table 4.9; 197l# and 1976#: Statistics Canada, 1976 Census of Canada, Population: Geographical Distributions (Cat. 92-806).

36

IRA M. ROBINSON

what it did in the 1960's. A distinguishing feature of the 1960's was the decline of the central cities (this trend has continued), but in the 1970's entire metropolitan areas, not just their central cities, are registering slower rates of growth, if not actual absolute population declines. This means that the suburban communities in these metropolitan areas are also experiencing zero or negative change. It does not mean, however, that all suburbs are uniformly losing population, but that the trend of out-migration from central cities which began in the immediate post war years now applies also to many of the communities surrounding the city limits. Thus, the concern during the late 1960's and early 1970's about continued concentration of the nation's population in metropolitan areas, especially in the Big Three, no longer seems well founded. Most urban experts and researchers, including those who do forecasting, were apparently unaware that these changes in the growth of metropolitan areas were going on and, indeed, did not anticipate them. TABLE 14 Metropolitan Concentration by Regions, 1961-1976 Region

Atlantic* Quebec Ontario** Prairies*** British Columbia

No. of CMA's 3 3 10 5 2

CM A Population as Percentage of Total Regional Population 1971 1966 1961

21.0 51.8 62.0 41.7 60.3

21.9 54.3 64.5 44.7 59.2

23.8 55.7 64.3 48.4 58.5

1976

24.0 55.7 64.3 49.9 56.1

* Includes the provinces of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. ** All of Ottawa-Hull included in Ontario. Ontario also includes Oshawa, which, prior to 1976 Census, was classified a Census Agglomeration. *** Includes the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Source: 1976 Census of Canada.

Growth of Smaller Centres: Small IS Viable

Canada's smaller centres may be differentiated into 2 broad types: (a) the so-called "non-metropolitan urban communities,"23 those between 1,000 and 99,999 people;24 and (b) the

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

37

smallest size settlements, those under 1,000 people, termed "non-metropolitan rural communities".25 Obtaining the requisite data on population changes in each of these two types of communities—even identifying them in the first instance—face certain difficulties. Statistics Canada publishes summary data on the population of urban areas by size groups, above 1,000 people, (see Table 15 below), but the areas are not identified separately. It does identify, and provide population counts for individual "municipalities"—that is, communities which are incorporated in terms of municipal status, regardless of size. However, as the Hodge and Qadeer study 26 shows, the majority of Canada's communities with less than 10,000 population (they define these as "small communities" for purposes of their analysis) are unincorporated—constituting some 80 per cent of the number of small communities, though housing only 30 per cent of the total population living in these communities. Moreover, they found that over 90 per cent of all communities under 10,000 population have less than 1,000 people. Thus, development of a complete picture of population changes in Canada's smaller centres requires information on its unincorporated settlements (both those over and under 1,000 population). There are two sources of this information. First, the population of settlements (incorporated and unincorporated) of less than 1,000 people are included in the "rural non-farm" category along with dispersed rural non-farm residents, but are not identified separately. Second, fortunately, Stats Canada among its several supplementary bulletins does issue a special bulletin for each Census identifying "unincorporated places" and listing the total population (but no other data) for each of these places.27 With the data provided in this bulletin, it is possible to fill the gaps, noted above, in the "municipality" tabulations, at least with respect to population changes. Using the above data sources, Hodge and Qadeer identified almost 8,000 "small communities" (by their definition) in Canada in 1971. They collected and analyzed a variety of information on these towns, including population changes, but, unfortunately, their study only covered the 1961-71 period. In order, then, to determine the population changes in all of Canada's non-metropolitan communities in the 1971-76 period, it was necessary to

38

IRA M. ROBINSON

obtain information on the approximately 7,000 unincorporated settlements in Canada in 1976 to complement and be reconciled with the published 1976 Census data on municipalities. This information was not available to the writer at the time of this writing, and, consequently, the population of these settlements in aggregate is roughly estimated, as noted below. Based on an analysis of the data from these various sources, it would appear that the death-knell which researchers, forecasters, planners and public officials have been tolling for Canada's small towns and rural centres these many years, should be silenced. While, to be sure, many such towns have died or are in the process of doing so, the fact is that the majority of smaller villages and towns across Canada are very much alive and even thriving. The proportion of the total population living in small and medium size non-metropolitan urban communities (defined here as those in the size class 10,000-99,999) increased in the past 15 years from 15 per cent in 1961 to 17 per cent in 1971, to around 17.4 per cent in 1976. The size range, 30,000 to 99,999, in particular, experienced rapid growth in the 1971-76 period, its average annual rate being three times the average rate of the urban population as a whole (see Table 15). Growth also has been occurring in Canada's smallest centres, its villages and towns under 10,000 population, including the nonmetropolitan rural communities under 1,000 people. As noted in Table 15, centres in the 2,500-4,999 size group grew more rapidly than the other smaller size groups, and, indeed, this size class in aggregate grew at a much higher annual rate (1.7 per cent) than either the total population or the urban population as a whole. While precise data are not available for 1976 on the non-metropolitan rural communities (as noted above), it is estimated by Hodge and Qadeer that in total, the population of all non-metropolitan communities under 10,000 population both urban and rural, incorporated and unincorporated, increased by around 450,000 people in the first half of the 1970's. Of this amount, this writer has estimated that those under 1,000 population experienced the largest increase, 350,000 people, or around 22 per cent. The continued vitality of Canada's smaller urban centres is even more striking when their growth rates are compared with other major settlement types over the two most recent five-year census

39

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

TABLE 15 Population of Urban Areas by Size Class, 1971 and 1976 Average Annual Change 1971-76

Size Class

Amount (OOO's) 1971 1976

500,000 and over 100,000-499,999 30,000- 99,999 10,000- 29,999 5,000- 9,999 1,000- 4,999 2,500- 4,999 1,000- 2,499

7,177.5 3,907.6 1,542.9 1,574.5 750.6 1,446.3 701.8 744.5

8,515.1 3,170.2 1,824.3 1,642.3 730.1 1,484.9 763.0 721.9

3.7 -3.7 3.6 .9 -.5 .5 1.7 -.6

All Urban Canada

16,400.0

17,367.0

Total Population

21,568.3

22,992.6

1.2 1.3

Percent of Urban Pop. 1971 1976

43.8 23.8 9.4 9.6 4.6 8 .00 4.3 4.5 100

49.3 18.3 10.5 9.5 4.2 8.6 4.4 4.2 100

Source: 1976 Census of Canada, Cat. 92-807.

periods. As can be seen in Table 16 the national population growth rate dropped by one-eighth, from 7.8 per cent in the 1966-71 period, to 6.6 per cent in the first half of the 1970's. Also, all urban areas (including the metropolitan areas) experienced growth rates in the early 1970's of almost half of what they were in the late 1960's. Rural farm areas continued their decline during the latter period. However, the rural non-farm population doubled their rate of growth in the latter census period compared with the late 1960's; and those settlements under 1,000 people experienced a one-fifth increase in the 1971-76 period. The incorporated small towns under 10,000 population just about held their own in the early 1970's compared with the previous 5-year period. It is fairly commonly assumed that the small town growth we are now witnessing in Canada (and elsewhere) is due to the spillover effects of metropolitan growth. Proximity of a small centre to a metropolitan area is presumed to be the major cause of growth of most towns and villages; such centres have been termed "commuter towns" by one writer.28 The Canadian experience, based on the little data available, does not bear out this presumption. The most extensive analysis of this question is available in the Hodge and Qadeer study. While the analysis, unfortunately, covers only the 1961-71 period, their key findings are worth not-

40

IRA M. ROBINSON

ing: First, not all towns and villages within the vicinity of metropolitan centres experienced growth; around one-third of them lost population. Second, in regions well beyond the metropolis there was also considerable town and village growth; about onehalf of them experienced growth. Third, there is no regular relationship between the location of growing towns and villages and metropolitan proximity. In the 1961-71 period, almost 72 per cent of the small centres located within 30 miles of a metropolitan centre did register an increase in population, followed by a sharp drop in small town growth in the 31-60 mile zone; but, in succeeding zones the share of growing towns and villages drops only slightly below the 31-60 mile zone level and, indeed, rises again in the more remote zones. TABLE 16 Population Change by Major Settlement Type 1966-1971 and 1971-1976 Settlement type 1966-1971

All urban places Census metropolitan areas Rural farm Rural non-farm All Small Towns and Villages* Incorporated Small Towns** Smallest Settlements***

11.4 13.5 -25.8 10.8 N.A. 6.6

N.A.

Population change 1971-1976 (per cent)

5.8 6.7 -27.1 22.8 11.6(est.) 6.3 21.6(est.)

* Under 10,000, incorporated and unincorporated ** Under 10,000 population *** Less than 1,000, incorporated and unincorporated

If we can assume that the Hodge and Qadeer findings are reasonably representative of the 1971-76 period, coupled with some random examples of actual small town growth in the 1971-76 period, then two pertinent conclusions are worth noting. First, the suburbanizing effects of metropolitan development do seem to have accounted for rapid growth of many small communities within daily commuting range of Canada's census metropolitan areas. A detailed study of the growth of small towns in the Province of Alberta in the 1971-76 period shows that while the prov-

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS

41

ince's two major urban centres (Calgary and Edmonton) experienced rapid growth in this period (in contrast to many of Canada's metropolitan areas), the small towns and villages grew, in relative terms, even more rapidly.29 Of the fifty-five fastest growing small towns in this period (defined as towns which grew at a rate twice the provincial average), some twenty were defined as "commuter towns" for Calgary and Edmonton and another sixteen as "minor commuter towns" for the province's three medium sized cities or for the larger commuter towns. Second, and perhaps more important, a greater number of Canada's rapidly growing smaller communities are located outside the Metropolitan orbit. Some evidence of this on a Canadawide basis can be gleaned from the fact that the following cities, located at some distance from and outside the immediate orbit of a metropolitan area, grew by more than 20 per cent in the fiveyear period, 1971-76: Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George, Vernoon, and Williams Lake (British Columbia); Medicine Hat and Fort McMurray (Alberta); Labrador City (Quebec), and Port Elgin (Ontario). The Alberta experience during the early 1970's would also seem to confirm this conclusion. As implied above, some nineteen of Alberta's fastest growing small towns are located outside the orbit of the province's largest urban centres. Perhaps an even more persuasive indication of this phenomenon is a recent analysis of the growth of Alberta's small towns, in which all communities were grouped, according to their role and geographic location, into six categories, and population changes were calculated for each class of communities for two time-periods, 1966-71 and 1971-76. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 17, which clearly shows a positive shift in population change to the small and medium-sized communities in the early 1970's compared with the late 1960's, and, in general, more rapid growth of communities outside the Edmonton and Calgary metropolitan regions. For those communities whose expansion was not spurred by proximity to a metropolitan area, other explanations for their growth are needed. The following chapter offers some hypotheses as to what these explanations might be, including also the possible reasons for the slow-down in growth of Canada's largest urban centres.

42

IRA M. ROBINSON

TABLE 17 Population Change by Community Type, Province of Alberta, 1966-1971, 1971-1976 Community Type by Class Edmonton and Urban Area Communities Calgary and Urban Area Communities Development Corridor Communities Resource Communities Peripheral Communities Isolated Communities and Rural Areas

Population Gain or Loss (percentage) 1971-76 1966-71

18

22 8

23 7 -1

11

17 15 33 9 8

Source: Ronald H. Blake, "Balanced Population and Economic Growth Policy," in Barry S. Weller ed., The Future of Small and Medium-sized Communities in the Prairie Region, (MSUA, October 1978), p. 47.

3 REASONS FOR CHANGES: SOME TENTATIVE HYPOTHESES

In essence, then, beginning in the mid 1960s, and continuing through the early 1970's, Canada has been experiencing some marked shifts in its pattern of urban growth. Many of the major urban centres, especially the largest ones, are growing at a much slower rate than heretofore, indicating that not only has natural increase been lower than previous years, but also that people have been leaving these areas not to be replaced, as before, by an equal or greater number of in-migrants. At the same time, a large number of rural non-farm areas and small to medium sized cities and towns are experiencing rapid growth, in contrast to earlier decades* Some of this growth is over-spill from metropolitan areas into nearby commuter towns and thus only represents a continuation of the post-war suburban exodus. But, in addition to and different from earlier periods, a great deal of growth is also occurring in areas that are a considerable distance from and outside the work-commuting range of metropolitan centres. These areas are not only retaining native residents who no longer feel compelled by economic or other pressures to migrate, or to be "pushed" away, but they are also attracting new migrants from the outside, including large numbers from the big urban centres. These changes represent reversals of past trends. The obvious question is why? Since these changes were not even recognized by Canadian urban researchers until recently, little if any investigation of the reasons behind them has been undertaken. What is clear, however, is that the causes underlying these new trends are diverse and only partly understood. Any single explanation invariably seems simplistic when one attempts to fit it to the disparate array of changes going on in different sections of the country and among different groups in the population. It is vir43

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tually certain that research will demonstrate that multiple causes are at work, in different ways in different places and among different population groups. The discussion which follows includes the author's conjectures about the causes. Some of the causes suggested fall into the category of "pull" forces of migration—that is, they represent possible hypotheses about why people are being attracted to small and medium sized urban centres and rural areas. Others represent "push" forces, that is, explanations for the reason people are leaving the large urban centres or not moving to them, as was the pattern before. Still other conjectures overlap both pull and push forces. Before discussing these reasons and hypotheses, it should be noted, first, that perhaps the most plausible explanation for metropolitan decline in Canada—shifts in jobs and the changing state of the national economy—does not appear to be applicable here, as it is in the USA (and several West European countries as well) where the relative decline in manufacturing and the obsolescence resulting from a lack of investment in the urban physical plant have been major factors in the decline of metropolitan areas in the Northeast and North Central states.1 While manufacturing in the industrial heartland of central Canada has not expanded in recent years to the extent it did in the 1950's and 1960's, there is no evidence of any substantial out-migration from, or closures of plants in the major metropolitan areas. Disamenities of the Large Metropolitan Areas

As discussed in previous chapters, until the mid-1960's Canada (like most industrialized nations) experienced a steadily increasing concentration of population (and employment) in its major metropolitan areas, especially in the Big Three. Moreover, most researchers were forecasting a continuation of that trend up to the twenty-first century. Throughout the early 1960's and indeed continuing through the early 1970's, concern was expressed about this situation by urban planners, researchers and public officials. Underlying this concern was (and still is) a belief that the benefits of large metropolitan size are being outweighed by their so-called diseconomies or disamenities. Many studies show that certain social, environmental and financial problems or costs increase with greater size of city.2 These include, among others, traffic congestion, pollution, noise, crime, social disorganization. To counter

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this trend, proposals were advanced for public policies and actions to slow down the growth of the large metropolitan areas and to redirect the growth into smaller centres. As discussed in Chap. 2, at the very time that these proposals were being put forward, growth of the largest urban areas had already begun to slow down, and at the same time the smaller urban areas and rural centres were experiencing a revival—and all of this happened without public intervention in any significant way. This would seem to indicate that individuals and households, acting through market forces and without government intervention, are indeed rejecting large urban areas, and their disamenities, as places of residence. But, clearly, the "push" of the metropolitan areas cannot by itself completely explain the recent spatial changes in the settlement pattern—individuals and households (and firms), before deciding to migrate out of these large centres or to avoid moving into them at all, must perceive that better alternatives exist elsewhere. Thus, to understand these spatial changes it is necessary to explain why the non-metropolitan areas (and smaller metropolitan areas), which have been growing rapidly, are seen as being better alternatives to big-city living. This matter is addressed next. Search for Amenities and Different Life Styles

For years surveys of residential location preferences in both Canada and the United States consistently showed a marked preference for small and medium size urban areas and rural settings, even among those people then living in big cities.3 However, all the time that people were indicating this preference, the larger urban centres were continuing to grow. The recent revival of growth of non-metropolitan areas in both countries would seem to suggest that people are finally "voting with their feet and not just their voices"; that is, they are at last carrying out their longtime location preferences. One of the most important reasons for this change is that individuals and families who contemplate migration these days are increasingly looking for lifestyle and amenity rather than employment opportunities.4 They are seeking places to live rather than to work, which reflects perhaps a basic change in values.5 The amenities and lifestyle opportunities of smaller towns and rural areas appear to be especially attractive to three specific groups of peo-

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pie: (a) retirees and persons approaching retirement age; (b) young families who have become fed up with the deteriorating social and physical environment in large cities and are relocating in search of privacy and desire to avoid the problems associated with urban life; (c) individuals and families who want to experiment with more radical lifestyles, in agrarian communities or some form of co-operative living. For some of these people, this represents a sort of "back-to-theland" movement, a positive feeling towards the agrarian way of life, and an anti-urbanism bias, and, in part, it also reflects a desire for the amenities, both natural and man-made, and other quality of life attributes commonly associated with small towns and rural settings.6 Some of this can probably be attributed to the new hedonism of the 1970's and a lag effect from the counter culture generation of the late 1960's as well as to the generally increasing concern for the quality of life. For many of the retirees, moving to these smaller towns or rural areas reflects a return to their "roots," while others simply find there places where they can live close to recreational facilities, more inexpensive housing, a lower cost of living, and an easier pace of life. Likewise, the attractions of smaller towns and cities, especially when compared with large cities, help to explain why these places are retaining smalltown people who could otherwise have migrated to other regions of the country as in the past; and this is as good as attracting an equivalent number of new people. For example, rural senior citizens, including farmers, who may be on the verge of retirement, are no longer flocking to the big cities to live out their retirements years. According to recent national surveys in the United States, people living in rural areas and small towns—both the oldtimers as well as new migrants—appear to be more satisfied with their lives than those living in large cities and their suburbs.7 Although the specific data supporting this conclusion are unavailable, it is presumed that the high levels of satisfaction associated with life in these areas are the result of the attractive physical environment and the simpler lifestyle found in such places. Problems of crime, pollution, congestion, and noise are virtually nonexistent in rural settings and most smaller urban areas. In addition, the abundance of open space and other natural features provides a range of recreational and aesthetic experiences not readily available to residents of the big cities. .

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There are significant differences amongst Canadian communities in the type and quality of amenities and lifestyles they can offer; and it is these relative differences that may be the important factor in the recent growth of different sized communities throughout Canada. Vancouver, for example, offers people certain kinds of amenities, including a better climate, which Toronto does not have; Calgary's climate and skiing facilities are more attractive than Montreal's; and so on. Likewise, the rapid growth of British Columbia in recent years clearly reflects, among other things, a westward preference on the part of great number of Canadians; while at the same time, within the province itself, small and medium sized places like Kelowna, Prince George, and Kamloops are seen as being at least as attractive as Vancouver. As noted in Chapter 2, a large number of the Canadian nonmetropolitan towns and cities (as well as the rural non-farm areas) that have been growing rapidly are located close to, although not within work-commuting range, of a large city or metropolitan area. These non-metropolitan settlements are seen as the best of both possible worlds: they avoid the problems and disamenities of big cities and also provide the many amenities and other advantages of "small town living." Moreover, advances in the economics and technology of transportation have removed some of the previous constraints on non-metropolitan growth by making these areas accessible to large cities and the major metropolitan areas for specialized functions and facilities (for example, opera, theatre, specialized clothing stores, etc.). In short, these nonmetropolitan areas can, in Alonso's words, "borrow size" of the large urban areas, which allows the residents to have their cake and eat it too.8 "People-First" Approach to Economic Development

Another reason, it is hypothesized, for the recent urbanization trends is related to the previous one and attempts to explain the search for communities as places to live rather than to work in terms of the changing economic forces inducing urban or regional development. Traditional models of urban and regional economic development have always assumed that people migrate for employment opportunities and that development of a viable export sector is the key motivating force in the creation of jobs. The process of

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economic development and of growth of an urban area or region, the models postulate, runs something like this: first, jobs are created as a result of demand for the area's exports, which attracts people to the area and encourages others to stay; incomes then rise, which results in greater local expenditures; infrastructure and amenities will be developed, attracting more people; the larger potential local markets thereby created attract importsubstitution industries and businesses and more jobs; and so on. Goldberg and Webster refer to this traditional model as the "demand-based model of development".9 While the availability of jobs was certainly a factor in the growth of many smaller centres and peripheral areas in the early 1970's, for example, communities and regions based on natural resources, population movements appear to reflect a completely different motivation. A large number of small towns and rural areas are experiencing growth because they offer in-migrants and existing residents, not immediate employment but special lifestyle and amenity opportunities. This is a new phenomenon in community and regional growth and is termed by Goldberg and Webster the "people-first" approach, or the "supply-based model of development," in contrast to the traditional model.10 In this model of development, it is assumed that the development cycle sketched out above is not necessarily linear but could be entered at any point and activated by any element in the process, in particular, by first attracting people rather than jobs. New in-migrants attracted to an area—for reasons of lifestyle, amenities, or whatever—create effective demand for the urban centre's or region's products soon after they arrive or spur the development of new businesses and industries, thereby creating new jobs, which, in turn, continues the process of economic development. In recent years, the diffusion of transportation, communications, education, cultural and health facilities, and other social and economic infrastructure throughout the national urban network and hierarchy made it economically feasible for people (and firms) to move closer to non-metropolitan amenities. General prosperity and higher incomes during this period also meant that many people were able to satisfy basic wants and needs so they were able and willing to trade-off further economic gains for noneconomic amenities. The people-first concept of area economic development is a

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particularly realistic option in the light of the Canadian welfare system, with its unemployment insurance, social assistance, and other support payments. Individuals and families can feel free to migrate to small towns and rural areas, even though there are no immediate job guarantees, without any great risk, because they are assured of no serious loss in income owing to the welfare system. Likewise, people can now remain in non-metropolitan areas even if they lose their jobs, or, in the case of young people if, none are immediately available when they graduate from high school or university. Traditional models assume such persons, especially the young, would migrate; the welfare system allows them to wait it out, either until a job surfaces (as a result of the operation of the supply-based model of development) or some home-grown opportunity is created, perhaps by their own ingenuity (for example, in a cottage craft). Also, if rural residents, including the unemployed, can hold out long enough and not leave, there are good chances they can eventually become local businessmen servicing the lifestyle and amenity-seeking in-migrants; for the evidence is that long-term residents of a region are more likely to become entrepreneurs than recent in-migrants.11 The supply-based model of local economic development explains why retirees and persons approaching retirement age— who are being attracted to and encouraged to remain in small towns and rural areas—are so important to these areas in terms of their potential economic impact. With their pension income, retirees serve much the same economic purpose, in terms of contributing to the development cycle, as if an equal number of new manufacturing jobs were to be attracted. If a town is made livable for retirees, attracting or retaining 100 of them is equivalent to creating 80 new jobs.12 And there is an additional bonus in that pension cheques create none of the pollution that a manufacturing plant is apt to do. Federal and Provincial Policies

While the federal government has no explicit implementable policy of deconcentration, several of its policies inadvertently or indirectly are probably having the effect of encouraging growth of smaller cities and towns and at the same time of slowing down the growth of the big cities and large metropolitan areas. The fed-

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eral government has an implicit policy of relocating those government operations which need not be located in capital cities or the large urban centres, an example of this being its decision to relocate from Ottawa most of the administrative and decision-making functions of the federal Department of Regional Economic Expansion (DREE). Also, DREE's own programmes of regional economic expansion and of encouraging growth in new or existing growth poles undoubtedly are having some positive effect on nonmetropolitan growth. While these programmes have been severely criticized for their failure to achieve their objectives and were not explicitly developed as a deconcentration strategy, they certainly have contributed to attracting some people to the depressed areas of Canada, both rural and urban, and to the retention of native residents who might otherwise have migrated to more prosperous regions. Even more importantly, several provinces have adopted deconcentration policies, either implicitly or explicitly designed to rejuvenate their small towns or to accommodate what are considered to be undesirable metropolitan growth trends. The most notable examples are: British Columbia, where there has been a plan for the area around Vancouver which aims to phase new growth into a series of "regional towns"; Manitoba, where since the early 1970's the government has been pursuing its so-called Stay Option—a policy to promote the social and economic well-being of rural residents so that they might have a genuine opportunity to remain in the region of their choice without sacrificing their standard of living; and Alberta, where, since 1973, the provincial government has been attempting to implement, with varying degrees of vigour and success, a provincewide policy of deconcentration. The Alberta government's deconcentration policy, which stems originally from the platform developed by the Progressive Conservative Party in 1971 as "New Directions for Alberta in the 1970's," received added impetus from a 1972 report of a special citizens-based task force on urbanization (undertaken during the previous government's tenure in office) which warned of the likely demise of many of Alberta's small towns unless countermeasures were taken by the provincial government. Since then the government has pursued the goal "to spread growth on a balanced basis across the province and capitalize upon the potential of the smaller centres, thereby assuring a better quality of life for

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citizens living within the metropolitan areas and in the smaller centres as a combined result."14 Related to this policy and the general goal of the government to diversify the province's economy is a programme to establish an energy corridor from Fort McMurray to Hardy, bypassing Edmonton. The corridor would include refineries, petroleum pipelines, a major highway, a railway, and power lines. It is hoped that such a concentration of infrastructure would attract sufficient employment to eastern Alberta to stabilize the population of the many small communities in this region that have been in decline for years. A second objective of the corridor development is to disperse the petroleum processing industries, thereby avoiding the serious environmental consequences of their continued concentration in and around Edmonton. The government uses three basic approaches to implement its deconcentration policy.15 First, it tries to persuade private business firms, entering or expanding within the province, to locate their operations in small and medium sized centres rather than in one of the major cities. To implement this objective, the traditional tools of tax concessions and other subsidies, infrastructure provision (for example, water supply and sewage facilities), and the relaxation of environmental quality standards, among others, are being used. Second, and in some respects more important, is its control over licensing and permits needed for natural resource development on crown lands and over the approval process necessary for large-scale, energy-using (particularly petroleum) projects. Also, through its ability to control the use of the "feedstocks" for the petrochemical industry (one of the major growth industries in the province), the government is able to influence the location of that industry. Third, the provincial government tries to halt decline directly and to initiate growth in a number of small towns by consolidating public services through the construction of multi-purpose provincial government buildings (for example, police, fish and wildlife offices, government financial intermediaries such as the Alberta Housing Corporation), and the location of senior citizens' residences and nursing homes. Even more important, the government is using the location of its own employees and facilities as a major lever for increasing employment in selected small towns. Scientific laboratories, research stations, regional headquarters of provincial departments and certain licensing agencies are exam-

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pies of government activities/facilities which have been decentralized. A notable example of this is the decision of the government in 1974 to build a provincial environmental laboratory and research centre in a small town of around 3,900 population (Vegreville), some 100 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. The new centre was designed to employ over 200 people and draw together and expand some of the environment-related activities of various government departments. While a number of jobs were expected simply to transfer to the Vegreville location from existing locations in Edmonton, most of the employees would be new and would have to be recruited. A comprehensive study of the likely impacts of the new centre on the town estimated that by 1980 a total of 240 to 320 new jobs (including the centre employment) or 600 to 900 population, would be induced both directly and indirectly as a result of the location of this deconcentration project.16 There is no doubt that the provincial government's deconcentration policy has been a major contributing factor in the rapid growth of Alberta's small towns and rural centres during the early 1970's. Growth of Public Employment

Certain types of service activities, which are not tied to or dependent on the agglomeration economies of big cities, find the environment and amenities of small and medium-sized cities and towns attractive. These activities, which create tertiary service jobs, involve developing ideas, distributing things, and offering services. Specific examples of these activities include research and development, educational institutions, government activities, and technological consulting firms. Public employment is one such tertiary activity that very definitely has been partly responsible for the growth of many smaller towns and rural centres all across the country (post offices, liquor shops, health and welfare offices, etc.). In a few cases deconcentration of government activities and facilities has been part of a deliberate policy. Development of Resources Sectors, including Energy

The strength of Canada's primary sectors, including energy, in the face of the new international economic situation has undoubt-

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edly been another reason for some of the urban growth trends experienced in recent years. Many resource regions and resourcebased communities all across Canada, which had been dying or slowing down in growth, have recently become more viable and experienced rapid growth. Canada's natural resources, especially oil, natural gas, and coal, and the associated communities for housing the workers and their families are typically found outside the populated or settled areas of the country. 17 While, in the past, few of these resource-based communities have grown to be very large, the largest being around 30,000 and most of them averaging between 1,000-5,000 persons, they do attract a significant number of people. A notable example of this is Fort McMurray, a small, quiet hamlet of around 850 at the end of World War II, which became the major residential and service centre for the Tar Sands Projects in the northeastern corner of Alberta. It grew from 6,847 people in 1971 to 15,321 in 1976, an average annual growth rate of almost 18 per cent—seven times the provincial growth rate. Its current population (1979) is estimated at 27,000. Moreover, many medium sized cities that serve as administrative or service centres for energy developments in the north, benefit from these projects and experience growth of population as well as employment. The generally healthy state of Canada's energy resources in recent years certainly explains why Alberta is now the fastest growing and probably the most economically viable of the provinces and why many of its smaller towns and its two major urban centres have been experiencing rapid growth. Zero-Sum Game Dynamics

From the standpoint of the dynamics of the Canadian urban system as a whole, the recent changes are perhaps not so surprising. With a lower average rate of urbanization, relative growth of some areas must inevitably mean the decline of others.18 When Canada as a whole was growing rapidly, in terms of overall population and urbanization, the majority of urban areas displayed positive growth, although there was variation in growth rates. This meant that when people migrated from Montreal or Toronto, for example, for whatever reasons, they were replaced by new international immigrants, or by in-migrants from other

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Canadian areas, or by the newly born of local residents as a result of the fairly high birth rates. Now, when people leave these larger places, they are not replaced. This means that Canada is approaching a "zero-sum game" in terms of population and urban growth dynamics, in that one area's gain is another area's loss.19 Other Factors

In addition to the above reasons, several other factors should be mentioned as having been responsible for the growth of many small towns and cities. In addition to tourism, there is also the improved accessibility of residents of smaller centres and rural areas to larger cities as a result of better roads and more widespread auto ownership and use. An important factor contributing to the slowdown in growth of the large metropolitan areas is the recent decline in the amount of net foreign immigration, which in the past was a major source of growth in the large cities.

4 THE FUTURE PATTERN OF SETTLEMENT

What about the future? Will the recent shifts and trends in urbanization, especially in the spatial pattern of settlement and the rates of growth among the different size communities continue? Has the trend since World War II of people streaming off the farms and out of the small towns and villages of Canada (and foreign countries) and rushing headlong to the bigger cities and urban areas stopped altogether? Most importantly, are the reasons for the recent trends likely to continue to prevail in the decades ahead? In short, do the recent shifts towards population deconcentration truly represent major long-run changes in the Canadian settlement pattern and urban system? To automatically answer these questions in the affirmative would overlook the possibility that these shifts are mere aberrations in long-term trends, reflecting essentially short-run conditions, and that in the future we will witness a return of people to the larger urban centres. However, by ignoring these recent changes one would clearly miss a significant indicator of Canada's future urbanization pattern. In approaching the above questions, it is useful, and necessary, to distinguish between the short-term, say the next decade or two, and the long-term, say beginning in the twenty-first century. The short-term is easier to predict. All available evidence points to a continuation of recent trends despite the fact that the effects of several key factors that will definitely influence the future settlement pattern are uncertain and difficult to predict at the present time. Before proceeding to a discussion of those considerations that led to the prediction that recent trends will continue, at least in the short-run, the uncertain factors will be dealt with first. 55

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UNCERTAIN FACTORS

Two factors, the direction and effects of which are difficult to predict at this moment but which clearly will influence the nature of Canada's future settlement pattern, are singled out here for special attention. These are: 1. the attitudes and underlying values of Canadians towards a number of issues affecting population and urban growth; and 2. the likely impacts of the impending energy crisis. Attitudes and Values1

The attitudes and values of Canadians toward a variety of issues affecting population growth in urban areas, urban living, and urban development will have a marked affect on the future settlement pattern. These attitudes embrace a broad range of possibilities. Attitudes to population growth. Attitudes may vary with respect to fertility, immigration, and the desirable total population size of Canada and of individual urban centres. One of the underlying reasons for the sharp drop in the fertility rate since the late 1950's has been a change in attitudes of women towards work, desirable family size, birth control and abortion, among other factors, and it is generally anticipated that these attitudes and values are likely to prevail in the future. However, it certainly is possible that changing economic circumstances, to mention but one possible influence, could alter these attitudes. Also, the impending energy crisis is apt to induce a more stay-at-home lifestyle, which is likely to put working women in a double bind by increasing demands on their time. The need to cut expenses by preparing more meals, raising gardens, or taking care of the children at home could easily conflict with the growing need for a second income.2 This also could result in higher birth rates. On a related issue, it should be noted that public opinion polls at least up until 1974 indicate that the proportion of Canadians who feel the present population size of the country as a whole (at the time of the poll) is just about right was increasing, while at the same time the proportion who feel it should be much larger has been decreasing.3 How Canadians might react to this question in the future if population pressures and economic or political conditions in the Third World became so intolerable that substantial

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numbers were knocking on Canada's door is problematic. (The positive attitude and favourable reactions of Canadians to the recent entry of large numbers of Vietnamese refugees may be a partial answer to this question—despite the ambivalent attitude of the federal government.) In particular, it is not certain how Canadians would react to a proposal to import large numbers of foreign workers into certain areas of the country where a shortage of unskilled manpower might develop (for example, to work on the many resource development projects now on the drawing boards all across the country)—as apparently is the situation in Alberta at this very moment. At the community level, there is a growing feeling that large size and rapid rates of population growth cause congestion, higher public costs, and general social unrest. This has led to some voices being raised in favour of controlling the size and/or rate of growth of urban areas—in the case of both large and small communities. Whether the emerging urbanization trends described earlier, namely, the slowing down in expansion of many of the larger urban centres and the concurrent rapid growth of smaller cities and towns will affect this attitude is problematic at the present time. Attitudes to individual-institutional relationships. These may range from a dislike or distrust of traditional institutional arrangement and delivery systems (for example, with respect to land use control, schools, banking, health care, energy)—which could spawn a more direct, decentralized, and local-level means of delivering services based on voluntary relationships without any coercion or one which favours greater government control, intervention, and centralization. The latter option might be encouraged by a feeling that strong government control is necessary to correct, for example, income disparities, environmental degradation, land use malpractices, an inadequate supply of low-cost housing, and energy shortages. On the other hand, the recent trend toward government involvement in various aspects of urban life and urban development could be tempered, if not counteracted completely if Canadian citizens, especially taxpayers, adopt a more conservative attitude toward public employment and government finances at all levels of government. It is just possible that taxpayer movements may emerge in the coming years aimed at limiting the size and scope of government, at the local and provincial levels (and

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possibly the federal level as well)—as has occurred recently in the United States, suggesting that opportunities in the public sector may be much scarcer in the 1980's. Specifically, this attitude, if actually implemented by governments, could mean that in the future public employment may not be the primary source of growth in various medium sized and small urban areas, as it was recently. Thus, these different attitudes toward individual-institutional relationships can affect the nature of decisions regarding a variety of key policy issues, which, in turn, can influence the nature and direction of the future settlement pattern. Attitudes to the use and control of urban land. These can range from the current attitude, which essentially views land as a commodity to be exploited, to one where urban (and agricultural) land is seen as a resource to be used and conserved for the best interests of the community as a whole. These different attitudes toward the use and control of urban land are also reflected in different feelings about land ownership and the basic question of property rights, that is, whether these are inexorably individualistic or whether land is seen as a public good in the broadest meaning of that term. These different attitudes are often reflected in such specific issues as the extent of public ownership of land by local municipalities or the rights of localities to restrict or control urban encroachment on prime agricultural land. Attitudes to space. Until now, the goals of individual consumers, especially families with children, with regard to urban wants generally centred on the acquisition of more space per family for all their activities. This generally has led to the preference for a single-family dwelling, with hobby room, garage, garden, private swimming pool, playground for the children, and so forth. In turn, this attitude, to a large extent, has produced a fairly low density, sprawling type of residential development, especially in the suburbs. In the future, attitudes to space may range from a continuation of this attitude to one where consumers are willing to accept certain urban wants being fulfilled on a communal scale, and a higher density form of living. The implications of these different attitudes for the nature of the future settlement pattern are enormous. For example, a key factor affecting the future settlement pattern will be the attitude of the large number of new families being formed today, and to

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be formed in the next decade or so, regarding their housing and location preferences. Most experts in the building and real estate industry expect suburbanization to continue in the next two decades, basing their prediction on an assumed continuation of the traditional preference for the single family home.4 They acknowledge that there has been some trend in recent years toward downtown and neardowntown living in renovated older houses or luxury apartments in many Canadian central cities, and foresee this trend continuing over the next two decades, but only for a limited market; mainly for young professionals, either single or childless, and wealthy older couples with adult children. The vast majority of new households, they assume, will continue to prefer their own single family, detached home and lot, particularly during child-rearing years. With land in the urban cores limited for this type of housing, plus its high price, these households will seek to fulfill their needs in the suburbs and perhaps in small cities and towns and rural centres outside metropolitan years. In short, it is assumed that these new households will continue to prefer the mix of land costs, house price, and living space that tends only to be available away from the big urban cores. Indeed, land developers will stimulate that preference because they have already bought up much land on the urban fringe and are waiting to reap the profits that should result from those actions; and, even though this might conflict with the desire on the part of planners and municipal officials to control urban sprawl, the battle, at least in the coming years, will undoubtedly be won by the developers.5 It seems to this writer that the experts are ignoring certain important counter trends: First, they are underestimating the tendency toward non-family households that has been so pervasive during the past decade and which, according to some experts, will continue in the future because it reflects certain underlying lifestyle changes in society.6 Most of these households prefer refurbished older homes, apartments or town houses, close to the amenities, excitement and other attractions of the downtown urban cores. Second, even among the new family households, there could be a shift away from the free-standing, owner-occupied, single-fam ily home and a greater demand for apartments, multi-family housing, row or town houses, mobile homes, and other innovative

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forms of higher-density housing. Because of the fluidity of many households and the looser legal links among their members, there may be a preference for a special forms of multi-unit housing (e.g. condos and coops) in contrast to the rigidity of tenure associated with ownership. Also, the maintenance of a single family house and its grounds is time-consuming, and with both family members likely to be working, time for domestic tasks becomes scarce and costly. Finally, the new households which would otherwise rear children and prefer the single-family home, might decide to postpone child-rearing and be satisfied with high density housing—if they feel they are unable to find their preferred housing in the inner cities. Third is the possible impact of a continuation of current economic conditions (especially inflation and high mortgage interest rates) on attitudes towards household formation, child-rearing, and housing preferences. Many studies in recent years have warned about the increasing difficulties faced by young, growing families to afford new housing, especially single-family homes. If inflation and the high cost of housing were to continue, this possibility seems even more remote. Indeed, it is even possible that young adults (and the elderly) might decide to postpone forming their own households, and, instead, remain with or return to live with parents or relatives (even after the young get married), thus reverting to the more traditional extended family housing pattern. The result would be a slowdown in the rate of new household formation—reversing a recent trend, with its resulting dampening effect on demand for new housing, especially singlefamily housing. Thus, in the short-run (that is, during the next two decades) attitudes toward household formation, child-rearing, and housing preferences could change, which, in turn, would have different impacts on the spatial distribution of the population. Predicting housing and location preferences over the long-run (that is, starting around the late 1990's) is perhaps less problematical. As noted earlier, we are fairly confident that the rate of new household formation will have slowed substantially as the end of this century approaches, and there will be a large porportion of middle-age households and the elderly, with few children, and thus smaller size households. We are confident as well that there will be a small cohort in the potential household-forming age

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group coming onto the housing market at that time because of the low birth rate levels of the late 1960's and early 1970's. These factors certainly should mean a high demand for smaller, apartmenttype housing units located in the urban cores. Attitudes to settlement size. There appears to have been in recent years a shift in the location preferences of a substantial number of Canadians, a preference for smaller towns and rural settings, following similar trends in the United States and Western Europe. This is in marked contrast to earlier periods when the overwhelming majority of people in all these countries were moving to and remaining in the larger urban centres. How Canadians will view this issue in the future will depend upon a number of factors including, among others, their perceptions at the time of the desirable attributes of these different sized centres,7 actual urban developments in these centres (will they have more crime, unemployment, etc.?), and, most importantly, the extent of the energy crisis and how individuals and families will respond to it in terms of their settlement preferences. Also, older people, especially retirees, are retiring in smaller towns, and one of the explanations for this is that they are being drawn back to their roots; that is, they originally come out of a rural or semi-rural background and hold a long-standing proagrarian and anti-urban bias. But what about all those persons who were recently born in cities and large centres and will have grown up in urban environments by the twenty-first century? Are they apt to have different attitudes about rural areas and small towns and prefer city-living in the future? The above list of attitudes is very crude, since it does not take sufficient account of the complex interactions between the attitudes within different areas. It is also incomplete because it probably leaves out many important attitude variables. Finally, the discussion does not reflect the fact that different groups in the population may have different attitudes towards each of these variables and that these may be, as they often are, in conflict; nor does it reflect the fact that the same group may indeed hold certain attitudes which are in conflict with each other. Despite these limitations, the list does illustrate the range and nature of attitudes and values that will affect certain variables that are apt to shape the form of the future settlement pattern in Canada. New techniques are now available other than public opinion

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polls for identifying in a meaningful and useful way citizen attitudes and values regarding a whole host of urban issues.8 These should be used by policy-makers when formulating settlement pattern policies. Energy Crisis

Uncertainty is now the major characteristic of the present energy outlook in Canada (and indeed for the rest of the world), both with respect to price levels and to supply patterns. Key issues involved are: the ability of world oil production to meet projected oil demands in the 1980's and 1990's; the price levels for oil that will result from the supply-demand situation; and the feasibility of using relatively less oil and relatively more of other energy sources in the future. This uncertainty has many implications for Canadian society, one of which is that it has shaken the assumption on which the planning of cities has been based, that the energy supply was stable, with relatively low prices and unlimited availability. In other words, it is likely that the era of not only cheap but continuously cheaper energy is over. Those cheap and versatile fuels, oil and natural gas, are being rapidly used up in Canada, and therefore the likelihood that energy in general and oil and gas in particular are going to become increasingly expensive (or what amounts to the same thing, scarce) during the next decade or two is a foregone conclusion. Many steps are being taken and measures adopted and proposed to deal with Canada's impending energy crisis, ranging from steps to increase the supply of conventional and nonconventional fuels to various approaches designed to lower energy demand. However, in most of the discussions on appropriate ways of dealing with the energy crisis, very little is said about the relationship between the pattern of settlement and energy efficiency, and the possibility of achieving greater energy conservation by influencing the nature of that pattern. Yet, we know that throughout the history of development in Canada, energy—in its various forms, price, and availability, as mediated by technology—and transportation (including waterways in earlier times, rail, and, most recently, the automobile) have always been determining influences on settlements and the settlement pattern.9 In particular, we know that since World War

1. Urban growth trends start with youngsters, their education, and perception of their future; public policies can sha^this future and the settlements in which they will find individual and communitv fulfillment

2. Higher standards in the quantity and quality of public open space can return the city to its rightful user—the pedestrian.

3. Population and transportation are interactive because they are interdependent and shape the settlements they form and the relationships between them.

4. Keeping feet and wheels apart, each in their own sphere, creates livability and creates communities that are viable and satisfying despite rapidly changing population patterns.

5. Changing work habits and flexible timetables provide increasing leisure, which in turn creates demands for more recreation activities, more recreation space, and ready access to open land and water throughout the seasons.

6. Moving day has become a familiar sight throughout Canadian cities, demonstrating social and economic mobility and creating its own momentum for rising standards of accommodation and changing choices of location.

7. Multiple housing reflects smaller families but increasing urban household formation, often supported by two wage-earners.

8. New housing forms respond to increasing densities but also to rising demands for private outdoor space and high quality maintenance services.

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II the automobile has shaped the pattern of settlement in a decisive way as new four-lane highways and expressways constructed to accommodate the increasing number of cars penetrated the countryside and permitted the building of low density suburbs. As a consequence, current settlement patterns, especially around the major urban centres, are characterized by sprawl over large areas, low suburban population densities, leap-frogging developments, segregated land use patterns, and physical layouts that are insensitive to climate. At the same time, the availability of cheap fuel to power the trucking industry contributed to the concentration of economic activity (and population) in a handful of large metropolitan areas. In general, the legacy of a cheap energy era has left Canada with urban spatial patterns, both intra- and inter-urban, which have an inherently high energy consumption. What may have been an acceptable level of efficiency when energy prices were relatively low is unlikely to be considered adequate today and in the future, when energy prices are relatively much higher and energy supply patterns are markedly changing. Focusing on the urban spatial pattern in general, and transportation in particular, as targets for energy conservation would be eminently logical if we just consider the following data on the enduses of energy in Canada: 1. 76 per cent of the Canadian population reside in urban areas, and they are large energy consumers for all kinds of purposes, not the least of which in importance is transportation; 2. 45 per cent of all energy consumed in Canada (in 1975) is accounted for by uses in human settlements,10 and of the remaining 55 per cent, industrial process energy accounts for 40 per cent (much of this also consumed in human settlements) and inter-urban transportation, 13 per cent; 3. The transportation sector alone accounts for 30 per cent of all energy consumed in Canada,11 and, of this, car travel alone accounts for about 55 per cent,12 two-thirds of which is consumed by cars driven in urban areas. Taking the transportation sector alone, the private car accounts for around 70 per cent of the energy consumed, all of which is totally derived from petroleum. We know what the effects of cheap and plentiful energy available for transportation have been on spatial patterns in the past. But what are the impacts of the impending shortages and/or high

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prices likely to be? Specifically, with respect to the underlying issues raised earlier in this monograph, are the effects likely to reinforce recent trends towards population deconcentration, or are they likely to cause a reversal and draw people back to the major urban centres? And, which of these patterns is the most energyefficient? If answers were available to these questions, it would then be possible to advise governments as to the most appropriate pattern of settlement to encourage as public policy, from the standpoint of energy efficiency. Unfortunately, there has been very little basic research undertaken or data collected on the relationship between energy efficiency and spatial patterns of settlement. However, the limited evidence available indicates that the following are the key spatial pattern determinants of energy consumption and energy costs: population size; density of development; the heating and cooling of homes; type, frequency, and extent of transportation used; number of persons in family requiring transportation of different types; demographic characteristics of population, especially age; location and type of residential and industrial uses; housing and location lifestyle preferences; regional location, especially climate. There appear to be two main schools of thought as to the effects of these determinants and, in turn, the best settlement pattern from the standpoint of energy efficiency.13 The first school of thought argues that large cities and a concentrated pattern of settlement in general incur lower energy costs (and fiscal costs as well) compared with more dispersed patterns made up of predominantly small, widely spaced, low density suburbs, cities, and towns. Consequently, it is assumed that large urban centres and metropolitan areas are the most energyefficient. The main thrust of the argument is, first, that multifamily buildings consume less energy per person; second, that higher densities (and mixed commercial and residential projects) reduce travel to places of work and shopping, and thus save on fuel for transportation and minimize infrastructure networks (for example, less street lighting, fewer sewers and water lines); and third, higher densities make mass transit systems more feasible and viable (which will particularly benefit the elderly, who will make up a larger proportion of the big urban centres in the future) and encourage growth around existing transportation nodes.

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At the same time, say the proponents of this argument, the energy crisis will discourage people from living in suburbs, small towns, and rural areas because of the cost of commuting to the big cities for work, or for specialized cultural, shopping, and entertainment facilities. This applies in particular to two-worker families (a growing percentage of the population) since the likelihood of the husband and wife finding suitable jobs in a small centre is slim, requiring at least one of them to commute to the city. Thus, they would prefer a big city where both are pretty sure of finding jobs; even if one of them has to commute it would be over shorter distances, and, in any case, public transport might be available. For these reasons, this school of thought would contend that Alonso's concept of "borrowing size," which is an important factor helping to explain the current deconcentration of population to non-metropolitan areas, only holds under conditions of ready availability of cheap fuel. Under conditions of limited supplies and high prices of petroleum, people will no longer find it advantageous (or economical) to live in a small town or rural setting and commute to the nearby big centre to borrow its size for specialized facilities and activities. Proponents of this argument also point out that small rural towns are especially vulnerable to the economic effects of higher gasoline and heating oil prices or shortages.14 In most cases, their freight—the products of their industries and their commercial and consumer supplies—moves largely by truck. Isolated towns in particular already pay more for goods and for transport because of the long distances and small loads, and with higher fuel costs, they will be paying even more. Also, many small towns and rural areas which rely greatly on tourism and recreational developments may suffer in the future, for long-distance tourist trade decreases significantly when gasoline prices go up; instead, recreation is (and will be, it is anticipated) sought closer to home.15 These proponents note that to get to work, people who live in the country and rural towns rely on commuting more than do people in small cities.16 Moreover, a U.S. study shows that present day residents of non-metropolitan areas generally consume considerably more energy per capita for transportation than do their metropolitan counterparts, since the former must travel farther to work and to obtain essential services such as health care.17 Also, popular opinion to the contrary, studies have shown that a

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fairly substantial number of residents of small towns do not own cars, including, in particular, the poor and elderly.18 Besides, volunteer transportation assistance to these groups is not often forthcoming from neighbours, as was the custom in the past, perhaps because as gasoline prices rise the car-owning neighbours reduce their number of trips or because the spirit of neighbourliness is dying out even in small towns. In any case, with the advent of shopping centres, needed services and sources of supply have dispersed and one trip downtown is less likely to take care of all needs. In summary, in terms of the original question posed at the beginning of this section, advocates of this school of thought would predict that the impending period of increased cost and/or limited availability of energy (especially fuel for automobiles) will draw people back once again to the larger urban centres and metros, at the same time slowing down the growth of the suburbs, small cities, and towns—thus reversing recent urbanization trends in Canada; and, if this does not occur naturally then governments should take the necessary actions to encourage such population movements.19 The other school of thought argues that just the opposite is possible. It contends that dispersed populations could have lower energy costs compared with concentrated patterns. The rationale for this position is threefold: (a) the relationship between energy efficiency and size and density of cities is more complex than the first school of thought assumes; (b) large cities involve higher energy and other costs than smaller places in aspects of urban life that are often ignored by the advocates of the first argument and (c) households and consumers may cope with energy shortages and price increases, not by changing their residential locations or lifestyles, but by adapting to the new circumstances in their present locations. The following specific reasons are offered to back up this argument. First, with respect to the relationship between density and energy consumption, it is pointed out that there appear to be thresholds to density increases.20 Up to a certain density and building size, energy consumption per capita decreases, but beyond that (the "breaking point" seems to be around twenty dwelling units per building and a building height of ten floors) higher levels of density may result in more, not less energy con-

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sumption.21 This is because any gains in energy efficiency by individual units in multi-unit buildings are offset by the energy needed to run elevators and utility systems and to heat, cool, and light common service areas in large high-rises.22 Second, high population densities (that is, large cities) produce large environmental costs, which, in turn, must inevitably be met by a higher expenditure of energy. These environmental costs include pollution, noise, crime (both in the streets and in the schools), and traffic congestion.23 Third, concentrated populations in a limited number of areas must be supplied with goods at long distances; and inter-regional transportation implications, and thus energy costs, are often ignored when comparing costs of concentrated versus dispersed population patterns. Fourth, there are substantial energy expenditures embodied in the large capital structures of big cities which are often not considered in accounting schemes concerned with this question. Fifth, low density settlements and small urban places in general frequently are able to tap the "free" energy of natural systems in the place of capital intensive fossil-fuel based systems to meet their needs.24 Also, consumption of energy in large cities is very much higher per unit of land area, which may be the most critical measure of density consumption (just as it appears to be with air pollution.)25 Sixth, households in dispersed locations, especially suburban areas, can employ a variety of strategies to adapt to increases in gasoline prices or shortages, rather than change their place of residence. They can take fewer but multi-purpose trips, use carpools, or opt for smaller and more energy-efficient cars. Also, households now occupying single family homes can improve efficiency in their homes by reducing the total space to be heated or cooled, adding storm windows and doors, installing additional insulation, and so forth. In general, those who argue that the new households coming on to the housing market in the next decade or so will continue to prefer single family homes in suburban locations (see earlier discussions on this) also assume that increased energy prices affecting both transportation and heating costs will result in smaller, more energy-efficient houses on smaller lots, clustered along rapid transit routes in the suburbs. Seventh, living in low density settlements and small urban

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places permits a person to walk to work as well as to have ready access to nearby open spaces and recreation facilities (by walking or bicycling or by a short automobile commute). This is in contrast to the big cities, where cars will probably continue to be needed and used for work and recreational trips to open areas which tend to be located further and further from metropolitan centres. Eighth, new technologies in the area of telecommunications are making it possible for various aspects of business and government operations to be carried out by persons living (and working) in widely separate places, including small towns—operations which previously required long-distance travelling or were urban-based. This has already occurred for intercity business teleconferences, the market for which is expected to expand in the future; however, teleconferencing mainly replaces air travel.26 The greatest potential for decentralization and deconcentration lie with the development of urban telecommunications, e.g. decentralized offices, neighborhood work centres, and home work centres, which, according to this second school of thought, should cut down urban travel, especially car travel. Such changes in work-residence patterns should produce energy savings not only from the reduced car travel but also from the elimination of many offices and work places, which themselves are energy users. However, as discussed further later on, while these new telecommunications should certainly have both decentralizing and deconcentrating impacts on the spatial structure, it is not altogether clear that this will result in less car travel and thus lower gasoline consumption. Finally, shortages of energy plus higher prices may demonstrate the value of developing a policy of community and regional self-sufficiency focused on a set of relatively diversified and integrated medium sized urban nodes.27 As the economies of scale and comparative advantages are offset by rising transportation costs (both for personal and freight movement), goods will be cheaper the less they have to be imported to a community or region and the less a person has to travel outside the region to get these goods (or services).28 Thus, this school of thought envisions the development of multi-faceted regional sub-centres, both in the suburbs and in non-metropolitan areas, with industry and commerce located close to workers, thereby reducing commuting. Thus, based on the above considerations, the second school of

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thought would predict that the impending energy crisis is likely to reinforce recent urbanization trends in Canada—a continuing slowdown in growth of the largest urban centres and rapid growth of the suburbs and many small to medium sized cities, towns, and metropolitan areas—and that governments, in order to achieve energy-efficiency, should encourage such a pattern of settlement. In summary, there are arguments on both sides of the question about the likely impacts of the impending energy crisis on the Canadian settlement pattern; specifically, whether it is likely to reinforce recent urbanization changes, leading towards a more dispersed population pattern, or perhaps to cause a return to a more concentrated pattern. It is difficult to predict with certainty which of the two schools of thought will prove correct in this regard until the necessary basic research becomes available. As implied by the arguments, pro and con, adjustment to the crisis will involve a number of trade-offs on the part of individuals, families, and firms and depend on public policy responses to it. Moreover, since energy costs are only one element in the location decisions of households and firms, it is difficult to predict at this moment how these will be traded off against other costs. Unfortunately, there are no empirical grounds as yet for quantifying the nature and cost of these various trade-offs; many of the arguments of both schools of thought are based on opinion, not on hard data. While there has been a considerable amount of data collected and research done recently on the energy implications of different size and type of structures, and of different spatial patterns within cities, the state of knowledge with regard to the relative energy efficiencies of different settlement patterns is not advanced.29 There is no comprehensive, reliable research as yet which treats the consequences of population distribution and redistribution for energy consumption. Only when such reliable research becomes available will it be possible to advise governments on the best settlement pattern from the standpoint of energy efficiency. In any case, and irrespective of the findings from this needed research, it is obvious that for public policy purposes the selection of the most appropriate settlement pattern, from the standpoint of energy efficiency, is not an either/or situation; rather, it is a case of opting for a little more of one type of pattern and a little

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less of another. Nor can the goal of energy efficiency be pursued to the exclusion of other national (or provincial) goals. A dispersed settlement pattern may cause a slowdown in a province's (or the nation's) economic development, or a concentrated pattern may not be acceptable to Canadians on social grounds. Clearly, the pursuit of the goal of conserving energy in planning settlement patterns must be traded off against other social, psychological, environmental, and economic objectives. Nevertheless, it is fairly certain that future decisions about how to develop cities, the types of transportation systems to build, where to locate industry, shopping centres, and residences, and what type of dwellings to design, will be made with energy efficiency a higher priority consideration than heretofore. One final point. The above discussion was concerned with Canada's energy situation over the next decade or so. In the long run, Canada, according to most experts, must develop one or more of the so-called alternative energy technologies based on renewable resources (solar energy, biomass, etc.). While some argue that this should be done immediately, most feel that this will take time and cannot be expected to be feasible until around the beginning of the next century. At that time, we can expect these alternative renewable technologies to have a decided deconcentrating effect on industrial development and perhaps on other aspects of community life as well.30 CONTINUATION OF RECENT TRENDS

Notwithstanding the uncertain factors mentioned above, most of the available evidence points to a continuation of recent urbanization trends, at least through the 1980's and 1990's. This conclusion is based on the following considerations: (a) the reasons suggested in Chapter 3 for the recent urbanization changes will, in the main, continue to be influential and, to some extent, may even prevail more forcefully; (b) new factors (for example, new technologies in the area of telecommunications) will come into play that could definitely reinforce current tendencies; and (c) recent experiences in other western developed countries are similar to Canada's, and there is reason to believe that these trends do, in fact, represent basic, underlying changes in post-industrial society.

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Current reasons should prevail

The reasons suggested in Chapter 3 for the recent urbanization trends should, in the main, continue to be operative, and several of them may prevail even more forcefully. For example, there is no reason to believe that people will not continue to seek places to live which offer rich amenities and alternative lifestyle opportunities. This will especially be true if the work week continues to decrease (as is expected), with the resulting desire on the part of even a larger number of individuals and families to have quick access to open space and recreational opportunities to take advantage of the increasing leisure time. In particular, retirees, who will constitute an even larger proportion of the population in the next decade or so, in part because people will be retiring even earlier than heretofore, will continue to seek non-metropolitan areas as places to live. Another reason for the deconcentration of population in the early 1970's which is apt to be even more pervasive in the coming period, is the development of energy resources. As Canada makes even greater efforts in the years ahead to increase its domestic supply of different sources of energy, and as these potential sources are located further and further north, the energy projects will attract greater numbers of workers and their families to the site of development than in the past. (However, while these future efforts will undoubtedly fill some of the energy requirements for the future, most analysts nevertheless forecast energy shortages in the coming years. The likely impacts of such shortages on the settlement pattern are contentious and uncertain.) New Technologies

There are new factors on the horizon which potentially at least should reinforce recent deconcentration trends. One is new technologies, especially in the area of telecommunications. As is commonly known, the service (or tertiary) sector is the most rapidly growing employment sector and is expected to continue to lead the economy in the future. Tertiary activity jobs have traditionally been urban-based, but there are indications that many of these activities are already beginning to decentralize to smaller cities and towns as well as the suburbs. It is generally believed that the development of new technolo-

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gies, especially in the field of communications, should further speed up this process. As noted by Goldberg and Webster (in relation to the telephone and commercial jet planes), this was predictable; many technologies are centralizing in impact when first introduced but become forces for dispersal later.31 Some recently developed technologies that could have the effect of furthering the deconcentration of tertiary activities include the computer, video-telephone, video-telephone conference rooms, technologies for screen output of files, and aircraft technologies such as vertical and short take-off and landing craft (V/STOL). Decentralized office growth is evident in many metropolitan areas today. In order to avoid the high costs of downtown real estate, companies have been acquiring new office facilities outside the central business district. Sophisticated telecommunications technology should reinforce this trend by providing effective communications channels between decentralized offices. However, according to one study, decentralized office growth is unlikely to reduce the volume of automobile travel or energy consumption, and, in fact, the amount of vehicle miles travelled might actually increase.32 Decentralization generally results in more travel in suburban areas, especially where improved travel speeds reduce trip times. Individuals and households will probably utilize the increase in speed to travel longer distances and locate their homes in lower density, more country-like environments; besides, the speed savings are likely to result in using the car for more non-work trips. A "planned" version of decentralized office growth is the neighbourhood work centre which also would have decentralizing effects.33 The idea behind this concept is that all office workers from the neighbourhood would operate from work stations in these centres and use the telecommunications technology to communicate with their co-workers and supervisors in other work centres. The neighbourhood work centre would have several advantages over the home work concept which currently faces many problems—psychological and otherwise, to its implementation. The former offers both the travel savings of the home work centre and the social contact of an office (one of the problems with the home work centre concept is that it is unclear whether people would be willing to forego the opportunities for social interaction which an actual office offers).

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This concept could have an enormous impact on automobile travel. Many workers would be able to walk or use the bicycle, and others would be able to use carpools because so many would have the same destination. However, if the "travel time budget theory" is correct, when given the opportunity to avoid the trip to work by car, households will, of their own accord, increase trip-making for other purposes, with no savings in auto travel or energy consumption.34 In general, decentralized office growth will, of course, affect commuting to downtown areas, particularly by clerical workers, and somewhat mitigate against the use of rail rapid transit. It is more difficult to provide effective transit service with a dispersed network, and without the high-volume downtown-oriented transit corridors. Office workers in decentralized nodes may become even more dependent on the automobile. Although the evidence so far is limited, there is no question about the potential deconcentrating impacts of the new telecommunications technologies on non-metropolitan areas. A key feature of tertiary activities (particularly the knowledgeproducing phases, known as quaternary activities) is that many of them can be performed on a small scale and are highly footloose in character; that is, they are not locationally bound as is resource extraction, manufacturing, and even population-serving activities such as retail trade. Emergence of new technologies in the area of communications eliminates the need for people to travel great distances to work together or for people to be employed in the same large city on a face-to-face basis as has been the pattern in the past. As a consequence, these activities are essentially free of locational constraints and have great latitude in their choice of places to do business. Another locational characteristic of most footloose economic activities is that they seek out places to settle in with high quality environments and regional amenities, which means that many smaller cities and towns and rural centres are ideal locations for these activities. From the standpoint of their economic development, location of these activities in such places provides an additional bonus. In contrast to traditional economic theory, which holds that the service sector is a follower in terms of job creation, it is now recognized that tertiary activities themselves may employ many local people as well as induce demand for local products

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and, in general, serve as a trigger for growth in line with the people-first, supply-oriented model of economic development discussed in Chapter 3. One specific example of the above phenomenon, with which this writer is familiar, and which may be a clue to future developments, is the case of a group of planning consultants who live and work in a variety of small-town locations all across Canada and who have formed a loose consulting network. They operate out of their own homes, pool their respective talents, and work together periodically if not continuously on projects of mutual interest; their only requirements for communication being the telephone, an ability to have quick access to data and information, some way to process written words, and a nearby airport with links to an international airport. With the ability to substitute telecommunications (and modern means of air travel) for travel or physical proximity, and considering the great distances between cities in Canada, and the impending petroleum crisis; this work-residence pattern, if it were to become more widespread, should have many benefits, not the least in importance being substantial energy savings.35 In general, it is felt today that major changes taking place in telecommunications favour dispersal of population, and that this may affect settlement patterns as profoundly over the next two decades as transportation has done during the past two.36 Similar Experiences Elsewhere

The changes in population and urban growth now underway in Canada are not unique to this country. Indeed, recent research would indicate that other countries have been experiencing these trends even more pervasively and for a somewhat longer time. The same trend of a declining rate of overall population growth is prevalent throughout the developed world. Zero population growth is now a reality in several European countries and in many other parts of the world. Moreover, deconcentration of population outward from large urban areas is a dominant trend in the United States and Western Europe. Indeed, this process has become so noteworthy that Berry has used the provocative term "counterurbanization" to describe it.37 In the United States, the recent changes in population (and employment) have been documented by a number of researchers.38

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Between 1970 and 1975, there were major regional shifts from the Northeast and North Central regions to the South (the new "sunbelt") and the West. Population and urban decline has been most apparent in the metropolitan areas. Nearly one-quarter of all Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSA's) showed an absolute decline in population between 1970 and 1975. Population growth rates were highest for SMSA's in the South and West, for medium sized SMSA's, and for many rural, non-metropolitan areas that lie far from the influence of metropolitan areas. Indeed, for the first time in this century, the non-metropolitan population growth rate exceeds the metropolitan, with migrants flowing from major urban centres to smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. More recent research by Vining and Kontuly indicates that almost all major capitals and urban centres in Western Europe (and Japan) now have stable or declining populations.39 Most of the countries studied show either a reversal in the direction of net population flows from their sparsely populated, peripheral regions to their densely populated core regions or a drastic reduction in the level of this net flow. In most of these countries, this reversal or reduction became evident only in the 1970's; although in several of them its onset was recorded in the 1960's. While the massive deconcentration of population outward from large urban areas already dominant in the United States and most of Western Europe is not yet evident in Canada, all of the indicators of a similar direction of change are present. There is no reason to believe that Canada's recent trends will not become dominant as they already have in these other countries. While further research on this process is needed, there is good reason to believe that the trends now pervasive in the United States and Western Europe are basic, underlying features of a post-industrial society and, thus, that Canada will not be immune to their impacts. FUTURE SHORT-RUN PATTERN

All things considered, it can be reliably predicted that the rate and pattern of urbanization in the next decade or two will be similar to the recent period, only more so. That is, the recent trends should become more dominant in the 1980's and 1990's, following the pattern in the United States and Western Europe. This

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means, for example, that the rate of national population growth and overall urban growth will continue to slow down. With a slowdown in national population growth, even with aggregate growth approaching zero, there will still be continued structural and technological changes, with or without economic growth. These changes will be mirrored in shifts in the location of economic activity and, accordingly, in population distribution. Further, as the average growth rate for all urban areas declines and the entire frequency distribution of urban growth rates shifts downward, more metropolitan centres will decline absolutely in population, such as Windsor and Sudbury did between 1971 and 1976.40 In short, a nationally slower or more stable population will be accompanied by many localities declining in population, others growing, and only some remaining stable.41 Thus, the distinguishing characteristic of the emerging settlement fabric can perhaps be termed diversity, that is, it will be characterized, more than ever before, by (a) a general dispersal of population, and (b) by communities in various stages of growth and no-growth (for example, the variability of individual community growth rates will increase.) Specifically, the emerging settlement pattern to the end of this century should be marked by the following growth situations: 1. continued growth of certain small and medium sized metropolitan areas, for example, those located in provinces and/or regions where economic growth is based primarily on expansion of energy resources (Calgary, Vancouver, St. John's, etc.), as well as the provincial and federal capitals (Edmonton, Victoria, Ottawa-Hull, etc.); 2. continued slowdown of growth in the largest metropolitan areas, urban centres, and central cities; 3. zero growth and, in some instances, actual decline of certain metropolitan areas, central cities, and many small towns and rural centres, the latter by-passed because of being poorly located in relation to modern means of transportation; 4. rapid growth of a large number of small to medium sized cities and towns (including new towns) that are strategically located, so as: (a) to house and service the workers and their families employed in nearby natural resource developments, especially energy resources; or (b) to serve as regional service centres for resource developments; or (c) to receive some decentralized

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economic activity (either private or public); or (d) to serve as diversified and integrated urban nodes for deconcentrated regional development programmes. With this diversity in community growth situations, government policies in Canada (at all levels) more and more need to be oriented toward settlement change, rather than settlement crises or urban growth, in order to address the full range of settlement situations. Some of these situations are not new to Canada, but others are, and it is these which will require new thinking, new approaches, and new policy instruments. The special problems likely to be encountered in these new growth situations and possible ways of dealing with them are the subject of the chapters which follow.

5 PLANNING FOR THE EMERGING SETTLEMENT PATTERN: PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Perhaps the distinguishing feature of Canada's emerging settlement pattern during the 1980's and 1990's will be the large number of big cities and metropolitan areas that will experience slow growth, zero growth, or even absolute decline—a continuation of a trend that began in the late 1960's. This situation will create a set of problems and pose challenges not encountered before by planners and public officials. This is not to suggest, however, that all or even most metropolitan areas and other urban centres will face no serious or difficult problems associated with growth itself. Far from it. In the first place, many metropolitan areas which may not be expected to grow very much, relatively speaking, in the next ten to twenty years, nevertheless will be faced with the need to install basic services and amenities (for example, sewage treatment) in order to accommodate the growth of the past two decades; that is, to satisfy certain needs which have been postponed for many years because of other priorities. Second, several medium sized and small metropolitan areas, such as Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Hull, and St. John's (see Table 12), are likely to experience periods of rapid growth for which they may not be well prepared in terms of services, infrastructure, and available land and housing at suitable prices. Calgary's recent growth experience may be a clue as to what these urban centres are apt to face in the years ahead. The city's phenomenal building boom ($1.1 billion of building permits issued in 1979), fanned by energy projects in northern Alberta, plus the rapid rate of in-migration (around 2,000 new people per month), have resulted in a whole series of problems for the planners and public officials, among which the following might be noted: soar78

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ing housing prices (now the highest in Canada); conflicts over land use and its control (there has been heated public controversy over proposed large-scale annexations); traffic congestion; serious social problems (divorce, alcoholism, drug and sexual offences, and violent crime—reputedly among the highest rates in Canada); and shortages in some vital services like hospital beds. To deal with these problems, planners face enormous difficulties. Population forecasts need to be continuously revised, which, in turn, necessitates frequent up-dating of the city's long-term capital budget (for instance, the twenty-year financial programme developed several years ago is now found to be adequate for only twelve years), and the city's general plan—in order to facilitate the provision of housing, land use, transportation, and other elements required for the city to function. Third, even lower rates of growth in the largest cities and metropolitan areas will mean, of course, fairly large population increases in absolute terms. For example, while their rates of growth are expected to continue to diminish, the Big Three will nevertheless have to accommodate an additional million-plus in total by the year 2001 (see Table 13). These additional people will all require jobs, housing, services, cultural, educational and recreational facilities, and other amenities of urban life. Fourth, many metropolitan areas, irrespective of their future growth rate, will continue to experience pressures and tendencies toward urban sprawl beyond their city limits and the removal of scarce, prime land from agricultural use to accommodate urban expansion (especially those centres in southwestern Ontario and the lower mainland region of British Columbia, where most of the country's fruits and vegetables are grown). Finally, the many small towns and rural centres all across the country that will experience growth in the decades ahead will not only face the traditional growing pains—provision of housing, infrastructure, financing of municipal services, protecting the natural environment from the pressures of rapid growth, etc. They can also look forward to special problems that result from their small size, economic base, and location. In addition, the oneindustry resource towns, both those which will receive an added shot in the arm from future resource development projects (especially those related to energy resources) as well as the newly created settlements, will continue to suffer from the traditional

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boom-or-bust cycle of growth and decline, with all the attendant financial, psychological, and social costs—unless measures are taken to stabilize their local economies. Of course, many small towns and rural centres will not be so lucky as these centres, and will experience stagnation, if not decline. Thus, Canada's emerging settlement pattern in the 1980's and 1990's will be marked by diversity in community growth rates and will consist of four broad types of growth situations: 1. medium to large urban centres and metropolitan areas that will experience fairly rapid growth; 2. central cities, large urban centres and metropolitan areas that will undergo slow growth, zero growth, or even absolute decline; 3. small towns (including one-industry resource communities) and rural centres that will experience rapid growth; 4. small towns and rural centres that will undergo decline and perhaps even extinction. Each of these growth situations involves its own special set of problems and needs (and opportunities), and each requires its own approaches and policy instruments for dealing with the problems and taking advantage of the opportunities. Figure 3 attempts to summarize the problems, needs, and opportunities in each of the first three growth situations. In the remainder of this chapter, the second and third types of growth situations are singled out for special attention. The problems to be faced by those medium sized urban centres and small to medium sized metropolitan areas that will undergo fairly rapid growth in coming decades are excluded from detailed examination, not because they are insignificant or because they will not cause strain and difficulties, but rather because there is ample experience and precedent on how to deal with this type of growth situation. After all, until about the late 1960's, this was a common phenomenon in Canada. Likewise, the decline of small towns and rural centres is not discussed since this, too, has been a common pattern in the past. Clearly, the most difficult and serious urban problems will be faced by those major cities and metropolitan areas expected to experience a slowdown if not actual decline in their growth. And, for all practical purposes, this is a completely new situation for Canada. There are few or no experiences or precedents to use as

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a basis for anticipating and planning for a situation that will combine local zero (or near zero) population growth and an aging population structure with economic well-being and a high quality of life in large urban centres. Hence, there is little concrete basis for anticipating what problems or opportunities might accompany these new conditions. Fortunately, ample literature is available on declining central cities,1 declining small towns,2 boom-orbust resource-based communities,3 and the recent experience in the United States4 and West Germany 5 relative to declining metropolitan areas. In addition, some of the experiences faced by those large urban areas in Canada that grew slowly in the early 1970's is available. From these various experiences, relevant inferences, analogies, and speculations can be drawn (these are discussed below). The special problems faced by rapidly growing small towns (including one-industry resource communities) and rural centres and the policies required to tackle them are also dealt with here because, in many ways, this is a unique situation in the history of Canadian urban growth. While these towns share with growing large urban centres many similar problems, on top of this they face special difficulties stemming from their size, economic base, and location. THE LARGE URBAN CENTRES: IS SMALL BETTER OR WORSE?

Based on the evidence from the sources noted above, it is safe to predict that generally large urban areas in Canada will find it extremely difficult, on their own, to adjust to population decline or even slow growth because of the existence of a whole range of financial and other inhibiting conditions and problems. These will result from population decline itself as well as from demographic changes which are expected as a result of the shifts in the overall population structure of Canada described earlier, and which will become aggravated in a situation of declining growth. Problems and Needs

1. Despite population decline, the savings in the costs and levels of public services to be provided are not proportional to de-

Figure 3: Major Problems, Needs, and Opportunities in Canada's Emerging Pattern of Settlement by Typical Types of Community Growth Situations TYPE OF GROWTH SITUATION

PROBLEMS/NEEDS

OPPORTUNITIES

Rapid Growth—Large urban centres and metropolitan areas

—urban encroachment on prime agricultural land; —financing basic services and amenities; —congestion of social and other services; —high price of housing and land; —traffic congestion; —land use conflicts; —rehabilitation of inner areas; —family detached housing in inner cores threatened by "up-zoning" and higher densities; —catching up with postponed services and utilities; —social problems

—provides a continuously increasing municipal tax base by attracting additional businesses and industries; —permits use of varied skills available and widens career opportunities; —expands variety of cultural and other services and facilities available; —attracts a varied population and age structure

Same as above, plus special problems/needs stemming from their small size, e.g.: —unprepared for growth; —large "front-end" costs required; —land speculation in early days; —growth often dispersed/dissipated among several small towns/rural centres; —discrepancy between revenues and expenditures required for new growth even greater (relatively) than large urban centres; —energy crisis may slow down tourism (i.e., recreation-seekers may prefer areas closer to home); —growth often short-lived, being followed by equally rapid decline; —conflicts between old-timers and newcomers, in social matters, types of local services to be provided, decision-making, etc.; —no professional planning assistance

—energy crises may induce local and regionally oriented businesses and industries; attract new residents who seek amenities and like living close to recreation areas, retirees, and professionals who can communicate with clients by means of new telecommunications technologies; —decentralizing trends in residential and industrial location may help stabilize local and regional economies; —new climatic controls may offset existing constraints on northern development.

Rapid Growth—Small towns and rural centres

TYPE OF GROWTH SITUATION

PROBLEMS/NEEDS

OPPORTUNITIES

Slow G r o w t h , Zero Growth or Decline—Large metropolitan areas and central cities

—asymmetry in relationship between population decreases and expenditures on certain services; at same time, revenues decline; —per capita tax burden may increase for those remaining; —how to meet unmet needs of existing population; —abandonment/deterioration of part of housing stock and some entire neighbourhoods; —housing and service needs continue to increase because household formation will rise; —demographic changes, e.g., high proportion of dependent elderly; more expenditures on health care, etc., and more adult- and elderlyoriented residential and community services and lifestyles; —poor, minorities, and elderly may suffer most from slower growth; —negative image (from decline) makes it difficult to sell municipal bonds and attract new firms; —limited control by local officials over area's economic destiny; —psychology of decline

—avoids problems of rapid growth; —chance to renew existing physical plant/declining neighbourhoods, and catch up on postponed needs; —opportunity to expand and develop locally based industries and businesses; —energy crisis may attract people back to large urban centres; —"holes" in urban fabric provide opportunity to lower excessive residential densities, to manage land resource, and innovate in urban design; —easier to solve pollution and other environmental problems; —fewer children means less pressure on educational system and gives chance to improve quality of education; —more elderly means less demand for auto travel, thus less demand for roads, less uprooting of neighbourhoods, less loss of property values and greater chance to develop viable public mass transportation systems; —elderly should increase demand for certain types of housing, trades and services; may resume their previous trade or profession (partor full-time); and provide volunteer service, citizen participation, and political leadership; —more certainty in forecasting; less speculation and over-investment

Slow G r o w t h , Zero Growth or Decline—Small towns and rural centres

Same as above, but more aggravated because of small size

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creases in population. This asymmetry is due to economic, social, and political reasons: a. Young families and educated people, who are the most productive segments of the population and most able to contribute, both directly and indirectly to a reversal of decline, and who represent the "low service cost" elements of the population, are the first ones to leave declining areas.6 b. Those left behind (the very young, the elderly, and the poor) who cannot easily move and can least afford it, must support, at a lower tax base, a level of services suitable for a larger population. c. Public service costs for the elderly will most certainly not decline over the coming decades. Aging of the population will affect an extensive list of services required, (for example, the types of housing and recreational facilities will shift toward the needs of the middle-age and elderly populations, while youth-oriented recreation and other needs will decline in importance). Moreover, not only will the elderly group grow in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the total population of most of the large urban centres, but because of their numbers they are expected to become more vocal and more politically active in their demands for the special services they need.7 d. Cutting services to accommodate population decline is generally not easily attainable because of citizens' expectations, the growth of constituency groups who resist substantial cutbacks in the scale of expenditures for their pet services even when demand is patently waning, and contractual arrangements cities have with personnel, the civil service, and unions. For example, parents are often unwilling to see inner-city neighbourhood schools closed even when there is a loss of school-age population and classes shrink markedly; and teachers are unwilling to tolerate layoffs even when pupil-teacher ratios are falling rapidly. e. Certain facilities involve fixed costs (due to "indivisibilities"), and some services entail heavy overhead costs, neither of which diminish substantially even though there are large reductions in demand.

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2. While service costs are not likely to decline, the revenues forthcoming to meet these needs most assuredly will. Among the various reasons for this, one is that depopulation probably will result in a cut in inter-governmental transfer payments, since those transfers are traditionally based on some population-sensitive formula. 3. Depopulation typically involves under-utilization of existing capital facilities (both public and private); since their fixed costs must now be spread over a smaller output and/or smaller number of patrons and taxpayers, the per capita tax burden will likely rise. (But this could be offset if a city's downtown area, with its large non-residential tax base, continues to flourish or at least does not deteriorate; then, the situation is one in which there is a constant tax base numerator divided by a smaller population denominator.) 4. Per capita debt may rise even in the absence of added borrowing if debt retirement is slower than the rate of population loss.8 5. Population decline usually leads to abandonment of part of the community's housing stock; abandonment leads to higher social costs resulting from fires, vandalism, and blight; and this contributes to erosion of the-property tax base. 6. Decline, and the negative image it projects, affects the ability of a city to sell its bonds and makes it even more difficult to attract new firms and households. Business confidence is likely to be lessened in a situation of a stationary or declining population, thus dampening the rate of capital formation. 7. Despite population decline, the expected high rate of household formation, including the sharp decrease in persons per household and the high proportion of nonfamily households (especially in the inner cities), means that the demand for housing will increase. Moreover, the amount of space demanded by these households (and by young couples, expected to be the other major market for housing in the inner cities) will be at least equal to that used by suburban families, if recent experience is any guide to the future. From a tax revenue standpoint, the question is whether the increase in number of households will compensate for the slower rate or actual decline in population growth. 8. Certain institutional characteristics which dispose an urban

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area toward decline in the first place (such as the dominance of a single group of decision makers, a low level of entrepreneurship, and a limited capacity for innovation) would seem to be reinforced during a period or stability or decline, as a result of increasing non-local control over the economy, smaller inflows of new personnel into organizations, and the survival of risk-avoiding styles of management.9 9. Just as there is a psychology of growth, there is also a psychology of decline: citizens and public officials like to look at the rosy side of things and tend to resist thinking positively about decline. This could result in inaction, aggravating the downward spiral. 10. Urban areas in Canada have limited control over their own destinies. The ability of locally appointed or elected officials to implement a policy for adjustment to stability or decline is circumscribed, in the first instance, by the legal-constitutional limitations imposed by the BNA Act, which gives the provinces primary, if not exclusive power over such matters as land use control, zoning, etc. Also, there are the constraints imposed by national economic forces which probably caused the decline in the first place and which greatly influence what an urban area can do to remedy its problems. The efforts by cities to attract new firms must face the reality that the location decisions of firms are often not made in local offices, where there might be a strong attachment to the individual city, but in distant urban centres, often outside of Canada. Opportunities

While these problems attendant on population decline are real and appear overwhelming, at the same time it can be argued that slower growth and even decline can be a disguised blessing. It not only avoids the problems of fast growth but also presents opportunities which are not present during a rapid growth period and which potentially could produce greater prosperity, well-being, and quality of life if only the urban areas can learn to capitalize on the potential advantages of not growing and to avoid the risks. First, slower growth can avoid many of the problems which fast growing areas such as Calgary face. (These have been detailed by Thompson.10) Rapid local growth has an adverse effect on hous-

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ing standards, leading to housing shortages, and crowds and overloads the fixed stock of used housing. It can run ahead of the capacity of public facilities, overload sanitary and storm sewers, and stall traffic on overused roads, wasting time, causing accidents, and increasing pollution. Rapid growth can also force schools into half-day sessions, crowd the court dockets, and create other types of social disorganization. Second, slower growth presents certain opportunities, including the following: 11 1. A reduction in the rate at which the stock of housing and other urban facilities needs to expand to accommodate increasing population (especially in the metropolitan cores) would provide an opportunity to reduce the annual rate of investment (thus releasing funds for consumption); or retire the most decrepit and obsolete housing and other facilities sooner. In short, population stability or decline would necessitate more substitution and reinvestment and less new additions of capital.12 2. Lessening of competition for the older housing stock could result in the average family being able to afford more space and might stabilize some neighbourhoods by increasing owner-occupancy rates (but at the same time it could destabilize others by threatening housing abandonment). 3. Slower growth may allow communities to catch up on longoverdue services and facilities, such as the provision of storm and sanitary sewers, transportation, and social overhead capital. 4. Property abandonment, resulting from depopulation, could provide opportunities for achieving long-held physical development objectives by proper management of the "holes" that open up in the inner cities. For example, if high, excessive population densities have been a problem in the past, then slower growth provides an opportunity to lower them, with the attendant benefits on pollution levels, traffic congestion, energy consumption, and so forth. Thompson suggests that the loosening up of these old, dense cores provides us with "opportunities to rearrange the urban furniture" and a "second chance to set things right."13 He recommends the careful use and mix of two land management strategies: (a) clustering the remaining population in viable neighbourhoods, and

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(b) thinning-out non-viable neighbourhoods through the provision of relocation incentives.14 5. There should be a lessening of environmental pressures (and thus of the need for stringent environmental controls), because of slower growth in aggregate consumption levels for scarce resources and amenities, including space and wasteabsorbing capacities of the air, the waters, and the earth. 6. Slower growth would probably focus more attention on expanding existing industries and businesses, rather than on trying to attract new economic activities. This could have a beneficial effect by encouraging creative industrial efforts, for example, diversification and growth of locally rooted industries. Likewise, the changing demographic structure is not likely to be all negative. It, too, can create some opportunities for positive change:15 1. Proportionally fewer children are expected (especially in the metropolitan core areas), not just because of lower fertility but also from age-selective out-migration (a disproportionate number of young families and their young children can be expected to leave). This could result in an improvement of the quality of education: a surplus of school space which, owing to a slack demand, will permit elimination of the worst facilities and upgrading of the system's physical plant or adaptation to the recreational and other needs of the elderly. Also, the surplus of facilities and staff should make possible more selection and provision of additional space and teachers relative to the number of pupils. (Note, however, that schools in the metropolitan suburban fringe could become overcrowded.) But it should be recognized that the smaller number and proportion of school-age children could be seized upon by local politicians and citizens as an opportunity to cut costs and allocate the resources which otherwise might have been used for educational purposes to other budget items. Yet, some of the funds freed as a consequence of a smaller school-age population might be used for education and retraining programmes for the larger adult population; for example, to compensate for the presumed threats to economic flexiblity and innovation represented by an older population structure.

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2. While old age dependency is expected to increase, lower fertility and population aging should reduce the child dependency ratio much more, relatively speaking, with the result that the total dependency ratio should decline. This means that it should be possible to adjust economically to an older age structure, and cover the added costs of old age (for example, the rise in per capita expenditures for health care), without placing an intolerable burden on the working population. (This assumes, of course, that it is no more expensive to take care of old people than it is to take care of the young, an assumption that requires additional study and investigation.) 3. There is apt to be a decline in the rate of crime, particularly violent crime, as those in the most crime-prone age bracket (15-25) will form a progressively smaller proportion of the total population. (This may be offset, however, by the high rate of white collar crime expected.) 4. Slower or negative population growth could conceivably lead to more rapid advances in per capita income, despite an older population, by increasing the proportion of the population employed (that is, the ratio of the working population to the total population will increase), and by facilitating investment and other outlays in research and development which can improve productivity. 5. The frequency of fires and false alarms, the need for recreational facilities (especially those aimed at young people), and the costs associated with these services, should decline in part because of the demographic shifts. (At the same time, the demand for child care will likely increase as more women enter the labour force; and service costs associated with the aged will rise. Fortunately, from a city's perspective, these services tend to be the primary responsibility of provincial and federal agencies.) 6. The changing age structure, combined with a slow-growing population, could presumably permit more certainty in forecasting, especially at the national and (to a lesser extent) regional levels. The smoother age distribution should result in less fluctuations in demand for schooling, jobs, and housing (which generally originate in sudden swings in the rate of formation of new families and households). It should also permit more accurate forecasting with respect to the need for social

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8.

9.

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services of the different population groups, as well as for local infrastructure. The greater certainty in forecasting should also result in less speculation, certainly in real estate but also in other business activities. A slow-growing or stationary local population would offer no specific encouragement to over-capitalization or to unwise investments; by contrast, there is a prevalent attitude in a growth situation that a larger potential market, resulting from an increase in population, would somehow correct or indeed compensate for possible errors of judgment. The smaller proportion of young people and young families and the higher proportion of older persons should lead to a decline in the market for private automobiles and a corresponding expansion in that for public transit. There should be less demand and support for further construction of expensive roads and parking facilities and thus less public expenditure for these purposes, freeing up funds for public transportation; less loss of taxable properties condemned for such developments; less ruination of neighbourhoods typically affected by such construction; and, in general, a lessening of the automobile's current negative social and environmental impacts. It should be possible to develop intra-urban settlement patterns that are more conducive to viable mass transit owing to the larger proportion of older people, the expected increase in smaller families, childless families, and two-worker families, in addition to the likely impact of the emerging energy crisis.16 These changes could result in a shift in residential demand away from low density suburban patterns and towards more concentrated, higher density urban forms. All in all, the short-term impacts of having many older persons, or retirees, in a community appear to be definitely positive. The increased demand for housing, trades, and services are beneficial. Also, many older people may resume their previous trade or profession, at least part-time, and may further benefit the community with their volunteer service, citizen participation, and political leadership. In the long run, however, it is possible that, through disability from aging, the older adults may become a drain on the community's resources.

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Thus, the prospects of slow growth, zero growth, or even absolute decline do not necessarily doom those large urban centres likely to be so affected in the decades ahead. There are definite opportunities which such a growth situation affords that were not present during periods of rapid expansion, if only the planners and public officials can take advantage of the potential advantages of not growing and avoid its pitfalls.17 In short, it is possible that the slower rates of growth and even the smaller size these big centres will be encountering can prove to be better and not worse for them. Indeed, at a recent conference on the subject, it was argued that slower growth can be a healthy sign; it can help in attaining a desired social, environmental or ecological equilibrium—a form of stability.18 However, the potential opportunities will not come about automatically. For example, the redirection of the investment and development funds released from expansion needs (for the purposes suggested above), and the adaptation of local planning to the objective of qualitative rather than quantitative growth, will challenge the imagination and skill of local public officials, politicians, citizens, and planners. Population decline in general and the anticipated changes in the demographic structure in particular—especially in the inner cities—will require careful and imaginative planning for the use and funding of public facilities. Political fortitude as well as creativity will be required to maintain public developmental efforts and outlays and to divert them more to qualitative improvements of the community, in the face of obviously lessened needs for quantitative expansion and the likely continuing pressure to reduce taxes and expenditures. The tendency toward inflexibility on the part of an older electorate and labour force will have to be constantly guarded against and compensated for in different ways in order to keep the options for change open. After reviewing the possible implications on a society of a zero population growth and an unchanging or stationary age structure, Day concludes that "life could be meagre or bountiful, violent or peaceful, miserable or happy," depending on institutional structures, social attitudes, and government policies. On balance, he feels that the implications are far more likely to be desirable than undesirable, both for the society and for the individual.19 One of the most important changes that needs to occur in order

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for these slower growing and no growth urban areas to be able to deal with the sorts of problems and take advantage of the opportunities associated with slow or declining growth and a changing demographic structure is a reorientation in thinking about the problem. This applies with equal force to citizens, politicians, and planners. First and foremost, it is crucial to recognize that those conceptions (misconceptions?) of urbanization, which were so firmly rooted in the research, literature, data, and growthoriented way of thinking of the 1950's and 1960's, are now outdated. It is urgent for everyone to understand that the circumstances today are completely different than heretofore. The difficulty, of course, is that experience up until now has been almost exclusively with population growth. Most people are illprepared for the phenomenon of decline. Policy instruments are generally oriented toward growth: of population, of the economy, of our cities. Planning in an age of decline or stagnation is not the mirror image of planning in an age of expansion and growth; it is an entirely different activity in kind, rather than degree.20 Undoubtedly, various types of responses will be developed or tried out to deal with slow or stagnating growth (and a different demographic structure) in the various urban areas so affected. Their comparative effectiveness and ease of implementation under varying local circumstances will only be known after some time has passed. However, two points are clear already. First, if it is inevitable that certain metropolitan areas and other large urban centres will experience relative if not absolute decline in the coming decades, then in order for such areas to be able to adjust "gracefully"21 to a new equilibrium at a smaller scale, strategies and plans for what Bourne calls "constructive contraction,"22 or others refer to as "planned shrinkage,"23 should be developed now. Second, there will be a need for an active role at the regional and provincial levels; otherwise, there is a danger that the local policy responses will be ad hoc and haphazard, that policies will be devised not only in ignorance of lessons already learned in other places, but also possibly in conflict with their neighbouring communities, and that they might undo all the good that might otherwise have been realized. Planning and co-ordination of policies at the regional and/or provincial levels within the framework of a national settlement strategy could avoid these pitfalls. (This proposal is discussed in the following chapter.)

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PROBLEMS OF RAPID GROWTH IN SMALL CITIES AND TOWNS

In contrast to our limited direct knowledge about the effects of decline in large urban centres, we certainly know more about the impact of growth on a community—what to look for and what to avoid—for this has been a dominant pattern in the past. Nevertheless, the fact is that most of our knowledge, until recently, was based on the experiences of larger cities (where most of the growth had been occurring previously), rather than on the impact of rapid growth on hitherto slow-growing or stagnating small towns. Fortunately, some recent research and studies have focused on this question, and from this information we have a better idea about the effects of rapid growth to help avoid similar problems in the future. 24 The discussion which follows is not concerned with the impact of so-called gradual growth—that is, growth which occurs normally, at a rate a town can handle reasonably well. Rather, the focus is on situations where population and/or industrial growth is sudden—specifically, where the new growth is large relative to the existing town (at least 10 per cent of the existing population). For example, this may happen when a public or private facility is suddenly erected in or near a small town. From the research available, we are beginning to learn that rapid growth in a small town can be a mixed blessing. It brings benefits as well as serious problems. Since many of Canada's smaller cities and towns had previously been stagnating or at best growing quite slowly, they all welcome the obvious benefits of growth: more jobs (sometimes) and more income; more tax assessments, a larger tax base, and more revenues (both from local taxes and from provincial grants). Certain groups in the population benefit in particular: home owners, from the rise in property values; land owners, from the increased value of their land; business proprietors, from their larger sales and volume of business, resulting in higher income and larger profits; and all townspeople benefit from the more varied facilities and amenities that growth and diversity will make possible. But, at the same time, residents (old and new) and local public officials are realizing that rapid growth brings innumerable social, environmental, and financial problems. Growth is changing the face of these towns, alienating older residents, threatening to destroy one of the main reasons the towns are growing in the first

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place (the lifestyle attractions of rural or semi-rural life), putting many of them into debt, and forcing town councils into rearguard actions to control the shape and direction of the growth imposed on them. Perhaps the major problem facing these growing towns is that, paradoxically, they have to grow to keep alive and, indeed, welcome it for that reason, but by growing, they may in fact destroy the very reasons for living in a small town—its environmental qualities and special aspects of small town life (the safety of the streets, the peace and quiet, the clean air and water, the uncrowded social facilities, the closeness to and familiarity with local government and the political process, and so on). The danger is that when the rate of growth in a small community becomes so fast or the number of people coming in is so large, the community becomes fundamentally altered; and if that happens, the desirable features will be destroyed or lost. Ironically, migrants who have traditionally moved to big cities for opportunities afforded by "bigness" enhance that bigness, but if large numbers of migrants move to small towns and rural areas for their "smallness," they may in fact destroy those very things they seek. Indeed, the revival of growth that is occurring in many Canadian small and medium sized towns and cities is already arousing concern in some quarters. Whereas fifteen years ago most small centres and rural areas would have welcomed growth without any reservations, today they regard arriving migrants with some suspicion and, in a few instances, outright opposition. Judging from recent experiences in the United States, we shall probably soon find many of these Canadian cities and towns adopting policies and regulations to restrict their growth. There is a danger that the notion of community itself will become lost—the sense of identity with one's neighbours and a feeling that one has control over the social and political processes. For, all of a sudden, there is a great influx of outsiders who are likely to differ from the residents in a number of ways, in terms of income, ethnicity, attitudes, or whatever. This disrupts the previously cohesive, coherent, well-integrated community. It is clearly a real shock to absorb a large number of people in that community without fundamentally changing its nature. The towns undergoing rapid growth are experiencing huge increases in the price of their housing and land. This has negative

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consequences for both the newcomers as well as the older residents. Many people go to small towns because they expect land and housing to be cheap, but often they find it is almost as expensive as it was in the big city which they left; and so the prospect of comfortable and relatively inexpensive small town life may actually escape them. This also poses a problem for current residents of the small town, because they have to satisfy their housing needs in those same markets, and they find that land and housing which have always been fairly cheap suddenly become very expensive. The result of that, quite often, is speculation in land and housing, which generally occurs immediately on the decision to locate a major economic activity in a small centre. In the Vegreville study it was found that the price of raw land in the community increased eightfold in fifteen months following the provincial government's decision to locate the research facility in that town. The most visible and publicly contentious problem these growing small towns face is the impact of rapid growth on their public finances, specifically on the local government budget. Because the towns are growing so fast, the old town services are no longer adequate. They were built for towns which never expected to grow to 3,000 or 5,000 people, and on top of that, now confront fifteen to twenty year forecasts of many times that number. This means the town councils must find ways of financing new sewers, new roads, new schools, and new hospitals just to keep up with growth. But, on top of all this, the newcomers, often from an urban area—and this includes the "weekend" residents who continue to keep their main home in the big city and own acreages in and around these smaller towns—soon start to demand city conveniences. Often financially better off than the existing inhabitants, the newcomers tend to demand new or upgraded services, which the older residents see no need for and resist, for example, stop signs at every corner, regular snowplowing, "fancier" schools. This creates another source of friction between old and new residents and adds to the rising costs growth inevitably brings. As a rule, the revenues which the increased population bring to the town are far less than the expenditures required to meet the needs induced by the newcomers. The result inevitably is rising tax rates, which causes a burden to and resentment from residents who are not as well off as the newcomers—particularly the elderly and other disadvantaged segments of the town population.

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Most small town councils have one thing in common: they all believe new industry will be an immediate cure-all for their financial problems by bringing in a larger and more diversified tax base. In addition, many town councils, especially those of commuter towns, worry about the need to create jobs so that the children of the town can stay at home. There are generally no jobs in these towns to hold the young. Teenagers leave for the big city as soon as they graduate from high school and rarely return. Even if they do stay at home (or return), the jobs available to them are limited. The councillors of those towns dependent on a single industry or tourism, as healthy as these activities may be at the moment, want new industry to achieve some economic balance and greater stability. Most town councils and residents do realize that new industry can be a mixed blessing, that it can directly or indirectly create serious environmental problems. However, these disadvantages, they feel, can be eliminated or at least minimized by seeking and approving only clean, quiet, non-polluting industries and by isolating them in designated industrial areas. With careful planning and judicious selection of new industries, these councillors believe, their town can get an economic shot in the arm while at the same time avoiding the typical problems created by new industry and maintaining all the attractions of its rural or semi-rural atmosphere and lifestyle. But these councils do realize that this is easier said than done, for they are in a tough market. Each is competing with others for the same industrial firms. In their search for and selection of appropriate industries for their towns, all the councils face several similar dilemmas related to the type and size of company they should attempt to attract.25 Should they seek out a number of small companies, which despite many advantages, employ few people, mostly in low-paying jobs, bear a high risk of failure, and attract little in the way of additional support activities while requiring substantial investment by the community? Or, should the towns try to attract a large industry which would probably be more stable and offer a wider range of employment jobs (from unskilled labour to clerical jobs to some management positions)? Yet the latter alternative also raises several problems. In the first place, by absorbing most of the work force of the community and preventing other companies from locating nearby (because of its monopoly or near-monopoly

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situation), a dependence is created that may be disastrous to the town in the long run, as so many one-industry resource towns can attest to. A large plant in a small town is also likely to bring in most of its management personnel from outside, at least initially, thereby attracting many new residents and aggravating the problems that growth creates. Another related dilemma is whether to give preference to industrial plants that hire mostly men as opposed to women, the latter being either wives of workers living in the town or single women from outside. The employment of wives would, on the surface, be highly desirable since this currently is a serious employment gap in most small towns and often a source of discontent. The problem, however, is that women generally earn lower wages, although since they represent the second family wageearner, the earnings are generally reflected in higher per capita consumption and savings. Also, an increase in female employment (only or predominantly) from within or outside the town produces little population increase, no increase in housing or residential land development, and no demand for water or sewer extension. In short, there will be development with only minimal growth in population. Unemployment may even increase because the men who are without jobs will be more reluctant to move away if their wives are employed. By contrast, when men are the predominant sex hired, the aggregate income added to the community will be more but the per capita income may not rise so much since new households will be added to the community. There are likely, however, to be related increases in housing and furnishing sales and in demand for public services and schools and some decrease in the cost of food and other consumer goods because of increased competition. The impact of the impending energy crisis on growing or potentially growing small towns and rural centres and the settlement pattern is unclear at this moment. On the one hand, energy shortages and/or higher fuel prices could put a damper on growth of these towns, especially on the smallest ones which might be bypassed in favour of larger, more strategically located regional service centres. Also, towns dependent on tourism could conceivably lose out as well, for as noted earlier, recreation seekers from urban areas are liable to cut back on their trips when fuel prices get very high.

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On the other hand, the energy crisis could provide opportunities which did not exist heretofore. If the arguments of the second school of thought discussed in Chapter 4 prove correct, then the energy crisis conceivably might speed up the movement to these areas of persons who want to live close to where they work or have ready access to recreation facilities without long commutes. Also, the energy crisis could produce an unexpected windfall in terms of local economic development. For example, while many residents of commuter towns around Calgary go to the big city for most of their specialty items and even for groceries, with the rising cost of gasoline they may prefer to shop in their home towns if the services were available. This should encourage location of supermarkets, specialty stores, and many of the other services which make a town self-sufficient. One of the most important lessons that researchers draw from the evidence on the impact of rapid growth in small towns is that unless the potential negative impacts and problems are anticipated and accounted for, they could easily outweigh the potential benefits from growth.26 Moreover, while financial assistance from the provinces is an obvious need (to help pay for services and facilities), possibly a more critical way to assist these towns to adjust more easily to the exigencies of rapid growth is by providing professional technical planning assistance.27 These towns rarely have access to planners with the necessary expertise and experience to tackle the highly complex and expensive task of planning and programming public works and land use. An equally important lesson from studies of the impact of senior government's deconcentration policies on small towns—be they explicit or implicit—is that in the future the following factors should be considered before any specific deconcentration decision is made:28 the type and scale of economic activity and/or facility that is most appropriate to deconcentrate; the types of small towns that are best able to receive the potential deconcentrated activity or facility (for example, all towns cannot meet the requisite technical requirements, such as water or labour supply); the likely impacts of the deconcentration on the potential receiving towns and their ability in terms of financial, technical and leadership personnel and social structure to absorb or otherwise respond to these impacts and problems effectively.

6 NEED FOR A N A T I O N A L SETTLEMENT POLICY

The emerging urban fabric in Canada over the next two decades will produce a completely new set of developmental conditions, creating problems and opportunities not encountered before. To deal with the problems adequately and take advantage of the opportunities will require re-examination of current policies and planning approaches. One of the most important requirements, this writer believes, is the development of "growth management" strategies at three levels:1 1. at the national level, the establishment of goals and objectives for the future overall settlement pattern and the rates of growth of the different size settlements in order to achieve a better balance among the provinces and settlements, including a more equitable sharing of economic and social strengths and opportunities; 2. at the provincial/regional level, the planning and management of the distribution of economic activity and population within the framework of the national objectives; 3. at the metropolitan and urban level, the development and support of growth management strategies by areas which are compatible with national and provincial/regional objectives and which specifically seek to contain, regulate and direct the consequences of the forces of growth (or decline). The concern in the remainder of this monograph is with the first level, the national. In this, there is no intention to underestimate the importance of the other two, but rather it is strongly felt that the new set of circumstances Canada faces in the future demands in particular a national settlement strategy—as difficult as this objective might be to implement. Moreover, several provinces and municipalities are already beginning to develop their own 99

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growth management strategies—and many more will undoubtedly do so in the future—but what is missing is a national framework to guide their strategies. THE PAST AND CURRENT SITUATION 2

Human settlement in Canada is typically seen as a local phenomenon, with political responsibility vested in the provinces (following the authority granted in British North America Act) and through them in a variety of local governments and agencies. But, historically, this has not always been the case. In the colonial period, settlement was used for strategic purposes to further the military and mercantile aims of the French and British governments. Development of the land, in carefully chosen locations, was part of a grand design of economic and military consolidation. Ever since Confederation, there have been purposeful national policies of settlement, notably affecting the Prairies. Construction of the two transcontinental railways, highways, harbours, and communication networks and institution of liberal immigration programmes were also part of a national "plan" that had clearly perceived settlement implications. In the decades after the 1930's, however, settlement receded in importance as a national policy instrument. The most desirable land was already settled and modern transportation and communications made it unnecessary to permanently settle a region in order to "occupy" it. National (and provincial) settlement policy became more concerned with various sectoral issues, particularly housing, infra-structure, and community and regional services. It was not until the late 1960's that the federal government once again recognized the need for a comprehensive national policy for urban areas and human settlements in general. This reawakening was triggered by a series of conferences and studies concerned with urbanization, urban problems, and the environment, the most notable ones being the following: the Economic Council of Canada's Fourth Annual Review (September 1967), which contained a sweeping introduction to urban problems and urban policies in Canada, followed by its Fifth Annual Review (September 1968) in which urban poverty was examined closely; a federal-provincial conference on housing and urban development held in Ottawa (December 1967); the Report of the Hellyer Task

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Force on Housing and Urban Development (January 1969); the Science Council of Canada's report on a national science policy for Canada (October 1968), which picked up the same theme and included as two of the four areas recommended for immediate planning, urban development and transportation; the First Canadian Urban Transportation Conference held in Toronto (February 1969), which was sponsored by the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities; and, finally, the Lithwick Report (1971). These various conferences and studies were undertaken in an atmosphere of apprehensiveness concerning the so-called big-city problem: the apparent concentration of population (and wealth) in the Big Three. And most of them advocated a slowing down of this concentration and the redirection of growth into medium sized and smaller cities and towns. However, this apprehension was based on research, data, and the conventional wisdom of the 1950's and early 1960's, for while this was going on, the rate of overall population and urban growth was indeed slowing down, as was the concentration of growth in the major urban centres; at the same time, smaller centres were experiencing a revival of growth. Perhaps the most well-known and important document produced during this period was the report prepared by Dr. Harvey Lithwick and his colleagues at Carleton University, which had been commissioned by the federal government to assist the Federal Government to determine what, if any, role it should play in urban affairs. The Lithwick Report itself further added to the concern over urban concentration by forecasting massive population increases in the Big Three by the end of the century. The report called for an expanded federal role in urban affairs, and among the five possible options suggested for such involvement, it proposed two which called on the federal government to spearhead a vigorous assault on the present pattern of development to alter in a fundamental way the forces of growth, technology, and power that we tend to accept unquestioningly at present.3 Specifically, it concluded that a national urban strategy for Canada should have as one of its principal objectives "to allocate national growth in an optimal manner . . . the strategy being . . . basically a new communities programme with associated programmes to deal with the extant urban system."4

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Shortly after publication of the Lithwick Report the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs (MSUA) was created with a mandate to develop means by which the federal government might influence the evolution of the urbanization process in Canada; to integrate urban policy with other policies of the federal government; and to foster co-operative relationships in the area of urban affairs with the provinces, and through them with their municipalities. Since the scope for settlement policy development, let alone implementation, at the federal level is, admittedly, limited because of provincial jurisdiction over municipalities, land use, local services, and settlement planning (as established in the BNA Act), MSUA has necessarily had to devote much of its energies to federalprovincial co-operation. One of the significant products of this effort was the establishment in several major cities of tri-level committees (comprising representatives of the federal government, provinces, and municipalities) which, at least until recently, met regularly to discuss issues of mutual concern. The principal policy objective of the ministry during the mid1970's was to gain federal and tri-level support for the development of a Canadian Urban Strategy. Five specific objectives were proposed:5 (a) to achieve a more balanced pattern of urban growth, both nationally and regionally; (b) to better manage the growth of metropolitan areas; (c) to improve all aspects of the urban environment; (d) to revitalize small communities; and (e) to improve, through tri-level arrangements, the co-ordination of federal, provincial, and municipal policies and programmes that might have an impact on the urban system or on specific urban centres. It was during this period that MSUA also committed itself to the principle of limiting the growth of the largest centres and redistributing that growth to about a dozen medium sized centres across the country. However, how this principal was to be transformed into effective public policy was never made clear. At the national scale the nature of settlement in Canada is influenced by three basic factors: (a) the rate of growth of the population and its distribution across the land; (b) the distribution of employment opportunities; and (c) the distribution of personal income throughout the population. All three factors are subject to public policy intervention. As already noted, in colonial times the growth (through immigration) and distribution of the population

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were consciously influenced by government, but little thought was given to employment or to income distribution. By contrast, the twentieth century has witnessed a steady shift toward greater government management of employment and income, partly through economic policies that found their genesis in the theories of John Maynard Keynes and the aftermath of the Great Depression and partly through some uniquely Canadian social policies, most of which were introduced right after the start of World War II and which cover, among other things, unemployment insurance, family allowances, old age assistance, hospital insurance, guaranteed income supplements. Many of these federal social programmes are shared with the provinces. In addition, the provinces have established their own social policies which, as with the federal programmes, have the objective of distributing more equitably the benefits of Canadian socio-economic development. Despite these far-reaching programmes, serious disparities among both regions and individuals still persist. Regional disparities have an impact on settlement in two ways: first, by the migration they encourage (indirectly) from the poorer to the more prosperous regions and, second, by the lower overall quality of housing, infrastructure, and services in less advantaged areas. Disparities among individuals, particularly between the poorest 20 per cent of Canadians and the rest of the population have a devastating effect on the quality of settlement, because the least advantaged groups live in the worst housing and have the lowest levels of health and education and the highest incidence of social problems. Governments at all levels have recognized that while individual differences in income cannot be eradicated, they have committed themselves to ensuring that no Canadian lacks the means to secure a basic standard of living. These efforts have on the whole been successful and are perhaps more than any other factor responsible for the generally high quality of Canadian communities. With minimum levels of individual welfare guaranteed, one might have expected both the federal and provincial governments to turn their attention to the first factor, the rate of urban growth and the spatial distribution of the population, especially in light of the impending urbanization trends and the problems that these changes are likely to bring. But such is not the case. There is no

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national settlement policy at the present time, although a few provinces (notably Alberta) have enunciated some sort of a strategy for deconcentrating urban growth. As noted previously, the Canadian federal government acknowledged this in one of its official documents submitted to the 1976 Habitat Conference.6 THE CASE FOR A NATIONAL POLICY

Many urbanists doubt that a single and uniformly applied national urban growth policy will emerge in Canada, even if it were necessary.7 The reasons given range from the country's extreme geographic diversities to the relative incapacity of the federal government to act in this area of public policy, because of the economic strength of the ten provinces and the constraints imposed on it by the BNA Act. Instead, what is likely to emerge, so this argument goes, is a set of provincial urban development strategies which recognize the essential presence of regional variations within the country and which will encourage regional urban systems to develop in a manner most suited to their needs.8 For example, Bourne suggests that an urban deconcentration policy might have some support in southern Ontario, in Alberta (where the provincial government is currently pursuing such a policy), and in the lower mainland region and Gulf Islands of British Columbia; but is likely to have little support in Quebec, and none at all in the Maritimes, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.9 More recently, Bourne challenged the need of an urban deconcentration policy for Canada, especially one aimed at limiting the growth of the major metropolitan areas, on the grounds that the conditions which generated the need for such limits are changing rapidly.10 Noting such recent trends as the decline in birth rates, the movement away from the major metropolises and back to small and medium sized centres, uncertain economic growth, and so forth and the likelihood of their continuing in the future, Bourne argues that these factors will probably combine to produce, in the future, slower overall growth rates and some redistribution of that growth, without government intervention. This writer disagrees with these arguments against the idea of a national settlement policy. For one, although the BNA Act certainly limits the potential capacity of the federal government to act in this area of public policy and while the federal system, in

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general, unquestionably makes inter-governmental co-operation difficult, these constraints are not intractable. Second, it is acknowledged that while provinces and large regions may develop their own strategies this does not necessarily mitigate against a national policy. A national settlement policy should and undoubtedly would reflect the needs of different provinces and regions and their special geographic and other characteristics; a national policy does not automatically assume a single, homogeneous strategy. Finally, it is certainly true that deconcentration appears to be occurring (and is sure to continue in the future) without the benefit of strong national policies or programmes. But the need for deconcentration is not the only justification for a national settlement policy. Indeed, given the recent and emerging urbanization trends, and the problems (and opportunities) they present, the need for a national settlement strategy is greater than ever before, for reasons which are expanded upon in the remainder of this section. The emerging pattern of slower overall population and urban growth and slower growth of many urban areas (especially the larger ones) combined with rapid growth of hitherto declining or slow-growth smaller towns, cities, and rural centres poses a whole host of new issues and problems not encountered before, which require national guidance, if not outright intervention. Indeed, the diversity of growth rates to be encountered in the decades ahead provides the opportunity (and necessity) to deal with all aspects of settlement change, and not just settlement crises or urban growth as such. In particular, it is necessary to recognize and more fully appreciate now, after a decade of preoccupation with the big cities, that the well-being of residents in all sizes and types of settlements is clearly inter-related.11 This means that it is critical to explicitly consider the smaller towns, cities, and rural centres in the national (and regional) systems of settlements if Canada is to develop and implement nationally and regionally sensitive and effective policies and programmes for settlement development. As noted earlier, several provincial/regional strategies for settlement are in place or are evolving which recognize this, but at the federal level there are no announced policies as yet which explicitly recognize development of smaller centres as part of the settlement system.12 The parliamentary secretary to the federal minister responsible

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for urban affairs acknowledged this as well when, in a speech several years ago, after noting the same population and urbanization trends, he said: It appears that we can now afford to turn from an almost exclusive focus on the problems of rapid urban growth to a focus which encompasses settlement changes and addresses the whole range of settlement situations, including the thorny problem of declining population.13

Moreover, he added, there is "both an opportunity and a need now to adopt long-term objectives for Canada's urban areas which are going to be valid, regardless of the rate and size of population growth." The need for a national settlement strategy becomes even more urgent in light of the slower rate of national economic growth forecast for the next decade or two and the impending energy crises. With slower economic growth, the level of resources available (from both federal and provincial sources) for policy interventions and the usual municipal assistance programmes is apt to be diminished. There will be many municipal competitors for a given expenditure of government funds (on housing, health, land assembly, infrastructure, etc.). With many of the large urban areas likely to slow down, if not actually decline in population growth, the pressure on these areas will be eased—at least in terms of requiring funds to accommodate the needs of growth— while the pressure on those small to medium sized towns, cities, and metropolitan areas that expect to grow (some quite rapidly) will increase. This could have serious implications for the allocation of infrastructure among different size classes of cities. It could involve, for example, serious conflicts over the allocation of funds between the large urban areas (still plagued by urban poverty, deprivation, and social problems) and the growing smaller centres. Moreover, while market forces (and perhaps even government policies, indirectly or unwittingly) appear to be favouring the decline of certain larger centres, this is certainly no argument for abandoning these areas, as some people propose. They will still continue to play an important role in the country's system of cities and overall economic development, even if their economic base changes, as expected, to take on more organization and distribu-

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tion and less production functions. In planning their future development, it will be necessary to view them as belonging functionally and structurally to the national urban system in a way that has not been emphasized in the past. In general, it will be critical to ensure that the size distribution and the spatial distribution of settlements do not constitute impediments to overall economic development. This requires a national policy. Under conditions of rapid overall population (and economic) growth there is generally a willingness to write off investments which may be of the wrong scale or in the wrong location. But under conditions of slower population growth and scarcity of resources, this luxury cannot easily be afforded. Moreover, when things are going well, it is also possible for the federal and provincial governments to sweep under the rug, or ignore, basic urban and regional inequalities and problems, on the assumption that disadvantaged groups, communities, and regions will eventually get their share of the larger pie (mainly through the "trickling down" process). But when the population (and economic) pie is no longer increasing or, if at all, at a much slower rate, the available choices and options become more limited and tougher to make, and some of the pie-eaters may not even receive the slice they have been used to. Another consideration here is the public's perceptions of different problems under different conditions of growth.14 Under conditions of overall population and economic growth and with most elements in the system growing, the underlying problems or contrasts do not appear so great or serious. But even though absolute differences may in fact be no greater under slow growth conditions, the very fact that relative decline and absolute growth co-exist will cause the differences to be perceived as being more severe. With such perceptions, there is likely to be strong pressure from the public for the achievement of greater balance or equalization between and among urban areas and regions. And, without a national settlement strategy tied in with a national industrial/economic policy to make decisions regarding allocation of resources, it could be a case of the urban areas that squeak the loudest winning out over those less powerful but more deserving. A related problem facing public policy under conditions of slower growth is the willingness of politicians to implement poli-

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cies aimed at achieving redistribution or greater balance among urban areas of different sizes. As long as the population (and economy) as a whole are growing, it is a relatively easy matter to gain public acceptance for such policies; while some elements of the system are made better off, no single element is made worse off. But under conditions of slow or no-growth, the problem assumes the nature of a "zero-sum game". The poorer elements of the system can be made better off through public intervention of one kind or another, but only if the wealthier elements are rendered worse off. If redistribution were to involve absolute decreases (say, of tax revenues or provincial and federal allocations) for certain areas—and, indeed, before this point is reached— then, if not outright hostility, certainly opposition is likely to be encountered.15 In short, under conditions of slow growth, zero growth, or absolute decline, if something is done for one urban centre (or one class of urban centre), this may preclude doing something in another centre (or class of urban centre). This choice or trade-off was always present, even when things were rosy; but under the emerging new conditions, it becomes much more obvious. In the future, these choices need to be evaluated not only for their financial effects, but also in terms of the consequences for pre-empting growth from other parts of the urban system. This necessitates, it appears to this writer, some sort of national settlement framework. Under conditions of slower growth of certain large urban centres side-by-side with rapidly growing areas (both large and small), there will be increased competition, as already noted, for federal and provincial funds. This problem will be aggravated by the existence in the decades ahead of increased competition, in general, for domestic capital as new energy and other resource development projects originate. This implies the necessity to make maximum use of the existing stock of community capital, together with efforts to reduce the growth rate of energy demand.16 Under these circumstances, a national settlement policy would help to minimize unnecessary duplication and competition for the limited domestic capital available and provide a national framework for establishing priorities. Reference to the need to reduce the growth rate of energy demand raises the issue of the relationship between the impending

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energy shortages and/or higher energy prices and Canada's future settlement pattern. The energy crisis will most definitely affect the pattern that emerges, but, at this moment, it is difficult to predict the nature and direction of these effects. Unfortunately, there is little solid research or data collected to identify precisely the magnitude of the various trade-offs involved between energy efficiency and spatial patterns. When such information becomes available, it will be possible to: (a) determine whether the impending energy crisis is likely, in general, to reinforce existing population deconcentration trends or cause a reversal to the earlier trends toward concentration in the big centres; (b) evaluate which of these settlement patterns is the more energy-efficient; and (c) identify and assess the impacts of alternative energy policies (with respect to major sources of energy and types of energyconservation programmes) on settlement patterns. Such information would be extremely useful to governments (especially at the federal and provincial levels) in formulating their energy policies, on the one hand, and settlement pattern strategies on the other. But since the pursuit of energy efficiency and energy conservation clearly involves the public interest, touching upon the lifestyles of all Canadians, any decisions about the future settlement pattern should be taken within a national perspective. At the same time, the goal of conserving energy in planning future settlement patterns should not be pursued to the exclusion of other social, environmental, and economic objectives. This would seem to be another persuasive argument for developing a national settlement strategy that is co-ordinated with energy and other national (and provincial) policies. Definition of a National Settlement Policy

Before proceeding further, it is probably appropriate to define more carefully what is meant here by a national settlement policy (or strategy). First, as to the meaning of a national policy; it could be any one of the following:17 1. a policy of the Government of Canada which it is able to impose on other jurisdictions, that is to say, a policy of control by the federal government; or 2. a policy applicable only to the federal government in terms of its actions, that is, it is a federal settlement policy; or

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3. a common policy adopted by all relevant jurisdictions across the country, that is to say, representing some kind of consensus of local, provincial and federal governments; or 4. a bundle of policies each formulated by one jurisdiction for itself—to the greatest degree possible the various jurisdictions' policies being consistent among one another for any particular geographical area. There is considerable confusion among people who call for a national settlement policy as to which of the above definitions they subscribe. Certain architects and urbanists, for instance, seem to be talking about a policy of control when they speak of a national settlement policy, with a special federal department established with power to intervene directly in the urbanization process. Several ministers of the federal government have advocated a national policy, and they seem to be talking about a policy for federal action, that is, an internal federal co-ordinating policy of relevance to other jurisdictions. Some recent writers, on the other hand, seem to be thinking of a policy of consensus when they refer to a national settlement policy. Still others advocate the bundle type of national settlement policy.18 The policy-bundle type is closest to what exists now, except that it is not adopted consciously as a policy option; nor for any particular area is there necessarily consistency of policies between the federal government, on the one hand, and the provincial/regional governments which are responsible for that area on the other hand. The proposed policybundle approach could include different policies for various areas of the country, so long as the different levels of government involved had mutually consistent policies for each of these areas.19 Irrespective of the meaning of national policy, the term "settlement policy" requires clarification, substantively. The first distinction that needs to be made is between a national settlement policy and national policies toward urban (or rural) areas. The federal and provincial governments have a plethora of urban policies as well as policies directed at rural areas. These deal with a vast array of specific socio-economic and physical development problems— for example: urban renewal to combat inner city decay; open space land programmes to humanize the man-built landscape with natural amenity; infrastructure programmes to help improve the physical environment of communities, both large and small; myriad social programmes to alleviate human dislocations

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in the larger, older cities, as well as the smaller rural centres and resource-based communities; and new town or new community programmes that attempt larger socio-economic and physical patterning and rationalization in potential new growth areas, mostly on the fringes of larger expanding urban metropolises. But all of these separate efforts do not add up to a national (or even federal) set of settlement (or urban growth) policies. Past results certainly demonstrate that the whole is indeed less than the sum of its parts. Urban (or rural) policies that have focused on restructuring certain negative elements that are consequences of the overall trends of urbanization have had little evident effect on the magnitude or direction of those trends. This is not to criticize these efforts as such nor their results, for example, with respect to urban renewal or new towns. Indeed, they have often been quite successful when judged within their own frames of reference. It is just to say that in the past they did not together constitute a set of national policies preventing the large metropolises from becoming congested, nor have they materially assisted in creating major alternatives for directing growth elsewhere into cities or urban areas of small or medium size. To appreciate better why these various urban (and rural) policies aimed at urban growth and development do not sum up to a national policy, it is also helpful to differentiate between the terms "growth" and "form and structure of development."20 Using the traditional definitions in the physical and social sciences, growth implies mainly quantitative changes in the size of the phenomena or entities under observation, while development implies qualitative change involving structural alterations in the relationships of their constituent parts to one another.21 This would suggest that traditional urban (and rural) policies are designed to deal with particular qualitative dimensions of urbanization and do not have an impact on (nor claim to address) issues arising from the need to induce or control change with respect to the sizes of different settlements or communities as such. In contrast, an urban (or settlement) growth policy focuses on actions taken to change or maintain the size of different communities as measured by the levels and rates of change in total population and activity within and between defined geographic entities. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, a national settlement policy would be concerned with the overall rate of urban growth, the spatial distribution of popula-

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tion throughout the country, and the rates of population change among the different size communities. A second distinction is between the term national settlement policy and three other terms with which it is often used interchangeably. First, it should not be confused with a "national population distribution policy," which tends to convey an emphasis on population only and not settlements in which people live. Second, it is not equivalent to a "national urban growth policy," which implies a focus on urban areas only, whereas the emerging spatial trends point to a need to deal with settlement change and the full range of settlement growth situations (rapid, slow and zero growth, and absolute decline) in small, medium sized, and large communities. Third, the term national settlement policy also should not be confused with a "national urban policy" that has been advocated by various people for some time, for example, the Lithwick Report. The latter would be concerned with many more matters, problems, and issues than a settlement policy, such issues as housing, poverty and income distribution, as well as the rate and distribution of growth. In this sense, a national settlement policy might be thought of as a component of a national urban policy. While sectoral policies vis-a-vis housing, poverty, etc., certainly will affect, and need to be assessed in terms of their impacts on the settlement pattern, a settlement policy does not deal with these matters as such. There is clearly a need for a national urban policy in Canada, and a case certainly could be made for it, but this has not been the focus of the monograph; such an argument is worthy of a separate paper. Levels of Responsibility

There is no doubt that the federal government plays a crucial role in the overall rate and distribution of growth throughout the country. While other governments are also involved, their effects are secondary to that of the federal government on a national scale, although within their respective jurisdictions (whether they be provincial, regional, or municipal) the impacts may be comparatively stronger. Similarly, each provincial government plays the major role in determining the rate and distribution of growth within its provincial boundaries, while regional/municipal authorities are less significant in this regard. Further, municipalities may

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be most important in determining local distribution of growth within the framework of policy established by the higher levels. At the same time, both the provinces and the federal government are not completely uninvolved at the municipal level, through the location of certain facilities, for example. This distribution of responsibilities among the different levels of government corresponds to the hierarchy of levels requiring growth management strategies noted earlier. The viewpoint being advocated here with regard to the type of national policy (among the four listed earlier) to be developed is, in effect, a combination or hybrid of the second and third types of national policies. On the one hand, a policy of control by the federal government imposed on jurisdictions is rejected out of hand, for it does not seem feasible given the relationships between the federal government and the provinces, and especially the limited power of the federal government as provided for in the BN A Act. On the other hand, the fourth type, it seems to this writer, would not represent much of an improvement over the present situation, for it essentially permits each jurisdiction to establish its own set of policies—even if internally consistent—which could easily be in conflict with policies of another jurisdiction. What is missing today and, more importantly, what is so important for the future, in view of the sorts of problems and opportunities facing Canada's settlements in the years ahead, is the establishment of some national goals and objectives with respect to the overall rate and distribution of growth throughout the country, worked out in relation to a national economic (or industrial) strategy and a national energy strategy, to mention but the key ones, the latter adjusted for their likely impacts on the settlement pattern. Therefore, what seems to be needed is, first of all, a consensus among the major participants, in particular the federal government and the provinces, on the goals of a national settlement policy. Such goals would perforce need to be strategically related to the emerging settlement pattern and its diversity of community growth situations, and to the urgent problems and issues which this pattern is likely to raise. With an agreed set of goals established, each of the respective provincial governments, together with the federal government, would implement these national settlement objectives by integrating and co-ordinating their own policies and actions with respect to the overall rate and pattern of growth and other related policies (for example, planning, energy).

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Several years ago the federal government did enunciate a sort of national settlement policy when it laid down the principal of limiting the growth of the largest urban areas and redistributing that growth to medium sized centres of the city. As implied earlier, this was probably the wrong policy at the time in view of the fact that growth was already deconcentrating. But, more importantly, what was missing to make it more than just a pious wish (even assuming the correctness of the principle) was any consensus for this principle among the various jurisdictions throughout the country, particular the provinces. Secondly, and perhaps of equal importance, the federal government itself did not seem able to co-ordinate its various policies and actions in a concerted fashion (in particular, its national economic policy) to realize this settlement pattern objective. The fact is that the federal government possesses a variety of responsibilities, the policies for which, if co-ordinated properly, could have gone a long way towards implementing its deconcentration principle in the early 1970's and could have constituted at least the second type of national policy for influencing the overall rate and distribution of growth throughout the country. A discussion of these federal policies and programmes follows. FEDERAL ACTIVITIES, POLICIES AND PROGRAMMES

The BNA Act assigns no specific powers to the federal government in the area of urban affairs in general or with respect to cities specifically. Yet, throughout the history of Canadian development, the federal government has implemented policies and programmes that have had far-reaching effects on the country's cities and settlement pattern in general. Most importantly, however, there are currently, at the federal level, a variety of activities, policies, and programmes which, directly and indirectly, have an impact on population distribution and the rates of urban growth throughout the country, even though most of them are neither explicitly urban nor spatial in name or focus. However, rarely are their impacts on the settlement system identified or evaluated, either prior to or after they have been implemented. Moreover, many of these policies are confusing as to their intent and in some instances actually work at cross-purposes, in terms of their explicit or implied effects on the urbanization pattern.

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If properly co-ordinated and integrated with a national settlement strategy, these various policies and programmes (including possible changes to existing ones) could play a significant role in implementing such a strategy in the future. Figure 4 summarizes these responsibilities and policies, in relationship to the types of community growth situations emerging in the next decade or so. The discussion which follows briefly describes these various responsibilities and policies, noting where appropriate, how they do and could have an impact on the settlement pattern. DREE

Chief among these activities are the programmes administered by the Department of Regional Economic Expansion (DREE) which involve a two-pronged strategy: incentive grants (Regional Development Incentives Act) designed to stimulate private capital investment in manufacturing and processing facilities and the provision of physical as well as social infrastructure via its Special Area Program. These programmes are not intended to implement a de-urbanizing policy; they are aimed at eliminating regional disparities and promoting more evenly distributed economic development. In the process, however, the pattern of urban growth is affected, especially through DREE's growth centre strategy. One of the major criticisms levelled at DREE's policies and programmes is that they have tended to favour industrial or manufacturing enterprises, compared with tertiary activities and employment. As Simmons notes, subsidizing a clothing store in Sudbury may be more important than trying to provide an industrial incentive for a manufacturing plant, and a new Holiday Inn may bring more money into a small prairie town than a grain elevator.22 Not only is the tertiary sector the most rapidly growing one in the economy, but probably it is the one most susceptible to direction and control, because service activities are not so dependent on special locational factors and tend to be locally owned or controlled, compared with the primary and secondary activities which are predominantly controlled by foreigners and also compete with foreign products. With retailing and many personal services increasingly being performed by national chains, selling national products or franchised by multi-national corporations, they

Figure 4: Objectives of a National Settlement Policy by Type of Emerging Community Growth Situation, and Potential Federal Policies and Programmes EMERGING TYPE OF GROWTH SITUATION*

OBJECTIVES

FEDERAL POLICIES/PROGRAMMES

Slow-growth, zero growth and decline of major metropolitan areas and central cities

—maintain economic and financial viability; —conserve and upgrade physical plant (housing, schools, infrastructure, etc.), especially of inner city areas; —revitalize abandoned/deteriorated neighbourhoods through clustering and thinning out strategies; —preserve surrounding farmlands; —enhance amenities; —encourage public transport; —maintain and improve health and physical wellbeing of older population; —recognize potential economic contribution of older persons and provide flexible working arrangements and jobs for them; —provide new forms of adult education; —minimize energy consumption

—industrial and tertiary activity incentives; —location of federal buildings and facilities; —housing mortgage assistance; —transfer payments; —infrastructure assistance; —land assembly and land banking; —neighbourhood improvement and residential rehabilitation; —immigration policy; —agricultural land preservation; —national health programme and social welfare system; —energy policy

Decline of small towns and rural centres including resource towns)

—enhance amenities —improve physical infrastructure, local and regional; —rejuvenate and stabilize local (and regional) economies; —concentrate growth in selected centres; —minimize energy consumption

—northern development; —regional economic development policy and programs (DREE); —infrastructure assistance; —industrial and tertiary activity incentives; —transportation (e.g., northern roads and rail line extensions) and telecommunications; —resource development—surveys, prices of staple products, etc.; —foreign ownership/investment; —immigration policy; —location of federal buildings and facilities; —defence procurement and contracts; , ^ffiSSBLKJi

EMERGING TYPE OF GROWTH SITUATION*

OBJECTIVES

FEDERAL POLICIES/PROGRAMMES

Rapid Growth—small and medium sized metropolitan areas, and medium sized urban centres

—protect prime farmlands; —control price of housing and land; —design and develop suitable family-type housing for urban cores, protect inner areas for family-type living; —control urban sprawl, contain urban development on fringe, and rationalize development (e.g., more compact development) in suburbs; —catch up with postponed services and infrastructure and keep up with new demands; —minimize energy consumption; —minimize social and environmental "costs" of rapid growth; —develop flexible approach to planning land use, transportation, and capital-budgeting

—infrastructure assistance; —land assembly and land banking; —housing mortgage assistance; —immigration policy

Rapid G r o w t h — s m a l l town and rural centres

same as above, plus special objectives stemming from small size, e.g.:—diversify local (and regional) economies based on small, locally rooted businesses and industries, to avoid dominance of one industry, and cushion impact of traditional boom-or-bust growth pattern; —be prepared for sudden growth and develop a plan of action before growth even occurs; —avoid land speculation in early periods (e.g., through public land ownership); —try to phase growth over time; —direct growth into a few selected centres; —easy and smooth transition and accommodation to growth

—CMHC housing assistance —infrastructure assistance

:

See Figure 3 for typical problems/needs and opportunities.

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could be taxed by activity and size and regulated in all sorts of ways; and also perhaps be given certain monopoly guarantees as we now do to T.V. stations, in exchange for commitments about location and level of service.23 CMHC

Another key set of programmes which indirectly affect the distribution of population and especially the pattern and rate of urban growth throughout Canada are administered by Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), now known as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Its land assembly, infrastructural assistance, neighbourhood improvement, residential rehabilitation, and historic preservation programmes are all designed to improve the inner cities of the large and medium sized urban areas. Indirectly, then, these programmes have the effect of encouraging the continued growth of Canada's major urban areas. CMHC's mortgage funding activity is a good example of a programme beset by conflicting objectives with respect to population distribution. This programme is supposed to have universal applicability, but according to the Canadian Council on Rural Development (an advisory body to DREE), it discriminates against rural areas and thus favours (inadvertently perhaps) the growth of urban areas.24 The council points out that mortgage funds obtained through CMHC are generally not available to rural residents, because the corporation requires a certain minimum community size and availability of specific services in order to be eligible. The assumption is that mortgage financing is a poorer investment and a greater risk in smaller rural communities. A related contradiction in the CMHC mortgage programme is that funds are not available for residents of northern single enterprise, resource-based towns. This particularly discriminates against service workers and their families who are not employed by the sponsoring resource industry. (The company does provide special financial assistance to its employees and their families for housing accommodations.) This policy tends to discourage certain people from moving to these northern communities, contributing indirectly to their instability.25 A national settlement policy aimed at stabilizing growth rates in small centres or attracting persons to

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these northern areas would be seriously hindered by continuation of CMHC's mortgage financing policy. Another key programme administered by CMHC, which potentially could be an effective technique for implementing a national settlement strategy, is its New Communities Program. However, with some notable exceptions in Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec (and these are mainly new bedroom suburbs constructed on the fringes of the major metropolitan areas), the building of new communities has been confined to single enterprise, resource-based towns in the North, and these were established by the sponsoring resource industry and not under the auspices of the aforementioned new communities legislation. Unlike the European experience, none of the Canadian new towns have been built as a device for decentralizing growth from the major urban areas to undeveloped or developing regions, either as free-standing, self-sufficient, completely new cities, or as expanded growth centres or growth poles. Manpower

An important federal programme that indirectly affects population distribution is the Manpower Retraining Program administered by the Department of Manpower and Immigration. This programme provides individuals with needed occupational skills through a variety of training devices. In addition, the Manpower Mobility Program provides the unemployed with assistance to relocate in areas where there are suitable job opportunities. One effect of these programmes is to further existing migration movements to the larger urban areas, since that is where most available jobs are. Transportation

Federal policies in the area of transportation in terms of development of facilities, regulatory measures, and role structure have a substantial impact on the growth of urban areas. This includes inter-provincial highways (Department of Transport), harbours (National Harbours Board), airports (Department of Transport), airlines (Air Canada), seaports (St. Lawrence Seaway Authority) and railways (VIA Rail). Another example of a federal pro-

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gramme which has the effect (probably unintended) of encouraging the growth of existing urban areas is the National Transportation Act of 1967. Under this act, for the sake of efficiency several previously subsidized rail lines have been closed, with the consequence that access to hinterland and rural locations has been reduced. Foreign Ownership/Investment

With a substantial proportion of the manufacturing sector owned by foreign companies and a heavy concentration of that industry in southwestern Ontario, foreign investment policy is potentially critical for deflecting growth from the Windsor-Toronto corridor, if this were desired as part of an overall settlement policy. At present, however, the Foreign Investment Review Agency does not use "conformity with a national settlement policy" nor, for that matter, "conformity with regional development policy" as a criterion for evaluating the acceptability of a foreign investment proposal.26 Likewise, the foreign investment review agency can potentially influence the pattern of community development throughout the North (including, in particular, the Yukon and Northwest Territories) and indirectly the rates of urban growth in other parts of the country by virtue of its review powers over resource development activities which are overwhelmingly foreign-owned or controlled. Resource development in the North typically results in the creation of a small, isolated, economically unstable resource town at the site of the project, characterized by a boom-or-bust cycle of growth, resulting in substantial personal, public, social as well as private industry costs. The bulk of the positive population and employment impacts from these projects occur in regional or provincial centres and more often in far-flung distant cities elsewhere, the headquarters of the multi-national resource company. Also, when and if market conditions or other factors change in the resource industry, the foreign-owned or controlled resource company is more likely to close down its subsidiary in Canada first. This adversely affects these resource towns since their fortunes are completely dependent on the resource industry, over which they have no control. As above, there is no evidence that the review agency in its assessment of resource development pro-

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posals from foreigners takes such community impacts into consideration. Immigration Policy

One of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the federal government for influencing the overall pattern of population distribution and the rates of urban growth in different sized cities would be its immigration policy, if it were applied differently. Most new immigrants settle in one of the major metropolitan areas (for example, most of Toronto's recent growth has been the result of foreign immigration), thereby contributing to the already concentrated major metropolitan areas. If a national settlement policy involved stabilizing the growth rates of smaller cities and towns throughout the country, then immigration policy, particularly in its distributional aspects, could be co-ordinated with settlement development priorities and programmes. And while net immigration is expected to slow down in the coming decades, what does occur should be co-ordinated with a national settlement strategy. Other

Previous mention has been made of the federal government's programme of decentralizing federal offices. This necessarily affects population distribution and the growth rates of different sized centres. There are many other federal policies and actions which indirectly—but sometimes significantly—affect population distribution and rates of growth among different centres throughout the country. These include, among others, the following: federal economic decisions and policies towards tariffs, market prices, farm price subsidies, resource development and resource exports; energy development and conservation; development of technology; and health and welfare. In short, while the concept of a national settlement policy proposed herein encompasses the interests and activities of all participants in urban affairs, it is nevertheless assumed that the federal government has an important role—perhaps the key role—in developing and implementing such a strategy. This is for the following reasons:

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1. The federal government is already involved directly (for example, through its substantial land holdings), but, most importantly, indirectly, in a substantial way in urban areas, through its housing, urban renewal, transportation, infrastructure, and many other activities. But these activities do not appear to be undertaken as part of any national framework, and thus there is often confusion as to their intentions and overlap and duplication of programmes. 2. Many of the policies and forces likely to influence the future pattern of settlement are not explicitly spatial in intention and thus transcend local and even provincial boundaries. They are inextricably linked to such matters as economic growth and stability, transportation, immigration, regional economic expansion, energy development and conservation, and social justice, to name but the important ones. All these are of direct concern to the federal government. And, through its policies on these matters, the federal government influences industrial location, inter-urban migration, and regional development, which, in turn, greatly influence the location, growth, and structure of individual urban areas and, ultimately, the settlement system as a whole. 3. Any solutions to the problems facing Canada's urban areas in the decades ahead will undoubtedly require massive amounts of funds, most of which can only be obtained from the elastic revenues of the federal government. Therefore, the allocation of these funds in a rational and equitable way points to the need for a consistent, clear federal policy within the framework of any agreed upon national settlement strategy. However, even if the objective implied in the above discussion was achieved—namely, effective integration and co-ordination at the federal level of its various policies and programmes—the fact is that this would only constitute one component, albeit an important one, of a national settlement policy for Canada. It would mean, as already noted, realization of only the second type of national policy. What are the chances of realizing the third type of national settlement policy, one that involves some kind of consensus of all relevant jurisdictions throughout the country? This question is assessed next.

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PRECONDITIONS FOR A NATIONAL SETTLEMENT POLICY

Based on their review of the experience of various countries, several researchers have concluded that the development and implementation of a national settlement strategy based on a consensus of all relevant jurisdictions and interest groups depends upon and is shaped by a number of factors or preconditions reflecting underlying social, political, economic, and cultural forces in a society. In terms of the question raised at the end of the previous section, it would be useful to assess the feasibility of Canada achieving consensus and action on a national settlement strategy in light of the preconditions outlined by these researchers. In his classic study of national urban growth policies undertaken in 1970, Rodwin stipulated two essential preconditions for the emergence of national growth policies; that is, for governments to act on this policy issue (as, indeed, in any other policy area), it is necessary that: (a) urban growth problems must be perceived as problems of sufficient national political importance, and (b) these problems must at least appear capable of solution through the political system.27 To these, Berry has more recently added: the will to plan and the power to plan. The latter reflects the ability of a society to achieve closure between desired ends and available means—that is, to reach a consensus on the goals and to set priorities for policy action.28 In part, Berry notes, this capability depends upon motivated and informed decision-makers. Bourne, in his comparative study of four countries that are attempting to regulate urbanization at the national level (including Canada), has elaborated on and added a number of additional preconditions to those proposed by Rodwin and Berry.29 The following are Bourne's criteria:30 1. The degree of social-cultural homogeneity: the higher the degree of national heterogeneity or pluralism, the more difficult it is to resolve urban issues and to achieve a consensus on national priorities and policies. Berry also has stressed the difficulty at the national level of normative goal-oriented planning for urbanization in culturally pluralistic and politically segmented societies. 2. The extent of territorial polarization: the degree of social-cultural heterogeneity becomes compounded when this heterogeneity is geographically pronounced and politically organized

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4.

5.

6.

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into discrete territorial units (for example, counties, provinces, and states). A national settlement strategy under such conditions must therefore represent the goals and priorities of all or at least a majority of its constituent cultural groups or territorial units, which is difficult to achieve. The historical inheritance of a political and social consensus on the need to define objectives for social policy: clearly the ability to achieve agreement on overt national action in general will set bounds on the feasibility of regulating the urbanization pattern. This point, it would seem, is similar to Berry's emphasis of the "ability to plan" precondition. The degree of historical inertia and institutional rigidity to social change, which inhibit efforts to accommodate new modes of decision-making necessary for formulating and implementing a national strategy. The degree of economic regionalization: the extent to which local/regional economies are integrated into a national urbaneconomic system influences both the perceived need and the power of central governments to plan development, including the settlement system, at the national level. The extent to which this integration exists delimits the potential importance of and defines to some extent the strength of supporting arguments for national settlement strategies; as well, it influences the ability to implement such strategies at the national level. The level of dependence of the urban-economic system on external influences: high levels of interdependence almost invariably reduce the ability of central governments to shape their own settlement futures, most especially at the national level. The present, anticipated, and perceived future rates of urban growth: this factor has several dimensions. First, present, anticipated, and perceived future high rates of urban growth are in themselves both the source of certain urban problems as well as one condition contributing to public and political awareness of those problems. Under some circumstances, high rates of growth make it easier to develop and implement overall urbanization strategies at the national level. On the other hand, there is sometimes resistance to such strategies on the grounds that they are not necessary, that growth will solve any current or future problems. Also, high growth rates may cause an over-em-

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phasis on short-term "ameliorative problem-solving" and "planning for the present," in contrast to "exploitive opportunity-seeking," "normative goal-oriented," and "planning with and from the future"—to use Berry's terms to describe different styles of policy-making and planning. 8. Anticipated rates of national economic growth: very low rates of aggregate economic growth will inhibit the ability of governments to pursue redistribution policies for urban and regional areas, which may be necessary under circumstances of low rates of population (and urban) growth. Where anticipated rates are high, the various responses may be similar to those noted above in the case of high rates of urban growth. 9. The ease of inter-departmental and inter-governmental cooperation: an effective national strategy for urbanization depends, by definition, on being able to link the activities of widely varying public and private agencies, both among levels of government and by sectors of responsibility. The existence of mechanisms for this purpose, be they formal or informal, is an important determinant of the success of that strategy precondition. A successful national settlement strategy depends not only on the specific policies developed, but also on how they are formulated and applied. Success often derives in part from a practice and custom of inter-departmental and intergovernmental co-ordination and co-operation, often reflecting underlying attitudes, as well as the existence of formal mechanisms for such purposes. Based on these criteria, and applying by his own admission a fairly crude weighting scheme to the factors, Bourne compared the four countries he studied in terms of their chances of achieving consensus and action on mechanisms for regulating urbanization. Canada came out with the lowest overall rating. At present (early 1980), and based solely on the above listed preconditions, this writer would have to agree with Bourne's conclusion. Consider the following "facts" about Canada, with respect to these preconditions: 1. Canada is a geographically and environmentally extensive and diverse nation, on which has been superimposed a federal system, in which the provinces play the pivotal role and in which there is increasing pressure today, following trends elsewhere, for ever greater local/regional autonomy. The fed-

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eral structure and the more recent history of federal-provincial power bargaining (for example, with respect to energy policy) invite a kind of regional sectarianism that defies national planning in a variety of areas, such as settlement development.31 The difficulties with national planning in Canada go deeper than structural constitutionality. Overlaying the federal fabric is the bi-cultural character of the nation which in reality makes Canada "two nations and ten provinces." In fact, disaffection with the Canadian federal system as it affects regional aspirations is by no means confined to Quebec, but appears to be shared by other parts of the country (for example, several western provinces). Canada is characterized by highly specialized regional economies, by heavy economic dependence on another country, the United States (coincidentally also a federal state), and by an urban system parts of which display considerable interdependence with the States. These factors make it extremely difficult to develop and implement independent Canadian national policies in various areas of Canadian life, including settlement development. Even when Canada was undergoing rapid population and urban growth and concentration of population was occurring in the larger urban centres (through the 1950's and early 1960's), there was no national settlement strategy—though, to be sure, there was more discussion about and proposals for such a policy in those years than currently. Now that the threat of massive population and urban growth is removed—factors which traditionally have been used to justify such a strategy— the possibility of marshalling public concern for this would appear on the surface even more remote. However, it is just possible the public in general and public officials in particular might be persuaded by the arguments advanced earlier in this chapter that under these circumstances the need for a national settlement strategy is even greater today, especially in view of the slower rate of economic growth expected in the next decade or so. Until recently, there was a potential federal mechanism for formulating a national settlement strategy and implementing such a strategy through co-ordination of federal programmes and policies affecting settlement development, and through

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intergovernmental co-ordination, in the form of MSUA. The ministry was created in 1971 primarily as a result of the Lithwick Report and was designed to lead federal departments in urban research, policy formulation, and programme co-ordination (especially of the few hundred federal urban and urban-related spatial programmes). While many people criticized the operations of the ministry while it was in existence and probably welcomed its recent demise, to its credit, MSUA at least established a tri-level planning mechanism, a means of bringing together federal, provincial and municipal authorities in jointly sponsored, jointly managed projects. At the very least, this new mechanism provided for study and discussion from which coherent national or regional policies might reasonably have been expected to emerge. The tri-level urban councils, established and administered by MSUA to focus attention on the specific problems of the major urban areas, provide yet another interesting model for achieving intergovernmental co-ordination. It is also true, as previously noted, that during the 1970's the ministry committed itself to the principle of limiting growth of the largest centres and to redistributing that growth to about a dozen medium sized centres all across the country. But it was never clear if and how these intentions might or could be made to crystallize into effect policy action. This is not surprising in view of the ministry's weak policy co-ordination and implementation powers, which to a large extent explains the continued existence of many federal policies that affect population distribution but work at cross-purposes. Also to its credit, there is no doubt that the MSUA model at the federal level was subsequently emulated by various provincial governments which have established departments of urban affairs of their own with similar responsibilities to MSUA at the provincial level. But now that MSUA is gone, and as weak as it was, what is to take its place? At least MSUA made some efforts to seek close integration with provincial, urban, and regional development programmes. There is now no similar federal mechanism which could remotely be responsible for the development, let alone the implementation, of a national settlement strategy. The lack of such a mechanism makes the prospect of realizing this objective very slim indeed.

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As pessimistic as this assessment of the feasibility of a Canadian national settlement strategy appears in the light of the necessary preconditions for such a strategy, it does not take into account two factors that potentially could alter the situation. One, alluded to by Berry, is that elusive characteristic known as dynamic and strong political leadership, in particular at the federal level, but also at the provincial level. History is full of examples where the leadership of an individual has turned the tide, and perhaps this can happen in Canada in the years ahead. A second factor, that Bourne could not anticipate, is the likelihood during the next several years of constitutional reform. Such reform is expected to include, among other matters, the cleaning up of current jurisdictional conflicts, duplication, and overlaps. And if certain changes that have been talked about for many years indeed come into being—for example, an increased role for the federal government in urban affairs and land use—the potential for developing and implementing a national settlement strategy based on consensus would be considerably enhanced.

EPILOGUE SOME RESEARCH AND INFORMATION NEEDS

One of the most significant conclusions to be drawn from this study of Canadian urban growth trends and the planning and policy implications of the expected future spatial pattern is that if Canada is to successfully confront the new circumstances on the horizon, there is an urgent need to improve and expand its settlement research capability. In the past there have been few systematic analyses of growth in Canadian urban system.1 Too much of the literature, too many of the concepts, and even political platforms are built on a relatively thin inheritance of research. Perhaps the most urgent task is to undertake basic research aimed at understanding the underlying urbanization processes now underway in Canada. It is clear now that what has emerged during the past decade is a more complex human settlement system than extant theories would have led us to expect. A reasonable starting point for such research might be to "test" the set of hypotheses suggested in Chapter 3 as the explanations for recent Canadian trends. Out of such research might emerge a new theory (or theories) of urban growth, which accounts for these recent changes, especially the stability and even decline of many metropolitan areas, and for which existing theories provide no insights. The emerging new circumstances of slower population and urban growth, for the country as a whole and for various urban areas and rural centres, bring to the forefront clearly the fact that our existing models and theories of how urban systems and subsystems work are premised on the assumption of population growth. They are all generally based on a time dimension always pointing upward as far as population is concerned. It is highly questionable that these models will serve without major alteration 129

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in situations of population decline. Our existing models cannot merely be run backward because growing and shrinking are not symmetrical; that is, the structural relationships involved in growth and decline are not mirror images.2 For example, disinvestment is not the mirror image of investment, and cutting down the size of an operation is not the same as expanding it, only in reverse. Thus, we desperately need to develop appropriate theories and models for urban areas in the process of decline. But, even without such theories, and paralleling such basic research, there are a whole host of questions requiring immediate answers that are related to the new conditions of stability and decline. Can a socio-economic democratic system such as Canada's, that has been premised for a long time on continued expansion, adapt easily, or at least without major perturbations, to slower growth, and, if so, how? How do we plan for what might clearly be a steady-state system in the future in terms of population and overall urban growth? Can Canada consciously and publicly face up to planned shrinkage? Do social and spatial inequalities increase or decrease as aggregate growth slows? How do we build into the process of planning and policy-formulation the element of uncertainty which, it now appears more than ever, seems to be inherent in the Canadian urbanization process? Then there are a series of related strategic research questions that directly bear upon the future spatial pattern and the urbanization process and on which there is very little information at the present time. Some of the key ones are: Are our large metropolitan areas in a fundamental state of decline? Is the large metropolis an unnecessary construct and a costly social burden for the future? How can the large urban centres expected to experience slow growth, zero growth, or absolute decline adapt gracefully to these new circumstances, at the same time maintaining a healthy local economy and providing their residents with a decent if not exceptionally high quality of life—in light of the special problems they are likely to confront? What is likely to be the impact of a steady-state or near steady-state economy on Canada's smaller towns and rural centres, including those that have been growing rapidly in recent years? Will the new family households now forming and expected to continue to form throughout the 1980's and early 1990's continue to have the same location and residential preferences as their parents? If they do, can we design and

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build new forms of higher density housing that will be suitable for our urban cores to accommodate these new families? What are likely to be the impacts of the impending energy crisis on the future spatial pattern? What trade-offs are consumers likely to make between commuting, location of residences, industry and recreation, environmental costs, and the other factors enumerated in Chapter 4? What spatial patterns are the most energy-efficient? What are likely to be the effects on the spatial pattern in the longterm future when and if new alternative energy sources based on renewable resources (solar, wind, biomass, etc.) are developed? These sorts of questions are now being asked by policy planners and examined by researchers in many West European countries.3 But not in Canada—unless such research is a well kept secret. In general, the Canadian record of policy-based urban research has not been impressive to date.4 It is crucial that this situation change. Researchers must clearly focus on the changing inter-relationships among urban phenomena and on the relationships between settlement development and the changing environment created by economic (and to some extent political) uncertainty and social change. It is also clearly evident now that research on separate policies such as housing and transportation, for example, cannot be undertaken without regard to their impacts on other sectors and, most importantly, on the overall spatial pattern and rate of urbanization. This is most evident, as discussed earlier, in the case of energy policy, where there is currently a paucity of good research on the interdependencies between spatial patterns and energy efficiency. Most importantly, not only should a major research initiative be launched directed at examining situations of decline but at the diversity of growth situations that are expected in the coming decades, including rapid growth of medium sized metropolitan areas and small towns and rural centres—all as part of the national settlement system. Researchers need to examine the full range of alternative settlement patterns under variable assumptions about future economic and population growth and energy policies. In so many areas of Canadian life, including planning and policy-making for urban development, the United States and British experiences have often served as our models.5 This looking

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outward for "lessons" has not extended too often to other countries. Yet, it would seem that in such perplexing policy areas as the development and implementation of a national settlement policy, there may be much to learn from the experiences of other federal systems, especially West Germany and Yugoslavia. Like Canada, these other federal systems are facing a dilemma: at precisely the time their central governments have become involved in questions of urban and regional development, other pressures have arisen in society leading to more decentralization in decision-making and a wider demand for local/regional autonomy. The responses of these comparable federal systems to this dilemma would undoubtedly be instructive. Equally important, since most West European countries (as well as the U.S.A.) are undergoing similar changes in their settlement patterns, it would be fruitful if the research tasks noted earlier— including the development of new theories of urban growth— were approached on a comparative international basis. While it is recognized that each country's human settlement system is a function of its own local conditions, history, geography, and stage of economic development at any given point in time, it is just possible that more general theories could emerge from such international research. Some efforts along these lines have fortunately been launched recently.6 Finally, it should be evident from the analysis of recent urbanization trends and the inability or unwillingness of planners, researchers, and public officials to detect and respond correctly to these changes that one of Canada's pressing information needs is an improved capability for monitoring and forecasting spatial change. Not all those who were forecasting rapid urban growth during the late 1960's and early 1970's did so because they were determined to hold onto the conventional wisdom of the past or because they were blind to the changes actually going on in the early 1970's. It is just that they did not know; they did not have the data to alert them to what was actually happening. Such mistakes and omissions must be avoided in the future, and surely one way is by establishing a more sensitive monitoring system, involving researchers at all three levels of government as well as the private sector. Availability of the forthcoming 1981 Census should provide an incentive for instituting such a system. In short, what is needed today is for research funds and pro-

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grammes to be directed in such a way that they focus the attention of researchers and decision-makers on the issues of population and urban growth decline and on the full range of growth situations in the emerging spatial pattern of settlement. Perhaps in this way, early warning signals, intelligent diagnosis, appropriate models and theories, and clear headed programmes and policies will replace rhetoric, confusion, myths, and ad hoc actions relative to this future crisis which is clearly on the horizon.7

NOTES

PREFACE 1

H. W. Richardson, "Optimality in City Size, Systems of Cities and Urban Policy: A Sceptic's View," Urban Studies 9 (1972):29-48. 2 Throughout this paper, the term "deconcentration" is used to describe the type of population movements under review here; that is, the relative shift of population growth away from a country's largest urban centres. This is in contrast to the commonly used term "decentralization," which, in this writer's view, describes the process of population movement (usually called "suburbanization") within the major urban areas. A term comparable to deconcentration is "dispersal". Other researchers have similarly adopted the term deconcentration to describe the population movements being experienced in other developed countries, as well as Canada, for example, Bourne (1980), van den Berg and Klaassen (1978) and Vining and Kontuly (1977). 3 Human Settlement in Canada (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, 1976), p. 1. 4 See: HABITAT, the United National Conference on Human Settlements, Report of the Canadian Delegation (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, 1977), p. 26. 5 Ibid., p. 61. 6 Throughout this monograph, the concept and measurement of "growth," "stability," and "decline" are in terms of population only, and the measure used is the rate of population change during various time periods in Canada's urban and rural settlements of different sizes. It is recognized that other measures of growth, stability, and decline may be used, e.g., economic activity, income, etc., and other ways of measuring changes (see Larry S. Bourne, 1979 and 1980). CHAPTER 1: MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT PRESENT AND FUTURE CANADIAN URBANIZATION: CONVENTIONAL WISDOM 1

For an excellent review of the more well-known forecasts of population and urban growth undertaken during the late 1960's and early 134

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1970's, see Peter Boothroyd, "Forecasts of Canada's Urban Future" (Report prepared for the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, Ottawa, 1976). 2 Harvey Lithwick, Urban Canada: Problems and Prospects (Ottawa: Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 1970). 3 Statistics Canada, for purposes of Census data, defines a Census Metropolitan Area as follows: the main labour market area of a continuous built up area having 100,000 or more population. It comprises a group of predominantly urban communities which are in close economic, geographic, and social relationship. 4 See, for example, the Government of Canada's official Interim National Report for Habitat, published in March 1975, and the Science Council of Canada's report in its Perception series, entitled Population Growth and Urban Problems, published in November 1975. 5 Human Settlement in Canada, p. 94. 6 It may be of interest to note that a similar criticism has been levelled against American researchers and public officials who likewise failed to anticipate the nature and magnitude of relatively recent shifts of population and economic activity from the Northeast and North Central parts of the United States to the South and West and from large metropolitan areas to smaller cities and rural areas (see Niles Hansen, "Some Research and Policy Implications of Recent Migration Patterns in Industrial Countries," International Regional Science Review 2, no. 2 [1977]: 161-66). 7 T. J. Plunkett, Understanding Urban Development in Canada (Toronto: Canadian Foundation for Economic Education, 1977), p. 2. 8 L. S. Bourne, "Some Myths of Canadian Urbanization: Reflections on the 1976 Census and Beyond," Urbanism: Past and Present, no. 5 (Winter 1977-78): 1-11; and "Emergent Realities of Urbanization in Canada: Some Parameters and Implication of Declining Growth" (Paper presented to the Fourth Advanced Studies Institute in Regional Science on Spatial Development Under Stagnating Growth, University of Siegen, West Germany, 6 August 1978). 9 G. Hodge and M. A. Qadeer, Towns and Villages in Canada (Kingston: School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University, 1978). 10 Ira M. Robinson, "Urban Growth in Canada: Implications of Recent Demographic Changes for Urban and Regional Planning and Policy" (Paper prepared for Fourth Advanced Studies Institute in Regional Science). 11 Recent Trends in the Growth of Canadian Urban Centres (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, June 1978). 12 Two known exceptions to this are: a speech made by then minister for urban affairs, Andre Ouellet, in July 1977, in which he acknowledged

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the slowdown in growth of the large metropolitan areas, the peaking of rural-urban migration, and the growth in medium and smaller centres; and a speech by Parliamentary Secretary to Mr. Ouellet in June 1977. CHAPTER 2: RECENT URBAN GROWTH TRENDS 1

Average annual rates used throughout this paper were crudely calculated and not compounded. They were calculated as follows: Population in later year ^ r .— 100 per cent -r- number of years. Population in base year 2 Net reproduction rate, or more precisely, the "replacement fertility rate," is the number of children per 1,000 women of child-bearing age which must be born to ensure that the parents are merely replaced. Assuming no increase from immigration, a replacement fertility rate means that, if maintained, a non-growing, stable population would result. In Canada, replacement fertility is, on the average, 2.1 children per woman; the rate is 2.1 rather than 2.0 to compensate for the few children who do not survive to reach their reproductive years. 3 L. H. Day, "What Will a ZPG Society Be Like?" Population Bulletin 33 (Wash., B.C.: Population Reference Bureau, 1978). 4 Recent Trends in the Growth of Canadian Urban Centres, p. 3. 5 L. Auerbach and Andrea Gerber, Implications of the Changing Age Structure of the Canadian Population: Perceptions 2 (Science Council of Canada, 1976). 6 Private households, as defined in the Census, refers to a person or group of persons (other than foreign residents) who occupy a private dwelling and do not have a usual place of residence elsewhere in Canada. These are in contrast to collective households consisting of persons who occupy institutional dwellings (e.g., hotels, camps, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, etc.). 7 1976 Census of Canada. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Childlessness is a major factor predisposing widows to live alone. See Peter A. Morrison, "Demographic Trends That Will Shape Future Housing Demands," Policy Sciences 8 (1977):209 and n. 8 on p. 209. 11 Housing Requirements Model: Projections to 2000 (Ottawa: Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, March 1978). 12 Ibid., p. 34, Table 15. 13 Foster Research Ltd., "Future Requirements for Natural Gas and Total Energy in Alberta, 1977-2006," (Report prepared for Northwestern Utilities Ltd. and Canadian Western Natural Gas Company Ltd., Calgary, August 1977), p. B-10, Table B-4.

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137

Peter A. Morrison, "Demographic Trends Impinging on Energy Use," in Small Cities: How can the Federal and State Governments respond to their Diverse Needs (Wash., B.C.: U.S. GPO, 1978), pp. 22-42; and William Alonso, "The Population Factor and Urban Structure," in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully, (Wash., D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1977). 15 For the 1976 Census of Canada, urban population includes persons living in an area (incorporated or unincorporated) having a population of 1,000 or over and population density of 386 per square kilometre. Some urban researchers prefer to use, as the urban definition, those persons living in urban centres of 10,000 population and over. See James Simmons, The Growth of the Canadian Urban System, Research Paper no. 65 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1974). 16 Hans Blumenfeld, "Transportation in the Modern Metropolis," Queen's Quarterly 67 (Winter 1961):640-43. 17 Data from the 1976 Census only covers the 1976 and 1971 population figures for the 1976 Census Metropolitan Areas based on 1976 boundaries. No data are available as yet from Statistics Canada adjusting the population figures for the 1976 CMA's for earlier years, based on the 19/6 boundaries. Thus, when data are presented for 19511971, these are based on 1971 Census and 1971 boundaries. 18 Leroy O. Stone, Urban Development in Canada (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1967). 19 The population of the city of Montreal has continued to decline since 1976. It has fallen below one million for the first time in thirty years according to a study prepared by the Montreal Transit Commission. The study shows the city lost 56,000 residents from late 1974 to 1978, leaving it with a population of 996,666. This is the first time since 1951 that the population of the city has been less than a million (Calgary Herald, 13 November 1979, p. 43). 20 Inner cities boundaries were arrived at by the CMHC field offices which defined their boundaries by using Statistics Canada census tracts as the basic building blocks. The primary criterion used was the percentage of pre-1946 dwellings, supplemented by local perceptions of the inner city and local conditions such as topography and natural boundaries. See Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, The Canadian Inner City: 1971-1976—A Statistical Handbook (Ottawa: The author, 1979). 21 Mark Shrimpton and Christopher A. Sharpe, "An Inner City in Decline: St. John's, Newfoundland," Urban History Review 9, no. 1 (June 1980):95. 22 Ibid. 23 Barry S. Weller, ed., The Future of Small and Medium-Sized Communities in the Prairie Region (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, October 1978), p. v, n. 1.

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24

It will be recalled that, for Census purposes, the urban population is defined as including persons living in places of 1,000 and over; and Census Metropolitan Areas are defined as cities with at least 100,000 people.

25

Weller, The Future of Communities in the Prairie Region, p. v.

26

Hodge and Qadeer, Towns and Villages.

27

The definition of an unincorporated place is as follows: "For purposes of the 1976 Census, any cluster or group of five or more permanently occupies dwellings locally known by a specific name is considered to be an unincorporated place." See: Statistics Canada, Supplementary Bulletins: Geographic and Demographic—Population of Unincorporated Places, 1976 (Cat. 92-830). 28 Anna Parkinson, "Growth of Small Urban Centres in Alberta, 197176" (Master's Degree Project, University of Calgary, 1978).

29

Ibid. For similar findings with respect to the Prairie region as a whole, see Jack C. Stabler, "Regional Economic Change and Regional Spatial Structure: The Evolving Form of the Urban Hierarchy in the Prairie Region," in Weller, ed., The Future of Communities in the Prairie Region, pp. 1-26. CHAPTER 3: REASONS FOR CHANGES: SOME TENTATIVE HYPOTHESES

1

Benjamin Chinitz, ed., The Declining Northeast (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978); George Sternlieb and James Hughes, eds., Post-Industrial America: Metropolitan Decline and Inter-Regional Job Shifts (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 1975).

2

See, for example, Irving Hoch, "City Size Effects, Trends, and Policies," Science 193 (1976):856-63. 3 James J. Zuiches and Glenn V. Fuguitt, "Residential Preferences: Implications for Population Redistribution in Non-Metropolitan Areas," in S. M. Mazie, ed., Population Distribution and Policy, Research Reports, Vol. 5 (Washington, B.C.: Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, 1973); Community Planning Association of Canada (Alberta Branch) and the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, "Human Settlements in Alberta: A Survey of High School Students" (Calgary, May 1976). 4

Michael A. Goldberg and Douglas B. Webster, "The Atlantic Provinces: Canada's New Amenity Region," Contact 11, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 1979):91-111.

5

James W. Simmons, Canada: Choices in a National Urban Strategy, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Research Paper no. 70 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1975).

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6

Larry G. Blackwood and Edwin H. Carpenter, "The Importance of Anti-Urbanism in determining Residential Preferences and Migration Patterns," Rural Sociology 43, no. 1 (1978):31-47. 7 Robert Marans, "The Attractions of Non-Metropolitan Living," Economic Outlook 5 (1978):52-53. 8 William Alonso, "Urban Zero Population Growth," Daedalus, Special Issue, The No-Growth Society 102 (1973): 191-206. 9 Goldberg and Webster, "The Atlantic Provinces." 10 Ibid. 11 1bid. 12 Douglas Webster, "Development Planning: State of the Art and Prescription," in W. T. Perks and Ira M. Robinson, eds., Urban and Regional Planning in the Federal State: The Canadian Experience (Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, 1979), pp. 39-53. 13 For a description of the "Stay Option" policy, the various actions taken to implement the policy, and an assessment of its results, see Helgi Austman, "Assessment of the 'Stay Option' of Manitoba," in Weller, The Future of Communities in the Prairie Region, pp. 65-69. 14 Blake, "Balanced Populations," pp. 28-29. 15 For a discussion of many of the specific programmes used to implement the government's decentralization policy, see ibid., pp. 27-43. 16 Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Alberta Environmental Laboratory and Research Centre, Vegreville: An Impact Assessment (Edmonton, 1976). 17 Ira M. Robinson, "Planning, Building, and Managing New Resource Towns," in Perks and Robinson, eds., The Canadian Experience, pp. 5475; and Marga R. Betz, "Community Stability in Resource Towns: Problems and Potentials" (draft of master's degree project, University of Calgary, 1980). 18 Simmons, National Urban Strategy and William Alonso, "The Population Factor and Urban Structure," in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully, p. 33. 19 Goldberg and Webster, "The Atlantic Provinces," p. 96. 20 Jack C. Stabler, "The Future of Small Communities in the Canadian Prairie Region," Contact 9, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 145-73. CHAPTER 4: THE FUTURE PATTERN OF SETTLEMENT 1

Ira M. Robinson and Walter Jamieson, "Values and Alternative Urban Futures, as the Basis for Policy Making," in H. P. Oberlander, ed., Canada: An Urban Agenda (A.S.P.O./C.P.A.C., October 1976), pp. 85104.

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2

Steve Olson, "Prospects for the Automobile, Sputtering towards the Twenty-First Century," The Futurist, no. 1 (February 1980): 30. 3 N. Tienhaara, Canadian Views on Immigration and Population: An Analysis of Post War Gallup Trends (Ottawa, 1974). 4 See, for example, a recent conference of builders, real estate executives, and government officials, reported on in The Calgary Herald, "Suburbia still alive and well in Canadian Cities," 27 October 1980, p. B-4. 5 Leroy O. Stone, "Statistical Futures: What Urban Distribution can Canada Expect?" in Urban Settlement Distribution: The Dynamics of Canada's System, Occasional Papers, no. 11 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1979), pp. 92-93. 6 See: Morrison, "Demographic Trends That will Shape Future Housing Demands"; and Alonso, "The Population Factor and Urban Structure." 7 For a review of a survey of Canadian public attitudes towards the desirability of different sized urban centres and attributes of such centres which are preferred and those which are not, see Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Public Priorities in Urban Canada: A Survey of Community Concerns (Ottawa, 1979). 8 Robinson and Jamieson, "Values and Alternative Urban Futures." 9 For a discussion of the historical effects of energy on the settlement pattern, see Habitat and Energy in Canada (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1977), pp. 22-29. lo

/wa.,p.s.

11

Along with the United States, this is the highest proportion compared with Western European countries and Japan. See Charles Slagorsky, Energy Use in Canada Compared with Other Countries (Calgary: University of Calgary, October 1979), pp. 33-44.

12

Habitat and Energy, p. 47.

13

There is no single source for the two schools of thought; the arguments have been drawn from a variety of sources and combined into the polarized positions. Many of the arguments are found in Daniel R. Vining, Jr., "The President's National Urban Policy Report: Issues Skirted and Statistics Omitted," Journal of Regional Science 19, no. 1 (February 1979):69-78; and Dale L. Keyes, "The Influence of Energy on Future Patterns of Urban Development," in Arthur P. Solomon, ed., The Prospective City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).

14

Vary Coates and Ernest Weiss, Revitalization of Small Communities: Transportation Options, vol. 1 (Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service, 1976), p. 12.

15

Ibid., p. 12.

CANADIAN URBAN GROWTH TRENDS 16

141

Niles M. Hansen, Improving Access to Economic Opportunity: Non-Metropolitan Urban Markets in an Urban Society (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1976). 17 Morrison, "Demographic Trends Impinging on Energy Use," p. 42. 18 Coates and Weiss, Revitalization of Small Communities, p. 12. 19 Prominent expressions of this viewpoint are found in: Herbert M. Franklin, "Will the New Consciousness of Energy and the Environment Create an Imploding Metropolis?" A/A Journal (August 1974):28-48; and Energy and the City (Wash. B.C.: U.S. GPO, 1977). 20 Regional Plan Association, Inc., Regional Energy Consumption (N.Y.: Regional Plan Association, 1974). 21 Keyes, "Influence of Energy," pp. 311-15. 22 Ibid., pp. 313 and 315. 23 See, for example, Vining, "The President's Urban Policy," and Irving Hoch, "City Size." 24 Vining, "President's Urban Policy." 25 Some researchers have predicted that policies which concentrate rather than disperse urban power densities may well give rise to serious mesoscale (10-100 km scale) or even regional climatic disruption by the year 2000. See ibid., no. 4, p. 75. 26 A. Chumak, "The Potential for Telecommunications as a Travel Substitute," Working Paper No. 10 prepared for The Role of the Automobile Study, undertaken by the Strategic Planning Group, Transport Canada (January 1979). 27 Jon Van Til, "Spatial Form and Structure in a Possible Future: Some Implications of Energy Shortfall for Urban Planning," Journal of the American Planning Association 45, no. 3 (July 1979):318-29; and Len Gertler and Ron Crowley, Changing Canadian Cities: The Next 25 Years (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977). 28 Bruce McCallum, Environmentally Appropriate Technology: Renewable Energy and Other Developing Technologies for a Conserver Society in Canada, 4th ed. (Ottawa: Department of Supply and Services, April 1977), pp. 118-26. The case for greater efficiency, flexibility and reduced costs from small, decentralized activities, in an era of energy and resource conservation, is also made in Joan Browder, Charles Littlejohn, and Don Young, South Florida: Seeking a Balance of Man and Nature (University of Florida, 1976). 29 For a comprehensive review of the research available in this area in Canada and elsewhere, see John H. Chubik, Urban Form and Energy: A Selected Review (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, July 1977). 30 McCallum, Environmentally Appropriate Technology.

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31

Goldberg and Webster, "The Atlantic Provinces," p. 95. Chumak, "The Potentials for Telecommunications." 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., Chap. 4. 35 The (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Systems has estimated that one-quarter of projected travel in the year 2010 could be replaced by telecommunications. See Olson, "Prospects for the Automobile," p. 34. 36 T. C. Marcin, "Major Problems of Regional Decline in a Stagnating Economy: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Housing Demand by Region in the United States" (Paper presented to the Fourth Advanced Studies Institute in Regional Science, University of Siegen, West Germany, 6-19 August 1978). 37 Brian B. Berry, Urbanization and Counterurbanization, Urban Affairs Annual Review, no. 11 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976). 38 See, for example: Sternlieb and Hughes, Post-Industrial America; Peter Morrison, "The Current Demographic Context of National Growth and Development," Rand Paper Series, P-5514 (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1975); Calvin L. Beale, "The Recent Shift of United States Population to Non-metropolitan Areas, 1970-75," International Regional Science Review 2 (1977): 113-22; Kevin F. McCarthy and Peter A. Morrison, "The Changing Demographic and Economic Structure of Nonmetropolitan Areas in the United States," International Regional Science Review 2 (1977): 123-42. 39 Daniel R. Vining, Jr., and Thomas Kontuly, "Increasing Returns to City Size in the face of an Impending Decline in the Sizes of Large Cities: Which Is the Bogus Fact?" Environment and Planning A, 9 (1977):59-62; and "Population Dispersal from Major Metropolitan Regions: An International Comparison," International Regional Science Review 3 (1978):49-73. 40 Simmons, National Urban Strategy, pp. 38-41. 41 Alonso, "Urban Zero Population Growth"; and John B. Parr, "Spatial Development and Stagnation: Procedures of Planning for Balance" (Paper delivered at the Fourth Advanced Studies Institute for Regional Science). 32

CHAPTER 5: PLANNING FOR THE EMERGING SETTLEMENT PATTERN 1

D. E. C. Eversley, "Rising Costs and Static Incomes: Some Economic Consequences of Regional Planning in London," Urban Studies 9, no. 3 (1972):351-63; Shrimpton and Sharpe, "An Inner City in Decline," pp. 90-109; E. M. Hoover, "Reduced Population Growth and the Problems of Urban Areas," in S. M. Mazie, ed., Population Distribution and Policy, Sternlieb and Hughes, Post-Industrial American; The Impact of

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Population Decline on Baltimore (Baltimore, May 1978); and Katherine C. Lyall, "Baltimore in the '80's: What the Experts Say," in Metro News, Special Edition of the Johns Hopkins Center for Metropolitan Planning and Research Newsletter 8, no. 6 (1 March 1980). 2 H. J. Bryce, ed., Small Cities in Transition (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1977):331-36. 3 Ira M. Robinson, "Planning, Building, and Managing New Resource Towns," pp. 54-75; and Marga R. Betz, "Community Stability in Resource Towns." 4

Sternlieb and Hughes, Post-Industrial America, Morrison, "Current Demographic Context," and Edgar Rust, No Growth: Impacts on Metropolitan Areas (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1975). 5 Gail G. Schwartz, Ralph Widner and John Shannon, "Revitalizing Inner Cities: A Trinational Perspective," in Urban Innovation Abroad, Special Supplement (Wash. B.C.: Council for International Urban Liaison, 1980). 6 Lyall, "Baltimore in the '80's." 7 Day, "ZPG Society." 8 T. Muller, "Service Costs in the Declining City," in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully. 9

Rust, No Growth, Chap. 13. Wilbur Thompson, "Land Management Strategies for Central City Depopulation," in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully. 11 Morrison, "Demographic Context"; and Hoover, "Reduced Population Growth." 12 One of the significant implications of reduced urban growth rates is that the "built environment" will not be as large and pervasive as it might otherwise have been. In fact, it appears that a large proportion of the urban areas and structures that Canadians will inhabit in the year 2001 has already been built. For example, the projected 30 million people expected to be living in Canada in that year are likely to require about 10.5 to 11 million dwelling units and of these, 7 million are now in place. See J. R. Gauthier, "Focus on the Future," CPAC Review 27(1977):4-6. 13 Thompson, "Land Management Strategies." 10

14

German officials and planners view the loss of urban populations as an opportunity that allows them room to manoeuvre. Many German cities are adopting a "thinning out" strategy in which advantage is taken of declining densities and population to improve the quality of housing and urban life in general. See Schwartz, et al., "Revitalizing Inner Cities." 15 Day, "ZPG Society."

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16

Morrison, "Demographic Trends Impinging on Energy Use," pp. 812. 17 One might even conjure up the lessons of the past to demonstrate that economic decline may in fact lead a city to new opportunities. For example, Mumford, writing in 1938, pointed out that almost all of the major improvements of the last twenty-five years in Wien (Vienna), London, Berlin, and New York had been put through during periods when the metropolitan financial system was in a state of collapse. See Lewis Mumford, Culture of Cities (N.Y.: Harcourt Brace, 1938), pp. 296-97. 18 Larry S. Bourne, "Urban Development under Stagnating Growth," Urban Forum 4, no. 4 (Jan./Feb./March 1979): 13. 19 Day, "ZPG Society." 20 David Eversley, Planning Without Growth, Fabian Research Series, 321, (London: Fabian Society, July 197*5), p. 26. 21 This word is borrowed from the title of a 1977 report by a U.S. Congressional committee concerned with the same problems in the U.S.A. See Chapter 2, n. 14, above. 22 Bourne, "Urban Development," p. 15. 23 For example, G. Sternlieb and J. Hughes, "New Regional and Metropolitan Realities of America," Journal of the American Institute of Planners (July 1977):241; and the various contributors in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully. 24 See, for example, Bryce, ed., Small Cities; Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Vegreville; and Coates and Weiss, Revitalization of Small Communities. 25 Coates and Weiss, Revitalization of Small Communities. 26 For an excellent guide or "how to" handbook to help small communities undergoing or facing the prospect of accelerated growth anticipate and manage such growth, see Briscow, et al., Action Handbook: Managing Growth in the Small Community, 3 pts. (Denver: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1978). While a U.S. document, this handbook is nevertheless useful for Canadian planners, public officials, and citizens concerned with small town growth, as it was prepared with small towns that are undergoing or facing the prospect of growth by energy-induced projects in mind. 27 Hodge and Qadeer, Towns and Villages. 28 Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Vegreville. CHAPTER 6: NEED FOR A NATIONAL SETTLEMENT POLICY 1

This term is being used in its broadest interpretation—that is, "growth" in this context is meant to include slow growth, zero growth, and decline as well as rapid growth. As such, more descriptive terms

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might be strategies for "management of the urbanization process" or "management of the rate and pattern of settlement." 2 Much of the material for this section is drawn from Human Settlement in Canada. 3 N. H. Lithwick, "Political Innovation: A Case Study," Plan Canada 12, no. 1 (1972): 51. 4 Lithwick, Urban Canada, p. 232. 5 Human Settlement in Canada, p. 80. Q Ibid., see Introduction, p. 3. 7 See the papers by Boothroyd and Marlyn, Miles, and Lang in: "National Urban Policy," Special Issue of Plan Canada 12, no. 1 (1972). 8 L. S. Bourne, Urban Systems: Strategies for Regulation (Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 181-83. 9 Ibid. 10 L. S. Bourne, "Limits to Urban Growth: Who Benefits? Who Pays? Who Decides?" Contact 8, no. 1 (February 1976): 1-15. 11 Weller, ed., The Future of Communities in the Prairie Region, p. 7. 12 This need is being recognized of late by various researchers, planners, and some public officials as reflected in the work of Gerald Hodge and his colleagues at Queen's University on the important role small towns and villages are playing in Canadian life. See Chapter 1, n. 9 for title of their report on the subject; the seminar on "The Future of Small and Medium-Sized Communities in the Prairie Region" held in June 1977 and sponsored by the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs; and the follow-up seminar to the aforementioned one, entitled "The Future of Small and Medium-sized Communities in Ontario," held in 1978. 13 Gauthier, "Focus on the Future." 14 Parr, "Spatial Development and Stagnation." 15 The Swedish and Dutch experiences are instructive here, as reported in James L. Sundquist, Dispersing Population: What America Can Learn from Europe (Wash., D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1975), chs. 5 and 6. Both the Swedish and Netherlands national governments introduced during the 1960's a national policy for slowing down their major urban centres and diverting future growth to the undeveloped and depressed regions of their countries. Their policies, backed up by a variety of incentives and controls, proved successful to the extent that their respective metropolitan areas not only experienced a slowdown in growth, but, in the case of Stockholm and The Hague, actual decline. As a consequence, city officials and private interests in both of these cities (who had previously favoured the dispersal policy), suddenly, during the mid-1970's, began to object and reversed their attitude when the population pressure on their cities not only eased but then altogether disappeared. For them, a slower rate of growth was

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one thing, an actual loss of growth was quite another. While they did not oppose, they said, a policy to assist those areas suffering from unemployment problems, this should not be done in such a way as to create difficulties for people who live and work in the big cities. In short, they now opposed the dispersal policy because it meant that the hinterland enjoys economic growth, and it benefits at their expense. They are now fearful that their capital cities would become cities of old people, schools would stand empty, the housing stock would decay, the tax base would decline, and cultural institutions could no longer be supported. 16 Habitat and Energy in Canada, p. 78. 17

18 19

Peter Boothroyd and Frank Marlyn, "National Urban Policy: A Phrase in Search of a Meaning," Plan Canada, 12, no. 1 (1972):4-12. Ibid. Ibid.

20

Philip H. Friedly, National Policy Responses to Urban Growth (Lexington, MA: Saxton House and Lexington Books, 1974), p. 6.

21

Bourne (see n. 10 above), drawing upon the work of Kenneth Boulding on the principles of growth, makes essentially the same point in his paper dealing with the efforts of certain Canadian urban areas to control or limit their growth. He distinguishes three types of growth, which pretty well corresponds to my differentiation between types of growth and development. Boulding's principles of growth are found in "Toward a General Theory of Growth," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 19 (1953):326-40; and A Primer on Social Dynamics: History as Dialects and Development (The Free Press, 1970).

22

Simmons, Canada: Choices, p. 86.

23

Ibid. Science Council of Canada, Perceptions I: Population Growth and Urban Problems. (Ottawa: Information Canada, November 1975), p. 69. 25 M. R. Betz, "Community Stability in Resource Towns." 26 Gertler and Crowley, Changing Canadian Cities, p. 441.

24

27

L. Rodwin, Nations and Cities: A Comparison of Strategies for Urban Growth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).

28

Brian J. L. Berry, "Comparative Urbanization Strategies," Ekistics 42, no. 249 (August 1976): 130-35.

29

L. S. Bourne, Urban Systems pp. 210, 211, 214; and "Conceptual Issues in Designing and Evaluating Strategies for National Urban Settlement Systems", in H. Swain and R. D. Mackinnon, eds., Issues in the Management of Urban Systems (Schloss Laxenberg, Austria: Ilasa, December 1974).

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30

The writer has not included all of Bourne's preconditions here, and also he has taken the liberty of rewording several of them. 31 Perks and Robinson, eds., The Canadian Experience, p. 8. EPILOGUE: SOME RESEARCH AND INFORMATION NEEDS 1

J. Simmons, Migration and the Canadian Urban System: Part /, Spatial Patterns, Research Paper 85 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977). 2 Alonso, "Urban Zero Population Growth," pp. 33-34; and Stephen H. Putman, "Some Problems of Forecasting Spatial Patterns in Declining Metropolitan Regions" (Paper delivered at the Fourth Advanced Studies Institute in Regional Science), p. 9. 3 For example, a two-week institute and workshop was held in August 1978 at the University of Siegen on the theme "Spatial Development under Stagnating Growth." The conference, attended mainly by European scholars and professionals, was arranged by the department of economics of the University of Siegen, in collaboration with the International Regional Science Association (RSA) and the German-speaking section of RSA. Several papers delivered at the conference have been previously referred to in this monograph. The article by Larry Bourne, "Urban Development," is a brief and personal overview of the objectives of the conference, and some of the concepts, theories, and approaches discussed. This writer was also in attendance at the institute. 4 N. H. Lithwick, "Urban Policy-Making: Shortcomings in Political Technology," Canadian Public Administration 15 (1972):57l-84; and Gertler and Crowley, Changing Canadian Cities. 5 "Introduction" in Perks and Robinson, eds., The Canadian Experience. 6

Prof. Larry Bourne at the University of Toronto (Centre for Community and Urban Studies) is about to launch a major research project in international comparative research; some of the theories and concepts he proposes to examine, and hopes to integrate into a single framework, are outlined in his paper, "Alternative Perspectives on Urban Decline and Population Deconcentration," Urban Geography 1, no. 1 (1980):39-52. Also, under the guidance of Prof. Leo Klaassen, Director of the Netherlands Economic Institute (Rotterdam, Netherlands), a project is underway sponsored by the Vienna Center for Documentation of Social Research, known as CURB, the cost of urban growth project. Urban development in fourteen West and East European countries is being studied, out of which some tentative theories of urban growth have already emerged, at least in terms of the European experience. See, for example, Leo van den Berg and Leo H. Klaassen, The Process of Urban Decline (Rotterdam: Netherlands Economic Institute, 1978). 7 William Alonso, "The System of Intermetropolitan Population Flows," in S. M. Mazie, Population Distribution and Policy, p. 333.

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APPENDIX Preambles to the Recommendations for National Action on Settlement Policies and Strategies and Settlement Planning—HABITAT: United Nations Conference on Human Settlements.*

A. SETTLEMENT POLICIES AND STRATEGIES

1. The goals and objectives of human settlement policies and strategies are recalled in the Declaration of Principles of the Habitat Conference. 2. To achieve these goals and objectives, national settlement policies must be formulated and the means for implementation must be selected and combined into national development strategies. These strategies must then be incorporated in the general planning framework, and the specific goals must become an integral part of national development objectives. 3. The ideologies of States are reflected in their human settlement policies. These being powerful instruments for change, they must not be used to dispossess people from their homes and their land, or to entrench privilege and exploitation. The human settlement policies must be in conformity with the declaration of principles and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 4. Human settlements of today embody the outcome of generations of ideas, decisions and physical investments; it is not possible, therefore, to achieve radical modifications overnight. But population growth and rapid changes in the location of human activities proceed at such a pace that, by the end of the century, we shall have to build "another world on top of the present one". If properly directed, this formidable task could mobilize untapped resources and be turned into a unique opportunity for changing our man-made environment: this is the challenge of human settlement strategies. * Taken from: "Habitat Report: A Summary," Community Planning Review, 26 no. 12.

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5. In fact, the very construction of the physical components of human settlements—be they rural or urban, in the form of dwellings or roads, with traditional or modern technologies—in sufficient volume to meet the needs of society could become a leading sector of the economy and a major generator of meaningful employment, instead of being treated as a residual of so-called "productive" activities. 6. It must be remembered also that, throughout the world, the present role of human activities was determined by economic, social and political relationships, many of which are by now obsolete. In the early industrialized countries of the northern hemisphere, the pattern of settlements still bears the marks of the ruthless urbanization of the last century; in the third world, both the hierarchy of settlements and, very often, their internal structures are the physical manifestation of the dual society inherited from a situation of dependence and exploitation. To change these complex and evolving relationships, settlement policies and strategies must be conceived on a scale appropriate to the task and as part of a single concerted effort for the improvement of the quality of life of all people, wherever they live and work. B. SETTLEMENT PLANNING

1. Planning is a process to achieve the goals and objectives of national development through the rational and efficient use of available resources. Thus plans must include clear goals and adequate policies, objectives and strategies along with concrete programmes. 2. Planning activities should promote and guide development rather than restrict or simply control it. Imaginative planning should be stimulative and anticipatory; in many cases it might have to remain openended and in all cases it should consider options and be based on the best available information and forecasting of demographic, social, economic and technological trends. 3. Although a strict hierarchial order is inappropriate for understanding the network of human settlements and the levels of decisions required to act upon them, it may be convenient to assume that planning is conducted at different scales of geographical coverage: national, regional, local and neighbourhood. To achieve balanced development, planning decisions taken at one level must be related and complementary to those taken at other levels, both "above" and "below", and appropriate machinery must be devised to resolve potential conflicts between them.

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4. Planning also operates over significantly different time spans, from a few years up to a generation and more. Decisions taken at one level and within a time framework may have important consequences at another level and on a broader time perspective. The longer the horizon, the more important it is for settlement planning to remain flexible in order to adapt to changing priorities or conditions. 5. In this constant process of adjustment and reconciliation, the notion of region becomes central to settlement planning as a unit smaller than the national whole but larger than the individual settlement itself, however big that may be. More and more countries are faced with the problems posed by metropolitan regions, centred around a very large urban complex, but sometimes spreading until they become contiguous with others. Other regions, especially in the third world comprise predominantly rural populations and require equal, although different, attention in planning terms. 6. In developing countries most people live in rural areas and will continue to do so notwithstanding considerable movement to urban areas. Given the urgent need to improve the quality of life of these people, which have been hitherto relatively neglected, planning and development of rural settlements should become a focus of national development policies and programmes. National cultures have strong roots in the villages, and form a vital resource of great potential in development and therefore must be recognized in development strategies. Growth, change and social transformation have meaning only if they touch rural peoples. Planning for rural settlement development must be holistic and on a local basis within regions so as to mobilize and use all available resources. 7. However, the majority of planning decisions and their implementation will continue to occur at the level of the individual settlement. Planning of individual settlements is oriented to solve the problems derived from the relationship between the environment, and the political, social and economic context, in a continuous process of change and mutual adjustment. The physical ambit of planning of individual settlements is concerned with the best use of the present stock—through renewal, rehabilitation and other forms of improvement—and the integration of marginal or peripheral settlements or the creation of new ones. The relative emphasis on each approach will depend on local circumstances, social values and political priorities. 8. Human settlement planning must seek to improve the quality of life

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of people with full respect for indigenous, cultural and social needs. Settlement planning and implementation for the purpose of prolonging and consolidating occupation and subjugation in territories and lands acquired through coercion and intimidation must not be undertaken and must be condemned as a violation of United Nations principles and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 9. Planning is no less important at the community level where the direct involvement of residents in the decisions affecting their daily lives can be achieved most effectively. At this, and the neighbourhood level, it is essential that planning and design be at the human scale and so contribute to good personal and social relationships in settlements. 10. Finally, planning is crucial in the wake of natural emergencies, such as those resulting from natural or man-made disasters, where the meeting of immediate needs must be reconciled with the achievement of long-term goals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alonso, William. "Urban Zero Population Growth." Daedalus, Special Issue, The No-Growth Society 102 (1973): 191-206. Auerbach, L., and Gerber, Andrea. Implications of the Changing Age Structure of the Canadian Population: Perceptions 2. Ottawa: Science Council of Canada, 1976. Berry, Brian B. Urbanization and Counterurbanization. Urban Affairs Annual Review, no. 11. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976. Boothroyd, Peter. "Forecasts of Canada's Urban Future." Report prepared for the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, Ottawa, 1976. Blackwood, Larry G. and Carpenter, Edwin H. "The Importance of Anti-Urbanism in Determining Residential Preferences and Migration Patterns." Rural Sociology 43, no. 1 (1978):31-47. Bourne, L. S. "Some Myths of Canadian Urbanization: Reflections on the 1976 Census and Beyond." Urbanism: Past and Present 5 (Winter 1977-78):1-11. "Urban Development under Stagnating Growth." Urban Forum 4, no. 4 (Jan./Feb./March 1979). Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The Canadian Inner City: 1971-1976—A Statistical Handbook. Ottawa: The author, 1979. Chubik, John H. Urban Form and Energy: A Selected Review. Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, July 1977. Eversley, David. Planning without Growth. Fabian Research Series, 321. London: Fabian Society, July 1975. Friedly, Philip H. National Policy Responses to Urban Growth. Lexington, MA: Saxon House and Lexington Books, 1974. Goldberg, Michael A. and Webster, Douglas B. "The Atlantic Provinces: Canada's New Amenity Region." Contact 11, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 1979):91-111. Habitat and Energy in Canada. Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1977. HABITAT, The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Report of the Canadian Delegation. Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, 1977

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Hodge, G. and Qadeer, M. A. Towns and Villages in Urban Canada. Kingston: School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University, 1978. How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully. Wash. B.C.: U.S. GPO, 1977. Human Settlements in Canada. Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, 1976. Keyes, Dale L. "The Influence of Energy on Future Patterns of Urban Development," in Arthur P. Solomon, ed., The Prospective City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980). Lithwick, Harvey. Urban Canada: Problems and Prospects. Ottawa: Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 1970. Maxie, S. M. ed. Population Distribution and Policy. Research Reports, Vol. 5. Wash. D.C.: Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, 1973. McCallum, Bruce. Environmentally Appropriate Technology: Renewable Energy and Other Developing Technologies for a Conserver Society in Canada, 4th ed. Ottawa: Department of Supply and Services, April 1977. Morrison, Peter A. "Demographic Trends That Will Shape Future Housing Demands." Policy Sciences 8 (1977). "National Urban Policy," Special Issue of Plan Canada 12, no. 1 (1972). Perks, W. T., and Robinson, Ira M., eds., Urban and Regional Planning in the Federal State: The Canadian Experience. Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, 1979. Recent Trends in the Growth of Canadian Urban Centres. Ottawa:* Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, June 1978. Robinson, Ira M. "Urban Growth in Canada: Implications of Recent Demographic Changes for Urban and Regional Planning and Policy." Paper prepared for Fourth Advanced Studies Institute in Regional Science, University of Siegen, West Germany, 6 August 1978. Rod win, L. Nations and Cities: A Comparison of Strategies for Urban Growth Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Rust, Edgar. No Growth: Impacts on Metropolitan Areas. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1975. Simmons, James. The Growth of the Canadian Urban System. Research Paper no. 65. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1974. Small Cities: How Can the Federal and State Governments Respond to Their Diverse Needs. Wash., D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1978. Sternlieb, George, and Hughes, James, eds. Post-Industrial America: Metropolitan Decline and Inter-Regional Job Shifts. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 1975. Stone, Leroy O. Urban Development in Canada. Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1967. Urban Settlement Distribution: The Dynamics of Canada's System. Occasional Papers, no. 11. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1979. Van Til, Jon. "Spatial Form and Structure in a Possible Future: Some

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Implications of Energy Shortfall for Urban Planning. "Journal of the American Planning Association 45, no. 3 (July 1979). Vining, Daniel R. and Kontuly, Thomas. "Population Dispersal from Major Metropolitan Regions: An International Comparison." International Regional Science Review 3, no. 1 (1978). Weller, Barry S., ed. The Future of Small and Medium-Sized Communities in the Prairie Region. Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, October 1978.

PHOTO CREDITS 1. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation 2. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation 3. U.B.C. Centre for Human Settlements/K. Buttedahl 4. U.B.C. Centre for Human Settlements/K. Buttedahl 5. U.B.C. Centre for Human Settlements/K. Buttedahl 6. U.B.C. Centre for Human Settlements/K. Buttedahl 7. U.B.C. Centre for Human Settlements/K. Buttedahl 8. U.B.C. Centre for Human Settlements/K. Buttedahl