Governing Urban Economies: Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City Regions 9781442617223

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword to the Series
Acknowledgments
1. Governing Urban Economies: Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions
PART I. Institutionalized Collaboratives
2. Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Community Economic Development in Montreal
3. Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Scale, Scope, and Coalitions in Toronto
4. Myth Making and the “Waterloo Way”: Exploring Associative Governance in Kitchener-Waterloo
5. The Politics of Coalition Building in a Deindustrializing City: Linkages, Leadership, and Agendas in Hamilton
PART II. Sector Networks
6. Linking Innovation and Inclusion: The Governance Question in Ottawa
7. Embarrassment and Riches: Good Governance and Bad Governance in the St John’s City-Region
8. 300 People Who Make a Difference: Associative Governance in Calgary
PART III. Project Partnerships
9. Challenge and Change in London: The Social Dynamics of Urban Economic Governance
10. Governance Innovations in Saskatoon: From State and Cooperatives to Local Partnerships
11. The Missing Link: Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization in Vancouver
12. The Bumpy Road to Regional Governance and Inclusive Development in Greater Moncton
PART IV. Conclusions
13. The Rise of Metropolitics: Urban Governance in the Age of the City-Region
14. Civic Infrastructures of Innovation and Inclusion? Reflections on Urban Governance in Canada
Contributors

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GOVERNING URBAN ECONOMIES Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions

Today more than ever, cities matter to the economic and social wellbeing of the vast majority of Canadians. Canada’s urban centres are simultaneously the engines of the national economy and the places where the risks of social exclusion are most concentrated, making innovative and inclusive urban governance an urgent national priority. Governing Urban Economies is the first detailed scholarly examination of relations among governmental and community-based actors in Canadian city-regions. Comparing patterns of municipal-community relations and federal-provincial interactions across city-regions, this volume tracks the ways in which urban coalitions tackle complex economic and social challenges. Featuring an interdisciplinary group of established and up-and-coming scholars, this collection breaks new ground in the Canadian urban politics literature and will appeal to urbanists working in a range of national contexts. (Innovation, Creativity, and Governance in Canadian City-Regions) neil bradford is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Huron University College. allison bramwell is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Innovation, Creativity, and Governance in Canadian City-Regions Series Editor: David A. Wolfe The series on Innovation, Creativity, and Governance in Canadian City-­ Regions presents the research results of a six-year, sixteen-city study of the social dynamics of innovation, creativity, and civic governance in Canadian cities. The first three volumes in the series provide detailed analyses of each of the three research themes carried out across a selection of large, medium-sized, and small Canadian cities, and the fourth one integrates the key findings across all themes for the individual cases. While the cases covered are primarily Canadian, the volumes present the material in an international and comparative context that addresses ongoing intellectual and policy debates concerning urban economic development and civic governance. As such, the series offers important new insights that contribute to our contemporary understanding of the relationship between urban social dynamics and economic ­performance.

Governing Urban Economies Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions

EDITED BY NEIL BRADFORD AND ALLISON BRAMWELL

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2014 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4856-2 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-2627-0 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetablebased inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Governing urban economies : innovation and inclusion in Canadian city-regions/edited by Neil Bradford and Allison Bramwell. (Innovation, creativity, and governance in Canadian city-regions) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4426-4856-2 (bound). – ISBN 978-1-4426-2627-0 (pbk.) 1. Municipal government – Canada – Citizen participation – Case studies.  2. Community development, Urban – Canada – Case studies.  3. Sociology, Urban – Canada – Case studies.  4. Canada – Economic conditions – Case studies.  I. Bradford, Neil John, 1957–, editor of compilation  II. Bramwell, Allison, editor of compilation  III. Series: Innovation, creativity, and governance in Canadian city-regions (Toronto, Ont.) JS1710.G69 2014   320.8'50971   C2014-900480-X University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

Foreword to the Series  vii Acknowledgments  xiii   1 Governing Urban Economies: Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  3 neil bradford and allison bramwell Part I: Institutionalized Collaboratives   2 Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Community Economic Development in Montreal  37 juan-luis klein, diane-gabrielle tremblay, and jean-marc fontan   3 Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Scale, Scope, and Coalitions in Toronto  58 allison bramwell and david a. wolfe   4 Myth Making and the “Waterloo Way”: Exploring Associative Governance in Kitchener-Waterloo  88 jen nelles   5 The Politics of Coalition Building in a Deindustrializing City: Linkages, Leadership, and Agendas in Hamilton  110 allison bramwell

vi Contents

Part II: Sector Networks   6 Linking Innovation and Inclusion: The Governance Question in Ottawa  137 caroline andrew and david doloreux   7 Embarrassment and Riches: Good Governance and Bad Governance in the St John’s City-Region  161 rob greenwood   8 300 People Who Make a Difference: Associative Governance in Calgary  184 patrick feng, ben li, and cooper h. langford Part III: Project Partnerships   9 Challenge and Change in London: The Social Dynamics of Urban Economic Governance  205 neil bradford 10 Governance Innovations in Saskatoon: From State and Cooperatives to Local Partnerships  229 peter w.b. phillips and graeme webb 11 The Missing Link: Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization in Vancouver  248 richard smith, paulina chow-white, graeme webb, renee cheung, karen fung, and j. patrick truman 12 The Bumpy Road to Regional Governance and Inclusive Development in Greater Moncton  273 yves bourgeois Part IV: Conclusions 13 The Rise of Metropolitics: Urban Governance in the Age of the City-Region  297 kevin morgan 14 Civic Infrastructures of Innovation and Inclusion? Reflections on Urban Governance in Canada  319 allison bramwell and neil bradford Contributors  339

Foreword to the Series

Innovating in Urban Economies: Economic Transformation in Canadian City-Regions Innovation and creative capacity are essential determinants of economic prosperity in a globalizing, knowledge-based economy. Although the process of globalization has led to numerous predictions of the “death of distance,” growing evidence suggests that the contemporary global economy make cities more – not less – important as sites of production, distribution, and innovation. Over the past decade, recognition has grown that even the most global of economic activities remain fundamentally rooted in city-regions as critical sites for organizing economic activity. More significantly, the social dynamics of city-regions are crucial in shaping economic outcomes (Gertler 2001). The interactive and social nature of the innovation process makes city-regions the appropriate scale at which social learning processes unfold. Knowledge transfer between highly skilled people happens more easily in cities, while talent flows within and between cities are a critical means for the dissemination of innovative ideas. In a country with diverse and strongly differentiated regional economies, relationships among economic actors, organizations, and institutions at the local and regional scale are crucial factors affecting national prosperity. The concentrations of talented people and skilled occupations in urban centres are seen as critical sources of the creative and innovative ideas which generate growth in city-regions. Leading urban regions are no longer prepared to be passive objects at the hands of globalizing forces associated with the spread of information technologies, but are taking control of their own economic future through efforts aimed at the “strategic management” of their own economies (Audretsch 2002). From

viii Foreword

this perspective, among the key foundations of economic success in a globalizing, knowledge-based economy are the social qualities and properties of urban places. The papers collected in this series report on the research results of a six-year study of the social dynamics of economic performance in Canadian city-regions by members of the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN). The ISRN itself was an innovative experiment in knowledge management that came into existence in 1998 through the leadership of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and its partners, the National Research Council and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The ISRN is a collaborative, multidisciplinary network of university-based researchers analysing how innovation processes unfold in different regions and localities across the country. Since its inception in 1998, the network’s research has focused on how interaction among the major components of the regional innovation system shape the processes of innovation and social learning ­critical to Canada’s success in the knowledge-based economy. Its primary objectives have been: (1) to understand the process by which regional networks foster the production and circulation of knowledge that is critical to the innovation process, and (2) to deepen our understanding of the role of public policy in facilitating (or impeding) this process (Holbrook and Wolfe 2005). The goal of the ISRN’s first research program from 2001 to 2005 was to determine the prevalence and success of local industrial clusters across Canada and to analyse how the formation and growth of these clusters contributes to local economic growth and innovative capacity. Underlying this objective was a set of fundamental conceptual questions: how do local assets and relationships between economic actors enable firms – in any industry – to become more innovative? Under what circumstances does “the local” matter, and how important are local sources of knowledge and locally generated institutions (public and private) in strengthening the innovative capabilities of firms and industries? What is the relative importance of non-local actors, relationships, and flows of knowledge in shaping the development trajectories of localized innovation and growth? The results of that five-year project made a distinctly Canadian contribution to the study of industrial clusters. The international literature on clusters and regional innovation systems recognizes that in a global marketplace, local input factors and inter-firm dynamics are critical to a firm’s ability to innovate and thereby gain competitive advantage. But,

Foreword ix

as noted above, a critical question addressed in the ISRN study concerns the relative importance of local versus non-local factors in cluster performance and the relationship between the two sets of factors. The ISRN case studies provided important insights into these questions. They documented a balance between the relative impact of local and non-local relationships and knowledge flows – in other words the dynamic tension between the local “buzz” and global “pipelines” that circulate knowledge between clusters (Bathelt, Malmberg, and Maskell 2004). They underlined the sectoral specificity of industrial clusters – clusters in different sectors draw upon different knowledge bases that influence both the innovation process within the clusters and the underlying relationship between the cluster and the research infrastructure which supports it. The case studies also highlighted the centrality of a strong, dynamic talent base, or “thick” labour market for the success of most clusters. The ability to draw upon a plentiful supply of labour with the skills required by cluster firms is often the most critical factor that attracts them to, and anchors them in, a specific geographic location (Wolfe 2009a). Finally, the case studies suggested that some of the most successful clusters have profited from the development of strong social networks at the community level and the emergence of dedicated, communitybased organizations. These entities link leaders in the individual clusters to a broader cross-section of the community. They appear to be supported by new institutions of civic governance that identify problems impeding the growth of the cluster and help mobilize support across the community for proposed solutions. The research also found some evidence to suggest that size is a critical variable in the success of civic engagement, with some of the larger, urban centres encountering greater difficulty in achieving effective degrees of mobilization (Wolfe and Nelles 2008). The results of the first ISRN project led to the overwhelming conclusion that many of the most significant factors which underlay the performance of individual clusters were not specific to the cluster itself. The research thus led to the conclusion that the social characteristics, dynamics, and relationships within the wider city-region are important determinants of economic performance. This led the members of the network to undertake a second Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI), with funding from SSHRC and other partners, to investigate the social dynamics of innovation and economic performance, with the city-region as the primary unit of analysis. The second MCRI project

x Foreword

from 2006 to 2011 set out to analyse what were believed to be three key determinants of economic performance at the local level: the broader dynamics of innovation and knowledge flows, the role of creativity and talent, and the contribution made by new forms of civic governance in Canadian city-regions (Wolfe 2009b). The study involved detailed investigations of all three of these themes – innovation, talent, and governance – in a sample of sixteen large, medium-sized, and small Canadian cities across eight provinces, resulting in more than fifty case studies in all. Each case was examined using a common research methodology, primarily based on in-depth interviews with key participants in critical sectors in the local economy using common interview guides. The key questions for each theme were largely the same, but were structured to reflect the researchers’ detailed knowledge of their own local economy and institutions. This series of four volumes presents the results of a selection of case studies conducted under each of these themes. The present volume considers factors affecting the social dynamics of civic governance and how these shape economic development in Canadian city-regions. Other volumes in the series deal with the role of knowledge flows in the dynamics of innovation and the attraction and retention of talented and creative people in city-regions. David A. Wolfe, Series editor REFERENCES Audretsch, D.B. 2002. “The innovative advantage of US cities.” European Planning Studies 10 (2): 165–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654310120114472. Bathelt, H., A. Malmberg, and P. Maskell. 2004. “Clusters and knowledge: Local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation.” Progress in Human Geography 28 (1): 31–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/03091 32504ph469oa. Gertler, M.S. 2001. “Urban economy and society in Canada: Flows of people, capital and ideas.” Isuma: Canadian Journal of Policy Research 2 (3): 119–30. Holbrook, J.A., and D.A. Wolfe. 2005. “The Innovation Systems Research Network: A Canadian experiment in knowledge management.” Science & Public Policy 32 (2): 109–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.3152/147154305781779623. Wolfe, D.A. 2009a. “Introduction: Embedded clusters in a global economy.” European Planning Studies 17 (2): 179–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 09654310802553407.

Foreword xi Wolfe, D.A. 2009b. 21st century cities in Canada: The geography of innovation. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada. Wolfe, D.A., and J. Nelles. 2008. “The role of civic capital and civic associations in cluster policies.” In Handbook of Research on Innovations and Cluster Policies, ed. Charlie Karlsson, 374–92. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishers.

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Acknowledgments

A national research project inevitably ends with an army of people and institutions whose contributions merit gratitude. First and foremost, the team acknowledges the vital financial and advisory inputs provided by funding agencies and partners in the research. The primary source of funding for the work came from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program #412-2005-1001. Throughout the work SSHRC proved immensely supportive of the team’s activities. In addition we appreciate the support of our research partners: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Health Technology Exchange, National Research Council, Nova Scotia Economic Development, Ontario Ministries of Economic Development and Trade, Research and Innovation, and Economic Development and Innovation, Queen’s University, Ryerson University, Simon Fraser University, Statistics Canada, Université Laval, University of Toronto, as well as in-kind support from THECIS in Calgary. The team’s annual meetings (King City, ON, 2006; Vancouver and Bowen Island 2007; Montreal 2008; Halifax 2009; Toronto 2010) would not have proved productive without the contributions of local organizing groups who helped with logistics, policymakers who participated in the knowledge exchange opportunities of the policy events, and local partners mentioned above who provided additional funding. Several people played pivotal roles in running the research program. Without the intellectual and administrative leadership of David A. Wolfe, none of this research could have happened: he assembled the team, led every stage of the work, and ensured that the team delivered what it promised. Meric Gertler offered intellectual guidance at each

xiv Acknowledgments

step of the project. Deborah Huntley, the project manager, provided excellent organizational skills that kept the team on time, on track, and on budget. These three key individuals were joined on the project management committee by Charles Davis, Jill Grant, Adam Holbrook, and Réjean Landry. At and between the annual meetings, the team received guidance and oversight from the project’s Research Advisory Board: Bjørn Asheim, Susan Christopherson, Susan Clarke, Philip Cooke, Hervey Gibson, Gernot Grabher, Anders Malmberg, Peter Maskell, Kevin Morgan, Claire Nauwelaers, Tod Rutherford, and Allen Scott. Teams in each of the city-regions studied, coordinated, and conducted the case study work. Many city-region teams involved several junior colleagues and students – too numerous to name – who made invaluable contributions to the work. Some began working on the project as doctoral students, graduated to post-doctoral fellows, and ultimately became colleagues and collaborators along the way. Without the participation of community members from across the country who donated their time and knowledge to the team in agreeing to sit for interviews or complete surveys, none of this work would be possible. The team sincerely appreciates their willingness to share their wisdom and experience, and hopes that they find the results of the research useful in their efforts to keep their communities vital and progressive. Final thanks go to Daniel Quinlan and his team at the University of Toronto Press for believing in the importance of bringing this work to a wider audience and for providing assistance along the way to make it possible.

GOVERNING URBAN ECONOMIES Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions

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1 Governing Urban Economies: Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions neil bradford and allison bramwell

The last thirty years have been a period of great economic change. The globalization of competition and the continuous flow of new technologies have combined to create new challenges and opportunities for citizens, firms, and governments alike. The economic shocks and deep recession of the past several years have intensified the pressures and made the adjustments more complex and far-reaching. The dynamics move in several directions at once, affecting people and places differently. On the one hand, the premium placed on creativity and innovation in the knowledge-based economy offers tremendous rewards to those who develop and apply the best ideas. On the other hand, these same forces leave many others struggling to find their way without the resources or access to the opportunities that the new competition demands. The result is that in countries around the world, Canada included, the knowledge-based economy presents a double-edged reality as economic innovation and social exclusion both shape contemporary restructuring processes (Bradford 2002; Action Canada 2012). A striking aspect of the new conjuncture is the link between global flows of capital, people, and ideas and the local places where they converge (Gertler 2001). While it might seem that globalization makes cities less important as commerce and community connect in cyberspace, such expectations have been dashed. Nearly three-quarters of Canada’s population live in urban areas with fully two-thirds residing in the twenty-seven census metropolitan areas. Cities are the places where immigrants overwhelmingly choose to settle and they have become the crucial engines of provincial and national prosperity hosting the country’s most innovative, globally successful firms. At the same time, cities are also home to the vast majority of Canada’s low-income and at-risk

4  Governing Urban Economies

individuals and families. Poverty and polarization evident at the national level have become more pronounced in cities as divides grow across urban neighbourhoods, housing, and labour markets. Taking stock of the new urban political economy, Meric S. Gertler concludes that “it is now apparent that many of Canada’s most pressing social problems – as well as its greatest prospects for prosperity – are focused in urban areas” (Gertler 2001, 32). Assessing similar urbanizing dynamics across Europe and the United States, Jeffrey Sellers reports that national efforts “to promote prosperity, to protect the environment and to further equity for the disadvantaged increasingly rely on activities at the regional and local levels” (Sellers 2002). Recognition that “cities matter” to the economic prosperity of countries and the social well-being of their citizens has focused considerable attention on local and regional capacities to manage change in innovative and inclusive ways (Bradford 2011; Bramwell 2012). A wide-ranging research literature with contributions from scholars, think tanks, and government bodies has explored multiple dimensions of “place quality” and the factors or conditions that underpin resilient local economies able to find their way in a turbulent global environment and often uncertain national contexts. From these studies, three central propositions have been advanced about the prospects and problems of urban development today. • Cities are globalization’s crucial scale of economic and social interaction where the assets of density and diversity can be leveraged to enable firms to tap new ideas and individuals to forge new social bonds. However, it is not geographic proximity per se that is valuable. Strategic investments and networked relations are required to drive innovation and inclusion. Through such intentional action, localities can enable learning and exploit synergies. • Economic prosperity and social well-being exist in a relationship of interdependence rather than opposition. According to the OECD, “metro-wide economic growth depends not only on economic interdependencies but also on social cohesion, for which policies have to be designed” (OECD 2006, 145). The Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ (FCM) policy statement on “Social-­Economic Development” describes the “twin goals of social and economic development” that “all governments must work together to support” (FCM 2013, 1). Leading urban scholars propose a “new and more inclusive agenda” (Stone 2008, 287) looking beyond “tradeoffs between capital and community” (Savitch and Kantor 2002, 145).

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  5

• To reach their potential for innovation and inclusion, cities require robust governance capacity, specifically the ability to bring together different sectors and levels of government for joint problem solving. The focus shifts from formal structures and institutional boundaries to collaboration addressing community-wide challenges beyond the reach of any single actor or organization. “Civil society and the corporate sector,” the OECD states, “are invited to participate in collective decisions and are encouraged to translate their involvement into concrete initiatives” (OECD 2001, 13). This book takes up these propositions about the dynamics of innovation, inclusion, and governance across a number of Canadian cities. Taking stock of the new ideas about urban economies and development strategies that have evolved over the past decade, it explores whether and how local actors are building new governance capacities that bridge economic and social objectives. Each chapter follows a common research methodology, primarily based on in-depth interviews with key participants in local governance using a common interview guide. Field research was conducted in the cities between 2008 and 2010, with the chapters written in 2011. As such, the case studies provide snapshots of how urban social and political dynamics shaped economic trajectories during a turbulent period in Canada’s economic development. In all cases, the interview data is supplemented through the individual author’s detailed knowledge of her or his own local economy, community networks, and governing institutions. Taken together, the cases studies in this volume provide a rich body of empirical research and conceptual perspective on local governance in different-sized cities spread across diverse regions of the country. The authors share three basic assumptions that are widely associated with the “new localism.” First, cities are the places where the twentyfirst century’s major economic and social challenges most visibly intersect a­ nd  where the opportunities for creative transformation are greatest. Second, cities cannot escape or resist the drivers of change; but they can guide and shape their impact by mobilizing local assets and leveraging extra-local resources. Third, within cities, municipal governments may be important actors in structuring change through creative use of the governance toolbox, exploring what Richard Tindal and Susan Nobes Tindal term an “alternative path” to entrenched views about unimaginative, subordinate “creatures.” On this second path, municipalities “are recognized as increasingly valuable in shaping provincial and federal policies with a spatial impact, and initiating and

6  Governing Urban Economies

coordinating new, broader-based governance models to respond more effectively to global competition” (Tindal and Tindal 2009, 396). This path is less comfortable and well travelled, but it may be crucial in allowing cities to meet today’s economic and social challenges (ibid., 20; Andrew 2001). The purpose of this introductory chapter is to situate the city case studies that follow in a broader intellectual context. The discussion is organized in three parts. We begin by considering in more detail why calls for more networked relations and localized governance have emerged today in both the economic and social realms. We identify two coherent urban development agendas, one pursuing economic innovation through cluster building, and the other seeking social inclusion through community building. Next we consider prospects for linking or balancing these agendas as envisioned in the above three propositions. Such inquiry requires a framework for analysing policy change and modes of governance and we develop a typology to guide city analysis and comparisons. The chapter closes with an overview of the key findings from each of the chapters and what they tell us about urban governance for economic innovation and social inclusion in Canadian cities. Urban Economic Development: New Social Dynamics For many years scholarship on local economic development adopted a form of structural determinism that emphasized the constraints on cities. This argument was most forcefully advanced by Paul Peterson in his aptly titled City Limits, a book that rapidly acquired wide influence in framing study of urban development in North America (Peterson 1981; Sancton 2011). Viewing cities as locked into competition with one another for external investment, Peterson described a narrow band of strategies and instruments deployed by all municipal leaders to “land business.” Indeed, land was the key factor of production under local control, and the development imperative for cities was to meet corporate demands for infrastructure services, minimal tax, and light regulation (Molotch 1976). With this incentive package, cities could expect to maximize growth. According to Peterson, such an agenda expressed the “unitary interest” of the city, supported by all major constituencies on the assumption that the benefits of growth would spread widely among elite interests and trickle down to lower strata. Most important, Peterson warned against redistributive measures that he believed would harm the economic position of the city. It was the responsibil­ ity of the city’s business-government “growth machine” to manage

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  7

economic development, disarm the political opposition, and insulate decision making from public input. As Peterson summarized, “City politics is limited politics” (Peterson 1981, 4). Over the last decade or so, Peterson’s narrowly conceived development agenda has been challenged (Sancton 2011). The critique has come from two interrelated if distinct disciplinary perspectives. On the one hand, economic geographers have questioned the adequacy of urban policies focused solely on business attraction through inducements and incentives. As knowledge-based production comes to define the new economy, economic geographers underscore “the social qualities and properties of urban places” that enable learning and innovation (Gertler 2001, 120). On the other hand, political scientists have reinterpreted urban policy and planning as involving much more than the automatic and inevitable imposition of a “single development imperative” or “unitary city interest.” The next two sections explore these challenges, beginning with the economic geographers’ concern with the social dynamics of urban economies and then considering the political scientists’ analysis of the political dynamics of urban governance.

Urban Economy: The Innovation Agenda The burst of techno-enthusiasm that initially accompanied globalization and the information-technology revolution led many observers to predict the “end of geography” and the “death of distance” (Cairncross 1997). Yet, urbanization continues to accelerate around the world even as business operates on a global scale and people migrate across borders. It is a “paradox of globalization” that cities have become more rather less important as sites of production and distribution (Gertler 2000). Underlying the paradox is the power of ideas as drivers of economic value. Competitive advantage in sectors from manufacturing and agriculture to human services increasingly rests on sophisticated skills and knowledge transfer. In such conditions, costs remain important for firms, but the calculus shifts from rudimentary considerations of material inputs or tax rates towards leveraging ideas, commercializing research, and recruiting highly qualified personnel to enhance innovative capabilities (Florida 2002). Simply put, competitiveness in the knowledge-based global economy is about far more than land development. Innovation is crucial and rather than a static or natural endowment, it is a social process driven by interactive learning among multiple economic players, each holding

8  Governing Urban Economies

different kinds of knowledge and commanding particular skills (Storper and Venables 2004). Research institutions such as universities, public laboratories, and knowledge transfer intermediaries are an indispensable foundation for business development and economic innovation. Networked relations among firms, workers, researchers, and financiers circulate knowledge and pool the resources necessary to solve either common problems facing a sector or the specific upgrading challenges of any given firm along the supply chain. Often it is the exchange of tacit knowledge – informal insights, know-how, and contextual intelligence – that keeps firms at the leading edge (Gertler and Wolfe 2004). This form of knowledge, gained through observation and dialogue among firms in related industries, flows most easily when the economic players share certain norms of behaviour or codes of communication that arise over time through repeated face-to-face interactions (Audretsch 2002; Maskell 2001). A local “innovative milieu” can supply the context for such interactive learning and specialized innovation. It follows that the urban economic development agenda is recast. Cities begin by identifying their distinctive economic assets and making investments in those elements that cannot be replicated easily or moved to other parts of the globe. Beyond servicing land, cities need to address a civic infrastructure of innovation that supports research commercialization, knowledge flows, and skills formation. Given the scope and scale of investments required, upper-level governments must do their part in the local innovation system. Rather than layering new programs in a disjointed fashion, they can work with one another and with local actors “on the ground” where ideas, investments, and talent converge. Urban development thus aims to make cities “places where socially organized learning processes take root and flourish” (Gertler 2001, 124).

Urban Society: The Inclusion Agenda Alongside growing appreciation of the localized dynamics of economic innovation, another set of social concerns is driving the resurgence of interest in cities. These concerns relate to the polarized income and precarious employment accompanying the knowledge-based urban economy (OECD 2006; Action Canada 2012). Here the analytical lens shifts from the highly educated, mobile workers well positioned to prosper in the global talent market to the many more vulnerable city residents who find themselves at risk of exclusion. They often experience a double

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  9

relocation: occupationally, from a relatively well-paid, full-time manufacturing job to insecure, low-paid service employment, and spatially, from safe and stable neighbourhoods to areas far less desirable. It follows that different social dynamics come into play. The local milieu does not grow ideas or engage learning. Instead, negative “neighbourhood effects” – exposure to crime, poor services, inadequate housing – compound the constraints on individuals and families already in difficulty (Bradford 2013). Moreover, these at-risk groups may not have access to the informal social networks that share tacit knowledge about economic opportunities. Canadian research examining the social consequences of economic change confirms these trends. Rising pockets of poverty in certain neighbourhoods in central cities and older inner suburban rings have been mapped, highlighting the added complexity of recent immigrants struggling in local economies (Hulchanski 2010; Walks and Bourne 2006). Indeed, immigrant settlement is a critical pressure point at the intersection of economic innovation and social inclusion in many Canadian cities. Immigration supplies innovative human capital to help build clusters, for example in cultural industries and information and communication technologies (Gertler et al. 2002). However, persistent “skills mismatches” rooted in problems of credential recognition or inadequate settlement services compromise any city’s attempt to leverage its “diversity advantage” (Donald and Morrow 2003). Of course, poverty has been a long-standing theme in the urban political economy literature. What’s notable in the recent emphasis on social inclusion as distinct from the traditional income-based poverty measures is the attention to the multiple and contextual factors that shape life chances in the city. From this vantage point comes recognition of the importance of community-building strategies that better align the social policy interventions of upper-level governments with local needs, while also pursuing inclusion from below through various grass-roots initiatives such as neighbourhood revitalization, social enterprise development, or workforce adjustment into the knowledge economy. The urban social inclusion agenda thus emphasizes the relational aspects of poverty and seeks solutions through communitybuilding efforts that rely on partnerships among social service agencies, foundations, and the private sector (Torjman 2007; Phillips 2010). Importantly, the inclusion agenda does not ignore the city’s need to attend to its economic position. It suggests a new way of thinking about the imperative (Stone 2008). Research shows that social exclusion

10  Governing Urban Economies

diminishes a city’s human-capital pool, puts extraordinary pressure on health and human services, and requires greater resources for protective services such as policing and fire (Pastor et al. 2001). Rather than viewing efficiency and equity as a zero-sum struggle, the communitybuilding approach sees economic value in a civic infrastructure of inclusion that supports strong neighbourhoods, workforce development, immigrant settlement, and the social economy. For its advocates, this agenda is suited to both the knowledge economy’s urban “hotbeds” where polarization and segregation are often most pronounced as well as the less dynamic second- and third-tier cities where private sector innovation lags and alternative strategies for community economic development may resonate (Pike et al. 2006). In either setting, it may be possible to “enhance formation of socially inclusive creative places” (Gertler 2004, 1; emphasis in original).

Intersecting Urban Agendas or the Two-Worlds Problem? The above discussions of why cities matter to economic and social wellbeing in a global age portray an urban development landscape shaped by two distinctive “communities of learning and practice,” one focused on innovation and the other on inclusion (Torjman and Levitan-Reid 2003). Both place great value on knowledge and its circulation, whether for competitive firms seeking to upgrade their capabilities or for at-risk individuals or neighbourhoods looking to connect to the mainstream. In their respective conceptions of robust civic infrastructures of innovation and inclusion, both collapse traditional distinctions between “hard physical” and “soft network” investments. They highlight the importance of joint action across sectors and between levels of government to tackle the complex, interwoven challenges in cities today. Neither of these agendas, each paying close attention to the new economy’s dynamics, fits with dichotomous accounts of local development that play the social and economic off one another. It follows that a number of scholars and analysts now explore possibilities for “joining-up.” Statistical analyses have shown that social polarization and institutional fragmentation within metropolitan regions limit growth and inhibit innovation (Pastor et al. 2001). A comprehensive inventory of local and regional development theory and practice concluded with a call for a “holistic, progressive and sustainable framework” rejecting the “narrow economism of ‘fixing the economy’ as a prelude to, and as a platform for securing well being” (Pike, RodríguezPose, and Tomaney 2006, 255, 256; Morgan 2004, 883). Notably, these

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  11

calls to join-up locally are not confined to academia. Research institutes have sponsored action-research on topics such as “just clusters” that offer toolkits for extending innovation to “old economy” sectors and areas, and on “equitable development” for connecting low-income neighbourhoods to regional economic opportunity (Rosenfeld 2002; Glover, Blackwell, and Treuhaft 2008). The OECD’s synthesis report on competitive cities in the global economy emphasized the need “to identify the critical relations among many agents which are likely to shape the future economic, social, political and environmental quality of a territory” (OECD 2006, 135). Why are such relations critical? The report elaborated: It is apparent from major cities across the OECD that metro-wide economic growth depends not only on economic interdependencies but also on social cohesion, for which policies have to be designed. In other words, areas that are detached from the economy and labour market of the metroregion constitute a drag factor that reduces the competitiveness of the region as a whole. For these reasons, metro-regional economic and social development policies need to be elements of a single coherent strategy. (ibid., 145)

Thus, the vision of innovative and inclusive urban development has rallied impressive support. Yet, the policy claims are ambitious and the practice remains contested. Some question whether there is anything beyond the “warm words” of government and “wishful thinking” of think tanks (Buck et al. 2005, 273). Clarence Stone and Donn Worgs have identified a “two-worlds problem” where a disconnect persists between “one based in experiences of limited opportunity, economic stagnation and decline, and marginality and the other based in experiences of expanding opportunity, economic growth, and competitive play in the main arena” (Stone and Worgs 2004, 263). They underscore the obstacles to reconciling these two worlds in “a single coherent strategy” (OECD 2006). Meanwhile, other observers report the existence of flourishing “economic communities” that “have learned how to connect their clusters of economic specialization with responsive community competencies such as education, infrastructure, and quality of life” (Henton et al. 1997, 2). In sum, whether and how these two urban development agendas connect is an important research question. What factors and conditions enable or constrain such local join-ups? While economic geographers have been most prolific in capturing the new social dynamics of urban innovation

12  Governing Urban Economies

and inclusion, political scientists have addressed the translation of new ideas into actual policy and governance arrangements. Attention shifts to the political dynamics of urban development strategy. Urban Policy and Governance: New Political Dynamics A growing body of case study research examining the interplay of economic and social priorities in urban development strategy now demonstrates the gaps and limitations in the view that market forces and business dominance eliminate local choice and channel decision making down the same path everywhere. A more nuanced perspective acknowledges the directive power of markets, but recognizes as well that they are embedded in social relations and influenced by political objectives. Cities are not business corporations with a self-evident, singular, and constant development imperative. Rather they are socio-political formations where local actors as well as extra-local forces and authorities build coalitions, formulate strategies, and adapt to changing circumstances. Jon Pierre offers an apt summary of the new urban development research: “Suffice it to say sustained, and sustainable, economic growth requires that political leadership has the capacity to embed the economy in a larger context of social norms and political objectives” (Pierre 2011, 87). This research into broader conceptions of local economic development, attuned to choice and variation, has tackled issues of both the substantive content of urban policy and strategy and the institutional processes of governance. Scholars have emphasized three issues: first, the degree to which local governments have broadened their traditional role of hard service provider to include the kinds of civic infrastructure described above conducive to economic innovation and social inclusion; second, the nature of the city’s “associational life” and the interactions among governments, businesses, and community-based organizations; and third, beyond the city, the terms of engagement with upper-level governments whose investments and policies shape urban development, enabling or constraining particular local choices.

Policy and Strategy From a growing international-comparative urban policy literature two major contributions are particularly salient to our themes. Jeffrey Sellers’s study of urban development strategy in eleven European and

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  13

American cities focuses on connections – the relative policy weighting – among economic, social, and environmental priorities (Sellers 2002). Taking full account of the new social dynamics in his post-industrial, service-­oriented cities, he finds that “urban coalitions have increasingly sought policy syntheses rather than single objectives” (ibid., 180; emphasis in original). Sellers argues that economic or social goals viewed through silos at the national level, and therefore subject to trade-offs, are lived more holistically in cities such that “wider dilemmas among these policies are being resolved at least partly within ­urban political economies” (ibid., 29). In a sophisticated analysis of variation in local policy syntheses, Sellers maps different configurations of economic and social interventions across national settings. Underscoring the difficulty in reconciling priorities, Sellers shows how local agendas nest within national infrastructures of policy formation and inter-governmental relations. In a similarly ambitious cross-national analysis, H.V. Savitch and Paul Kantor compare urban strategies across ten North American and European cities over thirty years (Savitch and Kantor 2002). They begin by identifying two quite distinct development trajectories, one ­social-centred, emphasizing collective benefits and public goods, and the other market-centred, putting priority on business freedom and development incentives. Importantly, Savitch and Kantor’s research into local decision making leads to a rejection of the view that the two strategies are mutually exclusive or that policy debates are best captured by “the idea of dual struggle” between pro-growth and antigrowth forces (ibid., 144). In the majority of their cases, the “actual formulation and implementation of programs were rarely understood as a matter of making tradeoffs between capital and community” (ibid., 145). Instead, they report that most cities were employing a mix of both strategies, with officials seeking points of intersection or complementarity between economic and social goals. Like Sellers, they judge the most successful places as “mix and match” cities pursuing “balanced development strategies” through policy expressing a “hybrid of choices” (ibid., 145, 147). Each of these flagship studies in the new urban political economy clearly demonstrates that socially oriented development ideas are resonating with local actors. At the same time, it is clear that the durability of such ideas depends on their institutionalization in governing arrangements. The discussion of policy and strategy must extend to questions of governance and institutions.

14  Governing Urban Economies

Governance and Institutions The concept and practice of governance involves the interplay between state and societal actors, and the extent to which collective purposes and joint projects can be realized through concerted mobilization of resources from public, private, and community sectors. Government does not disappear through governance (Bell and Hindmoor 2009), but its role changes from provider of solutions to enabler or partner in joint problem solving. New roles and instruments come into focus: catalyst, convener, facilitator, and partner. In fact, governance is an enduring feature of urban development policy and politics: city governments are fragmented corporate bodies, lacking institutional autonomy, and typically confronting serious resource-responsibility mismatches. As such, governance through partnership and collaboration is widely seen as crucial in bolstering a city’s strategic capacity for economic and social development. As Sellers, Savitch and Kantor, and many others emphasize, such urban governance relations have both a vertical and a horizontal dimension, looking upward to national or provincial governments and outward to local sector partners or adjacent municipalities. Jon Pierre is perhaps the leading contributor to urban governance research. He has formulated an institutional approach to urban policy and strategy. While much of the research on governance has been process-oriented, Pierre usefully reminds us that development strategies express values that become embedded in a structural framework that facilitates certain goals more than others, and empowers certain actors to lead. Surveying arrangements across Europe, America, and parts of Asia, Pierre identifies four models of urban governance translating particular policy objectives into delivery structures (Pierre 2011). These four are “pro-growth” that embodies the corporate-centred growth machine; “corporatism” that involves less than transparent forms of deal making among business, government, and, in some cases, labour elites; “welfare” that values redistribution and anti-capitalist resistance to partnerships; and “managerialism” that exemplifies technocratic rather than participatory values, foregrounding senior administrators. Pierre’s taxonomy of urban governance helpfully links values, actors, and institutions, and offers a tidy map of the distinctive configurations that drive development in different cities. As he suggests, it can facilitate comparative urban analysis. For our purposes, however, Pierre’s formulation requires some revision or, at least, conceptual updating. First, his models of growth and welfare remain tied to a zero-sum logic of

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  15

business productivity versus wealth redistribution. Second, his model of corporatism offers a narrow conception of state–societal interactions. Third, his managerial model cannot capture the range of more enabling roles and tools increasingly deployed by municipal governments in convening multiple actors to address cross-cutting challenges (Sorensen and Torfing 2009). In consequence, Pierre’s taxonomy is neither fully attuned to the new social dynamics of urban development that create possibilities for bridging values, nor particularly open to richer patterns of associational activity engaging multiple actors. Hard boundaries between the different governance models leave little space for the policy syntheses and governance hybrids documented by Sellers and Savitch and Kantor. Instead, Pierre envisions cities plagued by “governance gaps” as opposed economic or social interests advance their own values through their own institutional channels. Such single-track pathways are certainly possible governance outcomes (Cooke and Morgan 1998, 218). However, the question of which mix of values, actors, and governance forms drive urban development is inherently empirical. It follows that taxonomies to guide research must include conceptual space for both Pierre’s governance silos and policy gaps and the alternative – governance synergies arising from coalitions or partnerships of economic and social actors, even when core values remain distinct. Indeed, Pierre observes that “a broader and more inclusive model of urban governance could well be a refreshing alternative to participation in the more traditional structures in the urban political process” (Pierre 2011, 120). He concludes with pointed advice to city leaders moving forward: All of this boils down to a situation for the city in which its future prosperity to a very large extent hinges on its capacity to create governance which is both democratically responsive and oriented towards economic and social development … Cities need to get their proverbial acts together: engaging in a discussion about what the city should look like in ten, 15 or 20 years’ time; formulating a strategy to attain those collective goals, mobilizing resources from all corners of the community in pursuit of long term objectives. (150, 153)

Pierre’s account closes with this framing of what he sees as the twenty-first century’s “classic governance challenge” (ibid., 153). To allow for such governance possibilities, Pierre’s typology can be supplemented by Michael Keating’s notion of “development coalitions” (Keating

16  Governing Urban Economies

2002). These are place-based alliances of actors – often with a multisectoral profile – who drive economic development in a city or region. Through their collective work, development coalitions may well cross traditional social and economic boundaries, building civic infrastructures of innovation and inclusion or fostering dialogue about future directions. The social composition and political leadership of development coalitions are likely to vary from one city to another, as will the institutional focal points for collaboration, ranging from municipal agencies to business associations, community foundations, civic alliances, and so forth. The strength of Keating’s framework, then, is its openness to the possibility of urban development structured through governance hybrids and governance silos within and across cities. Context matters and attention to variation in the particular configuration of policies and institutions that define urban development strategy is crucial: “The goals of policy can be multiple and the policy process, the policy mix, and the means of implementation will all be specific to particular places” (ibid., 376).

Three Urban Governance Types Combining insights from Pierre and Keating underscores two key aspects of the political dynamics of urban development strategy. First, the relationship between economic and social development is more fluid and relational than portrayed in earlier conceptions of zero-sum struggles and inevitable trade-offs between efficiency and equity. Second, governance processes are critical in shaping the particular policy mix of values and objectives that come to shape a city’s development strategy. With these two insights, a robust typology for comparative study of urban governance and development strategies needs to capture an emerging institutional landscape featuring three main possibilities: collaborative structures underpinning economic- and social-policy syntheses; sector-specific networks that mobilize economic and social interests around their respective priorities; and transitory “join-ups” that bring together economic and social actors for specific project work. These three types can be elaborated and distinguished as follows. institutionalized collaboratives This arrangement is anchored in a visible “organizational space” that articulates a city’s shared purposes, convenes relevant actors for strategic planning around those purposes, and coordinates implementation.

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  17

Supplied with resources, such collaboratives engage high-profile economic and community leaders and support them with professional staff and volunteer networks able to set goals and take action in the wider public interest. Institutional collaboratives are ambitious governance initiatives, articulating a long-term shared vision, tackling complex interrelated problems beyond the reach of any single actor or sector, and acting as catalysts for systemic change across traditional bureaucracies, silos, and networks. The municipal government’s role is often that of convener if it has launched the collaboration or partner if the leadership resides elsewhere. This mode of governance may find strongest expression in those cities where “urban regimes” exist – that is, places where development coalitions persist over time and find sustained influence in shaping a city’s overall direction (Stone 1993). With its emphasis on quite formal and enduring relationships among different local stakeholders, institutional collaboratives practice “associative governance,” engaging multiple groups in policy work tackling longer-term systemic issues (Hirst 1994; Cooke and Morgan 1998). sector networks This arrangement is structured around different local networks representing economic actors on the one hand and social actors on the other hand. There is no bridging collaborative to join the city’s cluster and community builders. The two networks work independently of one another, fostering intra-sector relations to exchange knowledge, build capacity, and advocate policy (Cooke and Morgan 1998). In some cases, the organizational distance between the two networks may be reinforced by geographic differences, with economic networks mobilizing at the city-region scale while social networks work in particular neighbourhoods. With this governance type, quite robust associational networks within sectors are not matched by cross-sectoral links. A study of cluster growth and community economic development networks reported creation of “social networks, trust and learning” only within the individual sectors (Jackson and Kahn 2003, 7). Absent are the boundary crossers who in institutionalized collaboratives convene different networks, facilitate wide dialogue, and identify common goals. As such, sector network governance resembles Pierre’s view of the divide between pro-growth and welfare frameworks. The municipal government’s role may be that of a facilitator of the respective networks, perhaps taking the form of joint program design or delivery with sector leaders.

18  Governing Urban Economies

project partnerships This arrangement is less formalized than either the institutionalized collaborative or the sector networks. In this case, different economic and social actors come together around specific development projects, programs, or services that are time-limited and well defined, and where participation is based on direct organizational pay-off (Phillips 2006). Such project-based governance often takes the form of a “public-private partnership” where a contractual agreement details specific roles, responsibilities, and outcomes. Prominent urban examples include infrastructure investments such as neighbourhood regeneration initiatives where funding mandates cross-sectoral participation, or a settlement programs for immigrants that require employers, educators, and community-service agencies for implementation. Unlike sector networks, these partnerships bring together individual organizations not typically sharing values or objectives for projects of mutual interest or benefit. However, their instrumental and episodic character differentiates them from the ongoing relations characterizing institutionalized collaboratives and sector networks. The municipal government’s role is typically that of a co-investor, with responsibility for financial stewardship. With project partnerships, a key question is the degree to which the bounded and pragmatic “deals” provide a springboard for further cooperation among the various participants or remain passing “one-offs” (Stone, Orr, and Worgs 2006). Of course, these three governance types are idealized. In the real world of urban political economy, cities are likely to contain elements of all three, with perhaps one approach more prevalent than the others, signalling a particular governance logic for that place and time. We have argued that this typology has the analytical advantage of capturing better than existing frameworks whether and how economic and social dynamics come together in local development. As such, it can help us interpret emerging governance structures and processes in Canadian cities, a subject basically ignored in the major comparative studies discussed above and one which only recently has received some attention from Canadian-focused urban scholars. Bringing Canadian City-Regions In: Overview of the Chapters The purpose of this volume is to situate and pursue the international and comparative debates about urban governance and development

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  19

strategies in the context of Canadian cities. As noted at the outset of this chapter, our authors open up consideration of what Tindal and Tindal term the alternative path for cities, one “which takes a broad responsibility for the social and economic issues confronting its area and uses all of the means at its disposal to meet the needs of those living in the area” (Tindal and Tindal 2009). While European and American scholarship continues to dominate the comparative study of local economic and social development, recent Canadian research has opened four lines of research relevant to our inquiry. First, there are studies of Canadian cities as knowledge hubs and innovation platforms in the knowledge-driven economy. Much of this work takes the form of case studies highlighting associational networks among multiple economic actors including firms, researchers, financiers, and talent. Notably, this research has also begun to conceptualize the value of inter-sectoral relations. As David Wolfe observes, “experience suggests that in order to formulate strategies to improve their prospects for economic development, city-regions require the presence of strong, responsive relationships between the economy and the community that give both firms and the community a sustained advantage” (Wolfe 2009, 126). Federal and provincial program alignment with local cluster-building strategies is also identified as a critical success factor. Second, there are numerous studies of an emerging communitybuilding agenda in Canadian cities (Phillips 2010). This research highlights the leadership role of the third sector – voluntary organizations, community foundations, and think tanks – in various neighbourhoodbased and city-wide strategies to reduce poverty, integrate services, and include vulnerable residents directly in revitalization planning. Such community-building initiatives have often taken the form of ­“pilot projects” involving federal and provincial government seed or start-up grants for local inclusion efforts. Without doubt, the most comprehensive example of such community-building is in Quebec, where a province-wide, enduring social economy movement has institutionalized a sophisticated “network of networks” to link economic and social development. Relations among the state, market, and civil society in cities and regions have been realigned in the “co-construction of ­public policy” through “new institutional dialogic spaces” (Mendell and Neamtan 2010, 70). The third stream of research addresses Canada’s “city-building agenda” that examines the recent round of inter-governmental struggle as

20  Governing Urban Economies

urban municipalities seek to better align their revenue sources, policy tools, and governing structures with growing social challenges and economic opportunities (Broadbent 2008; Horak and Young 2012). These issues of municipal autonomy, in turn, have been connected to local innovation, inclusion, and governance agendas. As Caroline Andrew observes, more local capacity could produce more place-­sensitive public policy and enable local actors with the relevant knowledge and networks to work together on shared priorities (Andrew 2001; Bramwell 2012). Susan D. Phillips points out that at “the intersection” of these agendas “is an expansion of the space for innovation [that includes] the creation or strengthening of institutions and the enhancement of community capacity and relationship building” (Phillips 2010, 75). While such innovations remain at the “very early stages,” they suggest a platform in cities for linking the cluster and community-building agendas (ibid., 57). Finally, a Canadian research thread has pursued issues about the governance of local economic development, analysing political leadership and coalition dynamics. Following an earlier generation of “up against city hall” research (Sewell, 1972), documenting highly polarized conflicts over expressways and gentrification, recent scholarship has considered more collaborative social-economic development. Often exploring the relevance of Clarence Stone’s influential regime framework in Canadian cities, leading contributors offer different assessments (Sancton 2011). In a study of downtown revitalization in London, Ontario, Timothy Cobban found that no stable “cross-sectoral governing coalition guided development policy-making” (Cobban 2003, 349). In contrast, Kristin R. Good’s account of immigrant settlement politics and policy in Toronto and Vancouver identifies a range of different regimes operating across municipalities (Good 2009). Seeking an empirical middle ground, Christopher Leo called for more study of development coalitions and evidence of their influence in local policy (Leo 2003). Identifying three different governance arrangements for relating innovation and inclusion agendas to urban development strategies, we offer a middle-range framework to take up Leo’s empirical call. Each of the individual city-region case studies in the volume can be located as examples of our different governance types.

Institutionalized Collaboratives: Montreal, Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton Montreal is the clearest case of a coordinated state-led and multilevel approach to community economic development, blending collaborative

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  21

structures with neighbourhood-based projects. Juan-Luis Klein, DianeGabrielle Tremblay, and Jean-Marc Fontan describe provincial policy frameworks supporting Community Economic Development Corpora­ tions (CDECs) that facilitate local collaboration among actors with little previous experience of working together, including business, government, service providers, unions, and community-based organizations. Evolving as intermediaries or “multiservice hubs,” CDECs have launched and sustained a range of development initiatives including revitalization projects, entrepreneurial start-ups, and training and employment programs. Providing detailed analysis of one such collaboration, the Angus Technopole, Klein, Tremblay, and Fontan describe how the project mobilized community opposition to Canadian Pacific’s efforts to redevelop the site for residential and commercial use, and instead facilitated a compromise that featured a major community economic development component. With the CEDCs and Angus Technopole, Montreal’s landuse politics presents a counterpoint to the traditional “growth machine” priorities. Klein, Tremblay, and Fontan conclude that the blend of community and business interests in urban strategy represents a hybrid partnership that is “neither an exclusively social development project nor an exclusively business-dominated one.” In contrast to Montreal’s provincially enabled multi-sectoral collaboration, governance efforts in Toronto are largely bottom-up and community-driven. Allison Bramwell and David Wolfe argue that interactions among the three variables of scale, scope, and coalitions have important implications for the capacity of large city-regions to address multiple and complex social and economic challenges. City size and the scale at which governance processes play out matter for regional approaches to problem solving, and the scope of policy issues on local political agendas shapes prospects for cross-sectoral coalitions. Empha­ sizing the relational rather than the authoritative nature of power in Toronto, Bramwell and Wolfe find that challenges of scale create major obstacles to strategic collaboration around economic and social priorities that recent efforts to forge civic coalitions and expand the scope of policy have only partially surmounted. Notably, over the past decade, the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance has been institutionalized as a community-wide collaboration articulating a shared vision for the city-region and implementing several major projects at the intersection of economic and social development. Yet, Bramwell and Wolfe describe daunting challenges to such governance in Toronto, including weak inter-municipal structures and a lack of multilevel mechanisms to coordinate inter-governmental policy. While the Greater Toronto Civic

22  Governing Urban Economies

Action Alliance has made progress, linkages between civic leaders and municipal politicians remain surprisingly weak. Bramwell and Wolfe conclude that the Toronto city-region requires more aligned and strategic governance to manage successfully its urgent economic and social transformations. As one of Canada’s high-tech hotspots often looked to by other cities seeking their own pathways to sustainable economic prosperity, Waterloo is well known for its collaboration in building innovationintensive industries. Jen Nelles takes stock of Waterloo’s impressive range of associative governance structures, notably Communitech and Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc. Observing their economic development and high-technology focus, Nelles tackles what she calls “the myth of the Waterloo way.” Such institutionalized business-dominated networks can have a “dark side” or potentially exclusionary nature that may “stifle debate, limit participation and oppose change.” Alternatively, they may evolve and expand the scope of their activities and membership to incorporate new social or community priorities as conditions change. With its strong culture of civic engagement and “community barn-building,” Waterloo is a good test case to examine how the composition of development coalitions affects governance processes and agendas. Finding that Waterloo’s economic innovation agenda has recently incorporated a broader array of interests and perspectives, Nelles reports the emergence of “economic-social hybrid styles of governance.” The Prosperity Council of Waterloo Region is one such forum addressing broad regional issues such as the future of post-secondary education, investing in a more vibrant arts and cultural sector, and immigrant labour-market integration. While the governance focus in Waterloo remains economic development, Nelles tracks an expanding agenda and concludes that social inclusion issues are gaining traction through collaboration. Hamilton is a medium-sized manufacturing city in the Golden Horseshoe less than an hour’s drive west of Toronto, best known for its steel production. Deep in the throes of protracted economic restructuring, Hamilton stands at a crossroads in its economic and social development. Displaying several new development assets including a regional health-care hub and a research park leveraging the city’s postsecondary knowledge institutions, it also has a high poverty rate and several neighbourhoods of concentrated distress and exclusion. Allison Bramwell examines the collaborative efforts of local government and community-based networks to address these complex challenges of

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  23

economic and social change. Despite perceptions of Hamilton as a politically fractious community, Bramwell describes several promising initiatives aligning efforts and resources: the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR) is a broadly inclusive social development network and the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce has taken on a ­convening role as a “progrowth” economic champion. Straddling these two sector networks, the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative (JPC) is a partnership initiative bringing actors together to improve overall economic prosperity and quality of life. Bramwell argues that the JPC is a community-wide, collaborative governance coalition, closely aligned with the policy objectives of the municipal government and acting as a centralized linking mechanism or hub for intersecting community and business interests. However, internal debates over the future growth trajectory of the city, coupled with a dearth of concrete outputs, raises questions about both the collaborative’s governance capacity and its institutionalization. Despite the presence of several enabling conditions for collaboration, including urgent policy challenges and aligned civic and governmental leadership, Bramwell concludes that the JPC’s future remains uncertain.

Sector Networks: Ottawa, St John’s, Calgary Focusing on the role of municipal government, Caroline Andrew and David Doloreux analyse the extent to which different forms of gov­ ernance in the City of Ottawa facilitate collaboration among local actors. They argue that despite fiscal and policy constraints, municipal governments can have an important impact on the inclusiveness and innovativeness of a city-region. They can be catalysts and conveners who create, support, and sustain collaborative governance structures. Revealing variation across policy sectors, they find that while the City of Ottawa operates as one among several partners in economic development initiatives, it has been more central in forging community partnerships for social development. With little evidence of cross-­ sectoral collaborations, Andrew and Doloreux describe important linkages between the municipal government and the respective sector networks. Municipal politicians have worked closely with the private sector in economic development activities through organizations such as the Ottawa Centre for Research in Innovation (OCRI), while senior municipal staff have worked with various community networks on social inclusion in priorities such as public health, gender-based

24  Governing Urban Economies

policymaking, and neighbourhoods in need. While Ontario is the only province in which municipal governments have significant responsibilities in social service areas, Andrew and Doloreux note that mayors and councillors see greater political advantage in economic development partnerships through governance networks. In the future, they suggest, more integrated approaches to Ottawa’s economic and social development may occur through the recent multilevel government and community-based immigration partnership councils that have a broad mandate to coordinate services and programs and advocate policies. Rob Greenwood reveals the “stark co-existence,” in St John’s, of “clear cases of good and bad local governance.” On the one hand, governments and local networks have collaborated to build a successful economic cluster, and to mount a concerted attack on urban poverty. ­In these matters, two sector networks have been particularly robust in St John’s. The ocean technology cluster, anchored by the National Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Ocean Technology and the Oceans Advance cluster organization, is a multilevel collabora­ tion among three levels of government, Memorial University, and local  firms and industry associations. At the same time, a collaborative social sector has developed in St John’s, driven by “dynamic, nationally-recognized social entrepreneurs” working with a provincial government supporting inclusive approaches to poverty reduction. In contrast to these sector initiatives, Greenwood tracks a pattern of government failure in establishing a broad and coherent strategy for sustainable cityregion economic development. In this domain, weak inter-municipal cooperation combined with top-down provincial decision making brings into sharp relief the chicken and egg nature of inter-governmental relations on issues that cut across geographical boundaries and policy sectors. The St John’s city-region has been unable to cooperate to leverage provincial funding for regional economic development, while the lack of municipal capacity and regional authority leaves the province reluctant to devolve power and resources. Greenwood concludes with a call for new forms of leadership in city-region economic development, similar to those evident in the ocean technology cluster and poverty reduction sectors, in order to broaden and sustain St John’s recent prosperity. In Calgary, Patrick Feng, Ben Li, and Cooper Langford describe a different form of associative governance through sector networks, with

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  25

leadership, even dominance of agendas, supplied by an informal grouping of business elites and individual champions. While the municipal government has experimented with “triple bottom-line” frameworks for integrating economic, social, and environmental development, and launched a community engagement process to build community capacity, Calgary remains without the cross-sectoral coalitions or governance collaboratives required for implementation. Instead, Feng, Li, and Langford report tension between business and social service networks in key priorities such as immigrant settlement and homelessness framed by competing economic development and social sustainability discourses and a general mistrust of government. Business leaders addressing these issues prefer to work independently from networks of social agencies already active in the field. Sceptical of the government’s effectiveness, Feng, Li, and Langford describe an influential network composed of “300 people who make a difference,” drawing on personal and professional networks to “get stuff done.” These networks are mostly closed to those who “do not share the network’s views and priorities,” including local agencies serving the homeless and the local government. In Calgary, there is little talk of attracting or committing resources to build more inclusive and collaborative community-wide governance efforts. Feng, Li, and Cooper conclude that Calgary’s reliance on private-sector initiative expresses a wider Alberta political culture that values entrepreneurship and voluntarism. While informal and flexible networks may make them “more effective than municipal or provincial governments” in addressing complex policy challenges, they also reveal the anti-democratic potential of governance through exclusionary sector networks.

Project Partnerships: London, Saskatoon, Vancouver, Moncton Neil Bradford’s study of London analyses recent governance and policy change in a city very much on the front lines of continental and global economic change. In the 1990s, London’s traditional strengths in financial services and secondary manufacturing were hit hard by North American free trade, and since 2008 the so-called Great Recession has taken a major toll on the city-region’s automotive assembly and parts sector. With rising unemployment and an outflow of “talent,” economic development issues and their social consequences rapidly moved to the top of London’s local policy agenda. Comparing three

26  Governing Urban Economies

policy frameworks that have informed different economic development strategies over the past decade, Bradford describes successive challenges to London’s long-standing “growth machine.” Supporters of knowledge-intensive production and advocates for more inclusive and sustainable growth have each mobilized alternative development strategies and coalitions. However, tensions between the city’s influential business community and weakly organized social interests have complicated efforts to create a unified, forward-looking development strategy. These divisions have been exacerbated by a fractious city council “with politicians increasingly divided across different development visions.” None­theless, Bradford finds that the severity of the most recent economic shock has stimulated a more collaborative orientation, bringing together sector representatives in joint dialogue about the future and identifying development priorities that might supply the foundation for renewal. Along these lines, local partnerships are emerging within sectors, and across them in the form of specific projects that combine economic and social goals and attract broad-based investment. In a city still defined more by silos than partnership, Bradford notes, it remains to be seen whether nascent “join ups” around immigrant settlement, a transportation hub, and advanced manufacturing will form the basis for more durable coalitions and institutionalized collaboration. The Saskatoon case yields further insights into partnership projects as well as the impact of provincial policy frameworks and institutional traditions on urban governance activities. Situating Saskatoon in Saskatchewan’s storied experience with collectivism and planning, Peter Phillips and Graeme Webb describe how provincial cooperatives and crown corporations have given way to more locally orchestrated strategic planning efforts that are neither particularly collaborative nor robust. Saskatoon’s social development organizations are quite specialized in their service orientation and funding competition limits sectorwide linkages. Business and industry associations are more inclined to develop “broad community or sectoral strategies,” but a pattern of “organizational siloing” continues to fragment efforts, resulting in a number of disparate plans across the city-region. On the government side, the municipality has engaged inclusive planning processes, but thus far produced “no unified development strategy that incorporates economic, social, and cultural development issues.” Local interactions with upper-level governments were too often of the “top-down”

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  27

variety, although Phillips and Webb report progress with provincial approaches. While emphasizing the obstacles to an “overarching governance structure” in Saskatoon, Phillips and Webb highlight several successful projects, notably the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, that mobilize the combined resources of multiple partners for major city-building investments. Further progress will depend on “social entrepreneurs and creative individuals” who can cross sectoral boundaries and leverage the localized projects into more durable collaborative arrangements. Vancouver presents an interesting case study in governance and collaboration. It is a city well known for innovative partnerships in neighbourhood-based social inclusion and sustainable urban planning. How­ever, Richard Smith and his colleagues offer a different perspective based on their study of immigration settlement and integration. With a focus on newcomer skill underutilization, they address a policy field clearly at the intersection of economic and social development priorities. In Vancouver, immigrants encounter the barriers to opportunity rooted in service gaps and program deficiencies found in other Canadian cities, but the “host community” demonstrates little of the collaboration required for progress. Smith’s team describes Vancouver’s fragmented landscape of services that reflect significant governance gaps across sectors, governments, and agencies. The City of Vancouver is one of twenty-one municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), and with each lacking sufficient resources to address immigrant needs, there is a clear need to combine efforts and coordinate federal and provincial programs that are municipally delivered. Documenting the absence of such efforts, Smith’s team explores the potential for governance networks, joining civil-society organizations and local governments, to “collaboratively implement programs and policies at a Vancouver city-region level.” While the overall picture remains one of fragmentation and gaps, several immigrant-serving networks have developed a “holistic case-by-case approach” to tackle specific barriers. In turn, Vancouver’s municipal government is experimenting as “an enabler and a convener” to leverage projects launched through community-driven work. In concluding, Smith’s team cautions that such processes remain nascent and call for more concerted governance action. Among the cities in this volume, Moncton is the only case for which there is little evidence of collaborative governance on any level or in any form, resulting in patchy and fragmented governance relations.

28  Governing Urban Economies

Multiple government silos and divisions across economic and socialsector networks prevail. Yves Bourgeois argues that such fractious relations impair the city-region’s ability to address emerging economic and social challenges. While the local economy has remained relatively buoyant since the early 1980s, Bourgeois suggests that the earlier success has bred complacency about strategic planning and adapting to change. Weak immigrant integration and anti-poverty efforts coupled with low capacity to coordinate regional economic development now limit Moncton’s potential for innovation and inclusion. Bourgeois highlights three inter-related obstacles. First, Moncton faces challenges of inter-municipal coordination similar to many other Canadian city-­regions, but being an officially bilingual city, linguistic cleavages add another layer of complexity. Second, while local actors acknowledge the need for concerted attention on economic transformation, municipal development agencies tend to compete rather than cooperate despite the existence of a regional economic planning agency, Enterprise Greater Moncton. Such competition impedes efforts to attract federal and provincial resources, leaving multilevel policy efforts without strategic focus or local sensitivity. Finally, there remains a lack of transparency in the local political process. Closed decision-making networks “stand in opposition to more inclusive governance mechanisms” that might better address current and future opportunities. Greater Moncton, Bourgeois concludes, needs one strategic vision that can be implemented through a recently launched community planning process. Table 1.1 encapsulates these findings, locating the different cities in relation to the three governance types. Conclusion This chapter has engaged recent debates about urban development, situating Canadian city-regions in a European and American body of scholarship that analyses the prospects and problems of collaborative governance. Unpacking relations among economic innovation and social inclusion, we introduced a new governance typology to capture similarities and differences in institutional structures, organizational strategies, and policy priorities in city-regions across Canada. The chapters that follow are breaking new empirical ground in Canadian urban studies and it follows that our authors have not assumed the existence of a particular governance type or development coalition in their city-region.

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  29 Table 1.1  Governing Urban Economies: A Typology Institutional collaboration

Sector networks

Project partnerships

Where

Summit/Forum gatherings

Economic or social organizations

“3P”contract holders

What

City-wide integrated development

Sector representation/ advocacy

Project/program/service delivery

Who

Boundary spanning leaders Municipal convener role

Networks “minding sector business” Municipal enabler role

Project-specific contributors Municipal oversight role

How

Deliberation on civic purposes

Competing visions of economic development

Contribution agreements on infrastructure investments

City exemplars

Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Waterloo

Ottawa, Calgary, St John’s

Vancouver, Saskatoon, London, Moncton

Instead, each chapter proceeds more inductively, asking if such arrangements and actors are in place, whether and how they address economic and social priorities, and their impact on urban development strategies. Guided by these core questions, individual authors bring their own theoretical orientation and disciplinary perspective to study her or his city. Further perspective on the issues and findings is provided in the final two chapters. Kevin Morgan, a leading authority on international and comparative local and regional governance, situates the Canadian findings in the broader scholarly context of European urban political economy and recent institutional innovations at the city-region scale in Germany and Wales. Finally, Allison Bramwell and Neil Bradford draw together key themes across the case studies, exploring their implications for ongoing conceptual debates about governance, government, and policy in Canadian urban studies. Taken as whole, the chapters describe considerable experimentation in city-regions across Canada. Despite strong support from influential think tanks like the OECD for joined-up local governance and integrated development, “on the ground” practice remains nascent and fragile, with the performance uncertain. Whether and how city-regions connect their “economy and community” is an increasingly important issue in securing an innovative and inclusive future for the vast majority of Canadians who are now urban dwellers. This volume identifies

30  Governing Urban Economies

no single pathway forward. Rather, it shows Canadian city-regions embracing new governance challenges through structures and strategies shaped by their own institutional histories, leadership styles, and power relations. REFERENCES Action Canada. 2012. Prospering together: Addressing inequality and poverty to succeed in the knowledge-based economy. Action Canada Task Force. Andrew, C. 2001. “The shame of (ignoring) the cities.” Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d’études canadiennes 35 (4): 100–11. Audretsch, D. 2002. “The innovation advantage of US cities.” European Planning Studies 10 (2): 165–76. Bell, S., and A. Hindmoor. 2009. Rethinking governance: The centrality of the state in modern society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bradford, N. 2002. “Why cities matter: Policy research perspectives for Canada.” Ottawa: CPRN Discussion paper no. F/23. Bradford, N. 2011. “Public policy in Canada: bringing place in?” In Investing in better places: International perspectives, ed. S. Chisholm, 22–36. London: The Smith Institute. Bradford, N. 2013. “Neighbourhood revitalization in Canada: Towards placebased policy solutions.” In Neighbourhood effects or neighbourhood based problems? A policy context, ed. D. Manley, M. van Ham, N. Bailey, L. Simpson, and D. MacLennan, 157–76. Dordrecht: Springer. Bramwell, A. 2012. “Networks are not enough … but they do matter: Urban governance and workforce development in three Ontario cities.” Urban Affairs Review 48: 295–321. Broadbent, A. 2008. Urban nation. Toronto: HarperCollins. Buck, N., I. Gordon, A. Harding, and I. Turok, eds. 2005. Changing cities: Rethinking urban competitiveness, cohesion and governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cairncross, F. 1997. The death of distance. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Cobban, T. 2003. “Timothy Cobban’s reply to Christopher Leo’s Comment ‘Are there urban regimes in Canada?’” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 12 (2): 349–52. Cooke, P., and K. Morgan. 1998. The associational economy: Firms, regions, and innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donald, B., and D. Morrow. 2003. “Competing for talent: Implications for social and cultural policy in Canadian city-regions.” Report prepared for SRA Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada.

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  31 FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities). 2013. “Policy statement – Social-economic development.” http://www.fcm.ca/Documents/corporateresources/policy-statements/Social_Economic_Development_Policy_ Statement_EN.pdf. Florida, R. 2002. The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books. Gertler, M. 2000. “Self-determination for Toronto: What are the economic conditions and do they exist?” In Toronto considering self-government, 33–53, ed. M. Rowe. Toronto: Ginger Press. Gertler, M. 2001. “Urban economy and society in Canada: Flows of people, capital and ideas.” Isuma, Autumn. Gertler, M. 2004. Creative cities: What are they for, how do they work, and how do we build them? Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. Gertler, M., R. Florida, R. Gates, and T. Vinodrai. 2002. Competing on creativity: Placing Ontario’s cities in North American context. Ontario: Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation and the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. Gertler, M., and D.A. Wolfe. 2004. “Local social knowledge management: Community actors, institutions and multilevel governance in regional foresight exercises.” Futures 36: 45–65. Glover Blackwell, A., and S. Treuhaft. 2008. “Regional equity and the quest for full inclusion.” Policy Link, www.policylink.org. Good, K. 2009. Municipalities and multiculturalism: The politics of immigration in Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Henton, D., J. Melville, and K. Walsh. 1997. Grassroots leaders for a new economy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hirst, P. 1994. Associative democracy: New forms of economic and social governance. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Horak, M., and R.A. Young, eds. 2012. Sites of governance: Multilevel governance and policy making in Canada’s big cities. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Hulchanski, D. 2010. The three cities within Toronto: Income polarization among Toronto’s neighbourhoods, 1970–2005. Cities Centre, University of Toronto. Jackson, E.T., and R. Kahn. 2003. Seeking sustainable livelihoods: Constructing a role for community economic development in technology-cluster growth. Ottawa: Caledon Institute of Social Policy. Keating, M. 2002. “Governing cities and regions: Territorial restructuring in a global age.” In Global city-regions: Trends, theory, policy, 371–90, ed. A.J. Scott. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leo, C. 2003. “Are there urban regimes in Canada? Comment on: Timothy Cobban’s ‘The political economy of urban development: Downtown revitalization in London, Ontario, 1993–2002.’” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 12 (2): 344–8.

32  Governing Urban Economies Maskell. 2001. “Towards a knowledge-based theory of the geographical cluster.” Industrial and Corporate Change 10 (4): 921–43. Mendell, M., and N. Neamtan. 2010. “The social economy in Quebec: Towards a new political economy.” In Researching the social economy, 63–83, ed. L. Mook, J. Quarter, and S. Ryan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Molotch, H. 1976. “The city as a growth machine.” American Journal of Sociology 82: 309–55. Morgan, K. 2004. “Sustainable regions: Governance, innovation and scale.” European Planning Studies 12 (6): 871–89. OECD. 2001. Local partnerships for better governance. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD. 2006. Competitive cities in the global economy. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Pastor, M., P. Dreier, and E. Grigsby. 2001. Regions that work: How cities and suburbs can grow together. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Peterson, P. 1981. City limits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Phillips, S.D. 2006. “The intersection of governance and citizenship in Canada: Not quite the third way.” Montreal: IRPP Policy Matters. Phillips, S.D. 2010. “‘You say you want an evolution?’ From citizen to community engagement in Canadian cities.” In Local government in a global world: Australia and Canada in comparative perspective, ed. E. Brunet-Jailly and J.F. Martin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pierre, J. 1999. “Models of urban governance: The institutional dimension of urban politics.” Urban Affairs Review 34: 372–96. Pierre, J. 2011. The politics of urban governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pike, A., A. Rodríguez-Pose, and J. Tomaney. 2006. Local and regional development. London: Routledge. Rosenfeld, S. 2002. Just clusters: Economic development strategies that reach more people and places. Carrboro, NC: Regional Technology Strategies Inc. Sancton, A. 2011. Canadian local government: An urban perspective. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Savitch, H.V., and P. Kantor. 2002. Cities in the international marketplace: The political economy of urban development in North America and Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sellers, J. 2002. Governing from below: Urban regions and the global economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sewell, J. 1972. Up against city hall. Toronto: James Lorimer. Sorensen, E., and J. Torfing. 2009. “Making governance networks effective and democratic through metagovernance.” Public Administration 87 (2): 234–58. Stone, C. 1993. “Urban regimes and the capacity to govern: A political economy approach.” Journal of Urban Affairs 15: 1–28.

Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions  33 Stone, C. 2008. “Urban politics then and now.” In Power in the city: Clarence Stone and the politics of inequality, 267–316, ed. M. Orr and V.C. Johnson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Stone, C., M. Orr, and D. Worgs. 2006. “The flight of the bumblebee: Why reform is difficult but not impossible.” Perspectives on Politics 4 (Sept.): 529–46. Stone, C., and D. Worgs. 2004. “Poverty and the workforce challenge.” In Workforce development politics, 249–80, ed. R.P. Giloth. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Storper, M., and A.J. Venables. 2004. “Buzz: Face-to-face contact and the urban economy.” Journal of Economic Geography 4: 351–70. Tindal, C.R., and S. Tindal. 2009. Local government in Canada. 7th ed. Toronto: Nelson. Torjman, S. 2007. Shared space: The communities agenda. Ottawa: Renouf Publishers. Torjman, S., and E. Leviten-Reid. 2003. Innovation and CED: What they can learn from each other. Ottawa: Caledon Institute for Social Policy. Walks, R.A., and L. Bourne. 2006. “Ghettos in Canada’s cities? Racial segregation, ethnic enclaves and poverty concentration in Canadian urban areas.” Canadian Geographer / Géographe canadien 50 (3): 273–97. Wolfe, D.A. 2009. 21st century cities in Canada: The geography of innovation. Toronto: Conference Board of Canada.

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PART I Institutionalized Collaboratives

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2 Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Community Economic Development in Montreal juan-luis klein, diane-gabrielle tremblay, and jean-marc fontan

In many respects, Quebec society is distinct in North America. In addition to the French language and the Catholic religion of the majority of its population, Quebec society is highly unionized and has a large number of civic associations.1 Social movements are important in Quebec, but the evolution of their role in state–society relations in the province is of particular significance. The economic turn taken by social movements in Quebec in the 1980s transformed unions and community actors into stakeholders in socio-economic development and governance. The distinctiveness of Quebec’s approach to the governance of social and economic development is predicated on institutionalized arrangements which bring together private companies, major public corporations, and cooperative and social-economy-based businesses (Lévesque 2007b). Such a partnership-based socio-economic regime is the main characteristic of what is referred to in the literature as the “Quebec Model,” characterized by the participation of a plurality of actors and multiple and diverse “hybrid” forms of governance (Bourque 2000; Lévesque 2001; Fontan, Klein, and Lévesque 2005; Tremblay and Van Schendel 2004; Côté, Lévesque, and Morneau 2007; Klein, Fontan, Harrisson, Lévesque 2009). In the early 1960s, almost twenty years after a similar process had begun in the rest of Canada, Quebec underwent a profound process of political, economic, social, and cultural modernization, known as the “Quiet Revolution.” The rise of Keynesian approaches to governance characterized by the strengthening of the state’s role in achieving economic development and providing services emerged in this period (Brunelle 1978). In the 1980s, intensive economic restructuring and the decline of Keynesianism led to a redefinition of state–society relations

38  Governing Urban Economies

in Quebec (Favreau and Lévesque 1996). This emergence of a Quebec model, with its intention to institutionalize a culture of consensus building and collaboration, was largely driven by social movements in the province. This shift towards more collaborative forms of governance that formally included social partners was much stronger than in the rest of Canada, an outcome possibly due to the higher unemployment rate at the time and the shared belief that collaboration among social, political, and economic actors was required to address the challenges of economic restructuring (Tremblay 1994). While there were major investments in education and public health in Quebec in the 1960s, these investments were broadened to other areas of socio-economic activity in the 1980s. Grass-roots-based experiments intended to encourage cultural solidarity and deepen democracy resulted in a degree of convergence among public, private, and social spheres that is relatively unique in Canada (Vaillancourt 2002, 12). Since then, driven at times by the government, at times by social movements, and at times even by employers, this convergence has contributed to the development of a partnership-based mode of governance in the province. Ultimately, however, it was Quebec’s cultural specificity and the desire of social and economic actors to express and protect their distinct national identity that encouraged collaboration among public bodies, unions, community organizations, and influential business representatives to address the economic crisis of the 1980s in innovative ways. A cycle of social innovation was launched that transformed the Quebec model in many domains. In this chapter, we focus on the evolution of governance innovations in community economic development. First, we present the main features of the Quebec model. Second, we analyse the role of civil-society actors in local economic development. Next, we present the case of Technopole Angus in Montreal as an illustration of how social, public, and even private actors cooperate in local development. We conclude with several observations about the partnership-based and hybrid mode of governance that characterizes the Quebec model as it is applied to the Montreal case. The Quebec Model: From the Quiet Revolution to the 1980s Crisis High unemployment triggered by the economic crisis of the 1980s resulted in sharply increased demands for social protection and income support. The subsequent rebuilding of the “Quebec model” was marked by major increases in public spending to address the economic crisis in

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 39

the province. The public financial crisis that resulted was soon followed by a political crisis related to the functioning and legitimacy of the state (Bernier, Bouchard, and Lévesque 2003). Under the Keynesian system, often conflictual social relations were regulated by the state and its territorial extensions, though regions and municipalities were largely dependent on the central state (Klein 1989). State intervention in social and economic processes was centralized and rigid, and development policies were applied uniformly across the entire province, regardless of regional differences (Hamel and Klein 1996). However, at the global level, the inability of the state to deal adequately with the economic crisis resulted in demands for a more flexible and decentralized form of regulation (Moulaert and Swyngedouw 1989). In Quebec, at the provincial level, these demands stimulated novel responses. Increased participation of social actors in the policy process was accompanied by experimentation with local solutions. Employment was a key issue around which local social actors mobilized, resulting in the development of a “full employment” coalition (Tremblay 1998). One of the unintended outcomes of increased experimentation with local solutions, however, was that cities and regions within the province began to compete with each other, which had a fragmenting and dissociative effect. In this context, the approach to social activism and mobilization that had shaped public policy and programs in Quebec since the Quiet Revolution of 1960 was called into question. Social mobilization was crucial to the success of the Quiet Revolution, especially at its early stages, demanding greater involvement of the state in economic development and service provision, and in shaping the quality of the living environment. Beginning with unions and citizens’ committees, social mobilizations became more focused and more radical, forming around diverse issues such as the status of women, the promotion of cultural identity, the environment, and employment. Such broad-based mobilizations are known as “citizen-based unionization” (“syndicalisation citoyenne” (Favreau 1989; Lévesque 1984; Bélanger and Lévesque 1992). With the crisis of the 1980s, however, the dominant form of social mobilization changed. In the new context, civil society mobilized less for the improvement and the democratization of public services and the modernization of the state, and more around the need to respond to new social and economic demands. Criticisms of bureaucratic efficiency and democratic accountability resulted in major experiments in the delivery of health care, housing, and community development. Social

40  Governing Urban Economies

actors, with unions in the lead, but also some employers’ associations, organized around the issue of employment and became increasingly vocal about demands for “full employment” (Tremblay 1998). The implementation of the Keynesian welfare state involved regional development and planning programs implemented and centrally administered by the provincial government. While these programs were intended to ensure that disadvantaged regions could catch up to more prosperous regions of the province, the tendency to concentrate strategic investments in the most advantaged regions resulted in regional polarization. The 1980s crisis gave way to a twofold revision of these programs. First, due to the high level of public debt and demands for debt reduction from international financial organizations, the government retrenched from its involvement in regional development, which further precipitated a process of decentralization. Second, actors who felt they were poorly served by government programs, particularly in urban neighbourhoods that were most affected by the employment crisis, demanded the autonomy to develop more localized solutions. Though innovative processes were clearly stimulated by the economic crisis, they were also driven by other factors linked to ideological and cultural pressure arising from dissatisfaction with modes of governance implemented in the wake of the Quiet Revolution. The inability of the Quebec government to manage the economic crisis and return Quebec to full employment created conditions to allow social actors a more active role in the decision-making process, and to experiment with novel approaches to economic development. For example, labour federations created mechanisms such as the Fonds de solidarité of the Fédération des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), in 1983, and the Fondaction of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), in 1996, to invest pension funds that supported job creation in Quebec. These funds converted unions into business partners and promoted the development of a more inclusive economy (Lévesque 2003). In addition, grass-roots organizations turned to cooperative formulas in order to further support economic development (Lévesque 1984). Rather than accepting wholesale state control, citizens’ groups demanded democratization of services and took the initiative to design and deliver social and health-care services at the local level. These demands for societal input into the provision of services allowed for alliances between users of services and professionals, and resulted in a reconfiguration of relations of production and consumption (Bélanger, Lévesque, and Plamondon 1987). The actors involved in the various initiatives

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 41

were the new social movements such as women’s groups, community groups, and environmental groups, but also included unions, local community representatives, and even public administrations. In the social and health sector for example, the Quebec government eventually recognized the value of new modes of action at the local level and adopted some elements of these demands for innovative service delivery, in the form of the Centres locaux de services communautaires (CLSC). Thus, the economic crisis of the 1980s caused a realignment of state and society relations and new demands from social actors (Fontan, Klein, and Tremblay 2005; Tremblay 1994). As it underwent renewal and realignment throughout the 1980s, the Quebec model gave rise to numerous major social innovations (Lévesque 2003). This chapter focuses on the governance of local community economic development to illustrate those social innovations. Renewing the Quebec Model in the 1980s: Governance for Local Development Innovations in the governance of local community development starting in the 1980s in Quebec were part of a deep-rooted process. With the Quiet Revolution, Quebec society had built a modern state apparatus, which called for the modernization of territorial administrative structures. The local level served as the base for movements that demanded solutions to specific problems caused by the modernization process, and by the uneven integration of regions and localities in that process. Local movements demanded the right to participate in decision making concerning their specific situations. Urban social movements developed their own vision of economic development, which viewed local settings, such as the neighbourhood or borough, as a base for launching initiatives to create jobs and to promote other mechanisms for social inclusion. This strategy was consistent with changes in the approach to development of the provincial government, which began to implement policy at the local rather than regional or central level. As part of the evolution of the territorial mode of governance under the Quiet Revolution, the Quebec model underwent a series of reforms that saw the inclusion of local actors and local governance mechanisms in the policy process. In this way, the predominantly centralist, top-down approach to regional economic development that oversaw the uniform implementation of public programs across all regions was replaced by a more endogenous development

42  Governing Urban Economies

perspective oriented towards the development of local initiatives that emphasized entrepreneurship and the creation of start-up firms. This shift towards collaboration at the local level between the organizations active in the economy and social development constituted a major change in organizational cultures. Before the emergence of these types of collaborative initiatives, interactions between local actors such as boards of trade and other representatives of the business community, elected government representatives, service providers in health care or education, unions, and community organizations reproduced at the local level similar conflicts and class alliances to those pervasive at the provincial level. While in the earlier era these actors did not see themselves as stakeholders in the governance of regional development, by the 1980s, the societally driven demands for the reorientation of provincial regional development policies stimulated experimentation with collaboration and consensus building on employment issues (Tremblay 1994, 1998) and local actors began to collaborate to establish local development priorities. In Montreal, representatives of the local business community, social movements, and the main government institutions began to adopt a “partnership” strategy. From a metropolitan perspective, a working group of sixteen institutional leaders known as the Picard commission produced a report in 1986 that became a reference point for public and private stakeholders concerning the city’s development. The report promoted private leadership, internationalization, and the development of high-tech clusters in telecommunications, aerospace, bio-pharmaceutics, computer science, and microelectronics, a strategy that met with some success (Klein, Tremblay, and Fontan 2003). At the neighbourhood level, a cooperation and partnership strategy was driven primarily by community-based social movements and unions. At the same time, at the provincial as well as regional level, a number of Fora for Employment (forums pour l’emploi) were held in order to bring together employers, unions, and government bodies to discuss solutions to the economic and employment crisis (Tremblay 1998). Though many community groups were active on these issues throughout the 1970s, it was a major innovation that these groups began to collaborate with government representatives and the business community, which began to participate in the Employment Fora. Local actors including the business community mobilized in different neighbourhoods around community leaders to define local problems and develop their particular local assets. This new community-based approach to economic

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 43

development resulted in the creation of Community Economic Devel­ opment Corporations or Corporations de développement écono­mique communautaire (CDEC) (Fontan 1992; Hamel 1991; Tremblay and Fontan 1994), which marked a significant shift to the idea that community and social groups not only could, but should be active in economic development in order to reduce poverty. Building consensus enables actors who would not normally work together to discover common goals. The primary objective of the CDECs is to promote collaboration among neighbourhood actors to encourage partnership-based development projects. The second objective of the CDECs concerns the support of local entrepreneurship to facilitate the creation of local jobs. The third objective concerns employability and worker training aimed at the development of skills and qualifications for unemployed individuals to facilitate re-entry into a labour market undergoing accelerated restructuring. Focusing on the potential of local territories as a framework for collective action driven and anchored by social movements, CDECs operate in neighbourhoods and boroughs. This shift towards economic activity to facilitate social development constitutes a major change in community action, which provoked debate and tension within the community development movement. This convergence of objectives between policy reforms and social movements contributed to the implementation of a new framework that targeted and guided the development of local communities. Begin­ ning in 1997, the Quebec government created the Centres locaux de développement (CLD). The creation of these community-based centres stimulated experimentation with new financial tools and mechanisms for community economic development, and CLDs became multiservice stations or hubs, bringing together economic, political, and local community actors to support local entrepreneurship (Camus and Malo 2005). In Montreal, existing CDECs became, with few exceptions, CLDs, and the territorial scale of their action became the boroughs, giving tangible meaning to a space that had initially been defined for administrative purposes. The Angus Technopole: A Case of Hybrid and Partnership-Based Governance Located on a site of nearly 500,000 square metres and built in 1904, Angus was an important Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) manufacturing facility and the first plant in Montreal organized according to Fordist

44  Governing Urban Economies

principles, specializing in the manufacturing and maintenance of locomotives and rail cars for the railway industry. After years of decline due to deindustrialization and delocalization, the closing of Angus in 1992 represented the end of CP’s activities in Montreal. Due to the major repercussions for the local economy, this plant closure triggered ambitious plans for converting the site to other uses. The two main actors involved in the revitalization process were CP Rail, which retained ownership of the site, and the Société de développement Angus (SDA), a not-for-profit development corporation created by the CDEC of Rosemont-Petite-Patrie. Other key actors included the City of Montreal, which controlled land use through zoning regulations, the federal and provincial governments, which had financial resources and programs applicable to revitalization of the site, the newly created Fondaction fund created of the CSN, which eventually became the financial partner of the SDA, and the local community, led by union and community leaders who mobilized after the Angus plant closure to fight for the creation of jobs within and for the neighbourhood. From the start, plans to revitalize the site set the community, represented by the CDEC, which was promoting an industrial revitalization project aimed at creating jobs for local residents, against the owner of the property, CP Rail, which planned to develop a huge residential complex. The CDEC made redevelopment of the Angus site its main priority, for which it established a working committee that became an independent organization, the Societé de développement Angus (SDA), in 1995. Although connected to the CDEC, this organization was and still is autonomous and has its own board of directors, whose members include representatives of the local community, local business, intermediate organizations, and institutions, as well as professionals and financial partners. It is important at this juncture to mention the role of individual civic leaders, and particularly of Christian Yaccarini, the director of the Angus Technopole project. Through his leadership and personal capacity to network with local, regional, and national representatives, the Angus project moved forward. While the city of Montreal and the Quebec government joined forces to support the project, it is clear that individual leadership played a crucial role in mobilizing resources both from within and outside the community, bringing the debate forward, gaining social and political support for the project, and dealing with numerous difficulties along the way. At the same time, it is important to

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 45

acknowledge that this type of individual leadership was institutionally embedded in the CDEC as a collective district-based organization. In 1995, after a lengthy conflict between the local community and CP Rail, the SDA launched the Angus Technopole project. The conflict exploded as soon as the facilities were shut down, when CP wanted to have the zoning regulations changed in order to convert the site to residential and commercial use. The CDEC quickly mobilized local actors and residents against this project. Their consent was required for this zoning change, and community opposition meant that CP was unable to carry out its residential project. After an intense round of negotiations, the two main actors modified their respective projects. A compromise saw the site divided into two parts. CP yielded the western portion of the property to the SDA for its community economic development project, that is, some 250,000 square metres, and in return, the SDA and the community agreed not to dispute the zoning change required for CP to develop its residential project on the other part of the site. As these two separate projects were being launched, the SDA and CP continued their negotiations until a final agreement was signed in 1998, when the SDA then proceeded to acquire a first section of the property. The site development work began and continues to the present. The total cost of the revitalization work has been estimated at $250 million. The venture capital came mainly from government loans and from Fondaction, which is the financial partner of the SDA in constructing new buildings. As the Angus website declares, since February 2004, “the Fondaction-Angus partnership is the first association between a venture capital fund and a social economy business. Both partners contribute equal shares into each new project and share the same vision of sustainable development, combining economic, social and environmental performance objectives” (http:// www.technopoleangus.com/). Though the private sector was not directly involved, the local business community was relatively supportive of the Angus project, seeing it as a source of employment and revitalization of the local community, and therefore positive for the business climate. However, in contrast with many other cases in North America, particularly the “growth coalitions” in various cities, the initiative in this case was clearly driven by community and social groups, including unions.2 The first phase of the work involved the conversion of the only facility that remained from the former industrial complex into an industrial

46  Governing Urban Economies

mall, which was completed in 2000; and since then, seven additional buildings have been erected. By 2011, some fifty-four companies, operating in various sectors, including the social economy, were located in the technopole, accounting for 2100 jobs. The issue of land ownership was crucial to the development of the Angus project, and enabled the SDA to maintain its leadership in the project. Because it owns the property, the SDA holds two important cards in negotiations with its financial partners. Not only does it own an asset valued at nearly $15 million, which establishes it as a powerful partner, the SDA is also the project manager. As a result, it has built legitimacy as representative of the local community in dealing with the City of Montreal, the provincial government, and the financial partners, including Fondaction. The Angus project developers have attempted to maximize the local asset of social and organizational community density in order to counteract the tendency of industrial firms to locate in the suburbs. The SDA has thus adopted a proactive strategy, supported by strong leadership from local socio-economic organizations. In concrete terms, in the neighbourhood where the project is located, this leadership is bringing a number of organizations and mechanisms into play in order to develop resources, such as new forms of funding, and to attract firms. From this perspective, it is it apparent that the SDA has chosen to develop the site by attempting to reproduce business location factors generally associated with the new economy. In an effort to provide support services that foster innovation and synergy around a collective learning process, the SDA facilitates the establishment of cooperative networks between firms, and between firms and community-based organizations, both within and outside the area, such as universities, training centres, unions, and research centres. To this end, the SDA relies on institutional support from civic leaders from the Montreal business and social community. The development of a project that seeks to bring new economic activity into a struggling community such as Rosemont raises questions about human resources and the availability of a skilled and educated workforce. What can be done to ensure that the local workforce, and therefore the local community, benefit from new infrastructure investments, firm attraction to the area, and new firm formation? To gain an overall profile of the neighbourhood’s workforce and training needs, the CDEC established a working group called the Comité de Relance Angus (Angus revitalization committee). This committee was set up in the context of

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 47

the federal-provincial Labour Market Development Agreement that targeted labour force retraining. Made up of representatives from various socio-economic sectors (academic institutions, private companies, government institutions, financial institutions, community organizations, and trade unions), this committee, which operated from 1995 to 1997, was mandated to identify existing basic, occupational, and professional skills in the local community as well as skills and training gaps. It led to the development of a strategic plan aimed at socio-economic integration of the under- and unemployed who had been excluded from the labour market. One of the committee’s recommendations was to enable companies to assist in reintegrating these workers into the local labour market. The SDA invested in two such initiatives. One of them is still in operation: Insertech, initially called Centre intégré de formation en environnement et recyclage d’ordinateurs (CIFER) (integrated environmental training and computer recycling centre). Through this company, youth with difficulties, especially young immigrants, acquire expertise in computer assembly and recycling. The other one, now closed, called the Atelier de recyclage de bois Angus (Angus wood recycling shop), recycled wood salvaged from the old CP facilities and buildings. The skills the workers gain in such initiatives are intended to facilitate their entry into the regular job market, including with companies located in the Angus Technopole. In addition, with the support of the Quebec government to encourage the hiring of the local workforce, the SDA developed a basic job-training program for people willing to acquire the skills needed by companies wishing to locate on the site. The Angus Technopole is the outcome of community-based collective action that is not strictly limited to the local community. The project is in fact redefining the meaning of “local,” in that it has prompted solidarity from the Rosemont community, but also support from many organizations outside the immediate vicinity (Université du Québec à Montréal, SNC-Lavalin, Fondaction, Investissement Québec, Pricewaterhouse­ Coopers, Polytechnique Montréal, etc.). The SDA has brought all the organizations involved together to forge a broad partnership capable of mobilizing resources far beyond the capacity of immediate neighbourhood actors. Its structuring effects reach well beyond the local neighbourhood because of success in linking up actors from various backgrounds and sectors of society. While the principal change occurs at the neighbourhood level, the project also impacts the city of Montreal through the entire former CP industrial corridor.

48  Governing Urban Economies

Importantly, the companies that have already located on the site, many of whom originate outside the local community, have embraced the social aspect of the project. Some have created productive, organizational linkages, agreeing to invest strongly in training their workforce as the SDA had hoped, adopting a very different attitude from that typically demonstrated by Quebec and North American firms in general, among which underinvestment in workforce training is the norm (Tremblay 2006). This supports our argument that the Angus Technopole is an example of a cross-sectoral blend of the community and business dimensions, representing a “third generation” type of community initiative. Neither an exclusively social development project nor an exclusively business-oriented one, the Angus Technopole is a hybrid partnership-based project. Local Development and Main Trends of the Quebec Model The Angus case demonstrates how, since the 1980s, employment has been a rallying point for diverse local actors and has shaped the resulting approach to community development. Public, private, and civic actors all have a role in partnership-based experiences. In this context, the participation of civic actors can attract investments and develop entrepreneurship in conditions that are profitable for both the local community and outside private capital. These types of industrial revitalization initiatives in Montreal are largely driven by community-based civic actors interested in social development. The Angus case is only one of a few similar initiatives put forward by the CEDC movement in Montreal, the RESO (Regroupement économique et social du Sud-Ouest) being another very active and innovative case (Tremblay and Fontan 1994; Tremblay, Klein, and Fontan 2009). These initiatives are by definition part of the third sector. However, both past successful efforts as well as ongoing revitalization efforts have stimulated the creation of social enterprises and private firms. It remains to be seen if further experimentation with strategies that balance economic and social development will result in bridges being built between the various types of firms and organizations, to reflect the development of a “plural economy.” In Quebec, and particularly in Montreal, the involvement of civic actors is contributing to a redefinition of the concept of economic revitalization by broadening the understanding that public and private actors currently have of the types of activities involved in economic transformation as well as the significant positive results that accrue from these

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 49

hybrid partnership-based projects. This involvement opens other avenues for new economic activities which will undoubtedly be based more and more on social relations and knowledge-sharing. From this angle, economic revitalization can contribute to fostering high-technology activities as well as to developing culture and services that improve the quality of life of all citizens (Moulaert and Nussbaumer 2008). In addition, the knowledge developed through civic initiatives has the advantage of combining already well-proved sectoral development strategies with innovative strategies for supporting entrepreneurship. Thus, although the new economy is propelling us into the field of technological innovations, these innovations are also closely linked to social innovations (Klein and Harrisson 2007). From this point of view, the revitalization efforts initiated by civic actors in Montreal are particularly innovative because they have resulted in new relationships between public, private, and community-based actors in the development process. These bridges make it possible to envisage a pluralistic and inclusive form of governance that responds to social needs, including those of neighbourhoods facing difficulties, while at the same time being compatible with, but not dominated by, elites’ aspirations for economic growth. The Structuring Effect of the Local Initiative: Proposition for an Interpretative Model The Angus case as well as other initiatives we have referred to in previous texts (Tremblay, Klein, and Fontan 2009; Klein and Champagne 2011) allow us to propose a model that brings into play the diverse elements that contribute to local dynamism in a long-term perspective (figure 2.1). Dynamic local communities are the result of long processes that allow actors to mobilize the social capital that is anchored territorially (socio-territorial capital). That capital includes all the tangible and intangible assets that local communities can mobilize to realize a development process. This model identifies the vital stages for the success of a process begun locally. The first stage of that process is the launch of an initiative, that is, an individual project designed by a leader, a citizen, or a group of leaders or citizens. These projects may also focus on productive or social objectives and could thus involve the valorization of a cultural or human resource or the protection of an aspect of the collective heritage. The promoters then mobilize to convince other actors of the pertinence of their project and to get their support. The project, at first individual,

Figure 2.1 The structuring effect of local initiatives 50  Governing Urban Economies Figure 2.1  The structuring effect of local initiatives

Collective action

Local initiative

Local solidarity Mobilization of resources

Concertation Empowerment

Territorial awareness

Learning Institutional

then becomes a collective project, driven by the social actors and groups that constitute the local collectivity. At that stage, the actors must establish the legitimacy of the project as well as their own legitimacy as leaders recognized by the local collectivity and by external actors. This is all the more important as many of these actors are less in a position to invoke political legitimacy given that they do not participate actively in the local government (municipalities), which is often seen as an opponent rather than a supporter. Social-economy-based organizations here play a fundamental role to the extent that they can provide the local actors with a set of resources that contribute to the viability of the projects. The social economy thus spurs and strengthens the project. In the second stage the actors mobilize endogenous and exogenous resources in order to advance the project, which is to say, the human, organizational, and financial resources accessible to them. At that stage, the social-economy organizations provide the projects and their promoters with the social capital that they often lack. They give them the legitimacy required for mobilizing other resources, along with the opportunity to access local as well as other, larger, networks. The local

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 51

actors must demonstrate a capacity to act creatively to use the existing public resources and to eventually attract private capital, all the while maintaining local leadership. The resources are mobilized by exerting pressure on the actors who have the political or economic power. These confrontations intensify the actors’ feeling of belonging to their local territory and consolidate the relationships within the community. In the third stage the actors’ feelings of belonging are transformed into a territorial conscience. The collective action strengthens the actors’ feeling of belonging to the local territory, which leaves sustainable traces in their collective practices and local mechanisms for dealing with conflicts. The territorial awareness leads the actors to nuance their differences for the benefit of the collectivity. However, the challenge here is not to create a closed community that stifles the actors’ capacity to create and innovate. It must remain sufficiently open to the outside to avoid becoming isolated or losing opportunities to innovate, all the while centring on the community to reinforce the territorial awareness. This awareness constitutes an essential basis for the joint action of the local social and economic actors, which is a foundation for partnership-based entrepreneurship. It brings the actors to act together and to consult each other, which increases their capacity to succeed with their project and gives them power. That process summarizes the course of events of projects that succeed, but of course a certain number do not succeed. What constitutes the basis for building a sustainable local dynamism is the capacity of the actors to reproduce that process and to enhance it each time with new objectives that can spawn new projects. They do so by using the knowledge that each repetition produces and by codifying the experience so as to build an institutional density that ensures a governance for the benefit of the local community. Conclusion This chapter has argued that government policies and measures concerning local development in Montreal can be defined as co-constructions. On the one hand, experiments were often stimulated by pilot projects of limited duration. On the other hand, when those experiments prove viable, even efficient, public authorities can “scale up” these innovations and apply them in other regions. In that sense, we can speak of a coconstruction of the political approach that instituted these hybrid forms of governance innovation (Lévesque 2007a). The creation of the CLDs

52  Governing Urban Economies

in 1998 institutionalized the opportunity for innovative experiments, which subsequently took place in local settings over many years and which proved efficient and effective. CDECs were just one outcome of these experiments. This new entity received the mandate to mobilize all socio-economic and political actors at the local level with the goal of promoting the creation of businesses and jobs. The definition of the role of the CLDs nevertheless remains flexible, allowing them some space to define their own orientations. Many other policies that do not specifically target local development as such also influence these communities by providing resources that make organizations more successful in accomplishing their objectives. Among these, the Stratégie de lutte à la pauvreté et à l’exclusion sociale (strategy to fight poverty and social exclusion) supports partnership initiatives that link municipal and community-based organizations (Klein and Champagne 2011). These policies were driven in part by the mobilization of organizations representing economically challenged communities. The provision of social innovation tools, as well as government funding and support from CLDs, resulted in a collective process of rethinking visions of community-based economic development. Originally aimed at bringing together socio-economic, institutional, and political representatives, the implementation of these initiatives on the ground in actual neighbourhoods had the effect of strengthening local civic capacity. Local development is thus a central part of the compromise, the coconstruction of policies, and the plurality that characterize the Quebec model. It embodies a territorial movement that is rooted in history, but has developed initiatives associated with a modern and democratic notion of economic development and hybrid governance. Social mobilization contributes to the development of projects that can extend well beyond the boundaries of local communities, with structuring effects on the entire metropolitan economy. It is in fact metropolitan regional economic development that is targeted by bottom-up collective action. The resources that mobilization has succeeded in bringing into play are not only local, but come from elsewhere as well, and it is here that its main contribution to development lies. It is when the mobilization of local actors is able to leverage resources from inside and outside the community, resources both private and public, individual and collective, that the resulting developmental dynamics put the urban spaces concerned into a state of synchronism, as well as tension, with the global economy.

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 53

However, all locally defined strategies, even with the participation of organizations representing the local community, do not necessarily translate into concrete projects that benefit the actors rooted in the community. Social organizations must be involved in the redevelopment process, including project implementation, and must retain an important role in the leadership guiding these projects. The capacity to withstand economic dislocation and create projects is not enough. Social organizations must be involved in economic revitalization efforts, which raises the challenge of how to mobilize the required financial resources. From this perspective, local development as a bottom-up strategy of action does not only concern the local spaces where new projects are carried out, and is not limited to local actors. Local development should instead be seen as a process launched by local actors who mobilize public and private actors of various kinds, the effects of which extend beyond the boundaries of the local. In this view, the local is seen not only as a group of citizens in a limited territory, but also as a wide range of actors and actions, whose trust and unity deepen as the collaborations take place, and at a political and economic level where the actors negotiate their integration into wider dynamics. Local development has to be seen, therefore, as a laboratory where different types of actors use their power and their social relations to innovate for the benefit of a local community. While much research previously stressed the local and close proximity dimensions of the source of innovation and of local development, the case presented here, like others (Tremblay, Klein, and Fontan 2009, Klein and Champagne 2011), highlights the fact that the mobilization goes beyond the local dimension and local resources. This is an important insight, questioning some of the research and normative prescriptions which highlight the importance of the local but neglect its embeddedness in a larger global environment. The evolution of local development shows the importance of the actors representing civil society in the governance of development and in the definition of public policies in domains that matter to the community. The role of individual civic leaders, often downplayed in analyses of community development, also needs to be recognized. Indeed in Montreal, a coalition of engaged civic actors initially drove the Techno­ pole Angus process and saw it through to project implementation (Klein and Tremblay 2010). The unions and community organizations no longer limited themselves merely to protesting against unemployment or the injustices of an economic and social system. Instead, they equipped themselves with tools to become actors, even stakeholders with private

54  Governing Urban Economies

capital and public institutions, tackling major economic and social challenges. Their strength lay in partnership action, the ability to raise issues around which diverse actors could rally, and the capacity to convince government to consider social development when designing economic policy strategies. The institutionalization of social innovations enables communitybased civil-society organizations to be recognized as stakeholders in the context of the Quebec model. Yet, new challenges arise, notably the need to remain innovative despite increasingly close connections with formal institutional networks. It is thus critical to insist on state recognition, not only of the role of civil-society organizations as partners, but also of their innovative and transformative character so as to avoid stifling their full potential. NOTES 1 The rate of unionization in the province is approximately 40 per cent. Furthermore, Quebec is the province with the highest number of voluntary organizations in Canada. There were 46,326 non-profit and voluntary organizations in Quebec in 2003, which is 29 per cent of all organizations in the country. Second was Ontario, which counted 45,360 organizations. These figures are still more significant if they are related to the population. Quebec counted 617 per 100,000 inhabitants, which is very high in comparison to the average number in Canada (508) and in Ontario (369). (See table 1.10, “Nonprofit and voluntary organizations, by province or territory, Canada, 2003,” Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 61-533-XIE, in Cornerstones of community: Highlights of the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations, p. 20.)

REFERENCES Bélanger, P.-R., and B. Lévesque. 1992. “Le mouvement populaire et communautaire: De la revendication au partenariat (1963–1972).” In Le Québec en jeu: Comprendre les grands défis, ed. G. Daigle and G. Rocher, 713–47. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Bélanger, P.R., B. Lévesque, and M. Plamondon. 1987. Flexibilité du travail et demande sociale dans les centres locaux de services communautaires. Quebec: Les Publications du Québec.

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 55 Bernier, L., M. Bouchard, and B. Lévesque. 2003. “Attending to the general interest: New mechanisms for mediating between the individual, collective and general interest in Quebec.” Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics 74 (3): 321–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8292.00226. Bourque, G. 2000. Le modèle québécois de développement: De l’émergence au renouvellement. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Brunelle, D. 1978. La désillusion tranquille. Montreal: HMH. Camus, A., and M.-C. Malo. 2005. “Politique de développement local et initiatives en milieu urbain: Les CDÉC montréalaises mandataires du CLD.” In Territoire et fonctions, vol. 2: Les systèmes régionaux et les dynamiques en débats, ed. B. Jean and D. Lafontaine, 145–60. Rimouski: Éditions du GRIDEQ et du CRDT. Canada, Statistics Canada. 2005. Cornerstones of community: Highlights of the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations. Ottawa, catalogue no. 61-533, revised version. Côté, L., B. Lévesque, and G. Morneau. 2007. “L’évolution du modèle québécois de gouvernance: Le point de vue des acteurs.” Politique et Sociétés 26 (1): 3–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/016426ar. Favreau, L. 1989. Mouvement populaire et intervention communautaire. Montreal: Éditions du Fleuve / Centre de formation populaire. Favreau, L., and B. Lévesque. 1996. Développement économique communautaire: Économie sociale et intervention. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Fontan, J.-M. 1992. “Les corporations de développement économique communautaire montréalaises. Du développement économique communautaire au développement local de l’économie.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Université de Montréal. Fontan, J.-M., J.-L. Klein, and B. Lévesque. 2005. “The fight for jobs and economic governance: The Montreal model.” In Metropolitan democracies: Transformations of the state and urban policy in Canada, France and Great Britain, ed. P. Booth and B. Jouve, 133–46. Aldershot: Ashgate. Fontan, J.-M., J.-L. Klein, and D.-G. Tremblay. 2005. Innovation socioterritoriale et reconversion économique: Le cas de Montréal. Paris: l’Harmattan. Hamel, P. 1991. Action collective et démocratie locale: Les mouvements urbains Montréalais. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Hamel, P., and J.-L. Klein. 1996. “Le développement régional au Québec: Enjeu de pouvoir et discours politique.” In Le phénomène régional au Québec, Saint-Foy, ed. M.-U. Proulx, 293–311. Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, Collection Développement régional. Klein, J.-L. 1989. “Développement régional et espace local: Vers une régulation territorialisée.” Revue internationale d’action communautaire 22 (62): 117–28.

56  Governing Urban Economies Klein, J.-L., and C. Champagne, eds. 2011. Initiatives locales et lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exclusion. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, Collection Innovation sociale. Klein, J.-L., J.-M. Fontan, D. Harrisson, and B. Lévesque. 2009. L’innovation sociale au Québec: Un système d’innovation fondé sur la concertation. Montreal: Cahier du CRISES, Collection Études théoriques, no. ET0907. http://www .crises.uqam.ca/publications/cahiers.html. Klein, J.-L., J.-M. Fontan, and D.-G. Tremblay. 2009. “Social entrepreneurs, local initiatives and social economy: Foundations for a socially innovative strategy to fight against poverty and exclusion.” Canadian Journal of Regional Research / Revue canadienne de science régionale 32 (1): 23–42. Klein, J.-L., and D. Harrisson, eds. 2007. L’innovation sociale: Émergence et effets sur la transformation des sociétés. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Klein, J.-L., and D.-G. Tremblay. 2010. “Social actors and their role in metropolitan governance in Montréal: Towards an inclusive coalition?” GeoJournal 75 (6): 567–79. Special issue on Canadian cities. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ s10708-009-9270-0. Klein, J.-L., D.-G. Tremblay, and J.-M. Fontan. 2003. “Systèmes locaux et réseaux productifs dans la reconversion économique: Le cas de Montréal.” Géographie, économie, société 5 (1): 59–75. Lévesque, B. 1984. “Le mouvement populaire du Québec: De la formule syndicale à la formule coopérative?” Coopératives et Développement 16 (2): 43–66. Lévesque, B. 2001. Le modèle québécois: Un horizon théorique pour la recherche, une porte d’entrée pour un projet de société.” Montreal: Cahiers du CRISES. ET0105. http://www.crises.uqam.ca/publications/cahiers.html. Lévesque, B. 2003. “Vers un modèle québécois de seconde génération?” In Justice, démocratie et prospérité: L’avenir du modèle québécois, ed. M. Venne, 49–69. Montreal: Amérique. Lévesque, B. 2007a. “Développement local au Québec, 20 ans d’expérimentation et d’institutionalisation.” In Régimes territoriaux et développement économique, ed. X. Itcaina, J. Palard, and S. Ségas, 31–47. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. Lévesque, B. 2007b. Un siècle et demi d’économie sociale au Québec: Plusieurs configurations en présence (1850–2007). Montreal: Cahier du CRISES. ET0703. http://www.crises.uqam.ca/publications/cahiers.html. Moulaert, F., and J. Nussbaumer. 2008. La logique sociale du développement territorial. Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, Collection Géographie contemporaine. Moulaert, F., and E. Swyngedouw. 1989. “Survey 15: A regulation approach to the geography of flexible production systems.” Environment and Planning. D, Society & Space 7 (3): 327–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d070327.

Social Actors and Hybrid Governance in Montreal 57 Tremblay, D.-G., ed. 1994. Concertation et performance économique: Vers de nouveaux modèles. Montreal: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Tremblay, D.-G., ed. 1998. Objectif plein emploi: Le marché, la social-démocratie ou l’économie sociale? Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, Collection Études en économie politique. Tremblay, D.-G., and Van Schendel. 2004. Économie du Québec: Régions, acteurs, enjeux. Montreal: Éditions Saint-Martin-Fides. Tremblay, D.-G., ed. 2006. Formation et performance socio-économique: Comparaisons internationales. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Tremblay, D.-G., and J.-M. Fontan. 1994. Le développement économique local: La théorie, les pratiques, les expériences. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Tremblay, D.-G., J.-L. Klein, and J.-M. Fontan. 2009. Initiatives locales et développement socioterritorial. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Vaillancourt, Y. 2002. “Le modèle québécois de politiques sociales et ses interfaces avec l’union sociale canadienne.” Enjeux publics / Policy Matters 3 (2). http://www.irpp.org/fr/pm/archive/pmvol3no2f.pdf.

3 Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Scale, Scope, and Coalitions in Toronto allison bramwell and david a. wolfe

The economic processes of globalization and the rapid pace of technological change are actively reshaping the urban economies of city-regions in Canada and around the globe. The dual challenges of maintaining economic competitiveness and addressing the emerging social inequalities resulting from these changes place new demands on local governments that are often too complex for them to meet on their own. In response, novel relationships are emerging between various levels of government, and among public, private, and community actors at the local level. Recent research reveals how such interactions shape development in city-regions, tracking how structures of municipal government are shifting to processes of urban governance (Pierre 2011). Local institutions and actor networks linking state and society are reconfiguring urban policymaking and influencing the economic performance of cities (Clarke and Gaile 1998; Storper 2011). While individual city-regions confront similar economic and social challenges, they exhibit considerable variation in their policy responses and institutional structures. Understand­ ing such variation and explaining why some cities and regions are more resilient and adaptable than others is now a key research question in urban political economy (Savitch and Kantor 2002; Wolfe 2009). This chapter takes up questions about emerging forms of urban governance in Toronto, examining the evolution of social and economic dynamics over the past decade, a time of major challenge and change for the city-region.1 Similarly to other North American “megacities,” Toronto grapples with complex interconnected policy issues such as encouraging knowledge-intensive production, counteracting income gaps, reversing neighbourhood decline, managing fiscal pressures, and integrating regional transit systems. We examine recent efforts to forge more

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 59

collaborative development strategies in the Toronto city-region. To interpret and assess these developments, we offer an analytical framework to capture the interplay among three key variables – scale, scope, and coalitions – that shape the collective capacity of city-regions to adapt successfully to change. City size and the geographic scale at which governance processes play out impact the prospects for collaboration in important ways, as does the scope of policy issues placed on the local political agenda. Whether and how actors from the public, private, and community sectors are able to come together in “development coalitions” for collaborative work remains a central empirical question (Keating 2001). In the case of Toronto, the issue of scale has received considerable analytical attention, but there has been less study of the scope of policy and governance and the coalitions forged around them. Linking the concepts of scale, scope, and coalitions, our analysis brings into focus the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance, a durable multi-sectoral coalition that integrates the social, economic, and cultural dimensions of city-region development through multiple projects. At the same time, our research reveals ongoing obstacles to collaborative efforts in Toronto, specifically the challenges of regional unity, the weak organization of societal interests, and the absence of municipal political support. As such, our chapter contributes to a sharper theoretical understanding of the macro-structural and local institutional-political conditions that facilitate or constrain collaborative transformations. While “governance gaps” remain in the Toronto city-region, the evidence we find of a surprisingly robust cross-sectoral coalition suggests that existing accounts of policy dynamics in Canadian cities that focus primarily on municipal governments need to be amended to include innova­ tive governance structures and processes like the Toronto Civic Action Alliance. Dimensions of Urban Governance: Scale, Scope, and Coalitions Debates over the question of scale, or how the political and geographical boundaries of a city-region shape its governance processes, have recently received a great deal of attention across the disciplines of urban politics and economic geography. In an important departure from earlier analyses of urban politics that viewed cities with fixed and ­immutable geographical boundaries, analyses of urban governance understand the “shape of the city” as more fluid and multidimensional. While cities have their own municipal institutions and structures

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defined within formal geographical boundaries, they do not exist only as discrete “islands” of activity, but are also part of complex multilevel systems that operate across local, regional, national, and global “scales” that are mutually interconnected or “nested” within each other (Swyngedouw 1997; Bunnell and Coe 2001). In this sense, “scale” refers to complex interactions among multiple dimensions of social, political, and economic behaviour overlaid with the sheer size of a region. Governance challenges include cross-sectoral coordination among numerous and often competing actors, interests, and objectives, horizontal cross-boundary coordination among numerous municipalities, and vertical coordination among different levels of government. Driven by these “complex changes in socioeconomic geography and fluxes in scale,” mega-regions made up of large urban cores linked by functional ties to contiguous suburban hinterlands, have begun to play a “more prominent role in this multi-scalar context,” with important implications for the design and implementation of regional development strategies (Rodríguez-Pose 2008, 1026). It follows that the governance arrangements which prevail at the cityregion level, including existing administrative structures and their relative openness to influence and participation by a broad range of societal actors and civic associations, are a critical factor affecting the ability of city-regions to shape their social and economic future. The “new regionalism” underscores the need for cooperation between local governments in metropolitan areas to overcome fragmentation and regional fiscal inequality, as well as a broad cross-section of community actors to devise, coordinate, and implement effective regional policy solutions, enabling city-regions to become competitive in the global economy while also addressing issues of inequality (Savitch and Kantor 2002; Benner and Pastor 2011). In contrast, some of the more vocal critics of the new regionalism, many of whom have based their arguments on empirical observations drawn from the Greater Toronto Region, emphasize the limitations to the efficiency and legitimacy of regional collaboration, arguing for the difficulty of building collaborative administrative structures on the basis of competitive and constantly shifting municipal boundaries (Frisken 2001; Sancton 2004, 2008; Donald 2005; Boudreau et al. 2009). Closely related but analytically distinct from questions of scale, the scope of policy activities and the coalitions that form around them are interdependent dimensions that also shape the contours of urban governance in large city-regions. Questions of scope, or the number, type,

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 61

and range of issues that find their way onto urban policy agendas, highlight gaps in both the urban politics and economic geography literatures. Much of the economic geography literature on regional economic development examines the dynamics of industrial clustering in high-growth regions but focuses on inter-firm dynamics while ignoring political ones (Storper and Manville 2006; John and Cole 2000), whereas decades of urban politics research has focused on business influence in municipal decision making, narrowly cast in relation to land development and property servicing (Peterson 1981; Logan and Molotch 1976). Neither literature provides compelling theoretical explanations for the emergence of coalitions that include a wider array of local actors and urban policy issues. Questions of power and the formation of coalitions in urban politics harken back to the early days of the discipline, when researchers sought to identify power relations, largely within American cities. Making major theoretical contributions to the understanding of political agency and the idea that urban environments are consciously shaped, they tended to focus narrowly on the participation of the business community in economic development activities (Hunter 1953; Dahl 1961). More recent theoretical and empirical approaches retain the emphasis on coalition building, but draw attention to how local non-state actors other than business are organized and how they participate in the urban policy process, widen the policy scope to include issues other than economic development, and integrate macro-institutional variables into the analysis to facilitate international comparison (Pierre 2011; Keating 2002; Bradford 2003, 2007). Theories of urban governance examine the relational rather than the authoritative nature of power in urban contexts and the processes by which local actors blend their resources to “get things done” at the city-region level (Stone 1989, 2005). Clarke and Gaile (1998, 107) observe that these locally driven governance processes “sketch out the possibilities for participation and representation in local … policymaking, and shape the goals, preferences and prospects of contending groups” and, in this way, shape local capacity to address a wider range of economic and community priorities. Relational power between public and private actors in local governing arrangements is, however, fragmented and diffuse, and many decisions are made by “interdependent, complex, loosely-linked actors and institutions with shared purposes but no shared authority,” which underscores “how problematic cooperation and collaboration among these actors and institutions will be” (Clarke 2004, 30). Some theorists emphasize

62  Governing Urban Economies

the cooperative potential of urban governance, arguing that stable, crosssectoral governing coalitions embedded within complex, hierarchical, and multilevel systems “mediate the external pressures of globalization and economic change by building informal, collaborative institutional arrangements that provide the capacity to govern and make policy relevant to local needs” (Stone 2004, 9). Others emphasize the challenges, arguing that different coalitions form around different political objectives, organizational strategies, and key participants, making conflict over which governance arrangements to adopt more likely than consensus. Pierre (1999, 2011) observes that alliances of politicians, agency officials, local developers, and business leaders typically form around economic development and urban revitalization policy agendas, whereas coalitions of local government officials and community activists tend to unite around neighbourhood regeneration or social service delivery. Either way, building coalitions requires civic leadership in the form of “boundary spanners” who “bridge the structural division of labour between state and market in urban politics” and bring together government officials and civic leaders in order to “break down intersectoral barriers of mistrust” and “formulate and implement local policies that address the challenges of governing cities” (Pierre 1999, 376). In previous work, we have used the concept of “civic capital,” defined as a set of relations that emerges from interpersonal networks tied to a specific region or locality and contributes to the development of a common sense of community based on a shared identity, set of goals, and expectations. It comprises formal or informal networks among individual actors or associations at the community level and between members of the community and regional or local governments (Wolfe 2010; Nelles 2012). Efforts to forge coalitions take different forms across different cities, but all seek to address multiple pressures, build partnerships, and promote economic development and social opportunity (Pierre 1999, 2005; DiGaetano and Strom 2003; DiGaetano and Klemanski 1999; Lowndes 2001; Clarke and Gaile 1998; Bradford 2003). In this context, the question of which political objectives shape urban governance in Canadian cities, and how interests mobilize around different policy agendas, remains an empirical one. While the question of scale has been much studied, questions about the scope of urban governance activities and the coalitions that form around them in Toronto have received comparatively little analytical attention. Characterizing how the processes of urban governance actually unfold is particularly challenging in a cityregion as geographically large, economically differentiated, and socially

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 63

diverse as Toronto. The remainder of this chapter explores the potential for – and challenges of – such “joined up” economic and social development in the region. Challenges of Scale: Weak Regional Ties in the Greater Toronto Area As the fourth largest metropolitan economy in North America and “one of the continent’s fastest growing mega-regions,” the economically diverse Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is Canada’s largest and most productive city-region, with specializations in knowledge-­intensive clusters in the automotive, financial services, information and communications, and life-sciences sectors (Bourne, Britton, and Leslie 2011). Challenges intensified by the recent recession, however, such as widespread economic restructuring and the changing nature of local labour markets, high levels of immigration and ethno-cultural change, and concentrations of poverty and social polarization, suggest that this dynamism could be under threat (see also Hulchanski 2007). In its 2010 report Lifting All Boats, the Toronto Board of Trade asserted that “actively pursuing strategies that improve social cohesion and economic opportunity offer valuable returns to the Toronto region, such as increased global competitiveness, a more engaged population and reduced expenditures on health and other outcomes” (Toronto Board of Trade 2010, 3). While its sheer size affords significant advantages and is the source of much current economic dynamism, Toronto lacks some of the key institutional supports and administrative structures to coordinate various regional social and economic development strategies. The existing administrative boundaries of the Toronto city-region reflect the underlying economic geography that was framed in the previous industrial era and continue to operate at a significantly different scale than the economic region that exists today. The Toronto region is currently governed by the large upper-tier City of Toronto and surrounded by the four other upper-tier municipalities of Halton, Peel, York, and Durham, which include twenty-four lower-tier municipalities. The lack of a clear voice to represent the Toronto region is reflected in the competing range of definitions of what geographies it constitutes – the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton (GTAH), or the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH). According to the OECD’s most recent survey, if the definition of the Toronto region is extended to the GGH, then it subsumes a total of 110 municipal governments (OECD

64  Governing Urban Economies

2009, 33). Scholars also underscore the problems caused by the forced amalgamation of the former Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto or “Metro Toronto” into the City of Toronto by the Ontario government in 1998, which had a questionable impact on increased efficiencies in service delivery and did little to address problems of metropolitan governance for the GTA (Sancton 2005; Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009).2 As Donald (2005, 261) argues, under the “round of ‘scale politics’” that occurred between the Ontario government and local government in Toronto in the late 1990s that resulted in amalgamation, “economic actors in Canada’s largest city-regions feel hamstrung by existing institutional arrangements which remain ill-suited to changing urban realities and global spatial flows.” The challenges of weak inter-municipal cooperation are overlaid with institutional conflicts driven by a fragmented political structure which have impeded efforts to coordinate infrastructure and transit and to reduce poverty and social exclusion on a regional basis (Bourne 2001; Stren et al. 2010). From a governance perspective, the “almost dysfunctional” structure of municipal government, coupled with a lack of “consensus on the identity of the city or the region,” makes it “difficult to construct a single narrative that does justice to the highly varied and distinctive local economies, cultures, and landscapes” that make up the Toronto region. The result is an urban powerhouse struggling to implement “political initiatives and strategic planning for economic development and innovation at the regional scale” (Bourne, Britton, and Leslie 2011, 237, 241). As evidence of these structural challenges, several key agencies established at the time of amalgamation to deal with regionwide issues have met with varying degrees of success (Nelles 2012). The challenges of scale are clearly reflected in the areas of a regional economic development strategy, global marketing, and investment attraction. The challenge of forging a region-wide approach to economic development is clearly seen in the case of the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance (GTMA), which was established following amalgamation in 1998 to promote the GTA internationally and to act as a regional portal for site selection information, advice on provincial and Canadian regulation, and help in establishing international partnerships. The GTMA is described as having had “mixed success,” because while it has made some difference in marketing the region, it lacks buy-in from the surrounding regional municipalities and the clout to pursue its mandate to promote the economic development of the entire region (confidential interview). Rather than striving to improve regional governance, local

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 65

actors have opted to pursue the economic development goals of their individual municipalities. Recent discussions among several organizations to establish an integrated region-wide economic development agency have thus far failed to produce results, underscoring the general impression in the region that “the economic development field [in Toronto] is strewn with the bodies of failed initiatives” (confidential interview).3 Similarly, Metrolinx, the regional transportation agency previously known as the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority (GTTA), has also faced major challenges in fulfilling its mandate. Metrolinx was established in 2007 by provincial legislation to provide leadership in the coordination, financing, planning, and development of a multi-modal transportation network that conforms to the provincial plan for the development of the broader region. The agency was intended as a coordinating body for inter-regional transit issues and was given responsibility for the operation of the region’s GO Transit system after the dismantling of the Greater Toronto Services Board (GTSB). Regional coordination was imposed by provincial dictate and it is doubtful that such a regional partnership would have emerged independently of provincial intervention (Nelles 2012).4 The difficulties encountered by Metrolinx in forging a region-wide consensus on the future of regional transit to date has been underscored by the debate over the adoption of the Presto transit card and the challenge of mediating between the province of Ontario and the contending interests in the city council over the future of the Transit City plan. In summary, the mixed results of regional economic development and transportation strategies indicate that scale has an important effect on urban governance activities in the GTA. As Sancton (2008) suggests, the region’s multiple and constantly shifting boundaries structurally limit its ability to build collaborative mechanisms for regional government. While many actors in the region acknowledge that “geographic boundaries should be drawn broadly,” regional fragmentation continues to dog efforts at broader inter-municipal collaboration because “you trip up against those municipal boundaries every time and you’ve got another dimension to at least try to manage in that process and that’s the tricky stuff” (confidential interviews). Despite efforts to encourage regional collaboration, surrounding municipalities have tended to operate in a default position of inter-municipal competition because it is “hard to get mayors to agree that it’s in the best interest of this larger area to see something happen in all of their jurisdictions not just one of them” (confidential interview). Ultimately, while Toronto remains the

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economic anchor for the region, surrounding municipalities remain unwilling to collaborate on regional initiatives such as Metrolinx and the GTMA. Yet challenges of scale are not the only obstacles to collaborative governance in the GTA. Coalitions form among and between the local state and societal interests to advance a variety of policy agendas, but the active participation of social actors requires some degree of organization. The analysis now shifts to a discussion of state–society relations operating in the City of Toronto. Challenges of Scope and Coalition-Building: Fragmented Networks and Weak Civic Leadership in Toronto A wide array of organizations represents both economic and social development interests at the municipal level in Toronto. The level of organization varies across social development groups, from informal “tables,” where people meet regularly to share information and coordinate activities, to other more “organic” and ad hoc networks. Economic development activities are similarly fragmented, and strategic plans have lacked the civic leadership and broad-based support from the local business community to gain sufficient traction. People within these networks tend to know each other and have a good idea of each other’s primary activities, but beyond informal relationships and limited, oneoff partnerships and projects, there are few regularized interactions within social or economic development networks in the Toronto region, and certainly even fewer coordinating mechanisms to facilitate ongoing strategic collaboration between them.5 This section provides a brief discussion of the social and economic development networks operating in Toronto and the patterns of interaction between them and with municipal government. Although Toronto, like most other Canadian cities, has not experienced the same levels of socio-spatial segregation as some of its American and European counterparts, recent evidence of dramatic increases in spatial and income polarization since the 1970s has sparked increased policy activism and the development of targeted poverty-reduction initiatives (Hulchanski 2007; United Way of Greater Toronto 2004). Pov­ erty reduction requires integrated, timely access to a number of critical services such as employment services, income supports, education and skills development, immigrant settlement, affordable housing, child care, and transportation, yet there have been few efforts to coordinate anti-poverty and neighbourhood revitalization activities among the

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 67

numerous provincial and municipal social service delivery agencies and community-based social welfare organizations at work in the City of Toronto, let alone on a regional basis. Linkages between social service organizations tend to be loose and informal and the predominant form of networking activity appears to be partnerships to leverage project resources or coordinate neighbourhood service delivery.6 Most organizations reported that they belonged to multiple loose networks anchored by “a couple of key players” like the United Way of Greater Toronto, the Toronto Community Foundation, and other large charitable organizations, and typically include most organizations active in any given subsector such as children’s services, poverty reduction, and housing. As one respondent put it, “I think the last time we did an inventory we were at 140 plus groups and agencies with similar concerns across the city” with whom they “sort of try to work strategically,” and another mentioned the “90-odd tables that exist in the human service sector” (confidential interviews). The Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy (SNS) stands out against the backdrop of the city’s loosely networked and fragmented social welfare infrastructure as a rare example of strategic collaboration (Corke 2011).7 In response to rising concerns about increasing spatial concentration of poverty in Toronto, reports from two influential community-based organizations galvanized sufficient policy attention to result in this highprofile city-wide neighbourhood revitalization strategy.8 Together, the United Way of Greater Toronto, the City of Toronto, and the Toronto City Summit Alliance (a coalition of community leaders that will be discussed in more detail below) launched the Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force, whose final report formed the basis for the adoption of the SNS by City Council in October 2005, an ongoing joint initiative targeted at thirteen distressed neighbourhoods across the city.9 Membership on the SNTF included high-profile representatives from federal, provincial, and municipal governments including then mayor of Toronto David Miller, social service delivery organizations, charitable organizations like the United Way and the Trillium Foundation, and other public- and private-sector community leaders. By its “very construction [the Task Force] was intersectoral, bringing a whole bunch of voices to the table specifically to look at neighbourhood health and well-being” (confidential interview).10 Whether as part of smaller loose networks, or a more integrated strategy such as the SNS, the City of Toronto was consistently cited as a key participant in a wide range of social development networks. Municipal

68  Governing Urban Economies

staff reported that partnership arrangements with various communitybased organizations are an important element of municipal service delivery and that community-based “grass roots” organizations were regularly consulted to “feed into the planning and [social] policy development” activities of the City (confidential interview). However, while social service agencies and advocates participate in multiple loose networks, there is not “one major network” or single table around which all key organizations gather to discuss and coordinate strategic approaches to social welfare in the city. Citing scalar challenges of size and complexity, one respondent commented that “nobody speaks for a whole lot of people in this city – it’s just too damn big and it is really decentralized and diffuse” (confidential interview). Other interviewees attributed the lack of a coordinated social development network to an absence of both a strategic vision for the city and political leadership. Because it’s not on the political radar screen, I don’t think we institutionally developed the capacity to have a long term conversation about the health of our city and the health of our community … It would be useful if there was political pressure to promote and create more collaboration, more connected thinking and connected doing … We don’t focus on the big idea. (confidential interview)

Still others attributed this lack of vision to weak municipal policy capacity. For a city the size of Toronto, “the mechanisms to support proper policy development in the city, including those community structures, aren’t there” (confidential interview). The problem of fragmentation has been equally acute in the economic development area, which also lacks institutional coordination as well as a strategic vision sufficiently broad to unite a diverse and disconnected local business community. A period of major transition for Toronto’s economy, the 1990s began with an intense economic contraction of the manufacturing sector in the early part of the decade followed by more expansive growth in the later part of the decade and into the early 2000s in sectors as diverse as autos, aerospace and telecommunications, financial services, and the creative and cultural industries. This rapid economic expansion sparked renewed efforts to formulate an integrated economic development strategy for the City. Supported by the Ontario government, the newly amalgamated City of Toronto launched a planning effort in the late 1990s to develop a strategy to build on its strength in traditional economic sectors as well as newly emerging

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 69

ones.11 In partnership with local economic development agencies and business groups, the City of Toronto commissioned a major cluster study to chart the competitiveness and growth prospects of leading clusters in the local economy which fed directly into the formation of the Toronto Economic Development Strategy (ICF Consulting 2000a, 2000b).12 While the OECD review of territorial policy painted a broadly positive picture of the process, however, suggesting that it “benefited from the active involvement of business, labour, academic and community leaders,” interviews with participants at the time painted a less sanguine picture of the degree of business community engagement (OECD 2009, 156). The lacklustre business participation and subsequent weak support for the strategy is partly attributable to the absence of strong and cohesive leadership committed to the economic success of the city-region, as well as the lack of key “civic entrepreneurs” in the economic or political sphere willing to assume leadership of the strategic planning process. Despite its limited success, however, the City continued to focus on the key sectors identified in the strategy, laying the groundwork for more successful subsequent initiatives such as the Toronto Financial Services Alliance (City of Toronto 2007; Boston Consulting Group 2009).13 The latter half of the decade witnessed a second collaborative effort to update the City’s Economic Development Strategy under a new mayor and city council. In June 2006 Mayor David Miller established the Economic Competitiveness Advisory Committee, composed of senior executives from business, academia, and elected officials with limited representation from labour and the broader social and environmental sector of the city, and charged it with the responsibility to forge a “culture of partnership” to promote Toronto’s economic future. Launched in 2008, its Agenda for Prosperity laid out a vision for Toronto as a global business city, a hub for environmental innovation, a centre for global education and training, and a location for new and distinctive cultural products that draw upon creativity and diversity, as well as technological excellence. In relation to linking economic and social development, the agenda also identified its fourth pillar of prosperity in “One Toronto: Economic Opportunity and Inclusion” (City of Toronto 2008, 18). The report presented a number of areas for priority attention, but contained little that dramatically departed from the previous economic development focus of the city beyond the creation of two new municipal development agencies, Build Toronto and Invest Toronto, both of which appear to be structured more along the lines of traditional approaches to economic development than a strategic planning approach.

70  Governing Urban Economies

The Agenda for Prosperity never really gained the traction it needed to shape economic development and cluster policy for Toronto. Respon­ dents indicated that there was little resonance for the strategy, and as one put it: I couldn’t cite a cluster policy for Toronto. I know that the antecedents of a policy have been articulated. Thinking again, back to the city’s statement of its cluster priorities is there. But, a policy also implies, as it does in my mind, strategic objectives and a plan of action to foster the development of these priority clusters and frankly I haven’t seen it … It’s missing in action in my view. (confidential interview)

The implementation of the strategy has also been hampered by the lack of direct funding to support economic development initiatives. The total budget for the cluster strategy was $3 million annually, most of which was absorbed by salaries for staff support to the various sectors. Any additional funding depends on the City’s ability to tap into existing federal or provincial programs or agencies to support one of its strategic sectors. In the words of one recent assessment of the City’s efforts at strategic planning, the response to the plans has been “hesitant, uneven and disjointed … The production of strategy plans has itself become a growth industry” (Bourne, Britton, and Leslie 2011, 260). There was some suggestion that part of the difficulty was the lack of strategic leadership at the municipal level capable of recognizing opportunities and facilitating collaboration among key economic development stakeholders. Many perceived that the city was in “a unique position to try to facilitate that transfer process from universities to business community” because it has “proximity to both the industrial base and university education research base,” but felt that it “hasn’t really seized” the opportunity (confidential interview). In summary, the sheer challenge of coping with scale and complexity while balancing the multitude of interests in the Toronto city-region remains an endemic challenge: Toronto is so complicated and so huge and how do you meet everyone’s needs and everyone’s expectations? How do you bring consensus? All these little groups are kind of doing their own brilliant innovative things and there’s not a lot of interaction between them. And it’s hard to have that in such a complicated, busy, changing, multi-cultural city. I don’t think there is one answer to that question. (confidential interview)

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Echoing many descriptions of how different networks interact in the region, one person described Toronto as “a city with weak networks [that] don’t hang together well … It doesn’t feel like a city that … finds a way of having a common goal [that] everyone can contribute to and move towards” (confidential interview). There is some indication that this fragmentation is partly attributable to municipal structural factors. Many observers commented that municipal departments are siloed from each other and lack coordinative mechanisms within the municipal administration itself, let alone the city as a whole, and so “communication across the city is a problem” (confidential interview). There was also some suggestion that weak municipal policy capacity impedes the City’s ability to make more fulsome use of the powers that it has through the City of Toronto Act because “it needs to have a structure to support how it acts and it doesn’t” (confidential interview). Weakly organized social and economic development networks, coupled with an absence of boundary-spanning civic leadership to build linkages between these two agendas, have historically exacerbated structural impediments to collaboration at municipal and regional levels in the GTA. It is therefore somewhat of a surprise that the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance, a community-driven civic organization that links up economic and social, as well as cultural, development agendas and has numerous initiatives to its credit, not only formed in the Toronto region, but has been durable over time. The following section charts its genesis and evolution, focusing on the civic leadership that best accounts for its success and longevity in spite of weak support from municipal politicians. Integrating Scale, Scope, and Coalitions? The Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance As we have documented, both the City of Toronto and the broader GTA region lacked strong, integrated civic leadership to forge a unified local development coalition before the early 2000s. Indeed, before then there were few instances of civic leadership in the city-region uniting around an agreed upon set of goals. Some of the shortcomings associated with the lack of committed civic leadership in the Toronto region have, however, subsequently been addressed with the formation of a communitywide civic governance initiative with regional scope, the Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA), subsequently renamed to the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance (CivicAction) to reflect its regional mandate. The

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original City Summit was a one-day event organized in June 2002 on the initiative of the then mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman, and with strong participation from a number of community organizations, including the United Way of Greater Toronto and the Canadian Urban Institute. The summit brought together a diverse and representative group of leaders to identify the region’s strengths and challenges and to frame an agenda to respond to them. In response to a presentation about the state of Toronto’s economy and social infrastructure by David Pecaut, the future chair of what was to become the Toronto City Summit Alliance, one observer recalled the gasp that went up in the audience. Because we could see our future: a city in decline, no leadership, no fiscal authority, no fiscal tools that really meet our needs, no ideas, sort of more of the same complaining and nothing. So that was a significant moment, and coming out of that everybody was so impressed that they asked David to take the lead in setting-up a citizen’s movement. (confidential interview)

The City Summit had a galvanizing effect on a number of its key participants, not least of all David Pecaut himself, who said, “People were really energized. There were breakouts and discussions. But people wanted to do something. They really wanted to tackle things. So I left that day feeling that there was a tremendous amount of goodwill in the room, a tremendous amount of interest of tackling issues and that civil society in Toronto, if you consider business, labour, non-profits, were really ready to work together” (interview, 9 July 2009) . Following the successful conclusion of the summit, a coalition of more than forty civic leaders from the private, labour, voluntary, and public sectors came together to form the Toronto City Summit Alliance. The Alliance worked through the following eight months with staff resources committed by a number of organizations to produce its own analysis of the current economic and social situation of the region and formulated its own action plan. The plan, Enough Talk: An Action Plan for the Toronto Region, released in April 2003, set out a broad agenda for change in a number of areas, including physical infrastructure, tourism, research infrastructure, education and training, immigration, and social services. The release of the report was followed up with a second summit held in June 2003, along with the commitment to proceed on a number of key initiatives.

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 73

Since its inception in 2002, CivicAction has operated on the principle of building a collective vision for future directions in the city by assembling a common fact base and understanding of the issues and then forging a consensus for action around these defined issues on which there is already some agreement. Rather than directly delivering services, the TCSA brings together civic leaders from different sectors to discuss issues affecting the region, identify areas that need attention, and to incubate, develop, and launch new programs in these strategic areas. Playing the role of convener and catalyst, it has been “very conscious about not replacing or substituting [itself] for the work that everybody else is doing but to try and bring more resources to them and support them or connect them with other people” (confidential interview). With the basis for its activity clearly set out in the initial report, Enough Talk, subsequent work has been directed by the steering committee, supported by a series of working groups in various areas, including the economy, infrastructure, financing municipal and regional services, and education.14 Most of the TCSA’s initial work was done by volunteers who successfully created a consensus around a broad group of civic leaders, the representative nature and diverse composition of which attracted a considerable amount of publicity to its reports and expanded the impact of its initiatives. Federal, provincial, and municipal governments were motivated to take action, sometimes on their own, but often in a collaborative fashion.15 Of the strategic initiatives that have recently occurred in the Toronto city-region, the CivicAction Alliance links up the most networks. In terms of boundary-spanning activity, it is often the only organization with which more focused business, arts and culture, or social networks will have regular contact beyond their own smaller networks, and representatives of many networks and organizations interviewed reported some affiliation with the Alliance. Its agenda has included a wide range of economic, social, and cultural initiatives that have been undertaken using strategic planning approaches and include the Toronto Region Research Alliance (TRRA), the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC), the Modernizing Income Security for Working Aged Adults Task Force (MISWAA), the Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force, Greening Greater Toronto, DiverseCity, and Luminato, a yearly arts festival that grew out of an initiative to attract tourism to Toronto in the aftermath of the SARS outbreak. One of the most successful of these initiatives was the MISWAA report, which recommended the

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restructuring of income supports for the working poor, creating buy-in from both economic and social camps, and influencing subsequent provincial policy action on poverty. As one respondent remarked, “This year’s [2008] provincial budget was a Toronto City Summit Alliance poverty budget, there is no doubt about that” (confidential interview). Not all CivicAction initiatives have proved equally successful over the long term, however, and some, such as the TRRA, continue to struggle with the inherent challenge of overcoming the competition for both public and private investment among different parts of the region. Leadership in CivicAction has come almost entirely from the private and voluntary sector, led by a committed group of “civic entrepreneurs” (Henton et al. 1997). In David Pecaut’s view, a critical ingredient in the success of the group has been its strong sense of collective leadership: Most change that happens, particularly in a city and a region, but I think in large parts of life, comes from collective leadership, and when you really look at major long term enduring successes, it’s because a collective leadership has come together and sustained those changes. So the biggest challenge for the City Summit Alliance was creating that sense of collective leadership. (interview, 11 July 2009)

This strong ethic of civic leadership has contributed to CivicAction’s ability to act as a boundary-spanning organization between different networks and serve as a connective hub or governance mechanism through which the work of different networks is leveraged to create a more coherent and inclusive approach to city and regional issues. It is credited with playing “a pivotal role in bridging the dialogue between the government, the private and the not-for-profit for community and social sectors” and “in making people see the economic consequences of social issues and realizing that … business has an interest in dealing with social issues” (confidential interview). It has also been credited with leveraging policy attention and support from federal and provincial governments, an accomplishment which has largely eluded municipal political leaders. CivicAction is described as a successful example of civic cooperation and collaborative governance “because it models on other cities where there’s been strong civic networks of leaders that have been brought together to try and move the city forward and work together with other levels of government” (confidential interview). In this

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 75

respect, it is a clear example of the way in which strong civic leadership has contributed to the growth of civic capital and supported a broader base for urban governance in the Toronto region. These dynamics will be particularly interesting to observe in Toronto over the next few years, as both the political and civic leadership underwent major changes at the end of 2010. After the untimely death of David Pecaut in 2009, John Tory, another prominent Torontonian, gave up a bid for the mayoralty to take over as chair of the TCSA and the founding executive director, Julia Deans, stepped down in 2011. In addition, to reflect both the need to take on a broader regional focus, as well as an agenda committed to actionable changes, the TCSA rebranded itself as the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance and held another summit in February 2011 attended by over 1000 invited civic leaders and community activists. Reflecting this expanded regional agenda, CivicAction’s current strategic efforts are targeted on regional transit issues. At roughly the same time, Rob Ford, the fiscally conservative city councillor who ran on a platform of tax reduction, was elected mayor in the October 2010 municipal election. It is particularly notable that Ford largely ignored the extensive pre-election dialogues about community-building and regional governance in his campaign and focused instead on expenditure reduction through measures such as contracting out garbage collection. Governance Challenges Remain The Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance has gone a long way towards filling the civic governance gap in the city and, with its renaming to reflect its regional focus, perhaps in the region as a whole. It can take credit for providing previously lacking visionary civic leadership, encouraging boundary-spanning and networking activity across social and economic development agendas, overseeing the implementation of innovative projects, and attracting policy attention for critical local and regional issues. Not only has this inclusive civic coalition been sustained over time, it has made tangible and durable contributions to addressing social and economic development challenges in Toronto. At the same time, however, major governance challenges remain, and the Toronto region continues to struggle with weak municipal policy capacity, a perceived lack of concerted and visionary leadership, and strained multilevel governance relations.

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Who Speaks for Toronto? Concerns about Toronto’s weak municipal governance capacity were expressed in different ways throughout the course of this research. Attention to Toronto’s municipal institutional structure in the post-1998 amalgamated city underscores ongoing problems with transparency, accountability, and democratic representation. Taken together, a large ward system, a labyrinthine and inscrutable bureaucracy, ambiguity surrounding mayoral powers arising out of the City of Toronto Act, and a paucity of mechanisms for active citizen engagement provide serious impediments to the development of a concerted strategic vision for the future of the region (Stren et al. 2010). Many respondents also commented on the city’s weak policy capacity, a finding echoed in other studies on municipal policy capacity in Canadian cities (Seigel 2009; Stewart and Smith 2007). This was seen as partly due to the difficulty of establishing a new mayor-led level of governance within the city to expedite decision making that was intended to result from legislation under the City of Toronto Act. As one respondent commented, “for a city this size, there’s a big gap between us actually being an order of government and the capacity we have now, especially in the policy and research fronts” (confidential interview). Compounding the challenges at the level of the city itself has been the inability to develop effective governance mechanisms at the regional level on crucial issues such as regional transit and regional economic development. Recent empirical examinations of economic resilience in city-regions suggest that the most adaptable and agile places have supportive strategic governance institutions that are underpinned by high levels of civic leadership and civic capital (Wolfe 2010; Wolfe and Bramwell 2008; Nelles 2012; Safford 2009). While little is known about power relations between elected municipal politicians and civic leaders, particularly in Canadian cities, this research suggests that these relationships may not be as straightforward or harmonious as might be assumed. When asked about the main governance challenges faced by the city, many respondents focused on “the absence of vision and leadership to mobilize things,” the “lack of unifying ideas,” and a dearth of elected politicians willing to “step up to the plate with a sense of vision and a sense of perspective and an emerging agenda around which they could build a coalition and a consensus” (confidential interviews). There was general agreement that Toronto is at a crossroads in its economic and social development and that if it “wants to be the sort of city that

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 77

everybody wants it to be … it’s got to change,” but that there are no “mechanisms being put in place to allow that to happen” (confidential interviews). Most respondents also expressed the opinion that effective governance, even in a city-region as large and complex as Toronto, is possible with the right vision and leadership. There was a strong sense that before the TCSA got off the ground, Toronto suffered from a distinct lack civic ‘champions’ willing to articulate and drive a visionary agenda forward. Often noted for his strong networking skills and boundary-spanning ability, the late David Pecaut, the inaugural chair of the TCSA, was most often referred to as the civic leader who was most committed, effective, and visible in championing the interests of Toronto and the work of the TCSA. Yet one of the more interesting findings of this research is the weakness of the linkages between CivicAction and the municipal government. There was little evidence that the mayor or senior staff sought to build linkages with the original TCSA, and there was some suggestion of political competition between the mayor and the civic leaders for political control and legitimacy, and that the senior city staff were not keen to share or relinquish control over the city’s political agenda. While some people felt that more political bridges could have been built to support city- and regionwide governance initiatives “had there been more active dialogue and creative relationships between the multi-sector civic leadership group and the mayor” to build a common purpose, others perceived the TCSA as “an anti-mayoralty type initiative so it was hampered by a sense of political in-fighting” (confidential interviews). Either way, the potential for a robust and productive partnership between the city-region’s political and civic leadership remains untapped.

Multilevel Governance in Toronto? Multilevel governance in Canada has recently received a great deal of theoretical and empirical attention (Lazar and Leuprecht 2007; Bradford 2007). More specifically, Horak (2008) chronicles Toronto’s singular campaign for comprehensive multilevel governance reform in the mid-2000s under then mayor David Miller, which did not result in a fundamental reordering of federal–provincial–municipal relations in Canada, but did net some major gains for the City of Toronto.16 Our interview data provide several related observations about how multilevel governance dynamics unfold in Toronto. One of the most consistent intergovernmental challenges affecting governance in Toronto is that its sheer size

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and complexity as well as its unique position “to drive a 21st century economic direction for Canada” make it exceptional among Canadian municipalities. Yet, the provincial government, which has constitutional jurisdiction over municipal governments, is unwilling to acknowledge this fact and leverage such potential. Indeed, neither the federal nor provincial governments have an urban policy agenda that addresses the needs of large cities like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, which some feel should be treated as “peer governments with their own legislative and taxation powers” (confidential interview). Instead, cities are relegated to being policy-takers rather than policymakers (Broadbent 2008; Sancton 2004, 2005). Because “they don’t have enough levers to push to generate the resources or to cut through the different regulatory regimes and neither the province nor the feds are picking up the slack or willing to get out of the way and let the city do what it needs to do,” there is a deep frustration that Toronto lacks the fiscal and policy autonomy to address its own issues (confidential interview). As much of the recent work cited above has found, there are few formal multilevel governance mechanisms that link or “join-up” the policy efforts of all three levels of government. Instead, this research suggests that multilevel governance – or at least multilevel collaboration – develops somewhat organically around narrowly defined policy issues.17 Not surprisingly, because of their constitutional positions, the City of Toronto tends to work much more closely with the provincial rather than with the federal government. Despite the above noted “limited successes” through the New Deal campaign, Toronto’s relations with the federal government are decidedly tangential and distant, and most key informants reported that they do not work with the federal government “in any way, shape or form” (confidential interview). While talking to Ottawa is reported to be like “yelling at a brick wall,” with the provincial government, “it’s still a brick wall but there are … occasional doors and windows in the wall and every once in a while one of them is left open and you can sneak in an idea or policy through” (confidential interview). The province is seen as comparatively receptive to not only “conversation, ideas and input” from the municipal government, but also to other efforts to provide governance direction at the city-region level like the TCSA. Consistent with developments that have been noted in the recent literature on place-based policy in Canada, there is also evidence of a new attitude in some parts of the provincial bureaucracy towards finding new ways to work directly with cities to design and deliver public policies, such as the thirteen Priority Neigh­ bourhoods strategy.

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 79

Conclusion This detailed case study of Toronto suggests that the dimensions of scale, scope, and coalitions interact in important ways to shape urban governance activities in Canada’s megacity. The experience of Toronto suggests, however, that the recent success of civil society in creating durable coalitions and expanding the scope for collective policy action still have some distance to go to surmount the challenge of effectively managing the scale of Canada’s largest city-region. In terms of scale, there was little evidence of durable region-wide governance structures. Regional efforts in marketing and transportation, and social service delivery are far from embedded or robust, and multilevel interactions remain fragmented and episodic. Different municipalities have stronger relationships with the provincial government than they do with each other, and any existing regional mechanisms are largely provincially mandated rather than driven voluntarily “from below.” Only time will tell if this will change with the implementation of FedDev, the federally funded regional economic development program announced in 2009 with the intention of promoting economic growth and job creation in urban and rural Southern Ontario communities (Bradford and Wolfe 2010). It is significant, however, that the TCSA recently renamed itself the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance in order to better reflect its broader regional focus. In terms of scope and coalitions, collaborative networks appear to be more the stuff of rhetoric than substance. Local social and economic development policy networks exist, but appear to be internally weak and fragmented, and there is little evidence of overlap between social service and economic development departments at the formal governmental level. Yet, a hallmark of the success of the CivicAction Alliance has been its boundary-spanning civic governance activity in areas such as immigrant integration, neighbourhood revitalization, and income support. This reflects the driving vision of its collective leadership that the economic and social dimensions of the city’s future are inextricably linked. As we have seen, however, CivicAction operates largely apart from the municipal government and has weak links to regional governance institutions. From a governance perspective, Storper’s (2011) observation that city-regions that lack broad problem-solving coalitions are more likely to pursue “low road” economic growth strategies may be a useful cautionary tale for Toronto and provide the impetus for further experimentation with broader policies and collaboration across the municipal and civic divide.

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From a theoretical perspective, however, the longevity of the Civic­ Action Alliance opens up several fruitful directions for further research. Existing models cannot account for its success in recruiting local elites, keeping them involved, and influencing different levels of government to get projects off the ground in the absence of support from local government (Stone 2005; Mossberger and Stoker 2001). In addition, evidence of a durable cross-sectoral coalition operating in Toronto suggests that existing explanations of municipal policy dynamics in Canadian cities need to be expanded to account for the emergence of novel forms of state–society relations (Tindal and Tindal 2009). At the same time, however, further systematic research is required to understand better the barriers to collaborative governance in Canadian cities. Major governance challenges remain, and the Toronto region continues to struggle with weak municipal policy capacity, a perceived lack of concerted and visionary leadership, and strained multilevel governance relations, but the extent to which these obstacles are structural, constitutional, cultural, political, or simply a function of geography is unclear. A better understanding of the barriers to effective collaboration in the Canadian context would go a long way towards a better understanding of how to overcome them. NOTES 1 The material for this chapter is based on 65 key informant interviews conducted across the economic, social, and cultural sectors in Toronto, as well as participant observation by the authors at a number of key events in the region. 2 In 1998 the Ontario Government rejected the recommendation of the Task Force on the Greater Toronto Area to establish a regional level of government that would correspond more appropriately with the economic boundaries of the Greater Toronto Area and, instead, created the current City of Toronto, which covers only a small portion of the rapidly growing regional economy that comprises not only the CMA, but a much greater area as well. In addition, the upper-tier governments of Halton, Peel, York, and Durham each have elected chairs and responsibilities for economic development and regional planning. 3 For instance, some key municipalities in the region, including the cities of Toronto and Mississauga, have opted to mount their own foreign trade missions without the participation of the GTMA, while the City of Toronto

Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 81 has recently created a new agency, Invest Toronto, which overlaps with the GTMA’s mandate. 4 The Greater Toronto Service Board (GTSB), created at the time of amalgamation in 1998 to administer school taxes and the regional GO Transit system, is another example of an unsuccessful regional initiative, and was discontinued by 2001 for failing to fulfil its mandate. 5 Cohesive networks have also formed in the arts and culture and environmental communities in the GTA, a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this analysis. 6 A comprehensive characterization of the patterns of interaction between government and community-based social welfare organizations in Toronto would require additional research, but several preliminary observations can be drawn from interviews with representatives from this sector. 7 For example, Corke (2011) provides a detailed case study of the complexity of efforts to coordinate municipal service delivery in Toronto’s thirteen Priority Neighbourhoods. 8 Taken together, the Toronto City Summit Alliance’s report, Enough talk: An action plan for the Toronto region, and the United Way of Greater Toronto’s report, Poverty by postal code, formed the impetus for the creation of the Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force. 9 For more detail, see www.strongneighbourhoods.ca. Though the Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy is officially an initiative of the City of Toronto, it is housed within and administered by the United Way of Greater Toronto. 10 Though tri-lateral funding for the SNS was never provided, the SNTF benefited from a brief policy window at the time that was particularly open to multilevel policy dialogue (see also Bradford 2007). 11 The intention of the newly formed Urban Economic Development Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation was to pursue a more effective strategic alignment of existing provincial resources for supporting research, post-secondary education, urban development, and health to promote urban economic development, and part of its mandate was to build strong linkages between provincial and local economic development organizations in Ontario’s urban regions to better align objectives, actions, and investments. 12 A similar study was also conducted in Ottawa. In Toronto the study was conducted by a US consulting firm in partnership with local consultants and under the direction of the economic development and planning offices of the City. 13 Spearheaded by the City’s economic development office, the Toronto Financial Services Alliance (TFSA) is a group of forty key organizations,

82  Governing Urban Economies including the major financial institutions, representatives of all three levels of government, and local post-secondary education institutions focused on human resource development for the financial services sector. 14 In addition, subgroups have often formed out of existing working groups to tackle specific issues. 15 Core funding for the TCSA initially came from corporations and unions, and it was only once individual initiatives began to roll out that the Alliance accepted government funding. 16 For example, between 2003 and 2006, the City secured more than $400 million in new intergovernmental fiscal transfers, and pushed through the City of Toronto Act, the impact of which is still under debate (Horak 2008). 17 A range of multilevel initiatives with varying degrees of policy impact have emerged in the Toronto region in recent years: the Intergovernmental Committee for Economic and Labour Force Development (ICE) meets regularly to share information but has no policymaking or program authority; the Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) funded through the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, are organized around government funding opportunities and actively implement immigrant settlement and integration activities; and the Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force discussed above was a temporary intergovernmental alignment. These types of multilevel collaboration are, however, comparatively rare.

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Dimensions of Governance in the Megacity: Toronto 87 United Way of Greater Toronto. 2004. Poverty by postal code: The geography of neighbourhood poverty, 1981–2001. Report jointly prepared by the United Way of Greater Toronto and the Canadian Council on Social Development. Wolfe, David A. 2009. 21st century cities in Canada: The geography of innovation. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada. Wolfe, D. 2010. “The strategic management of core cities: Path dependence and economic adjustment in resilient regions.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3 (1): 139–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsp032. Wolfe, D., and A. Bramwell. 2008. “Innovation, creativity and governance: Social dynamics of economic performance in city-regions.” Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice 10 (2–3): 170–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.5172/ impp.453.10.2-3.170.

4 Myth Making and the “Waterloo Way”: Exploring Associative Governance in Kitchener-Waterloo jen nelles

Despite all appearances, the Kitchener-Waterloo region, located an hour west of Toronto, is an extraordinary place. The region boasts a population of less than half a million inhabitants (Statistics Canada 2010). Its most important economic sectors are the automotive and advanced manufacturing industries. It has a junior hockey team, a bustling farmers’ market, expanding big-box retail along the highways, and a revitalizing historic downtown. Many Canadians would have difficulty even locating it on a map. It is a quiet, mid-sized city. Considering this relatively pedestrian backdrop, it is somewhat surprising that Kitchener-Waterloo is a hotbed of innovation in information technology and high-tech manufacturing. The success of home-grown companies such as Research in Motion (the makers of BlackBerry) and OpenText have attracted the attention and investment of companies such as Google, Intel, Electronic Arts, 3M, and Oracle. The region is anchored by two universities that account for 10 per cent of Canada’s engineering graduates (Canada’s Technology Triangle 2010) and serve as regular recruiting grounds for Fortune 500 companies. The former president of the University of Waterloo was named governor general in 2010. Public spending has also poured into the region in response to its success with the recent high-profile investments in building an Ontario Technology Corridor, $50 million worth of funding for the Balsillie Centre of Excellence in Global Policy, and the siting of a new federal development agency for Southern Ontario, all since 2008. For such an ordinary place, Kitchener-Waterloo has blazed an astonishing path. If you ask leaders in the region what accounts for their vibrant economy, you are likely to get a fairly consistent answer: a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a tradition of civic engagement and collaboration. In

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Kitchener-Waterloo highly motivated and economically driven firms and individuals work together to solve collective problems and to seize opportunities, not only for their sectors, but for the benefit of the economy as a whole. This culture is often traced back to the Mennonite tradition of barn raisings (Nelles, Bramwell, and Wolfe 2005) and is credited for the foundation and visionary purposes of key local assets such as the University of Waterloo and the local technology association, and, more recently, with attracting federal and provincial investment in local knowledge infrastructure. Over time Kitchener-Waterloo’s historical claim to an entrepreneurial and collaborative culture have taken on mythological status. Local myths define and differentiate communities. They build on the experiences of the past, real or imagined, to situate the evolution of a place and people that in turn shape contemporary development (Graff 2008). Evoking a connection to the past glorifies the pioneering spirit of previous generations and legitimizes current initiatives by linking them with the same solid, and usually virtuous, tradition. Myths unite the community in a shared understanding of “who we are” and “where we are going” to create a powerful guiding vision for the future. A shared local mythology can be incredibly catalytic, but it can also be misleading. By their very nature myths glorify laudable aspects of the past and gloss over inconvenient truths. A slavish devotion to a community mythology may be used to justify policies that stifle debate, limit participation, and oppose change. This dark side of myth is often overlooked in economic development literature that encourages the development of local social capital associated with this type of shared vision. The “Waterloo Way” is no exception to this trend. This culture of civic engagement has been celebrated as one of the most important keys to the extraordinary success of the region (Nelles 2009; Nelles, Bramwell, and Wolfe 2005; Wolfe 2010), yet no one so far has submitted this mythology to critical analysis of what it might be obscuring. It’s time to part the “Waterloo Way.” This chapter challenges the Kitchener-Waterloo mythology. It probes some of the broad assumptions of social inclusiveness attached to the spirit of collaborative community governance. The mythical “Waterloo Way,” in which civic actors are active in directing economic development trajectories, is as a manifestation of the associational model of governance in which the state is just one among several actors involved in orchestrating regional growth (Cooke and Morgan 1998). Collabora­tive governance of this nature is based on supportive social relationships

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among a range of actors that intensify processes of social learning (Wolfe 2010). The implication is that, where civic engagement in economic development is encouraged, policy reflexivity, adaptability, and responsiveness will be enhanced. In his work on the role of networks in regional resilience, however, Sean Safford (2009) argues that not all networks are created equal and that the diversity of actors engaged in regional governance is an important determinant of economic recovery. This chapter tests a similar hypothesis: it asks whether the KitchenerWaterloo region has vibrant civic networks and, if so, to what degree they are diverse and inclusive. In a city-region like Kitchener-Waterloo, where the governance coalition is undeniably led by economic actors, the prevailing discourse is liable to be driven by economic interests. This opens up the possibility that civic governance in the entrepreneurial community may pursue strategies that support profit over equity, and growth over inclusion, particularly in times of fiscal stress. Yet the culture of the community – of self-helpers, of engaged corporate citizens, of committed philanthropists – speaks to an ingrained tradition of collaboration and civic virtue. This region is an interesting test of how the composition of civic coalitions affects governance agendas. Ultimately, the tradition of governance dominated by economic actors in the Waterloo region has not always been socially inclusive. Yet, over time the economic innovation agenda has evolved and incorporated a broader array of voices and concerns. This suggests that the struggle between economic and social governance agendas is not as zero-sum as it is sometimes portrayed and that economic-social hybrid styles of governance can emerge. The chapter begins with a critical survey of the concept of associative governance, particularly concentrating on the relationship between economic innovation development trajectories and social inclusion. It argues that associative governance has always had a normative basis in social development, but that recent discourse on economic development has intensified this link. The following section introduces the Kitchener-Waterloo case and elaborates on its local economic development trajectory and the regional mythology. This section explores the unique evolution of the economic development coalition in KitchenerWaterloo and its evolving economic innovation agenda. Having established the basis and influence of the “Waterloo Way” on its development trajectory, the chapter then questions the degree to which ingrained traditions of regional civic engagement have included a broad coalition of local actors addressing both economic and social priorities. The

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chapter closes with reflections on the implications of these findings for understanding associative governance and its institutional evolution in particular places. Governance, Coalitions, and Economic Development Trajectories Local economic development efforts in the Kitchener-Waterloo region are driven by private-sector associations and public-private partnerships such as the regional chamber of commerce, the high-tech industry association (Communitech), and the regional marketing alliance (Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc.). These partnerships have been incredibly active in visioning exercises, setting priorities for economic development, and stimulating processes of social learning and network building in support of the region’s innovative enterprise. This pattern of governance conforms most closely with the economic innovation economic development trajectory (Bradford and Bramwell, this volume) characterized by the centrality of local innovation systems to development discourses and associative modes of governance. The astonishing success of innovative places like Silicon Valley has been attributed to this type of networked local development trajectory (Cooke and Morgan 1998; Gertler and Wolfe 2004), resulting in the widespread adoption of economic innovation strategies as “best practices.” The emergence of alternative development trajectories (such as Bradford and Bramwell’s social inclusion type) affirms that this innovation-driven model is not without its critics. The emphasis on collaboration and the engagement of economic actors risks privileging goals “of and for the powerful” (Amin 1996, 310). As a result, associative governance strategies have been portrayed as a double-edged sword whereby innovative regions are built at the expense of social inclusiveness. Interestingly, this conclusion rests on the implicit assumption that this form of economic development is a zero-sum game. That is, economic actors will always privilege economic development over social development policy options. To what extent is this actually the case? Is the adoption of an economic innovation development trajectory necessarily incompatible with social equity? This section explores this debate in more detail before turning to the case of the Kitchener-Waterloo region. It demonstrates that literature on associative governance has traditionally acknowledged the complementarity of social and economic agendas and that recent developments in economic development discourse have intensified this connection.

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Associative Governance and Its Critics Associative governance relies on the presence and engagement of selforganizing networks of actors and civic associations in the business of governing. This perspective rejects the top-down notion that successful economic development is uniquely the result of either state intervention or market forces, proposing instead that civic life has an important influence on the development of innovative regions. In practice, this has resulted in the encouragement of local networks and the state’s participation in them, a transfer or splitting of responsibilities to associational actors in policy areas that affect their collective interests, and a greater emphasis on policy partnerships. This shift to governance-driven development through the reduction of bureaucratic dominance of public policy is particularly attractive to governments as an alternative to cost cutting (Bradford 1998) and as a strategy to increase efficiency in policy learning and reflexivity through social dialogue. Associative governance can change the way relations between state and society are configured and carried out. However, it is important to note that the shift from traditional forms of government to associative modes of governance represents a recasting of the role of the state in economic development, not its absence. Authority devolved to local and regional institutions rescales state capacity, but does not necessarily dilute it (Bell and Hindmoor 2009; Brenner 2004). The associative state plays an important role in terms of strategic leadership and capacity building in order to empower civic networks. In economic development efforts the state crucially shapes the institutional environment and underlying conditions conducive to the collective learning processes that link actors (firms, associations, and public agencies) and underpin innovative regions (Gertler and Wolfe 2004). Amin (1999) argues that the needs of the knowledge-based economy have displaced the local elites of the old economy. The development of a fertile environment for economic growth requires a “pluralist and interactive public sphere” to reinvigorate local cultures and build collective capacity. While the complementary relationship of social and economic agendas is an important normative dimension in the theoretical development of associative governance, there remains some question as to how well this has translated in practice. Those for whom the state represents the only institutional authority capable of ensuring social cohesion and democratic legitimacy argue that these trends impose serious limitations

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(Brenner 2004). Furthermore, the assumed advantages of associational governance tend to neglect the often conflictual nature of state–society relations and power differentials among the partners. The result may be promotion of narrow economic goals that overstate the benefits of market forces to drive development (Smyth, Reddel, and Jones 2004). All these critiques question whether associative governance arrangements balance interests in policymaking or threaten social inclusion and democratic representation (Swyngedouw 2005; Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002). Ultimately, however, these critiques are centred on the assumption that coalitions will be captured by narrow interests. New forms of governance are typically led by coalitions of economic, socio-cultural, or political elites (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002) and these configurations of powerful actors with power may well mirror, rather than mitigate, existing social inequalities (Bramwell 2010). Regardless of how inclusive the broader coalition may be, economic elites (firms, research organizations, industry associations, higher-education institutions) control the agenda and their interests will invariably dominate. This chapter contests that line of argument. While not disputing important critiques that can be levelled at all modes of governance about issues of accountability, representation, or democratic legitimacy (Swyngedouw 2005), this chapter explores the possibility that associative coalitions, even when led by economic elites, will engage issues of social development. Economic innovation and social inclusion development trajectories are not two solitudes where there is no overlap between respective policy frameworks or discourses. As Bradford and Bramwell (chapter 1) argue, economic development trajectories are best conceptualized in terms of the potential interplay among discourses and across interests. Consequently, it is possible to conceive of an associative governance coalition with the core goal of maximizing economic innovation also incorporating inclusive social strategies and expanding their networks to support such aims. Indeed, recent work on local economic development and associative governance increasingly points to the link between the social well-­ being and economic dynamism of city-regions (Pastor et al. 2000). Studies that identify factors such as tolerance, environmental and cultural assets, and social diversity and inclusion as characteristic features of creative, innovative places (Cooke and Lazzeretti 2008; Florida 2003; Scott 2006) present a new breed of arguments that blur the boundaries between economic and social development approaches. These place-based

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perspectives highlight the links between social and economic agendas and the importance of more inclusive modes of associative governance (Bradford 2005). Synergies between community and economic development discourses may produce broader development agendas and more representative networks within economic innovation trajectories. This trend towards inclusion is evident in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, although its implication for the development of meaningful and longterm “community-based regionalism” is unclear (Pastor et al. 2000). The Waterloo Myth and the Evolution of Strategic Governance Kitchener-Waterloo operates on a consensus that growth need not run roughshod over environmental or community goals and that successful business people are not pariahs, but can be heroes. The community is also action-oriented – it actually does things, rather than engage in endless debates about change. Scoffield 2006, B10 (emphasis added) [The founding of the new media convergence centre] is another example of community barn-building. Tom Jenkins (quoted in Perry 2009, emphasis added) It’s a tale of a region … We look for opportunities and strive ahead. We have a culture of collaboration. Mayor Brenda Halloran, City of Waterloo (Gionas 2009, emphasis added) There’s no doubt in my mind that none of this would have been possible without an extraordinary level of collaboration and co-operation between ourselves, our municipal partners and the community. David Johnston, president of University of Waterloo (quoted in Hall 2009, emphasis added)

Waterloo is one of the most prosperous and internationally recognized regions of its size in Canada. In a relatively short time it has carved out a niche in high technology, advanced manufacturing, and higher education and has become a model for city-regions seeking new forms of regional economic governance. As the opening quotes of this section indicate, leaders in the community have mythologized collective action and unabashedly credited the entrepreneurial spirit of civic engagement as the source of Kitchener-Waterloo’s success. The fruits of their collective efforts in economic development certainly lend credence to

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this assertion. Economic development in the region is primarily led by coalitions of private actors who have been remarkably proactive in identifying weaknesses and opportunities for collective action. These initially modest and commercially focused efforts have evolved over time, adopting broader agendas, enabling major investments to sustain regional prosperity. This section situates the major players in the Waterloo region, discusses economic governance over time, and critically reflects on the broader implications of Waterloo’s strength for issues of inclusion. This survey finds that as the region has evolved, governance initiatives at the regional scale have proliferated and expanded in scope. Despite the continuing dominance of economic actors, participation in regional strategic management, and the issues at its core, has never been more diverse than it is now. While this may not amount to a complete transformation from an economic-innovation to a social-inclusion agenda, it does suggest that elements of both can coexist and a potential to nudge regional agendas in more inclusive directions.

The Evolution of Civic Governance The Waterloo region has a rich history of collaborative action to develop regional institutions (see Nelles, Bramwell, and Wolfe 2005), but the dawn of regional strategic governance can be traced to the foundation of two core associations in the mid-1980s. Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc. (CTT Inc.) and Communitech were established independently by different communities of actors in order to grow the high-tech economy in the region. However, as the two associations evolved, they developed increasingly close ties and coordinated capacity. Today CTT Inc. and Communitech have expanded their mandates significantly beyond their original designs and function as the core associations in regional strategic governance. CTT Inc. is a regional marketing and economic development association. The association was founded in 1987 by economic development officials in the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge to coordinate regional marketing and business attraction efforts. Originally, CTT Inc. was a marketing corporation; however, its scope of regional activity now includes broader areas of regional economic development such as land use, infrastructure development, and immigrant integration. Representation on the board of directors of corporate partners reflects the economic development mission of the association. In recent years the composition of community partners has changed to include new associations involved in regional economic governance. In addition to

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the municipal chambers of commerce, the regional manufacturing association (the Manufacturing Innovation Network) and regional tourism marketing association (the Waterloo Region Tourism Marketing Corporation) have also been included among CTT Inc.’s community partners. This associational evolution is impressive and has occurred relatively rapidly. Research conducted in the region in the early 1990s found that CTT Inc. was a source of anti-regionalist sentiment and was viewed as a competitor with other local and regional entities (Leibovitz 2003). The contrast to today, where CTT Inc. is a broadly supported regional actor, could not be more distinct. While neither the membership nor leadership of CTT Inc. is broadly inclusive of social or cultural actors, as part of its expanding mandate it has participated in a variety of regional initiatives supporting these types of interests. Communitech began as a member-based organization supporting the high-tech industry in the Waterloo region. Established in 1997, its original mandate was to facilitate the exchange of ideas, to improve networking relations between high-technology firms, and to lobby relevant governments on behalf of the industry. Although these functions remain central to the association’s mission, Communitech now embraces a broader role in regional governance. Like CTT Inc., its leadership and board of advisers represents private-sector and economic development interests. However, it has also led and supported a wide variety of initiatives in social and cultural areas, as well as participated in range of networks. It is on the board of directors of the local Symphony Association, on the board of advisers for K-W Oktoberfest. It has been involved in the Intelligent Community Task Force, the Physician Recruitment Task Force, the Waterloo Region Immigration Employment Network (WRIEN), and the Prosperity Council. It also counts among its members government officials from all levels of government, from local chambers of commerce, the universities in the region, and other community groups. Both CTT Inc. and Communitech are associations that have transcended their originally narrow economic mandates to become leaders in regional governance. Both associations have been described as catalysts of regional initiatives (confidential interview) with the critical mass and political weight to bring people to the table in a wide variety of areas beyond economic development. While the associations themselves cannot be described as widely inclusive – despite the increasing diversity of their membership and partners – the scope of their activities show an intensifying commitment to diversity, cultural vibrancy, and regional health. In fact, there are few genuinely regional partnerships

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in any area that do not include representation of some sort from either organization. Of course, CTT Inc. and Communitech remain at their core economic development associations and their involvement in cultural and social spheres is consistently in the name of regional prosperity. In addition, the support of both organizations is considered by many actors to be crucial to the establishment of any large-scale regional initiative. As a result, this pair can function as de facto gatekeepers to the evolution of strategic management and governance in the Waterloo region.

A Widening Forum: The Prosperity Council If CTT Inc. and Communitech are the anchor organizations of strategic governance in the Waterloo region, then the Prosperity Council is the most important forum for metropolitan issues. The Prosperity Council was created in 2003 at the initiative of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce and includes the Cambridge chamber, CTT Inc., and Communitech among its founding members. The council was created as a federation formed to collectively create an environment that supports opportunities for prosperity in Waterloo region following “The Prosperity Forum 2003,” a visioning exercise that united local business, government, and community interests to discuss regional development strategies. The council is organized around six task forces, each currently in different stages of deliberation: vision, branding and marketing, workforce development, health, arts, and regional growth management. Where CTT Inc. and Communitech officially have an economic development focus, the Prosperity Council’s mandate and membership is much broader. Membership on its task forces represents a diversity of interests in the region. While CTT Inc. and Communitech, and indeed other Prosperity Council members discussed below, are formal associations active in the region, the council itself functions more as a forum than an actor. As a locus of regional debate and discussion, the Prosperity Council has been a launch pad for several regional initiatives. In this role, the council has been very significant in opening up discussions around the broader issues that can underpin regional prosperity. Important issues include physician attraction and retention and other issues of regional health, including the future role of post-secondary education. A recent initiative involved convening local business and arts communities at “Creative Intersections: A Call to Action” in the fall of 2007. This meeting inaugurated a strategic planning process to develop and support social infrastructure capable of sustaining a vibrant regional arts

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and cultural sector. This initiative was fundamentally influenced by recent discourse on “creative cities” that describes a link between economic attractiveness and prosperity and vibrant cultural spaces, which is cited heavily throughout its final report. While the Prosperity Council is without doubt the most broadly inclusive regional initiative yet launched, the focus remains, as its name would suggest, on prosperity. The forum adopts an economic lens even as it tackles issues of broader social and cultural importance to the region. This economic bias is hardly surprising, as it is an initiative of the core economic actors discussed above and the chambers of commerce. However, the scale and scope of the Prosperity Forum are indicative of the broadening focus of collaborative governance in the region, which may intensify as these arrangements evolve.

The Deepening Pool: Recent Governance Initiatives Regional governance associations and forums dealing with narrower mandates have also recently emerged in increasing numbers. Initiatives such as the WRIEN (2006), Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN, 2007), and the Corridor for Advancing Canadian Digital Media (CACDM, 2009) represent a range of interests and issues in the region. Each of these initiatives addresses a specific regional challenge or capitalizes on opportunities for development, and each plays a role in establishing broader strategies to support the future prosperity of the region. WRIEN is a collaborative of employers, agencies, governments, educators, and foreign trained professionals working together to attract immigrants, promote immigrant employment, and support foreign trained professionals. It was established in 2006 as a joint initiative of the Centre for Community Based Research (CCBR)1 and the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce to implement recommendations that came out of the 2005 CCBR-organized Immigrant Skills Summit. The partners secured additional funding for the network from the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, the KW Community Foundation, McDonald Green of Cambridge, and CTT Inc. and Communitech (Wayland 2007). Since its inception the network has attracted increasing funding for its initiatives from public and private sources, including the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Research in Motion. Members of its steering committees and issue groups are drawn from a wide variety of actors in the region, including education, economic development associations, employers, and community groups. WRIEN has yielded many initiatives – the most

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recent of which is the establishment of a federally funded Local Immigration Partnership Council (LIPC) – all of which are supported actively by participating stakeholders. WRIEN is perhaps one of the most inclusive entities in the region, and is the most broadly supported network addressing social issues. Yet, like other associative networks in Waterloo region, its mission is firmly framed in terms of economic development goals. While sensitive to broader immigrant settlement issues such as housing, health, and political inclusion, the primary goal of the network is to address issues related to workforce development such as qualification recognition and addressing systemic barriers to immigrant employment. As a forum uniting a wide variety of socially oriented actors in the Waterloo region, the network has the potential to engage in a broader social mandate, especially with the formation of the LIPC. The MIN was created in 2007 and is an online network built for manufacturing companies in the Waterloo region. It was established in response to the observations of the 2006 Corporate Visitation Program conducted by the City of Kitchener that manufacturing firms in the region were missing valuable opportunities to collaborate and share knowledge due to the lack of an established industrial network. Where Communitech provides networking opportunities and support services to its primarily high-technology members, there was no analogous association for the large number of manufacturing firms in the region. The MIN was conceptualized as an online community where individual firms and employees can make connections and share resources. Although it is built on a different model than Communitech, the MIN may evolve into a similarly powerful voice for regional manufacturing. CACDM is a collaborative initiative joining partners across the region and Southwestern Ontario to develop a centre of excellence in digital media. It combines two projects to develop the region’s digital media capacity launched in 2008/9. The first, spearheaded by the city of Stratford, located a satellite campus of the University of Waterloo and a digital media convergence centre in Stratford. The second established a Kitchener Digital Media Convergence Centre in the downtown core to combine the region’s expertise in digital media and mobile technology. The two separate initiatives were united to establish the first centre of excellence in the region and aim to build on and combine existing strengths for growth possibilities. CACDM is supported by the University of Waterloo, Conestoga College, and the C3 network of universities. Other stakeholders include the governments of Kitchener and Stratford as well as economic development associations from other

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centres in Southern Ontario, including OCRI (Ottawa) and M@rs (Toronto). In addition to receiving key support from local firms such as OpenText and Christie Digital, CTT Inc. and Communitech are also very involved in the strategy and direction of the initiative. While CACDM does not include representation from arts or cultural actors, these sectors are of core importance to the mission of the convergence centres. The vision of the centre of excellence is that arts and cultural expertise can be combined with digital media in order to produce innovative ways to present and manipulate data and visualize processes. In this respect the arts and cultural communities will be deeply engaged in driving innovation within these centres. CACDM is also significant from a collaborative governance perspective, as it marks one of the first times that strategic development has engaged with municipalities beyond its regional boundaries (such as Stratford) or sought support from stakeholders in the broader Southern Ontario region (such as M@rs and OCRI). Drawing on resources at a more provincial scale, it marks an evolution of the associative governance paradigm in Waterloo, leveraging external support to strengthen the regional economy and innovation system.

Civic Leaders and the Institutional Legacy of Engagement The coalition of actors involved in economic development and governance – anchored by the core associations of CTT Inc., Communitech, and the chambers of commerce – has put in place some impressive initiatives. These core associations, and their collective achievements, are the legacy of individuals working together to create a common vision for the region. While this analysis has so far focused on the organizations at the core of these projects, several key individuals stand apart from the rest as the embodiments of the culture of civic engagement, and as important civic leaders for regional projects. The CACDM initiative would not have received the visibility and widespread support it did were it not for the time and considerable resources that Tom Jenkins (CEO, OpenText) and Jerry Remers (COO, Christie Digital) devoted to its promotion. Both men were instrumental in amassing the development support and financial commitments from local firms that were critical in attracting the public capital to complete the project. Like Ira Needles, one of the key architects of the movement that created the now world-respected University of Waterloo, Jenkins and Remers saw an opportunity to establish an innovative institution that could create

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synergies in the region. And, like Needles, they had the civic networks in place to see the project through. This tradition of institutional philanthropy for innovative civic development from business leaders spawned a whole series of massive investments in Kitchener-Waterloo’s knowledge infrastructure. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics was established with private funding from one of the CEOs of Research in Motion (RIM), Mike Lazaridis, to stimulate world-class research in the field. In 2002 Lazaridis joined Jim Balsillie, also a CEO of RIM, in a $20 million donation to establish the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). This was followed by a $50 million grant in 2009 for the campus of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. These are only some of the most prominent examples of individual philanthropy in support of the institutional development of KitchenerWaterloo. None of these investments was geared to benefit the firms in the short term. Similar to the initiatives of the governance networks, these individual actions bolstered the economic attractiveness and longterm sustainability of the region. However, it is interesting to note that, while individual philanthropy in the region is hardly limited to these aims, all these investments focus on developing the elite dimension of Kitchener-Waterloo’s society. They concentrate on the development of infrastructure to attract the best and the brightest, to boost the capacity for innovation in arts, science, and culture – not to improve the access, develop the skills, or meet the needs of those excluded from the world of higher education. While this should not detract from the generosity and vision that these projects entail, it is nevertheless consistent with the pattern of limited social inclusion that dulls the lustre of the Waterloo myth. Evaluating the Inclusiveness of Civic Governance in Kitchener-Waterloo Contemporary governance projects in Kitchener-Waterloo cover a wider range of issues and include a wider diversity of interests than ever before. These partnerships demonstrate an increasing commitment to coordination at the regional scale and intensifying interest in expanding the scope of strategic collaboration. However, despite accelerating regional governance activity, the degree to which these initiatives can be considered inclusive – as genuine bridges that link economic, social, and cultural actors and interests – is questionable. An analysis of the content

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and representation of these associations reveals that the main focus of core missions remains economic development. And despite a degree of inclusivity in some of the more obviously boundary-­spanning groups, the degree to which non-economic participants are able to steer agendas remains unclear. This may be the product of another phenomenon observable in the Waterloo region. Economically oriented actors have become well organized and gained credibility and strength in the region. By contrast, although social and cultural groups often have a longer history of regional collaboration, these sectors tend to be more fragmented and less visible in regional public policy. Finally, CTT Inc. and Communitech, the twin foundations of associative governance in the region, are involved in every single initiative discussed above. Their support lends legitimacy and resources to emerging partnerships. This raises some interesting questions as to the consequences of this participation in terms of shaping regional agendas or influencing which initiatives succeed or fail. Yet, as I have argued above, the governance configuration described by these observations may not necessarily have negative implications. Three governance initiatives stand out as “boundary-spanning” and potentially more inclusive of both interests and actors. The Pros­perity Council was built on the idea of addressing broad regional issues; WRIEN brings together employers and immigrants to deal with systemic barriers to the entry of recent arrivals into the labour market; and CACDM was created to encourage convergence between technological and arts competencies. However, in practice, the obvious economic orientation of these partnerships may limit the degree to which they are practically inclusive. Each might engage with social or cultural communities, but in an effort to bolster regional competitiveness not social equity or cultural diversity. While this is a justifiable critique of Waterloo region’s economic innovation governance trajectory, its practical consequences should not be overstated. Social and cultural issues such as immigrant integration and arts infrastructure may be being framed in economic development terms, but to what degree does that diminish the validity of attempts to address these issues? One arts advocate involved in the Prosperity Council argued that the deliberations around a regional arts strategy had the potential to benefit the sector, regardless of the motivations (confidential interview, 15 January 2008). And few would deny the benefit of organizing regionally to address issues of immigrant workforce development. That these questions are being framed through an

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economic lens is undeniable, but that doesn’t preclude other initiatives aimed at social equity. Beginning with an economic focus still brings a diverse range of actors to the table, thereby increasing the potential that a variety of interests and issues will come to the fore in the course of debating core missions, identifying strategic priorities, and reconfiguring partnerships to seize opportunities that expand mission scope. This has already occurred within WRIEN with the creation of the LIPC. The council aims to address broader issues of immigrant and refugee access to services (such as health and welfare), employment and credentials, language skills, cultural integration, and overcoming discrimination. The federally funded LIPC proposal emerged from WRIEN’s Immigrant Support Work Group and has proceeded in partnership with the government of the Waterloo region. Its participation is both much more broadly inclusive and its goals more socially oriented than WRIEN’s core mission. Despite being in an early stage of development, the LIPC demonstrates the potential benefits of regional collaborative governance, lending some credibility to claims that even economically framed partnerships can catalyse broader social and cultural inclusion. One of the reasons that economic development issues have tended to frame strategic management efforts to date is that economic actors have typically been more active, organized, and visible on the regional scale than social or cultural actors. This is not to say that these two sectors are disorganized or are ineffective, but rather that economic associations and actors have been more successful in gaining public attention with a broader regional audience. For instance, in each of the interviews conducted for this project, subjects were asked to name key individuals and associations active at the regional level in the three sectors of interest: economic, social, and cultural/arts. No matter the origin sector of the interview subject, without exception each interviewee named the same core associations and leaders in the economic sphere. CTT Inc., Communitech, and the Prosperity Council were all cited repeatedly as the key associations concerned with economic governance in the region. However, on the arts and cultural side, even on the part of interviewees from within those sectors, there was little consensus on core organizations or leadership. It would be an error to attribute this lack of consensus to a failure of governance or leadership within the arts and social sectors. In part the fragmentation of these sectors is understandable given the wide range of scales at which they operate and the scope of the governance problems that they address. For instance, in the social governance sector

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groups address everything from downtown poverty to extra-curricular programming in schools, to neighbourhood support services. The focus of initiatives ranges from regional campaigns, local programs, neighbourhood targeted services, to programs serving specific community groups or institutions. Those interviewed who were delivering neighbourhood and local programs saw little need to coordinate at the regional level to support their activities. The regional scale simply wasn’t relevant. To the degree that these local and sub-local groups interacted with the regional level, it was to seek funding and other resources. In both instances, the United Way of Kitchener Waterloo and the Kitchener and Waterloo and Cambridge and North Dumfries Community Foundations were often named as significant. Those with ties to social forums at the regional level named the community foundations as the most important regionally oriented associations, particularly for their work in producing an annual assessment of regional social sustainability in the form of the “Vital Signs” report. The arts and cultural sector exhibits a similar story. The groups that make up this community include individual companies, galleries, performers and artists, event spaces, and troupes, as well as a few select federations within these categories. In general, the arts and cultural sector is less coordinated and active at the regional level. The main exception to this rule is the Waterloo Regional Arts Council (WRAC), a public service organization serving artists and arts organizations of all disciplines and traditions within the region. Currently, this organization operates a web portal and artist/venue directory, and lists events and information related to the arts scene. However, it has not been very successful at advocating for the arts or engaging in strategic management for the sector. One observer commented that it was difficult to attract and engage members of the artistic community because of their diversity and owing to a consistent state of financial crisis within arts organizations and infrastructure. These difficulties are in the process of being recognized within regional political circles, but more as a result of the effects of the Prosperity Council’s renewed focus on the arts in response to “creative cities” orthodoxy than to any effort of the WRAC. One of the main proposals circulating within the arts task force is the reform of the WRAC along the model of CTT Inc., which also inspired the structure of the WRTMC. In short, for a variety of (not necessarily negative) reasons the arts and social sectors in the Waterloo region have not managed to gain the visibility or policy clout of their economic counterparts in regional governance. This may partly explain the

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dominance of economic development concerns, even in forums ostensibly oriented primarily at cultural and social issues. One final observation about the configuration of governance arrangements in the Waterloo region is that two organizations – CTT Inc. and Communitech – are ubiquitous actors in almost every regional forum imaginable. Only the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce comes even close to the same level of participation and leadership on governance issues. Together these three organizations seem to lead, or at least play an important catalytic role in, every major regional initiative that has emerged since the early 1990s. So deep is their involvement that one might ask whether a regional program can be successfully launched without the at least tacit support of this triumvirate. This possibility raises important questions about the implications of such a consistently strong group at the centre of regional governance arrangements. On the one hand, these associations have played an incredibly important role in catalysing cooperation, bringing diverse groups together, achieving necessary critical mass to move forward, and lending legitimacy to the projects that they support. On the other hand, to what extent are these associations becoming the gatekeepers of the regional governance agenda in Waterloo? And to what degree are problems that don’t serve the interests of these associations being seriously addressed at the regional level as a result? Unfortunately, at the moment the answer to these questions remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that regardless of the potential bias resulting from the strong representation of these associations in regional governance, they have been invaluable in promoting a regional agenda and successful in expanding the scope of discussion about regional prosperity. In this respect CTT Inc., Communitech, and the K-W chamber are anchor institutions that have produced increasing collaboration and awareness of regional issues beyond a narrow economic development agenda. Conclusion: Beyond the Myth? Kitchener-Waterloo is indeed an extraordinary place. It is a high-tech oasis in the middle of a mostly rural part of Southwestern Ontario and home to higher education, innovative corridors of excellence, and knowledge infrastructure that are the envy of communities many times its size. The spirit of entrepreneurship and cooperation that characterized the pioneering families of the region lives on in the innovative small enterprises and collectively built institutions. This spirit sets

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Kitchener-Waterloo apart from its peers in the hearts and minds of its residents and leaders and in external evaluations of the region’s perhaps unlikely success (see Nelles, Bramwell, and Wolfe 2005; Bramwell and Wolfe 2008). The chapter has sought to pierce this veil of myth and investigate the practical application of Kitchener-Waterloo’s distinctive form of associative economic governance. More specifically, it critically examines some of the assumptions that accompany instances of strong civic networks and associative governance. Several findings from this case are particularly relevant, and highlight important theoretical nuances for the study of civic networks and their influence on local economic development. The presence of civic networks, particularly in a mid-sized community that claims to be built on a culture of cooperation, implies a degree of social inclusion that might not be expected in other cases. Theories of economic governance are often criticized on the basis of democratic legitimacy and social inclusiveness. In the Kitchener-Waterloo case, the most active governance networks are almost exclusively led by economic actors and lead organizations. However, over time regional governance has addressed a broader social agenda and involved a wider array of actors, even while privileging economic development. The spirit of cooperation, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement that permeates the Kitchener-Waterloo region has become the local mythology. These community characteristics unquestionably helped to build the innovative local economy and its institutional assets. However, the findings of this chapter caution against reading too much into the potential of these networks. Where civic networks have been strong in the realm of economic development, they are not necessarily as well developed elsewhere. This all adds up to a region that may be less inclusive of community concerns, and more vulnerable to economic downturns than a broad interpretation of associational governance theory leads one to expect. Yet a historical analysis of the region has shown the gradual evolution and expansion of civic networks, driven in part by its exceptional local culture. It is quite probable the KitchenerWaterloo region has more surprises in store as an extraordinary place in the process of becoming. NOTES 1 Formerly the Centre for Research and Education in Human Services (CREHS).

Myth Making and the “Waterloo Way”  107 REFERENCES Amin, Ash. 1996. “Beyond associative democracy.” New Political Economy 1 (3): 309–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13563469608406265. Amin, Ash. 1999. “An institutionalist perspective on regional economic development.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23 (2): 365–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00201. Bell, Stephen, and Andrew Hindmoor. 2009. Rethinking governance: The centrality of the state in modern society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814617. Bradford, Neil. 1998. “Prospects for associational governance: Lessons from Ontario, Canada.” Politics & Society 26 (4): 539–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.11 77/0032329298026004005. Bradford, Neil. 2005. Place-based public policy: Towards a new urban and community agenda for Canada. Research report. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. Bradford, Neil. 2014. “Challenge and change in London.” In Governing urban economies: Innovation and inclusion in Canadian city-regions, ed. Neil Bradford and Allison Bramwell. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bramwell, Allison. 2010. “Networks are not enough: Urban governance and workforce development in three Ontario Cities.” PhD dissertation, University of Toronto. Bramwell, Allison, and David Wolfe. 2008. “Universities and regional economic development: The entrepreneurial University of Waterloo.” Research Policy 37: 1175–87. Brenner, Neil. 2004. “Urban governance and the production of new state spaces in western Europe, 1960–2000.” Review of International Political Economy 11 (3): 447–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969229042000282864. Canada’s Technology Triangle. 2010. “Knowledge creation.” http://www .techtriangle.com/knowledge_creation. Cooke, Philip, and Luciana Lazzeretti. 2008. Creative cities, cultural clusters and local economic development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Cooke, Philip, and Kevin Morgan. 1998. The associational economy: Firms, regions and innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi .org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198290186.001.0001. Florida, Richard. 2003. “Cities and the creative class.” City & Community 2 (1): 3–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1540-6040.00034. Gertler, M., and D.A. Wolfe. 2004. “Local social knowledge management: Community actors, institutions and multilevel governance in regional foresight exercises.” Futures 36 (1): 45–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0016-3287(03)00139-3.

108  Governing Urban Economies Gionas, Sandra, producer. 2009. “The debate: Ontario’s innovation economy.” On The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 29 March 2009. Toronto: TVO. Graff, Harvey J. 2008. The Dallas myth: The making and unmaking of an American city. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hall, David. 2009. “Recipe for success: University leader tells chamber cooperation vital.” Windsor Star, 29 March 2009. Leibovitz, Joseph. 2003. “Institutional barriers to associative city-region governance: The politics of institution-building and economic governance in ‘Canada’s Technology Triangle.’” Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 40 (13): 2613–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0042098032000146812. Nelles, Jen. 2009. “Civic capital and the dynamics of intermunicipal cooperation for regional economic development.” PhD dissertation, University of Toronto. Nelles, Jen, Allison Bramwell, and David A. Wolfe. 2005. “History, culture and path dependency: Origins of the Waterloo ICT cluster.” In Global networks and local linkages: The paradox of cluster development in an open economy, ed. David A. Wolfe and Matthew Lucas, 227–52. Kingston, Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Pastor, Manual, Peter Drier, J.E. Grigsby, and M. Lopez-Garza. 2000. Regions that work: How cities and suburbs can grow together. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Perry, Ann. 2009. “Meet our post-industrial Waterloo.” Toronto Star, 21 March 2009, B1. Safford, Sean. 2009. Why the garden club couldn’t save Youngstown: The transformation of the Rust Belt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scoffield, Heather. 2006. “Manufacturing change: Towards a smarter economy: Part one – The Waterloo way.” Globe and Mail, 25 April 2006. Scott, Allen J. 2006. “Creative cities: Conceptual issues and policy questions.” Journal of Urban Affairs 28 (1): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2166 .2006.00256.x. Smyth, Paul, Tim Reddel, and Andrew Jones. 2004. “Social inclusion, new regionalism and associational governance: The Queensland experience.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28 (3): 601–15. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00538.x. Statistics Canada. 2010. “Population of census metropolitan areas.” In CANSIM: Statistics Canada. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/ sum-som/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm. Swyngedouw, Erik. 2005. “Governance innovation and the citizen: The Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state.” Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 42 (11): 1991–2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980500279869.

Myth Making and the “Waterloo Way”  109 Swyngedouw, Erik, Frank Moulaert, and Arantxa Rodriguez. 2002. “Neoliberal urbanization in Europe: Large-scale urban development projects and new urban policy.” Antipode 34 (3): 542–77. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/1467-8330.00254. Wayland, Sarah. 2007. Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network – WRIEN: A model of dynamic and collaborative community response. Toronto: The Maytree Foundation. Wolfe, David A. 2010. 21st century cities in Canada: The geography of innovation. Toronto: Conference Board of Canada.

5 The Politics of Coalition Building in a Deindustrializing City: Linkages, Leadership, and Agendas in Hamilton allison bramwell

Hamilton is the difference between buying a new home and renovating an old one. Anytime you do renovations it’s very hard, you come across all sorts of old pipes and contaminants, but you have treasures all over the place too. Confidential interview

Many cities in Ontario continue to struggle with the pressures of globalization and deindustrialization that have accelerated since the early 1980s. Despite lively discursive debates, questions about how cities actually go about trying to address these policy challenges have undergone relatively little empirical analysis in Canada. The central question of whether cities in Canada’s industrial heartland are developing their own strategic responses to social and economic change provides important insights into collaborative governance and the process of coalitionbuilding in Canadian cities. Because they focus attention on shifting state and society relations within different local contexts, theories of urban governance provide a useful lens through which to examine how governance dynamics shape cities’ efforts to develop strategic approaches to economic and social development. This case study of urban governance in Hamilton, Ontario, examines the collaborative efforts of local governmental actors and communitybased networks to address the challenges of poverty and economic restructuring. Mapping three primary networks and their discourses, we find that both sector networks and institutionalized collaborative types of governance are operating in Hamilton. From a sectoral perspective, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR) is a broad network focused on social inclusion issues, while the Hamilton

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Chamber of Commerce is a narrower “pro-growth” network focused on economic development. Seeking to integrate these social and economic agendas, the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative (JPC) is a multi-sectoral collaborative that emphasizes community development and sustainable employment. The JPC is an example of a cross-sectoral coalition that is closely aligned with the policy objectives of local government, and acts as a centralized linking mechanism or “hub” for intersecting community interests and discourses. This analysis of the patterns of interaction among these networks and their relations with local political leaders and senior municipal staff reveals the prospects and the problems of new forms of urban governance in Canadian cities. In places such as Hamilton, hard hit by successive rounds of industrial restructuring, there is evidence of collaborative development coalitions that seek to build community capacity for long-term strategic planning, but questions remain about sustainability. It is one thing for cross-sectoral networks to form and quite another for them to maintain the commitment and cohesion to form a governing coalition that actually makes or shapes public policy. Indeed, Hamilton’s recent development underscores the complexity of such institution building and the potential for conflict. In attempts to bridge long-standing divides between social welfare and economic development interests, Hamilton’s collaborative momentum has foundered on disputes within the economic development community over alternative futures, one seeking to retain its manufacturing strengths and the other seeking to encourage knowledge-intensive industries. A central challenge for the JPC in the future will be bringing these competing visions into alignment and forging a compelling direction for Hamilton’s development to rally broad-based support from public, private, and community sectors. The analysis proceeds as follows. We begin with an overview of the Hamilton economy, highlighting the ongoing economic and social challenges of intensive industrial restructuring. Next we situate the JPC as a nascent collaborative governance structure in a discussion of theories of urban governance identifying three key variables – feasible agenda, civic leadership, and linkages with local government – that appear to influence institutional viability and policy capacity. The chapter then describes the three primary networks operating in Hamilton, with a particular focus on the JPC’s role as an institutional space and strategic actor for joining up ideas and interests about Hamilton’s future development. The chapter concludes with observations about Hamilton’s

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pattern of network relations and prospects for collaborative sustainability in relation to the three governance variables. A Brief Profile of Hamilton Hamilton is a city deep in the throes of economic transition, the outcome of which remains uncertain, and so a clear characterization of its current economic situation is somewhat elusive. Situated roughly at the midway point between Toronto and Buffalo, New York, Hamilton is geographically centred in the middle of the densely populated Golden Horseshoe industrial region at the western end of Lake Ontario and the Niagara Peninsula.1 Though Ontario cities have largely escaped the depth of urban decay experienced by their US rust-belt counterparts, Hamilton is one of several that have undergone the steady and protracted decline of its traditional manufacturing industries. While it continues to struggle under the economic shocks of deindustrialization and massive job losses coupled with high poverty rates, it has a strong regional health care system, emerging health-science-based industries, and several post-secondary institutions. From an economic development perspective, while some emphasize its proud industrial heritage and seek to capitalize on its traditional manufacturing base and geographical location, others see it as having the factor advantages to support a successful shift to knowledge-intensive industrial activities and rue a civic inability to push forward the initiatives required to drive this transition. Yet several innovative economic, social, and civic initiatives that enjoy widespread community support are currently under way, and many see Hamilton as the up-and-coming “next big thing.” Hamilton felt the sting of economic restructuring earlier than most Ontario cities. Steel and its related manufacturing industries, from railways in the nineteenth century to auto parts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, historically formed the backbone of Hamilton’s large manufacturing industries, but its once strong manufacturing sector was also home to a diverse set of other activities, including textiles, agricultural equipment, tires, processed food, and major appliances. Though a relatively high proportion of Hamilton’s population is still employed in the manufacturing, transportation, and logistics sectors, and Hamilton’s list of top ten employers still includes four large manufacturing companies centred on steel and related industries, most Hamilton manufacturing industries have undergone steady contraction.2 Beginning in the early 1980s, Hamilton felt the early warning of

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impending globalization and deindustrialization with the closure or relocation of many manufacturing firms, some of which were indigenous and dated back to the turn of the twentieth century, resulting in major manufacturing job losses.3 In 2006, 11,000 manufacturing jobs were lost to Hamilton alone.4 These dramatic and sustained job losses in the manufacturing sector, coupled with the fact that a higher than average proportion of the population of Hamilton lives in poverty, means that Hamilton continues to face critical social and economic challenges. In fact, Hamilton is tied with Toronto for having the highest rate of poverty of major Ontario cities. In the City of Hamilton, 20 per cent of residents, or about 95,000, live below Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-Off measure (LICO). Of this, 26 per cent are classified as working poor, because their employment does not provide adequate wages or job security to maintain a basic standard of living, and another 8 per cent are Ontario Works participants who are considered job ready and looking for work.5 At the same time, however, Hamilton is also well known for the strength of its regional health care sector, anchored by Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS), which has emerged as a major player in the local economy and the largest single employer, with 10,000 workers. A related medical diagnostics sector appears to have begun to develop as a result of research linkages with local research and teaching hospitals, and anecdotal evidence suggests that it is gaining an international reputation and has begun to act as an important attractor of talent as world-class researchers are drawn to well-staffed and supported clinics and research facilities. The McMaster Innovation Park (MIP) is seen by many to be another critical element of future economic development in Hamilton. Located on the site of the former Camco plant, McMaster University, with the support of all three levels of government, has renovated this former industrial space to house research labs and spin-off incubators in materials manufacturing and the biosciences.6 In addition, though the transition remains in its very early stages, the federal government has made the commitment to move its CanMet lab, along with its staff and research scientists, to the MIP.7 The Politics of Coalition-Building: Leadership, Linkages, and Agendas Managing economic and social change on the scope and scale of Hamilton’s recent past is beyond the control and capacity of any one

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group or sector. In such conditions, as urban governance scholars ­emphasize, “getting important things done” requires governments to “blend their capacities” with non-governmental actors to drive change and implement policy innovation (Stone 1989, 2005). Theories of urban governance examine the development of formal and informal arrangements at the city-region level that support stable governing coalitions which “bridge state and market, city hall and civic leaders, and take on various forms under different economic and policy conditions” (Giloth 2004, 16). Myriad new forms of governing arrangements involving collaboration between local governmental and economic and communitybased actors have begun to emerge, not just across, but also within cities. A key debate surrounding attempts to analytically capture these emerging dynamics is between those who emphasize the siloed or “two-worlds” nature of urban governance and those who underscore the potential for institutionalized cross-sectoral collaboration that relates the economic and social dimensions of industrial restructuring (Bradford and Bramwell, chapter 1). Recent approaches to urban governance explore locally driven institutional design processes that “structure the power relations of both state and market interests, sketch out the possibilities for participation and representation in local economic development policymaking, and shape the goals, preferences and prospects of contending groups.” It follows that such institutional processes influence “how effectively a city will anticipate and address its economic development needs and local citizenship issues” (Clarke and Gaile 1998, 107). In analysing these dynamics, urban governance theorists isolate political choice as a key variable that accounts for differences in institutional structures, interest representation, and policy outcomes. Because norms and values embedded in local institutions are closely linked to the interests and goals of those who participate in the governance process, the question of who governs remains crucial (Pierre 1999, 2005; DiGaetano and Strom 2003; DiGaetano and Klemanski 1999; Lowndes 2001). City leaders from across sectors can choose to pursue collaborative orientations rather than division and dif­ ference. Research indicates that some cities are successfully building cooperative, cross-sectoral arrangements among local actors and institutions that do integrate or balance economic growth and social inclusion (Keating 2002; Clarke and Gaile 1998; Pastor et al. 2000). However, the diffuse linkages and relational nature of power between public, private, and community actors in urban centres makes

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these governing coalitions challenging to build and sustain (Clarke and Gaile 1998; Clarke 2004; Stone 1989, 2005). Indeed, theories of urban governance suggest that different parts of the municipal administration align with different sectors and that these “siloed” patterns of interaction shape governance efforts at the local level. Viewing local governance institutions as amalgams of ideas and interests, Pierre (1999, 2011) argues that these institutions favour particular key participants and political objectives. Different segments of the community and different city administrators embrace different values. Given “contending views even within cities about the purpose and goals of the city’s policies,” Pierre predicts conflict over discourses and policies will be more likely than consensus. The typical structural division of labour between state and market in urban politics suggests that different interests will organize around local economic or “pro-growth” and social development or “welfare” policy agendas and that interaction between them will be minimal (Pierre 1999, 2011).8 The result may be “governance gaps” that inhibit effective problem solving in the face of complex economic and social changes that call for community-wide response. A challenge for collaborative urban governance initiatives, therefore, is for various societal interests, and the municipal officials who align with them, to transcend their sectoral perspectives in search of common ground, or what Stone (1989, 2005) refers to as a feasible agenda through which joint work can proceed. Building stable cross-sectoral governing coalitions requires “boundary spanners” who can “break down intersectoral barriers of mistrust” between government officials and civic leaders and coalesce to formulate strategies and implement local policies. Yet, successful boundary-spanning activity is relatively rare (DiGaetano and Strom 2003), with recent research underscoring considerable variation in the form and content of coalitions and uncertainty about their sustainability (Harding 1999; Sellers 2002; Savitch and Kantor 2002; Bramwell 2012). This brief review of the urban governance theory brings into focus three key variables. A feasible common agenda, boundary-spanning civic leadership, and linkages with political leaders and senior municipal officials all interact to facilitate formation of stable cross-sectoral coalitions and sustain collaborative governance mechanisms. The discussion now shifts to a detailed analysis of how different interests and their discourses are organized in Hamilton, as well the patterns of interaction that shape urban governance efforts. While Hamilton is perceived

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by some to be a politically fragmented community that has difficulty establishing consensus on city-wide priorities, there is evidence of change. We track several economic and community networks operating at varying degrees of formality, each aligned around identifiable objectives, values, and discourses. Our focus is on the two key sector networks, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR) and the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce (HCC), and the most prominent cross-sectoral initiative, the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative (JPC).9 Highlighting variation in how these networks are organized and the patterns of interaction between them, as well as their relations with municipal politicians and administrators, we find that the JPC, while still a nascent even fragile entity, exhibits certain features of institutionalized collaboration. It has emerged as a “hub” for intersecting interests and discourses, is driven by strong civic leadership, and is well linked with local politicians and municipal staff. However, conflict over the future direction for economic development in the city suggests the absence of a stable governing coalition, while a lack of policy outputs underscores that the JPC is not yet institutionalized in Hamilton’s governance landscape. Social and Economic Development in Hamilton: Beyond Fragmentation? Whether it is a self-perception or perceptions from outside the community, there is a strong sense that Hamilton labours under a negative “reputation” as an ugly, dirty, “lunch bucket” town. Some respondents referred to Hamilton’s industrial past and the perception that it is a deindustrializing city that has not kept up with the pace of change, and has high levels of poverty as a result. Other respondents emphasized the fragmented nature of the city-region, and the fact that communitybased actors have historically tended to operate in their own isolated silos rather than engaging with broad community development: In Hamilton it has been very fragmented. The university has functioned on its own. Mohawk [College] has functioned on its own. The industries that we’ve had have suffered on their own. The education system operates on its own. The city … typically operated on its own … in three or four different pieces where you have powerful committees and powerful groups which have responsibility for certain parts of the city or certain aspects of the city. They don’t interfere with each other and they don’t

Coalition Building in a Deindustrializing City: Hamilton  117 align with each other about anything, either … So it’s been, in my opinion, a very fragmented city. (Confidential interview)

An enduring tension between advocates of social and economic development, or a “left/right old-fashioned political rub,” plays out in different ways, and appears to underlie perceptions of the fractious local political climate; “the political culture of this town” is described as “divisive, class based, and conflict ridden” (confidential interview). Many cited the historically dysfunctional working relationships on Hamilton City Council as a graphic manifestation of these divisions and a primary impediment to collaboration (confidential interview). In fact, interview respondents identified numerous “governance gaps” in Hamilton, which included the lack of a private, not-for-profit economic development corporation; a chamber of commerce seen as having “narrow attitudes” and regressive approaches to economic development; the perception of Hamilton as having a “blue collar mentality” that is “not a business-friendly R&D environment”; an underfunded municipal Economic Development Department; and a city council and senior staff who were seen as risk-averse and “not great drivers of new opportunities.” Each of these were cited by respondents as impediments to building a progressive economic development strategy for the city (confidential interviews). Against this less-than-propitious backdrop, it is important to consider how three main networks involved in Hamilton’s social and economic development, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, and the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative have recently evolved, and how they interact with local government officials, and with each other to advance city-wide development. Despite perceptions of Hamilton as a socially and politically divided city, there is an emerging sense that civic engagement in the city is improving and that collaborative behaviour is starting to take shape after a long period of conflict and fragmentation. Innovative and engaged civic leadership is becoming more visible. There appears to be a growing “buzz” about the increasing strength and potential impact of new forms of collaborative behaviour such as recently established community forums, sector networks, and governance mechanisms that were alluded to in all interviews. As one respondent put it, “Silos are coming down, and informal leadership is starting to align and work collaboratively together and to understand each other’s role in community building” (confidential interview). It is significant that while many people interviewed

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mentioned the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, every person interviewed mentioned either the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative or the Hamilton Economic Summit hosted by the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, and often mentioned both.

The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction: Social Inclusion The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction is a particularly successful example of a broadly inclusive and highly collaborative multistakeholder social development sector network that provides a regular forum for organizations to share information, discuss ideas, and coordinate services. Inclusive of large not-for-profit charitable organizations and service providers such as the United Way and the YMCA, as well as representatives of all three levels of government and most other local service providers, the HRPR provides a strategic focus for coordinating poverty reduction activities across the city. The HRPR was built on the foundation of earlier collaborative work. Strong informal relationships already existed between federal and provincial ministries, local government, local charitable foundations, the District Health Council, and the Social Planning and Research Council, who met regularly to discuss the coordination of poverty reduction activities in the city. Their collective efforts resulted in the development of a formally articulated “Social Vision” for the city that was endorsed by city council in 2002, the principles of which were subsequently adopted by the HRPR. Since then, the City of Hamilton has played a critically important role in the HRPR, acting as both a “convener and partner” and thereby “helping to create a culture that enables collaborative governance and a sense of shared responsibility” in the city (Bulthuis 2007, 2). Driven by senior municipal staff, with political commitment from two successive mayors, and core funding for the executive director’s salary from the municipal government, the City of Hamilton’s sustained involvement in the HRPR is evidence of policy activism in areas typically outside of municipal jurisdiction: “It was very bottom-up. We intentionally started that work with the Social Vision because we said … we are not going to sit around any longer and wait for the province or federal government to take care of us” (confidential interview). In addition to political and policy leadership from the city, the HRPR has also benefited from sustained influential civic leadership. It was coestablished by Joanne Priel, the manager of social services for the City of Hamilton, Caroline Milne, the executive director of the Hamilton Com­ munity Foundation, and Mark Chamberlain, the well-known business

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leader and civic entrepreneur, who is also chair of the JPC. Other community leaders such as the presidents of McMaster University and Mohawk College, city councillor Brain McHattie, and the mayor were or continue to be involved on a regular basis. Furthermore, participants consistently note the positive working relationships and high levels of trust and social capital within the HRPR (Weaver and Makhoul 2009). Apart from organizing and consolidating the social welfare inclusion discourse for the city, the HRPR has been instrumental in attracting attention from other levels of government. The political astuteness of network participants ensured that “many, many things were intentionally done to raise the profile” of the HRPR, including the briefing of candidates in federal, provincial, and municipal elections on the HRPR’s work. Not only has the HRPR model been “scaled up” to the provincial level and replicated in several other communities.10 The HRPR also acts as a locally based policy forum to advocate for a province-wide antipoverty strategy (Weaver and Makhoul 2009). Most saliently for this research, however, the HRPR has had a positive effect on the patterns of interaction between social networks and on discursive debates within the city. Tensions between social and economic development interests appear to have attenuated since its establishment, with a local consensus taking hold on the need to tackle rising income inequality and neighbourhood-based distress. At the same time, the HRPR is organized around social development and rooted in poverty reduction discourses. Beyond the active participation of a few business leaders, it cannot claim the sustained or wide participation of the local employer community. As such, it remains a sector network, albeit an especially vibrant one, rather than an institutionalized governance collaborative. However, as one observer remarked, “it’s okay” if the business community is not as involved in the HRPR because “now we have the [JPC,] where all the business people are going to learn the same things about collaboration and relationship building” and “maybe the way that table operates is different and maybe the discussion is dif­ferent” (confidential interview). In this way, the HRPR works in conjunction with the JPC, supplementing its efforts to shape a city-wide discourse about community economic development and sustainable employment.

The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce: Traditional Economic Development Like chambers of commerce everywhere, the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce is a membership-based organization whose basic mandate

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is to represent the interests of the local business community. It includes a range of firms operating in all sectors of the local economy, including, for example, large manufacturers like ArcelorMittal Dofasco and Orlick industries, smaller and medium-sized transportation and logistics firms, and smaller firms engaged in a variety of activities. From a discursive perspective the dominant economic development narrative advanced by the chamber tends to be based on traditional activities such as steel and related manufacturing, land use and residential and commercial construction, and other established industries such as agri-food and food distribution and processing. In its policy advocacy, it tends to promote the interests of firms in the manufacturing, transportation, and logistics sectors, and to support greenfield and brownfield development in order to increase the amount of warehousing and serviced employment lands within the City of Hamilton, much of which is spatially concentrated around the Hamilton airport. The chamber’s agenda is described as “pro-business, pro-corporation, pro-development” and interested in “airport, transportation, public and private partnerships for civic government” (confidential interview). Along with the development of employment lands, it also tends to emphasize firm and talent attraction and retention rather than focusing on innovation and indigenous development of firms in technology-based sectors. From a community-wide urban governance perspective, the chamber spearheaded, and has subsequently hosted three Hamilton economic summits, one-day meetings intended to bring sector leaders together to discuss the future trajectory of economic growth in Hamilton. These meetings are broadly inclusive of the local community, and are well attended by civic leaders from all sectors of the economy as well as local educational institutions, social service agencies, arts and culture organizations, and, perhaps most importantly, local politicians and senior municipal staff. It is particularly notable that the level of participation from politicians of the City of Hamilton has increased over the past three years. While one respondent observed that “it would have been nice to see more of our formal leadership” (confidential interview) at previous economic summits, the mayor and almost all city councillors attended the 2010 summit. The seven hundred people who attended this summit represented most sectors in the community, including the arts community, the social service community, and all of the influential local business leaders, as well as the leadership of the JPC. However, rather than broad efforts to generate ideas and facilitate dialogue on a broad range of issues that affect Hamilton’s social and economic growth, the agenda

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focused more narrowly on more traditional urban economic development issues, which included discussions about the economic opportunities arising out of the 2015 Pan Am Games, downtown revitalization, urban and regional transit issues, and youth talent attraction and retention strategies. Notably, broader discussions of facilitating the transition to knowledge-intensive economic activities and sustainable economic development were absent.

The Jobs Prosperity Collaborative: Sustainable Employment and Quality of Life The JPC evolved out of the Hamilton Civic Coalition, an earlier attempt to establish a forum for community-wide collaboration.11 Launched with initial funding from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the City of Hamilton, the JPC is a broad cross-sectoral network that brings together a range of local stakeholders and civic leaders to discuss ways to address city-wide economic and social development issues. Despite the different economic, social, and environmental agendas of the participants, all are aligned around the common goal of job creation and retention in Hamilton. The JPC is divided into seven different working groups, with each focusing on particular aspects of community-based economic and social development. Employment issues – the quantity and quality of jobs – are the common thread among the working groups. With a focus on sustainable economic development and support for the creation of family-sustaining employment, the JPC’s cross-sectoral working groups are chaired by and composed of civic leaders. Each working group focuses on a different priority area, and seeks to integrate the employment, economic growth, and social inclusion dimensions of Hamilton’s development.12 The JPC also enjoys strong, networked civic leadership. Mark Chamberlain, the chair and one of the more powerful driving forces behind the JPC is also the chair of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction. He is a well-known anti-poverty activist, and a very active and influential member of the local business community, with a track record as a highly successful high-technology entrepreneur. The JPC also enjoys direct and formal linkages with the City of Hamilton’s Eco­ nomic Development Department, and the current iteration of the city’s Economic Development Strategy was developed in conjunction with the Economic Portfolio working group of the JPC. The subsequent discussion provides a more detailed analysis of the JPC as an important

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linking mechanism that joins up different interests and discourses in the community, as well as its relationship with the other two sector networks, and with local government. Cross-Sectoral Collaboration: Framing Feasible Agendas When asked about key actors and institutions supporting collaboration at the local level, every interview respondent mentioned the JPC. Many respondents referred to the JPC’s potential to bring “a real breath of hope” to a “very fragmented city” by facilitating alignment among different community agendas and discourses (confidential interview). As one person put it: People in successful communities … get aligned about what they are doing and what they are aiming to do … Alignment is really about having a purpose … a big enough purpose that the whole community can embrace and leadership that keeps that purpose in the front of everybody … It’s about tearing down the silos, getting a common direction that we can all be supportive of. So if you get the community all heading down that same road it’s much easier to get things done. (Confidential interview)

Architects of the JPC learned some valuable lessons about attracting and sustaining community engagement from its precursor, the Hamilton Civic Coalition, one of which was the importance of building a feasible agenda that all participants could buy into (Mossberger and Stoker 2001; Bradford 2003). Despite support from a large number of highly influential civic leaders, the HCC appears to have floundered and lost momentum partly because it lacked focus, and partly because of discursive tension between business interests and community-based social service organizations over whether the coalition should focus on economic development or poverty reduction agendas. In order to retain the inclusive, community-wide structure of the HCC but avoid disabling political and discursive conflict, the focus of the JPC was structured around the discourse of job creation, which was seen as a “strategic focus that everyone could understand and buy into.” As one participant in the JPC commented, “Poverty, if it’s not done properly, can seen to exclude prosperity” but “if you flip it around and call it prosperity, it is easier to get traction,” particularly from the business community, so framing the work of the JPC around job creation was “something that everybody could agree on” (confidential interview).

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In addition to a feasible agenda, the JPC also features an organizational structure that facilitates inclusive participation but minimizes opportunities for conflict or stalemate. Through a series of tables, the JPC provides the “hub” through which different social, economic, and political interests can interact and intersect without having to directly confront one another. In this way, shared understandings within sectors can supply a foundation for more ambitious cross-sectoral planning. As one participant puts it: I think the JPC structure is in part allowing leadership to happen around circles of interest. So if you’re interested in arts and culture your leadership can take place at that table. If you’re interested in economic development through the lens of traditional economic development, your table is over here. So the structure is allowing people to participate in leadership which is great. (Confidential interview)

A detailed discussion of the diversity of community interests that interact through the JPC is beyond the scope of the current paper, but it is worth briefly highlighting the various interests and discourses represented. First, despite some distance between the Chamber of Commerce and the JPC, there is a great deal of membership overlap, and they continue to attend each other’s events with both networks counting on the support and active participation of senior city officials. This suggests that though discursive disagreements over the ­trajectory of economic growth for the city remain, the JPC is supplying space to facilitate ongoing dialogue and social learning. Second, discursive debates over the relative emphasis on social and economic development issues appear to have attenuated somewhat with the establishment of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR), which has had the effect of consolidating the social inclusion discourse for the city, and bringing a broad policy agenda to other levels of government.13 HRPR also has close links to the JPC, where the discourses of poverty reduction and living-wage job creation are mutually reinforcing and strategically brought together.14 Third, the JPC has direct links with environmental, arts and culture, and immigrant integration networks, each of which cuts across economic innovation and social inclusion priorities. Representatives from each of these networks participate in various JPC working groups, and there are indirect links with grass-roots civic participation networks through the environmental constituent network.15

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Interaction between Local Networks: Competing Economic Development Discourses As discussed above, the Hamilton community tends to view itself as a politically fragmented city-region that has difficulty establishing consensus on strategic community initiatives.16 The reduced tension between social inclusion and economic development advocates in Hamilton owing to the HRPR may now be shifting to a rift over the direction of the city’s future economic growth trajectory. While much of the language describing the Hamilton Economic Summit and the establishment of the JPC emphasized the consensual and collaborative nature of these initiatives, closer inspection reveals fissures that have important implications for economic development planning. Conflict over the future of economic development in the city informs competing agendas – or “two camps” – between those who emphasize Hamilton’s traditional industrial manufacturing economy and those who seek to encourage innovation and the transition to knowledge-intensive forms of economic activity (confidential interview). At the time of this research, official discussion of innovation-led economic growth was conspicuous by its absence in Hamilton. When asked about the main actors and activities driving technology-based economic development in the city, few respondents identified relevant actors and institutions such as McMaster University, Hamilton Health Sciences, or the Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network.17 One respondent observed: There’s a huge defensiveness in Hamilton in certain quarters. If you don’t phrase it right you’re walking on eggshells. If there’s any tone in your voice about lost manufacturing, old economy, defunct day-is-done, it’s over … the gloves come off … So framing a conversation within the creative age, within innovation, new products, streamline, globalism, that conversation is taking some time to get there. (Confidential interview)

This tension over the economic development trajectory of the city also appeared to be manifested in discursive conflicts between the chamber and the JPC. While some suggested that the activities of the HES and the JPC were intertwined from the beginning, that both reflect coordinated efforts to transform Hamilton’s divisive political culture by changing the way that different socially organized interests interact with each other, and underscore the overlapping interests and objectives of the two

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networks, others emphasize the inherent tension between them and the “long-standing argument” between the chamber and the JPC because the chamber was “out of step with what’s going on in the community.” For example, while some respondents suggested that the impetus to form the JPC emerged out of a recommendation from the first Hamilton Economic Summit, another respondent reported that the impression that the chamber took the lead on the JPC is “not even close to being true” (confidential interviews). According to this account, the JPC was formed to address shortcomings in the city’s existing economic development capacity and represented “enormous potential to create a different, more positive strategic approach” (confidential interview). Other respondents suggested that because of these tensions, many business people choose not to participate in local economic development activities and prefer closed, informal networks that operate “under the radar” because “they don’t feel understood or respected” (confidential interview). One respondent referred to “an emerging informal network of entrepreneurs who have as big or bigger impact on investments and job growth here as the formal network” and that “a lot of the stuff that happens is quietly done by 50 or 60 people and it isn’t the usual old guard industrialist third generation money, it is a new breed of both civic entrepreneurs and private sector entrepreneurs” (confidential interview). Indeed, the innovation discourse in Hamilton may be finding greater expression. For example, the 2011 Hamilton Economic Summit focused more explicitly on an economic transformation agenda and the Hamilton RIC Centre was rebranded as the Innovation Factory and appears to be actively working to support and expand awareness for entrepreneurial activity in Hamilton. In this context, the JPC represents the innovation agenda in its Innovation and Learning working group. In sum, relations between the Chamber of Commerce and the JPC leadership remain uncertain. Recent leadership change at the chamber has installed a new president and CEO who has been an active supporter and participant in the JPC since its inception. Different economic development visions are not easily reconciled, and the chamber focuses on more traditional economic development issues, whereas the JPC seeks more sustainable and innovative community-wide development. However, the JPC structure and process may help the actors work through the tension. Its Commercial Land and Infrastructure Working Group is focused on the development of serviced industrial lands and an integrated transportation and logistics hub, key issues of interest to the chamber that also address employment and innovation goals.

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Alignment with Local Government: Durable Governing Coalitions or Just Networks? The shift from an analytical focus on the actors and processes of local government to the patterns of interaction between local state and nonstate actors in local governance has expanded the number of variables and possible explanations for policy outcomes. The recent emphasis on the role of civic leadership in the strategic planning process accounts for some dynamics but cannot explain others, and much of the urban governance literature tends to underplay the role of elected municipal officials and the city administration (see, for example, Safford 2009; Wolfe and Nelles 2008). From a social development perspective, the HRPR had direct links to the City from the beginning: one of its principal architects is the general manager of the Community Services Department, the City of Hamilton funds the executive director’s salary, and it has sustained political support from successive mayors and several councillors. From an economic development perspective, however, the linkages between community-based networks and local government are somewhat more complex and ambiguous. Taken together, the HRPR, Chamber of Commerce, and JPC initiatives underscore the importance of analytically capturing the patterns of interaction between local governmental and community-based economic and social actors in urban governance processes. Some respondents commented that part of the reason that networked and collaborative initiatives arose in Hamilton was because of perceptions of governance gaps at the municipal level. City council was often criticized for its lack of leadership and for being too fractious and polarized. Municipal economic development efforts were described as “bureaucratic and not all that sophisticated” and it was suggested that frustration with the pace and direction of local public policy resulted in the community “becoming more assertive in expressing concerns about the barriers to economic growth” in order to communicate “the extent to which governments are an impediment to renewing this place” (confidential interview). From another perspective, some expressed the perception that both the chamber and the JPC experienced initial difficulties obtaining buy-in from the mayor and council because they were seen as competing over who speaks for the city. As one respondent commented, “If it’s seen as a threat … these broad coalitions [can be seen as] being set up to challenge governments … so it is very important to build trust [with the mayor]” (confidential interview).

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More positively, others describe the JPC as filling the economic development governance gap in Hamilton and underscore the close relationship between city politicians, senior staff, and the civic leaders who initiated the JPC. Many people expressed the view that Hamilton is “a world of opportunity,” but that “stronger voices” were needed to support innovation and to facilitate the transition to knowledge-intensive economic activities. The JPC was seen as an important vehicle for improving the connection between the community and the City’s economic development efforts. In keeping with his administration’s intention to “create a different, more positive strategic approach,” it was closely aligned with Mayor Eisenberger’s political platform to expand the economic development capacity of the city from the beginning. Important linkages between the JPC and senior municipal staff were being built.18 There is also some indication that the economic development department of the city has increased its budget and clout within the city administration as a result of its affiliation with the JPC. Perhaps most telling, one senior official described the close relationship between city staff, politicians, and the JPC as a clear manifestation of the shift from government to governance: [The City of Hamilton is] an enabler, we’re not an island and our ability to address the challenges that lay ahead of us will come as a result of us coordinating our actions with the community actions. We shouldn’t feel that we’re always the ones responsible for solving all the problems. We have a role to play, an important role to play, but ours should be more to engage people with their resources and to solve some of these really large regional issues. So how important are these groups? I mean they’re to the point where they’re helping us to form policy. (Confidential interview)

In his description of inclusive, community-wide forms of local governance, however, Bradford (2005, 11) underscores the importance not just of collaboratively developing a “guiding vision that expresses the collective aspirations of a community,” but also “linking this orientation to specific development projects.” It is one thing for a development coalition to form, and quite another for it to actually make and implement policy. A robust and inclusive governance mechanism is critical to building community capacity, but is just the first step. Networks aligned with local government to form a “governing coalition” must be sustainable over time and find an institutional base to have discernible impacts on the communities they seek to serve. In these terms, the jury

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remains out on the JPC. Since the initial flurry of activity that accompanied its launch, the JPC’s activity has not kept pace with high expectations for accomplishments, which casts doubt on its durability. The JPC attracted a lot of initial attention as “the new kids on the block,” but “I’m not sure it’s going to exist in three years” (confidential interview). It hosted a very large and well attended community event in 2009 to clarify understanding and jumpstart community dialogue about developing an inclusive local workforce development system in Hamilton, but has held no major events since then. In addition, there appears to have been little recent discernible activity within the working groups apart from a couple of background papers. Follow-up discussions with JPC participants corroborate observations that the JPC is in a transition period and faces sustainability challenges endemic to many collaboratives after start-up funds run out. Some working groups have accomplished their original objectives, such as the Economic Development Working Group’s collaboration with the City of Hamilton to develop its Economic Development Strategy in 2009. Some continue to meet, but others report little activity. The JPC currently lacks a sustainably funded secretariat to organize activities and sustain momentum and performance measures for its complex and cross-cutting mandate. Even though relations between the JPC and the Chamber of Commerce appear to have improved, sustaining the initial participation of the business community has become a challenge. Finally, a new mayor was elected in the last municipal election, but it is unclear if the leadership of the JPC and the new mayor are closely aligned. Though it still exists, the JPC has been in a period of quasidormancy or benign neglect pending discussions about new directions and next steps. As such, “all bets are off” about whether it can surmount these challenges (confidential interview). Conclusion This chapter has examined the collaborative efforts to address the dual challenges of poverty and economic restructuring in Hamilton. Despite perceptions of Hamilton as a fragmented political community, this research found evidence of collaborative governance activity in the city. Empirically, it mapped three primary networks and the discourses they represented, suggesting that both sector networks and institutionalized collaborative types of governance are operating in Hamilton. The two sector networks, the HRPR and the Chamber of Commerce, focus on

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poverty reduction and pro-growth agendas respectively. The JPC represents a collaborative, cross-sectoral coalition that seeks to integrate social and economic development objectives and to build community capacity for long-term strategic planning. Such institutionalized collaboratives are rare in Canadian cities and our research clarifies the obstacles to their viability and durability. Theoretically, then, our findings suggest that Hamilton’s evolving governance experience currently sits between traditional models of siloed sectors and emergent “join-ups” that integrate or balance economic and social priorities. In analysing these shifts and transitions, the chapter identified three factors – feasible agendas, civic leadership, and alignment with local government – that interact to shape the governance problems and potential of community-wide cross-sectoral coalitions. Despite its initial success in initiating a cross-sectoral process, the JPC demonstrates a mixed record on each of these variables. While it went to great lengths to represent a wide variety of community interests and to build a shared agenda that all participants could support, it was unable to attract sustained “buy-in” from the Chamber of Commerce and the two groups tended to compete over who should shape the future economic development trajectory of the city. Although this tension appears to have attenuated somewhat, the JPC’s difficulties in sustaining business representation continue, suggesting that discursive tensions endure. In addition, while it was driven by energetic and influential civic leaders who were linked closely with the policy objectives of local political leaders, especially the mayor, concerns lingered that the JPC was either competing with municipal efforts or using these linkages to dominate the local political agenda. Electoral change in municipal political leadership is likely to make these challenges more salient. In conclusion, this case study of collaborative urban governance in Hamilton underscores the opportunities and challenge of coalition building for social and economic development in Canadian cities. On the one hand, the breadth and depth of the current economic restructuring call for strategies that balance innovation and inclusion. On the other hand, mobilizing the diverse interests in the city-region behind a shared agenda and institutionalizing the civic capacity for change is a daunting task. In Hamilton, debates over who should determine the future growth trajectory of the local economy coupled with a dearth of concrete outputs called into question the JPC’s capacity to take on the core governance tasks of policy design and implementation. Yet, these initiatives remain in their early stages, and the outcome of their efforts

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remains uncertain. Many respondents referred to the fact that building collaboration among diverse community interests is messy and difficult, and that “true collaboration takes time, energy and resources” and can “slow some things down” (confidential interview). They also emphasized that Hamilton is ready for this type of experimentation because “we have the people in place to make it happen” (confidential interview). It remains to be seen if the JPC can build the strategic leadership and broad-based commitment to have an impact on Hamilton’s future social and economic development. NOTES 1 After amalgamation in 2001, during which the new single-tier City of Hamilton was formed out of the Regional Municipality of HamiltonWentworth and its six municipalities, Hamilton became the ninth largest city in Canada, with a population of just over 500,000. 2 These include ArcelorMittal Dofasco, U.S. Steel Canada, National Steel Car, and Orlick Industries. Both Dofasco and Stelco were acquired by large multinational steel companies over the course of this research and are now known as ArcelorMittal Dofasco and U.S. Steel Canada. 3 Of particular note were the departures of Dominion Glass (established 1864, departed 1997), Otis Elevator (est. 1902, dep. 1987), International Harvester (est. 1902, dep. 1992), Canadian Westinghouse (est. 1903, dep. 1997), Proctor & Gamble (est. 1913, dep. 1998), and Firestone Tire (est. 1919, dep. 1988). The appliance manufacturer Camco, Levi Strauss, and Rheem Canada are among other manufacturing firms that have left Hamilton in the past five years. 4 Globe and Mail, 5 September 2007. 5 The Ontario Works program, delivered through the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, is the provincial government’s pri­ mary temporary income support program, also commonly referred to as “welfare.” 6 The provincial government, through the Ministry of Research and Innovation, pledged $10 million, the City of Hamilton $5 million, and the federal contribution is the CanMet lab. 7 Both advanced manufacturing and biosciences activities are supported by the research capacities at McMaster and Hamilton Health Sciences and will be supported by research and commercialization/incubation

Coalition Building in a Deindustrializing City: Hamilton  131 facilities housed in the McMaster Innovation Park. In addition, the Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network, part of the Regional Innovation Network (RIN) initiative of the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, developed to support the commercialization of biotechnology, has been recently established, and will also move from its current location at McMaster to the MIP. 8 In welfare governance models, industrial cities facing severe problems of economic restructuring and unemployment struggle to regenerate the local economy, and depend on government spending to meet high social welfare needs. Pro-growth governance refers to “the structuring of concerted, public-private actions to boost the local economy,” and restricts membership to business elites and senior elected officials (Pierre 1999, 384). 9 A detailed discussion of other networks is beyond the scope of this chapter, but include the following: the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, a network of social-service providers; environmental protection and sustainable economic development advocates; civic groups focused on increasing civic participation and democratic accountability; the arts and culture network; and an innovation-led economic growth network. 10 See www.tamarackcommunity.ca. 11 The HCC, first established in the early 2000s, and inspired by the Toronto City Summit Alliance, was an effort to establish a regular forum where community leaders could meet regularly to discuss issues of importance to the Hamilton community. Though it managed to continue for several years, many respondents reported that strong initial participation in the HCC began to attenuate when political conflicts emerged over whether the coalition should focus on social welfare or economic development issues, and the work of the coalition languished until 2007. 12 These groups include Innovation and Learning, Hamilton’s Image, Immigration, Commercial Land and Infrastructure, Supporting Planning Process, and the Economic Portfolio. 13 Again, it is beyond the scope of the current discussion, but the HRPR is one of the few community-driven initiatives deemed so successful and worth replication that is has “scaled up” and influenced provincial policy. 14 As mentioned above, Mark Chamberlain chairs both the JPC and the HRPR. 15 For example, at the time interview data was being collected, the executive director of Environment Hamilton was participating in the Economic Portfolio working group. 16 For example, in addition to long-standing perceptions of fractious local politics divided along ‘left’ and right’ lines, one of the most divisive issues

132  Governing Urban Economies in Hamilton has historically been virulent discursive debates between advocates of greenfield expansion of employment lands and the development of a transportation and logistics hub, and advocates of environmental protection and sustainable economic development. This conflict played out most publicly and divisively in the long fight over the building of the Red Hill Expressway. 17 The Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network was the local Regional Innovation Network (RIN) funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. Since the time of the research, the RIN program has been changed to the Regional Innovation Centres delivered by the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation’s Ontario Network of Excellence. The RIC centres are tasked with supporting entrepreneurialism in knowledge-intensive economic activities. The Hamilton RIC was renamed the Innovation Factory. 18 The general manager for planning and economic development for the City of Hamilton worked closely with the chair of the JPC, and the director of economic development and real estate is co-chair of the Economic Portfolio working group. In addition, in conjunction with the chamber, the Economic Portfolio working group acted as the advisory committee on economic development to the City of Hamilton Council for the development of the City’s most recent economic development strategy. Further research is required to determine the participation of city councillors in JPC and chamber activities. Councillors were rarely, if ever, mentioned in this context.

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Coalition Building in a Deindustrializing City: Hamilton  133 Clarke, S. 2004. “The politics of workforce development: Constructing a performance regime in Denver.” In Workforce development politics: Civic capacity and performance, ed. R.P. Giloth. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Clarke, S., and G. Gaile. 1998. The work of cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DiGaetano, A., and J.S. Klemanski. 1999. Power and city governance: Comparative perspectives on urban development. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DiGaetano, A., and E. Strom. 2003. “Comparative urban governance: An integrated approach.” Urban Affairs Review 38 (3): 356–95. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/1078087402238806. Giloth, R.P. 2004. “The ‘local’ in workforce development politics: An introduction.” In Workforce development politics: Civic capacity and performance, ed. R.P. Giloth. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Harding, A. 1999. “North American urban political economy, urban theory and British research.” British Journal of Political Science 29 (4): 673–98. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007123499000320. John, P., and A. Cole. 2000. “When do institutions, policy sectors, and cities matter? Comparing networks of local policy makers in Britain and France.” Comparative Political Studies 33 (2): 248–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 0010414000033002004. Keating, M. 2002. “Governing cities and regions: Territorial restructuring in a global age.” In Global city-regions: Trends, theory, policy, ed. A.J. Scott. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Lazar, H., and C. Leuprecht. 2007. Spheres of governance: Comparative studies of cities in multilevel governance systems. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Lowndes, V. 2001. “Rescuing Aunt Sally: Taking institutional theory seriously in urban politics.” Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 38 (11): 1953–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980120080871. Mossberger, K., and G. Stoker. 2001. “The evolution of urban regime theory: The challenge of conceptualization.” Urban Affairs Review 36 (6): 810–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10780870122185109. Pastor, M., M. Dreier, J. Grigsby, and M. Lopez-Garcia. 2000. Regions that work: How cities and suburbs can grow together. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pierre, J. 1999. “Models of urban governance: The institutional dimension of urban politics.” Urban Affairs Review 34 (3): 372–96. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/10780879922183988. Pierre, J. 2005. “Comparative urban governance: Uncovering complex causalities.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (4): 446–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1078087404273442.

134  Governing Urban Economies Pierre, J. 2011. The politics of urban governance. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Safford, S. 2009. Why the garden club couldn’t save Youngstown: The transformation of the rust belt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Savitch, H.V., and P. Kantor. 2002. Cities in the international marketplace: The political economy of urban development in North America and Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sellers, J. 2002. “The nation-state and urban governance: Toward multilevel analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 37 (5): 611–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 107808740203700501. Stone, C. 1989. Regime politics: Governing Atlanta 1946–1988. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Stone, C. 2005. “Looking back to look forward: Reflections on urban regime analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (3): 309–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1078087404270646. Weaver, L., and A. Makhoul. 2009. “Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction: Setting the table for change.” Community Stories. Caledon Institute for Social Policy, March. Wolfe, D., and T. Creutzberg. 2003. Community participation and multilevel governance in economic development policy. Paper prepared for the Ontario Government Panel on the Role of Government. Wolfe, D.A., and J. Nelles. 2008. “The role of civic capital and civic associations in cluster policy.” In Handbook of research on innovation and clusters: Cases and policies, ed. C. Karlsson. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

PART II Sector Networks

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6 Linking Innovation and Inclusion: The Governance Question in Ottawa caroline andrew and david doloreux

This chapter examines different forms of governance that have emerged in the City of Ottawa in recent years and the extent to which these structures have created opportunities for partners to work together more effectively. In particular, we focus on the role of municipal governments and how they convene different sets of stakeholders to encourage the development of new forms of collaborative governance. Although local government is not the only institution involved, and often not the most important one, we argue that municipal governments can have a major impact on the inclusiveness and innovativeness of a particular city-­ region and that this role has been insufficiently studied, particularly in Canada. Municipal governments can play a significant role in creating, sustaining, and supporting innovative governance structures and can act as an important catalyst in bringing together relevant stakeholders. How­ever, their ability to do this depends on their capacity to partner with a range of community-based organizations, including business networks. Indeed, our study of Ottawa demonstrates the complexity of, and variation in, the municipal role and highlights differences in collaborative success across policy fields. Examining several initiatives in which the City of Ottawa has played its role as convener, catalyst, and partner to animate local governance innovation, we empirically assess theoretical propositions about whether and how municipal governance is able to integrate social and economic considerations in development strategies. We find that there is variation in the way that the City of Ottawa engages with organized communitybased organizations, and while in some cases it initiates governance activities, in others it is simply one of several participants. In relation to the partnership and governance mechanisms examined here, the City

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tends to operate as one of several partners in economic development initiatives, whereas the broader, more inclusive governance mechanisms that the City initiates tend to focus on community partnerships for social development initiatives. In response to the empirical question at the heart of this analysis, it is argued that none of the partnership or broader governance activities outlined here explicitly seek to integrate or “join up” economic and social development objectives. Though there are ostensibly some economic development objectives embedded in social initiatives, and some social development objectives embedded in economic development initiatives, none of these initiatives explicitly seeks to integrate the two. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that new approaches to integrating economic development and social inclusion objectives have begun to emerge in a nascent governance mechanism aimed at immigrant integration in the City of Ottawa. Our explanation for the varied forms of partnership used by the City in economic development and social development areas is partly related to political factors, but even more to factors relating to the administrative structures and the role of the senior administrators of the City of Ottawa. Economic development issues are always central to the agenda of the political leadership of Ottawa, and particularly to the mayor. This is not exclusive to the City of Ottawa, but something that is generally true of mayors across Canada. This leads to two dimensions of the partnerships that the City tends to engage in on economic development issues: their interest in engaging with private-sector business leaders and their interest in the City playing an active role within the partnership. There is not the same dynamic with social development issues. They are more often initiated by senior administrators and there are less often political champions for these issues. The lesser political attraction to social development issues at the municipal level in Ontario could be seen as surprising given that fact that Ontario is the only province in which municipal governments have significant responsibilities in health and social service areas (Canadian Tax Foundation 2007), which could lead to political leaders wishing to focus on these areas. However, we would argue that in general Canadian voters see municipalities as not being major actors in social development, and so there is little political advantage in championing these areas. On the administrative level, there have been senior administrators who have championed major partnerships in social development areas. However, these partnerships have remained very much within the social service or health departments of the municipality. Given the tradition

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of extremely limited horizontal coordination of municipal departments, the initiatives that were developed in the City’s social development departments had no way of being linked to economic development departments. This would explain the varying patterns of partnership that have existed up until the present, but as will be seen later on in this chapter, this may be changing. Exploring the links between innovation, inclusion, and governance in Ottawa over the past thirty years, the presentation here is organized in four parts. We begin with a brief overview of the four literatures that provide different theoretical lenses through which to examine the local integration of economic and social objectives. Turning to the Ottawa case, we offer historical perspective on the city-region’s development and the dynamics of municipal government in Canada’s capital. Next we examine examples of governance innovation occurring primarily within economic or social development sectors. We then describe the municipal government’s recent experience with multi-sector partnerships, concluding with several observations about the achievements and limitations of the various governance structures operating in Ottawa and the extent to which they integrate economic development and social inclusion objectives. Linking Innovation and Inclusion? Four Theoretical Approaches To situate these governance dynamics in Ottawa, we draw upon four related bodies of literature, each offering a different lens through which to analyse the relationships between economic development and social inclusion, local governance and social innovation, and the evolving role of municipal government. The literature on economic development and social inclusion asks whether economic development and social inclusion objectives can be integrated within the same policy and governance mechanisms, or whether these two objectives are mutually exclusive. The OECD has made the argument that economic and social objectives are compatible (OECD 2006), yet Bradford (2005) argues that this question needs to be empirically examined through the detailed analysis of specific programs rather than normatively assumed. In this context, much of the literature emphasizes the relationship between the potential to integrate economic and social objectives and the degree of autonomy or power held at the local level. This suggests that local political agency is an important factor that determines the links, if any, between economic development and social inclusion policies. It also underscores the importance of empirically examining theoretical assertions

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about the compatibility of economic and social objectives, emphasizing that the role of local authorities is a variable worth analysing. Through research that uncovered numerous “examples of initiatives … where integration of economic development and social inclusion agendas, and greater coordination within and between spatial levels is being developed both strategically and in the delivery of concrete initiatives,” North, Syrett, and Etherington (2007, 62) suggest that both political will and administrative capacity play a role. In addition, this literature emphasizes not only the importance of empirically investigating the linkages between economic and social considerations, but also that these links play out both vertically and horizontally, encompassing both political and administrative dimensions of policymaking. These lessons point to the importance of place-based policymaking, our second area of theoretical grounding. Place-based policymaking assumes that “place matters” and can have a measurable effect on social and economic outcomes. Recent research has focused on measuring the factors that influence the success of placebased policies. Bradford (2008) identifies community building and municipal empowering streams of place-based policy and argues that the most innovative policy results from bridging the two streams, particularly when they are linked to processes of social learning. Dunn, Bradford, and Evans (2010, 37–9) emphasize the importance of policy learning, and argue that place-based strategies represent a promising form of social innovation but cannot on their own solve the problems converging in particular geographic areas and need to be linked to more general policies delivered by national or regional governments. In federal states, place-based approaches depend on multilevel coordination of policy and planning, often through local governance structures that tailor investments or regulations to community contexts and capacities. New forms of leadership crossing government, civil society, and the economy are required to support such locally joined-up action. A third relevant literature relates to the evolving role of municipal government and emphasizes the city-region as a level worthy of analysis. Canadian municipalities have traditionally had a rather narrow range of responsibilities centring on the production and maintenance of physical infrastructure in support of economic development. Recently, however, there has been a greater understanding of the importance of the social role of the municipality (Torjman and Levitan-Reid 2003) in areas such as poverty reduction and community economic development. The municipal contribution in the cultural field has also become

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better understood. While the arguments of Richard Florida are hotly debated, he has brought into better focus the strategies and tools available to municipal governments in enhancing a variety of cultural assets and amenities that can contribute to more creative metropolitan development. In addition, for most large Canadian cities, amalgamations have meant that the city-region is the geographic scale of the municipal government, raising questions about the relationship between local government and democratic practice. Purcell (2007) outlines several important areas for further research, including the ways in which different models of local democracy imply different structures and the participation of different actors, and the roles played by discursive and scalar debates about the links between neoliberalism and democracy. Again, these questions imply the need for detailed empirical investigation of governance dynamics and will inform our exploration of the municipal government’s evolving interaction in Ottawa’s economy and civil society. Finally, a fourth relevant literature examines the extent to which governance structures can be seen as social innovation (Goldenberg et al. 2009; Gonzalez and Healey 2005). Although we recognize numerous definitions of governance, we refer to effective mechanisms of coordination in situations in which power, resources, and information are widely distributed (Paquet, cited in Andrew 2009, 140). This definition allows us to focus on detailed administrative and political arrangements for linking significant stakeholders in networked relationships. Mulgan defines social innovation as “innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social” or, simply put, “new ideas that work” (Mulgan, cited in Andrew and Klein 2009, 4). The conceptual link between governance and social innovation can be recast empirically to ask whether governance structures do in fact meet social needs more effectively. Goldenberg et al. (2009) argue for the importance of institutionalizing social innovation in the Canadian context, and moving beyond pilot projects to make social innovation a more permanent feature of the policy landscape. From an international perspective, Gonzales and Healey (2005) analyse governance capacity that promotes social innovation through a grid of three levels of governance – episodes, processes, and cultures – thereby alerting us to institutional variation in new arrangements in localities. This brief overview of these four literatures frames our empirical examination of local governance in Ottawa. We are interested in the municipal capacity to create governance structures that are intended to

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achieve both economic and social objectives. We are particularly interested in the capacity of the municipal government to bring together key stakeholders to devise innovative governance structures that produce intended outcomes in areas of social or economic need. Numerous obstacles to success are identified in the governance literature and our discussion now shifts to analysis of the challenges and opportunities in the Ottawa municipal system. At the same time, it is important to note that the impact and importance of these structures remains contested. Concerns include issues of accountability, transparency, and the amount of time taken to reach decisions. A common thread in the debate is the need for further research in order to understand the potential, as well as the limits, of these governance structures. Ottawa: Setting the Stage In order to examine the forms of multilevel collaborative governance currently emerging in Ottawa, it is useful to trace the historical development of Ottawa in relation to its socio-economic dimension, its institutional development, and the impact of these dynamics on the spatial distribution of employment and demographics across the region of Ottawa-Gatineau. Though this chapter focuses specifically on the City of Ottawa, it is impossible to understand its development without reference to the broader urban region that spans the provinces of Ontario and Quebec on both sides of the Ottawa River. Modern development of the region began with the lumber industry, which was slowly displaced by the growing importance, particularly during and after the Second World War, of the federal government as the primary economic driver of the region (Andrew and Doloreux 2012). The current period is marked by the increased economic importance of the high-tech sector to the extent that, for a short period in time, the dominance of federal government as the primary employer in the region appeared to be in question. However, the subsequent downturn in the high-tech sector after the dot.com bubble of the early 2000s has re-established the dominance of the federal government as the region’s largest employer. The centralized nature of employment in Ottawa is related to the dominant role played by the federal government in determining the localization of employment in the downtown core of the city (Andrew, Ray, and Chiasson 2011). The federal government has initiated a number of projects in an attempt to relocate employment outside the central

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core, but these have been limited in scope and employment remains largely centrally located. High-tech employment, by contrast, has been located in the western sector of Ottawa in the more suburban setting of Kanata. The federal government’s role in the region also needs to be understood in terms of its influence on the municipal government’s sense of itself and therefore on its definition of its chosen sphere of policymaking. According to Andrew and Chiasson (2012) , Ottawa’s municipal government has felt dictated to by the federal government, while at the same time, it has accepted and expected federal expenditures. This has created a dynamic whereby the municipality sees itself as responsible for providing minimal services with low tax revenues, and sees the federal government as responsible for providing services that go beyond the minimum, in such areas as urban planning, green space and park development. This relationship may be evolving, but historically it has had a major influence on the organization of Ottawa’s municipal government and on its intergovernmental practices. As is evident in many other Canadian municipalities, the City of Ottawa has combined the perception of a limited role for local government with its own understanding of the federal-municipal division of responsibilities as legitimizing minimalist municipal activities (Andrew and Chiasson 2012). This municipal self-perception was to some extent transformed by the municipal amalgamation of 2000, although the full impact of the amalgamation was not immediate (Andrew 2006; Andrew and Chiasson 2006). There had been citizen organizing and debate around the questions of amalgamation such as the Citizen’s Panel on Local Governance in Ottawa-Carleton that was established in August 1997 to develop a bottom-up model of governance and government for the region. How­ ever, the Citizen’s Panel disbanded in March 1998, declaring that “the opportunity for an objective and open-minded process had been lost due to the promotion by others of entrenched positions and particu­ lar governance models” (Gervais 2001, 4). In addition, the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa produced a report calling for ward-level structures with local decision-making responsibilities. How­ever, any local energy or initiative for developing citizen-based solutions came to an abrupt end when the Ontario government legislated amalgamation in Toronto, despite major grass-roots oppositional organizing across the city (Horak 1998). The Ontario government’s total dismissal of the protests and its imposition of the new City of Toronto completely discouraged citizen organizing in Ottawa and the

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amalgamation took place. The transition team chosen by the Harris government was, not surprisingly, sympathetic to the conservative political ideology of the then Progressive Conservative Ontario government. The transition team did not, however, transform the Ottawa government in ways that had been feared. The new City of Ottawa came into being on 1 January 2001 and held a Smart Growth Summit only six months later, in June 2001. A post-hoc analysis of the summit reported participating urban experts as commenting that “social capital is a crucial element of the quality of life in cities that underpins economic growth” and that “for them, the ‘quality of place’ has become a major source of attractiveness for employees in a knowledge-based economy” (Paquet 2001, 4). These comments indicate active efforts to establish a strategic vision for the city that integrates economic growth and social cohesion. This was also reflected in Ottawa 2020, a participatory planning process that enjoyed wide engagement and did much to create a collective sense of direction for the city. However, this initial period of enthusiasm was short-lived. The downturn in the high-tech sector was coupled with political change in the federal government and the coming to power of the federal Conserva­ tives, who had an immediate agenda to stop previous multilevel policy development in the area of federal–municipal interaction and seemingly little interest in the development of the Ottawa area (Bradford, in press). By the time the initial interviews for this research were being conducted in 2008, there was a widespread feeling that the City lacked direction and was incapable of attracting either political or financial support from either the provincial or federal governments for major infrastructure projects, particularly those relating to public transportation. Moreover, despite the optimism of the Smart Growth Summit, there was little, or no, concrete indication of bridging mechanisms that crossed the economic and social divide. Social-sector leaders interviewed were aware of economic development organizations but critical of their narrow concentration on economic development, whereas, for the most part, economic development actors were unaware of the activities of social development agencies. The only agency that was visible to both economic and social development actors was the United Way, which was clearly identified at the time of the interviews as the lead community agency.1 The feeling among civic leaders that the city government lacked direction only deepened in the period since this initial interviewing. The politics of amalgamation exacerbated tensions within the electorate, as

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half the population had believed the political rhetoric of the Progressive Conservative provincial government under Mike Harris that amalgamation would cut costs and therefore lower taxes, whereas the other half of the voting public feared that if taxes remained at the same level, amalgamation would necessitate cuts in services. This created a polarized electorate, which was inscribed in municipal politics by the victory of Larry O’Brien as mayor in the municipal elections of 2006, winning almost all the suburban wards and all the rural wards while his main opponent, Alex Munter, won in the central urban sectors. O’Brien won with an election promise not to raise taxes for the four years of his mayoralty, which meant that budget debates during the period 2006–10 were not focused on finding compromise solutions but rather were polarized around service cuts and enhancements. This period saw a widespread consensus among the population that the municipal government was not operating as it should and that the municipal council lacked direction, discipline, and civility. A series of debates emerged around the nature of the problem and how it should be addressed, such as whether an executive structure should give coordinated direction to the city government and therefore to municipal policymaking, whether political parties should organize local policy choices, and whether elected officials were too parochial or remained in office too long. Solutions were discussed and different groups formed, but no clear consensus emerged. The municipal elections of 2010 led to a major change in council, with a number of councillors being defeated, and the new council was just beginning its work at the time of writing this chapter. On the administrative level, 2006–10 was a period of working with fewer resources, but also of beginning to re-evaluate processes, at least in part because of the impact of amalgamation. It was also a period in which the problems of social exclusion became more apparent. Problems of homelessness and poverty, particularly immigrant poverty, became more evident and, as Bradford and Bramwell (this volume) suggest this led to greater interest in adopting place-based programs in order to bridge the economic and social dimensions of the knowledge-based society. The Community Development Framework (CDF), which will be discussed in more detail later, was at least in part a reaction to increased poverty and fewer resources and focused on distributing resources to the neediest neighbourhoods. It was in these debates around the problems and proposed solutions to municipal disarray that theoretical questions raised by Purcell (2007) and Sandercock (2003) around

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different forms of democratic government and governance manifested themselves in concrete ways. Demands for greater direct public participation and for more organized citizen influence on elected councillors stem from a vision of vibrant participatory democracy, whereas calls for a more disciplined and proactive municipal government relate to a vision of an enhanced representative democracy and a more formal institutionalization of citizen voice. For example, a vision of participatory democracy would see citizens self-organizing to present their recommendations to the public and then to the city council, whereas a stronger municipal council would see citizens funnelling their views through city-organized advisory committees. These alternatives were all debated by Ottawa civil society during this period, but did not necessarily result in clear political alternatives. Nonetheless, these debates are evidence of the strong dissatisfaction of civil-society Ottawa with municipal Ottawa over the period 2006 to 2010.

Governance in Ottawa We now return to our major research focus on how municipal gov­ ernments can convene different sets of stakeholders to catalyse the development of new forms of place-based multilevel governance. We acknowledge that the municipal government is not the only actor or the only institution involved, and often not the most important one. In this vein, we are interested in the factors that facilitate and constrain municipal action and whether these factors, such as political will and administrative competence, are located within the municipal structures themselves or operate beyond these structures. As studies of multilevel governance in Canada and elsewhere suggest, the actions of municipal governments are largely enabled or constrained by dynamics outside their control, such as economic and demographic change and different macro-institutional and public policy contexts. We argue, however, that municipal governments can shape the inclusiveness and innovativeness of a city-region and its governance. In this section we analyse the City of Ottawa’s role both as a partner and as a catalyst in innovative and inclusive governance structures, offering observations about its relative success. The City as a Partner: Economic and Social Development Initiatives The best-known innovative governance structure related to economic development issues in the Ottawa area is the Ottawa Centre for the

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Research in Innovation (OCRI). OCRI was created in 1983 as a partnership between the high-tech sector, federal laboratories, and post-secondary institutions, with the strong support of the regional government and, after amalgamation, of the City of Ottawa (Wolfe 2009). The City of Ottawa is therefore a partner in OCRI and very supportive of the region’s high-tech industry. OCRI helped to create research chairs at the University of Ottawa and at Carleton University in a variety of hightechnology areas, and organized numerous networking opportunities such as breakfasts, roundtables, visits to other high-tech centres, and conferences. OCRI was highly visible, and widely seen as an extremely effective regional economic development governance model, particularly after it merged with the Ottawa Economic Development Corporation in 2001, making it more or less the City of Ottawa’s economic development organization. The leadership of OCRI was also interested in developing a broader coalition of industry sectors to build a more unified economic development position for the city. As such, OCRI was one of the key drivers behind the creation of The Ottawa Partnership (TOP), which brought together the City of Ottawa, the high-tech sector, the life sciences sector, the tourism sector, Carleton University, and the University of Ottawa. TOP was co-chaired by one of the leaders of the high-tech sector and a president of the University of Ottawa, and staff support was provided by the City of Ottawa. For one of its most ambitious initiatives, TOP received provincial funding to do an extensive analysis of the potential for the development of economic clusters in Ottawa. While the initiative enjoyed some success, such as strengthening the photonics sector, it also experienced a number of failures. Other sectors were less successful in their cluster development activities and in the tourism sector; for example, differences between large and small actors in the tourist industry prevented the creation of a set of shared goals as a basis for cluster development. Another failure associated with TOP was its branding exercise. Apparently hoping to combine the importance of the high-tech sector and the image of a beautiful green capital, consultants came up with the brand “Technically beautiful.” The brand was launched with a great flourish, at a large corporate and municipal leadership breakfast, but was met by bewilderment and ridicule, and was quickly buried. Ultimately, the cluster study that was launched with widespread enthusiasm was quickly overshadowed by the downturn in the high-tech sector, and key corporate partners were too preoccupied to stay involved with TOP. As a result, TOP gradually faded into inactivity. At the time of writing, however, TOP is about to be replaced by a new structure, Invest Ottawa, as the

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central part of the economic development strategy of the current mayor. It will be interesting to see how the new structure will operate and whether the City’s more active role in this new structure will increase its effectiveness. A second economic development initiative in which the City was a partner, but not the initiator, was the Ottawa Talent Initiative (OTI), which began with the downturn in the high-tech sector after 2001. OTI began with the formation of a variety of peer networks among workers who had been laid off by 2003. By November 2003 meetings were held with OCRI and the City of Ottawa, and by January 2004 OTI existed as a formal structure funded by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Human Resources and Skill Development Canada (HRSDC), with small amounts from the City of Ottawa. OTI was extremely active in its first few years, running numerous training programs and short courses and providing opportunities for unemployed high-tech workers to network, socialize, and get support to deal with the psychological impact of unemployment for highly skilled workers who had envisioned job security in an economically viable knowledgeintensive sector. Apart from nominal funding, the City’s contribution also included the volunteer work done by former mayor of Kanata and municipal councillor Marianne Wilkinson, who acted as chair of the board of OTI.2 OTI was not able to secure permanent funding, however, and the board voted to close the organization in 2011. In summary, these two examples of economic development initiatives in which the City of Ottawa was a key partner underscore an interesting emerging dynamic. Though the projects were primarily oriented towards economic development activities, they had important social dimensions as well. However, in terms of the key actors and institutions involved, they were primarily limited to economic development interests, and in terms of the City’s role, there was no explicit effort to bring in social partners. The discussion now shifts to an examination of social-sector governance structures and variation in their relationships with the City of Ottawa. The creation of the Coalition of Community Health and Resource Centres (CCHRC) was a major governance innovation in the social sector in Ottawa (Tanner 1998). The centres offer local social services, some with health components, and are also involved in various community development activities. Starting as Community Service Units, first in Lowertown and then in the Dalhousie Ward in the late 1960s, these structures took their initial impetus from the large urban renewal program

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that took place in Lowertown in the 1960s, which pushed out many former residents and led to the establishment of a neighbourhood structure by the local social planning council. The Community Service Units were transferred to the regional government in 1972, followed by the creation of other community resource centres across the city. Over time, many of the centres, particularly the anglophone ones in the centre and west of Ottawa, added health components funded by the provincial Ministry of Health. By the 1980s the regional government had decided that the centres should be governed by community boards. The centres were set up as separate legal entities, governed by boards largely representative of the community they were serving. The City confirmed that it would continue to fund certain positions, including those of the executive director, a community developer, and a receptionist. The centres with health components continued to have those funded by the province. Having local boards and an enhanced local presence has given the community resource and health centres considerable political support from individual ward councillors and, collectively, from the city council. They have formed two collective governance structures: first, a coalition of the executive directors and second, a network of the community developers. The executive directors meet monthly to exchange information and collectively plan strategies, including those of negotiating budget processes at the City and building longer-term political support. The community developers also meet regularly to plan and implement collaborative initiatives aimed at public education, civic engagement, social justice, and the elimination of poverty. The relationship between the network of centres and the City of Ottawa has evolved significantly over a short period of time, with the centres first developing independently of the City, and later becoming part of City social services, and finally being removed from the administration of the City and set up with community boards. Local political and community support for the community resource and health centres has given them collective strength and increased visibility as a collective actor in Ottawa social politics. An indication of this growing visibility is that the City of Ottawa is now interested in re-establishing closer links to the centres, arguing that their services are basically municipal services and should be seen as part of the overall municipal governance system. Even though the role of the City has been somewhat peripheral until recently, it is worth mentioning that innovative social-sector governance structures with which the City of Ottawa has had a partnering role

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have also emerged in the immigrant settlement sector. LASI (Local Agencies Serving Immigrants) is a coalition of the executive directors of ten local immigrant settlement organizations who meet monthly to exchange information. As trust has developed among these agencies over time, there has been tacit agreement that different agencies should specialize in different areas to avoid overlap and duplication. While this may appear to be a rather minor innovation, the level of collaboration and trust is very high, particularly in an area where social service agencies compete with one another for funding. LASI has also decided collectively to create new agencies, such as the Immigrant Women’s Service Organization (IWSO), which resulted from a collective decision that a separate organization for immigrant women would enhance services to the community. LASI has remained very weakly institutionalized because settlement organizations are only funded for direct services, and therefore none of the LASI members can allocate resources for institutional support. This has imposed limits on the activities that LASI can initiate or organize, but does permit a more collective voice for the settlement sector as a major community actor. Another collective social innovation of LASI was the creation of LASI World Skills. All the members of LASI felt that employment for immigrants was an issue of critical importance to immigrant settlement and agreed to collectively set up a single separate organization, LASI World Skills, to focus on employment training and job placement. LASI World Skills was one of the initiators of Hire Immigrants Ottawa, a joint project now led by the Ottawa United Way with a council of local employers and funded by the Ontario provincial government. The fact that LASI’s members privileged a specialized separate agency rather than each developing a full range of employment activities underscores the fact that LASI World Skills is a significant instance of trust building and genuine concern for the quality of services and service delivery among the major players of the settlement sector in Ottawa. Finally, the Multicultural Liaison Officer (MLO) program is another social innovation initiated in Ottawa that has been subsequently rolled out across the Canada in a program funded by Citizenship and Immi­ gration Canada (CIC). It was created by the Ottawa Community Immi­ grant Services Organization (OCISO), which partnered with school boards in Ottawa to place workers within the schools to help counsel and orient immigrant students and their families and improve intercultural understanding and sensitivity within local schools. Although the MLO program is fully funded by CIC, OCISO has maintained its

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partnership model with the local school boards, arguing that the financial investment of the boards means a greater involvement and a greater sense of engagement with the program. The MLOs have played an important role in linking the school system to the settlement sector and in engaging the school system to meet the challenge of the growing diversity of Ottawa. Another example of a community partnership that goes beyond the immigrant settlement sector is the City of Ottawa’s role in Age-friendly Ottawa. This project originated as a World Health Organization ini­ tiative that was picked up by the Ottawa Council of Aging, which formed a committee including representatives from the Seniors Advisory Committee of the City of Ottawa and a variety of senior’s groups. The City was in the process of reviewing its seniors’ policy and was enthusiastic about the possibility of creating a broad coalition of seniors’ groups that would be able to mobilize a consensus in the community on priorities for seniors in the city. Although City staff have had a difficult time in terms of being able to share information and, therefore, to behave as an equitable partner, the City has played a significant role in quietly encouraging the different groups to work together. Our observations are similar for both social and economic development governance structures in Ottawa. There are economic development dimensions to the work of social development organizations such as the network of Community Health and Resource Centres, which are responsible for employment-related training and mentorship that arguably relate to issues of human capital formation. The settlement sector and Age-friendly Ottawa also contribute to local economic development activities through the employment possibilities for caregivers and service delivery for seniors. The role of the City has not been to reinforce these links, but rather to seek closer links to the network as part of its social development programming. The City as Catalyst: Multi-sector Governance Structures Our examination of some of the governance structures in which the City of Ottawa has played a partnership role suggest that the City did not exert its influence in an attempt to integrate economic and social development activities. We now examine several governance structures initiated by the City to determine if these initiatives were more innovative and inclusive. We focus on the extent to which the City made significant decisions, and on whether these decisions were made by elected

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politicians or municipal bureaucrats. In this context, we examine several city-initiated governance mechanisms including the Community Development Framework, the Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Equity and Inclusion lens, and, finally, Youth Futures. The Community Development Framework (CDF) is an ambitious attempt by the City to refocus its operations in a “place-based” way that gives priority to neighbourhoods in need rather than neighbourhoods that have greater ability to exert pressure and influence on the municipal government. The objectives were to engage residents in four pilot neighbourhoods in collective decision making about neighbourhood priorities and to reorganize city services from departmental silos to “place-based” coordinated services. The City negotiated to have the Coalition of Community Health and Resource Centres play an active role because of their experience with resident engagement strategies. The centres have been heavily engaged in the CDF and there have been some complaints from the centres that this additional activity has not received any additional financial support, while centres in areas that are not part of the four initial pilot neighbourhoods have complained about not being included in the CDF. The City has also engaged a wide variety of stakeholders in a number of information-sharing networks or “tables,” such as a funders table that includes the United Way, the Community Foundation, and the Trillium Foundation, a research table that includes representatives from Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, city staff, and community-based researchers, as well as other community and leadership tables. The city had taken the lead on inviting these stakeholders to the respective “tables,” but it has recently changed the governing structure of the CDF to eliminate the tables and to more formally acknowledge the coordinating role of the CCHRCs. The Poverty Reduction Task Force is another City-driven initiative that emerged from provincial government hearings intended to encourage engagement in local activities. The City of Ottawa created a task force, co-chaired by a senior administrator of the City and the highly respected executive director of the Ottawa Community Foundation. The task force has broad community representation but a limited mandate because it was not allocated any additional funding. In its first year of operation, the task force established a list of measures to be investigated and began to go through the list in its second year to determine what had been achieved and what remained to be done. Since the 2010 election, City staff have been increasingly unable to function in an equitable partnership and community dissatisfaction with the task force began to

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grow. Although the new mayor did allocate some new funding for housing, community members decided to withdraw from the task force before the City decided to terminate its mandate. The task force is an example, therefore, of the City’s inability to work in real partnership with the community. The Equity and Inclusion Lens is a particularly interesting example of an active and durable partnership between the City of Ottawa and a community-based women’s group, the City for All Women Initiative (CAWI in English and IVTF, Initiative: Une ville pour toutes les femmes, in French). CAWI was created as a continuation of earlier efforts (Siltanen, Klodawsky, and Andrew 2010; Klodawsky and Andrew 1999) to engender the decision-making processes of the City of Ottawa. While CAWI had already produced a Gender Equality Lens, staff at the City was aware that other equity-seeking groups were also interested in developing their own lens and were concerned that trying to coordinate too many different perspectives could lead to a stalemate that would preclude productive engagement from all stakeholders.3 Through a combination of skilled leadership and engaged collaboration, individuals driving the process were able to circumvent the potential for these competing perspectives to stymie the process. Staff from two administrative divisions in the City of Ottawa (Service Excellence and Human Resources) jointly partnered with CAWI to produce a multi-focused Equity and Inclusion Lens that included eleven “marginalized” groups.4 A complex participatory process of engagement of community partners, City staff, and members of the City’s advisory committees created the lens and produced eleven different community snapshots that gave background information on each of the groups and emphasized important overlaps among these groups.5 The City was particularly interested in partnering with CAWI as a useful way to meet part of the City’s performance excellence agenda. They envisaged use of the jointly developed Equity and Inclusion lens as one criterion for the evaluation of departmental plans as well as for the performance evaluations of City managers. The partnership was thus based on mutual benefit. For the City, it provides a useful tool for realizing important objectives and a partner they can trust, and for CAWI it provides visibility in the community and the opportunity to have a tangible impact on City policy. A final example of a City-driven multi-stakeholder governance mechanism is the Youth Futures/Avenir Jeunesse partnership between local post-secondary institutions, the City of Ottawa, Ottawa Commu­ nity Housing, and multiple community partners. Started in 2008 as a

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University of Ottawa pilot project to provide exposure to the university experience for at-risk high school youth, it was transformed into a program that offers leadership training and summer employment with the City of Ottawa. The City has now incorporated funding for part of the program into the regular budget and has given management responsibility for the program to the Ottawa Community Housing Corporation. The City sought the partnership and supports the program because it corresponds to the views of one senior manager in particular on how to break the cycle of poverty, while other staff see the benefits of the program for increasing the diversity in the City’s summer employment program. The originators of the pilot project at the University of Ottawa support the partnership because adding an employment component enables the program to reach high school students who can benefit most from the program. Discussion: City as Partner and Catalyst In summary, we can make several observations about these examples of collaborative community governance activities in which the City of Ottawa participates. First, there is variation in the way that the City engages with organized community-based interests. While the City is sometimes the initiator and actively seeks out community partners for a variety of reasons, in other cases it is simply willing to be one of several participants in initiatives that are primarily driven from the community level. Second, in relation to the narrow partnership activities and broader governance mechanisms examined here, the City tends to operate as one of several partners in economic development initiatives, whereas the broader, more inclusive governance mechanisms that the City initiates tend to focus on community partnerships for social development initiatives. Finally, with few exceptions engagement in partnership activities tends to be somewhat uneven. We discussed at the beginning of this chapter our explanation for these varying patterns of partnership as being the combination of the greater political attractiveness of leadership on economic development issues with administrative structures having very rigid boundaries between departments. To return to the empirical question at the heart of this analysis, therefore, it can be concluded that none of the partnership or broader governance activities outlined here have explicitly sought to integrate or “join up” economic and social development objectives. Though there are ostensibly some economic development objectives

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embedded in social initiatives such as LASI World Skills or Youth Futures that seek to link recent immigrants and marginalized youth with employment opportunities, and some social development objectives embedded in economic development initiatives like the Ottawa Talent Initiative that seek to provide support for laid-off tech workers, none of these initiatives is explicitly aimed at integrating the two. As a result, economic and social development initiatives and the governance arrangements that design and deliver them remain somewhat siloed in the City of Ottawa. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that new approaches to integrating the two sets of objectives have begun to emerge. The discussion now turns to an examination of one nascent governance mechanism that does explicitly attempt to promote collaboration between the social and economic sectors in order to integrate economic prosperity and social inclusion objectives. This process was only recently launched and as such its potential to realize both economic and social goals is not yet fully apparent. Linking Economic Development and Social Inclusion? The Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership Program Because the Local Immigration Partnership program (LIP) has been described in detail in Bradford and Andrew (2011), we examine here only the Ottawa version (OLIP), which includes, as one dimension of the governance structure, the relationship with the Ottawa component of the Welcoming Communities Initiative Community-University Research Alliance (OWCI).6 OLIP differs from the majority of the other LIPs being established in Ontario municipalities by having a community lead rather than a municipal lead, the Catholic Centre for Immigrants, acting on behalf of LASI. This means that one of the challenges for OLIP is to fully engage the City of Ottawa in the strategic community planning process and, even more important, in the implementation of the plan. In addition, as with other LIPs, OLIP has the challenge of engaging the private sector. The OLIP message is clear: immigrants are an economic asset and, if Ottawa is falling behind Calgary and Edmonton, it is because the province of Ontario and the City of Ottawa are not developing proactive policies to attract and retain new immigrants. This is the message from OLIP to the City, to private-sector employers, and to the general public. It follows that the OLIP is well positioned to join the economic innovation and social inclusion dimensions of the immigrant settlement agenda. Indeed, the City is now engaged in creating a

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network, within the City’s administrative structure, of people working on immigration integration issues across the various departments of the City. This development is being driven by one of the major administrative champions of immigrant integration policies and is also facilitated by the City’s larger programming effort around service excellence. However, the extent to which this bridging message will be heeded and acted upon by business and community stakeholders remains largely an open question. OLIP has concentrated on building partnerships among both immigrant-serving and mainstream community-based groups and with the City, and is only now beginning to turn its attention to communicating its message to the general public in recognition of its importance for successfully engaging the political commitment of the City. Conclusions The objective of this chapter was to offer a theoretically informed empirical report on Ottawa’s recent experience with different forms of collaborative governance, probing whether or not there were examples of mechanisms that integrated economic and social development actors and objectives. In addition, we wanted to understand the role the municipality plays in these mechanisms, and the interplay between political and administrative factors which explain this role. Certainly there has been innovation in Ottawa in terms of governance structures over the past thirty years. OCRI has been seen as a best practice in the area of economic development and LASI as a social innovation in the settlement sector. However, these examples did not explicitly link economic and social sectors, leaving some actors on the sidelines in key governance processes. This rather one-sided representation may in part account for the general sense of dissatisfaction with the overall community and civic leadership in the Ottawa area over the past ten years or so. We have also suggested that the Local Immigration Partnership represents a potential example of the integration of economic and social objectives, as effective immigration settlement and labour market entry addresses both economic development and social inclusion. Moreover, the issue is being horizontally coordinated within the City and therefore the administrative barriers that existed previously may be lessening. However, OLIP remains at its early stages, and it is therefore too soon to evaluate its ability to link economic and social sectors in Ottawa. Some interest has been generated among important community stakeholders, but it is not yet clear, despite the recent initiatives that we

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have just described, to what extent there is real buy-in from the City nor to what extent an understanding of the significance of OLIP is shared widely in the community. Furthermore, in terms of Purcell’s (2007) discussion of local democracy, it is not yet possible to see if OLIP will strengthen representative democracy, participatory democracy, social democratic democracy, or deliberative democracy. It remains an open question whether Ottawa will develop democratic and inclusionary structures linking the economic and the social or whether existing patterns that privilege one goal over the other will continue. Reflecting on the many activities and initiatives analysed in this chapter, it seems likely that Ottawa’s future governance structures will favour economic development to the detriment of social inclusion. NOTES 1 The fact that the United Way’s position as lead social service agency in the city is currently contested is worth noting but beyond the scope of this chapter. 2 Ms. Wilkinson served as mayor of Kanata from 1978–85 and councillor in Kanata from 1991–4 previous to the amalgamation of the new City of Ottawa. 3 While CAWI’s Gender Equality lens was based on a perspective that incorporated the differences between women as much as those between women and men, other stakeholder groups had different perspectives. For example, the provincial government had recently passed a law on accessibility for persons with disabilities, the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee to the City of Ottawa was interested in a cultural diversity lens, and the City of Ottawa was already engaged in the development of an Urban Aboriginal Strategy. 4 These included the five groups in the City’s equity and diversity policy (Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities, GBLT, women, and people with disabilities) plus six other groups considered also to be equity-seeking in the context of Ottawa (youth, seniors, rural persons, francophones, immigrants, and persons living in poverty). 5 For example, francophones can be immigrants, elderly, young, GLBT, disabled; women can live in poverty, be Aboriginal, rural, disabled, francophone; etc. 6 The Ottawa hub of the research alliance, the Welcoming Communities Initiative, serves to some extent as the research arm of OLIP. However,

158  Governing Urban Economies owing to the tight and demanding timetable of OLIP, the full potential of this relationship has not yet been developed. There have been initial discussions about how to connect the research priorities of each of the sector tables of OLIP with the research potential within the Ottawa area but no clear set of working relationships has yet been structured.

REFERENCES Agrawal, Sandeep, Caroline Andrew, and John Biles. 2008. Welcoming communities: Planning for diverse communities. Special edition, Plan Canada. Andrew, Caroline. 2006. “Evaluating municipal reform in Ottawa-Gatineau: Building for a more metropolitan future?” In Metropolitan governing, ed. E. Razin and P. Smith, 75–94. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press. Andrew, Caroline. 2009. “Urban governance, à la Paquet.” In Gilles Paquet: Homo hereticus, ed. C. Andrew, R. Hubbard, and J. Roy, 140–50. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Andrew, Caroline, and Guy Chiasson. 2006. “Restructurations municipales et renouvellement des modèles de gouvernance locale: Le cas d’OttawaGatineau.” In Villes du nord, villes du sud, ed. F. Hulbert, 31–40. Paris: Harmattan. Andrew, Caroline, and Guy Chiasson. 2012. “La ville d’Ottawa: Représentation symbolique et image publique.” In Villes et langues: Gouvernance et politiques, ed. R. Clement. Ottawa: Invenire. Andrew, Caroline, and David Doloreux. 2012. “Economic development, social inclusion and urban governance: The case of the city-region of Ottawa in Canada.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36 (6): 1288–305. Andrew, Caroline, and Juan-Luis Klein. 2009. “Social innovation: What is it and why is it important to understand it better.” Report prepared by the Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems. PROGRIS. Andrew, Caroline, Brian Ray, and Guy Chiasson. 2011. “Ottawa-Gatineau: Capital formation.” In Canadian urban regions: Trajectories of growth and change, ed. L. Bourne, T. Hutton, and R. Shearmur, 202–35. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Ansell, G., and A. Gash. 2007. “Collaborative governance in theory and practice.” Journal of Public Administration: Research and Theory 18 (4): 543–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mum032. Bradford, Neil. 2005. “Place-based public policy: Towards a new urban and community agenda for Canada.” Canadian Policy Research Networks, Research report F/51, Family Network.

The Governance Question in Ottawa  159 Bradford, Neil. 2008. “Canadian social policy in the 2000s: Bringing place in.” Plan Canada, special issue, 14–18. Bradford, Neil. In press. “The federal ‘Communities Agenda’: Metagovernance for place-based policy in Canada?” In Canada in cities: The policy and politics of federal-local governance, ed. K. Graham and C. Andrew. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Bradford, Neil, and Caroline Andrew. 2011. “The Harper immigration agenda? Policy and politics in historical context.” In How Ottawa spends, ed. B. Doern and C. Stoney, 262–79. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Buck, N., I. Gordon, A. Harding, and I. Turok. 2005. Changing cities: Rethinking Competitiveness, Cohesion and Governance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Canadian Tax Foundation. 2007. Finances of the nation 2006. Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation. Dunn, James, Neil Bradford, and Joshua Evans. 2010. “Place-based policy approaches: Practical lessons and applications for Community Development and Partnership Directorate.” Report to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Gervais, Marc. 2001. “Creating a new city.” Master’s thesis, University of Ottawa. Goldenberg, Mark, Wathira Kamoji, Larry Orton, and Michael Williamson. 2009. Social innovation in Canada: An update. Canadian Policy Research Networks research report. Gonzales, Sara, and Patsy Healey. 2005. “A sociological institutionalist approach to the study of innovation in governance capacity.” Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 42 (11): 2055–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 00420980500279778. Horak, Martin. 1998. “The power of local identity: C4LD and the antiamalgamation mobilisation in Toronto.” Research paper 195. Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies. Huxham, C. 2003. “Theorizing collaboration practice.” Public Management Review 5 (3): 401–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1471903032000146964. Jonas, A.E.G., and K. Ward. 2007. “Introduction to a debate on city-regions: New geographies of governance, democracy and social reproduction.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (1): 169–78. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00711.x. Klodawsky, Fran, and Caroline Andrew. 1999. “Acting locally: What is the progressive potential?” Studies in Political Economy 59: 171–82. North, David, Stephen Syrett, and David Etherington. 2007. Devolution and regional governance: Tackling the economic needs of deprived areas. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

160  Governing Urban Economies O.E.C.D. 2006. Competitive cities in the global economy. Paris: OECD. Paquet, Gilles. 2001. Ottawa 20/20 and baroque governance. Ottawa: University of Ottawa, Centre on Governance. Pastor, M. 2005. “Linking competitiveness into social cohesion.” OECD Conference on Sustainable Cities. Purcell, Mark. 2007. “City-regions, neoliberal globalization and democracy: A research agenda.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (1): 197–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00714.x. Sandercock, Leonie. 2003. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel cities in the 21st century. New York: Bloomsbury. Siltanen, Janet, Fran Klodawsky, and Caroline Andrew. 2010. “An urban politics of possibility: Feminist perspectives.” Presentation at Beyond Citizenship: Feminism and the Transformation of Belonging Conference. London, UK. Tanner, Frances. 1998. “Community Service Centres of Ottawa-Carleton.” Unpublished report. Torjman, Sherri, and Eric Levitan-Reid. 2003. The social role of local government. Ottawa: Caledon Institute of Social Policy. Wolfe, David. 2009. 21st century cities in Canada: The geography of innovation. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada.

7 Embarrassment and Riches: Good Governance and Bad Governance in the St John’s City-Region rob greenwood

The St John’s city-region is enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Oil and gas development off the province’s east coast is driving direct and indirect economic benefits for the capital-city region of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). The north-east region of the province’s Avalon Peninsula is home to the oil and gas operators and an extensive network of suppliers. It is also the location of the oil revenue–rich provincial government, Memorial University, the province’s research hospital, and major business and retail services. The North-East Avalon, as it is known, is growing in wealth, population, and geographic reach. The North-East Avalon (NEA) has not gained this wealth solely through good fortune. When oil and gas were first discovered off NL in the 1970s, the provincial government saw an opportunity to reverse a history of exporting the lion’s share of its resource wealth to countries, provinces, and companies beyond its borders. The government of Premier Brian Peckford, in particular, studied policies and practices from Norway and Scotland and built them into a concerted effort to maximize the benefits of industry development in NL. Subsequent provincial governments engaged in battles with the federal government to fulfil the promise of the Atlantic Accord, the 1985 agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador managing NL’s offshore oil and gas resources, and developed strategies to maximize economic linkages from the new industry. The attempt to make the most of this prosperity has revealed significant successes in the governance of the St John’s city-region. Federal, provincial, and municipal governments have collaborated for over two decades in the successful development of an ocean technology cluster in St John’s. More recently, the government of Danny Williams harnessed

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the new-found riches to pay down the provincial debt, improve government services, and advance a significant Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) to extend the fiscal gains to all segments of society. Significant challenges remain in the distribution of wealth, but the PRS has unleashed concerted action among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the social service sector, particularly in the St John’s city region. While the ocean technology cluster and a dynamic network of socialsector NGOs exemplify positive lessons in associative governance and the strategic management of the urban economy, as outlined by Bradford and Bramwell in the introduction to this collection, there have also been governance failures. For example, NEA demonstrates extremely poor collaborative governance in the municipal and local economic development sectors. Despite fifteen years of innovative regional collaboration experiments, the NEA suffers from federal and provincial discord in coordinating and supporting local development efforts, and municipalities struggle to coordinate their activities within the region. The constant drive of the City of St John’s to amalgamate its neighbours, and the continued reluctance of the provincial government to decentralize resources and decision making to municipal and regional development organizations, present intractable obstacles for coordinated and collaborative local governance. The stark coexistence of such clear cases of good and bad local governance points to underlying issues in achieving civic engagement and collaborative governance. These reveal lessons to inform future efforts to maximize local governance capacity and contribute to long-term development when the oil and gas industry has declined. City Regional Profile Based on CMA data, the St John’s city-region increased its population by 4.7 per cent, to 181,115, from 2001 to 2006. In 2006, the population of St John’s was 100,645, with the adjacent city of Mt Pearl at 24,805 and the town of Conception Bay South at 21,860. The provincial population declined by 1 per cent over the same time period. NL is divided into twenty economic zones, each with a Regional Economic Development Board (REDB), with the exception of Zone 1 in Northern Labrador, where the Nunatsiavut government has jurisdiction. The NEA zone roughly matches the St John’s CMA. In 2006 it was home to 66 per cent of the province’s professional, scientific, and technical service businesses, an increase of 15 per cent over ten years – more than triple the provincial growth rate. It included 50 per cent of all

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mining and oil and gas extraction businesses (although most mining activity occurs in Labrador); 67 per cent of all head offices in the province; and 58 per cent of all information and cultural industries. A study of the economic impact of the oil and gas industry in St John’s, released by the City, revealed that $1.6 billion in revenue was contributed to the City’s economy from 2001–4 (Capital Coast Development Alliance (CCDA) 2008, 19). In 2010, major capital projects in St John’s alone were estimated at over $1.2 billion, led by $428 million in property developments and subdivisions (Government of NL 2010a). Immigration numbers are less impressive. While almost 20 per cent of the Canadian population consisted of immigrants in 2006, with Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver leading the way, only 1.7 per cent of the NL population was born outside the country. The St John’s CMA was home to 63.3 per cent of all immigrants in the province, where they constituted just 3 per cent of the population. Progress is being made: the number of immigrants moving to the St John’s CMA almost doubled from the previous census period (CCDA 2008, 28–32). NL does enjoy the highest rate of return migration of residents in Canada, based on years of residents commuting to work elsewhere in Canada and returning “home” when labour market conditions improved. Greg Spencer observed that NL enjoys significant “hidden ­diversity” from these “been-aways” – an extension of the term “comefrom-aways” or “CFAs”– a label sometimes placed on newcomers to the close-knit society of the province. While these NL-born “beenaways” bring external networks and knowledge back home with them, in the long term, the significant demographic challenges of the province will require more than return-migration (Hall 2010). In almost all economic and demographic indicators there are also significant variations within the NEA zone. While several communities adjacent to St John’s enjoyed significant population gains – the largest at 67.9 per cent – eight communities declined in population. The income support assistance incidence rate, the number of people receiving income support divided by the population, is also varied. The zone as a whole has a rate of 11.4 per cent, with communities ranging from 4 per cent in the growing suburb of Paradise, to 34.6 per cent in the former mining community of Bell Island (CCDA 2008, 28–32). These successes, failures, and variations all combine to reveal the complexity of regional governance in the NEA. The following section on the St John’s Ocean Technology cluster highlights how governments, industry, and post-secondary institutions have successfully fostered

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collaborative relationships to build a thriving industry cluster that promises to be sustainable beyond the current benefits of oil and gas activity. That is followed by the exemplary model of associative governance demonstrated by governments, industry, and social-sector NGOs in combating the social inequities highlighted in the midst of new-found wealth. These dynamic success stories are then contrasted with the much less promising experience of regional cooperation and government capacity building in municipal and regional development. Governance Innovation (1): The Ocean Technology Cluster ISRN clusters for St John’s identified in 2006 included oil and gas; maritime; ICT services; business services; and higher education. Maritime had the highest location quotient at 2.68. Creative and cultural industries increased by 3.3 per cent from 2001, but were not considered a cluster, with a location quotient (LQ) of 0.95 (Spencer and Vinodrai 2006). Seventy-five interviews were completed across all these sectors in the St John’s city-region. In addition to a high concentration of highly educated and crea­ tive  workers across these sectors, a recent study by Josh Lepawsky (Lepawsky 2010) confirms earlier work by Colbourne (2006) and Shearmur (2010), that the efforts to establish an ocean technology cluster are succeeding. Based on a web-based survey of forty firms and four non-firm organizations, supplemented by thirteen in-depth, semistructured interviews after the survey (informed by but designed separately from the ISRN interview guides), Lepawsky concludes that: 1. The ocean technology sector operates as a cluster of interrelated business firms and other organizations according to national benchmark criteria for inductively identifying clustering activity; and 2. The sector operates as a learning and innovation system. Substantial collaborations exist between firms and other organizations in the cluster and there is clear evidence of labour flows between firms and organizations in the cluster that indicate a circulation of knowledge. Significant federal and provincial government investment has been focused on the creation of this cluster over two decades. The growth of the oil and gas sector has complemented this development, but has not driven it. Indeed, research in the St John’s city-region under the ISRN project indicates that, while contributing to wealth creation, oil and gas

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is not driving the innovation system through its own production process, as most oil and gas R&D is conducted outside Newfoundland. The federal and provincial governments have invested in significant marine-related infrastructure in Memorial University’s engineering faculty, in the university’s Marine Institute, and in various chairs and programs. The National Research Council’s Institute of Ocean Technology is also located on Memorial’s campus. Much of the Ocean Technology Cluster is related to oil and gas development, but fisheries and aquaculture, marine transportation, ocean observation systems and oceanography, and defence and security are also integral elements of the firm and R&D institution competencies (OceansAdvance 2009). Numerous federal-provincial funding agreements and provincial and federal programs have supported industry, education, and R&D development related to ocean technology (Colbourne, 2006). Most recently, the provincial government established a research and development corporation (RDC) to act as a catalyst and funder of R&D projects in academia and industry initiatives with long-term economic benefit for the province. RDC’s primary focus is ocean technology and energy (Memorial University 2010, 46). While oil and gas operators in St John’s may not carry out much of their own R&D in St John’s, additional funds are becoming available to support R&D. Oil and gas producers are required, under development regulations set by the federal-provincial offshore development board, to spend a certain percentage of their revenues, based on price and production volumes, on research and development and education and training in Newfoundland and Labrador. Already the accumulated amounts are in the hundreds of millions of dollars (Wade Locke 2009). Individuals interviewed in the sector described a significant amount of “churn” as all stakeholders – companies, governments, and researchers – try to determine how the massive investments will be made. Some local firms see the confusion around required R&D spending as an opportunity to “help them decide how to use it.” In some cases, access to pent-up R&D spending requirements is prompting firms that have not done oil and gas R&D to move into the sector. All these efforts are championed by OceansAdvance, a membershipbased cluster organization that includes fifty-one firms, in addition to units of Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic. OceansAdvance led an extensive strategic planning process for the cluster in 2009 with its strategy “Outward Bound 2015: Accelerating the Growth of the Ocean Technology Cluster Sector in Newfoundland and

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Labrador,” released in October 2009. OceansAdvance is supported by the federal and provincial governments and the National Research Council. The City of St John’s has branded itself as a Centre of Oceans Excellence. OceansAdvance provides the common “table” referenced by Bradford and Bramwell (chapter 1) as essential for private-publiccommunity-R&D associative governance. Several industry associations were also repeatedly referenced in interviews as providing formal mechanisms to bring firms together to share sector knowledge, learn best practices, and explore new markets. The Newfoundland Ocean Industries Association is the primary association for the oil and gas sector; the Newfoundland Alliance of Technical Industries focuses on the IT sector, as well as other technical industries; and the Newfoundland Environmental Industries Associa­ tion supports the growing environmental sector, which like many IT firms, cuts across resource sectors, manufacturing, and the public sector. Industry associations were explicitly targeted for government support in the 1990s (House 1999), to assist in the emergence of new growth sectors, and most still receive some support from the federal and provincial governments. The stakes are high and the economic benefits to the province, and especially the St John’s city-region, are enormous. The evidence clearly points to strategic coordination between the federal and provincial governments, the City of St John’s, industry, and the education and training sector. As the city-region confronts the changes brought about by newfound wealth, it has also benefited from a surge of activity by the provincial government and NGOs addressing the distribution of wealth and the provision of social services for those who are not well positioned to be included in the new prosperity. The St John’s city-region demonstrates associative governance mechanisms in the social sector that many argue are leading the country in this field, just as the collaboration in the ocean technology sector demonstrates. Governance Innovation (2): Civic Entrepreneurship, Poverty, and Inclusion The challenges of prosperity are an unusual problem in Newfoundland and Labrador. They have risen to the top of the priority list, however, for those concerned with the need for affordable housing, increasing gaps between the rich and poor, and growing divides between rural and

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urban Newfoundland, even within the NEA. Labour market shortages, unheard of in a place with a chronically high unemployment rate, have focused attention on the attraction and retention of skilled employees (Lepawsky, Phan, and Greenwood 2010), increasing immigration, and improving literacy rates and skills development among those who have not previously been able to find a place in the labour market (CCDA 2008, 24–34, 75). Fortunately for the NEA, the provincial government has worked particularly effectively with social-sector NGOs in creating a policy environment conducive to collaboration, providing the financial resources to implement programs and supports. Extremely dynamic and collaborative leadership in the NGOs has worked hand-in-glove with government officials to help shape supports and leverage them with federal, municipal, and industry resources. These NGO leaders repeatedly referenced each other as trusted collaborators who share information, partner on projects, and foster innovation in social programming that has been recognized as leading the country. Not unlike those of the Ocean Technology Cluster, the achievements of the NEA social NGOs have been built upon investments and processes that go back decades. The Strategic Partnership (SP) was established under the government of Liberal premier Clyde Wells to provide a forum for open dialogue among the provincial government, labour, and business (www.thestrategicpartnership.ca). The only such jurisdiction-level partnership in North America, the SP was modelled on several European examples of government-business-labour joint planning. Five priority areas have risen to the top of the SP agenda. Two of them are focused on economic development: transportation and communications infrastructure and innovation. The three others bridge the economic and social sectors, and reflect the new reality of the province’s prosperity challenges: labour market, employment relations, and population. The SP has approached these issues at the provincial level, with little engagement with the City of St John’s or the NEA, as partners in a regional focus. Another provincial government initiative has had much more direct engagement with the St John’s city-region. A consultation process for a Poverty Reduction Strategy was launched in June 2005 by the Williams government. During the 2003 election campaign, the PCs pledged to transform Newfoundland and Labrador from the province with the most poverty to the one with the least, within ten years (PC Party 2003).

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The consultation document proposed “a comprehensive approach with a mix of policy options … to have a significant impact on poverty.” Such a comprehensive strategy “requires input from all orders of government, community-based groups, business, labour, and individuals about the best approaches and policy mix to reduce poverty in the province” (Government of NL 2005, preface). In 2006, “Reducing Poverty: An Action Plan for Newfoundland and Labrador” was released, with goals and actions relating to services for those with low incomes, a stronger social safety net, improved earned incomes, early childhood development, and a better educated population. In the 2006–7 budget, over $30 million was committed, for twenty initiatives under the Poverty Reduction Strategy. By the 2010–11 budget, this was up to $134 million committed to more than eighty ongoing initiatives (Government of NL 2010b, 2). While many of these initiatives benefited people throughout the province, NGOs in St John’s made the most of the provincial government’s new collaborative approach to social policy and programming. A senior provincial government official involved with the strategy emphasized how government departments worked closely with grassroots organizations in implementing the strategy and that they had come to realize that the level and professionalism of their collaborations was a strength in NL compared to other provinces. The official talked extensively about the need for inclusiveness in their work, to actively engage with communities, since poverty reduction addresses the needs of people all too often “left behind.” These views are corroborated by individuals leading social-sector NGOs who are partnering with the provincial government in managing funds through their organizations for poverty reduction initiatives. The head of a leading social services agency in St John’s claims that their access to government officials is excellent and they can regularly count on meetings when needed. They see their work as part of a larger entrepreneurial effort to effect real change in the lives of the people their organization assists. This approach to “social enterprise” involves a new way of supporting people with disabilities to join the labour force. Through the relationships established between government and community, NGO leaders reported being able to “make one phone call” to solve an issue that a client had been fighting with for months. Another senior government official stated: “We finally figured out that government is better served by engaging in equal partnerships, where not

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only do you learn stuff from other people but you’re better at executing it and recognizing it.” Not only is collaboration evident in relations between the provincial government and social-sector NGOs, but there is a virtuous circle of inter-organizational cooperation among the NGOs. Where, ten years ago, they would not have worked together because they would have seen themselves as being competitors, “today they’re sitting on each other’s boards.” If one organization applies for funding, they get letters of support from other organizations. One NGO leader noted that there are 150 organizations working on social development in the city. “If we know that organization A is doing something really well,” she noted, “and organization B, that’s their challenge, if we put two of them together, they are going to be stronger organizations and they are going to meet the needs of more people … That’s my major role – connectivity,” she added. Another NGO leader explained that “people are starting to understand that sharing information is not giving it away.” Access to funding clearly has a lot to do with this virtuous circle ­of  NGO collaboration. One NGO leader explained that they started with a grant of $20,000 to organize a conference and “ended up having a $180,000 conference … with people here from all over Canada.” Support is coming not only from the provincial government, through the Poverty Reduction Strategy (although several NGO leaders lauded it as the main source of support). Several NGO leaders praised the City of St John’s for its support. One NGO received a donation of land from the City worth $50,000 and the City waived fees on certain business taxes. That organization owns its own building, “mortgage free,” and rents to another NGO and to twenty provincial government staff. Such partnerships take lots of time and effort – “[it] took us about two and half years to put the model in place” – but the interviewee noted that if they can demonstrate sustainability, funding follows. Another source of funding support recognized by the social-sector NGO leaders was the private sector. The energy (including oil and gas), mining, and banking sectors were all noted for their contributions to social-sector NGO initiatives, from employment programs for people with disabilities to youth programs and women’s shelters. One approach noted was to use private-sector funding for innovative programs for which it was hard to access government funding: once the concept was proved, “the Provincial Government now funds it for $90,000 per year.” As these social-sector NGOs demonstrate success, they attract further

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corporate support “because of the visibility here.” One supportive housing initiative has eighteen suites and each is being supported by a corporate partner. Unions, beer companies, and others are all contributing. These initiatives not only fulfil corporate social responsibility goals, but many also assist the private sector in addressing the growing labour market shortage. One hotel supported a targeted training program and guaranteed a job interview for graduates. Out of nineteen who started the program, seventeen completed it, and thirteen were hired. The other four got jobs with other hotels. Another organization that supports employment programs notes that government has also recognized the need to “look at marginalized groups as untapped labour forces.” The provincial government launched a parallel Immigration Strategy in 2007 to address the need for increased immigration and improved settlement services (Government of NL 2007). Again, social-sector NGOs have partnered successfully to receive funding to deliver programming. The Association of New Canadians is recognized as the official settlement agency to assist immigrants and refugees, with funding from the federal and provincial governments. Other organizations are supported to assist multicultural women, English as a second language, and employment opportunities for new immigrants. The business community also recognizes that they need assistance to learn how to integrate immigrant employees, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Municipalities have supported immigration portals and the university is recognized as a major source of newcomers to the province. One municipal leader reflected on the lack of immigration to NL historically, and noted that we need cultural events, craft fairs, and the farmer’s markets with ethnic foods to assist with immigrant integration: “Because we are ethnocentric in Newfoundland … we’ve been isolated for a long time … I think if you can create these gentle links and get people to respect people of other cultures as human beings with faces, not as ethnic minorities, they become the bridges to their own cultural groups.” Further research is being conducted on the attitudes of New­ foundlanders and Labradorians, and on how governments, industry, and community organizations can enhance this form of inclusiveness in a place relatively unfamiliar with multi-racial relations (Tremblay and Bittner 2011). The success of social-sector NGOs in the St John’s city-region cannot be attributed solely to funding and real need – although those present a compelling opportunity. A significant factor that emerges from the interviews conducted for this project is leadership. Another initiative

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launched by the Williams government was the creation of a Voluntary and Non-profit Secretariat, with its own minister and deputy minister. One of the main issues it is addressing is the lack of capacity in the voluntary sector province-wide. Among the leading social-sector NGOs in St John’s, however, leadership capacity is not a problem. Interviews in government and among NGOs result in ten to fifteen names being highlighted repeatedly for their vision and their ability. A group of dynamic, nationally recognized civic entrepreneurs has emerged, partly in response to the resources and the need identified by the Poverty Reduction Strategy. One NGO leader stated that St John’s social-sector NGOs were being recognized as leaders in the country. He has invited leaders from national organizations to join his board, as he builds the “pipelines” that maximize knowledge and learning from the outside: “The more we learn, the more we give, and there is a very reciprocal knowledge exchange.” He went on to emphasize the importance of building relationships, while also being able to deliver on your core programs and activities: “The only tool in the toolbox I have is a decent relationship … the breadth of relationships and partnerships you develop … You’ve got to know your stuff. You’ve got to have your evidence, you’ve got to be competent, you’ve got to be capable … It’s about having decent relationships backed up by ‘these guys can do the work.’” The main concern in such circumstances, not surprisingly expressed by a senior provincial government official, was with succession – who would replace these tremendous community leaders when they moved on or retired? The embarrassment of riches in associative governance capacity in the social NGO sector within the municipality of St John’s (as with the ocean technology cluster) is not shared more widely within the St John’s city-region. Interviews in neighbouring municipalities and regions attest to the absence of capacity in their organizations. In suburban Mt Pearl, a municipal official noted that there is no organization like the Community Sector Council (CSC) in Mt Pearl, or any of the other dynamic social NGOs noted above – “They provide a service for the region yet we don’t have a lot of association with them right now.” The City of Mt Pearl had just established a Department of Community Services, which completed a study on affordable housing. He hoped this type of work would “move us towards more social equity and social inclusion.” He added that unlike St John’s, “we’re compact, we can reach our citizens much easier because we’re smaller … We can easily connect.”

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If the need and the associated capacity are both less in Mt Pearl, in rural areas of the province, vast geographic areas, combined with limited capacity, make the organizational riches of St John’s seem very distant. In the Irish Loop Zone, south of St John’s, adjacent communities benefit from St John’s employment opportunities, but the vast majority of communities in the zone are too far removed for daily commuting. In that region, a small cadre of community leaders wear many hats – municipal mayor or councillor, Regional Economic Development Board member, NGO leader, etc. According to one community leader, of a population of about 8200 in the zone, “you really only need to get 100 to 150 people in the room. That represents the entire community leadership across all sectors and interests in the region … Capacity is the big challenge. Leadership and capacity.” The REDB in this zone has had to spend its time building organizational capacity – facilitating the establishment of a chamber of commerce and a tourism association. As for social equity or social inclusion, a rural leader, who lives within the St John’s labour market area, explained that “it’s a concept you don’t hear a whole lot about, and I’m unfamiliar with the concept … You don’t see a whole hell of it to apply in Newfoundland.” Even one of the dynamic St John’s NGO leaders acknowledged that while the same challenges exist in rural areas – mental health, addictions, homelessness and violence, and literacy – it is difficult to conceive of how to address the needs. NGOs based in St John’s recognize the needs, but acknowledged that “it’s impossible for us to mobilize groups around homelessness in all parts of the province.” In these areas, a senior government official suggested, provincial government delivery through community health workers employed by the health boards may be the best approach. Interestingly, all the key social-sector NGO leaders repeatedly referenced in interviews are paid staff, hired by St John’s–based organizations benefiting from the Poverty Reduction Strategy. The key leaders referenced in the Irish Loop, with one exception, are volunteers – often retired teachers. If there is a capacity gap, one place to look is the funding available to hire top-quality staff, who can then leverage additional funds and partner effectively in a virtuous circle of capacity building and associative governance. In their absence, the responsibility for delivery is seen to fall to the provincial government. This division of capacity between NGOs within the City of St John’s and community organizations in adjacent municipalities is mirrored in the municipal and economic development organizations in the region. Unlike the successful focus and collaborative governance achievements

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of the ocean technology cluster and the St John’s social NGOs, the lack of regional collaboration among municipal neighbours and local and regional development organizations is impeding success within the city and the region. Dysfunctional Governance: City-Region Municipal and Regional Economic Development If the St John’s city-region is doing well with its emerging ocean technology cluster and dynamic social NGO sector, there are much less promising advances concerning the strategic management of the urban economy. The City of St John’s and its neighbouring urban and rural municipalities have a very mixed record of regional cooperation. The constitutional responsibility for municipal government is clearly provincial. Local government was very slow to develop in NL, and while Canada has the weakest local government in the OECD, NL has the weakest local government in Canada. The provincial government in NL maintains tighter reins on municipal government as “the creature of the provinces” under the constitution than any other Canadian province (OECD 2002; Felt 2009; Greenwood 2009; Municipalities New­ found­land and Labrador 2010a). With less responsibility and insufficient resources to play a significant role, municipalities look to the provincial government to carry the lion’s share of infrastructure, labour market, and economic development needs. Perhaps, as has often been attributed to academic battles, the battles among neighbouring municipalities are so fierce because the stakes are so low! The perception of St John’s municipal officials is that they are at a special disadvantage, as the provincial government must respond to rural concerns that need special attention to mitigate decline. As one St John’s municipal interviewee stated: I think the province could have more respect for the municipal level in the sense of the importance of a city the size of St John’s as an economic driver and as a leader at the municipal level. They don’t want to do anything for St John’s that they can’t do for the whole province … You can’t have a onesize-fits-all solution to it … I would like to see better linkages, formal linkages, between the provincial government and the city government, and with the federal government … Treating municipalities in the way they do constitutionally tends to, I think … I use the word denigrate … It fails to recognize the real importance of cities.

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Federal and provincial support for the St John’s–based ocean technology cluster, and the Poverty Reduction Strategy which is dedicating significant resources to St John’s NGOs would seem to contradict this perception. Unlike ocean technology firms and organizations and social-sector NGOs, most economic development and municipal representatives interviewed, from municipalities and REDBs particularly, indicated frustration with the lack of capacity at the local level. At a time when the provincial government has greater financial capacity than ever in the province’s history, most suggested that decision making is more centralized than ever. Indeed, several people interviewed expressed fear at speaking out, as Danny Williams had such popular support and ruled with such centralized control that organizations and individuals could be excluded from government contracts or program funding. While the federal development agency in Atlantic Canada, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) gets high marks from all those interviewed for its business and sector support, federal political and bureaucratic decision making out of Ottawa received much less support. Prime Minister Harper is seen as being like Premier Williams in fostering a culture of fear. The federal bureaucracy in Ottawa is seen as centralizing decision making, removing staff from the province, and becoming more remote (Feehan and Coffin 2005). A prominent business leader in St John’s observed: “My impression is that the relationship of all three levels of government could be improved dramatically and we could get a lot more accomplished if all three had better, stronger, and more successful relationships.” The lack of cooperation extends to relationships between the municipalities. When the St John’s Board of Trade polled municipal candidates during the last election (St John’s Board of Trade 2010), the issue of amalgamating neighbouring municipalities continued to resonate with the majority of candidates – including the re-elected mayor. The provincial government has an explicit policy against forced amalgamations after repeated efforts to force mergers of small municipalities have backfired on the party in power. There has been a history of service sharing among municipalities in the NEA, including the St John’s Metropolitan Area Board (Metro Board), which operated from 1963–91. The Metro Board provided planning and building control for small unincorporated communities in the region, and operated the regional water supply system for the entire region, including St John’s and Mt Pearl. It was unelected, however, and as

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smaller communities adjacent to the capital grew and incorporated, they took over their own services. Water supply, landfill, and fire services continue to have regional service arrangements between neighbouring municipalities, but relations concerning economic development, regional planning, and strategic coordination relative to the provincial government remain disjointed, at best. The Metro Board contributed to the development of a St John’s Urban Region Regional Plan in 1976 for the entire NEA (Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador 2010a, 31–3), but efforts to launch a new regional plan by the provincial Department of Municipal Affairs in partnership with fifteen municipalities in 2009 have stalled. There is also a voluntary Northeast Avalon Joint Council, but like similar voluntary regional councils around the province, the council provides a forum for information sharing, yet “certain topics” can’t be discussed “because they cause disputes and divisions” (Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador 2010b, 18). The threat of amalgamation of its neighbours by St John’s stifles effective collaboration beyond basic services. The same senior St John’s official who called for more respect from the federal and provincial governments went on to suggest: “There are just too many voices at the municipal level, which sometimes makes us easier to ignore. I think you’ve got to get into regional governments … or even amalgamation, the dirty ‘A’ word – we have to move in that direction if municipalities really want to have credibility to be recognized for the role they play, and I think it would help us play that role better.” The same business leader who decried the lack of cooperation between the three levels of government went on to call for forced amalgamation. He maintained that to operate as a “stronger economic engine” the region should be brought together as one municipal entity, like the massive Halifax Regional Municipality (which is geographically larger than Prince Edward Island!). This necessary change would only happen if the provincial government brought the “hammer down” and forced amalgamation from above. A City of St John’s Corporate Strategic Plan released in June 2010 included, as one of its three strategic aims, to “support and advance amalgamation of communities in the St John’s CMA.” In the assessment of opportunities and threats in the plan, “advance amalgamation” was an opportunity; “redundancies in governance within the region” was a threat, but so was “perception of [a] weak relationship with other municipalities” (St John’s 2010). One student observer noted, after an internship with the City, that the amalgamation issue had created a

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“hesitance to cooperate” among the actors. She went on to state: “If council is bogged down with irrelevant squabbles, unsure of its rightful function in economic development, and is hesitant to cooperate with political actors from surrounding municipalities, it is unclear how amalgamation, particularly when forced upon unwilling participants, will address these issues” (Sweeney 2006, 29). The pro-amalgamation leaders interviewed acknowledge that St John’s has failed to establish a vision for sustainable economic development, and other than support for the ocean technology cluster and tourism promotion, the City does not have a long-term economic development plan “connecting the dots.” The recent municipal election placed the development of a vision for the city as a central issue. Since the election, the city has been working on an economic development “road map,” but it largely limits its focus to the municipality of St John’s, not the NEA, which it recognizes on every other front as integral to its success (Morgan 2010). While St John’s calls for amalgamation, Mt Pearl delivers good services for its residents, with citizen satisfaction surveys at about 90 per cent. Officials downplay the inter-municipal rivalry, but acknowledge that there needs to be more cooperation and coordination in economic development. Amalgamation, the Mt Pearl municipal informant suggested, was “not a Mt Pearl issue,” but one driven externally. While they pursue their own economic development strategies, St John’s and Mt Pearl fail to take full advantage of the NEA Regional Economic Development Board. Newfoundland and Labrador has been recognized by numerous jurisdictions for its innovative approach to regional economic development, introduced in the mid-1990s (Fairley 2001; Aradottir 2003; Douglas and O’Keeffe 2009). Twenty economic zones were established based on the recommendations of a federal-­ provincial task force, which also included municipal, business, labour, community development, and women’s organization representatives. Each zone established an REDB composed of representatives of municipalities, business, labour, community development organizations, education and training institutions, and others according to the characteristics of the zone. REDBs receive federal and provincial government support to employ staff, carry out consultations, and develop a strategic economic plan for their zone. Initially, these plans were to form the basis of a performance contract negotiated with the federal and provincial governments to coordinate investments in economic infrastructure, labour market development, and other supports for sustainable regional development (Task Force on Community Economic Development 1995).

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The federal and provincial governments have continued to support REDBs, but resourcing is limited and they have been forced, through annual work plans, to limit their activities very narrowly to economic development, and to serve strictly as a coordinator and planner, not as an implementer (Douglas and O’Keeffe 2009; Vodden 2009). In the St John’s region, the REDB has had a particularly difficult time in navigating the competition between St John’s and its neighbours. St John’s is also where the provincial offices for the various industry associations reside, along with most of their members, and according to one informant they see the REDB as competition. Consequently, the REDB initially focused on how economic and social development can be integrated, which was consistent with a provincial Strategic Social Plan in the 1990s. Good work was done relating to labour market development, in particular, but with the change in government and the election of the Williams Progressive Conservatives, the Strategic Social Plan was moribund. A rural secretariat was established in its place and REDBs were given very tight funding conditions to stick to economic development (Douglas and O’Keeffe 2009; Ministerial Committee 2005). The REDB recently completed a new strategic plan for the zone, which focused on helping the rural communities around St John’s and its urban neighbours. These essentially rural communities are part of the commuting area of St John’s, and they are now coping with influxes of new residents, driving up property values and increasing demands for services. Most of the rural residents have expressed a desire to improve local services, while maintaining the rural nature of their communities: “Let Walmart stay in St John’s,” said one interviewee (Capital Coast Development Alliance 2008). Under the federal-provincial arrangements to allocate a share of the gas tax to municipalities, local actors are required to develop Integrated Community Sustainability Plans (ICSPs). This process, taking place across the country, could motivate better planning at the municipal level. In particular, the process called for integration of social, cultural, physical, environmental, and economic development planning; however, one community stakeholder interviewed noted that most municipalities were simply hiring consultants to write the plan, with little or no community consultation or ownership, just to get the money for infrastructure. REDBs and their provincial umbrella organization proposed that they facilitate a regional approach to ICSPs, but this was discouraged by ACOA and the provincial government, which want REDBs to focus their activities narrowly on economic development (Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador 2010b, 50–1).

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Municipalities NL, the umbrella organization for municipalities, has released discussion documents on regional governance and conducted research on innovations in inter-municipal cooperation. Regionalization in health care and education in NL was advanced by the Williams government as a way to centralize resources, with little or no devolution of decision making. Municipalities were essentially ignored, as were REDBs. Newfoundland and Labrador’s political culture has long been one of looking to charismatic leaders to deliver the goods – the church and the merchant initially, and federal and provincial politicians since Confederation. Decentralizing decision making and building capacity for local associative governance may have emerged where federal and/ or provincial control and objectives aligned with local partners in the ocean technology cluster or among social-sector NGOs, but municipalities or regional development organizations with a mandate for a specific territory have not been able to gain sufficient capacity or legitimacy to challenge their federal and provincial superiors (Tomblin and BraunJackson 2006; Kearley 2008; Freshwater and Tomblin 2009; Baldacchino 2009; Greenwood 2009). Conclusion The St John’s city-region provides compelling evidence of how associative governance can succeed in a priority economic sector and among NGOs doing “good works” that align with the priorities of senior levels of government. The dysfunction of associative governance among NEA municipalities and REDBs highlights the challenges facing strategic management of the urban economy. Almost all of those interviewed from the private, public, and voluntary sectors recognize the limitations of municipal and regional development coordination and collaboration in the region (although few outside the NGO sector seem to be aware of how dynamic and collaborative it has become). A senior St John’s municipal politician commented: What I would be looking for now is something that builds a bridge between the citizen groups and the business community so that you’re moving in tandem on prosperity, but making sure that it actually is enlightened enough to benefit everybody, or not leave too many people behind, and you have to be careful at how you select your community leaders because one thing … The community groups are not as well organized as some of the economic groups, and they’re very fragmented … Leaders will emerge

Good and Bad Governance in the St John’s City-Region  179 from a process so that if we can really get into a good community engagement process, there will be leaders on both sides emerge that are able to see both sides of it.

Based on the findings on the social-sector NGOs for St John’s, concern for the NGOs’ ability to represent themselves is probably not warranted. One dynamic NGO leader did suggest that there is a need for “more common tables” to bring government, community, and business together. Several observers in St John’s, Mt Pearl, and the Irish Loop observed that it is very difficult to engage small and medium-sized businesses in collaborative processes “unless they see something of benefit to our business.” Large firms, as noted above, have been very supportive of the social-sector NGOs. The small size of St John’s was seen to be an advantage in getting people together, and Mt Pearl saw itself even better able to do so because it was so compact. Mt Pearl also prides itself on being more consensus-based than the disruptive “individual dynamic” going on among the capital city’s councillors. In the Irish Loop, geography is an impediment to “effective networking” – a 45-minute drive is the most you can expect someone to travel to come to a meeting. A key distinguishing factor between the successful associative governance of the ocean technology cluster and the social-sector NGOs, compared to the non-collaborative municipalities and REDBs of the NEA, is money. While the larger municipalities of the NEA are relatively healthy financially, there are no incremental financial incentives – carrots – to increased collaboration. Smaller municipalities and REDBs are all underfunded, with insufficient numbers of staff, but there are no funding mechanisms to induce greater cooperation – a point recognized explicitly in Mt Pearl and the Irish Loop. ICSPs were seen by one REDB and one municipal leader as a possible means of inducing greater regional collaboration and greater integration of environmental, physical, social, and economic planning and governance, but this was more of a wished for opportunity than an expectation. The St John’s city-region needs new approaches to extend the wealth of associative governance success from the ocean technology cluster and the social-sector NGOs to the embarrassing strategic governance of the city-region economy. One informant suggested we need the university to serve as a broker, to facilitate an “association of associations” (7–3). Universities and colleges are increasingly seeing regional engagement as a role they must take on as central to their mandate and many

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are establishing strategies, programs, and units to support this goal. The regional bodies of the Strategic Social Plan, if revived, could play a role in leveraging lessons from the social sector to benefit municipal and economic development. They brought together representatives from the federal and provincial governments, health boards, school boards, and REDBs. Such an integrated approach to development is widely accepted as essential to be effective (OECD 2006). Greater resources and recognition of REDBs from the federal and provincial governments would enable them to better achieve the mandate they have to facilitate and coordinate regional economic development. The Strategic Partnership would then have effective regional partners that bring together municipalities, business, and labour. Provincial legislation governing municipalities should also move from prescriptive (doing only what is expressly permitted in the legislation) to permissive, allowing municipalities to innovate and take on new roles and relationships, acting within the law like any other actor. Business, social, post-secondary, and governance actors cannot wait for someone else to take the lead to initiate collaboration in the city-region: building trust and sharing knowledge requires interaction, one actor and opportunity at a time. REFERENCES Aradottir, Elin. 2003. “The role of innovation systems in rural economic development: A case study of the Exploits Valley Region, Newfoundland and Labrador,” M.Sc. thesis, University of Guelph. Baldacchino, Godfrey. 2009. “Governance in small places: The unleashing of asymmetric federalism.” In Remote control: Governance lessons for and from small, insular, and remote regions, ed. G. Baldacchino, R. Greenwood, and L. Felt, 114–34. St John’s: ISER Books. Capital Coast Development Alliance (CCDA). 2008. Strategic plan. December. Colbourne, Bruce. 2006. “St John’s Ocean Technology Cluster: Can government make it so?” Canadian Public Administration 49 (1): 46–59. http://dx.doi .org/10.1111/j.1754-7121.2006.tb02017.x. Doloreux, D., and R. Shearmur. 2009. “Maritime clusters in diverse regional contexts: The case of Canada.” Marine Policy 33 (3): 520–7. http://dx.doi .org/10.1016/j.marpol.2008.12.001. Douglas, D., and B. O’Keeffe. 2009. “Rural development and the regional construct: A comparative analysis of the Newfoundland and Labrador and Ireland contexts.” In Remote control: Governance lessons for and from small,

Good and Bad Governance in the St John’s City-Region  181 insular, and remote regions, ed. G. Baldacchino, R. Greenwood, and L. Felt, 77–113. St John’s: ISER Books. Fairley, John. 2001. A new approach to community economic development: The Regional Economic Development Boards in Newfoundland and Labrador. Glasgow, UK: University of Strathclyde. Feehan, J., and A. Coffin. 2005. “Federal government presence in Newfoundland and Labrador.” St John’s: Harris Centre, November. Felt, Lawerence. 2009. “A tale of two towns: Municipal agency and socioeconomic development in Akureyri, Iceland, and Corner Brook, Newfoundland.” In Remote control: Governance lessons for and from small, insular, and remote regions, ed. G. Baldacchino, R. Greenwood, and L. Felt, 148–69. St John’s: ISER Books. Freshwater, D., and S. Tomblin. 2009. “Making sense of changing realities in the ‘uncharted fringe.’” In Remote control: Governance lessons for and from small, insular, and remote regions, ed. G. Baldacchino, R. Greenwood, and L. Felt, 19–46. St John’s: ISER Books. Government of NL. 2005. “Reducing poverty in Newfoundland and Labrador: Working towards a solution.” June. Government of NL. 2007. “Diversity – ‘Opportunity and growth’: An immigration strategy for Newfoundland and Labrador.” Government of NL. 2010a. The economy. Government of NL. 2010a. “Newfoundland and Labrador’s poverty reduction strategy. Consultation guide 2010.” Greenwood, Rob. 2009. “Doing governance for development: The way forward for Newfoundland and Labrador.” In Remote control: Governance lessons for and from small, insular, and remote regions, ed. G. Baldacchino, R. Greenwood, and L. Felt, 280–94. St John’s: ISER Books. Hall, Heather M. 2010. The social dynamics of economic performance: Newfoundland and Labrador Project preliminary findings, St John’s, Clarenville, Corner Brook, Lab West. St John’s: Harris Centre Report, Web. House, Doug. 1999. Against the tide: Battling for renewal in Newfoundland and Labrador. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Kearley, Wade. 2008. “Where do you draw the line? Regionalization in Newfoundland and Labrador: A comparative synopsis of selected stakeholders’ input.” St John’s: Harris Centre, 25 January. Lepawsky, Josh. 2010. “The organization and dynamics of clustering and innovation in the ocean technology sector in Newfoundland and Labrador and the St John’s city-region.” St John’s: Harris Centre, 30 September. Lepawsky, J., C. Phan, and R. Greenwood. 2010. “Metropolis on the margin: Talent attraction and retention to the St John’s city-region.” Canadian

182  Governing Urban Economies Geographer / Le géographe canadien 54 (3): 324–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ j.1541-0064.2010.00315.x. Locke, Fran, with Penelope Rowe. 2009. “Poverty reduction policies and programs in Newfoundland and Labrador: Tracing a path from the past to the future.” Social Development Report Series, 2009, Canadian Council on Social Development. Locke, Wade. 2009. Presentation to Newfoundland Ocean Industries Association, 18 June, cited in Memorial University, Background report to the development of the Memorial University research plan, February 2010. Memorial University of Newfoundland. 2010. Background report to the development of the Memorial University research plan. February. Ministerial Committee on the Process to Renew Regional Economic Development. 2005. Report. December. Morgan, Kevin. 2010. “New stories from Newfoundland: From poverty to prosperity?” Newfoundland Quarterly 103 (2, Fall): 44–6. Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador. 2010a. Continuities and discontinuities: A brief history of local and regional government in Newfoundland and Labrador. Community Cooperation Regional Government Papers. Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador. 2010b. Searching for a purpose: A current assessment of municipal government and regional governance in Newfoundland and Labrador. Community Cooperation Regional Government Papers. OceansAdvance. 2009. Outward Bound 2015: A strategic agenda for accelerating growth of the ocean technology sector in Newfoundland and Labrador. OECD. 2002. Territorial review of Canada. Paris: OECD, Territorial Reviews and Governance Division. OECD. 2006. The new rural paradigm: Policies and governance. Paris: OECD Policy Reviews. PC Party. 2003. Blue Book. St John’s. 2010. “Corporate strategic plan.” June. St John’s Board of Trade. 2010. Board of Trade MUN candidates poll on issues. Shearmur, Richard. 2010. “Maritime clusters: A comparative perspective.” Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, Memorial University, Synergy Session, with OceansAdvance, 9 June. Spencer, G., and T. Vinodrai. 2006. Innovation Systems Research Network cityregion profile: St John’s. Pp. 1–13: Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems (PROGRIS). Sweeney, Sylvia. 2006. “Local economic development in Canadian cities: St John’s as a case study.” Paper written for political science class, “Applied Political Research” (POSC6031) (Wellington, NZ).

Good and Bad Governance in the St John’s City-Region  183 Task Force on Community Economic Development. 2005. Report “Community matters”: The new regional economic development. St John’s: Task Force. Tomblin, S., and J. Braun-Jackson. 2006. Managing change through regionalization: Lessons from Newfoundland and Labrador. St John’s: Harris Centre. Tremblay, Reeta, and Amanda Bittner. 2011. “Newfoundland and Labrador: Creating change in the 21st century.” In Integration and inclusion of newcomers and minorities across Canada, ed. J. Biles, M. Burstein, J. Frideres, E. Tolley, and R. Vineberg, 325–54. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Vodden, Kelly. 2009. “Experiments in collaborative governance on Canada’s coasts: Challenges and opportunities in governance capacity.” In Remote control: Governance lessons for and from small, insular, and remote regions, ed. G. Baldacchino, R. Greenwood, and L. Felt, 259–79. St John’s: ISER Books.

8 300 People Who Make a Difference: Associative Governance in Calgary patrick feng, ben li, and cooper h. langford

Associative governance has emerged as an alternative to traditional ­government-control or market-driven approaches to economic and social development (Streeck and Schmitter 1985; Cohen and Rogers 1993; Bradford 1998). According to its proponents, associative governance offers a “third way” of local governance, one that bridges public and private sectors and promotes collaboration between actors from different economic sectors in pursuit of coordinated social and economic development within a city-region (Cooke 2001; Leibovitz 2003). As Bradford and Bramwell (chapter 1) put it, the intent of associative governance is to “institutionalize representation and action-planning among the full range of actors deemed relevant to economic innovation.” The purpose of this chapter is to assess the extent to which associative governance occurs in Calgary and explore the forms that such relations may take. Using qualitative data from interviews with business, government, and non-profit leaders, we argue that associative governance in Calgary has a distinct character and logic. The broad “pioneer spirit” of individual and community self-reliance in Alberta (e.g., Kupecek 1983; Lafleur 1996; Gregoire 2003; Kelly 2010) manifests itself in governance networks where entrepreneurs draw primarily on informal, personal networks rather than formal, institutionalized networks to address local social challenges. We find that associative governance approaches are preferred when problems fall outside the mandates of individual organizations and are not well defined at the outset. Such conditions can lead to new initiatives that support social innovation. At the same time, they can also lead to friction between organizations, reflecting competing discourses of economic development versus sustainable community. To make our case, the chapter examines two areas

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that have been the subject of much discussion in Calgary: immigrant settlement and homelessness. Calgary in Context The Calgary Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) is home to approximately 1.24 million people spread out over 5100 square kilometres in the Foothills region of Alberta, about 100 km east of the Rocky Mountains (Statistics Canada 2007a, 2010). It is currently the fourth largest city in Canada after Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Its economy is dominated by oil and gas and has seen rapid – if unsteady – growth since the 1950s. Calgary is often characterized as having a “boom and bust” economy, with explosive growth when oil and gas prices are high and little or negative growth when oil and gas prices are low. The most recent boom lasted through much of the 2000s, peaking in 2008, when the price of oil rose to over US$140/barrel and ending soon afterwards as oil dropped to under US$40/barrel in early 2009. Just as with bust periods, boom times can lead to severe social problems. For example, poverty and homelessness have risen with the city’s rapid economic and population growth (Calgary Homeless Foundation 2009), putting strain on social services in the city. Homelessness has been identified by many Calgarians as a more urgent social concern than safety, employment, and the environment (Calgary Foundation 2010). Immigration, which has underpinned much of the city’s recent population growth, has also brought to light socio-economic challenges such as integration of newcomers into the community and recognition of their foreign credentials. Given Calgary’s dependence on skilled immigrant labour, issues of integration and recognition are issue of both social and economic significance. In response, the City of Calgary has experimented with new approaches to local governance. For example, it adopted a “triple bottom line” policy to evaluate projects in 2005 that aimed to integrate economic, social, and environmental criteria into municipal planning. That same year, the City also launched “imagineCalgary” to engage community stakeholders and develop a comprehensive, long-range vision for Calgary’s future development. This was followed by the “Plan It Calgary” consultations in 2007 to develop an integrated municipal development, land use, and transportation plan. Most recently, Calgary City Council has identified “strengthening neighbourhoods” and “increasing social inclusion” as new upstream funding priorities for

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community capacity and social infrastructure programs (Family and Community Support Services Calgary 2010). Several initiatives by large non-government funders such as the United Way and the Calgary Foundation have also aimed to develop community-oriented social ­infrastructure. Taken together, these strategies indicate recognition by city council – and, indeed, the broader business and volunteer communities – that unbridled economic growth is neither desirable nor sustainable; consideration must also be given to the consequences of such rapid growth for community well-being. Nevertheless, city council deliberations also keep the goals of economic growth and diversification firmly in mind, suggesting tension between competing discourses of economic development versus sustainable community. In this chapter we examine some recent experiments in local governance and the extent to which they might be examples of associative governance.

Defining Associative Governance Leibovitz (2003, 2613) describes associative governance as consisting of processes and institutions that “facilitate the participation of and interaction between a wide range of actors from public agencies, private enterprises, trade unions and the voluntary sector.” It is a form of local governance that draws on – and promotes collaboration between – ­actors from different sectors, supporting their work on shared priorities. This represents a break from traditional governance approaches that privilege either the state or private enterprise as the key to economic (and consequently social) development. From the associational governance perspective, the role of the state shifts from commanding to facilitating: rather than exerting unilateral control, the state enables stakeholders to coordinate actions across the traditional boundaries separating government, industry, and civil society. Innovation thereby arises in response to a range of societal inputs rather than from the demands of any single sector. Consequently, ­associational governance rests on the proposition that coordination, collaboration, and sharing of information are important elements in effective management of economic and social development. This type of collaboration aims to improve both economic management and democratic participation. As Bradford (1998, xx) explains: “The benefits of associative governance may extend beyond the economy. In democratic terms, institutionalized dialogue among diverse social actors can help level the decision-making field by empowering interests historically lacking policy voice and material resources.”

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While interest in more collaborative styles of governance has grown in recent years, there remains considerable debate about the operative structures and processes. Ansell and Gash (2008, 544) define collaborative governance as an arrangement where “public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative,” with the aim of making or implementing public policies or programs. More broadly, Sørensen and Torfing (2007, 237) emphasize the plurality of forms that “governance networks” can take and argue that the litmus test of a governance network is “whether we can identify a network of interdependent yet autonomous actors engaged in institutionalized processes of public governance based on negotiated interactions and joint decision making.” Yet, it is not clear that either of these definitions captures fully what is happening in Calgary. Our interview data suggest that collaborative initiatives are preferred in Calgary when problems fall outside individual mandates and problems are not well defined at the outset. Furthermore, these collaborations commonly originate in the business or non-profit sectors rather than government. They appear to rely more on individual champions than on organizational collaboration and seem less formalized in their interactions with public institutions. Thus, the dynamics of associative governance in Calgary seem to differ from models described in the literature. Associative Governance in Calgary To understand better the particular dynamics of associative governance in Calgary, we examined data from interviews conducted with leaders from Calgary’s business, government, and non-profit sectors.1 Inter­ viewees were asked about local governance networks, social inclusion, and the role of government in promoting innovation. They were also asked about quality-of-life issues, which are of interest to both those Calgarians whose primary orientation is economic development and those who focus on sustainable community. In our interpretation of the data, the term associative governance was applied to instances where more than one organization developed new capabilities in concert to carry out an initiative, for example, through convening stakeholders or creating new infrastructures. Such initiatives included partnerships to create new funding opportunities, joint developments of shared capabilities and capacity-building, and petitioning with fellow stakeholders to change government structures or policies. In contrast, we labelled as in-house initiatives that were carried out individually using internal

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resources. For analytical clarity, we consider associative governance and in-house approaches as mutually exclusive, although initiatives may transition from one form to the other. Below we apply the framework and interpret the data in relation to two issues that have garnered much attention in Calgary in recent years: integration of immigrants and homelessness.

Calgary’s Challenges: A Closer Look Immigration and homelessness have recently drawn practical and policy attention in Calgary. Among those interviewed, over one-quarter mentioned homelessness as an ongoing concern for Calgary and over one-third mentioned migration to Calgary. This section explores how these challenges are being addressed and associative governance’s role in initiatives aimed at these two problems. integration of immigrants Calgary’s recent development and population growth has been transformed by an influx of immigrants, from both other parts of Canada and from abroad. Calgary’s total immigrant population experienced its most rapid rate of increase in 2001–6, growing by 57,940 persons compared to 30,920 persons in 1991–5 and 36,450 persons in 1996–2000. Of the City of Calgary’s non-immigrant population in 2006, 333,565 persons were born in other Canadian provinces, accounting for one-third of Calgary’s total population (Statistics Canada 2007a). As a result, Calgary’s diversity now approaches that of other major Canadian urban centres, such as Toronto and Vancouver (ibid.). On their arrival in Calgary, immigrants face a mix of challenges, which are addressed with varying levels of resources through several service networks. Thus, the task of integrating new Calgarians into the city’s social and economic fabric is multifaceted, with different contributions and unique perspectives offered from community service organizations (CSOs), business groups, and local government. Indeed, the rapid growth of Calgary’s newcomer populations has strained the capacity of government and CSOs to settle and integrate newcomers. Numerous organizations have arisen in response to this need. For example, on its own and through collaborations, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce claims twenty-six “offspring” organizations in the city to address the challenges faced by new immigrants and other marginalized

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groups. One current project seeks to enrich the city’s talent pool by working with lawyers to remove employment barriers against immigrants, First Nations members, and other disadvantaged groups. Other prominent organizations working to settle newcomers and link them to specific employer partners or the broader labour market include Calgary Economic Development (CED), the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA), and the United Way of Calgary and Area. Key settlement and integration challenges involve accreditation and language barriers, difficulty accessing affordable housing and social services, and achieving social and cultural competency. In our interviews, only a few organizations were repeatedly mentioned as providing leadership on immigration. CED was one of the few municipal organizations repeatedly described as acting strategically in both social and economic sectors. Professional associations such as APEGGA were seldom mentioned, even though APEGGA has spearheaded several local, regional, and national initiatives to develop and recruit highly skilled workers in response to industry’s demands for more labour. Similarly, the United Way of Calgary and Area was mentioned by several informants, but without clarity about its specific role within the city in relation to immigration. Smaller organizations were also identified, many of whom already collaborate with one another. Individual leaders (rather than organizations) were viewed as lynchpins of the immigrant-serving community’s networks. The interview data revealed a number of specific problems in Calgary’s immigrant settlement and integration process. Some interviewees were concerned about government policy and program “black holes” with respect to providing immigrants with access to government services enjoyed by the mainstream population. New immigrants must also discover and navigate fragmented services delivered by different levels of government. Both federal and provincial governments organize their affairs through strong departmentalism. Policy goals and program outputs are internally defined, often with little reference to their impacts on citizens seeking access, on existing local networks, or on communities trying to integrate services. This results in an approach that splits concerns into “atomistic” components delivered by different agencies and governments in an apparently unconnected fashion. The vulnerability of newcomers and the potential for their marginalization in the city is heightened in such a disjointed policy context. As

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one interviewee put it, immigrants are “made vulnerable by our system that dismantles inherent family structure, or even your own personal sense of self, in such a way that you can conform to other policy envelopes or regulatory kinds of expectations.” In relation to the different levels of government and their respective roles and responsibilities in managing this complex system, interviewees offered several insights. The federal government in Calgary was seen as not providing clarity to immigrants or employers about the challenges and opportunities for newcomers, and not offering adequate support for immigrant-serving organizations on the front lines. Provin­ cial issues ranged from uncertainty for employers and employees in the Temporary Foreign Worker program due to poor provincial/federal coordination, to inclusion of temporary foreign workers in commu­ nities, and, more broadly, to access to health care and education for immigrant families. Municipal issues included concern that city departments such as Family and Community Support Services may not understand the complex needs of recent and established immigrants. It was emphasized that government services and infrastructures designed for the existing population, or immigrants from traditional sources, were rarely matched to the social or cultural needs and expectations of current immigrant populations coming overwhelmingly from non-European backgrounds. It was also noted that, from a creative talent and innovation perspective, government agencies in Calgary were ill equipped to coordinate responses to increasingly diverse professional and non-professional immigrants. Concerns about government’s ineffective role in immigration were echoed in the business and not-for-profit sectors. One person characterized his organization’s relationship with government as “difficult,” noting: “It’s very complex, it’s hard to crack, it takes a lot of learning, it takes a lot of different kinds of knowledge and skill sets that we don’t always have. And people don’t always recognize it requires money, resources and it’s difficult to deal with government because, every time you try to talk to them about an issue, they kick in the public relations activities.” Yet, these critical views about government were at odds with the perceptions held by interviewees from the government sector itself. Public employees mostly viewed government programs for immigrants as working reasonably well. This gap in perception has implications for the viability of associative arrangements in Calgary, a theme we discuss in more detail later in the chapter.

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homelessness and affordable housing Access to affordable housing has been a concern for both Calgary’s marginalized and mainstream communities, particularly during the boom ending in 2008. Calgary’s population of invisible poor and homeless individuals grew by 32 per cent between 2004 and 2006 and by another 13 per cent between 2006 and 2008 (City of Calgary 2006, 2008). New initiatives and organizations arose to address these and related social problems. Informants indicated that significant social capital is being directed to quality-of-life issues that directly affect Calgary’s ability to sustain a vital workforce. Initiatives have been launched through Vibrant Communities Calgary, local professional organizations, and newcomerserving agencies. At least thirty-seven agencies operate shelters and eleven agencies provide services for the homeless in Calgary (City of Calgary 2008). Each individual agency pursues specific goals, drawing together its own assortment of funders and supporters, and most large agencies were reported by interviewees to collaborate infrequently. In 2008, the Calgary Homeless Foundation (CHF) launched a “10 Year Plan to End Homelessness” and became the de facto gatekeeper of government funding for homeless initiatives in the city. The launch of this initiative has brought a great deal of attention and resources to Calgary’s homeless situation, as well as some controversy. CHF’s plan adopts a “housing first” model that some say disrupts existing competencies of homeless-serving agencies.2 Adding to the friction is the fact that CHF’s leadership does not include representatives from any homeless-serving agency, relying instead on senior Calgary business leaders, community leaders, and agencies for whom homeless clients are a significant but not necessarily core constituency (CHF 2011). This may be because the 10 Year Plan, like many of the social innovations identified in our interviews, was modelled after successful initiatives in other cities and Calgary’s existing homelessness agencies were perceived by some as not having the relevant experience required for this type of operation. The origin of CHF is revealing when it comes to associative governance in Calgary. As one not-for-profit leader recalled, the founding of CHF relied on strong informal networks and individual leadership of a type that frequently plays a crucial role in bringing concerns to prominence in Calgary: The Calgary Homeless Foundation was started by Art Smith, who was told by his peers: “There’s no homeless issue in this city.” So he packed them into his car and took them to shelters. He convinced them that there

192  Governing Urban Economies was a homeless problem and, from that, he was able to talk to people who trusted him and put together a foundation that was financed both by private sector companies and by the government of Alberta. Art was able to talk to [then Alberta premier] Ralph Klein and say “We’ve got to get this thing going, here’s what we’re proposing to do,” and Ralph [effectively] said, “Here’s a million bucks.” And, from that, you see a number of initiatives occurring and I think the [Calgary] Homeless Foundation is doing really important work on a volunteer basis.

In other words, CHF began with one business champion who was able to use his personal, professional, and political connections to catalyse the founding of a new homeless organization. Moreover, while its initial funding was ad hoc and took place outside of established government channels, CHF has subsequently received substantial grants through both federal and provincial programs and been incorporated into municipal homeless strategies. Thus, the informal beginnings of CHF have transformed into sustained, mainstream relationships with other stakeholder organizations. The engaged and sometimes exclusionary nature of Calgary’s business networks is a theme we explore further below. It is important to note that not everyone in Calgary’s community-based networks support CHF’s housing-first approach. Another not-for-profit leader offers a less than flattering version of the story, criticizing CHF’s importation of a non-local model and its operational implications: “A group of businessmen got together and said ‘We’re going to end homelessness, we’re going to set up a plan and take stuff out of some American cities like New York and Portland.’ [They] put their proposal together and … it’s filled with flaws, it is fundamentally very flawed in its projections as well as its system of operations.” The above quotes illustrate three key points. First, elements of the private sector are strongly involved in emerging governance arrangements in Calgary; this engagement extends beyond purely economic issues to include social issues such as homelessness and immigration. Second, when leaders from the private sector become motivated to tackle a social problem, they tend to draw on their personal and professional networks rather than seek out formal government programs. Third, while initiatives such as the Calgary Homeless Foundation express the commitment of Calgary’s business community towards the city’s overall well-being, it also points to tensions between differ­ ent  groups and sectors within the city in relation to how they view

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problems and conceive solutions. These points came up repeatedly in our interviews and they bring into focus key features of Calgary’s governance dynamics. While it is still too early to know if its 10 Year Plan will be successful, CHF has already had an impact on how homelessness is addressed in Calgary. For example, new affordable housing projects have begun with support from CHF and its partners (CHF 2011).3 More important, the emergence of CHF reconfigured relations among homeless organizations in Calgary, with CHF turning into a de facto gatekeeper through which government funds for homelessness are funnelled. Clearly, the networks spanning business, government, and CSOs are important to addressing homelessness in Calgary. However, the “innovation” of funnelling federal and provincial funding through CHF was viewed as neutral, even negative, by some existing homeless-serving agencies. The “housing first” paradigm promoted by CHF has led to some tensions between the organization and “traditional” homeless-serving agencies. This shows how, in Calgary at least, associative governance initiatives are emerging but they do not necessarily lead to the inclusion of all stakeholders in a consensual, collaborative model. 300 People Who Make a Difference Another theme from our interview data was the repeated mention of a group of people in Calgary who “get things done.” This group, sometimes nicknamed “the 300” for its estimated size, is composed mainly (but not exclusively) of private-sector leaders who act as community leaders and civic entrepreneurs. These are the well-connected, influential members of Calgary society whose support is crucial if one wishes to launch a new social initiative. While “the 300” do not substitute for on-the-ground volunteers, they can be the catalysts to launch a new initiative or project. Members of this group serve on diverse corporate and non-profit boards across all sectors, and appear on lists of significant donors and business, social, and sporting club members. Not all initiatives require the imprimatur of “the 300,” but their involvement is frequent among those who tackle concerns across the entire city-region. The significance of both “the 300” and the general spirit of volunteerism among Calgarians was described by one interviewee as follows: What’s important to me is relationships with communities, those [people] that hold the levers for resources, politically and financially. I want to get

194  Governing Urban Economies a better connection into “the 300.” But I also want to get a better connection to those Calgarians that get stuff done. Calgary is unique in the country because it has one of the highest rates of volunteerism4 … Whether that is because there are fewer resources going into the schools and the parents need to do more or [we’re] just active in hockey rinks … we are funny like that, we just like to get involved. It’s important to engage that public to get stuff done.

While recognizing that “the 300” form a crucial funding and support network for social causes, its existence can also frustrate those whose initiatives cannot access the group or do not share in the network’s views and priorities. As one informant put it, “The issue with networks is that they have a dark side, in that they can be potentially exclusive … If you are not part of the network, you are out in a very major way, and if the network happens to be rich and powerful and you’re not in that, you are not going anywhere.” More broadly, we heard an observation (and sometimes complaint) from non-profit leaders that they attend countless “networking” events hosted by different organizations only to network with substantially the same group of individuals at each event. That many not-for-profit organizations (with presumably different goals and approaches) network with the same group of people suggests significant overlap among the city’s core associative governance networks. Put another way, social networks in Calgary are small and the same people tend run into each other repeatedly. While “the 300” is no doubt heterogeneous, Calgary’s community leaders perceive a “centre” or core group of people around which organizers can – and must – rally to advance their causes. Discussion Our interview data suggest several patterns in Calgary’s emergent associative governance. First, in response to city-wide concerns such as immigrant integration and homelessness, new organizations, partnerships, and collaborations have been created. Particularly when problems are complex and open-ended, associative strategies are preferred by both individual leaders and stakeholder organizations. Recognizing that such problems fall outside the mandate of any single organization, leaders from the city’s business and non-profit sectors seem willing to work together to better understand and address those problems. Indeed, recognition of a shared problem can spur organizations to collaborate in new ways. As these cross-sector forms are relatively new to

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both the organizations undertaking them and the wider Calgary citizenry, it remains unclear whether and how the collaborations will become successful components of local governance. Our interview data suggests that cross-sector collaboration does occur in Calgary, although not necessarily following existing associative governance models. Further, the durability of such departures as “social innovations” remains an open question. Whether the resources and commitment to institutionalization will be forthcoming is not yet clear in the case of either immigrant settlement or homelessness. Second, in leveraging associative governance, both business and notfor-profit leaders rely on their personal and professional networks. This illustrates the importance of social capital in launching new initiatives. Interestingly, many interviewees did not see government as a key player in this process. Often, new initiatives were spearheaded by local entrepreneurs and business leaders (as in the 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness) or business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce (as evidenced by its twenty-six “offspring organizations” that broadly engage with sustainability issues). Calgary’s business leaders are active in the community and are arguably more effective than municipal or provincial governments in bringing about social change at the community level. The prominent role of the private and third sector in Calgary’s development may also indicate a certain ambivalence about governments acting as facilitators and leaders when it comes to tackling complex, multifaceted problems. Third, we found evidence that associative governance in Calgary can successfully identify and overcome informational, conceptual, and strategic gaps among government policymakers. Indeed, many of our interviewees were sceptical about government’s ability to address social problems, thus creating an environment where business and nongovernmental organizations were expected to step in and lead. This attitude may be particular to Alberta, which idealizes a culture of “selfsufficiency” that resists attempts by government to lead on social issues. Much of this self-sufficiency model relies on volunteers “giving back to the community” (an often heard phrase in Calgary) rather than pushing for government programs. Political culture thus emerges as an important part of the associative governance story in Calgary.

Political Culture in Alberta Alberta’s governments have long encouraged private organizations to take responsibility for social programs and services as much as possible.

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Broadly, much of the “Alberta model” depends on the contributions of volunteers who are also leaders in their respective business and social communities. Even within traditional public government areas of health, education, and infrastructure, significant private intervention is encouraged in the delivery of benefits to Albertans. As one serial entrepreneur noted, the number of hours that volunteers contribute to social causes is significant and represents work that the provincial and municipal governments would otherwise have to do. As a result, associative governance networks built or supported by business and civic leaders were widely viewed by interviewees as being successful at tackling broad aspects of economic and social policy, while networks built or supported by government were seen as much less so.5 Political culture also shapes the relationship among Calgary’s business, government, and non-profit sectors, with business perspectives often leading discussions about development goals. This can be seen, for instance, in how the idea of a “liveable city” is taken up in local policy discussions. Like other Canadian CMAs, Calgary is eager to attract talented workers. Indeed, Calgary’s workforce is one of the most highly skilled in the country (CED 2009). Civic leaders believe that in order to continue attracting talented workers, they need to create a liveable city, one in which economic development and social inclusion coexist. This follows Florida’s (2003) hypothesis that the “creative class” – those segments of the workforce that are both highly skilled and mobile – are attracted to cities with a high quality of life and interesting urban amenities. Addressing social problems such as immigrant exclusion and homelessness is one tangible way to make the city more liveable. Calgary’s policy consensus around social problems is driven largely by economic logic; as Miller and Smart (2011) suggest (and is established in public documents), initiatives such as the 10 Year Plan to End Home­ lessness are justified primarily in terms of a business case – that is, it will cost less for the city to end homelessness than not to – rather than as a matter of social justice. Nevertheless, the imperative to “give back” is widely articulated in the private sector and can be seen in the many initiatives promoted by “the 300.” The economy of love (Boulding 1973) is not absent. Calgary’s firms, not-for-profit organizations, and government place different emphases on economic development versus sustainable community, but they do so to different extents rather than exclusively. One example of this can be found in the organizations that represent Calgary’s forceful and engaged private sector. The thrust of this sector’s thinking places strong priority on economic growth and diversification.

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This emphasis is clear in public documents from organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce. These documents publicly confirm what our interviews with firm leaders suggest: there is a strong commitment to policy supporting economic growth, with the specific recognition that the dominance of the oil and gas industry – which assimilates other sectors as support – renders the whole regional economy vulnerable to the volatility of the international commodity markets (Langford et al. 2014). Thus, beyond simple economic growth, these leaders see the need for diversification of the economy to make it less reliant on a single class of markets. This view was eloquently articulated in a 2008 summit that brought together invited leaders from industry, government, and academia (THECIS 2008). This thinking is also represented in reports of Calgary Economic Development and figures prominently in deliberations of City Council and administration. Outside Calgary, the City of Calgary’s use of a “triple bottom-line” model for considering programs and expenditures – through economic, social, and environmental lenses – has drawn positive attention from municipal watchers. However, in our interview data, this public accounting innovation was mentioned only twice, and only by one of several City of Calgary interviewees. Although there is much talk of broadening perspectives beyond the monetary bottom line, as was done in the imagineCalgary and Calgary Foundation evaluations, no authoritative framework has emerged to translate such talk into practice. While an unspoken consensus about the value of more sustainable development may exist among Calgary’s business, government, and non-profit sectors, differences remain as to who is best positioned to spearhead this vision. In most non-government interviews, government was viewed as not enhancing the interviewees’ sector through partnerships or planning, or in some cases as being absent from strategic planning or action around Calgary overall. In most government interviews, the level of government being interviewed was viewed as being key to socio-economic development planning in Calgary, with the other levels perceived as either largely absent or non-cooperative. Conflicting views between those inside government and external stakeholders highlight an obstacle in institutionalizing collaborative approaches. Nevertheless, at an operational level, conversations between the economic-growth and sustainable-development groups seem to be converging in activities at the municipal level. Referring back to the associative governance literature, it is clear that collaborative forms in Calgary do not follow Ansell and Gash’s (2008) definition of formal processes led by government. Calgary’s associational forums are seldom

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initiated by public agencies and they are usually organized informally, at least at the outset. Local governance in Calgary resembles a model of informal policy networks where individual leaders, experts, and wellconnected citizens (“the 300”) play a large, but largely non-institutionalized, role in organizing collective action on social challenges. Conclusion Calgarians take pride in giving back to their community and this spirit shapes new forms of collaboration across sectors. The voluntary sector is an important meeting ground for people from business and government, and a majority of interviewees thought the initiatives that resulted from such informal networks were largely successful. At the same time, this informal, voluntary dynamic does not seem to fit the ideal expressed in the associative governance literature of institutionalizing connections across sectors. Part of this “Calgary difference” may be due to the political, economic, and social history of the province. Alberta remains a resource-based economy and Calgary’s governance dynamics rest more on a limited government ethos of individual leadership and community volunteerism than on government-driven collaboration. Indeed, the gap in perceptions about public and private leadership on social issues is significant. Yet, despite Calgary’s competing discourses (between economic development and sustainable community), on the ground there is evidence of coordinated action in tackling issues such as homelessness and immigrant integration. Leadership for such associational strategies comes more from business leaders and non-profit sectors than from government, and invariably a business case must be made to support any investments. Thus, associational governance in Calgary appears to differ from the models described in the existing literature. Overall, our data suggests that Calgary’s emergent governance mechanisms are not inclusive of the full range of social interests, and do not fully leverage opportunities for social capital development or civic entrepreneurship. Interviewees were aware of representational gaps in the social networks, but remained sceptical that concerted efforts were under way to close them. This raises questions about the effectiveness of associational governance in hearing the voices of diverse stakeholders, especially those of marginalized groups. While public support is important to many initiatives launched through informal channels (e.g., the Calgary Homeless Foundation), a relatively small group of

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well-connected citizens has significant influence over which social initiatives gain momentum and traction in the city. Thus, the question of whether associative governance leads to more democratic and socially inclusive governance remains open. In Calgary’s case, the answer so far appears to be no. NOTES 1 These interviews were conducted as part of a national research project on innovation and city-regions funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. A total of 121 interviews were conducted in Calgary, of which 43 represented public-sector or civil-society organizations Each interview was transcribed and coded to identify local problems and initiatives undertaken to address those problems. 2 In contrast to traditional approaches that focus on addressing the underlying causes of homelessness, a “housing first” approach focuses on quickly moving homeless persons into stable, affordable housing. The idea is that social services can more easily provide support to homeless persons once they are in a stable housing situation. 3 We note the difficulty in finding reliable metrics to demonstrate the impact of any single organization on an issue as complex as homelessness. For example, emergency shelter use has declined since 2009, but some of this decline could be attributable to out-migration, as Calgary’s economy slowed following the boom. 4 Interestingly, the widespread and often mentioned local perception of extraordinary volunteerism in Calgary is not supported by Statistics Canada (2007b) data, which places the city’s volunteering rate at 50.3 per cent, above the national average but below those of several jurisdictions. 5 We note there was a gap between the perceptions of City of Calgary workers, who viewed their activities as largely successful, versus other interviewees’ view that City of Calgary and senior government efforts were largely irrelevant to associative governance activities within the city.

REFERENCES Ansell, Chris, and Alison Gash. 2008. “Collaborative governance in theory and practice.” Journal of Public Administration: Research and Theory 18 (4): 543–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mum032.

200  Governing Urban Economies Boulding, Kenneth Ewart. 1973. The economy of love and fear: A preface to grants economics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Bradford, Neil. 1998. “Prospects for associative governance: Lessons from Ontario, Canada.” Politics & Society 26 (4, December): 539–73. Calgary Economic Development. 2009. “The changing profile of Calgary’s workforce.” http://www.calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com/sites/default/ files/CED_LabourForce_SPFinal.pdf. Calgary Foundation. 2010. Calgary’s Vital Signs 2010 citizen’s report card.” http://calgaryvitalsigns.ca/documents/CAL_VitalSignsfinal.pdf. Calgary Homeless Foundation. 2009. “Hidden in plain sight: The housing challenges of newcomers in Calgary.” http://www.calgaryhomeless.com/ users/getdownload.asp?DownloadID=210. Calgary Homeless Foundation. 2011. “Calgary’s 10-year Plan to End Homelessness.” January 2011 update. http://www.calgaryhomeless.com/users/folderdata/%7B8E730485-2F03-40B2-821C557F99637F8E%7D/10%20year%20plan%20%282%29.pdf. City of Calgary. 2006. Results of the 2006 count of homeless persons in Calgary: Enumerated in emergency and transitional facilities, by service agencies, and on the streets – 2006 May 10. Calgary: City of Calgary, Community and Neighbourhood Services, Policy and Planning Division. City of Calgary. 2008. “Biennial count of homeless persons in Calgary (2008).” http://www.calgary.ca/docgallery/bu/cns/homelessness/2008_count_ full_report.pdf. Cohen, Joshua, and Joel Rogers. 1993. “Associative democracy.” In Markets Socialism, ed. Pranab Bardhan and John Roemer. New York: Oxford University Press. Cooke, Philip. 2001. “Regional innovation systems, clusters, and the knowledge economy.” Industrial and Corporate Change 10 (4): 945–74. http://dx.doi .org/10.1093/icc/10.4.945. Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) Calgary. 2010. “2009 report on Calgary’s 2010 FCSS program and 2010 funding recommendations.” http://www.calgary.ca/docgallery/bu/cns/fcss/fcss_annual_report.pdf. Florida, Richard L. 2003. The rise of the creative class: And how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. New York: Basic Books. Gregoire, Lisa. 2003. “Alberta teens face smoking fines, price of cartons tops $70.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 168 (7): 888. Kelly, Leroy Victor. 2010. “Generally descriptive.” In The range men: Pioneer ranchers of Alberta, 1–30. Victoria, BC: Heritage House Publishing Co. Kupecek, Linda. 1983. “‘A’ as in Alberta actor.” Cinema Canada, July–August, 22–3.

Associative Governance in Calgary  201 Lafleur, Brenda. 1996. “‘Resting’ in history: Translating the art of Jin-me Yoon.” In Generations and geographies in the visual arts: Feminist readings, ed. G. Pollock, 282–93. New York: Routledge. Langford, Cooper H., Ben Li, and Cami Ryan. 2014. “Firms and their problems: Systemic innovation and related diversity in Calgary.” In Innovating in Urban Economies: Economic Transformation in Canadian City-Regions, ed. D.A. Wolfe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Leibovitz, Joseph. 2003. “Institutional barriers to associative city-region governance: The politics of institution-building and economic governance in ‘Canada’s Technology Triangle.’” Urban Studies 40 (13, December): 2613–42. Miller, Byron, and Alan Smart. 2011. “‘Heart of the New West’? Oil and gas, rapid growth, and consequences in Calgary.” In Canadian urban regions: Trajectories of growth and change, ed. L.S. Bourne, T. Hutton, R. Shearmur, and J. Simmons. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Sørensen, Eva, and Jacob Torfing. 2007. “Making governance networks effective and democratic through metagovernance.” Public Administration 87 (2): 234–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01753.x. Statistics Canada. 2007a. “Population and dwelling counts, for census metropolitan areas, 2006 and 2001 censuses – 100% data.” http://www12.statcan .ca/english/census06/data/popdwell/Table.cfm?T=205&RPP=50. Statistics Canada. 2007b. “Canada survey of giving, volunteering and participating, 2007.” www5.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=71-542-X. Statistics Canada. 2010. “Population of census metropolitan areas” (2006 census boundaries). http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm. Streeck, Wolfgang, and Philippe C. Schmitter. 1985. “Community, market, state – and associations?” European Sociological Review 1 (2): 119–38. THECIS. 2008. “Summary of the proceedings of the First Banff Innovation Summit.” http://www.thecis.ca/userfiles/files/Banff_Summit_Consensus_ Report.pdf.

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PART III Project Partnerships

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9 Challenge and Change in London: The Social Dynamics of Urban Economic Governance neil bradford

Recently there has been growing awareness of cities as strategic policy spaces in the age of globalization. Contrary to predictions of the “locationless” effects of virtual communications and the “death of distance” in a weightless economy, economic geographers and demographers track an intensification of urban agglomeration as knowledge-intensive firms seek business opportunities and skilled workers leverage professional networks. A host of studies now report that the competitiveness of nations increasingly depends on cities and localized supports for business innovation. Yet the same research also describes an “urban paradox” wherein the opportunities for high value-added growth and the risks of social exclusion are both concentrated in city-regions (OECD 2006). The OECD concludes that “metro-wide economic growth depends not only on economic interdependencies but also on social cohesion, for which policies have to be designed” (ibid.). Economic development strategies in the most vibrant city-regions seek to balance the goals of “competitiveness and cohesion.” While this is a laudable aspiration, there is much evidence suggesting that integrated development is difficult to practise. Indeed, decades of urban economic development theory and policy identify a different trajectory: municipalities of all shapes and sizes competing with one another on the basis of narrow growth incentives that omit social considerations. Those urban policymakers and local authorities seeking more balanced or holistic development confront hard questions. What policy ideas and governance institutions undergird what the OECD terms “a single coherent strategy”? How might multi-sectoral coalitions emerge to support and advance the policy synthesis? What role do upper-level governments play in either facilitating or frustrating local

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collaboration? At present, normative claims about the value of integrated development are stronger than empirical research detailing how cities might actually pursue such strategies. This chapter aims to further understanding of the problems and possibilities for achieving more balanced local economic development.1 Our case study is London, Ontario, a mid-sized city that has found itself on the front lines of two major rounds of recent global economic change. In the 1990s, London’s traditional strengths in financial services and secondary manufacturing were hit hard by North American free trade, and in 2008–9, the so-called Great Recession rocked Southwestern Ontario’s key automotive assembly and parts sector. As industries closed, job losses mounted, and talent departed, a leading regional urban centre struggled to renew and rebrand. Economic development concerns moved front and centre, with several policy alternatives on offer, some emphasizing traditional growth priorities, others seeking to balance competitiveness and cohesion. London’s recent history thus offers an interesting window on the social dynamics of urban economic governance. Our analysis is organized in three parts. We begin with a conceptual discussion of the different development ideas and coalitions that shape local strategies. Turning next to London’s development, we track a decade-long debate over economic futures through the city’s key governance sites, and identify several multi-sectoral partnerships in the wake of the recent Great Recession. We close with reflections on lessons from the London experience about the prospects for integrated development and collaborative governance. Local Economic Development: Frameworks and Coalitions

Development Frameworks: Alternative Visions Today a range of local strategies guide development trajectories in North America and Europe. Catalogued in numerous OECD reports and the subject of numerous cross-national research communities, these strategies almost always privilege economic concerns, tracking employment levels, property values, assessment rates, and the like (Savitch and Kantor 2002; OECD 2006; Bradford 2008). But there is also considerable variation across cities in the degree to which social dimensions are incorporated in economic frameworks through attention to issues such as income polarization, distressed neighbourhoods, immigrant settlement, and affordable housing city (Sellers 2002). This variation underscores

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the need for a stock taking of the most influential local development frameworks to properly situate policy debates in any particular city. From the scholarly and practitioner literatures, it is possible to identify a limited number of policy discourses around which thought and action focuses (Pike et al. 2006). Each of these idea sets offers views about economic development goals, mechanisms, and processes for their realization, and criteria to interpret success. As such, they become action-oriented frameworks guiding policy and structuring political debate. Once institutionalized in decision-making routines they channel policymaking for extended periods. However, they are socially constructed frameworks, meaning that their solutions are always open to challenge, especially when conditions change and alternative accounts reframe choices. In cities experiencing intensive restructuring pressures, development debates become unsettled. In London over the past two decades, three development frameworks have acquired prominence, each with its own vision, strategy, and standards. These can be labelled the growth machine, knowledge mobilization, and social sustainability.

Growth Machine: Landing Industry In urban political economy analysis, growth machine refers to powerful alliances of land-based elites, specifically developers, realtors, and financiers, whose economic fortunes are tied to the rapid growth of their municipality (Molotch 1976). Supported by a wider circle of boosters in the media, utilities, chambers of commerce, and government officials, growth machines seek decisions that increase the value of land and its revenue streams from property taxes, rents, and profits. Growth comes to be seen not simply as a material benefit for particular growth machine members but as the basis for broad socio-political consensus. The goal is attraction of footloose capital investment, often in direct competition with neighbouring municipalities controlled by their own growth machines. A development strategy division of labour typically emerges between the municipal government and the business leaders, with the former supplying abundant serviced land and the latter undertaking “place-marketing” to potential investors. Competition among municipalities turns on the mix of incentives, subsidies, and information offered to ensure a smooth landing for incoming firms and plants. In these terms, the economic substance of the growth machine agenda is quite prosaic, privileging one traditional factor of production (land) to

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attract large-scale industrial or commercial developments and then rely on local multipliers for spread effects. The “land assembly” agenda is straightforward: expedite approvals, limit taxation, extend infrastructure, and deliver industrial plant and warehouse attractors such as roadwidening schemes, rural annexations, or greenbelt flexibility. Growth machines’ primary measures of success are quantitative – number of firms lured and jobs created; amount of land serviced; and transportation corridors created or extended.

Knowledge Mobilization: Growing Clusters A second development discourse focuses on knowledge mobilization, challenging some of the growth machine’s key assumptions and metrics. The central concern is innovation and the resiliency of local firms in the face of ideas-driven competition. Rather than trying to attract “any and all” external investment, knowledge mobilization advocates aim to be more selective in their targets and more engaged with potential investors as innovation partners. Firm success, whether lured from the outside or grown indigenously, requires organized support for learning that continuously upgrades technological capabilities, managerial competencies, and skill levels. Firms need access not simply to transportation corridors, but to multiple channels of knowledge, both formal and tacit, from a range of sources – other firms, universities and colleges, research centres, and governments. Firms must be embedded in an innovation system that connects entrepreneurs to both local suppliers and global pipelines of industry know-how (Gertler and Wolfe 2004). To avoid the vulnerabilities that accompany over-reliance on external investors it is necessary to balance investment attraction with institutional development enabling mobile corporations or branch plants to become anchor firms for local clusters. A high-performing innovation system will arrange the physical and social infrastructures appropriate to a city-region’s particular sectoral strengths, nurturing clusters of excellence (Porter 2003). With its emphasis on knowledge and learning, this development framework finds strong supporters among technology firms, research institutes, and science and engineering faculties in post-secondary institutions. Attracting political support from creative city builders, it proposes “associative governance” that brings together knowledge producers and users to apply innovations across the economy and municipal institutions (Cooke and Morgan 1998).

Challenge and Change in London  209

Social Sustainability: Strengthening Community The third discourse distances itself from the growth machine and knowledge mobilization projects, viewing both as too “economistic” (Morgan 2004). Richard Stren and Mario Polese introduce the idea of social sustainability to distinguish development that is “compatible with the harmonious evolution of civil society, fostering an environment conducive to the compatible cohabitation of culturally and socially diverse groups while at the same time encouraging social integration, with improvements in the quality of life for all segments of the population” (Stren and Polese 2000, 15–16). Observing that some of the most innovative and creative cities are also the most polarized and segregated, these advocates argue that governance processes need to reach well beyond the elites of the growth machine and knowledge mobilization networks to include social and community movements. These popular forces offer different metrics that “reflect a broader ­notion of ‘development’ encompassing health, well-being and quality of life in localities and regions” (Pike et al. 2006, 114; Morgan 2004). This discourse often works at the neighbourhood scale, organizing community-driven renewal in inner cities and older suburbs where urban poverty and environmental threats are increasingly concen­ trated. Valuing citizen engagement and broad-based participation in policy and planning, the social sustainability discourse envisions “empowered and participatory governance” for “socially oriented economic alternatives” that deliver inclusive, sustainable growth (Fung and Wright 2003; Healey 2007). Planners are empowered with infill development tools for brownfield revitalization, growth boundaries, and heritage preservation. Local policymakers pursue investments that promise quality employment, equitable opportunity, and environmental sustainability. In sum, local economic development choices cluster into three quite distinctive frameworks. Table 9.1 captures the key points of similarity and difference across the projects. Development Coalitions: Joining Up? The above discussion of how cities matter to economic and social wellbeing in a global age depicts an urban policy landscape shaped by three distinctive “communities of practice,” focused respectively on growth,

210  Governing Urban Economies Table 9.1  Local development projects Development project

Growth machine

Knowledge mobilization

Development discourse

Industrial recruitment

Cluster building

Inclusive development

Governance mode

Business-led partnerships

Associational governance

Civic engagement

Leadership network

Economic development corporations

Knowledge economy institutions

Social and community movements

Policy objective

Rapid growth

Economic innovation

Strong neighbourhoods

Flagship project

Business parks

Research commercialization

Infill development

Social sustainability

innovation, and inclusion. Recent studies from high-profile research networks advocate integrative development that exploits the synergies among the different priorities (Pike et al. 2006; Sellers 2002). “Cluster building and community building” can become interdependent parts of a holistic urban development strategy (Pastor 2006). According to the OECD, urban governance structures need to recognize “the close links between social and economic development, such that policies to support social cohesion may also increase investment attractiveness and business competitiveness” (OECD 2001, 209). In 2007, the European Union ministers responsible for urban development committed to “use the tool of integrated urban development and the related governance for its implementation” (European Union 2007, 1). However, close observers of city development remain sceptical of such official exhortations, questioning whether policy join-ups exist beyond the “warm words” of government or “wishful thinking” of think tanks (Buck et al. 2005, 276). In this context, Michael Keating’s concept of the “development coalition” is useful (Keating 2001). Development coalitions are place-based alliances of social and political actors working together for city-region economic development, supplying critical infrastructure for integrated development and fostering dialogue across sectors and classes. Rather than asserting functional linkages between economic and social structures or indulging in wishful thinking, Keating calls for empirical analysis of economic leaders, their policy ideas, and networks. Emphasizing the variation in development coalitions across

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cities and over time, Keating directs attention to key governance settings where development agendas take shape through the interaction of economic players. In some places, the institutionalized relations facilitate integrated development and coalition building. Elsewhere, the players and their projects remain in their sectors or silos with little evidence of collaboration. Economic Restructuring in London, Ontario, 1990–2010 We now turn to an exploration of the contestation of frameworks and interplay of economic actors in London, Ontario. A mid-sized Canadian city, with a population of about 350,000, London is the country’s tenthlargest market area, serving as a regional hub for Southwestern Ontario agricultural producers and smaller cities and towns. Located at the junction of three important 400 series highways and the Ontario city closest to all three major US border crossing (Detroit, Buffalo, and Port Huron), London prospered in the second half of the twentieth century as a site of choice for many subsidiaries of American manufacturers, notably in food and beverages, automotive parts, and aircraft and locomotive assembly. Once known for its strength in banking and insurance, London has more recently developed a profile in health research and post-­ secondary education through Western University and Fanshawe College. However, London’s economy been negatively impacted by two major rounds of restructuring (the 1990s free trade shock) and recession (the 2008–9 global downturn). As London’s economy has been buffeted by these external shocks, various economic actors have mobilized around the three development frameworks described above. As we track a dynamic process, three rounds of challenge and change come into focus.

London’s Economic Restructuring, Round 1: Retooling the Growth Machine London’s economic base was hit hard by continental restructuring in the 1990s. Financial head offices were relocated, large manufacturing plants closed or moved to lower-cost North American regions, and the city’s once vibrant retail and commercial core visibly deteriorated. Across the decade, London’s economic performance, population growth, and median family income fell behind those of key mid-sized municipal competitors in southern Ontario such as Kitchener-Waterloo. Office

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relocations, plant closures, and job losses diminished the city’s economic vitality. The corporate flight not only drained away the business leaders and philanthropic families that had invested heavily in social and cultural institutions, but also signalled to younger professionals that the local labour market would no longer offer the same opportunities for either senior management or career mobility. Among city leaders there was a groundswell of concern about economic prospects, and in 1997 the London Chamber of Commerce convened a group of some forty business leaders under the banner “Advance London” to set a new economic course for the city. Most concerned to replace lost industry and expedite development approvals, Advance London recommended formation of a new economic development agency freed from what the business leaders saw as an inefficient, even incompetent, municipal bureaucracy. Structured as a public-private partnership at arm’s length from government, the proposed London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) would be overseen by a business dominated board of directors, consistent with the Chamber of Commerce view that “business professionals prefer dealing directly with other business people” (LEDC 1998, 14). On receiving the proposal, the City hired a consultant to consider comparable structures in thirty-five other municipalities. The Coopers & Lybrand report endorsed the Advance London proposal, and in 1998 the LEDC was established with a mandate to strengthen “the London business environment making our city an attractive place to live, work and operate a business.” The LEDC immediately became the focal point for local economic development strategy. The LEDC and its first chief executive officer, well-connected London business person, John Kime, quickly went to work on a new development strategy. External business attraction emerged as the first priority. The goal was to exploit London’s locational advantage that had resulted from the recent federal negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the municipal-provincial territorial annexation of vacant farmland. Halfway between Detroit and Toronto, and with easy access to border crossings in Port Huron and Buffalo, London was a strategic locale on the “401/I-75” transportation corridor connecting Canada’s Golden Horseshoe with the American eastern seaboard and mid-west (Miller 2003). The LEDC’s external orientation was given strong endorsement and a tangible boost in 2000 when the City launched its twenty-year $65 million Industrial Lands Strategy, targeting seven industrial parks (Perspective London 2007). Flush

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with serviceable, flat greenfields, the City looked to compete hard for manufacturing operations, hopefully of the advanced and specialized kind, but equally for warehouse and other distribution facilities requiring more space than knowledge. The City planned to keep available 180 acres of serviced land – with roads, sewers, and hydro – ready for development. As a further enticement, development fees were waived for the construction of industrial buildings. London’s specific attraction approach was called “speculative development,” whereby the risks of upfront public investments in facilities would be managed by aggressive tenant recruitment and marketing by the LEDC through a single business services window detailing site availability, workforce skills, and infrastructure access (Perspective London 2008). LEDC’s specific aim with the industrial lands/external attraction strategy was to position London at the centre of a Southwestern Ontario automotive cluster. The LEDC had always acted on the premise that for London manufacturing and distribution activities had built-in location advantages over life sciences and high technology, and that it was therefore hard to compete head to head with “new economy hot spots” such as Waterloo or Ottawa. And there were some impressive thirdparty testimonials for the strategy’s impact. National automotive analyst Dennis DesRosiers opined that “London has the best record out there in landing automotive parts plants” (De Bono 2007b). For their part, City officials believed “London had become one of Ontario’s premier destinations for the development of industrial land” (Perspec­ tive London 2007). The LEDC’s outreach program was considered by many economic development professionals to be the “gold standard” in Canada as a business attraction initiative in the manufacturing sector (LNE 2005: 14). In terms of our development frameworks, the LEDC exemplified the growth machine. Its leadership was business-dominated and overtures for more community representation were rejected along with proposals for including community economic development and community-­ sponsored investment funds in the LEDC toolkit. The LEDC’s performance measures emphasized quantitative growth (employment, income, annual acres of industrial land, firms recruited, commercial and retail development), reflecting the growth machine’s “economistic” priorities (Morgan 2004). With this focus, the LEDC rapidly gained an exemplary reputation among manufacturing site selectors in Europe and North America. However, local concerns arose about the development strategy. When City officials took stock of the LEDC’s first six years of work,

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questions were asked about the preoccupation with external attraction of manufacturing plants. Was sufficient attention being paid to nurturing local knowledge assets and fledgling clusters in health and life sciences? And were the incoming operations sufficiently embedded in a local infrastructure for innovation? Around these questions, London’s growth machine was first challenged.

London’s Economic Restructuring, Round 2: Mobilizing Knowledge Networks In 2005, the City completed a strategic plan that identified five civic priorities, with economic development at the top. Estimating that it was spending nearly $30 million of its $360 million annual operating budget on economic development, the City worried about the lack of synergy or coordination between the LEDC strategy and the emergent organi­ zations representing life sciences and high technology that also were ­receiving municipal funding through research facilities at Western University (WU). Indeed, LEDC’s own research confirmed that recruitment for London’s knowledge-based sector lagged well behind that for manufacturing – by 2005 the number of net “new economy” companies registered in its business directory was largely unchanged after seven years of operation, and an innovation survey ranked London low on the “glue” for the high-technology sector and found that 60 per cent of businesses in advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and information technology had skilled labour shortages (De Bono 2006; LEDC 2007). The City was signalling to the LEDC leadership the need for a more balanced and knowledge-intensive economic development strategy. Important here was the recruitment of a new chief administrative officer, Jeff Fielding, from Kitchener in 2004. On his arrival, he delivered “a wake-up call” to the City Council (Miller 2003). Pulling together a range of trend line data, Fielding and his team documented London’s declining population growth rate in comparison to competitor cities, and drew attention to looming labour shortages rooted in a long-term failure to either retain young professionals or attract skilled immigrants. Challenged by Fielding as to whether London sought to play in the municipal “big leagues,” the deputy mayor conceded that the city had been sliding over the past decade, that it lacked a focused development strategy, and that it had no profile or influence on the larger provincial or national political and economic stages. These sentiments resonated strongly with an emerging network of technology-sector

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entrepreneurs who believed the LEDC was insufficiently attuned to their growth potential. Fielding’s wake-up call set in motion two novel policy development processes unfolding across 2005, each funded and facilitated by the City, representing a form of what Gertler and Wolfe term “organized social learning” (Gertler and Wolfe 2004). The first of these was a task force on London’s potential as a “creative city.” The second was a hardhitting economic survey titled London’s Next Economy (LNE). Together they envisioned a London development strategy balancing manufacturing attraction with support for home-grown innovation. The Creative City Task Force (CCTF) was a sixteen-member inquiry with cross-sectoral membership from the arts, technology, business, immigrant settlement, municipal, architecture, and tourism sectors (City of London 2005). With a mandate to change “the way London thinks” and determine a “strategy to help London become a leader in mid-sized cities in North America,” the CCTF focused on issues of cultural diversity, workforce development, and urban design. All eighty-seven recommendations were framed by a general declaration that “London’s assessment, future prosperity and downtown development will be driven in large part by the creative industries and the people who work in them” (ibid., 7). Drawing on research that asserted that the cultural diversity and social connections of a city are crucial for prosperity and overall quality of life, the CCTF report took the view that London’s conservative reputation and lack of “buzz” was a barrier to retaining and attracting the skilled workers for the new economy. Lagging behind other Ontario cities in competing for the valued 25- to 44-yearolds, the CCTF studied innovations in cultural planning and creative industries undertaken in Toronto and elsewhere. London could reach its destiny as the “Regional Capital” of Southwestern Ontario by realizing its cultural and creative potential. To this end, a new governance structure was proposed – a “Prosperity Congress” – where the City, the private sector, and cultural communities “come together to champion common causes” (ibid., 15). London’s Next Economy was written by a leading London technology entrepreneur who was also keen to shift London’s development tra­ jectory. It began by observing that since “the mid 1990s, London has methodically intensified its business development efforts with the expressed intent of expanding the community’s business base and reversing its declining role as a regional economic force” (LNE 2005, 4). However, the LNE was critical of these efforts. Echoing the CCTF, it

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rejected the city’s “past modesty and conservative style” and called for “more passionate, entrepreneurial environment” for the new economy (ibid., 10). And it took aim at the LEDC’s approach, observing that “impressive as the attraction program has been, London’s efforts in developing homegrown knowledge-based business has been below expectations” and concluding that if London is to transcend “branch plant status“ it “must collectively invest in its own organic growth program with the same vigor it has pursued its attraction agenda” (ibid., 15). Without an “organic growth plan” powered by investments in the knowledge infrastructure of universities, research firms, and creative talent the city’s future was at risk. London’s small yet promising knowledge industry network remained too dependent on senior levels of government for support to become fully embedded in a local innovation system. The overall message was straightforward: “In addition to continuing support for such programs as the industrial land use strategy, this plan advocates building upon the themes outlined in the Creative Cities Task Force” (ibid., 17). Joint CCTF-LNE priorities included land development that emphasized life sciences, information technology, and biomedical industries, geographically clustered in a “downtown tech alley” and the WU Research Park rather than on vacant land at the city’s edge; and external attraction efforts that were more selective in linking firms to local suppliers and WU and Fanshawe College. The CCTF and LNE were important moments in London’s economic development trajectory. The CCTF described a city that was isolated, complacent, and smug and “perceived as not having an exemplary reputation for welcoming newcomers.” The LNE spoke about the city’s inaction in the face of a “stealth-like erosion” of high-end jobs and talent, and perceptions of London “as a comparatively lethargic business community” known for its “modesty and conservative style.” About the LNE, the London mayor stated, “The timing of this bold and insightful report could not be better”; and the dean of WU’s renowned business school lauded both reports as groundbreaking, signalling that London was “embarking on an all-important, community-wide partnership” (Stephenson 2005). With emphasis on organic growth and mobilizing knowledge through research-business infrastructure, they challenged the growth machine. In their wake, the LEDC was reorganized, and CEO John Kime, the architect of the manufacturing attraction approach, was replaced by a younger leader with much deeper roots in the high-technology sector (De Bono 2007a). While the CCTF’s

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call for a multi-sectoral Prosperity Congress went unheeded, the LEDC broadened its vision to include diversity and innovation.

London’s Economic Restructuring, Round 3: Injecting Social Sustainability At the same time that the CCTF and LNE were questioning the LEDC development strategy for its inattention to knowledge and creativity, advocates of the social sustainability perspective – who had never really been part of the local economic debate – weighed in with a different critique. Environmentalists and anti-poverty advocates argued that speculative land development ignored the social and ecological implications of sprawl-based growth. The chairperson of the Urban League of London noted the city’s rising poverty and homelessness and questioned priorities: “I wouldn’t want to see $65 million set aside so we could have $65 million worth of truck stops or warehouses along the 401” (Dauphinee 2001). In fact, such concerns dated back to a public engagement exercise in the 1990s known as “Vision ’96.” The municipality consulted 5000 residents in producing a sweeping blueprint that acknowledged the interdependence of economic, social, and ecological priorities, and recommended a new social plan to guide municipal policy. As one councillor reflected, the intent was to “plan the city differently to protect agriculture, environmental features and for an improved quality of life”(Martin 2007). However, these recommendations remained just that – there was neither the political will nor the bureaucratic capacity to implement the sustainability vision as London’s growth machine retooled. Thus, London’s industrial lands agenda never experimented with the kind of “eco-industrial networks, clusters and parks” that have been implemented in other Canadian cities (Conference Board of Canada 2007). Indeed, the historically limited impact of the social sustainability discourse on London’s development strategy reflects the popular sector’s organizational gaps and weaknesses. Unlike the London business community that has mobilized around core policy interests, urban social movements have been relatively fragmented, pursuing issue-specific causes. Absent are robust peak association networks or inter-sectoral councils framing community-wide agendas and engaging city-wide development debates (London Community Resource Centre 1999). London has no social planning council, and agencies such as the United Way and Community Foundation that pursue broad community-building

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mandates in other Canadian municipalities have until very recently confined their work to conventional fund-raising.2 And as we have seen, London’s business leaders have not sought partnerships with social groups on economic development. The LEDC growth machine ignored overtures from autoworker representatives to contribute to business recruitment activities in that pivotal sector, and when the LEDC board was restructured in 2006 to include high-technology leaders’ representation, public concerns resurfaced about the lack of broader community representation (Belanger 2006). The consequences for London’s social sustainability agenda have been twofold. First, these issues remain largely within the purview of the municipal government, distinct from any governance partnerships. The Department of Community Services, supported by several councillors working through provincial and national social policy networks, produced a social policy framework and an anti-poverty strategy to guide municipal policy and negotiations with provincial and federal governments. Impressive as these government social initiatives are, they remain quite disconnected from broader economic development. As the Social Policy Framework summarized: While each of the “three pillars” – public, private, and voluntary sectors – has clear roles in the success of local efforts to identify and respond to social issues, one of the notable gaps in our community is the absence of a coordinated community body that guides this work. While other communities across the country may have social planning councils or similar mechanisms that work to address broader social issues (such as poverty or quality of life) in a more coordinated way, this does not exist in London. (City of London 2006a, 26)

The second consequence of London’s relatively fragmented civil society has been that social groups function much more as external critics than as partners in development. The Urban League of London has long been a vocal opponent of the business attraction and industrial lands strategy, and in the mid-2000s a new social sustainability network known as Imagine London launched a successful campaign through the Ontario Municipal Board to eliminate London’s Board of Control. London was the only city in Ontario retaining such a structure and Imagine London saw board members as the political arm of the growth machine, heavily dependent on developer funds to mount their expensive city-wide campaigns. As its name suggests, Imagine London’s

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purpose was not to contest specific policy issues or planning decisions, but to envision a qualitatively different development path for the city (Sher 2007). The vision was rooted in the social sustainability paradigm – a compact city of neighbourhoods valuing human scale, mixed use, and infill development to revitalize the downtown core. The 2006 municipal election brought to City Council several new members supporting socially sustainable development. The result was a fractious City Council, with politicians increasingly divided according to the different development visions. Observers worried about an incoherent or stalemated political system characterized by “meanspiritedness” and lack of “cohesive vision” (Belanger 2010). In 2007, when the Council Planning Committee refused to expand the city’s urban growth boundary to accommodate a developer’s request for an $80  million industrial park without prior assessment of the financial implications for the City, the Board of Control’s deputy mayor complained that a “whining socialist cabal” was stopping progress (Belanger 2007). The committee’s response was that future economic development demanded better integration of social sustainability goals. Wor­ ried about the impact of such disputes on the local investment climate, the Chamber of Commerce CEO made an extraordinary plea to the mayor calling for a “cease fire” and urging appointment of an outside facilitator to help City Council reach consensus (LCC 2008). But when one long-time councillor announced that she would not seek re-election in 2010, she stated that the Council’s “camps are so divided there is no bringing them together” (Belanger 2010). The 2008 Great Recession and Beyond: Building a Development Coalition? Our account of debates across London’s decade of free-trade restructuring between 1998 and 2008 revealed unprecedented turbulence for a city long known for its economic stability, political conservatism, and policy continuity. However, there was still more to come. In late 2008, London’s economy was rocked by the global financial crisis and plunged into its worst recession since the Great Depression. The statistics for 2009 tell a grim story: an unemployment rate skyrocketing to over 11 per cent; social assistance claims increasing 20 per cent; and the disappearance of more than 8000 jobs, with only part-time jobs showing any resiliency (Hunter 2009). Two years later, things had not improved – in July 2011, London had the highest unemployment rate of any

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urban centre city in Canada, with further major plant closings in the manufacturing and service sectors. Complicating London’s challenges were a series of economic studies from national think tanks that consistently took a dim view of the city’s economic prospects and its governance, especially in comparison with key urban competitors such as Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa (Martin Prosperity Institute 2009; Conference Board of Canada 2010). However, the local response to this most recent and pronounced round of troubles appears to depart from the protracted disputes of the previous decade. There is evidence that London’s three development ­networks are engaging one another more constructively. While key informants in London emphasized the city’s development silos and fragmented governance, many also pointed to emerging areas of collaboration. Here two interrelated dynamics are central, one involving more joint dialogue and visioning than in the past and the other specific city-building projects that involve joint planning and work. In both processes, the municipal government is assuming a more proactive role than in past years in convening actors and establishing a context for joint work.

Reframing Development: Collaboration Matters The depth and breadth of the 2008 economic shock triggered widespread discussion and urgent calls to action. The London Free Press launched a year-long special series “Beyond the Crisis” convening local leaders and outside experts to advise on new strategies. The federal government announced plans for a regional development agency for Southern Ontario, and London municipal, academic, and business leaders participated in formation of a regional economic alliance extending from Waterloo to Windsor. In September 2009, these initiatives came together when the City and LEDC co-hosted the first London Economic Summit, a multi-sectoral forum to create an action plan for London’s “next economy.” The summit called on public, private, and community sectors to recognize that their goals now “must be aligned, coordinated and mutually supportive in order to achieve success”(LEDC 2009). Observing that other cities were much further ahead than London, and that London suffered from a “lack of identity and presence in Canada and abroad,” the summit’s keynote speaker, WU president Amit Chakma, emphasized the “need to be innovative in our approach” and “to speak with a single voice and shape our own future” (Chakma 2009).

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While such declarations can be dismissed as simply “talk,” there is evidence of follow-up. In 2010, London’s old and new development thrusts began to merge (LEDC 2009). The municipal government established a nearly $70 million Economic Development Fund with six priorities balancing traditional industrial development with knowledge economy investments. While some observers saw in the priorities the perpetuation of “two very different visions of the city and its economy,” the director of the WU Research Park offered a different view, calling such debates a “false dichotomy.” He elaborated: “There is a third way London is uniquely positioned to take advantage of. We can make video games and then manufacture the chip boards they run on, and we will need Hwy. 401 manufacturing space for that. You cannot do that at a research park” (De Bono 2011). In 2011, a Mayor’s Economic Prosperity Council was established, cochaired by the dean of the Ivey Business School and a former bank executive, to forge such a third way (MEPC 2011). Calling on London “to be bold,” the council declared that the city’s sector leaders “must not be afraid of striking up new partnerships beyond the confines of our region or our traditional partners.” To follow up, the City announced two organizational innovations to strengthen economic linkages and focus. A chief investment officer was proposed for strategic management of municipal economic assets and partnership development, and a standing council committee on investment and economic prosperity for coordinating economic development initiatives. As London’s city manager remarked, “It can’t be business as usual” (Maloney and De Bono 2011). A common platform was envisioned to align resources and target supports. In relation to such initiatives, we close by highlighting three multisectoral projects, potentially seeding the kind of innovative partnerships envisioned by the Mayor’s Economic Prosperity Council. Each project brings together economic, social, and political actors for joint work, often blending priorities from the social sustainability, growth machine, and knowledge mobilization paradigms that have long organized development debates in London. Moreover, taken together they reveal London’s municipal government experimenting with a variety of facilitative roles – engaging sector networks, establishing tables for planning and action, representing partnerships to external governments, and contributing initial investments or matching funds. Over time, they may also constitute the foundations for a “development coalition” that begins to align London’s economic and social priorities over the longer term (Keating 2001).

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Coalition Building (1): Gateway City At the 2009 Economic Summit, the City confirmed plans to make London a regional transportation logistics hub for moving freight internationally by rail, highway, and air (LEDC 2009). Like the growth machine, this initiative emphasizes comparative advantage in London’s location along the NAFTA trade corridor and its transportation cost advantages over Greater Toronto Area competitors. But it also includes knowledge mobilization, leveraging London’s traditional locational advantages for a transportation-technology cluster featuring inter-modal logistics, aircraft manufacturing, and aviation design. To consolidate this developmental package, the City built a coalition of “Gateway City” partners and investors: the federal and provincial governments; the two postsecondary institutions; and local firms in global supply chains. Synergies are emerging: Fanshawe College launched a $31 million program in transportation trade and logistics, the WU business school cultivated research expertise in sustainable transportation infrastructure, and the City’s new economic development fund made Gateway investments its first priority. The new federal development agency, FedDev, also invested $8 million. In 2011, the “Gateway City” coalition took another step forward with two significant provincial investments, one to improve Highway 401 interchanges and ramps, and the other, an $80 million four-year Southwestern Ontario Economic Development Fund to “help build local capacity to attract and retain business investment” (Southwest Ontario Economic Alliance 2011). The LEDC also secured provincial funding to develop a “local skills ecology” integrating regional labour market information (Academica Group 2011).

Coalition Building (2): Inclusive City Efforts to make London a more inclusive city move along two tracks. First, a community-based network of immigrant service providers, municipal departments and agencies, businesses and trade unions, and university researchers have mobilized to welcome newcomers to London by upgrading immigrant employment and enhancing cultural services (City of London 2006b, 2008b). Responding to the CCTF’s call, a new municipal Culture Office now coordinates a stream of initiatives including an immigrant settlement portal, and a business-led immigrant employment council. In 2009 these local efforts were leveraged further by federal investment in a Local Immigration Partnership

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Council and provincial creation of its first credential-recognition centre outside Toronto (Bradford and Esses 2012). The second area of inclusion work addresses poverty and community building. In 2008 a Child and Youth Network, comprising more than 140 agencies and individuals from the education, health, recreation, and social service sectors, was formed (Child and Youth Network 2011). With the municipal government playing a leadership role in chairing and convening, the Network has received provincial recognition for its innovations in community development and neighbourhood-based planning. At the same time, the United Way of London and Middlesex County launched an extensive public engagement process that identified new priorities and cross-sectoral leadership for “community impact councils.” Simi­ larly, the London Community Foundation transformed its mandate from charity to change agent. Its Vital Signs reports identify issues that supply “fertile ground for partnerships because they’re similarly intertwined: immigration and language, poverty and employment, leadership and youth-mentoring programs” (Van Brenk 2010).

Coalition Building (3): Innovation City The third area of collaborative action emerging in London concerns advanced manufacturing. The goal is to transform traditional sector strengths through partnerships among researchers, businesses, and governments, with the specific knowledge networks determined by the nature of the innovation. Several projects illustrate the dynamics. First, in London’s new Advanced Manufacturing Park, the City and WU created a Composite Materials Research Centre for lightweight materials in vehicles, renewal energy, and aerospace. The German-based European leader in applied materials research, Fraunhofer Institute, is the key partner, attracted to London by the existing scientific expertise and by its location in the auto-sector manufacturing belt (Western Engineering 2011). Second, London is involved in the Southern Ontario Water Consortium that connects five municipalities, eight universities, and seventy businesses in new clean-water technologies. The London node in the consortium focuses on wastewater purification, with a focus on innovative municipal infrastructure for testing and treatment. Finally, the City, through the LEDC, has worked with digital gaming firms to build a London cluster. Since 2007 London has hosted a national digital gaming conference, and in 2010 the City led a local consortium for designation by Industry Canada as a digital gaming Centre

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of Excellence. As part this thrust, the City has partnered with Fanshawe College in building a downtown campus for digital and theatre arts. With each of these projects, local actors in London’s knowledge economy sector are demonstrating new capacities for joint work to secure investments and infrastructure that none on their own could manage. A common platform to align efforts and target resources may take shape. Conclusion This chapter has explored London’s recent economic development in the context of the “new localism” that positions cities as strategic actors in national and global economies. To interpret London’s trajectory, we drew from the literature three significant urban development frameworks and then tracked their expression in key governance settings as the city’s economy was buffeted by wrenching external shocks. Over the past two decades, London’s development policy has been contested terrain, with a long-dominant growth machine challenged by networks advocating cultivation of local knowledge clusters and more sustainable, equitable growth. London’s once closed and technocratic decision making became politicized and polarized as these development alternatives found expression in various governance bodies ranging from advisory task forces and arm’s length agencies to the elected council itself. While the economic and social priorities differ across these networks, our account also engaged arguments from high-profile research networks like the OECD about the desirability of more integrated or balanced forms of urban development. In these terms, London’s experience speaks to broader analytical debates in urban studies about local governance and variation in the dynamics of development coalitions. As economic hard times hit London in the 1990s, development debates polarized, with little evidence of dialogue across sectors or networks. However, the depth and breadth of the most recent economic shock has framed a more collaborative orientation. In the absence of strong city-wide umbrella associations or convening organizations, social and economic actors in London have come together for project-based work on quite diverse development priorities such as immigrant settlement, a transportation hub, and technology clustering. It remains to be seen whether such pragmatic “join-ups” establish a foundation for more durable and strategic governance across traditional divides. Leveraging synergies across these projects, a local development coalition may emerge. The City has started to play its part, convening actors, investing in projects, and leveraging external

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resources. A new generation of civic leaders able to cross sectors and link networks will also be required. London’s story reminds us that such transformations do not follow linear pathways nor functional logics. Economic conditions, institutional legacies, and leadership styles all combine to shape unique opportunities and development trajectories. NOTES 1 The arguments and analysis in this chapter draw on 25 key informant interviews conducted in 2007 and 2008. The research assistance of Kadie Ward, Paris Meilleur, Kate Graham, and Matthew Patterson is gratefully acknowledged as is the financial support of the SSHRC. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the ISRN annual meeting in Montreal, 1–3 May 2008. 2 In the last few years there have been several notable capacity-building and integrating efforts in London’s social and community sectors. These include the London Children and Youth Network, which joins together more than 100 agencies for concerted action; the London Community Foundation’s annual Vital Signs report on poverty and exclusion; and the London and Middlesex United Way’s Impact Councils. These recent departures are described in the next section of this chapter.

REFERENCES Academica Group. 2011. London Economic Development Corporation: Local labour market information project. Belanger, J. 2006. “Council debates input on economic forum.” London Free Press, 26 July. Belanger, J. 2007. “‘Socialists’ handcuff city, Gosnell fumes.” London Free Press. 1 August. Belanger, J. 2010. “Councilor bickering a natural part of politics.” London Free Press, 2 January. Bradford, N. 2008. “The OECD’s local turn: ‘Innovative liberalism’ for the cities?” In The OECD and transnational governance, ed. R. Mahon and S. McBride. Vancouver: UBC Press. Bradford, N., and V. Esses. 2012. “Integration and inclusion in London.” In Immigration, integration and inclusion in Ontario cities, ed. C. Andrew, J. Biles, M. Burstein, V. Esses, and E. Tolley. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

226  Governing Urban Economies Buck, N., I. Gordon, A. Harding, and I. Turok. 2005. Changing cities: Rethinking urban competitiveness, cohesion and governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chakma, A. 2009. “Western active partner in London economy.” President’s News Archive, University of Western Ontario. Child and Youth Network. 2011. Review of Ending Poverty, 2008–2011. London, Ontario. City of London. 2005. Creative city task force. City of London. 2006a. Social policy framework. Prepared by Department of Community Services, Social Research and Planning. City of London. 2006b. Welcoming cultural diversity in London: A community action plan. With United Way of London and Middlesex. City of London. 2008a. EMCY award winner. EMCY Celebrating Diversity. City of London. 2008b. Welcoming cultural diversity in London: Status report. With United Way of London and Middlesex. Conference Board of Canada. 2007. Mission possible: Successful Canadian cities Conference Board of Canada. 2010. City magnets II: Benchmarking the attractiveness of 50 Canadian cities. Cooke, P., and K. Morgan. 1998. The associational economy: Firms, regions, and innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780198290186.001.0001. Dauphinee, D. 2001. “Critics attack London industrial land plan.” London Free Press, 4 November. De Bono, N. 2006. “LEDC says tech sector needs ‘glue.’” London Free Press, 18 October. De Bono, N. 2007a. “Kime leaving LEDC post.” London Free Press, 26 April. De Bono, N. 2007b. “Made in London … not!” London Free Press, 25 August. De Bono, N. 2011. “City’s $67.8 million in question.” London Free Press, 7 February. European Union. 2007. “Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities.” Brussels. European Union. Fung, A., and E. Olin Wright. 2003. Deepening democracy: Institutional innovations in empowered participatory democracy. London: Verso. Gertler, M., and D. Wolfe. 2004. “Local social knowledge management: Community actors, institutions and multilevel governance in regional foresight exercises.” Futures 36 (1): 45–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0016-3287(03)00139-3. Healey, P. 2007. Urban complexity and spatial strategies: Towards a relational planning for our times. London: Routledge. Hunter, T. 2009. Enhance London: A strategy for economic and societal prosperity. Prepared for London Economic Development Corporation.

Challenge and Change in London  227 Keating, M. 2001. “Governing cities and regions: Territorial restructuring in a global age.” In Global city-regions: Trends, theory, policy, ed. A.J. Scott. New York: Oxford University Press. LCC. 2008. “Chamber presents effective governance.” London Chamber of Commerce, 14 May. LEDC. 1998. Investing in prosperity: A commitment to innovation, initiative and competiveness. London Economic Development Corporation. LEDC. 2007. Workforce survey, full report. London Economic Development Corporation. LEDC. 2009. Advantage London. London economic summit: Creating the action plan for the next economy. London Economic Development Corporation. LNE. 2005. London’s next economy: A game plan for accelerating new business development in the London region. Prepared by Paul Paoloatto on behalf of City of London, LEDC, Tech Alliance, Stiller Centre. London Community Resource Centre. 1999. Reflections: A community retrospective commemorating the London Community Resource Centre’s 25th anniversary year, 1974–1999. Maloney, P., and N. De Bono. 2011. “Fontana wants to create investment post.” London Free Press, 29 June. Martin, C. 2007. “Did annexation work?” London Free Press, 29 December. Martin Prosperity Institute. 2009. London 3Ts reference report. MEPC. 2011. Mayor’s economic prosperity report. London, 6 May. Miller, Dave. 2003. “We are ready to do business.” London Free Press, 7 April. Molotch, H. 1976. “The city as a growth machine.” American Journal of Sociology 82 (2): 309–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/226311. Morgan, K. 2004. “Sustainable regions: Governance, innovation and scale.” European Planning Studies 6 (12): 871–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 0965431042000251909. OECD. 2001. Devolution and globalization: Implications for local decision-makers. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD. 2006. Territorial reviews: Competitive cities in the global economy. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Pastor, M., P. Dreier, J.E. Grigsby, and M. Lopez-Garza. 2000. Regions that work: How cities and suburbs can grow together. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pastor, M. 2006. “Cohesion and Competitiveness: Business Leadership for Regional Growth and Social Equity.” In Competitive Cities in the Global Economy. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Perspective London 2007. “City’s Innovation Park providing room to grow.” Oakville: Perspective Media.

228  Governing Urban Economies Perspective London. 2008. “Speculative development has record year.” Oakville: Perspective Media. Pike, A., A. Rodríguez-Pose, and J. Tomaney. 2006. Local and regional development. New York: Routledge. Polese, M., and R. Stren, eds. 2000. The social sustainability of cities: Diversity and the management of change. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Porter, M. 2003. “The economic performance of regions.” Regional Studies 37 (6–7): 549–78. Savitch, H.V., and P. Kantor. 2002. Cities in the international marketplace: The political economy of urban development in North America and Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sellers, J.M. 2002. Governing from below: Urban regions and the global economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511613395. Sher, J. 2007. “Trosow defends planned growth for London.” London Free Press, 13 June. Southwest Ontario Economic Alliance. 2011. “SWEA prepares Southwestern Ontario Advocacy Day at Queen’s Park.” Stephenson, C. 2005. “The urban economy.” Speech to the next London Community Forum, 24 September, London. Stren, R., and M. Polese. 2000. “Understanding the new sociocultural dynamics of cities: Comparative urban policy in a global context.” In The social sustainability of cities, ed. M. Polese and R. Stren. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Van Brenk, D. 2010. “Failure to reach out hurts all: Report.” London Free Press, 5 October. Western Engineering. 2011. “Western and Fraunhofer team-up for a new composites research center in London.”

10 Governance Innovations in Saskatoon: From State and Cooperatives to Local Partnerships peter w.b. phillips and graeme webb

Saskatoon is an interesting example of a resource-based, export-­ dependent, knowledge-intensive creative community that has been forced to develop, adapt, and adopt new more open governance models and mechanisms. Historically, Saskatchewan (and at times Saskatoon) has been a continuing source of innovations in collaborative governance – the province led in the adaptation and adoption of the cooperative model to socio-economic development and was one of the first to exploit the transformative power of the state (including creating a number of management innovations). As recently as the 1990s, Saskatchewan was a classic case of centrally-directed rational planning, with much of the economy and society coordinated through the provincial cabinet (making decisions about the treasury and a portfolio of centrally managed public investments in industry-leading Crown corporations), in close coordination with investments and activities of seven sectorally-based cooperative “centrals.” In essence, the provincial and municipal socioeconomic systems were tightly controlled by elected, democratic elites. With the acceleration of global economic liberalization after 1980 – including new trade agreements, financial market deregulation, labour mobility, and free-flowing capital – the historically dominant institutions in Saskatchewan began to bend (and in some cases break). In the place of central planning, new distributed systems of strategic planning and socially inclusive development processes have emerged to link up the economic, cultural, and social development agendas. This chapter examines the baseline organizational structure and then investigates three specific examples of new models of governance: the emergence of a civic culture of engagement and local action; the diffusion of capacity and authority to a wider range of networked actors;

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and the evolution of interconnected research, development, and community networks led by creative individuals in Saskatoon. Background: Saskatoon in Political and Economic Context Saskatoon has emerged in recent decades as a globally connected centre. As recently as the 1970s, Saskatoon was a small city (fewer than 140,000 people) that served as a regional service centre for the chronically depressed economically and socially underdeveloped northern two-thirds of the province. While the city has been host to the University of Saskatchewan for more than a century, for most of that period the university was locally and regionally focused. A few scholars were nationally and internationally known, but the prime mandate was to fulfil its original land-grant mission for the province. In that context, the province, and more specifically Saskatoon, was not viewed as an innovative centre. In Saskatchewan, most of the action for the first seven decades of the past century was centred in and around Regina, the capital city and location of most of the government jobs and Crown corporation head offices, the home for most of the cooperative head offices and out-of-province firms, and the destination for many of the major industrial projects (e.g., IPSCO and the Coop Refinery). Many of the organizational innovations originating in the province came from the Regina area. The provincial government was highly innovative in its administration and policies. Innovations emerged in industrial development and in social and health policy and the Crowns developed, adapted, and adopted new technologies to exploit the rich natural resources in the province. At the same time, the coops developed much of the agri-food industrial capacity and community infrastructure and the little bit of industrial R&D that was under way was directed from, if not undertaken mostly in, Regina. Changes in the national and global economies triggered major economic and social transformations in the province and in Saskatoon. In the first instance, the opening of the North created a major new market for Saskatoon to serve and generated significant resource revenues for the province. From Confederation until 1930 the land and resources of Saskat­ chewan were owned by the federal government and largely undeveloped. In 1930 the federal government transferred control and ownership of the land and its natural resources to the provincial government, but the depression and then the Second World War delayed development. After 1944, the province actively sought to develop its mineral wealth. By the 1960s, uranium and potash were under continuous production, and oil,

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which was discovered in 1944, was flowing. While these developments generated jobs and revenues, they were only moderately profitable. The end of the gold standard changed everything. The corresponding rise in inflation, spurred on by the formation of OPEC and price spikes in oil and most agri-food and resource products, triggered a period of prosperity. Beginning in the 1970s, Saskatchewan experienced real and lasting income growth and wealth accumulation for the first time in more than forty years. Meanwhile, financial deregulation opened up new capital pools and various trade agreements (the GATT, CUSTA, NAFTA, and the WTO) opened new markets, encouraging further development of Saskatchewan’s highly capital-intensive natural resources. But the road to prosperity was not straight and easy. The spike in the prime interest rate to 19.5 per cent in 1982 first decimated business investment and then pushed commodity prices into a freefall for the better part of a decade. By 1991 the provincial treasury, owing partly to economic misfortune and partly to poor choices by the Grant Devine Progressive Conservative government, was largely insolvent. The 1990s were a period of consolidation and recovery, as Roy Romanow’s New Democratic Party (NDP) government first fixed the government accounts and then went on to respond to the most pressing socio-economic challenges. While Saskatoon was not immune to the vagaries of the market and political decision making, it has done relatively well during the past thirty years. The provincial farm economy has gone through major restructuring over that period, but on average the changes have hurt the Saskatoon region less and in some cases benefited it. The end of the Crow’s Nest Pass Agreement on freight rates, which subsidized transportation for wheat and a number of other commodities for shipments to export position, opened up new interest in livestock and various nonregulated grains and oilseeds, which are disproportionately grown in the region served by Saskatoon. Saskatoon capitalized on that by becoming one of the earliest and few crops-focused global biotechnology centres, ultimately bringing genetically modified herbicide-tolerant canola to the market. Meanwhile, rising global demand precipitated significant investment in potash and uranium and precious metals, all of which are served through the city. Perhaps most important, major cuts to the provincial and federal civil services in the 1990s hurt Regina, while opening up opportunities for Saskatoon to both attract and g ­ enerate new jobs related to expanding activities in health care and biotechnology research. In the past decade, global commodity markets turned around again and new economic drivers have emerged. Global demand for most

232  Governing Urban Economies

commodities has been growing strongly (at least partly owing to economic strength in Asia), new and potentially more profitable resource deposits have been delineated, and an array of technologies have emerged that make some products more profitable. In recent years more than $1  billion of new investment has been directed to the University of Saskatchewan and related research facilities. Oil, heavy oil, potash, uranium, gold, and diamonds have all been targeted for further development and the agri-food sector has rebounded (owing both to higher world prices and to the end of a US embargo on beef trade). The result has been a boom economy which has allowed Saskatoon to lead the province and nation in many economic indicators in recent years (see table 10.1); the economy remained vibrant throughout much of the economic disruption after 2008. In effect, Saskatoon has reinvented itself in the past generation, which differentiates it from many other centres in Canada. The city has a higher degree of talent, as measured by those with higher degrees (BA or higher) and those with PhDs (10.9/1000 in Saskatoon vs. 5.4/1000 for Canada). Similarly, Saskatoon has a higher percentage of its population engaged in creative occupations (33% vs. 29% for Canada), even though it has a somewhat smaller share of its population in the science and technology occupations and recognized clusters. Saskatoon has both self-labelled and been singled out by others as Canada’s Science City, at least partly thanks to the city’s research park, Innovation Place, and the Canadian Light Source (CLS), one of only six third-generation synchrotrons in the world and the only one in Canada. At the same time, Saskatoon has become a more exciting and vibrant centre and was picked as Canada’s cultural capital for 2006 in the category of cities over 125,000 in population. The evolution of the city’s nicknames perhaps says it all. In earlier decades it styled itself as “The City of Bridges,” “The Hub City,” and “POW City” (standing for potash, oil, and wheat), all of which denote geography and industry, but more recently has attempted to rebrand itself as the “Paris of the Prairies” in addition to “Science City” and a “cultural capital.” Governance Innovation in Saskatoon: From State and Cooperatives to Local Partnerships This research volume addresses two questions. First, what new governance mechanisms have emerged in city-regions for undertaking strategic planning exercises or what one might term the strategic management of the urban economy? Second, how socially inclusive are these

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  233 Table 10.1  Socio-economic indicators, Saskatoon versus Canada Key indicators

Period

Saskatoon

Canada

Population change*

2002–7

3.7%

4.1%

% foreign born

2001

7.5%

18.2%

% BA or higher

2001

17.5%

15.4%

PhDs per 1000

2001

10.9

5.4

Employment rate*

2007

70.9

63.5

Unemployment rate*

2007

4%

6%

% creative occupations

2001

33.4%

29.2%

% S&T occupations

2001

5.8%

6.4%

Bohemians per 1000 in the labour force

2001

11.6

13.1

Number clusters

2001

4

263

% employment in clusters

2001

15.5%

22.1%

Average household income

2001

$53,025

$58,360

Sources: Greg Spencer and Tara Vinodrai, Saskatoon city-region profile: Summary and highlights, 19 April 2006; * Statistics Canada

governance mechanisms and to what extent do they link up economic, cultural, and social development agendas? The evidence is mixed in Saskatoon. If one focuses primarily on the level and types of collaboration that occur between community-based organizations, industry associations, and the three levels of government, one can see interactions among these diverse actors at the cityregion level that constitute a form of collaborative governance. However, questions remain about the capacity, extent, and effectiveness of these partnerships and the role of civic entrepreneurs in supporting collaborative governance at the city-region level.

Historical Perspectives In the strict, historical sense, one might argue that Saskatchewan (and at times Saskatoon) has been a source of many innovations in collaborative governance. The province’s rural, agrarian roots have led to many community-led and state-directed efforts to overcome the lack of scale and scope inherent in such a small centre. Saskatchewan, with Quebec, has aggressively used the cooperative model to engage individuals. Cooperatives occupied an early and dominant position in agriculture. Spawned by counterparts in England and

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Europe, the cooperative movement in Canada initially arose to deal with (real and perceived) exploitation of farmers by bankers, railroads, elevator companies, implement manufacturers, and shopkeepers (Russell 2006). Farmer cooperatives dominated for more than a century. In 1906, groups of buying clubs that made bulk purchases of farm supplies and basic commodities banded together to establish the Grain Growers’ Grain Company to market their grain, which became the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, ultimately a highly integrated, multi-billion-dollar marketer of grains, oilseeds, livestock, and farm services. A family of cooperatives built up around the Pool to offer a range of services, including finance (credit unions), insurance (Co-operators’ Insurance and Cooperative Hail Insurance), oil refining (Consumers Co-operative Refineries), farm machinery (Canadian Co-operative Implements), and retail services (Federated Co-operatives Limited). By the 1980s there were cooperative organizations in almost every sector of the economy. A study done in 1998 revealed that 1306 cooperatives in Saskatchewan generated revenues of about $7 billion, controlled assets of more than $10 billion, and employed 15,046 people (Herman and Fulton 2001). Two of Saskatchewan’s three largest businesses in 2001 and six of the province’s twenty-five top firms were cooperatives. Equally important from a provincial and national perspective, Saskatchewan was one of the earliest and most frequent users of proactive government spending, policy, and investment. The election of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1944 (re-formed as the NDP in 1961), the first social democratic government in North America, shook up the assumptions about the role of the state in the economy and society. The new government bought a group of commercial enterprises within months of the election and established the Economic Advisory and Planning Board to provide advice to cabinet on improving the performance of government enterprises. The government also recruited new professional civil servants from across Canada. Marchildon (2006) asserts that the planning board soon became the “brains trust” for the new government. The government then created the Budget Bureau, to collectively manage expenditures, and the Government Finance Office, later known as the Crown Investments Corporation, to act as the holding company and treasury board for the growing number of Crown corporations in the province. Along the way, the province expanded its investment portfolio to include utilities (SaskPower, SaskTel, SaskEnergy, and SaskWater), intercity buses

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  235

(Saskatchewan Transportation Company), and auto insurance (Sask Auto Fund). At one point or another, the province also has been the sole operator, monopoly owner, or a major shareholder in almost all the major economic sectors in the province (including wood processing, pulp and paper manufacturing, potash, uranium, oil, gas, steel manufacturing, and farmland ownership). Given the largely rural, agrarian landscape in 1944, the new government also saw the need to actively support community development. Over the years, the province developed a range of community service programs which required locals to participate. In addition to the more than 900 rural and urban municipal governments, the province created thousands of school, hospital, library, ambulance, community pasture, tourism, and economic development boards. There was a myth permeating the provincial civil service that if one drew all the boundaries of the provincially mandated boards, agencies, and commissions, the provincial map would be black with lines. The perception – and in many areas the reality – was that the profusion of local government boards was exceeding the capacity in many communities to staff them. The net effect of this dominant role for collaborative governance is that a relatively small, democratically elected group of individuals controlled a large part of the economy. By 1991, at the peak of the public phase, the province controlled almost 20 per cent of revenues from commercial enterprises, more than twice the share in Manitoba, almost three times the Alberta government effort, and almost four times the national average (Statistics Canada 1995). Given the large share of domestic private control in the hands of democratically elected cooperative leaders, a plurality if not a majority of commercial activity was directed by a relatively small network of committed and engaged individuals. There were strong links between the cooperative movement and the CCF/NDP, at least until the 1970s. Many of the coop centrals had elaborate extension programs which would groom individuals for local leadership positions. Many had a distributed governing system, with local delegates elected to represent a relatively small area, who would then elect directors to manage the larger enterprise. This provided a fertile training ground for leaders who could then populate many of the community boards and local governments and ultimately seek political office at the provincial or national level. A number of factors worked to undercut the collectivist, statist model in Saskatchewan. The long-term urbanization of Saskatchewan has eroded its rural base, while the emergence of new global competitors

236  Governing Urban Economies

due to international trade liberalization and the shift in production away from commodities sold through central selling agencies (such as the Canadian Wheat Board) and towards products sold in spot markets and through private contracts worked to undercut the cooperative movement. Governments in Saskatchewan similarly retrenched. The Devine government in the 1980s began the process of privatizing the resource Crown corporations, converting the oil, uranium, and potash Crowns into private companies and divesting Crown forestry operations. As the economy entered the second decade of the twenty-first century, the private sector dominated in most key growth areas of the economy.

Emerging Partnerships Saskatchewan, more than many jurisdictions, has found its model of governance under stress. As cooperatives and central government agencies have retrenched, a number of “partnership” models have emerged to take their place. Government stepped back somewhat from direct ownership and control and instead made greater efforts to build the climate for development and to support local and sectoral initiative. As early as the 1970s the province encouraged industry to take more of a lead in industrial development. It encouraged the short-line farmmachinery manufacturers, for instance, to collaborate to develop their industry, providing support for the development of an industry association called the Prairie Implement Manufacturing Association (PIMA) and the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute, a technology assessment and transfer company in Humboldt. In the late 1980s the province then provided the leadership and seed money to develop Ag-West Biotech Inc. (now Ag-West Bio), which has become the flagship industrial organization in Saskatoon nurturing the life-sciences industry (Phillips et al. 2008). AWB, using largely government funds but directed by an arm’s-length private-sector board, has been instrumental in providing leadership for attracting new firms to the agri-food cluster, for operating a private equity pool (Procyshyn 2004), and for coordinating ad hoc teams to bid on new projects or infrastructure. AWB provided the leadership, for example, for the 1999 bid to host a National Agricultural Genomics Centre in Saskatoon; while the bid failed, the initiative pressed Ottawa into creating Genome Canada and the affiliated Genome Prairie operation in Saskatoon, which now provides strategic leadership for developing and managing world-scale genomics research projects that are frequently centred on Saskatoon.

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  237

Meanwhile, the municipality responded to this new imperative for collaborative governance and converted its business development department into the industry-financed and -led Saskatoon and Region Economic Development Authority (SREDA). In 2009, SREDA had more than 80 commercial and civic investors, who each contributed at least $1000, and more than 120 investment associates, who each contributed at least $500. In aggregate, the private-sector investors contributed $149,000, or about 11 per cent of the operating capital for that year (SREDA 2009). A small group of entrepreneurs, academics, and civic leaders have used these platforms to leverage new resources into Saskatoon. The individual and collective leadership of AWB, Genome Prairie, and SREDA has been instrumental in developing proposals, lining up partners, and pitching for federal support for a number of major investments in the city, including the CLS and the International Vaccine Centre (InterVac) at the University of Saskatchewan. This unconventional mix of actors has led to some interesting and innovative partnerships. The CLS exemplifies this sort of initiative. In 1994, a committee sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) recommended that Canada develop a dedicated national source for synchrotron light research. Two years later, an international peer review panel evaluated proposals from Ontario and Saskatchewan and unanimously recommended that the CLS be built in Saskatoon. The driving force for this initiative being located in Saskatoon was a few “intrapreneurs” in the federal and provincial ministries and at the university, aided and supported by the leaders and partners in AWB and SREDA. As the project gained momentum, it became a community quest. The municipal government made an almost unheard of  investment in a national science project, contributing $2.4 million (or approximately $10 per capita) to the capital project. Members of Parlia­ment and senators from all parties coalesced to lobby for the project in Ottawa. The university took the lead in developing the technical aspects of the project, assigning its VP of Research to lead the initiative. When the project reached the decision stage, it became clear that the federal government did not have an appropriate funding mechanism for this scale of project – the Canadian Foundation for Innovation was partly a response to the need presented by the CLS. As the project progressed, new models of management and engagement were tested. The doors were also opened for the public to see the project; there are now one or two multi-day open houses and a steady stream of organized tours annually – an estimated 35,000 people had toured the facility by 2009, or about 10 per cent of the

238  Governing Urban Economies

regional population. The project leaders also worked with community ambassadors, including taxi drivers, to educate them on the nature of the project and its impact on the city and economy. More recently, the CLS appointed international award–winning science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer to be writer-in-residence from 1 June to 31 July 2009. In order to increase public discussion of science in Canada, Sawyer used the residency to explore the creative processes at the root of science and art. This example has spawned a number of similar ventures (albeit on a smaller scale) in innovative collaborative governance in pursuit of economic and social goals in the city. Leaders and partners in the synchrotron team, in particular, have fanned out and helped with recent community efforts to build indoor soccer stadiums, a new performing arts centre, and a new art gallery. The Role of Institutions: Social Inclusion and Civic Engagement In a collaborative model of governance, the actors – civil society, industry, and government – cooperatively draw upon relevant assets present within the system, whether they be knowledge, credibility, infrastructure, or funding, to carry out services or projects at the city-region level. In order to gauge the capacity of this governance system in Saskatoon it is necessary to examine which services each sphere of actors provide and, more generally, what role they see themselves having within the larger community. To this end, a survey was conducted in 2007 on social inclusion and civic engagement, interviewing twenty-seven individuals/organizations – including seven interviews with community-based organizations, seven with industry associations, and thirteen with local, provincial, and national government departments or elected officials.

Community-based Organizations An interesting theme that emerged from interviews with communitybased organizations (CBOs) based in the Saskatoon city-region was their tendency towards specialization; each CBO provides a specific service, to a specific group, to fulfil a specific need. This specialization of services is consciously done for a variety of reasons. First, resource limitations are a reality for organizations. Communitybased organizations, which rely almost exclusively on funds donated by the private and public sectors, are more acutely aware of this fact

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  239

than others. Undoubtedly, these organizations would like to broaden the services they offer – their raison d’être, after all, is to help people – however, resource realities limit their capacity. Second, it is important to create and maintain a distinctive brand or service niche. Organizations such as Habitat for Humanity (which is synonymous with affordable housing) are more likely to receive funding than more broadly based CBOs (e.g., housing cooperatives). As CBOs rely so heavily on external funding, distinguishing themselves from other organizations is vital to their ability to attract the funds necessary to continue providing services. One important restraint on the tendency towards specialization is that funding from government is increasingly project-specific – as opposed to operational funding – which forces CBOs to expand their mandate to fit grant requirements. While it is easier for donors to measure the “bang-for-the-buck” of project-specific funding, this at times leads to unnecessary expansion, competition, and redundancy of services. Despite the lure of project-specific funds that fall outside of a CBO’s mandate, a majority of managers surveyed asserted that the increased efficiency from a singularity of purpose and a wish to remain neutral (i.e., not cross over onto another CBO’s “turf”) generally restrained such actions. One negative aspect of specialization is that it can affect CBOs’ ability to see the broader Saskatoon perspective. While all the organizations were oriented towards community development, many saw development solely from their organization’s perspective. While this makes sense in that the issues they wrestle with week-in and week-out dominate their thoughts, the lack of a broader perspective can make it difficult to have a unified strategy at the city-region level. Ultimately, the funding and programming challenges of CBOs tend to fragment their voice about important development issues. Some CBOs are beginning to address the need for a broader perspective. The United Way of Saskatoon, referred to as an “umbrella organization” by interviewees, is noted for its ability to bring together numerous individuals and organizations towards common ends. Another way in which this lacuna is being addressed is the “Cultural Connections” project initiated under a Heritage Canada Cultural Capital grant. This project looks to create an overarching governance structure for cultural organizations in Saskatoon – a structure that would go a long way to addressing the need for a united voice and vision for this sector of civil society.

240  Governing Urban Economies

Industry Associations One important insight from interviews with industry associations actually occurred as we were trying to arrange the interviews themselves – there was a noticeable lack of associations based in the Saskatoon city-region. While many associations have members in Saskatoon, the offices and staff for the associations are usually located in Regina. Given that advocacy was the most common service performed by the industry associations, it only makes sense that Regina will have a larger number of associations, as they position themselves to contribute to provincial government decision-making processes. Communications and networking emerged as the second most frequent service offered by industry associations. This service often included accumulating and disseminating information to members about issues important to the industry. Associations sought to meet this goal by holding luncheons, seminars, and other social events to bring together key individuals and organizations. Given that communication and networking depends largely upon face-to-face informal contacts, few industry associations reported operations in both Saskatoon and Regina. Industry associations often had strategic innovation plans in place. Unlike the CBOs interviewed, many industry associations had strategies that were less narrow and specialized in scope. To combat the tendency of strategies being “placed on shelves to gather dust,” associations have begun to create their own action plans to compliment the more general sectoral or regional strategic plans – these are designed to focus on and implement policy and programming in key areas. Associations such SREDA and AWB were pointed to as exemplars of organizations which had created or were in the process of developing broad community or sectoral strategies for future development in Saskatoon. One concern raised in the community is that the various strategic planning processes have developed too many disparate strategies. Moreover, while the strategies were often broad in scope and included detailed plans for implementation, the processes used to develop the strategies were narrow. The most obvious example of organizational “siloing” is the various strategies developed to deal with the issue of labour shortages in Saskatoon in 2007–9, an issue that affected industries across numerous sectors. Logic would presume that a collaborative effort would be in place to share knowledge for developing an effective strategy. However, while individual industry associations were aware of other actors examining the issue, none was able to give

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  241

anything but a brief overview of those specific initiatives. While exceptions to this organizational siloing of strategic planning were mentioned during the interviews – notable among these the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) – the prevalence of this characteristic is a limitation upon the extent and effectiveness of industry associations within Saskatoon’s collaborative model of governance.

Government and Elected Officials The interview process also delved into how governments were responding to new challenges. Individuals associated with government departments and agencies reported that executive government was converging on a common service theme of fostering development. Whether a service was seen to be a catalyst to provide neighbourhood-based activity programs or to encourage investment attraction and retention, government saw itself as setting in place the infrastructure for cultural, social, and economic development that other actors could build upon and use. This is not to say that government departments did not provide specific material services that their mandates required (e.g., road construction and other public goods). Rather, even those specific services offered occurred within an overarching framework focused on building the community capacity needed for development. Government is not a monolithic entity. Planning, programming, and services offered by the three different orders – federal, provincial, and municipal – are often ineffective at the city-region level. One major concern is that higher orders of government often show a lack of respect for the priorities of lower orders of government. This top-down approach is frequently noted in provincial–federal relations and to a lesser extent in provincial–municipal relations. Federal policy and services, in particular, appeared to be implemented but rarely developed at the cityregion level. Many noted that the “policy distance” of federal actors leads to disconnects with the city-region level. This was generally reflected in how CBOs and industry associations rated the effectiveness of the federal government at the city-region level. In contrast, provincial government actors appeared to have made a concerted effort to adapt strategic development initiatives to the cityregion level. With teams of people located in and specifically responsible for strategic sector development and competitiveness in Saskatoon, the Industry and Resources Department of Saskatchewan (now Enterprise Saskatchewan) is particularly active. The province also has

242  Governing Urban Economies

made a significant effort to integrate services at the city-region level. The Saskatoon Regional Intersectoral Committee is directed to increasing partnerships and collaboration and to eliminating gaps in the services offered. The Saskatoon municipal government has recently emerged from a period of self-professed stagnation to one of steady and open growth. What emerged over the course of the interviews was the sheer amount of services and initiatives that the municipal government concerns itself with. A number of these services, including immigrant settlement, affordable housing, and engaging urban Aboriginal reserves, would formerly have been the purview of the provincial and federal governments, but have been devolved to the municipal government in the past ten years. The City of Saskatoon’s strategic planning initiatives involve a demonstrably larger amount of civic dialogue and engagement. This engagement is especially noticeable in local area planning, which has formalized the participation of specific CBOs, community associations, and the general public. However, despite the innovative approach that the municipal government has adopted in its strategic planning process, the strategies themselves remain narrow. The City has no unified development strategy that incorporates economic, social, and cultural development issues. The last unified city strategy conducted at the behest of the City of Saskatoon was carried out in the late 1990s by the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority and was predominantly focused on purely economic issues. While collaborative governance is gaining prominence, it can largely be characterized as purpose-built, with specific efforts to achieve short- to medium-term objectives. While the model is being diffused across different parts of the local landscape, partly through institutional design and partly through pioneer linking by leading social entrepreneurs, most collaborative governance processes remain notably isolated in silos. Towards Collaborative Governance? With this sketch of the broad types of services offered by CBOs, industry associations, and the three orders of government in mind, it is appropriate to examine how these various actors view each other’s role in the governance of cultural, social, and economic development. Traditional­ ly, governance was presumed to be synonymous with government –

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  243

the interviews conducted in the Saskatoon city-region have demonstrated that governance now encompasses a multiplicity of actors. Broadly, there was a consensus that governance requires both formal and informal partnerships; governance has become more collaborative in nature. The three orders of government acknowledge the need for partnerships in the development process. Government actors generally recognize that they need to take a step back; while government must continue to play a lead role in the creation of strategies, partnerships must be in place to implement these strategies within the city-region. However, concerns were raised around maintaining the accountability and effectiveness of governance services once implementation is devolved to industry and civil society. Industry associations suggested the prime mandate for government should be to do a “good job with the basics.” Government should concentrate on addressing issues within its core mandate – to provide adequate support funding and to maintain and improve Saskatoon’s infrastructure. Business leaders assert that industry, not executive government, should take a leadership role in creating city-region development strategies. CBOs queried about the role of government in the development process echoed comments made by the industry associations that government should focus on creating and maintaining infrastructure. However, the CBOs saw infrastructure as also encompassing social and cultural infrastructure. Their view was that government should complement industry and civil society within the development process. Government should provide the resources required to create social, cultural, and economic infrastructure, while industry and CBOs should implement those services and initiatives. Now that we have articulated the suitability of a collaborative model of governance in carrying out social, cultural, and economic development, it is important to examine how various actors in the city collaborate, whom they collaborate with, and the extent of that collaboration. Respondents acknowledged that the collaboration process is conducted through both formal and informal contacts. In total, over fifty distinct networks or key associations were identified as taking part in development initiatives in the Saskatoon city-region. The Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority, the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, the Business Improvement Districts, and the North Saskatoon Business Association were highlighted as the most heavily

244  Governing Urban Economies

engaged actors in this process. However, only the City of Saskatoon and the University of Saskatchewan were identified as being active in each of the economic, social, and cultural development realms. While one might expect that the key role played by these two institutions could nurture boundary-crossing social entrepreneurs, the reality is that the heterogeneity and weak central tendencies in both organizations limit the potential for learning from their forays within and among the different domains. While bureaucrats from the City at times are usually involved in the processes examined, most respondents credited innovative efforts to individual citizens who are focused on narrow goals and outcomes and generally do not engage in efforts beyond their core interests. Meanwhile, university participation comes in one of two types – either vice-deans, deans, vice-presidents, or presidents who engage as ex-officio members, but with limited capacity to motivate faculty, or as individuals who, like their citizen counterparts, have narrow foci and limited interest in translating their experiences for others. The frequency of contacts between collaborators (both formal and informal), tested through our survey, was on average rated as 8.6 on a scale of 1 (minimal) to 10 (frequent). The high frequency of collaboration was attributed to the regularization of contacts and meetings between actors. Some noted that owing to the smaller size of the Saskatoon city-region there was increased contact between actors – “everyone is playing in the same sandbox.” Generally, actors in CBOs indicated a higher frequency of collaboration than actors reporting from the three orders of government or industry associations. These interactions can lead to either large quests that may produce innovations, such as the CSL/Synchrotron, or smaller and more focused efforts that develop specific infrastructure, programming, or institutions of benefit to a narrower group of existing users (e.g., soccer centres, art galleries, and performing arts centres). Despite the high frequency of collaboration between networks and associations, there appears to be little overlap between the social, cultural, or economic networks. Industry associations tend to collaborate with other industry players towards economic ends and CBOs interact with other civil-society groups around social or cultural purposes. The few exceptions to these silos – including the Tourism Saskatoon strategy, the Cultural Crescent project, and the Cultural Governance initiative – make the rule. Social entrepreneurs are special actors who operate in the realm of collaborative governance. They populate the institutions of collaborative governance and provide the connections between those institutions

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  245

that drive this model of governance. A recent study undertook a socialnetwork analysis of social entrepreneurs in Saskatoon to test for their role and influence on the system.1 Broadly speaking, the data indicated that creative social entrepreneurs are not unambiguously the primary creators of social capital in the Saskatoon city-region. Indeed, in Saskatoon it seems social entrepreneurs and creative individuals are important actors, but their effect is more pronounced in the industrial realm than in the social and cultural areas. Moreover, they are not obviously extending their reach and breaking down the institutional silos noted earlier. Both the institutional imperatives and social networks are not yet strong enough to overcome the silo effect and to build bridges to integrate efforts across disparate groups. Generally, effective social, cultural, and economic development initiatives require low-barriers to entry and need to engage the broader community in the formulation of policy and implementation. While many different actors are involved in these processes in the Saskatoon city-­region, interviewees continually pointed to the lack of engagement of First Nation peoples. There was a common belief that disenfranchisement of First Nations peoples has hindered the development of Saskatoon. While the frequency of interaction between actors in the development process was quite high, the effectiveness of these collaborations was only rated as 6.79 on a scale of one to 10 (10 indicating the highest effectiveness). Two common criticisms about collaboration processes were raised: first, while networks and organizations met regularly, little in terms of action plans were developed and implemented; and, second, it was believed that collaboration, based upon a drive for group consensus, led to ineffective and watered down policy. While the city can point to a few big wins, like the CSL/Synchrotron, many other efforts have been less successful. For example, there have been long-term efforts in Saskatoon to develop a science centre, to reinvigorate the performing arts through a university-based theatre and to expand art gallery capacity, all which generated significant effort but little in the way of tangible results for a long period. One test of the effectiveness of collaboration in the city-region is the level and type of competition between actors. Governments, industry associations and CBOs report that the Saskatoon city-region generally has a collaborative environment. At times, however, the collaborative environment is disrupted by fiscal imperatives. While CBOs enjoy operating within a collaborative environment, they report that limited access to resources can lead to organizations going into “survival mode”

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and competing ferociously. A few interviewees pointed out that when the federal government recently cut spending for NGOs, many CBOs “brought their knives out” and actively competed for project funding that would normally have been outside their traditional service area or “turf.” Industry associations are more sanguine about this, asserting that it is a misnomer to place competition and collaboration at two ends of a spectrum – both play important roles in networks and organizations engaged in social, cultural and economic development. Conclusion Saskatoon is now and for the foreseeable future will remain an excellent case study for testing the evolution and impact of collaborative governance on innovation. As a relatively small, regional city that has emerged from an extended period of economic and institutional stasis into a period of dynamic growth and development, Saskatoon has both benefited from and been pushed by a provincial culture of institutional innovation. The city has actively adapted and adopted new models of governance – including community-based partnerships and active social networking – and has had some significant success, exemplified by the development of the Canadian Light Source, the largest single science infrastructure investment in the history of Canada. That success, however, highlights how far the city still has to go to realize its vision of an engaged, collaborative city. Indeed, the few tangible successes bring into sharp relief the reality that much of Saskatoon’s collaborative governance effort remains in silos that are bolstered by institutional imperatives. While social entrepreneurs and creative individuals might some day break down the silos, at present they are so narrowly focused that their efforts tend to bolster rather than moderate the specialization that characterizes Saskatoon’s foray into collaborative governance. NOTES 1 The analysis began with a survey of key actors in the Saskatoon cityregion. A list of important actors in Saskatoon was compiled from interviews and other sources and then narrowed down to 253 individuals (73 from business, 63 from the university, 59 from government, and 58 from CBOs). These individuals and the networks they belonged to formed the source population for a study of the level of social capital in the

Governance Innovations in Saskatoon  247 Saskatoon city-region. Thirty individuals, from the refined list of 253, took part in this research. These thirty individuals were from all four major structures in the Saskatoon city-region (5 in government, 9 at the university, 7 in industry, 9 in civil society, and 2 others; the total is 32 because two participants held positions in more than one sector). Their entrepreneurial orientation and social networks were elicited by survey and then analysed by Webb (2009).

REFERENCES Florida, R. 2002. The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books. Herman, Roger, and Murray Fulton. 2001. “An economic impact analysis of the co-operative sector in Saskatchewan: Update 1998.” Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan Canada. Marchildon, G. 2006. “Cadbury, George Woodall (1907–95).” The encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre. http://esask .uregina.ca/entry/cadbury_george_woodall_1907-95.html. Olson, M. 1965. The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phillips, P., C. Ryan, J. Karwandy, T. Procyshyn, and J. Parchewski. 2008. “The Saskatoon agricultural biotechnology cluster.” In Handbook of research on clusters: Theories, policies and case studies, ed. C. Karlsson, 233–52. Wallingford: Edward Elgar. Procyshyn, T. 2004. “The Ag Biotech cluster and the CLS.” Unpublished MSc thesis, University of Saskatchewan. Russell, N. 2006. “Cooperatives.” The encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre. http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/ co-operatives.html. Saskatoon and Region Economic Development Authority (SREDA). 2009. Annual Report. Saskatoon: SREDA. Statistics Canada, 1994. Corporations and Labour Unions Returns Act. Statistics Canada Catalogue 61-222. Webb, G. 2009. “Creative social entrepreneurs, social capital and collaborative governance: A Saskatoon based analysis.” Unpublished MSc thesis, University of Saskatchewan.

11 The Missing Link: Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization in Vancouver richard smith, paulina chow-white, graeme webb, renee cheung, karen fung, and j. patrick truman Globalization, new technologies, changing demographics, and the shift to a knowledge-based economy are transforming the social and economic landscape and ushering in a new set of challenges in the process. The relative importance of human capital is growing and the skills required to compete in the global economy are changing. It is widely acknowledged that the competition for talent, skills, and education has become global and that the contest will only intensify as more and more nations develop strategic initiatives that target the emerging needs of the changing economy. Industrialized nations recognize that human-capital needs are crucial to innovation and the economic prosperity of national and regional economies. The demand for highly skilled workers, especially those with education, training, and experience in fields related to science and technology, is particularly acute, as evidenced in the United States by the annual exhaustion of H1-B visas.1 As nations restructure for the knowledge economy, many governments have begun to turn to immigration as a solution to labour shortages. In the United States and across Europe, immigration reform has become a topic of much discussion. Even European nations, such as Finland and Ireland, which have not been open to immigration traditionally, are in the process of reassessing their positions on immigration and considering policy reform. The same forces of globalization that are driving the need for the attraction, retention, and utilization of highly skilled and creative immigrants in a knowledge economy are also driving the rising importance of cities. Aspects of place, such as diversity and openness, local “buzz,” and local networks with global pipelines are all reasons why city-­ regions have become the locus of social, cultural, and economic development. As a result, the question of how to attract, retain, and take

Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization  249

advantage of the skills of the best and brightest immigrants has become one of crucial importance not only for government policymakers but also for networks of non-governmental organizations. While considerable attention has been paid to the subject of talent attraction and retention, those interested in innovation have been less attentive to the growing concern over skills underutilization. This chapter examines whether the community-building strategies in the Vancouver city-region have been able to successfully align macro-level policies and programs aimed at leveraging the human capital within immigrant communities with the capacities, needs, and aspirations of immigrants themselves. In particular, it investigates the role of collaborative governance models in addressing the continuing problem of skills underutilization that acts as a barrier to immigrant integration and socially sustainable growth. Governance is traditionally equated to a big tent where a host of organizations supply services under the structure supplied by formal government. However, in contrast to this model, the Vancouver cityregion has been referred to as a tent city – a governance bazaar. This analogy is particularly apt when talking about immigration services. The lack of formal government involvement in steering immigration services at the local level has driven small groups to form casual networks among themselves to fill the void – many tents, not one. While it is still too early to tell how effective this tent city has been in the Vancouver city-region, this tent-city model of collaborative governance has tremendous potential and thus demands attention.2 Immigration and the Knowledge Economy Like many nations, Canada faces shortages of skilled labour. Canadian cities are competing against one another and against cities worldwide for the types of talent that are necessary for innovation. In its report How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada (Lafleur 2007), the Conference Board of Canada points out that although the country has fared well in areas such as university completion (an indicator of talent production and innovation), Canada fares poorly when it comes to proportion of graduates in the fields of math, science, and engineering. In comparison to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, Canada ranks twelfth out of seventeen nations in the proportion of graduates with math, science, or engineering backgrounds. It also shows deficiencies in PhD graduation

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rates, ranking sixteenth out of seventeen OECD nations. Low standings in subjects related to science and technology, a relatively weak mathematics and science culture, and low PhD completion rates are all cause for concern, especially since high levels of academic achievement in these areas have been associated with such indicators of innovation as the creation of knowledge, number of articles published, and the quality and amount of research and development activities (Lafleur 2007). In addition to making a series of recommendations to improve innovation through education and lifelong learning, the Conference Board (ibid.) estimates that Canada needs 375,000 new immigrants annually “to stabilize the workforce and ensure economic growth.” The board views immigration as “an invaluable opportunity for innovation, new market and global competitive edge” (ibid., 16). Since the 1980s, Canada has targeted immigrants with the necessary skills and education to address national economic development priorities. While the costs and benefits of immigration are the subject of much debate and worthy of further consideration, the focus of this chapter is on the question of skills utilization.3 Canada performs well in attracting highly skilled workers, but performs poorly when it comes to inte­ grating immigrants into the labour market (Gera and Songsakul 2007). Recent immigrant groups experience greater employment pressures and less success in the job market than ever before in Canadian history. One study revealed that immigrants arriving since the 1970s tended to fair worse on such employment factors as income and unemployment in comparison to earlier immigrant cohorts and in comparison to the Canadian population as a whole (Grubel 2005). Evidence showing the underperformance of new immigrant groups in the labour market is supported by a variety of sources, including taxation data (Dougherty 1999) and different sets of census data (Bauder 2001; Drew, Murray, and Zhao 2000; Reitz 1998, 1999, 2001). The costs of underperformance by immigrants are enormous, and have an adverse effect on the economy as a whole, including innovation activities. In Canada it is estimated that the “national failure to recognize immigrants’ [educational] credentials costs 340,000 immigrants in the range of $3.4–5 billion annually in lost earnings due to unemployment and underemployment effects” and that “the majority of this cost is borne by immigrants living in three major centres: Toronto, Vancouver and Montréal” (Conference Board of Canada 2004, 120). Sociologist and immigration specialist Jeffrey G. Reitz (2001, 347) estimated through census data that, “in 1996 dollars, the total annual immigrant earnings

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deficit from all three sources was $15.0 billion, of which $2.4 billion was related to skill underutilization, and $12.6 billion was related to pay inequity.” Reitz (2001, 348) raises the question of whether “valuable immigrant skills – particularly high-level professional or technical skills which are increasingly in demand” – are being wasted in Canada. He reports that highly educated immigrants in particular receive lower earnings from premiums for education and that, “as a generalization it may be said that the education premium for immigrants on average is about half of what it is for native-born” (ibid., 362, emphasis in original). In addition, immigrants receive a lower earnings premium for work experience in comparison to native-born Canadians. By Reitz’s estimation, “immigrant men and women receive about one-half to two-thirds as much benefit from work experience as do the native born of the same gender” (ibid., 364). These findings suggest that there are other factors that must be considered when it comes to the “brain drain” and “brain gain” debate, which has occupied much attention in Canadian media and scholarship devoted to the issue of human capital. The question of “brain waste” is equally important because, as Reitz argues, the “offsetting impact” that immigrant skills are supposed to have on “brain gain” “obviously would be diminished if there is substantial underutilization of these skills” (ibid., 349). In terms of the substantial underutilization of immigrant skills, which Reitz (2001, 350) defines as “any employment of immigrants in work below a level of skill at which they could function as effectively as native-born Canadians,” the literature points to a number of relevant issues. The remainder of this chapter will examine these issues in relation to the empirical data collected in the course of this research. In doing so, it elaborates on the barriers affecting the integration of immigrant skills into the labour market from the perspective of organizations and government departments with immediate involvement in immigration settlement services. It also provides an analysis of these barriers and provides suggestions for policy implementation that are informed from the ground up, that is, from the point of view of those with first-hand experience in the issues. The Framework of Integration Like many other nations, Canada has gone out of its way to attract highly skilled, well-educated, and experienced candidates for immigration.

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Canadian immigration policy has largely been successful at attracting a large numbers of these highly sought after individuals. In itself, this is testimony to the considerable success of these policies. This success, however, may be compromised if better policies to support immigration integration are not implemented. Despite the economic benefits associated with immigration, the high density of city-regions coupled with rapid social and cultural change can also give rise to a host of social stresses. Stren and Polese (2000) argue for the need for socially sustainable growth that is “compatible with the harmonious evolution of civil society, fostering an environment conducive to compatible cohabitation of culturally and socially diverse groups while at the same time encouraging social integration, with improvements in the quality of life for all segments of the population” (p. 16). A successful framework for integration requires that the governing structures at the municipal level are open, accessible, and attentive to the needs of immigrant communities. What is integration and what should it look like? These timely questions require urgent consideration. To begin with, it is important to note that the term “integration” can carry negative connotations. For example, a visible leader in the community and leading administrator of an organization made up of highly skilled immigrant professionals pointed out: We need to question the [term] integration. I think at the root of it there’s a kind of containment that’s involved in that notion and we have to ask ourselves why we want to integrate people. Why can we not let people support people to find their way? This is a new beginning, maybe they don’t want to [integrate]. I just think that word integration is worth some problematizing a little bit, you know. Yeah, we want people to feel safe and a part of something, but … they have their own cultural identity and why would you want to melt that down?

The sociologist Peter Li, a recognized leader in Canadian immigration policy who co-chaired a national panel of experts working to improve the integration of immigrants has written extensively on the limitations of employing the term integration. Though Li (2003) acknowledges that in Canada the official policy objective of integration does not promote assimilation, but rather respects cultural differences through multiculturalism, he argues for the necessity of adopting a more positive perspective on immigrant integration.

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According to Li, both the Department of Citizenship and Immigra­ tion Canada and the Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada have likened their stances on integration to a “two-way process,” one that requires adjustments and accommodations on the part of newcomers as well as the receiving society. Working from this basis, Li presents some clear ideas about what integration, and by extension what research on integration, should be like. He recommends that a more enlightened view of integration would take into account how Canadian society and its institutions perform toward newcomers. Assessing successful integration would also mean determining the degree to which institutions are open or closed to immigrants; whether communities welcome or shun newcomers; and whether individual Canadians treat newcomers as equal partners or intruders. Such an approach requires policy-makers, immigration critics, and academics to abandon an ethnocentric complacency and to begin issuing a report card for Canada as a society to see how it fares in the two-way street of integrating immigrants. (Li 2003, 330)

The focus of our study is unique in that it intends to shift our attention towards the other half of the “two-way process” by focusing instead on the performance of Canadian society and its institutions. This allows us to examine the way in which government, industry, and civil-society organizations are successfully and unsuccessfully able to align macrolevel policies and programs of leveraging the human capital within immigrant communities with their capacities, needs, and aspirations. Government and Governance: Immigrant Integration in the Vancouver City-region Immigration has traditionally been the purview of the federal and, to a lesser extent, provincial governments. However, Good (2009) suggests that many responsibilities associated with attracting, retaining, and integrating immigrants have now become the responsibility of municipalities – often without the necessary financial resources to adequately take on these added responsibilities. While many municipalities are actively involved in taking up these tasks, some participants alluded to a reticence from municipal governments to take on too much responsibility in this area lest it set a precedent.4 However, despite this reticence,

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Good concludes that the downgrading of responsibility for dealing with immigrant settlement, coupled with a genuine lack of provincial policy guidance, has “provided room for local innovation and variation” (ibid., 143). In this chapter we refer to the Vancouver city-region as a single city. However, while there is a Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), the city is not amalgamated, but instead consists of twenty-one municipalities with independent city councils and mayors, significant social differences, and a wide range of policies and programs aimed at immigration.5 Furthermore, the GVRD “does not play a role in multiculturalism and immigration” (Good 2009, 258). As a result, the GVRD, as a governmental unit, is absent from our discussion of immigration in the Vancouver city-region. It is important to note that organizations that took part in the survey process suggested that “boundaries [between municipalities] are a problem” and that “each city treats itself as an entity [unto] itself”; the lack of an active, formal regional government actor severely hampers the ability to successfully develop policy on a cross-boundary municipal issue. However, while there is no regional government to push cross-boundary issues forward, we argue that collaborative networks, not restrained by formal geographic institutions have the potential to fill this void. Despite the heterogeneity of municipalities within the greater Vancouver area, this chapter forgoes a discussion of the different levels of responsiveness of each municipal government towards their immigrant communities. However, it is important to examine the role of government and the relationship between government, industry, civil society, and immigrant communities within a collaborative governance framework. Government is often seen as fulfilling the four essential roles of governing: authority, regulator, enabler, and convener. In a collaborative governance framework it is the last two functions that are of particular importance. As an enabler, the government provides social, cultural, and economic infrastructure, traditional physical infrastructure, and non-traditional, soft infrastructure such as building human capacity within the community. Furthermore, as a convener it should provide a forum where all relevant actors can voice concerns and develop complementary plans of action. Data from the 2006 Statistics Canada census show that the Vancouver city-region has a population of nearly 2.1 million. Of these people, ­39.6 per cent are foreign born and 41.7 per cent are visible minorities (Statistics Canada 2007) – Vancouver has an incredibly rich diversity of

Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization  255 Table 11.1  Representation of visible minorities on municipal councils within the Vancouver, BC, city-region* Municipalities

Size of council (excluding mayors)

Vancouver

10

Richmond

8

Surrey Coquitlam

Number of councillors who were “visible minorities”

Percentage of councillors who were “visible minorities”

Percentage of “visible minorities,” in population, in 2006 census

1

10

51

2

25

65

8

0

0

46.1

7

0

0

38.6

* This is an amended version of a graph seen in Good 2009, 34.

cultures, religions, and ethnicities. However, as seen in table 11.1, despite this diversity within the population, representation within the formal mechanisms of government is disproportionately low. A successful framework for integration requires that the governing structures at the municipal level are open, accessible, and attentive to the needs of immigrant communities. However, while traditional governing structures have a role to play, the municipal governments in the Vancouver city-region lack the necessary resources to adequately address the needs of immigrant communities, rarely coordinate their efforts with each other, and have failed to provide an adequate voice for immigrant communities within local formal institutions. Regardless of these limitations, “municipalities are important vehicles of the democratic will of local communities as well as important sites of multicultural democratic citizenship” (Good 2009, 5). Given the failure of traditional government and the possibilities presented by local communities as sources of multicultural democratic citizenship, examining the extent to which alternative governing models have emerged to fill the void is an important matter. Bradford and Bramwell (introduction) describe the emergence of a collaborative governance model as just such an alternative for communities. Drawing on Keating (2002), they suggest that a model that institutionalizes interactions between actors, where “development coalitions” are formed, is the best way forward. However, to talk about associations and coalitions places too much of an emphasis on formal

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interactions. We see a need to break from this language and adopt terminology that highlights the informality of the dynamic, weak tie governance networks that are forming – a collaborative model of governance. Phillips and Webb (this volume) define collaborative governance as a system wherein “the actors – civil society, industry, and government – cooperatively draw upon relevant assets present within the system, whether they be knowledge, credibility, or funding, to carry out services or projects at the city-region level.” Using this broadened notion, it is possible to examine the non-traditional governance structures that may be emerging in the immigrant services sector in the Vancouver city-region. Results When it comes to integration, the underutilization of immigrant skills was a major subject of concern and leaders of the most widely recognized organizations dealing with immigrant settlement and services in Vancouver. All saw this as a major issue. As one respondent put it, In the last maybe six–seven years, Canada has shifted its policy of immigration in favour of what they call independent immigrants, which are the skilled immigrants with what Canada needs or what the Canadian economy needs. However … we’re not using those skills and those professions adequately to build the nation and to help those individuals’ aspirations for making a decision to move here. So, for me that’s the biggest challenge.

If city-regions are to successfully implement policies and programs meant to harness the human capital within immigrant communities to drive local growth in the knowledge economy, it is important to know the extent to which policies align with the capacities, needs, and aspirations of immigrants. In particular, it is important to note what role, if any, collaborative governance plays at bridging the gap between macro-level policies concerning integration and skill-utilization policies and micro-level implementation. Some interview questions were designed to identify some of the barriers that newcomers face, while others were intended to solicit practical solutions and to identify effective models to facilitate immigrant integration. As mentioned above, we coded for the themes of integration and the underutilization of skills. Five sub-themes emerged, including the gap between immigrant expectations and realities, problems with

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professional licensing and accreditation, the inadequacy of Englishlanguage training, gender, and mentorship. Finally, we examined the participants’ responses for evidence of collaborative governance and to learn how actors do or do not collaborate to deal with the complex set of issues surrounding immigration and skill underutilization in the Vancouver city-region.

1. Expectation Gaps: “What They Find When They Arrive” Several respondents observed that there is a “disconnect” between the expectations of recent immigrants, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), and local immigrant settlement services agencies and the realities of the job market. This was described as an immediate pressure to get into the labour market in some way and they get that message usually when they access Citizenship and Immigration Canada as well as the immigrants’ agency. They’ve been permitted to come into the country because they got x number of points in the system based on their education and their language skills … [but] there is a real disconnect between what people think they are applying to and what they find when they arrive. For example, because people are required to present their education and their career and their number of years in their chosen careers and their language skills, they assume that if they are accepted into the country, their credentials are accepted, which is not the case. Once they arrive, they find out that they have maybe a five-year or so very expensive process in order to legitimize their education here.

In other words, Canadian institutions perform poorly when it comes to meeting the expectations of new arrivals, and most respondents felt that more could be done to prepare immigrants for the challenges they would likely encounter. While it was widely acknowledged that immigration policies were in place to target and attract certain types of skills and education, it was also pointed out that there was a lack of strategy on the ground that would produce an easier transition into the job market. As one respondent explained, “The opportunities are there,” but “we have not done a good job in terms of integrating them into the labour market.” It was suggested that the gap between immigrant expectations and what they experience when they arrive could be addressed by informing immigrants of what they might expect regarding credential recognition and

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housing before they arrive, which is not just an “obligation” but also “a good economic decision.”

2. Licensing and Accreditation Consistent with the literature, interview data also revealed that licensing and accreditation is one of the greatest barriers to the labour market integration of highly skilled labour. Respondents expressed a great deal of concern about reluctance on the part of Canadian licensing agencies to recognize foreign credentials in various trades and professions. Highly skilled immigrants are often encouraged to take a “survival job” where they make a living while they attempt to get accreditation in their original profession, and many remain stuck in what they perceived to be a temporary position. Engineers from Eastern Europe, for instance, are recruited for their skills and education, but often find it nearly impossible to get accredited. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba (Mata 1999) all produced studies calling for action, as the Conference Board of Canada (2011) recently noted, but the problem still exists. A point that has been underscored often in the literature is that ­licensing bodies and professional associations create substantial barriers through their reluctance to recognize foreign credentials in many professions, even “where the foreign professional or trade standards in question are in fact essentially equal to Canadian standards” (Reitz 2001, 351). The Conference Board of Canada has characterized the Canadian recognition system as “arcane” and “idiosyncratic,” and argues that, given Canada’s significant and increasing reliance on immigrant talent, it has to do a much better job of recognizing skills and learning that have been acquired in other countries. Learning recognition, here, is much more than a matter of issuing new credentials in Canada. It means finding or creating effective and efficient mechanisms for assessing and accepting foreign credentials without requiring onerous procedures for evaluation or repetition of training when these procedures are unwarranted. (Lafleur 2007, 19)

Some interview subjects informed us that the time and cost of licensing and accreditation are often too significant for newcomers, especially when they are contending with other pressing resettlement issues such as finding a home, a doctor, schools, and dealing with new bureaucracies. The problem also extends beyond the non-recognition of foreign skills by local licensing bodies. Reitz adds that there are other factors

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that come into play. In many cases, when immigrants are finally successful in obtaining a Canadian licence, employers continue to believe that immigrant skills are of lower quality and, in effect, fail to recognize credentials regardless of licensing. In general, there is a tendency on the part of Canadian employers to discount the foreign skills, experience, and education that CIC tried to attract to the country in the first place. While some of the interviewees mentioned racism, ignorance, and a general reluctance to accept difference as causes for such perceptions, language was stated more openly as another major factor.

3. Language: ESL Caps The situation in British Columbia is unique in Canada, as the minimum level of English as a Second Language (ESL) training is lower than in other provinces. A former member of the Vancouver School Board was adamant that the school system needs to extend the ESL system, commenting that “there’s a five-year cap for financial support in the public education system for an ESL student, which means you can only have five years of ESL education. What does that mean when all the research tells us you need at least seven?”6 A senior member of management from another well-established organization servicing the Chinese community of Vancouver described the problems associated with ESL training for newcomers in general: In BC, one of our biggest challenges, of course, unlike many other provinces, is lack of adequate English-language training. In most provinces, particularly in the big provinces … [like] Ontario, they have up to seven, eight, if not more English-language levels of training and support. In BC, we have only up to level 3. Now they are actually talking about enhancing that to level 4 and 5, but then they are talking about targeting it to the labour market. Which may be a good idea, I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but it’s just a start.

Interview data suggested that language training in Vancouver is inadequate because “there isn’t really appropriate language enrichment after a certain level [and] no free language enrichment after a certain level” at which most people who are arriving in the skill-work program are already beyond. While British Columbia’s language programs are not meeting the needs of skills-selected immigrants, interview subjects also indicated that there is a need for differentiation in language training. Members of another organization for professional workers in

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science and technology fields expressed a similar need to go beyond the provision of ESL training. For example, a senior executive from the organization reported that several members took university classes in communication at Simon Fraser University. In this manner, they were able to gain exposure to the language they needed to employ in order to discuss technology and other current issues related to their areas of expertise, and found this to be more rewarding because what they were learning was much more relevant to their professional development. There was a general sense that most highly skilled immigrants found English-language level training to level 3 did not reflect their level of ability nor aid them in getting ahead in their respective professional fields. As one respondent put it: For those who have [a] smaller language barrier, then the integration is quicker and easier because language makes it difficult [for] people either to access the public service or to interact with local people, and then of course obviously make it difficult for them to find employment. And so all along throughout these years we have been advocating that the government should support the language training for new immigrants. Right now in BC, the ELSA Program, that is the English Language Services for Adults, which is the official program for language training for new immigrants, supports new immigrants up to level 3, which is barely functional for everyday living, but not enough for people to find a job, to work, so that is one that has been difficult for people.

4. Gendered Factors Gender did not arise frequently in the course of interviews, but remains an important of element of immigrant integration activities. Professional women, particularly those with families, faced unique pressures such as getting their families settled and their children enrolled in school, and supporting their families throughout the transition process. For example, a respondent commented on the gendered aspect from the perspective of women engineers who had recently arrived, and stressed that support for professional women is already inadequate, which exacerbates the pressures experienced by recent immigrants who may not have broader support networks. Canadian society is not very open to newcomers, and female workers often encounter prejudicial attitudes. In this context, apart from

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professional networks and mentorship programs, which are also very important, peer-to-peer networks between highly skilled and professional immigrant women were mentioned as a positive mechanism to facilitate the exchange of practical ideas and a sharing of experience, and are free of the pressures often present in professional associations.

5. The Need for Mentorship Several respondents indicated that one-on-one coaching, or mentorship is the most effective mechanism to the integration process and can take a variety of forms at different stages of the immigration process. For example, individual counselling before arrival could mitigate the shock that occurs when the realities of entering the Canadian labour market do not meet up to newcomers’ expectations. This type of service could better prepare new arrivals to cope with the types of challenges they are likely to encounter. Mentorship is even more crucial once immigrants arrive because it can provide information and guide newcomers through the employment process. Mentors can also provide information about how to access practical forms of support such as locating childcare, offering assistance with completing applications and producing CVs, identifying potential employers, locating language courses, and introducing the new arrival to peer-to-peer and professional networks. If and when the newcomers find employment, mentors can continue to provide support for newcomers as they navigate the challenges of a new position. In Vancouver, mentorship programs provided by immigrant settlement-services organizations, neighbourhood houses, and municipal community services have existed for some time, but many programs have been discontinued in the last decade due to funding cuts. In summary, results from the interview data underscore what is already known about the significant barriers to immigrant integration in Canada. Taken together, gaps between immigrant expectations and realities, problems with professional licensing and accreditation, the inadequacy of English-language training, gender issues, and the need for better mentorship programs indicate that, like many other Canadian municipalities, the Vancouver city-region has a long way to go to improve the integration of recent immigrants into local civil society and the local economy. In this context, the discussion now shifts to an analysis of collaborative governance efforts operating at the local level to address these issues.

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Collaborative Governance and Immigration in Vancouver Drawing on the work of Phillips and Webb on theorizing collaborative governance in this volume, we suggest that in the absence of a big tent government in the Vancouver city-region actors “cooperatively draw upon relevant assets present within the system, whether they be knowledge, credibility, or funding, to carry out services or projects” for immigrant communities. Research in other city-regions suggests that collaborative governance models are needed if municipal governments, industry, and civil society are going to successfully address barriers to immigrant integration and socially sustainable growth. How­ever, there is a paucity of these governance networks in the Vancouver city-region (Good 2009). Our research has found that while there are a number of organizations that provide innovative and essential services for the immigrant communities there is a lack of formal linkages between organizations or collaboration with organized actors in other sectors. Nonetheless, there are a few actors that, given time and resources, may provide the foundation upon which to build the collaborative governance mechanisms needed in the region. As we mentioned earlier in the chapter, in a collaborative governance model government is seen as fulfilling four essential roles – governing authority, regulator, enabler, and convener. During our research into collaborative governance and immigration municipal Vancouver’s Multicultural Advisory Committee emerged as a major part of the interface between municipal government and the civil-society organizations involved with immigration and integration issues. It acts as both a convener (providing a forum where all relevant actors can voice concerns and develop complimentary plans of action) and as an enabler (providing social, cultural, and economic infrastructure, traditional physical infrastructure, and non-traditional soft infrastructure such as building human capacity within the community). The committee also has a fulltime multicultural social planner, which can be seen as an indication of the embedded nature of immigration issues in municipal Vancouver. In addition, multiple participants mentioned Baldwin Wong – the multicultural social planner at the time – as being an important civic leader who was able to build linkages across municipal boundaries, a finding that is echoed in Good’s study of immigration in Vancouver. The ability of someone like Wong to connect with a variety of civil-society organizations across municipal boundaries and to act as a bridge between them is an important element of a collaborative governance structure.

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There exists a complex jurisdictional interplay between the three levels of government when dealing with immigration and development issues in Canadian cities. As a result, an important measure of success for the collaborative governance model in the Vancouver city-region is their level of collaboration. The most prominent example of this was the involvement of federal, provincial, and local government in the Urban Aboriginal, First Nations, and New Immigrant dialogue program (“The Dialogues Project”), which seeks to build increased understanding and strengthened relations between these communities (City of Vancouver 2011). The federal government plays an important role in the Dialogues Project by providing the majority of the funding, as agreed to under the terms of the Canada–British Columbia Immigration Agreement, for the province’s Welcoming and Inclusive Communities and Workspaces Program (WICWP). This program is run through EmbraceBC, whose mandate it is to promote multiculturalism and eliminate racism in British Columbia by giving local citizens an opportunity to engage with one another and, through ongoing community initiatives, with local government and business. Under WICWP, the provincial government funds the Dialogues Project initiatives as well as groups like SUCCESS, DIVERSEcity in Surrey, and some other groups around metropolitan Vancouver. The municipality of Vancouver appears to have lent infrastructure support for the Dialogues Project, as the project team is made up of city staff. The steering committee members are from agencies and community groups active on multicultural, Aboriginal, and First Nations issues who act on the ground to pull together the successful elements of the Dialogues Project.7 Furthermore, the steering committee chairs are from the university, a First Nation, and an Urban Aboriginal organization, which indicates a fledgling level of boundary crossing between sectors. Government has a continuing and essential role as a collaborator within a larger collaborative governance model. However, despite the collaboration between the three levels of government in the Dialogues Project (as well as the boundary-crossing ties between sectors), there remains an overall organizational hole. During the interview process a number of participants cited a significant failure of coordination b ­ etween the three levels of government. The success of municipal Vancouver’s Multicultural Advisory Committee as an enabler of community capital and its ability to facilitate networks of ties as a convener are not enough to offset the lack of government presence in the governance process. If

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a collaborative governance structure is to emerge in the Vancouver cityregion, the three levels of government will have to continue to build upon their few successes in inter-governmental collaboration. While government must play an important role in collaborative governance, much of the heavy lifting is left to civil society and industry. However, it is important to note that this should not amount to a justification for the neoliberalization of governance. Collaborative governance requires collaboration between all sectors and actors for a more equitable and, ultimately, a more successful form of social, cultural, and economic development. In the Vancouver city-region there are a number of key civil-society organizations that provide services for immigrant communities. While these organizations do collaborate and seek partnerships with other actors, they cannot be categorized as taking part in a collaborative governance structure; more research is still needed to examine the informal linkages that were only hinted at during our interviews. Nevertheless, these organizations and initiatives are important to highlight. The “Bamboo Network” is an initiative of the Multicultural Helping House Society (MHHS), a non-profit association specializing in immigrant settlement services. The program seeks to overcome immigrant underemployment in professions and trades. It runs job-search workshops which support the entry of newcomers into the labour market by showing them how to write cover letters and résumés, and teaching them how to position their skills and experience in ways that are transferable to the Canadian job market. They also provide coaching on the job interview process and teach participants about the Canadian work culture, and provide mentoring in a number of professions and trades, such as accounting, auto mechanics, banking, software and hardware engineering, electrical work, engineering, nursing, pharmacy, social work, teaching, welding, and construction. A unique feature of the Bamboo Network is that it involves prominent employers and professional associations from the region. A huge part of its success can be attributed to the series of partnerships that it has forged with such organizations as BC Hydro, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, private engineering firms, the Association of Pro­ fessional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia, the Society of Canadian Women in Science and Technology, the Association of Chinese Canadian Professionals, the Society of Internationally Trained Engineers of British Columbia, and the United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society (SUCCESS).

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The Bamboo Network provides the innovative type of one-on-one, beginning-to-end counselling that many of our interview subjects called for, and it is able to support newcomers using a case-by-case approach. This allows the network to assess and tailor the provision of guidance and support in a way that sees newcomers through the job process from the beginning (accreditation, licensing, and preparation stages) to the end (job placement and job mentoring). Such a holistic approach has the added benefit of being able to accommodate needs on a case-bycase basis. A holistic case-by-case approach would also make it possible to address all the areas we have already discussed, that is, the gap between immigrant expectations and “what they find when they get here,” licensing and accreditation issues, English-language training issues, and gendered needs. Over the course of the interview process a number of organizations emerged that provide some cross-boundary municipal services. The most notable of these are the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies (AMSAA), an umbrella organization representing settlement agencies in the province; the Multilingual Orientation Services Association for Immigrant Communities (MOSAIC); and SUCCESS. SUCCESS, which delivers social services, employment services, business and economic development services, training and education services, health services, and advocacy, has eleven offices in six different municipalities. According to SUCCESS, these objectives are achieved through “cooperat[ion] and work with other citizens and organizations” (SUCCESS 2011, “Mandate”) in the community. An indicator of how successful it has been at providing these services is that the organization now “provide[s] a wide range of services not only to immigrants but also to all job seekers in the community” (SUCCESS 2010, “Employment services”). Although SUCCESS receives some provincial funding, it is rarely seen as a competitor by other civil-society organizations for municipal funds – over 40 per cent of its funding comes from fund-raising events, donations, membership dues, and user fees. As a result, SUCCESS is often in a better position to collaborate with these local actors (Good 2009, 155). However, while some civil-society organizations and local champions have strengthened the connective tissues between organizations and others have begun to address the issue of integration and skill underutilization, the collaborative governance structure in the Vancouver city-region remains nascent. Perhaps one reason our research was unable to reveal a stronger collaborative governance structure has to do

266  Governing Urban Economies Table 11.2  Ethnic demographics of Vancouver city-region municipalities Coquitlam

Richmond

Surrey

Vancouver

Total pop.

113,560

173,565

392,450

571,600

Foreign-born %

39.4%

57.4%

38.3%

45.6%

Visible minority %

38.6%

65%

46.1%

51.0%

Visible minority pop.

38,190 (100)

112,015 (100)

181,005 (100)

291,740 (100)

Chinese

19,940 (52.2)

75,725 (67.0)

20,210 (11.2)

168,215 (57.7)

South Asian

3280 (8.6)

13,860 (12.3)

107,810 (59.6)

32,515 (11.1)

Black

1130 (3.0)

1390 (1.2)

5015 (2.8)

5290 (1.8)

Filipino

2570 (6.7)

9555 (8.5)

16,555 (9.1)

28,605 (9.8)

Latin American

1110 (2.9)

1265 (1.1)

3785 (2.1)

8225 (2.8)

Southeast Asian

2570 (6.7)

1480 (1.3)

9240 (5.1)

14,850 (5.0)

Arab

385 (1.0)

960 (0.8)

1805 (1.0)

1875 (0.6)

West Asian

2580 (6.8)

1155 (1.0)

1790 (1.0)

5355 (1.8)

Korean

4240 (11.1)

1290 (1.1)

7665 (4.2)

8780 (3.0)

Japanese

850 (2.2)

3230 (2.9)

2090 (1.2)

9730 (3.3)

Other visible minority

125 (0.3)

295 (0.3)

655 (0.4)

990 (0.3)

Multiple visible minority

845 (2.2)

2745 (2.4)

4395 (2.4)

7320 (2.5)

Source: Statistics Canada 2007

with the scale on which we chose to analyse immigrant integration and skill underutilization. As seen in table 11.2, there is a wide diversity of ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, religious views, and economic means under the larger umbrella of “immigrants.” The foregoing analysis concentrated on relationships at more of an institutional level – connections between civil society, industry, and government across municipal boundaries – but collaborative governance structures have also emerged within particular ethnic communities. For example, Latincouver was created by members of Vancouver’s Latin-American immigrant community who identified the need for an online social-networking space specific to their experiences. The organization uses this online public square to organize business networking events and social and cultural activities, while also acting as a bridge between its members and other ethnic communities in the city-region (Latincouver 2009). Furthermore, community members are able to speak with municipal governments and to take part in public consultations

Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization  267

under the banner of this project. The development of Latincouver demonstrates the possible role that strong ties or primary associations, such as those that exist within an ethnic community, have at creating the social capital necessary for the emergence of weak ties between communities and organizations. While we do believe that collaborative governance networks are necessary to address the issue of skill underutilization in immigrant communities and its subsequent impact on integration and socially sustainable growth, this model does have limitations. One subject commented that because “there are so many small organizations, it is difficult for newcomers to know how to prioritize their time in respect to these organizations.” Collaborative governance is a complex system, especially in comparison to a formal government with specific departments that carry out specific tasks. It is possible that while a collaborative governance model is needed so that organizations can collaboratively draw upon all their resources and knowledge, the complexity caused by the fragmentation of the system may be a barrier to access. To access the resources offered within collaborative governance models requires a familiarity with the system that immigrants simply do not have; with no big tent under which all services might be found, immigrants must navigate a sea of tents – a potentially stressful process hampered by language issues and many other barriers. Conclusion: Policy Directions It is evident that more could be done to facilitate the integration of new immigrants in general, and skills-selected immigrants in particular in the Vancouver city-region. Studies have shown that “state policies can be quite effective in facilitating immigrant integration and nurturing solidarity,” but that “a naïve faith in these immigrants’ social capital, and a glaring lack of public policies directed toward integrating [welleducated, highly skilled workers and professionals] into positions commensurate with their training and credentials has resulted in what can only be described as an integration failure” (Triadafilopoulos 2006, 79). Our findings suggest an integration failure in Vancouver where, despite organizational innovation by immigrant communities, civil society, and all three levels of government, the still-nascent collaborative governance structures in the Vancouver city-region have been unable to fill the policy and resource void left by a lack of cross-municipal or regional governance.

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The time has come for new thinking. The Vancouver city-region, in concert with the other levels of government, needs to adopt new approaches to immigration integration. As the Secretary General of the OECD urges, “To be prepared for the future … governments need to act now to put proper policies in place to help satisfy labour needs partly through migration and enable the integration of migrants. Every OECD country should make this a priority. It is socially, politically, ethically and morally correct, but it is also an act of sheer economic rationality” (OECD 2008). It is our conclusion that while formal governments at all levels have a role to play, they cannot and should not be the only party accountable for integrating new immigrants. The business and non-profit sectors are also major stakeholders when it comes to skills underutilization. To put the matter simply, business needs the skills and opportunities represented in the highly skilled immigrant population, immigrants want to work at levels that are appropriate to their skills, and non-profit organizations, especially those working in immigrant settlement services, are ideally situated to contribute towards bridging these objectives. Skills underutilization and immigrant integration present an opportunity for collaborative governance. However, the collaborative governance network in the Vancouver city-region may need to be more fully developed before it is able to fill the partial void left by municipaland city-region-level governments. That said, the Bamboo Network, SUCCESS, AMSAA, MOSAIC, the Multicultural Advisory Committee, and Latincouver are positive developments in the realization of a collaborative governance model that has the potential to bridge the gap between macro-level policies and programs of leveraging the human capital within immigrant communities and their capacities, needs, and aspirations. The Public Policy Forum makes the case that under conditions of globalization, Canada needs institutions that will coordinate and realign industry and policy objectives (Lister 2007). So too do Canadian city-regions. It is of the utmost importance that skills underutilization and immigration integration be tabled as part of any discussion on innovation, and that the role that non-profit organizations can play be emphasized. We would be remiss if we did not briefly touch upon the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements of 2011 and their importance to governance innovation at a local level. Acting in solidarity with movements in North America and around the world, OWS came to Vancouver on 15 October 2011. The Vancouver OWS brought real substance to the notion of this city-region being a tent city. And, more important, it

Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization  269

demonstrated the power and creativity of small pieces that are loosely joined. While it is still too early to tell, the Vancouver OWS may demonstrate that there is a growing competency and capacity within the cityregion when it comes to leveraging informal links – a collaborative governance literacy. The lack of formal linkages between organizations in Vancouver that emerged from our research may not indicate an absence of governance in Vancouver, but rather that we are in an interstitial period (marked by the emergence of OWS) where informal linkages play an ever-increasing role. More research is needed to examine this governance transition, the possible emergence of collaborative governance literacy, and its impact on governance in the Vancouver city-region. NOTES 1 In spite of much criticism, American employers target and bring in highly skilled foreign workers on temporary visas through the H-1B program to address the skills shortage. For 2008, US Citizenship and Immigration Services set the cap on H-1B visas at 65,000 and received 150,000 applications from US employers within a day of the application deadline. 2 The data utilized in this paper comes from the first round of in-depth interviews that were collected in the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007. The research team identified and contacted leading organizations working on issues associated with social inclusion and civic engagement in the Vancouver city-region. An emphasis was placed on organizations working on immigrant services because the economic and social integration of newcomers appears to be increasingly important to the economic success of the Metro Vancouver region. Participants were recruited on the basis of their reputation, visibility, and history, either as a leading organization or department in immigrant services and related fields or as individuals with knowledge and expertise on the topic. The frames of integration and the underutilization of immigrant skills (or “brain waste”) were identified and coded for, along with four sub-frames: immigrant expectations and realities (or “what they find when they get here”); licensing and accreditation; English language (which included ESL and ELSA), and gender. Solutions, suggestions, and recommendations were also identified and grouped both as a separate category and according to the four themes when it was appropriate. Furthermore, the participant’s responses were examined to determine which organizations played a key role in strengthening the “connective tissue” in the Vancouver city-region – i.e., which

270  Governing Urban Economies







organizations facilitated the development of a collaborative governance structure (Gertler 2004). 3 For recent criticisms of Canadian immigration policy, refer to Collacott 2002; Francis 2002; Stoffman 2002. 4 Also seen in Good 2009, 147. 5 Good does a remarkable job of delineating the different approaches of the municipalities in the Vancouver city-region towards immigration – Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby, and Coquitlam. 6 In their analysis of Swedish and Finnish census data, Rooth and Saarela (2007) demonstrate that the ability to speak the language of the host country fluently is of paramount importance, and argue for the need for advanced language and workplace-relevant language training. 7 See http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/dialogues-project.aspx.

REFERENCES Bauder, H. 2001. “Employment, ethnicity and metropolitan context: The case of young Canadian immigrants.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 2 (3): 315–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12134-001-1001-4. City of Vancouver. 2011. “Dialogues project.” http://vancouver.ca/peopleprograms/dialogues-project.aspx. Collacott, M. 2002. “Canada’s immigration policy: The need for major reform.” Fraser Institute Occasional Paper. Vancouver. Conference Board of Canada. 2004. Performance and potential: 2004–05. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada. Conference Board of Canada. 2011. “Immigration knowledge area.” http:// www.conferenceboard.ca/topics/immigration/default.aspx. Dougherty, C. 1999. “New entrants to the labour market: A comparison of the labour market performance of immigrants landed in the 1980s and 1990s.” Presentation at 4th International Metropolis conference, 7–11 December 1999. Drew, D., T.S. Murray, and J. Zhao. 2000. “Brain drain and brain game: The migration of knowledge workers from and to Canada.” Education Quarterly Review 6 (3): 8–35. Francis, D. 2002. Immigration: The economic case. Toronto: Key Porter Books. Gera, S., and T. Songsakul. 2007. “Benchmarking Canada’s performance in the global competition for mobile talent.” Canadian Public Policy 33 (1): 63–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.v33.1.063. Gertler, M. 2004. “Creative cities: What are they for, how do they work, and how do we build them?” Canadian Policy Research Networks. Background paper F, 48.

Immigrant Integration, Innovation, and Skills Underutilization  271 Good, K. 2009. Municipalities and multiculturalism: The politics of immigration in Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Grubel, H. 2005. Immigration and the welfare state in Canada: Growing conflicts. Public Policy Sources no. 84. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. Keating, M. 2002. “Governing cities and regions: Territorial restructuring in a global age.” In Global city-regions: Trends, theory, policy, 371–90, ed. A.J. Scott. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lafleur, B.P.D. 2007. How Canada performs: A report card on Canada. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada. Latincouver. 2009. “What we do.” http://www.latincouver.ca/documents/ en/what_we_do. Li, P.S. 2003. “Deconstructing Canada’s discourse of immigrant integration.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 4 (3): 315–33. http://dx.doi .org/10.1007/s12134-003-1024-0. Lister, M. 2007. Government and globalization: What kind of public service does Canada need in order to thrive in the knowledge economy? Report for the Public Policy Forum. Mata, F. 1999. “The non-accreditation of immigrant professionals in Canada: Societal dimensions of the problem.” Multiculturalism Program, Citizenship and Canadian Identity, Department of Canadian Heritage. http://canada .metropolis.net/researchpolicy/conversation/MATAPAPER.html. OECD. 2008. “Helping immigrants integrate better into society must become a priority, says OECD Secretary-General.” http://www.oecd.org/document/ 50/0,3343,en_2649_201185_40122610_1_1_1_1,00.html. Reitz, J. 1998. “Measuring down.” In Post 2000: Business wisdom for the next century, ed. C. Davies, 157–63. Toronto: Key Porter Books. Reitz, J. 1999. “Immigrant success in the knowledge economy: Institutional change and the immigrant experience in Canada, 1970–1995.” Paper presented at International Metropolis Conference, Washington, DC. Reitz, J. 2001. “Immigrant skill utilization in the Canadian labour market: Implications of human capital research.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 2 (3): 347–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12134-001-1004-1. Rooth, D.-O., and J. Saarela. 2007. “Native language and immigrant labour market outcomes: An alternative approach to measuring the returns for language skills.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 8 (2): 207–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12134-007-0014-z. Statistics Canada. 2007. “2006 community profiles.” 2006 Census. Ottawa: Ministry of Industry. http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ dp-pd/prof/92-591/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1= 5915022&Geo2=PR&Code2=59&Data=Count&SearchText=vancouver& SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=59&B1=All&Custom=.

272  Governing Urban Economies Stoffman, D. 2002. Who gets in? What’s wrong with Canada’s immigration program and how to fix it. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross. Stoker, G. 2003. “Governance as theory.” In Public Administration, ed. Bidyut Chakrabarty and Mohit Bhattacharya. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Stren, R., and M. Polese. 2000. “Understanding the new sociocultural dynamics of cities: Comparative urban policy in a global context.” In The social sustainability of cities: Diversity and the management of change, ed. Mario Polese and Richard Stren. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. SUCCESS. 2010. “Employment services.” http://www.successbc.ca/eng/ component/option,com_mtree/task,listcats/cat_id,113/Itemid,26/. SUCCESS. 2011. “Mandate.” http://www.successbc.ca/eng/content/ view/33/43/. Triadafilopoulos, T. 2006. “A model for Europe? An appraisal of Canadian integration policies.” In Politische Steuerungvon Integrationsprozesessen: Intentionen und Wirkugen, ed. S. Baringhorst, U. Hunger, and K. Schönwälder, 79–94. Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90454-2_4.

12 The Bumpy Road to Regional Governance and Inclusive Development in Greater Moncton yves bourgeois

Cities undertake economic development activities for various reasons, not least of which is to increase employment and income opportunities for their residents.1 Municipal economic development strategies often privilege certain jobs or industrial sectors based on the assumption that favouring key sectors will generate localized spending throughout the economic base in other areas such as construction, retail, and personal services. Social welfare and income redistribution programs are often assumed to be sufficient to meet the needs of under- and unemployed workers. Yet widening income disparities indicate a reversal of the economic gains made by workers during the Golden Age of post–Second World War prosperity, calling into question economic development approaches based on “trickle-down” views of income redistribution (Krugman 2007). The stagnant income level of some Canadians is a reminder that not everyone benefits from new economic opportunities. Just societies provide the institutions and mechanisms so that all may participate in social and economic realms, regardless of their initial position in society, but even those with more conservative views of justice must contend with the fact that social and economic problems result when segments of the populations are marginalized (Rawls 1971). Urban policymakers increasingly acknowledge that economic development and social inclusion are interdependent, and that sustained economic growth is contingent on social stability (Bourgeois 2002; OECD 2008). Increasingly persuasive arguments about the need to balance social equity and economic efficiency goals through more inclusive forms of economic development at the city-region level are found in the associative governance literature. Theories of associative governance seek to explain how local governmental and community-based actors attempt

274  Governing Urban Economies

to collaborate and pool resources to address the overlapping social and economic challenges faced by their particular communities. An underlying argument is that when the poor, underemployed, immigrant, and other marginalized populations are excluded through structural and cultural barriers from fully participating in local economies, human capital is squandered that could otherwise support economic growth. Furthermore, closed societies may curtail the diversity and mixture of ideas from which social and economic bottlenecks are solved and economic value is built. As outlined in the opening chapter of this volume, regional economies hold better chances of leveraging the full potential of skills and ideas that sustain long-term economic growth when economic and social actors collaborate to develop a common civic infrastructure to tackle challenges that cross the economic and social divide as well as remove structural and cultural barriers that limit the participation of disenfranchised individuals and groups. Theories of associative governance that capture the extent to which cities balance innovation and inclusion draw attention to key vertical and horizontal dynamics such as the interaction between the local and other levels of government. Also important are the organization of local social groups such as business and other community-based interests and how they interact with local government, and the role of civic leaders and intermediaries that facilitate the development of coalitions shaping governance dynamics. To explore whether new governance mechanisms were emerging to help plan the urban economy and, if so, how inclusive they were to various economic, cultural, and social groups, twenty-five stakeholders in Greater Moncton were interviewed, including leaders from various ethnic community, immigrant integration, and poverty groups, as well as economic development and elected officials. On the whole, there was relatively little evidence of associative governance in Greater Moncton. Greater regionalism was inhibited by intermunicipal competition, difficulties in generating a common vision, and the absence of formal and informal mechanisms to organize the development of the shared vision. New efforts are under way to increase citizen participation in the planning process, but they have yet to be completed or stood the test of implementation, and so far are limited to zoning. The relative absence of these regional and associative governance mechanisms has resulted in problems of social and economic inclusion, namely, that of immigrants and the working poor. Lack of strong collaborations between economic development agencies and immigrant

Regional Governance and Inclusive Development in Moncton  275

settlement groups have led to development strategies predicated on attracting new immigrants while ignoring newly arrived immigrants or recently graduated international students who leave Greater Moncton for opportunities elsewhere. Structural barriers to immigrants, such as credential recognition and knowledge of the labour market, thus remain difficult to overcome, as are cultural barriers such as generalized unfamiliarity with the challenges of immigrating, closed networks, and a largely bicultural society. Relatively weak linkages are also found between poverty groups and in their collaborations with economic development planning. Greater Moncton’s Economic, Social, and Cultural Context While economic growth in Greater Moncton may be unevenly distributed, some interviewees emphasized that it was no small feat that the economy was growing at all. New Brunswick communities that are growing or stagnant demographically seem lucky compared to smaller and northern communities suffering rapid depopulation and brain drain. The cityregion’s watershed moment came in the 1980s, when Moncton weathered the perfect storm. The city lost its armed forces base, Eaton’s mail-order catalogue operation, and the CN repair shops, the latter representing 5000 jobs in a city with a workforce of 53,000 and in an economic region of 77,000 workers in 1987 (Statistics Canada 2011a). Yet despite these setbacks, growth in the Moncton economic region’s employment has since consistently surpassed the national average. Moncton’s economy has slowly transitioned into a business service economy. In the critical years after the CN shops closure (1987–94), average annual employment grew fastest in business support services (12.99% growth per year compared to the Canadian average of 4.86%) and professional, scientific, and technical services (8.79% average yearly growth compared to Canada’s 4.45%) (Statistics Canada 2011a). In the recession years of the early 1990s, IT and culture industries as well as manufacturing stoked the local economy (16.19% and 7.83% average annual growth, respectively, compared to 3.46% and 4.04% nationally). Professional (13.08%) and business services (20.0%) grew strongly between 1999 and 2004, as did education (9.06%) and health care (8.51%). In the last five years (2004–9), the fastest-growing sectors were public administration (10.94%), finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) (10.87%), and construction (10.20%), testimony to fast population growth and accelerated transition into a service-oriented economy.

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The emergence and evolution of Greater Moncton as a transportation and retail hub is documented elsewhere (Hickey 1990; Larracey 1991). The region also succeeded in growing regional finance and professional services sectors throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Urban employment growth in a province of economic stagnation and depleting rural communities propelled mass urbanization into the Greater Moncton census metropolitan area (CMA). This demographic boom buoyed a combination of higher-than-average (health, education) and lower-than-average (construction, wholesale and retail trade, business and accommodation services) wage sectors. A rapidly changing built environment and increasing disposable income for middle- and upper-income earners projected an illusion of endless growth. Times were tough before but seem good now. The “Moncton miracle” resulted from diligent efforts by community and provincial leaders to put the economy back on its feet (Farnsworth 1994). “The only miracles that are true are those you build. They took down the CN curtains and people thought there would be nothing, but lo and behold there was a diversifying economy already,” noted a longserving economic development official. Political leaders like provincial premier Louis Robichaud, “who brought the University [of Moncton] in the 1960s,” Premier Frank McKenna, who “brought in the call centres,” and Mayor George Rideout, Paul Daigle, and others, who “brought a fresh view, an aggressive, can-do attitude,” are credited with setting the stage for Moncton’s current economic success. Elected and economic development officials now boast of the city-region’s higher-wage jobs from two hospitals, the University of New Brunswick nursing school, National Research Council research facilities, the Université de Sherbrooke and Université de Moncton’s medical school partnership, the expansion of Crandall University and New Brunswick Community College, nearby Mount Allison University, and a new courthouse. At the same time, Greater Moncton leaders attracted call centres and back offices being relocated from national head offices. These were not the highest-paying jobs or the easiest to sustain in the long term in an increasingly competitive global economy, but they had the immediate palliative effect of keeping workers in Greater Moncton and attracting others at a time when unemployment rates were growing across the province. One local official remarked that “you need the kindling to build the fire,” and another that “growth is better than a kick in the pants.” Likewise, a local business leader commented that “it’s not just the workers, but New Brunswick businesses themselves that are now

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moving to Moncton to access qualified workers.” While call centres may be “cannibalizing each other,” as one elected official worried, there remained many entry-level service sector jobs from the city’s new casino and retail developments. Growth is, however, somewhat relative. Greater Moncton per capita income has stagnated under 90 per cent of the national average in the last ten years, which explains in part its success at attracting wagesensitive industries. That its 6.5 per cent population growth rate (2001– 6) is among Canada’s ten fastest is of great significance given that the province’s growth rate as a whole has been flat, and would be in rapid descent if not for the province’s southern cities. Historically, linguistic divisions have been one of the more formative social dynamics operating in the Greater Moncton city-region. Greater Moncton’s French-speaking Acadian population had long been marginalized from both economic and political spheres. While the province of New Brunswick and Canadian government were paving the way for bilingualism in the 1970s, Moncton mayor (1963–74) and Member of Parliament (1974–9) Len Jones was a figurehead for staunch opposition to bilingualism. Meanwhile, the Acadians in Greater Moncton had been quietly leveraging existing federal and provincial institutions – and building new local ones – to solidify the French-speaking community within the local economy. They lobbied and received a French-language Radio-Canada station in 1954, relocated Collège St-Joseph from nearby Memramcook, and founded the Université de Moncton in 1963 (Beaulieu 1993). Assomption Vie, an insurance company established in 1903 to serve Acadians living in Waltham, Massachusetts, before relocating to Moncton in 1913, was growing and employing more and more Frenchspeaking professionals, with its new building dominating Moncton’s small downtown since 1972. By the time the economic crises of the 1980s appeared, a new generation of French-speaking workers and entrepreneurs had gained training, experience, and confidence that enabled them to participate actively in the city-region’s economic transition. New federal government offices such as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) provided jobs to many across the region, including Acadians among whom bilingualism was more common. By the 1990s Greater Moncton’s increasing bilingual workforce attracted call centres and back offices, and the growing demand for bilingual workers spurred more anglophones into French immersion.

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Greater Moncton’s past was marred by anglophone mistrust of francophone language claims, and francophones’ jealous guarding of social institutions as means to improve socio-economic opportunities. How­ ever, when economic resources are scarce, innovative forms of cooperation can result. Economic hardship in the 1980s coaxed francophone and anglophone communities to plan and to work together. Through concerted efforts by leaders and officials from both linguistic communities, Greater Moncton identified and organized assets, engaged in earnest economic planning for the first time, and worked diligently to build and market its new economy. International exposure, such as with the World Francophonie Summit held in Moncton in 1999, helped solidify a growing cultural and economic rapprochement between francophones and anglophones. Increasingly, francophones were being elected to local and municipal offices, and French had become tolerated in meetings and service delivery.2 The broader community recognized that the coexistence of French and English – once a powerful social divider – had become a palatable economic asset. As the bilingualism and biculturalism that had once been divisive issues in New Brunswick instead began to serve as a lynchpin for economic transition in the region, opponents were relegated to marginal roles in municipal politics and organizations. Rallying behind bilingualism and marketing it as a major regional competitive advantage was a significant social innovation in the region and may hold promise for other multicultural regions struggling to overcome similar cleavages. Dysfunctional Governance: Regional Economic Planning in Greater Moncton While economic hardship in the Greater Moncton area encouraged greater regional collaboration across linguistic divides, more recent economic prosperity in the region appears to have had the opposite effect, transposing the linguistic cleavages that dissipated in the 1980s and 1990s onto municipal boundaries. Regional cooperation works if all parties believe they get their fair share. In other words, if regional collaboration helps leverage scale and scope to make existing projects more cost-effective (i.e., avoiding duplication) or larger projects feasible when individual municipal populations are too small (e.g., a new convention centre), then everyone stands to gain, even if some municipalities get a relatively bigger share of property tax revenues. Difficulties

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arise, however, when this residual is claimed by everyone, such as the much larger municipality of Moncton or the faster-growing Dieppe. The catalyst for this outcome was the provincial plan to amalgamate Greater Moncton’s three municipalities of Moncton, Dieppe, and Riverview in 1993, which raised fears among many residents of the mostly French-speaking city of Dieppe that French-language services would be diluted if shared with English-speaking majorities in Moncton and Riverview. Plans for amalgamation were shelved in favour of greater regionalization of municipal services between 1994 and 1999, but Dieppe residents remained concerned that enhanced regional planning and service delivery would prove a slippery slope towards future amalgamation. Starting in 2002 the town of Dieppe began questioning regional governance mechanisms such as the regional water system and regional land use planning. The following year it established its own economic development corporation, started building a downtown core, and obtained a new charter as a bilingual city using French as its first language (Bourgeois and Bourgeois 2005). Language was not, however, the main consideration for all proponents behind Dieppe’s autonomous initiatives, and many were inspired instead by civic pride. A large percentage of Dieppe’s population had moved to the municipality well after the 1980s downturn and early 1990s threat of amalgamation, so for many there were no memories of linguistic animosity. As one long-time business leader pointed out, After [former Dieppe mayor Bill] Malenfant, [subsequent mayor Yvon] Lapierre arrived from Quebec: dynamic, caring little of previous political history, and wanting to ensure return on investments for Dieppe citizens. Many current Dieppe citizens were not residents when Lapierre arrived … When times are tough, people work together. When times are good, they want return on their investment.

Ultimately, however, it has been the conflation of civic pride with residual linguistic fears that has raised barriers to greater regional governance. Many economic development and social inclusion challenges are best tackled when local institutions and governments work together on a regional scale to collaborate on infrastructure development, lobbying to other levels of government and attracting foreign investment. More than one economic development official in Greater Moncton acknowledged

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that the lack of collaboration in the region has inhibited federal investments. As is the case with most city-regions in Canada, myriad institutions and associations are configured by overlapping and intersecting vertical (federal, provincial, municipal) and horizontal jurisdictions (municipalities, local service districts) as well as by language (cultural associations, school districts, hospitals). At the regional level, Enterprise Greater Moncton (EGM) is the local economic development agency, created by the province but largely funded by the three municipalities, to develop economic strategy and programs for the Moncton CMA, including Moncton, Dieppe, Riverview, and smaller adjacent communities. The first formal planning exercise in Greater Moncton began in the difficult mid-1980s when the city-region was adopting five-year regional economic development plans in efforts to “lift itself by its bootstraps.” The previous regional strategy was updated to 2007–10 and EGM unveiled in November 2011 its regional plan for 2011–16. While EGM oversees the city-region’s economic development strategy, individual municipalities in the Greater Moncton CMA have been adopting and implementing their own local economic development agencies and strategies since the 2000s. The City of Dieppe created its economic development corporation in 2004 “to reflect local specificities a regional body may not promote as well,” insisted one official. This prompted the City of Moncton, and most recently the Town of Riverview, to establish their own local economic development agency and strategies. Priorities are sometimes aligned with the regional strategy, but sometimes not. Overall, while officials from all economic development agencies reported positive relationships with other agencies and informally recognized the need for greater regional planning, the regional capital amassed during the difficult 1980s seems to have splintered. Few formal mechanisms were built to coordinate planning regionally. One municipal economic development official admitted that “we all benefit from economic spinoffs when other municipalities land something big, but without doubt we’re always in competition with one another,” and that municipalities tend to be preoccupied with narrow local rather than regional interests. An official from another municipality concurred that “with the other city, it’s more competition than cooperation. Our interactions are based out of need more than anything. Networks are informal.” “Despite the hoopla, there’s little cooperation or collaboration between organizations,” summarized another official.

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While three local economic development plans complementing the regional plan for the CMA can be useful in reflecting local nuances and interests, in substance there were conflicting objectives among economic development agencies. After all, “our mission is to increase our municipal tax bases … which means business attraction and expansion within our municipal limits.” Municipal revenues are based first on local, not regional, success. Not only is parochialism built into the process, but at some level so too is partisanship. While political parties are not officially represented in municipal politics, they play an essential role in financing and mobilizing volunteers to support municipal candidates. Non-elected economic development officials complained: “We need apolitical economic development boards. City councillors should not be there.” And elected officials admitted that “party politics get in way of good policy. There’s a better degree of cooperation if people are from the same [political] party.” The problem of misalignment exists not only between municipal economic development agencies or with the regional economic development authority, but also with provincial and federal governments. A federal official cautioned that leveraging funding from higher levels of government is difficult because “the province and ACOA guard their resources jealously.” The provincial government implements economic development initiatives via Invest New Brunswick, but its participation in regional planning exercises was described as “periodic” by local economic development officials. Not only are provincial efforts often not aligned, they have also at times impeded Greater Moncton efforts to promote nascent industries. For example, provincial government control over the community college system is only now being separated at arm’s length. To promote economic development in the northern city of Bathurst, the province concentrated French-language information technology (IT) teaching there, despite the fact that the vast majority of IT firms are concentrated in Moncton, Fredericton, and Saint John. Enrolments at the Bathurst campus remained weak as francophone IT students were enrolling in private colleges or English-language community colleges in Moncton and other southern cities because, as one education official put it, “they knew that’s where the jobs were.” At the federal level, ACOA administers many economic development initiatives as one agency and disburses funds throughout the four Atlantic provinces. While development officials welcomed the headquartering of the resource-rich federal agency in Moncton, in practice they found ACOA “easier to plan without” because, as one economic

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development official explained, “there’s lots of red tape – it doesn’t move at the speed of business. In the past, waiting for ACOA, we found opportunities had come and gone.” Most relevant to the question of regional planning in Greater Moncton, however, is the observation that ACOA’s purview is limited because it typically “doesn’t work with municipalities” nor does it work with “retail or with service sectors because they don’t export, [even though] they do export when Moncton is drawing more and more tourists as an entertainment destination. These are important parts of our strategy.” While there are certainly cases of the federal and provincial governments lending support to local projects, municipal and regional economic development officials interviewed consistently maintained there was little involvement of other levels of government in the planning process. A City-Region Moving Forward? Challenges and Opportunities for Collaboration When comparing the Greater Moncton economy to those of other New Brunswick communities, times are noticeably good, and it is easy to understand how the urgency and motivation for regional planning has attenuated in recent years. However, a major bump lies in the road ahead. Demographic growth in Greater Moncton, Dieppe included, is expected to slow considerably in the next five to ten years, unless immigration from other provinces or countries increases drastically. Most of the metropolitan area’s growth hails from in-province migration from economically declining communities, where fewer and fewer workers are left. At current rate, the numbers of international immigrants who have been attracted to Moncton cannot compensate for slowing intraprovincial migration. There are concerns that if population growth rates subside, the construction and retail boom will subside as well. The growth of the health and education sectors may also halt as the province seeks to reign in a now-spiralling deficit. The economy may not tumble, but widespread belief that current growth rates will persist are unfounded. Greater Moncton faces several major challenges that will affect its ability to implement the broader regional planning strategies it will need to support future economic growth. The first major challenge is to figure out what Greater Moncton would like to become. Many strategic plans remain wish lists that attempt to please everyone but are unable to deliver on everything. In addition,

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different approaches tend to compete with and undermine each other. Recognizing that “Moncton is not an economy easy for start- ups,” economic development agencies champion the metro area as one of North America’s most cost-effective places to do business because of its competitive wages, and because “we’ve done better leveraging our cost advantages to facilitate attraction, expansion and re-expansion.” Yet, in the same breath, others promote increasing knowledge-intensive, valueadded economic activities such as IT and advanced manufacturing, and the commensurate skill levels and wages. Still others want to promote the region as an emerging entertainment, retail, and service destination. Tugging in different directions not only undermines regional collaboration, it can also undermine the success of individual efforts. Little consistency emerged in the ideas expressed by the dozen or so economic development specialists and elected officials interviewed in the course of this research. While some aspirations for the region demonstrated elements of early stages of a strategic visioning process, others tended to be disparate “pet ideas” unconnected with existing strategies. Several ideas were expressed that could form the basis of some type of shared regional vision. For example, the promotion of cultural industries could improve not only the quality of life in the region, but also long-term business attraction. One official maintains that Moncton was the first Canadian city to include culture in its economic development strategy, Creating Tomorrow Together, in 1994. Other ideas focused on the development of a regional innovation economy by facilitating knowledge transfer from local universities such as Crandall University and the Université de Moncton, although these do little research relative to the University of New Brunswick. As one official noted, “Our universities are generally underutilized – there’s a chicken-and-egg problem with respect to research capacities and demand for services.” The presence of two hospitals, a medical training centre, and a cancer research institute were also cited for their spin-off potential. Another idea was to brand the region as a transportation hub, a gateway between the port of Halifax and New England markets, and to build upon UPS and FedEx regional air-cargo operations. Still others emphasized the key role of the province in regional economic development such as business attraction activities, and in developing a better balance between urban and rural infrastructure in recognition of the city’s role in creating economic growth. Echoing local officials in other Canadian cities, one remarked that “like in other provinces[, w]e can’t do anything unless [the] province is involved.”

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Though these ideas are fragmented, they do nonetheless reflect some broadly connected strategic elements. Other ideas came across as particularly disparate and at odds with one another, such as marketing the region as a destination for young families and as a retirement community; marketing the region as a retail, entertainment, and “sports destination in the making … the Indianapolis of this area,” and moving away from retail because “our labour market is saturated with lower skilled jobs – retail, restaurants, food beverage processing, general labourers – that become unsustainable”; diversifying and specializing the local economy; and concentrating on attracting highly skilled workers “to sustain our burgeoning IT cluster,” and not needing “superstars to fill in key needs, such as computer programming. That’s easily outsourced.” At the time of writing, a new zoning initiative called Plan Moncton was being developed. This plan to link economic development and the built and natural environment, and open the process to consultation with broader sets of stakeholders and the general public, is largely unprecedented in the region. Some expressed hope that its success will spread a more open approach to other spheres of municipal planning. However, greater inclusiveness and transparency in new governance mechanisms can threaten existing long-standing networks which benefit from older forms of local social and political organization. Despite formal planning mechanisms and checks and balances, interviewees gave repeated examples of recent municipal deals where full details only surfaced after the deal was done, and without the awareness of the general public or even city council members. Sceptics about the effectiveness of new governance initiatives alluded to a concentric-ring model of governance, with several layers of decision making. The outside layer envisions inclusive and consultative mechanisms to glean citizen and stakeholder input. In the middle layer, decisions remain in the purview of elected officials on municipal governments and boards, with more limited public consultation. At the centre, however, there remains a small core group of influential leaders who can “get the job done” after a few speed-dial calls. Informal decision-making mechanisms centred around strong local leaders worked well to transition the local economy out of the 1980s. However, these same closed networks now stand in opposition to more inclusive governance mechanisms, and have created wariness among many that the success of inclusive planning initiatives will be limited because vested interests stand to lose influence.

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Moncton’s Missing Social Dimension: Immigration and Poverty As stated in the introduction, at a minimum the structural exclusion of disenfranchised workers and groups means economic prosperity is not shared. Worse, by not integrating new or underemployed workers better, local economies starve themselves of skills that help businesses and the economy to innovate and grow. Hence, failure to provide adequate opportunities for new and poor Monctonians will not only widen the income gap, but it will also cost the region growth in the long run. As with local economic development planning, the relative absence of collaborative mechanisms limits the reach and efforts of immigration and poverty groups. There are several organizations working diligently to help immigrants and families integrate into the region, and to help with the cultural “mindshift” many felt lacking. While officials applauded the work of other organizations, however, many expressed sadness that resources were not better aligned. As one immigration settlement official summarized: “Moncton is taking baby steps; resources aren’t working together: CAIIMM [Centre d’accueil et d’intégration des immigrants du Moncton Métropolitain], MAGMA [Multicultural Association of the Greater Moncton Area], the immigration board, UdeM’s [Université de Moncton] international office – we’re just not working together.” There was hope the grouping of many immigrant services under a new peace centre downtown will promote the needed relationship building, of bridging the “lots of moving parts, each with their own toolboxes.” Several observers noted that it was puzzling how multiculturalism was slow to evolve in a region that prospered from embracing biculturalism less than twenty years before. Anglophone business leaders referred to the French-language Université de Moncton as “the fortress on the hill” in explaining why they preferred conducting joint research ventures with Fredericton-based University of New Brunswick rather than Moncton’s French university. One francophone cultural worker used the same expression in French to denote a lack of will to engage with the broader community. The Université de Moncton is caught with a delicate balancing act. University officials interviewed were quick to point out the important role played by the university in the community, as an employer with local spin-offs, providing bilingual continuous education classes for the greater community, and whose international students added a multicultural presence to the city. They also highlighted the fact

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there are no language restrictions in conducting research partnerships with its research centres and institutes. Yet the university emphasizes its initial raison d’être, when created in 1963, to provide a university education to francophone New Brunswickers who otherwise had to leave the province or remained without university education. Several francophone economic development and cultural groups concurred that narrow and relatively closed informal social networks played an important role. One francophone official explained that it was normal to “hire people we know, from within our networks, university classmates. UdeM is a small network,” and added that “UdeM lacks vision. We are small-minded, we navel gaze, and we limit to working amongst ourselves. Our leaders miss too many opportunities [to engage with the broader community]. Bicultural diversity has not proven a precursor to multiculturalism.” Boosters in Greater Moncton proclaim Moncton’s multicultural identity, citing the proliferation of ethnic restaurants over the past ten years. Immigrants and officials in the immigration settlement field, however, believed multiculturalism in Moncton was still only “crawling forward.” One recent immigrant commented that “Monctonians are friendly, but they are not open to others. It is much harder to open a business here.” Several interviewees repeated an important nuance between being nice and being welcoming, not of bigotry but a lack of understanding immigrant needs. This was largely attributed to the fact that so few natives of Moncton have the experience of living abroad and hence a proper understanding of the challenges of settling into a totally new environment. All immigration settlement groups identified the sensitizing of the general population as a major objective, and the difficulty of empathizing with the challenges of immigrants as a barrier to immigrant retention. For example, in the summer of 2011, many Greater Monctonians were shocked to learn that a Korean family operating an Asian food market received deportation papers because their fifteen-year-old son suffered from autism and epilepsy. The medical condition presented an “excessive burden” to government, specifically $5000 annually to cover extra education costs (Fantoni 2011). Following a public outcry, the family was allowed to stay when the provincial government promised to take care of the extra costs. Though local policymakers have little information and do not know, for example, “how many international students are staying, and why if not,” there is a general perception that many immigrants “convince themselves of just being in the ‘wrong city’” and leave for larger

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metropolitan areas and other provinces. Indeed, Moncton’s share of population who had moved from other countries between 2001 and 2006 is a minuscule 1.1 per cent, compared to 8.6 per cent in Toronto. Only 3.4% of Monctonians were born outside Canada, compared to 4.2% in Saint John, 7.4% in Halifax, 19.8% in Canada on average, 20.6% in Montreal and 45.7% in Toronto. Only 2.0% of Moncton’s residents are of a visible minority, compared to 3.1% in Saint John, 7.5% in Halifax, 16.5% in Montreal, and 42.9% in Toronto. In Moncton, only 2.2% do not speak English or French as their mother tongue, compared to 3.0% in Saint John, 5.6% in Halifax, 22.5% in Montreal, and 44.5% in Toronto. When considering what is the first language still spoken at home, only 0.7% of Monctonians speak another language than French or English, compared to 1.6% in Saint John, 2.5% in Halifax, 12.3% in Montreal, and 26.9% in Toronto (Statistics Canada 2011a). Moncton is a bicultural, but not yet multicultural, city-region. Greater Moncton is certainly not the only small city-region facing difficulties attracting international immigrants, but as significant as the challenge immigrant attraction poses, retaining the immigrants it manages to attract is even more difficult. One economic development official estimated that of the six hundred immigrants they tracked while settling into the region, as many as four hundred had left the city-­ region for other Canadian cities in the following two years. This is a serious problem, because settled immigrants are “our best recruiters” for attracting friends and family to the region. General amenities and affordability are not so much the issue – the city-region has a catchment area of more than 500,000 people within two hours’ drive, and at $172,056, the median price for a detached house is half that of Montreal ($320,959) and one-sixth that of Toronto ($1,032,305) (CMHC 2011). Rather, because there is lacking a critical mass of newcomers to sustain cultural activities, language classes, religious services, and specialty foods and services, immigrants to the city have difficulty finding others of shared origin. In addition, economic development narratives tend to characterize immigrants as commodities, or “robot employees,” as one immigration settlement official commented. They are perceived to be necessary inputs for sustaining local economic growth rather than as individuals and families. Sensitivity programs are discussed and promoted, but programs need resources. One settlement official complained that “government funding is not great. Corporate sponsorships nil. The city speak is there, but nil with contributions,” while another stated

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that “ACOA passes the buck. [The] New Brunswick [government] creates small immigration centres. Those create three or four government jobs, but nothing for immigrants. Meanwhile, we ignore the experience acquired in the field by local immigration organizations that develop an expertise through very dedicated volunteers.” In addition to cultural barriers that affect the retention of immigrants in Moncton, structural barriers mean that many newcomers are unable to find work suited to their qualifications. Retaining international immigrants depends on their integration not just into the community, but into the local economy as well. As with other communities in Canada facing similar challenges, credential recognition for foreign-trained professionals and the availability of sufficient employment opportunities in local labour markets are critical determinants of successful immigrant integration. Of the many challenges faced by immigrants, accreditation surfaced most frequently during interviews with dozens of immigrants, immigrant service providers, and cultural organization representatives. Echoing an often cited misalignment in local labour markets, one immigration official commented, “We have doctors flipping burgers at McDonald’s, while the Minister claims we have a shortage of doctors.” Many other examples of egregiously mismatched skills and jobs were reported. The question is how to overcome the challenge. Some im­ migration group officials view the accreditation problem sceptically: “Unions claim to be protecting the public, but it’s more like they’re protecting their members.” Others accept more readily that skilled labour shortages – such as with doctors, lawyers, and engineers – is the price to be paid for ensuring minimum “quality control and safety standards.” For skilled tradespeople such as plumbers or electricians, training and accreditation can occur within a few shorts months, but for engineers and doctors it can take years. “Most don’t have money to go back to school,” summarized an immigration group worker, referring to immigrants not arriving via the immigrant investor program. Some advocated such solutions as putting better tests in place, as well as mentoring, in order to recognize and fast-track accreditation. Others highlighted the need that the financial commitment to retraining include not only specialized education programs, but childcare while parents took general language classes and life skills training involving such matters as banking, navigating the health care system, car seats, and a variety of other requirements different or non-existent in other countries. Some interviewees noted that large companies such as McCain Foods did a better job with transitioning immigrants than did communities and agencies.

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A related challenge to retaining immigrants by integrating them into local labour markets is the lack of employment opportunities that make use of their skills. For example, while 10 per cent of Université de Moncton’s student population comes from foreign countries, and benefited from campus integration services while studying, there were virtually no integration programs into the broader community or labour market. For at least two settlement workers, local economic development job fairs abroad to recruit immigrants seemed wasteful when so many international students, including business school graduates, return home or leave Moncton for other Canadian cities upon graduation. Several interviewees observed that larger firms were very active in hiring and training international immigrants as a means to overcome skills shortages in the region, including the Delta Beauséjour Hotel, Fairmont Hotels contact centre, Home Depot, and Kent Building Supplies. All cited examples were from the retail and accommodation and food services industries. Yet the majority of the region’s jobs are in small and medium-sized businesses, and “most of the businesses here do not have [human resource] capacities or patience to understand different cultures, differences in CVs [curriculum vitaes], and degrees from foreign universities [to assess a foreign university pedigree or professional credentials] … It’s a missed opportunity to match new immigrants with our businesses’ shortages of qualified labour.” Though virtually all stakeholders recognized that “local businesses need to do a much better job at hiring,” they were less forthcoming about possible solutions. Most of the organizations worked on a very small scale and tended to tap into informal local networks to match immigrants with employers. Students who knew professors who knew employers had better chances of getting interviews, with the possibility of a job. Employment facilitated through informal networks is common to many Canadians, but for international students networks are concentrated on campus, and so one immigration settlement group focused on professors’ professional contacts to make opportunities available to immigrants. There were no formal mechanisms to pursue similar efforts at a macro scale.

Poverty – the Challenge of the Underemployed and Unemployable As regional incomes rise for the average Monctonian, the plight of the working poor and difficulties accessing economic opportunities are oft forgotten. “Efforts to reposition Moncton as a shopping Mecca and other

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[service industries] worked well, but all those jobs were low-paying jobs.” Affordable housing and day care, post-secondary education accessible to children of poor families, mental illness, and addictions were singled out as important obstacles that prevented many Monctonians from greater economic participation. While these obstacles are important, they were not unique to Greater Monctonians. One obstacle that seemed particularly restrictive in Moncton was the public transit system. As many as 87.1 per cent of employed Monctonians travel to work in personal vehicles, as either drivers or passengers. This is much higher than in Halifax (75.7%), Toronto (71.1), and especially Montreal (56%). Only 2.8% of Moncton workers use public transit, compared to the Canadian average of 11%, or that of Halifax (11.9%), Toronto (22.2%), or Montreal (32.6%). Turcotte (2008) found that 80 per cent of Canadians living in CMAs make at least one trip a day by car, for every household income category above $40,000. The rate drops to 70 per cent for those households earning between $20,000 and $40,000, and to 55 per cent for those earning less than $20,000. Recent immigrants were much less likely to rely on automobile travel (60%) than immigrants established at least five years (75%) or those born in Canada (75%). Turcotte also found that greater housing density, not city size, explained greater reliance on mass transit. In other words, greater housing density makes public transit more sustainable and gives better access to economic opportunities for low-income earners and recent immigrants, and this is particularly true in “this auto-dependent community” of Moncton. The new zoning initiative called Plan Moncton is aimed precisely at increasing housing density, by setting limits beyond which the city of Moncton will not provide water or sewerage connections to new developments. Moncton’s built environment reflects this car dependence, with new housing developments sprawling outwards and downtown reserved for parking. One economic development official highlighted that “40% of downtown physical space is parking lot, of which 85% is private.” For lower-income earners, lack of a dense core means infrequent bus routes. One poverty group official chided economic planners and their belief and “expectations that buses will go into every nook of suburbs.” Lack of affordable day care prevented fuller participation in the workforce. “The cost of day care alone can eat up a low income earner’s salary.” Urban growth pushed housing development to the suburbs, making public transit less sustainable, increasing reliance on automobiles, and

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thus further decreasing employment opportunities for low-income earners. The lack of attention to these issues by economic development officials and planning was called out by almost all poverty groups, much like the immigrant integration issues discussed in the previous section. There is in fact scant mention of these issues in the economic development strategies, or by the officials mentioned. Conclusion The rapid urban growth of the Moncton city-region is a blessing after the gloom of 1980s restructuring, and in a province and region (Atlantic Canada) currently experiencing rather stagnant population and economic growth. Yet much of this growth is due to workers and families from depleting communities urbanizing into the province’s southern cities, particularly Greater Moncton. This intra-provincial migration is driving economic growth, as lesser-export and population-growthsensitive sectors such as construction, health, education, retail, and business services are leading employment creation. Despite recent success recruiting families and entrepreneurs from South Korea into Moncton and from France into Dieppe, macro immigration attraction and retention rates in the metropolitan area are very low, much like other small Canadian CMAs. As fewer people in depleting communities are left to migrate into the southern cities, and with migration from other provinces and countries unlikely to compensate for intra-provincial migration unless current rates increase twofold and tenfold, respectively, it is unlikely the Moncton CMA can sustain its economic performance from population growth. Rather, Moncton’s economic growth will depend increasingly on productivity growth, itself a product of technology and human capital investments. The city-region mobilized regional capital impressively during the 1980s and 1990s and transitioned its economy towards growing services sectors. However, average earnings lagged at 86.1 per cent of the national average in 2006, only slightly higher than in 2001 (84.4%) (Statistics Canada 2007). Despite anecdotal company success stories, the local economy’s overall competitiveness depends more on relatively low wages and comparatively less on knowledge assets. Skilled-labour shortages are also particularly acute in Greater Moncton, where unemployment rates have hovered between 4.0 and 5.5 per cent, nearly half the provincial rate.

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If Greater Moncton’s future economic growth is contingent on strategic knowledge creation and human capital growth, then how have economic development efforts been coordinated to meet these challenges? A regional approach to economic planning was hatched during the tumultuous 1980s, and has led to the institutionalization of a regional economic planning authority (Enterprise Greater Moncton) and its fiveyear plans. However, relative economic success and a population explosion in the 1990s have also fractured economic planning, as well as economic development strategies and agencies, at the municipal level. Increased local autonomy was also largely unaccompanied by provincial and federal agencies, whose priorities were considered unaligned by Greater Moncton economic development officials. Skills shortages could be bridged by greater efforts to integrate immigrant and low-income earners. However, immigrant and poverty group officials lamented there were few efforts to collaborate and to coordinate efforts at a local or regional level. There seemed an important mismatch of efforts between immigration settlement groups and local economic development agencies. Economic development agencies were leading immigration recruiting efforts abroad, while immigrant settlement groups were having difficulty keeping immigrants already in Moncton – immigrants having newly arrived and international students having recently graduated. Poverty groups believed economic development strategies paid scant attention to the issues restricting the employability of poor Monctonians. If low-income earners cannot move easily into and within the city, if accessing jobs, college, or other enabling institutions is predicated on car ownership because of sprawl and limited mass transit, then businesses miss opportunities to bridge labour shortages. If immigrants cannot put valuable skills to work because of lack of credential recognition, better integration programs, or open-mindedness by employers, then the region squanders important human capital that could increase regional competitiveness. With little work and income opportunities come limited opportunities to participate in the political and development process. Differing points of view and voices will be silent, and others will take their silence as legitimacy for the status quo. Economic development efforts that ignore the barriers to economic integration faced by immigrants and the poor risk widening income gaps between haves and have nots, and risk limiting the city-region’s economic growth by not using its human capital fully.

Regional Governance and Inclusive Development in Moncton  293 NOTES 1 I am indebted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for its generous funding, as well as Robert MacKinnon and Tracy Chiasson of UNBSJ, and Rodrigue Landry and Hélène Gallant of CIRLM, for administering the grant. I extend my appreciation to Daniel Bourque, who provided much appreciated research support, and of course to the many interviewees who volunteered their precious time. I am grateful to Neil Bradford and Allison Bramwell for their diligence in editing this volume, as well as David Wolfe and Meric Gertler for their admirable stewardship of this comparative project. 2 Even in Dieppe, where more than 80 per cent of the population speaks French as a first language, council meetings were held in English until the 1970s, mused some Dieppe elected officials.

REFERENCES Beaulieu, Gérard. 1993. Les médias en Acadie. In Jean Daigle, L’Acadie des Maritimes. Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes. Bourgeois, Daniel, and Yves Bourgeois. 2005. “Territory, institutions and national identity: The case of Acadians in Greater Moncton, Canada.” Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 42 (7): 1123–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 03056240500121123. Bourgeois, Yves. 2002. “Trading in policy: Does global trade undermine social policy and planning?” Critical Planning Journal 9. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). 2011. “Monthly housing statistics.” June. http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/odpub/esub/61512/ 61512_2011_M07.pdf?fr=1313687180609. Conference Board of Canada. 2011. Report card on income inequality. http:// www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/society/income-inequality.aspx. Fantoni, Beatrice. 2011. “Deportation over medical issues averted, but questions remain.” Montreal Gazette, 20 June. http://www.montrealgazette .com/life/Deportation+over+medical+issues+averted+questions+rema in/4925770/story.html. Farnsworth, Clyde. 1994. “The Moncton miracle. Bilingual phone chat.” New York Times, 17 July. Heisz, Andrew. 2011. Income inequality and redistribution in Canada. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE – no. 298.

294  Governing Urban Economies Hickey, Daniel. 1990. Moncton 1871–1929: Changements socio-économiques dans une ville ferroviaire. Moncton: Éditions d’Acadie. Krugman, Paul. 2007. Conscience of a liberal. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Larracey, Edward W. 1991. Resurgo: The history of Moncton. Moncton: City of Moncton. OECD. 2008. Growing unequal? Income distribution and poverty in OECD countries. Paris. Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Statistics Canada. 2007. “Moncton, New Brunswick (Code 305) (table). 2006 community profiles.” 2006 census. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 92-591XWE. Ottawa. http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ dp-pd/prof/92-591/index.cfm?Lang=E. Statistics Canada. 2011a. “Table 282-0054 – Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by provinces and economic regions.” CANSIM (database), Using E-STAT (distributor). http://estat.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&ESTFi=EStat/English/CII_1-eng.htm. Statistics Canada. 2011b. “Table 051-0046 – Estimates of population by census metropolitan area, sex and age group for July 1, based on the Standard geographical classification (SGC) 2006, annual (persons).” CANSIM (database). http://estat.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&EST-Fi=EStat/ English/CII_1-eng.htm. Turcotte, Martin. 2008. Dependence on cars in urban neighbourhoods. Canadian Social Trends 85, Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11-008-XWE.

PART IV Conclusions

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13 The Rise of Metropolitics: Urban Governance in the Age of the City-Region kevin morgan

City-centric narratives have assumed a viral quality in economic development circles around the world. Everywhere, it seems, cities are increasingly portrayed as powerful “engines of prosperity” for their regional hinterlands as well as their national economies. In intellectual circles the dominance of these narratives is epitomized by the title of a recent book on the urban renaissance, Triumph of the City, written by one of America’s premier urban economists (Glaeser 2011). Politicians and policymakers are equally in thrall to city-centric visions of development. Trumpeting the idea that “our cities are back,” Tony Blair’s government went so far as to claim that “competitive cities make prosperous regions and sustainable communities” (ODPM 2004). Global cities are now said to have more in common with each other than with their own countries and, for the hyper-mobile elite, there is some truth in this view. But there is a danger that such cities become reified “post-national” spatial categories that receive privileged treatment not only in theoretical terms, as objects of scientific study, but also as recipients of public investment because of their special economic significance in the national economy (McCann 2003; Ward and Jonas 2004). Whatever their global entanglements, cities are far more tethered to their national and regional environments than urban elites care to imagine; for example, not only are they subject to national regulatory regimes regarding social and economic behaviour, they are also entangled in a deeper ecological sense, especially as regards air quality and water supply, as urban political ecology has demonstrated in its quest to “renature urban theory” (Heynen et al. 2006). If city-centric narratives have elided urban nature, they also elide the fact that cities are hugely dependent on and inter-connected with their

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regional hinterlands, the fuzzy and protean metrolands for which there is no longer an agreed terminology. These burgeoning urban regions – city-regions as they are called here – have spawned a bewildering set of monikers as spatial theorists struggle with the fact that urban space is “perpetually in flux” (Harvey 1989, 127). This protean quality is best captured in the metaphor of the twenty-first-century metropolis as a chameleon that “shifts shape and size; margins become centres; centres become frontiers; regions become cities” (Roy 2009, 827). Flux and fluidity can be overdone, however, because this protean quality is more pronounced in the rapidly expanding cities of the global south and the market-driven economies of North America than in the more regulated economies of northern Europe, where continuity-in-change is the name of the game. A comparative urban political economy needs to be alive to these nuances because, notwithstanding “the roll-out of neo-liberalism,” cities, states, and markets have their specificities, one of which is their national cultural specificity. A comparative urban political economy can help us to understand the political specificities of city-regionalism because the local politics of the city-regional process has been curiously neglected in both the urban planning literature (which treats city-regionalism as a technical “re-scaling the city” issue) and the radical geography literature (which portrays city-regionalism as the “handmaiden of neo-­ liberalism”). The politics of city-regionalism is ignored in the former, because planning is deemed a technical matter, and is rendered unnecessary in the latter, because structural imperatives trump local agency. One of the aims of this chapter is to try to show that neither of these interpretations of city-regionalism is tenable. The chapter is structured as follows. The next section examines recent theoretical debates in urban and regional studies which highlight the different ways in which city-regionalism can be understood, and offers several observations about how these debates unfold in the Canadian context. The following section explores the politics of city-regionalism in Stuttgart and Cardiff to see what light can be shed on the city-regional process in different national contexts. The final section offers some tentative conclusions about the nature of city-regionalism and its implications for democratic urban governance in the age of the city-region. Debating the City-Region: Controversies in Spatial Theory Academic debates are no longer “academic” if this is taken to mean they are inconsequential beyond the academy. On the contrary, urban

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and regional governments in Europe and North America have shown themselves to be an eager and receptive audience for the latest fashion in economic development concepts – be it science parks, clusters, or creative quarters – in the hope that it will spark a renewal of the local economy. The city-region is the latest territorial concept to be embraced by the worlds of policy and practice and it raises challenging issues for spatial theory too. In this section I briefly explore two theoretical issues that have recently exercised the field of urban and regional studies, namely, (1) the relational critique of territorial conceptions of place and (2) the limits of neoliberalism as an explanation of city-regionalism.

The Relational Critique The relational critique of territorial conceptions of place is a powerful challenge to the conventional ways in which geographers have sought to understand place-based phenomena. The relational conception owes its origins to a group of radical British geographers who are collectively responsible for some of the most stimulating work in geography in recent years, culminating in their relational critique of “the territorial fix” (Allen et al. 1998; Amin 2004; Allen and Cochrane 2007). The critique began as a project to “rethink the region” in relational/networked terms rather than in territorial/scalar terms, and its central argument was that an adequate understanding of the region “can only come through a conception of places as open, discontinuous, relational and internally diverse” (Allen et al. 1998, 143). A relational and non-territorial ontology of place was imperative, it was argued, because “globalisation and the general rise of a society of transnational flows and networks no longer allow a conceptualisation of place politics in terms of spatially bound processes and institutions” (Amin 2004, 33). From a relational perspective, the problem with the mainstream view is that it is hopelessly wedded to an antediluvian conception of cities and regions as “territorial entities,” when one needs to recognize that “cities and regions come with no automatic promise of territorial or systematic integrity, since they are made through the spatiality of flow, juxtaposition, porosity and relational connectivity” (ibid., 34). Relational critics are especially scornful of the territorial approach to devolutionist politics in the United Kingdom, which is said to be “grounded in an imaginary of the region as a space of intimacy, shared history or shared identity, and community of interest or fate” (ibid., 37). The notion that places – cities, regions, or city-regions – can act as agents or subjects of their own destiny is dismissed because it assumes that

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places have an internal coherence and a collective capacity that they do not in fact possess. Indeed, the very idea of the “region” as a meaningful territorial entity is no longer tenable because, as relational theorists see it, the governance of regions now works through a looser, more negotiable, set of political arrangements that take their shape from the network of relations that stretch across and beyond given regional boundaries. The agencies, the partnerships, the political intermediaries, and the associations and connections that bring them together, increasingly form “regional” spatial assemblages that are not exclusively regional, but bring together elements of central, regional and local institutions. In the process … a more fluid set of regional political relationships and power-plays has emerged that call into question the usefulness of continuing to represent regions politically as territorially fixed in any essential sense. (Allen and Cochrane 2007, 1163)

Although the relational critique galvanized geographers and other social scientists to think more critically about the meaning of place, and especially about how places are constituted through “the spatiality of flow” and “relational connectivity,” it also triggered some critical reactions. A common criticism was that the relational critique was a caricature of the territorial conception of cities and regions: by juxtaposing relational and territorial readings of place, as though they were mutually exclusive, it created a binary division that was totally unwarranted (Hudson 2007; Macleod and Jones 2007; Morgan 2007). In my own response, for example, I argued that “political space is bounded and porous: bounded because politicians are held to account through the territorially-defined ballot box, a prosaic but important reason why we should not be so dismissive of territorial politics; porous because people have multiple identities and they are becoming ever more mobile, spawning communities of relational connectivity that transcend territorial boundaries” (ibid., 1248). Ray Hudson also argued that territorial and relational conceptions were complementary rather than mutually exclusive approaches, making the telling point that “actually existing regions are a product of a struggle and tension between territorializing and de-territorializing processes” (Hudson 2007, 1156). Finally, in a very judicious review of the debate, Macleod and Jones rightly argued that the precise mix of relational and territorial influences “ought to remain an open question: a matter to be resolved ex post and empirically rather than a priori and theoretically” (Macleod and Jones 2007, 1186).

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While the notion of political space as a wholly bounded entity is clearly non-sensical, because flows of information, investment, people, and technology are impervious to administrative boundaries (albeit with important exceptions, like the national boundaries of authoritarian states, for example), the notion of the municipal boundary as a wholly porous entity cannot be sustained in the turf-conscious world of city-regional politics.

The Limits of Competitive City-regionalism Like the new regionalism that preceded it, the growth of city-regionalism is often associated with the twin trends of globalization and neoliberalism. Indeed, in some quarters these new forms of regionalism are portrayed as the handmaiden of a neoliberal offensive “to dismantle national redistributive structures and hollow out the democratic content of economic governance, not least under the guise of constructing new regional structures” (Lovering 1999, 392). The main problem with this interpretation is not that it is necessarily wrong (because some forms of regionalism may indeed be aligned with neoliberal projects), but that it embodies a functionalist and reductionist view in which all variants of regionalism are perceived to be aiding and abetting neoliberalism wittingly or unwittingly (Morgan 2004, 873). This is the untenable interpretation of what Harding calls “the city-region as neoliberal plot” (Harding 2007, 443). The narrative of competitive city-regionalism – in which the cityregion is portrayed as a relatively autonomous economic actor in the vanguard of creativity, innovation, and development – is one of the most seductive economic narratives in the world today, especially to business and political elites who are mired in austerity capitalism. Urban theorists have nourished this competitive narrative by arguing that city-regions are the key territorial players in the global economy because they are “the sites of dense masses of interrelated economic activities that also typically have high levels of productivity by reason of their jointly-generated agglomeration economies and their innovative potentials” (Scott and Storper 2003, 581). From a political perspective, there are two problems with this conception. First, while there is a positive correlation between agglomeration and productivity, it is an ecological fallacy to suppose that what is true of some city-regions is true of all city-regions. In other words, the alleged economic benefits of city-regionalism need to be treated with extreme scepticism because the claims are based on the most successful

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city-regions. Second, the competitive narrative sidelines a whole series of other rationales for city-regionalism, so much so that there has been an under-emphasis in the city-region literature on how new territorial forms are constructed politically and reproduced through everyday acts and struggles around consumption and social reproduction. An especially notable lacuna is serious treatment of the role of the state and an associated politics of distribution constructed around various sites, spaces and scales across the city-region. (Jonas and Ward 2007, 170)

Jonas and Ward have made an important contribution to the debate on city-regionalism by drawing attention to a whole series of issues that are downplayed in the competitive city-regional narrative – like the role of politics (local and extra-local) in fashioning city-region configurations, the significance of struggles around collective consumption, sustainability, and quality-of-life issues, and the role of democracy in city-region politics. Like any other territorial narrative, city-regionalism cannot be reduced to a single rationale, even one as seductive as “competitive city-regionalism,” and these alternative rationales need to be teased out by treating the politics of the city-region more seriously. This is precisely why the Canadian case studies in this book are so important. Notwithstanding their nuances and variations, one of the common threads running through the eleven city-region case studies is the laudable way in which they take local politics seriously and explain differentiation with reference to both local and extra-local forces. Among the local forces at work here are the influence of institutional history, leadership styles, and power relations, all of which have to be established empirically rather than read off from alleged structural im­ peratives. The extra-local forces include familiar economic forces, like mercurial multinational companies, as well as political forces, like the imperious policies of federal and provincial governments, policies that seem to frustrate rather than foster Canada’s emergent city-regions, a legacy perhaps of the anti-urban bias in Canadian political culture (Andrew 2001). The analysis of local and extra-local forces helps the authors of these case studies to avoid the unwarranted binary division which juxtaposes relational and territorial perspectives, enabling them to combine both approaches to explain the trajectory of place politics in their city-region case studies. Treating local politics seriously also means that these studies help to establish a distinctively Canadian approach to the analysis of city-­ regionalism. Urban theory has been justly criticized by theorists of the

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global south for its northern-centric biases, particularly the way in which American and European experiences act as silent reference points for the study of metropolitan life everywhere (Robinson 2006; Roy 2009). A celebrated example of American bias in urban studies is the way in which urban regime theory was assumed to be universally applicable to the study of the growth politics of all cities, when in fact it was predicated on the market-driven political cultures of US cities. Although urban regime theory never resonated with the more state-managed political cultures of northern Europe, it has had less traction in Canada too, an important caveat because Canadian identity is too often lost in the alleged commonality of “North America.” Indeed, for all the case studies in this volume, a well-organized and politically engaged local business class only seems to exist in Waterloo and Ottawa. Yet the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance, one of the more durable and innovative coalitions studied here, seems to function without an organized private sector, relying instead on sustained civic leadership drawn from local business and community-based organizations alike. In the majority of the case studies presented here, social-inclusion issues seem to loom as large as the competitive issues that once dominated the agenda of city-regionalism, suggesting that this agenda is not necessarily tethered to a neoliberal politics, a point that is equally true of city-regionalism in Europe. Fashioning the City-Region: The Challenge of Metropolitics For all the grandiose talk of a “European model” – that is to say, a regulated model of capitalism with an inclusive welfare state and a social partnership between capital and labour – this is largely confined to northern Europe (European Commission 2011). In Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries in particular, high levels of social-welfare spending, labour market regulation, and innovation are widely believed to be mutually reinforcing developmental attributes, confounding the ideological claims of neoliberalism. When periodic economic crises have shaken the foundations of this model, the response is usually focused on the firms and industries that are most affected by the restructuring crisis. However, in the case of Stuttgart, one of the pioneers of city-regionalism in Europe, the urban government took advantage of an economic crisis to try to fashion a new form of metropolitan governance. As we will see, this process of urban restructuring may have been framed initially in narrow economic development terms, but the Stuttgart city-region has evolved into so much more than a purely economic instrument.

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Stuttgart: A Pioneer of City-regionalism in Europe Stuttgart’s status as a pioneer of city-regionalism is largely due to the interplay of economics and politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, long before the federal government introduced the category of “metropolitan regions” into the German spatial planning system. With a population of 2.6 million, the Stuttgart metropolitan area embraces 179 municipalities, 5 counties, and the city of Stuttgart, and it hosts some of the most prestigious names in German manufacturing, such as Daimler-Benz, Porsche, and Robert Bosch, the key players in the region’s auto cluster. To appreciate why Stuttgart was the first to embrace city-regionalism in Germany we need to understand two things in particular: its geo-political condition and its economic plight. The city government has always been painfully conscious of Stuttgart’s lack of space – situated as it is in a valley and surrounded by hills – a limitation that helps to explain its deeply felt need to cooperate with the municipalities of its regional hinterland. The need for inter-municipal cooperation was especially apparent by the 1970s, when Stuttgart found itself surrounded by a ring of prosperous mediumsized towns that had sucked jobs, people, and income from the core city over the post-war period, threatening the city government with a fiscal crisis because the regional population was using its services and infrastructure without having to pay for them. To escape this geo-political trap, successive mayors of Stuttgart had sought some form of “burden sharing” from neighbouring municipalities, even to the point of proposing a radically new regional city as early as 1975, to share the costs of such things as public transport, hospitals, and new projects like trade fairs (Zimmermann 2011). These geo-political pressures might not have led to a new city-region had they been the only factors at work. What gave the city-region idea new political traction, however, was the shocking effect of the economic crisis between 1992 and 1994, which triggered major job losses in manufacturing and provoked deep disquiet in all sections of the metropolitan elite about the viability of the regional economy (Cooke and Morgan 1998). If the principle of inter-municipal cooperation was the agreed solution to the fiscal problem of the core city, and the way ahead for the regional economy, there were many local barriers to overcome in practice, not least the opposition of the counties, who thought a strong city-region would jeopardize their future. The local gridlock was eventually broken by the intervention of extra-local factors as well as new

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civil-society actors. Four factors were crucial in breaking the local political gridlock: • first, key figures in the business community visibly supported the regional reform process and the likes of Edzard Reuter (then the CEO of Daimler-Benz) personally asked the counties to support the reform; • second, the intervention of the federal state government (i.e., the Land of Baden-Württemberg) was also decisive because it helped to resolve the local conflicts between the city and its municipal neighbours by getting some of the counties to share the cost of public transport with the core city; • third, civil-society organizations became actively involved in the debate, especially the churches, the chambers of commerce, and the trades unions, helping the public to become better informed about the pros and cons of regional reform; • and, finally, a coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats formed a new government of the federal state in 1992; the Social Democrats made all the difference because regional reform was one of their conditions for the coalition treaty and this ensured federal state support for the proposed city-region (Zimmermann 2011). A combination of local and extra-local forces helped to fashion a radically new city-regional entity, the Verband Region Stuttgart (VRS), which came into being in 1994. The VRS derives its political legitimacy from its directly elected regional assembly, the ninety-one seats of which are distributed on the basis of a county-based population formula. Although a wide range of political parties are represented in the regional assembly, half the total seats in the 2009 election were won by Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the two dominant parties in the region. In operational terms, the assembly selects a chair from its ranks to lead it for a five-year legislative period and appoints an executive director to head the VRS regional office for an eight-year period, giving it a long-term operating horizon. Relative to its tasks, the VRS consists of a small team of some fifty planners and technical staff, all of whom are based at the head office in Stuttgart. The VRS budget, some 290 million euro in 2010, is financed through contributions from the Land government, levies from its municipal members, and income from the regional light rail system, the S-Bahn, which is also the largest expense item. Although its powers are evolving, the VRS is currently responsible for the following region-wide tasks:

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• Regional planning (to develop settlement patterns, development axes, retail development, and protected open space) • Regional transport planning and public transit (including planning and operating the S-Bahn); • Landscape planning (to provide an inventory of land and water resources, climate-change mitigation, and the development of an integrated landscape park for the region); • Regional economic development (within a year of its formation the VRS had created a dedicated agency, the Wirtschaftsforderung Region Stuttgart [WRS]), to deliver its economic development mandate); • Regional waste management (the VRS manages mining waste and toxic soils on a regional basis); • Regional tourism marketing (the VRS works in concert with other government bodies to promote the region as a tourist destination) (Frank and Morgan 2012). Although the VRS has exclusive responsibility for regional planning, landscape planning, and regional transport planning, all its other responsibilities are shared with the municipalities. The rise of the VRS does not mean that municipalities in the Stuttgart region have been sidelined, far from it. Local municipalities are relatively autonomous actors and their local autonomy is constitutionally guaranteed in article 28 of the Basic Law. Even so, the VRS can overrule local land-use plans if the latter are deemed to violate the regional plan and this local/regional tension will increase if the VRS acquires more powers in the future. Another perennial source of tension is the funding of the VRS budget, one component of which comes from the municipal contributions. As the budget is debated annually in the regional parliament, some municipalities use the occasion to argue that the VRS is “an institution of local self-government and not a metropolitan government” (Zimmermann 2011, 201). These tensions – over planning powers and budgetary contributions – are part of the new challenges spawned by the growth of metropolitics in the Stuttgart region. But the biggest challenge for the VRS has come not from the anticipated quarter of jealous local governments, but from the wholly unexpected quarter of a highly aggrieved civil society. The controversy revolves around a grandiose urban regeneration project, Stuttgart 21, which was essentially designed to transform the central railway station from a terminus into a through-station for the European highspeed rail network. Although the bulk of the funding comes from the

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state government and the German Rail company, the VRS is a minority stakeholder in Stuttgart 21, a project it deems vital to the economic success of the regional economy. On the face of it, Stuttgart 21 would seem to suit the multiple planning requirements of an ambitious and innovative metropolitan region, not least by freeing up 100 hectares of prime inner-city land that could be used as a brownfield site to accommodate a third of the city’s housing needs over the next twenty years, allowing urban planners to preserve greenfield sites that are essential to mitigate the heat island effects the city experiences due to its topography. This was one reason why the political establishment – in the city, the region, the Land, and the federal government itself – sponsored the project originally. But despite such high-level political sponsorship, embracing every party except the Greens, Stuttgart 21 has provoked the biggest conflict between civil society and the state since 1953, when the Land of Baden-Württemberg was created (Frank and Morgan 2012). Originally conceived in the mid-1990s, the Stuttgart 21 project became progressively more controversial, culminating in an unprecedented violent confrontation in October 2010, when police used water cannons and tear gas to forcibly remove protesters from a city park in which old trees were about to be felled. Opposition to Stuttgart 21 was fuelled by many factors –cost concerns, ecological fears, and the NIMBY factor, for example – all of which helps to explain the ecumenical nature of the protest movement, which included a wide spectrum from leftwing environmentalists to right-wing CDU supporters. Stuttgart 21 was already a national political issue before the violent confronta­ tion,  even to the point of involving Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who felt the need to publicly endorse the project by saying that “Germany would put its future on the line if it failed to complete high-tech projects that had been sanctioned by democratic bodies” (Wisemann 2010). The support of Germany’s chancellor was not enough to save the CDU government in the state election of 2011 (ending a unique era of one-party rule that began with the founding of the state in 1953), a defeat widely attributed to the government’s inept handling of the Stuttgart 21 issue. The real winners of the 2011 state election were the Greens, though this was not the first time they had benefited from orchestrating the opposition to Stuttgart 21. In the municipal election of 2009 the Green Party had secured a completely unexpected landslide victory, due in large part to their opposition to the unpopular Stuttgart 21 project. Probably for the first time in a large German city, it has been

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claimed, “a controversy about a single major urban project has completely changed the distribution of local political power” (Jessen and Mayer 2010, 14). Two important messages emerged from this controversy. The first is that metro-governance is more a political art than a technocratic exercise and the sponsors of Stuttgart 21 had signally failed to master this art. If the attributes of the art include a capacity to listen to and learn from the voices of civil society and a facility to convey compelling urban narratives, it was clear that the traditional political establishment had a lot to learn. The second message is that the multiple issues embroiled in Stuttgart 21 – such as inter-city mobility, innovative regions, public space, and urban sustainability – are highly contested and are therefore totally at odds with the desiccated technocratic idea of “best practice,” which implies “one best way” of doing things (Frank and Morgan 2012). The fact that Stuttgart 21 is still scheduled to go ahead, following a state-wide referendum organized by the Greens, suggests that such mega-projects have a path-dependent quality once major costs have been incurred. Although Stuttgart 21 has been a chastening experience for the VRS and its fellow sponsors – providing a sobering reminder that civil society needs to be engaged in the new metropolitics – the controversy should not blind us to what has been achieved in the Stuttgart region as it approaches its twentieth anniversary in 2014. By the inter-communal standards of Europe and North America, where competition often trumps cooperation, the VRS constitutes one of the most successful examples of inter-governmental cooperation at the city-regional level.

Cardiff: From City-region Rivalry to Emergent City-regionalism The city-regional agenda in the United Kingdom has assumed growing significance as other territorial agendas have lost their political resonance. Regionalism was the dominant territorial narrative in post-war British politics until it was officially jettisoned by David Cameron’s coalition government, though it had already begun to lose its allure under the Labour government, when a regional assembly was decisively defeated in a referendum in the northeast region of England in 2006. In place of regionalism, the Cameron government has championed two alternative territorial narratives, namely, localism and city-regionalism: while the former is officially portrayed as a means to empower local governments and local civil societies, the latter is presented as the

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means to spearhead economic renewal, especially in the English core cities outside the prosperous southeast super region. Paradoxically, perhaps, these devolved territorial narratives are highly predicated on the whims of the central state. In the case of localism, the principle is being progressively compromised in practice by the centralist actions of the central state. Although the city-regional agenda has fared better, it too depends on England’s core cities agreeing to a bespoke “city-deal” with the central government before they can assume more control over their urban budgets for economic development, skills, transport, and infrastructure. The pioneer of city-regionalism in the United Kingdom is Manchester, which was the first to form a combined authority with its nine municipal neighbours in the Greater Manchester metropolitan region, a form of inter-communal cooperation that was launched in 2011. Because of political devolution, Scotland and Wales have more autonomy to fashion their own city-regional arrangements. The case of Cardiff is one of the most instructive cases in the United Kingdom – not so much for what it has achieved but for what it has failed to achieve given the potential synergies between the city and the region of South East Wales. Few cities have been as dependent on their regional hinterland as Cardiff. Without the dramatic growth of the coalfield in the nearby South Wales Valleys, there would have been no need to build port facilities, and without export facilities Cardiff would never have become a “coal metropolis” in the early years of the twentieth century (Daunton 1977). Although the city and the region were mutually dependent from the outset, the nature of this relationship changed radically after 1920, when the coalfield peaked in employment terms. Thereafter, the economic flows from the Valleys to the city were decreasingly of products in search of an export market and increasingly of people in search of a labour market. Over time these travel-to-work flows were supplemented by more varied flows of people as Cardiff assumed its dual role as a consumption centre for the region and a political capital for the nation thanks to devolution (Morgan 2006b). However, with a population of just 340,000, Cardiff was thought to be too small to attract major international investment. To project a more positive image to investors, over the past decade successive city governments have sought to market Cardiff not as a city of less than half a million but as a city-region of 1.4 million people. Significantly, the cityregion concept was also sanctioned by the Welsh Assembly Government when it launched the Wales Spatial Plan in 2004, which invoked a ­social-justice as well as an economic rationale, saying:

310  Governing Urban Economies South-east Wales is Wales’ most populous area. It is characterised by major economic and social disparities. The coastal zone is now the main economic driver, and its competitiveness needs to be sustained to help raise the economic potential of Wales as a nation. The heavy commuting flows between the Valleys and the coast mean that the area functions as an interdependent but unplanned urban network … This needs to be built on constructively, making Cardiff the focal point of a coherent and successful urban network in south-east Wales, enabling it to share its prosperity. The area will function as a single networked city-region on a scale to realise its international potential, its national role and to reduce inequalities. (Welsh Assembly Government 2004)

Despite this official blessing from the national government, the ten municipalities in southeast Wales were unable to build on their functional interdependence for a variety of reasons. Although the Labour party was the dominant political party in both the city and the region, the municipalities of the Valleys were deeply distrustful of the motives of the city government. In particular, they feared that city politicians were using the city-region concept as a fig leaf for a city-centric agenda in which the Valleys would become a mere commuter belt for the capital. For its part, the city government was discovering that its imperious and self-referential attitude had alienated a wide range of potential partners, within its own urban civil society as well as among its municipal neighbours, the noxious legacy of a political leader who exercised a command-and-control style of presidential politics that triggered a series of scandals and an independent inquiry into the governance of the city (Morgan 2006a). The independent inquiry uncovered a litany of problems with the presidential style of leadership in the city, and from a city-regional perspective the most damning was the charge that partnership working was completely alien to the city government. This finding forced the inquiry to conclude that “Cardiff could end up unwanted in Wales and unwelcome in England” (Lyons 2004, 113). The political gridlock around the city-region agenda in Wales persisted for the best part of eight years, from the vision of a “single networked city-region” in the Wales Spatial Plan in 2004 to the release of a government-sponsored report on city-regions in 2012. Although some inter-communal collaboration did emerge during this interregnum – in regional associations for planning, housing, transport, waste management, and economic development – little or no progress was made as regards more serious political collaboration. The main reason for the lack of progress was the ambivalent attitude of the Welsh government

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itself. In contrast to the politics of city-regionalism in Stuttgart, where the state government felt compelled to intervene to break the local political gridlock between the city and the counties, the Welsh government never fully committed itself to the city-region agenda. One reason was the anti-urban bias in Welsh political culture, a legacy of a small nation of villages, towns, and rural areas that was suspicious of urbanization, which in some quarters was deemed to be alien and threatening to “traditional” ways of life (Evans 1985). Two factors persuaded the Welsh government to act more decisively on the city-region front. First, the economic performance of the Welsh economy continued to decline relative to other regions and nations in the United Kingdom, creating additional pressure to explore new options. Second, the core cities in England were seeking more devolved powers and resources, espousing the city-region agenda to do so, and this prompted the Welsh government to appoint a City Region Task Force that recommended that two city-regions – Cardiff in southeast Wales and Swansea Bay in southwest Wales – should be recognized and promoted (Haywood et al. 2012). The evidence submitted to the task force was overwhelmingly supportive of the city-region approach, though there was no single rationale in the evidence submitted to the public consultation exercise. Although economic considerations dominated the original remit, the task force uncovered a series of other rationales for city-regionalism. Indeed, in the course of the inquiry the issue of transport connectivity became the dominant issue because it was “at the forefront of responses to the call for evidence” (ibid., 54). Spatial planning considerations also loomed large because it was found that local authorities were forced to work within artificial boundaries when they designed their local development plans, even though housing, employment, transport, and waste management functions needed to be planned on a more strategic regional basis. To this end the task force felt compelled to recommend “an over-arching city region strategic planning tier to ensure city region hinterlands benefit from the growth of their cities and have a voice in cross-boundary development” (ibid., 46). In other words, two of the most important recommendations in the task force report – a city-region transport authority and a city-region spatial planning tier – were motivated by sustainability and social-justice considerations as much as economic development imperatives. Given the political gridlock that had stymied city-regionalism in the past, the task force concluded by reminding the Welsh government of the need for political leadership, a delicate act because the national

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government “must both drive the city region agenda and delegate powers and responsibilities to the city region” (ibid., 65). Conscious of the role the state government had played in breaking the political gridlock in Stuttgart (one of Cardiff’s twin cities), the task force was unequivocal that the Welsh government was ultimately responsible for making or breaking the city-regional agenda because of its unrivalled capacity to shape the spatial allocation of public investment. Since the Welsh business community is relatively weak, and because civil-society organizations are inordinately dependent on public funds, Wales is one of the most state-centric countries in Europe (Morgan 2013). Little or no innovation in public sector governance can occur without the blessing of the national government, and the task force was acutely conscious of the fact, which is why the government will be responsible for fostering or frustrating the pace of city-regionalism in Wales. Conclusions: City-Regionalism in Comparative Perspective Though the contrasts loom larger than the commonalities, the politics of city-regionalism in Cardiff and Stuttgart share some common threads and these help to illuminate two of the theoretical issues discussed earlier – the relational critique of territorial politics and neoliberal interpretations of city-regionalism. Exploring the politics of city-regionalism means engaging with the granularity and specificity of local political life, a realm in which municipal boundaries and municipal politicians have a material effect on the pace of change and the nature of outcomes, a point that seldom gets the attention it deserves in the theoretical literature on neoliberalism, where structural imperatives are often invoked to explain local outcomes. As we saw earlier, the relational critique of territorial conceptions of place resolutely rejects the notion of a “bounded” political space. But once we enter the granular level of local politics it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that prosaic municipal boundaries proved to be a major barrier to inter-communal collaboration in both metropolitan areas, so much so that local political gridlock might have continued indefinitely had it not been for the interventions of “higher” levels of government, the state government in Stuttgart and the national government in Cardiff. Far from being idiosyncratic features of these two areas, a large survey of city-regionalism in Europe came to the conclusion that the boundaries of administrative areas “constitute very strong barriers against policies aiming to optimise the position of metropolitan areas around large cities” (Tosics 2007, 791).

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More than superficial lines on a map, municipal boundaries demarcate turf and power within a political space and, as such, they need to be negotiated away politically not conjured away theoretically. Rene­gotiating municipal boundaries can take many forms, ranging from structural reorganization (as in Stuttgart) to looser governance arrangements (as in Greater Manchester). In other words, the challenge of city-regionalism is “not to be found in the mere establishment of new encompassing territorial government but in new methods of ­‘organising connectivity’” (Salet et al. 2003, 377). The most judicious conclusion to be drawn from the protean politics of city-regionalism in Europe is that there is no such thing as a single model of “best practice” of city-region governance. This needs to be more widely understood because “the Stuttgart model” has been extolled as the best model for Germany as it combines a problemsolving capacity in the VRS with a democratic mandate in a directly elected parliament (Furst 2005). The fact that “the Stuttgart model” has not diffused to other cities despite it being nearly twenty years old underlines the point that “models for city region governance are not easily transferable, even within a country” (Kunzmann 2004, 8). If the European experience rejects the notion of a single model of “best practice” as regards city-regional governance, the Canadian experience points to the same unequivocal conclusion. As with Europe, the Canadian experience attests to multiple ways of “organizing connectivity,” and the editors of this volume have usefully identified three emergent typologies of urban governance, namely: institutionalized collaboration in city-­ regions, a form of urban governance that is both cause and consequence of durable development coalitions; sector networks, which support strong sector-based associational activity, but which also tend to be weak in terms of cross-sectoral territorial linkages; and project partnerships, a less formalized mode of governance designed for task and finish projects. These types of urban governance are not set in aspic and one of the most interesting questions is how they will evolve under pressure: will they be underlined or undermined in response to turbulent social and economic change? Waterloo is deemed to be an exemplar of institutionalized collaboration, but the resilience of its local governance arrangements will be severely tested by the current crisis at Research in Motion, the company at the centre of the high-tech ecology in the city-region. As regards the sector networks typology, St John’s has clearly achieved some notable successes, especially with respect to its ocean technology and social economy sectors; but these sectoral strengths have been compromised by territorial weaknesses in inter-­ governmental relations – horizontally

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between municipalities and vertically between cities and their provincial and federal interlocutors. Equally searching questions are being asked of Vancouver’s project partnership arrangements, where twenty-one municipalities in the city-region struggle to coordinate priorities and resources to integrate immigrants, a major test of the city’s claim to be a dynamic cosmopolitan metropolis. In each of these urban governance typologies, political boundaries have played a big part in compromising collective action, proving that such boundaries are as significant in Canada as they are in Europe. If political boundaries need to be taken more seriously in relational geography, what about the second theoretical argument we discussed earlier, that city-regionalism is the handmaiden of neoliberalism? The evidence from Europe and Canada suggests that the main rationale for promoting city-regionalism tends to be an economic development one. But the case studies – from Europe and Canada – also showed that cityregionalism is more than a one-dimensional economic development strategy. Economic renewal might have been the overriding rationale for the VRS, but the latter has evolved into something larger and more multidimensional than a mere economic development agency. Indeed, if expenditure is an index, the VRS is much more of an infrastructural agency, because 93 per cent of its budget in 2010 was devoted to public transport, while just 2.7 per cent was spent directly on economic development measures. Furthermore, the VRS committees are devoted to spatial planning and transport as well as economic development, which also suggests that the city-region agenda is more capacious than a narrow economic agenda. Though it is more aspirational than actual at this point, the city-­ region agenda in Wales is being framed in a similarly capacious manner. While economic renewal is once again the dominant consideration, the public consultation process uncovered a wider set of reasons for promoting city-regionalism – and spatial planning and public transport planning once again emerged as important rationales. As it happens, these two functions – spatial planning and public transport – are deemed to be the most important functions from a city-regional perspective because, as the most tangible expressions of a positive-sum game, they provide compelling evidence of the benefits of inter-­communal cooperation in other areas (Kunzmann 2004; Tosics 2007). Spatial planning and public transport can of course be rationalized as part of a narrow economic development agenda, which is the lens through which hard-pressed municipalities are trying to secure infrastructural investment in an era of austerity (Wolfe 2009). But strategic

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spatial planning and public transport can serve a broader sustainable development agenda as well, especially if social-justice considerations are factored into the plans for such things as who gets access to what types of public services, whether affordable housing receives parity of esteem with private-sector housing, and where waste processing facilities are located. While city-regionalism can be the handmaiden of neoliberalism, it can just as easily be the vehicle for a progressive politics if the local political alliance is sufficiently committed to sustainability and social justice. This brings us to what is arguably the most important question of all – which is whether city-regionalism fosters or frustrates the realm of democratic deliberation in metropolitan regions. The growth of city-­ regionalism in Europe has not been driven by a burning desire to expand the realm of deliberative democracy, and there is a real danger that a deeper democratic deficit could emerge unless community-based spaces of deliberation are created to hold urban elites to account (Rodríguez-Pose 2007). Current debates about city-regionalism in Europe are too fixated on the inter-governmental dimension, largely because inter-communal collaboration between municipalities is framed as the principal problem. But what is equally important is the state–civil society dimension – how urban publics figure in the new governance arrangements, a question that rarely gets the attention it deserves (Heinelt and Kübler 2005). The costs of ignoring civil society were dramatically exposed by the popular reaction to Stuttgart 21, a controversy that triggered the collapse of one of the longest periods of one-party rule in Europe, and all because the imperious CDU establishment failed to engage with local civil society. In Europe and Canada alike we are witnessing the advent of a new metropolitics and one of the key challenges will be how to create an innovative and inclusive dialogue between the city-regional state and its urban publics in civil society, a dialogue that will call for new community-based spaces of deliberation to supplement the shallow democracy of the ballot box. REFERENCES Allen, J., et al. 1998. Rethinking the region. London: Routledge. Allen, J., and A. Cochrane. 2007. “Beyond the territorial fix: Regional assemblages, politics and power.” Regional Studies 41 (9): 1161–75. http://dx.doi .org/10.1080/00343400701543348.

316  Governing Urban Economies Amin, A. 2004. “Regions unbound: Towards a new politics of place.” Geografiska Annaler 86B: 33–44. Andrew, C. 2001. “The shame of (ignoring) the cities.” Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d’Études Canadiennes 35 (4): 100–10. Cooke, P., and K. Morgan. 1998. The associational economy: Firms, regions and innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780198290186.001.0001. Daunton, M. 1977. Coal metropolis: Cardiff 1870–1914. Leicester: Leicester University Press. European Commission. 2011. Cities of tomorrow. Brussels. Evans, N. 1985. “The Welsh Victorian city.” Welsh History Review / Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru 12: 350–87. Frank, A., and K. Morgan. 2012. Re-inventing the city: The art of metro-governance in the Stuttgart region. Papers in Planning Research 186. Cardiff: Cardiff University. Furst, D. 2005. “Metropolitan governance in Germany.” In Metropolitan Governance, ed. H. Heinhelt and D. Kubler, 151–68. Abingdon: Routledge. Glaeser, E. 2011. Triumph of the city: How our greatest invention made us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier. London: Penguin. Harding, A. 2007. “Taking city regions seriously? Response to debate on ‘Cityregions: New geographies of governance, democracy and social reproduction.’” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (2): 443–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00736.x. Harvey, D. 1989. “The place of urban politics in the geography of uneven capitalist development.” In The urban experience, ed. D. Harvey, 125–64. Oxford: Blackwell. Haywood, E., et al. 2012. City regions final report. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Heinelt, H., and D. Kübler. 2005. Metropolitan governance: Capacity, democracy and the dynamics of place. London: Routledge. Heynen, N., M. Kaika, and E. Swyngedouw. 2006. In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism. London: Taylor and Francis. Hudson, R. 2007. “Regions and regional uneven development forever? Some reflective comments upon theory and practice.” Regional Studies 41 (9): 1149–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701291617. Jessen, J., and H. Mayer. 2010. “Regional competitiveness and quality of life: The case of Portland and Stuttgart.” PNDonline 2: 1–17. Jonas, A., and K. Ward. 2007. “Introduction to a debate on city-regions.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (1): 169–78. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00711.x.

The Rise of Metropolitics  317 Kunzmann, K. 2004. “An agenda for creative governance in city regions.” disP 158: 5–10. Lovering, J. 1999. “Theory led by policy: The inadequacies of the new regionalism (illustrated from the case of Wales).” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23 (2): 379–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00202. Lyons, M. 2004. The commission on the governance of Cardiff Council. Cardiff: Cardiff County Council. Macleod, G., and M. Jones. 2007. “Territorial, scalar, networked, connected: In what sense a ‘regional world’?” Regional Studies 41 (9): 1177–91. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701646182. McCann, E. 2003. “Framing space and time in the city: Urban policy and the politics of spatial and temporal scale.” Journal of Urban Affairs 25 (2): 159–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9906.t01-1-00004. Morgan, K. 2004. “Sustainable regions: Governance, innovation and scale.” European Planning Studies 12 (6): 871–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 0965431042000251909. Morgan, K. 2006a. “Governing Cardiff: Politics, power and personalities.” In Capital Cardiff 1975–2020, ed. A. Hooper and J. Punter, 31–46. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Morgan, K. 2006b. “Re-scaling the capital: Cardiff as a city-region.” In Capital Cardiff 1975–2020, ed. A. Hooper and J. Punter, 293–310. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Morgan, K. 2007. “The polycentric state: New spaces of empowerment and engagement?” Regional Studies 41(9): 1237–51. http://dx.doi.org /10.1080/ 00343400701543363. Morgan, K. 2013. “Path dependence and the state: The politics of novelty in old industrial regions.” In Re-framing regional development: Evolution, innovation and transition, ed. P. Cooke, 318–40. London: Routledge. ODPM. 2004. Our cities are back: Competitive cities make prosperous regions and sustainable communities. London: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Robinson, J. 2006. Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development. Abingdon: Routledge. Rodríguez-Pose, A. 2008. “The rise of the ‘city region’ concept and its development policy implications.” European Planning Studies 16 (8): 1025–46. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654310802315567. Roy, A. 2009. “The 21st century metropolis: New geographies of theory.” Regional Studies 43 (6): 819–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701809665. Salet, W., et al. 2003. “Practices of metropolitan governance in Europe.” In Metropolitan governance and spatial planning, ed. W. Salet, A. Thornley, and A. Kreukels, 377–90. London: Spon.

318  Governing Urban Economies Scott, A., and M. Storper. 2003. “Regions, globalization, development.” Regional Studies 37 (6–7): 549–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0034340032000 108697a. Tosics, I. 2007. “City-regions in Europe: The potentials and the realities.” Town Planning Review 78 (6): 775–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/tpr.78.6.6. Ward, K., and A. Jonas. 2004. “Competitive city-regionalism as a politics of space: A critical re-interpretation of the new regionalism.” Environment & Planning A 36 (12): 2112–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a36223. Welsh Assembly Government. 2004. People, places, futures: The Wales spatial plan. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government. Wisemann, G. 2010. “Move to defuse Stuttgart protests.” Financial Times, 7 October. Wolfe, D. 2009. 21st century cities in Canada: The geography of innovation. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada. Zimmermann, K. 2011. “Metropolitan governance in Stuttgart: New regionalism par excellence?” In Metropolitan governance: Different paths in contrasting contexts – Germany and Israel, ed. H. Heinelt, E. Razin, and K. Zimmermann, 189–205. Frankfurt: Campus.

14 Civic Infrastructures of Innovation and Inclusion? Reflections on Urban Governance in Canada allison bramwell and neil bradford

Canadian cities are young places in a young country, having evolved quickly and peacefully within the last three centuries from military forts and small trading outposts to diverse agglomerations of economic activity and social interaction in one of the most urbanized countries in the world. Canadian urban scholarship has not kept pace with these developments. Following on Katherine Graham’s assertion that “we do not have home-grown theories of local government in Canada” (Graham, Phillips, and Maslove 1998, 19) and Caroline Andrew’s (2001) lament about “the shame of (ignoring) the cities,” Taylor and Eidelman (2010, 961–2) observe that “scholarship on the institutions, processes, practices and impacts of Canadian urban politics is anaemic” and “productive scholarly debates within and across research clusters remain rare.” This paucity of scholarly attention belies the rich social fabric of Canadian cities and their growing importance as a strategic locus for national economic dynamism. Particularly few and far between in the Canadian literature are studies of urban governance and how novel inter-governmental and state–society interactions are shaping local policy processes and community building. Over the past decade, however, scholarly recognition has grown that Canadian cities are at a crossroads, facing difficult choices about how to manage economic and social change in a time of fiscal constraint, and with limited authority and capacity (Bradford 2005; Leo 2006; Horak and Young 2012). In one of the more evocative characterizations of the shifting local terrain, Tindal and Tindal (2009) chart two pathways forward. The first is the conventional and well-trodden municipal route. Cities, resigned to their constitutional irrelevance and policy constraints, accept provincial dictates and a limited role in shaping their

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own development. Most studies in urban political science track this first pathway, focusing on local administration and its impact on the core municipal business of land development and property servicing. Yet many of today’s most complex policy problems play out most intensely in cities without regard to constitutional assignments or administratively bounded responsibilities. Indeed, Tindal and Tindal’s second pathway captures the mix of challenge and opportunity for cities whose leaders and citizens embrace more ambitious roles and envision alternative futures. Cities heading in this direction take on an “enhanced policy role,” seeking innovative ways to adapt to change, in part by mobilizing civic capacities around a “policy process centred in, and responsive to, the local community” (ibid., 392). On this second pathway, cities are at the forefront of developing new forms of collaborative regional governance, as well as gaining status within multilevel governance arrangements by “contributing local insights … recognized as increasingly valuable in shaping provincial and federal policies with a spatial impact” (ibid., 396). This volume’s study of urban governance in eleven Canadian cityregions has explored the problems and possibilities along Tindal and Tindal’s second pathway. Framing their projection empirically, our authors questioned whether and how cities are seeking the more ambitious way of policy engagement, collaborative planning, and joined-up action. Are cities building multi-sectoral coalitions to shape local strategies for social and economic development, and if so, in what ways? Are city-regions exhibiting new forms of collaborative governance or do they follow older patterns of inter-municipal competition? Are cities finding their policy voice within emerging forms of multilevel governance or do they remain subservient to the mandates of upper-level governments? This concluding chapter draws together the key lessons learned from our individual city case studies. We begin by identifying three conditions that seem necessary if cities are to practise collaborative governance for more integrated, strategic development. Observing that none of our cities fully meets such conditions, we map the different governance dynamics through a new typology capturing various “middle range” modes of collaboration. We close with a brief reflection on how our findings inform two central debates in Canadian urban studies, drawing out more general lessons and research questions about the theory and practice of urban governance.

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Collaborative Governance in Cities? Enabling Conditions Taken together, the chapters in this volume indicate that there is considerable governance experimentation under way in Canadian cities as local decision makers tackle policy challenges head on, engaging with other levels of government, community organizations, and business networks along the way. It is one thing for governance initiatives to form, however, and quite another for them to perform. Building horizontal and vertical forms of collaborative governance that include diverse interests, endure over time, and deliver tangible results is a tall order. Certainly, our case studies clarify the obstacles. But they also suggest certain factors or circumstances supporting cities choosing to travel this ambitious route. Three such enabling conditions come into focus: local autonomy; policy capacity; and democratic accountability.

Local Autonomy Local autonomy remains rather a vague and undeveloped concept in Canada. Generally referring to the limited policy freedom and fiscal resources municipalities possess, it has channelled much Canadian municipal research to legislated mandates in land use planning and service delivery functions. A wide-ranging literature documents the entrenched constitutional barriers to an expanded view of municipal initiative (Sancton and Young 2009; Sancton 2011; Horak and Young 2012). Exploring the potential rather than assuming the limits, our chapters offer a different perspective on these issues. Interested in how municipalities shape the development trajectories of their cities through interaction with community-based and governmental actors, they identify several factors that shape possibilities for more autonomous action. First, with the largest city-regions, inter-municipal cooperation matters. Establishing a collective voice on economic and social issues that clearly cross municipal boundaries can concentrate scarce local resources while community-based, regionally orchestrated plans are leveraged for strategic action. Second, and directly related to the unity of local vision and voice, is the city’s increasing bargaining position within inter-governmental and increasingly multilevel governance relations. Here, the third issue influencing local autonomy arises – leadership within municipal institutions as well as civil society and the economy. In short, cities with more autonomy are better positioned for collaborative

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­ overnance. Achieving such autonomy, however, requires influential g leadership with a unified vision and resourceful strategy. What do our chapters tell us about local autonomy? Most confirm its limits and barriers. Collective responses to region-wide social and economic policy challenges are impeded by multiple levels of fragmentation in the Greater Toronto Area and the Greater Vancouver Regional District, both of which lack institutional mechanisms to coordinate policy on cross-boundary issues over more than twenty separate municipalities. Not confined to large city-regions, challenges of regional scale are also evident in smaller places like London, St John’s, and Moncton. There the dominance of “growth machine” approaches to economic development, or inter-municipal competition with business attraction incentives, continues to overshadow more collaborative planning for longer-term resilience. In both the larger and medium-sized cities, then, intra-regional tensions inhibit internal unity of purpose and external marketing of regional assets. Macro-institutional policy frameworks also constrain local autonomy. Federal and provincial governments are involved in multiple ways and to different degrees in public policies delivered at the urban level, but multilevel governance arrangements that vertically align the fiscal and policy resources of federal, provincial, and municipal governments are rare. The integrated multilevel Community Economic Development Corporations for neighbourhood revitalization in Montreal are a “partnership-based mode of governance” distinctive not just in Canada but in North America. Indeed, our other case studies offer little evidence of aligned multilevel governance arrangements that empower municipalities and embed their priorities. In Vancouver and Toronto, for example, federal and provincial policies were not attuned to the particular needs of these two mega-cities, and in other medium-sized cities intergovernmental collaboration occurred only around narrowly defined policy issues, if at all. In Saskatoon, for example, efforts to “adapt strategic development initiatives to the city-region level” were often lost in the “lack of respect for the priorities of lower orders of government” (Phillips and Webb, this volume). In the St John’s city-region, provincial reluctance to devolve decision making to municipal and regional development organizations left local actors “suffering from federal and provincial discord” and struggling to coordinate their activities, much less build collaborative governance (Greenwood, this volume). At the same time, several chapters pointed to the role of local leadership in forging some measure of autonomy. In Hamilton, Waterloo,

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Calgary, and Ottawa various combinations of civic leaders came together to shape a collective vision for how social and economic development should unfold in each of these cities. High-profile leaders, typically but not always drawn from the business community, often initiated the process by calling public attention to city-wide problems, recruiting other influential partners with resources – networks, knowledge, money – to participate in governance efforts. Despite significant local and regional fragmentation, cohesive and high-profile civic leadership is widely credited for jump-starting the Toronto City Summit Alliance and maintaining momentum for the initiative until it was sufficiently institutionalized to sustain itself. “Civic entrepreneurs” drawn from both the public and private sectors emerge as key drivers of collaboration in more targeted sector networks and project partnerships in St John’s and Saskatoon. Given the “weak mayor” system that prevails in the Canadian municipal system, this volume’s attention to other forms of local leadership is not surprising. As economic and social challenges move well beyond municipal capabilities, community-based networks are defining local priorities and mobilizing collective resources. Better understanding the role of local politicians in such civic collaborations emerges as a significant research topic on the urban governance agenda.

Policy Capacity If local autonomy involves the freedom local actors have to collectively set strategic goals and influence economic and social development in their city, policy capacity refers to the ability to research, develop, and implement these priorities. It rests on a blend of technical expertise and policy resources, acquired through both multilevel governance networks and local linkages with organizations representing different interests and populations in the community and economy. As in the case of local autonomy, the prevailing view of Canadian municipal policy capacity is quite negative. Stewart and Smith (2007, 265, 283) argue that municipal staff mostly provide “truncated and unsophisticated” policy analysis, which is “problematic in an era when cities are gaining more powers and more independence from senior levels of government.” While not centrally addressing this issue, our case studies highlight a different dynamic, showing how municipal officials – if not always elected politicians – are engaging with civic leaders and sector networks to generate ideas, construct visions, and take action. In the process, local policymaking becomes more complex in terms of the breadth of issues tackled, the range

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of actors involved, and the institutional settings. Overall, municipal governments are becoming more engaged in collaborative governance efforts, variously acting as catalysts, conveners, partners, and funders in emerging networks of policy dialogue and development. With cities now key sites for economic innovation and social inclusion, municipal governments increasingly look outward to their local civil societies to build policy capacity for an agenda beyond traditional land development, service administration, and physical infrastructure. Along these lines, the case studies reveal interesting variation. In matters of social development, municipal officials in several cities, notably Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, and Hamilton, have each worked closely with community organizations in strategic planning processes that trigger innovations in service delivery and social inclusion. Elsewhere municipal-community policy partnerships evolved through social learning processes such as Toronto’s neighbourhood revitalization task force and St John’s provincial poverty reduction strategy. Similar policy development mechanisms addressing the cultural dimensions of innovation and inclusion were deployed in London through its Creative City Task Force, in Vancouver through its Multicultural Advisory Committee, and in Waterloo through its Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network. In some cities, Moncton and Saskatoon, for example, the social development sector remains quite fragmented, more preoccupied with individual mandates and funding flows than seeking inter-sectoral policy partnerships around community-wide issues. On the economic development front, our chapters capture policy patterns across cities with different forms of business organization, industrial specializations, and economic development activities. In Ottawa and Waterloo, cities with clusters of knowledge-intensive information and communications technology industries, highly organized private, not-for-profit industry associations work directly with local government on issues of broad economic significance to the region, going far beyond traditional preoccupations with land servicing and physical planning. The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation formally partners with the City of Ottawa to shape municipal economic development strategy. In Waterloo, three civic organizations and business networks, Commu­ nitech, Canada’s Technology Triangle, and the Prosperity Council of Waterloo Region all collaborate with local and regional governments in Waterloo to leverage upper-level government investment in research infrastructure, technology transfer, and human capital. In other cities, however, the local business community is not a dynamic policy actor or

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governance partner. In Toronto, London, and Hamilton, sector fragmentation has tended to limit strategic policy intervention. In Moncton and Calgary, business interests remain rather “exclusionary” in their orientations, disinclined to partner with local community organizations or government. Overall, then, our chapters describe an emerging pattern wherein local actors from the government, community, and private sectors are acting strategically to build their collective capacity to address more complex economic and social challenges. However the policy pathways vary. In some cities societal interests are well organized for active engagement and participation in collaborative problem solving. In other cities, those same interests are fragmented and competitive, making them less reliable governance partners. Thus, while enhanced municipal policy capacity is a priority everywhere, the prospects for success through a broad base of knowledge and networks are not the same.

Democratic Accountability If policy capacity refers to the ability of municipal governments to collaborate with local civic actors and engage multilevel governance, democratic accountability refers to the legitimacy and performance of these processes. To what extent are societal interests and the wider public shaping policy choices and who is responsible for results? The emergence of new forms of collaborative governance has shifted analytical attention from a focus on electoral mechanisms and service delivery functions that only weakly link citizens with government, to an alternative view of local democracy working through networks of organized interests and processes of policy dialogue. In this view, no single agency can tackle complex problems on its own and a wide range of local actors engage in knowledge sharing, trust building, and social learning to increase the collective capacity to design and deliver innovative urban policy responses (Briggs 2008; Green and Haines 2012). A potential dark side to local governance, however, concerns democratic accountability. Its legitimacy rests on the equitable representation of diverse social interests and wider citizen “buy in,” qualities that can easily be lost through closed processes where narrow agendas come to dominate. In turn, the performance of collaborative governance refers to its evolution past the “talk stage” to outcome-driven strategic behaviour through policy advocacy and program design and implementation. On this basis, governance processes are sustained over time despite

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inevitable changes in leadership, funding, or political agendas (McQuaid 2010). Yet important questions remain about the relationship between legitimacy and performance, and it is possible that functional governance fails to meet tests of democratic accountability. The case studies in this volume offer insights into these questions about the democratic accountability, legitimacy, and performance of governance. While there is evidence of robust governance activities in many Canadian cities, several critical observations arise. First, generally speaking, social development networks are more open and inclusive than economic development ones. Well-organized and highly representative networks of social development actors in Hamilton, Ottawa, and St  John’s are notable for their openness to numerous local actors and agencies in efforts to coordinate local service delivery and policy advocacy. Beyond the ability to organize themselves to attract sufficient provincial or federal resources to support further institutionalization, however, the actual performance of these initiatives in the form of policies or programs with measurable impacts is less clear. A second observation suggests that narrower economic development networks exhibit stronger performance. Ottawa and Waterloo boast industry associations that not only have attracted policy attention from federal and provincial governments, but also demonstrate sustained and influential participation in strategic local economic development activities. Largely precluding the active participation of economic interests outside the knowledge-intensive ICT sector as well as social welfare advocates, this dominance over local economic development agendas could “be used to justify policies that stifle debate, limit participation, and oppose change” (Nelles, this volume). A third observation, however, is that this admonition rings particularly true in several cities where parochialism and vested interests resistant to the inclusion of new interests and ideas result in some of the weakest and least developed governance structures. Entrenched interests in Moncton and London that dominated closed and exclusionary political decisionmaking processes functional in more settled times in each city’s economic development currently hinder formation of inclusive governance mechanisms that enable creative adaptation to new challenges. Simi­ larly, project partnerships prevail in Saskatoon where local actors remain largely uninterested in collaborative activities that reach beyond their own immediate interests to address a wider urban agenda. Problems of democratic accountability and legitimacy are also evident in Calgary, where a well-organized network of “the 300” most influential

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business leaders in the city closed to those “who do not share the network’s views and priorities” intentionally operates outside the purview of government and community organizations on issues of immigrant settlement and homelessness (Feng, Li, and Langford, this volume). Along these lines, a fourth observation about performance and legitimacy emerges from those cities where little or no collaboration was evident. Several issues arise that speak to larger normative and practical questions about collaboration itself. For example, should cities such as Moncton or London be dismissed as “governance failures” – somehow deficient in leadership or spirit – struggling to catch up to their more sophisticated competitors? Or might their sectoral, even siloed approaches, be an appropriate and defensible response to existing alignments and institutional histories? Simply put, we can’t yet declare a particular form of collaboration to be everywhere and always the optimal form of urban governance, with all cities more or less progressing towards a common set of “winning arrangements.” Variation prevails across our cities and further research is required to both explain pathways and assess performance. In fact, among our eleven cases, only two can be said to demonstrate both substantial legitimacy and performance, yet each reflects different multilevel governance dynamics, making generalization difficult. Supported by provincially mandated and federally supported policy, the neighbourhood revitalization initiative in Montreal is inclusive of a wide range of local actors, including business, employment, and social service providers and representatives from all three levels of government. Its legitimacy is reinforced by performance, delivering concrete programs and demonstrating sustainability over time. A different route to success has been followed by the Greater Toronto Civic Alliance. Without consistent federal, provincial, or municipal support, it relies on broad-based civic leadership to build and sustain momentum through a variety of strategies and mechanisms. Convening regular large summits to solicit community input and ideas, the Alliance has been successful in policy advocacy, and reports progress on numerous economic and social development projects. It is perhaps the most inclusive and highest performing governance initiative represented in this volume. In summary, the case studies presented here suggest that local autonomy, policy capacity, and democratic accountability interact in important ways, both enabling and constraining the strategic management of economic and social change in Canadian city-regions. The types of new governance relations described in our chapters track the evolving

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autonomy and capacity of local actors to shape urban development. At the same time, however, variation in the democratic accountability of these initiatives suggests that concerns about the representativeness, performance, and sustainability of these processes are not unfounded. Governance challenges arise everywhere, taking place-specific expression in different contexts. Governing Urban Economies: Variation on a Theme We asked questions at the outset about whether or not cities are becoming more activist, engaging community-based actors and business networks in the policy process, developing new forms of collaboration, and gaining status within emerging channels of multilevel governance. On these questions, our chapters offer two main answers. First, there is variation across cities. Some places are building a strategic capacity for collective and integrated responses, while others are less able or inclined to mobilize across sectors and governments. Second, it is clear that none of the cities is fully launched down the activist “second pathway” charted by Tindal and Tindal. None yet exhibits a robust synthesis of the enabling conditions – local autonomy, policy capacity, and democratic accountability. At the same time, however, none remains firmly entrenched in the safer “first pathway” of limited ambitions, passive subservience, and traditional roles. In sum, there is considerable “governance work” ongoing in Canadian city-regions. Nascent and fragile everywhere, the specific dynamics and forms vary across places. We are thus left to interpret a rather messy and ambiguous urban governance space in between the two pathways charted by Tindal and Tindal. Our chapters indicate that this in-between space – between institutional sectors, levels of government, policy fields – is where much of the governing of Canadian city-regions now plays out. In mapping this space, the threefold governance typology outlined in this volume’s opening chapter offers a way forward, capturing variation in the settings, drivers, and scope of urban governance in Canadian cities. Each of these governance types exhibits a particular collaborative logic related to institutional structures, the roles played by municipal government, patterns of interaction between social and economic sectors, and leadership styles. Institutionalized collaboratives are evident in different forms and degrees in Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Waterloo, where regular interactions between economic and social actors aimed at city-wide strategic

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development agendas are driven by high-profile civic leaders, with municipal government variously involved through funding, the participation of municipal staff, and support from municipal politicians. Sector networks shape governance in cities where the challenges of economic and social development are consistently addressed separately through relatively well-organized community and business actors. These networks share information internally to improve coordination, leverage resources, or advocate policy, but have few linkages for inter-network exchange and therefore cross-sectoral work. Such a “two worlds” pattern characterized development strategies in Calgary, Ottawa, and St John’s, with economic and social networks working independently of one other but often developing their own functional relations with government departments at different levels to advance sector goals. Finally, a third category of governance relations is best described as project partnerships, wherein local actors demonstrate little sustained collaboration or sectoral leadership but “join up” episodically around narrow, time-limited initiatives. Such public-private partnerships often respond to funding opportunities from upper-level governments in areas of physical infrastructure. Focused on mutual gains from specific investments, they neither express a wider city-region development strategy nor institutionalize a durable capacity for collective action. Collaboration in Saskatoon, London, Moncton, and Vancouver took this form, with loose, passing, and in some cases dysfunctional partnerships emerging in matters ranging from synchrotron light research (Saskatoon) and a transportation hub (London), and more tenuously in immigrant settlement (Vancouver) and community development planning (Moncton). Lessons and Implications (1): Informing Governance and Policy Debates These three governance types provide a way of organizing the casestudy findings which collectively suggest that Canadian city-regions are not clearly travelling down either of Tindal and Tindal’s two pathways, but rather are navigating the messy and ambiguous space in between. Returning to our earlier point about the paucity of urban governance studies in Canada, these findings also speak to several emerging scholarly debates, each of which resonates with more advanced comparative work in the field, and merits further dedicated Canadian research. Two such debates are especially germane, one analytical and focused on interpreting local governance dynamics and the other more

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prescriptive and aimed at improving extra-local, multilevel policy processes. In the former case, the question is whether the highly influential American-based “regime theory” fits well with Canadian urban governance structures and processes. In the latter case, the concern is a broader public policy discussion, one that acknowledges the inevitable involvement of all levels of government in the complex issues now converging in city-regions, and goes further to explore prospects for replacing Canada’s competitive, two-level federalism with place-based approaches that better align interventions and respond to local priorities.

Urban Regimes or Development Coalitions? Urban regime theory, pioneered over thirty years ago by Clarence Stone, remains a dominant analytical framework in American and comparative urban governance studies (Stone 1989, 2005). It offers a powerful lens for explaining the emergence and persistence of governing relationships involving municipal politicians, administrators, and the local business community who join up to make and implement consensual policies in a strategic fashion over long periods of time. For Stone and others applying his framework, urban regimes function on the basis of agreement on a feasible policy agenda, appropriate incentives to cooperate, and adequate resources to deliver results. Widely applied in the American urban context, regime theory has found much more mixed reception in European research and, beyond a few studies, has “found little purchase in the Canadian literature” (Taylor and Eidelman 2010). The case studies in this volume underscore the limits of regime theory in relation to Canadian urban governance. Across our cities, design and delivery of development strategies was shaped as much by extralocal factors ranging from provincial and federal governments to footloose corporations. Only in a few cases – Waterloo and perhaps Ottawa – could local business interests be said to be organized sufficiently for the level of strategic collective action and partnership required for regimes. In the cities where more durable agendas were emerging and acquiring institutional foundations, the collaborations featured considerable leadership from community-based actors looking to leverage social priorities like poverty reduction, immigrant settlement, and community economic development. In Montreal, Hamilton, and Toronto such broad-based coalition dynamics were evident, countering the business-centred logic of regimes. This finding intersects with Kristin R. Good’s extension of the regime concept beyond traditional corporate

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priorities to include social development, notably immigrant attraction and settlement (Good 2009). Overall, however, our chapters suggest the analytical merits of the “development coalition” as a conceptual lens on local collective action in Canadian municipalities (Keating 2002). Development coalitions are place-based alliances of actors working together for economic and social development in a city or region, delivering critical infrastructure or public goods and fostering dialogue and communication across sectors. Importantly, the social composition, political leadership, and policy content of the coalitions will likely vary from one locale to another, as will their durability. Institutional bases also differ, ranging from municipal agencies, planning councils, and community roundtables to more fluid project-specific partnerships without an identifiable venue. Unlike the regime model, the development coalition framework is explicitly attuned to diversity in civic leadership, variation in governance arrangements, and mix in development strategy. “The goals of policy can be multiple,” Michael Keating writes, “and the policy process, the policy mix, and the means of implementation will all be specific to particular places” (ibid., 376). Given the fluid and varied character of collaboration in Canadian city-regions, the concept of development coalitions seems a better departure point for analysis of urban governance than regime theory.

Place-based Policy or Two-level Federalism? In their conceptualization of the second development pathway for municipalities, Tindal and Tindal reference “local insights that are now recognized as increasingly valuable in shaping provincial and federal policies with a spatial impact” (Tindal and Tindal 2009, 396). At issue here is the reciprocal influence of local assets and upper-level government resources on both community well-being and public policy performance. These synergies arise in the context of what the OECD and other policy analysts term “wicked problems” that are entrenched, interconnected, and highly localized in their expression (but, importantly, not their origins) (Maxwell 2007). The policy problems and governance challenges explored in this volume, at the intersection of urban economic and social development, fit this description. They call for public policy interventions that work from the “ground up,” informed by the priorities of local actors, and leveraged through their assets and capacities. Such interventions, multilevel in design and collaborative in

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delivery, are place-based. Their particular value comes from the blend of inputs, combining the professional technical expertise of governments with the experiential know-how of local networks and front-line organizations. Rather than acting alone or declaring jurisdictional control, governments work with one another and through civil-society networks towards solutions reflecting the differentiated complexity of contemporary urban Canada. The case studies in this volume highlight the general absence of such approaches in Canadian city-regions. Montreal’s place-based integration of economic and social goals through community development stands out as the vibrant exception. In a few other places, notably St John’s and to some extent Saskatoon, there were examples of inter-governmental alignment on sector priorities or project partnerships. Overall, the picture is a patchwork of inter-governmental interactions, more often than not leaving local actors sidelined or working at cross-purposes on onesize-fits-all mandates issued from above. These findings confirm much existing knowledge about inter-­ governmental relations and urbanized policy challenges. A 2006 report to the prime minister on cities and communities concluded that “governments in Canada have lost their sense of place in policy-making” (External Advisory Committee 2006, 15). Canadian federalism has long featured a competitive inter-governmental ethos of rights, order, and control (Gross Stein 2006). Moreover, the game is only two-levelled, as municipalities and community-based organizations have no seat at the table. Both federal and provincial governments define their respective goals and programs without much reference to either wider impacts or local spillovers. As Janice Stein summarizes, in today’s global-local age, such a “neat division of powers and alignment of responsibilities” is the “wrong paradigm” (ibid., 19). Instead, Stein and others call for “networked” or “deep” federalism that aligns actors and tailors policy to local places (Leo 2006). In sum, the experiences documented in this volume with so-called wicked problems reinforce the message from an OECD report on multilevel governance: “National policies are increasingly important, not only to provide better framework conditions for local initiatives, but also and especially to take better account of the many sectoral and macroeconomic policies which have a territorial impact” (OECD 2002, 21). For governments and community-based actors active in city-­regions, new policy imperatives frame complex governance challenges. As the 2006 report to the prime minister concluded, “Canada needs to catch

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up with other countries on the issue of place” (External Advisory Committee 2006, 15). Lessons and Implications (2): More Urban Governance Research The growing importance of the urban and regional scale to social and economic development and policy performance, coupled with the paucity of research on urban governance in Canada, suggests numerous opportunities for further inquiry. This volume’s theoretically informed case studies have brought into focus several key issues meriting further systematic analysis. Five sets of questions are particularly salient. First, while these chapters make important observations about substantial variation in institutional forms and governance dynamics across cities, they are less robust in explaining why such differences exist. Well-chosen comparisons could now explore the conditions under which different development paths are pursued and why particular governance relationships take hold in some places but not others. Second, an important theme, or perhaps a key tension, running throughout our governance chapters concerns the relationship between representative democracy led by politicians and associational or collaborative forms typically driven by actors in civil society or the economy. Examination of the links between collaborative governance institutions or networks and local government officials, both elected and bureaucratic, would help unpack issues of accountability and legitimacy. What conditions enable civic entrepreneurs and municipal officials to cooperate? What benefits do the respective sectors offer to one another, whether in policy terms or less tangible relationship building? Is political support ultimately critical to sustainable governance relations? Temporality also emerged as an intriguing element in many of the chapters. Collaboration not only varies in type but evolves over time. A third set of questions focuses on factors that enable sustainability. Analysis needs to consider material and moral incentives to cooperate, as well as exogenous triggers such as economic crisis or upper-level government funding that can rapidly focus the attention of local actors. Equally important are historical legacies, economic specializations, and cultural traditions that channel institutional-political action over time. Fourth, this volume’s focus on governance dynamics highlights the complex relationship between urban policy capacity and local political autonomy. On the one hand, there are sound reasons to view collaborative governance as enhancing local policy capacity. On the other

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hand, municipalities that are “creatures of the provinces” remain constrained in their freedom to forge such relations and support institutional partnerships. At the same time, multilevel governance dynamics can alter the local setting in ways that shift both capacity and autonomy. An exciting research agenda locates municipal governments at the intersection of horizontal and vertical policy networks, and explores their autonomy to participate and capacity to contribute. Finally, there are larger conceptual and theoretical issues at play. The first of these concerns the emerging debate in Canadian urban studies about the optimal conceptual frameworks for development analysis. Our volume makes the case for “developmental coalitions” as a promising departure point, suggesting further that the American-based regime theory carries several conditions and connotations ill suited to the Canadian setting. The issue is far from settled, and recent work has productively applied the regime model to capture relations in specific policy fields. Further policy case studies in Canadian cities can build on this discussion. A second line of conceptual inquiry arising from our chapters relates to the threefold governance typology. Specifically, more local policy analysis is required to assess relative governance performance through these different types, and also to interpret institutional dynamics over time, probing whether cities progress through different types to an “optimal model” or rather mix and match to produce “governance hybrids.” Contributions can be made to wider debates about institutional form, stability, and change. Conclusion This volume has explored issues of economic and social development in Canadian city-regions, focusing on governance relations designed to strengthen urban policy capacity and community outcomes. Its analytical departure point was twofold: first, the growing importance of urban centres as strategic sites of economic and social interaction in a global age and, second, awareness that tackling the complex challenges and opportunities is beyond the resources and reach of any single sector or actor. As Meric Gertler has put it: “The geographies of prosperity and poverty are not dissimilar”; both are “urban phenomena” and it follows that “we need to ask some very searching questions about the governance of our cities” (Gertler 2001, 127). Indeed, our case-study chapters suggest that local development debates in Canada are increasingly framed by two strategic discourses

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with shared visions of collaboration, one about economic innovation and the other social inclusion. Both emphasize the value of geographical proximity and networked relations in creating the new knowledge, institutional capacities, and policy focus that are widely seen to underpin urban success in the twenty-first-century global context. In turn, each discourse, in practice, requires governance mechanisms that bring together sectors and levels of government for joint problem solving. Assess­ing the problems and prospects for such collaboration, this volume’s eleven case studies collectively describe a dynamic urban governance landscape characterized by considerable experimentation, evident variation, and uncertain performance. The Canadian experience underscores several general lessons about the political economy of urban governance and development. First, despite normative assertions about the value of joined-up local governance and integrated development, “on the ground” practice remains nascent and fragile. Second, there is no single pathway to such collaboration. City-regions take particular routes shaped by their own institutional histories, leadership styles, and power relations. Finally, progress along any of the governance pathways is not easy. Governments at all levels need to work with an unfamiliar “governance toolbox” and local actors must test new strategies that connect their “economy and community.” While our case studies reveal considerable experimentation, they also underscore the need for concerted social learning across scales and sectors if Canadian city-regions are to secure an innovative and inclusive future in an increasingly turbulent global economy. At the same time, and from a public policy perspective, this volume underscores the importance of seeking more integrated forms of local development. In an age of growing income gaps, intense industrial restructuring, and increasingly concentrated poverty, there are compelling reasons for urban policy frameworks that balance the imperatives of economic innovation and social inclusion. Such balanced policy frameworks, in turn, require broad-based engagement that combines the resources of governments, civil-society organizations, business networks, knowledge centres, and citizens. To this end, our chapters have explored a different conception of urban infrastructure, one that looks beyond traditional divides between “hard” property services for the economy and “soft” community services for the society. Bringing together the economic and social dimensions of urban development through the lens of collaborative governance, this volume has framed a wider policy conversation about shared investments in civic infrastructures of innovation

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and inclusion. As the chapters all remind us, the pathway forward is challenging and there is no blueprint for either the governance infrastructures or the urban investments. The scope and scale of the issues playing out in Canadian city-regions will require further creative commitment from governments and citizens alike. REFERENCES Andrew, C. 2001. “The shame of (ignoring) the cities.” Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d’Études Canadiennes 35 (4): 100–10. Bradford, N. 2005. Place-based public policy: Towards a new urban and community agenda for Canada. Research Report. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 2008. Democracy as problem-solving: Civic capacity in communities across the globe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. External Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities. 2006. From restless communities to resilient places. Final report. Ottawa: Infrastructure Canada. Gertler, M.S. 2001. “Urban economy and society in Canada: Flows of people, capital and ideas.” Isuma 2 (3): 119–30. Good, K.R. 2009. Municipalities and multiculturalism: The politics of immigration in Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Graham, K., S.D. Phillips, and A. Maslove. 1998. Urban governance in Canada: Representation, resources, restructuring. Toronto: Harcourt Brace. Green, G.P., and A. Haines. 2012. Asset building and community development. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gross Stein, J. 2006. “Canada by Mondrian: Networked federalism in an era of globalization.” In Canada by Picasso: The faces of federalism. The 2006 Scholar-in-Residence lecture, 15–58. Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada. Horak, M., and R.A. Young, eds. 2012. Sites of governance: Multilevel governance and policy making in Canada’s big cities. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Keating, M. 2001. “Governing cities and regions: Territorial restructuring in a global age.” In Global city-regions: Trends, theory, policy, ed. A.J. Scott, 371–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leo, C. 2006. “Deep federalism: Respecting community difference in national policy.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 39 (3): 481–506. http://dx.doi .org/10.1017/S0008423906060240. Maxwell, J. 2007. Looking down the road: Leadership for Canada’s changing communities. Research report. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks.

Reflections on Urban Governance in Canada  337 McQuaid, R.W. 2010. “Theory of organizational partnerships: Partnership advantages, disadvantages and success factors.” In The new public governance? Emerging perspectives on the theory and practice of public governance, ed. S.P. Osborne, 127–48. London: Routledge. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2002. Urban Renaissance, Glasgow: Lessons for implementation. Paris: OECD. Sancton, A. 2011. Canadian local government: An urban perspective. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Sancton, A., and R.A. Young. 2009. Foundations of governance: Municipal governance in Canada’s provinces. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stewart, K., and P. Smith. 2007. “Immature policy analysis: Building capacity in eight Major Canadian cities.” In Policy analysis in Canada: The state of the art, ed. L. Dobuzinskis, M. Howlett, and D. Laycock, 265–88. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stone, C. 1989. Regime politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Stone, C. 2005. “Looking back to look forward: Reflections on urban regime analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (3): 309–41. Taylor, Z., and G. Eidelman. 2010. “Canadian political science and the city: A limited engagement.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 43 (4): 961–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0008423910000715. Tindal, C.R., and S.N. Tindal. 2009. Local government in Canada. 7th ed. Toronto: Nelson.

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Contributors

Caroline Andrew is the director of the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa. Her current research interests all revolve around the analysis of local government policies of equity and diversity and include evaluating the implementation of the Equity and Inclusion Lens by the City of Ottawa, studying the Ottawa partnership behind the Youth Futures program, multicultural media use and production in Ottawa, and a community history of Thompson, Manitoba. Yves Bourgeois is Director of the Urban and Community Studies Institute at the University of New Brunswick. A graduate of UCLA (PhD), Edinburgh, Oxford, and Moncton universities, his research centres on the linkages between urban growth and innovation, creativity and cultural identity formation. Neil Bradford is professor of political science, Huron University College, Western University, and adjunct research professor in political economy, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University. His research interests include urban and community economic development, multilevel governance, and place-based public policy. Allison Bramwell is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Specializing in urban politics, governance, and political economy, her current research interests include urban policy networks and local state–society relations, crosssector collaboration in complex policy areas, and the politics of workforce development.

340 Contributors

Renee Cheung is an MDM candidate in the Centre for Digital Media at Simon Fraser University. Paulina Chow-White is project manager of GeNA Lab in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. David Doloreux is professor of management at the University of Ottawa and holds the research chair in entrepreneurship, innovation, and regional development. His current research interests include innovation in manufacturing and service industries and the factors that influence innovation at the regional and national levels. He has extensively published books and articles on the topics of regional clusters, innovation systems, and regional development. Patrick Feng is an assistant professor in the Department of Communica­ tion and Culture at the University of Calgary. Jean-Marc Fontan, PhD, is professor of sociology and director of the Incubateur universitaire Parole d’excluEs (IUPE) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). As director of the social innovation collection of the Presses de l’Université du Québec, he promotes the publication of a variety of studies on social innovation. He has over twenty years’ experience in action research with local and community development actors and has an important number of publications and communications in this field. Karen Fung is an MA candidate in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. Rob Greenwood is executive director of public engagement at the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John’s. Juan-Luis Klein is professor of economic geography at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the director of the Centre de recherche sur l’innovation sociale (CRISES). He is also in charge of the series “Géographie contemporaine,” published by the Presses de l’Université du Québec and has authored and co-authored several books and articles on the topics of economic geography, local development, and social innovation.

Contributors 341

Cooper H. Langford is a professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. Ben Li is with the University of Oulu Department of Information Processing Science, Finland. Kevin Morgan is professor of governance and development in the School of Planning and Geography and dean of engagement at Cardiff University. His research interests include the interplay of governance and development; place-based innovation systems and strategies; sustainable food systems; and ethical/social enterprise. Jen Nelles is an adjunct assistant professor in urban affairs and planning at Hunter College, CUNY, in New York City. Her current research focuses on power and decision-making networks in metropolitan regions in the development of regional infrastructure. Her first book, Comparative Metropolitan Policy: Governing beyond Local Boundaries in the Imagined Metropolis, was published in 2012. Peter W.B. Phillips is professor of public policy in the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan. He undertakes research on governing transformative innovation, including regulation and policy, innovation systems, intellectual property, supply chain management, and trade policy. He is author or editor of thirteen books, over forty journal articles, and over fifty book chapters, most related to innovation in the global bioscience system. Richard Smith is a professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and director of the Master of Digital Media program. His research focus is social inclusion (and exclusion) brought on by the introduction of new media. He has an ongoing interest in technology for education, privacy and surveillance in public spaces, online communities, and the wireless information society. Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay is professor of labour economics and human resources management at the University of Québec (Téluq) and Canada Research Chair on the Socio-organizational Challenges of the Knowledge Economy. Her current research interests include creative and industrial clusters, innovation, employment, work-life articulation, telework, and work organization. She has been an invited professor in

342 Contributors

a dozen universities and has written over twenty books and some one hundred articles. J. Patrick Truman is an MDM candidate in the Centre for Digital Media at Simon Fraser University. Graeme Webb is a PhD candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. David A. Wolfe is the Royal Bank Chair in Public and Economic Policy and director of the Innovation Policy Lab and Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems at the University of Toronto. He served as national coordinator of the Innovation Systems Research Network from its inception and was the principal investigator on its two major collaborative research projects.