City Politics in Canada

Canada’s big cities are at the forefront of social and economic change. They account for most of Canada’s population growth, they are magnets for immigrants from all parts of the world, and they have led Canada’s shift from an industrial to a post-industrial economy. Today, perhaps more than ever, Canada’s cities are the places where new policy problems, new political movements, and new demands for representation first emerge. In City Politics in Canada: Forty Years of Continuity and Change, co-editors Martin Horak, Jack Lucas, and Zack Taylor and their team of authors explore how these great transformations have reshaped the practice of politics in seven large Canadian cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Calgary. In doing so, they revisit and carry forward the ambition of City Politics in Canada, edited by Warren Magnusson and Andrew Sancton and published by UTP in 1983. That landmark volume was the first to offer an in-depth view of Canadian city politics. Forty years later, a new generation of scholars take up the same expansive, cross-country goal. The editors’ introduction presents a holistic picture of urban change in Canada, complete with up-to-date social, economic, fiscal, and electoral data, and identifies important questions. The city chapters, written by local experts, illuminate the dynamics of political continuity and change over four transformative decades. In the closing chapter, the editors synthesize the findings to draw out new insights about the nature of Canadian urban politics.