Canadian Cities on the Edge: Reassessing the Canadian Suburb

The City Institute at York University (CITY) Canadian Cities on the Edge: Reassessing the Canadian Suburb Rob Fiedler and Jean-Paul Addie Occasional Paper Series Volume 1, Issue 1 February 2008 Rob Fiedler and Jean-Paul Addie are both Ph. D Candidates in the Department of Geography at York University and can be reached at either: [email protected] or [email protected] 1 Abstract Half a century of explosive suburban expansion has fundamentally changed the metropolitan dynamic in North American city-regions. In many cities the imagined suburban “bourgeois utopias” that evolved during the 19th Century, in material and discursive opposition to the maladies of the city, have given way to diverse forms of suburban and exurban development. New, complex and contradictory landscapes with diverse social, infrastructural and political-economic characteristics have appeared within pre-existing urbanisms and urban forms. This maelstrom of growth, with its associated fluid geographical restructuring, is being reflected in qualitatively different rhythms of everyday suburban life and has engendered stresses in the institutional and infrastructural cohesion of the metropolis – problematizing scalar governmental relations between city and suburbs, the theoretical and applied use of “urban” solutions to address “suburban” problems, and what constitutes “urbanity” itself. Focusing on the Canadian context from a broad (yet by no means exclusive range of methodological and theoretical perspectives, it can be argued that, despite their ubiquitous presence, suburban society, space and politics have been unduly sidelined in various bodies of geographic literature. In response to this deficit, we think it is time to develop a research agenda for critically unpacking the complex social, institutional and infrastructural realities of contemporary suburban landscapes. In particular, we suggest future studies of “the suburbs” may benefit by engaging with the following: (1) the continuing predominance of an uncritical city-suburb dichotomy; (2) the presence of “in- between landscapes”, poorly acknowledged in both urban and suburban imaginaries; (3) the theoretical de-valorization of “forgotten” suburban spaces and lives within the contemporary metropolis; and (4) the dialectical interplay between (sub)urban society, space and politics. A re-conceptualisation of “the suburbs” requires a holistic understanding of the city’s varied landscapes, everyday realities, and contemporary political infrastructures, allowing us to grasp the fluidity and dynamism (and emerging contradictions) shaping present-day urban experiences in Canadian city-regions. 2 Introduction Half-a-century of explosive suburban expansion has fundamentally transformed the metropolitan dynamic in North America. Sprawling city-regions now subsume historic central cities—rendering problematic many conventional and popularly-held understandings and representations of suburban space—suggesting the need to reconsider, reinvigorate and/or reinvent how suburbs are conceptualized, analyzed and represented in contemporary urban scholarship. In particular, we contend that conceptually “the suburbs” are widely (and uncritically) understood as (1) being relatively homogeneous in terms of social structure, built-form and political constituency; and (2) as playing a secondary, ancillary role in relation to the political, economic and cultural Mecca of the downtown urban core. “Global cities” and urban governance literature is dominated by theoretical discourses that prioritize the role of city-regions’ downtowns, central business districts and political- economic institutions in the contemporary metropolitan dynamic, whilst the prevalent imaginary has presented suburban expansion as occurring autonomously from conditions within central city cores (Brenner, 2002). Whereas sustained suburban expansion since the end of World War II has produced, especially in the largest metropolitan regions, vast suburban regions that dwarf central cities in terms of population, employment and sheer physical size, recent urban scholarship has tended to emphasis “the city” and “urban life”—i.e. vibrancy and diversity, as well as tensions and conflicts in inner-city spaces. For example, urban scholars noted the increasing role of downtown and historic inner- city districts in the construction of “urban lifestyles” and the formation of “symbolic economies” in city-regions (Featherstone, 1991; Zukin, 1982, 1995, 1998) and have critically examined the contestation and displacement that accompany inner-city revalorization, gentrification and redevelopment (Blomley, 2003; D. Mitchell, 2003; Peck, 2005; Slater, 2006; N. Smith, 1996). Despite the increasing predominance of suburban space in contemporary city-regions, suburban transformations (especially those occurring at the scale of everyday life) have received little focused attention. To be sure, new suburban forms such as “edge cities” or “technoburbs”—the sprawling mixed-use suburban zones on the urban periphery that are automobile dependent, highway oriented, computer network enabled, and relatively autonomous from older central cities—have been identified (see Fishman, 1987; Garreau, 1991). Fishman even goes as far as to explicitly argue that unlike the “traditional” suburbs that emerged in the 19th century Anglo-world (“bourgeois utopias”)1 “this phenomenon…is not suburbanization, but a new city” (1987, p. 184). Still, old understandings and representations of suburbs predominate in urban discourses (both academic and popular). As Harris and Larkham (1999) suggest, this is in no small part because “suburbia” in the popular sense is mainly understood through representations and images centered more on myth than actual day-to-day realities. As Bourne (1996) observes, old city-suburb distinctions have disappeared and new ones have emerged. He 1 Fishman describes “bourgeois utopias” as a low-density environment, defined by single family homes in a park-like setting. Domestic and nuclear family centered, suburbs had to be physically large and socially homogeneous enough to provide refuge from the discord of city life (poverty, noise and pollution, etc.). In particular bourgeois suburbia strictly separated work from home life, quite unlike the “premodern” city. 3 argues that scholarly and popular understandings of suburbs remain reliant upon “externally-imposed images, entrenched social meanings and inherited cultural baggage” and a “simplistic city-suburban dichotomy” that is “outdated and increasingly unsuited to the complex realities of contemporary metropolitan life and urban development” (Bourne, 1996, p. 163). As a corrective, he suggests that we “re-invent” both the content and terminology of our accepted understandings of suburbia. Accordingly, this paper is driven by two broad aims: first, to provide a concise overview of recent literature on Canadian suburbs, and second, to tentatively tease out ways we might, as Bourne has suggested, reinvent or reconceptualize the suburbs in urban scholarship. In order to contextualize this project, we predominantly draw from the experience of the Toronto city-region to call attention to the presence of spaces that are neither “traditionally” urban, nor suburban, suggesting that Canadian suburban research could benefit by addressing the following: (1) the continuing predominance of an uncritical city-suburb dichotomy; (2) the presence of “in-between landscapes”, poorly acknowledged in both urban and suburban imaginaries; (3) the theoretical de-valorization of “forgotten” suburban spaces and lives within the contemporary metropolis; and (4) the dialectical interplay between (sub)urban society, space and politics. Distinct or embedded literature? The literature review conducted for this paper produced several important insights on scholarship about Canadian suburbia. First, there is a paucity of recent studies detailing contemporary “everyday life” in the suburbs. Second, scholarship that might be considered explicitly “suburban” in focus, as shall be discussed in the following, is a relatively small literature composed mostly of work on the historical development of— and living conditions in—early 20th Century Canadian suburbs. Third, there is a much larger body of literature that is metropolitan in focus (i.e. work on urban planning, urban politics, urban social geographies, critical urban geographies, etc.). Important insight into contemporary suburbia can be gleaned from this disparate body of research, but discussion of the suburbs tends to be embedded, implicit and highly fragmented and therefore difficult to summarize in a comprehensive and coherent manner. It is, therefore, a considerable challenge to provide an exhaustive summary of literature that discusses or commented on Canadian suburbs. This is not intended to imply some sharp demarcation between what is “suburban”-focused and what is not. It is a recognition that with most Canadians now living in suburban areas (of some form or another), the suburbs form the essential backdrop for much of contemporary “urban” life and therefore are widely discussed—without necessarily being the focus of analysis or discussion itself. We wish to foreground this at the onset to highlight the degree to which any attempt to summarize scholarship on the suburbs is necessarily confronted by the challenge of identifying material that is scattered within work on other topics. It is inevitable that this review will have missed many contributions of this nature. We present our review through

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