PROSPECTS FOR REFORM

John Sewell

Research Paper 180

The City in the 1990s Series Lecture 2

Lecture delivered in the series The City in the 1990s: Livable for Whom? sponsored by The Centre for Urban and Community Studies Fall, 1989

Centre for Urban and Community Studies University of January 1991

ISSN: 0316-0068 ISBN: 0-7727-1354-5

$4.75 i

THE OTY 1N THE 1990s: UVABLE FOR WHOM?

Six lectures were given by internationally known scholars and experts in the Fall of 1989, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding in 1964 of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies. These are now being published as Centre Research Papers, in a series entitled The City in the 1990s.

Peter Hall: Reinventing the City (Lecture 1)

John Sewell: Prospects for Reform (Lecture 2)

Forthcoming:

•Manuel Castells: The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process

•Jorge Hardoy: Building and Managing Cities in a State of Permanent Economic Crisis

• Birgit Krantz: Increasing the Livability of Urban Architecture: Advances from Swedish Experience

•Charles Tilly: Immigrants and Cities in North America ii

PROSPECTS FOR REFORM

THE AliTHOR Born in Toronto in 1940, an alumnus of Victoria College and the 's Faculty of Law, John Sewell has spent his adult life striving to change this city. He worked as a community organizer in downtown urban renewal areas from 1966 to 1969. Elected as a City Alderman in 1969, he led the fight against developer-dominated decision-making, and as a member of Council until 1984-­ and from 1978-80-has an intimate connection to recent Toronto political history.

John Sewell wrote 's urban affairs column from 1984-86. He was then appointed Chair of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority, a position from which he was removed with great publicity two years later. He has taught in law and social science at , and writes for NOW magazine.

ABSTRACT Several factors influence prospects for another era of local government reform. We have new understanding about government's interests which often have little to do with policy resolution; the role of local politicians is different now that they are full-time and well funded; neighbourhood participation has been "hijacked" and used to exclude differences rather than to improve the quality of decisions. Urban dissatisfaction seems to be increasing, and with it a sense of helplessness. The big problems of the past-transportation and development-are no longer localized, and housing, air and water quality, waste disposal, income distribution, have moved inescapably onto the agenda.

Reform will have to involve new groupings, and the reformers will be those arguing for a smaller but tougher public sector. Will they be able to produce anything of lasting value, resistant to takeover by private interests? iii

PREFACE

Political reform has always been an enigma. The definition of "reform" in the Oxford English Dictionary seems straightforward enough: "to amend or improve by some change of form, arrangement or composition; to free from previous faults or imperfections." The problem with reform, however, is not so much what it means, but what it involves. "Reformers" are generally distinguished from "revolutionaries" by their commitment to change without the overthrow of the system or the shedding of blood. Much of the reform movement in both Canada and the United States has involved eradicating corruption and inefficiency in municipal politics, leading a New York mayor to characterize a reformer as "a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat." More generally, the philosopher George Santayana said, "A thousand reforms have left the world as corrupt as ever, for each successful reform has founded a new institution, and this institution has bred its new and congenial abuses" (quoted in Safire 1978, 604). Thus, either reformers do not really get to the bottom of things; or the changes they eventually institute become targets for reformers of another era.

Typical intellectual criticisms of reforms are that they do not go far enough, and that reformers rarely stay the course in local politics. But in the end, profound structural change is not a realistic objective for local political activists in Canadian (or American) urban settings; and the (sometimes) meteoric quality of reform politicians serves an important function in the political system by bringing new enthusiasm into politics and by creating a different discourse about what is possible locally. iv

This article by John Sewell (originally delivered as a lecture), which deals with urban political reform in Canada, is important in two respects. In the first place, it is written by a former reform politician who himself made a major contribution to the second "wave" of reform politics which he discusses in the text. John Sewell began his political career in Toronto as a successful community organizer in the urban renewal area, from 1966 to 1969. Wishing to extend his influence to City Hall in order to strengthen citizens' participation and democratize political decision-making, Sewell ran for alderman and was elected in the fall of 1969. His philosophy as a community organizer and some of his experiences as an alderman are recounted in a lively book entitled Up Against City

Hall, which was published at the end of 1972. Some of the chapter headings reflect the intense moral passion which Sewell, as the quintessential reformer, brought to local politics: "Metro Centre: The railway swindle", "The Grys affair: A finger in the pie", and "South of St. Jamestown: The fist of Meridian". Most of this material concerns his personal battles with developers and their representatives on the Council-battles which largely defined the moral universe of the reformers during the "second reform wave" of the late 1960s through the early 1970s. Sewell remained as alderman on the until 1978, when he was elected . He was defeated as Mayor in 1980 by , who is still Mayor in 1991 as this is written. During the 1980s Sewell has been the chairman of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority, has written regular columns on Toronto politics for The Globe and Mail and the weekly magazine NOW, and has taught law and social science at York University.

The second reason why this paper is important is that it attempts to deal directly with the whole question of government and private sector involvement in local politics. This has been a major area of concern during the 1980s, as senior v levels of goverrunent in Canada have reduced their support for municipal activities on the one hand, and as community-based groups and the private sector have (for diHerent reasons) taken more initiatives. Sewell sees the next reform wave in the conjunction of conununity and private interests jockeying for influence over issues such as waste management, pollution, tax reform, urban poverty, and housing. Traditional reliance on government with its burgeoning and insensitive bureaucracy is weakening; a new vision of what is possible to the political reformer is in the process of formation. This paper articulates one approach to such a reform vision, through the eyes of a thoughtful former politician whose sense of reform is still lively.

Richard Stren January, 1991

PROSPECTS FOR REFORM

Reform is one of those words which seems particularly apt for city politics. Reform is non-partisan, accurately capturing the lack of formal political parties at the local level. It suggests improvement in a reasoned practical way, accurately reflecting the city's lack of access to levers that control the economy, levers that can influence wide-ranging change. And it suggests agreement of a widespread constituency, something of the odour of community action and implementation of an agreed-upon agenda. No wonder the word is so frequently relied on by those who wish to bring change to the city.

While cities are in a constant state of change--growing, shrinking, bunching up or evening out, bulging and pushing and decaying-most of that change is the normal city dynamic. Reform, however, is a certain kind of change attempted on the city to gain a new sense of direction. It goes beyond reorganizing to do things better, and pushes into new directions to pursue new goals.

Two Eras of Urban Reform in Canada

There have only been two periods in the life of North American cities when those changes were organized enough to be called reform eras. In both cases, there seemed to be a fairly distinct start, a flowering, then a decline. Looking briefly at these eras reveals a conjunction of events that will help us predict the shape of the next reform era.

The first period of urban reform in Canada began near the end of the 19th century and continued for more than a decade into the 20th century. It brought a great unleashing of energies and ideas, such that "one astonished observer decided that people had been seized by some inexplicable urge to save mankind" (Rutherford, 1974: xi).

The movement lashed out in all directions. Some reformers wanted services that had become necessary for city life-transit, electricity, and gas are three examples-to be removed from the private sector and firmly ensconced in the safety of the public sector. As we know, success came soon for believers in 2 public power. Transit systems, by contrast, were not to be taken over by the public sector until after the Great War, and in several Canadian cities not until after the Second World War.

Some reformers pushed hard for new ways to plan cities. Ebenezer Howard's influential book Garden Cities of Tomorraw was published in England in 1898, and his disciples quickly crossed the ocean and began designing Canadian cities. Thomas Adams made his mark in Canada before the century was a decade old, and he prepared the plan which would replace the community devastated by the Halifax Explosion in 1917. Many Canadian cities had a Committee of Good Design proposing grand boulevards to enliven city life.

Others pushed for a strong public role to address social ills, such as child welfare, slums and liquor. Significant resources were spent on public health. In Toronto, Charles Hastings successfully introduced systems of water and sewage treatment, and convinced the city to open a public abattoir to ensure that meat was free from disease and healthy for the citizens. This was the era of churches playing an active social role, when J.S. Woodsworth opened his settlement house in Winnipeg.

And some pushed to reform the structures of city government. The Board of Control was conceived as the device to introduce a degree of professionalism in municipal decision-making, as attempts were made to root corruption out of City Hall, even though the disease was far more prevalent in the United States than in Canada.

It has been remarked, "So wide was the scope of the urban reform movement that some... may feel it was merely a collection of assorted causes linked only by a general focus on the city and its problems" (Rutherford, 1974: xiii). Hence the difficulty in agreeing on the roots of the push for change: some argue the dominance of class issues (Artibise and Stelter, 1979: 73ff), some the urge for collectivism (Rutherford, 1974: 381).

Reform didn't survive the Great War. Loyalty to and interest in the city was quickly swallowed by war nationalism and the search for personal liberation (brilliantly illuminated in Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins). The sense of release 3 at the end of the war became a search for new beginnings on the crest of economic growth-with an undercurrent of horror as war atrocities were revealed. The feeling of community so dominant in the pre-War years never returned.

The Depression brought urban possibilities to a standstill. The Second World War effort focused social and economic energies, in the process creating engines of economic growth that continued pumping when the war ended. It seemed that desires too long pent up would finally be satisfied.

Within 15 years, a second reform era was underway in Canadian cities. Like its predecessor, it was rough at the edges. One common target was the inner-city expressway, providing the suburbs access to the downtown. Reformers in St. John's, Toronto, Vancouver and other cities fought the construction of these roadways, arguing instead the merits of public transit.

Reformers also fought developers and their schemes to build high-rise apartment towers in existing neighbourhoods. Arguments were made about the nature of a planning process which encouraged these kinds of buildings, and of the politicians who so readily approved them. Was the neighbourhood not inviolate, many asked? There was a significant push for the involvement of ordinary people in decisions-citizen participation was the ungainly name attached to the idea­ and the establishment of neighbourhood planning divisions at City Hall to ensure it came about.

The designation of superblocks as blighted pockets to be demolished and reshaped-"urban renewal" was the euphemism-was challenged sharply in several cities (particularly Vancouver and Toronto), and after messy battles with bureaucrats at various levels, was finally abandoned. In short order private urban renewal schemes, most often involving the demolition of neighbourhoods and their replacement by apartment towers set in fields of grass, were also brought to an end.

A fourth strand of reformers mounted a more general challenge, questioning the wanton destruction of the old by the new, and so attacked directly modern ideas of planning. These reformers were wrongly characterized as 4 whitehaired women in running shoes; rather, the path they cut through the social and age spectrum was very wide indeed.

Reformers pushed for councillors who were tied more to local constituencies than to the property industry, councillors who represented and spoke for the community rather than for a more general ill-defined interest. When electors pounced on his election contributions from the development industry, one candidate exclaimed, "I'm no Charley McCarthy." But that was what the electors might have preferred-their own puppet rather than someone else's (Lorimer, 1970: 150).

And there were a host of other reform cries. In the Board of Control-that device suggested by reformers at the tum of the century to improve decision-making and fetter the dominance of local interests-was seen to be an impediment to accountability and responsibility. It was replaced with an Executive Committee responsible to the politicians on Council rather than to the electors. Challenges were mounted to the way housing was provided, and the need for municipalities to establish their own non-profit housing companies, which some (again mostly in Ontario) did. The efficacy of public transit was reviewed and most often commitment to it was renewed. Questions were raised about policing and its responsibility to the community.

As had been the case with the earlier reform era, this whole debate was supported by a flood of words discussing, analyzing or just recounting the events as they unfolded. City Magazine was in its heyday, newspapers (The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, for example) had columnists ruminating on reform matters, and books poured forth on city politicians, land development scandals or imagined scandals, and on the meaning of urban reform.

But by the end of the 1970s the reform era was already dissipating, barely 15 years after it had become large enough to be reckoned with. Some of its maxims became common wisdom, used by the most unlikely of politicians to justify doing things the same old way. Local control, for instance, has become the new buzz word, used this time around to protect a community from social injustice. Some of its strains were incorporated into the fabric of decision-making, such as various methods of consultation and public notice. Several key expressways were stopped, 5 and downtown development challenged and changed. Urban renewal was abandoned as a method of city-building.

Determining why this second reform push came to an end is of considerable interest, but it might be more helpful to draw comparisons between the two urban reform movements of this century. Both were wide-ranging, touching a whole host of issues. Neither was confined to a single area of interest or a single cause, and in many cases the causes became tangled and muddled, making choices difficult and indeed contentious. One simple example from the recent reform movement is the choice between the principle of social housing-housing for lower income families not served by the private market-and the principle of local control over planning decisions. The latter most often precluded the former.

It was this profusion of voices, causes and issues that inevitably made both reform movements non-partisan in nature, cutting across the constituencies of established political parties and political groupings. This gentle shaking of established order produced a rich blend of talents and experiences that resulted in innovative and imaginative ideas. The strength of the reform movements lay in the energy of those involved and the attractiveness of the ideas seen as necessary to carry society forward, but this was a strength not able to withstand economic or other more powerful forces that have a large say in the directions cities take.

Both reform periods saw the role of government as crucial to problem solving. Often problems were defined as the dominance of the public sector by private interests-corrupting influences in the first reform era, property interests in the second, are clear examples-and the prescription was to reassert the public will. Thus both saw the need for city government, in its political and administrative manifestations, to play a larger role in order to ensure that urban problems were addressed. This was a unifying aspect of each era, bringing together individuals who might otherwise have held quite different views about the intervention of more senior governments in private affairs.

These two qualities-the collusion of different interests and individuals in an uncommon alliance, and the push for a larger role for city government­ together created a loose coalition that reeked of impish anarchy. It was as though otherwise respected people could set aside their own traditional interests for a 6 while to play at serious politics close to home and slap the hands of the most powerful actors. Thus those who played a large part in creating an expanded economy-not a group to be criticized with any frequency save by a small minority of political ideologues-were held up to criticism and even ridicule. Their actions, claimed this loose and diverse group with little organized power base, were hurting the city.

Hence the moral quality of both reform movements. Those involved took sides and asked others to do the same. The first movement had a religious fervour that fought alcohol, poverty, and moral degradation; the second chastised land developers and their banking supporters as "bad" and destructive. They asked citizens to take sides. The battles in the second reform movement were to "Save Our City" as can be noted from the Toronto anti-expressway group "Stop Spadina Save our City Co-ordinating Committee."

Urban reform movements continue to hold fascination. The ideas remain fresh, the goals to a large extent remain noble, yet there is an ephemeral quality which does not allow either movement to be pinned down in a satisfactory way. They were never able to grapple with larger questions-cities, after all, do not control the larger handles of economic growth, let alone immigration, taxation, or other matters of national policy. As a result, the movements could be disrupted with relative ease.

Are there common factors underlying these eras? Given the complexities of cities, it is dangerous to attempt conclusive answers. But several factors jump to mind.

First, both reform eras occurred at a time when Canadian cities were growing in leaps and bounds. Toronto's population jumped from 56,000 in 1861 to 376,000 in 1911, and to more than half a million by 1921 plus a further 100,000 just outside of the cities boundaries (Spelt, 1973: 85). That growth trend accompanied the second reform wave: after World War Two the increase continued to accelerate, from 1.1 million in 1951 to 2.1 million 20 years later.

Second, population increases were (not unexpectedly) accompanied by increasing economic activity. Standards of living rose dramatically. In 1881, 13,000 7 people were employed in manufacturing and the payroll was $3.9 million: by 1911 the number of manufacturing employees had increased five times to 65,000, and payroll had increased almost ten-fold to $36.1 million (Careless, 1984: 200). Similar overall employee and payroll increases were evident in mid-century even though manufacturing declined in importance as services expanded (Lemon, 1985: 126££).

Thus reform was not a product of bad times and troubles. On the contrary, reform was the result of good times and increased opportunities. It was economic prosperity which seemed to bring problems into enough focus that the optimism of the times quickly turned into a desire to confront rather than evade those issues. If Toronto is any model in regard to urban reform, the theory of worsening provided no basis for reform. The better things got, the stronger the push for reform.

This might offer some explanation for reform's decline. The intervention of the Great War certainly brought an end to the first wave, and it was notre­ established after the cataclysm had ended. The second wave flattened out as the 1970s drew to a close and it was totally squashed in Canadian cities by the time the 1981 recession was apparent.

Contrary to expectations reform was not propelled by a sense of shared community: both eras followed substantial immigration. After World War Two many immigrants possessed only the most faltering English, making their participation in the political process extremely limited. New immigrants may have shared a vision with the rest of the community of a better, safer life, but its main component rested on economic prosperity, not political change.

Three Significant Changes

It is not entirely unreasonable to assume that the conditions which set the stage for reform in the past will also set the stage for reform in the future. It is probably fair to say that reform will take place when population and standards of living are growing. From all accounts, that probably means reform is a possibility over the next decade. But several new factors are now apparent which radically alter the way in which change might be presented. Three new perceptions will 8 probably change the situation enough that reform will arrive in a different guise than previously, perhaps with dilierent results.

The Role of Public Democracy

As I have shown, the two earlier reform eras assumed solutions lay in the public sector, particularly by constraining the private sector. That outlook is quickly vanishing. It is becoming common wisdom to admit that public bodies are unable to resolve problems and that referring difficult issues to them because the private sector is not able to cope with them is less and less a viable option.

One aspect of the problem lies not so much at the political level as with the character of public bureaucracies. Most humans endeavour to create situations where problems are homogenized and regularized, where problems become part of the landscape rather than stumbling blocks. Both in business and in private life, people seem to gravitate to states of mind where problems are normalized to such an extent that they are barely noticeable. It is this human characteristic that does much to explain the plight of the battered woman who refuses to act on a problem that others would not tolerate. But it also explains why public bureaucracies often seem unable to take effective action: they have moulded their landscape to the extent that things other people consider problems are just part of the scenery, and not to be worried about.

The same phenomenon occurs in private business, but it has a short shelf­ life. Customers have a nasty habit of taking their business elsewhere if a firm is unable to resolve problems, a fact that leads private managers to encourage employees to take the energy to resolve rather than ignore problems. Where this inability is predominant, the company tends to lose business and, in severe cases, to actually collapse. The public sector rarely suffers from competition as clients cannot take their business elsewhere, so problems linger and fester, rather than get resolved (Milliband, 1969).

This position is also evident to those on the left who generally support the role of the public sector in principle, but who argue it is now controlled by the wrong interests. Even if the right interest controlled the public sector, many would suggest policies which removed management from the hands of 9 government and put it into the hands of those directly affected. The rise of the co­ operative housing movement is a good example of this sentiment, an option much preferable to . The argument then is not with a more efficient and productive public sector, but a recognition that it has inbuilt limitations. Recognizing those limitations is not to cast aspersions on the public sector.

Another aspect of the same problem is that government has proven itself to be incapable of coping with the serious issues it is now being asked to resolve. This is particularly true with respect to the problems commonly put in the environmental grab-bag: water quality, solid waste, air quality, to name three. These issues all deal with individual actions that in themselves do not cause concern, but when repeated by hundreds of thousands of people, are a recipe for catastrophe.

Let me offer a hypothesis about this failure. Government seems quite capable of balancing different interests, although perhaps not always to everyone's liking. But how to balance the interests of the environment which seems incapable of speaking for itself except by the revenge it can take in the long term? The environment does not have an economic interest which it can express at every tum the way a family or a corporation can, and therefore it cannot enter into the power struggle the political sys tern is set up to resolve. These kinds of issues may simply be ones the political system cannot handle, although the expectations are that it should. This is another reason people use to denigrate governments.

This century hoped the public sector would resolve problems in the Western World but as we enter the century's last decade, governments are often seen as the problem rather than as the solution. A simple re-run of the two previous reform movements, where reformers have relied on the public sector to keep the private sector in check, seems increasingly unlikely.

A Longer Life for Local Politicians

A second change is evident in the status of local politicians. In the two previous reform movements, the holding of local elected office was seen as an activity carried on in conjunction with other pursuits. Council duties were not 10 full time, but were wedged among business activities from which the councillor was expected to earn a living. Councillors were paid an honorarium and while they had access to an office at City Hall (where letters might be dictated and signed), it was not a place where constituents could expect to find them except at meeting times.

In the last 10 years there has been a radical shift in the role of the elected official. Accompanying the most recent reform movement was the suggestion that full-time politicians were needed to keep unelected officials in check. To ensure that the will of local residents was respected, politicians were encouraged to spend more time at City Hall, and to attend more planning and administrative meetings. Two changes have occurred. Since the mid-1970s it has been customary for councillors in larger municipalities to have a private office and private or shared support staff. In the City of Toronto each councillor is now entitled to a full-time secretary and a full-time executive assistant.

Compensation for councillors has increased significantly. Twenty years ago a councillor would expect to secure an honorarium equal to about a third of what an upwardly mobile individual might obtain in the labour market. Today, compensation for councillors in even mid-sized municipalities is above the median income for a family of four. Election to office now brings income significant enough that no other work or employment need be pursued. Recent studies show at least half the elected councillors in Canada's largest cities work there on a full-time basis, without other gainful employment.

Originally it was hoped this change to a more full-time presence at City Hall would permit the citizens' representatives to rule an often errant bureaucracy, but it is a good question whether that has been the result of these changes. Many councillors seem to have made common cause with those unelected officials they see on a daily basis, and the interests of the two groups might have grown even closer. And the councillors now have good reason to hold onto their position even more tenaciously than before; for many, loss would entail a substantial drop in income that may not be easily replaced.

The latter aspect has a rather worrisome result. If a councillor wishes to retain his or her position it is most advantageous to sit in the middle of the pack, 11 hoping others will chart directions, take the lead, and generally define safe ground on which to stand. Allowing others to take these risks means not being singled out and therefore being less vulnerable to the attacks of special interest groups. Politicians wishing to protect their positions are not known for their ability to define issues or suggest solutions: those courses of action too easily produce opponents who will prove to be potent challengers.

I suspect this new respectability of the local elected officials-being awarded an office and staff at City Hall as well as compensation exceeding the majority of families in society-is one factor which has led to the dulling of whatever reforming edge recently existed in local politics. No wonder many citizens feel the need for leadership at the local level, the need for someone to define the edges of issues in a hope they can be clarified and solutions proffered. It is not in the interests of councillors to take leading positions; it is in their interest to sit back a few rows and wait to see what others can do. If senior bureaucrats can take the heat, all the better. Ironically then, the changes wrought by the most recent reform wave have brought about a breed of politicians not known, by and large, for their ability to grapple publicly with problems.

There seems to be good anecdotal evidence of a longer elected life for local councillors. Terms have stretched from one year to three in many jurisdictions­ in itself indicating a shift towards more permanence. And in many cities there are examples of council members who have served for a decade or more, a feature which would have been unusual even 20 years ago.

Feeding this syndrome of permanency is the propensity of those doing constant business with City Hall-the development industry in particular-to be pleased with the idea of continuing councillors who can be expected to understand the constraints under which they work, and their needs for changes to Official Plans and Zoning Bylaws. As has always been the case, developers favour supporters at election time through election funds. The new breed of local councillors seem to have constant fund-raising events for which developers pay the lion's share, thus building up significant war-chests to help frighten away possible opponents. Recent evidence in the Toronto area (Ferguson, 1989) indicates that 75 per cent or more of election funds for many councillors comes from the development industry. Many have elections surpluses which they retain 12 for the next time around, or appropriate for personal use. The two interests-one wanting certainty, the other security-appear to be contentedly feeding on each other.

These factors all mitigate against local politicians deciding to provide the edge needed for a new reform movement. Those already in power will have to shift their current modes of behaviour in significant ways that seem to be against their own long term interest if they are to define issues-either for or against-in a way advantageous to reform. It seems more likely they will use their secure power base to create a mushy middle, a device well known to frustrate the attacks of those who argue for change. They will blur and soften issues so the enemy is hard to define. This is a new and significant impediment to reform.

The Shift in the Meaning of Community Politics

A driving force in the last reform movement was the idea that the neighbourhood was an important forum to which City Hall had not listened. Local residents became the radical force that questioned the actions of Council and suggested new ways of proceeding. Neighbourhood groups were the great liberating force from which reforms took sustenance.

The idea of "neighbourhood" came into respectability only half a century ago through the work of planners such as Clarence Perry. Apart from providing planners with a basic building block of large scale suburban development, the concept has served as a very useful social parameter in the contemporary city. The neighbourhood creates spatial and social dimensions in which the individual is recognized to have meaning and worth. In the rest of the city the individual is a stranger to almost everyone but in the neighbourhoods/he is a distinct person worthy of respect.

Thus 20 years ago when people sought common principles that would unite them against a hostile but ill-defined force, they began on the neighbourhood level. That made sense because threats often came in neighbourhood packages, such as urban renewal, expressways, private redevelopment, all promising destruction of the communities where people lived. The neighbourhood group became the key ingredient of radical change. 13

These threats were against the existing city, the city built before the Second World War. Those neighbourhoods under attack most often contained a range of incomes and family sizes, a mix of uses and builcting forms. When residents asked for protection, they wanted to preserve that diversity and they wanted policies which would extend those kinds of mix throughout the city (Jacobs, 1961).

But another definition of neighbourhood was also emerging: that the neighbourhood should be an exclusive place. When in the early 1950s Don Mills, Canada's first corporate suburb, was being marketed, the device used was that this new community was only for a select, exclusive group of people. That was the message presented in the carefully designed homes, the enforced colour co­ ordination, the looping, curvy, street design and the modem house form. This first corporate suburb was successfully marketed because it was exclusive.

Don Mills was an astounding frnancial success and it was replicated on the fringes of every Canadian city. Not only has the street design, the house form, the low density, the separation of uses been repeated ad nauseam, but so has the basic value: that this kind of community is exclusive, that the very best new communities are exclusive.

The land mass of most Canadian cities is now predominantly filled with the progeny of Don Mills. Exclusivity has become the dominant characteristic of the urban area and the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) lullaby is frequently sung to consistent applause. NIMBY has hijacked the neighbourhood concept embraced by the reformers. It seized on the idea that local decision-making was best, and then used it to create an exclusive closed community rather than an inclusive diverse community. The neighbourhood idea became a limiting approach to city possibilities, rather than an expansionist vision.

Elected officials have reacted accordingly. They are wary of addressing big problems which may upset or adversely affect local constituents. Few councillors wish to address the severe housing crisis found in too many Canadian cities, since solving that problem requires sites for new housing, and they know their constituents will say Not In My Back Yard. The same problems surround solid waste disposal. 14

NIMBY provides another reason for hostility to the public sector. The public sector is charged with resolution of some of society's most intractable problems, problems from which neighbourhoods wish to be protected. Permitting a strong public sector only increases the likelihood that change will come close to one's backyard. Better for exclusive neighbourhoods to push for a weaker public sector.

One must also note the increased power of suburban neighbourhoods with the restructuring of local government. The operative level is now regional, and given the recent change in Metro Toronto to direct election, it is apparent that suburban communi ties, which now occupy the majority of the land mass in Canadian cities, are being given even stronger voices. The protectionist idea of the neighbourhood is clearly ascendant.

Thus neighbourhoods, the building block of the last reform movement have become the very stumbling block of the next. Local control when taken to the extent now apparent is not a vehicle for reform.

Current Urban Problems

One of the most popular of contemporary urban words is gridlock. Its recent origin is attributed to a New York traffic planner, Sam Schwartz, who wanted to describe what happened when traffic didn't clear an intersection when the light turned red, thus blocking traffic that had earned the green light. The word now stands for the condition where every way seems blocked and congested, where there is no way out, where one feels trapped in the centre of the problem.

Many city residents feel they are caught in gridlock. Change and growth are everywhere, happening at a pace that seems relentless and never ending. This feeling seems to be present even in cities that are growing only slowly.

The helpless feeling of gridlock may result from two factors. Some remember the rush of empowerment that accompanied the reform movement of the 1970s. There was a sense then that control of the city was at hand, that the voice of the ordinary person was heard and perhaps listened to, that the mechanisms of the city were about to right evident wrongs. This feeling was also 15 apparent in the earlier reform era. Today's milieu, by comparison, is flat, overwhelmed by a feeling of disenfranchisement. Thus while the engines of growth and change rage all around as they did in the recent past, there is no concomitant feeling of control or involvement.

A second explanation is that the feeling accurately reflects the real situation: indeed there is little leadership offered as a way out of civic problems. The NIMBY syndrome has certainly placed many councillors in the position of shying away from suggesting that larger problems are their responsibility. Hence the inability of councils in Winnipeg and Toronto to deal with property tax reform, or of the councils throughout Southern Ontario to deal with housing, or of cities on the Great Lakes to deal with issues of water quality.

At the same time, those who would consider themselves reformers find themselves pushed into a corner. Unable to rely on neighbourhood groups for reform support, they have cast around for other constituencies. One path has been toward political party support. Given its traditional position of being in the forefront of political change in Canada, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is a natural destination for many reformers. Unfortunately, the party has not provided fertile ground.

In Toronto, where NDP members have been the most successful in running for city council, two problems have been evident. One is that there is no structure into which the NDP councillor can fit. At the provincial and federal levels, the NDP has an acknowledged leader (trying to be premier or prime minister), but locally there is no comparable position. Since the councillor and mayoralty elections are not contingent on each other, it is difficult to demand loyalty from the councillor to a mayoral candidate, and if there is no party mayoralty candidate, there is no public figure to whom party members may tum for cohesion. This makes party discipline a serious problem, as has been readily apparent when NDP members vote on different sides of important issues. At Toronto City Council during 1989, NDP members voted on both sides of a massive office development proposed for the Bay-Adelaide intersection, and on the extension of an arm of the Gardiner Expressway into the downtown. At Metro Council, NDP members voted on both sides of the contentious property tax reform package. The idea of the party 16 having a thought-out, cohesive platform to offer voters is enormously damaged by these kinds of mixed voting messages.

A second, and perhaps related, problem is the reluctance of local voters to see solutions to city problems being in the purview of a political party. Parties are not needed for security and predictability of those in power since retention of power does not depend on a vote in Council. Unlike senior levels where the important business is carried out in Cabinet meetings, behind closed doors, all council decisions are required to be dealt with in public, removing much of the aura of mystique around decision-making. The small size of councils-only in Winnipeg and Montreal do city councils exceed thirty-five members-means councillors can get to know each other well and make alliances that shift from issue to issue. Thus the individual skills of the councillor are of considerable interest. Party affiliation might be used as an excuse by electors not to vote for someone. Declared party affiliation might be a liability in the electoral process.

For these reasons, reliance on traditional political parties has not proven advantageous to reformers, even though the parties can offer much help during elections. Accordingly reformers have looked for other constituencies, most particularly special interest groups. These groups cover a host of current issues: environment, criminal justice, housing, minorities, poverty, peace, health, and so forth.

The limitations of special interest groups are well known. Most frequently they consist of exceptionally well-informed individuals, many of whom hold very precise and strong views on the issues at hand. However, the groups are small, with a narrow band of support and small political leverage. Group dynamics often result in struggles over turf, so adherents have to be clear about how they look at issues, and how they define solutions. Wafflers are not welcome.

These limitations create great problems for politicians seeking a wider base. Maintaining credibility with the interest groups often means advocating precise solutions to problems when the public at large is not much aware of the problem itself. The result is a credibility gap, where voters fear they are being led too quickly in an uncertain direction. When reformers attempt to broaden their base by allying themselves with a number of these groups, the problem becomes 17 compounded and the reformer is seen to be caught on the margins rather than playing to the mainstream. Alliances with special interest groups can become a dead-end trap.

Hence the leadership vacuum. The old ways are of no help in the new situation. The structure of local political life mitigates against appropriate action. Yet at the same time, the issues seem overwhelming.

In passing, one might note the response of the leadership of the political mainstream to the dilemma. It offers large scale undertakings hoping to vault over problems by achieving a new respectability among a world-wide audience. This was the response of Montreal in the 1960s (with Expo) and the 1970s (with the Olympics) in place of reform; indeed it was not until these events had wound down in the 1980s that reform was able to gain a real, although precarious, presence in Montreal City Hall. Toronto councillors have been pursuing the same course, first with the domed stadium, which has generated considerable world­ wide attention for a local undertaking, and with plans to attract the Olympics and a World's Fair. Even those who call themselves reformers were shoe-homed into supporting these initiatives. While these approaches produced considerable exhilaration and a bonding of significant energy and talent among those already in positions of power, they also produce a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction. And when the bids for both events lost, any energy that existed fizzled away: it had been attached to the event, not to a larger cause about the fate of the city.

It is difficult not to note the problems Canadian cities now face. The water quality of most cities is in considerable doubt, often contaminated with industrial discharges and other toxic wastes. Not only are there growing concerns about the long term health effects of drinking city water-even the present method of chlorination is said to impugn water quality-but few of the water bodies on which Canadian cities sit are fit for simple recreational uses like swimming or windsurfing. Fish caught in nearby waters cannot be safely eaten. Human wastes are proving to be unmanageable. Sewage treatment plants which by and large are run by municipalities, often discharge effluent which is dangerous to human health. Sewage sludge is often unfit to use as fertilizer. Solid wastes continue to be buried, but in Ontario two thirds of the solid waste dumps which have been 18 filled to capacity and closed have been certified by the Ministry of the Environment as dangerous to health.

And on it goes. There is an increasing disparity in our cities between rich and poor. Welfare systems make recipients more rather than less dependent. Food banks-an idea that hadn't even been imagined in Ontario a decade ago-are increasingly relied on to feed the poor. Some bus shelters are gaining permanent inhabitants.

Most residents in big cities are all too aware of these problems, and they do what they can to alleviate them. They donate large amounts to food banks. Parishioners struggle to conceive of and then see built a few units of affordable housing. The number of environmental groups is increasing rapidly. Publicly sponsored recycling programs are overwhelmed with waste which the public knows still has value. Every neighbourhood has a clutch of weekend lawn sales, as both buyer and seller recognize reuse makes good sense.

These individual actions do not offer much long-term satisfaction, and certainly they don't provide a way out of the gridlock. In the face of the immensity of the problems, individual action seems absurdly impotent. People are looking for better directions to avoid creating the problems in the first place.

But if history is any indication, dissatisfactions will not of themselves produce the next reform wave. What is required is continuing prosperity and growth of a scale that permits many people to see the possibility of new options to solve the all too evident problems. These conditions seem apparent in many Southern Ontario cities, and thus the possibility of reform should not be ruled out. But how will it be structured? What will be its well-springs?

Reform Possibilities

The first observation is that reformers will not look to governments for solutions. As already noted, governments have been largely discredited and are no longer seen as effective in addressing public problems. Hoping to secure office by suggesting that the problems facing the city can be resolved by government is not a realistic approach and will not support a viable movement. 19

The political left will have great difficulty with this change. Many on the left believe the major problem with government is that it represents the wrong interests, and that it could be effective if it represented different interests. So in the first instance the left may suggest more public intervention, although it is difficult to say if that strategy will appeal to voters.

The increased government intervention of the last reform era was effective in some cities. The entry of the City of Toronto into the non-profit housing field with Cityhome in the mid-1970s is a good example of one such initiative. Further, there is no question but that at various points in time some city governments have been extremely innovative, and pushed to ensure new programs were put in place to answer needs the power structure wished to overlook. The left may ask for a continuation of such ventures.

But it is difficult to see the public agreeing that increased government activity is the answer. Certainly in the areas touching on the environment-water quality, air quality, solid waste, toxic waste--governments have been most unhelpful even when given a mandate and significant funds to address these problems.

Next time around, reformers will not eschew government; rather, the solutions suggested will probably be to take issues out of the hands of government and into new contexts where they can be looked at in new ways, and perhaps turned from problems into opportunities.

I do not believe these suggestions will be in the nature of privatization, which is a strategy the political right has pursued for some years. Privatization might manage to raise money for the government by the selling of public assets­ usually the most successful assets are sold, rather than the least successful, a strategy somewhat puzzling to an innocent observer. Privatization passes on to the private sector, intact, failed government solutions, problems government is unable to deal with. It is not a strategy that has much to commend it.

A second strategy tried in some cities, although rarely with their consent, is the idea of the Enterprise Zone. The English and Chinese models take the lands in 20 question out of local control_ remove all planning restrictions, and give the private sector a free hand, not only with physical plans, but also with financial returns. The Enterprise Zone represents an abdication of reasonable planning control, as though private interests alone can deliver the best results.

There is good reason to question whether anyone except the private companies involved sees any merit in this proposal. Given that only one party will benefit from this idea, why would the Enterprise Zone be accepted by any local government interested in holding power?

Instead, reformers will look for ways to deal with the problems which involve a larger constituency. They will tackle problems that governments have tried and failed to resolve: the environment, criminal justice, welfare and income distribution. The agenda will struggle with questions of what techniques should be used to turn these problems around so they actually get solved rather than simply perpetuated.

One kind of answer is being found in some American cities. To redress a failing public education system, private companies are now entering into agreements with schools indicating that if school principals improve educational standards in very specific ways (as spelled out in the agreement) then the signatory companies will hire a certain number of graduates. This is a clear example of a whole new approach to securing an education system which actually works. The solution involves an agreement between community agencies and the private sector, an agreement that government feels obliged to recognize.

In my opinion the next reform wave will emphasize this kind of approach. Community agencies and private companies-natural enemies-will co-operate to find answers to the problems they are most concerned about: welfare reform, housing, solid waste, water quality, criminal justice. Individuals in these diverse sectors will find common ground for two reasons. First, they share similar feeling about the inadequacies of the public sector, even though they approach it from different positions. This common interest can be seen now in landlords and tenants, both of whom complain about rent controls in Ontario, although from different points of view. 21

The second reason for finding common ground is a shared personal world vision shaped in the 1960s but surviving in different entrepreneurial cultures. Individuals in the non-profit social agency culture, just as those in the profit­ making capitalist culture, are not entirely captured by their economic milieu. Both can see beyond it and recognize the imperative of responding to the problems now falling between the cracks. They will join together to forge an alliance that asks for government support.

Thus a new reform era will probably stress specific agreements and contracts made between government agencies, social agencies and private companies to rectify specific problems. Gone will be the days when it is expected that goverrunent is the answer. The new cry will be to get government out of the road so real solutions can be tried out.

There are various ways to express this new approach. One might see it as government ending its near monopoly on a host of issues, and allowing others to try their luck. Or it might be characterized as putting public activities into a market setting. Or it might simply be seen as finding the most effective organization to bring about a solution. It will take different forms in different cities and in different sectors, but freeing a range of activities from the clutch of the public sector will probably be a hallmark of the new reformers.

It will be interesting to see what kind of government actually results from thls process. I suspect government will get much leaner, and much firmer and tougher about what it is doing. Goverrunen t subsidies may be required for certain programs, but I suspect as often as possible markets will be devised to help set reasonable values on the work being done.

Admittedly, the slack at the senior levels of government is far greater than at the local level, but one cannot predict what will happen there. Reform wind always blows first through cities, and senior governments are only affected, if at all, a decade later.

Thus the tone of the next reform movement will probably be away from the reformer's traditional reliance on government. Where will the constituency come from for this approach? Who will be pushing for these kinds of reform? 22

As with previous reform movements, the group involved will be diifuse. It will not be based on the neighbourhood, but rather on interest groups provoked by social agencies. In the first instance, the social agencies will attempt to provide leadership, but that will quickly expand to include coalitions with more private interests. Neighbourhood groups, I suspect, will be left behind in this new reshuffling and will fade into the background, somewhat embarrassed about opposing these new interests. As the public agency /private sector alliance makes agreements with governments, the NIMBY sentiment will seem passe, old hat, without lasting value. With governments seen as minor actors, neighbourhoods will relax considerably their resistance to change of any kind. These two allies will instill a confidence which will help accommodate change in neighbourhoods for at least a few years.

So we may see a new beginning, a way out of the present morass. This reform era, if it emerges, may be no more the impish anarchy that has characterized reform in the past. It may fail to answer real needs. But it may point to new directions. 23

REFERENCES

Artibise, A.F.J. and Gilbert A. Stelter, eds. 1979. The Usable Urban Past. Toronto: Macmillan.

Careless, J.M.S. 1984. Toronto to 1918. Toronto: James Lorimer.

Eksteins, Modris. 1989. Rites of Spring. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys.

Ferguson, Jock. 1989. Articles of August 9 and 10 in The Globe and MaiL

Howard, Ebenezer. 1898. Garden Cities of Tomorrow. London.

Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great Americnn Cities. New York: Vintage Books.

Lemon. James. 1985. Toronto since 1918. Toronto: James Lorimer.

Lorimer, James. 1970. The Reo.l World of City Politics. Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel.

Milliband, Ralph. 1969. The State in Capitalist Society. London: Quartet Books.

Rutherford, Paul, ed. 1974. Saving the Canadwn City: the first phase 1880-1920. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Satire, William. 1978. Safire's Politicnl DictioMry. New York: Random House.

Spelt, Jacob. 1973. Toronto. Don Mills: Collier-Macmillan. Recent Publications in this Series Research Paper No.171 THE FAMILY HOME IN WORKING-CLASS LIFE • Richard Harris February 1989,27 pp. $350

Research Paper No. 172 ON THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF METROPOLITAN AREAS IN CANADA: A DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS • L. S. Bourne February 1989, 27 pp. $3 50

Research Paper No.l73 THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN CITY IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA: AN INTRODUCTION •Engin F. Isin April1989, 41 pp. $4.50

Research Paper No. 174 DIFFERENT STROKES FROM DIFFERENT FOLKS: WHICH TYPES OF TIES PROVIDE WHAT KIND OF SOCIAL SUPPORT? • Barry Wellman July 1989, 63 pp. $4.50

Research Paper No.175 ECONOMIC GROWTH STRATEGY AND URBANIZATION POLIOES IN CHINA, 1949-1982 •I

Research Paper No.l76 THE PLACE OF KINFOLK IN PERSONAL COMMUNITY NETWORKS •Barry Wellman October 1989,41 pp. $450

Research Paper No.l77 TORONTO'S FIRST APARTMENT-HOUSE BOOM: AN HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY, 1900-1920 •Richard Dennis October 1989,55 pp. $450

Major Report No. 25 URBAN GROWTH TRENDS IN CANADA, 1981-86: A NEW GEOGRAPHY OF CHANGE •J.W. Simmons and L.S. Bourne December 1989,70 pp. $5.75

Research Paper No.178 LOW INCOME HOUSING IN NAIROBI: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH •Moses Bulli Ladu December 1989, 55 pp. $5.75

Research Paper No.179 REINVENTING THE OTY •Peter Hall November 1990, 24 pp. $4.50

Research Paper No. 180 PROSPECTS FOR REFORM •John Sewell January 1990, 29 pp., $4.75

SEND REQUESTS TO: CENTRE FOR URBAN AND COMMUNITY STUDIES 455 , Toronto, ON, MSS 2G8, CANADA