North American Metropolitan Planning: Canadian and U.S. Perspectives

Abstract

This article presents the results of a comparative study of Canadian and American metropolitan planning and management systems in some of the largest urban regions in both countries: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Edmonton in Canada; and Chicago, Boston, San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, and Minneapolis-St. Paul in the U.S. While our study confirms the view that Canadian metropolitan areas generally have more highly developed regional governance systems than their American counterparts, we also detected a growing unwillingness of more senior levels of government (province or state) to grant the additional authority needed for the regional institutions to keep pace with rapidly expanding development. Consequently, the development patterns and governance of metropolitan areas in the two countries seem to be converging. The article closes with a discussion of the implications of our findings for metropolitan governance systems in other industrialized nations.