Metropolitan-scale Planning in Neo-liberal Times: Financial and Political Obstacles to Urban Form Transition

Abstract

Just as rising concern about its environmental, economic, social, health and quality of life downsides generates loud calls for a departure from the dispersed car-oriented urban model, conditions for such a transition have become more uncertain. The intended urban shift is hampered by dissonance between the generation of metropolitan-scale planning visions and the anti-interventionist characteristics of the current neo-liberal age. The paper identifies impeding effects of neo-liberalism—notably, public funding hardship and political dynamics—on attempts at carrying out transformative metropolitan planning. The difficulty in preventing major failures in the operation of cities under neo-liberalism is reflective of its inability, at a broader societal scale, to regulate the economy and thus avert economic and social crises. The paper draws its empirical substance from the gap in Toronto, Canada, between metropolitan planning visions and the urban development reality.

Acknowledgements

The research leading to this paper was funded by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada standard research grant (no. 34018). Authors are of course solely responsible for the content of the paper.

Notes

. In Canada, the federal government plays a minimal role in urban matters, which explains its near absence from this narrative.