Book•
Governing the Island of Montreal : Language Differences and Metropolitan Politics
01 Jan 1985-
About: The article was published on 1985-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 15 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Metropolitan area & Politics.
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DOI•
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a Table of Table of contents of the paper "A.K.A., Table of Contents" and a table of the authors' abstracts.
Abstract: ...................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................ iii Table of
40 citations
Cites background from "Governing the Island of Montreal : ..."
...One explanation is that lower marriage rates are the result of a “rejection of Catholicism” in Quebec, where the Catholic Church played a much larger role than in the rest of Canada in civil society prior to modernization and secularization of the state in the 1960s (Sancton, 1985; Le Bourdais & Lapierre-Adamcyk, 2004; Pollard & Wu, 1998, p. 350; Gauvreau, 2008)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the current round of "scale politics" between Canada's largest global cities and the existing national policy architecture and intergovernmental context, and examine the role of economic actors in Cana...
Abstract: This paper examines the current round of ‘scale politics’ between Canada's largest global cities and the existing national policy architecture and intergovernmental context. Economic actors in Cana...
35 citations
Cites background from "Governing the Island of Montreal : ..."
...Part of this process also involved wrestling control out of the hands of the English Montreal élite (for more on this fascinating history, see Sancton, 1985; Germain and Rose, 2000; Paul, 2004; Hallenbeck, 2004)....
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Dissertation•
02 Nov 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative analysis of reformes metropolitaines marseillaise et montrealaise is presented, evaluating the mesure dans quelle mesure ces nouvelles demarches metropolicaines MARSEILLAISE et MONTALAISE sont reellement innovantes and permettent d'envisager l'evolution des modes de planification urbaine.
Abstract: Dans un contexte urbain marque par les phenomenes de metropolisation et de mondialisation, de nouveaux enjeux apparaissent et engendrent de nouvelles formes de gouvernance visant a elaborer une strategie territoriale. La concordance des agendas politiques francais et quebecois quant a la mise en ?uvre de reformes metropolitaines est a la base de cette recherche. Cette comparaison evalue dans quelle mesure ces nouvelles demarches metropolitaines marseillaise et montrealaise sont reellement innovantes et permettent d'envisager l'evolution des modes de planification urbaine. Le reseau metropolitain marseillais se caracterise par une demarche de « projet metropolitain » qui s'inscrit dans le courant de la planification strategique alors que par l'intermediaire de son institution metropolitaine, Montreal elabore un « schema metropolitain » qui se revele plus proche de l'approche traditionnelle. Alors que ces deux demarches apparaissent fort differentes, ces deux metropoles rencontrent des obstacles en grande partie similaires. Elles peinent en effet a discuter du modele de developpement a adopter ; a traiter des aspects redistributifs de l'amenagement du territoire ou encore de la localisation et de la realisation d'equipements metropolitains d'envergure potentiellement conflictuels. Le profil politico-institutionnel issu des reformes metropolitaines marseillaise et montrealaise est fort different mais se caracterise par une difficulte commune a creer une arene de discussion a l'echelle metropolitaine capable de rassembler les acteurs publics, prives et la societe civile autour d'une strategie commune. Ces deux metropoles illustrent donc la reapparition d'une pratique de la planification metropolitaine qui serait moins spatiale que celle developpee durant les annees 60, neanmoins plus strategique mais pas encore totalement collaborative.
34 citations
Cites background from "Governing the Island of Montreal : ..."
...A Montréal, c'est à la fois un site d'archipel et les tensions linguistiques et économiques entre l'Est et l'Ouest de l'île de Montréal, et plus généralement entre la zone centrale et la périphérie, qui peuvent expliquer cet isolement (SANCTON 1983; TREPANIER 1998; DOUAY 2002)....
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the slow march of the region of Montreal towards metropolitan governance and argue that the most recent round of municipal reform and regional institution-building is a continued reaction to the fiscal crisis of the State and that it lays the groundwork for a downloading of responsibilities from central to local government.
Abstract: The current upsurge of interest in metropolitan government on both sides of the Atlantic is mirrored in the debates raging in Montreal. An earlier boom period in the formation of metropolitan structures in the western world, the 1960s and early 1970s, left the region of Montreal with a legacy of partially fulfilled hopes and promises. At that time, as in many other countries, the political debate centred around issues of service provision, economies of scale and the need for coordination in matters such as land-use, control of urban sprawl, transportation and environmental protection. The instrumental arguments focused on size, territorial extent and representation. Today, while these arguments are still voiced loudly, the context has changed markedly. On the one hand is the ethos of globalisation and the perception that cities must be competitive on the world stage in order to prosper. Neoliberalism, the retreat of the welfare state, and the restructuring of the responsibilities and financial arrangements of the various levels of government have led to increased social fragmentation, social exclusion, often among immigrant groups, and severe inequities between the various parts of metropolitan areas. The central cities tend to house the poor and harbour the homeless, while the suburbs attract the more affluent. On the other hand is the acknowledgment of the importance of localism, community values, knowing why and how dollars are spent, participatory governance, consensual partnerships, along with increasing powers of special interest groups, business leaders, and corporatism in general. The ideas from the 1960s and early 1970s, of top-down directives, forced municipal amalgamations, imposed regional or metropolitan structures, are being challenged by principles of grassroots planning and collaborative action. The purpose of this paper is to examine the slow march of the region of Montreal towards metropolitan governance. It is organised in a chronological manner and follows the historical evolution of policies and debates. Over the decades, local, regional and provincial actors have come to recognise the interdependence of central and suburban municipalities. But they have offered different definitions of what ails the region and have resorted to different rationales for government action (or inaction) on these problems. If there is one continuous thread in Montreal's long saga of half-failed reforms, it is the fact that there is, politically speaking, no such thing as the problem of metropolitan governance. At any given time, various issues get conflated and often confused; over time, different problems gain prominence while others recede into the background. Governmental reforms do not proceed merely because the various parties agree on the problems at hand; they occur when the authorities experience a sense of urgency about one or another issue, be it infrastructure provision, environmental preservation, municipal solvency or economic competitiveness. We argue that the most recent round of municipal reform and regional institution-building is a continued reaction to the fiscal crisis of the State and that it lays the groundwork for a downloading of responsibilities from central to local government. Alongside the search for zero deficits on the part of the province (and the federal government), however, the desire to improve equity among municipalities and the will to foster democracy are strong motivations for local actors. As balancing budgets, downloading responsibilities to lower-level governments, and keeping older cities competitive in the world economy are the order of the day, municipal amalgamations and regional coordination mechanisms are of great interest to decision-makers. In the case of Montreal, local factors such as the political culture of the province and the persistence of linguistic tensions add to the difficulty of arriving at consensual decisions in the region. …
17 citations
Cites background from "Governing the Island of Montreal : ..."
...A whole series of proposals were aired, including one idea that the island be divided into two: an eastern French municipality based on the city of Montreal and an English one on the West Island, centred on Pointe Claire (Sancton 1985)....
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...The linguistic issue, which sets the case of Montreal apart from other cases, has in the past limited the ability of the provincial government to effect regional governance (Sancton 1985)....
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: In the 1990s, the provincial governments of both Quebec and Ontario established task forces to recommend new arrangements for the governance of their largest metropolitan areas, Montreal and Toronto respectively as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: During the 1990s the provincial governments of both Quebec and Ontario established task forces to recommend new arrangements for the governance of their largest metropolitan areas, Montreal and Toronto respectively. The task forces (Pichette and Golden) faced remarkably similar political environments and arrived at similar conclusions. Despite the fact that the Montreal task force was appointed earlier and reported earlier, its impact appears to have been minimal. Meanwhile, Toronto has experienced an explosive debate about the creation through amalgamation of the "megacity", in part because such a course of action was not contemplated by the Toronto task force. With much less publicity, the Ontario government has since proceeded to establish the Greater Toronto Services Board (GTSB), the first municipal institution in Canada that transcends and includes two-tier municipalities. Just as the GTSB is beginning to function, debates about metropolitan governance in Montreal have begun anew. This paper briefly describes the historical background to governance arrangements in the two urban regions, explores in some detail the similarities in the work of the two task forces, and attempts to explain why the outcomes appear to have been so different. Some scholars have already tried to show how theory relating to urban political economy applies to the organisational changes in Toronto (Keil 1998; Isin 1998; Todd 1998; Horak 1999), but they have not attempted to explain how it accounts for the lack of change in Montreal. One of the additional objectives of this paper is to evaluate the relevance of this theory in explaining recent developments in the two metropolitan areas. Governmental Arrangements Prior to Pichette and Golden Until 1914 and 1920 respectively, urban growth in Toronto and Montreal was typically accompanied by regular annexations of suburban municipalities to the central city. The process stopped in both places because the central cities could no longer afford to absorb the debts of their bankrupt suburban neighbours. In 1921 the provincial government of Quebec established the Montreal Metropolitan Commission, Canada's first example of a two-tier metropolitan form of urban government. The main initial function of the commission was to share defaulted suburban debts among more financially stable municipalities and to supervise future suburban borrowing (Sancton 1985). Despite ambitious proposals for various new forms of metropolitan government in Montreal, the commission had not evolved much beyond its original structures and functions when Ontario established the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto (Metro) in 1953 as a two-tier system embracing thirteen local municipalities. In 1969, the Quebec government created the Montreal Urban Community (MUC), but this metropolitan institution was functionally weak in comparison to Metro (Figure 1). More importantly perhaps, the original 29 member municipalities of the MUC were never consolidated, except that one, Pointe-aux-Trembles, was annexed by the city of Montreal in 1982. Within Metro, however, the thirteen original members were reduced to six as a result of provincial legislation approved in 1966. The council of the MUC has always comprised the suburban mayors and all council members from the City of Montreal. In 1988, the Ontario government introduced a system of direct election for Metro's council. These were some of the reasons why throughout the period from 1953 to 1992, there was a belief within some municipal circles in Montreal that Toronto's governmental structures were more advanced. There was, however, an important sense in which both systems failed to adapt to changing circumstances. The initial external boundaries of both Metro and the MUC never changed, despite the fact that most metropolitan growth was taking place outside their original territories and that both organisations were supposed to be engaged in "metropolitan planning". …
10 citations
Cites background from "Governing the Island of Montreal : ..."
...The main initial function of the comm ission was to share defaulted suburban debts among m ore financially stable municipalities and to supervise future suburban borrowing (Sancton 1985)....
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