Critics have long voiced concerns about the wisdom of living in cities and the effects of city life on physical and mental health. For a century, planners have tried to meet these issues. John Sewell traces changes in urban planning, from the pre-Depression garden cities to postwar modernism and a revival of interest in the streetscape grid.In this far-ranging review, Sewell recounts the arrival of modern city planning with its emphasis on lower densities, limited access streets, s...

It is now impossible to understand major North American cities without considering the seemingly never-ending and ever-growing sprawl of their surrounding suburbs. In The Shape of the Suburbs, activist, urban affairs columnist, and former Toronto mayor John Sewell examines the relationship between the development of suburbs, water and sewage systems, highways, and the decision-making of Toronto-area governments to show how the suburbs spread, and how they have in turn shaped the c...

In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida, one of the first scholars to anticipate this back-to-the-city movement in his groundbreaking The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentri...

Canada is the second-largest country in the world, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and spanning six time zones. From coast to coast lie vast forests, breathtaking mountains, flat, open plains, and thousands of lakes and rivers. It is also the world's second-most sparsely populated country. The Canadian psyche is deeply influenced by the size of the territory and the extremes of its climate. Canada's short history, and its relatively peaceful development, affects the way t...

Unbuilt Toronto explores never-realized building projects in and around Toronto, from the citys founding to the twenty-first century. Delving into unfulfilled and largely forgotten visions for grand public buildings, landmark skyscrapers, highways, subways, and arts and recreation venues, it outlines such ambitious schemes as St. Alban's Cathedral, the Queen subway line and early city plans that would have resulted in a Paris-by-the-Lake.Readers may lament the loss of some projects...

MAKING MILLIONS — BOLD ABORIGINAL ENTREPRENEURS  — KIM BAIRD, CLARENCE LOUIE, TEWANEE JOSEPH, MANNY JULES — ARE REINVENTING CANADA’S ECONOMY  A growing number of aboriginal leaders – especially those blessed by geography – are unlocking the value of their lands in order to enter the economic mainstream,” says author Alex Rose in the eBook, First Dollars: Pipelines, Ports, Prisons and Private Property. “New economic activities ...

Despite decades of talk about globalization, democracy still depends on local self-government. In Local Self-Government and the Right to the City, Warren Magnusson argues that it is the principle behind claims to personal autonomy, community control, and national self-determination, and holds the promise of more peaceful politics. Unfortunately, state-centred thinking has obscured understanding of what local self-government can mean and hindered efforts to make good on what activi...

An "easy-to-follow and comprehensive" step-by-step guide for US citizens who want to emigrate to Canada ( Publishers Weekly ).More and more Americans are thinking of moving to Canada to find a job, attend colleges and universities, peace of mind—even retirement—and whatever their motivations, they will have to navigate the Canadian immigration, citizenship, and naturalization processes.So whether you're thinking ab...

With a landmass of approximately 7000 square kilometres and a population of roughly five million, the Greater Toronto Area is Canada's largest metropolitan centre. How did a small nineteenth-century colonial capital become this sprawling urban giant, and how did government policies shape the contours of its landscape?In Toronto Sprawls, Lawrence Solomon examines the great migration from farms to the city that occurred in the last half of the nineteenth century. During this...

From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City is a historical geography of the City of Greater Sudbury. The story that began billions of years ago encompasses dramatic physical and human events. Among them are volcanic eruptions, two meteorite impacts, the ebb and flow of continental glaciers, Aboriginal occupancy, exploration and mapping by Europeans, exploitation by fur traders and Canadian lumbermen and American entrepreneurs, the rise of global mining giants, unionism, pollution...

Municipalities are responsible for many essential services and have become vital agents for implementing provincial policies, including those dealing with the environment, emergency planning, economic development, and land use. In Foundations of Governance, experts from each of Canada's provinces come together to assess the extent to which municipal governments have the capacity to act autonomously, purposefully, and collaboratively in the intergovernmental arena.Each chap...

The Prime Ministers of Canada is a unique work that features original essays by Canada's leading historians and is illustrated with exceptional archival images. The first in a series of books on Canadian leaders, it was first published in 2002 and now has well over 10,000 copies in print form. The fourth edition was published in early 2016 and is now available for the first time in digital format. The short, incisive texts provide surprising insights into the lives and motivations of the c...