Governing Ourselves?: The Politics of Canadian Communities

الغلاف الأمامي
UBC Press, 2004 - 352 من الصفحات

Popular rhetoric suggests that the 21st century has ushered in an era of homogeneity. Urbanization, globalization, amalgamation, media conglomeration, and technological convergence have become familiar terms to us -- terms coined to reflect the effect of the complex and diverse forces at work in communities across the country. Given such overwhelming pressures, how are people within these communities able to make decisions about their own environment, either individually or collectively? To what extent can they govern themselves?

This stimulating text considers questions of influence and power within local institutions and decision-making processes using numerous illustrations from municipalities across Canada. The challenges to local governance are examined from a wide array of perspectives; communities large and small from Iqualuit to Toronto are offered as examples. In an original approach to the subject, McAllister pays particular attention to smaller and more remote cities of Canada. Case studies of Prince George, British Columbia; Sherbrooke, Quebec; Saint John, New Brunswick; Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario are used to illustrate historic and contemporary challenges for local governance.

Governing Ourselves? covers traditional topics related to Canadian local government structures, institutions, and intergovernmental relations. At the same time, it reaches more broadly into other areas of inquiry that are relevant to geography, urban planning, environmental studies, public administration, sociology, and Canadian studies. A wide-ranging exploration of Canadian communities and their politics, this book is relevant to the practitioner, student, academic, and anyone who wonders whether, in fact, we do govern ourselves.

من داخل الكتاب

المحتوى

Introduction3
3
Boxes
5
LOCAL DEMOCRACY A CONTESTED NOTION
11
The Historical Legacy
23
Avenues of Participation in Local Governance
46
SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITIES INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS
75
Municipal Restructuring
88
Contemporary Intergovernmental Relations
118
The Politics of Urban Planning
154
Redefining the Public Interest172
172
THE BUSINESS OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY
199
Business Management and the Municipal Corporation
232
SURFING INTO THE TWENTYFIRST CENTURY
255
Notes
285
Selected Bibliography
307
Photography Credits315
315

THE POLITICS OF SPACE PLACE AND ECOSYSTEMS
139

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

نبذة عن المؤلف (2004)

Mary Louise McAllister is an adjunct professor and associate professor emerita at the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, where she has taught since 1996. She is the author of Governing Ourselves? The Politics of Canadian Communities. McAllister resides in Waterloo, where she continues to sit on university graduate thesis committees.

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