Suchergebnisse

"The Boundary Bargain: Growth, Development, and the Future of City-County Separation addresses a burgeoning area of study in Canadian local government-growth, development, and sprawl. Specifically, the manuscript examines the role of municipal organization in urban growth and the role of institutions in the city-county separation. Using Ontario as case study, the manuscript highlights the coordination problem posed by this separation. Traditionally, the two areas have been seen as distinct with different sets of values, economies, labour trends, and ways of life. Despite these cultural and geographic divergences, rural and urban have always had a reciprocal relationship and both play an important role in the strength of the national economy, trade, commerce, and population growth. This complex inter-connected relationship presents a challenge to policy-makers. In Ontario, more recent structural responses to the divide have tended to view the city and its rural periphery as part of a common political unit, if not also a sociological and economic one. In the past when an urban area of a county was declared a city it was politically separated from its surrounding county thereby severing any institutional linkages the two once shared. More recently responses to regional growth began to see urban and rural as connected and have since designed institutions that linked the two in order to provide greater policy and service continuity. The Boundary Bargain details this shift in institutional thinking and municipal organization while examining best practices for addressing growth and development from a regional perspective."--

This article examines the development and governance of informal, unwritten intermunicipal service-, facilities-, and equipment-sharing agreements. Although these agreements are easier to construct than formal agreements, they lack legal protection. The results show that municipalities are using informal shared services arrangements much less frequently than in the past. Those that have an informal agreement in place note that they are attractive because of the relative flexibility it allows, but they are wary of the inherent risk of entering into an arrangement without legal recourse. These informal arrangements, however, work well in areas in which there is a history of long-term cooperation, a high degree of trust, and some type of forum for resolution. The use of these informal arrangements, however, has been waning for years because most municipalities push for formalized agreements in an effort to insulate themselves, when possible, from the inherent risks of informal cooperation.

AbstractIn the wake of wide-ranging municipal amalgamations Ontario, the provincial government promoted the use of community councils, citizen-led boards that would have input in local matters. Community councils were touted as a way of preserving local identity and policy control. However, more than a decade removed from Ontario's restructuring process, few municipalities have community councils in place. Those that have implemented community councils established them with purely advisory functions. This paper asks why community councils were so inconsistently implemented and introduced with such limited powers. Overall, it is found that community councils were victims of restructuring politics. Blocked by city councillors fearing decentralization would dilute their authority and foster political rivals, constrained through a restrictive legislative framework and pushed aside by city officials fearing they would effectively recreate a two-tier system, community councils were either abandoned or installed with a limited mandate.

The challenge of governing multi-municipal areas is a long-standing policy problem for those who study local government. While changes to government structures are often suggested as a solution to the coordination and servicing dilemmas inherent within metropolitan areas, more recent research has demonstrated that decentralized, voluntary means of interlocal cooperation show promise in providing for service and policy continuity within these regions. Very little research has been conducted on the state of voluntary cooperation in Canadian metropolitan areas. This article seeks to correct this by studying interlocal agreements within six Canadian metropolitan areas, while introducing new measures for examining the intensity of these relationships. Overall, this article finds that municipalities within these areas are using interlocal agreements sparingly, and those with arrangements are mostly signing low-value, low-risk agreements that do not integrate governance mechanisms or service responsibility.

City-county separation was the original method of organizing municipalities in the province of Ontario. When an urban area of a county became classified as a city, it would be politically separated. The province has moved toward regional structures that link urban and rural since the 1950s, but we still know very little about the 18 cities and towns that remain separated from their counties. This article examines the principal method of compensating for institutional gaps between municipalities: the creation of intermunicipal agreements. Overall, it is found that separated cities and counties are scarcely using intermunicipal agreements to ensure service and policy continuity. It is argued that this is principally due to provincial interference.

Canada has experienced two formal federal ministries dedicated to addressing urban issues. The first, the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, encountered resistance from provincial governments and its fellow departments. Both worked to undermine it. The second, the Ministry of State for Infrastructure and Communities, was created with a more conciliatory tone towards the provincial governments and its ministerial colleagues. This paper examines the establishment of both ministries and tracks their efforts using a policy learning and lesson-drawing framework, concluding that common institutional actors, such as the Privy Council, were responsible for the Ministry of State for Infrastructure and Communities' change in tone and approach to multilevel governance. General lessons are drawn about inter-governmental relations and multi-level policy formation in federal systems.

Canada has experienced two formal federal ministries dedicated to addressing urban issues. The first, the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, encountered resistance from provincial governments and its fellow departments. Both worked to undermine it. The second, the Ministry of State for Infrastructure and Communities, was created with a more conciliatory tone towards the provincial governments and its ministerial colleagues. This paper examines the establishment of both ministries and tracks their efforts using a policy learning and lesson-drawing framework, concluding that common institutional actors, such as the Privy Council, were responsible for the Ministry of State for Infrastructure and Communities' change in tone and approach to multilevel governance. General lessons are drawn about inter-governmental relations and multi-level policy formation in federal systems.

Innovative technologies promise a brave new world of convenience and cost effectiveness - powered by cameras that monitor our movements, sensors that line our streets, and algorithms that determine our resource allocation - but at what cost? The first collection of its kind, this groundbreaking volume brings together social, economic, and cultural insights to enhance our understanding of the ongoing technological upheaval in cities around the world.

Cohen's Smart City Generational model has been the basis of understanding for the evolution of the Smart Cities movement. However, how does this model align with practitioners' conceptualization of the term? Our research focuses on Infrastructure Canada's Smart City Challenge (SCC). Through 14 primary interviews and 20 finalist applications, this research reveals that practitioners overwhelmingly understand Smart City building as a government-driven, data-centric endeavor (Smart City 2.0), as opposed to being about vendor transactions (Smart City 1.0), resident engagement (Smart City 3.0), or community co-creation (Smart City 4.0), where the specific technology is of secondary importance to project objectives. We conclude that, rather than moving through distinct generations, the smart cities movement should be understood as a gradual process of municipal public administration modernization as local governments are becoming increasingly savvy and experienced about contracting with technology firms to address urban problems.

On September 1, 2020, the Township of Zorra, Ontario, Canada began a compressed work week pilot project designed to add flexibility for its employees in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Office-based employees who opted into the pilot were given either Monday or Friday off from work and then worked longer shifts for the four remaining days. This field note provides information on the program's design and implementation and reports on the findings of pre- and post-pilot surveys designed to gauge attitudes of workers toward the compressed work week. Results indicate that the pilot was received positively and managed to avoid concerns typically associated with compressed work weeks, namely increased fatigue and staffing challenges. In addition to the evaluation of the pilot, we also provide insight into how organizational scale can aid in the development and design of public sector workplace innovations.