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With these 61 readable essays, Cape Breton's Tom Urbaniak brings a courageous, critical and constructive eye to problems of our time. Whether it's revitalizing struggling communities, harnessing the power of small investors, reforming tired institutions or protecting parliamentary democracy, he is able to point to workable solutions. In this practical and thought-provoking reader, Prof. Urbaniak challenges students and citizens to engage with their region and with the world. He invites us all to be learners and active participants in our communities, contributing our wisdom and creativity for the common good

This chapter argues that building a theory of strong or weak mayoral leadership in the United States and Canada poses many challenges. But there is no reason why a theory of mayoral leadership has to be specific to the national context. Institutional structures may be different in the two countries, attitudes about government may vary, but mayoral leadership in both countries is about establishing a general policy or problem narrative, influencing senior levels of government and crisis management, and usually about proposing projects rather than unilaterally promulgating. For students of mayoral leadership, national affiliation is not the main dividing line, but rather how we think about leadership as a concept, regardless of country. There are marked differences concerning how such terms as "strong mayor," "power," and "leadership" should be understood. Determining the relative weight of such variables as personality, political culture, interests, and institutions is also a complicated matter, and there remains considerable confusion over research methods and appropriate questions, not to mention the difficulty of sorting out facts from groundless popular assumptions. The literature on mayoral leadership is much more extensive in the United States than it is in Canada. But the task of building a Canadian literature, almost literally from scratch in many instances, also affords an opportunity: to study mayoral leadership as a pre-emptive exercise—that is, narrowing or defining an agenda, instead of actually wielding formal authority or necessarily creating big projects.

Redrawing Local Government Boundaries: An International Study of
Politics, Procedures, and Decisions, John Meligrana, ed., Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 2004, pp. 246.Canadian readers will appreciate this book because it shows us that we
are not alone. Our perennial obsession with adjusting, sometimes
completely redrawing, local-government boundaries has its counterparts
near and far. There is a trajectory and a pattern: Senior levels of
government generally want to see local governments with larger
territories. However, the decision-making and implementation processes,
and the results of those processes, have scarcely been examined or
compared from an international perspective. Even policy makers often have
been in the dark about others' best (or worst) practices. This book
is therefore very useful.

"Company towns have shaped Canadian culture, but many of such communities have undergone radical transitions to an uncertain post-industrial future. How are these communities dealing with their historic landscapes--especially the residential neighbourhoods threatened by neglect or gentrification, places that some would prefer to forget, others to romanticize, and still others to understand and to re-use. There is much more work to do than put up plaques or pass designation by-laws. There are complex social and financial realities to consider. This book explores what happens, or sometimes what does not happen, when residents and policy-makers try to conserve the fabric or vestiges of communities whose economies have collapsed or places that have been forced to make a major transition to stay alive. But the ability to make a transition has a great deal to do with the DNA of a place. What were its founding moments? What were the early institutions and organizations that forged a spirit of place? How have these shaped the character of the community and made it more or less entrepreneurial when faced with the sometimes urgent need to re-orient the local economy and find new vocations for places. These sorts of economic and social considerations are seeping into the consciousness of those who work on and champion heritage conservation in Canada, and they are the subject of this collection of essays from academics and practitioners widely engaged in a variety of projects hoping to redefine the company town."--