Local Roads to Austerity: Neoliberal Urbanism in Canada
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1607 ... May 17, 2018
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Local Roads to Austerity: Neoliberal Urbanism in Canada
Greg Albo and Carlo Fanelli
The ‘urban question’, as it came to be called in the 1970s, is now a central focus of academic study, state planning and political struggle alike. It is impossible to disentangle these concerns with today’s ‘urbanized world’, in all its myriad of social forms, from meta-cities to ex-urban sprawl, and the political economy of capitalist development. With half of the world’s population now living in urban locales, the UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report 2016 offers a glimpse of the world-historical transformations.
The raw figures are, at times, difficult to fathom: over 500 cities of one million; one in three of the world’s population living in slums; the urban conglomeration centred on Tokyo... estimated at some 35 million; and meta-cities of 10 million or more becoming something of a commonplace.
If the most mesmerizing urbanization developments today are taking place in the ‘global south’ (with an astonishing variation in settlement patterns and urban forms), North America remains the most urban of the continents with Canada, by some measures, being more urbanized than the United States. The leading urban cores in Canada -- Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver -- continue to grow demographically, spatially and in density at generous clips. The Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s meta-city, now has a population pushing toward some 7 million, growing steadily at over 100 thousand per year, with its urban armatures stretching hundreds of kilometers in all directions from the shores of Lake Ontario.
