URBAN

Urban Canada - N.H. Lithwick - P. 175-77

d) The Urban Policy-Economic Development Policy Nexus

The passive role assigned to government by the dominant values of the day is the primary factor which establishes its response to urbanization. Consequently, many prerequisites for the development of urban concepts and policies are not present.

One of these is the perception of urbanization itself by public authorities. Clearly, the inexorable trend towards an urban society in Canada has had nothing like the impact on private citizens and policy makers that is warranted by the phenomenon. This may be due to the agrarian traditions of the country that still dominate our legislatures, or to any number of other reasons. But whatever it may be, the implications of high density living in a society dominated by organization life have not been grasped. The vagaries of "the hidden hand" apparently cannot be relied on to provide the physical surroundings, the amenities, and the human environment that highly specialized, interdepedent urban dwellers require if they are to lead full, creative lives. Faced with an urban world, common sense and a recognition of social costs and benefits lead to the conclusion that the present remedial role of government, working in the interstices of economic initiative, will have to be replaced by a creative concept which anticipates and guides the forces of urban growth.

Assuming an adequate awareness of urbanization, the possibility of drafting effective urban policies is everywhere prevented by the sbsence of global development plans and policies. It is an exercise in futility to plan for cities in a vacuum. As noted above, urban development and economic development are highly interdependent components of the same system; economic planning and environmental planning are therefore simply obverse sides of the same coin. The relation is seen clearly in the process of planning. Since the position taken in this chapter is that effective urban policy must flow out of a general development strategy, a moment will be taken to describe such a strategy in order to show its relation to urban policy.

At the broadest level, the basic approach calls for the development of comprehensive provincial plans that are informed by and compatible with national strategies of social, economic, and physical development. Depending ont he method adopted, plans for regions into which the province may be subdivided for planning purposes are prepared.

At the provincial level, plans comprise a series of strategic policies defining the nature, distribution, and timing of overall development. The plan enunciates provincial policy respecting such factors as population growth and manpower resources, energy and natural resource development, transportation, education, and agriculture. These substantive policies find expression in a complementary set of broadly defined instrumental policies respecting investment choices, budgetary priorities, taxation and financial incentives, urban development and supportin provincial institutional arrangements.

With such policies represeting a broad "horizon" plan, regional plans serve to disaggregate the strategic provincial schemes and adapt them to regional conditions. Thus, a set of more specific policies defining regional economic and social goals, and the means of attaining them, form the basis of regional development planning. For example, regional policies might determine the general framework of population and employment growth, the nature and extent of major communications facilities, and broad policy objectives for major urban centres.

In addition, a further process of refinement and specification must occur. This is the expression of regional economic and social goals in terms of broad, strategic land use policies. It is at this point that the vital conversion process between economic and physical planning takes place and represents the connection or interface between the concepts of economic and environmental planning. The regional stage of the planning process consequently involves the translation of provincial policies into regional goals and also the conversion of these goals into a series of generalized land use allocations. The gross spatial distribution of population and employment growth is specified within the regions, as are the broad outlines of the communications network, target areas for recreation facilities, natural resources development and the like.

The planning process comprises a third element. This is the conversion of regional goals from strategic to tactical terms; that is, from generalized spatial concepts to specific designations of land uses and social policies. These functions are primarily concerned with physical and social planning and with the provision of cognate supporting services provided by local government. The final stage in the process gives practical expression to the broad goals defined by the provincial and regional plans. In many important respects, the work of urban government represents the "pay-off" of the comprehensive planning process.

Urban Canada - N.H. Lithwick - PP. 173-74

c) The Current Policy Framework and Its Limitations

These, then, are some of the more apparent dimensions of urban policy. It is a broad concept distinguished by a comprehensive bundle of integrated policies that together constitute a full statement of goals for urban development. Measured against this model, the present pattern of urban-affecting policies is singular at best. To illustrate some of the inconsistencies, we shall examine present methods of determining the direction, velocity, and character of urban development.

As already sugested, no explicit policy guides urban growth in this country. Impetus for urban growth probably derives from our societal preoccupation with economic achievement. TheOntario Economic Council recently noted that rising levels of income which are recognized and accepted by government, labour unions, agriculture, and business. Economic goals, not the goal of individual freedom or other humanistic values, are used to justify the institutional adjustments that have taken place in our society, particularly government expansion. As the Council observed, "...the question seldom asked is growth for what purpose?"

Since the city is the mainspring of our techno-industrial society, the maintenance of this dominant value system must be reflected in continued urbanization. Growth is viewed as inevitable and, by implication, morally good and socially desirable. The basic role of public agencies under these circumstances is to provide services and infra-structure to support and encourage urban growth, and therefore economic development. If this brand of economic determinism is in fact the implicit superordinate goal of urban development throughout Canada, then a responsive rather than allocative function of urban policy should prevail That it should was suggested recenlty by the Economic Council of Canada:

"...under present circumstances, current (urban) policy can best be directed towards orderly growth and an improvement in the environment within Canada's presently expanding urban centres."

In other words, until more acceptable development criteria appear, policy should serve economic goals--providing education, roads, utilities--and tend to its victims--supplying public housing, welfare, protective services.

This ethos or philosophy underlying contemporary urbanization clearly places public policy in an auxiliary position to the forces of economic growth and prevents it from assuming a more positive role in rationalizing and ordering urban development. Consequently, urban policies generally are more piecemeal than comprehensive, more pragmatic that anticipative, and short rather than long range. Furthermore, because individual public responses are not conceived within a framework of urban goals, they tend to be developed ad hoc and to lack consistency. Public agencies tend to interpret "the public interest" narrowly in terms of their own interests and to promote policies acordingly.