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- Title
Canadian Suburbia: From the Periphery of Empire to the Frontier of the Sub/Urban Century.
- Authors
KEIL, ROGER
- Abstract
Canadian suburbia is part of settlement of indigenous landscapes. It was originally a product of the rapid growth of cities in the periphery of the British Empire. Working class immigrants often self-built their housing on the poorly serviced but surveyed lots of the industrializing cities; industry sometimes followed on the seemingly endless greenfields beyond. Later generations of European immigrants moved from crammed inner city quarters to post World War 2 subdivisions in the periphery, now opened up by interregional highways, transit, sewer and water services and soft infrastructures such as schools and universities. Many relocated to residential areas around emerging assembly plants of the Fordist period. Supported by federal housing programs, suburban single family homes became the standard of an Anglo-Saxon settler society in which landed property reigned supreme as an economic reality and ideological icon of arrival. In some places, such as Toronto, an alternative modern suburban landscape was erected in the form of tower neighbourhoods that stood out futuristically from townhomes and bungalows below. Ostensibly built for the domestic middle class, they turned out to become the port of entry for many new immigrants that came from around the world. In extension of this trend in what is now the "inner suburbs", in recent decades, the suburbs and exurbs of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver have become the chief destinations of new generations of immigrants, mostly from non-European countries. This has changed the social composition, meaning and politics of suburbia fundamentally. The Canadian sub/urban periphery is now a prime site of the formation of globalized suburban constellations that define this century.
- Subjects
MONTREAL (Quebec); TORONTO (Ont.); VANCOUVER (B.C.); CANADA; SUBURBS; SUBURBANIZATION; URBAN planning; IMMIGRANTS; IMPERIALISM; HISTORY
- Publication
Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien, 2018, Vol 38, Issue 2, p47
- ISSN
0944-7008
- Publication type
Article