Jeanne M. Wolfe

At first glance, cities in the United States and Canada are identifiable by their North American similarities. Driving off the superhighway one follows “the strip” into town. All too familiar are the gas stations, the McDonald’s, the Wendy’s, the drive-in suppliers of automobile, garden and home-repair parts, asphalt-circled shopping centers, neon-lighted emporiums and motels that line the way. Behind them, a block or two away, are subdivisions of neat and tidy single-family housing draped over the landscape. Further on, one will find tree-lined suburban industrial parks, apartment and office campuses, and then the glass and concrete-towered downtown. As the four-lane road wends its way into the nineteenth century city it passes weedy tracks, murky underpasses, half-used industrial installations (some of them condominiumized in cheerful postmodern colors), some new residential developments, a few straight streets of ageing working-class houses, and then leads into the central area and the familiar portico of a Hilton, Delta, Howard Johnson or Holiday Inn.

But first impressions can be deceiving. In The Myth of the North American City: Continentalism Challenged, Michael Greenberg and John Mercer clearly spell out a number of significant differences between the two countries. Canadian cities tend to have higher residential densities, less deserted centers, more strongly developed systems of public transportation, and lower rates of car ownership. They also have a higher proportion of foreign-born residents, less out-migration from the inner cities, and in general, less violent crime.

It sometimes has been noted that the US was founded on the principles of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” while the preamble to Canada’s British North America Act calls for “peace, order and good government.” Yet it is hard to explain away Canada’s more livable cities as simply the result of a more peaceful and less individualistic culture. Conscious policies and traditions have led to the condition of Canada’s cities today. As US cities seem to drift toward an increasing, sense of crisis, Canadian thinking about cities and planning may provide a useful point of comparison.