Urban Sociology in Canada

327 Pages·1986·4.645 MB·English

by  Peter McGahan (Auth.)

Urban
SECOND
EDITION
Sociology
in
C a n a da
PETER McGAHAN
University of New Brunswick, Saint John
Butterworths
Toronto
Urban Sociology in Canada
© 1986 by Butterworth & Co. (Canada) Ltd.
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Printed and bound in Canada
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
McGahan, Peter.
Urban sociology in Canada
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-409-84758-5
1. Sociology, Urban. 2. Urbanization - Canada.
3. City and town life - Canada. I. Title.
HT127.M32 1986 307.7'6'0971 C85-099148-X
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Acknowledgments
I remain indebted to my colleagues and students on both campuses of the
University of New Brunswick. Mrs. Robin Fullerton-White painstakingly
typed drafts of this edition, and was a highly valued assistant. I have relied
heavily on the assistance and encouragement of Janet Turner and the other
staff of Butterworth & Co. (Canada) Ltd. Robert Goodfellow was of consid-
erable help in the final stages of this project. I am grateful for the continued
support of Beth McGahan.
This edition is dedicated to the memory of Joseph McGahan, who
unknowingly taught me of the beauty and wonder of urban immigration.
Preface
This edition, as with the first, only touches the surface richness of Canadian
urban studies. It maintains the same theoretical structure and strategy of
introducing urban sociology but with several changes. More recent census
data on Canadian cities are used. Linked to this is reference to the now
emerging ' counterurbanization process," a pattern appearing not just in
Canada. New examples of urban empirical studies have been included to
illustrate generalizations and concepts. A section on the ecology of urban
crime has been added to emphasize the importance of a city's spatial struc-
ture. References have been updated in selected fashion, and the bibliography
has been extended.
Introduction
The modern age is an urban age. Movement from a rural to an urban society
in both Western and developing countries represents a social, demographic,
and economic transformation of profound significance. And in focusing on
urbanization we are concerned with only part of a much more complex pro-
cess involving modernization, industrialization, and the development of
complex forms of organization.
Urbanization as a demographic process involves: (1) an increase in the
number of urban areas or points of concentration in a society; (2) an increase
in the size of individual cities; and (3) a general rise in the proportion of a
society's total population living in urban areas (Tisdale 1942). These in-
creases tend to occur together. Cities are defined as relatively large, dense,
permanent settlements in which the majority of residents do not produce
their own food.
THE URBAN TRANSFORMATION
Prior to the nineteenth century, the process of urban development was
sporadic. In the some 40,000-year history of homo sapiens, the first cities did
not appear until approximately 3500 B.C., in that section of the Fertile Cres-
cent lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. These cities evolved
through advances made in the last St one-Age economy, the Neolithic. Im-
proved methods of irrigation, cultivation, and transportation promoted the
rise of cities - such as Ur, Kish, Mari, Farah, and Lagash - by permitting a
surplus of food to be collected to support urban populations. A centralized
social and economic organization evolved to exploit that surplus. This en-
couraged a more elaborate division of labour and specialization of craft, and
strong trade relations between centres (Childe 1951). Almost all early cities
were marked by: "full-time specialists, large dense populations, great art,
writing and numerical notation, exact and predictive sciences, levies that
concentrate the surplus food production, the state, monumental public ar-
chitecture, long-distance trade, and a class-structured society" (Gist and
Fava 1964, 13).
Early cities also emerged on the Indus River (now West Pakistan) where,
for example, the major centre of Harappa emerged with a population of
2 INTRODUCTION
20,000 within a square-mile area. But the primitive state of medicine and
industry, the labour-intensive character of agriculture, and the rigid social
stratification prohibited any sustained process of urban growth.
Ancient cities dotted the Western Hemisphere as well, among the Indians
of the Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala. Mayan cities emerged after 300
B.C., although less densely concentrated than those in Mesopotamia. The
earliest large urban centre in Middle America was Teotihuacân ('place of the
gods"), located fifty kilometres from present-day Mexico City. It was the
site of the mammoth pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, a religious and ad-
ministrative centre, a city that covered seven to eight square miles, with a
population at its height of approximately 75,000. It reached its peak
development between A.D. 150 and 750. And archaeological evidence sug-
gests that by the latter year the city had been abandoned. The reason for this
is not clear. One explanation might be "that the unending construction work
[as revealed, for example, in its pyramids] was such a physical and economic
burden on its inhabitants and tributary groups that the population might
have nursed a growing rebellion which could have exploded in the over-
throw of their traditional hierarchy" (Hardoy 1973, 71). Urban centres also
formed important parts of the Incan empire in the central Andes, one of the
most extensive of preindustrial civilizations.
As these civilizations were not sustained, so too did their cities inevitably
decline. Such was the fate of both Athens and Rome. And after the demise of
the Roman Empire urban centres in Europe languished until the revival of
trade in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But it was not until the Industrial
Revolution over the past two centuries that the urban transformation
became a fixed feature of human history.
The demographic dimensions of this transformation are truly staggering
(Weber 1963 ed.; Davis 1955, 1972). In 1800 less than 3 percent of the
world's population lived in cities of 20,000 or more; by 1950 or so the pro-
portion had risen to 20 percent - a rate of increase much faster than at any
previous time in history. Only fifty cities of 100,000 population or more
existed in 1800; by 1950 that number had grown to 900, and it has continued
to increase ever since.
Despite this worldwide trend to urbanize, there are still some striking dif-
ferences between regions and nations. Levels of urbanization are highest in
Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and North America, and lowest in many
of the underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. These discrepancies,
however, mask the much higher rates of urban increase which the latter con-
tinents have been experiencing in recent decades (Hauser 1957; Davis 1972).
The urban transformation is becoming truly a universal process.
THE CANADIAN URBAN TRANSFORMATION
In demographic terms too we find clear evidence of this transformation in
Canada. In 1981, three-fourths (75.7 percent) of her population resided in
Introduction 3
urban areas; only a very small proportion (4.3 percent) lived on farms (table
1). Approximately one-hundred years ago, Canada was almost entirely a
rural society. Today half (51.7 percent) of all Canadians live in cities of
100,000 population or more. The majority of urban residents indeed are
concentrated in the largest centres of 500,000+. The rate of urban growth in
Canada has, however, in recent years slowed.
TABLE 1
Distribution of Total and Urban Population by Urban Size Group,
Rural Non-farm, and Rural Farm, Canada, 1981 (%)
Distribution of Distribution of
Urban Size Group Total Population Urban Population
500,000+ 41.2 54.4
100,000-499,999 10.5 13.9
30,000-99,999 8.2 10.8
10,000-29,999 6.4 8.5
5,000-9,999 3.3 4.3
2,500-4,999 3.3 4.3
1,000-2,499 2.8 3.8
Rural Non-farm 20.0 -
Rural Farm 4.3 -
Total 100.0 100.0
(N) (24,343,180) (18,435,925)
SOURCE: 1981 Census of Canada, Population; Cat. 92-902, vol. 1, table 2, pp. 2-1, 2-2.
Reproduced by permission of the Ministry of Supply and Services Canada.
THE CENSUS DEFINITION OF "URBAN"
Prior to 1951 the Canadian census definition of urban was restricted to
the legal municipal status of incorporation. "With the rapid growth of
suburbs, i.e., built-up areas outside a city's boundaries but still an
integral part of the city, legal status alone became an inadequate
criterion. Population density, i.e., population per square mile, became
an increasingly important component of the urban classification"
(Kralt 1976, 3).
In the 1981 census, urban residents are those persons living in an
area having a population concentration of 1,000 or more, and a popu-
lation density of 400 or more per square kilometre (Statistics Canada
1981).
In 1931 and 1941 Canadian metropolitan areas were categorized as
"Greater Cities of Canada. " This label was changed in 1951 to "Census
Metropolitan Areas." In the 1981 census, a census metropolitan area
refers to "the main labour market area of an urbanized core (or contin-
uously built-up area) having 100,000 or more population. CMAs are
4 INTRODUCTION
comprised of (1) municipalities completely or partly inside the ur-
banized core; and (2) other municipalities if (a) at least 40% of the
employed labour force living in the municipality works in the urban-
ized core, or (b) at least 25% of the employed labour force working in
the municipality lives in the urbanized core. " If the population of the
total area contains between 10,000 and 99,999 it is termed a Census
Agglomeration.
Although important urban centres existed in Canada in the early nine-
teenth century, only in the 1890s and subsequent decades did the level of
urbanization begin to rise significantly. During the governments of Laurier
and Borden, Canada abandoned its position as primarily a rural-agricultural
society through the mass immigration, wheat production, and industrial
expansion which characterized this most critical period in its history (Brown
and Cook 1974). As the manufacturing and tertiary sectors of the economy
increasingly developed, the degree of urban concentration continued to
intensify.
Table 1 reveals that in 198115.8 percent of Canadians lived in urban cen-
tres each with a population size of less that 30,000. Many of these are single-
industry communities (Lucas 1971). Although physically isolated from large
metropolitan centres, their resource-extraction functions link them closely
to the national economy and the national urban system. There are today
more than 800 such communities, containing one-fourth of the total non-
metropolitan population (Ray and Roberge 1981, 16).
Despite its overall high national level, one important characteristic of
Canadian urbanization is its regional variation, reflecting in part differences
between the provinces in economic development (figure 1). Approximately
four-fifths of the populations of Ontario and Quebec were recorded as
urban in 1981, followed by more than three-fourths of those in British
Columbia and Alberta. Most of the other provinces showed much lower
proportions urban. Such regional differences appeared in past decades as
well. Since 1881, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia consistently main-
tained the highest levels of urban concentration.
The gap between them and the Prairies has, however, narrowed in recent
years as the latter experienced greater industrialization.
... particularly in Alberta where increases in business activity to service the
burgeoning oil and natural gas industry stimulated urban areas during the 1950s
and the 1960s. By 1971, the proportion of Alberta's population residing in urban
areas approached that of British Columbia, while in Saskatchewan once the most
rural of Canada's provinces, more than half of the people lived in a city or town
(Gertler and Crowley 1977, 47).
Despite these variations, at least half the population in all provinces
except Prince Edward Island now reside in urban areas, thus validating
Canada's status as an urban nation.
Introduction 5
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6 INTRODUCTION
URBAN SOCIOLOGY AS A FIELD OF STUDY
The development of urbanization as a dominant process of both demo-
graphic and social change represents one fundamental aspect of the modern
age. Urban sociology attempts systematically to describe and analyze this
phenomenon. It is therefore of central importance in achieving a more com-
plete understanding of contemporary societies.
Character of the Field
Throughout the history of its development urban sociology has manifested
several interesting characteristics.
Eclecticism. A number of years ago Noel Gist (1957) underlined the eclec-
tic character of urban sociology. One still finds a variety of theoretical per-
spectives, methodologies, and research interests represented among those
examining urbanization and urban structure. While interpénétration of
varying concerns and interpretations stimulates fascinating comparisons, it
renders the overall integration of the field difficult to achieve.
Lack of distinctiveness. This eclecticism is rooted in a more fundamental
difficulty. Urban sociology is undergoing something of an "identity crisis/'
The field lacks clearly definable boundaries. In a society that has achieved
only a low level of urbanization, the study of the city has an identifiable
focus - with attention given to rural-urban comparisons and to the role of
the city as a transformer of "ruralities" (or rural social and cultural attri-
butes). In a highly urban society, however, urban sociology merges with
general sociology, and its specific interests are included within other
sociological specialties (Gutman and Popenoe 1970). Consequently, as an
increasing number of societies experience structural and demographic trans-
formation, what distinguishes urban from general sociology is less obvious.
Attempts are made to avoid this implication by redefining urban sociology
in a restricted fashion. For example, Thomlinson (1969, vii) proposed that
urban ecology should be the only remaining "legitimate intellectual ration-
ale for the continuance of urban sociology as a distinct field." Not uncom-
monly, urban researchers avoid confronting this issue directly, and, instead,
concentrate on developing sets of theoretically integrated propositions
within the particular area they are working - a strategy which often takes
them into the realm of various specialties of sociology. The eclectic char-
acter of the field is thus reinforced.
Despite these features it is possible to organize the different concerns and
areas of interest within urban sociology.
Aims and Organization of Urban Sociology
When a tourist travels to a foreign land, he frequently relies on a guide
book. It contains descriptions of interesting and unusual existing sites; more