TORONTO LAUNCH: Zack Taylor - Shaping the Metropolis

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON
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Jack Taylor will launch his book Shaping the Metropolis: Institutions and Urbanization in the United States and Canada. The event is hosted by The Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG), Munk School of Global Affairs. Dr. Alan Harding, formerly of the University of Manchester and now Chief Economic Adviser to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority will serve as commentator.

Zack Taylor is assistant professor of political science and director of the Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance at the University of Western Ontario.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Shaping the Metropolis Zack Taylor compares the historical development of American and Canadian urban governance, both at the national level and through specific metropolitan case studies. Examining Minneapolis-St Paul and Portland, Oregon, in the United States, and Toronto and Vancouver in Canada, Taylor shows how differences in the structure of governing institutions in American states and Canadian provinces cumulatively produced different forms of urban governance. Arguing that since the nineteenth century American state governments have responded less effectively to rapid urban growth than Canadian provinces, he shows that the concentration of authority in Canadian provincial governments enabled the rapid adoption of coherent urban policies after the Second World War, while dispersed authority in American state governments fostered indecision and catered to parochial interests.