Gary Sands - Roads to Prosperity : Economic Development Lessons From Midsize Canadian Cities.

Acknowledgments

T he work presented here benefitted from financial support from a number of sources. We have received several grants from the Canadian Embassys Faculty Research Grant Program, which provided resources for US scholars doing work on and in Canada. Separate grants were also received from the Qubec / United States University Grant Program through the Qubec Government Office in Chicago. Additional financial support was provided by Wayne State University and Michigan State University.

While each of these sources has been important, funding from the Canadian Embassys Faculty Research Grant Program has been especially vital. The corpus of research presented here represents the fruits of that grant program, which aimed to foster cross-border research linkages, present Canadian work to US audiences, and develop scholarship (and scholars) in the United States focusing on Canada. The Embassy Faculty Research Grant program was discontinued in 2013. We hope that this book will serve as a testament to the lasting value of that programs support.

In particular, we would like to thank Dr. Dan Abele of the Canadian Embassy in Washington and Dennis Moore, Public Affairs Officer at the Canadian Consulate in Detroit. Over the years, their support and encouragement for our work has been invaluable.

We also owe a great deal to all those individuals who assisted our research by generously giving their time, knowledge, and understanding. There are far too many local officials, planners, economic development specialists, and academics for us to try to list them individually. We want to thank them for their assistance.

There are, however, a number of individuals who deserve recognition for their extraordinary contributions to this effort. Doug Caruso (Planner for the City of Windsor and adjunct planning faculty member at Wayne State University and the University or Windsor) and Mal Matthew (Planner for the Borough of North York and Professor at the University of Windsor) provided invaluable assistance helping us to understand Canadian cities and their context. Professor Pierre Filion of the University of Waterloo not only provided essential insights and critiques, but also helped to bring us into contact with professional and academic planners across Canada.

Over the years we also benefitted from the capable research assistance provided by a number of individuals, both at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. These include Jessica Faist-Witt, Maranda Holtsclaw, Kathryn Huttenga, T. J. Knezek, Bradon Martin, and Moushumi Roy.

Appendix A. Metropolitan Area Data

Table A1 Demographics

Table A2 Manufacturing and Business Services Employment, 19912011

Table A3 Economic Base

Table A4 Creative Occupations

Table A5 Components of the Economic Prosperity Index

Table A6 Employment by Industry

Table A7 Employment Share Information Technology and Creative Occupations

Appendix B. Factor Loadings

F actor analysis is a statistical technique that is often used to reduce the number of variables in instances where the individual variables are highly correlated. In essence, factor analysis creates a new index variable (factor) by the linear addition of two or more measures. When two or more factors are extracted, they are constructed so that the correlation between factors is minimized. As a result, the variables included in each factor can be interpreted as representing a different concept. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed using creative class indicator measures derived from previous creative class research.

The results of these analyses are provided below, indicating the individual variables in each factor, along with the associated factor loading.

CREATIVE CLASS

Creative Factor Loadings

Amenities Factor Loadings

IMMIGRANT

Immigrant Origin Factor Loadings

Minority Population Factor Loadings