Lisa Benton-Short - Cities of North America: Contemporary Challenges in U.S. and Canadian Cities

Cities of North America

Cities of North America

Contemporary Challenges in US and Canadian Cities

Edited by

Lisa Benton-Short

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cities of North America : contemporary challenges in U.S. and Canadian cities / edited by Lisa Benton-Short.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-1313-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-1315-9 (electronic) 1. Urban policy United States. 2. Urban policyCanada. 3. Cities and townsUnited States. 4. Cities and townsCanada. I. Benton-Short, Lisa.

HT122.C57 2014

307.760973dc23

2013028531

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

An Introduction to Cities of North America

Three Cities, Three Stories

Washington, DC

January 20, 2009. They came to the National Mall in Washington, DC, by the hundreds of thousands. They came from around the country, endured frigid weather, security checkpoints, and long lines. The entire two-mile stretch of the mall was a carpet of nearly two million peoplean unprecedented crowd of astonishing size and spirit. They were there to bear witness to historythe inauguration of Barack Obama. That day, the Mall was quite visibly a stage for and of democracy.

The National Mall in Washington, DC, is one of the most recognized and visited public spaces in the United States. It is where presidents are inaugurated and where the country has commemorated important people and events. It is a stage on which we act out the meaning of the nation, where protests challenge us to rethink what constitutes citizenship, justice, and the promise of democracy. It is where American society expresses its national ideals of democracy, liberty, and freedom in the built form and the physical landscape. The power of the Mall derives not from its stoic architecture, inspiring memorials, or grassy open spaces but from the people who visit, who use the space in celebration or protest, and who, ultimately, use the Mall as a stage for the expression of democratic ideals.

New York City

In the fall of 2011 dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of people gathered in Zuccotti Park, in the heart of New York Citys Wall Street financial district. The protest movement became known as Occupy Wall Street. Activists rallied against the increasing corporate influence on democracy, the lack of legal consequences for those who brought about the global recession, and the increasing disparity in wealth. The Occupy slogan We are the 99% refers to the income inequality and wealth distribution in the United States between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the population.

The protest led to media awareness that inspired similar Occupy protests in numerous US and Canadian cities, including Los Angeles, Detroit, Buffalo, Baltimore, Montreal, San Diego, Toronto, and Vancouver. By late November, city officials announced they would close Zuccotti Park to the protesters. Since the closure of the park, the Occupy Wall Street movement has focused on protesting and occupying space at banks, corporate headquarters, and college and university campuses.

Vancouver

In February of 2010, millions of people around the world turned their attention to the city of Vancouver. For the next seventeen days, the city played host to the Winter Olympic Games. The city spent hundreds of millionsperhaps as much as two billion dollarsto upgrade facilities, build new venues, and create the Olympic Village. It was estimated that the Olympics brought $2.5 billion to the Vancouver economy and generated 45,000 jobs.

Hosting the Olympic Games involves not only a creative vision but also a physical restructuring of the city, an opportunity for urban renewal. The construction of the Olympic Village and projects, such as the construction of new roads and sewer system, and the creation or improvement of parks, plazas, and streets links the games with urban renewal. Often this involves an upgrade of the citys infrastructure and transportation networks, the renovation of the seafront, and/or the organization of the historic center. Hosting the games leaves a physical legacy that has longer-term development potential. Perhaps the largest infrastructural legacy is the upgrade of airports, telecommunications, mass transit schemes, and road networks that quite literally better connect the city to global flows of people, ideas, and commerce.

The games are a catalyst for urban renewal, environmental remediation, and improvements to a citys infrastructure that can make the city more competitive on the world stage. Vancouver is betting that the games will reposition the city in the global imaginary by promoting a positive global image of the city and stimulating tourism and investment.

These three cities and the three recent stories that occurred there remind us of the powerful and central role that cities play in our political, economic, and social lives. They are where we gather to celebrate. They are where we gather to protest. They are often the sites of important events. They are also where millions of us live daily, navigating the streets of our neighborhoods, commuting to work, raising families. Americans and Canadians live in a highly urbanized society, where what happens in our cities informs not just our local lives but our national political, economic, and social discourses.

In this book, we use the regional term North America to refer to cities in the United States and Canada. Although geographers include Mexico in North America, we chose to focus this book on just US and Canadian cities because these cities share so much more in common economically, politically, and socially. For example, US and Canadian metropolitan areas face complex issues that include the redistribution of economic activities, the continued decline of manufacturing, and a global growth in services, all of which have rapidly changed the look and experience of cities. Inner cities have experienced both gentrification and continued areas of segregation and poverty. Downtown revitalization has created urban spectacles that include festivals, marketplaces, and sports stadiums. Older, inner-ring suburbs now confront decline and increased poverty, while the outer-ring suburbs and exurbs continue to expand, devouring green space. While it is true that some Mexican cities have experienced these changes, most have not. As a result, Mexican cities confront different economic, political, and social challenges from their US and Canadian counterparts. We do, however, acknowledge the linkages and networks that comprise US, Canadian, and Mexican cities and have included a chapter that examines critical trends among border cities.

Urbanization Trends

The world passed a major milestone in 2010: more than one-half of the worlds residents now live in urban areas. This event is impressive when we consider that less than 10 percent lived in urban areas in 1900 and only 30 percent lived in urban areas in 1950. This major demographic shift marks a century of accelerating urbanization. It is now a fact that in many areas of the world, a majority of the population lives in urban areas, and this trend is only growing. In the United States and Canada, a majority of the population has been urban throughout most of the twentieth century and into the first decades of this century (table 1.1). Today, more than 80 percent of the US and Canadian population lives in urban areas. The three largest cities in North America are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, but there are some forty-eight cities that have a population of more than one million. Figure 1.1 shows the major cities of the United States and Canada.