Observations on the governance of "Suburbia": learning from the Canadian experience

In a world of planetary urbanization, processes of spatial development are under endless changes and threatened by the constant strengthening of neoliberal policy-making at all spatial scales. At the same time, the existence of worldwide urban growth shows us that the urban morphology is no longer readable through core/periphery dualisms which strengthened a centralist bias on urban theory. Today, both urban growth and change are better understood if we take into account tendencies towards urban expansion, de-centralization and suburbanization (Keil, 2017a), to explore the relations between agglomeration processes and their multi-scalar operational landscapes. By addressing the uneven spatial development of urban areas, the paper grounds its reflection in the governance processes of suburban areas, embracing two perspectives to bridge an analysis between Canada and Europe. On the one hand, it grounds the reflection on “suburban governance”, by looking at the so-called “suburbanisms”, i.e. the growing prevalence of distinctive ways of life in the suburban areas. On the other hand, the paper looks at the city-region perspective to address the governance of the multifaceted expansion of urban agglomerations in European and Canadian contexts. Furthermore, the paper provides an overview of suburbanization in Canada, as a territorial mass halfway between the American and the European models of suburbanization. A noteworthy literature has been produced to study the suburban ways of living in Canada, and in this respect, the contribution enhances the strengths of the “Atlas of Suburbanisms”, pointing out the interesting theoretical approach adopted by Canadian academia. Finally, the paper posits that urban changes not only imply transformations in built environment, but they also call for new governance agendas able to deal with societal, inter-institutional and infrastructural issues in a time of uneven suburbanization within city-regions.