A social movement in urban politics: a reinterpretation of urban reform in Canada

A social movement in urban politics: a reinterpretation of urban reform in Canada

by Richard Harris

New ideas arise from new conditions. ‘Urban social movements’ became popular in the 1970s as social scientists attempted to understand the resurgence of urban political activity which had begun in many countries during the previous decade. The concept was first developed by Manuel Castells, who argued that a new urban politics was emerging on the basis of territorial interests out of novel conditions of collective consumption (Castells, 1977). Castells’s arguments attracted a good deal of attention, being discussed and applied by researchers in many countries (e.g. Dunleavy, 1980; Mullins, 1977; Olives, 1976). Refinements were suggested. In particular the need to relate theory to historical experience was emphasized (Katznelson, 1981; Pickvance, 1976; 1977). Castells has recently responded to this suggestion by elaborating his original argument through the analysis of urban politics in a wide variety of spatial and historical settings (Castells, 1983). Castells’s theory of urban politics has therefore proved to be both influential and resilient.

Although widely held, the notion that some social movements are specifically ‘urban’ in character is in fact rather questionable. Up to the 1970s, those who had written about social movements in general had not found it necessary to distinguish a specifically ‘urban’ type (e.g. Heberle, 1951; 1968; Smelser, 1963). Subsequently, they have not been much impressed by the idea that they should. A recent review, for example, makes no reference to this possibility (Jenkins, 1983; cf. Piven and Cloward, 1977; Tilly and Tilly, 1981). Of course this might be explained in terms of the sociology of academic research, and specifically the slowness of established specialists to respond to new topics. But it seems that more important issues are also at stake. A number of writers have argued that ‘urban’ has no explanatory power (Abrams, 1978; Paris, 1984; Saunders, 1981). These writers suggest that the concept does not denote a particular type of place, nor a particular social sphere or interest. From this point of view there does not seem to be any compelling reason to label as ’urban’ any of the issues that were raised by political activity in the 1960s and early 1970s. ‘Collective consumption’ occurs, indifferently, inside and outside cities, as does the definition of political interests on the basis of territory. Social movements may arise on the basis of consumption or territorial interests, but to label them urban is misleading. Whatever new realities have marked cities in the postwar period, the implication of recent debates is that ’urban social movements’ is

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not a useful way of thinking about them. The critics of ‘urban’ theory, however, have not had much influence upon the

actual interpretation of politics in cities. Typically, city politics is still viewed as an urban phenomenon. Canada is a case in point. It is the conventional wisdom that, during the 1960s in Canada, conditions in cities gave rise to a local movement for political reform (Higgins, 1977; 1981; Lorimer, 1983; Magnusson, 1983, 31-3). Urban growth, publicly sponsored urban renewal, public housing and inner-city redevelopment are supposed to have led to the emergence of local reform activity after about 1965. Moreover, these local conditions, and the movement to which they gave rise, are invariably described as ’urban’. Although this term is rarely defined, the implication is that local conditions in cities were qualitatively different from those in other parts of the country. The purpose of this paper is to outline an alternative interpretation of reform in Canadian cities. This account emphasizes the extent to which local reform was part of a larger movement for social change (Section I). Of course it was affected by conditions in cities. In general these conditions heightened the pressure for reform (Section II), and in specific cities they influenced the timing and intensity of reform activity (Section 111). But they did not create, nor define the nature of, reform. For that reason it makes more sense to talk of a social movement in urban politics, rather than an urban reform movement.

If this view of city politics in Canada is correct, it has implications for our under- standing of the situation in other countries and indeed for the way we think about modern urban politics (Section IV). To be sure, some aspects of the Canadian experience are unique, and these must be appreciated if the more typical elements are to stand out. But the broad features of the Canadian political economy, and the processes that were at work in the 1960s, were much the same as in other advanced capitalist countries. In the context of postwar economic prosperity, the pressures for inner-city redevelopment were growing. In the early 1960s a general movement for social change emerged out of a growing popular disdain for conventional party politics. This movement had both a radical and a reform wing, and both found expression in city politics. The same was true in the United States, Britain and indeed most western European countries. If events in Canada can be interpreted without reference to ‘urban social movements’ it is reasonable to infer that the same is true elsewhere. And if this is the case, the existence of ‘urban’ social movements, at least in modern capitalist societies, must be called in question.

I The social movement of the 1960s

Social movements are held together in part by social ideologies (Heberle, 1968, 439). In ideological terms, the movement of the 1960s was democratic in a radical sense (Levitt, 1984; cf. Hanson, 1985, 293-337). It sought to achieve greater participation in government and also to make society as a whole more equal. This ideology was shaped by forces that were international in scope, and which defined

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the movement in all of the advanced capitalist nations. In each country, the unfreezing of the Cold War coupled with the postwar economic boom made social criticism and domestic reform seem both acceptable and affordable. As a result, in every country there was an upsurge of political dissent.

The movement was rather diffuse, with two major elements. The first, which named itself the ‘new left’, was clearly the more radical. Developing in the late 1950s the new left drew ideas from a wide range of sources, including anarchism, pacifism and, increasingly, socialism. In the United States such ideas were combined with indigenous populism, to give the American new left a peculiarly strong emphasis on direct, or participatory, democracy. The second, more traditional element in the reform movement varied widely in character from place to place. In the United States it was closely associated with the liberalism of the Democratic Party. In Europe, it was more likely to be linked with socialist and social-democratic thought in organizations like the British Labour Party. In Canada, it was expressed in both the Liberal and New Democratic Parties. The former leaned towards liberal democracy, the latter towards social-democracy and, on its left wing, to socialism.

1 Radicals

The social roots of the new left were predominantly middle-class youth (Levitt, 1984; Parkin, 1968). By the early 1960s university campuses were growing rapidly. Students who had grown up in the affluence of the postwar economic boom had high expectations. Universities, overwhelmed by numbers, became more and more imper- sonal. The white collar and professional jobs that graduates might expect to get were being standardized and deskilled, offering fewer opportunities for personal autonomy and job satisfaction. It is no paradox, then, that one of the more privileged generations in history formed the basis of a movement that called for wholesale change.

Students and the new left were suspicious of the political system that they had inherited. In Canada, the new left dismissed elections as nothing but ‘ping-pong politics’ (Toronto. Research, Information and Publications Project, 1965). Parties, certainly, were held in low esteem. After 1956, the Communist movement was dis- credited by the Soviet invasion of Hungary and by the revelation of Stalin’s purges. The record of socialist and social-democratic parties did not appear to be much better. By the late 1950s most parties had given up any serious attempt to organize people for any other purpose than securing their vote. Organized labour was seen in much the same terms. The unfavourable political climate and growing affluence of the 1950s had pushed most unions into adopting an accommodatory role (Palmer, 1983, 185-228). The new left perceived that there was a political vacuum, which it then proceeded to fd1.I

’ At the local level new left community groups typically developed to fill what they perceived to be a political vacuum (O’Malley, 1977).The most notorious, and best documented, Canadian example was the organization of community resistence to urban renewal in Trefann Court. For discussion see Fraser (1972), Rep0 (1977), Sewell (1972, 15-40) and Spinks (1967).


The political alliance that the new left sought with greatest consistency was with those who were the most powerless: the working and welfare poor. This was especially true in North America, and above all the United States (Breines, 1982; Gitlin, 1967). The idea of organizing the poor was not new, After all, the working class of the 1930s had been, overwhelmingly, poor. But by the 1960s the poor had become quite distinct from organized labour. The union drives of the 1930s had provided economic protection to some workers, but many were still at the mercy of a labour market that pushed wages below subsistence. The unorganized did not see themselves as part of a labour movement, and unions did not try to speak for the unorganized. A line was drawn. Also during the depression, political unrest had forced many governments to provide the unemployed, and the unemployable, with some kind of safety net. In the US and Canada, unemployment insurance, and federally-funded welfare programmes, kept many people from starving. In the process, they created a new class of welfare dependent poor. By the 1960s, there was little sense of solidarity between the welfare poor and the working class. Organizing the poor had taken on a new, and very specific, social meaning.

Many among the poor had no workplace, or their workplace was the home. To organize this group the new left had to spend most of its time dealing with welfare and community issues. This was a departure for the left. Traditionally, socialists and communists had stressed the importance of organizing people in their workplace. After all, the strike was a powerful weapon. In contrast they had viewed community issues as secondary. The new left reversed this emphasis. The community - or what some have called the sphere of reproduction -had become steadily more important since the second world war (cf. Aglietta, 1979; Gorz, 1978; Tronti, 1973). The Keynesian solution to the crisis of the 1930s involved state intervention to promote demand-led growth. Pushed by the state, mortgage institutions underwrote a suburban boom which boosted consumer demand and industrial growth. New left activists did not approve of this trend, and indeed they attacked the bland material- ism of suburban consumer society. But they sensed that the residential community had thereby acquired an unprecedented importance. Far from being a liability, then, the necessity of organizing the poor around community issues seemed to give the new left an entree into a newly significant political arena.

2 Reformers

Community issues affected everyone. Partly for that reason, traditional reform organizations were not unmoved by the activities of the new left. In many countries the labour movement began to become more active. Liberal and socialdemocratic parties also responded to the political success of the new left by showing a new concern for their ‘grass roots’. The process, of course, was different in each country. In Britain the Liberal Party led the way. In Canada, the New Democratic Party (NDP) took the greatest interest both in community organizing and in local politics, but in national elections the Liberals were better able to capitalize on the new

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enthusiasm for reform. This was especially true in the 1968 federal election. By then, one of the most popular slogans of the new left had become ‘Power to the People’. In the 1968 campaign the Liberals adapted this to ‘More Power for Every- one’ (Gwyn, 1981, 101). Strictly, this emptied an already vague phrase of all meaning, but it sounded good and helped to win votes. After the election Trudeau, the successful Liberal candidate, promised to build a ‘just society’, a truly ‘participatory democracy’.

With hindsight such rhetoric sounds empty. But it would be wrong to interpret the actions of reform parties at this time as purely cynical. They were a genuine response to a broad change in political attitudes which Inglehart (1977) has called the ‘silent revolution’. To many working and middle-class people, both government and business seemed to be getting larger and consequently more remote. A call for greater participation went up. On the economic front, the continued existence of poverty in the midst of plenty was a standing criticism of the society for which so many who were over 40 had fought. Moreover, many came to believe that such an affluent society could (and should) now afford the luxury of caring properly for those unable to care for themselves. In the United States this movement gave Kennedy a narrow victory in the 1960 presidential election and kept the Democrats in power until 1968. In Canada a similar movement found a clear party expression a little later, coming to a peak only in the latter year with the election of Trudeau. It was in rapid decline by 1970. While it lasted, however, a broadly popular support for liberal or social-democratic reform was probably the most influential and certainly the most diffuse of the two elements to reform in the 1960s.

3 A movement of radical reform

The nature of these two reform elements has not received much attention, especially in Canada. The new left has been quite well served (Kostash, 1980; Levitt, 1984), but the other current of party-based reform has been almost entirely ignored. It is referred to in modern histories of the Liberal and New Democratic Parties, as well as by Richard Gwyn in his political biography of Trudeau (Cwyn, 1981; Morton, 1974; McCall-Newman, 1982). But this is not enough. In some countries reform became synonymous with a particular political party. This was the case in the United States where, as Matusow (1984) has shown, the Democratic Party held a virtual monopoly on the liberal vote. But the same was not true in Canada. Here, reform transcended party boundaries, being split between the Liberals and the NDP. Indeed, it even touched the Progressive Conservatives (Horowitz, 1966). In Canada, then, party histories are bound to leave us with a fragmented view of the reform movement. In view of the fact that no synthetic treatment has been attempted, it is not surprising that the relationship between traditional reform and the new left is very poorly understood (but see Hackett, 1979).

It might be objected that it is wrong to speak of two currents within a single reform movement. In principle the distinction between the reformer and the radical was clear, and even in practice the two groups were often at odds with one another.


On the one hand, most people in the new left were sceptical of electoral politics and were concerned about being coopted by ‘the system’ (cf. Daly, 1970; Loney, 1979). On the other hand, many liberals and social democrats thought the new left to be unnecessarily extreme. In the United States, for example, Matusow (1984) has argued that the extremism of the new left gave liberalism a bad name and thereby alienated potential allies. In large part this was the result of misunderstandings. The media played up the more bizarre elements of the new left, helping to polarize opinion against it (cf. Gitlin, 1980). Moreover, the violence which many came to associate with the movement was perpetrated by factions which formed when the new left fell apart. The Weathermen were the most notorious example in the United States, and the FLQ the most significant in Canada. These groups were not part of the new left, and indeed they represented a clear rejection of the movement’s democratic vision. But this was not altogether clear at the time. For whatever reason, then, many liberals and movement activists worked hard to differentiate themselves from one another.

But they protested too much. Reformers and radicals were so eager to establish their differences precisely because they shared so much. New left radicalism, particularly in North America, drew a good deal of inspiration from the liberal ideals of freedom of expression and of equality of opportunity. Many in the new left made a good deal out of the fact that society did not live up to those, its professed, ideals. Far from being alien, the new left was very much a child of North American society. Of course, there were those in the new left who espoused more radical ideals. But in general the goals of the reformer and the radical were quite similar. Moreover, in practice only a minority of people fell clearly into one camp or the other. For every political purist there were 10 activists whose views were more loosely defined and 100 others who simply reckoned that something should be done. Among the majority, then, the distinctions between the radical and the reformer were quite blurred, Both were critical of undemocratic state bureaucracies and powerful corporations. Both thought that the existing degree of social inequality was wrong. Both believed that something should be done about it and, prehaps even more importantly, agreed that something might.

The boundary between radicalism and reform became particularly blurred in Canada. Canada is unique among the western democracies in that it has an established social-democratic party that has never held power at the national level. The NDP could present itself as a radical party that was at the same time committed to electoral politics. Left of the Democratic Party in the US, it was untainted by the compromises of office as was, for example, the Labour Party in Britain. Hence, when the new left disintegrated in the late 1960s, a number of activists turned to the NDP. For purists, the ideological line between the new left and the NDP (and even more obviously the Liberals) was clear. But for many, probably tne great majority, of the supporters of these groups there was the strong sense of a common purpose.

This common purpose had a nationalist tone. More than in most countries, nationalism in Canada has been uncertain. Although Canada gained political independence

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from Britain in 1867, for decades it remained dependent upon British trade and investment. It was largely emancipated from this by the United States which, from the early twentieth century, came to play a dominant role in the economic, and therefore political and cultural, life of the nation (Levitt, 1970; Panitch, 1981). Outside Quebec, this produced a continuing uncertainty about the nature, and indeed the very existence, of a separate Canadian identity. The 1960s, however, saw a resurgence of nationalist sentiment, even in English Canada (Resnick, 1977). The roots were complex. The rapid urbanization of the country, coupled with an influx of immigrants from a wide variety of European and Asian countries, appear to have been of decisive importance.

This new nationalism tapped some of the enthusiasm of the postwar baby boom. At the same time, it imparted optimism, and the diffuse feeling of a shared purpose, to the movement for social reform. Even the Progressive Conservative party was touched by this, with ‘red tory’ nationalists such as George Grant finding common ground with radicals in the NDP and new left (Grant, 1967; Horowitz, 1966). In the United States, liberalism (and even more the new left) became embroiled in opposition to US involvement in Vietnam. In the process it laid itself open to the charge of being unpatriotic. North of the border the opposite was the case. Nationalism and reform complemented one another. On the one hand, to promote nationalism in the Canadian mosaic, some social reforms, notably bilingualism and multiculturalism, were seen to be necessary. On the other, social reform in such a dependent nation appeared to demand policies that were aggressively nationalist. In Canada, then, almost all reformers wrapped themselves in the flag. For this reason, I believe that it is useful to view the democratic reform movement of the 1960s as a whole, while recognizing that it contained within itself two complementary, and sometimes warring, elements. As the movement waxed and waned it reflected and shaped the politics of an era.

II The city and reform politics

In Canada (as elsewhere) the movement for democratic reform was concentrated in the cities. There were good reasons for this. By the beginning of the 1960s almost three quarters of all Canadians lived in urban areas. Moreover, the massing together of great numbers of people heightened the opportunities for conflict. To thrive, any political organization or movement must develop an effective means of internal communication. This is particularly true of a democratic organization where members participate in collective decisions. Telephones and newsletters help to maintain information networks, but effective internal democracy still seems to require that people gather together in a particular place. This is likely to be easier in the city than in the country (cf. Calhoun, 1982). In the city, people do not have to travel far to get to a political meeting; those without cars can readily make their way by transit. This islikely to be especially important in the early stages of a movement, when it has relatively little support. In that situation, only the medium-sized city


(or larger) might contain enough people to get a local organization off the ground. Of course, the existence of the city does not gurantee that a political movement will emerge. But it does offer the nascent movement a particularly favourable environment in which to develop.

Cities also provided more occasions for conflict. It has been said that political battles over the use and regulation of land are distinctively urban (Roweis and Scott, 1978; 1981; Sancton, 1983, 291-317; Williams, 1971).* This is surely wrong, for such conflicts can develop anywhere (Harris, 1984a). But the concen- tration of economic and social activity in cities does exacerbate the issue. A neighbour may not care much what you do to (or in) your home when (s)he lives on the next farm over. @)he will care a good deal when both homes are attached. The intimate interdependence of urban land creates many occasions for conflict: over what neighbours have done, have not done, and are proposing to do to their properties. Neighbours, of course, include governments, developers and industries, as well as the family next door. Land use conflicts can be as various as they are intense. The person who is most likely to be involved is the property owner, since (s)he has a financial stake in the issue. In the case of the home owner, th is stake may amount to the greater part of the family’s assets. The owner will generally have reconciled himself or herself to the local pattern of land use; indeed (s)he probably took account of this when buying his or her present home. But proposed changes are another matter. Owners view change with suspicion. This is obviously true where the likely effects on property values are negative. It is also likely to be true in situations where the effects are less clearcut, for most people are risk-averse. Altogether, cities are rich fields for conflict over land use, above all where change is rapid.

In these terms, the development of cities in the postwar period invited political conflict. Cities were growing and changing more rapidly in Canada than in most other countries. Through immigration and rural-urban migration, Canadian cities grew very rapdly after 1945. At the beginning of the 1940s, the proportion of people living in urban areas in Canada (43 per cent) was about 10 percentage points lower than that in the United States. By 1971 the level of urbanization in the two countries, at 69 per cent, was the same (Yeates and Garner, 1980,21). In Canada, suburbs sprouted at the crab-grass frontier. Backed by federal loan guarantees, a whole generation bought new detached homes and settled down to raise a family. The suburb-building process was uncontroversial. Few stood to lose by it and many, including the middle class and the burgeoning development industry, reckoned to gain. But suburban growth had consequences for the inner city. More people than jobs moved out of the downtown. The volume of commuters rose steadily, increasing the pressure for road and freeway construction. The restructuring and expansion of employment in the inner city put pressure on older residential districts. Developers itched to replace warehouses, factories and low- income housing with profitable offices and high-rise apartments. Governments

* Roweis no longer takes this view. Personal communication.

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were not unsympathetic. In 1946 and again in 1954 urban renewal legislation provided public subsidies for innercity redevelopment. Public monies also went into highway projects that would keep commuter flow at least one step ahead of gridlock. The problem was that redevelopment and road construction meant change. They entailed the displacement of existing residents, and threatened the way of life (and property values) of many more. In the postwar period, then, the restructuring of the city created many conflicts of interest arising from the use and regulation of land. Such conflicts did not give ‘urban’ reform a unique character, but it did impart a peculiar intensity to city politics.

Much of the reform activity that developed in cities came to be focused upon city government, that is to say upon those who were elected or appointed lo call^.^ This was not inevitable. In Canada, local governments have no constitutional status (Plunkett, 1968; Higgins, 1986; 66-120). For those seeking personal redress or social change, federal and provincial courts and governments are the loci of power. In the field of land-use regulation, for example, the ultimate arbiter of disputes in the province of Ontario is the provincial Municipal Board. But on many of the issues that came to be important to reformers in the 1960s, local governments were, if not the ultimate then at least the first court of appeal. Through zoning and building bylaws, municipal governments regulate much of the built environment, and therefore the immediate context of community life. This guaranteed that local governments would be at the centre of conflicts over housing and redevelopment. But this was not all. Municipal governments are concerned with other matters as well. These include education and certain types of welfare assistance. In terms of welfare, for example, in the 1960s policy was determined partly at the federal and partly at the provincial level. The day-to-day administration, however, and de fact0 some elements of policy, was a concern of local govenment. Most of the funds for welfare came from the upper levels of government, but some were still provided from the local tax base. There were, then, a number of reasons why reformers might want to concentrate their attention on city hall.

The most important of these concerned the real estate connection. Because they taxed and regulated real estate, local governments were brought into a particularly intimate relationship with propertied interests. Each came to depend upon the other, the one for revenue and the other for regulatory favours. This was quite generally the situation in advanced capitalist countries where local governments taxed and zoned land. This mutual dependence, however, took a particular form in Canada. Here, rapid urbanization and federal tax policy in the postwar period encouraged the growth of large, vertically-integrated development companies (Lorimer, 1978). By the 1960s, a mere handful of these companies - dubbed ‘the developers’ by James Lorimer - exerted a degree of control over property development (and redevelopment) in Canadian cities that probably had no parallel in any other country. Their bargaining power with local government

I have followed Magnusson (1985) in distinguishing ‘local government’ in this manner from ‘local state’. The latter comprises all elements of the state which have a local presence, including those which are branches of federal or provincial governments.


was correspondingly large. Their size and local political influence came to be viewed by reformers as an affront to democracy, making the developers the most visible target in a milieu that was increasingly politicized.

Because cities in Canada became centres of political activity, such activity came to be viewed as a distinctively urban phenomenon. This view was first made popular by James Lorimer, in his roles as author, book publisher and editor of Ci@ Magazine. In essence he interpreted the rise of citizen participation as a response to the development of the ‘corporate city’, a city built by and for the large developers (Lorimer, 1978; 1983). Some authors, notably Warren Magnusson, have argued that the origins of the Canadian corporate city and of urban reform lie deeper than that (Magnusson, 1983; cf. Harvey, 1985, 1-31, 185-226). In their view, the development of the modern city has reflected and reproduced corporate capitalism itself. The development companies, then, were little more than the instruments of a much larger process. This is an important difference, especially since it highlights the similarities between the situation in Canada and elsewhere. But in one important respect Magnusson and Lorimer are in agreement. In his introduction to a recent edited collection of articles on city politics in Canada, Magnusson (1983, 32-3) argues that innercity redevelopment gave rise to a good deal of grass roots opposition and that ‘the new reform politics of the late 1960s and the 1970s grew out of such protest’. He, like Lorimer, believes that local conditions were decisive to the emergence of urban reform.

This is at best only half of the story. It is generally recognized that local reform in North America in the early twentieth century was an integral part of a much larger ‘progressive’ movement that sought the reform of many social and political institutions. The argument has been most effectively made by Wiebe with respect to US cities, but the same was also true in Canada (Wiebe, 1967; Hanson, 1985; Rutherford, 1977). Moreover, it is also well known that in Quebec in the 1960s, the links between provincial and city politics were very close. This was especially true in Montreal, where the emergence of the Front d’Action Politique (FRAP), followed by the Montreal Citizen’s Movement (MCM), are usually interpreted as the confluence of civic reform and Quebec nationalism (Milner, 1982,143; Raboy, 1982,237; Godbout and Collin, 1977). When nationalist sentiment found a new outlet in the 1970s in the separatist Parti Quebecois, the urban reform cause was hurt (Roussopoulos, 1982, 25). Different, but comparable, connections surely existed in the 1960s between national and urban politics in English Canada. Indeed, without reference to such connections, it is difficult to explain why, in most cities, reform emerged in the late 1960s. On the criteria used by reformers, the process and content of municipal government was not much different in the 1960s that it had been in the 1950s. Moreover, the restructuring of the city was proceeding rapidly in both decades. With the exception of public housing, the issues that reformers addressed were not new to the 1960s. Why, then, did an ‘urban’ reform movement emerge in (about) 1968 rather than (say) in 1958 or 1948? Neither Lorimer nor Magnusson have an answer. When local reform movements are set within the broader national and international context, however, the answer is clear. So-called urban reform was

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one manifestation of the broader social movement that developed with the thawing of the Cold War, with growing affluence, and with the emergence into adulthood of the postwar baby boom generation. In Canada it drew strength from a new nationalist spirit. It was the combination of local and more general conditions, not one or the other, that gave rise to a municipal reform movement, and which gave local reform its particular chronology and character.

III The sources of local diversity

Of course local circumstances were important to the timing and impact of local reform. Writers such as Lorimer and Magnusson have emphasized the extent to which much the same social and economic changes were affecting cities across the country. Accordingly they view reform as a movement that was urban in character and national in scope. Higgins has quite properly called this into question (Higgins, 1981). He has pointed out that local economic conditions led to local differences in the timing and intensity of municipal reform. In some cities reform coincided with the rise and fall of the national reform movement as a whole, being in decline as early as 1970. Kingston, Ontario, was a case in point (Harris, 1987). In others, Toronto and Montreal being prominent examples, it lagged slightly behind (Freeman, 1982; Goldrick, 1978). Many factors, acting separately and in combination, might account for this. Especially rapid, or slow, growth would create unique pressures. Social divisions within the locality might affect the character and strength of reform. The presence of recent immigrants and ethnic minorities, for example, could complicate the picture in unpredicatable ways. Overall, however, the most generally significant divisions that shaped reform at the local level were those defined by the ownership of domestic property, by place of residence within the city, and above all by social class.

The importance of housing tenure in local politics is widely appreciated, both by local activists and by students of urban politics (Agnew, 1981; Cox, 1982). With a greater stake in their neighbourhood of residence, owners are more likely to organise against urban redevelopment. In research on Kingston, Ontario, for example, Harris (1984b, 465; 1985, 578) has indicated that, even in mainly rental districts of the city, home owners typically dominated neighbourhood politics. In such instances, owners and tenants often found themselves at odds with one another. Their interests naturally differ: owners are happy to see property values rise, while tenants prefer to keep rents low. These aims are not usually compatible, and in some cases renewal proposals set owners and tenants against one another, as happened in Toronto’s Trefann Court (Fraser, 1972). In economic and political terms, then, housing tenure constituted a base of difference and indeed conflict.

Residential segregation, coupled with the localized impact of specific city redevelopments, also created divisions of interest (Cox, 1984; Harris, 1984~). Faced with redevelopment proposals, the residents of a particular neighbourhood could argue that the proposed physical infrastructure was simply unnecessary. In two of


the most notorious Canadian issues of the time, this was the strategy taken by opponents to the Chinatown (Vancouver) and Spadina (Toronto) expressways. But where the need for construction could not readily be disputed, as was the case with public housing, a different strategy was usually adopted. Neighbourhoods argued, in effect, that public housing should be built, but someplace else. In Kingston, for example, this was the argument of the residents of both Rideau Heights and Calvin Park, the main neighbourhoods where the local government attempted to build public housing (Harris, 198b, 470). In this manner the residents of different areas of the city could find themselves at loggerheads.

Above all, the character of local reform was shaped by the local class structure. This is neither a simple nor an obvious point. Social class is one of the most disputed concepts in the social sciences, as it is in society as a whole. It has been defined in many ways (Giddens, 1973). The most satisfactory definition, because it is rooted in a broader theory of social structure and change, and because this theory has been shown to have great explanatory power, is that which has been developed within the marxist tradition. Because they share the conviction that classes are at once objective economic relations and yet also subjective frames of mind, marxists disagree as to how, exactly, classes should be defined (Carchedi, 1977; Thompson, 1968; Wright, 1978). The relationship between ‘class’ and ‘class consciousness’, then, is the key difficulty in using the marxist conception of class (Przeworski, 1977; Stedman Jones, 1983). In one sense, the nature of this relationship is an open, that is to say empirical, question. Defined in economic terms, the members of a class may or may not conceive of themselves, or act politically, as a class. If they do, we may say that class and class consciousness coincide. If they do not, we might conclude that members of the class in question are misguided, or exhibit ‘false consciousness’. But this label should be used very carefully. People have a variety of economic interests, and at any particular time these may quite legitimately over- lay in their minds the significance of class. For example, at a time when rents are increasing rapidly, a working-class tenant may quite reasonably decide to spend more time working for a tenants’ association than in a union. In my view this is not, as some marxists might claim, false consciousness. But, conversely, in such a situation it would not be correct to conclude that class had ceased to be important. The economic significance of class is the continual creation of value, and appropriation of surplus value, in the workplace. This continues whether or not the tenant in question acts, politically, as a worker. Moreover, as many writers, including Max Weber, have noted, economic class divisions that are obscuied in everyday consciousness typically come to the surface in moments of crisis (Weber, 1968, 184-6). At such times they can play a decisive role, thereby reaffirming their political and economic significance to the society in question.

This would appear to be what happened in the 1960s. By the 1950s and early 1960s class consciousness had virtually disappeared from the surface of Canadian politics and, as Porter noted at the time, from the Canadian self-image as it was presented in the mass media (Porter, 1965). Although it did not conceive of itself primarily in class terms, the reform movement implicitly challenged this image. In

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many cities the movement formed a political coalition that was drawn mainly from the ranks of the poor, middle-class youth, the organized labour movement and a young generation of social service professionals. The power and economic interests of these groups were not identical. No-one cared more about state programmes of welfare assistance than the poor, the group that was also clearly the least powerful. The middle class, with its greater knowledge and direct experience of how government worked, was usually in the best position to bring influence to bear on city hall. But in several important respects these groups found common ground. All stood to gain from the expansion of government social programmes, the welfare poor as recipients, the working and middle class as employees and possible beneficiaries of unemployment insurance, pension and medical assistance. None were powerful. The working and middle classes had developed, or were in the process of making, organizations to protect their interests. These organizations carried some clout, but were mainly definsive in character. They helped to protect employees against inadequate wages, unfair dismissal and, later, government cutbacks. But at the local level, prior to the reform movement of the 1960s, they had little voice at city hall.

Ranged against this coalition were local businessmen and landiords, along with what may be called the development lobby. The latter typically comprised builders, developers, real estate agents and banks, along with associated professionals and the local construction trades. Again, these groups did not have identical powers or interests. The professionals and the building trades were usually the weaker partners in this loose alliance, and some of the interests and loyalties of the latter were the same as these of their union brothers in the reform coalition. But, in varying degrees, all of these groups shared a direct interest in the growth of the local economy, and specifically in the processes of urban development. They saw municipal government at best as a facilitator, and at worst as a barrier, to the economic growth which was being promoted by the private sector. As many writers have shown, these were the groups that typically had the ear of City Council, and for whom local reform posed the greatest threat.4 For the most part, then, reform issues divided the major classes fairly neatly into two coalitions. In any particular place, the vitality and character of reform politics depended heavily upon the relative numbers, the attitudes and political organization, of the major classes. Class attitudes and organization were, in turn, likely to depend to a considerable extent upon the particular way in which housing tenure reinforced, or cut across, class divisions, and also upon the ways that class and tenure were embodied in the social geography of the city. In this manner, the nature and impact of reform in each city came to depend upon the complex interpenetration of specific social divisions within the locality, as well as upon the broader course of events.

' See, for example, the case studies contained in Magnusson and Sancton (1983).


N Discussion and implications

Previous accounts of Canadian city politics in the 1960s have identified some important truths. Economic circumstances differed from place to place and such differences did find expression in local politics. Most cities were changing rapidly and hence became centres of political activity. But, paradoxical as it may seem, local circumstances did not play the decisive role in local politics. Municipal reform developed only with the emergence of a broader movement for social change. In some cities, local issues kept reform alive after the broader movement had gone into decline. But there seems to have been no Canadian city where municipal reform preceded the social movement of the 1960s. This, as much as anything else, indicates the extent to which local events waited upon wider trends. Moreover, to the extent that local events were important for local politics, they do not seem to have had any quality that can usefully be described as urban. Local intervention by the state, conflicts over land use and the like were perhaps more common and visible in cities, but they were not unique to such places. Such issues had their importance, but it is neither necessary nor even useful to refer to them as urban.

There is no reason to believe that the situation in Canada was, in any fundamental sense, different from that in other countries. Allusions have already been made to the existence of broad parallels between Canada, the US and Britain. In each of these countries, housing tenure, class and segregation were arguably the key sources of local division, although in many places race and ethnicity also played a highly significant role. Again, in each country city politics was shaped in much the same way by the social movement of the 1960s. This is not surprising since the movement itself was international in origins and scope. A specific comparison may best highlight the representativeness of the Canadian experience. In New York, as Fainstein and Fainstein (1985, 194) have shown, the redevelopment of Manhatten that occurred in the 1950sgave rise to protests but not to any ‘genuine social movement’. It was only in the 1960s in the Fainstein’s view, with the emergence of civil rights as a national issue, that a local movement emerged. When the national movement fell apart in the early 1970s, the momentum of local political reform was lost. There is some room for debate as to the precise significance of civil rights to the national movement. But in New York, as in Canadian cities and elsewhere, the importance of broader political issues to the course of local events seems obvious.

It is of course not surprising that people’s involvement in urban politics is closely related to their engagement in wider political issues. Indeed, it would be most remark- able if this were not the case. For that reason, the Fainsteins’ argument (p. 193) - that ’urban movements cannot be explained by analyses that stay at the urban level’ - should be regarded as a truism. But the available evidence supports an even stronger conclusion that, at least in modern capitalist societies, urban movements, per se, do not exist. Of course, local activists often organize around local issues. Some of these local issues came up, again and again, in many cities. Redevelopment of the built environment, housing costs and state welfare programmes are prime examples. It is at least arguable that the urban milieu heightens these issues, and gives organizers an

Richard Harris 377

unparalleled opportunity to mobilize people around them. But the issues themselves are not generically urban. In today’s world there are no ‘urban social movements’, only social movements which have found their clearest expression in urban politics.

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Le concept des 'deplacements sociaux urbains' devrait 6tre abandonnc. En thiorie. on a avanc6 I'argument qu'aucune question sociale n'cst cxclusivcment urbainc mais cet argument n'a pas beaucoup influenci les recherchcs empiriques qui ont eti. faites sur les politiques des villes. Le Canada dans les annCes 1960 constitue un bon exemple. Dans ce pays. le developpement des politiques de reforme dans les villes y a ete attribue aux conditions locales. II s'agissait en fait essentiellement de I'expression d'un mouvcment plus largc pour un changement social. La reforme reflktait dans une certaine mesure dcs conditions locales. structures de classe et de propriitC et la facon dont ces structures correspondaient a la gCographie de la ville. Mais ces conditions n'etaient pas exclusives aux villes et elks nc devraicnt pas Etre appelees urbaines. Dans les societC capitalistes modernes. i l est prkferablcs dc considercr Ics mouvcmcnts de reforme 'urbains' comrne des mouvements sociaux qui ont trouvC une expression dans les politiques locales.

Das Konzept 'stadtischcr Gesellschaftsbewegungcn' solltc aufgegben werden. Trotz der theoretischen Auffassung. dal3 kein politisches Phanomcn rein stadtisch bedingt ist. haben derartige Argumente nur geringfiigigen EinfluB auf empirische Untersuchungen iiber Stadtpolitik gehabt. Ein gutes Beispiel dafur ist das Kanada der 1960er Jahre. Dort wurde namlich das Aufkommen einer Rcformpolitik auf Zirtlichc Bedingungen zuriickgefuhrt. In Wirklichkeit entsprang diese jedoch in erster Linie einer breiteren Bewegung fur gesellschaftlichen Wandel. Das Reformstreben spicgelte zwar in gewissem Mal3c ortliche Bedingungen wider. wie etwa Klassenstrukturen und Eigentumsvcrhaltnisse sowic dic Art und Wcisc. in der sich diese in der

Richard Harris 381

Stadtgeographic zcigtcn; abcr solche Bedingungcn waren nicht ausschliel3lich auf Stadtc beschrlnkt und sollten folglich nicht als stadtisch bczcichnet wcrden. I n den modernen kapitalistischcn Gesellschaftcn wcrden ‘stidtischc‘ Rcformbcwegungen zutreffender als gesellschaftlichc Bcwegungen vcrstandcn. die uber dcm Wcgc der Brtlichcn Politik zum Ausdruck kommen.

El concept0 dc ‘movimientos sociales urhanos‘ tendria que dejar de usarsc. Desdc un punto de vista tecirico. se ha argumentado que no hay tema politico quc sea exclusivamente urbano. si bien las investigacioncs empiricas sobrc las politicas urbanas no se han visto influenciadas sustancialmente por tales argumentos. Un ejemplo cs el caso de Canada en 10s anos 60. El resurgir de las politicas reformistas en las ciudades se ha atribuido en cste caso a las condiciones localcs. Dc hecho. fue fundamcntalmcnte una expresicin de un movimiento mas amplio tendente a producir cambios sociales. Hasta cicrto punto. la reforma reflejo las condiciones sociales. incluycndo las estructuras de clase y de tenencia y la forma en la que &as se reflejaron en la geografia de la ciudad. N o obstante, tales condiciones no fueron exclusivas de las ciudades y no dcberian llamarse urbanas. En las socicdades capitalistas modernas. 10s movimientos reformistas ‘urbanos’ se comprcnden mejor bajo el titulo dc movimientos sociales que han encontrado un marco de expresi6n en las politicas locales.

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A social movement in urban politics: a reinterpretation of urban reform in Canada

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