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The paper centres on the content of metropolitan-scale plans of the six largest Canadian urban regions. Plans in all these regions promote intensification and alternatives to automobile use, and thus adhere to smart growth and sustainability principles. In all cases save one, reliance on nodal development is the preferred manner of achieving intensification and ensuring its co-ordination with public transit services. Meanwhile, however, results point to differences in the stage of development of metropolitan planning strategies. The paper concludes by reflecting on the wide adoption of the nodal model in metropolitan plans. It interprets this popularity as the outcome of the ability of nodes to achieve intensification and reduced car reliance objectives, while conforming to prevailing planning and institutional capacity. The effectiveness of the nodal approach and other broad metropolitan planning concepts rests in their capacity to procure a metropolitan structure for the other scales at which urban planning is practised.

AbstractGrowing dissatisfaction with the prevailing dispersed urban form and its generalized reliance on the automobile has resulted in the formulation of planning models seeking to substitute dispersed development with recentralization. A survey of 301 planning documents with a metropolitan focus, originating from the 58 US and Canadian urban regions with a population exceeding one million, reveals widespread support for urban recentralization. But interviews with 55 planners, involved in the preparation of these plans and/or the implementation of their proposals, highlight actual and foreseen barriers to the implementation of recentralization strategies. The article interprets the popularity of recentralization in planning documents as the outcome of planners' attempts to reconcile their commitment to sustainable development with societal factors affecting planning possibilities. Still, we anticipate serious problems in achieving large‐scale recentralization due to urban development path dependencies emanating from the prevailing urban form and dynamics, institutional structures, and from the limited urban transformative potential afforded by neoliberalism.

Fuelled by the province's booming energy sector, Alberta's two largest cities have experienced unprecedented levels of growth. As a result, they face a choice about how to best accommodate their expanding populations — whether to grow out or grow up. For decades, Calgary and Edmonton accommodated almost all growth through the former, suburban expansion. Indeed, the postwar period was marked by a focus on contiguous outward growth to ensure housing affordability and the efficient use of infrastructure, a policy that was widely supported by both the public and the development industry. In Calgary, at least, this has started to change. Beginning in the late 1990s, the city shifted its focus to livability and sustainability, a move that saw policies introduced to promote urban intensification and greater transit use. While this shift has proven popular in many quarters, it also has its fair share of detractors, including many in the development industry. In Edmonton, a city where growth has been relatively slower and authority over urban development dispersed among several local governments, this policy shift has not occurred. Although it is too early to see clear results from this policy shift, a spatial analysis shows that the density of Calgary's built-up urban area increased in the first decade of the 21st century. Relatively high-density suburban growth led Calgary to consume less land compared with the previous decade (2 ha per 100 new residents in 2001–2011 versus 6.5 ha in 1991–2001). This growth was accompanied by modest intensification in core areas, although the dwelling unit density of the urban area increased by more than the population density (18 per cent versus 14 per cent). Edmonton's development is roughly similar: denser suburban growth has led to the more efficient consumption of rural land (3 ha per 100 new residents in the 2001–11 period versus 7 ha in 1991–2001). The built-up area has also intensified slightly, especially in areas near transit stations. By way of comparison, Vancouver with its long-standing urban containment policies, including the expansion limits represented by the Agricultural Land Reserve, grew mostly through intensification between 1991 and 2011. In Toronto, the second comparator city examined and one in which local growth management policies have existed since the 1980s, growth is now almost equally divided between intensification and suburban expansion. The analysis suggests that it is difficult to alter a deep-seated policy regime that promotes outward growth. What is more, high levels of intensification may not be enough to offset the effects of a new demographic reality: smaller average household size because of such factors as longer lifespans, delayed family formation, family planning and divorce. So even with a greater number of housing units, the population of the built-up area may still fall. Finally, if the emerging polycentric structures of Calgary and Edmonton are to be successfully supported, major investments in infrastructure are going to be required.

Suburbs that developed in metropolitan Canada post-World War II have historically been depicted as homogeneous landscapes of gendered domesticity, detached housing, White middle-class nuclear families, and heavy automobile use. We find that key features of this historical popular image do in fact persist across the nation's contemporary metropolitan landscape, particularly at the expanding fringes and in mid-sized cities near the largest metropolitan areas. Th e findings reflect suburbanization into new areas, point to enduring social exclusion, and recall the negative environmental consequences arising from suburban ways of living such as widespread automobile use and continuing sprawl. However, the analysis also points to the internal diversity thatmarks suburbanization today and to the growing presence of suburban ways of living in central areas. Our results suggest that planning policies promoting intensification and targeting social equity objectives are likely to remain ineff ective if society fails to challenge directly the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers behind the kind of suburban ways of living that fit popular imaginings of post-World War II suburbs in central areas. Our results suggest that planning policies promoting intensification and targeting social equity objectives are likely to remain ineffective if society fails to challenge directly the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers behind the kind of suburban ways of living that fit popular imaginings of post-World War II suburbs.

Suburbs that developed in metropolitan Canada post-World War II have historically been depicted as homogeneous landscapes of gendered domesticity, detached housing, White middle-class nuclear families, and heavy automobile use. We find that key features of this historical popular image do in fact persist across the nation's contemporary metropolitan landscape, particularly at the expanding fringes and in mid-sized cities near the largest metropolitan areas. Th e findings reflect suburbanization into new areas, point to enduring social exclusion, and recall the negative environmental consequences arising from suburban ways of living such as widespread automobile use and continuing sprawl. However, the analysis also points to the internal diversity that marks suburbanization today and to the growing presence of suburban ways of living in central areas. Our results suggest that planning policies promoting intensification and targeting social equity objectives are likely to remain ineff ective if society fails to challenge directly the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers behind the kind of suburban ways of living that fit popular imaginings of post-World War II suburbs in central areas. Our results suggest that planning policies promoting intensification and targeting social equity objectives are likely to remain ineffective if society fails to challenge directly the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers behind the kind of suburban ways of living that fit popular imaginings of post-World War II suburbs.