Still Detached and Subdivided? Suburban Ways of Living in 21st-Century North America

Still Detached and Subdivided?
Suburban Ways of Living in
21st-Century North America
Markus Moos / Robert Walter-Joseph (Eds.)

Acknowledgments 7
Foreword—Mapping the Great Suburbs of North America 8
Elvin Wyly
1 Suburban Imaginaries 11
An Atlas of Suburbanisms 16
2 Defining Suburbanisms 21
More Continuity than Change? 21
Markus Moos, Pablo Mendez, Liam McGuire,
Elvin Wyly, Anna Kramer, Robert Walter-Joseph
and Mark Williamson
3 Planning the North American Suburb 43
The Great (Sub)Urban Transformation 44
Pierre Filion
4 Mapping Suburbanisms 55
The American Dream: Homeownership, Single-Family Dwellings,
and Automobiles 86
Markus Moos and Pablo Mendez
The Diversity of Suburban Soundscape Experiences 101
Sarah Godfrey and Jennifer Dean
5 Suburban Futures 107
#ChangeSpace: Planning Suburban Public Space for Youths 115
Christina Glass and Nicole Yang
Exploring Opportunities for Intergenerational Living on a Suburban Campus 118
Nicholas Deibler and Lucas Oldfield
Aging in the Suburbs 121
Samantha Biglieri and Jennifer Dean
Suburban Redesign, Human Scale 123
Luna Khirfan
Local Suburban Agriculture 128
Virginia Hang and David Vanderwindt
Heritage Protection in the Suburbs 132
Robert Shipley
Autonomous Vehicles: Savior or Sentinel of Low-Carbon Suburban Futures 134
Sarah Sinasac and Alexander “AJ” Wray
Editors 140
Contributors 140
Imprint 143
5

“Somewhere between leafy neighborhoods built
around lively railroad villages and the shiny new
subdivisions in cornfields on the way to Iowa that
bill themselves as suburbs of Chicago, we took our
wish for privacy too far. The suburbs overshot their
mandate.”
Leigh Gallagher, “The End of Suburbs,” Time Magazine
“But we cannot simply abandon the suburban fabric
of the last fifty years and wish that things had
developed differently.”
Grady Gammage, The Future of the Suburban City:
Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix
“When the housing bubble bursts… the force driving
densification of suburbs could become irresistible
in some places.”
Jane Jacobs, Dark Ages Ahead
6

Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the immense
support and encouragement from Roger Keil, Sara
Macdonald, and the Global Suburbanisms research project.
This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada through funding from
the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global suburbanisms:
governance, land, and infrastructure in the 21st
century (2010–2017).”
The editors thank Pierre Filion, Richard Harris, Ute Lehrer,
Pablo Mendez, Alan Walks, and Elvin Wyly from the benchmarking
project team for earlier collaborations that contributed
in important ways to the ideas contained in this book.
We thank Anna Kramer whose maps published as part of
the online Atlas of Suburbanisms served as an inspiration for
this work.
We thank Eric Rempel who worked tirelessly to finalize
maps, format citations, and help with proofreading. Eric’s
assistance was of tremendous help during the final stages of
this project. We also thank Ginny Hang, Liam McGuire, Michael
Seasons, Mark Williamson, Alexander “AJ” Wray, and
Nicole Yang for research assistance at various stages of the
project; and Samantha Bajc, Kelly Heald-Oliver, and Rachel
Poon for proofreading and editorial comments.
We thank the Canadian Journal of Urban Research and Urban
Studies for permitting us to use modified content of previously
published work in this book, Jane Jacobs whose book
The Nature of Economies served as an inspiration for the use
of fictional characters in our work, and the band Rush whose
song “Subdivisions” was an inspiration for the title “Still Detached
and Subdivided?”.
To all of those that have helped make this book a reality, all
your efforts and insights are truly appreciated!
7

Foreword—Mapping the Great
Suburbs of North America
Elvin Wyly
On a recent trip to run a few errands downtown, I looked
for a bookstore. There was only one, a nano-scale version of
a nearby chain store location that had gone belly up amidst
the e-reader digital deletion of brick-and-mortar outlets for
physical books. The tiny store’s selection was distilled to optimize
sales per square foot, yielding a blend of bestsellers and
the minimal requisite taxonomies of fiction, finance, politics,
education, and other keywords appealing to the foot traffic
flows of a city center with global city aspirations. But one of
the sections caught my eye: a single, large bookcase of histories,
travelogues, and atlases, under a prominent banner:
“Great Cities.”
There was no equivalent “Great Suburbs” section, and that’s
a shame. This is the section we need to establish for the book
you hold in your hands (or read on a screen), to understand
the contemporary evolution of a transnationally interconnected
form of settlement that has now become central to
the human experience. It is a fundamental paradox that while
“being urban is increasingly the shared condition of humanity,
for many if not most of us, this takes place in what we
would recognize as a suburban space.” 1 And yet, in urban
theory and popular discourse, a pervasive suburbia is routinely
rendered subordinate, invisible, peripheral, or pathological—obscuring
the “kaleidoscopic” dimensions of today’s
global suburban landscapes, processes, and ways of life. 2 This
book is the first of its kind: a blend of critical urban theory,
planning policy, and empirical visual analytics focused on the
multiple dimensions of suburban ways of life that transcend
the taken-for-granted stereotypes of the city/suburb divide.
In this book, Markus Moos and Robert Walter-Joseph ask
us to reconsider the suburbs by questioning the very essence
of how we define these spaces and places—and they do this
for the genuinely paradigmatic case of North America. This
provocation comes at a moment of enigmatic transition for
North American suburbia. On the one hand, the suburban
landscapes of the US and Canada played undeniably crucial
roles in reflecting and reproducing twentieth-century economy,
society, theory, and policy. Indeed, the interdisciplinary
critical literatures assessing North American suburbia are
now so vast that it’s hard to imagine what more could be said
(the second edition of The Suburb Reader includes more than
three hundred essays and primary sources). 3 North American
suburbia has come to seem hegemonic and yet too familiar,
once the universal reference point but now too old, obsolete.
Today’s planetary urbanism is being reconceptualized in
two opposite directions: a reanimated, triumphant universal
‘science of cities’ led by economics, geo-spatial models, and
physics, versus a postcolonial transnational turn that emphasizes
a world of difference, context, and contingency. Despite
their enormous differences, both of these movements see
the future of urbanism not in North America, and certainly
not in North American suburbs, but in the flourishing
new urban systems of rapid growth and development across
the Global South. For many of the ‘econophysics’ advocates,
North American suburban places are useful only insofar as
they provide petri dishes for the formulation of universal
scientific laws of spatial behavior and neoliberal economic
competition, which can then be applied in the tabula rasa
new cities of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) emerging
markets. 4
8

For postcolonial theorists, in contrast, the places and theories
of North America and the rest of the Global North must
be provincialized in order to build a more cosmopolitan urban
imagination. Unfortunately, both of these trends have
helped promote a misunderstanding of North American suburban
places and theories. Viewed from the vantage point
of a twenty-first-century world of cosmopolitan variegated
capitalisms, it is now easy to see the fallacy in the hegemony
of last century’s North American models in the development
of generalized urban theory. It is possible to recognize
historical-geographical contingency while still paying careful
attention to the enduring significance of what those situated
processes produced in the imperial ‘American Century.’
This balance between the general and the specific is what
Moos and Walter-Joseph diagnose in the multidimensional
“spectrums” of North American suburbanisms—spectrums
of built forms and social processes that are constantly traveling
across time and space. The dramatic socio-spatial restructuring
wrought by North American suburbanization in the
Fordist-Keynesian era of the twentieth century produced real
material legacies of sedimented layers of capital investment
and durable institutions of politics, governance, and law. It
creatively destroyed earlier histories of suburban diversity,
delivered mass-produced dreams of upward class mobility
through outward residential mobility, and gave rise to new
cultures of entitlement, separation, and inequality in coded
languages of property values and home equity.
Suburbanization of this kind produced durable morphologies
that shaped the rhythms of everyday life for generations
of individuals and families—and even as these morphologies
changed, the cohort effects of suburban built environments
telescoped into the present for anyone who spent significant
life stages in these settings, through inherited ways of expe-
riencing, thinking, and feeling about home, community, domains
of private and public life, and the “urban.” It produced
a powerful myth, “the American Dream,” that assumed a
contingent reality through massive investments of money
and meaning. Twentieth-century North America altered the
trajectory of the ongoing historical process of the urbanization
of capital, producing a suburbanization of consciousness
with lasting, wide-ranging consequences for contemporary
planetary urbanism. 5
The suburbanization of capital and consciousness is now simultaneously
cosmopolitan and contextually contingent. Diverse
transnational networks are rapidly remaking “classical”
twentieth-century suburbia in many parts of America, 6 while
other suburbs are reproducing the entrenched anti-urban
electoral biases of eighteenth-century American federalism
that structure the executive, legislative, and judicial dimensions
of domestic and foreign policy. The sharpest revanchist
edges of the American suburban frontier, in turn, provide a
mirror for Canadians, a “Southern Other” reference point
for the construction of a different, yet still highly stratified,
multicultural neoliberal colonial present. 7
The “American Dream” of suburbanism, enabled in large part
by “Interstate and defense highway” legislation justified by
Dwight Eisenhower’s feared “military-industrial complex,”
is now evolving into more diversified postcolonial forms at
home. At the same time, the “Dream” inspires culturally contextual
combinations of imitation, adaptation, and rejection
as developers, planners, and state elites work to build Xi Jinping’s
authoritarian capitalist “Chinese Dream,” 8 9 the utopian
gated communities of a “Filipino Dream” marketed to
returning overseas workers on dispossessed indigenous lands
on Manila’s peri-urban fringe, 10 and countless other new
11 12
global suburbanizations of neoliberalizing urban space.
9

The problem is that anything even resembling a ‘center’ was
difficult to find, let alone formally define. During their site
visits, all they saw, as Jakob later quipped, was “detached and
subdivided, physically and metaphorically.”
2
Average household size by place of birth
in the US
American Community Survey, 2014, US
Census Bureau. Figure by Alexander
“AJ” Wray.
Jakob argued that the problems of suburbanization were
largely problems of size and scale: “If we had stopped building
them in the late seventies,” he would say when the topic
came up, “the problems associated with sprawling suburbs
would not be quite as severe, for example the loss of agricultural
land, traffic congestion, carbon emissions, and automobile-based
lifestyles contributing to health concerns would
not be the issues they are today.” 17
Jakob was eager to discuss, with anyone who would listen, suburbs
and the ways that he felt they had gotten worse over time.
Jakob turned to Jeannine and asserted that he had long lived
in the kind of suburb, “that was built when we still got suburbs
right. We used to build them as neighborhood units, containing
amenities people could walk to, trees, parks … community.
Now, it’s just monoculture,” Jakob muttered, “both socially
and in terms of land use and transportation patterns … it’s all
wasted and antisocial space now. The land uses are all detached
from one another, we subdivided not just land, we subdivided
life, our communities,” he passionately argued. 18
“The suburb where I live and grew up is filled with memories
of family get-togethers, friends, and a culture that, although
at times seemingly distant, made my experience anything but
antisocial, or shall we say the opposite of detached,” Jeannine
proclaimed with confidence. Jeannine informed Jakob that
she, and many of her friends, believed that they would eventually
want to raise their own families in the suburbs where
they grew up (although a stint downtown after university was
not out of the question). 19 F 3
3
Household type by immigration status
in Canada
Statistics Canada Public Use Microdata
Files, 2001. Figure by Alexander “AJ”
Wray..
Jeannine held back a smile; didn’t see it quite the same way.
Although she certainly appreciated the critiques of the ways
suburbs were being built, she didn’t see the large, new singlefamily
houses as “wasted space.” She was a second generation
immigrant who lived with her parents, three younger
siblings, an uncle, and one grandparent in the same house.
The supposedly large house seemed just fine, and the three
bathrooms at times even a bit scarce when everyone was getting
ready in the morning. F 2
12

Recent trends in building larger houses on smaller lots concerned
Jeannine. She called it pseudo-New Urbanism, paying
only lip service to the New Urbanist ideals that called for
higher densities and improved streetscapes, among other design
principles. In her neighborhood it meant fewer rooms
for extended family members and less private outdoor space
that could have been used for gardening—her family grew a
large share of their own produce in their backyard.
“Downtown living is the bomb,” an out of breath Carly,
who had been running from the subway, broadcasted loudly.
Nearly everyone in the coffee shop looked up at the group
but quickly returned to their laptops, cell phones, books,
conversations with friends, or “whatever else people seem to
be doing in coffee shops these days,” as Jakob would often
joke.
4
Real time suburbanization in the Greater
Toronto Area
The detached single-family home has
come to epitomize suburban living
in North America. This neighborhood
contains single-family homes on relatively
narrow lots, a characteristic of
some suburbs built in the past decades
following New Urbanist planning principles.
Photo: Elvin Wyly.
13

An Atlas
of
Suburbanisms
“Wei, when you talk about an atlas, I envision a book that
is all encompassing, in that it covers every kind of suburb,
and explains its characteristics and identifies its location,”
Carly argued. “By the title alone, I would expect detailed
indices and maps, cataloging clear geographic boundaries
from north to south and east to west. It’s the kind of atlas
we all remember from our first encounter with geography in
primary school, right?”
Carly looked at Jakob for confirmation. Jakob seemed lost by
Wei’s explanation of the Atlas of Suburbanisms. 26 Wei had argued
that the Atlas would be a useful starting point for them
to think about suburbia, a big picture reflection on overarching
trends of sorts, before embarking on their project to plan
for a future suburban center.
“I think I have seen it before,” Jeannine chimed in. “I think
the authors identify their project as purposefully unorthodox.
The Atlas is meant to defy our expectations of what an
atlas should be, and in doing so hopes to challenge our very
notions of what we think a suburb is in the first place.”
“I remember reading about this in the Atlantic Cities magazine,”
27 Jeannine added. She went on to explain that one
of the key arguments put forward by the Atlas was that if
we use mutually exclusive boundaries to talk about suburbs
and cities, we can only attain a limited understanding of the
ways social and economic issues actually bleed into one another.
Good examples of this are commuter flows or housing
markets that usually do not follow neat political boundaries.
Most planning problems don’t follow these boundaries either,
she explained.
“This reminds me of Jean Gottmann’s work on “megalopolis”
28 that I had to read back in my university days,” Jakob
said in a tone that, to Wei, finally suggested some enthusiasm
for new ideas. Jakob labeled Wei as being too academic at
times, but this time Wei had started to draw Jakob’s attention.
Wei explained the ways he could foresee approaching their
client with a project like none before them, a suburb like no
other. First they had to gain a better understanding of the
research, and find out exactly how to deploy it in practice.
“Yeah, megalopolis,” Jakob said again when Carly thought
she misheard, expecting the word metropolis instead. “Gottmann
used the term to describe the economically and socially
integrated region on the Northeastern Seaboard of the
United States that includes many separate political entities.
There are no clear boundaries to a megalopolis, you are not
in or out, you are always farther or closer from its sphere of
influence,” Jakob professed.
“Exactly!” Wei responded. “An atlas often consists of maps
with clearly defined boundaries because the focus is on political
entities, which are generally mutually exclusive. Social,
economic, and especially natural phenomena don’t follow
these exact boundaries. The boundaries are much more malleable.
If we accept that suburbs are social constructs, then
the study of, or the planning for, suburbs requires us to take
into account that malleability.”
“What do you mean by social constructs,” Jakob asked with
a confused look on his face.
16

“Well,” Wei continued, “you can think of gravity as something
that we can take as largely given, at least on earth. It
simply exists. If I drop a pen,” Wei demonstrated, “the pen
will drop, every time. It’s a natural phenomena, if you will.
Suburbs, on the contrary, are not natural. They don’t exist
without us building them, and adding culturally specific
meaning.”
“I think that’s what Henri Lefebvre 29 refers to as the social
production of space,” Carly interjected.
Jakob suddenly sat up, moved his cup aside with one hand,
and gestured with the other. “I agree with all this,” he said,
“but suburbs still do exist, don’t they? I mean, otherwise what
would we call places that even define themselves as suburban
municipalities? Are we to tell our client that we concluded
they don’t exist, and they are supposed to pay us money for
that?!”
“No, of course not,” Wei responded assertively. “To be sure,
suburbs are, in many instances, explicitly defined politically
5
Beyond the White Picket Fence
Hawaii. Photo: Roger Keil.
17

20
7
Drive-by America
Anacortes, Washington.
Photo: Elvin Wyly.

2
Defining Suburbanisms
“Few words in modern America are as emotionally
freighted as suburb.” Grady Gammage,
The Future of the Suburban City: Lessons
from Sustaining Phoenix
“Perhaps the least loved of all jurisdictional
categories, “suburb” failed even to secure a
stable definitional identity on its quiet path to
dominance, but this in many ways is the elusive
essence of the story.” Jamie Peck, “Neoliberal
Suburbanism: Frontier Space,” Urban
Geography
would translate into only residential condominium apartments
and, therefore, not actually achieve the mix of residential
and employment uses the municipality envisioned. It
could wait for now. Jeannine clicked on the attachment and
began to read.
4
More Continuity
than Change? 34
Markus Moos, Pablo Mendez, Liam McGuire,
Elvin Wyly, Anna Kramer, Robert Walter-Joseph
and Mark Williamson
Jeannine was just getting settled in her office chair, coffee
in hand, when ding an email from Carly popped up on her
screen.
Hello everyone,
Great chat last week. Attached is the
article I mentioned. It was written by the
same people that put together the Atlas of
Suburbanisms website: http://env-blogs.
uwaterloo.ca/atlas/.
Looking forward to working on this project
together.
Sincerely,
Carly
Jeannine was supposed to review the latest update of a draft
zoning by-law from one of her clients. The client wanted to
designate most of a downtown as mixed-use, despite Jeannine’s
repeated attempts to convince them otherwise. She was
concerned that in this market a mixed-use land designation
Introduction
In a process that in many ways echoed the Fordist transformation
of the United States’ economy after 1945, the
search for a peacetime spatial fix exploded the Canadian
metropolis outwards through an expanding network of
highways leading to new low-density residential communities.
35 36 37 The tremendous popularity of these new
housing developments reflected state efforts to vastly increase
access to mortgage credit, but also the widespread
seductiveness of an existing image of the suburbs as idyllic
retreats from the polluted and congested industrial
city and its density, diversity, and perceived danger.
4
The group got together for coffee again a few weeks later.
“Okay,” Jeannine began, “clearly this article is focused on
Canadian suburbanisms but there are obvious parallels to the
US in the way suburbs were historically defined as specific
21

Automobility: Driving the Suburbs
Postwar urban reform movements drastically redefined
Canadian urban regions. With minimal public input, modernist
planners created projects based on the mechanical
blueprints of Le Corbusier, seeking in this way to open the
inner city to the new garden city communities that were
radiating outwards from the urban core. 64 65 In tandem
with a car-centric planning ethos, suburban households
also became the primary consumers of private automobiles,
as car ownership in Canada grew from one million
in 1945 to 4.3 million in 1963. 66 Several inner cities were
sliced by new highway systems such as the Gardiner
Expressway in Toronto, 67 although citizen opposition
thwarted freeway development in Vancouver and a few
68 69
other places.
The result was a growing contrast between the inner
city and its “Other” in terms of the application of differing
planning ideals: by the early seventies, inner-city
neighborhoods were increasingly approached through a
post-modern planning model in which the need for sense
of place and community was given much higher priority
than before. 70 71 But as the inner city came to benefit
from the planners’ and new wealthier residents’ growing
appreciation of the existing dense built environment, the
suburbs became associated with the modernist master
plans of Fred Gardiner in Toronto 72 and Sutton Brown in
Vancouver, 73 merging greenfield suburban developments
with a culture of automobility.
Until the nineties, when planning began to concern itself
more directly with issues associated with urban sprawl, 74
suburban planning continued along this postwar path,
opting for drivable, not walkable communities, wider
streets instead of sidewalks, and on ramps instead of
transit bus loops. Indeed, in Canadian metropolitan re-
gions, the widely touted shift in planning thought has
not resulted in a decline in the persistent empirical lived
realities of auto-dependency for lower-density areas outside
the central city. 75 Thus, the postwar suburban landscape
emphasizes a cultural meaning inextricably tied to
automobility, in stark juxtaposition to the post-modern
landscapes that later emerged in the inner city under the
influence of the ideals of Jane Jacobs. 76 F 8
4
“One part of the article that really stood out for me,” Carly
shared, “is the connection to Jane Jacobs’s work. What would
Jane Jacobs say about planners’ ideas to transform suburbs
into what basically amounts to cities?” she pondered.
Jeannine wondered why some suburban transformations, for
instance, adding density near transit hubs, were such a challenge
to initiate, and political hot potatoes in some jurisdictions.
Clearly, it had something to do with the fact that the
proposals were not just about a change in built environment,
but were also perceived as a challenge to the very lifestyle
some suburbanites had come to enjoy and value.
The problem was, as Jeannine understood quite well, that
the suburban way of life in North America was contributing
to several environmental and public finance concerns. 77 Yet,
did that necessarily mean we had to abandon suburban ways
of living all together? Could we not develop planning solutions
that helped maintain some of the ideals of suburbs that
people had come to value and appreciate, while also reducing
the negative impact of current practices?
“Clearly, suburbs,” Jeannine proclaimed, “have their own
lifestyles, just as cities do.”
8
Chicago, Illinois.
Photo: Markus Moos.
24

25

access to mortgage credit via private banks), but also by a
series of neoliberal experiments in metropolitan deregulation
and privatization. 116
The components developed through the PCA described
above can be converted into median scores for each individual
census tract. Figure 11 charts these scores for each
component by distance from the central business district
(CBD) in the twenty-six CMAs. The graphs for “Classic
Suburbia” illustrate how in the largest cities, socio-economic
characteristics that match the popular imaginings
of the postwar-era suburb are generally found in census
tracts located at least five to ten kilometers outside that
core. Because this component was associated with high
proportions of recently-built dwellings, it also shows
that most of the growth in new housing occurred at the
fringes of large metropolitan areas. This suggests that
recent shifts towards less automobile use, more diverse
household compositions and greater social mix have occurred
primarily in the central city, while there has been
sustained replication at the periphery of the postwar image
of suburban life, with its associated environmental
impacts and social exclusion.
Interestingly, many of the smaller metropolitan areas
show higher degrees of “Classic Suburbia” both away from
and near the CBD, which in turn suggests that suburbanization
is not always a decentralizing process in a smaller
city context.
The incidence of socio-economic characteristics linked to
“Classic Suburbia” in smaller cities brings to mind historic
planning ideals of suburbs that included notions of ‘ideal
city sizes’ such as Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City. 117 In this
sense, areas that today match the popular imagining of
the postwar suburb mesh, to some extent at least, with
notions of ‘small town ideals’ that emphasized relatively
low densities. Because city size is smaller, proximity to
amenities and jobs is still possible there, unlike in a large
metropolitan context where residing in “Classic Suburbia”
would generally require traveling much further to reach
the CBD or other employment areas. F 12
Interestingly, however, many of the smaller CMAs showing
high scores for “Classic Suburbia” throughout their metropolitan
structure are actually located in close proximity to
Canada’s largest metropolitan areas, particularly near Toronto
and Vancouver—for instance, Hamilton, Kitchener,
St. Catharines-Niagara, Barrie, Oshawa, and Abbotsford.
It suggests that some of these cities, which are known to
have commuter flows to and from the largest metropolitan
areas, are reproducing twentieth-century variants of
Gottman’s 118 “megalopolis,” or what Knox’s 119 more refined
conceptualization has termed as “metroburbia.”
What we are seeing here, we would argue, is the suburbanization
of many existing medium and small cities
into the larger metropolitan structure of their nearest
Canadian global city. This observation fits with Ley’s explanation
120 of population outmigration from large metropolitan
areas to nearby medium-sized cities due to high
housing costs, reinforced by anti-growth sentiments that
commonly strengthen in established neighborhoods. At
the regional scale, then, we are seeing the next cascading
wave of decentralization of “Classic Suburbia” taking
place, wherein Canada’s metropolitan global city-regions
are punctuated by peripheral localities of traditional
Fordist-era suburbanism.
Sub/urbanisms in Sub/urban Places
Another valuable finding is that various characteristics
that were traditionally associated with urban places
are now found in suburban areas, and vice-versa. For instance,
parts of the inner city also register intermittent
12
Ebenezer Howard’s three magnets
Reproduced by Ginny Hang, School of
Planning, University of Waterloo.
34

incidence of our first, suburban component. This is likely
related to gentrification, which has resulted in some inner-city
neighborhoods becoming more affluent and more
internally homogenous in terms of socio-economic and
ethnic composition. Similarly, areas indicating social homogeneity
and non-transit users are located not only in
outlying areas but also in downtowns. This likely arises
in part because gentrifier households tend to use transit
less frequently than other downtown residents and
less than immigrants now living in the older suburbs. 121
The indicators of our “Classic Suburbia” component are
also found in some parts of the inner city. However, this
is not a new trend entirely—there have long been established
elite neighborhoods in the central cities of Canadian
metropolitan areas, and such neighborhoods not surprisingly
display characteristics that match indicators of
the popular image of postwar suburbia (e.g., single-family
homes, high social status, homogeneity, etc.). 122
Discussion
Over the past four decades, post-Fordist socio-economic
restructuring—marked by the onset of contemporary
globalization and the internationalization of the production
process—has reshaped both physically and socially
the geography of Canadian cities, creating new forms of
socio-spatial segregation through gentrification, immigration,
and occupational restructuring. 123 124 Postwar
stability began to erode in the early seventies, when the
cumulative effects of oil crises, increasing international
economic competition, and the decline of the welfare
state threw the Fordist economy and its socio-economic
structures into crisis. The transition to a post-Fordist,
Schumpeterian workfare state characterized a new economic
regime. It brought with it the rollback of social
35

to high traffic areas and their capacity to tap automobile-based
catchment areas (e.g., motels, business parks,
and different orders of shopping malls). F 15
The main planning invention of this period was therefore
the post-WWII low-density, mono-functional suburb. 164
The construction of expressways and arterials encouraged
reliance on the automobile in new suburban areas, which
fostered a car-oriented landscape, and in turn made it
necessary to provide more highway space. The new suburban
form became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But planning
responses directed at older urban areas were also to accommodate
the increasing volumes of vehicles. They too
sought to revitalize declining inner-city sectors in the face
of a general metropolitan-wide decentralization trend. Inner-city
planning interventions of the time took the form
of expressway construction and urban renewal, leading to
either private or public sector redevelopment. 165 Among
the cities that were most ambitious in the renewal of their
central parts were Pittsburgh, New Haven, and Hartford,
in the US, and Hamilton, in Canada.
15
Calgary, Alberta. Photo: Markus Moos.
16
Portland, Oregon. Photo: Markus Moos.
46

47

pattern is clearly the outcome of the adaptation of the
city to a rapid rise in the reliance on the car over the postwar
decades. Remarkably, no new transportation technology
has emerged over the seventy years under investigation.
The sustainable city paradigm calls for a return
to rail public transit, which, while making use of updated
technologies, is not as such an innovation. It is revealing
that the largest urban transportation innovation on the
horizon, the self-driving car, would operate on existing
road infrastructures and would likely accommodate itself
well to dispersed urban forms. F 21
It is also noteworthy that social equity was either poorly
handled or given a secondary status by the planning parastage
or has yet to materialize in substantial change beyond
inner-city neighborhoods.
Planning and Urban Change
The longue durée perspective adopted in this chapter
has made it possible to concentrate on main historical
tendencies, that is, those associated with the successive
paradigms that have dominated planning over the past
seventy years. The sequence of events reported in the
historical narrative was straightforward. It consisted of a
major transition, the “Great (Sub)Urban Transformation,”
followed by two reactions to the resulting (sub)urban development
pattern. The narrative has revealed the uneven
nature of the three paradigms as regards their impact on
(sub)urban development.
In all North American metropolitan regions, it is (sub)
urban dispersion that remains the dominant pattern of
development. The chapter has demonstrated that planning
commitment alone is not sufficient to achieve major
transformations. It has indeed shown that such an outcome
requires the alignment of several critical societal
factors as observed in the case of the relation between
the expert/transformative paradigm and the Great (Sub)
Urban Transformation. We have seen that subsequent
paradigms were unable to bank on such an alignment as
of yet. 182 183 The reality is that deep transformations of
urban form and dynamics can only happen infrequently
because of the massive mobilization of different kinds of
resources required to overcome the prevailing (sub)urban
development impetus. F 20
One key factor in the transformation of cities is the wide
adoption of a new transportation technology. It is in this
sense that we refer to the “streetcar city” and the “automobile
city” in urban history texts. 184 185 186 The dispersed
20
Dispersed development patterns
favor the car
Near Orlando, Florida.
Photo: Markus Moos.
52

21
Los Angeles, California.
Photo: Markus Moos.
digms. Planning interventions associated with the expert/
transformative paradigm reflect features of the Fordist
economic and social arrangements in place at the time.
Planning was indeed engaged in Keynesian economic
stimuli, such as the encouragement of single-family home
developments, while being involved in redistributive measures.
Such was the case of the erection of public housing.
But the equity consequences of these measures were at
best mixed due to the top-down nature of the planning
for these developments. The place of social equity within
the planning agenda lost ground over subsequent periods,
which was reflected in the urban outcomes of the second
and third paradigms. 187 The participation/conservation
paradigm fueled, intentionally or not, the gentrification
53

22
U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year
Estimates; Year Structure Built and dwelling type in New York MSA generated by Robert Walter-
Joseph; using American FactFinder; 2010 Tiger /LineShapefiles /(machine-readabledatafiles) /
prepared by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2010.
56

23
U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 American Community Survey
1-Year Estimates; Year Structure Built and dwelling type in Los Angeles MSA generated by
Robert Walter-Joseph; using American FactFinder; 2010 Tiger /LineShapefiles /(machinereadabledatafiles)
/prepared by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2010.
57

30
Statistics Canada. 2011. Vancouver Urban Area, Year Structure Built, Dwelling Type (map). Using
2011 Census, Vancouver CMA Census Tract (cartographic boundary file, gct_000b11a_e.exe) 2011
Census, Lakes and Rivers (cartographic boundary file, ghy_000c11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Road
Network File (Cartographic boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.exe) 2011 National Housing Survey (data
file). Using ArcGIS, Version 9.0 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, Calif.).
Waterloo, Ontario. Robert Walter-Joseph.
64

31
Statistics Canada. 2011. Ottawa-Gatineau Urban Area, Year Structure Built, Dwelling Type (map).
Using 2011 Census, Ottawa-Gatineau CMA Census Tract (cartographic boundary file, gct_000b11a_e.
exe) 2011 Census, Lakes and Rivers (cartographic boundary file, ghy_000c11a_e.exe) 2011 Census,
Road Network File (Cartographic boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.exe) 2011 National Housing Survey
(data file). Using ArcGIS, Version 9.0 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands,
Calif.). Waterloo, Ontario. Robert Walter-Joseph.
65

44
Left: U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 American Community Survey
1-Year Estimates; Race in Washington MSA generated by Robert Walter-Joseph; using American
FactFinder; 2010 Tiger/LineShapefiles/(machine-readabledatafiles)/prepared by the U.S. Census
Bureau, 2010.
78
Right: Statistics Canada. 2011. Ottawa-Gatineau Urban Area, Ethnicity (map). Using 2011 Census,
Ottawa-Gatineau CMA Census Tract (cartographic boundary file, gct_000b11a_e.exe) 2011 Census,
Lakes and Rivers (cartographic boundary file, ghy_000c11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Road Network File
(Cartographic boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.exe) 2011 National Housing Survey (data file). Using
ArcGIS, Version 9.0 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, Calif.). Waterloo,
Ontario. Robert Walter-Joseph.

45
Left: U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year
Estimates; Race in Chicago MSA generated by Robert Walter-Joseph; using American FactFinder;
2010 Tiger/LineShapefiles/(machine-readabledatafiles)/prepared by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2010.
Right: Statistics Canada. 2011. Toronto Urban Area, Ethnicity (map). Using 2011 Census, Toronto
CMA Census Tract (cartographic boundary file, gct_000b11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Lakes and Rivers
(cartographic boundary file, ghy_000c11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Road Network File (Cartographic
boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.exe) 2011 National Housing Survey (data file). Using ArcGIS, Version
9.0 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, Calif.). Waterloo, Ontario. Robert
Walter-Joseph.
79

50
U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year
Estimates; Tenure in Houston and Washington MSAs generated by Robert Walter-Joseph; using
American FactFinder; 2010 Tiger/LineShapefiles/(machine readabledatafiles)/prepared by the U.S.
Census Bureau, 2010.
Statistics Canada. 2011. Ottawa-Gatineau and Toronto Urban Areas, Tenure (map). Using 2011 Census,
Ottawa-Gatineau and Toronto CMA Census Tract (cartographic boundary file, gct_000b11a_e.
84
exe) 2011 Census, Lakes and Rivers (cartographic boundary file, ghy_000c11a_e.exe) 2011 Census,
Road Network File (Cartographic boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.exe) 2011 National Housing Survey
(data file). Using ArcGIS, Version 9.0 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands,
Calif.). Waterloo, Ontario. Robert Walter-Joseph.

51
Statistics Canada. 2011. Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Montreal, Tenure (map). Using
2011 Census, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Montreal CMA Census Tract (cartographic
boundary file, gct_000b11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Lakes and Rivers (cartographic boundary file,
ghy_000c11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Road Network File (Cartographic boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.
exe) 2011 National Housing Survey (data file). Using ArcGIS, Version 9.0 (Environmental Systems
Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, Calif.). Waterloo, Ontario. Robert Walter-Joseph.
85

“Okay, so we learn more about the geography of low-income,
for instance, from this map right here. What does that help
us understand about suburbs?” Jakob probed.
“Well, you are asking the wrong question,” Carly responded.
“It tells us something about suburban ways of living as well
as suburbs. It shows us that, in this case, the geography of impoverishment
is most centralized in two metropolitan areas,
Calgary and Phoenix, known to be more dispersed in their
development pattern, with some exceptions of course.
“Whereas in New York and Toronto, America’s and Canada’s
largest cities respectively, impoverishment is both an urban
and suburban issue, that is, if we take suburbs to be places
located further away from the downtown. If we, on the contrary,
think about suburban ways of living, historically these
have been linked to affluence in North America, or white
affluence. These maps start to unpack that assumption, and
we could talk about an urbanization of suburban ways of
living in some parts of the metropolitan areas, the high rises
in Mississauga, Toronto’s largest suburb are an example, or
a suburbanization of urban ways of living such as poverty,
which has traditionally been thought of as an urban issue.”
F 52–53
“But the resulting analysis is still inherently incomplete,” Jakob
stressed, “in that it relies heavily on one data source,
the US Census Bureau and Statistics Canada censuses, and
quantitative methods. Can we really deduce ways of living
from census variables? Does the question of ways of living
not inherently scream qualitative analysis?”
The two continued walking the exhibit, stopping frequently
to look at the maps and other displays on the walls.
“No, of course not. It’s not complete,” Carly acknowledged,
“but the numbers provide a starting point to help us think
about suburbs, or should I say suburban ways of living, in
new ways. Look at the description of these Venn diagram
maps,” Carly pointed at a large colorful poster on the wall.
“I am supposed to read all that now,” Jakob grumbled with a
smile on his face.
“Yes!” Carly instructed firmly.
F 54
4
The American Dream: Homeownership,
Single-Family Dwellings, and
Automobiles 189
Markus Moos and Pablo Mendez
The American Dream is in many ways epitomized by
homeownership, automobiles, and single-family dwellings
in low-density suburbs. But defining a suburb is no
easy feat. 190 191 192 193 Researchers have used a number of
variables such as period of development, density, and
distance from the historic central business district to delineate
suburbs as a distinct category. 194 However, some
researchers consider the term ‘suburb’ to be obsolete or
simply inadequate due to its inability to capture the diversity
of neighborhoods contained within suburbs.
Ann Forsyth, 195 in a recent review of the literature,
identifies several ‘dimensions’ that have been mobilized
to define suburbs on the basis of location, 196 built
form, 197 transportation infrastructure, 198 activity, 199
and social, cultural, and political features. 200 201 202 Our
research is novel, and complementary, in that instead
86

52
Geographies of impoverishment
Top: U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 Census; persons below poverty line
in New York and Phoenix MSAs generated by Eric Rempel; using American FactFinder; 2010 Tiger/
LineShapefiles/(machine readabledatafiles)/prepared by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2010.
Bottom: Statistics Canada. 2011. Calgary and Toronto Urban Area, Persons below Low Income Cutoff
(map). Using 2011 Census, Calgary and Toronto CMA Census Tract (cartographic boundary file,
gct_000b11a_e.exe) 2011 Census, Lakes and Rivers (cartographic boundary file, ghy_000c11a_e.
exe) 2011 Census, Road Network File (Cartographic boundary file, grnf000r11a_e.exe) 2011
National Housing Survey (data file). Using ArcGIS, Version 9.0 (Environmental Systems Research
Institute, Inc., Redlands, Calif.). Waterloo, Ontario. Eric Rempel.
87

98
61, 62
Share of the population by
suburban ways of living.
Figures by Alexander “AJ” Wray.

99

1
Suburban Milton, Ontario
Legend
Natural
Water
People
Av. Income Visible Minority Single Detached Car Commuting
Milton 95,326 47.2% 41.3% 64.6%
1. 77,053 4.9% 38.8% 75.5%
2. 109,021 44.1% 65.9% 86.7%
Source: Statistics Canada - 2011 NHS
2
Conceptual Map of Sound Intensity
1. Neighbourhood (Census Tract) - Main St. (623) Travelled on Foot 2. Neighbourhood (Census Tract) - Forbes (620.04) Travelled on Foot
1
3
1
2
3
2
1. Ontario St. N
2. Main St. E
3. Martin St.
1. Main St. W
2. Scott Blvd
3. Forbes Terrace
106

5
Suburban Futures
“Low-density suburbs that had seemed natural
and egalitarian began to seem environmentally
and economically wasteful, at least
to some.” Ann Forsyth, Constructing Suburbs:
Competing Voices in a Debate Over Urban
Growth
“The unprecedented growth of unemployment
and poverty in the suburbs during the
2000s reflects structural shifts in the economy
that pose serious challenges for antipoverty
policy.” Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube,
Confronting Suburban Poverty in America
Wei wiped the sweat off his brow, shuffled some papers that
he was holding in his hands and began to talk: “Okay, everyone,
listen up. Good to see everyone made it out here in
this heat.”
The group scheduled a meeting on site this time. It had been
several weeks since their last get-together, and many hours
of work had gone into preparing for this meeting, including
several sessions of public participation. The group was
accompanied by several junior planners from the firm who
were there to take notes. They were presenting to two senior
partners and several staff members from their client, the local
municipality. Jakob had asked Wei to organize and run the
site visit.
They were standing on the corner of two major arterial roads,
identified in the municipal plan as the town center. There
was a gas station immediately behind them where they re-
ceived permission to park their cars. Across the street to the
north, there were several five- to ten-story apartment buildings,
mostly rentals, set back almost twenty feet from the
road. Cater-cornered from them was a small park, and across
the street to the east a shopping plaza with the parking lot
facing the street.
We have all seen this type of built form. It is as ubiquitously
North American as supersized burgers and fries. To the casual
observer, one is somewhere, everywhere, and nowhere
specific all at the same time. To the people living there, it
is an experience shaped largely by cars, if not driving a car
then walking the arteries of the automobile-based economy,
or waiting amidst the steady stream of cars for a lone bus
to appear. Within the subdivisions, it gets quieter. People
commonly value the sense of privacy, greenspace, safety,
and absence of heavy automobile traffic that these subdivisions
offer.
“But it is also their home,” as Wei later explained, “and this
means we cannot simply view the current built form as something
in need of fixing. Clearly, improvements are needed on
environmental grounds and to save on infrastructure costs
arising from sprawling development. But the question is how
will these improvements benefit the existing population, as
opposed to only the new people moving in? We will try to do
both in this ambitious plan.”
The bench at the bus stop in front of them has been rented
as advertising space by a real estate agent. “Ironic,” Carly
thought to herself, “that the people who mostly sit on this
bench to wait for the bus are among a growing share of
low-income renters living in the suburbs. This is as close as
many will ever get to the American (or Canadian) Dream of
homeownership, advertised behind them on a bus bench.”
107

Classic Suburbs
New Urbanist Suburbs
DOWNTOWN
20 km
FOR SALE
FOR SALE
Low density
Automobile-oriented
Predominantly residential
Outside historic central city
Low to medium density
Predominantly residential, some retail
Mostly automobile-oriented
Outside historic central city
High Rise Suburbs
Transit-Oriented Suburbs
DOWNTOWN
20 km
DOWNTOWN
20 km
FOR SALE
P
Medium to high-density
Predominantly residential, some retail
Mostly automobile-oriented
Outside historic central city
Medium to high-density
Predominantly residential, some retail
Higher transit use, some walkable areas
Outside historic central city
67, 68
A typology of North American residential
suburbs. Drawings by Eric Rempel.
108

POST
Ethnoburb
Distant Suburbs
METRO AIRPORT
100 km
SUPERMERCADO
FOR SALE
FOR SALE
Low to medium density
Larger houshold size
High concentration of one ethnic group
High public transit use but
automobile-oriented streetscape
Vertical Suburbs in Cities
Medium to small self-contained cities
1 to 2 hour drive away from major metropolitan area
May or may not have strong core of its own
Generally autocentric but transit networks exist
Detached Urbanism
FOR SALE
Budget Books
FOR SALE
High-density
Homogenous population
Condominium apartments
High presence of cars despite walkable streetscapes
Low to medium density
Predominantly residential with commercial street nearby
Near central city
High car ownership despite walkable urban form
109

-
71
116

72
117

122

74
Walking range for older adults at the
Boardwalk, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Research has found that people with
dementia travel about 400 meters from
their home, and able-bodied people and
older adults travel 1.5 kilometers. E.g.,
see: N. Shoval, H. W. Wahl, G. Auslander,
M. Isaacson, F. Oswald, T. Edry, and J.
Heinik, “Use of the global positioning
system to measure the out-of-home
mobility of older adults with differing
cognitive functioning.” Ageing and
Society, 31 no. 5 (2011) 849–869. Map
by Samantha Biglieri and Eric Rempel
using © OpenStreetMap contributors,
openstreetmap.org.
• Develop memorable landscape features and community
facilities that promote social interaction and foster
a sense of belonging. 246
An alternate future of aging is one in which government
agencies at all levels acknowledge and budget for the implementation
of age-friendly best-practices such as those
above. It means collaborating across government departments
and with developers, private property owners, and
the public to strive for enabling and supportive suburbs.
“The maturing of the suburban population
ushers in a new era for suburbia, and presents
both opportunities and challenges for local
communities….”
William H. Frey, Brookings Institute 247
This future is not so distant as evidenced by existing projects
by forward-thinking developers who are using innovative
planning and design to build more inclusive spaces.
For example, the world-renowned dementia-friendly village,
De Hogeweyk in the Netherlands has been used as a
model for similar communities elsewhere in the world. 248
In Ontario, Schlegel Villages is creating several communities
that function like an urban village, complete with
main street services such as a café and hairdresser, and interior
wall fixtures that resemble an outdoor main street
(e.g., bricks, exterior door hardware). One of these communities,
The Village at Taunton Mills located in Whitby
(a suburb of Toronto) has plans to incorporate shared
space within its building for the broader older adult community
for events and programming. The Village itself
is an alternative future and has the capacity to improve
opportunities and reduce vulnerabilities among the older
adult population living in the surrounding suburban
areas.
These examples provide inspiration and guidance for what
an alternative future suburb can look like and how it can
be achieved to meet aging-in-community objectives. They
also provide hope that these futures are not just the subject
of distant dreams, but an achievable reality.
F 75 a, b, c, d
4
Suburban Redesign, Human Scale
Luna Khirfan
4
The Boardwalk in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, represents
a typical suburban shopping area with big-box structures
that predominantly house single uses. Big-box structures
are inherently simple compositions of stand-alone structures
that do not stimulate an interesting visual experience
for the pedestrian. By virtue of being single structures,
these buildings are isolated from the surrounding
buildings within the same shopping area while the combination
of several buildings in the one area remain disjointed,
failing in the process to create any form of a common
ground or enclosure between these buildings. 250
Also, by virtue of being big-box, the building footprint of
these structures is expansive, rendering them out of human
scale and unwelcoming to pedestrians due to their
lack of permeability—i.e. the porousness characteristic
that allows pedestrians to walk in and out, as well as
through, buildings. This is further exacerbated by the
fact that these big box structures maintain their distance
from the street, hence, do not offer any direct interaction
with the street—a characteristic known as inactive frontage
that yields foreign transactions—transactions that
123

SUBURBAN TRANSECT in
4
Local Suburban Agriculture
Virginia Hang and David Vanderwindt
There is increasing concern over the disconnect that exists
between the food that we eat and the places where it is
produced. 253 This is in part due to the large carbon footprint
associated with global food distribution networks,
concern over pesticides and genetically modified foods,
and obesity associated with eating highly processed
foods. 254 These, among other factors, have led to growing
interest in local food production.
Due to their low-density character, North American suburbs
provide significant potential for (sub)urban agriculture.
255 If supported by appropriate enabling policies,
we envision a suburban future that includes different
kinds of agricultural uses depending on the suburban
context.
F 77
Our proposed approach borrows from those who have
written about Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes
(CPLUS) and Agrarian Urbanism strategic approaches to
create a continuum of agriculture across the suburban
transect. 256 257 We also envision, using a matrix, different
types of local food production, processing and distribution
77
Figure by Virginia Hang and
David Vanderwindt.
Local Cidery Rooftop Greenhouse Community Gardens
Urban/Rural Fringe Big Box Store High-Rise Suburbs
128

opportunities for different kinds of suburbs, 258 or for different
kinds of suburban ways of living.
“There is growing interest and discussion of urban agricultural
activities as a means to enhance the sustainability of
cities” but less emphasis has been placed on suburbs even
though land is more abundant there. 259 It is important to
note that (sub)urban agriculture can take many different
forms, and that its success is likely in part dependent on
context-sensitive application. 260
F 78
4
WATERLOO, ONTARIO
Private Gardens Integrated Local Eatery The Edible Schoolyard
Large-Lot Suburbs Small-Lot Suburbs Park & School
129

“The lesson we
should take from
Ms. [Jane] Jacobs
was her ability
to look at the city
with her eyes wide
open, without rigid
prejudices. Maybe
we should see where
that lesson leads
next.”
Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Outgrowing Jane Jacobs
and Her New York,” The New York Times.
“America’s suburban landscape
today is more varied than ever
and filled with contradictions
… some are, as in the early
days, extraordinarily wealthy
and privileged, others are very
poor; some are class-based,
others are ethnic enclaves; some
entirely residential, others are
mixed-use; some have evolved
for over a century, others
emerged in the past decade;
some are a residence of first
choice, others a suburb of last
resort. And most tend to be
homogeneous or exclusive one
way or the other.”
Jan Nijman, “The American Suburb as Utopian Constellation,”
in Suburban Constellations.
138

82
Photo: Los Angeles,
by Elvin Wyly.
139

Editors
Markus Moos
Markus Moos is Associate Professor in the School of Planning
at the University of Waterloo. His research is on changing
housing markets, suburbanisms, youthification, generational
change, and the economy and social structures of
cities. Dr. Moos is lead author of the “Atlas of Suburbanisms”
(http://env-blogs.uwaterloo.ca/atlas/), and founder of
“Generationed City” (http://generationedcity.uwaterloo.ca).
His research has been featured in the media including the Atlantic
Cities Magazine, CityLab, Spacing Magazine, Business
Insider, UK’s Daily Mail, CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange,
CTV News, and The Globe & Mail.
Robert Walter-Joseph
Robert Walter-Joseph is a graduate of the School of Planning
at the University of Waterloo. He has several years of experience
in social and economic research and policy development
in the public and academic sectors. He has contributed to
various research projects including the “Atlas of Suburbanisms”
and the “Generationed City.” His work has been featured
in a number of publications including the Huffington
Post, City Lab, and Curbed New York, and his writing has
been published in the Ontario Planning Journal and the LSE
American Politics and Policy Blog. He currently works for a
planning and design consultancy in Toronto.
Contributors
Samantha Biglieri
Samantha Biglieri is a doctoral candidate in the School of
Planning, University of Waterloo. With a background in
professional land-use planning consulting, Biglieri’s research
is based in two fields—planning practice and public health—
and is centered on creating accessible, inclusive, and meaningful
spaces through research and policy in order to improve
health outcomes—especially for marginalized populations.
Her doctoral work is focused on examining the impact of
public spaces on people with dementia.
Sarah Godfrey
Sarah Godfrey is a PhD student in the School of Planning,
University of Waterloo. Brown is passionate about the role of
sound in people and place relationships, and the importance
these interactions have for urban planning practice. Her current
research focuses on sound’s connection to well-being
and social inclusion in urban environments.
Jennifer Dean
Jennifer Dean is Assistant Professor in the School of Planning,
University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the connection
between public health and the built environment, social
inclusion, sense of place and place-making, planning policy
and theory, and qualitative research methods. Dr. Dean is a
long-time suburbanite from the Greater Toronto Area who
lives in a fabulous smart-growth community (yes, walkability
even in the ‘burbs’!).
Pierre Filion
Pierre Filion is Professor in the School of Planning, University
of Waterloo. His research is on downtown and inner-city
planning, metropolitan region planning, and land-use transportation
interactions. Dr. Filion’s recent research has focused
140

on the obstacles to Smart Growth-inspired transformation of
cities, the changing structure of metropolitan regions, and
suburban centers.
Luna Khirfan
Luna Khirfan is Associate Professor in the School of Planning,
University of Waterloo. She investigates the relationship
between public engagement, place-making, and place
experience such as in the rehabilitation of historic cities and
the adaptation to climate change. Dr. Khirfan is the author
of World Heritage, Urban Design and Tourism: Three Cities in
the Middle East, NYC: Routledge, 2014.
Anna Kramer
Anna Kramer holds a PhD from the School of Planning,
University of Waterloo. She is co-author of the online “Atlas
of Suburbanisms.” Dr. Kramer’s doctoral work was on the
socio-spatial interactions between frequent transit networks
and affordable housing. She is currently Assistant Professor
of Urban Planning at the University of Toronto.
Liam McGuire
Liam McGuire is a graduate of the Department of Geography
at the University of British Columbia. His graduate research
focused on multi-variate patterns of inequality among
neighborhoods in the Greater Toronto Area. McGuire’s experience
includes contributing to the “Atlas of Suburbanisms”
and providing research support for community development-based
projects. He currently works as a director within
the non-profit sector.
Pablo Mendez
Pablo Mendez is Assistant professor in the Department of
Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University.
His research has focused on urban informality, the uses
of housing, the evolution of suburban ways of living, and the
settlement process of transnational migrants in metropolitan
Canada.
Robert Shipley
Robert Shipley retired in 2016 after twenty years as Associate
Professor in the School of Planning, University of Waterloo.
He was Director of the Heritage Resource Centre and a former
Visiting Research Fellow of Oxford Brookes University,
UK. He remains a member of the Canadian Institute of
Planners and was a founding member of the Canadian Association
of Heritage Professionals.
Mark Williamson
Mark Williamson recently graduated with an undergraduate
degree in Planning from the School of Planning, University
of Waterloo. His research interests include the public policy
considerations of housing affordability and the role of federalism
in shaping planning policy. He is currently pursuing
graduate studies at McGill University in Montreal.
Elvin Wyly
Elvin Wyly (http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/~ewyly) is Professor of
Geography and Chair of the Urban Studies Coordinating
Committee at the University of British Columbia. His research
focuses on housing, gentrification, quantitative methods,
racial inequality, and the socio-spatial implications of
mass social networking.
Nicholas Deibler, Christina Glass, Virginia Hang, Lucas Oldfield,
Sarah Sinasac, David Vanderwindt, Alexander “AJ”
Wray, and Nicole Yang are current students in the School of
Planning at the University of Waterloo. Their contributions
to the book were completed as part of coursework under the
supervision of Dr. Markus Moos.
141