Quality of Place and the Rescaling of Urban Governance: The Case of Toronto

Abstract

Globalization is best described as a complex process embodying conditions of instant communication and the rapid movement of people, goods, and ideas. Aligned with this process is a reorganization of state and society that some geographers have referred to as “rescaling”—a reconfiguration of the spatial scales at which governance occurs. The emerging landscapes of a rescaled global economy reveal not a diminishing role for the local, but rather the resurgence of place—cities—as deterritorialized centres of global control. The prominence of these command and control nodes within a global post-industrial economy is increasingly being linked to discourses of economic efficiency. Using the case of Toronto, Canada, the authors interpret changing governance structures as evidence of a rescaling process that has seen resources and responsibilities move in opposite directions, to the detriment of the quality of place in the city. Rhetorical calls for global competitiveness have led to a withering of the state’s role in providing the context for the emergence of locally enriched social and cultural environments. The case of Toronto reveals a spatial paradox where changes in governance aimed at enhancing global competitiveness have actually diminished the local qualities cities depend upon to sustain such advantage. None the less, economic competitiveness and quality of place need not necessarily work in opposition, and we advance a general planning framework to balance these desires.