Toward The Metropolitan Mindset

By Don Iveson, ICD.D and Gabriel Eidelman

Last month, the Canadian Urban Institute , in collaboration with the School of Cities, University of Toronto, released the first State of Canada's Cities Report, with short "provocations" from dozens of urban researchers and practitioners across Canada. The following is our contribution to the report, which draws from our own recent report for the School of Cities, Toward the Metropolitan Mindset: A Playbook for Stronger Cities in Canada, available at metromindset.ca.

Mayors and civic leaders across Canada have long argued, quite rightly, that we need to empower our cities. But granting new powers to just one central city and not its immediate neighbours may actually make matters worse. Take some of our most pressing challenges: housing markets, climate impacts, transportation gridlock, labour availability, energy transition — none of these begin or end at municipal boundaries. Therefore, to build stronger cities for today’s issues, we need to shift our thinking: from a municipal to a metropolitan mindset.

The metropolitan mindset means moving past the traditional, zero-sum logic that so often pervades local politics, where city leaders compete with their neighbours for scarce resources. We urgently need an approach that inspires, enables, and sustains collective problem solving across municipal borders. This shift requires extraordinary collaboration between local authorities and across all orders of government. But more than that, it requires us to understand, plan, and govern our cities as metropolitan systems.

Consider that Canada’s ten largest metros are home to more than 20 million residents, more than half of Canada’s national population, accounting for 60% of national GDP. Despite their social, economic, and environmental importance, these metropolitan areas are governed inconsistently, pushed and pulled by more than 275 separate local governments in five different provinces, and dozens more intergovernmental authorities.

The solution is not to replace or consolidate this jurisdictional web with, say, ten mega-governments, one for each of these metropolitan regions. This would be both administratively challenging and unwise, to say nothing of time consuming. No, the point is to design better metropolitan institutions through mutual learning, deliberation, and thoughtful consideration of Canada’s distinct institutional traditions and metropolitan histories, to encourage greater collaboration between existing authorities and political leaders.

In a recent paper published by the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, we offer two parallel playbooks to cultivate the metropolitan mindset in Canada – one at the local level, for municipal leaders; and one at the provincial level, where key powers and resources are concentrated – as a starting point for greater dialogue between governments, industry, civil society, and the public about the future of metropolitan governance across Canada.

The local playbook focuses on building trust – the key ingredient needed to move past a scarcity mindset and spur collaboration. This means building dialogue through a multi-sector coalition of supporters, a shared vision of a collective future, momentum for change, and a commitment to continuous improvement. Local leaders need not agree with one another at every step. But they must foster relationships with their neighbours that can withstand disagreement, through mutual respect and a process of give and take.

The provincial playbook is all about raising expectations – making it clear to local municipalities that the metropolitan mindset is critical to provincial prosperity. This means sending a strong signal that municipalities are capable of working together; that the province will be there to support local leaders; and that the provincial interest in metropolitan problem solving is steadfast and will not be derailed by local infighting. The goal is not to impose solutions, but rather champion and backstop the cause, no matter which way electoral winds blow.

We have emphasized the primacy of provincial and local jurisdictions for practical and constitutional reasons. But there is nothing stopping the federal government from adopting a metropolitan mindset as well — in fact, it is well suited to the task. Data collection and reporting on census metropolitan areas, for example, has long been undertaken by Statistics Canada. And there is precedent for Indigenous governments and organizations to engage in metropolitan collaboration too, as witnessed in Metro Vancouver. But without mayors and provincial leadership, we risk remaining stuck with metropolitan myopia.?

Ultimately, the degree to which local and provincial governments embrace the metropolitan mindset will no doubt differ from city to city, and province to province. The mindset does not come naturally, nor easily. It must be carefully tended by both local leaders and provincial governments. Even so, metropolitan problem solving remains our best hope for collectively addressing our most difficult urban challenges, and thus, for building stronger cities, and a stronger Canada.

To read more, visit metromindset.ca.