A modest proposal for Toronto’s land transfer tax
The City of Toronto is dangerously addicted to its land transfer tax. My proposal: redirect it to fund the capital budget.
Category: Writing
Ontario’s growing economic and political polarization
In a recent article in Inroads: The Canadian Journal of Opinion called “Ontario’s ‘Places That Don’t Matter’ Send a Message: The Fault Lines Dividing the Province are Getting Deeper”, I argue that the long-term changes in Ontario’s economy are driving political polarization on rural, small urban, and metropolitan lines.
Legitimacy and metropolitan institutions
In a recent article in the journal Planning Theory, I draw on the work of Scharpf and Schmidt to outline how institutional design shapes the legitimacy of planning institutions.
A new tool for neighbourhood change research using the Canadian census
Using Canadian census data for neighbourhood change research is hard because tract boundaries change. Jeff Allen and I decided to fix it. This article in the journal Canadian Geographer describes our method.
A look at the effects of municipal election rules in the 2014 Toronto ward elections
Do campaign finance and other rules that govern elections level the playing field? My analysis of the 2014 City of Toronto ward elections, published in the journal Urban Affairs Review, suggests not much.
Why do Canada and the United States govern cities differently?
The relationship between cities and the state and provincial governments that empower them differs between Canada and the United States. In this piece, published in the International Journal of Canadian Studies, I argue that this is the result of divergent processes of incremental institutional change beginning in the early 19th century.
Comparison of planning systems should focus on institutions, not culture
The concept of planning culture has become a popular way of explaining national differences in urban planning practice and development outcomes. In this piece in Town Planning Review, I argue that an historical institutionalist analysis is a more helpful basis for comparative planning research.
What place for cities in Canadian political science?
In this article in Canadian Journal of Political Science, Gabriel Eidelman and I survey the how Canadian political scientists have studied urban politics and local governments since the 1970s, and point to gaps that should be filled.
Why has Canadian political science ignored urban politics?
Why haven’t Canadian political scientists paid much attention to urban politics? In the Journal of Urban Affairs, Gabriel Eidelman and I argue that there are institutional, epistemological, and ontological reasons for this fact.
