Housing the North American City

Randall White, a political scientist, is also a Toronto-based economic
consultant and author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to Senate
Reform in Canada.

This unusually interesting book presents a multifaceted account of the
long-term historical growth of the housing stock in Hamilton, Ontario,
from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Some may find the title somewhat misleading. In any international
perspective, however, it is surely correct to conceive of Hamilton’s
housing experience as an essentially North American one. Doucet, a
geographer from Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, and Weaver,
a historian from Hamilton’s McMaster University, adroitly filter their
discussion of the Hamilton case through the wider literature on Canada
and the United States.

The first three chapters offer a broadly chronological account of the
evolution of the residential development process, from the “era of
individualism” (up to 1880), to the “era of corporate involvement”
(1880-1945), to the “era of state intervention” (1945 to the
present). The next six chapters discuss various specific subjects. In
one way or another, these all relate to the authors’ special interest
in exploring how and why the “icon” of the suburban single-family
home has come to dominate mainstream housing markets in both Canada and
the United States. At the same time, this interest is conditioned by
strong sensitivities to the fate of groups outside the mainstream: there
are also chapters on “The Rented House” and “The North American
Apartment Building.” A final chapter, “Housing Quality and Urban
Environments,” elaborates a “qualified thesis on the democratization
of shelter” and casts some more ambivalent glances toward the future.

It is impossible to convey the admirable richness and variety of this
text in a short review. The book is bound to spark several kinds of
debate among several kinds of housing experts. But it extends our
understanding of the past in undeniable ways. It will repay more than
one visit by anyone interested in almost any aspect of housing, urban
history, Ontario’s regional history, or even the state of life in
“North America” and how it became the way it is today.