The New City: How the Crisis of Canada's Cities Is Reshaping Our Nation.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Lorinc’s work is basically a SWOT analysis of Canada’s seven major cities—Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. “SWOT” is corporate-speak for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

The strengths and opportunities come quickly and effortlessly: Lorenc is passionate about his subject and doesn’t hold back in his praise for what is good in Canada’s urban areas. He sees centres for knowledge and innovation, research, and creativity. There’s the recent recognition by the federal government that Canada’s well-being involves the well-being of its major cities, and those cities’ role in “caring social experiment” and “urban globalism.”

While clearly pro-city, the author is aware that there is a dark side and much of the work is dedicated to examining the social issues of health, poverty, homelessness, crime, and safety as they play out on the urban setting. The weaknesses and threats side of the analysis covers inner suburban decay, urban sprawl, the chaos of amalgamations, income polarization, child poverty, and the tenant/home owner divide.

Although Canada is huge in physical space, it is compact in population density. Fifty percent of the country’s population lives in just six city districts, and 80 percent of all Canadians live in metropolitan areas. That we are an “urban nation” holds true even for our Aboriginal population, over 50 percent of whom now live in urban areas.

Lorinc’s examination of Canada’s cities drills down to include transit and infrastructure, multiculturalism and immigration, school board structure, architecture, the aging population, land-use planning, culture, downtown gentrification, waste management, bicycle lanes, and other aspects of the urban fabric.

Carefully documented research, a very readable prose style, lots of specific examples, and a grasp of the big picture make the book a vital introduction to the sociology of urban Canada at the start of the 21st century.