The Canadian City

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In 1974 a group of disgruntled city planners came together to form City
Magazine. This publication, unlike the established trade journal of the
time, was conceived “to report on the successes and failures of the
citizen movement across the country, take the responsibility of
systematically analyzing and criticizing policies of federal, provincial
and civic governments . . . and to give wide exposure to the sacrifices
of citizens’ needs for developer’s profits.”

The Canadian City presents the “best” of the magazine’s first 17
years. Its contents are a heady mix of thought-provoking essays
examining this country’s urban evolution (or devolution) over the past
two decades. Sadly, the book is a chronicle of more citizen failure than
citizen success. Since 1974 the developers have taken the field (or city
lot) consistently more often than the citizens’ groups. The writers of
this book seek to explain why.

Very often the articles come out swinging against aggressive land
developers, shortsighted politicians, and “status quo” urban
planners. This tone, unfortunately, may make the average reader want to
dismiss the essayists as a merely a collection of poor losers and
conspiracy-mongers. Recent municipal land scandals involving politicians
in British Columbia and Ontario, however, demand that the writers of The
Canadian City be taken seriously. They are not a mere tangle of
overgrown flower children, but dedicated professionals. There is no talk
of surrender or compromise in this book, only of lessons learned the
hard way.

Like its parent magazine, The Canadian City is targeted for the general
audience. It is good reading for anyone interested in grass roots urban
planning, and must reading for citizens’ groups willing to face the
big guns at City Hall.