Planning Canadian Communities

Andris E. Roze was an urban planner and designer in Toronto.

Gerald Hodge, Director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen’s University, since 1973, has taught planning at the Universities of Toronto and British Columbia. He has practised planning in several provinces and has done research on Canadian regional and local planning. He has published widely in journals and he coauthored, with M. Qadeer, Towns and Villages in Canada (Toronto: Butterworths, 1983).

In this monograph Hodge analyzes problems of Canadian cities and the need for planning. The book is divided in three main areas. The first part gives the historic background of Canadian cities and the foundation of communities. Then follows the central section on the practice of community planning in Canada, focusing on physical aspects, land use, public policy, and regional and metropolitan planning. The last section deals with the persons and groups who participate in the decision-making and the planning activities in Canadian communities. Hodge describes the tools and processes of implementation of physical planning that have evolved throughout Canada, and illustrates these with a variety of plans from Vancouver to the Atlantic Provinces.

The volume is illustrated with historic plans, photographs, charts, and graphs. The text is well organized in chapters and sub-chapters which enables easy comprehension of subject relationships.

Hodge has written this book with the academic or planning student in mind, and it is suitable as a Canadian community planning text for planning students or for people interested in the field. The author has admirably avoided the planners’ jargon so often used by professionals writing in this subject area.

This is an excellent text which provides history, theory, and the current state of the planning art in Canada.