The Costs of Radical Structural Change: The Case of Toronto and Hamilton

Abstract

As detailed in Chap. 3, Canadian provinces experimented with radical structural change. This chapter is a case study of two cities in the province of Ontario, one of the provinces that pushed structural change the hardest. The case studies are Toronto, the largest city in Canada, and Hamilton, an older, industrial, declining midsize city. With the thrust in Ontario commencing in the 1990s to move from a tiered form of government to consolidated structures, this provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of radical structural change. Toronto and Hamilton had their upper governmental tiers abolished under the restructuring and the former independent municipalities within the tier amalgamated into the central city. It is an analysis of the administration of the new cities and an assessment of whether the amalgamations achieved the objectives of the political leaders who mandated the mergers. Each region is treated as a separate case study. The movement from a tiered to a consolidated city in Toronto by no means captured all the urban development in the Toronto area. In fact, Hamilton is considered to be part of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It is on the outer fringes of the GTA. I separate these for analysis purposes because there are different issues in the consolidations of each. Toronto’s amalgamation was the combination of a central city and older, inner-ring suburbs within a larger metropolitan area. Hamilton’s consolidation was an amalgamation that combined a number of small rural communities into this declining industrial city on the edge of the GTA.