Pierre Filion
Biographic Data
| ID | 365559 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pierre Filion |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pierre |
| FAMILY NAME | Filion |
| SIGNATURE | FILION P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Waterloo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7538-6441 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 289 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Crossing Paths, Crossing Perspectives
Intensification in the city centre
As cities aim for more sustainable patterns of urbanization, intensification has emerged as a core planning strategy. In 2013, the City of Regina set new intensification targets: absorb 30% of annual population growth through intensification and add 10,000 residents to the city centre by 2035. In the decade since, implementation has been unsuccessful. This study explores the barriers to core area intensification in Regina by engaging with key inf…
Past, present and future revitalization trends in Canadian mid‐size city downtowns
The article is a critical review of the literature investigating the impact suburbanization has had since the mid‐20th century on the downtowns of Canadian mid‐size cities and the strategies deployed to revitalize these districts. It demonstrates that large city downtowns are more likely than their mid‐size city counterparts to enjoy conditions favourable to their success, hence the need to devise revitalization efforts tailored to the reality of…
Urban neoliberalism, smart city, and Big Tech
On May 7, 2020, Sidewalk Labs (part of Alphabet, which includes Google) abandoned its Toronto waterfront redevelopment project after two-and-a-half years of planning, public relations, and bargaining with the public agency responsible for this sector. The official and final reason Sidewalk gave for its withdrawal was the uncertainty of the Toronto real estate market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Few observers of the Toronto scene subscribed to th…
Planning for Post-pandemic Downtowns of Mid-size Urban Areas
There is widespread consensus that the Covid pandemic has had significant negative effects on cities and city life. In an online survey, urban planners were asked to identify the attributes that contributed to the success of the downtowns of mid-size urban areas prior to the pandemic as well as the attributes that would facilitate their post-pandemic recovery. While some urban scholars expect that recovery will lead to a ‘new normal’, the planner…
Ethnoburb as a spatiotemporal process
Progressive Economic Development Policies
It has become increasingly difficult to define progressive municipalities and progressive economic development. Conceptions of “local economic development” tied to neoliberal agendas are often narrow, focusing on efforts to offset perceived disadvantages of a location. Many traditional incentive policies result in a transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector. In this article, we consider whether the introduction of progressive econo…
Techs and the Cities
Large technology firms pose new challenges for local economic development in the 21st century. They are attractive targets for local economic developers because they have the potential of providing permanent, well-paying jobs. This article examines two mega-economic development deals. Amazon’s proposed second headquarters in Queens and Sidewalk Labs’ Quayside proposal for the Toronto waterfront pit large and prosperous Big Tech firms against loca…
Residential Intensification at the Interface of Market-Driven Development and Planning
The paper concentrates on changes in the balance of power between the market and planning reflecting the shift from Fordism to neoliberalism. The empirical substance originates from the Toronto metropolitan region, Canada’s largest and most economically globalised urban area. An investigation of sub-centres and the contrast between two waves of residential intensification tie limited planning capacity to shifting intensification outcomes. In one …
Creative or instrumental planners? Agency and structure in their institutional and political economy context
The paper casts light on structural factors limiting and shaping the actions of planners. In doing so it attempts to compensate for the emphasis planning theory places on the agency dimension of planners at the expense of the structural limitations they encounter. The paper draws from Giddens’s structuration theory, which depicts how the imbrication of agency and structure within institutional contexts sets the resources and constraints environme…
The heart of the city
The heart of the city: Creating vibrant downtowns for a new century, by Alexander Garvin." Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(8), pp. 1349–1350
International experience of public infrastructure delivery in support of housing growth
Youthification across the metropolitan system
Path dependencies affecting suburban density, mix, and diversity in Halifax
This paper examines path dependencies in suburban development outcomes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Findings suggest that development patterns are constrained by geography and spatial configuration, the legacy of institutions and decisions, transportation technologies, political culture, the development industry, population growth and characteristics, economic conditions, and cultural and lifestyle preferences. Planning policies and practices that se…
Sustainable Cities
Sustainability concerns conditions required to assure the durability of human life and society. In an urban context it pertains largely to the relation between cities and their environment. To endure, cities must respect environmental prerequisites for the wellbeing of their residents and their own existence. In this regard, they must avoid damaging their own environment and contributing to broader‐scale degradation of environmental conditions, a…
Recentralization as an Alternative to Urban Dispersion
Growing dissatisfaction with the prevailing dispersed urban form and its generalized reliance on the automobile has resulted in the formulation of planning models seeking to substitute dispersed development with recentralization. A survey of 301 planning documents with a metropolitan focus, originating from the 58 US and Canadian urban regions with a population exceeding one million, reveals widespread support for urban recentralization. But inte…
Planners' Perspectives on Obstacles to Sustainable Urban Development
A major problem confronting planning is the gap between transformative proposals and enduring urban development trends. The paper interprets interviews with 62 planners involved in a sustainable urban development strategy in a large region focussed on Toronto, Canada. Surveyed planners were asked about the obstacles they encounter when attempting to modify prevailing urban development. Mentioned obstacles are consistent with expectations arising …
Suburban Inertia
During the years following the second world war, an urban development model-dispersed suburbanism (DS)-came to predominate in North America. The low-density functional specialization and all-out automobile orientation of this new urban form were ideally suited to the circumstances of the time, thus accounting for its rapid adoption. DS also proved to be adaptable to changing societal circumstances, which explains its predominance as an urban deve…
Dépendance locale et développement économique
Traditionnellement, au Canada, les milieux d'affaires sont en bonne position pour influencer les politiques locales. Les municipalités font de plus en plus appel à l'entrepreneurship local pour diversifier leur base économique, mais leur autonomie à l'égard du capital n'augmente pas. L'auteur s'intéresse aux efforts de développement de six municipalités ontariennes et à la manière dont elles s'y sont prises (processus, secteurs économiques visés,…
Evolving suburban form
Transformations in both the approach to suburban growth expressed in planning documents and the reality of suburban development are examined. The North American suburban model, characterized by near universal reliance on the automobile, abundant land consumption, rigorous functional specialization and a dispersal of employment, retail and services, was pieced together between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. While plans from this period concen…
Transformative Metropolitan Development Models in Large Canadian Urban Areas
The paper centres on the content of metropolitan-scale plans of the six largest Canadian urban regions. Plans in all these regions promote intensification and alternatives to automobile use, and thus adhere to smart growth and sustainability principles. In all cases save one, reliance on nodal development is the preferred manner of achieving intensification and ensuring its co-ordination with public transit services. Meanwhile, however, results p…
Metropolitan-scale Planning in Neo-liberal Times
Just as rising concern about its environmental, economic, social, health and quality of life downsides generates loud calls for a departure from the dispersed car-oriented urban model, conditions for such a transition have become more uncertain. The intended urban shift is hampered by dissonance between the generation of metropolitan-scale planning visions and the anti-interventionist characteristics of the current neo-liberal age. The paper iden…
Planning Context and Urban Intensification Outcomes
There is a lack of knowledge about effective implementation of intensification policies. The paper concentrates on the intensification experience of Sydney, Australia, and Toronto, Canada. Historical narratives, which document intensification efforts and outcomes since the 1950s, paint different pictures. For much of the period, Sydney adopted a medium-density strategy sustained by public-sector incentives and regulations. In Toronto, in contrast…
Intensification and Sprawl
This study investigates the balance between forces of standardization and differentiation in the evolution of residential density in Canada's four largest metropolitan regions between 1971 and 2006. The leading factors of standardized development are the continentwide postwar adaptation of urban form to the automobile and growing housing space consumption. The influence of these factors is manifested in increasing convergence in the density level…
Gilles Sénécal et Laurence Bherer (dirs), La métropolisation et ses territoires, Québec, Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2009, 291 p
Gilles Sénécal et Laurence Bherer (dirs), La métropolisation et ses territoires, Québec, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2009, 291 p.. Un article de la revue Recherches sociographiques (Volume 51, numéro 3, septembre–décembre 2010, p. 343-615) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit
The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas
Housing in‐affordability is a growing problem within Canadian urban areas. This research asks an as‐yet unanswered spatial question: where do those suffering high rates of housing affordability stress reside and what do the spatial patterns imply about policies intended to address this housing problem? This paper tabulates and maps the spatial distribution of households that pay excessive amounts of their income for rent in order to identify loca…
The Gentrification-Social Structure Dialectic
The Entrenchment of Urban Dispersion
The paper portrays three aspects of urban dispersion: urban structure, residents' location and land-use preferences, and social ecology. To explain the dynamic inherent in this form of urbanisation, it suggests an explanatory model concentrating on shifts in the respective importance of space, place and proximity associated with the passage from traditional monocentric to dispersed urban form. The paper draws its empirical substance from the Kitc…
Canada-U.S. Metropolitan Density Patterns
The paper compares density patterns of the three largest Canadian metropolitan regions with those of a sample of 12 U.S. urban areas with comparable populations. It verifies if such patterns support claims of Canadian urban distinctiveness prevalent within this country's research literature. Findings indicate that regional differences among U.S. cities are as important as cross-national distinctions. Measures of centrality and overall density pla…
Density Gradients in Canadian Metropolitan Regions, 1971-96
This paper demonstrates that over the 25-year period, 1971-96, the majority of Canadian cities have undergone transition towards an increasingly decentralised urban form. The trends, however, are quite diverse, pointing to fundamental differences in the respective importance of growth in central and outer parts of the metropolitan area. On the whole, the relatively high densities observed in Canadian central cities, in comparison with US ones, ap…
Urban neoliberalism, smart city, and Big Tech
On May 7, 2020, Sidewalk Labs (part of Alphabet, which includes Google) abandoned its Toronto waterfront redevelopment project after two-and-a-half years of planning, public relations, and bargaining with the public agency responsible for this sector. The official and final reason Sidewalk gave for its withdrawal was the uncertainty of the Toronto real estate market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Few observers of the Toronto scene subscribed to th…
Suburban Mixed-Use Centres and Urban Dispersion
In a context of growing car dependency and suburban sprawl, planners search for ways of intensifying urban development and reducing reliance on the automobile. The creation of planned mixed-use centres intended to become hubs of transit and pedestrian movement within the dispersed suburban environment represents one such intensification strategy. I investigate three suburban mixed-use centres in the Greater Toronto Area, selected for their advanc…
Suburban Inertia
During the years following the second world war, an urban development model-dispersed suburbanism (DS)-came to predominate in North America. The low-density functional specialization and all-out automobile orientation of this new urban form were ideally suited to the circumstances of the time, thus accounting for its rapid adoption. DS also proved to be adaptable to changing societal circumstances, which explains its predominance as an urban deve…
Planning Context and Urban Intensification Outcomes
There is a lack of knowledge about effective implementation of intensification policies. The paper concentrates on the intensification experience of Sydney, Australia, and Toronto, Canada. Historical narratives, which document intensification efforts and outcomes since the 1950s, paint different pictures. For much of the period, Sydney adopted a medium-density strategy sustained by public-sector incentives and regulations. In Toronto, in contrast…
Intensification and Sprawl
This study investigates the balance between forces of standardization and differentiation in the evolution of residential density in Canada's four largest metropolitan regions between 1971 and 2006. The leading factors of standardized development are the continentwide postwar adaptation of urban form to the automobile and growing housing space consumption. The influence of these factors is manifested in increasing convergence in the density level…
Growth and decline in the Canadian urban system
Concepts of the Inner City and Recent Trends in Canada
This essay evaluates the explanatory power of two current models ‐ ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ ‐ of the evolution of inner cities. This in done in the light of data on socioeconomic trends that affect residential areas in the cores of the nine major Canadian metropolitan regions. The centrifugal model focuses on the attraction of suburbs on central city residents; the centripetal concentrates on the lure of some inner‐city neighbourhoods for …
Youthification across the metropolitan system
Reorienting Urban Development? Structural Obstruction to New Urban Forms
There is a growing sense that the North American low-density and automobile-dependent urban form is unsustainable from the perspectives of quality of life, economics and the environment. Yet for all the calls for a transformation of development patterns, trends inherited from the post-second world war period die hard. This article employs structuration theory to generate a conceptual framework that identifies factors of structural stability and t…
Metropolitan Planning Objectives and Implementation Constraints
Planning faces the predicament that as recommendations become bolder possibilities for implementation deteriorate. This is imputed to society's transition from a Fordist and modern to a post-Fordist and postmodern era. On the one hand, postmodern values account for more public participation and heightened environmental sensitivity, which translate into proposals for alternative forms of urban development. On the other hand, the implementation of …
Recentralization as an Alternative to Urban Dispersion
Growing dissatisfaction with the prevailing dispersed urban form and its generalized reliance on the automobile has resulted in the formulation of planning models seeking to substitute dispersed development with recentralization. A survey of 301 planning documents with a metropolitan focus, originating from the 58 US and Canadian urban regions with a population exceeding one million, reveals widespread support for urban recentralization. But inte…
Dispersed City Form in Canada
This case study illustrates that some Canadian cities are not as compact and centralized as conventional wisdom would have us believe. The spatial structure of Kitchener CMA is shown to be ‘dispersed’ based on empirical trends towards lower population densities, outward spreading of jobs, retailing and other activities, CBD decline, increased open space, a transportation system that is singularly dependent on auto use, and an overriding demand fo…
Rupture or Continuity? Modern and Postmodern Planning in Toronto
The literature on the transition to postmodernism, postfordism and participatory planning stresses the value of the economic and planning process shifts that have occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This paper compares two periods of planning and urban development in Toronto: one running from 1959 to 1962, at the height of modernism, fordism and expert-driven planning, and the other, from 1989 to 1992, set within the postmodern, postfordi…
Potential and Limitations of Community Economic Development
As traditional alternatives to laissez-faire economics lose ground and credibility, increasing attention is being focused on community economic development (CED). This form of development emerges as one of the few remaining options available to promote social equity and achieve community survival in the face of economic adversity. CED is dedicated to participatory decisionmaking and to forms of economic development that operate at a local level a…
Progressive Economic Development Policies
It has become increasingly difficult to define progressive municipalities and progressive economic development. Conceptions of “local economic development” tied to neoliberal agendas are often narrow, focusing on efforts to offset perceived disadvantages of a location. Many traditional incentive policies result in a transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector. In this article, we consider whether the introduction of progressive econo…
Smart Growth and Development Reality
A supportive distribution of residential density is perceived to be an essential component of strategies aimed at increasing the use of public transit. To alter substantially land use-transport dynamics in a fashion that favours public transit patronage, residential density policies must be deployed over long periods and unfold at local and metropolitan levels simultaneously. The article narrates policies that attempted, since the late 1950s, a j…
The Urban Policy-making and Development Dimension of Fordism and Post-Fordism
This paper investigates urban policy-making and development from a regulation theory perspective. It describes major Toronto urban trends of the past 50 years in order to gauge their conformity to changing regulation conditions. Results indicate that in the 1950s and 1960s, policies in Toronto were in accord with the Fordist mass consumption and welfare orientation. They also suggest a coincidence between the post-1995 period of public-sector ret…
Uneven cities
Path dependencies affecting suburban density, mix, and diversity in Halifax
This paper examines path dependencies in suburban development outcomes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Findings suggest that development patterns are constrained by geography and spatial configuration, the legacy of institutions and decisions, transportation technologies, political culture, the development industry, population growth and characteristics, economic conditions, and cultural and lifestyle preferences. Planning policies and practices that se…
Wasted Density? The Impact of Toronto's Residential-Density-Distribution Policies on Public-Transit Use and Walking
Although the Toronto metropolitan region performs well relative to its North American counterparts in terms of density and public-transit use, it does not derive as much walking and public-transit patronage benefit from its high-residential-density areas as it could. The impact of residential density on journey patterns is limited by an imperfect juxtaposition of density and public-transit service peaks. Another impediment is the difficulty of as…
Ironie du char
Ironie du char: un essai sur l'automobile et la crise des transports à MontréalJean-Pierre Dagenais Montréal: Edité à compte d'auteur (2275 est rue Laurier, Montréal, Québec), 1982, 208 p. - Volume 17 Issue 1
La marche des mots. Propos-contacts
Jacques Poulin aime les chats et les chats l'aiment.Ses matous se sont appelés, au fil des années, Mathusalem, Amour Rabi, Zef, Tchummy
Vieillissement de la population et demande de transport dans la région de Montréal, 1978-1991Yves Bussière, Bernard McCann, Anita Seni Montréal
Vieillissement de la population et demande de transport dans la région de Montréal, 1978-1991Yves Bussière, Bernard McCann, Anita Seni Montréal: INRS-Urbanisation (études et documents 36), 1983, 83 p. - Volume 19 Issue 2
L'Urbanisme au Québec
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Développement régional
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Concepts of the Inner City and Recent Trends in Canada
This essay evaluates the explanatory power of two current models ‐ ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ ‐ of the evolution of inner cities. This in done in the light of data on socioeconomic trends that affect residential areas in the cores of the nine major Canadian metropolitan regions. The centrifugal model focuses on the attraction of suburbs on central city residents; the centripetal concentrates on the lure of some inner‐city neighbourhoods for …
Core Redevelopment, Neighbourhood Revitalization and Municipal Government Motivation
This article investigates the motives behind policy-making at the municipal level. More specifically, it argues that local governments are guided in the formulation of their policies by a need to reconcile fiscal and electoral considerations. On the one hand, by focussing on urban renewal initiatives it shows that an important proportion of municipal policies are primarily devoted to the maintenance or the bolstering of the taxation base. On the …
Réanimation urbaine et pouvoir local
Réanimation urbaine et pouvoir local: les stratégies des municipalités de Montréal, Sherbrooke et Grenoble en quartiers anciensRichard Morin Montréal: Presses de l'Université du Québec/INRS-Urbanisation, 1987, 173 p. - Volume 21 Issue 2
Socio‐Economic change within the older housing stock of Canadian cities
Traditional neo‐Classical economic theories of change in the older, inner city housing stock are primarily based on assumptions of a filtering down’ of housing quality and occupant households. As an alternative, this paper develops an approach that relies on societal and metropolitan transformations to explain the changing role of older, inner city neighbourhoods. It uses Statistics Canada's Household Income, Facilities and Equipment files for th…
Gouverner les villes moyennesAlbert Malileau et Claude Sorbets (sous la direction de) Paris
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Gentrification-Social Structure Dialectic
Partis politiques municipaux
Partis politiques municipaux: une étude de sociologie électoraleLouise Quesnel et Serge Belley (avec la collaboration de Jacques Léveillée) Montréal: Éditions Agence d'Arc, 1991, 285 p. - Volume 25 Issue 3
Metropolitan Planning Objectives and Implementation Constraints
Planning faces the predicament that as recommendations become bolder possibilities for implementation deteriorate. This is imputed to society's transition from a Fordist and modern to a post-Fordist and postmodern era. On the one hand, postmodern values account for more public participation and heightened environmental sensitivity, which translate into proposals for alternative forms of urban development. On the other hand, the implementation of …
Potential and Limitations of Community Economic Development
As traditional alternatives to laissez-faire economics lose ground and credibility, increasing attention is being focused on community economic development (CED). This form of development emerges as one of the few remaining options available to promote social equity and achieve community survival in the face of economic adversity. CED is dedicated to participatory decisionmaking and to forms of economic development that operate at a local level a…
The Entrenchment of Urban Dispersion
The paper portrays three aspects of urban dispersion: urban structure, residents' location and land-use preferences, and social ecology. To explain the dynamic inherent in this form of urbanisation, it suggests an explanatory model concentrating on shifts in the respective importance of space, place and proximity associated with the passage from traditional monocentric to dispersed urban form. The paper draws its empirical substance from the Kitc…
Dispersed City Form in Canada
This case study illustrates that some Canadian cities are not as compact and centralized as conventional wisdom would have us believe. The spatial structure of Kitchener CMA is shown to be ‘dispersed’ based on empirical trends towards lower population densities, outward spreading of jobs, retailing and other activities, CBD decline, increased open space, a transportation system that is singularly dependent on auto use, and an overriding demand fo…
Rupture or Continuity? Modern and Postmodern Planning in Toronto
The literature on the transition to postmodernism, postfordism and participatory planning stresses the value of the economic and planning process shifts that have occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This paper compares two periods of planning and urban development in Toronto: one running from 1959 to 1962, at the height of modernism, fordism and expert-driven planning, and the other, from 1989 to 1992, set within the postmodern, postfordi…
Synergy and Movement Within Suburban Mixed-Use Centers
The article measures the intensity of interaction between activities within suburban mixed-use centers (also referred to as suburban downtowns or edge cities), and the reliance on walking for intra-center journeys. It examines whether or not these centers are achieving, as intended in planning documents, an inner dynamic that distinguishes them from typical suburban commercial developments. A survey of office workers within the Greater Toronto Ar…
The Urban Policy-making and Development Dimension of Fordism and Post-Fordism
This paper investigates urban policy-making and development from a regulation theory perspective. It describes major Toronto urban trends of the past 50 years in order to gauge their conformity to changing regulation conditions. Results indicate that in the 1950s and 1960s, policies in Toronto were in accord with the Fordist mass consumption and welfare orientation. They also suggest a coincidence between the post-1995 period of public-sector ret…
Uneven cities
Suburban Mixed-Use Centres and Urban Dispersion
In a context of growing car dependency and suburban sprawl, planners search for ways of intensifying urban development and reducing reliance on the automobile. The creation of planned mixed-use centres intended to become hubs of transit and pedestrian movement within the dispersed suburban environment represents one such intensification strategy. I investigate three suburban mixed-use centres in the Greater Toronto Area, selected for their advanc…
Density Gradients in Canadian Metropolitan Regions, 1971-96
This paper demonstrates that over the 25-year period, 1971-96, the majority of Canadian cities have undergone transition towards an increasingly decentralised urban form. The trends, however, are quite diverse, pointing to fundamental differences in the respective importance of growth in central and outer parts of the metropolitan area. On the whole, the relatively high densities observed in Canadian central cities, in comparison with US ones, ap…
Canada-U.S. Metropolitan Density Patterns
The paper compares density patterns of the three largest Canadian metropolitan regions with those of a sample of 12 U.S. urban areas with comparable populations. It verifies if such patterns support claims of Canadian urban distinctiveness prevalent within this country's research literature. Findings indicate that regional differences among U.S. cities are as important as cross-national distinctions. Measures of centrality and overall density pla…
The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas
Housing in‐affordability is a growing problem within Canadian urban areas. This research asks an as‐yet unanswered spatial question: where do those suffering high rates of housing affordability stress reside and what do the spatial patterns imply about policies intended to address this housing problem? This paper tabulates and maps the spatial distribution of households that pay excessive amounts of their income for rent in order to identify loca…
Changing Patterns of Residential Centrality
The research focuses on Canadian CMAs with populations of 500 000 or greater over the period 1971-1996. It uses population density gradients and enumeration of population and household shift to assess changing patterns of residential centrality over the twenty-five year period. Results indicate that all of the CMAs examined have experienced continued outward dispersion, some more so than others. When population change in core and inner-city zones…
Geography (32 works) · Economics (31 works) · Political science (31 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Economic geography (19 works) · Economic growth (19 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (19 works) · Metropolitan area (18 works) · Urbanization and City Planning (18 works) · Engineering (14 works)