Toward the Metropolitan Mindset: A Playbook for Stronger Cities in Canada

Abstract

Mayors and civic leaders across Canada have long argued, quite rightly, that we need to empower our cities. But granting new powers to just one central city and not its immediate neighbours may actually make matters worse. Instead, we need to shift our thinking: from a municipal to a metropolitan mindset. The metropolitan mindset means moving past the traditional, zero-sum logic that pervades local politics, where city leaders compete with their neighbours for scarce resources, to one that inspires, enables, and sustains collective problem solving across municipal borders. This shift requires extraordinary collaboration between local authorities and all orders of government. But more than that, it requires us to understand, plan, and govern our cities as metropolitan systems. In the following report, we offer a playbook to cultivate the metropolitan mindset in Canada, in four parts. We begin by providing an overview of Canada’s ten largest metropolitan areas — Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary, Edmonton, Québec, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo — exploring their unique geographies and socio-economic profiles. Next, we review the mixed results of past attempts at metropolitan governance in each city-region. Third, we look for inspiration from promising examples of metropolitan problem solving abroad. Finally, we lay out two parallel playbooks — one at the local level, for municipal leaders; and one at the provincial level, where power and resources are concentrated — to inspire concerted collective problem solving, as a starting point for greater dialogue between governments, industry, civil society, and the public about the future of metropolitan governance in Canada.