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Core Redevelopment, Neighbourhood Revitalization and Municipal Government Motivation: Twenty Years of Urban Renewal in Quebec City*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Pierre Filion
Pierre Filion
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Abstract

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 other hand, a description of the different guises taken by urban renewal over a 20-year period highlights the influence electoral circumstances have on the configuration of renewal strategies. Urban renewal efforts undertaken by Québec City's municipal administration provides the case study for this article. It identifies the impetus for launching these efforts and identifies the economic and electoral factors that produced a transition from a form of urban renewal involving a redevelopment of the core area, to one assuring the preservation of the built environment of central neighbourhoods.

Résumé

Cet article porte sur les motifs qui sous-tendent la formulation de politiques au niveau local. Plus précisément, il y est démontré que les administrations municipales sont guidées à cet égard par des considérations d'ordre fiscal et électoral. D'une part, il ressort d'une analyse de programmes de rénovation urbaine qu'une large part des politiques municipales ont d'abord comme but de maintenir ou d'augmenter lévaluation foncière. D'autre part, une description des différentes formes prises par la rénovation urbaine au cours d'une période de 20 ans souligne l'influence majeure des conjonctures électorates sur la configuration de ce type d'intervention municipale. Les efforts de rénovation urbaine entrepris par la Ville de Québec entre 1965 et 1985 servent d'étude de cas. Sont identifiées les raisons qui ont suscite une telle entreprise de la part de cette administration municipale. L'attention est aussi dirigée vers les facteurs économiques et électoraux qui ont amené le passage d'un style de rénovation urbaine impliquant un redéveloppement du centre-ville, à une forme atténuée de rénovation qui assure la préservation du cadre bâti des quartiers centraux.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 131 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1987

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References

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3 This has been widely documented with respect to central cities of the United States. See US, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, “Central City—Suburban Fiscal Disparity and City Distress, 1977,” Washington, D.C., 1980; US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, “The Current Fiscal Conditions of Cities: A Survey of 67 of the 75 Largest Cities,” Washington, D.C., 1977; Gordon, D., “Capitalism and the Roots of Urban Crisis,” in Alcaly, R. E. and Mermelstein, D. (eds.), The Fiscal Crisis of American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 109–12Google Scholar; MacManus, S. A., Revenue Pattern in the United States Cities and Suburbs: A Comparative Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1979), 55, 99–100;Google Scholar G. Sternlieb and J. W. Hughes, “Metropolitan Decline and Inter-regional Job Shifts,” in Alcaly and Mermelstein (eds.), The Fiscal Crisis of American Cities, 145–64. In general, the exodus of middle and high-income residents has not been felt in Canadian central cities to the same degree. See, for example, Goldberg, M. A. and Mercer, J., “Canadian and U.S. Cities: Basic Differences, Possible Explanations and their Meaning for Public Policy,” Papers of the Regional Science Association 45 (1980), 159–83Google Scholar. Yet Quebec City has been affected to a greater extent than most Canadian central cities by such an outward flow, especially, as we shall see, in its central area.

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14 Although it underwent substantial changes in its personnel, this administration is still in office. In 1977, Mayor Gilles Lamontagne was succeeded by the present mayor, Jean Pelletier.

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24 Ibid., 412.

25 Ibid., 374–75.

26 Ibid., 452.

27 Author's translation: see Ville de Québec, Programme de dépenses capitales 1974–79, 11. The belief that solutions to social problems hinge on private development has been labelled “ethos of privatism”: see Barnekov, T. K. and Rich, D., “Privatism and Urban Development: An Analysis of the Organized Influence of Local Business Elites,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 12 (1977), 453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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29 This latter source of opposition composed mainly of middle-class elements corresponded largely to what Molotch has referred to as the “antigrowth movement” (Molotch, H., “The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place,” American Journal of Sociology 82 [1976], 309–32).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Le Soleil, December 6, 1975, and November 13, 1976.

31 See Commission permanente des transports, des travaux public et de l'approvisionnement, Amenagement de la Colline parlementaire, Government of Québec, 31st Legislature, 2nd Session, 1977.

32 Later, the curtailment of the civil service's expansion strengthened the provincial government's earlier position regarding the renting of office space in the core area. (See Conférences socio-économiques du Québec, La grande région de la capitate: état de la situation [Québec: Gouvernement du Québec, 1983], 42–45). In fact, the provincial government expressed its intention to reduce its office space requirements within the Québec metropolitan region by 800,000 square feet between 1982 and 1988.

33 The payment of these subsidies must be seen within the context of a surge of interest on the part of the federal and the provincial government for inner-city housing. Municipalities were given the opportunity of taking part in joint subsidization programmes. See de Québec, Ville, Comité permanent de 1'habitation, Habitation perspectives 84 (Québec: Ville de Québec, 1984), Tables 3 and 4.Google Scholar

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35 Statistics Canada, Catalogue 95–965,1983, Table 1. What is defined as the central area encompasses census tracts 15 to 19 and 21 to 25.

36 de Québec, Ville, Comité permanent de l'habitation, Habitation perspectives 84 (Québec: Ville de Québec, 1984), 49, 57, 65, 71.Google Scholar

37 Henig, J. R., Neighborhood Mobilization: Redevelopment and Response (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 201–16Google Scholar; and “Neighborhood Response to Gentrification: Conditions of Mobilization,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 17 (1982), 343–58.Google Scholar