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Journal of Urban History, Vol. 33, No. 1,
51-76 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0096144206290265
Constructing Urban Expertise
Professional and Political Authority in Toronto, 1940-1970
Stephen Bocking
Trent University
Between 1940 and 1970, the population of the Toronto metropolitan region increased rapidly. This imposed new infrastructure demands, particularly for sewer, water supply, and transportation systems, and encouraged comprehensive approaches to planning and flood control. Several forms of expertise emerged to guide responses to these demands, of which three are considered here: engineering of urban services, planning of new communities, and watershed conservation. Each form of expertise had close ties to public- or private-sector institutions; collectively, they reinforced prevailing views concerning the public interest and the role of technocratic expertise. They also demonstrated how a city’s expert and political orders could be constitutive of each other, with the planning and building of infrastructure by government and the private sector creating the contexts for applying expertise, which, in turn, justified expansion of the city’s administrative functions.
Key Words: planning • technical expertise • urban environmental history • infrastructure • flood control
References
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- See Larry Bourne, "Presidential Address Normative Urban Geographies: Recent Trends, Competing Visions, and New Cultures of Regulation," Canadian Geographer 40, no. 1 (1996): 2-16.
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