In this thesis I demonstrate how the social and physical construction of spaces in Montréal‘s CBD during the Quiet Revolution marginalized working-class, inner-city manufacturing districts. To address this research question, I work across a variety of secondary sources and employ census data and reports to analyze demographic changes as well as other indices that illustrate the impact of local economic restructuring. In order to understand identity formation that is related to yet distinct from the mechanisms of capital, I examine archival documents that trace the urban growth regime’s nationalist-inflected vision of high-modernity that was inscribed onto the city’s landscape. I focus on the appropriation of landscapes in working-class Southwest Montréal. I situate these landscape transformations in a longer history of class formation in which a colonized Francophone bourgeoisie attempted to reverse its socioeconomic circumstances that were partly a consequence of the British conquest.

Industry Canada’s Community Access Program (CAP) aims to provide affordable public access to the Internet and the skills that people need to use it effectively. In fact, the CAP is an Industry Canada effort to bridge the digital divide (rural-urban, intra-urban). In the City of Toronto Industry Canada funding is used to support CAP sites managed by two organizations, the Learning Enrichment Foundation and the Toronto District School Board. CAP was implemented through the establishment of community-based public Internet access facilities. The implementation of the CAP in Toronto has resulted in the use of a wide range of organizations and locations including: libraries, schools, community centres, employment and social service agencies, and language development centres. This research asks the question, is the current network of CAP locations adequately geographically organized to meet the demand for service provision? Adequate supply means that the neighbourhood CAP supply is not over-served and under-served. Data from Industry Canada’s CAP database and the Canada census are input to a modeling process that combines multi-attribute decision analysis with a location-allocation model. The results suggest that there is likely a need to reevaluate the geographical structure of the current CAP network, with a view to achieving a more equitable allocation of supply.

This research examines the perceptions and use of environmental indicators and state of the environment reports by local government and Conservation Authority decision makers and practitioner’s within the Ontario portion of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin. Participants describe their information needs and how indicators and SOER are used at the local level; and what limitations or challenges they face to bridge the gap between monitoring information and policy. A multi-method approach including a web-based survey and follow-up telephone interviews was the primary data collection method used. Indicator and SOER knowledge and information are further explored to determine information exchange amongst different levels of governance. To review the dissemination of indicator and SOER information from a higher spatial scale down to the local level, the State of the Great Lakes environmental indicators and SOER, developed by the governments of Canada and the United States served as a case study.

Using qualitative interviews, this thesis examines bicycle and car politics in Toronto, Canada to understand: i) how automobility affects those engaged in contesting and supporting cycling initiatives; ii) why the installation of cycling infrastructure has been politicized; and iii) whether strategies used by cycling activists are effective. The paper concludes that contemporary cultural and economic values surrounding automobility are visible in those engaged in bicycle and car politics. Findings suggest that the politicization of efforts to install cycling infrastructure arise due to how these values manifest themselves in the political realm, and the interrelationship between a lack of coherent transportation policy, the institutionalization of automobiles in planning and a ward-based decision-making system that entrenches suburban and urban biases. Activist strategies could be more effective by moving away from a focus on cycling lanes to address cultural norms associated with automobiles and bicycles and by focusing on a ‘complete streets’ approach.

Using the Three Border Model developed by Mike Davis and Alessandra Moctezuma, this thesis presents a number of case studies focused on the narratives of power and transformation that continue to develop on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border in the post-9/11 context. The first case study overviews the history of the U.S.-Mexico border in relation to the ongoing fortification of the physical boundary and its legal reification in federal policy. The second case study examines the exclusionary policies enacted by the state of Arizona as well as the anti-immigration agenda instituted by the Minuteman Project. The third case study examines the ways in which urban communities in the borderlands contest the material manifestations of the border present in their everyday lives. By surveying case studies at different sites and scales along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, this thesis challenges traditional conceptions of state power at the border.

In this thesis I demonstrate how the social and physical construction of spaces in Montréal‘s CBD during the Quiet Revolution marginalized working-class, inner-city manufacturing districts. To address this research question, I work across a variety of secondary sources and employ census data and reports to analyze demographic changes as well as other indices that illustrate the impact of local economic restructuring. In order to understand identity formation that is related to yet distinct from the mechanisms of capital, I examine archival documents that trace the urban growth regime’s nationalist-inflected vision of high-modernity that was inscribed onto the city’s landscape. I focus on the appropriation of landscapes in working-class Southwest Montréal. I situate these landscape transformations in a longer history of class formation in which a colonized Francophone bourgeoisie attempted to reverse its socioeconomic circumstances that were partly a consequence of the British conquest.

Industry Canada’s Community Access Program (CAP) aims to provide affordable public access to the Internet and the skills that people need to use it effectively. In fact, the CAP is an Industry Canada effort to bridge the digital divide (rural-urban, intra-urban). In the City of Toronto Industry Canada funding is used to support CAP sites managed by two organizations, the Learning Enrichment Foundation and the Toronto District School Board. CAP was implemented through the establishment of community-based public Internet access facilities. The implementation of the CAP in Toronto has resulted in the use of a wide range of organizations and locations including: libraries, schools, community centres, employment and social service agencies, and language development centres. This research asks the question, is the current network of CAP locations adequately geographically organized to meet the demand for service provision? Adequate supply means that the neighbourhood CAP supply is not over-served and under-served. Data from Industry Canada’s CAP database and the Canada census are input to a modeling process that combines multi-attribute decision analysis with a location-allocation model. The results suggest that there is likely a need to reevaluate the geographical structure of the current CAP network, with a view to achieving a more equitable allocation of supply.

This thesis investigates the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) in order to engage debates about neoliberalism in African development policy. In identifying limitations with commentaries of Nepad and pervasive narratives of neoliberalisation, I employ an analytic of governmentality to reinterpret neoliberalisation as the governmental re-management of populations into societies of free, entrepreneurial, self-regulating subjects. Firstly, I investigate how Nepad makes Africa knowable and amenable to technical intervention in the form of “development”, particularly drawing attention to how the African subject is understood and the intimacy between technical solutions and expert diagnosis. Secondly, I explore four initiatives and techniques that attempt to render these rationalities reality. The conclusions elucidate how neoliberalism ought not to be understood as a monolithic, unrolling totality that simply implants itself through coercive power relations, but rather is comprised of a patchwork of rationalities, knowledges and discourses and given effect through prosaic governing practices.

Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) have become the leading cause of death in India and other developing countries. The aims of this study were to: (1) describe the geographical epidemiology of CVD in India, (2) provide a graphical display of CVD risk factors and mortality outcomes, and (3) describe the sources of bias. Five large, nationally-representative datasets from India were studied. Cardiovascular death rates were 308/100,000 among males and 198/100,000 among females in middle-age (30-69years). Wide variations between states were noted in the distribution of risk factors and mortality. The selected risk factors explained 49% and 43% of the variation among males and females respectively. Ecologic analysis revealed death rates at state-level were associated with rates of overweight and vegetarianism among males; no such association was found among females. This study has implications for identification of areas with high burden, formulation of hypotheses, and assessing needs for disease control at national/regional levels.

Marginal regions in discursive space: an examination of socio-economic conditions, development paths and spatial differentiation in the economic systems of the Canadian and Russian North Andrey N Petrov Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography University of Toronto 2008 This dissertation is an effort to provide a new insight into the problem of regional development in remote areas under changing global and national political and economic conditions. It undertakes an assessment of shared economic histories, recent changes and future possibilities of socioeconomic prosperity and sustainability in marginal regions of Canada and Russia. The first chapter re-examines the structure of Canada’s and Russia’s space-economies by evoking the concept of regional multichotomies and economic marginality. I consider whether outcomes, geographic patterns and spatial logics of regional differentiation in the two countries are similar and explore the evidence of similarity between the North(s). Finding development outcomes in the Russian and Canadian North strikingly similar, the second chapter uses a combination of discursive analysis and regulation theory to re-interpret the origins of present-day problems and examine the genealogy of northern development. It argues that the Canadian and Russian northern development regimes shared profound commonalities. From these positions, the chapter compares and critiques past and present policies of regional development in the two Norths, and discusses their viability. The third chapter dwells upon a concept of ‘development regimes’ to analyze and compare contemporary regional development policies. It further investigates how recent economic development policies in the two Norths are adapting to changing economic and political realities, and if they were able to deliver desirable results to northern communities. The chapter compares and critiques contemporary policies and discusses possible alternative perspectives that reconcile an emerging postcolonial paradigm of development and realities of post-Fordism. It introduces the notion of the neo-staple development regime and describes its manifestations (Impact and Benefit Agreements). The fourth chapter presents a case for fostering knowledge based development and creative capital in the North. It builds on the innovation systems and institutional geography literatures to argue that the creative capital in the periphery is a pivotal factor of regional development. The chapter provides a conceptualization and empirical analysis of the creative class in remote regions. Contrary to the metropolitan bias, I argue that creative ‘hot spots’ beyond metropolis exist, and could become the centres of regional reinvention, if appropriate policies are introduced in support.