This study examines the reasons behind the decline in public transport patronage in Melbourne between 1950 and 1990, through a comparison with Toronto. The share of urban travel undertaken by public transport has declined since the Second World War in all developed countries, but public transport patronage in Melbourne appears to have declined more rapidly than in most other industrialised cities. Public transport has, however, gained or held ground in Toronto, where the form of development is similar in many ways to Melbourne. Most accounts of Toronto’s success (particularly in Australia) regard transport/land-use integration as the critical factor. The contrasting analysis maintains that Melbourne’s urban form has changed over this period to a dispersed, car-oriented pattern. This study evaluates a different interpretation of the ‘Toronto model’. This is that Toronto has undergone similar urban changes to Melbourne since the war, but has found a way of operating public transport successfully in a relatively dispersed environment. The contrast with Melbourne, then, is not primarily in land-use patterns, but in policies towards the operation of public transport.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes abstract. Portions of appendices in Mandarin Chinese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-226).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes abstract. Portions of appendices in Mandarin Chinese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-226).

This dissertation examines the literary archives of three Ontario cities – Windsor, Hamilton, and Toronto – to discover and enfold urban nature in our everyday lives. Beginning with a refusal to accept the popular notion that there is no nature in the city or that the city is separate from the natural world, I seek to engage with writers in these three cities to find representations of and engagements with the natural world in an urban setting. In the light of a growing environmental crisis marked by fossil fuel shortages, climate change, biodiversity decline, and habitat loss, this project is an attempt to craft a meaningful response from an ecocritical perspective. Central to this response are two key contentions: one, that the natural world is in the city, but we need to find ways to recognize it there; and, two, that the most efficacious and ethical way to respond to environmental crisis is to make this urban nature a part of our everyday lives by fostering attachments to it and protecting it, or, to put it differently, enfolding it into our human lives. Using literature, my project shows how the natural world is present in three Ontario cities and how writers like Di Brandt, John Terpstra, Phyllis Brett Young, and others are already including urban nature in their work. This work also addresses significant gaps in Canadian literary discourse which has tended to focus on wilderness or rural spaces and in ecocritical discourse which has also tended to eschew urban locations. This project adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to read a wide range of texts including fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, educational material, scientific publications, and others in order to encourage readers and citizens of Windsor, Hamilton, and Toronto to discover and enfold the urban nature present in those cities. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)