contrast to other big-city mayors such

as Ed Koch and Coleman Young,

Kucinich responded to fiscal stress by

refusing to grant tax breaks or other

business concessions; instead. he

attempted to protect the public sector

and to respond to neighbourhood

needs rather than downtown develop-

ment interests. Swanstrom analyses

thi\ tax abatement decision, the adm-

nistration of the Community Develop-

ment Block Grant programme, and

the city’s default for non-payment of

its debt as case studies of growth

politics. Swanstrom is less effective in

drawing on the first two cases in

support of his argument but the de-

fault issue is a powerful example of the

limits on local policy choices in US

citiex.

Cleveland is the first m;ijor US city

since the Depression to default on its

bank loans. Swanstrom’s fascinating

account persuasively argues that the

local banks forced the city into default

on the basis of political motives rather

than objective fiscal criteria. The local

banks were clearly frustrated and

aggravated by Kucinich’s confronta

tional style and his refusal to sell

Muny I.ight, the municipally owned

public utility. The banks’ continued

refusal to rollover the city’s notes

meant the city had to rely on its

shrinking cash reserves to meet opcr-

sting expenses. This cash flow prob-

lcm reached crisis proportions in De-

cember 107X; the evidence indicates

that a united phalanx of local banks

then refused credit unless Kucinich

agreed to sell Muny Light. Rather

than cater to the banks’ conditions and

their conservative growth politics,

Kucinich let the city go into default.

Swanstrom attributes Kucinich’s

subsequent electoral defeat not to the

default itself but to the electorate‘s

wearinccs with these continual con-

frontations. Interestingly. he faults Kucinich as well as the business con-

munity for the defeat of urban popul- ism in Cleveland. Swanstrom argues

that Kucinich’s Alinsky-like in- \trumentalist style was essentially

apolitical. It lacked a coherent ideolo-

gy and his executive-centred, office- specific coalition engendered opposi-

tional politics rather than any positive

political vision for the city. Not unlike

362

Jimmy Carter and George Wallace in

national politics, Dennis Kucinich

played on citizen alienation and anti-

politics sentiments to capture public

office. Once in office. he was indepen-

dent but isolated. lie lacked the poli-

tical resources and organizational net-

works necessary to carry out his priori-

ties. He also lost the support of his

original constituency, the community

organizations, in repeated clashes with

groups practising the same Alinsky-

style tactics of mobilizing through

confrontation. The Kucinich adminis-

tration could not reconcile itself to

now being the target of vocal com-

munity protests; Kuctnlch saw these

conflicts as unnecessary, arguing that

‘Activist community groups are un- necessary with a mayor who under-

stands their needs’. With his disturb-

ing attempts at racialist politics in his

1’979 reelection bid, Kucinich alien-

ated ‘I significant proportion of his

white ethnic constituency and lost any

chance to pursue his urban populist

growth politics in Cleveland.

What does the Kucinich experience

tell us about the possibilities for more

autonomous local policies and alterna-

tive growth politics? Sw,anstrom ack-

nowledges the constraints imposed by

the market’s ‘political allocation of

credit‘ but he claims the economic

space for more discretionary. redis-

tributive loc:tl choices is greater than

public officials realize and more sub-

stantial than the conservative growth

politics perspective suggests. Swan-

Strom sees ‘the underdevclopmcnt of

local politics’ as the critical issue de-

termining whether or not more auton-

omous choices will be made. In his

view, the fragmented pluralist features

of most local governments make it

unlikely that coherent, democratic,

local economic planning will be possi-

ble. He stresses the need to go beyond

pluralism to establish political institu-

tions ‘sufficiently autonomous from

special interests’ to formulnte de-

velopment policy but argues that these

institutions must also represent the

‘democratic aspirations of the major-

ity of inner city residents‘. Swainstrom

concludes that the goal is not ‘to

eliminate growth politics but to sub-

ject it to the will of the majority’.

Kucinich did not have the opportun-

ity nor. perhaps. the inclination to

consider these institutional issues.

Swanstrom more inexplicably skimps

on this discussion, limiting it to the last

4x pages of his text; as a consequence’.

the conclusion of this provocative

book is curiously flat. The important

issues raised by the book. as well a\ it\

modest shortcomings, cnsurc that its

use as a supplementary text in under-

graduate and graduate courses in

urban politics and planning will \timu-

late lively and thoughtful discussionx.

Susan E. Clarke Center for Policy Studies

University of Colorado, USA

Toronto - young city to present day TORONTO SINCE 1918: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

by James Lemon

James Lorimer, Egerton Ryerson Memorial Building, 35 Britain Street, Toronto, Canada M5A lK7, and National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada, Toronto, 1985, 224 pp, $26.95 (plus $2.00 for post-

age)

In 19X4, Toronto celebrated its ses-

quiccntenary and like the two pre- vious SO-year marks, this was an occa-

sion for stock taking. Much wa\ writ-

ten and said by way of documenting

the city’s dramatic and recent trana-

formation from sleepy provincial

capital in Victorian garb with ;i i-c-

Iaticely homogcnous population to ;i

large. sophisticated ;md cosmopolitan

urban centre which is attracting atten-

tion in North America and el\ewherc

for an elusive and much \ought after

quality called ‘liveability’.

James Lemon, a professor of

creogrq~hy at the Universitv of Toron- c to. has contributed to this literature

with an illustrated history that take\

the young city from the end of the

Great War up to the present. His woi-k

is ;I comp~mion \,olume to 7iI,-o/r/o lo

CITIES November 1986

1918: An Illustrated History, by J.M.S. Careless, published in 1984. These works are the first in a series spon- sored by the National Museum of Man which is intended to provide popular histories of major Canadian cities.

Professor Lemon’s book is a biogra- phy in five chapters each covering a period of from one to three decades selected on the basis of a local con- cern: the politics of restraint in the 1920s; the need for social welfare (in the dirty 1930s); the post-war emph- asis on planning in the 1940s; the population boom of the 1950s and 1960s; and the redefinition of ideology starting in the late 1960s. A central theme underlying the analysis of all of these periods is the ongoing debate over public intervention on issues such as transport, health, welfare, housing, planning and education. Some addi- tional background material is pro- vided on demographic, social and cultural changes in each period, in- cluding a selection of contemporary photographs.

Continuity

What emerges from this narrative is a strong sense of continuity - it is possible to see the adult in the child. Through the ongoing debates over public control versus private initiative, labour versus management, planning versus laissez-faire which periodically erupt, personality traits emerge to define a particular civic culture. Through the lenses of this culture, Toronto responds somewhat different- ly at each stage to the same set of concerns and pressures which are felt in other North American cities and begins to take on a distinctive form and character which has appeal if only because its response appears to work where others fail.

What then is the nature of this civic culture? It is apparently paradoxical, simultaneously progressive and yet conservative to its root. Like Canada’s Progressive-Conservative Party it straddles a wide political spectrum and can only be understood in toto as the combined voice of bankers and union leaders, developers and neighbour- hood activists. Its ability to embrace simultaneously sets of concepts which

CITIES November 1986

cannot elsewhere be mixed appears schizophrenic to purists of any stripe; yet is a reflection of a radical pragmat- ism.

Of necessity it is a culture which now literally speaks in dozens of ton- gues and dialects, demonstrating through a combination of bemused pride and benign indifference what an image of multiculturalism it is, while at the same time retaining many of its bastions of power and privilege intact.

Toronto’s civic culture is profoundly sceptical of big ideas and powerful people. Its true genius is procrastina- tion and many of its finest achieve- ments have simply been the result of a failure to act quickly to implement ideas later seen to be of dubious value. Hence, Toronto still has streetcars, it has few expressways, few public hous- ing projects and its middle class never entirely got round to moving to sub- urbia.

There is an almost irresistible urge in Toronto to seek compromise when conflicts erupt at any level; when consensus proves impossible to achieve, the tendency is to postpone bringing any issue to a head. This trait, the hallmark of a society which does not have a revolutionary past, can be extremely frustrating to anyone who is anxious to accomplish some- thing quickly; and yet it seems to be of value for cities - buying time when pre- cipitous action may not be desirable.

Through his chronicle of events covering almost 70 years Professor Lemon shows how this blend of inertia and a finely tuned sense of balance, coupled with a history of relatively uncorrupt municipal government and modest ambitions, has produced a

Book review.?

different kind of North American city. By putting current political con-

cerns in an historical context, Profes- sor Lemon’s book provides a valuable service, disabusing those who look back only as far as a particular horizon year. be it in the early 1950s for those who associate the beginning with the formation of the metropolitan govern- ment or the mid-1970s for those who believe that it all began with the Central Area Plan, a major overhaul of the previous growth-at-all-costs phi- losophy. It should also give pause to those who would attempt superficial transplants of ideas, solutions, or in- deed highly distinctive places, from one city to another without regard for local mores.

If there are weaknesses in this book, they stem perhaps from a desire to include so much densely packed fac- tual material under so many diverse headings in each decade that it is occasionally difficult to follow the thematic narrative through the prolif- eration of data. There is also the unavoidable difficulty of loss in objec- tivity as one moves closer and closer to the present. Professor Lemon himself has played a strongly partisan role in the events he describes in the final chapters so it is only natural that his convictions should be evident. There is no doubt, however, that there is a subtle change from chronicle to advocacy which parallels this loss of distance from events.

Ken Greenberg Program Manager

Urban Design Group City of Toronto Planning

and Development Department

The city: seen, sensed and synthesized UNREAL CITY: URBAN EXPERIENCE IN MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND ART

edited by Edward Timms and David Kelley

Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 1985,268 pp, f26.50

The origins of this book seem at first sight to offer the perfect formula for an instant depressant - fifteen essays that began as lectures to a Cambridge audience. For once, however, the cold collation of the university curriculum has furnished an excellent and varied banquet. The first servings were, one suspects, offered to students of

363