Governing Urban Economies: Innovation and Inclusion in Canadian City-Regions by Neil Bradford & Allison Bramwell

Author:Neil Bradford & Allison Bramwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442617230
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Dysfunctional Governance: City-Region Municipal and Regional Economic Development

If the St John’s city-region is doing well with its emerging ocean technology cluster and dynamic social NGO sector, there are much less promising advances concerning the strategic management of the urban economy. The City of St John’s and its neighbouring urban and rural municipalities have a very mixed record of regional cooperation. The constitutional responsibility for municipal government is clearly provincial. Local government was very slow to develop in NL, and while Canada has the weakest local government in the OECD, NL has the weakest local government in Canada. The provincial government in NL maintains tighter reins on municipal government as “the creature of the provinces” under the constitution than any other Canadian province (OECD 2002; Felt 2009; Greenwood 2009; Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador 2010a). With less responsibility and insufficient resources to play a significant role, municipalities look to the provincial government to carry the lion’s share of infrastructure, labour market, and economic development needs. Perhaps, as has often been attributed to academic battles, the battles among neighbouring municipalities are so fierce because the stakes are so low!

The perception of St John’s municipal officials is that they are at a special disadvantage, as the provincial government must respond to rural concerns that need special attention to mitigate decline. As one St John’s municipal interviewee stated:

I think the province could have more respect for the municipal level in the sense of the importance of a city the size of St John’s as an economic driver and as a leader at the municipal level. They don’t want to do anything for St John’s that they can’t do for the whole province … You can’t have a one-size-fits-all solution to it … I would like to see better linkages, formal linkages, between the provincial government and the city government, and with the federal government … Treating municipalities in the way they do constitutionally tends to, I think … I use the word denigrate … It fails to recognize the real importance of cities.

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