Suburbanization, affordable housing, mass transportation, loss of fertile lands -- these are modern problems, yet they are not new. Thomas Adams grappled with these same issues nearly a century ago, when he wrote Rural Planning and Development, a book that quickly became a touchstone for planners and planning in Canada. Reprinted for the first time and updated with commentaries by leading Canadian planners, this book highlights Adams’ influence on the planning profession and the continued relevance of his comprehensive vision for planning -- to move beyond the demands of the moment to embrace long-term strategies for building stronger rural communities.

Using the perspectives of law, politics, public policy and intergovernmental relations, historian Barry Cahill describes the complex activities of an almost-unaccountable agency that took the place of municipal, provincial and federal governments in addressing the needs of the citizens and the city after the Explosion. He provides new insight into the pioneering town planning and construction of the Hydrostone neighbourhood in Halifax. He also explains why this ad-hoc disaster agency continued to operate for nearly sixty years after the catastrophic event that precipitated its establishment. This book offers a new and unique perspective on the recovery efforts which followed a domestic disaster unprecedented in Canadian history.

Climate change and an evolving non-renewable energy sector threaten the future viability and sustainability of communities across the country. While rural communities have a special place in the national fabric, they often lack the resources to tackle these important and evolving threats. Planning for Rural Resilience: Coping with Climate Change and Energy Futures makes clear that communities and municipalities have opportunities to make informed and constructive decisions in the face of uncertainty: many of these decisions are “win-win” in the sense that they benefit the community in the short term while also building resilience for the future. Case studies include a town rebuilding itself after a tornado and an individual farmer’s commitment to creating a resilient farm. They provide examples of innovative, successful, and practical on-the-ground actions and strategies. Planning for Rural Resilience asks central questions about the nature of change and the ability to adapt in rural regions. While change is often feared, communities have capacity that can be rallied, harnessed, and turned towards planning policy and action that responds to threats to the future. This important work will assist municipal decision makers, planners, and community members as well as anyone who has a passion for the future and betterment of rural life.

Planning Canadian Regions was the first book to integrate the history, contemporary practice, and emergent issues of regional planning in Canada. This much-anticipated second edition brings the discussion up to date, applying the same thorough analysis to illuminate the rapid changes now shaping our regional landscapes. This new edition draws upon contemporary analyses, projects, and literature to address issues of spatial complexity now facing regional planners in Canada. Special attention is paid to he regional planning dimensions of climate change adaptation and environmental sustainability across Canada, the development inequities faced in peripheral resource regions, the role that Aboriginal peoples must play in the planning of their regions, and the distinctive planning needs of metropolitan regions across the country. This book challenges planners, educators, and policy makers to engage with the latest thinking and strive for best practices in twenty-first century regional planning.

Returning to the ideas of John Locke and the Founders themselves, Barbara A. McGraw examines the debate about the role of religion in American public life and unravels the confounded rhetoric on all sides. She reveals that no group has been standing on proper ground and that all sides have misused terminology (religion/secular), dichotomies (public/private), and concepts (separation of church and state) in ways that have little relevance to the original intentions of the Founders. She rediscovers a theology underlying the founding documents of the nation that is neither anyone's particular religion nor one requiring religion. Instead, it justifies freedom of conscience for all and provides a two-tiered public forum—a civic public forum and a conscientious public forum—for the debate itself and the actions that debate inspires. America's Sacred Ground—this theology and its public forum—determines the meaning of freedom and the ways in which Americans can pursue "the good": good government, good communities, good families, good relations between individuals, and good individuals from a plurality of perspectives. By exploring our past, McGraw answers the critical question, Who are we as a people and what do we stand for?

Why do America's public schools seem unable to meet today's social challenges? As competing interest groups vie over issues like funding and curricula, we seem to have lost sight of the democratic purposes originally intended for public education. Public schools were envisioned by the Founders as democratically run institutions for instilling civic values, but today's education system seems more concerned with producing good employees than good citizens. Meanwhile, our country's diversity has eroded consensus about citizenship, and the professionalization of educators has diminished public involvement in schools. This volume seeks to demonstrate that the democratic purposes of education are not outmoded ideas but can continue to be driving forces in public education. Nine original articles by some of today's leading education theorists cut a broad swath across the political spectrum to examine how those democratic purposes might be redefined and revived. It both establishes the intellectual foundation for revitalizing American schools and offers concrete ideas for how the educational process can be made more democratic. The authors make a case for better empirical research about the politics of education in order to both reconnect schools to their communities and help educators instill citizenship. An initial series of articles reexamines the original premise of American education as articulated by important thinkers like Jefferson and Dewey. A second group identifies flaws in how schools are currently governed and offers models for change. A final section analyzes the value conflicts posed by the twin strands of democratic socialization and governance, and their implications for education policy. Spanning philosophy, history, sociology, and political science, this book brings together the best current thinking about the specifics of education policy—vouchers, charter schools, national testing—and about the role of deliberation in a democracy. It offers a cogent alternative to the exchange paradigm and shows how much more needs to be understood about an issue so vital to America's future.

Encompassing a broad range of innovative studies on planning support science, this timely Handbook examines how the consequences of pressing societal challenges can be addressed using computer-based systems. Chapters explore the use of new streams of big and open data as well as data from traditional sources, offering significant critical insights into the field.

Here is a vividly written and compact overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the "Founding Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic "philosopher-kings" as American or world history has ever seen. In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, R. B. Bernstein reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings--people much like us--who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic civilization's Age of Enlightenment. He analyzes the American Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal constitutions, and the key concepts and problems--among them independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of church and state--that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.

Canada is a country of massive size, of diverse geographical features and an equally diverse population—all features that are magnificently reflected in its architecture. In this book, Rhodri Windsor Liscombe and Michelangelo Sabatino offer a richly informative history of Canadian architecture that celebrates and explores the country’s many contributions to the spread of architectural modernity in the Americas. A distinct Canadian design attitude coalesced during the twentieth century, one informed by a liberal, hybrid, and pragmatic mindset intent less upon the dogma of architectural language and more on thinking about the formation of inclusive spaces and places. Taking a fresh perspective on design production, they map the unfolding of architectural modernity across the country, from the completion of the transcontinental railway in the late 1880s through to the present. Along the way they discuss architecture within the broader contexts of political, industrial, and sociocultural evolution; the urban-suburban expansion; and new building technologies. Examining the works of architects and firms such as ARCOP, Eric Arthur, Ernest Cormier, Brigitte Shim, and Howard Sutcliffe, this book brings Canadian architecture chronologically and thematically to life.