Cities and the Constitution

Canadian municipalities oversee the country’s most urgent policy areas, yet the constitutional authority of cities to manage their increasing obligations has not kept pace. This volume considers how policy, law, and the constitution can be reimagined to resolve the mismatch between powers and responsibilities.

---

Canada’s largest cities have faced exponential growth, with the trajectory rising further still. Due to their high density, cities are the primary sites for opportunities in economic prosperity, green innovation, and cultural activity, and also for critical challenges in homelessness and extreme poverty, air pollution, Indigenous-municipal relationship-building, racial injustice, and transportation gridlock. While city governments are at the forefront of mitigating the challenges of urban life, they are given insufficient power to effectively attend to public needs.

Cities and the Constitution confronts the misalignment between the importance of municipalities and their constitutional status. While our constitution is often considered a living document, Canada has one of the most complicated amending formulas in the world, making change very difficult. Cities are thus constitutionally vulnerable to unilateral provincial action and reliant on other levels of government for funding. Could municipal power be reimagined without disrupting the existing constitutional structure, or could the Constitution be reformed to designate cities a distinct tier of government? Among other novel proposals, this groundbreaking volume explores the idea of recognizing municipalities in provincial constitutions.

The first volume of a complementary pair, authored by renowned Canadian legal and urban studies scholars, Cities and the Constitution suggests contemporary solutions to one of our most pressing policy dilemmas.