Author Description

This dissertation examines the geography of political values and voting behaviour in large Canadian cities. The dissertation seeks to uncover whether and how Canadian inner cities and suburbs (the latter disaggregated into inner and outer suburbs) are polarizing in terms of political ideology and party preferences, the importance of place of residence in structuring such a process, the reasons that such a process may be occurring, and the implications for shifts in political representation and influence in light of continued suburbanization. The dissertation utilizes a multi-level approach in answering these questions. A number of different sets of data are analyzed: the aggregate vote data organized at the constituency level, census data at the level of the constituency and census tract, individual survey results from the Canada election surveys, data on seat distributions and ministerial appointments, and as a special case study, a cluster-sample survey of voters in one electoral district.The dissertation finds that from the late 1970s onwards (but not beforehand), inner cities and suburbs have become increasingly polarized in terms of both their voting behaviour and political values. Place of residence has an independent effect in structuring these trends, particularly in terms of support for parties on the left and extreme right of the Canadian political spectrum. The explanation for these processes is complex, but strong support is found for the proposition that people with different views are self-selecting into different residential environments, with moderate support found for the proposition that the local context of the residential environment influences/reinforces resident's political values. A relationship would appear to exist between the rising importance of consumption for Canadian society, urban space and form, and ideology, but it works in ways not typically theorized in the literature. Although the findings suggest that suburbanization is implicated in the shift to the right in public policy, the growing dominance of the suburbs has not yet translated into an anti-city bias. Nonetheless, in light of the expectation of further suburbanization, these findings have implications for the future of welfare-state policy in Canada and the potential marginalization of the inner cities.