Contested periurban amenity landscapes: changing waterfront ‘countryside ideals’ in central Canada

Abstract

Periurban second homes have received limited attention in landscape research, but they can offer important insight for landscape histories of urbanisation. This paper focuses on the hundreds of thousands of waterfront ‘cottages’ or ‘chalets’ found in central Canada’s densely-populated Toronto-Montréal urban corridor. A review of scholarly work examines how wide swaths of forest have become periurban amenity landscapes over the last 150 years. An interwoven theoretical narrative centres on the ‘countryside ideal’—an enduring concept linking Anglo-American attitudes about nature and culture with context-specific assemblages of landscape, urban form, and social practice. Finally, a critical discussion highlights how these periurban amenity landscapes have become increasingly contested, taking stock of new clashes between rapid processes of landscape transformation now underway and the broader Anglo-American images, representations, and material cultures expressing what nature is (or ought to be).