The Myth of the North American City Revisited: A Comparative Conceptual and Empirical Evaluation

Abstract

In The Myth of the North American City: Continentalism Challenged, Michael A. Goldberg and John Mercer articulate a largely “cultural deterministic” theory of urban development. Cities are shaped, they say, by their society’s cultural framework and “national character.” Given that American and Canadian cultures differ, their cities’ physical forms and governance differ too. Hence, there is no North American city. Using data from opinion surveys conducted in 2010 in Canada and the United States, among other data, we critique the North American City concept and test attitudinal hypotheses consistent with Goldberg and Mercer’s expectations. We concur that the concept of the North American city has little utility but also find little empirical support for most of the authors’ theses. All empirical attitudinal relationships, moreover, are mitigated significantly by factors of language in Canada and race in the United States.