The Urban Policy-making and Development Dimension of Fordism and Post-Fordism: A Toronto Case Study

Abstract

This paper investigates urban policy-making and development from a regulation theory perspective. It describes major Toronto urban trends of the past 50 years in order to gauge their conformity to changing regulation conditions. Results indicate that in the 1950s and 1960s, policies in Toronto were in accord with the Fordist mass consumption and welfare orientation. They also suggest a coincidence between the post-1995 period of public-sector retrenchment and the market-driven nature of post-Fordism. The intermediary period, however, was dominated by unsuccessful efforts at maintaining Fordist-type policies in a regulation context shifting towards post-Fordism. These findings confirm the non-functionalist interpretation of links between policy-making and regulation professed by regulation theory researchers. They also cast light on the role the city plays in the changing nature of regulation. Assertive metropolitan planning and socially balanced sub-divisions characteristic of the Fordist period of regulation gradually made way for market-driven development. With a reduced government presence, urban development has become less co-ordinated and more socially polarised, thus reflecting at the urban level society-wide features of post-Fordism.