The planning process provides a context in which to understand how we participate and belong in our communities. In this dissertation, a comparative case study approach is employed to examine particular land use planning examples and understand better participation and belonging in culturally diverse urban and suburban centres. This chapter begins by introducing the comparison being made, and in particular the scale of that comparison. The methodology of the study is explained, both in terms of research design and implementation. The remainder of the chapter outlines the concept of citizenship as it is used in this research; specifically its utility at the local level. The chapter concludes by identifying the criteria, developed within a communitarian context, that are used to evaluate the two case studies in subsequent chapters.

To some, the above sentiment is utopian and naive. To others, it describes the very ideal our society should be working towards. In this study, community is the level of analysis. The term "community", however, is not without its own epistemological baggage.

Communities have a spatial element, as areas within cities or urban regions that have particular characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the city (Davies and Herbert, 1993: 6). More than the place where people routinely interact with neighbours, community also evokes sociological meaning. In fact, community is often seen as "an ambiguous and overused concept," referring broadly to social bonds forged by a range of common experiences, interests, and struggles (Horton, 1995: 36). Community is the social domain of our lives, a place of local level associations -- family, friends, and neighbours, clubs and civic groups, local unions, government, and media. In the context of this research, where the ways in which people participate in local decision-making and share a sense of belonging with their neighbours is of key interest, "community" is also the environment where citizenship can be practiced. "Community" is thus used here as both a geographical and sociological concept, with reference to a physical area in addition to common ties and social interaction (Knox, 1995: 213).

Given the differences in spatial extent and population between the two case studies, there could be some concern as to whether or not the comparison being made in this research is of the same scale. Although the suburbanized collection of villages (Markham) and the inner-city neighbourhood of a few square blocks (Kensington) being compared here are of unequal size, both represent a similar mental and physical boundary of belonging that residents within the two case studies identify with. That is, there is a shared quality of life that exists within these communities that can be readily identified and compared. It is this apparent, yet hard to define, sense of community that is being explored under the rubric of local citizenship. The dissertation seeks to evaluate what, if anything, exists in the two communities beyond shared boundaries. While Markham could be used as a higher level of analysis than Kensington -- i.e. municipality vs. neighbourhood (Andranovich and Riposa, 1993), the focus of this research is not aimed at Markham as a centre of government and administration, but rather as a community from which the underlying urban social and political processes can be explored. Thus Markham and Kensington are not used in the research as a "municipality" and a "neighbourhood", but rather as "communities".

The boundaries chosen also serve a very practical purpose, given that the dissertation explores the arena of land use planning decisions in suburban and urban environments. Planning is done on the scale of the entire municipality in Markham under the Official Plan. For Kensington Market residents, planning is nested within the City of Toronto’s Official Plan, but their primary contact with urban planning is through the community planner assigned to the local area, guided by the Part II Official Plan, the secondary plan for Kensington.

This does not mean that the existing political boundaries of this particular municipality and neighbourhood represent the only relevant boundaries for Markham and Kensington residents. As an intensely personal concept, "community" may indeed be defined within larger boundaries (the Greater Toronto Area, or the City of Toronto for example) or even smaller boundaries (the old village of Unionville in Markham or Augusta Street within Kensington) than those used here. In fact, "community" was not consistently defined by the interview participants in either case study. Some gave the label a social meaning, describing their community as the basis of their identity. Others described their community as a place where goods and services could be collectively shared, giving the concept a political and economic meaning. Still others rejected the term altogether when describing the events that took place in the case studies. It was out of the interview portion of this research that the understanding and use of the word "community" in the dissertation significantly evolved, through a recognition that a community undoubtedly is a product of what its inhabitants think it is, and that classifications and definitions of communities "must depend on the geographic scales of reference used by people" (Knox, 1995: 214).

This study was not designed with a preconception of what community means for individuals or groups, nor did it seek to form such a definition. Community therefore should be understood here only as a means of defining the scale or level of analysis. As the dissertation explores participation in local decision-making, however, the degree to which people feel a sense of belonging in their community is an important factor in achieving meaningful participation. The potential for a collective sense of belonging, and thus the extent to which "community" describes more than a geographic and social boundary, is something speculated upon within the final chapter’s discussion of local citizenship (Chapter Nine).

In the planning literature, issues of participation and belonging in communities have been addressed under the rubric of the ‘public interest’. Encompassing notions of technical optimality and ethical good (Mazza, 1996: 397), planning is deemed to be in the ‘public interest’ when it produces "sound, amenable development for the community as a whole" (Hodge, 1998: 197). Determining what that looks like in practice, however, is unavoidably tangled in the political nature of local decision-making, a process fragmented by the various interests hoping to exert influence. What the ‘public interest’ means, therefore, is related to who defines the ‘public interest’. But as Hodge explains:

In the first half of the twentieth century, urban planners were preoccupied with the goal of efficiency, defined within a context of rational comprehensive planning. The views of those affected by planning proposals and decisions were said to be represented by planners themselves. That is, though citizens did not participate directly in decision-making, a major tenet of the planning profession was that planners were to act in the ‘public interest’. Not only was it assumed that there was such a thing as a common ‘public interest’ , but it was also taken for granted that due to their education and position, planners (and other political administrators) were deemed capable of defining that ‘public interest’. Rational comprehensive planning, then, was "...premised on the idea that there is a collective ‘public interest’ that can be identified through the planning process, and becomes the criterion for evaluating alternative planning proposals" (Alexander, 1992: 129).

The first challenge to this dominant perspective in planning came in the 1960s as both practitioners and theorists began to question why what was in the interest of the poor and the marginalized was often not part of what was defined as the ‘public interest’. This critique coalesced around a seminal article by Paul Davidoff (1965) and his idea of "advocacy planning". Alarmed that planners were too concerned with the process of planning and had lost sight of the outcomes, Davidoff argued that planning was not a value neutral activity, and that planners should not only identify the values underlying their prescriptions, but importantly affirm them and take a political stand as an advocate for what they deemed right. Davidoff presented a fundamental challenge to the assumed neutrality of planning, and the ability of planners to equitably define the public interest.

While advocacy planning has been widely attributed with broadening the scope of what are considered the roles and responsibilities of planners, some of the mostly white, middle class professionals who went into poor neighbourhoods to act as advocates for the marginalized found the experience sobering (Sandercock, 1998: 89). In cases where a lack of decision-making power was the problem, technical skills of advocacy proved to be of limited utility. Moreover, as Sandercock argues, the planners came to these communities with an agenda, conceptualized the problem and defined the terms of a solution:

Despite its limitations, advocacy planning opened up the concept of a single ‘public interest’ for scrutiny. In the decades that followed, other groups in society came forward arguing that their interests were not being met by the planning process and its reliance on a planner-defined ‘public interest’. Feminist activists within planning were analyzing gender inequalities (Moore Milroy, 1990). People of colour were drawing attention to racist practices in planning (Thomas and Ritzdorf, 1997). Gay and lesbian activists were addressing oppression affecting their lives in cities (Forsyth, 1997; Valentine, 1993). Today, multicultural difference is also becoming a category of analysis in planning (Sandercock, 1998). Combined, these various critiques;

As the range of interests affected by the planning process filters out into various groups, the concept of a single ‘public interest’ is severely undermined. For those who do not wish to abandon the idea entirely, how one defines the ‘public interest’ must be addressed. There have been a few attempts to do just that (Alexander, 1992: 130-31). One is to see the public interest in a normative framework, a concept based on explicit values, as in advocacy planning (Davidoff, 1965). In this case, planning might be deemed in the public interest if it is equitable, or if it improves the situation for those worst off in the community. Another alternative is to interpret the ‘public interest’ in terms of the ‘relevant public’ (Klosterman, 1980: 326). Here planning would be considered in the public interest if it benefits the group of individuals that are relevant to the issue at hand. Although this approach requires that the planner decide who is ‘relevant’, arguably the plurality of interests that exist can be more readily acknowledged for a single policy or decision than for planning practice in general. Perhaps the most enduring approach to redefining the ‘public interest’ has been calls for democratic public participation. From this perspective, planning is in the public interest when everyone participates, with the legitimacy of the process directly related to the level of participation (Arnstein, 1969). This too has its drawbacks, however, articulated in the debate over the efficiency and effectiveness of public participation strategies (Wallace, Woo and Boudreau, 1997).

Rather than bolstering a discredited concept, Sandercock opts for the creation of a new, fragmented definition of the ‘public interest’. Discussed as part of a larger critique of the pillars of the traditional approach to planning, Sandercock makes the case for diverse or multiple publics. Planners under the traditional paradigm operate in the ‘public interest’ and present a public image of neutrality; planning policies are expected to be gender- and race-neutral. Sandercock argues that the concept of the ‘public interest’ must be deconstructed: "We must acknowledge that there are multiple publics" (Sandercock, 1998: 30; italics in original).

Such a "multiple publics" perspective, however, should not be equated with planning without any concern for the public, but rather planning in a way that diversity in behavior, opinion and experiences is assumed to be the norm. Planning from this perspective must recognize the complexities in decision-making within any community. The research for this dissertation is informed by this "multiple publics" perspective. The ethnoculturally diverse communities of Kensington and Markham are not assumed to have a collective purpose, nor is it expected that planners in those communities will be able to articulate a single ‘public interest’. In fact, the focus of this research was the challenges that diversity presents for the planning process.

This dissertation is exploratory in nature; it seeks insights and asks questions as opposed to strictly describing events or attempting to explain actions. As such, it does not seek to find a causal relationship between citizenship, planning and ethnocultural diversity, but rather makes a case for recognizing the interrelationship between these three themes. "Rich description", using a variety of data sources and data collection techniques, is used to describe the context of the communities and the background and context of the planning situations in Chapters Five and Seven. "Reflection" is employed in Chapter Eight, to evaluate and understand the decisions made within the particular planning process that occurred in each case study. This reflection is based on the comparison of differing perspectives articulated in the combination of interview and document data, and helps to draw the connections between planning and participation in each community and the broader concept of local citizenship (found in Chapter Seven).

The data were obtained from two major sources. Newspapers, planning documents, as well as various municipal, consultant and community studies and reports were used to define the scope of the research, and frame the case studies. Key informant interviews provided a "reality-check" on the secondary data collected, and created a more complete picture of events and the interaction of various actors. The interviews offered insight into why particular decisions were made and by whom, and provided additional context for the decisions made within the formal and informal planning processes. However, they are meant to be neither exhaustive nor representative of the case study communities, but rather used as a technique to augment what is documented about a particular situation. This combination of secondary and primary research was used in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of the case study communities and the planning processes that occurred around the particular situations explored in this dissertation.

The case study method allows the inclusion of such a variety of data sources. Through the use of case studies, the subjects of the research (planning and citizenship) are

investigated within a real-life context (ethnocultural diversity) (Yin, 1984; Feagin, Orum and Sjoberg, 1991). Belonging to the "context of discovery" rather than the "context of validation" (Ragin, 1991), case study research does not provide the means to prove ideas or test hypotheses so much as it allows for exploration of "one or two issues or processes that are fundamental to understanding the system being studied" (Feagin, Orum and Sjoberg, 1991: 153). The focus of this study is on the decision-making process surrounding a particular planning example in each case study community. The comparison of two case studies allows for the relationship between the variables planning and citizenship to be examined within a common context -- in this case cultural diversity.

While the two case studies chosen are similar in that they both have ethnoculturally diverse populations, the history of this diversity, the impact it has on each community, and the implications it presents for local decision-making are quite different for Markham and Kensington. It is these differences that the dissertation attempts to draw out through the comparison of the two case studies. In particular, a comparative case study approach is useful to understand the impact of federal immigration policy over the last twenty years -- with the very different local histories in the two communities offering concrete examples of the impacts of changing federal immigration policy agendas. As well, the urban and suburban differences between the two communities not only allow for a comparison of differing planning priorities, but also present an opportunity to contrast differing senses of community membership or local citizenship. To reiterate the three themes of the dissertation presented in Chapter One -- diversity, planning and citizenship -- the comparative case study approach used in this dissertation provides a more detailed and potentially more accurate understanding of both the challenges ethnocultural diversity poses for urban and suburban communities, as well as the options and means used to address these challenges.

Citizenship describes one’s participation, or membership, in a common community, with community typically understood as a political community (Barbalet, 1988: 2). Formally, citizenship is a legal status within a set of political institutions or practices. Given certain rights and responsibilities of government, people are equal in their status as "citizens" (Flathman, 1995: 112).

By extension, "designating membership in a national community, citizenship also defines non-membership" (Barbalet, 1988: 97). With different types of political communities come different types of citizenship, and different conditions put on the means to acquire citizenship. As Brubaker explains:

Moreover, citizenship is the purview of nation-states and not individuals: "Citizenship is not as many other memberships voluntary," Hammar explains. "The state decides whether a citizen shall be allowed to renounce his citizenship, and whether a foreigner shall be granted citizenship." (Hammar, 1986: 740-41; see also Bauböck, 1991: 9-10). This has proved to be a point of tension in many Western European countries as definitions of citizenship separate immigrants, and sometimes subsequent generations of immigrants, from the rest of society (Hintjens, 1992). Even in Canada, a country known for its liberal immigration reception, concern over inflows of immigrants has spawned discriminatory and intolerant attitudes among some who view immigrants as outsiders regardless of their legal status.

The distinction between membership and non-membership -- what some describe as the "politics of citizenship" (Hall and Held, 1989) -- is especially relevant when the relationship between immigration and citizenship is considered. Immigrants are dependent upon host states for some rights of citizenship they once possessed in their home country. As Bauböck explains:

Thus, the exclusionary aspects of defining citizenship can become an instrument of "social closure" for a society (Garcia, 1996: 12).

In bestowing the status of "citizen", states also offer a variety of citizenship rights, including civil, political and social rights (Marshall, 1992: 8-9). Civil rights include the right to own property, and are the oldest form of citizenship rights in modern democracies. Political rights, such as the right to vote, were the next to evolve. Social rights arrived with the advent of the welfare state, and include rights to health care or education. Today the concept of citizenship is most commonly associated with nation-states, as they are empowered to grant the status and rights of citizenship.

The benefits of membership in a national community, or national citizenship, has been challenged in this century by socio-economic pressures as social rights have proven to be difficult to guarantee. Though aspired to by some, social rights have failed to be universally applied to all citizens in many modern democratic states in the same way as civil and political rights. It is here that the challenges of delivering the benefits of national citizenship have undermined an exclusively national definition of citizenship. That is, as local communities increasingly take on the responsibilities of funding and delivering the goods of the modern welfare state, the comprehensiveness of a national citizenship beyond legal status is eroded.

Canadian citizenship has evolved primarily as a formal-legal concept within the context of the expansion of rights (Williams, 1985: 99). A term absent from the 1867 Constitution, Canadian "citizenship" did not exist until 1947 with the passage of the Canadian Citizenship Act. This marked a significant shift away from Canada’s role as a British colony and was meant to be a positive expression of Canadian nationalism. As the minister responsible for the Citizenship Act, Secretary of State Paul Martin, explains: "Canada... was becoming more outward-looking and would be better fitted to play its full part in the world if Canadians had a sense of community expressed by appropriate symbols" (Martin, 1993: 71). The Citizenship Act was to give Canadians "a consciousness of common purpose and common interests as Canadians" (Canada, 1946: 502).

Canadian citizenship, as it was envisioned by its architects, was never intended as a solely legal notion. Citizenship was seen as a legal status whose active elements were expressed in the people and the infrastructure of the nation. As Martin explained in the House of Commons at the time the Citizenship Act was debated:

This sentiment was further strengthened in the 1960s as concern over human rights became an important milestone for the concept of Canadian citizenship, moving it away from its exclusively rights-based understanding. As Williams explains:

By 1982 the Canadian citizen was guaranteed some civil, political and social rights with the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This was a most significant point in the development of Canadian citizenship, yet even as Canada was redefining itself as a country separate from British tradition the concept of citizenship remained elusive. In fact, compared with most European nations, the citizenship which has developed in Canada is "easy and undemanding" (Morton, 1993: 59), a "minimalist citizenship, ill-defined and therefore unthreatening" (Fulford, 1993: 11).

Citizenship, understood as more than a legal status, includes a range of political, civil and social rights (Marshall, 1992) -- the provision of which is something that all national governments are finding harder to do. In Canada, in particular, economic and political pressures to decentralize government are increasingly shifting the responsibility of ensuring citizenship rights through funding and service delivery to provincial, regional and local levels. Debt reduction and restructuring efforts in areas of social programs (health care and unemployment insurance, for example) are eroding the infrastructure that national citizenship requires. The Canadian government has less fiscal capacity to support the universal social rights envisioned when the Canadian Citizenship Act was first introduced. Furthermore, the federal government is no longer the only instrument for realizing citizenship rights and is unable to guarantee equal or universal application of such rights, as the provinces and municipalities take on policy-making roles.

Given this fiscal strain, many argue that Canada must move beyond social rights as a basis for (national) citizenship (Fulford, 1993: 107). In an economic and political climate where social rights cannot promise to hold us together as Canadians, one obvious direction in which the federal government has moved has been the promotion and recognition of Canada’s multiculturalism. It has proved very difficult, however, to incorporate that diversity into an understanding of citizenship. As Paquet points out:

Bissoondath goes further, suggesting that it has been failed attempts to incorporate multiculturalism into citizenship ("the creation of hyphenated Canadians") that has diminished the value of Canadian citizenship itself (Bissoondath, 1994). Despite legislation and targeted spending, a national citizenship based on Canada’s multicultural reality has failed to effectively replace social rights as a basis for citizenship in practice.

Citizenship, conceptualized from a national perspective, is defined by legal rights and obligations. It is a legal construct, essentially a passive understanding of citizenship. It assumes that people become citizens and acquire the identity of citizenship out of legal means and not out of experiential or social relations.

If, however, the argument is accepted that national governments are less capable of providing that "collective project", and that the job of providing the [social] benefits of citizenship are increasingly decentralized to lower levels of government, then there becomes room for alternative conceptualizations of citizenship.

More than a status bestowed by the state, citizenship involves membership in a (political) community, the legitimacy of which is often judged by the degree of participation in that community. According to Kymlicka and Norman, it is these two concepts of citizenship which are mistakenly conflated:

Another way to understand this duality in the concept of citizenship is to recognize a distinction between formal and substantive citizenship (Brubaker, 1992; Bottomore, 1992; Bauböck, 1991). Formal citizenship allows a person to claim the status of citizen and any rights and obligations granted from political membership in a community. Substantive citizenship, on the other hand, is much harder to secure, requiring equal participation in a community. Substantive citizenship moves beyond a legal status and includes a universality or equality in the practice of citizenship.

For Marshall, substantive citizenship was the end goal of the evolution of citizenship rights in modern democratic states. He described this journey to substantive citizenship as the movement forward by society on a path "toward a fuller measure of equality" (Marshall, 1992: 18). From this perspective, substantive citizenship was ultimately a socio-economic matter because citizenship for Marshall was about the welfare state’s ability to provide a minimum socio-economic equality for all classes through the promise of social rights. The provision of extended welfare rights, however, proved difficult to sustain, and therefore raises questions as to whether or not social rights should be considered rights of citizenship. As Parry points out, substantive citizenship, if based on Marshall’s criteria of rights, is unattainable for most states (Parry, 1991: 196). It is the ability of the state to guarantee such rights of citizenship that is problematic.

The limitations of a legally constructed definition of citizenship have been widely argued by those who, wary of citizenship being understood merely as a collection of rights and obligations, recognize the sociological element of citizenship (Barbalet, 1988; Turner, 1993). Acknowledging that citizenship is more than a legal status but also an activity, citizenship is seen to originate out of not only membership but also participation in a community. As Turner explains:

The benefit of such a conceptualization of citizenship, according to Turner, is that it places the concept squarely in the debate over inequality and the problem of unequal distribution of resources in society (Turner, 1993). Citizenship as a set of practices is therefore an active idea imbedded in the local level of social relations. As Alejandro describes it, citizens are the subjects, not the objects of citizenship. Citizenship, he argues, is:

Participation then, as the practice of one’s shared membership or citizenship, is not passive but active in the associations and relations encountered at the local level. Participating is more than voting in elections to be served by those elected, it is "in the associational networks of civil society, unions, parties, movements, interest groups and so on..." (Walzer, 1995: 164).

Recognizing the local elements of citizenship need not be a rejection of the national elements of citizenship. Citizenship is a legal construct, a status bestowed by the state, and the state plays a unique role in both framing society and occupying a space within it (Walzer, 1995: 169). The argument made here, however, is that citizenship is more than a legal construct, and is present in the actions and practices of social relations at the local level. Shifting focus from the national to the local level does not necessarily offer a more legitimate practice of citizenship. Care should be taken not to romanticize the concept of the "local community" -- it is important to recognize the inequities that are present in local practices as well. A local understanding of citizenship, where citizenship is seen as active, as a set of practices, assumes that some degree of common membership is possible. The basis of this common membership, or the ability of citizens to participate in a common community equally, however, is by no means ensured.

Given the heterogeneous nature of communities, perhaps the most significant obstacle to achieving substantive local citizenship is assuming universality in the practice of citizenship. When citizenship is understood as legal status, people are said to be equal, regardless of social or group inequities among them, by virtue of their shared status as citizens. Those who do not share in this status are not promised equality by the state; a point that was made earlier with the conflation of immigration and citizenship. Diversity, however, challenges the legitimacy of this assumed equality in practice. Social or group inequities can prevent individual citizens from obtaining the full benefits of citizenship in the (political) community, even if they may be legally equally entitled to them.

Although the distinction between formal and substantive citizenship was originally conceived with class differences in mind, the inequalities that are inevitably bound up with citizenship can alternatively be understood based on ethnocultural diversity. Where formal citizenship exists, the substantive rights of citizenship may not be acquired in practice, or only to an unequal degree, by particular ethnocultural groups (Bottomore, 1992: 69). Despite the assertion that citizenship requires "a direct sense of community membership based on loyalty to a civilization which is a common possession," (Marshall, 1992: 24) the sense of belonging in a common community is not guaranteed with the shared experience of citizenship any more than it is with the shared status of citizen.

Planning as a structure and process for local decision-making provides a useful context in which to observe community membership, or the ways in which people participate and belong in their communities. While the land use planning examples used in this research provide a useful lens through which to explore these ideas, planning in itself does not provide a means of evaluating the nature of community membership. For example, is belonging and membership in a community manifested in a formal right to attend public meetings? To what degree does membership go beyond this basic participation and involve power and influence over local decision-making? How equitably is this power and influence shared within the community? In what varied and complex ways do groups and individuals function within the community?

In order to evaluate participation and belonging as seen in local planning processes, criteria have been taken from the communitarian tradition. Communitarianism is one side of a long standing debate within political thought over whether it is the individual or the community that is the most appropriate unit of analysis, political organization and social action. (Avineri and de-Shalit, 1992). In recent years, there has been a revival of communitarian ideas by those unwilling to accept the status quo of contemporary urban society: "..the longing for community has arisen from many voices... Scholars in different fields, with different perspectives seem to share a weariness with the politics of interest" (Hirsch, 1986: 423).

While communitarianism has a wide band of supporters in both philosophical and practical circles, its critics are also abundant. One of the strongest criticisms of communitarianism is that it requires homogeneity to function -- if not homogeneity in membership, then homogeneity in terms of a commonly held vision of the future and the importance of community membership. Critics point out that such a homogeneous environment is seldom possible:

These so-called "dangers" of community arise out of the common historical, cultural or social experience that binds a community together, but in no way must meet universal or independent standards about what is "right" or "good". Although most commonly described within the confines of a moral and consensual association of individuals, critics argue that communitarianism ideals could likewise be used to foster a closed community structured, for example, around a racist or sexist inequality. The danger of communitarianism, therefore, is in the potential to romanticize the concept of "community" by putting it beyond reproach simply because it is a local-level association. As Hirsch sternly concludes:

Although the "community" is a justifiable level of analysis for research based on local decision-making as seen in planning practice, the ideals of communitarianism do not sufficiently allow for the challenges ethnocultural diversity poses within Canada’s urban communities. In order to evaluate the substantive nature of community membership within Kensington and Markham, criteria evolving out of what may be called a "modified communitarian approach" are used. This approach is based on the ideas of civic membership and community found in the communitarian tradition summarized in Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work (1993). It is tempered, however, by liberal and post-modern critiques of the civic community ideal related to diversity and inequality, as raised by Will Kymlicka (Multicultural Citizenship, 1995) and Iris Marion Young (Justice and the Politics of Difference, 1990) respectively.

Putnam identifies four elements as the central themes of the communitarian ideal of a "civic community": (1) civic engagement; (2) political equality; (3) solidarity, trust and tolerance; and (4) associations (Putnam, 1993: 87-91). Civic engagement refers to participation in public affairs. According to Putnam, within a civic community people’s citizenship is marked by their active participation in public affairs. Citizens are not motivated to participate out of altruism, however one’s self-interest is defined in the context of broader public needs in the civic community. Political equality is a second theme of the communitarian ideal of civic community as described by Putnam, and refers to the democratic relations of cooperation that exist within the community. The structure of the ideal civic community is reinforced by a series of horizontal relations of reciprocity and cooperation, within a general climate of equal rights and obligations. Putnam does not go so far as to suggest there is an absence of power within the communitarian ideal, although he does admit that in the civic community leaders must be responsible to their citizens (the democratic cornerstone), resisting relationships of authority and dependency. Solidarity, trust and tolerance is the third theme of the civic community. While the civic community ideal is not expected to be conflict free (in fact, Putnam argues it is filled with healthy conflicts), tolerance is a necessity for the community to function. Amidst the diversity of the community, isolation, distrust and opportunism are dispelled with the solidarity of the communitarian ideal citizens share. Associations is the final theme of the civic community, and according to Putnam the most important. Associations are the social structures and practices that reinforce the civic community on a daily basis. These associations will be local, participatory, and indigenous in that they embody the norms and values of the community.

Civic community, broken down into these four elements, offers a useful base from which to examine the meaning and practice of local citizenship -- or as it is articulated in this dissertation, the participation and belonging that is evident within local decision-making. These elements of civic community, however, offer no assistance in addressing the thorny questions associated with diversity and inequality necessarily found in a heterogeneous community, and arguably found in every community outside the communitarian ideal. For this, attention must be paid to liberal and post-modern writers that acknowledge the complex reality of heterogeneous communities.

Although aimed at the level of the multicultural state, Kymlicka (1995) sheds some light upon the inequalities that inevitably exist within a heterogeneous community at any spatial level of analysis. Kymlicka argues that although society needs universal rights assigned to all individuals regardless of group membership, certain differentiated rights or "special status" must also be given to minority groups if equality is to exist in practice (Kymlicka, 1995: 27-33). As Kymlicka explains, group differentiated rights "are based on the idea that justice between groups requires that the members of differentiated groups be accorded different rights" (Kymlicka, 1995: 47).

Coming from a liberal tradition, Kymlicka is not articulating a justification for collective rights out of interest in the character or traditions of a minority group in the communitarian sense. Rather, the protection of group rights for cultural minorities is considered necessary to preserve a context for individual choice (Kymlicka, 1995: 34). Minority groups are said to need this protection because without it, the rights of citizenship that are held in common would be interpreted by the majority. In fact, beyond this adjustment to create equality in the practice of commonly held rights of citizenship (such as the right to participation in decision-making), Kymlicka severely questions the ability of a common citizenship, a sense of belonging, to exist at all within a differentiated society that lacks shared values and a shared identity. As he points out, heterogeneous societies lack the means for "membership in shared possession" (Kymlicka, 1995: 180-181) such as a commonality in history, language or culture that homogenous communities can build a common citizenship upon.

Post-modern theorists likewise criticize the "civic community" ideal as summarized in Putnam’s work above, although on different grounds. As Young (1990) argues, there is no such thing as the common good. Collectivities do exist, but only in that strangers share public space and are collectively impacted by social, economic, political and/or cultural concerns (the domain of planning decisions). According to Young, an alternative to the ideal of community is "a normative ideal of city life" whereby social relations are defined as the being together of strangers. As she explains:

Just as the liberal criticism of the communitarian ideal suggests that the majority will define common citizenship rights, Young argues that the privileged in a community will articulate what is described as the "common good". According to Young, citizenship is dictated by the power relationships and inequalities which structure how and to what degree we participate within our communities, "the virtues of citizenship are best cultivated through the exercise of citizenship" (Young, 1990: 92). Civic community, therefore, is not a desirable goal because it assumes that people will leave behind their particularity and difference in favour of the common good (Young, 1990: 118). As Young explains:

One consequence of intersecting the ideas of communitarian, liberal and post-modern perspectives is that the definition of community becomes very important. For example, while Putnam articulates a community of association, and Kymlicka describes a differentiated political community of minority and majority groups, Young challenges the legitimacy of the community ideal itself, considering instead a city ideal. As was described earlier in this chapter, community in this dissertation is used as both a sociological and spatial concept. Without assuming a collective "unity or commonness" (to use Young’s words), and while acknowledging the heterogeneity in the two communities, Kensington and Markham are used with the understanding that the boundaries of the two case study communities chosen represent boundaries that have meaning for those who live and work within them.

The distinction between associations and groups is another useful consequence of the intersection of these three theoretical perspectives. This distinction is best articulated in Young, as she uses "social groups" to represent individuals who share some sense of identity and "associations" to represent where individuals voluntarily come together out of a shared set of attributes (e.g. ratepayers). Using this distinction, we can determine that Putnam’s "associations" are voluntary linkages between citizens that structure and reinforce civic community. By contrast, Kymlicka makes a case for collective rights for social groups; in this sense "groups" are collectivities we belong to by virtue of who we are, such as ethnocultural groups. As Young notes, however, groups and associations intersect in practice, as individuals develop their sense of identity. Given the related themes of diversity and planning explored in this research, both groups (e.g. ethnocultural) and associations (e.g. of residents, of ratepayers, of businesses) are important, and therefore will be distinguished from one another in the chapters to follow.

In order to judge the practice of citizenship in Kensington and Markham -- that is, to look for evidence of substantive citizenship in local decision-making processes -- criteria are necessary. Drawing from the modified communitarian approach explained above, each case study was evaluated on four grounds:

1. participation in public decision-making - who is involved? how are they involved?
2. democratic equality - how democratic are the communities in practice? what influence do individuals have? what influence do social groups have? to what degree is power distributed?
3. social structures and associations - how are citizens impacted by planning decisions? in what way(s) is the community organized?
4. solidarity and tolerance - to what degree is diversity tolerated? what do citizens share, if anything?

Before participation and belonging, or substantive citizenship, in the case study communities can be evaluated and before the impact of ethnocultural diversity on the planning processes involved can be assessed, it is important to understand how these communities came to be multicultural. Chapter Three provides an historical background to Canada’s immigration policy and the influence of policy-making on the structure of Canadian society that helps explain the similarities and differences in the ethnoculturally diverse populations of Kensington and Markham.

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