Downtowns, past and present.(Essay)

In the last two decades, analysts of urban change have focused on the evolution of metropolitan areas that have increasingly taken the form of "fragmented mixtures of employment and residential settings, combining urban and suburban characteristic." (1) Edge cities, edgeless cities, exurbs, boomburbs, metroburbs, development corridors, and nodes represent a new phase in the history of the city. As new office buildings have been rising in suburban downtowns or edge cities, former city centres have undergone major shifts in their form and function. Although most Canadian cities maintained thriving downtowns throughout the twentieth century, retail and office ...