Popular rhetoric suggests that the 21st century has ushered in an era of homogeneity. Urbanization, globalization, amalgamation, media conglomeration, and technological convergence have become familiar terms to us -- terms coined to reflect the effect of the complex and diverse forces at work in communities across the country. Given such overwhelming pressures, how are people within these communities able to make decisions about their own environment, either individually or collectively? To what extent can they govern themselves?

This stimulating text considers questions of influence and power within local institutions and decision-making processes using numerous illustrations from municipalities across Canada. The challenges to local governance are examined from a wide array of perspectives; communities large and small from Iqualuit to Toronto are offered as examples. In an original approach to the subject, McAllister pays particular attention to smaller and more remote cities of Canada. Case studies of Prince George, British Columbia; Sherbrooke, Quebec; Saint John, New Brunswick; Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario are used to illustrate historic and contemporary challenges for local governance.

Governing Ourselves? covers traditional topics related to Canadian local government structures, institutions, and intergovernmental relations. At the same time, it reaches more broadly into other areas of inquiry that are relevant to geography, urban planning, environmental studies, public administration, sociology, and Canadian studies. A wide-ranging exploration of Canadian communities and their politics, this book is relevant to the practitioner, student, academic, and anyone who wonders whether, in fact, we do govern ourselves.