Graduate Students

Bloomfield, Elizabeth - Ph.D

City-Building Process in Berlin/Kitchener and Waterloo, 1870-1930. 2 vols. - Dr. Gilbert Stelter, advisor

         This study of city-building processes in two Ontario industrial towns through the formative years of their development, 1870-1930, is presented as a contribution to Canadian urban history. The work has been prompted by the difficulty of explaining differential rates of urban-industrial growth in cities with generally similar resources and accessibility. Clearly, selective growth cannot be explained by general impersonal forces and factors like centralization and metropolitan dominance, economies of scale, and location in relation to resources, transportation and markets. It is postulated that the collective determination of community leaders to advance their town was a powerful factor in growth.
Berlin/Kitchener and Waterloo are considered good examples of the sub-metropolitan, industrial type of town, so far inadequately studied and understood, in which the interacting processes of urbanization and industrialization were worked out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Berlin especially is an outstanding example of a lesser town, with no natural advantages, which by determined effort and an industrial policy managed to raise itself in the urban hierarchy to become the leading city in its region by 1930.
         The primary focus is a detailed investigation of historical processes of urban economic development, blending concepts of urban growth with ideas on community structure and leadership, the urban ethos and municipal powers of assisting enterprises. Local entrepreneurs and elite groups made their decisions and took actions to build up their cities according to the perceptions of the the opportunities offered by the broader economic, technological and political forces of the time.
         Two sets of city-building processes are discussed in detail - the economic and spatial-environmental. The crucial importance of urban economic development to the city is demonstrated. Collective action to stimulate economic activity, notably by municipal inducements to manufacturers, was justified by the conviction that factories generated multiplier effects to benefit all sections of the community. In contrast, the processes by which the urban environment was shaped were left to private initiative, except that in the planning movement after 1912, there were again efforts to act collectively.