“The Task to Which We Have Consecrated Ourselves”: The development of Town and City Planning in Canada in a transnational context.

My paper will provide a discussion of my dissertation (obviously a condensed, twenty-ish minute version). My current research explores the evolution of urban planning in Canada with a particular focus on the early 1900s and the efforts to establish town planning as a recognized profession. My project encompasses the period from the early 1900s and the creation of the Town Planning Institute of Canada in 1919 to the Second World War and considers how planning developed in Canada thanks to transnational influences from the United States and Great Britain. Since planning was more developed in these two countries, Canada relied on an exchange of ideas and personnel to create its own planning expertise, organizations, and legislation.  I am particularly interested in the networks developed between planners in these three nations and how, once transported to Canada, planners in this nation adopted, adapted, and rejected town planning ideas.