Democracy in Kingston: A Social Movement in Urban Politics, 1965-1970

Richard Harris

1987 aza. · McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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A reform movement in Kingston emerged in 1965, developed steadily over five years, and then rapidly disintegrated. The two major strands of reformers, the New Left and a more diffuse movement of the middle class, drew together in 1968, focusing on the issues of rental housing and urban renewal. The reformers sustained an intense level of political opposition for over two years but, for a variety of reasons, by the end of 1970 the movement had fallen apart and the remaining fragments had apparently lost influence. Harris analyses the reform movement in Kingston in relation to the broader context of reform in North America, suggesting that the distinctive possibilities and problems created by the post-war urban milieu led to the formation of an urban reform movement that polarized city politics along class lines. He argues that at the local level the specific nature of urban reform is shaped by the complex social geography of class and domestic property ownership within each city. Kingston's reform movement had only a limited immediate effect upon the economic and political conditions within the city. Typical of the urban and social refrom movements as a whole, however, its longer term effect upon social attitudes and democratic process has been much greater, and more significant, than has been shown previously.

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