ABSTRACT
The dominant narrative describing the Canadian urban space economy has long focused on inter-urban competition, with rivalry between major commercial centres (Montreal and Toronto) the high profile story. Prentice (2006) has linked the urban competition discourse to North America’s ‘frontier’ development as a hierarchical distribution of ‘gateway cities’ (Burghardt, 1971) connected by transportation ‘corridors’ (Whebell, 1969). For 100 years the east–west transcontinental railway secured and maintained Montreal’s role as Canada’s major financial capital, but communications developments – first long-haul trucking, then air travel and recently the digital revolution – have dramatically changed the roles, functions and connections of gateway cities (Prentice, 2006; Pain 2007a, 2007b). Toronto was classified a secondary ‘world city’ by John Friedmann (1986). By the year 2000, Toronto had achieved a score of 0.60 connectivity compared with Montreal’s 0.40 (Taylor, 2000).
