Content Analysis Comparing Canada’s Two Earliest Town Planning Journals
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Authors
Goodman, Jasmine
Date
2021
Type
Language
en
Keyword
Charles Hodgetts , Thomas Adams , Town planning history , Public health history , Commission of Conservation , Conservation of Life , Journal of the Town Planning Institute of Canada , JTPIC , 1910-1930 , Urban planning history , Canadian town planning
Alternative Title
Abstract
This report’s comparative analysis of Canada’s two earliest town planning journals reveals the evolution of planning during the nation’s rapid urban expansion from 1910-1930. Six grouped topics were analyzed – aesthetics, economics, environmental, health, social, and planning. The report provides tools for future researchers including indices, graphs, spreadsheet, grouped subjects, titles lists, and chronological timeline. A content analysis compared the key differences and similarities, topics and themes, and organizations’ focus between the Conservation of Life and the Town Planning Institute of Canada journals.
Dr. Charles Hodgetts was appointed in 1910 to lead the Commission of Conservation’s Health Branch. As medical advisor and key author in the Conservation of Life (CoL), he primarily addressed public health issues. Thomas Adams was appointed as the town planning advisor in 1914, and when the CoL ceased publication in 1921, shifted his writing to the Journal of the Town Planning Institute of Canada (JTPIC), published from 1920 to 1931. The introduction of Adams was pivotal to the content shift from public health topics that had been under the guidance of Hodgetts to a more town and rural planning perspective.
Still, the different professional focus of Hodgetts and Adams influenced an overlap in public health and town planning topics. They addressed how incorporating urban planning can help solve the underlying urban problems from a rapidly expanding industrial society. While earlier JTPIC articles closely linked planning with public health, by 1920, a vision of modern planning through the City Scientific/Practical concept indicated a gradual separation between the planning and public health professions. This shift coincided with town planning in Canada becoming established as a profession working under legislations of various provincial Town Planning and Development Acts. At the same time, the CoL continued with its tradition to address conservation and environmental concerns, having successfully leveraged town planning to tackle public health issues. Thus, outcomes of the key differences and similarities between the two journals highlight how the planning and public health professions initially merged and then diverged in early Canadian town planning. Overall, this report’s historical content analysis of the earliest planning journal archives provides an intriguing glimpse in the evolution of the planning profession in Canada.