This volume reflects on a period of major change in the provision of public services in Israel and Canada. It has been generated through the association of the Halbert Exchange Program for the University of Toronto and the Center for Canadian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In showing the effects of cutbacks in funding, limitations in access, and threats to the universality of public service provision, the book emphasizes that this stress also marks a shift in political values leading to the changing roles of the state in the lives of the residents of the two nations. The analysis of public service provision included in this collection also demonstrates the effect of constitutional, strategic, demographic and economic changes during the eighties. While these forces reflect distinctive national characteristics demonstrated in the two countries, they also demonstrate the impact of wider changes associated with such global trends as: fiscal integration and the emergence of trade blocs, technological change, dominance of multinational corporations, and the growing effects in an international division of labor.

This collection of articles by Canadian and Israeli academics is divided into three parts; the first deals with general perspectives on planning as a generic activity and its role in a context of conditions of intense change and uncertainty; the second presents a series of illustrations of the dissonance between planning as a force of order set within disorderly environments; and the third provides context for this discussion at the global level and in terms of the reflections of reflections by Israeli and Canadian planners on the issues of planning in turbulence.