Sustainability, Hegemony, and Urban Policy in Calgary by Tom Howard BA
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From Risky Business to Common Sense: Sustainability, Hegemony, and Urban Policy in Calgary by Tom Howard B.A. (with distinction), University of Calgary, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2015 © Tom Howard 2015 ABSTRACT Recent years have seen the City of Calgary adopt a suite of sustainability policies in a bid to shift its received trajectory of sprawling urban development towards eco-conscious alternatives. But where sustainable urban development is typically rendered as a consensus-driven project portending mutual benefits for a given locality, the historical adoption of sustainability policies in Calgary has been characterized by waves of conflict and controversy which have allegedly watered down the City’s policy objectives. Rather than evaluating the technical merits of individual policies against ‘best practice’-type standards, this thesis argues that the meanings and implications of particular policy paradigms – such as Calgary’s move towards sustainability – must be found in both the specific institutional configurations in which policies are formed and the political-economic conditions to which they respond. This thesis explores these institutional pressures and conjunctural forces through a historical analysis of several key moments in the emergence and evolution of sustainability-oriented policy in Calgary. Chapter 1 establishes context for this inquiry, while Chapter 2 formulates a theoretical framework by synthesizing neo-Marxian interpretations of local environmental policy and recent innovations in the field of ‘policy mobilities’ with the work of Antonio Gramsci, particularly related to his conception of hegemony. Building upon this edifice, Chapter 3 comprises a historical overview of the City’s first attempts at sustainability-oriented policy, which I argue are best viewed as a ‘fix’ for several tensions and contradictions surrounding Calgary’s hegemonic development model, which I term ‘developer-led suburbanization’. Attempts to reformat and restructure this model through consensual community ‘visioning exercises’ and ‘systems’-based rationalities are considered in Chapter 4, which I explain as a manoeuvre by the City to restore political legitimacy and wrest control over development matters from private sector actors. These narratives converge in my central argument: the historical formation of sustainability policies in Calgary has not been a process of incremental rationalization or evolutionary refinement, but has instead reflected a series of struggles for political leadership within an arrangement that can be best understood through the Gramscian concept of hegemony. ii PREFACE This thesis, including the design, analysis, and presentation of research materials herein, is an original intellectual product of the author. It was approved by the University of British Columbia’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board, certificate number H13-01227. Figures 3.5 and 4.5 are Copyright © The City of Calgary, and reprinted with permission. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ......................................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................................................ vi List of Figures .............................................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Sustainability in the City of Contradictions ................................................................................. 1 1.1 Eco-Politics on the Edge ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Situating Sustainability ..................................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Querying the Boomtown ................................................................................................................ 13 Chapter 2: Sustainability, Hegemony, and Urban Policy ............................................................................ 19 2.1 Sustainability is the Answer! (But What was the Question?) ........................................................ 19 2.2 Local Politics and the ‘Urban Sustainability Fix’ ............................................................................. 20 2.3 Policy on the Fly: Mobile Constructions of Sustainability .............................................................. 28 2.4 Ideology, Intellectuals, and the Vicissitudes of Hegemony ........................................................... 36 2.5 ‘Fixing’ Hegemony, or, Going Green with Gramsci ........................................................................ 45 Chapter 3: Boom Times and Birth Pangs .................................................................................................... 55 3.1 Lineages of Failure ......................................................................................................................... 55 3.2 A Pre-History of Power and Planning in a Prairie Boomtown ........................................................ 58 3.3 A Tale of Two Policies ..................................................................................................................... 64 3.4 Growth Collapsed, Hegemony Emergent ....................................................................................... 68 3.5 Conservative Eighties, Revolutionary Nineties .............................................................................. 74 3.6 Roads to Reform............................................................................................................................. 81 3.7 Suburbanizing Sustainability .......................................................................................................... 86 3.8 Sustainability Policies and Their (Dis)contents .............................................................................. 96 Chapter 4: Greening the Growth Machine ............................................................................................... 104 4.1 Postmillennial Moves: The Return of Growth and Revival of Sustainability................................ 104 4.2 Cities on the Move, Policies on the Make .................................................................................... 108 4.3 A Pangloss for the Prairies ........................................................................................................... 115 4.4 Imagining Urban Sustainability, Governing Civil Society.............................................................. 121 iv 4.5 Consolidating the Vision............................................................................................................... 130 4.6 “Where Do We Grow From Here?” .............................................................................................. 135 4.7 Translations and Recuperations ................................................................................................... 142 4.8 Recombinant Sustainability.......................................................................................................... 148 Chapter 5: Sustainability Between Two Worlds ....................................................................................... 154 5.1 Urban Policy Amidst an Interregnum ........................................................................................... 154 5.2 Reflections on Method ................................................................................................................. 156 5.3 The Uses of Hegemony and the Problem of Monday Morning ................................................... 159 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 162 Appendix A: List of Interviews .................................................................................................................. 179 v LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Calgary’s municipal debt, 1980-88 .............................................................................................. 75 Table 3.2 City budgets in an austere age, 1991-1995 ................................................................................. 80 Table 4.1 City of Calgary growth projections versus actual growth rates, 1995-2003 ............................. 105 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Political-economic pressures and the urban sustainability fix .................................................. 24 Figure 2.2 The sustainability fix reconfigured ............................................................................................. 47 Figure 2.3 Hegemonic projects and the sustainability fix ..........................................................................