Making a Sustainable Future in Southeast False Creek, Vancouver Mark Kear University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St

Cities, Vol. 24, No. 4, p. 324–334, 2007 Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2007.01.005 All rights reserved. 0264-2751/$ - see front matter www.elsevier.com/locate/cities Spaces of transition spaces of tomorrow: Making a sustainable future in Southeast False Creek, Vancouver Mark Kear University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Rm 5047, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5S 3G3 Received 4 September 2006; received in revised form 12 January 2007; accepted 14 January 2007 Available online 23 April 2007 The most recent overhaul of the relationship between nature, society and the economy in Southeast False Creek began in the Fall of 1990 when the Vancouver Task Force on Atmo- spheric Change presented a report entitled Clouds of Change to City Council. The report laid out a set of 35 recommendations designed to set a new course for socionatural transformation in the city by implementing a more comprehensive approach to environmental planning and policy. Among the initiatives outlined in Clouds of Change was a call for the development of a planning and design process aimed at creating a sustainable community on the shore of South- east False Creek. The subsequent and on-going evolution of the plans to create this ‘‘sustainable community’’ will be used to examine how the vision of Clouds of Change has been forced to interact and react with other concomitant visions of the Vancouver of Tomorrow to produce a new space and a new nature on the city’s waterfront. I will show how various phases of the now decade-old debate over the meaning of ‘‘sustainability’’ in the context of SEFC have exposed the often obscured connections between transformations in the socionatural function of urban space and the process of maintaining and renegotiating the relationship between nature and urban-centered regimes of accumulation. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Waterfronts, Vancouver, urban political ecology, socionature Introduction which has been described as ‘‘a vast display case for the aesthetic consumption of nature’’ (Berelo- Since the early 1990s, Vancouver’s popularity as witz, 2005), much of this change has occurred on an object of scholarly inquiry has grown signifi- 1 the water’s edge, where views of the Coast Moun- cantly. This is due, with little doubt and in large tains and English Bay are the least obstructed, part, to the many changes that have occurred over property values are the highest and consumers this period in the city’s built environment, plan- are the most eager to consume. Accordingly, it is ning structures, demographics, and relationship to in these waterfront spaces where some of the most surrounding spaces. Not surprisingly, in a city dramatic transformations of the relationships between society, nature and the economy have been experienced. One such shoreline space, Southeast E-mail: [email protected]. False Creek (SEFC), will be the focus of this 1 Over the last decade (beginning January 1996, as tracked by the study. Social Science Citation Index) Vancouver has experienced a more than 20-fold increase in the number of citations it receives in The story of SEFC, an 80 acre brownfield on the planning and geography journals over the number of citations it shore of False Creek, an inlet of English Bay that received from 1976 through 1985. acts as a de facto border between downtown 324 Spaces of transition spaces of tomorrow: Making a sustainable future in Southeast False Creek, Vancouver: M Kear ab c Figure 1 (a) Vancouver and region. (b) The urban core. (c) Southeast False Creek background. Vancouver and the rest of the city, began in the meaning of ‘‘sustainability’’ in the context of Fall of 1990 when the Vancouver Task Force on SEFC have exposed the often obscured connec- Atmospheric Change presented a report entitled tions between transformations in the socionatural Clouds of Change (City of Vancouver, 1990)to function of urban space and the process of main- Vancouver City Council. The report laid out a taining and renegotiating the relationship between set of 35 recommendations designed to set a new nature and urban-centered regimes of course for socionatural2 transformation in the city accumulation. by implementing a more comprehensive approach The manufacture of synergies between produced to environmental planning and policy (Punter, socionatures and accumulation regimes, despite the 2003, p. 152). Among the initiatives outlined in economism that the existence of such a relationship Clouds of Change was the first, and seemly innoc- implies, is shown by the story of SEFC to be far uous, call for the development of a planning and more than a deterministic process. What the exam- design process aimed at creating a sustainable ple of SEFC demonstrates is that the harmoniza- community on the shore of Southeast False Creek tion of socionature with accumulation, like other (see Figure 1a–c). In what follows, the subsequent forms of social and economic transition, is a and on-going evolution of the plans to create this never-quite-finished, trial-and-error process of ‘‘sustainable community’’ will be used to examine searching for new fixes for the social, economic how the vision of Clouds of Change has been and ecological crisis tendencies of locally dominant forced to fuse and interact with other concomitant accumulation regimes. This ‘‘search,’’ in the case of visions of the Vancouver of tomorrow to produce SEFC, has taken the form of an often confronta- a new space and a new nature on the city’s water- tional political struggle between different interest front. More specifically, I will show how various groups, actors and networks of actors. Among the phases of the now decade-old debate over the forces shaping this struggle, and the networks which entangle it, has been the pull of the market to rebuild and reimagine the everyday function of the waterfront in a way that is in sync with the 2 Castree (2002) attributes the term socionature to Swyngedouw ‘‘highest’’ and ‘‘best’’ uses of that space in the post- (1999). Callon (1995) also made use of the term. See Bunce and Desfor (2007) in the introduction to this special issue of Cities for industrial city. In dialectical fashion, this market a more detailed description of the term, its theoretical anteced- force has been met by the reciprocal action of ents, and its relevance to the study of waterfront transformations. those agents and actors, unassisted by the law of 325 Spaces of transition spaces of tomorrow: Making a sustainable future in Southeast False Creek, Vancouver: M Kear The PEF was established in 1975 to manage city-owned real estate. The PEF is directed by a five member appointed board composed of the Mayor, two Councillors, the City Manager and the Director of Finance. Neither the public nor non-board-member Councillors are permitted to attend PEF board meetings, or access meeting agendas and minutes. The objectives of the PEF are: “To manage and develop the Fund's holdings in order to generate a reasonable economic return; To buy and sell lands in order to assemble a land inventory that offers the best possible opportunity to preserve and where possible increase the real value of the PEF's assets; To support the City’s public objectives; and To develop a program to accomplish the conversion of non-strategic holdings to strategic ones.” The PEF board oversees approximately $1.2 billion in city assets. Figure 2 PEF background. value, to protect themselves from such market-lead and the PEF. In making this sketch, I rely heavily imagineering of space with calls for greater atten- on David Harvey’s model of the circuits of capital tion to the ‘‘extra-economic.’’3 and the difficulties, political or otherwise, often Consequently, the dispute over the future of encountered by those seeking to rechannel flows SEFC, though couched in the language of sustain- of investment from one circuit to another. This spa- ability, has served as a sort of discursive proxy battle tially informed model of the urban process under to define the ‘‘proper’’ and foreclose ‘‘alternative’’ capitalism is an attractive one to apply to Vancou- fixes for the fissures which Vancouver’s transition ver’s experiences in SEFC because it avoids both to a knowledge-based economy has opened in the ci- (i) over-hyping Vancouver’s planning and environ- ty’s neighborhoods, social networks and landscapes. mental achievements, and/or (ii) rehearsing and Thus, on the surface, the dispute can be read as be- reifying ‘‘common sense’’ (classical economic) ac- nign and parochial, focused on creating a community counts of urban change. which balances the so-called three pillars of sustainability: the social, the economic, and the environmental; however, the subtext of the dispute tells Remaking the socionatural function of urban many nested and overlapping stories about the rear- space ticulation of the relationships between the economic and the extra-economic, use value and exchange va- The challenge for those seeking to remake the socio- lue, the local state, capital and civil society, et cetera. natural function of urban space while at the same In other words, sustainability has come to function time aiding accumulation and/or expanding the local as what Spivak (1988) calls a ‘‘screen allegory,’’4 tax base is to identify the conditions and the means to both obscuring and legitimating the socionatural transform the way socionature is lived, conceived ‘‘fixing’’ of space.5 and perceived in a manner ‘‘that either directly or In order to bring this public narrative of sustain- indirectly expands the basis for the production of sur- able city building together with the broader story- plus value’’ (Harvey, 1989).

Load more