Red Hill Dissertation: Chapter 1

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1. The Political Ecology of Transportation and the

Ideological Terrain of Urban Nature

If, as suggested, the politics of the people is a politics of movements notalways progressive or democratic, but potentially so the implications for

political theory are profound. It suggests that the key considerations of

democratic theory ought not to be the traditional matters of the state, but therelations within and between social movements. Indeed, it suggests that,

insofar as political theory has become simply the theory of the state, it

serves as a legitimating ideology that obscures the very possibility ofpolitics of, by and for the people

Warren Magnusson (1996: 70-71)

If you ask me what is the object of my work, the object of the work is toalways reproduce the concrete in thought not to generate another good

theory, but to give a better-theorized account of concrete historical reality.

This is not an anti-theoretical stance. I need theory in order to do this. Butthe goal is to understand the situation you started out with better than before

Stuart Hall (quoted in Nagar 2002: 184).

Other Voices: Environmental Narratives and Articulating Landscapes

Walking through the Red Hill Valley in the summer of 2008, I was struck first by the

dramatic changes in the landscape. I had last been in the valley almost five years ago,

observing and participating in the efforts to prevent construction of the Red Hill Creek

Expressway. The places in my memories where people had camped and picketed day

and night, where an Aboriginal roundhouse and longhouse had been constructed, and

where others had chained themselves to trees or constructed platforms high in the

branches above had been erased by the road, now humming with automobile and truck

traffic. Alongside the road I found new paths, lined with pine needles and surrounded

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by rows of saplings, planted during the construction of the expressway. As I walked

south, following the Red Hill Creek upstream towards the escarpment, the noise of the

traffic began to fade behind the hills of the valley and I found myself in Kings Forest,

surrounded by a more familiar atmosphere. While the creek had been significantly

altered, realigned and rebuilt by engineers and construction crews, the area still

provided a welcome sense of stillness and grandeur with a vibrant canopy of leaves

above and the soothing sound of the creek guiding me further along the trail. Still

further south, I came to Albion Falls, where the creek flows over the rock face of the

escarpment. I had come to this place with my stepfather many times as a child and

remembered the joy of walking along the edge of the escarpment with him and gazing

down into the valley. Here, I could still find a familiar sense of peace and connection to

the flora and fauna around me, even with the drone of traffic in the distance.

Leaving the valley, I found myself sifting through memories of the tumultuous,

inspiring and painful events that I had witnessed in the valley a few short years before,

when citizens of the city of Hamilton had gathered together to try and protect the area

from what they saw as a destructive and unjust development project. As I detail in the

pages that follow, the Red Hill Creek Expressway had become a pivotal debate over not

simply the fate of this river valley but the identity and future of the city itself, stretching

across five decades. Proponents envisaged the expressway as a road to prosperity,

opening up new lands for development and improving traffic efficiency and safety by

diverting cars and trucks from other roadways. They argued that the road would

enhance the Red Hill Valley, making it more accessible and cleaning up the refuse

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and pollution that had accumulated over many years of alleged neglect. Many

opponents saw the expressway as nothing more than a subsidy for new residential and

commercial development on the escarpment lands south of the valley and argued that

the road would irreparably destroy an area of great ecological, aesthetic and

recreational value. Others saw the road as an exemplary case of environmental injustice,

increasing air pollution in a region of the city with many low-income neighbourhoods

and a concentration of polluting industrial sites, and diverting funds away from the

maintenance of existing infrastructure, under-funded social programs, and a declining

downtown core in an industrial city still reeling from the globalization of steel

manufacturing. Still others saw the road as a classic example of colonial dispossession,

built through an area with particular significance to Aboriginal people as both a site of

indigenous artifacts, burials and ancestral connections, and as a place for the assertion

of hunting and fishing rights guaranteed by a long-standing treaty with the British

Crown.

The primary aim of my dissertation research is to explain how and why these counter

narratives developed, in a dialogical relationship with the dominant narrative of growth

and progress, various political ideologies, and an industrial imaginary that valorized the

productive transformation of nature through technology and infrastructure, expert

management, and the compartmentalization of urban space.My analysis considers how

and why the politicalframingof language and ideas in this particular debate changed in

response to shifting political economic conditions, larger ideological discourses, and

urban environmental imaginaries: established regional visions of the relationship

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between urbanization and nature articulated through representations of the Red Hill

Valley.

I argue that environmental discourses or narratives should not be treated as static

political positions but must be understood through the interplay between competing

narratives as they draw upon and influence each other, including attempts to modify or

co-opt particular ideas and symbols. My case study demonstrates the prevalence of a

pro-growth discourse that gradually adopted elements of ecological modernization,

but this case also provides a rich and perhaps rare example of the development of

counter-hegemonic narratives of urban sustainability and transportation that eventually

succeeded in transforming the citys dominant industrial imaginary the prevailing

normative vision of the relationship between urbanization and nature.1 I place particular

emphasis on how this conflict over urban transportation and land development

responded to and gradually altered the structure of urban governance in the city of

Hamilton. Values and norms shaped by influential political ideas and local conceptions

of place and community often remain implicit and unexamined by the actors engaged in

a particular conflict, and differences may be obscured by the use of vague and

ubiquitous terms such as sustainability, development and democracy.

Examination of these differing normative positions can reveal weaknesses and

1 Following the theories of Antonio Gramsci (1971), I understand hegemony as power relations

that promote and protect the interests of dominant social groups by means of coercion and

consent rather than brute force. I find more recent interpretations of the struggle for hegemony

as contestation between political discourses (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Scott 1985) very usefulbut caution against a perspective that reduces all political phenomena to discursive phenomena.

As I discuss below, hegemony is produced and challenged in and through spatial relations,

involving symbolic and material relations of power (Joseph 2002).

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oversights within a given narrative, explain how and why particular narratives become

more widely accepted than others, and provide a basis for suggesting ways to more

effectively encourage democratic dialogue and debate over the meaning and

implementation of urban sustainability.

My research seeks to suggest ways thatmore inclusive conceptions of environmentalactivism and governance could be advanced. I am drawn to this particular struggle

because of its complexity, its longevity, and the diversity of interests involved, but even

more so because of my own involvement in this debate over the future of the city where

I was born and where I have spent most of my thirty four years. Conducting research

into this environmental conflict thus posed the difficulty of locating myself within my

own study and abandoning an easy recourse to the familiar academic role of the

objective observer. Encouraged by recent work on activist scholarship (Hale 2008;

Frampton et al. 2006) and participatory research (Reason and Bradbury 2001;

Rocheleau 1994), I began to recognize that my involvement in the expressway debate

and the connections I had already established with other participants could provide

insights and research opportunities that might otherwise be unavailable to me, even as it

also raised the challenge of striving to understand and fairly represent positions and

arguments which I was already predisposed against. During my research, I drew upon

my personal experiences and observations, but also endeavoured to take a critical

distance from the local environmental and social justice organizations with which I had

been involved, including groups opposed to the Red Hill Creek Expressway. At the

same time, I understand and present my research efforts as committed to promoting

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environmental justice and more responsible and inclusive approaches to urban

governance and development, and the critical analyses of urban planning and social

movements presented here are intended as a small contribution towards these goals.2

Like the urban spaces that surround it, the Red Hill Valley is composed of layers of

material and symbolic history a socio-ecological palimpsest. My dissertation research

traces the historical transformations of the valley, a landscape on to which various

groups projected their vision of Hamiltons past, present and future. For some, it was a

wasteland and garbage dump; for others, a pristine wilderness; a recreational retreat; a

transportation and infrastructural corridor; a sacred burial ground; a symbol of an

alternative urban future. With its rich ecological and cultural history, the valley became

a kind of blank slate on to which people wrote their particular narratives of nature and

the city. The valley and creek functioned as an articulating landscape (Desfor and

Keil 2000) that was used to represent particular relationships between nature,

urbanization and development. The various representations and narratives articulated by

the groups and individuals involved in this debate were developed in a reciprocal

relationship with this place, drawing upon popular perceptions of the valley as a

2I am employing Warren Magnussons definition of social movements as movements that take

people out of their daily routines and away from ordinary conceptions of themselves as passive

subjects (1996: 10) and therefore extending this term to include any collective of people taking

action to promote a cause with political implications, including business coalitions. In

Magnussons words (ibid: 67),

If we begin with popular political activity, rather than from the enclosure imposed upon

it, another dimension of reality emerges. Politics might be defined as purposive social action

directed at the conditions of social existence. From this perspective, social movements are

the politics of the people and government is the politics of the state The fact thatmovements can and do burst the enclosures of the state is evidence not of their prepolitical

but of their political character of their capacity to found or create new forms of political

community, identity and action.

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the protection and preservation of nature, primarily through technological innovation

(Hajer 1995; Christoff 1996; Mol 2001; Young 2001). According to Desfor and Keil

(ibid: 50-51), only rarely, at specific historico-geographical conjunctures, has it been

possible to escape or go beyond the current hegemony of this continuum and to create

meaningful and sustained alternatives Although they rarely succeed in the current

climate of urban development under globalized market rule, such social and ecological

challenges to the ecomodernist status quo are ever-present and pervasive events.

Political Ecology, Urban Development and Post-Industrial Cities

The Red Hill Creek Expressway debate lasted over four decades and involved a great

diversity of political actors with differing interests and ideological positions. Discursive

and material strategies changed over time according to the political framing of issues by

environmental groups, changing political economic and socio-ecological conditions,

and environmental imaginaries, defined here as popular representations of normative

relationships with urban nature. Ideological disagreement in the articulation of concepts

and values often remain implicit or unelaborated in the course of political debate and

discussion, particularly with respect to urban sustainability. References to democracy,

nature, development, progress and sustainability were abundant but it soon

became clear that these terms had profoundly different meanings for different people

and groups, informed by differing values, norms and interests.

While consensus may not be a realistic goal in conflicts of this nature and magnitude,

it is vital to the pursuit of urban sustainability that the diversity of different meanings,

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values and desires attached to terms such as these be recognized and discussed, rather

than ignored and dismissed (Harre et al. 1999; Hull and Robertson 2000). In many

cases, including the Red Hill Creek Expressway conflict, those with greater influence

and resources often shape the language of the debate, disregarding or obscuring other

voices and perspectives through a process that Michael Freeden (2003) refers to as

decontestation the attempt to present a fixed and immutable definition of a concept

or social relation in order to thereby removing its meaning from the realm of political

debate. By examining the multiplicity of actors and views involved in conflicts over

urban transportation and development, and by clarifying the ideas, beliefs and

aspirations that shape those conflicts, we can better appreciate how relationships of

power operate and how those relationships can be transformed.

This research is situated within the growing field of urban political ecology. Political

ecology is an interdisciplinary field of social science research that has been developed

over the last twenty years or so, drawing together elements of cultural ecology, political

economy, critical development studies and related approaches to the study of human-

environment interactions.3 Political ecology is explicitly concerned with explaining the

interaction of social and biophysical processes, and places particular emphasis on the

interdependent relationships between political, socio-economic, and ecological change

3 The term political ecology has been applied to a variety of political movements and researchapproaches since the early 1970s (see, for example, early uses of the term by Wolf 1972 and

Enzensberger 1974). Within European politics, it is often used to refer to environmental politics

and movements, particularly politics that emphasize substantial economic reforms,

democratization, social justice and convivial relationships, both with nature and within human

communities (see for example, Lipietz 1995 and Whiteside 2002). According to MauriceDurverger (1992), the expression cologie politique was first coined in 1958 by the French

philosopher and political economist Bertrand de Jouvenal.

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(Robbins 2004). This field aims to understand and explain how human practices of

resource use are shaped by social relations at multiple levels over time, and the ways

that these relations shape and are shaped by the physical environment (Walker 1998:

132).

This approach to environmental studies primarily examines how political economic

forces influence transformations of nature, from forestry to genetic engineering, and it

draws attention to the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of such

transformations.4Thus, political ecology can show us how environmental conflicts are

generated by the unequal social and spatial distribution of the material impacts of

development (here understood in terms of the transformation of nature to benefit

human beings), and by ideological disagreements based upon differing experiences and

conceptions of nature and environment. In contrast to more technocratic and

managerial approaches to environmental studies which often de-emphasize or bracket

out the normative disputes and social inequalities inherent to environmental issues,

political ecology seeks to understand the beliefs, practices, and power relationships that

perpetuate such conflicts in order to support alternative relations to nature that are more

ecologically responsible, socially equitable and inclusively democratic (Robbins 2004).

While much early and influential work in political ecology was based on case studies

of rural struggles in the global South (cf. Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Bassett 1988;

4 I use the term political economy to refer to the interdependence of political and economic

phenomena and institutions, and the study of the reciprocal influence between politics, social

relations and economic change. This broadly defined field has had a major influence on politicalecology, which explores the connections between political, economic, social andecological

relationships.

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significant nodal points or concentrations in these networks rather than as distinct and

discrete entities.

This conception of the city as a hybrid of intersecting socio-ecological networks

demands an approach to urban environmental studies that traces these networks beyond

the local scale and situates local processes of urbanization within broader multi-scalar

contexts regional, national, global. As Erik Swyngedouw writes, There is no longer

an outside or limit to the city, as the urban process harbours social and ecological

processes that are embedded in dense and multilayered networks of local, regional,

national and global connections (2004a: 10). Urban political ecology seeks to identify

and understand the specific processes through which urban space is produced and

transformed, and to examine the multi-scalar interconnections between urbanization and

environmental change. The aim is not simply to map these networks and interactions

but to use this information to support the creation of healthier, more democratic and

more equitable communities (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003).

To this end, many recent studies have considered the discursive dimensions of

political conflicts over the use and control of urban nature, often emphasizing the

dominant influence of neoliberalism, ecological modernization and popular notions of

urban sustainability as the balanced coexistence or reconciliation of economic

development and environmental protection. While there is now a good deal of literature

criticizing this dominant vision of urban sustainability, little attention has yet been paid

to analyzing how and why counter-hegemonic movements and political narratives

emerge and how they might be sustained and expanded. My dissertation provides a

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basic framework for such analysis, examining how more radical visions of urbanization

and nature develop in dialogue with competing political narratives and ideologies,

shifting political economic conditions, andthe material and symbolic qualities of the

surrounding local environment. In this way, I am responding to Peter Walkers call for

research in political ecology research that more directly engages with political practice

(2007) and policy formation (2006), and attempting to flesh out what Erik Swyngedouw

(2006: 13) has referred to as the political programme of political ecology as a guide

for actively contributing to the democratic content of socio-ecological construction.

Existing studies of urban political ecology and governance have tended to focus on

global cities such as New York (Gandy 2002), Toronto (Desfor and Keil 2004; Keil

and Boudreau 2006) and Los Angeles (Gottlieb 2001; Wolch et al. 2002; Desfor and

Keil 2004). Little attention has yet been given to smaller urban centres and even less to

former industrial centres like Hamilton (some notable exceptions include Heynen and

Perkins 2005; Brownlow 2006; Heynen 2006). Post-industrial cities present serious

challenges for urban sustainability, both in terms of the severity of ecological

degradation and in terms of the socio-economic disparities and financial limitations that

hinder efforts to attract new investment and pursue new approaches to economic

development (Langer and Endlicher 2007). Shaped by the legacy of infrastructure

systems, regulatory frameworks and economic development capacities closely linked to

manufacturing, these cities find themselves in a grey area between Fordist and post-

Fordist regimes of capital accumulation and related mixtures of regulatory practices

(Filion 1985; Brownlow 2006). They simultaneously attempt to build on existing

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economic sectors and infrastructure while tentatively exploring new approaches, often

lacking the resources, political influence and economic power of the global centres that

are often seen as examples of the post-industrial or post-Fordist city. As I discuss

throughout my dissertation, these conditions provide unique opportunities and obstacles

for the formation of more radical visions of urban nature and environmental politics.

Burdened by the ecological legacy of large-scale heavy industry andthe socio-

economic impacts of deindustrialization and associated regulatory restructuring, these

shrinking cities have unique spatial forms, socio-ecological relationships, and forms

of environmental politics that are worthy of much deeper analysis than they have

received to date (Alsop et al. 2006; Haslam et al. 2006; Langer and Endlicher 2007).

The brownfields, neglected inner-city neighbourhoods and other degraded urban

landscapes that characterize such cities can vividly illustrate the co-production of social

and ecological processes (Davis 2003).5 Furthermore, as exemplified by my case study

of Hamilton, these cities present unique social and ecological problems, often

characterized by profoundly uneven patterns of spatial distribution that are shaped in

part by historical social and spatial relationships between industry, government and

labour. I demonstrate in my dissertation that these historical relationships have a strong

influence on political narratives of nature and development, producing unique forms of

environmental politics that revolve around issues of environmental justice related to

industrial pollution. As I discuss throughout the dissertation, the Hamilton case is

5 Photographer Edward Burtynsky has vividly documented Hamiltons stunning and sometimes

disturbing sites of industrial detritus and urban decay, intermingled with the flourishing of

unique forms of ruderal ecology.

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particularly notable for the high degree of community organizing and coalition building

involved in public resistance to this highway project. Through my analysis of political

narratives, I explain how this activism emerged and how it has been sustained over

time, drawing upon the unique socio-ecological relationships, political economic

conditions and articulating landscapes of this industrial city.

Urban Metabolism and Transportation

To express the interdependence between social and biophysical change within processes

of urbanization, theorists have drawn upon Marxs concept of metabolism, understood

as the circulatory exchange through which every living organism transforms its external

environment and is transformed in turn by that environment. The concept of urban

metabolism draws attention to the flows of different materials that sustain the city and

to the interdependence of social and biophysical processes in the production of urban

space. However, most existing studies of urban metabolism presuppose a functionalist

analogy of bodily metabolism and focus primarily on the inputs and outputs of energy,

biophysical materials and nutrients (cf. Girardet 1992, 1999; Warren-Rhodes and

Koenig 2001; Sahely et al. 2003). Too often, inadequate attention is paid to the political

and economic dimensions of the efforts to define and create sustainable urban

environments, including modes of social regulation and habits of consumption (Keil and

Boudreau 2006). Whereas sustainability theorists like Herbert Girardet focus primarily

on technological shifts from linear to circular metabolic flows of biophysical exchange,

defining urban sustainability in terms of homeostatic stability and efficiency, political

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ecology views urban metabolism in terms ofpolitical contestation over control of the

socio-ecological processes through which urban space is materially and discursively

produced. In the words of Matthew Gandy, nature is not conceived as an external

blueprint or template but as an integral dimension to the urban process which is itself

transformed in the process to create a hybridized and historically contingent interaction

between social and bio-physical systems (2004: 364).

This broader notion of metabolism has been usefully applied to the analysis of urban

infrastructures, particularly water and wastewater systems, as pivotal points of struggle

over the material transformation and symbolic representation of urban nature (Gandy

2002; Swyngedouw 2004a; Kaika 2005) but relatively little attention has yet been paid

to transportation infrastructure.6 Waterways, railways, airports and highways are vital

material features of the networks that support urban life and efforts to promote

sustainable transportation can benefit greatly from an analysis that illuminates the links

between the economic relationships, governmental regulations, and ideologies and

cultural norms that support particular transportation modes and systems over others. My

dissertation research applies the analytical framework of urban political ecology

transportation, showing how transportation infrastructure has played a pivotal role in

struggles over the transformation of urban nature, and why transportation is becoming

an increasingly volatile site of struggle in contemporary debates over the meaning and

6 Work in this area has included a session on Transportation and Political Ecology at the 2006

Association of American Geographers conference that I co-organized with Dr. Julie Cidell fromCalifornia State University (other participants included Jason Henderson, Matthew Huber and

Rene Venon), and a recent paper from Anna Waugh (2006).

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implementation of urban sustainability. The case study of the city of Hamilton is

particularly useful for exploring the connections between political economy, mobility,

urban form and conflicts over the transformation of nature because of Hamiltons

physical geography, the central role that transportation infrastructure has played in its

historical development, and the ways in which natural features and processes have been

radically transformed through contested shifts in the social and economic conditions of

the city.

The question of sustainable urban transportation requires consideration of more than

just the biophysical inputs and outputs required for different transportation modes, the

design of alternative technologies, or the implementation of ecological planning

principles. Creating sustainable transportation modes and systems, from reformist

measures such as increasing the circulatory efficiency and ecological impacts of roads

to more radical shifts toward alternative modes of transportation, requires critical

examination of the political economic and social relationships that support and

perpetuate particular modes and systems over others, including investment, exchange

and consumption patterns, property and ownership regimes, governmental policies and

regulations, and the ideologies and cultural norms associated with particular

transportation modes and systems. Jason Henderson (2004: 193) has usefully described

such considerations as the politics of mobility, which he defines as:

the political struggle over what type of type of transportation mode be it

automobile, transit or walking is developed in a city and how urban space is

configured to make various modes functional. The politics of mobility is more than

simply a debate over how people and goods are moved around the city and how

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space is organized for that movement. It is an extension of ideologies and normative

values about how the city should be configured and by whom.

Hendersons work considers how participants in transportation and land use debates

struggle to represent and reconfigure urban space in order to promote particular forms

of mobility. These different forms and visions of mobility clearly reflect particular

interests and ideologies, shaped primarily but not exclusively by the shifting political

economy of capitalism.

Transportation has played a key role in the development of both cities and

capitalism. A major determining factor in the production of urban space, transportation

infrastructure links together the sites of extraction, production, consumption and social

reproduction so vital to the accumulation of capital (Harvey 1985). Economic and

political pressures have always driven the expansion of transportation infrastructure, as

business interests have struggled to persuade governments to provide the means of

accelerating the circulation of goods and people, and improving access to raw materials

and markets. Growth entrepreneurs seeking to increase the exchange value of their

property have long been concerned with promoting and expanding transportation

infrastructure such as ports, railways and roadways because this increases the

accessibility of land parcels and opens up new lands to speculation and development

(Logan and Molotch 1987). Throughout the late nineteenth and much of the twentieth

century, this synergy between the expansion of transportation infrastructure, urban form

and capitalist development was met with widespread public support, bolstered by

modernist identifications of progress and freedom with the speed, spectacle and status

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of motorized mobility. Sheller and Urry (2000) use the term automobility to capture

this linkage between automobile production and infrastructure, urban form,

consumption patterns, and associated social practices and desires.

Cities have been shaped and continually reshaped by the demand for more and better

transportation circuits, from waterways to railways to roadways, subway systems and

flight corridors (Hanson 1995). The high-density nodes prevalent in the nineteenth

century expanded out along streetcar and railway lines, creating corridors and nodes of

development with commercial activities concentrated at transportation axes and in

downtown areas. The development of the first low-density suburbs, the further

stratification of urban space along class lines, and the gradual decentralization of

commercial and industrial activities were all accelerated by the emergence of the private

automobile. By the mid twentieth century, the proliferation of highways supported rapid

urban and suburban expansion, particularly in North America where the automobile

industry had a profound influence on shaping the course of transportation planning,

urban development and patterns of consumption around the automobile and associated

industries (Freund 1993). From this autocentric perspective, maintaining and increasing

traffic circulation by improving the capacity and efficiency of roadways is the primary

goal of transportation planning. Issues of transportation accessibility and the ecological

impacts of automobility are seen as secondary or ignored entirely.

The political ecology of mobility I present in my dissertation is concerned with

understanding the relationships between transportation, urban form and the use of urban

nature, and explaining how this particular conflict over transportation and development

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was shaped by differing visions and narratives of the city, nature and sustainability. I

examine how particular visions and narratives achieved a hegemonic status and how

they were challenged by alternative views, in order to better understand how more

equitable and inclusive alternatives can be promoted. My analysis also directs attention

toward the multi-scalar networks and relationships involved in the (re)production of

urban environments, demonstrating that efforts to define and implement sustainable

transportation necessarily entail conflict over the relevant scales of authority and action.

The Social Production of Urban Space, Scale and Nature

As Peter Walker (2003) notes in his discussion of the application of political ecology to

First World contexts, it is important to consider how local conditions interact with

broader scale processes. Walker calls for regional political ecologies that situate

local-scale dynamics within larger regional and global contexts. I attempt to do this in

my dissertation, situating the social, ecological and political economic dynamics of the

expressway conflict within the larger context of regional and global change. In

particular, I touch upon the larger context of environmental politics within and beyond

the Greater Toronto Area, Canadas colonial past and present, and the political

economic and ideological currents of change associated with economic globalization.

Political ecology has always been attentive to the spatial dimensions of ecological

and socio-economic change, and the way that those spatial relationships are transformed

and utilized within political conflicts. Not surprisingly, the material and discursive

production of geographical scale has become a central thematic in analyses of the

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metabolic interactions and networked relationships that constitute urban environments.

While there has been a flourishing of academic interest in the social production of scale

in recent years, particularly within human geography, much of this work has focused on

the rescaling of social, political and economic relationships that has come to be

associated with globalization and, to a lesser extent, the ways that these rescaling

processes have been resisted and contested (Brenner et al. 2002; Herod and Wright

2002; McMaster and Sheppard 2004).

A central aspect of the politics of scale is the use of scalar narratives to influence

political outcomes by framing socio-spatial relations in particular ways, creating

political space (Magnusson 1996) for advancing particular visions of social, political,

economic and ecological relationships. Hegemonic narratives seek to frame conflicts

within and across particular spatial boundaries, limiting or opening up the boundaries of

political debate and action. Such research has fruitfully begun to explore how social,

political and economic relationships stretch across, jump between, and transform spatial

divisions and borders, as actors struggle to define and control the relevant scales of

organization and authority (Smith 1996; Swygedouw 1997; Brenner 1999; Marston

2000; Gough 2004). Until recently, little attention has been paid to the roles that

ecological processes, and symbolic representations of nature, play in the production of

geographical scale (Kurtz 2003; Swyngedouw 2004a, 2004b; Brown and Purcell 2005;

Rangan and Kull 2008).

Study of the socio-ecological relationships and networks that produce urban space

naturally focuses upon how these scalar configurations are utilized and transformed

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through struggles over the meaning and direction of urban development (Swyngedouw

and Heynen 2003; Desfor and Keil 2004; Oddie 2008). Such research is vital, both for

understanding the pivotal role that the transformation of urban nature plays in the social

and spatial conditions of cities, and for more effectively intervening in development

initiatives that are socially and environmentally damaging. As I hope to demonstrate,

attention to the politics of scale is particularly important for the study of the political

ecology of urban transportation and land development, which invariably involves

material transformations and symbolic representations of nature that stretch across

spatial scales and are continually altered by political struggle. Destructive forms of

urban transportation and development are sustained by cultural norms, governmental

regulations and socio-ecological relationships that become fixed and un-fixed through

political contestation. Challenging these norms, regulations and socio-ecological

relationships requires a politics that can expose the interests and ideologies that support

them and build persuasive alternatives without becoming trapped at a single scale of

analysis and action (Brown and Purcell 2005).

Research on the social production of scale, and urban political ecology more broadly,

draws upon geographical work on the social production of urban space. This work

invites us to understand space not simply as a physical container or background for

political struggle but rather as material and symbolic spaces whose meaning and value

are continued reproduced through social relations and practices (Gottdiener 1985; Soja

1989; Lefebvre 1991). In this way, spaces are understood as contested terrain, social

products that necessarily involve political contestation. Social relationships are

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understood, in turn, as inherently spatial that is to say, always articulated within and

through particular spaces and, increasingly, across geographical scales. As Edward Soja

(1989: 81) writes, commenting on the formative work of Henri Lefebvre, this socio-

spatial dialectic insists that social and spatial relations are dialectically inter-reactive,

interdependent; that social relations of production are both space-forming and space-

contingent.7

Subsequent work on the social production of space has examined the pivotal roles

that material organization and symbolic representation of city spaces play in the

contested processes of urbanization. Much of this research is grounded in a tradition of

urban political economy that emphasizes the relationships between the state, class and

capital accumulation but has incorporated new approaches to understanding the

connections between the material processes of urban life and the symbolic

representation of those processes through culture and discourse (Zukin 1991;

Beauregard 1993; Harvey 1996, 2000; Massey et al. 2000). These approaches draw

upon poststructuralist and feminist theories of difference that highlight the complexities

of social life and the ways that culture and language mediate our experience of the

world (Grosz 1995; Staeheli 1996; Rose 1996). This research has prompted a

7 Lefebvres work explored this dialectic in the context of urbanization, politics and capitalist

development, articulating a trialectic of socially producing urban space. Firstly, perceivedspace is constituted by the everyday practices and routines that are carried out in a given space.

These spatial practices reflect a societys mode of production (e.g. industrial production) and

tend to reproduce the social relations that support this mode of production. Secondly,

conceived space consists of abstract, totalizing representations of space that seek to fix the

meaning of the space in terms of pre-planned functions. Thirdly, lived space refers to theways that spaces are experienced, imagined and utilized by those who actively inhabit them,

often in ways that contradict or challenge dominant definitions of their purpose and value

(Lefebvre 1991).

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reconsideration of Marxist political economy that does not privilege relations of

production as the fundamental source of social conflict, but does examine overlapping

forms of oppression and identity formation, and does pay close attention to agency,

identity and strategies of resistance as well as political economic structures and

constraints (Tajbakhsh 2001). These theories resist the tendency to reduce urban

research and politics to a single dominant mode of explanation or ideology, encouraging

research that examines the interface between social identity and spatial practices in

urban analysis (Eade and Mele 2001).

Similarly, geographical research on the social production of nature invites us to

consider nature and environment as invariably and unavoidably experienced,

defined and understood through language, culture and diverse material practices. Nature

is understood as an amalgam of biophysical and social phenomena that is always

invested with changing cultural meanings and shaped by shifting political and economic

relationships (Smith 1984; Fitzsimmons 1989; Braun and Castree 1998; Escobar 1998;

Castree and Braun 2001; Castree 2005). Environmental knowledge of natural processes,

organisms and ecosystems is always mediated by historical and contingent processes of

social interaction and signification. In this sense, natural and social phenomena are

coproduced (Jasanoff 1990). According to Tim Forsyth, The concept of

coproduction does not imply there is no external reality or biophysical world that

exists beyond human experience. But it does meant that knowledge about such a

biophysical world cannot be separated from social influences, and particularly from

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a future where class, gender, race and interplace relations might be configured

along more just and equitable lines.

Environmental Imaginaries, Frames and Ideologies

One of the more useful concepts for examining the interface between the material and

the symbolic in the context of urban political ecology, and for countering the tendency

toward an overemphasis on symbolic and discursive politics, is the notion of

environmental imaginaries. This concept was introduced by Richard Peet and Michael

Watts (1996: 263) and based on the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1994). Peet and

Watts argue that each society carries what we refer to as an environmental imaginary,

a way of imagining nature, including visions of those forms of social and individual

practice which are ethically proper and morally right with regard to nature (1996:

263).9 They maintain that these normative, place-based visions of the relationship

between nature and humanity are developed and articulated through regional

discursive formations certain modes of thought, logics, themes, styles of expression,

and typical metaphors (ibid: 16) that highlight particular socio-ecological relationships

and actors, while excluding others. These discursive formations are grounded in

everyday practices and expressed through particular political-economic and institutional

spaces. Peet and Watts see this as reciprocal relationship between thought and nature.

That is to say that nature is socially constructed through language and culture but the

9 Edward Soja (2000: 324) offers a similar definition of urban imaginaries as mental or

cognitive mappings of urban reality and the interpretive grids through which we think about,experience, evaluate and decide to act in the places, spaces and communities in which we live.

However, there is here no recognition of the central role that nature plays in these mappings and

interpretations of urban space.

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social is also naturally constructed as natural organisms, processes and landscapes

invariably influence the way we think, reason and imagine.

Peet and Watts propose that political ecologists have much to gain from studying

the processes by which environmental imaginaries are formed, contested and practiced

in the course of specific trajectories of political-economic change (ibid: 263). Yet there

has been surprisingly little attention directed towards this research agenda, particularly

in an urban context (exceptions include Cowell and Thomas 2002; McGregor 2004;

Huber and Currie 2007). My dissertation research develops these ideas further by

exploring the urban environmental imaginaries through which particular transportation

and development practices come to be accepted as necessary or natural. Following

Peet and Watts, I present urban environmental imaginaries as normative visions of

socio-ecological relationships, represented in everyday discourse and familiar images of

urban nature and landscapes, that are shaped by changing cultural norms, political

economic conditions and struggles over the meaning and control of urban development.

This is particularly relevant to a political ecology of transportation and mobility, as an

aspect of urbanization and urban life that is dramatically shaped by political economic

changes, saturated with culturally mediated values and desires, and increasingly the

subject of intense political contestation. Urban environmental imaginaries constitute the

ideological terrain upon which these struggles occur and with which political actors

engage in the effort to promote the acceptance of alternative visions and practices.

This approach is based, in part, on recent work in cultural geography that explores

landscapes as the products of material and symbolic contestation (Mitchell 2000;

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Duncan and Duncan 2001; Walker and Fortmann 2003). These critical analyses of

landscapes, from wilderness areas to shopping malls, aim to reveal the historical

conditions of labour and social struggle involved in their construction, thereby

contextualizing places, practices and relationships that are represented as natural and

necessary. By understanding how and why a given landscape is defined, represented

and invested within meaning, and how and why particular people and particular

activities are sanctioned and others discouraged, one can gain a better grasp of how

hegemonic socio-ecological relationships are sustained and challenged by discursive

representations and material transformations of space.

In my research, I distinguish between environmental imaginaries, as normative

visions of urban nature, and the political framing efforts of social movements that are

combined to form overarching political storylines or narratives, arguing that political

narratives always develop and change in a reciprocal relationship with these more

widely accepted and often implicit place-based conceptions of nature and the city.

Narratives are modified through changes in the frames that are used to represent

particular issues, actors and events in the debate. Political frames, then, are strategic

representations of issues, actors and events within a political struggle, articulated and

re-articulated in the effort to clearly and persuasively foreground particular

interpretations (Goffman 1974; Snow and Benford 1988a, 1988b, 1992, 2000; Tarrow

1994). According to Snow and Benford (1988b: 137) a master frame is an interpretive

schemata that simplifies and condenses the world out there by selectively punctuating

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and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences and sequences of actions within

ones present or past environment.

In recent years, this concept of cultural framing within social movements has been

rightly criticized for assuming an instrumental or structural interpretation of cultural

politics that reduces the production and reception of movement identities and values to a

kind of strategic marketing, based on a rational choice view of political agency which

narrowly interprets cultural practices as individual strategic actions, abstracted from

the relational actions, networks and group processes in which they occur (Steinberg

2002: 210). Accordingly, there is little explanation of how and why movements develop

particular arguments and values, how and why these values change over time, and how

and why their efforts at meaning making are accepted or rejected by others through

political struggle and debate (Masson 1997; Olivier and Johnston 2000; Goodwin and

Jasper 2004).

As Dominique Masson (1997: 64) argues, theorists have to account for the

positionality of both the actor (the frame producer) and of the target audience (be it

supporters or state agencies) in social conflicts and in the more immediate context of

their interaction. In addition, to explain why certain frames are adopted, why they

resonate or not, succeed or not, or why they are produced at all, they should also

consider the hegemony of dominant ideologies, the prevalence of institutional

discourses (for example, the discourse of rights), as well as movements symbolic

constructions of a higher order such as movement identities (the logic of the name) or

ideologies. Along similar lines, Olivier and Johnston (2000) call for an approach that

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combines the analysis of frames with a revitalized conception of ideological analysis

that traces the historical development of core political concepts, values and norms

through the words, symbols and actions of social movements.

To frame an ideology as a frame is to say that the social psychological issues are

paramount. By contrast, to frame an ideology as an ideology is to call attention to the

ideas on their own terms, to the structure of beliefs about a society (its social theory),and to its ethical, moral and political content, to its values and norms. It is to

understand the origin and logic of those beliefs, and potentially to be prepared to

assess that belief system against ones own meaning system (Olivier and Johnston

2000: 13).

Ideology was long considered an indispensable tool for understanding society and

politics but has become an unfashionable concept over the last twenty years or so,

primarily due to poststructuralist critiques of the alleged limitations and essentialist

qualities of structuralist interpretations, particularly of the Marxist variety (Baudrillard

1988; Lyotard 1984; Laclau and Mouffe 1985). However, a number of theorists have

more recently attempted to revive and rehabilitate the concept of ideology,

incorporating some of these poststructural criticisms but demonstrating the continued

relevance and importance of the concept as an analytical tool (Eagleton 1991; Van Dijk

1995, 1998; Freeden 1996, 2003; Malesevic and MacKenzie 2002; Sunderlin 2002;

Talshir et al. 2006). Sinisa Malesevic (2002) persuasively argues that poststructuralism

reduces the concept of ideology to the structuralist Marxist notion of false

consciousness and fails to consider the contributions of other intellectual traditions.

Malesevic calls for a shift from structure-centered approaches to agency-centered

approaches that consider how and why individuals are motivated to believe in

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particular ideologies, and a related shift from the form of ideologies (what ideologies

do) to analysis of their content. To this end, he proposes an analytical framework that

examines 1) the conceptualization of cultural values and economic and political

relationships; 2) representations of social actors; 3) the use of language and images

within ideological texts; and 4) the representation of counter-ideologies. Finally,

Malesevic (ibid: 106) emphasizes the importance of the distinction between normative

and operative ideology or ideology as officially represented by its proponents and

ideology as it functions and operates in the circumstance of daily routine.

In my dissertation research, I apply this general framework to the political ecology of

transportation and development, emphasizing the importance of representations of

urban nature and socio-ecological relationships. The concept of urban environmental

imaginaries is used to identify normative visions of the relationship between

urbanization and nature that are formed and reformed in a reciprocal relationship with

the political narratives of social movements, providing a discursive field that shapes

the limits of political discourse and is shaped in turn by political narratives that support

or challenge these widely accepted visions of urbanization and nature. In place of a

discourse analysis that understands political contestation exclusively in terms of the

struggle for hegemony between competing narratives, I aim to show how the political

framing efforts of actors in the Red Hill Creek Expressway debate were shaped by

larger systems of meaning that changed over time in response to changing political

economic conditions, cultural norms and competing ideological narratives related to

mobility, progress and development.

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This is an attempt to offer what Marc Steinberg (2002: 211) describes as a dialogic

analysis of social movements, viewing frames, ideologies and movements themselves

as relations between people in communication, ranging from speech to text to images

and symbols. Drawing upon the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin (1986) and Antonio

Gramsci (1971), Steinberg argues that political contestation always occurs within a

discursive field that is constrained by dominant political narratives and widely

accepted cultural norms. Political contestation is not simply a matter of competition

between self-contained hegemonic and counter-hegemonic frames or ideologies but

rather an interaction between different narratives and visions in which domination can

never be total, as the successful appropriation and reworking of discourse in one

context contains the potential for resurgent hegemonic meanings in another (Steinberg

2002: 213). This is illustrated in my research by examination of the different ways in

which the language of sustainability, development and democracy has been

appropriated, altered and re-appropriated over the course of this particular conflict.

Research Methodology

My research relied upon three methodological approaches: discursive analysis of

relevant texts and images; discursive and ideological analysis of twenty-eight semi-

structured interviews; and participant observation. Firstly, I looked at a wide variety of

publications, press releases, websites, media reports, maps, artwork, videos and other

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visual representations produced by prominent actors in the expressway debate,

including the City of Hamilton, the Hamilton Spectator, View Magazine, the Hamilton

Independent Media Centre, Friends of Red Hill Valley, Showstoppers, the Hamilton

Chamber of Commerce, the Get Hamilton Moving Task Force, Hamilton-Halton

Homebuilders, Hamilton Action for Social Change, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy

and the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force. Drawing primarily on the tools of

critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2001; van Dijk 2001) and the analytical

framework outlined above, I examined how these texts and images were used to frame

arguments related to the expressway project and paid particular attention to normative

representations of particular places, issues and actors. I consulted local history books

and relevant data on opinion polls; campaign contributions in recent municipal

elections; local development charges and recent urban boundary expansions;

demographic shifts, levels of employment and types of industries in different sections of

the city; and assessments of local air, soil and water pollution during the last thirty

years.

I also conducted twenty-eight semi-structured interviews with prominent individuals

involved in the expressway conflict, including real-estate developers, politicians,

planners and various social activists.10 My interview questions were open-ended to

allow interviewees to speak at length about their interpretation and/or their

organizations interpretation of the expressway conflict and related debates. I would

10

Please see Appendix A and B for consent form and sample interview questions.

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pose additional questions to probe for information regarding the history and geography

of this conflict and in order to solicit responses to the arguments raised by opposing

groups. All interviews were digitally recorded and subject to the ideological analysis

outlined above. This process involved transcribing each interview and then reading

carefully a number of times, noting recurring words, phrases and themes. These words,

phrases and themes were then summarized and seemingly related concepts were

visually mapped out to create a visual network of associated discursive themes and

ideological concepts from each interview. I then compared all the interviews in order to

identified themes and concepts that were shared, grouping interviews together based on

these commonalities.

On the basis of these interviews and my analysis of various publications, I created an

outline of four basic political narratives, noting the interpretative frames that they

utilized at different points in time and the ideological content of those narratives. They

can be summarized as follows.

1) Growth and Progress Narrative: Relying upon the master frames of urban

growth, which presents economic and population growth as universally

beneficial; freedom and prosperity, which valorizes individual mobility,

wealth, safety and security; and representative democracy, which presents

democratic citizenship as primarily involving the election of governmental

representatives and optional engagement in consultation processes.

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2) Conservation Narrative: Relying upon the master frames of urban

conservation, suggesting an approach to economic development and societal

progress that protects significant ecological areas and transitions towards

industries, urban forms and transportation modes that reduce ecological damage;

health and urban nature, emphasizing the importance of nature for human and

non-human health on a citywide scale, access to natural areas, more compact

urban development, and the reduction of air and water pollution; and

participatory democracy, presenting democratic citizenship as primarily

involving active engagement in municipal politics and decision-making

processes.

3) Public Ecology narrative: Relying upon the master frames of urban ecology,

which conceptualizes urbanization in terms of interconnections between

ecological health, socio-spatial justice and economic development, and

advocates forms of development that address these problems simultaneously;

environmental justice, which highlights the unequal social and spatial

distribution of healthy and unhealthy environments; and ecological

citizenship, emphasizing the importance of public engagement in the

monitoring and improvement of urban environments.

4) Colonialism narrative: Relying upon the master frames of imperialism,

highlighting the historical and contemporary oppression and displacement of

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Aboriginal people; environmental justice, as outlined above, but with

particular emphasis on environmental racism; environmental reciprocity,

emphasizing indigenous ties to the land, responsibility for future generations and

the earth as a living organism; and Aboriginal sovereignty, highlighting

indigenous ownership and control of the land and the recognition of treaty

rights.

These narratives and frames, and the ways in which they change over the course of the

conflict, are explained in more detail within subsequent chapters.

On the basis of my interviews and my historical research, I also identified the basic

features of two dominant imaginaries of urban nature, one tied to Hamiltons unique

physical geography and history of industrial manufacturing during the 19 th and 20th

centuries, and another emergent imaginary of urban sustainability shaped by the

decline of manufacturing and the intensification of political debate over the future

course of urban development and transportation over the past three decades, as

exemplified by the Red Hill Creek Expressway conflict. The industrial imaginary is

outlined in Chapter 2 and expanded upon throughout the text, alongside the gradual

emergence of the urban sustainability imaginary. These normative visions of nature

were expressed through representations of the valley, variously described as a wasteland

and garbage dump; an urban wilderness and ecological oasis; a sacred burial ground;

and a symbol of successful or potential ecological modernization, and the expressway,

various represented as an economic catalyst; an ecological disaster; an instance of

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environmental injustice; and an award-winning example of ecological restoration and

green infrastructure.

Finally, I relied on participant observation as a life-long citizen of Hamilton and as a

community activist who has worked with a number of local groups including

Environment Hamilton, Citizens at City Hall, the Hamilton chapter of the Council of

Canadians, and the Peoples Agenda. Between 1999 and 2004, I participated in some of

the later attempts to halt completion of the expressway, including various letter-writing

campaigns, public protests and the picketing of construction in the valley, and draw

upon these experiences in Chapters 6 and 7.

Chapter Overview

Chapter One has provided an overview of theoretical work that I am drawing upon and

responding to, and has outlined the methodology I used in my research. Chapter Two,

Water, Stone and Steel: Hamiltons Socio-Ecological Roots, provides a history of

Hamilton that explores the relationships between social, ecological and political

economic change, showing how material transformations and symbolic representations

of nature played a pivotal role in urban form, planning and governance. Here, I

introduce the industrial imaginary as a vision of urban nature that emphasizes the

productive transformation of nature in the name of progress. I also discuss

infrastructure as a symbol of this progress, in the context of a functionalist conception

of urban metabolism in which urban space and nature can be neatly compartmentalized

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and the socio-ecological costs of development 'externalized', conceptually and

materially.

Chapter Three, Accelerating Development and Resistance: Contested Landscapes

and Political Narratives, introduces the expressway project in the context of

modernization, automobility and associated infrastructure, linked to suburbanization

and the Keynesian welfare state. I discuss the emergence of a pro-growth urban regime

focused on suburban expansion, roadways and manufacturing, and outline the "growth

and progress" narrative articulated by these interests. Finally, I outline the

"conservationist" counter-narrative articulated by local environmental groups during the

1970s and 1980s.

Chapter 4, Re-Envisioning Urban Development? Globalization, Ecological

Modernization and Vision 2020, discusses the emergence of the globally influential

discourse of ecological modernization, in the context of economic globalization and the

gradual decline of Hamiltons manufacturing sector. I discuss significant shifts in the

dominant narratives articulated through the expressway debate, first through a

controversial environmental impact assessment process, and then in relation to

Hamiltons Vision 2020 urban sustainability plan and the subsequent cancellation of

provincial funding for the expressway under the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Chapter 5, Urban Sustainability, Neoliberalism and Public Ecology, examines the

impacts of neoliberalization on urban politics and policy in Ontario following the defeat

of the NDP by the Progressive Conservative party, and the subsequent changes in pro-

expressway strategies. I examine the rise of new strategies of resistance to the

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expressway, including emphasis on municipal finances, ecological citizenship and

coalition-building, alongside the intensification of pro-expressway activism galvanized

by the attempt to subject the expressway project to a federal environmental assessment.

These new approaches are analyzed in terms of the greening of the dominant narrative

of growth and progress and the emergence of a narrative of public ecology that

emphasizes environmental justice and the democratization of control over urban

development.

Chapter 6, Contesting Development, Democracy and Aboriginal Rights in the Red

Hill Valley, briefly discusses the emergence of a vision of greenfield development

beyond the city limits, based around the expansion of transportation infrastructure,

before turning to a series of confrontations in the Red Hill Valley that involves various

forms of direct action, including an Aboriginal land occupation. In this chapter, I

discuss the interaction between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists, placing the

expressway conflict in the larger spatial and temporal context of colonialism.

Chapter 7, Beyond Red Hill Valley: Greening Development and Democratizing

Ecology, presents the expressway as an example of neo-Fordist ecological

modernization, examines the ideological dimensions of this conception of urban

development, and discusses the ongoing debate surrounding the expansion of the

Hamilton International Airport as an extension of the expressway debate. I then outline

new forms of environmental activism that have emerged in the wake of this conflict,

including the Six Nations uprising in the nearby town of Caledonia. Drawing upon my

interviews with Aboriginal activists, I provide a constructive critique of the public

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ecology narrative in order to suggest ways that this vision of environmental justice and

democratization can be deepened and expanded beyond the conceptual limits of the city,

the Canadian state, and liberal notions of democratic citizenship. Finally, I provide a

summary of the findings and contributions of my dissertation, and point to some

directions for future research and action.

Red Hill Dissertation: Chapter 1

Documents

Transcript of Red Hill Dissertation: Chapter 1