Understanding barriers to green infrastructure policy and stormwater management in the City of Toronto: a shift from grey to green or policy layering and conversion?

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a study of policy implementation of green infrastructure and stormwater management in the City of Toronto – Canada’s largest city. The analysis uses key informant interviews with public, private and non-profit sector actors to examine the challenges municipalities face in implementing green infrastructure policies. The article begins with a review of the literature related to green infrastructure policy implementation followed by the theoretical and methodological approach used in the paper. Findings are then presented outlining the significant barriers to green infrastructure and insights from participants who articulated that rather than a shift from grey to green, what is evident in terms of policy change is policy layering and very gradual conversion of well-established policies that support grey infrastructure. The paper concludes with a discussion of why the shift from grey to green will continue to be challenging unless significant policy and institutional changes are advanced.

Keywords:

• green infrastructure
• water
• policy
• policy change
• policy instruments
• implementation barriers
• policy layering and conversion

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Faisal Shaheen, the research assistant who collected some of the secondary sources for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interests was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Primary data collected from interviews and the anonymity and confidentiality of participants and responses is covered under an approved research protocol from Ryerson Research Ethics Board. A snowball sampling technique starting with a small sample of government officials was used to identify key informants on green infrastructure in the City of Toronto. In total eight government officials, three representatives from non-government organizations and four representatives from the private sector were interviewed.

2 See Ryerson Center for Urban Research 2017, Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area Government Owned Public Lands Inventory Web Map https://www.ryerson.ca/cur/Research/governmentpubliclandswebmap/

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded in part by a research grant from the Ryerson Center for Urban Research.