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Abstract
This article delineates concepts of eco-modernisation and urban sustainability (including its associated discourses), elucidating Foucault's notion of governmentality and examining select moments of contested urban governance in the neighbourhood of Old Ottawa South, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It shows how intensification – a “compact city approach” to urban sustainability – as both policy and practice, serves to both discipline and regulate by “conducting the conduct” of environmental and entrepreneurial subjects. It reveals that zoning has more explicitly become a political technology (albeit a flexible one) for achieving “highest and best use” of private property, privileging intensification projects proposed by developers, through a hierarchical exercise of state power that privileges market processes, while undermining community values and priorities.
Notes
In general, urban intensification refers to increased densities of residents and/or buildings within the so-called built-up urban areas, although it can also refer to increased economic activity in a particular area and has been connected to processes of gentrification (Campsie Citation1995, Bunce Citation2004, Dale and Newman Citation2009).
The City of Ottawa (Citation2007a) defines brownfields as “abandoned, vacant, or underutilized commercial and industrial properties where past actions have resulted in actual or perceived environmental contamination and/or derelict or deteriorated buildings” (p. 3).
According to City of Ottawa (Citation2006), a main street is “traditional” if the community through which it runs was developed primarily prior to 1945. These streets tend to have small-scale mixed-use buildings set close to the street, resulting in “a lively mix of uses and a pedestrian-friendly environment” (City of Ottawa Citation2006, p. 1).