Ted Rutland

The Work of Policy: Actor Networks, Governmentality, and Local Action on Climate Change in Portland, Oregon

To develop and implement public policy requires work. In this paper, we examine some of the work involved in a pathbreaking climate change policy adopted in Portland, Oregon. Seeking to address shortcomings in existing studies of local environmental governance, we focus particular attention on how climate change became a political priority in Portland, how a particular representation of local carbon dioxide emissions was developed in the process of public consultations, and how the local state attempted to achieve its adopted policy objectives by enlisting the self-governing capacities of its residents. To carry out such an analysis, we draw on both actor-network theory (ANT) and governmentality. The first approach offers an understanding of how collective priorities emerge as different actants learn how to move toward their goals by working together, and also suggests how subjects and objects are reshaped by their enrolment in such configurations. The second approach offers a more precise understanding of how the state attempts to achieve its objectives—once they are established—by conducting the conduct of its citizens. Brought together, we argue, ANT and governmentality provide an incisive approach to questions of local environmental governance, and to broader political concerns as well. As each approach addresses well-cited shortcomings of the other, the combined approach developed in this paper could be deployed in many studies that examine the emergence of political priorities and the capacity to achieve them.

The Growing Localness of the Canadian City, or, On the Continued (Ir)relevance of Economic Base Theory

The past 50 years have brought massive changes in the patterns of economic activity around the world. Not only has global trade increased, but, precisely because of this, many scholars suggest that local (and regional) networks of production and exchange have become more prevalent and important. The nature of local economic development has, as a result, changed quite substantially. And yet theoretical approaches to it largely have not. Fifty years after Douglass North introduced economic base theory - asserting that economies grow only through increased exports - it remains the familiar refrain, if not the basis, of local economic development theory. We think it is about time to reassess the merits of base theory as an approach to, and explanation of, local economic development. Accordingly, in this article, we review briefly Norths argument for base theory and the debate it stirred up early on. Then we present two evaluations of its current relevance. The first is theoretical: we consider whether changes in the patterns of economic activity in the global north, including the emergence of local/regional networks of production and exchange and the growth of consumer services, have made it possible to achieve economic growth without increasing exports. The second is empirical: using the minimum requirements method, we examine whether the economies of Canadas cities have become more locally oriented and, if so, whether they have grown. Both evaluations indicate that economic development is indeed possible through increased local activity (although exports remain important). We conclude that it is time to consider more nuanced models of local economic development that accommodate the multiple ways in which development can be achieved.

Enjoyable life: : Planning, amenity and the contested terrain of urban biopolitics

This article explores the connections between urban planning and a particular form of biopolitics. These connections are investigated by looking at the emergence of “enjoyment” as a planning concern in late 1960s Halifax, Nova Scotia. This new concern, the article suggests, emerged as a result of a political struggle involving activist groups, a newly formed state agency, and elements of the post-World War II political establishment. Wedded to this concern were two essential planning policies: the promotion of “amenity” (especially in the downtown) and the introduction of structured “citizen involvement” in planning decisions. Together, these two policies inaugurated a new form of planning and biopolitics. The promotion of amenity aimed to create a more enjoyable life through the alteration of prevailing conditions of life, while citizen involvement routed planning decisions – including the precise meaning of amenity – through “liberal” practices of government. Most importantly, the new policies were shaped by the enactment of normative divisions within the population, a characteristically biopolitical effect. The result of these divisions was a highly unequal process of citizen involvement and a correspondingly uneven terrain of enjoyment: a terrain whose development and use would provide enjoyment for “normative” populations, while leaving “pathological” populations unaffected or worse.

“The city is an apartment house”: property, improvement and dispossession in early twentieth-century Halifax, Nova Scotia

In early twentieth-century Halifax, municipal policies of property taxation and assessment became an important object of political discussion and contestation. Central to these political contests was a particular, theoretically informed distinction between “land” and “improvements.” This distinction would ultimately ground a set of changes in municipal taxation and assessment (introduced between 1914 and 1918) and would help to constitute a new and consequential logic of state action within property relations. Drawing on the literature on property “enactment,” this article examines how early twentieth-century struggles over municipal taxation and assessment reshaped the prevailing understanding of real property in the city of Halifax. Consistent with existing research, I demonstrate how a new perspective on property—including a new distinction between land and improvements—gradually came into being through a series of performances, practices and material devices. Embedded within this new perspective, crucially, was a specific logic of dispossession, a new and calculative rationale for the expropriation and redevelopment of the city’s “underimproved” land. While the literature on property enactment has quite often investigated practices of dispossession, I point out that its analysis of dispossession’s logic or rationale has tended to be confined to a single property theorist, John Locke, and his justifiably famous distinction between land and improvements. Emphasizing the rather different, post-Lockean conception of property that emerged in early twentieth-century Halifax, I suggest that more attention ought to be paid to the multiple and varying logics of dispossession that are liable to be contained within prevailing property enactments.

The spaces that anti-blackness makes

O ne of the most important developments for critical urban studies in recent years has been the emergence of a rejuvenated Black geography. Exemplified by publications like McKittrick and Woods’ (2007) edited collection, Black Geographies, this project draws upon the work of scholars both within and outside the discipline of geography and delivers similarly discipline-traversing insights. Its central aim is not simply to document the lives and spaces of Black communities—an older, though still relevant, endeavor. At its best, this project also seeks to explain how blackness, as a socially constituted but nevertheless real condition of existence (Gilmore 2002, 22), is connected to broader, spatialized systems of power. It asks, in effect, how

Re-remembering Africville

T he story of Africville—already the subject of a book, two video documentaries and scores of articles—needed to be told again. The basic details are straightforward enough. Africville was a longstanding African Nova Scotian community on the outskirts of Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the 1960s, for reasons that remain subject to debate, the city designated the area a slum and moved to redevelop it. Despite opposition from Africville residents, the city expropriated Africville property, sent bulldozers to smash down its homes, businesses and church, and scattered its one-time residents into city-run public housing projects (in some cases) and into short-term and more far-flung accommodations (in other cases). The action was often described by city leaders at the time as a benevolent, anti-segregationist move—albeit one taken in direct opposition to the desires of Africville residents. ‘It is going to take some courage for the aldermen to move persons who do not want to be moved’, one Halifax newspaper wrote in 1962, ‘even when it will surely be for their own good’ (cited by Nelson, p. 75). Today, after decades of struggle on the part of displaced Africville residents and their allies, the predominant story has changed somewhat. In this version, harm was in fact committed by city leaders. Africville residents should not have been forced to leave their homes. And yet, something of the original story remains. Whatever the outcome, those involved with the decision were nevertheless well-intentioned. They were guided by the ideas of their time. The razing of Africville was an injustice, but it was a mistake committed in the past. Nothing like that would happen today. I have lived in Halifax for much of the last seven years and have heard this story many times. As a white person, and thus a material beneficiary of white racism’s past and present, there is something both comforting and alienating about this story. Contained rigidly in the past, the injustice of the Africville displacement need not concern me; it demands nothing of anyone now living. Indeed, to the extent that the displacement is explained as a mistake, it demands very little of those who were actually involved in carrying it out. As Jennifer Nelson points out in Razing Africville, the assumptions of historical distance (‘it happened in the past’) and good intentions (‘it was a mistake’) permits ‘both a lack of accountability and the construction of innocence in positing that we now have learned our lesson and next time would do it right’ (p. 132). What is much less comforting than this mistake-in-the-past story is the glaring persistence of racism, and its entanglement with municipal government, in Halifax today. (Halifax is not unique in this regard, of course.) In addition to various everyday forms of racism, several city-sanctioned examples could be cited: from police-force