Ottawa’s Urban Growth Machine

In 1961, just around the time Jane Jacobs was writing her influential book on the death and life of the great American city, Yale Professor Robert Dahl was writing a book on urban governance. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. A case study of political power and representation in New Haven, Connecticut, Dahl book looked systematically at political power, economic influence to evaluate who governs the city of New Haven, and how urban governance can be understood.

The simple question of who governs remains pertinent today as we evaluate the tools and policies of urban planning. How for example are land use decisions made? How does the process of comprehensive planning integrate different goals and motivations? How are stakeholders given a stake in decision-making? What are the limits to this decision-making process?

The Urban Growth Machine (UGM) thesis, which developed from these early interventions, maintains that coalitions of land-based elites drive urban politics to expand the local economy and the accumulation of wealth. According to this analysis the rentier-class ensures support for the project of continued growth by creating community solidarity on the collective benefit of growth and expansion. Land-based interest and the day-to-day actions of urban elites figures prominently in UGM provides an agency-centered understanding of the power relations and resources underpinning the formation and development of urban places and systems.

Recent debates over the expansion of Ottawa’s urban boundary is symptomatic of the formation of coalitions around urban growth. As the City of Ottawa renews and updates its official plan, local developers and lawyers are lobbying to have the boundary expanded so that their lands can be developed for residential use. In their lobbying efforts they have attempted to include in their analysis the cost of housing, arguing that is the urban boundary is not expanded, then home ownership would become unaffordable to many residents. Of course, as the UGM thesis suggests, this is all about creating coalitions, but the real goal of the development industry is to ensure adequate lands for continued greenfield development.

Why is this so important? Planning decisions around sewage, roads, transit, parks, creation of commercial districts, former industrial spaces can dramatically increase the value of land. Most of the profit for land developers is captured in the rezoning, subdividing and servicing of raw land. The extension of water and sewer into smaller lots multiplies the value of the original parcel. Almost all of the developers profit comes in the planning phase and municipal politicians create wealth through land use planning, servicing and subdivision: either on green field sites, or by rezoning current sites to allow for higher building height or density. In fact, profits earned in the planning approval processes are much higher than in the actual construction of homes and high-rise units

However local community and environmental groups have argued that such an approach will only perpetuate unsound planning decisions of the past and continue to worsen the problems of sprawl, pollution, and traffic. Not only have they promoted a more dense and environmentally sound (day we say “smart”) planning approach, but, Ecology Ottawa, a local group battling sprawl and promoting sustainability, has demonstrated to what extent the UGM is at play by highlighting the relationship between developers and zoning decisions. In discussing a revealing report looking at the contributions of developers to local councilors, Ecology Ottawa spokesperson argues the following:

“It seems large developers and their interests are being put first—ahead of the broader public interest—in key decisions about how our city will grow. What is most revealing about this report, however, is how widespread the acceptance of political contributions from these influential vested interests is.”

All of this debate shows how the UGR theory, as an agency centered theory, takes into the struggles over local hegemony and counter-coalitions organized around environmental and redistributive concerns. At times, these interests will contend and sometimes over-power the urban growth machine. In short, UGR explains a politics of locality based the rearrangement of local interests into coalitions where various interests compete and co-operate depending on the development and economic initiative.