| This dissertation is a comparative urban sociology of the popularization of sustainable urban housing development in Chicago, IL and Vancouver, BC from the years 1994-2008. This qualitative research project, part content analysis and part ethnography, aims to describe and analyze the common types of sustainable urban housing developments as well how people produce, consume, conceive, perceive, live and inhabit that sustainability. This study asks two main research questions: (1) How do print media discourses about sustainability and sustainable housing differ in two cities, popularly recognized as "green," in countries with similar economies but differing levels of state intervention into the economy? (2) How do actors involved with sustainable housing conceptualize sustainability and related government housing policy issues they encounter? This research argues for better understanding of the processes that create sustainable, long-term, necessary, socially just changes in urban housing, how development practices are implemented at the local level, and how discourse structures, two cities "do" sustainable urban housing development. |
