| This thesis is an exploration of the processes that have contributed to the exurbanization of El Dorado County, California, and the effects of those processes on local planning politics. Building on interviews, planning documents, content analysis of real estate advertising, and Geographic Information Systems, the author employs a political ecological approach for understanding exurbanization, its effects on the politics of landscape, and the potential for a "post-exurban" future for El Dorado County. Exurbanization, discussed as a material and cultural/symbolic landscape, is shown to have been motivated and enabled by a combination of cultural, political, economic and demographic factors, compounded by a lack of regulatory power for local planners, with the result that a "rural" county witnessed tremendous population growth and subdivision throughout the 1970s and 1980s. As this growth became more suburban in density and character, intense struggles developed over the future of the county's landscapes, with particular narratives and strategies employed by those resisting further growth. Ultimately, both pro-growth and anti-growth groups contributed to a continuing demobilization of local planning structures. |
