Intensifying inequality in the 'sustainable city': A political ecology of 'smart growth' in an era of neoliberal urban governance in the City of Ottawa, Canada

In recent years, municipal governance in Canada has undergone dramatic transformation. In an era of intense political economic restructuring and reform at different spatial scales, the rolling back of national state regulation, the retrenchment of public finance, the devolution of senior government responsibilities to local municipalities and the triumph of a 'growth first' neoliberal ideology (Peck and Tickell 2002) have produced a discernable shift towards more entrepreneurial and competitive styles of urban governance through which municipal governments, in concert with real estate developers, business leaders and other actors, have sought to mobilize city space to attract new capital investment and labour in a bid to strengthen (and sustain) urban economic competitiveness and secure long-term growth.;Using the City of Ottawa, Canada as a case study, this thesis explores recent smart growth-inspired policy reform experimentation premised on curbing low density suburban expansion – or 'sprawl' – and promoting more 'environmentally-sensitive' and 'sustainable' land use planning and development practices through a combination of regional growth management and urban intensification strategies. It situates the development of the City's of Ottawa's new 'smart growth' urban environmental policy and planning framework in the context of on-going political economic transformations at multiple scales and explores the implications of the City's urban intensification strategy for housing affordability in Ottawa's downtown core, where market-driven high-density condominium development has been most intensely targeted.;The neoliberalization of urban governance and policy regimes, however, comes at a time when municipalities are also facing growing public demands to protect and preserve local and regional environments, and the global biosphere, from the kind of predatory 'growth first' development agenda driving the current era of municipal policymaking. Though the rise of neoliberal urban governance regimes appears to be at odds with contemporary ideas of urban environmental 'sustainability', this thesis draws on, and seeks to contribute to, a growing body of scholarship in urban political ecology that documents the ways in which ideas of 'environment' and sustainability' and are becoming actively (though selectively) incorporated into the everyday politics, policies and development practices of contemporary neoliberal urbanization through a discourse of ecological modernization.