Maintaining affordable housing in Canadian cities remains a challenge for municipal governments. With few political and financial resources, local governments often turn to zoning bylaws to protect affordable housing opportunities. This research focuses on the development and implementation of inclusionary zoning programs in Toronto and Vancouver. In order to understand the value of these policies, this research asks how planners implemented inclusionary zoning and with what outcomes. Interviews with key actors in the public and private sector form the basis of an account that details the implementation of affordable housing requirements negotiated at two new-build gentrification sites in Toronto and Vancouver. The findings from this research show mixed results and highlight the barriers to the successful implementation of inclusionary zoning. While capable of securing subsidized units in gentrifying neighbourhoods, the poor results of these policies demonstrates the difficulty of managing gentrification unleashed by the state.

In November 2007 the right of centre Saskatchewan Party defeated Saskatchewan’s social democratic party, which had been in government for seventeen years. Unlike previous defeats, the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) loss in 2007 clearly showed that a new intra-urban political polarization in Saskatoon and Regina had emerged with the outer suburbs abandoning the NDP and the core areas maintaining previous levels of support. This study employs correlation analysis and logistic and linear regression analysis, using survey data from the 2003 and 2007 general election campaigns from Saskatchewan. Urban zones are constructed based on the morphological (urban form) hypothesis in order to create categories for spatial analysis. The different types of urban places are analyzed incorporating survey and Statscan data. Statistically significant differences between the urban zones are discussed in light of possible mechanisms found in the literature in order to explain recent political turns in Saskatchewan.

Maintaining affordable housing in Canadian cities remains a challenge for municipal governments. With few political and financial resources, local governments often turn to zoning bylaws to protect affordable housing opportunities. This research focuses on the development and implementation of inclusionary zoning programs in Toronto and Vancouver. In order to understand the value of these policies, this research asks how planners implemented inclusionary zoning and with what outcomes. Interviews with key actors in the public and private sector form the basis of an account that details the implementation of affordable housing requirements negotiated at two new-build gentrification sites in Toronto and Vancouver. The findings from this research show mixed results and highlight the barriers to the successful implementation of inclusionary zoning. While capable of securing subsidized units in gentrifying neighbourhoods, the poor results of these policies demonstrates the difficulty of managing gentrification unleashed by the state.

In November 2007 the right of centre Saskatchewan Party defeated Saskatchewan’s social democratic party, which had been in government for seventeen years. Unlike previous defeats, the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) loss in 2007 clearly showed that a new intra-urban political polarization in Saskatoon and Regina had emerged with the outer suburbs abandoning the NDP and the core areas maintaining previous levels of support. This study employs correlation analysis and logistic and linear regression analysis, using survey data from the 2003 and 2007 general election campaigns from Saskatchewan. Urban zones are constructed based on the morphological (urban form) hypothesis in order to create categories for spatial analysis. The different types of urban places are analyzed incorporating survey and Statscan data. Statistically significant differences between the urban zones are discussed in light of possible mechanisms found in the literature in order to explain recent political turns in Saskatchewan.

Despite the ‘cultural turn’ in economic geography, the discipline has yet to conclusively describe the processes through which culture influences actors’ daily economic and social practices. Without a better understanding of the role of culture, it is difficult to explain the emergence and influence of the heterogeneous landscapes of regional business culture we readily observe. This problem is particularly acute in the study of entrepreneurial environments, where regional culture is theorized to play an important role in the local entrepreneurship process. This dissertation proposes an alternative approach to culture which draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to reveal the underlying social processes connecting culture with entrepreneurial action. Through qualitative case studies of software entrepreneurs in three Canadian cities — Kitchener- Waterloo, Ontario; Ottawa, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta — this dissertation examines the emergence and evolution of regional cultures and how they have helped to create distinct contexts which encourage unique forms of entrepreneurial practices, outlooks and strategies. This new perspective allows for a more detailed and dynamic analysis of regional cultures and provides new tools for researchers and policy makers to understand the role of cultures within regional economic development.

This dissertation analyzes tensions between Indigenous and Canadian authority over land and governance through a critical inquiry into jurisdiction. I examine jurisdiction in the context of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake’s territory, located about three hours north of Ottawa in the northernmost boreal region of Quebec. To undertake this study of overlapping jurisdiction, I analyze the struggle over resource management across the past thirty years on the territory and their struggle against the federal land claims policy. I map the ways in which space is differentiated under competing legal orders, where on the one hand, jurisdiction is produced by the sovereign territorial state through operations of economic and political calculation, and on the other, by the Algonquin nation through a kinship nexus of allocated hunting and trapping grounds, and by the daily caretaking practices associated with Anishnabe life on the territory. I raise questions as to how simultaneous operations of law may take place in a single area, across distinctive epistemological and ontological frameworks, and how jurisdictions are produced in this context. My dissertation examines how the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have contested the socio-spatial production of state sovereignty claims through the exercise of jurisdiction over their lands. My focus on jurisdiction in this dissertation turns our attention to the practices of settler colonial sovereignty in Canada, and especially to the role Indigenous law plays in resisting intervention on their lands. I examine the role Indigenous law plays in shaping the political economy of this country, seeking to identify whether a “distinct form of accumulation” emerges in the dialectic of settler colonialism and Canada’s staple state economy. The interpretive framework of jurisdiction allows us to examine the overlapping authority claims between Indigenous, state, regional, and private interests, and to parse out the ways in which these jurisdictional claims produce different kinds of political space.

This dissertation analyzes tensions between Indigenous and Canadian authority over land and governance through a critical inquiry into jurisdiction. I examine jurisdiction in the context of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake’s territory, located about three hours north of Ottawa in the northernmost boreal region of Quebec. To undertake this study of overlapping jurisdiction, I analyze the struggle over resource management across the past thirty years on the territory and their struggle against the federal land claims policy. I map the ways in which space is differentiated under competing legal orders, where on the one hand, jurisdiction is produced by the sovereign territorial state through operations of economic and political calculation, and on the other, by the Algonquin nation through a kinship nexus of allocated hunting and trapping grounds, and by the daily caretaking practices associated with Anishnabe life on the territory. I raise questions as to how simultaneous operations of law may take place in a single area, across distinctive epistemological and ontological frameworks, and how jurisdictions are produced in this context. My dissertation examines how the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have contested the socio-spatial production of state sovereignty claims through the exercise of jurisdiction over their lands. My focus on jurisdiction in this dissertation turns our attention to the practices of settler colonial sovereignty in Canada, and especially to the role Indigenous law plays in resisting intervention on their lands. I examine the role Indigenous law plays in shaping the political economy of this country, seeking to identify whether a “distinct form of accumulation” emerges in the dialectic of settler colonialism and Canada’s staple state economy. The interpretive framework of jurisdiction allows us to examine the overlapping authority claims between Indigenous, state, regional, and private interests, and to parse out the ways in which these jurisdictional claims produce different kinds of political space.

Local diversity is often credited with being a driver of creative economic activity. Comparative research on this topic is often however highly structural in nature and does little to address questions of agency. This work seeks to link the traditional regional science approach to questions of potential advantages of local diversity with a more bottom-up view of the creative process. From a theoretical perspective this involves incorporating the social psychology literature on the creative process as well as concepts from social network analysis with more aggregated spatial notions of creativity and diversity. More specifically, it addresses how different knowledge is connected through social interaction and how this fuels the creation of new ideas and ultimately creative economic activity. A number of empirical innovations are made in order to test these theoretical constructs beginning with an agent-model/simulation which illuminates how social networks form and evolve over space and time. These artificial networks suggest how agents embedded in diverse local contexts have a creative advantage by possessing greater access to a variety of knowledge. Subsequent statistical analysis of large secondary datasets seeks to provide external validity to the agent-model. The first demonstrates a strong relationship between local diversity and the concentration of creative economic activities across 140 Canadian city-regions. A key implication of this finding is that local diversity is more closely associated with certain types of economic activity, rather than overall economic performance. The second statistical analysis uses the Canadian General Social Survey to compare the social network characteristics of individuals. This analysis shows that people engaged in creative industries and occupations tend to have larger, more dynamic, and more diverse sets of social relations than any other category of worker. The dissertation concludes with a model that suggests policy interventions should focus on developing local environments that provide the necessary conditions in which creative activity can thrive, rather than attempting to intervene directly in the creative process itself.

The majority of Kenya’s wildlife exists outside the network of national parks and reserves, predominantly in private and community-owned lands. Although works must be acknowledged for having explored the community conservation approach, the body of research examining how Kenya’s wildlife conservation approach is being negotiated by local stakeholders and incorporated into local livelihood strategies is limited. Based on a case study of the Meibae Community Wildlife Conservancy in northern Kenya, this study examines the motivations of local and non-local groups to pursue wildlife conservation. Viewed through a political ecology lens, this paper analyzes how local people moderate the influence of external conservation values and interests. Findings suggest that local people adopt wildlife conservation projects to access better systems of rangeland management, pursue strategic linkages with external stakeholders and develop basic industries. I conclude that this process represents how Samburu pastoralists strategically embrace externally driven wildlife conservation efforts in self-defining ways.

This research examines settlement services and their ability to provide assistance with social inclusion for newcomer youth in the Peel Region, Ontario. Focus groups are used to examine the experiences and perceptions of settlement services and their ability to enhance social inclusion among 44 newcomer youth. The findings indicate that newcomer youth have positive perceptions of settlement services. Furthermore, there are five arenas in which settlement services are assisting with social inclusion for newcomer youth. These include relational inclusion, labour market inclusion, spatial inclusion, educational inclusion, and socio-political inclusion. Additional research is required to examine the social inclusion impacts that settlement services have on newcomer youth over the life-course. Moreover, reconsidering government initiatives and policies involving funds for settlement services and community organizations is necessary.