7. Beyond Red Hill Valley: The Greening of Development and the Democratization of Urban Ecology

If the current rhetoric about handing on a decent living environment to future generations is to have even on iota of meaning, we owe it to subsequent generations to invest now in a collective and very public search for some way to understand the possibilities of achieving a just and ecologically sensitive urbanization process under contemporary conditions. That discussion cannot trust in dead dreams resurrected from the past. It has to construct its own language its own poetry with which to discuss possible futures in a rapidly urbanizing world of uneven geographical development. Only in that way can the possibilities for a civilizing mode of urbanization be thought and imagined. How to translate from this purely discursive moment in the social process to the realms of power, material practices, institutions, beliefs and social relations is, however, where practical politics begins and discursive reflection ends David Harvey (1996: 438). The systems learned a lot over the years about claiming to control the environment and human beings. I think maybe thats the analysis that needs to be made what is the nature of imperialism in contemporary politics? Its denied but it still exists by way of debit and credit, by way of economic exploitation, environmental exploitation and human exploitation Larry Green (February 12, 2006)

The notion of urban sustainability is now widely known, if not widely understood. As others have demonstrated (Gibbs 2000, 2002; Desfor and Keil 2004), urban sustainability is now most often understood in relation to the tenets of ecological modernization, which maintains that it is possible to redesign urban development to minimize or eliminate negative ecological impacts. This is to be accomplished through innovations in planning, infrastructural design and urban governance. Within North

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America, this idea has recently been promoted under the banner of smart growth or growth management, signalling a resurgence of support for the governmental regulation of urban development after a decade or more of neoliberal deregulation. The basic principles of the compact or green city advocated by environmentalists since the 1970s, including intensification, mixed-use development, and the reorientation of urban form around expanded public transit networks, has been repackaged in a way that emphasizes the compatibility of such changes with sustainable economic growth and advocates the gradual integration of these planning principles into structures of urban governance and policy-making. In this way, the discourse of smart growth tends to reassert the traditional political authority of governments, in partnership with business, and distances itself from more radical critiques of urban development that emphasize environmental justice, alternative approaches to economic development, and the democratization of urban governance and planning. My case study of Hamilton has illustrated the gradual and partial emergence of an ecomodernist model of urban development and transportation in a post-industrial context, showing how the legacy of the citys industrial past has shaped the material practices and symbolic representations of urbanization and its relationship to nature. This has given rise to a neo-Fordist ecological modernization, exemplified by the Red Hill Valley Project, in which an urban regime of business interests, politicians and planners are struggling to maintain conventional Fordist development practices and infrastructural investments alongside a rhetorical commitment to sustainability and limited experimentation with post-Fordist strategies of intensification, ecological

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restoration and downtown revitalization. Secondly, I show how and why a counterhegemonic narrative of urban sustainability has emerged through resistance to the Red Hill Creek Expressway, emphasizing issues of ecological health, environmental justice and democratic citizenship. In the effort to identify ways of creating more inclusive and effective forms of environmental activism, this final chapter provides a summation of my findings along with a constructive critique of this dominant public ecology counter-narrative. This critique is based on my interviews with Aboriginal protesters involved in the expressway conflict and the subsequent protests against colonial dispossession and exurban sprawl in Caledonia, Ontario. Finally, I offer some thoughts on how this case might contribute to future research in urban political ecology.

Neo-Fordist Ecological Modernization and the Ideology of Development In May 2005, the Red Hill Creek Expressway was renamed the Red Hill Valley Parkway, suggesting early modernist visions of carefully engineered roads seamlessly integrated with the surrounding landscape and drawing motorists closer to nature. In the years leading up to the completion of the expressway, it had become increasingly clear that many land owners and developers stood to benefit financially from the completion of the project. Just prior to the opening of the highway in November 2007, a short article in the Hamilton Spectator (November 15, 2007) pointed to the many areas where growth was expected to accelerate as a result of the highway. These areas included Stoney Creek, transformed from off-the-beaten-track to a hub courtesy of Red Hill; major roads near the northern end of the valley, where interest in the re-use of existing

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commercial and industrial space was allegedly beginning to increase; the junction of the Lincoln Alexander and Red Hill parkways, where further housing developments and big box stores were appearing; various business parks on the escarpment; and Glanbrook and Elfrida, two small communities at the edge of the southern urban boundary witnessing the proliferation of residential housing and big box commercial developments.1 These developments have grown quickly in the year since the Parkway opened, creating a patchwork of housing tracts and strip malls across the rural lands south of the valley. Upon its completion in November 2007, the Parkway was celebrated in the pages of the Hamilton Spectator (November 27, 2007) as a key extension of our transportation network a state-of-the-art highway, built with attention to detail and deep consideration of its impact on the nature through which it passes (Figure 7.1). Experts in restoration ecology had earlier been quoted in the newspaper describing the successes of tree replanting, ecosystem rehabilitation efforts and realignment of the Red Hill Creek, now the longest continuous stretch of rebuilt urban waterway in North America (ibid, August 22, 2006). The City proudly announced that just over 13,000 trees were cut rather than the 44,000 originally estimated, and that 1 million seedlingsHousing developer and major land holder Aldo DeSantis was particularly vocal in his enthusiasm for the completion of the road, telling the Spectator in 2004 that the expressway was essential of for the success of his Summit Park housing development and the surrounding escarpment lands slated for more residential and commercial development. DeSantis, implicitly referring to greenfield development, claimed that this were the growth in the city is going to be for the next 10 to 15 years Once the Red Hill (Expressway) is finished ... I would say this whole area will take a life of its own because ... almost everywhere else in Hamilton is pretty well out of land. If not for this project, Hamilton would have only two or three years of land left (quoted in Hamilton Spectator, April 21, 2004).1

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would be planted in the valley by 2011, thereby allegedly restoring more habitat than was disturbed by the roadway (ibid, October 30, 2006). Chris Murray, project manager for the Red Hill Valley Project, also highlighted details such as the elevated viaduct beneath the road to allow the migration of animals, including specially designed telephone poles intended to facilitate the movement of the endangered flying squirrel, and future plans for a cultural interpretive centre and linkages to other parks on the escarpment (ibid, November 8, 2005). Figure 7.1: The Red Hill Valley Parkway (Hamilton Spectator, November 30, 2007)

Reflecting on the last five decades of debate over the road, the Hamilton Spectator continued to frame the issue as a contest between economic growth and environmental protection, suggesting that the criticisms of environmentalists had ultimately

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contributed to a project that would serve the greater good by stimulating growth and providing more efficient transportation, while successfully mitigating any negative environmental impacts on the valley (Hamilton Spectator, November 16, 2007). Indeed, the project has attracted a great deal of attention and has garnered the City awards for its innovative design and restoration work.2 The Red Hill Valley Project is now represented as a harmonious mixture of transportation infrastructure and ecological restoration, achieving the balance between economic development and environmental protection that proponents of the road had long advocated (John Dolbec, November 18, 2005). However, in the process, the issues of urban sprawl, democracy, environmental justice, and colonialism that became increasingly prominent during the expressway debate remain obscured and ignored. Through the Red Hill Valley Project, expressway proponents had successfully promoted a vision of urban sustainability as the maximization of economic benefits from conventional development practices and the minimization of the social and ecological costs. In this way, proponents were able to sustain and revitalize the political narrative of growth and progress that had been used to promote the expressway over many decades. The urban growth frame at the core of the growth and progress narrative had been adapted to create a new vision of sustainable growth. An ideological commitment to the free market remained implicit. Economic growth remained linked to societal progress and the absence of private sector growth wasThe City received an Environmental Achievement Award from the Transportation Association of Canada in 2004 and an Award of Merit for Environmental Infrastructure from the Consulting Engineers of Ontario in 2007.2

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presented as the cause of poverty and societal degeneration. In the words of Chamber of Commerce CEO, John Dolbec (November 18, 2005), We need developers who can invest money in developing the city otherwise you dont grow. And rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, youve got to accept that not to grow means to decline. Frankly, Hamilton has had enough of decline. Weve been declining for 30 years. Economic growth, driven by the private sector, continued to be represented as an unqualified good, with universal benefit for all. The association of urbanization with population expansion and economic growth remains deeply rooted and largely unquestioned, even within recent plans that attempt to manage that growth such as the Province of Ontarios recent Greenbelt Plan and Places to Grow legislation. As Sandberg,Wekerle and Gilbert (2006: 10-11) write, growth, in other words, is taken as a given, and planning processes are seen as a rational practice not only precluding slowgrowth or no-growth options, but also supporting urban and regional competitiveness that feeds the need for more development. There is no apparent differentiation here between types of economic development, including those that may actually increase socio-economic disparity or benefit some urban populations and areas more than others. Growth, to borrow the 1990s rhetoric of economic globalization, is represented as a rising tide that lifts all boats. While many environmentalists involved in the Red Hill Creek Expressway debate struggled to represent urban sustainability as a dramatic shift towards alternative economic development strategies and policies and away from those that contribute to socioeconomic polarization, ecological damage and environmental injustice, expressway

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proponents advocated a more moderate approach (John Best, December 20, 2005) in which alternatives would be balanced with the pursuit of economic sustainability defined as private investment that ultimately pays the bills to afford the health care system, social services and environmental mitigations that you need (John Dolbec, November 18, 2005). This suggests a trickle down vision of sustainability, representing private sector growth as the solution to social and environmental problems. Social, ecological and economic issues are understood as three separate spheres (or legs of the stool in the language of the Vision 2020 plan) that needed to be properly balanced. Economic growth is described as a key aspect of sustainability but little consideration is given to the interaction between economic, social and ecological conditions, and particularly the socio-ecological impacts of conventional economic development practices such as highway construction, support for industrial manufacturing, and the subsidization of suburban expansion on the edge of the city. Expressway proponents argued that the economic leg of sustainability would be strengthened by the project but paid little attention to how investment in this project would divert funds from other development initiatives and municipal services, encourage greater use of the private automobile, and lock in future development patterns based around commercial, industrial and residential greenfield developments on the periphery of the city. No contradiction is noted in the use of economic development strategies that will likely contribute to poor health, under-funded social services or environmental damage to pay for health care, social services and environmental protection. Urban sustainability is presented not as a

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qualitative shift in urbanization and transportation but as a strategy of harm reduction that can minimize the negative impacts of development (John Best, December 20, 2005). In this narrative, the city is often presented as a unified whole, an undifferentiated public of municipal taxpayers who share the costs and benefits of development equally. Attention is also directed to the scale of the individual household, through references to prosperity, security and individual freedom as the fruits of development, and to the scale of the global economy, source of the allegedly inexorable forces that require cities to remain globally competitive at all costs. This narrative also assumes a functionalist conception of urban metabolism, embedded in the industrial imaginary of urban nature, which supports the compartmentalization of urban regions and functions. Just as many expressway proponents interpreted sustainable development as balance between three separate spheres of economic, social and ecological sustainability, the expressway project itself focused on environmental mitigation and restoration within the valley but paid much less attention to the roads ecological impacts on water quality in the Hamilton Harbour and air quality in the neighbourhoods surrounding the valley. Similarly, proponents of the project frequently stated that roadway expansion and the development of lands surrounding the airport could be pursued in tandem with downtown revitalization and the expansion of public transit, suggesting a view of urbanization in which land uses can be neatly compartmentalized. Throughout the debate, pro-expressway groups appealed to a collective sense of the city as separate from and in competition with the rest of the Greater Toronto Area,

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united by civic pride in Hamiltons past achievements, a tough and resilient local character represented by the citys industrial and labour history, and the common goal of reclaiming the title of the Ambitious City through large-scale development initiatives and economic revitalization (Ed Fothergill in Hamilton Spectator, October 26, 2003). These arguments drew upon a persistent industrial imaginary that celebrated the historical transformation of a wild and threatening first nature into a domesticated and productive second nature through industrial development and infrastructure. Over the course of the conflict, expressway proponents represented the valley as a wasteland and garbage dump but were gradually forced to concede the aesthetic, recreational, ecological and historical significance of the place. The highway was then presented as a means of renewing or restoring this degraded place, allegedly making it more attractive and accessible and improving the ecological conditions by cleaning up the area and rerouting the creek to its original course. The valley was re-presented as a place of ecological and cultural value but one that could only be properly restored and utilized by the hand of development. In this way, business and government were repositioned as the primary actors in the move towards urban sustainability. Environmentalist critics were acknowledged as having contributed to the creation of better project through their input but it was the City that could now take credit for having restored and revitalized the valley, thereby reasserting their ownership and control over this space and the transformation of urban nature more broadly.

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According to this vision of urban sustainability, change should be driven by market demand and facilitated by government. While almost all of the developers, politicians and planners I spoke with acknowledged that more substantial, long-term changes to economic development policies, urban form, transportation modes, and consumption patterns would be required in future, they maintained that these transformations would have to be driven primarily by the market rather than governmental regulation. The role of government was described as primarily one of assisting economic growth and the market was described as a clear reflection of consumer choice. While some governmental regulation of where growth occurs was recognized as necessary (again, under the rubric of integrated growth management or smart growth), how growth takes place was largely seen as a matter of consumer choices that are then reflected by market demand. In the words of Hamilton City councillor Chad Collins (December 15, 2005), When you look at an old city like Hamilton its very difficult to deal with the market. We cant control where people want to live but I can at least encourage builders and developers to try to provide some housing stock in a certain area. But I think until we culturally change, until the majority of people realize that reliance on the automobile is hurting us and that 50 by 120 foot lots may not be helping us environmentally or financially, its hard to convince people that thats the case. Locally were competing with Oakville and Mississauga and Brampton and Brantford and theyre providing that housing stock of new subdivisions with giant lots, single-family homes, paved driveways and a two-car garage. So if Hamilton all of a sudden says were not doing any of that - were holding our urban boundaries firm and were only looking at residential applications for the inner city were going to continue to have young urban people move to Toronto because were not offering them what they want. The persistence of well-established development practices such as the expansion of road infrastructure and suburban development was explained as a response to both the

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demands of consumers and a method of survival within a political and economic climate of increased inter-urban and international competition. Development continued to be represented as a process that is (ideally) apolitical a response to market conditions and consumer demand that benefits all citizens, re-conceptualized in a neoliberal era as taxpayers and consumers. Accordingly, the impetus for substantial cultural change is seen to lie primarily with the needs and choices of consumers, with governments and the private sector simply responding to these desires as they are expressed through the electoral system and the market. There is little or no acknowledgement that both government and business pursue their own interests, spending a great deal of money and energy in the attempt to influence individual and collective behaviour.

Smart Growth, GRIDS and the Aerotropolis Debate The struggle against the Red Hill Creek Expressway was one of a number of conflicts over urban development in the Greater Toronto Area that began to escalate during the late 1990s. The most widely publicized such struggle was the debate over the fate of the Oak Ridges Moraine, a large geological formation north of Toronto that contains many significant and continuous ecological areas and is the source of aquifers and headwaters streams flowing down into Lake Ontario. In 1989, citizens began organizing to protect the area from the encroachment of residential and commercial development. The acceleration of residential housing developments in this area during the 1990s generated public outcry that eventually persuaded the provincial government to impose a moratorium and create the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, which imposed

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development restrictions on the area while compensating real-estate developers with lands elsewhere (Gilbert, Wekerle and Sandberg 2005). In many ways, this signalled a significant shift for the Conservative provincial government and the politics of urban planning in Ontario more broadly (Keil 2002). In the mid 1990s, the Harris Conservatives had swept to power on a wave of enthusiasm for the neoliberal nostrums of deregulation, privatization, the rollback of wasteful spending and the valorization of the free market. But in the wake of escalating public concern over the negative consequences of governmental deregulation, exemplified by the water contamination crisis in Walkerton, Ontario, and the negative impacts of urban sprawl, exemplified by the struggles over the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Red Hill Valley, notions of regulated urban development began to resurface within planning discourse under the banner of smart growth. With various controversies and scandals weighing on the Conservatives, the provincial Liberal party came to power in late 2003 promising to put a stop to years of unplanned sprawl by encouraging development in urban centres, preserving farmland and conservation lands on the urban periphery, and improving transportation infrastructure, including renewed investments in public transit (Pond 2006). By 2005, the province had legislated the creation of a greenbelt around the periphery of the Greater Golden Horseshoe where development would be limited or prohibited. An accompanying plan for future land-use and urban development within the greenbelt put forward intensification targets and designated growth areas where development should be concentrated. This was framed as a shift to urban planning and governance on

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a regional scale, a shift supported by advocates of a new regionalism based on integrated planning between and across municipal boundaries as a means of tackling the problems of urban sprawl, growing socio-economic polarization, and/or the kind of cutthroat inter-urban competition venerated by neoliberalism (Sancton 2001, 2008; Boudreau et al. 2006). Within Hamilton, the language of smart growth was also been expressed through the Citys Growth Related Integrated Development Strategy (GRIDS), a process to determine where the future growth of the City will take place, over the next 30+ years, integrating land use, transportation, water, waste water and stormwater planning into one project (City of Hamilton 2008). Like the provincial Places to Grow legislation, GRIDS made frequent reference to growth management and the need to determine where future development would be encouraged and where it would be restricted, based on careful consideration of the social/cultural, environmental and economic implications of growth and development decisions (ibid). This plan was linked to the renewal of Hamiltons Vision 2020 sustainable development plan and the promise of better integrating the principles of Vision 2020 into the planning practices of City departments. A participatory renewal process was launched in 2003 that aimed to reassess Vision 2020 and establish new directions for implementation that would then provide guidance for the GRIDS plan. According to project coordinator Linda Harvey (October 15, 2003), the aim was to restructure and institutionalize Vision 2020 as a value set, a way of making decisions rather than existing only as a series of tasks and strategies that cost money.

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Citizens were invited to help formulate development guidelines that would then be used to judge and integrate the components of the larger GRIDS strategy. A summary Consultation Report of the nine development guidelines and suggestions for implementation was presented to the public and endorsed by City Council in September 2003. The GRIDS plan was developed over the following three years, based on a number of City reports and public consultations. A number of growth options were then formulated and evaluated by City staff using a triple bottom-line method designed to balance consideration of the economic, social and ecological impacts of these different plans for the future development of the city. A nodes and corridors option was ultimately selected that focuses mixed use development in particular regions of the city and aims to develop better transportation linkages between them, including both roadways and public transit. While GRIDS was presented as a democratic planning exercise that was shaped by public input, the final outcome of the process raises serious doubts about this claim. In many ways, the outcomes seem to have been predetermined in advance. Just as the consultations during the late 1970s regarding the north-south roadway generated options that all included a road through the Red Hill Valley, all six of the growth options presented to the public through the GRIDS process included two significant urban boundary expansions, one to accommodate the proposed aerotropolis development surrounding the Hamilton International Airport and a second to allow for further residential and commercial development in Upper Stoney Creek. Although consultants reports had demonstrated that the aerotropolis development would meet

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only one of the nine development guidelines generated through public consultation, politicians and staff in support of the airport expansion insisted that this was necessitated by a severe lack of employment lands (Citizens at City Hall, May 19, 2006). In effect, the aerotropolis and other features of the Citys Economic Development Strategy (created prior to the GRIDS process and without public consultation) were excluded from any form or democratic deliberation or evaluation according to the Citys professed triple bottom-line criteria. This exclusion precipitated a renewed debate over the citys future. Many activists involved in the Red Hill conflict rallied together to voice objections to the aerotropolis, joining local farmers and other residents living near the Hamilton International Airport. A new organization, Hamiltonians for Progressive Development (HPD), was created and soon became involved in an Ontario Municipal Board challenge against the urban boundary expansion for the aerotropolis. HPD, Environment Hamilton and other critical groups argued that the City had failed to consider the rising costs of air transportation and the growing predictions of an imminent decline in worldwide oil supplies. They pointed to the ecological impacts of increased air transit on regional air quality and watersheds,3 as well as the socio-economic impacts of creating new jobs outside of the impoverished downtown core and replacing viable farmland with industrial and commercial development. Furthermore, this development may threaten indigenous artefacts and sites in the area and the lands fall within the scope of the Nanfan Treaty used to assert hunting and fishing rights in the Red Hill Valley. Finally, critics haveA large portion of the proposed airport development area includes the headwaters of Chippewa Creek, which flows into the Welland River further east.3

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noted the economic costs of extending infrastructure outside the existing boundaries of the city to service this development (Citizens at City Hall, February 23, 2008). The Province of Ontario also challenged the Citys urban boundary expansion through the Ontario Municipal Board, insisting that the City must complete the GRIDS process and demonstrate that the boundary expansion had been subject to a comprehensive review of alternatives before proceeding, including a needs assessment and land budget analysis. Both OMB challenges have since been settled, with the City committing to complete these studies and hold more public consultations before further attempts are made to expand the urban boundary. A Community Liaison Committee was created in late 2007 and has quickly become a site of intense political debate over the proposed development. The debate surrounds the lack of clarity over the actual decision-making structure of the committee; the revitalization of brownfield sites versus greenfield development; and an ongoing dispute between the City and the Province over provincial intensification targets and estimations of the amount of available land for employment in the Hamilton area.4 The provincial government disagrees with the calculations used by city staff and consultants to estimate the need for greenfield industrial land around the airport, and says the city has overestimated theFurther controversy surrounds the impacts that the decline of world oil supplies will have on the aerotropolis and the Citys largest growth strategy. In June 2005, City council responded to concern about this issue by commissioning a study of peak oil and its implications for Hamilton. This report was delivered to City staff in October of that year but staff repeatedly delayed its release, taking the unusual step of demanding changes in the report from the consultant. When the study was finally released in April 2006, council agreed to ask for the creation of terms of reference for a more detailed study on the local impacts of peak oil. Three requests have been made for these terms of reference but after two and half years, they have yet to be produced by city staff (Citizens at City Hall, October 20, 2008).4

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amount of land required. Nevertheless, the majority of councillors and their senior staff are rejecting the provincial warning and proceeding with plans to urbanize nearly 3000 acres of farmland (Citizens at City Hall, June 25, 2008).5 For many proponents of the Red Hill Creek Expressway, one of the most important aspects of the road was its facilitation of the larger vision of Hamiltons future as a multi-modal transportation hub, linking together road networks, the airport and, to a lesser extent, the port and railway lines (John Dolbec, November 18, 2005). In the words of one prominent developer (anonymous, December 5, 2005), Global trade is having a huge impact and technology is having a huge impact on the way that goods are produced and shipped. I think were going to see North America lose a lot of manufacturing jobs but if we position ourselves properly we could be the assembly centre. For example, with computers, components are going to be manufactured all over the place but with just-in-time inventories and people ordering goods over the internet you see that things are becoming more and more customized. Thats not going to happen at the factory where theyre manufacturing the parts, its going to happen at the distribution centres where they put the parts together and on to a truck or a plane. So thats the kind of logistics that Hamilton can really capture. Right now, Toronto has that market but we can offer a much less expensive alternative to those types of companies I guess I see us as the future downtown core of the megalopolis that is going to eventually stretch from Ottawa all the way down to Niagara Falls. I see that as eventually being all filled in, one continuous city. And we will be the downtown core, in the middle of it all. This vision, which requires the further expansion of roadways and greenfield development on the edge of the city, is now being challenged by public resistance, the provincial governments emphasis on urban intensification targets, and rapidly changingThe Citys determination to press ahead is motivated in part by the threat of competition from a proposed airport development in Pickering, just east of Toronto. Promoted by the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA), which manages Torontos Pearson International Airport, the Pickering Airport project was first proposed in 1975 and revived by the GTAA in 2002. This project is now undergoing an environmental assessment process. While it is estimated that the Pickering Airport could not be operational before 2012, it poses a serious threat to the City of Hamiltons own ambitious plans.5

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ecological and economic conditions on a global scale. This plan has also been disrupted by a significant shift in the citys governing urban regime. In the 2006 municipal election, Fred Eisenberger, former chair of the Hamilton Port Authority, narrowly defeated Mayor Larry DiIanni, a long-time proponent of the Red Hill Creek Expressway and advocate of the aerotropolis expansion. Eisenberger campaigned on a platform that emphasized downtown revitalization, an end to sprawl-like development, and ethical integrity at city hall. To demonstrate his commitment to this later principle, Eisenberger refused to take campaign contributions from corporate or union donors, running a shoe-string campaign that sharply contrasted with $200,000 war chest accumulated by Larry DiIanni. Eisenbergers strategy drew further attention to the controversy then surrounding DiIannis campaign contributions in the 2003 election. Shortly after that election, community activists began examining the records of the Mayors campaign financing and soon uncovered a long list of apparent violations under the Municipal Elections Act, including different companies listed under the same address and numerous contributions over the $750 limit. When City council voted against an investigation, Joanna Chapman, a local business owner, community activist and former politician, launched a legal challenge that resulted in DiIanni being charged with 41 violations of the Election Act. Eventually facing six charges in court, DiIanni pled guilty and was order to pay a small fine and write an essay on campaign financing that was then published in Municipal World magazine (DiIanni 2003).6 A number of companies were also eventually charged and fined forThis list includes A.DeSantis Real Estate Ltd and three associated companies (A.DeSantis Developments Ltd., A.DeSantis Holdings Ltd., HGH Developments ); Dival Developments;6

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over-contributing to DiIannis campaign. The majority were from the development industry, including many that benefited directly or indirectly from the completion of the Red Hill Creek Expressway. This scandal raised public awareness about the influence of the development industry in municipal politics and likely made a significant contribution to the outcome of the 2006 election. The issue was covered by many online and print media publications and contributed to discussions about the influence of corporate and union donations within other communities during the election. A 2006 study of campaign financing of ten municipalities in southern Ontario by political scientist Robert MacDermid demonstrated that Hamilton was not the only city in which the development industry accounted for a large percentage of donations. MacDermid (2006: 21) concluded that, within the ten cities he studied, the development industry is by the far the largest segment of corporate and of all contributions in all communities. This is not surprising given the political economy of the development industry and the vital role that municipal politics plays in the creation of profit developers and those who organize development interests have a very good idea about who is a supporter of their goals. It seems unlikely that development interests would continue to support an incumbent who had not been supportive of development.

Doral Property Management (and associated company Trival Investments Ltd); Dufferin Construction (and associates St. Lawrence Cement and TGC Asphalt and Construction Ltd); Effort Trust; Fifty Road Joint Venture Inc; Fortran Traffic Systems (and associate Guild Electric Ltd); Homelife Effect Realty Inc; J.Voortman and Associates Ltd (and associate Oakrun Farm Bakery); LIUNA Station and LIUNA Gardens Ltd; Losani Homes; Sahars Hospitality Inc; Silvestri Investments; Starward Homes Management Ltd; Tender Choice Foods and Venetor Equipment Rental Inc.

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Seeds of Change: Urban Ecology and Activism After Red Hill The whirlwind of activism surrounding the events in the Red Hill Valley during 2003 and 2004 sparked new networks of communication and collaboration between different groups and inspired new political strategies and campaigns, within and beyond the boundaries of Hamilton. Growing out of the narrative of public ecology articulated over the last decade of resistance to the expressway, these new initiatives have emphasized public education and independent media production; alternative approaches to economic development; and public participation in urban environmental governance, inside and outside of the boundaries of the state. There is space here only to highlight some of the most significant developments over the last five years. Environment Hamilton, the non-profit group founded in 2001 by environmental activists deeply involved in the Red Hill struggle, has become one of the most prominent voices of change in the city, expanding its participatory ecological monitoring programs to include tree inventories and the monitoring of industrial emissions in the citys north-end, and continuing to develop policy recommendations based on this citizen-led research. More recently, Environmental Hamilton has launched a climate change campaign focusing on changes in urban policy and the everyday habits of citizen. It has also developed the Eat Local project, which aims to support and encourage community supported agriculture, urban community gardening and local organic food production, uniting rural and urban producers and consumers in the Hamilton area. This later initiative has great potential to cut across spatial, socioeconomic and cultural divisions, establishing and strengthening lines of communication

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and collaboration between urban and rural residents, and amongst citizens involved in different aspects of urban agriculture and food production within the city, from community gardens to food banks. Transportation for Livable Communities (TLC), a working group of the McMaster University Ontario Public Interest Research Group, was formed in 2000 to create a Car Free Day event and has since become a strong advocate for sustainable transportation in Hamilton. The group has lobbied the municipal government for proposed improvements to public transit and cycling infrastructure, has led protests against bus fare increases, and organized numerous public events that have included public lectures, marches, and parking meter parties which use sod, lawn chairs, music and food to transform parking spaces and even whole streets into public (party) spaces (Figure 7.2). TLC now hosts a Car Free Week that combines these events and members of the group have also been instrumental in organizing Hamiltons monthly Critical Mass rides, in which cyclists briefly take back the road by occupying multiple lanes.

Figure 7.2: Parking Meter Parties, 2001 and 2008 (Transportation for Livable Communities , 2008)

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In late 2003, members of Transportation for Livable Communities and Environment Hamilton established the Transit Users Group (TUG). TUGs mandate was to build a strong, broad-based membership across the city of Hamilton to advocate for better public transit as a crucial municipal service, central to the health of this community (Transit Users Group 2008). By March 2004, the group had produced a Transit Blueprint for Hamilton that documented the decline in public transit funding and usage, and put forward a series of policy recommendations.7 The Blueprint linked together the decline in funding for transit, the decline of employment in the inner city,TUG noted that municipal funding for transit had declined since the early 1990s and that ridership on the buses on of the Hamilton Street Railway had declined by 33% since a peak period in the late 1980s, despite a 25% growth in population over this same period. According to TUG, between 1986 and 2001, the share of total trips made by transit in the City of Hamilton declined from 12% to 7%, while the total trips made by automobile increased from 72% to 76% (Transit Users Group 2004: 8These statistics were further supported by a study conducted for the City in early 2004 that compared ten major Canadian cities and reported that Hamilton had the second highest amount of roadways per capita, the second highest level of fuel consumption per capita, the third highest level of automobile ownership, and the fourth lowest level of transit use (Friends of Red Hill Valley newsletter, March 2004).7

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rising levels of air pollution from automobile and truck traffic, and the growth of suburban development and roadways on the southern edges of the city and beyond. In order to reverse these trends, TUG advocated service improvements, various proposals for keeping transit fares low and policy recommendations for the development of a transit growth strategy to increase ridership. In addition to the Blueprint document, activists produced and distributed flyers in seven different languages and lobbied local politicians. Through their efforts, the 2004 budget for public transit was increased for the first time in twenty years and proposed fare increases were rejected by a majority of City councillors. More recently, members of TUG have played a major role in generating public and governmental support for the development of a light rail public transit system for Hamilton, discussed in more detail below. Citizens at City Hall (CATCH) is another important initiative that emerged during the final days of the Red Hill conflict. Another working group affiliated with Environment Hamilton, CATCH began recording and transcribing City Hall meetings in early 2004, focusing largely but not exclusively on matters related to the expressway. The group soon expanded its focus, monitoring almost every committee meeting, creating short news reports on important issues and debates, and providing verbatim transcriptions of meetings that were considered particularly important or revealing (full transcriptions have become infrequent in recent years because of the amount of work involved and the lack of volunteers willing to do this). This material is made available to the public via an email list and website, providing citizens with a one-stop source on the latest decisions and debates at city hall and placing particular emphasis on issues of

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urban planning, land use, transportation, urban environmental policy, poverty and social justice, and democratic participation in municipal decision making. Over time, CATCH has provided a valuable source of information for local activists while forging links with similar municipal democratization initiatives in other countries within and beyond Canada. In the months and years following the mobilizations of 2003 and 2004, Hamilton witnessed a flourishing of independent media production. The Hamilton Independent Media Centre (IMC) was particularly influential and prominent during the events in the valley. The group had formed during a campaign against the Hamilton International Air Show, becoming one of the first Canadian members of the International Independent Media network that grew exponentially after the mobilization against the World Trade Organization in Seattle 1999. During the mobilization in the Red Hill Valley, members of the Hamilton IMC documented the events with sound and video recordings, creating short news pieces and reports accessible via their website and broadcast by a number of programs on 93.3 CFMU, the McMaster University campus radio station. During the summer and fall of 2003, news was updated on a daily and often hourly basis. These reports were produced by activists directly involved in the conflict and they often provided a very different emphasis and perspective than the coverage in the Hamilton Spectator. Slowly dissolving in the years following the Red Hill conflict, the Hamilton IMC nevertheless played a vital role during this period of the conflict and influenced the formation of other independent media producers in the city.

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Raise the Hammer (2000) is a primarily web-based forum for promoting and discussing a new vision for the revitalization of Hamilton based on principles of the healthy city, including the recognition of the city as a dense urban ecosystem that cannot be successfully micromanaged and compartmentalized; an approach to urban planning that encourage environmental efficiency and vibrant public spaces; the promotion of public transit and decreased reliance on the private automobile. Raise the Hammer has been particularly influential in advocating for increased investment in the revitalization of the inner city through public transit investments, the removal of the citys one-way street system, and the recovery and reuse of Hamiltons many brownfield sites. This publication has provided a strong critical voice against the Citys focus on urban expansion around the Hamilton International Airport and the larger transportation hub vision of the city. Downtown renewal is also strongly promoted by H Magazine, a bi-monthly print newspaper that celebrates Hamiltons unique history and geography, with a particular emphasis on the built environment and arts and culture. Political commitments are often implied rather than explicitly stated but this publication has also proven influential in generating public support for revitalization of the inner city and shaping a new urban imaginary based on notions of social inclusion, environmental sustainability and localized economic development. Mayday Magazine, a monthly print newspaper that also advocates downtown revitalization and provides criticism of the prevailing urban expansion model of urban development represented by the expressway and the proposed aerotropolis, but places greater emphasis on issues of social justice and imperialism.

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This publication demonstrates an ideological commitment to more radical politics, particularly forms of anarchism closely associated with the global justice movement. From this perspective, local issues are often framed in the light of more global and international systems of oppression and exclusion, providing a context that is missing from other publications. However, in practice, this means that local issues are often given less attention or interpreted in terms of a larger political analysis that misses the particularities and subtleties of the issue at hand. I discuss this problem further below. Mayday is a publication of the Sky Dragon Centre, a non-profit cooperatively run community centre located in downtown Hamilton (Figure 7.3). The Centre first opened on a smaller scale in 1996, renting space for various martial arts, meditation and dance classes while providing free meeting space for various community groups, including the Showstoppers and others involved in the fight against the expressway. Centre director Kevin MacKay was personally involved in this struggle and many others, organizing numerous rallies, marches and festivals in support of various environmental, peace and social justice campaigns. In 2004, the Centre was re-established as a non-profit cooperative, modelled after long-running workers cooperatives such as the Mondragon cooperative in Spain. The following year, after extensive fundraising, the co-op purchased and renovated a building in the downtown core, using energy-efficient construction materials. The larger vision for the Centre (which now includes an organic caf, numerous dance and marital arts classes, and daily events ranging from political discussion groups to film nights and dance parties) is to serve as a community catalyst, sparking new projects around the city that are based on the same principles of direct

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democracy, egalitarianism, and ecological sustainability (MacKay 2004). According to the Centres website (Sky Dragon 2008), Establishing the Centre will introduce a living example of sustainable living into downtown Hamilton, yet it is only the first stage of a much broader plan. Through the project, a team of community activists will become knowledgeable in the development process and can then explore other socially and environmentally conscious community development projects. Ideas being considered include developing large-scale green affordable housing co-ops, starting an organic farm, and purchasing land to develop a retreat centre / eco-community. The Centre will also facilitate these initiatives by providing resources, with all surplus revenue generated by Sky Dragon entering into a project development fund. With this fund, a network of innovative cooperative and non-profit ventures can be established. The goal is to create more sustainable buildings, work-places and lifestyles within our city and in other cities Canada-wide.

Figure 7.3: Sky Dragon Centre (2008)

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The Sky Dragon Centre is an example of a new orientation in activism that has been inspired by ideas developed and challenges identified during the struggle against the Red Hill Creek Expressway. Kevin MacKay explicitly links the Centre to the lessons learned during that struggle, including the need to understand how political and economic power is exercised and maintained by the private sector, governments and social movements; how to identify and minimize the tensions and misunderstandings that prevent effective communication and collaboration between social groups; and how to more effectively transform existing economic and social relations in order to foster more equitable and ecologically responsible forms of development. MacKay explains, (October 1, 2007), I wanted to create a space to work on some of the foundational issues, so that the next time we have a fight like that weve got so much more we can bring If people get smarter at knowing the system better, knowing what theyre going to throw at us and what were going to run into. And also knowing ourselves a little better too and working to communicate better. The more people that are oriented that way, the more glue youve got to keep those different groups together. The Centre aims not only to educate and better connect concerned citizens but also to contribute to a gradual institutional transformation that can offer viable economic alternatives, cooperatively providing products and services that can then generate capital for community development projects. Progressives must create institutions that supply basic human needs: food, shelter, recreation. They must also provide institutions that educate, disseminate progressive ideas, and create social spaces in which democratic skills can be nourished. A way to move forward in this task is through the vehicle of non-profit corporations and worker cooperatives. These have the benefit of being able to work legally within the

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current capitalist system while possessing characteristics that are fundamentally subversive to it (Kevin MacKay 2004). The Sky Dragon Centre is a non-profit institution that is designed not to replace governmental services, as per the neoliberal model of downloading service responsibility to private institutions, but rather to function in and against the market, making selective use of market mechanisms to support social enterprises and community development projects (cf. Imbroscio 1997; DeFilippis 2003; Wainwright 2003; Albert 2003). Such initiatives aim to reclaim the economic terrain as a medium for communitarian and ecological values and practices (MacKay 2004) by remaining rooted in and guided by the needs, aspirations, knowledge and active engagement of local communities. In similar fashion, the participatory urban ecology programs organized by Environment Hamilton invite citizens to actively participate in generating environmental knowledge that can then be utilized for different projects, including the development of urban policy alternatives that are proposed to the municipal government. This form of activism does not simply place demands for action upon government but aims to simultaneously build community capacity for generating knowledge and taking action independently of the institutions of the state. Arjun Appadurai (2001) refers to this focus upon the utilization of public knowledge, the strengthening of selfmanagement capacities, and the socialization of state and market as deep democracy or governmentality from below, noting the ways in which some contemporary urban social movements are reversing the established flows of expert knowledge by

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conducting their own studies and surveys, building their own pilot projects, and creating public events that foreground the need for dialogue and democratic debate. These initiatives are not calling for a return to the strong state of the Keynesian era or the ceding of power to the private sector advocated by neoliberalism, but rather for the further democratization of knowledge production and decision-making power, building the capacity for citizens to understand and shape systems of governance (Fotopoulos 1997; Fung and Wright 2003). This new politics is an attempt to reclaim and redefine the notions of democracy, decentralization, participation and civil society that have been captured by the proponents of deregulation, privatization and free markets (Wainwright 2003).8 John Gaventa (2001) provides a useful distinction between social participation and political participation as two essential aspects of this kind of participatory governance. Social participation refers to the efforts of communities to increase public control of resources and regulatory institutions through grassroots capacity building, coalition formation, and the creation of alternative institutions, while political participation refers to efforts to influence states representatives and to participate in the creation and implementation of public policies. Both are necessary in order to strengthen the capacity of individuals and communities for self-determination and informed political engagement, while democratizing and expanding the mechanisms forWainwright recognizes that such initiatives are building on previous strategies and narratives of left politics, and are new only insofar as they are experimenting with innovative ways of addressing the local and extra-local impacts of the global mobility of capital and the changing role of the nation state, and working to redefine popular conceptions of democracy, participation and accountability in the process.8

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participation in policy creation. This view is also captured by Fung and Wrights concept of empowered participatory governance (2003) as a combination of public education; mechanisms for genuine public participation in decision-making; inclusive processes of democratic deliberation; and forms of countervailing power, mobilized by community and advocacy groups, that can guard against the domination or manipulation of participatory governance initiatives by those with greater political influence or wealth. In the context of the conflicts over urban development and transportation in Hamilton, the years following the culmination of the Red Hill Creek Expressway struggle have brought a turn towards increased emphasis on social participation. At the same time, activists have continued to pressure and influence government, often drawing upon these public education and capacity building efforts to inform the policy recommendations and tactics that they employ. One example is the Hamilton Community Action Network (CAN), which was created in early 2005 to begin identifying and supporting progressive candidates for the upcoming municipal election in 2006. Candidates were ranked according to the criteria of good government, defined as transparent, accountable local government, whose players cannot be improperly influenced, and improvement of the quality of life for all residents by focusing on improving and enhancing existing infrastructure rather than through outdated economic development strategies (Community Action Network 2006). CANs documents make frequent reference to the Vision 2020 plan and clearly draw upon the political frames of municipal democratization and urban ecology

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developed during the Red Hill struggle. While failing to identify suitable candidates in all sections of the city, the group did have a significant influence during the election and contributed to Fred Eisenbergers narrow victory in the 2006 mayoralty race.

Beyond the City: Environmental Politics, Justice and Canadian Colonialism The struggle against the Red Hill Creek Expressway has also clearly had an impact on environmental politics beyond the boundaries of Hamilton. While it is rarely recognized as such, the ongoing Aboriginal occupation and land dispute in the town of Caledonia, Ontario, is not only an issue of land ownership and political sovereignty but also a conflict over the socio-ecological impacts of urban development. The land occupation at the Douglas Creek housing development was sparked by concern over the social and ecological impacts of accelerating urban development around Caledonia, which borders the Six Nations territory (Figure 7.4). Following the announcement of Ontarios Places to Grow plan and greenbelt legislation, Caledonia found itself located just a few miles beyond the greenbelt and soon became a very attractive area for developers leapfrogging out beyond this limit. The town soon witnessed a frenzy of proposals for residential housing (Bacher 2006).

Figure 7.4: Six Nations, in relation to Caledonia, Hamilton and the Red Hill Valley (Map by Jane Mulkewich and Richard Oddie)

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While concern was growing over the ecological impacts of urban development and particularly the pollution of the Grand River watershed, the municipal government of Caledonia was readily accommodating these proposals and passed a by-law in 2006 that allowed for the construction of 5,000 additional homes in the area. Like the City of Hamilton, the local government was also supporting the construction of the midpeninsula highway, which would further accelerate the conversion of the surrounding agricultural land into residential and commercial development. On February 28, 2006, people from Six Nations began occupying a partially-constructed housing subdivision in Caledonia, asserting their claim to this land as part of the territory granted to them by the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784 (Figure 7.5). Thus, the actions at Douglas Creek Estates were motivated by the proliferation of new housing developments and proposals for new urban boundary expansions, as well as the unresolved claims to Aboriginal ownership of the land. The Places to Grow Act has been interpreted by many First

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Nations as a direct threat to their sovereignty, as it allows the provincial government to designate any land as a growth plan area and decide on its development, including unceded indigenous lands (Bacher 2006).

Figure 7.5: Blockade at Douglas Creek Estates, Caledonia (Hamilton Spectator, March 8, 2006)

Over the past three years, the Caledonia conflict has garnered national and international attention due to the longevity of the land occupation, numerous solidarity actions and blockades across the country, and the ongoing tensions between police, protestors, and non-Aboriginal residents of Caledonia. This is the most significant Native uprising in Canada since Kanesatakes Mohawk revolt at Oka, Quebec, in 1990, and it has drawn much needed attention to the plight of First Nations in Canada. The ongoing negotiations to resolve the conflict may yet bring significant changes in the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state. The mobilization at Caledonia has also healed some of the political divisions at Six Nations that were

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exacerbated during the Red Hill Valley conflict. Both the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Six Nations elected band council have supported the land occupation, calling for a peaceful resolution through meaningful negotiation with the federal and provincial government. However, unlike the Red Hill Valley conflict, there has been relatively little collaboration with non-Aboriginal environmentalist groups. Over the past four years, the connections between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists and organizations in Hamilton, forged during the struggle against the expressway, have been sustained in part through cultural events like concerts and fundraisers. More recently, a number of events have gathered money to assist the land occupation in Caledonia. Groups such as Hamilton Action for Social Change and the newly formed Hamilton Solidarity with Six Nations have helped to raise awareness about the history of relations between Six Nations and Canada and the federal governments primary responsibility to resolve the dispute through meaningful negotiation. However, there is little evidence of overt support for the actions in Caledonia from non-Aboriginal environmentalist groups, or notable interaction with Hamiltons Aboriginal community around issues such as poverty and homelessness. The Red Hill struggle provided new opportunities for communication and coalition-building that have yet to be realized. As I discussed in the previous chapter, the interaction between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal activists during the events of 2003 and 2004 was significant both because of the level of collaboration between these various groups and because of the extent to which Aboriginal perspectives on the conflict challenged the political narratives that had

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long dominated the popular debate over the fate of the valley. These alternative views suggest re-contextualized and expanded conceptions of the principles of environmental justice and democratization expressed through the narrative of public ecology and point towards a post-colonial political ecology of urban development and transportation that disrupts the familiar framing of urban environmental politics within the conceptual boundaries of the city, the state and the citizen. As exemplified by the Red Hill case, Aboriginal perspectives place urban environmental politics in a larger spatial and temporal context, drawing attention to the fact that urbanization in Canada is rooted in the colonial dispossession and displacement of indigenous peoples. Indeed, as demonstrated by the struggles at Red Hill Valley and Caledonia, urbanization in Canada still largely depends upon these processes, frequently claiming lands for development with little or no regard for treaty rights obligations or unresolved land claims. This perspective shatters the still-dominant myth of the urban frontier as terra nullius, a blank slate for development and modernization. It also questions the untenable conceptual division between modern urban life and indigeneity, encouraging recognition of indigenous peoples within Canadian cities and the extent to which urban development impacts indigenous communities beyond the city limits (Jacobs 1996; Peters 1996; Newhouse and Peters 2003). Thinking beyond this division between urbanization and indigeneity suggests an analysis of urban political ecology that further blurs the boundaries of the North American city, recognizing that changing relationships between urbanization, governance and nature must be understood in relation to the history of colonialism and its contemporary manifestations.

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As I discussed in the previous chapter, Aboriginal perspectives further decentre the state and the citizen within environmental politics by putting both concepts into question. According to many of the Aboriginal activists that I interviewed, the Canadian state should be viewed first and foremost as a mechanism for maintaining colonial rule, designed from the beginning to support elite interests and control and constrain the behaviour and life chances of others, particularly native people (Al Loft, October 19, 2005; Buddy Martin, December 27, 2005; Larry Green, February 12, 2006). The principles and practice of liberal democracy celebrated by many activists in the Red Hill struggle were viewed with a more sceptical eye by Aboriginal participants. In the words of Larry Green (February 12, 2006), What is the concept of democracy? My understanding is that the Greeks had no concept of the people. They had a class of individuals which were a working force for the benefit of the citizens. So being a citizen meant that you were a class above the working people. So there are all these concepts that are used without clarity and without thinking about their origins. The privileges of citizenship in western democracy have recently been extended from a white, wealthy, male elite to other social groups, and the agenda of many progressive social movements has become the further extension, deepening and radicalization of the democratic ideal. This is clearly evident in the words and actions of many of the groups involved in the struggle against the Red Hill Creek Expressway, as demonstrated by the narrative of public ecology. As Ive tried to demonstrate, these groups have developed an understanding of urban politics and activism that aims to work in and against the state and the market, pushing for greater democratic control

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over urban development and governmental institutions (political participation) while working to create social and economic networks that provide citizens with the knowledge and ability to better govern themselves (social participation). However, many of the Aboriginal activists I spoke with placed greater emphasis on the notion of self-management and much less on engagement with the institutions of representative democracy, which were viewed as systems of imperial rule that continue to privilege the interests of an elite few. This perspective suggests a more nuanced view of participation and democracy that is based on the differential capacities of people to participate in both the institutions of representative democracy and community organizing due to overlapping, systemic forms of oppression that include racism, sexism, and socio-economic disparities (Cooke and Kothari 2001; Hickey and Mohan 2004). Rather than assuming an undifferentiated notion of the public or the citizen in the struggle for democratization, this perspective insists that emphasis must be placed on recognizing, understanding and assisting those who are excluded from these concepts and categories: indigenous peoples, people living in poverty, people without homes, people without citizenship, and others lacking the socio-economic means and/or social status enjoyed by others. Such groups may have little engagement with the institutions of the Canadian state and may have little inspiration or incentive to become engaged in this kind of political participation, yet are often deeply engaged in politics indeed, often a politics of daily survival. The concerns and activities of such groups may too easily be overlooked by an environmental politics that assumes an uncritical or homogeneous view of citizenship or

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that remains narrowly focused on the machinations of urban governance, planning and environmental policy. Finally, as I discussed in the previous chapter, Aboriginal perspectives on justice and democracy can reveal the limitations of liberal conceptions of these ideals, conceptions that are often implicit even within more radical expressions of environmental politics in Canada. By defining citizenship as primarily a set of individual political and civil rights to life, liberty and property, liberalism promotes the formal legal and political equality of individuals. Yet, it fails to adequately consider claims to collective or group rights, particularly those that question the private ownership model of property (Blomley 2004; Turner 2006). Further, a liberal framing of justice and democracy can obscure recognition of systemic forms of exclusion operating within social movements themselves. Within many environmental groups, traditionally dominated by white, middle-class activists, activists from other backgrounds are greatly under-represented and engagement with communities of colour is often very limited or tokenistic regarded as peripheral to a conception of environmentalism that brackets out issues of oppression and discrimination (Agyeman 2005; Sandler and Pezzullo 2007). While a number of the groups that I have discussed in this dissertation have begun to expand and strengthen the connections between middle-class environmentalists, social justice groups and activists from low-income neighbourhoods within the city of Hamilton, there remains much work to be done in expanding connections to other social groups and communities, particularly Six Nations and other communities of colour, through an active engagement in anti-racism and anti-oppression work.

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As Tom Keefer (2007) argues in his analysis of the response of the non-Aboriginal left to the land occupation in Caledonia, white activists who have provided support for indigenous movements often fail to directly address racism within their own communities and to directly counter anti-Native sentiments and movements, choosing instead to take leadership from Aboriginal people. As the Red Hill case demonstrates, each particular situation may involve various claims to leadership and internal political conflicts that non-Aboriginal activists may be unfamiliar with. Furthermore, Aboriginal activists may be wary of allowing further non-Aboriginal influence upon the internal dynamics of their communities, given the historical legacy of such interference. In Keefers words, building radical organizations and combating white racism within predominantly white communities, workplaces and political organizations will be particularly hard. But it remains a necessary task as a pre-condition to building meaningful solidarity with indigenous struggles (2007: 10). Building these bridges will require an ongoing commitment to understanding the interlocking forms of exclusion and oppression that perpetuate environmental injustice and the degradation of urban environments. In Laurie Adkins words, a collective identity for ecology as a social movement cannot be constructed in the absence of a discourse about experiences which are spatially, temporally, and culturally located (1998: 312). This requires the articulation of values, goals and political identities that resonate with the diverse social, economic and cultural roles or positions that people embody. In this case, connections can be strengthened through engagement with the ongoing land occupation at Caledonia, which can be seen as an extension of the struggle

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to protect the Red Hill Valley. Once again, pressure for development is pitted against efforts to protect a landscape with profound cultural, historical, ecological and economic significance. These efforts parallel the efforts to limit or prevent the aerotropolis development in Hamilton and both struggles share an opposition to the proposed mid-peninsula highway. Activists in Hamilton have much to gain by thinking beyond the limits of the city and working to support the people of Six Nations. As Joyce Green (1995: 99) writes, Facing up to the past means owning all of our history, rather than perpetuating the myth of white settlers creating civilization in uncharted wilderness. Taking responsibility means understanding that the national wealth has been accrued at the expense of Aboriginal peoples, in ways that were legislatively mandated by governments acting on non-Aboriginal Canada's behalf. Decolonization in the Canadian context means engaging in the perpetual work of maintaining relationship, not so that it can be circumscribed and terminated, but so that it can carry us all into the future. This new relationship will provide a framework for the elaboration of a non-colonial form of government, and for the creation of a society in which the history and well-being of some is not secured by obliterating the history and wellbeing of others

Conclusion: Some Contributions for Thought and Action Over the course of this dissertation, Ive sought to explain the decades-long conflict over the fate of the Red Hill Valley in terms of competing political narratives that presented different conceptions of the relationships between urban development, democratic governance and nature. Ive attempted to account for the hegemony of a dominant narrative of growth and progress and the emergence of a counterhegemonic narrative of public ecology, analyzing the historical development of these

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narratives in terms of their dialogical relationship to each other, the influence of changing political economic conditions, and the ways in which they both responded to and shaped prevailing normative visions of the relationship between nature and the city. I have shown how resistance to the Red Hill Creek Expressway involved ongoing shifts in the material and discursive strategies employed by community activists as they responded to political opportunities and setbacks. Discursively, this involved a shift from a narrative of urban conservation, defending the ecological and recreational value of the valley, to one that emphasizes environmental justice and greater democratic control over urban development. In the process, even as they failed to prevent the construction of the expressway, activists have succeeded in politicizing the relationship between urbanization, nature and democratic governance. This has taken the conflict far beyond the confines of the Red Hill Valley and led to an ongoing debate over the future of this post-industrial city. I have described this shift in terms of changing political frames that brought about a gradual transformation in the larger political narrative articulated by expressway opponents. Over time, the alternative vision of urbanization offered by critics emphasized urban ecology as the basis of urban development rather than simply protecting nature from development; socio-spatial inequality and environmental injustice rather than a less specific focus on the relationship between health and urban nature; and ecological citizenship within and outside of the bounds of the state rather than the earlier emphasis on public participation in municipal decision-making. In all

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respects, these changes represent an evolution of political analysis and action, based on the lessons taught by the successes and failures of this long-running struggle. The events of 2003 and 2004 highlighted both the extent to which activists had managed to build new bridges of communication and cooperation between disparate activist communities, and the extent to which they had failed to mobilize sufficient numbers of people to support their efforts at direct action. These experiences provided important lessons, not the least of which is that future successes required more significant investment in public education and capacity building. Alternative media production was regarded as particularly important given the dominance of the Hamilton Spectator as a primary news source within the city and the perceived need to revitalize and maintain the momentum of mobilization and critical debate within activist circles that had been generated during the actions in the valley. As discussed above, many of the new initiatives that emerged out of those actions emphasized the importance of directly involving citizens in community events, public discussions, and the collective generation of knowledge in the effort to provide conditions under which people can feel personally connected to the issues, connected to others who share their concerns and thereby empowered to take action (Lynda Lukasik, June 30, 2005). During and after the Red Hill struggle, activists have also concentrated on understanding, publicizing and working to influence municipal decision-making structures and the political networks that sustain particular regimes of urban governance. Significantly, the efforts of groups like Citizens at City Hall has further highlighted the important role that city staff and planners play in shaping political

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discourse and policy formation, and demonstrated the multi-scalar networks of communication and influence between city planners, politicians and corporations that promote and sustain particular transportation and economic development projects, providing support through money, labour and ideological discourse. As implied above, the advancement of a new vision of urban development will require continued efforts at involving citizens in both the social participation of public education, dialogue and capacity building, and the political participation of understanding and engaging with the institutional structures of urban governance. In Hamilton, and in most other cities around the world, the greatest challenge facing those who support a just and ecologically sensitive urbanization process (Harvey 1996: 438) is the persistent persuasiveness of the language of growth and progress, the equation of economic growth with societal progress and prosperity for all, and the continued conceptualization of biophysical processes as external to processes of economic development and urbanization rather than integral to the very possibility of human survival. This is readily apparent in conflicts over urban transportation such as the Red Hill case, where support for the expansion of roadways and associated urban development was reinforced to a great degree by the identification of roads and automobiles with well-established notions of technological progress, individual freedom and economic renewal. Such identifications take on additional resonance within the historical context of an industrial city, where progress has traditionally been equated with the taming and transformation of biophysical processes through technology and human labour, and where visible signs of this legacy persist, from the billowing

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smokestacks to the clouds of smog and derelict brownfield sites. In such places, perhaps, it is easier to view the weeds and wildflowers now reclaiming these abandoned spaces as signs of failure and decline and to imagine renewal in terms of new industrial-scale development projects that can again successfully transform the wasted space of nature into productive spaces of wealth and prosperity. As I have sought to demonstrate throughout this thesis, the persistence of these ideas and desires, mediated and experienced through specific regional landscapes and discourses, is shaped to a large extent by political economic conditions and not simply by the contest and interplay of political narratives. The story of the Red Hill Creek Expressway demonstrates the ease with each urban development can become locked into paths of infrastructural dependence by previous planning decisions (or lack thereof) and prevailing economic conditions, at multiple scales. In this case, politicians and planners failed to maintain Highway 20 as a north-south escarpment crossing due to political pressure from residents and business interests, including the Ontario Land Corporation, and were consequently persuaded to promote the valley as the most politically and financially expedient route. The ability to pursue more innovative (and politically contentious) solutions to traffic congestion was diminished during the 1980s and 1990s by the gradual decline of the steel manufacturing industry under conditions of economic globalization, followed by a more regional application of deregulatory fanaticism under the Conservative provincial government of Mike Harris. With a physical infrastructure and transportation system long geared towards support of the manufacturing sector, and now faced with serious

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industrial contamination of air, water and soil, Hamilton faced significant material obstacles to pursue the kind of alternative urban future suggested by the Vision 2020 plan, combined with the resistance from various local actors who continued to benefit from adhering to established Fordist development patterns and practices. While the recent turn towards regional smart growth under a new Liberal provincial government has provided political and financial support for urban intensification, the expansion of public transit, and other efforts to limit suburban expansion and greenfield development, there remains little financial support from all levels of government for the rehabilitation and reuse of brownfield sites in Canada support that is absolutely crucial for post-industrial cities such as Hamilton.9 Ive tried to demonstrate that Hamilton, as a former manufacturing centre with a unique physical geography and political history, provides an important case study of the ecological modernization of urban development. The city faces unique challenges due to the path-dependencies created by the legacy of steel manufacturing, including the accumulation of environmental pollutants and contaminated brownfield sites, and continued reliance on industrial development and associated transportation infrastructure to support the municipal tax base. Dominant conceptions of ecological modernization have thus sought to promote the notion of balancing environmental protection and rehabilitation with a continued emphasis on the expansion of transportation infrastructure and greenfield business parks to attract new investment.It must be noted that the City of Hamiltons Environmental Remediation and Site Enhancement (ERASE) program has had some recent successes in encouraging the redevelopment of brownfield sites. ERASE provides grants and property tax concessions for redevelopment projects and preliminary studies.9

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The greening of the Red Hill Creek Expressway serves as an example of this vision. At the same time, activist networks galvanized by the struggle against the Red Hill Creek Expressway and rooted in a rich local history of labour and environmental activism, have challenged this vision with an alternative urban imaginary. Through resistance to the expressway, activists have politicized established approaches to urban development and highlighted the close ties between municipal politicians and the development industry. They have succeeded in drawing critical attention to the wider model of urban development represented by the Red Hill Creek Expressway and fostering debate over the future course of urbanization for the Hamilton region. In the political space opened up by the defeat of Mayor Larry DiIanni and the disruption of the pro-growth governing regime that had promoted the development of the expressway and the aerotropolis, many activists have been representing an alternative vision, an urban environmental imaginary that first emerged out of the Vision 2020 plan. This is a vision of Hamilton as a city that more fully embraces ecological modernization, abandoning reliance on manufacturing jobs, highways, and related infrastructure in favour of urban intensification and revitalization of the ailing inner city, a modal shift away from the car to public transit and cycling, the reduction of energy and land consumption, and the redirection of investment towards service industries, information technology, arts, culture and tourism (Ryan McGreal in Hamilton Spectator, April 2, 2008). This alternative urban imaginary presents natural processes and spaces as vital components of urban life, highlighting the integration of urban form with nature rather

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than the transformation and domestication of nature through urban development. The lake, the valley, the escarpment, and surrounding conservation areas and parklands, are highlighted and celebrated as unique features of the region that contribute to Hamiltons quality of life as places of ecological and cultural significance. The modernist vision of urban metabolism as requiring the compartmentalization and control of nature, expressed in the industrial imaginary and exemplified by Hamiltons historical planning practices, is rejected in favour of a conception of the city as a composite of interconnected and overlapping social and biophysical processes that can only be partially understood and anticipated. This casts doubt on the idea that the city can be master planned and perfectly managed, and points instead to a more holistic and synergistic vision of urban metabolism. In contrast to the more radical elements of the public ecology narrative articulated during the final years of resistance against the road, this emergent vision of the green city places less emphasis on issues of democratization and environmental justice, and more emphasis on alternative strategies of economic development and urban planning, fleshing out details that remained vague during the previous decades of resistance. Those supporting this alternative imaginary now have a political opportunity to affect more substantial changes in urban development and transportation policy but must also be wary of abandoning the more radical analyses and ideas for change suggested by the struggle against the expressway, as Ive tried to demonstrate through my discussion of Aboriginal politics and the Caledonia land occupation.

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Over the course of many years and successive waves of activism, the expressway conflict produced a vibrant mix of activist movements and forged networks of communication and collaboration between environmentalists, social justice and antipoverty groups, peace and global justice advocates, animal rights activists and many others, cutting across and combining different political ideologies. My analysis suggests that local activists must continue working to understand and challenge the language, ideas and desires that grant particular approaches to urban development and transportation a hegemonic status, as well as the material interests and political economic conditions that lock in these accumulation strategies by limiting the ability to pursue alternative approaches. This requires an approach to urban environmental politics that does not focus exclusively on the local scale or reduce all local problems to manifestations of global forces but rather illuminates how urban conflicts are shaped by networks of people, ideas, money and biophysical processes that stretch across geographical scales, and how those scales are continually redefined through political struggles as actors work to highlight particular socio-spatial relations while obscuring others. As Brown and Purcell (2004: 611) write, the analysis of scale should examine how the relationships among scales are continually socially produced, dismantled, and re-produced through political struggle. The analysis should always see scales and scalar relationships as the outcome of particular political projects. It should therefore address which political interests pursue which scalar arrangements. Furthermore, it should analyze the agenda of those political interests. Such considerations can inform the development of policy alternatives, particularly with respect to economic development. In Hamilton and elsewhere, activists face the difficult

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challenge of understanding and utilizing political economic opportunities to promote alternative approaches to urban development that resist the tendency to separate economic, social and ecological sustainability into separate conceptual and policy spheres. Further, these alternative approaches must tap into prevailing urban environmental imaginaries, drawing upon popular symbols, concepts and spaces that can be imbued with positive notions of ecological responsibility, cultural revitalization and democratic renewal. Finally, I have argued that alternative visions of urban development must be built on a commitment to environmental justice and democratization that extends beyond the familiar conceptual boundaries of the city, the state and liberal individualism. This case study highlights three major areas for future research in urban political ecology and environmental politics. The first concerns the need for more detailed research into the historical formation of discourses of urbanization and nature, and particularly counter-hegemonic narratives that are able to mobilize citize