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Browsing Research Publications by Author "Desfor, Gene"
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Item Open Access Introduction to "Political ecologies of urban waterfront transformations"(Elsevier, 06/04/2007) Bunce, Susannah; Desfor, GeneThis is an introductory chapter for a series of papers which focus on the political ecology of waterfronts in selected cities in Europe, North America and the Caribbean. The papers incorporate emphases on the myriad influences that different scales of social and environmental policy development and implementation, planning decisions, infrastructure funding, investment and ownership practices, and public engagement, for example, have on the social and ecological processes that occur on urban waterfronts. The authors posit that urban waterfronts are interesting and complex spatial locations that, when studied with attention to broader transformative processes as well as the changes that occur within the scale of the urban waterfront, allow for new insights into the production of nature, patterns of social entanglement, and political–economic configurations in cities.Item Open Access Keys to the City: Waterfront Development in Toronto(2006-09) Laidley, Jennefer; Desfor, GeneThe article begins with a narrative of David Miller’s 2003 mayoral election victory not only because the waterfront has become, if not materially then certainly symbolically, central to his term of office, but also because it demonstrates how waterfront quays have become places with strategic political, economic, environmental and social value. The waterfront was central to Miller’s election victory and – contrary to the continuing complaint that ‘there’s nothing happening on the waterfront’ – has played a major role in city, regional and even national politics throughout his first term of office. We argue this is the case because the waterfront has become critical for wealth accumulation processes, and control of these processes is a major concern. Cities have long been recognized as prominent agglomerations in economic processes of production and reproduction and, at this particular historical juncture, waterfronts are one of the main sites where this occurs. http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay13.pdfItem Open Access Port City Relations: Global Spaces of Urban Waterfront Development(23/11/2007) Desfor, GeneUrban waterfronts have become key sites where global restructuring processes and local interests are engaged in complex struggles that are influencing the future of cities. The author discusses three issues related to these struggles. First, new waterfront spaces are emerging from a convergence of economic restructuring, globalization and technological changes. Second, port security has become an increasingly important factor in waterfront developments and port-city relations. And third, urban waterfront developments are part of the construction of socio-nature. Following a discussion of these issues, the author suggests that new policies are needed for waterfront development.Item Open Access Toronto's Recent Waterfront Struggles: Much Ado About Nothing?(2006-01) Desfor, Gene; Laidley, JenneferThe article analyses a particular case of jurisdictional conflict in planning and developing Toronto's waterfront at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation and the Toronto Economic Development Corporation seemed to have different ideas about how to develop a site on the East Bayfront, and this article describes struggles between the organizations. It suggests that continuing battles betweeen these organizations is much ado about nothing for the majority of Toronto's diverse working class. http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay09.pdfItem Open Access Urban Expansion and Industrial Nature: A Political Ecology of Toronto's Port Industrial District(Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008-09) Desfor, Gene; Vesalon, LucianThis article analyses political and economic practices involved with the production of an industrial form of socio-nature - the Port Industrial District - during the early decades of the twentieth century in Toronto, Canada. Informed by historical documents from that period, as well as using contemporary concepts from urban theory, we analyse the creation of a major land mass and southern extension of Toronto within a political ecology framework. We explicitly link the concept of socio-nature with the dynamics suggested by theories of capital and spatial expansion, thereby bringing 'nature' into a more central position in understanding urban development processes. The Toronto Harbour Commissioners, the central organization in this land-creation process, reflected, we argue, more the ideological preferences and economic interests of local elites than an efficient institutional design for solving a multi-dimensional 'waterfront problem '. The harbour commission and its supporters envisioned and promoted the new industrial district, the pivotal section of its 1912 waterfront development plan, as a general strategy for intensifying industrialization and growth of the city. The massive infrastructure project is best understood as a spatio-temporal fix to productively absorb capital through spatial expansion and temporal deferment. A new institutional arrangement consolidated political and economic relations through practices that made possible the production of a new form of socio-nature and reshaped the eastern section of Toronto's central waterfront as an industrial landscape.Item Open Access Walking on Water: The Politics of Land Creation(03/03/2008) Desfor, GeneThis presentation looks at how a particular form of socio-nature, the Port Industrial District, was produced through intertwined human and non-human processes and how this new land-form supported wealth accumulation in Toronto during the early twentieth century.