Nature in the city: Urban ecological politics in Toronto

This dissertation is about urban ecological politics and how they are manifest in one city, Toronto. Given that few theoretical and empirical works have analyzed these politics, this largely exploratory dissertation includes an analysis of literature from outside of political science to address four broad questions. How might one characterize urban ecological politics? What are some of the situations that lead to these politics? What impact do these politics have on the city and on the larger political economic forces that shape the city? How have urban ecological politics been manifest in one particular city, Toronto?

I argue these politics are about regulating the urban-nature relationship; that is, they are political struggles involved in shaping, along with natural processes, the types of social and ecological relations and spaces that, in turn, shape the city. One of the main social processes that lead to these politics, I argue, is capitalist urbanization. The accumulation of private capital creates urban spaces and practices that cause environmental degradation. When people who are concerned with nature respond to this degradation, political struggle ensues. I also argue urban ecological politics have an impact on the shape of the city and on the broader political economic forces that produce capitalist urbanization. This impact happens because urban ecological politics regulate urban spaces in ways that can facilitate or impede the accumulation of private capital. The variability of the impact depends on the power relations between, and goals of, the groups involved in a given struggle.

My examination of Toronto in the latter part of the dissertation illustrates the theoretical assertions I make about urban ecological politics. Beginning with an overview of how ecological relations have affected Toronto, I turn to an examination of how the last 40 years of economic and spatial restructuring, much of it aimed at facilitating capitalist accumulation, have also caused significant environmental degradation. I trace how many of the environmental campaigns instigated by urban environmentalists in the past twenty years are a response to this environmental degradation. Very few of these campaigns have impeded capitalist accumulation while most have moderated the negative impact of accumulation. Nonetheless, as the struggle around the Leslie Street Spit illustrates, an urban ecological political struggle can result in the regulation of urban space that does not facilitate capitalist accumulation.