Densification in Vancouver - A general introduction of concepts employed to understand this phenomenon

Chapter Two


Introduction to terminology and concepts

In this study concepts from three separate discourses will be used to look at different facets of the postmodern transformation of Vanncouver. From political economy the concept of regime of accumulation will be used to study the densification process. From the discourse on modernity and postmodernism, an array of concepts will be used to fashion a concept of regulation. Finally, from social ecology, Burgess’s concentric city model will be used as template to map out how the settlement geography of the city has changed in the late twentieth century.
Because this study will also attempt to situate these developments within a larger historical framework concepts from Regulation theory will be borrowed to identify distinct period of development with regard to the evolution of the built environment in Vancouver

2.0a – Introduction to Regulation Theory
Starting with Regulation theory, growing disenchantment with standard Marxist interpretations of change set the stage for the creation of Regulation theory (Jessop 1990). In France, in particular, there was feeling that concepts used to periodize change, such as a mode of production, were too abstract. To better understand change more concrete categories were required. Moreover, the orthodox emphasis placed on revolutionary change began to seem too unrealistic and dogmatic. To make it possible to look at non revolutionary processes of change, a more nuanced framework for understanding change was needed. Finally, these theorists recognized that political and cultural factors, and not just economic variables, needed to be incorporated into any explanation of change.
So, rather than focussing upon revolutionary transformation and the overthrow of capitalism, Regulation theory looked more closely at how an existing system can mutates or reform itself. Consequently Regulation theorists began to explore how regulatory structures work preserve and transform a particular society To do this, it was soon realized that a much finer theoretical mesh was required. One which could capture change at different geographic scales. And one which could capture the role played by politics and culture.
Unlike more orthodox Marxist formulations of change, which pitched at a very abstract level, such as the mode of production, Regulation theory generated concepts that operated at an intermediate level of abstraction (David Kotz 1990). The other noteworthy feature about Regulation theory was the theoretical space given to the play of contingency. More attention was therefore given to historical context and the play of non-economic forces in the process of transformation. As Bob Jessop (1990) pointed out, regulation theory looks at ‘contingent interaction among tendencies and counter-tendencies, “ concerning itself with the “ actual results in specific conjunctures.”
Like most other most other streams of thought in political economy, Regulation theory originally looked at processes of change occurring at the level of the nation state. However because this study of transformation will be primarily set at the level of the Local state some concepts borrowed from Regulation theory will have to be recalibrated to make them useful. Furthermore, because this study will be looking at the evolution of the city in terms of the production of space the relation between capital and land will be given more emphasis than the relation between labour and capital. This represents a significant departure for Regulation theory since the relation between labour and capital has traditionally formed the basis for demarcating different periods of historical development.
In particular, four key concepts used by the Parisian school – mode of growth, model of development, regime of accumulation and mode of regulation -- will be modified or let go. Beginning with mode of growth, Jessop describes a mode of growth as a pattern “of production and consumption of a national economy considered in terms of its role in the international division of labour (p.174). Since urban processes are the focus of this study, this concept will not be used.
Lower down the scale of abstraction, there is model of development. To Jessop a model of development is comprised of a dominant paradigm, made up of two parts: a regime of accumulation and a mode of concept. Jessop observed that this term is mostly to be found in the work of Lipietz (1979).However equivalent terms can be found elsewhere in the literature. In this study mode of development will be recast as a mode of urban development. In turn, a mode of development, is defined by the articulation of a regime of accumulation and mode of regulation.
In Regulation theory, a regime of accumulation is defined by the relation between capital and labour. When a stable and reproducible pattern of production emerges from out of specific configuration established by capital and labour, a new regime of accumulation is born. Similarly, when a regime of accumulation can no longer reproduce the conditions necessary for the reproduction of a pattern of production, a period of transition sets This will be the framework that will be used to look at the production of space. However, because the main will be placed upon the relation between land and labour, rather than labour and capital the way a regime of accumulation is conceptualized will have to be altered to reflect this change in emphasis.
Then there is a mode of regulation. Along with regime of accumulation, this is the other conceptual marker Regulation theory uses to set one period of development apart from another. For Jessop, a mode of regulation refers to the values, norms and institutions whicch come into existence to help secure and reproduce an existing regime of accumulation. A mode of regulation is therefore made up the “institutional ensemble and complex norms which secure capitalist reproduction pro tempore despite the conflictual and antagonistic character of capitalist social relations (Jessop 1990,p.174). While a regime of accumulation places more emphasis on structure, a mode of development gives more space to the consideration of agency rather than structure. Likewise, if a regime of accumulation is concerned with economic processes, a mode of regulation focuses more on political and cultural processes that support a regime of accumulation. While a regime of accumulation tends to set limits on change, and by doing so homogenize the process of change, a mode of regulation is more influenced by local social and political forces which results in the creation of more variability.
When adapted to the study of Vancouver, a regime of accumulation will be used primarily to refer to the relation between capital and land that determines distinct phases of development with regard to the production of space. As we shall see, in the second part of the twentieth century two distinct patterns can be identified. Between 1945 and 1965 urban development was defined by land-extensive development. Compared to the pre war period this meant that capital investment became more dispersed. In the mid 60’s, this began to change. As investment in the built environment began to become more concentrated, a new regime of accumulation appeared, one which was based on land-intensive rather than land-extensive development.
At the same time, the cultural and institutional supports which had sustained land-extensive development began to fray. With the coming of the counter culture a period of transition and experimentation began which eventually produced a new set of norms and expectations which became the basis the creation of a new mode of regulation. In Vancouver, this happened when urban reformers came to power in the early 1970’s. Along with the densification process (land-intensive development), As the study of planning in Vancouver will show, besides the densification process, this cultural shift would have a profound effect on the way that space was regulated, bringing into existence a new mode of urban development, where the interplay between postmodern regulation and densification became the defining feature of a new phase of development.

2:1 In Search of a definition: Looking at Postmodernism in terms of urban regulation

Because postmodernism has been used in several different ways, it is useful to look at how the word has evolved before lookig how can be used to define a mode of regulation . In her book Post-modern and the post-industrial: a critical Analysis, Margaret Rose (1991) traces the use of the word back to the early 1930s when postmodernism was used as an aesthetic term to describe a style of poetry that arose in reaction to modern verse. According to Rose, the term also surfaced occasionally in other contexts. For example Arnold Toynbee used the term to describe a new era in a book that he published in 1930. Later on several references to postmodernism were made in a number of sociology texts written by C. W. Mills in the 1950s and Etzioni during the 1960s. However, it wasn't until Charles Jencks popularized the word as an aesthetic term within the field of architecture that the concept of postmodernism came into more widespread use.
In the 1970’s postmodernism began to be used as a philosophic construct, when Lyotard (1984) and Hassan (1984) used the concept of postmodernism to critique modern philosophy. Becoming a key reference point in philosophy as well cultural studies, it did not take long before the term began to be used in another way, this time as an historic construct.. Within the field of political economy this happened in the 1980’s. For example, Walter Jameson's (1984) wrote about the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of capitalism, one in which a new culture logic, which he described as being postmodern, would become one of the defining features of Late Capitalism.
Presently weak and strong versions of postmodernism are in use. At one end, we find theorists like Lyotard and Hassan who claim that postmodernism constitutes a radical negation and transcendence of modernism. Meanwhile, theorists like Marshall Berman (1982) and David Harvey (1989) have taken a more moderate position on the significance of postmodernism, interpreting postmodernism as just one stream of modernism, not its negation or transcendence.
When related to a mode of regulation, in this study postmodernism becomes the defining cultural logic for current period of city building. This interpretation does not presume that postmodernism works as a single totalizing force that encompasses and shape everything according to one cultural logic. That is why the notion of a cultural logic takes its cue more from the work of David Harvey rather than that of Fredric Jameson. Here, postmodernism is meant to refer to a looser constellation of causes and effects that are generated from an identifiable cultural field or matrix, rather than as an all encompassing, or fairly rigid and narrow structural framework where the rules and commands that exist for the organization of space are already largely determined, as would be the case with regard to the way a DNA molecule shapes a living organism. In both cases, chance and mutation are important parts of the evolutionary process. If a comparison between the organization of an organic entity and urban space is made, unlike an organic entity, subjectivity, at both the individual and institutional level, can play a decisive, if not critical role, at certain critical conjunctures, in affecting what the outcome will be, making the process of spatial formation much more open ended and indeterminant than can properly be conveyed by using a biological metaphor.
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Instead the conjecture put forward is that postmodern regulation is defined by a series of articulated and patterned responses that were triggered by three events that occurred at different scales, but were nevertheless related to each other. For example at a continental or global level, it is possible to two events sparked the shift from modern to postmodern forms of regulation. The first and most important event was the shift from bureaucratic to market rule. The second event was the emergence of a new middle class. In all Western countries, but most particularly in North America, this middle class fraction emerged because of two processes. The first had to do demographics and the decision to expand the university system (Owram 1996; Kettle 1984). In turn, the subsequent expansion of the university in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in quantum leap in the number of middle-class individuals who were socialized in this institutional context.
Besides these global and continental forces, the postmodern transformation of the city may take on some unique national characteristics because of the presence of specific processes at work at each geographical scales. For example, in Canada, the arrival and adoption of postmodern norms coincided with the emergence of the densification process as a significant restructuring force. This, combined with presence of a different political culture (Laxer 1996), gave postmodern regulation in Canada a different inflection than in the United States. And it was from the middle class representations of the city that were constructed out of these different inflections that provided the experential context that eventually were translated into different actions by the institutional apparatus of the local state in each country. In this way changes in the institutional apparatus would eventually materialize into the production of different spaces, producing a distinctive political culture and built environment that become expressive of these new experiences. As a result, there are postmodern spaces and there is a postmodern time that can be described which make it possible classify the evolution of the city by looking at shifts in culture and the impact that these shifts have had on the regulatory apparatus of the local state.
Postmodernism therefore refers to something more than a distinctive span of time. It also refers to the presence of spatial logic that functions within the sphere of the local state creating specific spaces that can be identified as being postmodern because of a set of philosophic, social and aesthetic attributes that stand in contrast to spatial attributes that existed when twentieth century modernism was the dominant spatial logic for the organization of space in the city. However, postmodernism will also be used in a more expansive way, and refers to something more than the existence of a contrasting spatial logic. Employed as a descriptive construct to taken into account other attributes that are not directly associated with the local state, the experiences of the middle class or postmodern regulation but exist at the same time and help to delimit the existence of different time periods and even, at some stage, eventually become integrated into the postmodern spatial matrix and even shape it to a certain extent. On the occasions that the postmodern city is referred to in this sense duration not logic becomes the qualifying factor for inclusion and the use of the term postmodernism becomes more descriptive rather than analytical.
When this is done the discussion of the postmodern city becomes broader and embraces a larger empirical domain. And this is helpful in making sense of the many facet of the new reality that we are now living, making it easier to understand what has happened. This also allows many of the empirical differences that exist between the modern and postmodern periods to be more clearly highlighted and sorted into contigent and logics parts of the postmodern logic for the organization of space in the Canadian city. For example, even though some the distinguishing elements that set one period apart from another - such as different patterns of immigration and demographic changes, such as a declining birth-rate -- may not be logically connected to the emergence of a postmodern system of regulation there is an historical connection, where non-cultural, outside elements, become absorbed into this new cultural logic and may even become distinguishing elements that set one period apart from another: even if, as with immigration, it is an external element that is separate from the cultural experiences of the middle class but one which has nevertheless shaped what has happened to the regulation of the city.
In this way, elements unrelated to the creation of a postmodern spatial matrix can be incorporated into the discussion of the postmodern city. Although they may have nothing directly to do with the origins of postmodern regulation their presence has affected the organization and look of the postmodern city. For example, in this study the two most important external attributes that exist outside the postmodern matrix but which set the postmodern period apart from the modern period are immigration and the creation of new tenure form with the passage of strata title legislation. In the case of immigration the shift from Europe to Asia has had a profound influence on the evolution of the postmodern city although it is not logically connected to middle class representations of the city, which resulted in the production of postmodern spaces (SC-44; G/M 1997bm). Likewise the introduction of strata title legislation would play a pivotal role in establishing a contact point where postmodern norms could be articulated to the densification process, creating a material and institutional nexus for a new mode of urban development with a definable spatial logic that can be described as postmodern, to emerge. In this case strata title legislation acted as an institutional bridge that made it possible for postmodern regulation to attach itself to the densification process. This created an important articulation that established an institutional mechanism that would become an important support for the postmodern transformation of the city.
The concept of modern and postmodern will therefore be used in a complex and composite fashion rather than as a simple classification scheme to periodize urban change. On the one hand, these terms will be used as descriptive terms to simply to refer to the presence of two contrasting time periods. On the other hand, postmodernism will be used to refer to a new mode of regulation, which exists as a spatial matrix that operates on three distinct levels that involve philosophic, social and aesthetic constructs about space that affect how urban space is regulated, producing a spatial logic which is separate from the modern one which once predominated. As a historic construct, although there is a loose correspondence between the empirical elements that the two senses of the term will be used in, identical things or processes are not necessarily referred to. For this reason there is a certain degree of fuzziness in the employment of these terms that is unavoidable. But this is compensated for by the way that the double application of postmodernism as a historic construct allows the varied processes that that are involved in the shift from the modern to postmodern period of development to be taken into account in the discussion that will now follow on the subject of urban transformation.