Transition Policies in Housing and Transportation in Quebec, Canada Raise Concern for Urban Sprawl, Equity and Social Justice

Keywords: Sustainable Housing, Electric Vehicle, Neoliberalism, Urban Sprawl, Sustainable Urban Transition
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 11

Abstract

Government promotion of sustainability can contribute to the persistence of unsustainable development pathways and to the exacerbation of inequalities. Such a situation arises when policies concentrate on the adoption of technological artefacts by individual consumers rather than on more fundamental transformations of how society operates. In this paper, we argue that to devise fair and transformative transition policies, a more thorough consideration of the social and spatial dimensions of sociotechnical system transitions (Binz et al., 2020; Fastenrath & Braun, 2018), a multi-system perspective (Ernst et al., 2016) and a particular attention to the influence of neoliberalization processes on transitions (Brenner et al., 2010; Antal et al., 2020) will be necessary. We exemplify this viewpoint by analyzing the case of sustainability transition policies in housing and transportation in Quebec, Canada. The methods include literature review and documentary analysis of relevant policies. We conclude that Quebec’s transition policies can certainly contribute to a reduction of direct greenhouse gas emissions associated with housing and transportation systems. However, two strong caveats can be raised about the overall environmental contributions and fairness of these policies. First, in line with the neoliberal project, these policies adhere to a commodity and consumer understanding of the transition that risks exacerbating socioeconomic inequalities. Second, since they target homeowners (Lessard, 2021) and the buyers of individual motor vehicles (Orsi, 2021), an argument can be made to the effect that these policies further subsidize unsustainable land use patterns characteristic of sprawl and as such, they risk reinforcing structural lock-ins (Filion, 2010).