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Grant, Jill

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10222/77426

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    The production of a suburban main street: Financialization and urban design in Halifax
    (School of Planning, Dalhousie University, 2017-11) Willwerth, Nick; Grant, Jill
    Given that planning policy calls for mixed use, higher densities, street-oriented facades, walkability, and high-quality urban design, what explains the kinds of segregated, low-density, auto-oriented designs and development patterns that appear in some suburban areas? Drawing on land sales data, field surveys, and interviews with urban professionals (planners, developers, brokers, elected councillors) in Halifax, Canada, we argue that processes of financialization are generating new opportunities for the mass production of suburban landscapes lined with specific types of buildings. Alongside land-use regulations and design guidelines intended to urbanize the suburbs by promoting urban forms and sensibilities, financial processes paradoxically reproduce traditional suburban stereotypes.
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    Evaluating Strategies for Plan Coordination: A Survey of Canadian Planners
    (Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2019) McCarthy, Stephen; Grant, Jill; Habib, Muhammad Ahsanul
    In the contemporary context, many Canadian cities have large numbers of plans that present major challenges for coordination and implementation. The paper reports the results of a survey of Canadian planning practitioners who were asked about the strategies they use to coordinate plans and policies. The most highly-rated strategy, collaborating and sharing data for consensus-based decision-making, reflects the dominance of the collaborative planning paradigm in motivating the discipline. Data analysis discovered strong correlations between perceptions of the efficacy of a strategy and practitioners saying they used the strategy: in other words, planners value not only what they have been taught in theory, but what they do in practice.
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    Planners’ perceptions of the influence of leadership on coordinating plans
    (Sage, 2018) Grant, Jill; Taylor, Amanda; Wheeler, Christina
    Based on interviews with 92 planners in five Canadian city-regions, we explore planners’ perceptions of the ways that leadership affects their ability to coordinate land-use planning activities in the context of sometimes divergent or conflicting priorities and policies. Practitioners describe conditions where transformational leadership -- with organizational leaders building followership around values set by political leaders – has become common, and planners have often settled into managerial roles as agent of municipal councils. Planners identify two other roles they may play: as facilitator of communication and collaboration, and as leader for smart growth strategies. The evidence suggests that planners align their role expectations not only with preferred theories in the discipline, but also with the leadership regimes they encounter.
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    Integrated community sustainability planning in Atlantic Canada: Green-washing an infrastructure agenda
    (Sage, 2018) Grant, Jill; Beed, Timothy; Manuel, Patricia
    In 2005 the Canadian federal government initiated a New Deal for Cities and Communities. The program, which involved bilateral agreements with provincial governments, promised substantial funding to municipalities to promote integrated community sustainability through capacity building and infrastructure renewal. We evaluate the content of sustainability plans and the processes that produced them in one region: Atlantic Canada. The findings suggest that although the state mandate and funding resources produced a large number of sustainability plans, changing national political priorities and local desperation for economic and population growth undermined the program’s initial commitment to and potential for environmental and social sustainability.
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    Regulating marginality: how the media characterises a maligned housing option
    (Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2019) Grant, Jill; Derksen, Janelle; Ramos, Howard
    Communities often stigmatise forms of housing targeting low-income tenants. This paper examines how media sources characterise one such form: rooming houses that provide multiple, low-cost, single-room accommodations in structures with shared bathrooms and/or kitchens. By analysing newspaper and online media coverage in Halifax, Canada, we illustrate the way the media describe the rooming house as a risky structure and its occupants as dangerous and marginalised persons requiring surveillance and regulation. Media coverage can play an important role in creating the social context within which local government fashions planning and housing policy interventions to control the size, location, and operation of unpopular housing options. In cities where market pressures drive gentrification, negative media coverage can contribute to the on-going loss of such affordable housing opportunities.