Assembling place-based transitions: capitalist logics of green building in Vancouver, Canada

O'Neill, Kirstie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3954-9933 and Affolderbach, Julia 2024. Assembling place-based transitions: capitalist logics of green building in Vancouver, Canada. Urban Geography 24 (5) , pp. 840-862. 10.1080/02723638.2023.2243132

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Abstract

Green building is increasingly central in urban sustainability strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to demonstrate leadership, innovation, and technological advances. Vancouver offers a strategic example of a city that has adopted green building policies for sustainability and boosterism purposes. We combine assemblage thinking with sustainability transitions research to expose the relationality and interconnectedness of green building practices in specific places like Vancouver. This allows us to explore the entangled nature of niche-regime relations, and the stickiness between places and practices, which influence emergent innovations: how place specificity affects the unfolding of transitions. Through our empirical examples, we identify two logics driving green building in Vancouver (risk and innovation, and urban entrepreneurialism), which although differentiated nevertheless work to reinforce neoliberal sustainability activities. We argue that despite implementation of varied green building approaches, policy and discourse tend to mainstream a weaker, incremental form of green building.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	1938-2847
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	31 July 2023
Date of Acceptance:	22 July 2023
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2024 04:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/161374

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