Creating New Urban Spaces of Sustainability and Governmentality: An Assessment of the Development of a Food and Urban Agriculture Strategy for Edmonton, Canada

Urban Farm DB summary

A participatory action case study examined the development of Edmonton, Canada's urban food policy from 2008 to 2013, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, coded and triangulated through a grounded-theory approach. Despite initial progressive changes in municipal policy and promising innovative food-system planning, the research found that Edmonton's city council was ultimately driven largely by a development agenda, following a pattern documented in other urban sustainability initiatives that foreclose political debate and reinforce the status quo.