The barriers to achieving sustainability in the region involve factors operating at a variety of scales. Political and economic factors acting at the local scale was already discussed in the comparison of Vancouver with Surrey. At the regional scale, there are several factors affecting sustainability. Many of these factors are related to the plan and the regional planning authority (the GVRD) itself. First, as mentioned earlier, the GVRD does not have any enforcement tools with which to ensure local municipal adoption of LRSP objectives and goals. The result is a lack of regional cohesion, which the plan is based on and which is needed to begin moving towards sustainability objectives, and a continuance of the ‘smoke stack chasing’ model whereby municipalities continue to compete for development projects that demand fast approval and little if no planning and consultation. Indeed, Ralph Perkins, a senior planner with the GVRD, identified this lack of enforcement mechanism as being the biggest obstacle to achieving GVRD sustainability objectives.
    
        Another barrier operating at the regional scale is the lack of integration between  land-use planning, which is carried out by the GVRD, and transportation planning, which is the responsibility of the GVTA, now called Translink. As noted earlier in the paper, one of the keys to planning sustainable growth is an integration of land-use and transportation planning into a coherent whole. That the GVRD and Translink are effectively institutionally and fiscally divorced from one another means that strategic planning for mixed-use, high density, transit centred developments in the region is undermined.
    
        The very weak interpretation of sustainability adopted in the various regional sustainability initiatives like the LRSP is a further barrier to achieving sustainability in the region.  Although the broad aims of the LRSP, if achieved, can definitely be seen to be ones that would result in a far more sustainable region, the specific targets that have been actually set are minimal, an example of which is the target of achieving a transit modal split of only 18 per cent by 2021. This shows the GRVD initiatives still envision the automobile to play an overwhelmingly dominant role in transportation and land-use outcomes in the future. Further, the objective to concentrate growth in the growth concentration area does not address the problem of sprawl in the region, as concentrating growth in a large and vast area does not necessarily result in compact nodal developments serviced by transit. Perhaps the most significant flaw with regional sustainability initiatives are that regulatory tools and meaningful implementation strategies are all but absent in the plans.  As such, the various regional sustainability initiatives can really be seen to be ‘all bark and no bite’, lacking any teeth with which to bring about the changes called for in the plans.
Policy and decision making involving land-use and, to a lesser degree, transportation decisions are still very much occurring at the local scale and not the regional scale, resulting in more or less a continuance of the status quo. The integration of economic development, the environment, and social equity issues within policy and strategy, despite the massive amount of regional plans, documents, studies and discussion papers strategizing about how to integrate these, is still not occurring at the local scale across the region. The result is a fractured region made up of various different localities with very different interpretations of sustainability and how to implement it.  The divergent interpretations of sustainability at local scales, and the weakness and ineffectiveness of the regional body and its various initiatives, are significantly undermining the integration of economic development with environmental and social issues.

Larger Scale Barriers

        As illustrated earlier in the paper, there is general consensus that a particular urban form expressed at a range of scales can and does shape human behavior in ways that allows economic activity to occur while both reducing human impact on the environment and increasing social equity and overall quality of life. More broadly, there is almost universal acceptance of the need to adopt the concept of sustainability in decision making at personal, local, community, regional, national, and global scales. However, there seems to be a discrepancy between what is said, and what is done. As Jennie Moore writes: “As societies around the planet move closer to understanding the issues surrounding human impact on the eco-sphere, it is becoming increasingly clear …that there is disjunction between what citizens and local government say they want in terms of securing a sustainable future, and what they are willing to do to achieve it” (101). In terms of achieving sustainability in general, and a sustainable urban form in particular, it is clear that there are obstacles impeding the transformation of words into actions.  

        The barriers to achieving a sustainable urban form are far from clear, involving a combination of complex factors that act in mutually reinforcing ways at a range of geographic scales. Barriers acting at the local scale are often initiated at larger national and global scales, and vice versa. Earlier, I discussed how the emerging focus on regional urban sustainability is a reaction to the ill effects that modernism wrought on cities. However, widespread embracement of the concept of sustainability can also be seen to be a result of the structural shift from monopoly capitalism (Fordism) to global capitalism (post-Fordism) in which the role of cities is increased alongside a decrease in the importance of the nation state. Also, sustainability as a concept has, in some ways, been co-opted and used to brand and market cities and communities competing with one-another on a global scale. There are also powerful cultural forces influenced by aggressive and sophisticated branding and marketing techniques affecting behavior and perception surrounding the concept of sustainability.  

Sustainability, World Cities, Marketing and Globalization.

        Sustainability is often associated with the concept of ‘quality of life’, a commonly referred to measure gauging the ‘livability’ of cities effecting location decisions for companies, employers and employees alike (Indeed, Vancouver has been rated first or second in the world in ‘quality of life’ by an international agency for several consecutive years now). In this context, the widespread embracement of the concept of sustainability can be seen to be an effort to brand and market cities without actually practicing sustainability. The possibility of living in a ‘sustainable’ city with a ‘high quality of life’ without having to sacrifice the SUV and suburban fortress on acreage is desirable to many, and one that can be realized in Greater Vancouver.

        Just as the ‘New Urbanist’ movement markets its neo-traditional developments in the suburbs with claims that they are more environmentally sensitive and ‘community’ oriented (McCann, 1995), so too many cities and urban regions market themselves as ‘sustainable’ when things are really ‘business as usual’.  In the new international arena of decentralized production and competition characterized by post-Fordist flexibility and a new international division of labour, industrial production has been jettisoned to the ‘periphery’ to make way for information and service based activities in the ‘core’. The branding of cities is a powerful marketing tool used to attract employers and employees alike engaged in the ‘new’ service and information based economy characterizing wealthy, mainly western cities. In many ways, sustainability is being co-opted by multi-national capital and neo-liberals as a concept to further a particular set of social relations and social norms (Gibbs, 2002). A very local example of the co-option of the term sustainability for marketing purposes is the new “Univer-city” community being built up on Burnaby Mountain by the Burnaby Mountain Development Corporation in co-operation with Simon Fraser University. The community is being branded as “sustainable’ with the development corporation identifying ‘equity’ as one of the guiding principles of the design.  However, there isn’t one unit of affordable or non-market housing in the plans, and cars and their accoutrements play the dominant role in the design of the community (Burnaby Mountain Corporation, 2001). That a new development being developed in collaboration with a major and reputable University is co-opting the concept of sustainability for marketing purposes is revealing.

        The shift in the capitalist regime of accumulation from the monopoly variant (Fordism) to the global variant (Post-Fordism) has, many argue, resulted is a ‘hollowing out’ of the nation state or a process of ‘glocalisation’ (Gibbs, 2001). Amongst others, Sasses argues that cities are becoming increasingly prominent in the global market-place accompanied by the lose of sovereignty by nation states (Sassen, 1994). As shown above, sustainability objectives require regulatory mechanisms delivered at regional and national scales to mitigate against the divergent and competitive nature of local economic development. However, the integration of national economies into a global market, an increased emphasis on free trade, and a political shift towards more neo-liberal policies has resulted in decreased leverage for nation states to implement sustainability objectives. The result is increased pressures on local environments and a decreased ability for localities to implement, enact, and achieve sustainability objectives.

        Many have pointed out that economic globalization, free markets and the specific institutional forms they have taken on (such as the WTO) are incompatible with aims for greater sustainability (see for example; Gibbs, 2001; Goldsmith, 1996; Nozick, 1992;  Norberg-Hodge, 1996), arguing that a narrow focus on profit maximization and the belief that un-fettered market-forces will solve all our problems ignores many other non-economic values including those involving environmental and social factors.  The powers of the nation state have not vanished entirely, however. In the face of multilateral free-trade agreements overseen and enforced by supranational institutions and brokered largely by increasingly powerful global corporations, “the powers of the nation state have …been re-constituted and re-structured as states seek to develop coherent strategies to deal with a globalising world”(Gibbs, 26). The ability, and indeed even the willingness, of nation states to use this re-constituted power to implement sustainability is of course affected by pressures to attract investment and human resources, and by the penalties imposed on nation states by supra-national institutions like the WTO and IMF when they decide that they are impeding trade by the adoption and implementation of sustainability policies and strategies. Clearly, sustainability is incompatible with the type of neo-liberal, free-market policies embraced in Canada at all scales of government, from the City of Surrey and its developer/mayor Doug McCallum, to the ‘anti-government’ Liberal government of British Columbia and its neo-liberal Premier, Gorden Campbell, and to a lesser extent, the Federal Chretien Liberal government. In Canada, sustainability imperatives have not been sufficiently institutionalized and equipped with sanctions at any scale of intervention, and as a result, there lacks any behavioral constraints to environmentally destructive and socially exploitative behaviors. Instead, social values and cultural norms of behavior continue to be overwhelmingly based on limitless material consumption and accumulation, which is a most formidable barrier to sustainability.

Cultural and Perceptual Barriers.

     “The logic of a capitalist regime of accumulation founded on intensive growth and mass production has been to both produce and stimulate consumption to the maximum” (Lipietz in Gibbs, 2001; 17).  The item that best characterizes materialist mass consumption is the automobile. As an icon of freedom, power, individuality, autonomy, and social status, the car is an extremely powerful cultural symbol, particularly here in North America. In many ways it can be seen to be at the core of what Naomi Klein calls “brand culture” (2000). In a mass consumer society, she explains, people consume identities that have been manufactured and commodified through sophisticated advertising and branding techniques in order to sell ‘life style’ products. At the core of the American consumer lifestyle is the automobile, and increasingly the SUV. Brands like The Escape, The Liberty, The Explorer, The Frontier, The Ranger, the Forester, The Yukon, and the Expedition are found in urban cores and regions  throughout North America. These brand names evoke powerful sentiments about the landscape or situation in which people envision living, referring to a fantasized “elsewhere” and ideal, pure, and inherently American forms of identity. In this context, the suburb is the ‘frontier’: an escape from the ills of the city to the ‘liberty’ of the countryside. The drive to and from work is not a commute, but an expedition or an exploration, and these people we see driving downtown are just foresters and rangers on their day off. Other marketing techniques involve portraying other modes of transportation as being un-cool, abnormal, and even socially abhorrent, a recent example of which was an ad that appeared in SFU’s Peak Newspaper, as well as the Georgia Straight, proclaiming transit users as “creeps and weirdo’s” (The Peak April, 2003; 10; The Georgia Straight April 8th, 2003). This is not to suggest that people drive only as a result of the powerful marketing and branding techniques used to sell these ‘cultural products’. As mentioned earlier, in many cases, cars are not even really a choice, but a requirement as destinations are often beyond the convenient reach of transit. However, many people still choose to drive even when taking transit is a feasible alternative. Choosing to drive over taking transit even when driving is less convenient illustrate some of the powerful cultural forces intertwined with a mass consumer society based increasingly on the consumption of branded products and life-styles.

        Other perceptual and behavioral barriers to sustainability exist as a lack of understanding, and/or a failure to recognize, the unfeasibility of proceeding as usual. “Perceptual and behavioral barriers affect cognition of circumstances related to sustainability and interfere with action taking” (Moore, 107). Due to what is generally a widespread ignorance of issues surrounding the concept of sustainability, and as a result, widespread mis-use of the term (Premier G. Campbell constantly uses the word to justify closing down women’s shelters and reducing benefits for the disabled), people are not motivated to change behaviors that maintain the status quo. But clearly lack of education is not the only factor at play. In many instances, acting ‘sustainabley’ requires trade-offs and sacrifices that many are not willing to make for fear of the “free-rider” phenomenon seen in public good problems whereby there is a perceived inequity in terms of the sacrifices made.  People are generally not willing to make sacrifices that other people are not because, as Moore writes: “If one feels that one’s own sacrifice will be taken advantage of by someone else, thereby nullifying any possible benefit, motivation to act is diminished. Thus, perceived inequity becomes a rational for abdicating personal and civic responsibility to behave in ways that support sustainability” (200; 111). The fear of the ‘free-rider’, combined with the disjunction between what people espouse as being desirable over the long term (sustainability) and the blatantly unsustainable decisions that people make on a daily basis, may suggest that people expect sustainability objectives to be enforced by government through regulation. At any rate, neither market mechanisms nor voluntary measures have resulted in sustainable practices.
        There is also a widespread faith in technologies and the market place to solve our problems, or, in other words, a faith in the ability of adversity to bread innovation. 'Fuel cells will re-place gasoline, and genetically modified foods will feed the worlds poor'. However, “while the scope for possible action may grow with technological developments, it is very clear that the obstacles to sustainability are not technical or even economic: they are social, institutional, and political” (Bush, qtd. in Moore, 103).

 

Conclusions

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