De-politicising and re-politicising transport infrastructure futures

De-politicisation and re-politicisation in transport infrastructure planning

The past decade has produced research revealing the post-political characteristics of state-based land use and transport planning (Oosterlynck and Swyngedouw, 2010; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012; Wilson, 2014). Generating insights about the modes of governance (Swyngedouw, 2009), participatory practices (Van Wymeersch et al., 2019) and planning policies (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012) supporting the de-politicisation of planning, the research has provided a theoretical and analytical lens to understand the structure of the politics guiding state-based planning. It has produced new understandings of the role policies, practices and processes play in protecting the politics of the state, and actively de-politicising what counts in the formal spaces of planning (see Reardon and Marsden, 2020).

While scholars grapple with the challenges associated with the de-politicisation of transport infrastructure planning, there is a body of research exploring this phenomenon, and its relationship to re-politicisation. In other words, how diverse actors take to the informal spaces outside of government and formal planning to contest planning proposals, processes and practices (see for instance, Metzger et al., 2014; Raco and Kesten, 2018; Kenis, 2019). These efforts can take many forms, and may include street protests and community meetings, but they can also embody a transformational potential in the creation of political citizen-subjects that exude a transformational potential and power to change future planning and policies (Van Wymeersch et al., 2020). While these moments of transformational potential can be episodic and uneven, studies examining the re-politicisation efforts taken by citizens has helped to illustrate the breadth and reach of these informal citizen-led participation efforts, as well as illuminate just how hard it is to shift the wider politics constituting planning (Legacy, 2016; Haughton and McManus, 2019; McArthur, 2019).

To help explain de-politicisation and its relationship to re-politicisation, scholars such as Wood and Flinders (2014), for instance, have turned to post-foundational scholarship to explore how the deeply political aspects of public life, including the planning for future transport, are de-politicised and therefore shielded in some ways from public critique. In their work, Wood and Flinders (2014) explore the three faces of de-politicisation and the interplay between them showing how de-politicisation extends beyond government and can be supported by social and discursive spaces. They show how de-politicisation is a social-political phenomenon. Such insights are in part supported by the work of post-foundational thinker Chantal Mouffe. In her work, Mouffe connects de-politicisation as described by Wood and Flinders (2014) to politics, describing it as the ‘the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seeks to establish a certain order’. However, in her efforts to locate ways to engage with de-politicisation, Mouffe (2000, 2005, 2013) described the political as manifesting as a counter-hegemonic expression revealed as a challenge against the state.

Positioned as a point of tension to politics and de-politicisation is the political. Connected to acts of re-politicisation, the political is described as ‘the antagonistic dimension which is inherent to all human societies….It is a dimension that can never be eradicated’ (Mouffe 2013: p. 2–3). The political establishes what Mouffe describes as a we/them relationship, and fuels an antagonistic encounter between the state and society, where what is at stake ‘is the struggle between opposing hegemonic projects which can never be reconciled rationally, one of them needing to be defeated’ (Mouffe, 2013: p. 9). Calling for agonism, Mouffe argues that there is transformative potential in taking on state hegemony, which is conducted not through a withdrawal from the state, but rather by contesting this politics through mobilising a ‘collective will’ that draws actors inside as well as outside the state to change it. In other words, it is about a re-politicisation that exposes de-politicisation and seeks to intervene to re-shape politics, which for this paper is transport infrastructure planning, by creating a space for a contested consensus, what Mouffe describes as agonism that moves to change the culture and preparedness to engage in debate and to hear dissent. In Mouffe’s words,

The call for democracy that is now being voiced in a variety of quarters can only produce lasting effects if the activists involved in these movements, instead of implementing a strategy of withdrawal, accept becoming part of a progressive ‘collective will’ engaged in a ‘war of position’ to radicalize democratic institutions and establish a new hegemony (Mouffe, 2013: p. 127).

Rather than acting as a binary or as two opposing forces, there is a relational quality between politics and the political, and de-politicisation and re-politicisation, whereby they are in continuous struggle as one responds to the other. One way this struggle is performed is in the combining of the politics of the ‘parliamentary’ and the political of the ‘extra-parliamentary’, that is state actors and non-state actors participating in a form of political engagement (Mouffe, 2013: p. 127), whereby new political possibilities may emerge.

Looking to another foundational thinker in this space, Jacques Rancière (1995, 1999) places his attention on what is made unequal in matters of public life as a core tenet in establishing the political. Rancière observes acts of re-politicisation as emergent and grounded in recognition or experience of inequality that leads to the ignition and then formation of citizens as political subjects; in other words, re-politicisation emerges from struggle or inequality that motivates ordinary citizens to become political actors in their efforts to resist and re-politicise planning. Rancière also engages with ideas of consensus and the role it plays in de-politicisation which may pose a barrier for change that is being expressed through re-politicisation. However, he argues, that the ‘folly of the times is the wish to use consensus to cure the disease of consensus’, and in bringing the issue of consensus to the fore, he calls for a re-politicisation of conflicts, to allow it to help reveal what is actually political: ‘to give politics back its former visibility in the handling of problems and resources’ (Rancière, 1995: p. 106). But he does not go so far as to suggest that a re-politicisation can give birth to a new consensus. Rather, and as shown by McArthur (2019), a single effort of re-politicisation cannot take all that is political in transport planning into account, which means that any new consensus will always remain narrow, as actors are limited in what experiences and forms of inequality they encounter and draw their energy from. Who is acting politically and why is a question embraced by Rancière and there is a general regard for the uneven ways in which such inequality is experienced, expressed and reflected in policy. Asking these questions builds understanding of the way de-politicisation establishes consensus and how that consensus is protected. It also shows how re-politicisation has the potential to build a new consensus with the potential power to establish a new hegemony that itself requires ongoing scrutiny.

Drawing on Mouffe’s call to mobilise a ‘collective will’ and Rancière’s cautioning of ‘using consensus to cure the disease of consensus’ offers an interesting framework through which to consider the interplay between de-politicisation and re-politicisation. In the section that follows, I examine de-politicisation and re-politicisation by considering how the politics of the parliamentary and the political of the extra-parliamentary interplayed, and what potential they generate for the politics of future transport planning. This includes what consensus frames and processes were challenged and how they were challenged.

Political landscapes: elite urban coalitions in the GTHA and City of Hamilton

In the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), an ambitious $50 billion transport plan called The Big Move: Transforming Transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (Greater Toronto, Transportation Authority, 2008) signalled a fundamental move by the province of Ontario towards regionalisation (Addie, 2013). Occurring in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, this shift was an effort by the province to consolidate the wider economic imperative through a spatial coordination of transit focusing on several key growth areas (Addie, 2013, p. 205), with the city of Hamilton being one. The plan was also released at a time when the region was experiencing growth in population that would add nearly 2.5 million people by 2031 to its existing population of 6.5 million (Hertel et al., 2015, p1-3). Down the road, the medium-sized city of Hamilton with a population of over 500,000 (Statistics Canada, 2016) would be the recipient of a light rail project, the first of its kind since the removal of streetcar infrastructure under this ambition plan. Cities like Hamilton contained within the GTHA were together contributing to substantial growth in population in the overall region signalling a need to invest in public transport to support future travel needs. This ambition aligned with the aim of having 80% of all GTHA residents living within two km of rapid transit upon the implementation of this plan (Greater Toronto, Transportation Authority, 2008, p. 1).

Despite these stated ambitions, little was understood about how the projects contained in the plan would be funded to ensure that transit was expanded to meet the needs of a diverse region. A report published by academics and consultants, Hertel et al. (2015 p. 8) about spatial equity in the GTHA, called for transit equity to help remove obstacles from achieving a ‘fair distribution of goods and services by the regional transportation system’. As some were calling for greater transit equity, other groups were calling for transportation systems that are ‘accessible, affordable, equitable, efficient and integrated across the region’ and for revenue and funding sources that are ‘dedicated, fair and efficient, transparent and accountable, regional and sustainable’ (Move the GTHA, 2019).

Responding to these diverse problems, two different elite urban coalitions formed, one in the city of Hamilton the other in the GTHA. Each spurred by different challenges facing their comparatively different geographical contexts, they would engage with the politics of planning for future transport infrastructure, occupying a gap they exposed in the framing of the transport problem and its solution. For the GTHA that discussion was about sustainable funding and for the city of Hamilton it was about how a consensus surrounding how a different transport mode could shape that city.

In the sections that follow, the paper turns to the re-politicisation efforts of these two urban coalitions in the region of the GTHA and the city of Hamilton to explore how they each engaged with the political in the planning for future urban transport infrastructure. What is revealed are the different ways the practices of re-politicisation exposed the politics of contemporary transport planning. This is done by exploring the new political possibilities and the transport infrastructure consensus-based promises that emerged.

A collective will and creating new political possibilities: The case of Move the GTHA

With the election of a new mayor in the city of Toronto, the problem of transport in the region was being framed around ensuring that suburban localities see investment in rapid transit as part of an integrated regional network. What was political about transit planning over this period tended to surround questions about transit technology and location of investment. It was a contest about lines on a map, focused on what parts of the city were attracting the largest investments, and what suburbs were most ‘deserving’ (Furey, 2017; Draaisma, 2017). In parallel with these debates, Metrolinx the regional transit authority for the GTHA delivered the Big Move (Greater Toronto, Transportation Authority, 2008) guiding a discussion about regional transit. Bold in its scope and emerging from a consultative process with communities, there was little money available to realise its ambition. Missing as well, was a public discussion about how funding could be generated. In response, the coalition group called Move the GTHA formed in 2011-12 to create the discussion.

Led by the Toronto Environmental Alliance, the Toronto Regional Board of Trade, CodeRedTO, Toronto Public Health and others, the Move the GTHA’s aim was to build awareness in support of a regional transit network that is affordable, accessible, integrated, well-funded, and supported by a funding arrangement that is also transparent and accountable (Move the GTHA, 2020). Self-described as a ‘collective of organisations’, the Move the GTHA was designed to provide a convening space that could bring together a politically and ideologically diverse group of actors. As the interviewees reflected, the formation of the Move the GTHA was viewed as a powerful signal; when a collective of this kind can form in recognition of a common problem, in this case transit funding, it presents ‘a historic opportunity’,

…and I have been tracking big politics and the political economy for years and years and here was the first time in a generation where a very elite business group was effectively saying, ‘Governments need to come up with new taxes’, effectively the Toronto Board of Trade was saying ‘If our companies are going to make money, people need to be able to move around and goods need to be able to move around and transit is the best way to do that and transit has to be built by government’ (Coalition Representation, Toronto Interviewee 107).

The question of a sustainable revenue source would become for this group ‘the moment of the political’ (Mouffe, 2013: p. 126) and the common cause that for these groups would address a range of problems from the movement of workers and goods, through to addressing the climate impacts attached to transport. In interviews with members of this group, they acknowledged their unique position, as well as their deep networks and resources to play a convenorship role that allowed them to reach across the political spectrum to engage all political parties, in the lead up to the 2014 and 2018 Provincial elections, and with communities (Move the GTHA, 2016). Their efforts targeted political windows, as the kinds described by Kingdon (1984), such as election cycles, as well as the review of the Big Move in 2016. The latter sparked the Move the GTHA to release a report called Are we there yet? The state of transit investment in the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area (Move the GTHA, 2016) to inform the public engagement period supporting the review of this plan. The intent was to create a discussion about the funding gap and the need for new sustainable funding sources. Described by one of the authoring organisations as ‘very pragmatic’ (Coalition Representative, Toronto, Interviewee 111), the report identified a $30 billion funding gap to support transportation funding. Engaging with this plan, the Move the GTHA group sought to create the political space for discussion about revenue raising tools for transit; it was not to impact or drive any one project, instead the goal was ‘primarily to create the political space, the political demand for the Province to move forward with new revenue tools’ (Coalition Representative, Toronto, Interviewee 107). To do so, the Move the GTHA drew upon its convenorship power, created by their elite position in Toronto that would allow their network to extend into policy circles at the provincial level with people who worked in the political and non-political (the bureaucracy) circles of provincial government: those ‘who are really working to drive them ahead’ (Coalition Representative, Interviewee 109).

Bringing awareness to funding, their efforts avoided locking themselves into a single form of revenue generation that could result in fractures among this politically diverse group. Instead the collective was built around an understanding that pressures were growing, existing revenue streams were drying up and new revenue generating tools were needed. The adversary was not necessary a neoliberal hegemony, as described by Mouffe (2013, p. 123), but in this case the adversary was complacency surrounding funding that could be amassed on a scale to adequately address existing mobility challenges. Without this discussion, the promise for future transit lay hollow; an empty signifier lacking engagement with the political, which in this case was a public discussion about future funding, in a way that could ascertain who and what will benefit, and who and what will bear those costs for these benefits (Swyngedouw, 2018).

The network sought to create the political platform for elected officials to engage in these rather difficult discussions. In raising the issue of funding, the timing of their efforts aligned with two provincial elections and the evaluation of The Big Move transport plan. The intention was to help raise the question of funding, and the generation of new sustainable revenue tools to ensure that the ambition of transit expansion could be realised. The funding gap was a real problem recognised by government. But rather than engage in the question of new sustainable revenue sources, funding for transit would be provided through the partial selling of a public utility (Benzie et al., 2015), representing a single injection of funds through a decision to privatise which itself was a controversial (Crawley 2017). Unlocking funds to support rapid transit in some communities, this partial sale left the wider question of a sustainable medium and long-term revenue source unaddressed. Despite the failure to adequately shift policy, the efforts of the Move the GTHA show that the politically hard questions of urban planning, such as funding for future infrastructure, can become the site for a collective to form that publicly engages with difficult questions with the potential to create space for such discussions into the future. In a similar way to the Better Transit and Transportation Coalition established in Vancouver during the 2015 transit plebiscite, as described by Legacy and Stone (2019), the Move the GTHA endeavoured to open the space for public discussion, and in a small way creating a space for possible future debates on this question.

Consensus the disease, consensus the cure: The case of Hamilton’s Anchor Institutions

The city of Hamilton is currently in the middle of an urban renaissance. This post-industrial city has been transforming slowly. New start-ups, medical innovation and educational precincts have been met with the arrival of new residents attracted to Hamilton’s comparatively more affordable housing market (Bennett, 2015). In responding to these changes, a backlash targeting select downtown streets has raised concerns that the once affordable downtown of Hamilton will no longer be so resulting in displacement of more vulnerable populations (Harris, 2018). The prospect of rapid transit, while welcomed by many for its promise of complete streets, improved pedestrian access, economic development and providing ‘balanced transport’ (Leach, 2006), also raised anxieties for some about the future of the city. At the centre of this tension lay a proposed light rail line, that would become a symbol of future anxieties, as well as representing the hopes, and new imaginaries about what could be.

Rancière (1995, p. 106) laments the ‘folly of the times is the wish to use consensus to cure the disease of consensus’. Where there are two dominant consensuses in tension, Rancière (1999, p. 116) warns of simply extending one consensus to take hold of the other resulting in a new hegemony that emerges without ongoing scrutiny. For the city of Hamilton, the question of future transport was brought to the fore with the promised investment of light rail through its downtown laying bare a tension where both sides would claim a consensus view of the future of transport infrastructure and employing strategies to re-politicise the other’s view. Following contention presented across three different mayoral elections between 2006 and 2014, light rail registered as a controversial issue for this medium-sized city, as expressed by one city politician, ‘I’m confident that there will be more turmoil. This will be a bumpy ride no matter what happens. It’s not going to be smooth sailing, and I think that’s kind of part of transformational projects.’ (City Politician, Hamilton, Interviewee 18).

In May 2015, the Province of Ontario announced it would provide 100% funding to build a $1 billion (CAD) light rail line along Hamilton’s main street. Attached to a wider strategy to build a regional network of transit connecting Hamilton to the GTHA, the proposed light rail would connect to existing regional rail services into the centre of Toronto providing local economic benefits along its corridor. The announcement preceded a decade of discussion about regional transit as evidenced in the Big Move (Greater Toronto, Transportation Authority, 2008), and about a transition to rapid transit at the local scale, as observed with the release of the City of Hamilton’s Rapid Ready: Expanding Mobility Choices in City of Hamilton (2013). These two plans would align and articulate what could be seen by some as a consensus on transit: that as Hamilton grows, it will need a form of transit that can support that growth.

Outside of the formal engagement processes surrounding the release of the above plans, there was a perception that this project had wide support. For instance, in November 2016 a Yes LRT Change.org petition generated 1753 signatures (Change.org, 2019), gesturing towards some level of resident support for this project. In addition, and following a particularly critical period of debate surrounding light rail, the following note was written in a public blog called Raise the Hammer amplifying the sense of support and consensus,

We need to acknowledge the literally hundreds of businesses, community organizations and anchor institutions that had the vision and courage to publicly affirm their support for this plan and to throw their weight behind it. It takes a lot for business or institutions to take a public stand on a political issue….Movements do not just happen by themselves, and an inspiring coalition of volunteers came together over the past several months and years to coordinate LRT activism and advocacy…More broadly, we must applaud the thousands, even tens of thousands, of Hamiltonians who have taken the time to learn about the projects. Many people who started out sceptical or opposed came to support the plan as they have learned more about it (McGreal, 2017).

Weighing actively in the discussion about future light rail was the Hamilton Anchor Institution Leadership. In generating continued support for light rail, their leadership was coalescing around a shared economic ambition for the city leveraged by this new transport technology, as stated,

To me the reason for LRT is what type of city do we want to be. It’s about putting ambition back into the ambitious city…..It’s about thinking about what type of city my kids are going to inherit….I am also looking at what type of city are they going to ultimately come of age in (Local Business, Peak Body, Hamilton, Interviewee 30).

If built, light rail would result in the end of the one-way streets serving the car, incentivising business, commercial and residential investment in Hamilton’s downtown helping to transform it into a more vibrant, pedestrian friendly, and even becoming a global city, as reflected in the quote below,

So a city that’s really had some hard knocks, but there’s also a lot of people here who really care about the city and the future of the city, and I think there’s a lot of people who see that there’s a different way forward, much aligned with what you see in cities across the world. Advocating for reinvestment in the downtown, walkable streets, pedestrian friendly neighborhoods, robust public transportation, cycling lanes, all of these things. I think that there’s a sense that this project would represent a very firm step towards a different type of future for the city (Community Campaigner, Hamilton, Interviewee 1).

The significance of the coalition that mounted in favour of light rail must be considered within its broader historical context. The future of Hamilton and the role of transit in this future city is grounded in deep seeded contestation, which is evident in the battles waged over two freeways in earlier decades that pitted environmentalists against the development community. In describing this history, one interviewee remarked about the proposed light rail project, ‘all the old rivalries and so on, have been forgotten and have coalesced in support of this one project which makes it all the more mystifying that it’s been so difficult to just get people to go, “Here we go”’ (Community Campaigner, Hamilton, Interviewee 1).

The proposed light rail project encountered re-politicisation that both spoke to the concerns levelled against this project, as well as the advantages this project could bring to the city. A central actor in critiques waged against light rail in Hamilton was Councillor Terry Whitehead, a local councillor since 2003. His dissent was motivated by a range of factors including the appropriateness of an expensive light rail investment over busses, and what contribution it would make to shaping Hamilton into the future; these issues were raised in a 58-page report he tabled in July 2016 to challenge the financial base of light rail and the costs associated with running and maintaining light rail into the future (Craggs, 2016). This act of re-politicisation was met by a response from a local transport academic. Seeking to clarify the contents of some of the material used in the Whitehead study, this academic helped to bring nuance to the debate: while light rail has been shown to fail in some mid-sized cities like Hamilton, the challenges faced in those instances can be mediated in the case of Hamilton through careful land use planning accompanying transport planning (Higgins, 2016). This researcher’s intervention into the debate was not to offer support for light rail per se and extending his voice to the consensus on light rail, but rather to provide nuance into a complex future imaginary that validates concerns, but also helps to move the debate forward rather than harden the lines of contention. As the Councillor sought to re-politicise any consensus achieved on light rail, this re-politicisation was engaged with by a local academic. This engagement may have softened the dissenting discourse and in a way that also engaged with the political aspects of light rail, namely that ambitions are not always realised and there are real concerns, particularly when there is a failure to include land uses in such planning of future transport.

As concerns about the light rail project continued to rise from within the broader Hamilton community, these concerns heightened the tension on Council. In March 2017, in the leadup to an important Council vote on the light rail proposal, the news outlet CBC (2017) reported that ten ‘heavyweight Hamilton institutions’ supported light rail as evidenced by a ‘We support LRT’ poster that was created listing nearly 300 organisations and businesses throughout the City who wished to lend their support to the light rail project. This loose coalition comprised of long standing, self-declared city shaping business actors such as the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, as well as the health and educational actors.

Articulated support from the anchor institutions was met with the fear of declining support on Council. Councillors such as Judy Partridge who were previously supportive of light rail were starting to waver. For instance, for Partridge, it was the uncertainly surrounding the final cost of the project that led to her unfavourable position, as she explained in a public opinion piece on 31st March (Partridge, 2017). This tension came to a fore at a 26th April 2017 Council vote. At this meeting exhaustion met emotion in what was a very charged and dramatic meeting, with a gallery full of interested members of the Hamilton public. Councillor Whitehead joined his fellow councillors in speaking passionately about how this project had divided their city. For Councillor Whitehead tears were drawn when he spoke about the personal connection he developed to this project, and how he had been compelled to make what he perceived in that moment to be the right decision for the next generation. When the votes were cast, Councillor Whitehead was one of three Councillors who decided to vote in favour of the amendment, changing their vote allowing the project to proceed to its next phase of planning. For Whitehead, the Provincial Minister’s last minute decision to extend the line to benefit an even wider population of the city of Hamilton was pivotal in shifting his position (Mann, 2017); a move on the part of the Province that itself signalled some preparedness to deliver the project in a way that responded to the needs expressed through these periods of debate and re-politicisation.

At the time of writing, the Hamilton story, like the GTHA story remains ongoing. The light rail project, despite nearly 12 years of debate, council votes, change in political leadership, and community discussion, the proposed light rail project in Hamilton was cancelled in late 2019 (Craggs and Taekema, 2019); a decision taken by the Provincial Government igniting another dramatic turn for the politics of transit planning in Hamilton. Since the COVID-19 pandemic and embrace of infrastructure to help stimulate local and regional economies, the story of light rail in Hamilton remains live, with a decision made in September 2021 to ratify a memorandum of understanding between the city and the province to move the project forward (City of Hamilton, 2021). As the efforts by elected officials, business and community to bring light rail to Hamilton will likely continue, the call for new transport infrastructure also continues to resonate with the work of Baker and Ruming (2015) as the framing for this project aligns with broader economic aspirations for the city. In the face of resistance to that logic, and in the context of continued debates about the future light rail system at the time of writing, it is hopeful that wider questions about land uses, housing affordability along the project’s corridor and supporting Hamilton’s vulnerable populations may form an increasing part of this discussion (The Hamilton Spectator, 2018).