Locational Conflict and the Politics of Consumption

Abstract

The concept of locational conflict challenges politically mute interpretations of market equilibrium as it emphasizes the disharmonious and asymmetric costs and benefits resulting from a land use decision. It has been claimed that land use conflict is simply an urban manifestation of a more fundamental class conflict. This chapter illustrates the role of guiding ideologies by examining the divergent values of participants in a number of land use conflicts which occurred in Vancouver, British Columbia, between 1973 and 1975. It shows the ascendancy of a social and aesthetic ideology under circumstances of rising real wealth, an ideology which prescribed that urban development should follow what Thorstein Vehlen called the canons of good taste. In as much as the values were concerned with the canons of good taste in urban development, the symbolic values of the built environment, their arguments were concerned with choice in consumption patterns, lifestyle, and status relations.

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