Towards smart regional growth: institutional complexities and the regional governance of Southern Ontario’s Greenbelt

Abstract

The task of developing regional greenbelts poses multidimensional challenges to policymakers. Unlike their early 20th-century predecessors, these greenspaces incorporate multiple functions including growth management, farmland and environmental protection, and increasing economic competitiveness. This regional and multifunctional approach to greenbelt management involves considerable governance complexities, as an increasing number of policy fields such as economic growth, agriculture, housing, nature conservation, different policy levels and various territorial jurisdictions become involved in policy implementation. However, institutional dimensions of contemporary greenbelt governance are hardly reflected within the literature. This is also the case for the Greater Golden Horseshoe region in Southern Ontario, Canada, where a regional Greenbelt Plan was implemented in 2005. By engaging with institutional perspectives on regional governance, we analyse how the governance of regional greenbelts and smart growth have been influenced by vertical, horizontal and territorial coordination challenges and politics at the provincial and local levels. We conclude that despite provincial government intervention in regional planning, the impact of market pressures, growth coalitions and institutional coordination problems prevent growth management policies from delivering the significant changes promised by the Ontario government.