SEEING TREES: ENGENDERING ENVIRONMENTAL AND LAND USE PLANNING

Both scholars and practitioners of environmental and land use planning in Western contexts have been slow to consider the links between planning and gender as they apply to land use reallocations in regions located beyond the city. The purpose of this paper is to spark discussion and inform future research efforts about the gendered implications of land use change. Drawing on research from environmental planning, gender/development planning, and rural resource communities, a conceptualization of feminist environmentalism is developed to interpret how environmental and land use planning represents women's lives and gives meaning to women's perspectives on economic transition in rural resource communities in Canada. Two planning documents are analyzed. First, a regional land use plan and transition strategy proposed by the Commission on Resources and Environment (core) for Vancouver Island in 1994 is examined. It is revealed that this plan contained a narrow interpretation of social sustainability, which resulted in the omission and /or marginalization of important elements of women's lives. Second, a subsequent post-hoc assessment of the impact of the Vancouver Island plan was reviewed. This report gave voice to women's material realities; however, a nuanced interpretation of the variation in the experiences of women remained elusive. Drawing on insights from both theory and practice, challenges for future research are presented. Les universitaires et les praticiens de I'aménagement du territoire et de I'environnement en contextes occiden-taux ont résistéà prendre en considération les liens entre la planification du territoire et le genre sexuel tels qu'ils s'appliquent aux re-allocations de l'utilisation du territoire, particulièrement en régions contiguës aux villes. Le but de cet article et de susciter la discussion et d'informer sur la direction des recherches en considération des implications du genre sexuel et des femmes par rapport a l'utilisation du territoire. À partir de recherches et de la littérature en planification environnementale, en déve-loppement, en féminisme et en ressources des commu-nautés rurales, une conceptualisation de I'environ-nementalisme sensible au genre sexuel est élaborée pour interpréter premièrement, les représentations de la vie des femmes en aménagement du territoire et de I'environnement. Deuxièmement, cet article aborde le sens que cet environnementalisme féministe offre aux perspectives des femmes en lumière des transitions économi-ques des communautés rurales. Deux documents tirés de la littérature en aménagement sont analysés. Premièrement, nous analysons un plan d'aménagement et de stratégic de transition proposé par la Commission sur les Ressources et I'Environnement (core: Commission on Resources and Environment) pour I'l?le de Vancouver, publié en 1994. Une lecture de ce document révèle que l'interprétation limitée de la durabilité sociale a pour résultat l'omission où la marginalisation d'éléments im-portants de la vie des femmes. Deuxièmement, nous analysons un rapport d'impacts du plan pour I'l?le de Vancouver. II appert que malgré une sensibilité aux réaltiés matérielles de la vie des femmes, l'interprétation des variations des expériences des femmes reste difficile. À partir d'aperçus et d'élements théoriques et pratiques, I'article termine par une discussion des défis pour les recherches á venir.     

PLACES AND SPACES OF DISLOCATION: LADY ORACLE'S TORONTO

In this paper we explore some of the issues relating to place, identity, and ideology in Margaret Atwood's third novel, Lady Oracle, first published in 1976. Simply, Lady Oracle relates the story of the writer Joan Foster as she struggles to come to terms with her multiple identities. In so doing, the novel depicts some of the many social and spatial changes taking place in Toronto from the 1940s to the 1970s. Herein we focus on the representations of home and city, and how Joan's search for identity is embedded in the reconfiguration of these geographical spaces and places. Home assumes negative connotations as it is associated both with the suburbs and with a mother who relinquished her own needs and desires for motherhood. The city, on the other hand, is an ambiguous landscape; we suggest, however, that it is precisely this ambiguity that encourages and permits Joan to explore alternative identities. By way of conclusion, we will point to some of the novel's assumptions and silences. Dans cet article, nous examinons comment Lady Oracle (le troisième roman de Margaret Atwood, publié pour la première fois en 1976) traite les questions de place, d'identité et d'idéologie. Simplement, Lady Oracle ra- conte l'histoire de l'ecrivain Joan Foster, qui rencontre des difficultés d se reconcilier avec ses identities multiples. En même temps, le roman dépeint les transforma- tions sociales et spatiales A Toronto entre les annees quarante et les annees soixante-dix. Ici, nous portons principalement sur les représentations de la maison et de la ville, et comment la reconfiguration de ces places et espaces géographiques est integree à I'enquéte pour une identité entreprise par Joan. ‘La maison’ acquiert des connotations negatives, vue qu'elle est associee a la fois aux banlieux et à une mere qui renonce à sa propre volonte et à ses propres besoins pour se vouer à la maternite. Par contre, la ville est un paysage equivoque: nous proposons cependant que c'est precisement cette equivocation qui permet à Joan d'explorer des nouvelles identites. Enfin, nous examinerons les presuppositions et les silences du roman.     

Québec et la géographie sociale en questions

Questioning Québec through social geography In the early 1960s, two revolutions were underway: the quiet revolution in Québec and the quantitative revolution in geography. Apparently unrelated, these episodes of change probably shared common underlying values associated with modernity. Since then, the transformations experienced in Québec have been interpreted in a multitude of ways, including geographical considerations. Research careers, mine included, have been shaped by this undertaking. All along, I have found that social geography, with the capacity it has to reinvent itself, has helped making sense of this turbulent environment. In the 1970s, exploring the structural dynamics of Canada's social space helped in figuring out the place occupied by Québec in this ensemble. Then, analyzing the historical relationships between cosmopolitan Montréal and provincial Québec City suggested that the oxymoron ‘quiet revolution’ stood for a central process in the cultural dynamics of Québec's social space, where new ideas arriving through Montréal are sifted and institutionalized by the state in Québec City. Nevertheless, Québec City is also capable of initiating progressive urban movements, as illustrated by the odyssey of the Rassemblement populaire de Québec, documented through participant observation. Such urban movements may affect the urban fabric but, as intense and creative social networks, they may affect even more their interacting members, as it seems to have been the case with regard to rapidly evolving gender relations during the last decades. All in all, after more than four decades, I keep the conviction that a practice of social geography that is open to various theories and methods is capable of producing liberating knowledge.