Sandeep Agrawal, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning in the Faculty of Science. Photo credit: John Ulan
For the average citizen, the words municipal zoning may conjure images of infill housing, neighbourhood amenities, or multi-storey buildings. But for University of Alberta scientist Sandeep Agrawal, municipal zoning is a topic that is inextricably linked with human rights.
Now, new funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) with contributions from the City of Edmonton will support Agrawal’s new project examining the ways in which Edmonton’s municipal zoning bylaws can be made more inclusive and equitable for all.
“Since its emergence in New York City in 1916, zoning has been used to address conflicts between land uses, such as residential and industrial, but has also been used to control and segregate people,” explained Agrawal, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning in the Faculty of Science.
“This research will use Edmonton's Zoning Bylaw Renewal Initiative as a case study to examine equity and inclusion considerations in zoning, specifically through the human rights perspective.”
For more than a decade, Agrawal has focused his research on the intersection of human rights and municipal planning with his pioneer work in Toronto, which led to significant changes in the Ontario Provincial Policy Statement of 2014 and the City of Toronto’s zoning bylaw. This follow-up work—carried out in collaboration with Neelakshi Joshi, postdoctoral fellow in the School of Urban and Regional Planning— is funded by SSHRC, the Alberta Ministry of Justice and the Solicitor General, Alberta Professional Planners Institute Legacy Award, and UAlberta’s Killam Research Fund. His forthcoming book is titled Rights and the City: Problems, Progress and Practice.
Learn more about Agrawal’s new research project.
Tell me about the focus of this project.
Zoning bylaws are key legal tools that Canadian municipalities use to implement their municipal plans. Zoning prescribes the uses of land and the locations, types and sizes of buildings within a municipality.
Since the early 20th century, zoning has been used to address conflicts between land uses, such as residential and industrial, but has also been used to control and segregate people. This research will use Edmonton's Zoning Bylaw Renewal Initiative as a case study to examine equity considerations in zoning, specifically through the human rights perspective.
In partnership with the City of Edmonton, the project will address a series of related questions: how can we apply and promote equity and substantive equality considerations in a zoning bylaw? How can we identify the inequities created by land use regulations generally? What human rights and equity issues should be considered when drafting land use regulations? What compromises may be necessary when addressing equity using such tools?
What do you hope to discover? What problems do you aim to address?
During the course of our research, we might discover historical negative externalities and long-standing equity issues embedded in Edmonton’s zoning. In order to alleviate these issues, we will develop a “substantive equality”-based framework to guide the City of Edmonton so that it can best apply equity and human rights considerations in its new zoning bylaw. We anticipate that our findings and recommendations will be useful not only to the City but also to planners and policymakers across Canada seeking equity and human rights considerations in land use regulations.
Why is this an important area of study?
This research will form the basis for developing an analytical framework and a discussion paper to guide how a Canadian municipality, the City of Edmonton specifically, and planners and policymakers across Canada, can best incorporate equity and human rights considerations into municipal zoning. The research is timely and topical because it dovetails the City of Edmonton's current efforts to undertake the first comprehensive overhaul of its Zoning Bylaw in two decades. The Bylaw no longer reflects current City policies and often creates inequitable barriers—for example locating social and affordable housing across the city. Edmonton aims to refocus its land use regulation through an equity lens, arguably the first Canadian municipality to make such an attempt.