ABSTRACT
We will engage in a piece of institutional ethnography of the shifting sustainability and climate policy space at the City of Vancouver, before and after the passing of a key piece of policy, the GCAP.1 As a city government recognized since at least 1990 for leadership on both sustainability and climate policy, within a context of a hands-on approach to urban planning and design, the City of Vancouver represents a mature case of approaching both agendas by North American standards. We will investigate the work that a sustainability framing does, compared to the work that a climate framing does, in terms of some of the major policies and practices enacted and ignored in this policy space, and in terms of the organization of the policy learning in this domain. Within this case, we will find a series of shared, if shifting, knowledge institutionalization mechanisms, including normative assumptions about the appropriate and optimal reach of policy, about leadership, collaboration, and partnerships, and other questions of strategy and the exercise of power.
