Developers, the State, and the Politics of Private Property Rights

This article uses a new institutionalist approach to investigate major land use conflicts and regional land use policy changes in the Toronto region that affected the property relations of land developers. Institutionalist approaches focus on the role of key actors, ideas, and strategies in influencing the trajectories of political institutions, and the confrontation of political and strategic maneuvering in the face of existing institutions and structures. Through comparison of the processes driving enactment of two major regional land use statutes—the Oak Ridge Moraine Conservation Act and the Greenbelt Act—this article pays close attention to the relationships between political actors and land developers, as well as the underlying political climate in shaping the development and outcomes of these statutes. This article shows that these two environmental land use statutes, which both had significant implications for the private property rights of land owners, differed in important ways in both their development and enactment. This article also shows that the enactment of provincial land use laws and their effects on private property rights are subject to greater political negotiation and contestation, and more unpredictable outcomes, than previously considered within new institutionalism. This article draws on case study research to illuminate the varied ways that land developers and key governmental decision makers exercise power, working within and against existing legal structures to forward particular agendas vis-à-vis urban land use.