From Growth Machine to Growth Management: The Dynamics of Resort Development in Whistler, British Columbia

Abstract

In North America, competition for land has often been conceptualized as being driven by growth machines whereby those with common stakes in development form coalitions of local elites to influence government in pursuit of their goals. The inequitable benefits of growth have been challenged more recently by the introduction of growth-management practices that heighten the role of local residents in land-use decisions. In this paper, the concepts of the ‘growth machine’ and ‘growth management’ are applied to an examination of the resort community of Whistler, British Columbia. This approach transforms previous theorizations of resort formation which draw upon Butler's (1980) life-cycle model, by focusing on the social and political dynamics of growth. Whistler is seen to progress through a phase of uncontested growth-machine dominance, to a phase of local contestation that is then moderated by the introduction of growth-management practices. The evolutionary process is seen as a cumulative one in which, over time, social and environmental imperatives are imposed upon the economic imperatives of the growth machine.