Countryside urbanization: Reasoning and choices underlying Québec’s agricultural land preservation program
Urban sprawl continues to encroach on rural land in Québec, despite widespread condemnation of the process and policies designed to curb its spread under Québec’s agricultural land preservation program. A variety of explanations are often put forward to explain the paradox: a weak political class structure, laxity on the part of regional administrations or the effectiveness of different behind-the-scenes pressure groups. In reality, none of these interpretations provides the analytical framework needed to understand the phenomenon. The issue actually lies at an entirely different level since, in fact, legislation and regulations clearly allow for continuing dispersed urban growth, sometimes even encouraging it, in spite of denials in principle. The interpretation of Québec’s agricultural land preservation program that we propose in this article refuses to give credence to arguments centered on unfortunate oversights of one form or another, and is based instead on our conviction that societies function in a world conditioned by cultural considerations. Understood in this light, the different exigencies surrounding the management of urbanization can be seen to stem from an underlying conception of land use in a given area, driven by far more powerful motivations than any learned discourse or clever calculations.