The permitting city: affective legal rule in settler colonial Vancouver

This dissertation takes permitting of non-commercial public space events as prism to the politics of contemporary co-constitution of law, affect, and the self-proclaimed progressive, livable and settler-colonial city. In Vancouver, Canada, non-commercial events in public space are presumed to generate enjoyment, creativity and social connection (The City of Vancouver, 2024a), values in line with The City of Vancouver’s self-proclaimed progressive and ‘livable’ aspirations (Beasley, 2019, Punter, 2014). Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with 63 interviewees (permitting officers, urban planners, permit holders, and permitting regulation transgressors) this dissertation argues that this aspiration gives rise to a form of urban legal rule that is explicitly permissive, manifesting in permitting. Previous scholarship on permitting of public space activities has focused on its exclusionary capacity, centering activities and individuals that permitting actors aim to exclude (e.g., Langegger, 2013). In contrast, this dissertation examines the legal hierarchization that emerges around public space activities that are desired by regulators as they are believed to enhance the 'livable' and progressive identity that contemporary settler colonial (Dorries et al., 2019, Porter & Yiftachel, 2019) Vancouver seeks to cultivate. Through analyzing the legal practices (Brickell et al., 2021), technicalities (Riles, 2005) and relational legal space (Delaney & Rannila, 2021ab) that emerge through permitting, I argue that permissive legal rule hierarchizes through the affective realm. This affective rule is steered by a settler colonial reiteration of propertied ‘quiet enjoyment’, comprise the settler colonial ideology of ‘the logic of improvement’, and steer how transgressors access and use space. I refer to the affective relational legal space this produces as ‘The Permitting City’. Ultimately, I argue that in The Permitting City, permissive legal rule is employed to craft a progressive and livable self-identity and reiterate the settler-colonial claim to land in the same move.