Researching Local Development Cultures: Using the Qualitative Interview as an Interpretive Lens

Abstract

This paper directs critical reflection on the use and treatment of qualitative interviews in researching building and development actors, processes and outcomes. Using the case study of New Urbanism in Toronto, it argues that norms of self-presentation and impression management consciously or unconsciously enacted by development professionals (developers, builders, designers, planners) within the research interview constitute key data that is often overlooked in planning and urban developmentrelated research. More often than not such study is geared towards typifying development processes, identifying and prescribing industry 'best practices' and evaluating the relative success of outcomes on the ground. It is argued here that a finer-grained coding of interviews with key project-based actors directs attention to the hybrid and contingent nature of social roles in development networks and processes. This challenges researchers to examine more rigorously the identities, strategies, constraints and rationalities of development professionals to gain a deeper understanding of their agency in the (re)production of urban form and the definition of local development cultures.

Tracing Discretion in Planning and Land-Use Outcomes: Perspectives from Toronto, Canada

“…A multiple-case design facilitates exploring similarities and differences across these dynamics. This approach is justified based on other studies applying the case study to decisions-making processes among development actors where researches have explanatory variables that are too difficult to control (Moore 2015) or when planning processes (e.g. negotiations) are poorly understood (Baarveld, Smit, and Dewulf 2015).…”

Race, Gender, and Positionality in Urban Planning Research

“…However, there remain gaps in engaging with how the contingent and subjective nature of knowledge is constructed within the research process. The geographer and urban planner Susan Moore (2015, p.391), for example, notes that there is a relative neglect of the research interview as a social interaction worthy of more critical attention or articulation in writing up findings:[S]elf-presentation and impression management in the interview are not only a methodological challenge, but are themselves key data, which often get overlooked in research geared to typifying development processes, identifying industry ‘best practices’ and evaluating the relative ‘success’ of outcomes on the ground.…”

Transnational urbanism interrupted: A Chinese developer’s attempts to secure approval to build the ‘New York of Africa’ at Modderfontein, Johannesburg

“…In becoming entrepreneurs, developers learn to identify opportunities, raise finance, acquire property, secure regulatory approval, and design, construct and market their products. These activities involve personal relationships and practical know-how that are, to some extent, context-specific (Assche et al, 2014;Moore, 2015;Shatkin, 2008;Wood, 2009). Developers can therefore be extremely 'parochial' (Charney, 2007(Charney, : 1180, with some being comfortable working only in a particular part of a particular city (e.g.…”

“…A key component of the context that developers have to navigate is gaining approval from regulatory authorities (Healey, 1998). Developers use different forms of rationalisation and legitimation to present their projects in the best light (Moore, 2015). Long-standing developers would have experience with the planning rationalities at work in their respective approval channels, knowing whether authorities are inclined to constrain and direct growth to achieve broader aims or to foster growth for its own sake (Boburg and Reinhard, 2017; Flyvbjerg, 1996; Swyngedouw et al., 2002).…”