Seeing trees: Engendering environmental and land use planning

Both scholars and practitioners of environmental and land use planning in Western contexts have been slow to consider the links between planning and gender as they apply to land use reallocations in regions located beyond the city. The purpose of this paper is to spark discussion and inform future research efforts about the gendered implications of land use change. Drawing on research from environmental planning, gender/development planning, and rural resource communities, a conceptualization of feminist environmentalism is developed to interpret how environmental and land use planning represents women's lives and gives meaning to women's perspectives on economic transition in rural resource communities in Canada. Two planning documents are analyzed. First, a regional land use plan and transition strategy proposed by the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) for Vancouver Island in 1994 is examined it is revealed that this plan contained a narrow interpretation of social sustainability, which resulted in the omission and / or marginalization of important elements of women's fives. Second, a subsequent post-hoc assessment of the impact of the Vancouver island plan was reviewed. This report gave voice to women's material realities; however, a nuanced interpretation of the variation in the experiences of women remained elusive. Drawing on insights from both theory and practice, challenges for future research are presented.