ABSTRACT
The consumption of natural and agricultural land provoked by the spatial expansion of cities is nowadays perceived as a threat for the sustainability of cities by decision-makers. Consequently, they have implemented different types of policies in an attempt to control urban development and preserve peri-urban agriculture. In this chapter, we analyze the impact of two policies which aim at regulating Ontario’s Greenbelt in Canada and the InterSCoT in Toulouse, southwestern France. Both policies aim at regulating urban sprawl and preserving peri-urban agriculture. Whereas Ontario’s Greenbelt consists of top-down zoning initiated by the Ontario provincial government, the InterSCoT in Toulouse is the result of a coordination of more than 400 municipalities that have pooled resources to strategically plan their growth. After a critical analysis of the institutional context and processes that have resulted in the implementation of Ontario’s Greenbelt and the Toulouse InterSCoT, we assess their respective impacts on farm investment, which is used as an indicator of the success of maintaining a dynamic peri-urban farming sector. The results, based on farmer in-depth interviews, show that the preservation of farmland is not enough to maintain a sustainable peri-urban farming sector; coordination spaces where farmers are represented are required to improve the inclusion of farmers’ needs during the policy design phase.
