Regulating capital investment in urban property: towards comparative-historical research in planning history

This paper makes three main contributions: First, we argue that spatial planning institutions have become fundamental ‘rules of the game’ regulating development and defining urban property rights, and that the differences of approach between places can best be explained as a product of historical processes of institutional development. Second, we introduce a historical institutionalist theory of contested institutional development based on concepts of critical junctures of major institutional change followed by reactive sequences of institutional contestation in strategic action fields. We outline a methodologically institutionalist research method designed to produce replicable comparative research of long-run processes of institutional change, based on historical narratives employing process-tracing of institutional change and examination of permissive and productive factors structuring such change. This approach generates clear research questions and supports causal analysis of processes and mechanisms of change in urban property systems to explain why current institutions take the form they do. Third we illustrate the theory and research method with the case of Toronto, a fast-growing city where property rights and obligations and development control regulations have been vigorously contested. The conclusions explore the implications for planning theory and for comparative-historical research of this analysis of institutional change processes and mechanisms.