Open Collections

Kingan, Emi Celeste Schreyer

University of British Columbia

Due to climate change and recent flood events, communities across Canada are increasingly turning to managed retreat—a flood mitigation strategy where people, infrastructure, and/or services relocate away from flood hazards. This thesis explores how the District of Squamish in British Columbia approaches managed retreat. Using a qualitative methods approach involving archival research, document review, and semi-structured interviews with 11 practitioners and experts, I address three questions: What role does managed retreat play in the District of Squamish and why is it being considered and implemented? How do practitioners and experts view managed retreat? And, how does managed retreat conform to and/or challenge the traditions and practices of flood management and community planning? I first unpack Squamish’s development and flood history to establish why the community is considering managed retreat today. In doing so, I find that settler-colonial and industrial development, which involved the construction of flood control infrastructures, increased the risk of flooding in the region while also, paradoxically, transforming Squamish into a desirable community. However, by highlighting proposals from decades ago that suggested relocating part of the community, I suggest that Squamish’s development on floodplains did not proceed unchallenged. Returning to the present day, I examine the District of Squamish’s approach to managed retreat. I argue that the community’s strategies broaden what can be considered managed retreat beyond quintessential property buyout programs; yet, I also critique the effectiveness of these approaches. I then zoom out to engage with the experiences of the practitioners who consider and implement managed retreat. While the tensions these professionals face often foreclose serious consideration of managed retreat, I offer that these complexities equally provide an entry point for communities wishing to confront their flood risk and address connected societal concerns. Synthesizing these arguments, I end by presenting a framework through which to understand managed retreat as a process of de/construction. Ultimately, this thesis and framework speaks to how managed retreat both destabilizes, and creates opportunities to reimagine, the traditions and practices that direct how communities develop and live with water.

Text

2024-10-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89327

Geography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/