Getting From Here To There Power Politics And Urban Sustainability In North America

Getting from Here to There? seeks to take the study of sustainable cities into a realm of analysis and critique that has not been seriously investigated in any explicit and systematic manner: the sphere of power and politics. Using detailed case studies of selected urban sustainability programs-some stillborn or short-lived, others celebrated, still others most promising-it focuses on the political agencies shaping them and the structural elements either impeding or facilitating efforts to build sustainable cities. To accomplish this task, the authors utilize three theories or models of urban power-growth coalition, urban regime, and neo-Gramscian hegemonic-to explore the dynamics of power and politics to better understand these cases and to derive important lessons about getting from here to there. These models offer valuable lessons for ongoing or future sustainable city programs, community or business groups, key policy makers, grassroots organizations, mayors, and urban planners involved in or contemplating moving urban sustainability projects forward, as well as students of urban politics and environmental and sustainability researchers.

A political scientist and an urban architect explore China’s odyssey to become an ecological civilization and transform its massive, unsustainable, urbanization process into one that creates hundreds of eco-cities. The resulting From Eco-Cities to Sustainable City-Regions is the first book-length study combining analysis of politics and power, urban design and planning issues derived from the co-authors’ interdisciplinary research, and on-site fieldwork from their political science and architectural area specialties.

The culmination of over three decades of writing by environmental scientist and writer Haydn Washington, this book examines the global environmental crisis and its solutions. Many of us know that something is wrong with our world, that it is wounded. At the same time, we often don’t know why things have gone wrong – or what can be done. Framing the discussion around three central predicaments – the ecological, the social, and the economic – Washington provides background as to why each of these are in crisis and presents steps that individuals can personally take to heal the world. Urging the reader to accept the reality of our problems, he explores practical solutions for change such as the transition to renewable energy, rejection of climate denial and the championing of appropriate technology, as well as a readjustment in ethical approaches. The book also contains 19 ‘solution boxes’ by distinguished environmental scholars. With a focus on positive, personal solutions, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of environmental science and environmental philosophy, and for all those keen to heal the world and contribute towards a sustainable future.

This text mixes the best classic theory and research on urban politics with the most recent developments in urban and metropolitan affairs. Six fundamental themes guide the book: the importance of private power and the rise of public-private partnerships; the continuing role of formal rules and structures of government; the importance of external affairs and intergovernmental relations in the modern city; commonalties and differences among Frostbelt and Sunbelt cities; the complexity of racial issues and the effect of the new immigration; and the importance of the gendered city.

How can human communities sustain a long-term existence on a small planet? This challenge grows ever more urgent as the threat of global warming increases. Planning for Sustainability presents a wide-ranging, intellectually well-grounded and accessible introduction to the concept of planning for more sustainable and livable communities. The text explores topics such as how more compact and walkable cities and towns might be created, how local ecosystems can be restored, how social inequalities might be reduced, how greenhouse gas emissions might be lowered, and how more sustainable forms of economic development can be brought about. The second edition has been extensively revised and updated throughout, including an improved structure with chapters now organized under three sections: the nature of sustainable planning, issues central to sustainable planning, and scales of sustainable planning. New material includes greater discussion of climate change, urban food systems, the relationships between public health and the urban environment, and international development. Building on past schools of planning theory, Planning for Sustainability lays out a sustainability planning framework that pays special attention to the rapidly evolving institutions and power structures of a globalizing world. By considering in turn each scale of planning—international, national, regional, municipal, neighborhood, and site and building—the book illustrates how sustainability initiatives at different levels can interrelate. Only by weaving together planning initiatives and institutions at different scales, and by integrating efforts across disciplines, can we move towards long-term human and ecological well-being.

The 21st century has been called the "century of the city." Unprecedented and uneven urban growth and expansion coupled with climate change have compounded concerns that current urbanization pathways are not sustainable. Calls for scholarship on urban sustainability among geographers cite strengths in both examining human-environment interactions and unravelling urbanization patterns and processes that positioned the discipline to make unique contributions to critical research needs. Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability reflects on the contributions that geographers have made to urban sustainability scholarship on varied domains such as transportation, green infrastructure, and gentrification. Contributed chapters probe uniquely geographic perspectives on urban resilience, environmental justice, political ecology, and planning that arise from empirically integrating social and biophysical realms that arise from considering spatial dimensions of problems like scale- and place-based peculiarities of phenomena. This book will be of great value to scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Urban and City Planning, Political Ecology, and Sustainable Urbanism. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.

Winner of the 2015 RIBA President's Award for Outstanding University Located Research This book is the long awaited sequel to "Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities". "Second Nature Urban Agriculture" updates and extends the authors' concept for introducing productive urban landscapes, including urban agriculture, into cities as essential elements of sustainable urban infrastructure. It reviews recent research and projects on the subject and presents concrete actions aimed at making urban agriculture happen. As pioneering thinkers in this area, the authors bring a unique overview to contemporary developments and have the experience to judge opportunities and challenges facing those who wish to create more equitable, resilient, desirable and beautiful cities.

This book investigates the new urban geographies of “smart” metropolitan regionalism across the Greater Seattle area and examines the relationship between smart growth planning strategies and spaces of work, home, and mobility. The book specifically explores Seattle within the wider space-economy and multi-scaled policy regime of the Puget Sound region as a whole, ‘jumping up’ from questions of city politics to concerns with what the book interprets as the “intercurrence” of city-regional “ordering." These theoretical terms capture the state-progressive effort to promote smarter forms of regional development but also the societal/institutional tensions and outright contradictions that such urban development invariably entails, particularly around problems of social equity. Key organizing themes in the text include: the historical path-dependencies of uneven economic and social development, particularly between Tacoma-Pierce County and Seattle-King County; current patterns of high-wage, medium-wage, and low-wage jobs; the emerging spatial and social structure of recent residential changes, especially with respect to class and race composition; and, finally, transit trends and new urban spaces associated with policy efforts to mitigate highway congestion and car-dependency. Greater Seattle, then, is mapped as a key US urban region inscribed spatially by the uneven search for a more sustainable order. Historically-sensitive, theoretically-informed and empirically topical, this book is of interest to scholars and students at all levels in regional planning, urban geography, political science, sustainability studies, urban sociology and public policy.