Governing Urban Sustainability

Comparing Cities in the USA and Germany

Lisa Pettibone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317125433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Urbanisme et développement urbain

In her study of the interactions between tools of urban sustainability governance in key cities, Lisa Pettibone argues that a new factor-sustainability-minded groups-may be critical to building momentum for sustainability. The book presents in-depth case studies of six cities in the USA and Germany: New York, Portland, Seattle, Berlin, Hamburg, and Heidelburg. Drawing on 75 interviews, document analysis, and a bilingual literature review, the book analyzes how sustainability is politically constructed in city strategic plans and sustainability indicators. The volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles of sustainability, discusses the key governance instruments relevant to urban sustainability, and delivers new empirical and theoretical material on their role in a sustainability transition. It concludes that despite the national-level differences, cities' experiences in both countries are similar. Political sustainability at the city level differs in several important ways from academic principles of sustainability. Finally, it proposes that sustainability-minded groups may be a key link to connect urban sustainability in practice to theoretical concepts.

PART I Defining Urban Sustainability

DOI: 10.4324/9781315585635-1

Chapter 1 A New Framework for Urban Sustainability Governance

DOI: 10.4324/9781315585635-2

Decision-makers today are faced with a number of interconnected challenges: a complex ecological crisis that includes biodiversity loss, multiple forms of pollution, and climate change; an increasingly precarious global financial system that has led to two recent crises, increased inequality, and growing social unrest; and growing tension between the Global South and the Global North about how to address these issues. But these challenges have been increasingly linked to solutions called for by sustainability, a worldview that has emerged from outside traditional policymaking channels and reframes these problems in a new way (Lafferty, 2004). Sustainability uses a reflexive, deliberative, systems-based approach to advance solutions that work within the long-term and acknowledge ecological limits. To achieve this, sustainability calls for a massive societal transformation (for example, McCormick et al., 2013; WBGU, 2011).

Such a transformation entails dramatic restructuring of social, political, and technical systems and institutions in order to reduce wasteful resource use, promote equity and inclusion, all while maintaining a good quality of life and without collapsing economic or ecological systems (WBGU, 2011). This tall order is the focus of research on sustainability governance, which focuses on transforming socio-political structures and processes within the framework of a broader transition to sustainability (Lafferty, 2004; Meadowcroft, Farrell, and Spangenberg, 2005). Sustainability governance requires new forms of decision-making to reframe problems and work in new ways to resolve them (Adger and Jordan, 2009; Voß, Bauknecht, and Kemp, 2006).

Partly because of sustainability’s “outside-in” character (Lafferty, 2004)—that is, the fact that it is an agenda that has emerged largely from outside the political system—it has seen slow implementation at the national and international levels. In the face of this, cities worldwide have taken the lead in transitioning to sustainability, particularly in high-consumption countries such as the United States and Germany. Scholars have pointed to the importance of cities, as home to much of the world’s population, pollution, and economic activity, in climate and sustainability governance (McCormick et al., 2013; Owen, 2009). In addition, cities’ relative flexibility and ability to experiment with new policies has made them able to more quickly progress in a transition to urban sustainability governance (Acuto, 2013; Gordon, 2013). Although sustainability requires a global transformation, cities have taken the lead in moving toward sustainability governance. However, findings from urban sustainability governance research have been sobering. Researchers have cited implementation concerns (Kern, Koll, and Schophaus, 2007) and political shortcomings (for example, Gibbs and Krueger, 2007; Holgersen, 2014) as problems. Beyond this, much sustainability governance literature, including urban sustainability governance, overrelies on instruments, which have seen uneven implementation at best. If governance is to play a role in sustainability transition, it is important to better understand what effective urban sustainability governance looks like.

This book seeks to explore how six U.S. and German cities are incorporating sustainability principles into political decision-making processes, that is, how they are achieving urban sustainability governance. I explore these questions by asking why cities actually do develop and use plans and indicators and how well their vision of sustainability matches principles found in the literature. By examining six cities with similar contexts (large cities in industrialized federal countries) that have experimented with both strategic plans and sustainability indicators in different ways in terms of development process, motivation, and actors involved, I aim to better understand their role in urban sustainability governance.

By studying these six cities, I hope to answer the following questions:

• Why do cities develop strategic plans and sustainability indicators?
• How do these governance instruments help incorporate sustainability principles into political decision-making?

The focus here is thus two-fold: to understand both actors’ motivations in developing these instruments and to explore how well they connect to urban sustainability governance, as measured by sustainability principles. While trying to answer these questions, I found one type of actor group not discussed in the literature to be consistently important. In several cities, civil society groups—in the form of think tanks, volunteer initiatives, or nonprofits—were central actors in the development and use of plans and instruments to achieve sustainability. However, the work of such organizations has not yet received explicit attention in the academic literature. Therefore, I also explore the role of these groups, which I call sustainability-minded institutions, in urban sustainability governance in the six case cities. They are the focus of a third research question:

• How do sustainability-minded groups use plans and indicators to promote urban sustainability governance?

In answering these questions, I hope to better understand not only the potential role of plans and indicators in urban sustainability governance, but what functions they actually perform. Specifically, I focus on how different motivations affect their use in urban decision-making processes, as well as how well these tools are connected to sustainability itself. In addition, I highlight the special role played by sustainability-minded groups as an important subject for further study.

This study uses a qualitative comparative case study approach. I examine the three factors—strategic plans, sustainability indicators, and sustainability-minded groups—in six cities in the United States and Germany considered sustainability leaders: New York, Portland, and Seattle in the United States and Berlin, Hamburg, and Heidelberg in Germany. In studying the effects of these three factors, I hope to build a more robust understanding of sustainability governance better able to aid practitioners in taking effective action.

Why the United States and Germany

This study uses a multiple case study approach that includes cities in both the United States and Germany.¹ These countries serve as interesting cases for study for several reasons. First, both are wealthy, high-consuming countries with problems typical of the global North and of interest to researchers worldwide. Both countries are important in international debate related to sustainability and environmental problems. Second, and important to the study of urban sustainability, both are federal countries whose cities have a relatively high level of autonomy. Third, cities in both countries are seen as sustainability leaders in the literature and have sought to brand themselves as interested in sustainability. The case cities are often considered role models, meaning that actors engaged in incorporating sustainability into urban decision-making look to these cases for guidance. These factors make the United States and Germany, as well as the six cities studied here, especially important to the study of urban sustainability governance.

1 Similarities between these two countries have made them the subject of a rich body of comparative literature (for example, Dolowitz and Medearis, 2009; Lafferty and Meadowcroft, 2001; Light, 1999; Ralston, 2012; Rose-Ackerman, 1995; Schreurs, 2003).

At the same time, the United States and Germany differ in several important ways, as discussed in Chapter 3. Most relevant to this study are urban planning policy and the national-level debate regarding sustainability. These differences, however, play a surprisingly limited role at the city level. As such, although cities will be compared by country to highlight national-level factors of importance in incorporating sustainability into decision-making, comparisons are also made along other axes to explore other key factors.

The Six Cities

In this book, I use a qualitative comparative case study approach to examine how six large cities in the United States and Germany have used strategic planning and sustainability indicators as tools of urban sustainability governance (see Yin, 2009). The cases were selected to maximize a diversity of approaches to sustainability and uses of these two governance tools to incorporate sustainability principles into political decision-making (see Pettibone, 2014a for more details on the methods used). In addition, during the empirical research, I became aware of the importance of civil society organizations I call sustainability-minded groups, which became an additional focus of this research and are discussed in Chapter 7.

Three cities in each country were selected as the maximum possible for a qualitative design. To select the case cities, I first consulted city sustainability rankings in the United States (Karlenzig et al., 2007; Svoboda et al., 2008; Thompson, 2009)² and Germany (Dovern, Rickels, and Quaas, 2012; Siemens, 2011a). In the second step, I selected highly ranked cities from these lists that reflected a range in terms of geography, governance, and approach to sustainability (see Table 1.1).

2 It should be noted that subsequent study of the case cities and city ranking methodologies made me skeptical of their value beyond advocating for a particular understanding of sustainability. These three U.S. city ranking projects may have come to similar conclusions, as all efforts had ended by 2010.

All six cities presented here have been considered leaders for their work on sustainability. Berlin’s Local Agenda 21 is a model of inclusive planning; Hamburg was the 2011 European Green Capital; Heidelberg’s plan and indicators have won the city numerous awards; New York’s ambitious sustainability plan has drawn international attention; Portland has used comprehensive planning to manage growth; Seattle’s volunteer-created sustainability indicator set has been subject to international study. Each city has attempted to use these instruments in some way, but led by different actor groups with different motivations.

Each of the six cities selected has been considered an exemplar in its use of plans or indicators for sustainability: all have used these tools in some way to promote urban sustainability governance. What differs is what actors are involved—politicians, administrators, or civil society organizations—and what vision for the city these actors seek to realize through plans and indicators.

The case cities vary in terms of size, population, economic prosperity, and the built environment. Table 1.2 highlights key characteristics of the six case cities. As the table shows, the cities vary on all of the characteristics seen here. The main differences—such as population density and housing stock—are not necessarily based on country, but more closely correlated to city size. Surprisingly, Berlin and Hamburg have a large number of residents in single-family homes, comparable to the more suburban cities of Portland and Seattle. These cities are thus bro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Box
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Defining Urban Sustainability
• Part II Urban Sustainability Governance in Six U.S. and German Cities
• Part III Realizing Sustainability Principles in Urban Sustainability Governance
• Bibliography
• Index