Urban Environmental Governance Research Articles

Are bottom-up approaches good for promoting social\u2013ecological fit in urban landscapes?

Bottom-up approaches are often presented as a remedy to environmental governance problems caused by poorly aligned social institutions and fragmented ecosystems. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating how such social–ecological fit might emerge and help achieve desirable outcomes. This paper combines quantitative social–ecological network analysis with interviews to investigate whether bottom-up approaches in lake governance improve the fit. We study groups of residents seeking to improve management of a network of lakes in Bengaluru, India. Results show that 23 ‘lake groups’ collaborate in a way that aligns with how lakes are hydrologically connected, thus strengthening the social–ecological fit. Three groups founded around 2010 have mobilized support from municipal officers and introduced an ecosystem-based approach to lake management that recognizes their ecological functions and dependence on, the broader hydrological network. These groups have also changed how other lake groups operate: groups founded after 2010 are more collaborative and more prone to contribute to social–ecological fit compared to the older lake groups. This paper demonstrates the utility of a theoretically informed method for examining the impact of bottom-up approaches, which, we argue, is important for a more informed perspective on their relevance and potential contribution to urban environmental governance.

Green Infrastructure and the Hidden Politics of Urban Stormwater Governance in a Postindustrial City

Infrastructure tells a material story of ongoing challenges in cities, reflecting the diverse, normative desires of different communities. In this article we examine the introduction of green infrastructure technologies into urban infrastructure systems to think critically about these challenges and desires. Green infrastructure is an intentionally designed, multifunctional technology that directly uses or mimics the ecological processes of soils and plants (e.g., green rooftops, rain gardens, and bioswales). Facing budget shortfalls as well as demands to mitigate hazards and green the city, urban leaders are looking at green infrastructure as a facility that can provide diverse cobenefits along with traditional services. A focus on stormwater-based metrics, however—effectively reframing green infrastructure as green stormwater infrastructure—discursively tamps down alternative politics and desires for the city. Through a case study of Pittsburgh’s stormwater governance, we argue that the work to (re)technologize green infrastructure as green stormwater infrastructure is an act of depoliticization that hinders needed conversations about just infrastructure outcomes. We draw on themes from qualitative interviews with community members engaged in urban water governance to suggest that these moments of transition provide an opportunity to illuminate previously obscured infrastructure politics and challenge the forms of knowledge that bind us to conventional routines of urban environmental governance. We see an opportunity to reframe the conversation in a way that opens up opportunities for historically disenfranchised communities to voice their needs beyond the technocratic problem of stormwater management.

Urban policy (im)mobilities and refractory policy lessons: experimenting with the sustainability fix

ABSTRACT This paper bridges scholarship on policy mobilities and urban climate change experimentation to analyze the ways in which innovative low-carbon policies fail to diffuse. It argues that urban experiments become strategic learning tools that allow dominant actors in urban environmental politics to map pathways for a sustainability fix, test new low-carbon interventions, and gain knowledge of pathways for growth. Through a case-study of a solar district heating demonstration project in the Calgary metropolitan region, we suggest that these experiments allow powerful actors to mobilze “perverse policy lessons” in order to construct “policy failures” in cases that do not meet their requirements for a sustainability fix. Our analysis elucidates material and discursive strategies mobilised by dominant actors to selectively circulate knowledge that defines an urban experiment’s success or failure. We highlight two takeaways for future scholarship on urban environmental governance and policy mobilities.

From resilience to multi-species flourishing: (Re)imagining urban-environmental governance in Penang, Malaysia

This article uses the concept of multi-species flourishing to evaluate the potential of emergent urban governance initiatives in Penang, Malaysia, for achieving more socially and environmentally just forms of urban development. In doing so, the article offers an empirical examination of increasing development pressures on the forested hillsides of Penang, and the significant environmental and socio-cultural implications associated with this activity. This includes the significant flash-flooding and landslides in 2016 and 2017 that have been attributed to unscrupulous hillside developments and deforestation on the island for condominium and highway development. In tracing local responses to these developments, the article draws attention to the various more-than-human relationships that have been mobilised in preventing further degradation of the environment. It also re-visits the concept of environmental imaginaries to illustrate the close relationship between environmental and social wellbeing. The article argues that it is important to move beyond concepts of resilience, which advocate the implementation of technology and engineering measures to adapt to, rather than resist, the environmental shocks associated with intensive urban development. The research for this article has been conducted through participatory research with local civil society groups, and aims to evaluate the role of both governmental and non-state actors in these efforts and the challenges faced in doing so. The article concludes that research on urban resilience and urban governance must move beyond human-centred modes of thought and practice that regard cities as operating outside of ecological systems.

The State, Sewers, and Security: How Does the Egyptian State Reframe Environmental Disasters as Terrorist Threats?

On 25 October 2015, Alexandria, Egypt, experienced heavy rainstorms, which overwhelmed the city’s sewer and drainage systems. The storm flooded the city and caused the death of seven residents. How the causes of the 2015 Alexandria floods would be narrated and explained became a subject of national contestation; the Egyptian state claimed that the floods were caused not by failures of urban environmental governance or climate change as others suggested but by an act of terrorism. In this article, I draw on geopolitical ecology and situated urban political ecology to examine the production and contestation of the Egyptian state’s narratives of the floods. In doing so, I argue against using the term authoritarian, which predetermines the state’s function through an inherited set of characteristics. Rather, I start with the how and why of state power to carefully examine the complex relationship between the state and urban environments. This situated approach reveals how failures of urban environmental governance are being reframed by repressive regimes to further justify their rule Key Words: infrastructure, sanitation, security, terrorism, urban environmental governance.2015年十月二十五日，埃及亚历山大市遭逢暴风雨，淹没了该城市的下水道与排水系统。暴风雨淹没了城市，并导致七名居民死亡。这场2015年亚曆山大市水灾的导因如何被叙述与解释，则成了全国争夺的对象；埃及政府宣称这些洪水并非像若干人所指称的城市环境治理失败或气候变迁所导致，而是由恐怖主义行动所引发。我于本文中运用地缘政治生态学和脉络化的城市政治生态学，检视埃及政府对于水灾叙事的生产与争夺。我通过这麽做，主张不应使用“威权”这个概念，因为该概念预设了国家通过内在的特徵组合进行运作。反之，我从国家权力“如何”以及“为何”之问题开始，详细检视国家与城市环境之间的复杂关系。此一情境化的方法，揭露了城市环境治理的失败如何被压迫的政体重新框架，以进一步合理化其统治。关键词：基础建设，下水道设施，安全，恐怖主义，城市环境治理。El 25 de octubre de 2015, Alejandría, Egipto, experimentó intensos temporales, que sobrepasaron la capacidad de los sistemas de alcantarillado y drenaje de la ciudad. La tormenta inundó la ciudad y causó la muerte de siete residentes. El modo como las causas de las inundaciones de Alejandría en 2015 serían narradas y explicadas se convirtió en materia de preocupación nacional; el estado egipcio sostuvo que las inundaciones fueron causadas no por fallas de la gobernanza ambiental urbana o por cambio climático, como otros sugirieron, sino por un acto terrorista. En este artículo, me baso en ecología geopolítica y en ecología política urbana situada para examinar la producción y contestación de las narrativas sobre las inundaciones por el estado egipcio. Al hacerlo, arguyo contra el uso del término autoritario, que predetermina la función del estado a través de un conjunto heredado de características. Mejor, empiezo con el cómo y el porqué del poder estatal para examinar cuidadosamente la compleja relación entre el estado y los entornos urbanos. Este enfoque situado revela el modo como las fallas de la gobernanza ambiental urbana están siendo re-enmarcadas por regímenes represivos para justificar aún más su gobierno. Palabras clave: gobernanza ambiental urbana, infraestructura, saneamiento, seguridad, terrorismo.

An approach to examining performances of cool/hot sources in mitigating/enhancing land surface temperature under different temperature backgrounds based on landsat 8 image

Numerous studies on urban heat island (UHI) effects have examined relationships between land use/land cover (LULC) and land surface temperature (LST), while impacts of environmental temperatures on these relationships have received little attention. This paper has investigated how background temperature affects performances of cool/hot sources in either enhancing or mitigating LST in Shenyang, China based on Landsat 8 image. In specific, according to the method of standard classification method with an interval of 1.0 standard deviation, LST was classified into seven temperature levels: highest, higher, high, medium, low, lower and lowest. Afterwards, the seven levels were merged into three temperature zones (TZ), namely cold TZ (CTZ, highest, higher and high), neutral TZ (NTZ, medium) and hot TZ (HTZ, low, lower and lowest), for investigating relationships between LST and LULC (including building (BU), road (RO), bare land (BA), green land (GR), agricultural land (AG) and water bodies (WA)). LST generally follows the order of BU > RO > BA > AR > GR > WA, but temperature differences between cool/hot sources reduce as background temperature increases. LULC-LST relationships vary greatly with background temperature. Overall, BU and RO have significant positive relationships with LST, while negative relationships are found among GR, AR, WA and LST. However, in CTZ, RO is in negative relationships with LST, GR and WA are no longer significant in NTZ, and GR and BA play significant positive roles in aggravating LST in HTZ. Generally, this study can help orientate scientific decisions in urban environmental governance.

An Evaluation of Environmental Governance in Urban China Based on a Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Analytic Network Process.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of urban environmental governance by developing hesitant fuzzy linguistic analytic network process (HFL-ANP). The study bridges the gaps in current knowledge in the following ways: the study methodically develops the HFL-ANP method to evaluate and pick the optimal environmental governance strategy from alternatives; theoretically, network structure of evaluation indicators system on environmental governance is constructed, and the objective and subjective information in the evaluation process of environmental governance is combined. In detail, based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and the pollution haven hypothesis, the paper constructs the evaluation indexes system of environmental governance and takes observation time length into consideration. Then, we choose three urban cases of environmental governance by exploring the existing literature. Furthermore, we develop the HFL-ANP method and apply it to the cases. The study calculates the initial weights of all indexes by using multiplicative consistency of the HFL preference relation, and derives the decision matrix through combining objective information with subjective information of environmental governance. Finally, we come to the following conclusions: ANP network stricture is close to real-world practical problems and provides the basis for HFL-ANP method; HFL-ANP is a very suitable method of assessing environmental governance; and based on the urban cases of environmental governance, Shanghai is the optimal alternative. In addition, this indicator system can only be applied to cities in China, and the administrative hierarchy of policies has not been considered by this method. Thus, future studies should expand this method and indicator network to contain different countries and different administrative hierarchy.

Temporal and Spatial Differentiations in Environmental Governance.

With the general degradation of environmental carrying capacity in recent years, many developing countries are facing with the dual task of economic development and environmental protection. To explore the issue of urban environmental governance, in this research, we establish a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to investigate the environmental governance regarding temporal and spatial efficiency. Further, we deconstruct environmental governance efficiency into comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency and develop a Tobit model to analyze the influencing factors affecting urban environmental governance efficiency. In addition, the above DEA, Tobit model, and deconstruction of efficiency have been applied to study environmental governance efficiency for the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. Findings include: (1) The gap in environmental governance efficiency between cities is highly noticeable, as the highest efficiency index is 0.934, the lowest is only 0.246, and the comprehensive efficiency index has fallen sharply from 0.708 to 0.493 in the past 10 years; (2) Environmental governance efficiency is basically driven by technological progress, while the scale efficiency change index is the main driver of the technological progress change index; (3) For environmental governance efficiency, urbanization and capital openness are irrelevant factors, economic level and urban construction are unfavorable factors, and industrial structure and population density are favorable factors. These findings will help urban agglomerations to effectively avoid the adverse effects of environmental governance efficiency in economic development, and achieve a coordinated development of urban construction and environmental governance.

Responding climate change: A bibliometric review on urban environmental governance

Urban environmental governance is critical for responding climate change. Existing policies have been inefficient for addressing complicated socio-ecological issues. In order to further promote related studies, it is critical to have a comprehensive review so that recent research progresses can be summarized and future research directions can be identified. Under such a circumstance, this paper aims to conduct a bibliometric review on urban environmental governance, with a focus on addressing climate change. Based on 1697 articles published from 1997 to 2017 and searched from Web of Science, a systematic method combining bibliometric analysis and network analysis is applied to uncover the dynamic trends, academic collaboration and research hotspots. Results show that the overall publication quantity had been gradually improved. The key journals include Journal of Cleaner Production, Sustainability and Energy Policy. Authors from USA have the most publications and international co-authorships, followed by China and UK, while the most influential institution is the Chinese Academy of Science. Moreover, research keywords have been identified, including GHG emission, energy, water, health and transport. In terms of research methods, life cycle assessment and ecological footprint are the dominating methods. In order to further improve research in this field, it is crucial to combine different methods so that more innovative perspectives can be presented. Research findings from this study can also provide valuable policy insights to policy-makers so that appropriate urban environmental governance policies can be raised to mitigate the overall greenhouse gas emission.

The effect of the urban wastewater treatment ratio on agricultural water productivity: based on provincial data of China in 2004\u20132010

China’s urbanization has always required the support of rural areas. By 2014, urban wastewater pollution had become a serious problem in China and this drew the public’s attention to the urban water environment. As a result, the government now requires a new type of urbanization, with simultaneous development of high-quality rural areas. Improving the economic, social and environmental influence of urban development on rural areas helps to improve urbanization and make rural areas more sustainable. This article focuses on a particular question: Have urban wastewater emissions affected the efficiency of agricultural water use? Using provincial panel data for 2004–2010, we analyze how the increase in the urban wastewater treatment ratio has changed China’s agricultural water productivity. The effect is shown to be prominent, irrespective of whether the urbanization ratio is high or low. This effect is most significant when the urbanization ratio is highest or when society pays more attention to urban environmental governance. The influence has regional heterogeneity and is also affected by various other policy settings. The results provide helpful guidance for cities as they focus on rural impacts as part of the new type of urbanization policies.

Urban Social-ecological Innovation: Implications for Adaptive Natural Resource Management

The urban landscape, as home to the majority of the global population, has been the scene of significant and lasting ecological degradation. Consequently, modern cities rely on distant and geographically vast areas for the provision of a range of important ecosystem services. Urban centres also, however, comprise important hubs of human invention and innovation. Collective approaches to the use and management of green space in urban social-ecological systems, as a form of social-ecological innovation, provide a valuable resource in the production and adaptive management of local ecosystem services. Urban social-ecological innovation (USEI), therefore, comprises an important consideration in urban environmental governance. Research on innovation in urban social-ecological systems is analysed here and an evaluation of the insights thereby derived culminates in the development of a conceptual framework. We propose that such a framework can be applied by practitioners and researchers alike to evaluate the mediating nature of USEI towards increasing the resilience of productive urban landscapes.

Examining the Role of NGOs in urban environmental governance

I conduct an ethnography of the public policy processes around urban environmental governance in Boston, MA; Philadelphia, PA; and Baltimore, MD. In particular, I examine the structure and functioning of the public policy networks of the urban tree initiatives in order to investigate the expanding role of NGOs in public service delivery, especially related to sustainability and climate adaptation. This study concludes that urban partnerships often lack network structures that exhibit the centralization and hierarchy to roll out public programs smoothly. An overly horizontal structure leads to overlaps and gaps in management functions. Inadequate hierarchical control by public agencies increases the likelihood of gridlocks in service delivery. From an urban governance perspective, the prominent role of NGOs increases accountability of the public programs in certain limited capacities, while it creates systemic risks that compromise their legitimacy in ways that merit further investigation.

Innovative urban forestry governance in Melbourne?: Investigating “green placemaking” as a nature-based solution

A nature-based approach to climate resilience aims to challenge and re-frame conventional environmental management methods by refocusing solutions from technological strategies to socio-ecological principles such as human well-being and community-based governance models, thereby improving and legitimizing the delivery of ecosystem services (ES). There are, however, many challenges to applying a socio-ecological agenda to urban climate resilience and thereby re-framing ES delivery as community and people focused, a knowledge gap extensively outlined in the environmental governance literature. In this paper, we aim to contribute to this re-assesment of urban environmental governance by examining the City of Melbourne's approach to urban re-naturing governance from a place-based perspective. Here we focus on the city's internationally-acclaimed urban forest strategy (UFS), investigating how and to which extent the governance arrangements embedded within the UFS draw strength from diverse perspectives and allow for institutional arrangements that support “situated” reflexive decision making and co-creation. We find that Melbourne's UFS governance process fosters green placemaking by re-focusing climate adaptation solutions from technological strategies to situated socio-ecological principles such as human well-being and community-based decision making. In this sense, this case provides valuable insight for the broader UGI governance field regarding the opportunities and challenges associated with a socio-cultural approach to urban re-naturing and ES delivery.

Environmental non-governmental organizations and urban environmental governance: Evidence from China

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) play an increasingly important role in the process of urban environmental governance, especially in some developing countries such as China. However, existing studies pay little attention to such an issue in China. In this paper, we consider 113 cities in China from the pollution information transparency index (PITI) list released by ENGOs as the treatment group and some other cities as the control group, and use the difference-in-differences (DID) model and propensity score matching DID (PSM-DID) model to explore the role of ENGOs in China's urban environmental governance. The results show that ENGOs play a significantly positive and robust role in China's urban environmental governance. Furthermore, using regression analysis for eastern, central, and western China, we find that the influence of ENGOs exists in eastern and central China rather than in western China. In addition, the results of the Placebo test indicate that the effect of ENGOs shows an upward trend since 2008. We suggest that ENGOs' role should be strengthened in China, and governments at various levels should take into account environmental information released by ENGOs and consider appropriate measures to improve local environment quality using the obtained information.

Infrastructure and institutions: Stakeholder perspectives of stormwater governance in Chicago

This article examines the ways stakeholder preferences and perspectives of stormwater management converge and diverge in Chicago. With a greater emphasis on broad stakeholder participation in urban environmental governance and decision-making, accommodating and moderating multiple and competing perspectives will become a greater part of urban green-space planning. Decision-makers must choose how resources are to be allocated to manage stormwater and decide among the multiple and sometimes conflicting options available to reduce the impact of stormwater at different sites across the city and region. This paper examines the disparate understandings of how to best manage stormwater in the city. The results reveal that departmental silos may not adequately explain variation in stakeholder perspectives. Instead, two dominant perspectives towards stormwater management connect diverse stakeholder groups in Chicago: the Infrastructural Interventionist and the Institutional Interventionist. The first strongly views stricter laws and regulations, developed in tandem with science and data-driven approaches, as the best way to improve stormwater management. The second desires new rules and institutions to foster integrated management approaches, as well as more robust economic instruments capable of assigning a monetary value to stormwater, as critical to resolving stormwater problems. Conflicting points of perspective arise around the preferred type of infrastructure to be implemented to deal with stormwater and how it is to be developed. Understanding how these two social perspectives interact and conflict is important in considering the actions that will ultimately be undertaken to direct landscape changes capable of resolving the multiple challenges Chicago faces in managing stormwater.

Reinventing the bicycle: how calculative practices shape urban environmental governance

ABSTRACTThe concept of sustainability transitions has become increasingly prominent in academic and policy discourses during recent decades, but the importance of the link between knowledge-producing epistemic practices and urban governance has been underappreciated in this discourse. Based on a case study of cycling in Copenhagen between 1900 and 2015, and drawing upon a governmentality-inspired analytical framework, this research demonstrates that transformative governance may be initiated by epistemic practices that render urban systems visible in other ways. Urban cycling has been reconstructed over time in Copenhagen as a traffic safety ‘problem’, a component of the experiential and liveable city, and a health-producing (and hence economically valuable) regional transport mode. The research findings emphasise that epistemic practices can provide a powerful stimulus for creating changes in urban governance. The results also provide support for initiatives to broaden the terms of academic debate on sustainability transitions.

Alternative spaces of urban sustainability: results of a first integrative approach in the Italian city of Brescia

In the face of contemporary economic, environmental, and social changes, one of the main challenges facing cities is to build and realise a vision for a sustainable future. To do so, a number of local sustainability strategies are promoted in urban policymaking with the goal of improving citizens' participation and quality of life. The aim is to empower citizens and enable them to be more active in local and global sustainability issues. This paper focuses on identifying and discussing the alternative spaces in which the future of the city can be collectively envisioned, considering processes of socio‐ecological change and power relations, consistent with an urban political ecology. The purpose of such spaces should be to link daily behaviour patterns of sustainability with urban environmental governance through processes of participation. In particular we suggest the adoption of an integrative approach between top‐down and bottom‐up approaches. One example is an experimental process, called the Altrevie project, which took place in a pilot area of the city of Brescia and involved 150 families. The approach is an example of participatory action research. Its first phase was a sample survey to obtain an initial representation of the lifestyles of the residents. In the second phase, residents learnt to measure their ecological footprint and participated in workshops and laboratories to improve the sustainability of their lifestyles. During the project, we identified and tried to promote alternative spaces in which to imagine and build the sustainable city: spaces of alternative consumption which go beyond the traditional market system (according to alternative economic geographies); and spaces of participation that can promote an integrative method between top‐down and bottom‐up approaches. These different approaches to urban development create unique conditions for seeking sustainability through innovative and participative visions.

Clean city politics: An urban political ecology of solid waste in West Bengal, India

Solid waste management is often perceived as one of the most pressing environmental problems facing local governments in urban India and elsewhere in the global south. However, solid waste is not simply a managerial problem but is in many ways a highly political issue that involves diverse political actors at different scales. Particularly at the local level, solid waste management can also be a key part of broader political strategies, acting through its unique materiality as an environmental artefact and social relic. In this paper, we use an urban political ecology approach to examine a recent segregation-at-source project in a small town in West Bengal as a lens to understand more general multi-scalar, socio-political urban processes. Drawing primarily upon qualitative field research, the paper shows how diffuse forms of power and different governmentalities were applied between and within state-level government agents, municipal authorities, local waste workers and local communities to implement and (re)shape this project. The research points to the complexity of urban environmental governance and everyday politics in which action repertoires ranging from threats, the creation of environmental and hygienic subjects, moral appeals and economic rationality, underpinned by the harmful character of waste and by socio-cultural imaginaries thereof, (re)produced uneven political ecologies of waste between and within different neighbourhoods of the city.

Seeing the (urban) forest through the trees: governance and household trees in Niamey, Niger

Much of the literature on urban environments in Africa focuses on complex governance and institutional arrangements with less research on micro-scale environmental practices of households. Trees in household, however, comprise a substantial part of the urban forest composition, particularly in contexts where municipal or state tree programs are weak or unsuccessful. In the face of ineffective urban environmental governance, households become a key driver of environmental change through everyday decisions and practices. This project investigates both governance and micro-scale aspects of urban forests in Niamey, Niger. Governance has evolved from being state-centered, including both colonial and post-colonial states, to being wrapped up in international development projects of decentralization and food security. Despite overlapping institutional jurisdictions, trees in Niamey exist in a tenuous state. As a result, micro-scale practices around household trees constitute key drivers of the urban forest today. Tree count and tree diversity at the household scale were assessed through a survey with 348 households across 14 neighborhoods in the city. Through this survey, we found that poorer households had fewer trees and fewer variety of trees than others. Wealthier households were found to have the most trees, while middle-income neighborhoods were found to have the highest variety of trees present. Constraints to planting and maintaining trees were access to space, water, and money.

Policing and polluting: The role of practices in contemporary urban environmental pollution governance

Over the past 30 years, urban environmental pollution governance has been increasingly influenced by ideas of New Public Management. However, there is increasing evidence that it is failing in its promise to deliver efficient and effective regulation. The critiques are mounting of risk-based approaches, where regulators are increasingly accountable for the costs (and benefits) of their interventions upon firms.There is a particular lack of research on the role of conduct and practices involved on the ‘front line’ of regulation. This constrains our ability to understand how more efficient effective urban environmental pollution control might develop. This paper focuses on the regulator field officers and business duty holders of environmental compliance, who have direct contact in the processes and administration of regulation. Applying theories of social practice to environmental regulation, the paper provides new insights into compliance and enforcement practices, as these workers seek to prevent pollution, remediate sites and manage waste. The analysis reveals disconnects between expectations of enforcing and managing compliance; and between practices of policing and polluting.Using an ethnographic-informed approach to understand the social practices of regulation has not been attempted in this way before. It reveals new insights into limitations of current approaches to regulation, and indicates interventions that could lead to improved compliance outcomes in a post-New Public Management era in urban pollution governance.