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This volume is a compilation of essays and research related to the rapidly changing dynamics of emerging government-focused sustainability efforts at the state and local levels. Specifically, the book explores the level of experimentation taking place by governments in their quest to become more "green." The book is organized into three main issue areas: greening of governmental operations; using land use planning and community development tools to create greener communities; and litigation issues surrounding the green movement. There are countless approaches and creative strategies that can achieve sustainability goals and at the same time, make government more efficient, less costly and more transparent. This book is designed to introduce government lawyers to opportunities and benefits when lawmakers and policymakers rethink "business as usual" in the name of sustainability and "greener" governments. Each chapter identifies the legal tools that can be used to accomplish these goals in a given topic area, and each chapter identifies legal issues for consideration by government lawyers to best accommodate new approaches and to incorporate the use of emerging technological innovations.
Superstorm Sandy sent a strong message that a new generation of urban development and infrastructure is desperately needed, and it must be designed with resilience in mind. As cities continue to face climate change impacts while growing in population, they find themselves at the center of resilience and green city solutions, yet political and budgetary obstacles threaten even the best-planned initiatives. In The Guide to Greening Cities, seasoned green city leaders Sadhu Johnston, Steven Nicholas, and Julia Parzen use success stories from across North America to show how to turn a green city agenda into reality. The Guide to Greening Cities is the first book written from the perspective of municipal leaders with successful, on-the-ground experience working to advance green city goals. Through personal reflections and interviews with leading municipal staff in cities from San Antonio to Minneapolis, the authors share lessons for cities to lead by example in their operations, create programs, implement high-priority initiatives, develop partnerships, measure progress, secure funding, and engage the community. Case studies and chapters highlight strategies for overcoming common challenges such as changes of leadership and fiscal austerity. The book is augmented by a companion website, launching with the publication of the book, which offers video interviews of municipal leaders, additional case studies, and other resources. Rich in tools, insights, and tricks of the trade, The Guide to Greening Cities helps professionals, policymakers, community leaders, and students understand which approaches have worked and why and demonstrates multidisciplinary solutions for creating healthy, just, and green communities.
"A Brookings Institution Press and American Enterprise Institute publication Federal policies have made great progress protecting the environment. But the policies sometimes have imposed inordinate costs on local governments. Managing Green Mandates describes how various federal environmental directives do not suit diverse conditions at the local level, and compel local communities to spend their revenues on reducing relatively minor risks to the public health. While policymakers have thrown far-reaching requirements at the feet of local authorities, the federal government is providing them less aid to comply with the increasingly stringent standards. The burden of these underfunded mandates can further disadvantage many overtaxed municipalities. Pietro Nivola is a senior fellow in the Governmental Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of The Laws of the Landscape: How Politics Shape Cities in Europe and America (Brookings 1999). Jon Shields is a graduate student in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. "
As the need to confront unplanned growth increases, planners, policymakers, and citizens are scrambling for practical tools and examples of successful and workable approaches. Growth management initiatives are underway in the U.S. at all levels, but many American "success stories" provide only one piece of the puzzle. To find examples of a holistic approach to dealing with sprawl, one must turn to models outside of the United States. In Green Urbanism, Timothy Beatley explains what planners and local officials in the United States can learn from the sustainable city movement in Europe. The book draws from the extensive European experience, examining the progress and policies of twenty-five of the most innovative cities in eleven European countries, which Beatley researched and observed in depth during a year-long stay in the Netherlands. Chapters examine: the sustainable cities movement in Europe examples and ideas of different housing and living options transit systems and policies for promoting transit use, increasing bicycle use, and minimizing the role of the automobile creative ways of incorporating greenness into cities ways of readjusting "urban metabolism" so that waste flows become circular programs to promote more sustainable forms of economic development sustainable building and sustainable design measures and features renewable energy initiatives and local efforts to promote solar energy ways of greening the many decisions of local government including ecological budgeting, green accounting, and other city management tools. Throughout, Beatley focuses on the key lessons from these cities -- including Vienna, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Zurich, Amsterdam, London, and Berlin -- and what their experience can teach us about effectively and creatively promoting sustainable development in the United States. Green Urbanism is the first full-length book to describe urban sustainability in European cities, and provides concrete examples and detailed discussions of innovative and practical sustainable planning ideas. It will be a useful reference and source of ideas for urban and regional planners, state and local officials, policymakers, students of planning and geography, and anyone concerned with how cities can become more livable.
City greening has been heralded for contributing to environmental governance and critiqued for exacerbating displacement and inequality. Bringing these two disparate analyses into conversation, this book offers a comparative understanding of how tensions between growth, environmental protection, and social equity are playing out in practice. Examining Chicago, USA, Birmingham, UK, and Vancouver, Canada, McKendry argues that city greening efforts were closely connected to processes of post-industrial branding in the neoliberal economy. While this brought some benefits, concerns about the unequal distribution of these benefits and greening’s limited environmental impact challenged its legitimacy. In response, city leaders have moved toward initiatives that strive to better address environmental effectiveness and social equity while still spurring growth. Through an analysis that highlights how different varieties of liberal environmentalism are manifested in each case, this book illustrates that cities, though constrained by inconsistent political will and broader political and economic contexts, are making contributions to more effective, socially just environmental governance. Both critical and hopeful, McKendry’s work will interest scholars of city greening, environmental governance, and comparative urban politics.
Vacant lots, so often seen as neighborhood blight, have the potential to be a key element of community revitalization. As manufacturing cities reinvent themselves after decades of lost jobs and population, abundant vacant land resources and interest in green infrastructure are expanding opportunities for community and environmental resilience. Vacant to Vibrant explains how inexpensive green infrastructure projects can reduce stormwater runoff and pollution, and provide neighborhood amenities, especially in areas with little or no access to existing green space. Sandra Albro offers practical insights through her experience leading the five-year Vacant to Vibrant project, which piloted the creation of green infrastructure networks in Gary, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York. Vacant to Vibrant provides a point of comparison among the three cities as they adapt old systems to new, green technology. An overview of the larger economic and social dynamics in play throughout the Rust Belt region establishes context for the promise of green infrastructure. Albro then offers lessons learned from the Vacant to Vibrant project, including planning, design, community engagement, implementation, and maintenance successes and challenges. An appendix shows designs and plans that can be adapted to small vacant lots. Landscape architects and other professionals whose work involves urban greening will learn new approaches for creating infrastructure networks and facilitating more equitable access to green space.
This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building. It presents ‘biographies’ of drivers and processes of green building innovation in four case studies: Brisbane (AUS), Freiburg (GER), Luxembourg (LU), and Vancouver (CA). Two of them are relatively well known for their initiatives to mitigate climate change – particularly in the building sector, whereas the other two have only recently become more active in promoting green building. The volume places emphasis on development paths, learning processes, and innovations. The focus of the case studies is not restricted to purely technological aspects but also integrates regulatory, procedural, institutional, and other processes and routines and their influence on the variations of the building sector. The diversity of the selected case studies offers the reader the opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of how sustainability developments have unfolded in different city regions. Case study-specific catalogues of transition paths provide insights to inform policy debates and planning processes. The catalogues identify crucial innovations (technological, regulatory, etc.) and explain the factors and circumstances that have led to their success and broader acceptance in Freiburg, Vancouver, Luxembourg, and Brisbane. With the help of a number of micro case studies within each of the four city regions, the case studies also offer ground for comparison and identification of differences. The book represents the outcome of the GreenRegio project, which stands for ‘Green building in regional strategies for sustainability: multi-actor governance and innovative building technologies in Europe, Australia, and Canada.’ GreenRegio was a 3-year CORE-INTER research project funded by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
This is the New York State edition of the GIC's guide to evaluating and conserving green infrastructure (GI) across the landscape. It provides an historical background to GI, as well as practical steps for creating GI maps and plans for a community. It discusses issues around evaluating green assets, public involvement in the mapping process, and the practical steps in bringing together GIS information into a useful format. It draws from twelve field tests GIC has conducted over the past six years in a diversity of ecological and political conditions, at multiple scales, and in varied development patterns – from wildlands and rural areas to suburbs, cities and towns. This guide is intended to help people make land management decisions which recognize the interdependence of healthy people, strong economies and a vibrant, intact and biologically diverse landscape. Green infrastructure consists of our environmental assets – which GIC also calls ‘natural assets’ – and they should be included in planning processes. Planning to conserve or restore green infrastructure ensures that communities can be vibrant, healthful and resilient. Having clean air and water, as well as nature-based recreation, attractive views and abundant local food, depends upon considering our environmental assets as part of everyday planning. Available from GIC at www.gicinc.org.
The world’s population is currently undergoing a significant transition towards urbanisation, with the UN expecting that 70% of people globally will live in cities by 2050. Urbanisation has multiple political, cultural, environmental and economic dimensions that profoundly influence social development and innovation. This fundamental long-term transformation will involve the realignment of urban society’s technologies and infrastructures, culture and lifestyles, as well as governance and institutional frameworks. Such structural systemic realignments can be referred to as urban sustainability transitions: fundamental and structural changes in urban systems through which persistent societal challenges are addressed, such as shifts towards urban farming, renewable decentralised energy systems, and social economies. This book provides new insights into how sustainability transitions unfold in different types of cities across the world and explores possible strategies for governing urban transitions, emphasising the co-evolution of material and institutional transformations in socio-technical and socio-ecological systems. With case studies of mega-cities such as Seoul, Tokyo, New York and Adelaide, medium-sized cities such as Copenhagen, Cape Town and Portland, and nonmetropolitan cities such as Freiburg, Ghent and Brighton, the book provides an opportunity to reflect upon the comparability and transferability of theoretical/conceptual constructs and governance approaches across geographical contexts. Urban Sustainability Transitions is key reading for students and scholars working in Environmental Sciences, Geography, Urban Studies, Urban Policy and Planning.
Climate change continues to impact our health and safety, the economy, and natural systems. With climate-related protections and programs under attack at the federal level, it is critical for cities to address climate impacts locally. Every day there are new examples of cities approaching the challenge of climate change in creative and innovative ways—from rethinking transportation, to greening city buildings, to protecting against sea-level rise. Climate Action Planning is designed to help planners, municipal staff and officials, citizens and others working at local levels to develop and implement plans to mitigate a community's greenhouse gas emissions and increase the resilience of communities against climate change impacts. This fully revised and expanded edition goes well beyond climate action plans to examine the mix of policy and planning instruments available to every community. Boswell, Greve, and Seale also look at process and communication: How does a community bring diverse voices to the table? What do recent examples and research tell us about successful communication strategies? Climate Action Planning brings in new examples of implemented projects to highlight what has worked and the challenges that remain. A completely new chapter on vulnerability assessment will help each community to identify their greatest risks and opportunities. Sections on land use and transportation have been expanded to reflect their growing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The guidance in the book is put in context of international, national, and state mandates and goals. Climate Action Planning is the most comprehensive book on the state of the art, science, and practice of local climate action planning. It should be a first stop for any local government interested in addressing climate change.