sustainabilityschizophrenia

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Sustainability schizophrenia or ‘‘actually existingsustainabilities?’’ toward a broader understanding of the politics

and promise of local sustainability in the US

Rob Krueger a,*, Julian Agyeman b

a Interdisciplinary and Global Studies, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, USAb Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University, 97 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA 02155, USA

Received 5 August 2003; received in revised form 1 June 2004

Abstract

As an approach to development, many see capitalism as reaching across an enormous range of scholarly domains and political

interests. For some time geographers and others have begun to conceptualize capitalism as less of a system of intrinsic economic

logic and more a collection of social and discursive relationships. By bringing capitalism into the ‘‘discursive world’’ these commen-

tators and others have provided the theoretical ground for an exploration of alternative economic forms, especially those that are

more socially and ecologically just. This paper makes an argument for putting sustainable development through the same theoretical

scrutiny. Drawing on examples from the US we recruit the concept of ‘‘actually existing sustainabilities’’ from AltvaterÕs concept

‘‘actually existing socialisms’’ as an entry point to this conversation. Our purpose is to show that the potential for sustainability

in the US exists in current local policies and practices if we rethink how we frame it.

Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sustainability; Environmental justice; Smart growth; Local

1. Introduction: rethinking the ‘‘practice’’ of American

sustainability

Sustainable development has been constructed as an

alternative to the capitalism of unfettered consumption

and progress without ecological limits (see Hawken

et al., 1999; Dryzek, 1997). For even some moderate

proponents of the sustainable development agenda‘‘capitalism’’ has taken the earth and, ultimately, its

inhabitants to the brink of ecological disaster. To re-

dress these concerns, since the 1992 Earth Summit many

international organizations (governments and NGOs

alike) have identified and developed practices that prom-

ise to move the global process of economic development

onto a sustainable trajectory (see Local Agenda 21

(LA21); the International Council of Local Environ-

mental Initiatives; the UN Habitat Agenda). As envis-

aged by participants in Rio and the subsequent World

Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johan-

nesburg in 2002, sustainable development was to emerge

from a combination of international, national, and local

policies. According to the principle of ‘‘subsidiarity’’,local authorities, as the level of governance closest to

the people, were identified as a primary site for vision-

ing, scoping and finally implementing ‘‘sustainability’’.

In this paper, we are interested in exploring the pros-

pects for local sustainability in the US.

Sustainability in the US might be characterized as

‘‘schizophrenic.’’ At the national scale hope for US

sustainability seems bleak (e.g., Bush backing out of

Kyoto, tax cuts favoring the rich at the expense of

0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2004.07.005

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Krueger).

www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Geoforum 36 (2005) 410–417

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



housing and other social programs). Yet, some recent

studies suggest that at the local level the sustainability

agenda, at least cleavages of it, may be more vigorous

(see below). Interestingly, some of these local agendas

often do not identify sustainability per se as a priority.

Nor do they replicate the ‘‘LA 21 approach’’ adopted

by Europe and much of the rest of the world; theseare local initiatives occurring without national guidance

or financial support. Furthermore they appear to be

evolving out of traditional ‘‘planning’’ activities. For

example, Berke and Manta Conroy (2000) found many

cities had policies such as local entrepreneur grants,

tax abatement schemes, preservation policies for local

food production, and mixed use zoning not explicitly

linked to a sustainability agenda. Thus, local planners

and planning committees may be developing policies

that may not fall under the moniker of ‘‘sustainability’’,

or produce immediately recognizable outcomes in terms

of sustainability yet can be leveraged toward that end.

Said differently: could it be possible that there is a

greater ‘‘sustainability’’ potential in US local policies

than is currently realized? Theoretically, we wonder

whether the current framing of sustainability results in

a missed opportunity to fully explore sustainability as

actual practice.

As our analytical entry point to this question we bor-

row, albeit metaphorically, AltvaterÕs (1993) concept

‘‘actually existing socialisms’’ to begin examining what

we will call ‘‘actually existing sustainabilities’’ (hereinaf-

ter AESs). For Altvater, actually existing socialisms are

those socialisms and socialist practices that existed in the

post-War period, not the ‘‘myth’’ of socialism created byreading Marx, Lenin or Western post-war propaganda.

In this paper we adapt this idea to sustainability by

defining AESs as those existing policies and practices

not explicitly linked to the goals of or conceived from sus-

tainable development objectives but with the capacity to

fulfill them. As a construct, sustainability has been

linked to larger agendas, such as LA 21 (or Communi-

ties 21 in US), Smart Growth, or even environmental

justice. As we will argue through the course of the paper

we believe the metaphor is useful for elucidating variants

of local sustainability that exist outside the scope of

these constructs. It forces us to frame sustainability dif-

ferently, to link it to actual practices rather than broad

initiatives or agendas, or even guiding principles. Let

us say at the outset that our goal for this paper is not

necessarily a critique of US sustainability. To be sure

the US, in all scales and domains, is currently unsustain-

able. Our primary purpose here, however, is to sharpen

our analytical focus and identify some practices and pol-

icy arenas that define sustainability. In this way, when

we do engage in critique we give critical attention to

how specific activities may lead to more sustainable

places, where they fall short, and, most importantly,

their uneven distribution within places and across space.

We explore these issues through the course of the fol-

lowing sections. In the next section we examine the main

theoretical constructs for examining sustainability in the

US. Here our purpose is to expose some conceptual

weaknesses in the sustainable development, Smart

Growth, and environmental justice literatures with re-

gard to our concept of actually existing sustainabilities.In the next section of the paper we flesh out these con-

ceptual weaknesses further by examining some empirical

work on sustainability in the US. Our focus here is on

sustainability as a set of practices that may or may not

be tied to one of the agendas, or goals found within

them, we reviewed in the previous section. More specif-

ically, we suggest that local sustainability as practice

emerges largely from ‘‘off the shelf’’ planning activities.

In Section 4, we briefly describe how these existing prac-

tices can evolve into ones capable of producing more

locally sustainable outcomes. In the penultimate section

we argue that we should re-focus our political economic

analysis on these actually existing sustainabilities.

2. ‘‘Constructing’’ sustainability

In this section we review different theoretical ac-

counts that suggest how we might ‘‘get to’’ sustainabil-

ity. In particular, we examine selections from the

sustainable development, ‘‘Smart Growth’’, and envi-

ronmental justice literatures. From these literatures we

focus on several dominant themes such as strong versus

weak sustainability, mixed-use development, the relative

importance of process and product, and procedural orprocess justice. These approaches, especially Smart

Growth and the environmental justice literatures, are

useful for helping us to identify actually existing sustain-

abilities yet are constrained by these themes or lack the

theoretical ability to extend beyond their limited practi-

cal scope.

2.1. Sustainable development

There has been a surge in material in recent years

dealing with the concepts of sustainability and its ac-

tion-oriented variant sustainable development. This

has led to competing and conflicting views over what

the terms actually mean, and what is the most desirable

means of achieving the goal. The single most frequently

quoted definition of sustainable development comes

from the WCED (1987) that states ‘‘sustainable develop-

ment is development that meets the needs of the present

without compromising the ability of future generations

to meet their own needs’’ (WCED, 1987, 43). This defi-

nition implied a shift from the traditional, conservation-

based usage of the concept as developed by the 1980

World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980), to a frame-

work that emphasized the social, economic and political

R. Krueger, J. Agyeman / Geoforum 36 (2005) 410–417 411



context of ‘‘development’’. By 1991, the IUCN had

modified its definition. Along with that of the WCED,

it is the most used definition: ‘‘to improve the quality

of life while living within the carrying capacity of ecosys-

tems’’ (IUCN, 1991). McNaughten and Urry (1998, p.

215) argue that ‘‘since Rio, working definitions of susta-

inability have been broadly accepted by governments,NGOs and business. These tend to be cast in terms of

living within the finite limits of the planet, of meeting

needs without compromising the ability of future gener-

ations to meet their needs and of integrating environ-

ment and development’’.

Within the sustainability discourse itself there has

also emerged two divergent trends, or constructions of

sustainabilitythat of strong/hard sustainability versus

weak/soft sustainability (Jacobs, 1992). Hard or strong

sustainability implies that renewable resources must

not be drawn down faster than they can be renewed,

i.e. that (critical) natural capital must not be spent

we must live off the income produced by the capital. Soft

or weak sustainability accepts that certain resources can

be depleted as long as others can substitute them over

time. Natural capital can be used up as long as it is con-

verted into manufactured capital of equal value. The

problem with weak sustainability is that it can be very

difficult to assign a monetary value to natural materials

and services, and it does not take into account the fact

that some natural materials cannot be replaced by man-

ufactured goods and services. Strong sustainability thus

maintains that there are certain functions or ecosystem

services that the environment provides that cannot be

replaced by techno-fixes.

2.2. Smart growth

The Smart Growth movement has emerged as a

promising attempt to make the connections between

on the one hand, urban/suburban sprawl and car cen-

tered un-sustainability, and on the other, the potential

for mixed use, compact and authentic communities. As

Tregoning et al. (2002, p. 342) note ‘‘the concept is not

a reformulation of sustainability, but a new iteration

of it. By shifting the focus from self-sacrifice to self-

interest, the champions of Smart Growth have reframed

the debate over sprawl and broadened the audience. In

the process, they have opened up new opportunities to

build consensus among once disparate groups’’. Among

many critiques, smart growth is urban-designer led (i.e.

top down) therefore more concerned with the product (a

compact community), than the process (involving com-

munities in visions of what their community might look

like in the future).

Smart Growth has evolved rapidly from its origins in

the1990s. It is an effort to recast the policy debate over

sprawl in a way that more directly links the environ-

ment, the economy and daily life concerns. In 1996,

the U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyÕs Urban

and Economic Development Division held a series of

meetings to try to build consensus around land-use is-

sues and to work out how to get better information

and tools into the hands of anti-sprawl workers: local

officials, planners, developers, preservationists, environ-

mentalists and others. Later in 1996, a broad coalitionformally joined hands as the Smart Growth Network

(SGN), with members in real estate, advocacy and poli-

cymaking. In the effort to define what up until that time

had been a little more than a catchy phrase, they came

up with 10 Smart Growth principles: mixed use; taking

advantage of compact building design; creating housing

opportunities and choices; creating walkable communi-

ties; fostering distinctive, attractive communities with a

strong sense of place; preserving open space, farmland,

natural beauty, and critical environmental areas;

strengthening and directing development toward exist-

ing communities; providing a variety of transportation

choices; making development decisions predictable, fair,

and cost-effective; encouraging community and stake-

holder collaboration in development decisions.

2.3. Environmental justice

The roots of the US environmental justice movement

can be traced to citizen revolts against the siting of toxic

waste or hazardous and polluting industries in areas

inhabited by predominantly people of color. A 1983

Government Accounting Office Report (GAO, 1983)

indicating that African–Americans compromised the

majority population in three of the four communitiesof the south-eastern US where hazardous waste landfills

were located and the landmark report ÔToxic Wastes and

Race in the United StatesÕ (United Church of Christ

Commission for Racial Justice, 1987) contributed signif-

icantly to the development of a public awareness of

‘‘environmental racism’’ (Bullard, 1993, 1994; Bullard,

1999). Thus arose the traditional definition of environ-

mental injusticethat people of color are forced,

through their lack of access to decision-making and pol-

icy making processes, to live with a disproportionate

share of environmental ‘‘bads’’–and suffer the related

public health problems and quality of life burdens.

Environmental justice activists claim that the ‘‘path-

of-least-resistance’’ nature of locational choices within

our economy functions to the detriment of people of col-

or, and, moreover, this disproportionate burden is an

intentional result (Portney, 1994).

In addition, studies have shown that not only are

people of color more likely to live in environmentally de-

graded and dangerous places, but the amount of envi-

ronmental and public health protection afforded these

groups by the US Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) is substantially less than that generated for whites

and more wealthy people (Lavelle and Coyle, 1992).

412 R. Krueger, J. Agyeman / Geoforum 36 (2005) 410–417



Furthermore, claims of environmental racism point to

the limited participation of non-whites in environmental

affairs and the lack of public advocates who represent

minority and low income communities (Pulido, 1996;

Camacho and David, 1998). Activists and environmental

justice academics argue that the victims of environmental

inequities will only be afforded the same protection asothers when they have access to the decision making

and policy making processes that govern the siting of

hazardous materials and polluting industries (Faber,

1998). Environmental justice activists go beyond so-

called ‘‘fair share’’ principles, which maintain that every

municipality should have an equal share of environmen-

tal ‘‘goods’’ and ‘‘bads’’, regardless of the race or class of

its population (distributional justice). Instead, they argue

that environmental bads should be eliminated at the

source (procedural or process justice) (Faber, 1998).

These are but brief introductions to various construc-

tions of sustainability and we have been necessarily

selective in our review. Examining weak and strong

sustainability, mixed-use development, the relative

importance of process and product, and procedural or

process justice are all part of the ‘‘story’’, but are, in

and of themselves incomplete constructions. Each ‘‘per-

spective’’ requires certain commitments that frame how

one might view of sustainability a priori. Our approach,

in contrast, seeks to build on these insights yet expand

them so we can begin ‘‘seeing’’ sustainability in practices

outside these theoretical frames.

3. Local sustainability? Some empirical evidence

In the previous section we argued that the sustaina-

bility, Smart Growth and environmental justice perspec-

tives suggest approaches to local sustainability but are

indeed limited in their scope of what we could under-

stand sustainability to be. For us, sustainability as prac-

tice can take a variety of forms. We now present some

empirical work that supports this contention.

Lake (2000) examined the composition of US cities

with sustainability initiatives. Lake drew his population

from those cities that adopted International Council of

Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) sponsored

LA21 initiatives or substantially equivalent programs.

Some of LakeÕs key findings were:

• Twenty-two US cities satisfied the LA 21/ICLEI crite-

ria for having a sustainable initiative;

• All LA 21 cities were second-tier cities or smaller

(representing 2.3% of the total US population);

• LA 21 cities are relatively homogeneous in their pop-

ulation in terms of race and class;

• LA 21 cities, on average, have higher levels of educa-

tion than the rest of the country;

• Half of the LA 21 cities also host a major university.

In his analysis, Lake links these characteristics to a

cityÕs motivation for initiating a sustainability program.

For example, Lake contrasts San FranciscoÕs sustainabil-

ity initiative, which is based on concern over deteriorat-

ing environmental quality to BostonÕs, which sought to

use sustainability to stimulate its flagging economy. In

fact, through his analysis, Lake identified five strains oremphases in these sustainability initiatives: quality of life

(N = 7), environmental quality (N = 14), city govern-

ment and operations (N = 6), indicators projects

(N = 7) and multi-faceted sustainability (N = 1). Lake

is clear in his chapter that his interest was not an exten-

sive analysis of sustainability, but rather to focus on ‘‘LA

21’’ cities in the US. Despite limited focus only LA 21 cit-

ies Lake suggests that cities are motivated by specific rea-

sons (e.g., cost of living, government inefficiency,

pollution) and deploy specific policy measures to remedy

them. Lake goes on to critique these approaches and the

overall potential of cities to contribute to global sustain-

abilitymore on this laterour point for now is that

LakeÕs work links the broad sustainability agenda to par-

ticular practices and it is these practices that we must

focus on if we are to elucidate and examine the potential

for local sustainability. We now turn to some more de-

tailed extensive analyses of local sustainability.

Portney (2003) conducted a comparative analysis of

sustainability initiatives in 24 US cities. His analysis,

‘‘focuses on the policies, programs, and activities of cit-

ies, including sustainable indicators initiatives’’ which

Portney (2002, p. 365) sees as ‘‘consistent with an overall

effort for cities to become sustainable’’. Portney identi-

fied seven categories to organize the sustainability initi-atives in these cities: (1) Sustainable indicators projects,

(2) Smart growth activities, (3) Land-use planning pro-

grams and policies, (4) transport planning programs

and policies, (5) Pollution prevention and reduction ef-

forts, 6) Energy and resource conservation/efficiency ini-

tiatives, (7) Organization/administration/management/

co-ordination/governance. Together these seven catego-

ries (34 total variables) establish PortneyÕs Taking Susta-

inability Seriously Index.

Portney analysed the data using simple statistics. He

tabulated growth, income, employment, and percent of

population using public transport. Portney found that

few independent variables contributed to a better under-

standing of why certain cities take sustainability more

seriously. Variables that did correlate, and somewhat re-

flect LakeÕs findings, are median age, percentage of high

school graduates, percentage of African–Americans liv-

ing in a city, and percentage of the labor force employed

in manufacturing. So, for Portney, cities with young pop-

ulations who still rely on manufacturing as a base have

the most to improve upon in terms of local sustainability

policy. That is not to say, however, that these cities

eschew sustainability. Rather, that in this cohort of 24,

they do not take sustainability as seriously as others.




In contrast to Lake, for Portney, the existence of bona

fide (e.g., LA 21) sustainability initiatives is the key

question. Furthermore, Portney is uninterested in meas-

uring how sustainable a city actually is (and even sug-

gests it is premature). This is fodder for an interesting

debate, but for our purposes what Portney in his ‘‘sus-

tainable city’’ is make linkages between traditionalsustainability policies and actual policies and practices.

For example, Portney, identifies the operation of public

transit as a sustainable activity, not biodiesel or hybrid

buses but getting people around to jobs, recreation

and shopping. He also identifies brownfield reclamation

programs, lead paint and asbestos abatement as prac-

tices that lead to sustainability. We agree. These prac-

tices could constitute the basis sustainability in the

US. Sustainability in the US, as suggested by both

Smart Growth and environmental justice literatures, will

not be the result of a paradigm shift, but an extension of

existing practices that, when coupled with social equity

and environmental concern may produce sustainable

outcomes. 1 Thus it is these policies and their attending

practices that we must scrutinize when we evaluate local

sustainability in the US.

In their study of local planning, Berke and Manta

Conroy (2000) employed six principles to determine

how well local comprehensive plans support goals of

sustainability. The six principles include: (1) harmony

with nature, (2) livable built environment, (3) place-

based economy, (4) equity, (5) polluters pay, and (6)

responsible regionalism. Principles one through four

are related to reproduction in that they address the

long-term ability of a community to sustain local social,economic, and ecological systems. Principles five and six

link the local to broader scalar concerns.

Berke and Manta Conroy drew their sample of 30

communities from the 105 that were identified to poten-

tially have sustainability as an organizing concept in

their comprehensive plans. Potential plans were identi-

fied through reports from federal agencies (e.g., Envi-

ronmental Protection Agency, and Housing and

Urban Development), community newsletters, sustaina-

ble community conference proceedings, and a computer

list-server. Of the 105 plans identified, 30 were deemed

appropriate. 2 The remaining plans (N = 75) were used

in the sample of cities that did not have sustainable

development as an organizing concept.

Does planning for sustainable development make a

difference in a cityÕs sustainability score? No. Berke

and Manta Conroy found that, ‘‘the explicit inclusion

of [sustainable development] has no affect on how well

plans actually promote sustainability principles’’ (30).

This suggests that local places incorporate specific prac-

tices into the planning and development strategies out-

side the purview of sustainability. Specific areas Berke

and Manta Conroy identified include population densityrequirements, land banking, phased growth and impact

fees for less suitable developments.

These extensive analyses of local sustainability in the

US strongly suggest that sustainability practices may

often exist outside the scope of the current sustainability

literature. Specialized practices and new paradigms are

not required for sustainability to occur. Indeed, actually

existing sustainabilities can be found in current practices

and policies. To further ground this notion we now

move beyond extensive cases to a single case, a vignette

really, that describes how the process of moving from

off-the-shelf planning and existing practice evolved into

planning for sustainability.

4. Locating sustainability in the US: the case of Seattle

Seattle began its sustainability initiative inauspi-

ciously over 20 years ago with an intensive solid waste

recycling program. 3 In the late 1980s as SeattleÕs popu-

lation began to surge along with the economy of the Pa-

cific Northwest, city leaders, both inside and outside

government, pushed for a Growth Management Plan.

In 1990 the Growth Management Act was passed. The

purpose of the Act was to preserve forests, farms, andwilderness areas by locating the anticipated 50,000 new

households in the city within the city boundaries. To

do this the City enlisted the grass roots support of its

neighborhoods and augmented the cityÕs planning func-

tion through consultants. Consultants and neighbor-

hood groups developed plans for accommodating

growth while enhancing the livability of their neighbor-

hoods. Since 1991, more than 20,000 people have been

engaged in the effort. The City Council is currently

reviewing some 4000 neighborhood proposals. These in-

clude regulatory changes to allow new types of housing,

zoning changes to accommodate additional households,

and strategies for public safety, social services, open

space and parks, and transportation management. The

plans are built around the Urban Village strategy, which

calls for the creation and improvement of walkable com-

munities in which people can walk to jobs, shopping,

and employment opportunities, and have efficient public

access to travel between these villages.

1 We say ‘‘can’’ because though we agree in Portney in principle, the

process of how this happens on the ground in uncertain and uneven.

Yet, our point with this paper is to expand our conception of relevant

sustainability practices so that we may examine appropriate processes

in the search for a more just and sustainable world.2 Communities of less than 2000 were eliminated from the sample.

The remaining plans were equally distributed in population size

between 20,000–90,000 people.

3 Without delving too deeply into ‘‘who did whatÕ in the ‘‘Sustain-

able Seattle’’ (a not for profit) versus City of Seattle sustainability

initiatives (see Brugmann, 1997 for a fuller explanation of the situation

in Seattle).




As a result of these and many other related efforts, in

2000, SeattleÕs mayor created the Office of Sustainability

and the Environment. The office was created because the

cityÕs leaders ‘‘recognized the need to understand and

manage for the linkages between the cityÕs long-term

economic, environmental, and social health (OSE,

2001). The new office will work to identify the cityÕs

sustainability leverage points and work with the city

manager and council to change policies that promote

sustainable practices within the government and the

community at large.

In this brief case of Seattle we can see that actually

existing practices can lead to planning for sustainability.

The triggers to local sustainability exist in probably

every city in the US, all it needs, if ‘‘all’’ is the right

word, is political vision. Indeed, look at any city in the

world, be it CuritibaÕs transit system (Jaime Lerner),

BurlingtonÕs Legacy Project (Peter Clavelle), BogotaÕs

Bus Rapid Transit (Enrique Penalosa) or LondonÕs road

pricing (Ken Livingstone) and there is a courageous

Mayor. Cities are required to plan for their futures

through zoning, planning, building codes; the basic tools

of local government. The Seattle case suggests that

‘‘actually existing sustainabilities’’ exist in places and

that the challenge is to transform them from the tools

that reproduce the current capitalist system to different

ones that are more sustainable. Keil and Desfor (2003,

p. 24) note that, ‘‘processes of urban development have

been increasingly linked to ecological concerns’’. It is

true that state level policy and concerns for open space,

water quality and air quality, as well as general quality

of life, are driving many local economic developmentinitiatives in the US. Other related factors that are driv-

ing local agendas are quality housing and transport.

Both the Seattle case and those above suggest that these

policies begin as off the shelf policy tools and strategies

that evolve with the sustainability agenda.

The previous sections suggest an examination of

‘‘actually existing sustainabilities’’ (AESs) may be a

fruitful one. The evidence suggests that incipient sustain-

ability initiatives do exist at the local scale, but their spa-

tial distribution is limited. Sustainability, it appears in

large part, can exist in extant policies and practices.

According to the studies reviewed above, the notion of

examining localities with grand sustainability agendas

or initiatives conveys part of the story but by no means

all of it. In terms of their analysis, in our view, they raise

further theoretical and empirical questions.

With the exception of Lake, the empirical studies de-

scribed above are useful in that they provide insight into

where American sustainability might come from. They

are theoretically uninformed on ideas regarding social

change, however. In the context of todayÕs entrepreneur-

ial city, an outcome of the current neo-liberal regulatory

system, for example, begs the question of who will we

become sustainable for? Similarly, the literatures on sus-

tainable development, Smart Growth, and environmen-

tal justice are uninformed on the notion of social

change. The sustainability literature puts forth interest-

ing typologies (e.g., strong versus weak sustainability

(Jacobs, 1992) or intergenerational equity, social justice

and transfrontier responsibility (Haughton and Hunter,

1994)). Typologies are appropriate for identifying andmeasuring the success of these initiatives. The Smart

Growth literature is more practical than theoretical; it

sets out a plan and milestones for achieving the 10 Smart

Growth Principles. As we have noted above, it provides

guidance for the form and design in the context of urban

sprawl. It is more policy guidance for urban planners

with an anti-sprawl bent than a vision for creating sus-

tainable societies. Finally, despite the exhortations of

Taylor (2000) about the ideological nature of the Princi-

ples of Environmental Justice, the environmental justice

literature is more a political strategy than a theoretical

approach. It convincingly demonstrates how procedural

inequities have led to distributional inequities of envi-

ronmental risk. Yet these are capable of revealing pre-

cious little about the process local places experience to

‘‘construct’’ sustainability. 4 To fully grasp the implica-

tions of a localityÕs AES we must interrogate them and

situate them in their proper context. It is to this discus-

sion we will now briefly turn.

5. Toward a political economic analysis of local

sustainability?

Despite the conceptual lure of sustainability, criticalgeographers have largely remained aloof to the clear

opportunity sustainability extends to explore the com-

plex relationships between the environment, economy,

and social change (Hanson and Lake, 2000a,b). Those

geographers who have engaged sustainability as a con-

cept or a political strategy typically eschew its potential

and view it either as yet another regulatory strategy de-

signed to reproduce the capitalist mode of production

(Harvey, 1996) or as an impossibility given the present

political economic circumstances of ‘‘post-Fordism’’

(Gleeson and Low, 2000). Thematically, under this view,

sustainability initiatives emerge from the contradictions

of capitalism. Sustainability is largely undermined, how-

ever, by the dogged strength of capitalismÕs attendant

social relations and power networks. In the context of

the local scale, and coming from a different perspective,

geographers remain uncertain or even dubious of the

local scaleÕs capacity to promote sustainability (Lake,

2000; Gibbs, 2002). Lake (2000) lacks confidence in

the localÕs ability to move toward sustainability. Lake

(88) states that,

4 Nor do they suggest they do.




. . .it is both unfair and unreasonable to expect that

government at the local scale can accomplish more

than is [actually] encompassed in these programs.

Local government in the United States lacks the

authority, the resources, and most importantly,

the power to initiate and accomplish the funda-

mental transformations in systems of productionand consumption that are required . . . to move

the world toward the goal of truly sustainable

development.

Yet, Gibbs (2002, p. 140) states, ‘‘Indeed, part of the

Ôcapacity to actÕ . . . within local areas is comprised of the

opportunities and constraints that are imposed by forces

acting at broader spatial scales’’. Gibbs, coming from a

regulationist perspective, does acknowledge, however,

that even in these neo-liberal times an incremental ap-

proach to sustainability, across scales, is possible. Once

we bring this struggle ‘‘down’’ to a set of practices, rather

than examining it as a struggle between ‘‘Capitalism’’ and

‘‘Sustainability’’, our theories of social change will have

more traction, we will be able to hold people accountable.

Scholars linking political economic accounts of social

change, such as regulation theory or regime theory, to

environmental concerns and the hegemonic social rela-

tions of contemporary global capitalism have shown

the viability of such an approach (see Lipietz, 1992;

Gibbs, 2002; Krueger, 2002; Keil and Desfor, 2003;

Jonas et al., 2004). Keil and Desfor (2003) thus suggest

examining the embeddedness of local sustainability pol-

icies. Employing the ontological/epistemological distinc-

tion articulated by Castree (2000), they argue thatexaminations of local sustainability policy should be

‘‘process oriented’’ for such an approach exposes the

inherent and differentiated tensions that comes with

sustainability policy and practice. The power of the

political economic explanation is that it can transport

sustainability from normative concept to actions exist-

ing in a social context that are beholden to ‘‘logics’’ of

prevailing economic systems, ideologies and discourses.

Unlike the sustainability, Smart Growth, and Environ-

mental Justice literatures above, these accounts provide

descriptions of the opportunities and constraints of local

sustainability. In many cases the impossibility of susta-

inability seems to be a foregone conclusion. Yet as Han-

son and Lake (2000a,b, p.7) remind us:

The indeterminacy of complex interactions across

multiple scales argues convincingly that sustaina-

bility cannot be comprehended as a function of

managed solutions, definitive scenarios, or pre-

dicted outcomes.

Bringing the concept of actually existing sustainabili-

ties into the conversation requires a finer grained analy-

sis into those policies that, in the US, reflect sustainable

initiatives. Though requiring us to respect scale, it forces

us away from macro-concepts to look at policies, prac-

tices and their implications for local places and their dif-

ferences across space and between places. The concept

of AES also requires us to look for sustainabilities in

new places. Krueger and Savage (2004), for example,

suggest union demands for preserving the communityhealth care provision and high quality employment in

the context of restructuring BostonÕs health care indus-

try comprises an AES. We must consider that in these

capitalist places alternative outcomes can exist. The dan-

ger is that if we do not explore this analytical thread and

link it to action, these opportunities will go unrealized.

6. Conclusion: actually existing sustainabilities?

According to ICLEI there are 6415 communities in

113 countries with LA21, or other local sustainability

initiatives (ICLEI, 2002). The ICLEI survey identified

81 US communities that meet the LA 21 criteria. This

compares to 172 communities in South Korea, 106 in

Belgium, 425 in the UK, and 39 in Zimbabwe. Conven-

tional wisdom would suggest that the US is a straggler at

best and grossly negligent at worst. These days, how-

ever, ‘‘wisdom’’ seems to be anything but conventional.

Indeed, alongside sustainability ‘‘visions’’ and ‘‘sustain-

ability’’ policies there are ‘‘actually existing sustainabil-

ities’’. Sustainability, then is a social process with the

resultant tensions emerging from enormous differences

in social, institutional, and discursive practices that

often seem irrational at best and schizophrenic at worst.In this paper we have thus sought to conceptualize

sustainability from the ground up, as it actually exists

in local places, as a set of evolving practices, regardless

of whether they formally bear the mantle of sustainabil-

ity, LA 21 or Communities 21.

The US sustainability case suggests that despite

national and, in many cases, state level commitment to

sustainability, it does not necessarily foreclose local ef-

forts to promote sustainability. In fact, the Seattle case,

despite its obvious criticisms, suggests that sustainability

can be a process of institutional learning. Through the

language of sustainability the Seattle Office of Sustaina-

bility and the Environment, and the departments that

preceded it, were able to transform ‘‘conventional’’

planning practices into ones that promoted processes

based upon principles of sustainability. This paper has

identified the process and applied some theoretical lan-

guage to open this notion up to debate. More focused

research must be completed, however.

Campbell (1996, p. 301), an academic planner,

boldly states that ‘‘in the battle of big public ideas,

sustainability has won: the task of the coming years is

simply to work out the details, and to narrow the gap

between its theory and practice’’. In this paper we


sustainabilityschizophrenia

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