From sustainable development to carbon control: eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development

Abstract

The management of carbon emissions holds some prospect for challenging sustainable development as the organising principle of socio‐environmental regulation. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low‐carbon polity as an ideological state project, and examines its potential ramifications for the regulation of economy–environment relations at the urban and regional scale. Carbon control would seem to introduce a new set of values into state regulation and this might open up possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban and regional development in a manner not possible under sustainable development. But low‐carbon restructuring also portends intensified uneven development, new forms of state control and a socially uneven reworking of state–society relations. In order to explore these issues we start by setting out a framework for conceptualising environmental regulation based around the idea of eco‐state restructuring. This idea is introduced to capture the conflicts, power struggles and strategic selectivities involved as governments seek to reconcile environmental protection with multiple other pressures and demands. Overall the paper seeks to make a distinctive contribution to theoretical work on state environmental regulation and the emerging spatial dimensions of climate policy.

Locating the fourth helix: Rethinking the role of civil society in developing smart learning cities

“…Several sustainable development theorists (e.g. Gibbs et al 2013, While et al 2010 critically examine the politics of urban change in situations where a city desires to become innovative and creative but neglects to develop learning infrastructure.…”

A Green Leap Forward? Eco-State Restructuring and the Tianjin–Binhai Eco-City Model

“…Tianjin-Binhai, also enacting a new geography of collaboration -partnering with an Asian state rather than European or North American firmsbecame the new best practice eco-city. The deep involvement of the Chinese central government in framing and selecting Tianjin-Binhai, the inclusion of social welfare provision into its master plan, the ambition of developing new technologies and standards for ecocity construction, and the inclusion of low-carbon goals, reflect both China's recent environmental governance transition and the post-Kyoto global focus on reducing territorial carbon emissions (WHILE et al, 2010).…”

“…ESR, critiquing such conceptualizations for underestimating the role of the state (WHILE et al, 2004;KRUEGER and GIBBS, 2007), seeks to theorize how such modes of environmental governance emerge in certain places and times, as state-economy-environment relations shift in ways that reflect political struggles surrounding competing ecological agendas (BUTTEL, 2000). Building on strategic relational conceptualizations of the capitalist state (JESSOP, 2007), WHILE et al (2010, p. 81) describe ESR as the reorganisation of state powers, capacities, regulations and territorial structures around institutional pathways and strategic projects […] viewed as less environmentally damaging than previous trajectories.…”

“…The paper begins by exploring the utility of eco-state restructuring (ESR) (WHILE et al, 2010) for analyzing China's changing regulatory and governance regime. It then provides a brief overview of the political economic context within which China's turn to environmental governance has occurred, focusing on the period since market reform.…”

Design of an Integrated Assessment of Re-distributed Manufacturing for the Sustainable, Resilient City

“…Bristol has a Strategic Resilience Officer and is one of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities (www.100resilientcities.org), but the subject of manufacturing has not yet been strongly included in its resilience work. Similarly, there has been a great deal of research on the concept of a sustainable city, including: the "sustainable city" as an oxymoron [5], sustainable development and carbon control in urban redevelopment [6], and the urban politics of climate change [7]. Papers on sustainability appear to be more likely to question the feasibility of the proposition when compared to those on resilience, possibly due to the fact that the idea of resilience aligns more with standard practices of business continuity planning and risk management.…”