The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability fix’ in Manchester and Leeds

Abstract

There is evidence that the politics of economic development in the post‐industrial city is increasingly bound up with the ability of urban elites to manage ecological impacts and environmental demands emanating from within and outside the urban area. More than simply a question of promoting quality of life in cities in response to interurban competition and pressures from local residents, the greening of the urban growth machine reflects changes in state rules and incentives structuring urban governance as part of an evolving geopolitics of nature and the environment. The adoption of principles and practices of ecological modernization potentially represents a dramatic shift in the social regulation of urban governance away from unconstrained neoliberalized modes. In this article we explore how different demands on and for urban environmental policy have played out vis‐à‐vis changing modes and practices of governance in two English post‐industrial cities. We explore differences in the ways that entrepreneurial urban regimes have sought to incorporate the green agenda (Leeds), or insulate themselves from ecological dissent (Manchester). We further attempt to conceptualize evolving urban economy‐environment relations in the UK in terms of an ensemble of governance practices, strategies, alliances and discourses that enables the local state to manage, though not necessarily resolve, seemingly conflicting economic, social and environmental demands at different scales of territoriality. Here we propose the notion of an ‘urban sustainability fix’ to describe the selective incorporation of ecological objectives in local territorial structures during an era of ecological modernization. Dans les villes post‐industrielles, la politique de développement économique semble liée de plus en plus étroitement à l'aptitude des élites urbaines à gérer les impacts écologiques et les exigences environnementales venus de l'intérieur et de l'extérieur. Au‐delà de la simple défense d'une qualité de vie en ville, répondant à la concurrence interurbaine et aux pressions des habitants, l'intégration de la cause Verte dans la machine de croissance urbaine reflète les nouvelles règles et mesures d'encouragement étatiques qui structurent la gouvernance des villes dans le cadre d'une géopolitique évolutive de la nature et de l'environnement. L'adoption de principes et pratiques de modernisation écologique pourrait traduire un revirement dans la régulation sociale de la gouvernance urbaine, en remplaçant la totale latitude des réponses néolibérales. L'article explore comment les demandes variées de et en politique urbaine d'environnement se sont exercées dans le contexte changeant des modalités et pratiques de gouvernance de deux villes post‐industrielles anglaises. Il s'intéresse aux différences de démarches qu'ont adoptées des régimes urbains ayant l'esprit d'entreprise pour incorporer le programme vert (Leeds) ou s'affranchir de la dissidence écologique (Manchester). De plus, il s'efforce de conceptualiser les relations évolutives économie‐e...

Transition Regions: Green Innovation and Economic Development

“…A research group addressing UK urban sustainability governance deploys regulationist 1 class analysis and urban regime theory (Gibbs et al, 2002;While et al, 1 Regulation theory analyses capitalist economic development in terms of a relationship between two key sub-systems. The first is the 'regime of (capital) accumulation' and the second is the mode of (capitalist) regulation'.…”

“…Hence, to the extent it can provide, as it claims, a range of theoretical and empirical insights into urban enterpreneurship, the changing context for urban politics and, to some extent, the social contradictions of urban environmental regulation under a regime of 'ecological modernization' (While et al, 2004) urban regime ecology's real contribution is mainly descriptive. Thus many of the empirical findings of this work are interesting, but have relatively little theoretical purchase, largely because the use of the regulationist-regime metaphor still over-narrows the research perspective to a classic and irremediable social conflict causality.…”

Understanding the Geographies of Transport and Cultural Heritage: Comparing Two Urban Development Programs in Oslo

“…This raises questions over the options available for the two types of programs and their reference to scale. While et al [67] (p. 556) once made a distinction between what they term a "high-octane" versus "steady-burning" types of urban development. Such a distinction is applicable for the two cases under study in this paper, with Bjørvika representing the former and the Grorud Valley the latter.…”

Scalar Politics and Local Sustainability: Rethinking Governance and Justice in an Era of Political and Environmental Change

“…As Bulkeley and Betsill (2005) demonstrate, even in the Global North, capacity is built at the local scale through multiscalar networking. Additionally, While et al (2004) show that the weakening of the local state opens up new possibilities for private sector involvement in urban governance, through their role of adding capacity to the local state, but also in their role of providing opportunities for investment and development of technology required to address environmental problems (Luke, 2003). Just as the ecological footprint concept has recognised that the city does not operate within an ecological closed system, we suggest that local areas also have a political footprint that has both a direct and indirect bearing on local action.…”

“…To meet the demands of attracting investment and increasing competition between cities, localities can no longer be inward focused, as assumed by Local Agenda 21. While et al (2004) argue that a consequence of this outward focus is an emerging separation between environmental and urban politics, where neoliberal economic development and environmental reform contradict one another at the local level, whilst entrenching class divisions. The changing role of the local has highlighted the need for new policy initiatives, new partnerships, and new spaces for engagement-in short, new modes of governance (While et al, 2004) that have a better fit with the spatiality of environmental problems.…”