Introduction: Problem, Argument, Themes

Abstract

This book explores urban sustainability across Greater Seattle through a series of regulatory, discursive, and investment strategies and emerging forms of territorial governance associated with the smart growth regional planning doctrine. The smart growth movement has been and largely remains into the 2010s, “the most prominent planning approach for sustainable land use and urban development” (J Am Plann Assoc 78:87–103, 2012, p. 90) in many parts of the USA. This chapter outlines the focus, purposes, and main arguments of the book. The discussion establishes the rising importance of forging sustainability through reshaping metropolitan space. It then argues that actually existing smart growth is spatially variegated across metropolitan space—i.e., unevenly taken up and differentially embedded in the urban fabric—because of what Karen Orren and Steven Skowronek (Political order, New York, 1996) call “intercurrence,” a key theoretical concept in the book that refers to the coexistence of multiple political orders. The chapter justifies the case study focus on Greater Seattle and concludes with a brief summary of the themes and arguments of the remaining chapters.