Urban sustainability and the governance of greening

Abstract

Cities have long been seen as important in achieving sustainability. However, conceptions of and approaches to urban sustainability and greening have changed over time from a primary focus of environmental problems as urban problems to cities as leaders in global climate change mitigation. This chapter provides a brief overview over the changes in understandings of and research on urban sustainability over the past few decades with a specific focus on governance and sustainability approaches. The literature review provides the context for situating and understanding green building transitions in the four case study regions where interpretations and implementations of green building have changed over time and need to be understood within the broader spatial and temporal context. The chapter introduces the concept of policy mobility and related work on urban assemblages that emphasise the relational character of local and urban processes. These perspectives understand cities as consisting of both local and global influences and elements. One emphasis of policy mobility is to understand these relationships through processes of learning, adaptation and mutation of knowledge and practises (e.g. green building policies, certification programs, planning approaches and construction techniques) between individuals and actor groups such as policy-makers, consultants, scientists, urban designers and architects. The chapter proposes an analytical framework that utilises the synergies of policy mobility and transition study approaches and that addresses the complexity of sustainability transitions as socio-spatial and socio-technical processes.