Ernest J. Yanarella

Does sustainable development lead to sustainability

Abstract The shortcomings and contradictions of the present understanding of sustainable development as a concept and a strategy suggest that the very idea of sustainable development must be subjected to the most thorough-going reevaluation. In rejecting simplistic versions of sustainable development strategy, this paper offers the strategy of sustainable cities both as an alternative strategy and as a catalyst to long-term global sustainability. In so doing, it seeks not to replace all components of the strategy of sustainable development but instead to place them within a restructured strategic framework locating the design and building of sustainable cities at its centre.

Research and Solutions: "Green" vs. Sustainability: From Semantics to Enlightenment

The sustainability movement from the grassroots to the global level has been both enriched and hobbled by the many different versions of sustainability articulated in scholarly and popular writings...

Beyond environmental moralism and policy incrementalism in the global sustainability debate: case studies and an alternative framework

Global strategies for sustainable development remain caught in an interplay between environmental moralism and policy incrementalism. The former is evidenced in the continuing proliferation of international sustainability declarations; the latter in the design of local programmes approaching sustainable development in scattered, piecemeal policies where the goal - sustainability - remains unclear or only loosely defined. This paper points to the problems and perils of the dual process, underscoring the risks of environmental moralism implicit in such practices and highlighting the costs of formulating sustainability programmes only vaguely attached to its core concept. It initially focuses on the effort to promote Local Agenda 21 (LA21) - one model of sustainable urban practice - among towns and communities throughout the world and then contrasts Local Agenda 21 with the Aalborg Charter, a competing model for urban sustainability. In order to explore the success to date in implementing Local Agenda 21, the paper offers an overview of four exemplary programmes of community sustainability. The final section presents a critical assessment of LA21s successes and failures judged against an alternative sustainability framework developed by the Center for Sustainable Cities and informing the Aalborg Charter. Copyright

Local sustainability programmes in comparative perspective: Canada and the USA

Abstract This paper seeks to explore Canadas response to the global dialogue over sustainable development on two dimensions: policy articulation at the federal and provincial levels and policy implementation at the municipal level. In order to accomplish these goals, this analysis begins by outlining a critical framework for understanding and assessing local sustainable development. Next, it examines the evolution of Canadian federal and provincial policies supportive of sustainable development, including the role played by non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in enhancing this process. It then contrasts the Canadian promise and experience with that of the USA. In analysing local responses to the call for sustainable communities, it offers a case study of the Hamilton‐Wentworth Vision 2020 sustainable community programme—a North American showcase of sustainable community initiatives.

Toward a Post-Modern Theory of American Political Science and Culture: Perspectives From Critical Marxism and Phenomenology

Nearly half a decade ago, a new revolution in American political science was heralded by David Easton Speaking before the members of the American Political Science Association, the departing president startled his audience by his ringing call for the acceptance and institutionalization of this revolution the &dquo;post-behavioral revolution&dquo; in the discipline, just as he had urged the assimilation of behavioralism into political science some sixteen

The space of flows, the rules of play, and sustainable urban design: The sustainability game as a tool of critical pedagogy in higher education

This paper seeks to explore the origins of these inchoate changes and shifts in perception and experience of urban dwelling places and electronic spaces by tracing out their implications for the agenda of sustainable cities.The paper first considers the movement from Netville, the cybercommunity generated among technical experts and scholars associated with the building of the Internet, to Cybercities, the various online communities emerging from ARPA’s seemingly anarchic communications network. It pays particular attention to the “rules of play” that governed the construction of the Internet and the kind of egalitarian community of competence that those rules engendered. The analysis explores the import of those “rules of play” for “Emerald City,” a sustainability game for designing sustainable cities. The last section then shifts from participatory design process as game to an ongoing design project – the Westbahnhof project. This project, demonstrates the relevance of both the “rules of play” and the sustainability game in building sustainable cities of the future in an open, democratic, and participatory fashion.

Research and Solutions: Don't Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit! Counterintuitive Policy Advice for Achieving Sustainability

As the ecological movement shifts from conceptualization to implementation of programs for sustainability, the matter of appropriate tactics and strategy comes into play with increasing frequency. This strategic and tactical review becomes all the more crucial in the twenty-first century context of global warming and peaking of world oil reserves. This essay argues that the currently fashionable and appealing tactic of “picking the low-hanging fruit” in order to achieve quick paybacks and build coalitions of support for sustainable policies is fundamentally flawed and, on its own, counterproductive. Grounded in the imagery of a pathway or avenue to sustainability, this policy nostrum eventually leads to a series of walls or barriers that make the goal of that journey unrealizable. In advancing the alternative strategy of sustainable city regions, this essay lays out the case for adopting the commitments, tactics, and strategems flowing from the idea that sustainability is a balance-seeking process requiri...

Plato Meets Lawnmower Man in the Virtual Polis: The Case of PS 776

f popular movies are signposts of mass cultural fantasies, political terrors, and psychic nightmares, we Americans are in for some tough sledding as we negotiate the pathway to the next millennium. Already, we are being bombarded by cruel anticipations of ecological collapse, technophilic hopes of planetary domination and terra/terror forming, and hallucinogenic plans for disembodied consciousnesses

Global Warming and the Specter of Geoengineering: Ecological Apocalypse, Modernist Hubris, and Scientific-Technological Salvation in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Global Warming Trilogy

Kim Stanley Robinson has emerged as one of the most environmentally concerned and political savvy science fiction writers among his contemporaries. His ecological concerns began early and reached maturity in his Mars trilogy, which won rave reviews and science fiction honorifics, as each was successively published. Between 2004 and 2007, his latest trilogy—the “Science in the Capital” series—was released, focusing upon the near-term dangers of global warming and the tendencies toward a kind of surveillance society in the United States spawned by the continuing war on terror. This chapter seeks to spotlight the good, the bad, and the tenuous in the trilogy by exposing Robinson’s Enlightenment assumptions about modern science and the scientific community, his fascination with fast-times scenarios, his license to Science and scientists to utilize terra/terror-forming techniques on Earth’s ecosystem, and his wilderness worship and preference for Paleolithic lifestyles. In the process, it juxtaposes trends in the techno-corporate world affirming precisely the Big Science solutions advanced by Robinson in his trilogy against more difficult, but more promising alternatives emerging from post-Enlightenment responses to global warming as a cultural and political economic crisis emanating from voices from grassroots organizations and postmodern ecological thinkers. The paper’s reads Robinson’s work against its Enlightenment grain to sketch some essential ingredients of a post-Enlightenment approach to addressing the global warming phenomenon.

Community, Labor, and Environmental Participation in Industrial Recruitment: East Asian Automobile Investment in Canada in Comparative Perspective

The construction of nine Japanese and one South Korean automobile assembly plants in the North American industrial heartland was a major feature in the transformation of global automobile production in the 1980s. In this article, the authors compare the community, labor, and environmental involvements in and impacts on the Canadian industrial recruitment of four East Asian assembly plants. The authors found that Canadian transplant recruitment has not lived up to its promise to ameliorate local unemployment and generate commercial and residential growth, nor have these transplant sitings in rural communities generated major environmental controversies. Instead they have produced single-issue citizen campaigning, administrative resolution, and elite accommodation. Organized labor represents workers at CAMI, the General Motors-Suzuki joint venture, but its efforts at the three other flexible production facilities will be difficult given Canadas economic woes, the overcapacity problem, and the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement.