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...

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.

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