Agency and governance in green infrastructure policy adoption and change

Gerlak, Andrea K.; Elder, Alison; Pavao-Zuckerman, Mitchell; Zúñiga-Terán, Adriana A.; Sanderford, Andrew R.

doi:10.1080/1523908x.2021.1910018

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Thus, it is, and will be, important to consider the impacts across scales (city, neighborhood, and resident) as the urban water systems in the Southwest are updated and to ensure that already underserved communities are prioritized. This may require the use of equity-centered tools not generally applied to water systems, such as the examination of socio-demographic characteristics of neighborhoods, the distribution of existing environmental harms, water and sewer rates, and the creation of special programs for communities to ensure affordability that go beyond traditional first-come, first-serve rebate approaches. , Attention should be paid to public outreach about the new systems and the reasons they are being built to encourage public support.…”

Section: Results: Governance and Policy Challenges For A Future Nzuw ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rainwater. Rainwater harvesting is permitted by the state and in some cases required or incentivized by the City of Tucson for residential and commercial applications. , However, rainwater supplies have been highly variable in recent years, increasing the need for active storage during dryer, hotter times.…”

Section: Discussion: City Specific Case Study Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This may require the use of equity-centered tools not applied to water systems, such as the examination of socio-demographic characteristics of neighborhoods, the distribution of existing environmental harms, water and sewer rates, and the creation of special programs for communities to ensure affordability that go beyond traditional firstserve rebate approaches. 57,58 Attention should be to public outreach about the new systems and the reasons they are being built to encourage public support.…”

Section: Access To Trees and Heat-mitigating Vegetationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs

Crosson,

Pincetl,

Scruggs

et al. 2024

ACS EST Water

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The Colorado River supplies >40 million people in the United States Southwest with their daily water supply and is unable to meet the current demands. New approaches are needed to enhance sustainability and resilience. A net zero urban water (NZUW) approach meets the needs of a given community with a locally available and sustainable water supply, without detriment to interconnected systems and the long-term water supply. Transitioning to a NZUW future will require considerable modifications to governance and policy across the Southwest and its cities specifically. We identify five areas of governance and policy challenges: diversified water sources and sinks; planning, design, and operation; monitoring and enforcement; coordination; and addressing equity and justice. Four case study cities are investigated: Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, and Tucson. Across these cities, the policy priorities include supporting potable water reuse, coordinating policies across jurisdictions for alternative water sources, addressing equity and justice, developing and incentivizing water conservation plans, and making aquifer storage and recovery projects easier and more economical to pursue. We conclude that a NZUW transition in the Southwest faces considerable governance and policy challenges, but moving cities toward this goal is crucial.

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Section: Results: Governance and Policy Challenges For A Future Nzuw ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion: City Specific Case Study Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Access To Trees and Heat-mitigating Vegetationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs

Crosson,

Pincetl,

Scruggs

et al. 2024

ACS EST Water

Self Cite

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“…In response to this trend, Hoover et al (2021), Tomateo (2021), and Gerlak et al ( 2021) each highlight community engagement in GI planning and policy as critical to realizing the potential for multifunctionality from GI implementation. Gerlak et al (2021) specifically focus on learning as a key process in this engagement and find that experimentation by actors and communities plays a key role in developing the knowledge, skills, and trust needed to facilitate this learning. Overall, these papers clearly display a need for explicit consideration of systemic inequality in infrastructural policy and planning and, despite a common misconception of its inherent social value, show that GI is not excused from perpetuating this 'nightmare' because it is 'green'.…”

Section: One Person's Dream Is Another's Nightmarementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In examining pathways to overcome 'amnesia', Gerlak et al (2021) note a growing recognition in policy and governance of the importance of equity in GI access and distribution. They examine the role of agency and governance in urban transformation through GI within the context of Tucson, AZ by examining the diverse and interconnected roles of entrepreneurs working in GI, providing insights into how they learn from each other and across scales.…”

Section: Overcoming Amnesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

The multifaceted geographies of green infrastructure policy and planning: socio-environmental dreams, nightmares, and amnesia

Matsler

Grabowski

Elder

2021

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning

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Of what 'green infrastructure' do we dream?Infrastructure lies at the heart of many disputes within environmental policy and planning. Take for example recent proposals for massive federal investments in infrastructure in the United States. These investments promise climate resilience, secure jobs, and large improvements in environmental quality occurring alongside a new era of public lands policy. Despite these lofty goals, fierce debate rages over the relationship between infrastructure spending, social wellbeing, and economic performance. Within these debates, some have argued for a deeper inclusion of 'green infrastructure' (GI), as a key component of sustainability transitions. And yet, debate continues over what GI is and how it should be implemented.Existing scholarship makes clear that GI means different things to different individuals and institutions. Deeply contested, GI manifests via varying conceptual orientations: through a water/stormwater management approach, an urban ecology/ecosystem services approach, a landscape conservation/greenspace planning approach, and integrative approaches across these overlapping orientations (Matsler et al., 2021;Szulczewska et al., 2017). Even within each of these conceptual orientations, significant differences exist in the scope and interpretation of what constitutes GI (Wright, 2011). These are not simply epistemological issues related to disciplinary silos; rather they stem from incompatible ontologies over what type of work should be expected from ecosystems, and its close corollary, the nature of the relationship between humans and landscapes (Gabriel, 2014;Gandy, 2002;Wachsmuth, 2012). Like many issues facing sustainability policy, these ontological concerns do work beyond the abstract, revealing the radically different and often alienated experiences of humans with each other and their resident ecosystems (Grabowski et al., 2019).Ontological instability adds considerable confusion to the implementation and practice of GI. The GI concept was originally popularized as a way to connect various ecological habitat typessuch as street trees, forest patches, parks, restored streams, and floodplainsin a cohesive planning framework to provide multiple benefits (Benedict & McMahon, 2001). In practice however, GI is more often implemented to address specific and singular purposes: for example, GI is built as an engineering solution for stormwater (Fletcher et al., 2015) or flood (Thorne et al., 2018) management, or entangled with political solutions to 'undesirable' land uses as in the case of clearing slums (Millington, 2018) and redevelopment of vacant properties (Schilling & Logan, 2008). In each of these cases, significant conflict exists over what counts as 'green infrastructure' to meet the socially defined goals driving urban and infrastructure redevelopment.In addition to different conceptualizations of what biophysical elements are considered 'part of' GI, GI is also socially and politically mutable. This instability presents itself as a contradiction of meani...

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Policies Related to Green Infrastructure and Urban Resilience

Kumareswaran,

Jayasinghe

2023

Green Infrastructure and Urban Climate Resilience

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Agency and governance in green infrastructure policy adoption and change

Cited by 18 publications

References 55 publications

Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs

Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs

The multifaceted geographies of green infrastructure policy and planning: socio-environmental dreams, nightmares, and amnesia

Policies Related to Green Infrastructure and Urban Resilience

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