Thursday, April 22, 2010

Part II of the assignment #7

A newspaper article:
“Smart Growth” taking hold in U.S. cities, study says (New York Times, published in March 24, 2010)
(http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/03/24/24greenwire-smart-growth-taking-hold-in-us-cities-study-sa-30109.html?scp=4&sq=sustainable%20planning&st=cse)

This article deals with the changing trend of urban redevelopment since the 2000s in terms of metropolitan regions’ sustainable planning systems. Through U.S. Census residential building permit data for the 50 largest metropolitan regions over a 19-year period (1990 to 2008), the EPA shows that there has been a fundamental shift in the real estate market, including “a dramatic increase in the share of new construction built in central cities and older suburbs.” Considering the main focus of this study from the EPA report, urban development trends of metropolitan regions, this is related to urban (development) policy issues and focuses on city (or local) government planning for sustainability, I think.

As several scholars mentioned the conceptual and intrinsic ambiguities of sustainability and sustainable development, it is hard for us to reach a consensus on how we define sustainability and what factor(s) or perspective(s), of ecological, economic, environmental, and social sustainability, should be considered more than others. Under this circumstance, I will use the definitions of sustainability that Solow, Goodland, and Wheeler generally mentioned: It is a comprehensive concept, including a series of actions for preserving existing stocks of ecological and social capital, improving long-term health of human and ecological systems, and helping make human communities and natural environments healthier while seeking higher quality (and values).

According to the analysis of the EPA report, urban development at the local level in the United States focuses on two research questions: (1) “if there has been a shift toward urban redevelopment,” and (2) “in which regions the shift has been most significant.” The empirical findings show that (1) redevelopment of urban centers has continued to outpace construction in the outskirts of suburb areas and (2) this acceleration of residential construction in urban neighborhoods reflects a fundamental shift in the real estate market. This development trend supports the viewpoints of environmentalists who would conserve “untouched land while reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.” Moreover, it also has similar policy orientations toward the Obama administration's “Partnership for Sustainable Communities” (http://www.epa.gov/dced/partnership/index.html), run jointly by the EPA, the Transportation Department, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Focusing on the “livability” initiative that this program orients toward, U.S. cities’ urban redevelopment trend since the 2000s tends to approach ecological and environmental sustainability, like “improving building-level energy efficiency, cutting greenhouse gas emissions through transit-oriented development, and taking advantage of other locational efficiencies.”

In spite of increasing sustainability in terms of ecological and economic sustainability regarding urban redevelopment since the 2000s, many large-scale redevelopment projects still require changes in local regulations or public infrastructure investments in order to move forward. A recent national survey provides an indication of just how common infrastructure adequacy and inflexible parking regulations are as a barrier to redevelopment. Sixty percent of developers stated that projects are constrained by a lack of infrastructure and seventy percent consider minimum parking requirements a significant burden on their typical development projects (Urban Land Institute, 2009). Additionally, some potentially viable redevelopment sites face the burden of real or perceived contamination and need assistance to evaluate conditions and conduct any necessary clean up. The clear trend toward more redevelopment has a couple key implications for smart growth: (1) regions often cited as leaders in promoting growth management and redevelopment (Portland, Denver, Sacramento and Atlanta) are among the medium sized cities where the shift inward has been most dramatic; (2) In metropolitan regions with large and diverse central cities with strong ties to the global economy (New York, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles) the market fundamentals are shifting toward redevelopment even in the absence of formal policies and programs at the regional level.

The case analysis on the urban redevelopment trend at the local or regional level does provide a broad picture of the magnitude and direction of residential construction trends across the country. Although it is hard to generalize, land-use regulations, infrastructure provisions, and incentive programs strongly influence these trends driven by real estate market fundamentals. Specifically, in regions where urban core communities’ share of new construction has increased, some projects, like transit-oriented development, high-rise buildings in prime waterfront or downtown locations, redevelopment of former industrial sites, redevelopment of strip commercial parcels or large underutilized parking lots, are driving forces for this trend. Besides, in regions where urban fringe development is still increasing its share, continued decentralization of employment, a weak overall housing market, and deficiencies in urban core infrastructure are likely to be seen.

Although this article focuses on the city governments’ sustainable urban planning and development, the EPA report and this article show us the general trends of urban redevelopment in terms of a national context. That is, this article attempts to see a comprehensive urban redevelopment trend including all the state and city levels. Under the lack of federal leadership on housing and transportation policy, city governments’ efforts to improve local energy efficiency and preserve local environments through decreasing pollution rates at the local level can be possible through the effective implementation of “smart growth.” However, such findings regarding urban redevelopment in the metropolitan regions may simply indicate that sustainability planning is in its early stages and intergovernmental consensus or political backing has not yet emerged for the most meaningful changes. As this article mentions, urban redevelopment toward the city center caused changes in demographic variation of those living in urban centers and building structures, like decreasing single-family homes but increasing multi-family developments such as apartment complexes and blocks of condominiums. However, we don’t know how exactly a series of shifts regarding urban redevelopment toward “smart growth” influences sustainable development at each level of government (the federal, state, and local levels) and their interaction (or intra-governmental relations). As Wheeler mentioned, how well the Three Es – economy, environment, and equity – are balanced and reflected at the local sustainable planning framework depends on local governments’ capacity and will toward sustainable development and their capacity to connect specific policy and program changes in a meaningful way.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

A successful working of sustainable planning system under multiple planning governance systems: The role of cities in climate change policy

Wheeler’s book gives me an opportunity to explore the necessity or possibility of mutual partnership or cooperation under multiple-level sustainable planning governance. However, as I mentioned in Blackboard, there is little mention about the existence of role conflicts or mechanisms for solving them. Through a Web search, I found an interesting working paper published by the OECD. The title of this paper written by Lamia Kamel-Chaoui and Alexis Robert in 2009 is “Competitive Cities and Climate Change.”

As I already know, climate change is a global issue as well as a local issue that all policy makers and stakeholders are concerned about. According to the authors, the climate change issue should be considered more at the local level because cities are major contributors to CO2 emissions and therefore urban policies at the local level should carefully consider climate change policy: what role the cities (and the state and federal levels) have, and how each sustainable planning system or governance can set their roles and limitations in an organic and balanced way and consider the possibility of role confusion and conflicts. The authors argue that cities should serve as a “policy laboratory” for action on climate change and effective climate policy packages should seek policy complementarities among and within urban sectors to implement policies that enhance each other’s effectiveness. To do so, well-designed strategic plans and long-term strategic planning should be required and role division between the federal and states or between the federal and local level are needed, according to the authors. Another interesting point in this book is the importance of financing on successful sustainable planning systems, like greening local revenues and financing local green activities, through the use of “fees and charges” as instruments to influence behavior and mitigate climate change. If you are interested in this working paper, please see this link: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/30/36/44232251.pdf

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Assignment #6: Applying Cohen’s five frameworks to congressional efforts toward “sound science” in the American context

My research topic deals with congressional efforts toward sound science in an American context. Historically, many scientific results or information regarding environmental policy, like global warming or air pollution, have been manipulated by the White House, political parties, and public agencies, and the serious problem is that we don’t know in how many cases this has been done and how we can control this intentional manipulation of scientific results in the future. In this assignment, I will apply my research topic to Cohen’s five frameworks on environmental policy respectively through using several sources of articles and books.

1. Values framework

According to Cohen (2006), valuing a certain ideologies, perspectives, or policy contexts is the most fundamentally important step regarding forming a direction of environmental policy-making process. Everybody has different thoughts and perspectives on the rightness and wrongness of a certain policy issue because public policy per se and its related process is inherently value-laden. Therefore, there are several different values priorities held by policy stakeholders and actors regarding environmental policy issue and the policy-making process. Some people orient toward religious values more than any other values; others orient toward economic values (like efficiency and effectiveness); still others pay attention to social equity or fairness. Environmental issues include all these value concurrently, so which values are considered more than others depends on various situational and contextual factors. Regarding my research topic, congressional efforts toward “sound science,” controlling intentional manipulation of scientific results by strong policy actors in the process of environmental policy, like the White House, political parties, and public agencies, values framework plays an important role in shaping national science and technology policy and politics-science interaction in the process of environmental policy-making.

Environmental policy, which is closely connected with science and technology policy in the United States, has faced a dilemma over which value(s) are considered. For example, in the case of global warming, while most members of the public want to avoid future harm from climate change, they have conflicting values about which sacrifices are worthwhile today (Tierney, 2009). As Cohen mentioned in his book, environmentalism as a value is frequently in conflict with the logic of economic development (like development logic for national economic development). The president, as one of the main policy actors, has his own value priorities and tries to reflect this value into the policy-making process under his incumbency. According to Vaughn and Villalobos (2009), most of former president Bush’s policy orientation was based on “religious conservatives” and “pro-corporate interests” and therefore he pursued policy initiatives that were consistent with the faith and profit-based preferences of his supporters during his presidency. This approach made environmentalism underestimated and ignored under his administration as a relatively unimportant value.

2. Political framework

Every policy issue consists of several policy actors having different perspectives and ideas, and therefore their interactions and interrelationships bring about cooperation and conflicts in the policy-making process. A power game among policy actors happens regarding “resource deployment, consumption, degradation,” and its related “learning” process (Cohen, 2006), and political winners and losers are made as the result of this game. We should understand and review science-politics interaction regarding “sound science” efforts. All policy matters and realities based on the current complex interactions and dynamics are inevitably “political,” considering the real interaction between science and politics. Happer (2003, p. 27) considers that politicization of science is inevitable “when governments provide funding for science.” Many scholars consider the politicization of science with different angles and issues (Vaughn & Villalobos, 2009; Happer, 2003; Gough, 2003). Although it cannot be generalized, they commonly argue that “the more that political considerations dominate scientific considerations, the greater the potential for policy driven by ideology and less based on strong scientific underpinnings” (Gough, 2003, p. 3).

There are several policy actors and stakeholders on the politics-science interaction on environmental policy. I think there were two main actors under the Bush administration in the manipulation of scientific results as the politicization of science: the president (or political parties) and the scientists. The president can control other policy actors’ voices through strategically deploying trusted allies and moving or mobilizing bureaucratic activity (Vaughn & Villalobos, 2009). Politicization has become a core governing strategy of the administrative presidency, according to Vaughn and Villalobos (2009). There are two types of politicization that the chief executive can implement: “active” (strategic placement of key political allies into personnel positions of managerial importance) and “passive” (presidential staffing strategies designed rather to slow, blunt, or negate bureaucratic involvement in key policy areas) politicization. Based on President Bush’s predisposition toward religious conservatism and corporate backers, he tried to reflect these predispositions under his administration, like reduced regulation of corporations. Scientists as “impartial experts” are used to a means by politicians to legitimate government policies: regarding policies advantageous to politicians, they’re prone to exaggerate their expertise to bolster their case (like enumerating the catastrophes that would occur if their policies aren’t adopted), while denigrating their political opponents as “unqualified” or “unscientific” (Tierney, 2009). In extreme politicization, governments or powerful advocacy groups consider science and scientists as those who “share or benefit from the politicization to drive science out of technical decisions and to promote a nonscientific agenda” (Happer, 2003).

3. Science and technology framework

Ideally, the role of scientists regarding environmental issues (like global warming) can be considered as an “impartial arbitrator” offering expert answers to politicians’ questions or a pure researcher who is separated from messy politics. However, most scientific issues are not so simple. While most scientists agree that anthropogenic global warming is a threat, they’re not certain about its scale or its timing or its precise consequences. There are too many technological, economic, and political uncertainties to count on it making a significant global difference. If people around the world can’t be cajoled — or frightened by apocalyptic scenarios — into cutting carbon emissions, then politicians need backup strategies (Tierney, 2009). Besides, citizens’ “scientific illiteracy” (Mooney & Kirshenbaum, 2009) and the resulting disinterest in scientific information help politicians or the White House manipulate scientific results to reflect their supporter’s interests. According to Mooney and Kirshenbaum (2009, p. 13), “80 percent of Americans can’t read the New York Times science section” and they are not interested in science. This situation in the United States gives rise to the cultural decline of American science.

4. Policy design framework

Policy per se becomes complex, according to Schneider and Ingram (1997), in order to “hide the actual allocation pattern for groups such as contenders” who are powerful but negatively socially constructed in society. Moreover, policy also becomes complex “when policy makers delegate responsibility to the scientific and professional networks who design policies and programs that draw from the specialized language and knowledge of scientific disciplines.” Under this circumstance, the citizens without special information or knowledge in a certain policy issue are likely to be alienated from policy-making processes and these processes are monopolized by powerful groups like elites, politicians, or the scientific and professional.

The intentional manipulation of scientific results regarding environmental policy process has historically been made with various strategies and symbolic action of policy stakeholders. Scholars mention some extreme cases, such as the censoring of Dr. Hansen (Bowen, 2008), the deliberate misrepresentation and occasional suppression of scientific evidence not consistent with administrative goals (Clayton, 2007; Waxman, 2003), and the dismissal of allegedly intransigent members of the Council on Bioethics. Of these strategies, strategic personnel management was frequently far more commonplace, according to Vaughn and Villalobos (2009). The Bush administration took advantage of two tracks of scientific manipulation strategies: “active politicization,” which takes the form of hiring former industry and interest group lobbyists to manage the official national effort; and “passive politicization,” in which those aspects of the federal bureaucracy not under the thumb of like-minded presidential appointees would remain understaffed to the point of dysfunction.

5. Management framework

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (2004), the Bush administration (1) appointed underqualified individuals to important advisory posts, (2) used political litmus tests in questionnaires for seeking nominees, (3) appointed nonscientists to senior positions normally reserved for highly qualified scientific experts, and (4) censored and distorted scientific reports that contradicted administration policy goals. Moreover, the Bush administration took advantage of strategic vacancies by (1) allowing political appointee positions to convert to civil servant positions, (2) the general overpoliticization at the top levels of department management, and (3) an overreliance on outside contractors to conduct a “war on science” (Vaughn and Villalobos, p. 810). Having too many (a rising number) of political appointees makes it increasingly difficult for incoming presidents to carry out their transitions into office and fill the posts necessary for them to be able to govern effectively. Too much politicization and staffing woes can erode the quality of information, including that which relies on scientific information, as well as other sources of agency expertise covering diverse policy spheres.

Reference
Cohen, Steven. 2006. Understanding environmental policy, New York: Columbia University Press.
Gough. Michael. 2003. Science, Risks, and Politics. In edited by Michael Gough, Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking, Standford. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Washington D.C: George C. Marshall Institute. pp. 1 – 25.
Happer, William. 2003. Harmful Politicization of Science. In edited by Michael Gough, Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking, Standford. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Washington D.C: George C. Marshall Institute. pp. 27 – 48.
Mooney, C., & Kirshenbaum, S. (2009). Unscientific American: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, New York: Basic Books.
Schneider, Anne L., and Helen Ingram. 1997. “Good” Public Policy: A Policy Design and Social Construction Perspective. Current Public Policy and Management Issues, edited by Rosalyn Y. Carter and Khi V. Thai, Boca Raton, FL, Academics Press.
Tierney, J. (2009, February 23). Politics in the guise of pure science, The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/science/24tier.html?ref=science [accessed April 5, 2010].
Vaughn, J. S., & Villalobos, J. D. (2009). The Obama administration’s challenges after the War on Science: Reforming staffing practices and protecting scientific integrity in the Executive Branch. Review of Policy Research, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 803-819.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Measuring sustainability

This weeks’ reading mention that the term sustainability has multiple meanings so it is hard to generalize its concept. Lack of generalization and the ambiguities of meanings of sustainability make scholars measure it in terms of empirical and quantitative-based methodologies. So, how do we reduce the ambiguities of the meaning of sustainability and create a more valid (or reliable) concept of sustainability and its-related issues? One of the key works is related to the effort to measure sustainability, I think.

Through a Web search, I found that several scholars have intended to measure sustainability and related topics. Some of them use complicated mathematics and equations while others focus on several key sub-areas of sustainability, like environmental, cultural, economic, and equity dimensions, by creating measurable indicators. Here is a journal article written by Thomas Parris and Robert Kate. They attempt to test whether or not several quantitative indicators concerning sustainability that have been developed by existing studies are valid, focusing on the definition of sustainable development, motivation, process, and technical methods. They conclude that “there are no indicator sets that are universally accepted, backed by compelling theory, rigorous data collection and analysis, and influential in policy.” They assume that this result is due to “the ambiguity of sustainable development, the plurality of purpose in characterizing and measuring sustainable development, and the confusion of terminology, data, and methods of measurement.” If you are interested in measuring sustainability and its relevancy and validity, please see this article:

http://www.isciences.com/assets/pdfs/AR198-EG28-13%5B001-028%5D.pdf

Moreover, I also link another article discussing sustainable development in terms of its defintion, goals, indicators for measuring, and values. It is helpful for us in increasing the understanding of sustainabilty and related concepts:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sustsci/ists/docs/whatisSD_env_kates_0504.pdf