Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Through an exploration of UK municipal waste policy, this paper examines debates on environmental policy integration (EPI) and governance. We argue that this policy arena has been characterised by modes of vertical integration, which have failed to promote the horizontal integration required to move beyond the limits of anachronistic institutional structures and have failed to achieve the paradigm shift needed to make meaningful progress towards sustainability. Through this analysis we develop three critical arguments. First, that the analysis of EPI requires attention to embedded paradigms, structures, and dynamics at all levels of governance, emphasising the importance of incorporating subnational levels of governing to EPI analyses. Second, that both analysis of and arguments for EPI need to engage more fully with broader dynamics of governing and to recognise the coexistence of contradictory processes of integration. Finally, we sound a note of caution in relation to calls for EPI. In the messy, dynamic, and multilevel reality in which EPI has to be implemented, such calls must recognise both sustainability and policy integration as iterative processes rather than as predetermined blueprints.

This paper examines the impact of Objective 1 funding in Europe in reducing country and regional disparities in gross value added per capita by presenting a critical review of both empirical studies and end-of-term programme reports. In practice, it is very difficult to establish impact effects because it is hard to establish the counterfactual. This difficulty arises as a consequence of different theoretical predictions as to what would happen in the absence of intervention, overlapping funding streams, and the regional impact of other policies such as European integration. There are also evaluation problems caused by data inadequacies and noise. Even so, the balance of evidence suggests that Objective 1 funding has had remarkably little demonstrable impact and there is, therefore, a strong case for reform.

Current British government policy leans heavily toward a participatory approach to urban development. The alleged benefits range from the growth of trust and social capital to better policy delivery and implementation involving a greater range of actors in the policy process. Yet, in many cases, poorly carried out partnership and participatory efforts can produce outcomes directly opposite to the benefits listed above. The author examines participation as a structural phenomenon and in doing so offers insights into how relationships could be strengthened in order to avoid these negative outcomes. Social network analysis is used to examine the structural relationships found within an urban redevelopment project in Portsmouth, England. Through the application of these measures, a number of relational patterns emerged which were not conducive to participation and left community groups feeling overwhelmed and underrepresented. The author concludes by noting how this technique could be used not only to highlight network imbalances, as seen in the case study, but also to offer community groups proactive advice in developing their network ties and communication structures, thus improving their overall position within the network and helping to deliver better levels of trust and social capital to the process.

We examine the reasons why a US locality would voluntarily commit to the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign. Using geographic information systems analytic techniques, we map and measure a locality's vulnerability to climate-change impacts at the county level of spatial precision. We analyze multiple measures of climate-change vulnerability, including expected temperature change, extreme weather events, and coastal proximity, as well as economic variables, demographic variables, and civic-participation variables that constitute a locality's socioeconomic capacity to commit to costly climate-change policy initiatives. Bivariate and logistic regression results indicate that CCP-committed localities are quantitatively different to noncommitted localities on both climate-change risk and socioeconomic-capacity dimensions. On vulnerability measures, the odds of CCP-campaign participation increase significantly with the number of people killed and injured by extreme weather events, projected temperature change, and coastal proximity. On socioeconomic-capacity measures, the odds of CCP-campaign involvement increase with the percentage of citizens that vote Democrat and recycle, as well as the number of nonprofit organizations with an environment focus. The odds decrease in a county area as the percentage of the labor force employed in carbon-intensive industries increases.

UK policy makers have increasingly developed area-based employment initiatives. This has culminated in the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot, which targets concentrations of worklessness in twelve deprived communities across Great Britain. Drawing upon detailed case study work undertaken in the Sheffield pilot, I discuss the challenges faced by the Jobcentre Plus agency in tackling such problems. A key finding is that the creation of the agency has placed too much emphasis on the most visible and superficial manifestations of organisational culture. At a deeper level, I find that the culture of the agency limits its ability to respond imaginatively and flexibly to the needs of such communities.

This paper explores the role of coalition building in the implementation of renewable-energy policy. Applying a discourse analysis framework to wind-energy development in the North West of England, two strong coalitions operating within the wind-energy development arena were identified. By combining this framework with a multicriteria assessment, it is revealed that each coalition had very different priorities during the evaluation of wind-energy schemes. Overall, only when offshore wind is evaluated are there elements of common ground. This technology therefore appears to offer a solution to sharp contrasts in discourse. Based on this assessment, it is concluded that the implementation of national energy-policy objectives is contingent upon the regional government developing coherent storylines to attract the support of as broad a coalition of stakeholders as possible.

I examine the relationship between the dynamics of the size of the Spanish central government, by looking at central government tax-revenue-retention shares in different domestic regions, and regional-income heterogeneity. Annual data correspond to the 1986–2001 period. In addition to interregional inequality, other factors, such as per capita transfers from the central government, regional saving rates, and years in which there is a change in the party leading the central government, also contribute to the decreasing dynamics of revenues that are retained by the Spanish central government.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the management strategies of cooperation in public-private partnerships (PPPs) in spatial planning. We describe a specific case study: the Dutch location development project ‘Sijtwende’. We deal with the main question of what this case teaches us about the management of complex processes of cooperation between public and private partners. We will describe the difficulties in the cooperation. Furthermore, we will look for important breakthroughs in the process of collaborative development of the area. In this paper we combine theoretical thoughts on PPP models, and management and empirical insights from out in-depth case study, in order to find balances in using project and process management strategies for managing complex spatial planning processes.

The authors analyze agri-environmental schemes (AES) from the perspective of new institutional economics (NIE). The field of NIE studies the effect of institutions on the decisions of economic actors. Policy is intended to shape institutions and thus influence behavior. NIE is therefore particularly suitable for the analysis of policy programs such as AES. Their aim is to explain some of the management problems that have arisen in AES and to contribute to finding solutions by using insights from NIE. To this end a specific Dutch AES is used as a case study, in which a number of administrative problems are analyzed. These problems prove to be similar to those that have been identified in other European AES, and are related to the ecological efficacy of this particular type of policy program, its economic efficiency, its administrative sustainability, and the level of sociopolitical support it enjoys. The explanation for the problems identified is based on NIE; this approach is also used to identify solutions. The solutions derived from this theory are then compared with the solutions that have been applied in reality. The authors conclude with a discussion of what these lessons imply for AES in general.

The significant changes in housing policy in the UK over the last three decades have been widely described and discussed. Public housing has moved away from centre stage because of privatisation and the decline in new public sector building. In the last decade there has been a renewed concern to provide affordable housing, but policy has not reverted to the earlier model where the affordable-housing drive was led by local authorities and new towns. Instead, it has turned to the use of the planning system to deliver different kinds of affordable housing, and one consequence has been the advent of a different style and density of urban housing development. The authors address the change in housing provision from a perspective related to the politics of construction. They play off earlier work by Dunleavy, and contrast the new politics of urban housing with those described in the era prior to 1975. They draw on research on mixed-tenure developments and regional housing strategies in England, and suggest that there is a new technological and ideological shortcut which is affecting the pattern of housing in major urban areas. Although there are some profound differences from the era of mass housing, there are also some important similarities in the factors that underpin the new politics of urban housing. The authors discuss key issues and provide suggestions for future research.