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The sustainable city represents an ideal of good and just living that has inspired urban development work for at least 25 years. While criticized by many for its scientific, social and political vagueness, the concept of the sustainable city has nonetheless continued to frame material and political efforts in urban redevelopment. From a perspective grounded in the pragmatic sociology of critique, this article takes this phenomenon as evidence of an international movement to generate not just political pronouncements or technical fixes, but a new order of worth, from the concept of the sustainable city. After presenting the pragmatic sociology of critique and the application of this body of social research as it pertains to better understanding sustainable urban development, we reflect on the factors that challenge the acceptance of the sustainable city as an order of worth, or as a mode and manner of justifying significant decisions in the public domain, recognizable and understandable to a majority. For efforts to create the sustainable city to justify themselves, socioculturally, in this way, the work demands a clear test of worthiness. This article illustrates the search for an adequate test through a review of two distinct efforts to generate new systems of assessment for sustainable building projects, and points out the contrasting nature of these two tests: one which aims to be accessible to thoroughgoing public debate fit to transform a context toward a political discourse of urban sustainability as well-being ; the other that interprets the need for a test as affirmation of expertise related to the unfolding climate emergency.

This research provides analysis of the case of the Jackson Farm development application, embedded within the particular dynamics of the municipal, regional, and provincial sustainability land use policy culture of the Metro Vancouver region, in Canada. Within a culture of appreciation of the increasing need for sustainability in land use policy, including the protection of agricultural lands at the provincial level through the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), to urban intensification and protection of the green zone at the regional scale, lies a political conflict that comes into focus in individual land use decisions, within municipalities struggling for autonomy. This case is neither driven strictly by "the politics of the highest bidder" nor by policy failure ; the case of the Jackson Farm is instead a case of the challenges of implementing inter-governmental coordination and collaborative governance in a context of both significant sustainability policy and urban growth. The process can be seen to follow an ecological modernization agenda, seeking "win–win" alternatives rather than recognizing that typical compromises, over time, may tip the direction of development away from sustainability policy goals. Understanding the twists, turns, and eventual compromise reached in the case of the Jackson Farm brings to light the implications of the shift in the regional planning culture which may necessitate a less flexible, more structured prioritization of competing goals within plans and policies in order to meet sustainability goals. We highlight this, and present an alternative implementation process within the existing policy regime with potential to aid the specific goal of agricultural land protection.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- PART I: Our starting point for urban sustainability and justice -- 1. Our starting point: sustainability and justice made urban -- The city in a state of exception -- Ordinary justice in the urban commons -- What do we know about planning for justice in the sustainable city? -- Expanding the common sense of pragmatism into a critical pragmatism -- Note -- References -- 2. Sustainability as a slippery and a sticky concept -- Pragmatism and sustainability -- A critical pragmatic approach to recognizing urban sustainability in action -- Notes -- References -- 3. Celebrating the city, for all the wrong reasons? -- What was lost, now is found -- The books that mark the shift in urban thinking -- Trappings revealed by critical urban scholarship -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- PART II: An urban way forward in a pragmatic view -- 4. An urban shot at authenticity: our cities become ourselves -- The implications of individualism for urban notions of justice -- The dynamics of argumentation -- Our cities become ourselves -- Placemaking in the public domain -- Pragmatic opportunity for engagement -- Conclusion -- References -- 5. Empowerment in urban communities, after abandoning Utopia -- From the Great Society to the Great Community -- Reviving public participation to serve sustainability and justice -- Learning socially to engage in communities -- Pragmatic reappropriation of empowerment in community -- Conclusion -- References -- 6. Security, struggle, and resilience in the city -- Urban risk and urban reward -- The prospect of resilience -- The scene of struggle -- Towards a greater commoning of the city -- Conclusion -- Note -- References -- 7. Conclusion: a better urban life to be lived

This book is the seventh volume in a series covering best practices in community quality of life indicators. The case studies and analysis in this volume demonstrate how community indicators projects today operate within a need to amplify the voice of disadvantaged communities, seriously explore the increasing use of information technology, produce positive community change and sustain these efforts over time. The work presented here spans North American and Australian community work and demonstrates how the field of community indicators has undergone a rapid evolution in only a few decades. Today as in their original formulations, community indicators projects are designed to gauge the social, economic and physical health and well-being of communities. Meg Holden (PhD, New School for Social Research) is a social scientist whose research investigates the promises and results of sustainability planning in cities around the world. She is an Associate Professor of urban studies and geography at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Meg served as a board member of the Community Indicators Consortium from 2011-2016 and she currently serves as editorial board member of the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life as well as the Springer book series on Community Quality of Life and Wellbeing. Meg is the author of Pragmatic Justifications for the Sustainable City: Acting in the common place (Routledge, 2017). Rhonda Phillips, Ph.D., FACIP, has research and outreach efforts that focus on quality of life and well-being related to community and economic development. At Purdue University, she serves as inaugural Dean of the Honors College and a professor in the Agricultural Economics Department. She is author or editor of over 20 books, including Sustainable Communities: Creating a Durable Local Economy, and Introduction to Community Development. Formerly a Senior Sustainability Scientist with the Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Rhonda also served as director and professor in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. She is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and immediate past president of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. Chantal Stevens is a Performance Management Analyst for the King County Auditor's Office where she also holds the position of Program Oversight Manager for the Countywide Community Forums, an innovative collaboration between the public and King County to improve public engagement. She previously served on the CIC board from 2004-2007, and again in 2012. Chantal was formerly the Executive Director of Sustainable Seattle, a pioneer in the development of community indicators. She was the co- lead of the first conference dedicated to the exploration of CI-PM integration, and is currently an active advocate for community indicators and public engagement as a key element of a functioning performance management system at King County. She holds a BS and MMA from the University of Washington.

This article is a longer reflection on Frank Cunningham's Ideas in Context in light of the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey.

AbstractIn the context of calls for more effective processes to facilitate deliberative democracy in cities, and the connection often asserted between participatory means and sustainability ends in urban governance, this article examines a case of public participation for sustainability indicator selection in Vancouver, Canada. Sustainability indicator systems are often introduced via participatory exercises, but the quality of this participation and its outcomes are questionable. Based upon current debates in deliberative democratic theory, our judgment of the quality of a particular process depends on the level and mode of interaction. Do we expect, along with Healey, that participants build a rational consensus beginning from root values and visions, or do we expect, along with Mouffe, a conflictual consensus among participants working from incommensurably diverse life worlds? An examination of governmentality theory, based on the work of Rydin, adds to this a way of understanding the impact on participation outcomes of what participants learn about their own and others' roles in democratic urban governance as they prepare recommendations specific to local sustainability. This case study analysis reflects on these theoretical debates in terms of the unfolding of a public participation process for sustainability indicator selection. It offers lessons for public process design that is better aligned with the expectations of radicalized communicative rationality and for the specific learning values of engagement for participants, which were at least as strongly related to democratic practice as they were to sustainability per se.RésuméSur fond de demandes de processus décisionnels plus efficaces facilitant la démocratie délibérative dans les villes, et de lien souvent revendiqué entre méthodes participatives et objectifs de développement durable en matière de gouvernance urbaine, l'article étudie un cas de participation publique visant la sélection d'indicateurs de durabilitéà Vancouver, au Canada. Les systèmes d'indicateurs de durabilité apparaissent souvent avec les pratiques participatives, mais la qualité de cette participation et ses résultats sont discutables. D'après les débats actuels sur la théorie de la démocratie délibérative, l'évaluation de la qualité de tel ou tel processus dépend de ses niveau et mode d'interactions. Veut‐on croire, tel Healey, que les participants bâtiront un consensus rationnel en commençant par des valeurs et perspectives fondamentales ou, telle Mouffe, qu'un consensus conflictuel se créera entre des participants émanant d'univers de vie sans commune mesure? L'étude de la théorie de la gouvernementalitéà partir des travaux de Rydin offre un moyen de comprendre comment les résultats de la participation sont affectés par ce que les participants apprennent sur leur rôle personnel et sur le rôle des autres dans la gouvernance urbaine démocratique, pendant qu'ils préparent leurs recommandations en matière de durabilité locale. L'analyse de l'étude de cas revient sur ces débats théoriques pour expliciter un processus de participation publique visant la sélection d'indicateurs de durabilité. Elle en tire des enseignements qui suggèrent une conception des processus publics plus conforme aux attentes d'une rationalité communicative radicalisée et qui déterminent, pour les participants, les valeurs d'apprentissage social propres à l'engagement, valeurs qui ont été liées à la pratique démocratique au moins autant qu'au développement durable lui‐même.

In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbon-positive cities, ecopolises, ecobarrios, One Planet Communities, and solar cities. They have become frames—sometimes the dominant frame—used to orient the construction of new pieces of a city in a growing number of countries. Despite numerous standardization efforts, the field of ecourban neighbourhood planning and practice lacks a consistent cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes meaningful ecourbanism in specific economic, political, ecological, social, and design-based terms. Ecourban neighbourhood projects also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different contexts. This article presents an original typology of ecourbanism as the integration of seven extreme type principles. We developed this typology through an abductive approach, or the back and forth testing of observed practices with arguments advanced in theories of sustainable development, planning and urban studies. While ecourban neighbourhood developments by definition express integrative goals, this typology permits assessment of the extent to which outcomes are being achieved in terms of each specific principle. We define and present a limiting case for each of these extreme type principles. Rather than attempting to render different standards equivalent across national contexts, this typology-based approach to understand the outcomes of ecourban neighbourhood developments promises a means to facilitate orienting these developments toward higher levels of integration within a common set of principled boundaries, as they are developed around the world.

This collection of urban studies research and interpretation crosses the country from Quebec to B.C., comparing trends and perspectives over the past decade and across and beyond disciplines. Core questions of research, policy and practice facing Montreal and Vancouver—those featuring housing and transportation, in particular—are featured in terms of new and innovative directions. Emerging questions—about urban indigeneity, food systems, climate action—are broached in challenging ways. The twenty authors whose original work is compiled here demonstrate the scope for continued, critical, comparative conversation across francophone and anglophone divides. The book offers a significant resource for understanding the intersecting field and practice of urban studies in Quebec and in B.C. and for spurring its further evolution. A French version of this book is also available