re-politicizing urban sustainability and the politics of...

Re-politicizing urban sustainability and the politics of the possible:

a critical yet hopeful analysis of the making of Project Twin

Streams in Waitakere City, New Zealand

Danya Lee Rumore

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Science in Geography

School of Environment

University of Auckland

March 2010

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Abstract

This thesis explores what politics and conditions of possibility give rise to and enable meaningful

urban sustainability interventions. The subject of urban sustainability has attracted significant

political and academic attention during the last decade. It is increasingly argued that urban

sustainability is as much a political as a technical or design problem and that, for this reason,

greater attention need be paid to the political projects necessary to achieve more sustainable urban

development. While critical geography has contributed much to a more politically and

theoretically informed discussion around urban sustainability in recent years, this work has

focused on critique and has largely failed to guide us forward toward realizing greater urban

sustainability and making ‘better’ urban worlds. Seeking to contribute to a more hopeful

discussion around the politics of urban sustainability, I provide a critical, politicized yet hopeful

reading of the politics and practices through which urban sustainability interventions are made

and governed in this thesis. I do so through a qualitative case study of the urban sustainability

intervention Project Twin Streams in Waitakere City, New Zealand, drawing on data gathered

through 20 semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and participant-observation. I mobilize

governmentality notions around the making of political programs—in particular, the ideas of co-

constituted political projects and the practice of assemblage—to examine what politics and

conditions of possibility have given rise to and have sustained Project Twin Streams. Key themes

emerging from this study include: the embeddedness of this urban sustainability intervention in

larger social, ecological, economic, and political processes; the critical role that alignments have

played in enabling this project; and the way in which agency and ‘power to act’ have defined the

making and governance of this initiative. While this examination of Project Twin Streams reveals

some of the conditions and contingencies set by larger political, economic, and institutional

processes, it highlights the politics of the possible and emphasizes that is possible to act to

produce more sustainable, ‘better’ urban worlds.

Key words:

Urban sustainability — Politics of the possible — Agency — Alignment —

Co-constitution – Assemblage – Hope – Project Twin Streams

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank all of my wonderful friends, family, advisors, and colleagues who had

faith in me and encouraged me throughout this thesis process, even when I wandered and

doubted myself. For as J.R. R. Tolkien once wisely said, “Not all those who wander are

lost.”

I am indebted to my advisors, Dr. Karen Fisher and Dr. Nick Lewis, for their abiding

support, guidance, and feedback. I particularly want to thank them for helping me to

challenge my understanding of the world and to always look for the possible, as well as

for all of the fun meetings involving flat whites.

Special thanks for Brent for his love, ideas, and help with last minute proofreading and

formatting. This thesis would not have come together without him.

I also want to thank Miss Siobhan O’kane for making this year in New Zealand one of

the best years of my life and for keeping me smiling even through rough times.

Thank you Mom, Dad, Gina and Dante for always believing in me and encouraging me to

follow my dreams.

Additionally, I want to express gratitude to all of those who participated in this research:

thank you for sharing your knowledge, ideas, and lessons with me, and for deeply

inspiring me. Project Twin Streams will always hold a special place in my heart.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities,

Fulbright New Zealand, and the University of Auckland for funding for my two years of

study and research at the University of Auckland.

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Table of Contents 1 REPOLITICIZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY AND THE POLITICS OF THE POSSIBLE 1 1.1 INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................................................1 1.2 SITUATING THE STUDY: INTRODUCTION TO URBAN SUSTAINABILITY AND URBAN SUSTAINABILITY SCHOLARSHIP .............................................................................................................................................................2 1.2.1 Sustainable development and the emergence of the urban sustainability rubric ....2 1.2.2 Urban sustainability scholarship and repoliticizing urban sustainability.................5

1.3 A MORE HOPEFUL READING OF THE POLITICS OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY ........................................7 1.4 THE CASE STUDY: PROJECT TWIN STREAMS ............................................................................................7 1.5 THESIS OBJECTIVES .......................................................................................................................................8 1.6 THESIS OVERVIEW .........................................................................................................................................9

2 RE-ANALYZING AND RE-POLITICIZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY ..................11 2.1 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER ................................................................................................................ 11 2.2 OVERVIEW OF THE URBAN SUSTAINABILITY LITERATURE......................................................... 11 2.3 RE-ANALYZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY: CRITICISMS AND CRITIQUES ................................ 13 2.4 RE-POLITICIZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY: INSIGHTS FROM CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY ........ 15

2.4.1 Beyond the urban-nature divide: the city as a complex socioecological system........ 16 2.4.2 Unbounding the urban: beyond the bounds of the sustainable city ................................ 19 2.4.3 The material and discursive politics of urban sustainability ............................................. 23 2.4.4 The urban sustainability fix: seeking to reconcile ecological goals with economic and social interests ............................................................................................................................................ 27

2.5 TOWARD A CRITICAL, POLITICIZED YET HOPEFUL READING OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INTERVENTIONS.................................................................................................................................................... 29

3 A CRITICAL, POLITICIZED YET HOPEFUL READING OF THE MAKING OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INTERVENTIONS.........................................................................33

3.1 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER:............................................................................................................... 33 3.2 A MORE HOPEFUL GEOGRAPHY: PERFORMING ‘BETTER’ WORLDS .......................................... 33

3.2.1 A new ethics of thinking: illuminating the politics of the possible................................... 34 3.2.2 The politics of the possible in critical urban sustainability analysis .............................. 36

3.3 MAKING POLITICAL PROGRAMS: INSIGHTS FROM GOVERNMENTALITY THINKING ............ 37 3.3.1 The making of political programs ................................................................................................ 38 3.3.2 Reading for the politics of the possible in the making of political programs .............. 43

3.4 A CRITICAL, POLITICIZED YET HOPEFUL READING OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INTERVENTIONS.................................................................................................................................................... 44 3.5 TRACING THE MAKING OF THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS .......... 45

4 SITUATING THE CASE STUDY: CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND ...........................47 4.1 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER ................................................................................................................ 47 4.2 WAITAKERE CITY: AN OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................... 47 4.3 INSTITUTIONAL SETTING AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND .................................................................... 49 4.4 OVERVIEW OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS ............................................................................................... 54 4.4.1 The initiation of Project Twin Streams..................................................................................... 54 4.4.2 Getting started..................................................................................................................................... 56 4.4.3 Starting to run..................................................................................................................................... 58 4.4.4 The future of Project Twin Streams ........................................................................................... 61

4.5 PROJECT TWIN STREAMS: AN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY CASE STUDY................................................ 61

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5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................63 5.1 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER.................................................................................................................... 63 5.2 GUIDING METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................ 63 5.2.1 Critical reflexivity............................................................................................................................... 63 5.2.2 Positioning myself and my research .......................................................................................... 65

5.3 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS .......................................................................................................... 67 5.3.1 Semistructured interviews............................................................................................................ 68 5.3.2 Document analysis............................................................................................................................. 70 5.3.3 Participant observation .................................................................................................................. 71 5.3.4 Analysis of data ................................................................................................................................... 71

5.4 GENEALOGICAL APPROACH ....................................................................................................................... 71 5.5 UNPACKING THE POLITICAL PROJECT OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS ................................................. 73

6 GENEALOGY OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS: TRACING THE MAKING OF AN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INTERVENTION ...........................................................................75

6.1 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER ................................................................................................................ 75 6.2 CONDITIONS OF EMERGENCE FOR PROJECT TWIN STREAMS .................................................... 76

6.2.1 The Eco City .......................................................................................................................................... 76 6.2.2 The seeds of Project Twin Streams .............................................................................................. 79

6.3 ASSEMBLING THE PROJECT: A STORMWATER PROJECT WITH SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ASPIRATIONS ........................................................................................................................................................... 82 6.4 REASSEMBLING THE PROJECT: FROM STORMWATER TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .. 85

6.4.1 Alignment with New Zealand’s sustainable development agenda and the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme ...................................................................................................................... 87 6.4.2 Stabilizing the project: forging alignments, developing a name ...................................... 90

6.5 REASSEMBLING THE PROJECT: FROM SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TO …? ....................... 96 6.5.1 From sustainable development… to economic benefit?....................................................... 98 6.5.2 From sustainable development…to a sustainable catchment model? ..........................100 6.5.3 From a significant challenge to a glowing opportunity? ..................................................101

6.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY .............................................................................................................................102 7 THE MAKING OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS: EMBEDDEDNESS, ALIGNMENT, AGENCY, AND EMERGENCE............................................................................................................ 105

7.1 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER ..............................................................................................................105 7.2 EMBEDDEDNESS........................................................................................................................................106 7.3 ALIGNMENT: ‘AN ALIGNING OF THE STARS’ .........................................................................................109 7.3.1 Alignment of coconstituted political programs.................................................................110

7.4 AGENCY: ‘MAKING THE STARS ALIGN’ ...................................................................................................113 7.5 THE POLITICS OF THE POSSIBLE IN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY............................................................116

8 CONCLUSION: MAKING ‘BETTER’ URBAN WORLDS AND THE POLITICS OF THE POSSIBLE IN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY...................................................................................... 119 8.1 RESEARCH TRAJECTORY, FINDINGS, AND SIGNIFICANCE ...................................................................119 8.2 LIMITATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH...........................................................................................................122 8.3 PATHWAYS FORWARD AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE WORK ..........................................................123 8.4 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS.........................................................................................................................124

APPENDIX A: TABLE OF KEY ACRONYMS.................................................................................. 125 REFERENCES....................................................................................................................................... 126

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List of Tables TABLE 1: CRITICISMS OF MAINSTREAM URBAN SUSTAINABILITY SCHOLARSHIP AND INSIGHTS FOR ‘RE‐POLITICIZING’

THE CONSIDERATION OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY .......................................................................................................... 30 TABLE 2: KEY ELEMENTS OF WAITAKERE CITY'S 'ECO CITY' APPROACH ............................................................................. 51 TABLE 3: WAITAKERE CITY COUNCIL’S IDENTIFIED LTCCP COMMUNITY OUTCOMES ....................................................... 52 TABLE 4: KEY MILESTONES FOR PROJECT TWIN STREAMS TO 2008 .................................................................................... 60 TABLE 5: LIST OF INFORMANTS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS/CONNECTIONS TO PROJECT TWIN STREAMS................... 69 TABLE 6: PHASES OF PTS ...........................................................................................................................................................103 TABLE 7: ALIGNMENTS ................................................................................................................................................................103 TABLE 8: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LARGER POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT AND PHASES OF

PROJECT TWIN STREAMS .................................................................................................................................................108 TABLE 9: OVERVIEW OF POLITICAL PROJECTS THAT HAVE BEEN AND /OR ARE CURRENTLY ALIGNED WITH PTS AND

THE CO‐CONSTITUTIVE EFFECTS OF THESE ALIGNMENTS............................................................................................112

List of Figures

FIGURE 1: WHILE ET AL.’S DIAGRAM OF THE ‘URBAN SUSTAINABILITY FIX’ .......................................................................... 29 FIGURE 2: MAP OF THE PROJECT TWIN STREAMS CATCHMENT IN RELATIONSHIP TO AUCKLAND ................................... 48

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1 RE-POLITICIZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY AND THE POLITICS OF THE POSSIBLE

The 20th century has been the century of urbanisation… The future of humanity now lies, for the first time in history, fundamentally in urbanising areas. The qualities of urban living in the 21st

century will define the qualities of civilisation itself (Harvey, 1996a 403).

1.1 Introduction

Currently, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. It is predicted

that by 2050, about six billion of the world’s then nine billion people will reside in cities

(UNPD, 2007). This dramatic acceleration in global urbanization poses daunting social,

economic, and ecological challenges, recognition of which has inspired significant

interest in the topic of urban sustainability during the last twenty years. Urban

sustainability has now become both a hot topic of both international and local politics and

an increasingly important focus of academic scholarship. Indeed, many suggested that,

given current and predicted urbanization trends, addressing the sustainability of our urban

environments will be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century (Hanson and Lake,

2000; McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2003).

Critical commentators increasingly argue that urban sustainability is as much a

political problem as a technical or design problem (Braun, 2005a; Hanson and Lake,

2000), an assertion that has given rise to a vigorous discussion around the political nature

of urban sustainability interventions in recent years. However, this discussion has

remained heavily focused on critique, and has generally failed to inform our

understanding of how politics contribute to the realization of ‘better’, more sustainable

urban worlds. Seeking to meaningfully contribute to this growing academic discussion

around the politics of urban sustainability, this thesis will explore what politics and

conditions of possibility give rise to and enable meaningful urban sustainability

interventions. Rather than endeavoring to know whether such interventions will ‘succeed’

or whether they will ‘fail’, this thesis privileges questions of how are urban sustainability

projects made: how to they emerge, how are they sustained, and to what effects? I will

examine these questions through a qualitative case study of the urban sustainability

2

intervention Project Twin Streams in Waitakere City, New Zealand, drawing on data

gathered through 20 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document

analysis. In so doing, I hope to work back toward a sense of what might be possible in

urban sustainability initiatives and what politics and knowledges might promote such

interventions (see Le Heron, 2009).

In this chapter I first set the scene for this study by introducing urban

sustainability and urban sustainability scholarship. I then provide an overview of the

ideas that will be discussed in this thesis. I conclude this chapter by providing an

introduction to the case study Project Twin Streams, an overview of my research

objectives, and an outline of this thesis.

1.2 Situating the study: introduction to urban sustainability and urban sustainability scholarship

The recent interest in ‘urban sustainability ‘and ‘sustainable cities’ is generally traced

back to the 1987 publication of the Brundtland Commission’s report Our Common

Future, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Agenda 21 (which was born from the

Rio Earth Summit), and the resultant emergence and expansion of the global ‘sustainable

development’ discourse (Braun, 2005a; Wheeler and Beatley, 2004; Whitehead, 2003).

To fully situate this study, I first provide an overview of these political developments and

discuss their role in bringing into being the rubric of urban sustainability. As will be seen

throughout this thesis, these seminal political moments have and continue to underpin,

inspire, and influence urban sustainability interventions worldwide and, further, have

played a key role in the emergence and development of the object of this study, Project

Twin Streams.

1.2.1 Sustainable development and the emergence of the urban sustainability rubric

Responding to heightened concerns about the state of the environment, the United

Nations (UN) convened the World Commission on Environment and Development

(WCED, commonly known as the Brundtland Commission) in 1983 to address the

“accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the

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consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development" (WCED, 1987).

The UN General Assembly established the Commission in recognition that environmental

problems are global in nature, suggesting that it was in the common interest of all nations

to establish policies for ‘sustainable development’—what was defined by the Brundtland

Commission’s Report Our Common Future as “development that meets the needs of the

present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

(WCED, 1987). In the two decades since the release of the Brundtland Report, the

concepts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ (as well as Brundtland’s actual

definition of sustainable development)—while also attracting considerable critique and

often acute censure (see for example Escobar, 1995; Redclift, 1987, 2002, 2006)—have

become an integral part of international discourse and in doing so have attracted

significant political attention worldwide. Indeed, the Brundtland Report is commonly

attributed with introducing the term sustainable development into the international

lexicon and with bringing the concept into the global political limelight (Redclift, 2005;

Wheeler and Beatley, 2004).

The idea of sustainable development was again brought to the forefront of the

international political stage in 1992 through another UN conference: the United Nations

Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Informally known as ‘Rio’ or the ‘Earth Summit’, this convention brought together some

2400 representatives of non-governmental organizations and over 17,000 people in

parallel with the NGOs to address the themes of environment and sustainable

development. As stated by the UN,

[The Rio Earth Summit] was unprecedented for a UN conference, in terms of both its size and the scope of its concerns. Twenty years after the first global environment conference the UN sought to help Governments rethink economic development and find ways to halt the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources and pollution of the planet (UN, 2009).1

From this iconic conference and its hopeful yet arguably utopian ideals emerged

numerous documents and commitments to sustainable development, including the Rio

Declaration on Environment and Development, the Statement of Forest Principles, the

1 The first global environmental conference was the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm

4

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations

Convention on Biological Diversity, and of particular interest to this study, Agenda 21

(UN, 2009).

Agenda 21 was designed to be “a wide-ranging blueprint for action to achieve

sustainable development worldwide” (UN, 2009). Consisting of four sections and 40

chapters, Agenda 21 sought to provide a comprehensive, dynamic program for action and

a guide for the implementation of sustainable development that, according to its authors,

could be “carried out by the various actors according to the different situations, capacities

and priorities of countries and regions in full respect of all the principles contained in the

Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” (Agenda 21). Further, it was the

intent of the Rio convention that this agenda would “evolve over time in the light of

changing needs and circumstances,” a process that its authors argued, “marks the

beginning of a new global partnership for sustainable development” (Agenda 21). As

will be seen throughout this study, Agenda 21 and the Rio Earth Summit were to inspire

and stimulate a variety of local and regional ‘sustainable development’ initiatives

throughout the world and significantly, as will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 6, were to

plant the seed for Project Twin Streams.

The Brundtland Commission’s report, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and Agenda

21 not only highlighted the need to address global social and environmental issues, but

each in their own way called attention to the increasingly important role of urban

development and urban resource use in driving ecological and social degradation. This

heightened awareness of the social and ecological implications of urbanization, in turn,

inspired greater interest in rethinking cities in more environmentally-friendly, socially

sensitive ways, giving rise to the sustainable cities movement and the rubric of urban

sustainability (Braun, 2005a; Wheeler and Beatley, 2004). In the two decades since the

Rio Earth Summit, the concept of urban sustainability has gained a significant amount of

political attention and momentum at the local, national, and international levels. Indeed,

this urban sustainability rubric has given rise to a large-scale ‘sustainable cities’ efforts

such as the European Commissions Sustainable Cities Project (UN-Habitat, 2009) and the

recently developed New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities (NZCSC, 2009), as well as

myriad local and programs concerned with increasing the sustainability of the urban

5

environment (for an overview of such initiatives, see Sattherwaite, 1999; Platt, 2006;

Wheeler and Beatley, 2004). In recognition of the fact that, as quoted at the beginning of

this chapter, “The qualities of urban living in the 21st century will define qualities of

civilisation itself” (Harvey, 1996a: 403), such work generally seeks to introduce a certain

‘ecological rationality’ into urban planning, design, and practice, working to

acknowledge and reduce the negative environmental and social implications of modern

urban development and urban lifestyles, and to make cities more ‘healthful’, ‘sustainable’

places (Braun, 2005a; Haughton and Hunter, 1994; Wheeler and Beatley, 2004; Wolch,

2007).

1.2.2 Urban sustainability scholarship and re-politicizing urban sustainability

Not only has the sustainable cities rubric given rise to a plethora of political movements

and initiatives concerned with introducing ‘ecological rationality’ into urban planning,

design, and practice; it has also stimulated much research and scholarship concerned with

such endeavors and the sustainability (or the ‘unsustainability’) of urban centers and

urban development.2 Indeed, this ‘sustainable cities’ and ‘urban sustainability’ literature

has burgeoned during the last two decades into what is now an expansive corpus that is

broadly concerned with understanding the negative social and environmental implications

of urban development and potential ways of reducing such negative impacts (Braun,

2005a; Wheeler and Beatley, 2004; Wolch, 2007).

As will be discussed in the following chapter, this urban sustainability scholarship

has significantly contributed to our understanding of cities as ‘ecological spaces’ and has

in many ways inspired a new generation of more socially and environmentally aware

urban practice; however, it has also attracted significant critique. Taking a more critical

cut into urban sustainability, recent commentators have criticized the sustainable cities

and urban sustainability literature for being both atheoretical and apolitical and have

called for a ‘re-analyzing’ and ‘re-politicizing’ of urban sustainability scholarship.

Seeking to contribute to a more theoretically and politically robust understanding of

urban sustainability interventions, these commentators have drawn attention to many of

2 While some critics distinguish between ‘urban sustainability’ and ‘sustainable cities’ and critique the concept of a ‘sustainable city’ (see Chapter 2), these terms are generally used interchangeably in this thesis.

6

the problematic oversimplifications made about urban sustainability and urban

sustainability interventions and, accordingly, have revealed many of the oft-overlooked

complexities and political struggles inherent in such efforts (Braun, 2005a; Bulkeley and

Betskill, 2005; Whitehead, 2003). Significantly, these critical analyses call our attention

to the fact that a) urban sustainability thinking has tended to reproduce problematic

urban-nature binaries and argue instead that cities must be considered as complex

socioecological systems; b) contrary to most ‘bounded’ conceptualizations of ‘sustainable

cities’, urban sustainability interventions are enmeshed in larger socio-political and

economic systems and must be understood as such; c) like all political programs, urban

sustainability efforts are always produced through material and discursive political

struggles that are reflective of certain power relations; and d) attempting to reconcile

economic interests with environmental goals and the resultant ‘urban sustainability fix’

(While et al., 2004) may significantly inhibit more radical possibilities for sustainability

interventions. These insights will be discussed in depth in Chapter 2.

As I will conclude in the next chapter, this critical work has done much to

illuminate the complexity of urban sustainability, to politicize our understanding of urban

sustainability initiatives, and to make evident the intricacies of the political projects

necessary to achieve more sustainable urban development. However, this work centers on

critique and offers little in the way of a seed for new, more sustainable alternatives.

Indeed, it has done little to inform our knowledge of what conditions of possibility give

rise to meaningful urban sustainability interventions and how such interventions are

sustained. This gap is highly problematic given that, as Leach et al. argue, that realization

of greater sustainability demands that we better understand “How, and in what

circumstances, can dynamic, intertwined social, technological and ecological change

contribute to processes and outcomes that are more resilient, sustainable, and socially

just” (2007: 1). For this reason, it appears that the questions of ‘how’ and ‘through what

circumstances’ are meaningful urban sustainability interventions made and in what ways

do they contribute to more sustainable urban development demands far greater attention.

These are the questions that this thesis will address.

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1.3 A more hopeful reading of the politics of urban sustainability

Inspired by the ‘hopeful’ project of many post-development and poststructuralist feminist

geographers who call for a new ethics of thinking and who seek to emphasize the

‘politics of the possible’ rather than reproduce conditions of impossibility (see Section

3.2), this thesis will provide a critical, politically, and theoretically informed yet hopeful

reading of urban sustainability interventions. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, I will

combine insight from the critical thinking around urban sustainability discussed in

Chapter 2 with thinking around governmentality and the making of political programs to

explore the making and governance of urban sustainability interventions. In particular, I

will draw on ideas around the co-constitution of political projects and the practice of

assemblage and will mobilize these ideas to unpack how such efforts are called into

being, how they are sustained, and to what effects through a case study of the urban

sustainability intervention Project Twin Streams.

To use the words of Le Heron, the theoretical framework of the co-constitution of

political projects and the practice of assemblage:

enables a framing of governance contexts and issues, and actors and initiatives, in terms that expose more clearly how those involved are involved…This is a concern less to claims about what might be done, and intentions and motivations about such claims, and more to a probing of what might actually be done and is done in the conditions faced by actors who are often very aware of their constrained and contingent circumstances (2009: 137). These ideas fundamentally understand political projects—such as urban sustainability

projects—as always contingent and emergent, and call our attention to the agency and

hard work through which political interventions are made. Together these ideas provide a

critical yet open-ended lens through which to analyze and explore the making and

governance of urban sustainability interventions, and will allow us to read such projects

for the politics of the possible.

1.4 The case study: Project Twin Streams

Project Twin Streams is an urban sustainability initiative located in Waitakere City, New

Zealand’s first ‘Eco City’. This project works to restore 56 km of Waitakere stream banks

8

through an integrated community development approach that “seeks to work with nature

rather than against it” (WCC, 2009). Having emerged from Waitakere’s Eco City vision

of sustainable development, this project takes a ‘quadruple bottom line’ approach to

urban sustainability, endeavoring to address not only the ecological restoration of the

streams but also to improve the city’s social, economic and cultural conditions. While

Project Twin Streams is ostensibly concerned with restoring Waitakere’s stream banks,

the project possesses a big vision and a broad mission that encompass better stormwater

management, improved land-use, more sustainable households, and increased community

engagement. This stream restoration project has expanded and grown since its inception

in 2003 to include community development, arts, and educational programs as well as the

construction of a cycle- and walkway along the streams, and is now considered a holistic

urban sustainability intervention. In its eight years of running, the project has been

recognition as a progressive, highly integrated Council-community partnership effort

(Trotman, 2007a, WCC, 2009). Widely considered to be a successful initiative, Project

Twin Streams has attracted national and international attention and has been lauded both

as a model urban sustainability initiative as well as “a global leader in the protection and

restoration of [urban] streams for future generations” (WCC, 2007b). Project Twin

Streams and its context will be further discussed in Chapter 4.

1.5 Thesis objectives Seeking to provide a critical, politicized yet hopeful reading of urban sustainability

interventions, this study is guided by the questions: What politics and conditions of

possibility give rise to and support meaningful urban sustainability interventions and how

are such interventions governed? More specifically, how do such efforts emerge, through

what political means are they are sustained, and what work do they do and in what

contexts? In addressing these broad questions, this study seeks to:

• Shed light on what political practices and discourses bring such efforts into being

and sustain them;

• Illuminate what conditions of possibility give rise to and enable such efforts;

9

• Examine what political projects are at play in such initiatives and to explore the

way in which such political projects are contingent, co-constituted, and entangled;

and

• Improve our understanding of how larger political, economic, and institutional

conditions and forces influence such efforts.

1.6 Thesis overview

In Chapter 2, I provide a brief overview of urban sustainability scholarship and discuss

recent arguments around ‘re-analyzing’ and ‘re-politicizing’ our consideration of urban

sustainability. I then examine critical thinking around urban sustainability and explore

what insights this work contributes to a more politically and theoretically informed

understanding of urban sustainability. In the first part of Chapter 3, I examine ideas

around the performativity of knowledge and a ‘new ethics of thinking’; in light of these

notions and the call for a more hopeful geography, I argue for a critical, politicized yet

hopeful reading of urban sustainability that reads for the politics of the possible. I build

on this in the second part of Chapter 3 by examining governmentality thinking around the

making of political projects, and argue that ideas around the co-constitution of political

projects and the practice of assemblage may usefully be applied to inform a more hopeful

exploration of how urban sustainability interventions are made and governed. Chapter 4

provides contextual and background information about the case study, Project Twin

Streams. I explain my methodology in Chapter 5, discussing my methodological

framework, my positionality and subjectivity as a researcher, my chosen research

methods, and my use of a genealogical approach. The findings from this study are

presented in Chapter 6 in the form of a genealogy of Project Twin Streams; this

genealogy explores the developmental trajectory of Project Twin Streams so as to

illuminate how this project has been made and sustained and to what effects. My results

are discussed in Chapter 7. In Chapter 8, I make conclusions about this study, explain the

limitations of this research, and suggest pathways forward for future work.

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2 RE-ANALYZING AND RE-POLITICIZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

2.1 Introduction to chapter In addition to attracting much attention from policy-makers and activists during the last

two decades, urban sustainability has also become the subject of much academic interest

and significant critique. I begin this chapter by providing a brief overview of mainstream

urban sustainability scholarship. Examining broad critiques of this mainstream urban

sustainability literature—which largely coalesce around the basic contention that urban

sustainability study and practice has, to date, been largely depoliticized and under-

theorized (Braun, 2005a; Whitehead, 2003)—I then argue for a ‘re-politicizing’ of our

consideration of urban sustainability. In light of this, I explore what recent critical

geographic thinking adds to our politicized understanding of urban sustainability

interventions. Specific themes that will be addressed include: consideration of the city as

a socioecological system; unbounding the urban to address forces acting at multiple

spatial and temporal scales; appreciation of the discursive and material struggles involved

in defining and implementing urban sustainability; and the ‘urban sustainability fix’. I

conclude this chapter by arguing that such insights may inform a more theoretically and

politically robust analysis of urban sustainability interventions, but that a more hopeful

reading of the ‘politics of the possible’ of urban sustainability is needed.

2.2 Overview of the urban sustainability literature

In calling attention to the growing significance of urbanization for patterns of global

resource use and environmental change, the 1987 Brundtland Report and the 1992 Rio

Earth Summit (see Chapter 1) not only planted the seed for the urban sustainability

movement but also, in doing so, inspired a new generation of scholarship around

rethinking cities in environmental terms. In the words of Braun:

Efforts to rethink cities in explicitly environmental terms increased dramatically after the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, and the UNCED Earth Summit of 1992 … In the years that followed, the rubric of ‘sustainable cities’ gained prominence, especially in planning, policy and design circles, reflected in the recent publication of a major ‘sustainable city’ reader (Wheeler and Beatley, 2004). In general, this literature has sought to introduce an ecological rationality to urban planning, [design, and theory] (2005: 637, original emphasis).

12

Seeking to introduce ‘ecological rationality’ into urban planning, design, and

theory, the urban sustainability literature generally calls attention to what Grimm et al.

(2000) describe as the ecology in cities and the ecology of cities (Braun, 2005a; Wheeler

and Beatley, 2004). Much of this work draws upon Wackernagel and Rees’ (1996)

concept of the ecological footprint to highlight the connectedness of cities and outside

ecological degradation, and, similarly, argues that cities—as sites of concentrated

consumption and production (see Gleeson and Low, 2003; Low et a.l, 2000)—have

become central to global sustainable development (Foley et al., 2005; McGranahan and

Satterthwaite, 2003; Wheeler and Beatley, 2004). With the implicit goal of reducing

urban ecological footprints, much urban sustainability scholarship focuses on evaluating

urban forms and practices in terms of energy consumption, greenspace, the integrity of

habitat, the recycling and reuse of materials, housing density, and pollution levels (Braun,

2005a; see for example Haughton and Hunter, 1994; Satterthwaite, 2000; Wheeler and

Beatley, 2004).

Others have approached the pursuit of ‘sustainable cities’ through more explicitly

addressing the ecology in and of the city. Couched under the classification ‘urban

ecology’, much recent work seeks to recognize and understand the often-overlooked

biodiversity extant in urban spaces and to trace nutrient, water, and waste cycles in and

out of cities (Grimm et al., 2000, 2008; McDonald, 2008; Platt, 2004, 2006; Platt et al.,

1994). Further expanding urban ecology thinking, planners and landscape architects

increasingly call upon the language of ecosystem ecology to advocate for the integration

of cities into their biophysical surroundings, suggesting that we need to design cities

‘with nature’ and ‘with natural processes’ (Farr, 2008; Hough, 2005), and that we should

envision and plan cities as ‘sustainable ecosystems’ (Newman and Jennings, 2008).

Such work represents a significant diversion from the long-standing separation of

‘urban’ and ‘nature’ that many such as Wolch (2007) suggest largely influenced 20th

century urban practice and ideas about cities. Significantly, this work calls attention to

the connectedness of urban environments to larger ecosystems and demonstrates the

rationale for and benefits of ‘greening’ urban planning, design, and theory (Braun, 2005a;

Wheeler and Beatley, 2004; Wolch, 2007). Yet, while such work and the broader

13

literature on sustainable cities have both significantly contributed to our understanding of

the drivers of ‘unsustainability’ in cities and have inspired a new generation of more

socially and ecologically sensitive urban practice, such efforts have also attracted much

analysis and significant criticism. Predominant critiques and the resultant call for re-

politicizing our consideration of urban sustainability are explored below.

2.3 Re-analyzing urban sustainability: criticisms and critiques

In his oft-cited work ‘(Re) Analysing the sustainable city’ Whitehead argues, “Despite

the rapid proliferation of the sustainable city ideal, analyses of sustainable development

in urban areas have remained surprisingly anodyne” (2003: 1187). Numerous other

commentators, including Braun (2005a), Gleeson and Low (2000), Hanson and Lake

(2000), and Kaika (2005) share such sentiments and further criticize the sustainable cities

literature for being largely atheoretical and apolitical. They and others argue that the

sustainable cities movement and analyses of urban sustainability too often separate

environmental problems from larger social and economic issues and that, for this reason,

the challenge of sustainable urban development typically is relegated to an issue of

changing the city rather than changing society (see also Gleeson, 2008). As Braun

(2005a) points out, this analytical void even manifests itself in sustainable cities

anthologies such as Wheeler and Beatley’s (2004) The sustainable urban development

reader.

Broadly, such commentators criticize the sustainable cities literature for its

tendency to take an overly simplistic, highly technocratic approach to urban

sustainability. Whitehead argues, “such work has tended to reduce the analysis of

sustainable urban development to a technical matter of institutional restructuring, traffic

management, architectural design and the development of green technologies” (2003:

1187). Braun builds on this, suggesting that this technocratic approach, with its emphasis

on urban form and policy-making rather than politics, tends to both appeal to a somewhat

ideological understanding of urban nature and entirely lacks for “critical analysis of the

processes of urbanization—its causes, its specific historical forms, its multiple scales, and

its uneven geographies and ecologies” (2005a: 638). Further and very much related, it is

contended that, in overemphasizing form, the urban sustainability debate largely fails to

14

apprehend the deeper socio-cultural forces that drive unsustainability (Gleeson and Low,

2000; Gleeson, 2008). In light of this, numerous commentators agree that many if not

most ‘sustainable cities’ accounts overlook both the political struggles involved in

defining, implementing, and governing urban sustainability interventions (Bulkeley and

Betsill, 2005; Marvin and Guy, 1997; Whitehead, 2003) and the deeper social and

economic change that may be necessary to achieve increased urban sustainability

(Gleeson, 2008; Gleeson and Low, 2000). As such critics argue, these political and

theoretical oversights are highly problematic for, the words of Braun, “the result is a

limited understanding of the political projects necessary for change” (2005a: 638).

Drawing these criticisms together, it is increasingly argued that the mainstream

urban sustainability discourse—with its overly simplistic, technocratic, and policy-

orientated approaches—entirely ignores the political character of sustainability (Hanson

and Lake, 2000). As summarized by the participants of the National Science

Foundation’s 2000 workshop on urban sustainability:

The prevailing discourse [of urban sustainability] is dominated by biophysical and technical approaches that assume, for example, that sustainability primarily refers to ecological systems that can be sustained via engineering solutions…Defining sustainability as merely a technical problem, however, obscures the social, economic, and political arrangements underlying existing unsustainable practices, and assumes that sustainability is achievable while leaving intact those underlying relationships (Hanson and Lake, 2000: 17). Therefore, they argue: The greatest barriers to defining and achieving urban sustainability are political, to the extent that attaining sustainable livelihoods necessitates a realignment of entrenched interests, outcomes, and power relationships…the definition of the problem, its causes, and possible outcomes are all inherently and inescapably political projects (Hanson and Lake, 2000: 17, emphasis added).

Following the above conclusions, it is now widely argued that urban sustainability must

be “seen in terms of urbanization processes, and as a fundamentally political rather than a

technical or design problem” (Braun, 2005a: 640, original emphasis; see also Hanson and

Lake, 2000; Keil, 2003; Whitehead, 2003). In light of this, many such as Braun (2005a)

and Hanson and Lake (2000) call for greater attention to the political nature of urban

sustainability and urban sustainability interventions, and highlight the need to address

both the power relations inherent in urban sustainability strategies and the multiple forces

15

acting at multiple levels that influence efforts to increase urban sustainability.3

Fundamentally, these critical commentators suggest that urban sustainability efforts—as

emphasized in the quote from Hanson and Lake (2000) above—must be understood as

inherently political projects and must be considered and analyzed as such (Braun, 2005;

Hanson and Lake, 2000; see also Le Heron, 2006).

2.4 Re-politicizing urban sustainability: insights from critical geography

While the mainstream urban sustainability literature largely overlooks the politics and

power relations inherent in efforts to increase urban sustainability and lacks in

“theoretical vigor and empirical specificity” (Braun, 2005a: 640), more critical literatures

increasingly address the political nature of urban natures, urban environmental policy,

and urban sustainability efforts. Congruent with Wolch’s suggestion that “Geographers

are particularly well suited to tackle these challenges” (2007: 380) and Hanson and

Lake’s call for geographic contributions to “building the conceptual framework necessary

to place the popular idea of urban sustainability on sound theoretical footing” (2000: 2),

critical geographers have contributed significantly to a more theoretically and politically

robust discussion around urban sustainability during the last decade. This geographic

work draws on a long history of critical urban theory and a wide range of theoretical

traditions, seeking to inform urban sustainability debates with theories of society and

space and to ground our understanding of urban sustainability in current empirical

knowledges about urban processes (Braun, 2005a; Keil, 2003, 2005; Wolch, 2007).4 “The

result” according to Wolch, “is an emerging twenty-first century urban geography that

speaks dialectically about urban nature and the nature of urbanism” (2007: 374).

Dominant themes emerging from critical discussion around urban sustainability

and their insight for a more politicized, theoretically informed understanding of urban

sustainability are explored below.

3 Similar arguments are made about sustainability at large (see for example Hanson and Lake, 2000; Le Heron, 2006). 4 See Hubbard, 2006 for an overview of critical urban geography.

16

2.4.1 Beyond the urban-nature divide: the city as a complex socioecological system

The forms and circumstances that physical and environmental changes take are tied to specific historical/geographical social, cultural, political or economic conditions and formal or informal institutions of governance that accompany them… we must conclude that [urban] environments are combined socioecological assemblages that are dynamically produced, spatially and temporally, socially and materially (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003: 912).

As above-mentioned, mainstream urban sustainability literature draws attention to the

ecology in and of the city, illuminating the connectivity of cities and outside ecologies

and recognizing nature in the city. Ironically, while this work begins to conceptualize the

city as an ‘ecological space’, it is argued that much of the sustainable cities literature

tends to be largely ‘anti-urban’, often describing cities as ‘unnatural’ and as both the

antithesis to nature and as inherently unsustainable (Braun, 2005a; Heynen et al., 2006c).

As Braun (2005a) points out, the assumption that cities are drivers of unsustainability and

are intrinsically antithetical to nature manifests even in the more critical work of many

such as that of Luke (2003) who:

falls prey to this presupposition, worrying over the ‘unchecked proliferation’ of ‘citified spaces’ which are ‘too costly to sustain’, since ‘the rising level of globalized urbanization is overwhelming Earth’s natural ecology to the point of threatening the sustainability of the entire planet’s human and non-human life’ (Braun, 2005a: 638, citing Luke, 2003: 11-12, 24).

Braun (2005a) suggests that this ‘end of nature’ perception of urbanization both entirely

overlooks potential efficiencies that may be achieved through urbanization (see Folke et

al., 1997) and also, paradoxically, effectively reproduces the problematic urban-nature

binaries that urban sustainability and urban ecology thinking typically tries to disturb. It

is argued that such a limited understanding of the city inhibits progress toward greater

sustainability and may restrict our understanding of the interventions and political

projects necessary to achieve meaningful change (Braun, 2005a; Heynen et al, 2006a;

Keil, 2003; Wolch, 2007).

In contrast, critical commentators increasingly argue that we need to more deeply

unsettle the urban-nature binary, challenging the perspective that cities are intrinsically

antithetical to nature and/or contradictory to sustainability. Building on urban ecology’s

biophysical consideration of nature in and of the city (see Section 2.2) and a long history

17

of writing about the city as an ecological space, such analysts reposition cities as

‘complex socioecological systems’ that are formed through processes that are at-once

fundamentally social and ecological (Heynen et al., 2006a, 2006b; see also Braun, 2005a;

Keil, 2003, 2005).5 Supplementing and politicizing urban ecology’s largely biophysical

consideration of the nature in and of the city, this work calls attention to the ways in

which urban natures shape and are shaped by interrelated social, environmental, political,

economic, and power relations and, accordingly, understands cities as historically

produced through human-nature interactions (Braun, 2005a; Keil, 2003; see also Cronon,

1991; Gandy, 2002; Robbins and Sharp, 2003). It is argued that understanding cities as

complex socioecological systems—rather than perceiving cities and urbanization simply

as drivers of degradation of an outside nature or as inherently ‘unnatural’—calls attention

to the ways in which urbanization is intrinsically linked to nature, from all scales local to

global, and further illuminates how cities and urban environments produce and also are

produced by certain socio-environmental and political-economic relations and

configurations of power (Heynen et al, 2006a; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003).

This conceptualization and consideration of cities as complex socioecological

systems resonates with and is tied to both broader developments in geographic thinking

around human-environment relations and recent progress in ecological theory. Breaking

down the nature-culture binary that many such as Braun (2005a) and Heynen et al.

(2006a) argue has long impeded our understanding of environmental issues, critical

human geographers increasingly emphasize the need for ‘hybrid geographies’ that

encompass both the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ and which expand ethical and political

considerations beyond the bounds of the human (Braun, 2005a, 2005b; Whatmore, 2002;

Wolch, 2007). Similarly, ecological thinking has recently shifted from a focus on

equilibrium and climax-state stability toward greater appreciation of ecological

complexity and instability. This shift has, significantly, inspired greater consideration of

environments as socioecological systems and has increased recognition that

anthropogenic disturbances may positively contribute to ecological sustainability rather

than simply being a source of environmental threat (Berkes, 2007; Folke and Gunderson,

5 Many commentators trace thinking around the city as an ecological space back to early urbanists such as Howard (1902), Mumford (1938; 1961), and McHarg (1969).

18

2006; Forsyth, 2003; Gunderson and Holling, 2002). Congruent with these shifts in our

social and ecological thinking, appreciation and consideration of cities as hybrid

socioecological systems is argued to be a timely and promising development in our

understanding of human-environment relations (Braun, 2005a; Heynen et al., 2006a).

Many commentators posit that—through progressing our understanding of urban

environmental issues and bridging urban and environmental studies—this shift in our

urban thinking may promote more sustainable socioecological relations (Braun, 2005a;

Heynen et al., 2006a; Wolch, 2007). Further building on such ideas, some even suggested

that conceptualizing the city as a socioecological system may open up new discussions

regarding the resilience of cities (Gleeson, 2008).6

Much more than simply a theoretical development, this shift toward

understanding cities as socioecological systems encourages us to envision cities and

urbanization as not only a source of environmental degradation or as the ‘antithesis to

nature’, but as a new configuration in human-environment relations (Swyngedouw and

Heynen, 2003). Indeed, many suggest this expansion in our urban understanding asks us

to imagine cities as potential sites of ecological regeneration and—to use the words of

Harvey (2000)—possible ‘spaces of hope’ (Braun, 2005a; Wolch, 2007; see also Section

3.2). Additionally, such an understanding calls attention to the role of nature as an active

agent in socioecological change and in shaping both the physical and social fabric of the

city (Braun, 2005a). Many commentators suggest the physical environment is too often

relegated to “simply a state or arena on which struggles over resource access and control

take place” and argue that greater attention need be paid to the role of the non-human in

socioecological change (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003: 3). Such commentators suggest that

we need to better understand not only the ways in which political and economic struggles

shape environmental change, but also how the biophysical environment in return shapes

these struggles (Nygren and Rikoon, 2008; Walker, 2006). Commenting on this, Braun

argues that “while there is a great deal of talk about the importance of nature to

understanding the city, and urbanization processes, it is often unclear what nonhuman

nature adds to these accounts” (2005a: 647, original emphasis); in light of this, he and 6 While this discussion is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is likely that greater attention will be placed on urban socioecological resilience in the near future and this appears an exciting development in urban studies.

19

others suggest that if we understand cities as a complex socioecological systems, we must

pay greater attention to the active role of nature in influencing urban sustainability

interventions (Keil, 2003, 2005; Wolch, 2007).

Most momentously, the conceptualization of cities as complex socioecological

systems calls attention to the reality that urban socioecological change shapes and is

shaped by interwoven social, political, economic, and ecological forces at multiple scales.

This conclusion has significant implications for how we understand and study urban

sustainability, as discussed below.

2.4.2 Unbounding the urban: beyond the bounds of the sustainable city

Building on the recognition that cities are complex “socioecological assemblages that are

dynamically produced, spatially and temporally, socially and materially” (Swyngedouw

and Heynen, 2003: 912), critical commentators on urban sustainability widely criticize

the urban sustainability literature for its strong tendency to conceptualize and address

cities as ‘bounded’ systems. They suggest that this bounded understanding of urban

systems leads to the oversight and oversimplification of the variety of forces—material

and discursive—acting at multiple spatial and temporal scales that influence urban

processes and urban natures (Braun, 2005a; Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005; Hanson and

Lake, 2000; Whitehead, 2003). Commenting on this, Braun (2005a) finds that most

analyses of urban environments are defined by a certain ‘pervasive localism’. He

suggests that this is particularly true of the urban sustainability literature, which he argues

typically understands cities as spatially bounded, thereby “eliding the networks that link

local places and actors with others elsewhere” (2005a: 636). Whitehead agrees, arguing

that not only have accounts of the sustainable city tended to reduce analysis of

sustainable urban development to a technical matter—focusing on the practical and

policy-focused implementation of urban sustainable development efforts (as discussed in

Section 2.3)—but that they “have also become increasingly parochial, with little sense of

the wider political, economic and ecological forces which flow through cities” (2003:

1187).

Building on this, many critics problematize the very idea of the ‘sustainable city’,

arguing that cities can never in themselves be sustainable. Such critics remind us that—as

20

some urban sustainability theorists such as Haughton and Hunter (1994) have long

acknowledged—cities are part of global networks: the city is an “open dependent system,

which necessarily interacts with environments and economies of the city’s hinterland, a

hinterland which has become increasingly global rather than local” (Haughton and

Hunter, 1994: 16; see also Braun, 2005a; Haughton, 1999). Further, as Hanson and Lake

(2000) stress and as Heynen (2003) demonstrates in his analysis of the production of

injustices in urban forestry, what might appear to be sustainable at the local scale may not

be sustainable at the global scale, and what contributes to sustainability and justice in one

place might undermine sustainability and justice in others. For this reason, it is argued

that:

[A] sustainable city cannot be achieved purely in internal terms: a sustainable city is essentially one which contributes effectively to the global aims of sustainable development, where sustainable development is seen as much as a process as an end-product. With the emergence of ever-thickening and extending patters of global economic trading, and increasingly global exchanges of environmental resources and waste streams, it is futile and indeed virtually meaningless to attempt to create a ‘sustainable city’ in isolation (Haughton, 1999: 233). In light of this, it is argued that we need to shift from focusing on creating self-contained

‘sustainable cities’ to instead promoting more sustainable urban development and urban

development that contributes to increased global sustainability (Hanson and Lake, 2000;

Haughton, 1999; Whitehead, 2003).

Critics argue that by neglecting larger political, economic and social issues, the

sustainable cities literature’s generally bounded considerations of urban sustainability

leads to an emphasis on symptoms rather than deep-seated solutions (Braun, 2005a;

Gleeson, 2008; Whitehead, 2003). Further, this bounded perception of the urban

problematically divorces cities from other scales at which environmental governance is

conducted, revealing a limited understanding of the forces influencing and influenced by

urban sustainability initiatives (Bulkeley and Betskill, 2005; Marvin and Guy, 1997).

Given much recent emphasis on conceptualizing cities as spatially open systems and on

understanding them in terms of inter-scalar networks and globally organized flows

(Massey, 2007; Thrift and Amin, 2002; see also Brenner, 2000), such a bounded

understanding of the city is particularly problematic. For these reasons, many maintain

21

that an ‘unbounding’ of the ‘sustainable city’ is necessary if we are to fully understand

the political projects necessary to achieve urban development that contributes to global

sustainable development (Braun, 2005a; see also Hanson and Lake, 2000). Accordingly,

critical commentators on urban sustainability now seek to reposition cities as

socioecological systems that are “increasingly constituted at various scales of the

globalization process as natural relations and urban social relations are produced through

complex processes of ‘glocalization’7 and entangled in myriad flows of capital, things,

and people” (Keil, 2003: 729) and call for an unbounding of our understanding of urban

sustainability and urban sustainability interventions (Braun, 2005a; Bulkeley and Beskill,

2005).

Drawing on regulation theory and political economy thinking to analyze the

sustainable cities paradigm, Whitehead criticizes the urban sustainability literature’s

typically parochial approach and finds that:

The sustainable city may be considered as [an] emerging site of regulation—drawing together a range of practices situated in economic space (such as the labour process, urban-regional growth alliances, international markets), political space (the local state, regional, national and supranational governance) and ecological space (bio-regions, ecological footprints, the global environment). The sustainable city as a site of regulation could thus be viewed as an intersection of political, economic and environmental space (2003: 1189). Through the case studies of the health initiatives in Stoke-on-Trent and the greening of

Black Country in the UK, Whitehead shows that the “creation of sustainable cities is not

simply a technocratic exercise in town planning and urban design, but is part of a wider

set of socio-ecological processes of regulation” (2003:1902). Accordingly, he calls for

greater emphasis on the ways in which certain economic, social, political, and ecological

strategies come together at different spatial and temporal scales to create urban

sustainability interventions (Whitehead, 2003).

Similarly, Gibbs and Jonas (2000), and While et al. (2004) apply regime theory to

urban sustainability and local urban environmental policy analysis, and also draw on

political economy perspectives to illuminate the way in which urban sustainability efforts

are embedded in and reflective of larger socio-economic, political and ecological

7 On ‘glocalization’, see Swyngedouw (1997)

22

configurations. Gibbs and Jonas (2000) call attention to what they refer to as the ‘scalar

paradox’ of urban environmental policy, demonstrating that while there has been an

increasing awareness on one hand of the global nature of environmental issues such as

climate change, neoliberal politics has shifted responsibility toward the local as a site at

which to resolve the deep-seated conflicts between environmental protection, urban

growth, and economic development. This is corroborated by While et al. (2004), who

further argue that neoliberalism has born a ‘new urban politics’ in which responsibility

for national and international commitments—such as Agenda 21, as discussed in Chapter

1—are now passed down to sub-national and local authorities. Building on this, they

suggest that this has led to reliance on the ‘sustainability fix’, through which local

authorities increasingly seek to reconcile larger economic pressures with international

mandates for environmental protection (see Section 2.4.4 below). Together, the work of

Gibbs and Jonas (2000), While et al. (2004), and Whitehead (2003) demonstrates the

ways in which local urban sustainability initiatives are enmeshed in larger social and

economic regimes and highlight the need to examine local policies in relation to wider

institutional forms and political economy. In light of this, Gibbs and Jonas argue,

“coordination of environmental policy and sustainable development must occur at all

levels” and suggest that, if we are to effect meaningful change at the urban level, we must

understand the struggles that occur at multiple scales that influence such efforts (2000:

301). These analyses of urban sustainability efforts suggest that local interventions can

have significant effects, but that in order to do so, they “must be located within a

supportive and supranational framework” (Gibbs and Jonas, 2000: 310) and must be

understood as part of multi-scalar networks and flows.

Bulkeley and Betsill (2005) also call for greater attention to the unbounded,

messy reality of urban sustainability interventions and contribute to our understanding of

the blurred levels of governance that influence localized urban sustainability initiatives.

They argue that:

it is necessary to step beyond the local as a frame of reference, and to engage with the processes which shape local capacity and political will for sustainable development at multiple sites and scales of governance in order to explain why moves toward urban sustainability are, and are not, taking place (Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005: 48).

23

Using the framework of multi-level governance to analyze the multi-scalar politics of

climate change policy in Newcastle upon Tyne and Cambridgeshire, UK, they

demonstrate how the governing of urban sustainability is being conducted both through

relationships among nested tiers of governance and through multi-scalar coalitions of

state and non-state actors advocating particular discourses and ideologies (what they refer

to as ‘spheres of authority’). Their work builds on and reinforces the work of Gibbs and

Jonas (2000), While et al. (2004), and Whitehead (2003) and further draws attention to

the way in which a variety of forces at multiple levels—whether complementary or

adversarial—come together to constitute the messy, blurred multi-level institutions and

governance assemblages that enable or prevent the progress of urban sustainability

efforts.

Such analyses evince that, if we are to promote greater progress toward more

sustainable urban development, we must engage with the forces and processes at multiple

sites and scales that shape urban socioecological conditions and the capacity of cities to

move toward greater urban sustainability (see also Hanson and Lake, 2000; Leach et al.,

2007). Further, such work illuminates the tensions that arise in seeking local solutions to

global issues, the necessity of aligning policies and interventions at multiple levels, and

the critical role that nested governance structures play in regulating urban sustainability

efforts. Significantly, the above cited works not only illuminate the necessity of

unbounding our consideration of urban sustainability and addressing the broader, multi-

level social, economic and political spheres that shape urban sustainability efforts; they

also draw our attention to the key role that material and political struggles and power

relations play in shaping both the construction and implementation of urban sustainability

interventions, as discussed below.

2.4.3 The material and discursive politics of urban sustainability

Heavily influenced by poststructuralist thinking—which generally problematizes

discourses and explores the social-construction of ideologies of nature and culture (see

Escobar, 1996, 1999, 2001; Peets and Watts, 1996; Whatmore, 2002)—critical

geographers increasingly call attention to the material and symbolic ways in which urban

natures and society are intertwined in urban environments (Braun, 2005a; Heynen et al.,

24

2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Keil, 2005; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003). This work explores

the linkages between knowledge, power, and representation and, accordingly, seeks to

tease out the way in which discourses and discursive formations play out in the material

production of urban socioecological conditions. Many commentators now argue that, as

put by Swyngedouw and Heynen, urban socioecological conditions and transformations

“become discursively, politically, and economically mobilised and socially appropriated

to produce environments that embody and reflect positions of social power” (2003: 902;

see also Evans, 2007; Heynen et al., 2006a, 2006b; Kruger, 2007).

This is demonstrated by Evans (2007) who, in his political ecology study of urban

greenspace, illuminates how the decisions of what counts as nature, who decides this, and

how this is politically deployed significantly impacts how urban socioecological

conditions come to be made and remade. Analyzing the development of the Vincent

Drive wildlife corridor in the UK, Evans shows the production and reproduction of

certain discourses of urban nature are mobilized to support and justify certain regulatory

practices and continued capitalist development. Tracing the shift in classification of the

Vincent Drive greenspace from a ‘sensitive ecological site’ to a prime site of urban

development, he draws attention to the way in which certain discursive formations—what

he refers to, following Hajer (1995), as ‘discourse coalitions’—are utilized to codify

urban spaces and to serve certain political purposes; in doing so, he illuminates how these

discourse coalitions become bound up in and reflective of power relations. More

specifically, Evans argues that scientific knowledge and ecological discourses are

actively deployed to enact a certain ‘ecological politics’ (see Hajer, 1995) in urban

development. He contends that socially constructed ideas about ecology, such as that of

the ‘wildlife corridor’, are ‘purified’ into seemingly apolitical, scientific, ecological tools

that are then used as a “potent source of claim-making power” to support continued

development (Evans, 2007: 134). As he concludes,

The manipulation of ecology as ‘the articulation of knowledge and power, of statements and visibilities, of the visible and the expressible’ was fundamental in translating local planning policy into an ecological reality on Vincent Drive (Evans, 2007: 145, citing Escobar 1996: 46).

Similar arguments are made by others including Kruger (2007) who, unlike Evans

(2007), explicitly draws on the rubric of urban sustainability in his exploration of the

25

‘smart growth’ discourse in Worcester, Massachusetts. In his analysis, Kruger (2007)

finds that development interests and development policy reframe and recast urban

environments to fulfill new aesthetics and agendas—mainly to promote continued urban

development. He concludes that the recasting of urban natures, whether strategic or not,

reconfigures relationships between human and non-human actors. Significantly, he adds:

This recasting of nature is not without its implications…the social organization of ecological systems creates winners and losers. Moreover, who wins and who loses is largely determined by their relationship to a particular construction of nature and their ability to garner political power (Kruger, 2007: 107).

As he and others conclude, not only are knowledges and discourses about urban natures

and urban conditions deployed to enable, support, and justify urban socioecological

change and urban sustainability interventions but, further, the resultant urban

socioecological change is never neutral or apolitical; to the contrary, it is always

reflective of certain power configurations and entails the creation of, as Kruger (2007)

suggests, new ‘winners and losers’ (see also Heynen, 2003; Heynen et al., 2006a, 2006b,

2006c).

On this matter, Whitehead (2003) argues that, fundamentally, the discourses and

practices of sustainable development and urban sustainability both define the problems

and the potential solutions to the ‘sustainable city’ dilemma. As he shows through his

analysis of urban sustainability initiatives in the UK, certain articulations and re-

articulations of socioecological and socioeconomic ‘problems’ determine the ways in

which urban sustainability is approached and the agendas that it serves. Reflective of the

work of Evans (2007), his examination of sustainable development and the politics of

nature in the Black County elucidates the way in which the Black Country urban forestry

program was transformed from ‘simply an exercise in nature conservation’ to ‘a program

of sustainable urban development’ and later to an ‘economic good’ through the shifting

of discourses and re-articulations of urban socioecological problems. Like Evans (2007)

and Kruger (2007), he finds that such discursive shifts are both reflective of certain

power relations and that they manifest in the material regulation of the city. Whitehead

concludes,

26

[T]he study of sustainable cities becomes less about simply reciting a set of universal social and ecological principles regarding urban development, and more about analyzing the ways in which at certain times and in different places certain social, economic and environmental strategies of urban development emerge and who benefits most from these strategies (Whitehead, 2003: 1201).

While et al. (2004) build on this, exploring the way in which discourses and

power are intertwined in urban sustainability efforts in both Leeds and Manchester, UK.

Like Whitehead (2003), they call attention to the critical role of discourse in defining

both the problems and suitable solutions for urban sustainability concerns and focus on

the way in which the dominant neoliberal discourse has positioned the local as the

appropriate level at which to address urban sustainability (see also Gibbs and Jonas,

2000). Further, they suggest that, as in the case of Leeds, progress toward urban

sustainability is often as much or more a shift in discourse than actual material change. [A]fter a decade in which Leeds established a reputation for ‘excellence in environmental governance’…there is little evidence that decision-makers [in Leeds] have succeeded in making significant unilateral changes in key policy areas such as CO2 emissions, energy use or waste reduction…[urban sustainability] is as much about changes in political discourse as it is about material changes in the ecological footprint of economic activity (While et al., 2004: 563, 554).

Bulkeley and Betsill (2005) reach similar conclusions. Addressing the material

and discursive struggles through which urban sustainable development efforts and

policies are defined and governed, they, much like Evans (2007), argue that it is largely

through disparate groups of actors at multiple levels coming together to form ‘discourse

coalitions’ that transport problems in Cambridgeshire, UK have been and continue to be

shaped. As they argue,

In Cambridgeshire, the ‘transport problem’ has been framed in terms of how the growing levels of mobility, apparently deemed necessary to serve the goal of economic competitiveness…can best be facilitated…This interpretation of Cambridgeshire’s transport has been shaped not only locally, through different interest groups promoting economic growth in the Cambridge subregion, but also by transnational corporations seeking to locate in the area, and by national government’s promotion of Cambridge as a critical national asset, which collectively form a ‘discourse coalition’ (Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005: 58). Not only do Bulkeley and Betsill (2005) draw attention to the power of discursive

formations and discourse coalitions in shaping urban sustainability efforts and policy, but

as the above quote suggests, they also make evident that such discourse coalitions are

produced through alignments among myriad forces at multiple levels. Reflective of

27

Whitehead’s work (2003), their analysis also illuminates the critical role that the framing

of problems—such as that of the ‘transport problem’ in Cambridgeshire—plays in

defining the ‘solution’ to increased urban sustainability. Further, as suggested in the

above quote, Bulkeley and Betsill’s (2005) work also illustrates a particular tension that

features significantly in many if not most critical analyses of urban sustainability and

urban environmental policy: the tension between economic development interests and the

goal of increased ecological sustainability. This tension and the resultant ‘urban

sustainability fix’ (While et al., 2004) are considered further below.

2.4.4 The urban sustainability fix: seeking to reconcile ecological goals with economic and social interests

As intimated by Bulkeley and Betsill (2005) in the above cited quote, urban sustainability

and urban environmental policy efforts typically walk a somewhat tremulous and highly

formative line between the desire to protect and enhance the natural environment and

often conflicting social and economic demands (see also Whitehead, 2003). Gibbs and

Jonas (2000) suggest that in the current neoliberal environment, local authorities

increasingly must position ecological goals as compatible with rather than conflicting

with economic development. Following Gandy (1997), they express concern that seeking

to reconcile economic growth with ecological concerns—a tenet of what is referred to as

many as ‘ecological modernization’ (Harvey, 1996b; While et al., 2004; see below)—

may problematically “legitimate weaker forms of sustainable development, rather than

actively enabling new regulatory solutions” (Gibbs and Jonas, 2000: 300). Whitehead

substantiates this concern, arguing that, in the case of urban forestry in Black Country,

the “requirement of the Urban Forestry Unit continually to couch their objectives in

relations to social and economic advantage unquestionably inhibits more meaningful and

possibly radical ecological engagements” (Whitehead, 2003: 1200). In light of this, he

and others suggest that the current socioeconomic context of neoliberal regulation

significantly effects and likely limits the type of ‘sustainable cities’ that are being

produced (Whitehead, 2003; While et al., 2004).

While et al. (2004) further this discussion with their notion of the ‘urban

sustainability fix’. They describe the ‘urban sustainability fix’ as the selective

28

incorporation of environmental goals into the greening of urban governance; a process

that they suggest is largely determined by the balance of the social and economic

pressures for and against environmental policy within and across the city (see Figure 1

below). In their words, the “contingent notion of a ‘sustainability fix’ is intended to

capture some of the governance dilemmas, compromises and opportunities created by the

current era of restructuring and ecological modernization” (While et al., 2004: 551,

original emphasis).8 Building on Harvey’s (1982) idea of the ‘spatial fix’, they suggest

that “sustainable development is in itself interpreted as part of the search for a spatio-

institutional fix to safeguard growth trajectories in the wake of industrial capitalism’s

long downturn, the global ‘ecological crisis’ and the rise of popular environmentalism”

(While et al., 2004: 551; see also Hajer, 1995). Following Harvey (1996a), they maintain

that the urban sustainability fix—like all ecological modernization approaches—provides

a lack of incentives for radical approaches to environmental sustainability in a global

economy configured around increased consumption, arguing that it instead offers a

“politically acceptable means of greening urbanized capitalism” (While et al., 2004: 566).

Such arguments are consistent with the conclusions of many critical

commentators on urban sustainability, who generally agree that, in the words of White

and Whitney, efforts to create sustainable cities will be largely “nullified” without a

significant “restructuring of international, national, regional, and local economic and

social systems” (1992: 8; see also Braun, 2005a; Gleeson, 2008; Gleeson and Low, 2000;

Hanson and Lake, 2000; Harvey, 1996a, 1996b). A discussion around the restructuring of

international, national, regional and local economic and social systems is far beyond the

scope of this thesis; however, it is critical to note that this conclusion and the above-

discussed work draws our attention to the tension between ecological and economic

interests, the dangers of the resultant ‘urban sustainability fix’, and the critical role that

larger economic processes play in shaping urban sustainability efforts.

8 According to Harvey, “As a discourse, ecological modernization internalizes conflict. It has a radical populist edge, paying serious attention to environmental-ecological issues and most particularly to the accumulation of scientific evidence of environmental impacts on human populations, without challenging the capitalist economic system head on.” (1996b: 382)

29

Figure 1: While et al.’s diagram of the ‘urban sustainability fix’

Source: White et al. (2004)

2.5 Toward a critical, politicized yet hopeful reading of urban sustainability interventions

To use the words of Robbins (2004), it may be argued that the above-discussed work acts

as a ‘critical hatchet’ on urban sustainability—one that provides a deeper cut into the

political nature of urban sustainability and, in so doing, encourages us to re-analyze and

re-politicize our consideration of urban sustainability interventions. Significantly, this

critical work draws our attention to the need to address cities as complex socioecological

systems; to consider the multi-level and multi-scale social, political, economic, and

ecological factors that influence and are influenced by urban sustainability efforts; to

understand the role of material and discursive political struggles and power relations in

the formation and implementation of urban sustainability strategies; and to both beware

of the dangers of reconciling economic and ecological interests and the resultant ‘urban

30

sustainability fix’ and to also consider the role of larger economic processes in shaping

urban sustainability efforts. The above-discussed criticisms of mainstream urban

sustainability scholarship and the resultant insights for ‘re-politicizing’ our consideration

of urban sustainability are summarized in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Criticisms of mainstream urban sustainability scholarship and insights for ‘re-politicizing’ the consideration of urban sustainability

Criticisms of mainstream urban

sustainability scholarship Insights for ‘re-politicizing’ the

consideration of urban sustainability Tendency to conceptualize cities as antithetical to nature; reproduction of the urban v. nature binary

Conceptualize cities as complex socio-ecological systems; pay attention to the ways in which ecological, social, economic, and political forces influence and are influenced by urban socioecological change

Tendency to consider cities as ‘bounded’ systems and to focus on local processes and parochial debates surrounding the implementations of urban sustainability interventions

‘Unbound’ our consideration of the urban; greater attention to the myriad forces acting as multiple spatial and temporal scales that shape and are shaped by urban sustainability interventions

Tendency to overlook the material and discursive political struggles through which urban sustainability interventions are made and justified and the power relations embodied in these struggles

Focus on how material and discursive political struggles play out in the construction and implementation of certain urban sustainability interventions and the power relations embedded in these struggles

Tendency to neglect the conflict between economic interests and desired environmental goals and to overlook the way in which larger economic processes shape urban sustainability efforts

Awareness of the dangers of attempting to reconcile economic and environmental goals and the resultant ‘urban sustainability fix’; consideration of how larger economic processes shape urban sustainability efforts

Importantly, the above-discussed work asks us to move beyond naïve ‘calls to arms’

around urban sustainability and sustainable cities to instead consider the complexity,

magnitude, and political nature of the interventions necessary to achieve greener urban

worlds (Braun, 2005a; Wolch, 2007). However, while such critical thinking around urban

sustainability has greatly contributed to theoretically and politically informing our

understanding and study of urban sustainability interventions, it is important to note that,

following Robbins (2004), a ‘critical hatchet’ is not enough. Indeed, as Walker argues,

“critique alone rarely produces significant policy changes”, nor does it help us prefigure

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more sustainable alternatives (2006: 385, original emphasis; see also Batturbury, 2004).

For this reason it is troubling that—while the above-discussed work does much to inform

our critical understanding of the political nature of urban sustainability efforts and the

magnitude of the political projects necessary for change—it provides little in the way of

guiding us toward ‘better worlds’. As I will argue in the next chapter, this gap in our

understanding of the politics of urban sustainability is particularly disconcerting in light

of recent calls within feminist and poststructuralist geography for greater academic

emphasis on the ‘politics of the possible’ and on ‘geographies of hope’. For this reason,

the next chapter will explore how recent ideas around governance and governmentality—

when combined with the critical insights around urban sustainability discussed above—

may inform a critical, politicized yet more hopeful analysis of the politics through which

urban sustainability interventions are made

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3 A CRITICAL, POLITICIZED YET HOPEFUL READING OF THE MAKING OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INTERVENTIONS

3.1 Introduction to chapter: In Chapter 2, I reviewed critical thinking around urban sustainability. As I argued in the

conclusion to the previous chapter, critical commentators on urban sustainability have

encouraged us to re-analyze and re-politicize our consideration of urban sustainability

and have provided insight regarding what this might entail; however, such work has

remained largely focused on critique, providing little in the way of ‘seeds’ for prefiguring

more sustainable alternatives. In light of this, I argue in this chapter for a critical,

politically, and theoretically informed yet more hopeful study of urban sustainability

interventions, and present a theoretical framework for such an analysis.

I first explore recent feminist and poststructuralist thinking around the

performativity of knowledge, hopeful geographies, the ‘politics of the possible’, and the

resultant call for a ‘new ethics of thinking’. Drawing inspiration from this body of work, I

then discuss governmentality thinking around the making of political programs. I argue

that the ideas around the co-constitution of political projects and the practice of

assemblage may—when combined with the critical insights on urban sustainability

discussed in Chapter 2 and the more hopeful project discussed below in section 3.2—

fruitfully be translated into the study of how urban sustainability interventions are made

and governed. I conclude this chapter by discussing how this framework shall be applied

to explore the experience of the case study, Project Twin Streams.

3.2 A more hopeful geography: performing ‘better’ worlds Our argument falls into three main parts. First, we argue that social inquiry and its methods are productive: they (help to) make social realities and social worlds. They do not simply describe the world as it is, but also enact it. Second, we press some of the implications of this claim. In particular, we suggest that, if social investigation makes worlds, then it can, in some measure, think about the worlds it wants to help to make. It gets involved, in other words, in the business of ‘ontological politics’. At the same time we argue that its methods – and its politics – are still stuck in, and tend to reproduce, nineteenth-century, nation- state-based politics. So what does this imply? How might we move in social science from the enactment of nineteenth-century realities? There are many possibilities… (Law and Urry, 2004: 390-391). During the last two decade, the ‘moral turn’ in geography has stimulated a re-evaluation

of ethical and moral issues within the discipline (Smith, 1997). This moral turn has

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informed both how geography studies the world and how it engages with the subjects it

studies (Cloke 2002; Proctor and Smith, 1999; Smith, 2000). Reflecting this moral turn,

feminist geographers have argued that knowledge is always partial and situated (Gibson-

Graham, 2008; Rose, 1997; see Chapter Four). Drawing together notions of partial and

situated knowledge with poststructuralist insights—mainly those of plurality, complexity

and contingency (Wiley, 2006)—feminist and poststructuralist geographers increasingly

call our attention to the ‘performative’ nature of knowledge production, arguing that the

way that we think about, talk about, and write about the world actively produces and

reproduces—or ‘performs’—the world (Gibson-Graham, 1996, 2006, 2008; Harris, 2008;

Law and Urry, 2004). In the words of Law and Urry, as quoted above, “social inquiry and

its methods are productive: they (help to) make social realities and social worlds. They do

not simply describe the world as it is, but also enact it” (2004: 390).

3.2.1 A new ethics of thinking: illuminating the politics of the possible

As Law and Urry (2004) imply in the above quote, recognition of the performativity of

knowledge comes with significant ethical implications. Gibson-Graham suggest: This vision of the performativity of knowledge, its implication in what it purports to describe, its productive power of ‘making’, has placed new responsibility on the shoulders of scholars—to recognize their constitutive role in the worlds that exist, and their power to bring new worlds into being. Not single-handedly, of course, but alongside other world-makers, both inside and outside of the academy (2008: 614).

In light of this, Gibson-Graham (2008) argue for a ‘new ethics of thinking’ and advocate

an anti-essentialist approach to research that theorizes the contingency of outcomes rather

than describing the unfolding of structural logics, that reads for difference and conditions

of possibility rather than reinforcing hegemony and structural impossibility. While their

work predominantly focuses on diverse economies, they broadly call for knowledge

production and academic study that seeks to illuminate a ‘politics of the possible’

(Guthman, 2008; Harris, 2009) and which sees localized social initiatives as potential

‘laboratories for alternative futures’ and important ‘spaces of hope’ (to use the words of

Harvey, 2000). Along with Massey (2008), they encourage us to “expand our imaginaries

35

of change and determination and…to conceive of the smallest ethical interventions as

having potentially wide-ranging effects” (Gibson-Graham, 2008: 625).

To enact this new ethics of thinking, Gibson-Graham advocate an ‘experimental

approach’ to research that seeks to learn and explore rather than to judge or draw

extensive, universal conclusions; they argue that such an approach endeavors to

illuminate possible political interventions and to be open to what such ‘social

experiments’ might be able to teach us. They argue for a shift away from practicing

‘strong’ theory with its “embracing reach and reductive field of meaning”; instead, they

encourage us to practice a ‘weak’ form of theory that is localized in purview and that

does not seek to extend explanation too widely (2008: 618-619; see also Sedgwick,

2003). They explain:

The practice of weak theorizing involves refusing to extend explanation too widely or deeply, refusing to know too much. Weak theory could not know that social experiments are doomed to fail or destined to reinforce dominance; it could not tell us that the [world] will never be transformed by the disorganized proliferation of local projects (2008: 619). Building on this and following Sedgwick (2003), they argue that weak theory places

greater emphasis on agency, indeterminacy, and possibility. Such an approach, they

argue, de-exoticizes centralized power and, in doing so, illuminates a diverse,

emancipatory topography of power relations (Gibson-Graham, 2008; see also Allen,

2003). It is argued that through recognizing this more complex topography of power

relations, the possibilities inherent in individual agency and the exercise of power

through collaborative associations might be made more evident, bringing to light the

universal ‘power to act’ (Harris, 2009). In the words of Allen:

Negotiation and shared outcomes replace confrontation and opposition and take us into a realm of the ‘power’ to act, rather than the domain of the ‘powerless’ who are likely to be left feeling that the ‘power over’ them is all that they are likely to experience (2003: 196).

Gibson-Graham’s work is reflective of a wider body of scholarship concerned

with the geography of hope and the geography of responsibility (Amin and Thrift, 2005;

Braun, 2005b; Castree et al, 2010; Harvey, 2000; Lawson, 2005; Massey, 2004, 2005,

36

2007; Whatmore, 2002).9 Like that of Gibson-Graham, this work generally questions

hegemonic logics, highlights the ethical implications and performative nature of

knowledge, and calls our attention to the role of knowledge production in creating ‘other

worlds’. Together, such work reminds us that, as stated by Law and Urry, “if social

investigation makes worlds, then it can, in some measure, think about the worlds it wants

to help to make” (2004: 390). Accordingly, this suggests that, as academics, we must

always be mindful of the implications and effects of our research and study, and that we

must constantly ask ourselves: what kind of world do we want to help build through the

knowledge we produce?

3.2.2 The politics of the possible in critical urban sustainability analysis

If we take the performative power of knowledge seriously and adopt this new ethics of

thinking, what does this mean for our study of urban sustainability interventions? It is in

this vein that I argue for a critical, politicized yet more hopeful analysis of urban

sustainability. Following Harris, I argue that, “a constructive critique should carry with it

a reflexive awareness of how academic scholarship can shape our understanding of the

politics of the possible” (2009: 56). While the authors of the critical work discussed in

Chapter 2 generally frame their work as supportive of efforts to improve the

sustainability of urban environments and as an attempt to put urban sustainability on

stronger political footing, this work has largely focused on the limitations of and the

economic and political barricades to efforts to increase urban sustainability. Much the

same, it too often imagines urban development as ultimately driven by insurmountable

neoliberal politics and capitalist economic logics (see for example Braun, 2005a; Evans,

2007; Gibbs and Jonas, 2000; Heynen et al., 2006a, 2006b; Kruger, 2007; While et al.,

2004; Whitehead, 2003). While such work contributes significantly to our more critical

understanding of urban sustainability, it may effectively ‘re-perform’ and ‘re-produce’

conditions of structural impossibility and, in so doing, blind us to the potential political

9 Although not published at the time of writing this thesis, Castree et al’s (2010) The point is to change it: geographies of hope and survival in an age of crisis promises to be a powerful contribution to this body of literature

37

openings that urban sustainability initiatives and interventions—no matter how small—

may present.

Like the commentators on urban sustainability discussed in the previous chapter, I

am interested in increasing the political efficacy of urban sustainability interventions.

However, following Gibson-Graham (2008) and Harris (2009), I argue that we must be

mindful as academics of the way that we approach and analyze these practices. As argued

in the conclusion to the previous chapter, it is not enough to simply critique such

practices; rather, we must strive to be critical while still optimistic—we must look for the

possible and seek to learn from such interventions rather than presuming to know

whether such efforts are bound to succeed or doomed to fail. For as Harris states, “the

way such performances are read might open up spaces in which to enact a politics of

possibility” (2009: 58).

Endeavoring to get beyond naïve, apolitical notions of urban sustainability but yet

to read urban sustainability interventions for the possible, I argue that recent thinking

about governmentality and the making of political programs—mainly ideas around the

co-constitution of political projects and the analytic of the ‘practice of assemblage’—can

fruitfully be deployed to inform a more open, hopeful reading of the politics of urban

sustainability. These ideas are discussed below.

3.3 Making political programs: insights from governmentality thinking The topic of governance—broadly defined as ‘political processes and institutions’—is an

enduring concern among social scientists and policy-makers and a subject that has

generated considerable academic discussion (Leach et al., 2007). Building on post-

structuralist insights and the seminal work of Foucault (see Foucault, 1991; Wiley, 2008),

many government and governance theorists now ascribe to the notion of governmentality.

Governmentality thinking broadly conceptualizes government as a ‘process’ rather than a

‘thing’ and understands governance is an “ensemble of ‘institutions, procedures, analyses

and reflections, the calculations and tactics’ through which governmental interventions

are devised, and conduct conducted” (Li, 2007a: 276; citing Foucault, 1991: 102; see also

Leach et al., 2007; Li, 2007c; Macleod and Durrheim, 2002).

38

Governmentality theorizing has given rise to powerful developments in our

thinking around how governance and political programs are enacted. True to its

Foucauldian, poststructuralist roots, governmentality thinking argues that governance is

conducted through “particular ensembles of power, institutions, language and practices

[that] construct issues in certain ways and act on them to produce particular material

effects” (Leach et al., 2007: 22). This understanding of governance calls attention to the

inseparability of power and knowledge, suggesting that power and knowledge are

mutually constituted as discourse (Leach et al., 2007). Further, Foucauldian notions of

governmentality highlight the diverse topography of power relations involved in

governing. Governmentality thinking emphasizes that political power is not a ‘thing’ that

resides in some centralized location or that is held by an omni-powerful state; rather,

power is something that is practiced by actors at all levels who intentionally or not

contribute to the act of governing—whether through compliance, resistance, or otherwise

(Li, 2005, 2007a, 2007c; Macleod and Durrheim, 2002; Rose, 1999; see also Allen,

2003).

Building on governmentality thinking, Li (2005, 2007a, 2007b) calls for greater

attention to the tangled set of practices, processes, relations and discourses through which

governance is conducted. She argues that we need to go beyond simplistic questions of

why have certain political programs and intervention ‘succeeded’ or ‘failed’ to address

the more complex question of how are particular political programs made: from what

conditions do they emerge, and through what techniques and practices are they assembled

and enacted, maintained of transformed, sustained or undone. Further, she asks: “What do

these schemes do? What are their messy, contradictory, conjunctural effects?” (Li, 2005:

383). In effect, she suggests that to truly understand how political programs are governed,

we must unpack how political programs are made and to what effects.

3.3.1 The making of political programs The recent work of Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron (2007, 2009), Lewis et al. (2008), and

Li (2005, 2007a, 2007b) can usefully guide us in this pursuit. Building on

governmentality and political economy thinking, these commentators argue against a

conceptualization of political programs and interventions as linear or uni-dimensional

39

processes with coherent and knowable outcomes. They maintain that political programs

are not pre-constituted political formations controlled by hegemonic actors that will give

rise to predictable results; political interventions are not simply invented, nor do they

appear fully formed. Instead, these commentators reason that political programs emerge

from particular conjunctures of ideas, events, enduring struggles and conditions of

possibility. In the words of Larner et al., they “have different origins, engage diverse

actors, are premised on distinctive understandings of problems in the current context, and

operate at multiple spatialities and temporalities” (2007: 223). For this reason, Larner et

al. (2007) suggest that political programs do not always follow predicted pathways:

sometimes they emerge from serendipitous encounters; sometimes they result in dead

ends; and, while they do not always achieve the goals set out for them, they always do

work on the world (see also Lewis et al., 2008; Le Heron, 2007, 2009).

3.3.1.1 The co-constitution of political projects

Building on the above reading of political programs, Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron

(2007, 2009), and Lewis et al. (2008) advance their analytic of a ‘poststructuralist

political economy’. Drawing together poststructuralist ideas with political economy

thinking, they argue that, in the words of Larner et al., political programs emerge: as much out of the cross-fertilization among diverse strategies, projects, and experiments [as] from any prior ideological or structural-functional coherence. These strategies, projects, and experiments are co-constitutive; they work through ongoing encounters, engagements, and contingencies, and the active working of agents, discourses, and tactics. That said, the co-constitutive process is not radically open and free-flowing. Rather, it is subject to strategic alignments, shared interpretations, and mutual path dependencies that establish boundaries and directionality (2006: 246).

For this reason, they conceptualize political programs and governing practices as open

and active assemblages of multiple and contingently related ‘political projects’. Contra to

Jessop (2002), whose term they adopt, they argue that ‘political projects’ are always

emergent and co-constituted. These emergent, co-constituted political projects

continuously come together into particular configurations that may encompass

contradictory or complementary strategies, rationalities, and political practices; these

configurations may or may not coalesce into larger coherent political programs. For this

40

reason, Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron (2007, 2009) and Lewis et al. (2008) envision

political programs as tenuous and unstable configurations that are formed through shaky

linkages and alignments between diverse, often-conflicting political projects. According

to this view, political programs are not stable formations or the outcome of a simple

rolling out of united political agendas. To the contrary, they are the product of on-going

encounters, engagements, contingencies, and the active work of agents (Larner et al.,

2007; Le Heron, 2006, 2009; Lewis et al., 2008).

Reading governance as such, Larner et al. (2007) and Lewis et al. (2008) employ

a genealogical approach to unpack the making and governance of political programs and

political projects (see Chapter 4 for a discussion of the genealogical approach). They

suggest that we must ask: From what conditions do political programs and political

projects emerge? How are these programs and projects envisioned? How do their

practices and discourses change over time? How they are entangled in and supportive of

other political projects with differing expectations and agendas? And how are they re-

envisioned and hybridized so as to align with other political programs and projects? As

suggested in Chapter 1, such a reading critically “enables a framing of governance

contexts and issues, and actors and initiatives in terms that expose more clearly how

those involved are involved” and facilitates a “probing of what might actually be done

and is done in the conditions faced by actors who are often very aware of their

constrained and contingent circumstances” (Le Heron, 2009: 44).

3.3.1.2 The practice of assemblage

The recent work of Li (2005, 2007a, 2007b) strongly resonates with and enhances that of

Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron (2007, 2009), and Lewis et al. (2008). Like these

commentators, Li (2005, 2007a, 2007b) maintains that political programs and

interventions do not simply emerge from a unified state vision or singular agenda. She

argues, “Rather than emerging fully formed from a single source, many [political

programs] are formed through an assemblage of objectives, knowledges, techniques, and

practices of diverse provenance” (2005: 386). Political programs and interventions, she

suggests, often start out as a ‘contingent lash-up’ of myriad actors and agendas that

possess far less coherence than we might assume (see also Rose, 1999). They are the

41

outcome of agency and struggle; the trajectories they follow are indeterminate and

constantly influenced—and to some extent determined—by different actors in different

places at different times working to draw heterogeneous elements together, to form

connections among them and to sustain these connections in the face of conflict (Li,

2005, 2007a, 2007b). In light of this, she proposes the analytic of assemblage as a way to

understand how political interventions are enacted and to capture the more complex

reality of governance (Li, 2005; 2007b).

Advancing her analytic of assemblage, Li (2007b) argues that political

interventions are complex assemblages of bodies, discourse, knowledges, and practices

that are formed through the continuous hard work of pulling disparate elements together,

aligning them, and sustaining these alignments amid tension and struggle. In contrast to

most conceptualizations of government—which typically emphasize resultant formations

(such as ‘regimes’)—she directs our attention to the practice of governing, to the active

and ongoing process of ‘assembling’ any given governance scheme. Shifting our focus to

the practice of assemblage, she suggests, flags agency and the hard work that goes into

drawing heterogeneous elements together, aligning them, and sustaining these alliances

amid tension. Significantly, this invites us to explore how elements of a political

assemblage may or may not be made to cohere and—like the above discussed thinking

around co-constituted political projects—emphasizes the temporality, spatiality, and

contingency of political interventions and political programs; it calls our attention to how

certain elements are brought together at particular conjectures only to disband or realign

(Li, 2005, 2007b).

Building her analytic of assemblage, Li (2007b) highlights a particular set of practices

that are often implicit in but rarely examined in depth in studies of government and

governance. She argues that most critical analyses of government focus on the singular

practice of problematization, emphasizing how problems come to be defined as problems

in relation to certain schemes of thought, diagnoses of need and deficiency, and

recommendations for improvement. While she recognizes that problematization plays a

key role in the formation of governance schemes, Li (2007b) argues that other practices

are crucial to the making and governance—the ‘assemblage’—of political programs, of

42

which she generically identifies and calls our attention to six. She broadly describes

these:

1) Forging alignments: the work of linking together the objectives of the various

parties to an assemblage, both those who aspire to govern conduct and those

whose conduct is being conducted;

2) Rendering technical: extracting from the messiness of the social world, with all of

the processes that run through it, a set of relations that can be formulated as a

diagram in which problem (a) plus intervention (b) will produce (c), a beneficial

result;

3) Authorizing knowledge: specifying the requisite body of knowledge, confirming

enabling assumptions; containing critiques;

4) Managing failures and contradictions: presenting failure as an outcome of

rectifiable deficiencies; smoothing out contradictions so that they seem superficial

rather than fundamental; devising compromises;

5) Anti-politics: reposing political questions as matters of technique; closing down

debate about how and what to govern and the distributive effects of particular

arrangements by reference to expertise; and

6) Reassembling: grafting on new elements and reworking old ones; deploying

existing discourses to new ends; transposing the meanings of key terms

She suggests that these practices—while by no means exclusive to others—may serve as

a powerful framework through which to understand how political programs and

interventions are made and governed (Li, 2007b).

Li argues that not only does the analytic of assemblage emphasize contingency—

a notion that is widely accepted by among governmentality theorist (see Foucault, 1991;

Rose, 1999)—but, further, it highlights the way in which material content (e.g. bodies,

actions, and agendas) and ‘enunciations’ (e.g. statements, plans, and laws) are linked not

linearly, but “rhizomatically as ‘reciprocal presuppositions and mutual insertions play

themselves out’” (Li, 2007b: 265; following Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 85-91).

According to Li (2005, 2007b), this importantly forces us to address to many of the oft-

overlooked Foucauldian ‘how’ questions associated with governance (see Foucault,

43

1991). For example: ‘If there is contestation, how is it manifested?’; ‘If alignments are

fragile and shaky, how are they secured?’; and ‘How are disparate actors and agendas

made to cohere, even if just for a time?’ (Li, 2007b; see also Rose, 1999).

Additionally, Li asserts that assemblage has the potential to “finesse questions of

agency” (2007b: 265). She argues that rather than emerging from a revolutionary

movement or the vision of a powerful leader, interventions are more often assembled

from an existing repertoire: they are the assembling and reassembling of situated bodies,

materials, and discourses. Like Larner et al.—who argue that political programs are

typically “ad hoc, post facto rationalizations in which connections are made across

political projects that were initially quite discrete and even contradictory” (2007: 223)—

Li suggests that particular political programs may be united under “elaborate

rationalizations but the elements from which they are drawn have no singular rationality

and no essence” (Li, 2007b: 265). Accordingly, if we understand political interventions

as assemblages of situated bodies, materials, discourses and ‘political projects’ that are

actively and continuously ‘assembled’, we cannot simply attribute political programs to

powerful master-minds or understand them as manifestations of united political agendas;

rather, we must recognize the agency of the situated subjects who do the work of pulling

together disparate elements and/or contesting them. We cannot understand political

programs as following straightforward trajectories or pre-destined paths, but instead must

acknowledge our ability to influence them. Such a reading of governance emphasizes the

agency and ‘power to act’ (see Allen, 2003; Section 3.2.1) that all parties bound up in any

given assemblage possess—whether they be policy-makers, scientists, NGOs, protesters,

or the subaltern (Li, 2005, 2007a, 2007b). It emphasizes agency, indeterminacy, and

possibility, thereby opening space for the recognition of the politics of the possible.

3.3.2 Reading for the politics of the possible in the making of political programs As Larner et al. argue, our understanding of the processes through which political

programs are made and actioned “shapes our readings of the scope and content of

possible political interventions” (2007: 225). The above-discussed thinking around

governmentality suggests that political programs and political projects are not made and

actioned by the linear rolling out of a coherent, unified vision; nor are they stable,

44

immutable configurations that delimit individual power to act. To the contrary, they are

ensembles of myriad co-constituted ‘political projects’. They are assemblages of bodies,

discourses, and practices that are constantly made and remade by agents acting at a

variety of spatial and temporal scales. They are enacted by the hard work of ‘assembling’

heterogeneous (sometimes contradictory) elements and political projects, aligning them,

and sustaining or reassembling these alliances in the face of tension. They are formed

through often shaky and tenuous alliances among myriad political projects, which

themselves are always emergent and co-constituted. Significantly, when taken together,

the above thinking around governance opens up a landscape of what Braun describes as a

“more hopeful politics, one in which contemporary forms of political and economic

organization are seen to be precarious achievements, not immutable forms” (2005b: 840).

Such a reading suggests that political programs are spaces of constant possibility with

room for potential political intervention and that, simply put, things can always be done

differently to different effects.

3.4 A critical, politicized yet hopeful reading of urban sustainability interventions

What can such insights contribute to our reading of urban sustainability? Reading the

making and governance of urban sustainability ‘political programs’ through the lens of

co-constituted political projects and the practice of assemblage calls our attention to the

ways in which certain economic, social, political, and ecological strategies come together

at different times and in different places to create urban sustainability intervention. In so

doing, it helps us to consider urban sustainability interventions as complex socio-

ecological configurations and asks us to unpack the multi-level forces and processes that

shape and are shaped by such efforts. Such a reading fundamentally understands political

programs such as urban sustainability interventions as produced through political

practices and struggles that are both material and discursive, and asks us to question how

various political projects come together, become entangled, and are either made to cohere

or not. For these reasons, such a reading of the making and governance of urban

sustainability interventions inherently addresses many of the critical insights around a re-

politicizing the study of urban sustainability discussed in Chapter 2.

45

However, as above-mentioned, reading urban sustainability interventions through

such a lens not only draws our attention to the complex, highly political reality of how

such programs are made; it also makes evident that these political programs are actively

assembled, that they do not follow determinate, pre-destined paths but rather are spaces

of significant potential and possibility. Following Massey, such a reading allows us to

understand urban sustainability interventions as the product of “multiple actors,

trajectories, stories with their own energies—which may mingle in harmony, collide,

even annihilate each other” (Massey, 2007: 22). Much the same, in drawing our attention

to the co-constitutive effects of political programs and projects at all levels it invites us to

deploy what Massey refers to as a ‘politics of place beyond place’ and to recognize that

“Actions in one place affect other places. Places are not only the recipients of the effects

of global forces, they are…the origin and propagator of them too” (Massey, 2007: 15).

Reading urban sustainability interventions through such a lens provides a more

‘politically enabling’ understanding of urban sustainability that allows us to imagine

urban sustainability interventions as sites of potentiality rather than ‘sites of structural

impossibility’ (Gibson-Graham, 2008: 622). It allows us to look for the politics of the

possible in such interventions and calls attention to the agency, indeterminacy, and

possibility extant in such efforts. In so doing, it forces us to understand such urban

sustainability ‘political programs’ and ‘political projects’ as not simply destined for

success of for failure, but as spaces of hope where things can always be done differently

to different effects and where actors of all sorts have the power to act and to enact

meaningful change.

3.5 Tracing the making of the political program of Project Twin Streams

Building on and drawing on the ideas discussed in these first three chapters, the rest of

this thesis explores how urban sustainability interventions are made and governed

through a case study of Project Twin Streams. In order to situate this study, the following

chapter provides contextual and background information about Project Twin Streams.

This will be followed by a discussion of my research methodology in Chapter 5.

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4 SITUATING THE CASE STUDY: CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

4.1 Introduction to chapter Building off of the work discussed in Chapter 2 and drawing on the theoretical ideas

discussed in Chapter 3, the rest of this thesis explores how urban sustainability

interventions are made and governed and to what effects through the case study of Project

Twin Streams (PTS) in Waitakere City, New Zealand. In order to understand this case

study, it is first critical to situate PTS in the context within which it emerged, developed

and currently exists. For this reason, I first provide an overview of Waitakere City and a

discussion of PTS’s larger institutional setting and political background. I then draw on

official documentation and past research concerning the project to present an overview of

the development of PTS. This contextual information and overview of PTS will provide a

foundation on which the rest of this study will build.

4.2 Waitakere City: an overview Project Twin Streams is located in Waitakere City, the western-most sector of the

Auckland Region on the North Island of New Zealand. The larger Project Twin Streams

catchment—which includes the Huruhuru Creek Catchment and the Henderson Creek

Catchment—covers about 10,000 hectares of Waitakere City’s more than 39,000 hectares

(Trotman, 2007a; WCC, 2002; see Figure 2 below). Waitakere City is situated between

the Waitemata and Manakau Harbors and is home to the native bush-clad Waitakere

Ranges, rugged west coast beaches, and historical orchards and vineyards; for this reason,

the city has been identified as a site of significant ecological, landscape, and heritage

value (WCC, 2002).

48

Figure 2: Map of the Project Twin Streams catchment in relationship to Auckland

Source: Hall and Helsel (2009)

Waitakere City is home to about 186,000 people and is currently the fifth largest of

New Zealand’s territorial authorities. In the last decade, Waitakere City has grown

rapidly, exhibiting the second fastest growth rate of all of New Zealand’s large cities; the

city grew by about 10.5% between 2001 and 2006 alone (Statistics New Zealand, 2009).

Regional growth is expected to continue, with predictions estimating that the population

of Waitakere City will increase by about 40.5% between 2001 and 2021 (WCC, 2002).

Waitakere encompasses a diverse population. According to the 2006 census, 59%

of Waitakere’s population identify themselves as European, 13% as Maori, 16% as

Asian, and 15% as Pacific Peoples.10 The population of Waitakere City is fairly young,

with a median age of 32.8 years (Statistics New Zealand, 2009). Waitakere’s population

also reasonably affluent: Waitakere is classified as a middle-income city. Despite this,

10 In the 2006 census, respondents were allowed to select more than one ethnicity.

49

many areas of the city have been identified as having a high degree of social need (WCC,

2002).

Until recently, the economy of Waitakere consisted of a mixture of agriculture,

horticulture, dormitory suburbs, and a small manufacturing sector. In the last two

decades, urban sprawl has considerably reduced the land available for agricultural and

horticultural activities, shifting the economy toward retail and construction industries.

Currently about 68% of the businesses in Waitakere are in the service sector. In part due

to limited economic opportunities in the area, only a little more than half of Waitakere’s

workforce actually works within the city. Hence, while the city accounts for about 15%

of the Auckland Region’s population, it generates less than 10% of the region’s gross

domestic product and jobs (WCC, 2002). Seeking to build the city’s economy and to

reduce pressure on the regional transportation system through encouraging more residents

to work within the city, the Waitakere’s city council has initiated a variety of urban center

revitalization projects with the goal of making these centers hubs for employment (WCC,

2009).

While the Waitakere region has a long history of diverse land use, the area is

developing rapidly and is becoming increasingly urban as a result of its population

growth; urban sprawl is now identified as the leading source of regional land-use change.

The area’s growing population and resultant urbanization trends have significantly

heightened pressure on the region’s natural environment and resources, leading to issues

such as decreased biodiversity and impaired water quality due to increased stormwater

run-off into streams and waterways (WCC, 2002). Concerned about increasing pressures

on the region’s natural resources and environment and seeking to further its ‘Eco City’

vision (see below), the city council has undertaken a variety of initiatives to reduce the

negative environmental impacts of continued development and to increase the city’s

sustainability (WCC, 2002, 2009).

4.3 Institutional setting and political background Waitakere City Council (WCC) is currently the local authority responsible for overseeing

the Waitakere region. WCC and the city of Waitakere were created in 1989 through the

amalgamation of Waitemata City and the boroughs of Henderson, New Lynn, and Glen

50

Eden as part of the re-organization of local governance resulting from the 1989 Local

Government Act (LGA 1989). In the current Auckland Region governance structure,

WCC is one of the Auckland’s seven local territorial authorities (LTAs) and works in

conjunction with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC), the larger regional authority

responsible for overseeing and coordinating all of the greater Auckland Region. As will

be discussed further below, the configuration of Auckland governance is currently being

restructured in accord with the Local Government Act 2009 (LGA 2009); this governance

restructuring is to be fully implemented by the end of 2010 (ACC, 2010).

In 1993, soon after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (see Chapter 1), Waitakere City

Council formally adopted Agenda 21 and committed to becoming New Zealand’s first

‘Eco City’. According to the Waitakere City Council, “Being an eco city means working

together for better social, economic and environmental outcomes for our children, our

grandchildren and ourselves” (WCC, 2009). To put the Eco City vision into action, WCC

developed the ‘Greenprint’—a progressive guiding document that lays out Waitakere’s

commitment to addressing social and ecological issues in holistic, innovative ways—in

1994. The Greenprint has since been described as “probably New Zealand’s first example

of a strategic plan taking a holistic approach” (PRISM and Knight, 2001: 67). Waitakere

City’s Greentprint and Eco City commitment have and continue to shape the values

underpinning the decision-making processes in Waitakere and, accordingly, have

influenced the recent development of the city during the last two decades (Trotman,

2007a). The key elements of Waitakere’s Eco City approach are presented below in Table

2.

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Table 2: Key elements of Waitakere City's 'Eco City' approach

− Community empowerment and participation

− Resourcing communities to take responsibility for the health of their local

environment and communities

− Placing people’s connections with and care for the natural environment as the

foundation for human wellbeing, and for discussion on sustainable development

− Having a long term vision

− Working in ways that recognize and respect the treaty of Waitangi11

− Working at deeper levels with communities through creative means

− Taking a collaborative approach and ‘co-creating’

− Taking small steps and valuing small achievements and changes

Source: Trotman (2007b)

Waitakere City Council has worked to live up to its Eco City goals and its

intention of being an international best practice model for sustainable development. In the

mid-1990s, the Greenprint was translated into a new, innovative district plan. As laid out

in this district plan and the Greenprint, Waitakere has committed to and is now actively

working to “create a Green Network which links the City’s natural environments running

from the Waitakere Ranges, along the stream and road networks and across open space to

the see” (Greenprint, 1999: 41; WCC, 2002). Seeking to exemplify its Eco City ideals,

WCC built a new council chambers and civic center using energy-efficient design, green

building materials, waste management, and stormwater treatment devices; this building

was designed to reflect the natural and cultural heritage of the area (WCC, 2004). In

addition to the new council building and the Green Network project, Waitakere has also

taken on numerous other ‘eco initiatives’, including a variety of transport and urban

village center upgrades, and prominently—as will be discussed below—the flagship

Project Twin Streams (WCC, 2009).

Although Waitakere City adopted Agenda 21 and the ideals of sustainable

development in 1993, it was not until the early 2000s that the New Zealand central

11 The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement that was made between the New Zealand Maori and the British Crown. For more on the Treaty, see www.treatyofwaitangi.govt.nz/

52

government began to explicitly articulate sustainable development as a national policy

goal. The central government’s interest in the principles of sustainable development

resulted in the 2002 Local Government Act (LGA 2002), a government statute that

emphasized community development and directed councils to “consider social,

environmental, economic and cultural wellbeings in everything they do as part of taking a

sustainable development approach” (Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme, 2009; see

also Cheyne, 2003). The LGA 2002 mandates that local government develop Long Term

Council Community Plans (LTCCPs) in conjunction with local communities; these

LTCCPs must outline desired community outcomes and the process for delivering these

community-based goals (WCC, 2006). The LTCCP outcomes identified by Waitakere

City Council are listed below in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Waitakere City Council’s identified LTCCP community outcomes

− A commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi

− Sustainable development

− First call for children

− A safe city

− Urban and rural villages

− Integrated transport and communication

− Strong innovative economy

− Strong communities

− Active democracy

− Green network

− Three waters

− Sustainable energy and clean air

− Zero waste

− Lifelong learning

Source: WCC (2006)

The central government’s interest in sustainable development escalated in late 2002,

when the then New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, attended the World Summit on

Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and, in the words of Larner et al, “was

reputedly shocked by the gap between much of New Zealand’s practice and ‘best

practice’ elsewhere in many spheres of sustainability” (2007: 234). Following the

Johannesburg Summit, the New Zealand government released the 2003 New Zealand

Sustainable Development Programme of Action (NZSDPOA), a key governmental

53

document expressing the New Zealand Labour Coalition Government’s dedication to the

mission of sustainable development. The NZSDPOA built on and reinforced the mandate

of the recent LGA 2002; together, the LGA 2002 and the NZSDPOA laid out a new role

for local government, calling for local government to be a key partner of central

government in the pursuit of sustainable development (Cheyne, 2003).

As part of the NZSDPOA, the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme (ASCP)—a

three-year pilot program concerned with increasing the sustainability of the Auckland

Region—was enacted. The ASCP ran from mid-2003 to mid-2006 and involved a

partnership among the Auckland Region’s seven LTAs, the Auckland Regional Council,

and the central government’s Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). The ASCP consisted

of six workstrands: Transport; Urban Form; Design and Development; Urban Centers and

Economic Performance; Regional Child and Youth Development; Regional Settlement

Strategy; and Sustainable Communities (Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme, 2009).

One of Auckland’s LTAs, WCC was a partner in the ASCP and, as will be addressed

further below, became intimately involved with the national project through the

Sustainable Communities program.

On July 30, 2007, only about a year after the completion of the ASCP, a Royal

Commission into the governance of Auckland was announced by the then Labour

Government. This Royal Commission on Auckland Governance was established as a

response to discontent with the current organization of Auckland Regional government

with the purpose of investigating more efficient potential local government arrangements

(Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, 2009). In the words of Mark Burton, the

Local Government Minister at the time, the Commission’s inquiry was driven by the

priorities of transforming New Zealand into “an economically successful and sustainable”

nation and securing Auckland’s “future as an internationally competitive city and region”

(Burton, 2007).

The National Party—a generally more conservative and economy-focused party than

Labour—was elected into power in New Zealand before the Royal Commission released

its recommendations. Following the release of the Royal Commission’s report in March

2009, the new National Party Government decided upon and announced their plan for a

new Auckland governance structure. This new structure will amalgamate ARC and all of

54

the Auckland Region’s seven LTAs—including WCC—into one larger conglomerate

Auckland Council. This ‘Super City’ governance structure is currently in the process of

being instated and is to be fully in place by late 2010 (ACC, 2009). Significantly, this

new structure will involve the dissolution of Waitakere City Council, a shift that will

have significant implications for Waitakere’s many Eco City initiatives such as Project

Twin Streams.

4.4 Overview of Project Twin Streams A major flagship project of Waitakere City’s Eco City vision, the urban stream

restoration and urban sustainability initiative Project Twin Streams is now in its eighth

year of running. In the eight years since PTS officially began, the project has attracted

much political attention and considerable academic interest. Drawing from the official

and academic literature on this project, this section provides an overview of the

development of PTS. As above-mentioned, this overview will provide the background on

which my analysis and findings will build.

4.4.1 The initiation of Project Twin Streams In the early 1990s, around the same time as the Eco City initiative came into being,

Waitakere City faced considerable problems related to stormwater run-off and degraded

streams.12 During the previous 150 years, the city’s streams and waterways had been

severely degraded through a variety of land-uses (predominantly logging, land clearing

for farming, and rapid urbanization), weed invasion, rubbish dumping, and contamination

from herbicides, pesticides, industrial sources, and polluted stormwater run-off. This

stream degradation led to stream bank erosion and flooding issues, problems that were

further exacerbated by Waitakere’s aging drains and stormwater infrastructure. Stream

erosion and flooding became so problematic by the early 1990s that it threatened private

12 Stormwater run-off occurs when precipitation from rain or snowmelt is prevented from naturally soaking into the ground due to impervious surfaces such as driveways, sidewalks, and streets. It instead flows over the ground and may pick up debris, chemicals, and other pollutants before flowing into stormwater drains or directly into streams, rivers or other waterways without being treated. This problematic source of non-point pollution can significantly affect water quality and even pollute drinking water sources (EPA, 2003)

55

households in many regions of Waitakere, particularly along the Oratia and Opanuku

streams (Trotman and Woodley, 2008; refer to Figure 2 in Section 4.2).

Waitakere’s flooding issues became so severe that ARC warned that a

moratorium on development would be instated in the mid 1990s unless Waitakere’s

stormwater and flooding issues were addressed. In 1994, a significant water shortage in

the Auckland Region further exacerbated Waitakere’s water issues and raised

consciousness about the region’s water concerns. Having recently committed to the

ideals of Agenda 21 and the guiding framework of the Greenprint (see Section 4.3), WCC

began to look for innovative, proactive ways of dealing with their water issues.

Accordingly, WCC commissioned a number of studies in 1997-1998 to explore the effect

of stormwater on the Oratia and Opanuku Streams and to examine possibilities for

addressing the city’s flooding and water quality issues (Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

In 2001, not long after WCC completed these studies, Professor Han Schreier—a

water expert from the University of British Columbia—visited Waitakere. He encouraged

Council to employ bioengineering solutions such as stormwater ponds and to focus on

riparian restoration for long-term stormwater management. Professor Schreier’s advice

reflected international thinking around stormwater and water quality management, which

increasingly focused on supporting natural stream flow and planting riparian margins

(Trotman, 2007a). Inspired by Professor Schreier’s advice and the Eco City vision, a

small group of ‘visionaries’ from Waitakere City Council translated the results from

WCC’s water studies into the idea for Project Twin Streams (Trotman, 2007a). As put by

Trotman, “Their idea was to focus on the riparian margins of the streams, including

buying private properties in flood prone areas and developing innovative stormwater

management techniques” (2007: 19). It was hoped that this stormwater project would

engage local community and that it would grow into a holistic, ‘quadruple bottom line’

local sustainability effort that would address social, cultural, ecological, and economic

wellbeings. According to Trotman, this big idea for Project Twin Streams “percolated

until the opportunity emerged to make it happen via Infrastructure Auckland funding”

(2007a: 19).

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4.4.2 Getting started Infrastructure Auckland (IA) was a statutory body formed through the Local Government

Act of 1998 with the principle purpose of granting funds for regionally significant

transport and stormwater projects in the greater Auckland area. In 2004, only six years

after its formation, IA was dissolved through another Local Government Act and was

replaced by two new bodies: the Auckland Region Transport Authority and Auckland

Regional Holdings (ARH). Assets that were formally overseen by IA are now

administered by ARH through the ARC (DIA, 2009).

Needing significant funds in order to realize PTS, WCC submitted a series of

funding applications to IA between 2002-2003. After a lengthy application process, these

applications were approved, securing over $39.6 million funding for PTS for the ten-year

period from 2003-2012. This funding was directed toward the purchasing of private

properties in the 100-year floodplain and the weeding and replanting of the riparian

margins in the areas stipulated by the applications. The project formally began in 2003

when the first application was approved (Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

The first two years after PTS received its initial funding are described by Trotman

as a period of ‘teething’ and a time in which “tussles occur over purpose and approach,

delays occur, key projects begin, and a new approach to community emerges” (2007a:

23). As she makes evident, the project experienced many challenges and struggles in its

early days. Issues with resource consents led to significant delays in getting the riparian

planting process started and caused tension within WCC.13 Originally adopting a

‘conventional’ approach to community engagement—whereby the WCC sought

community support for the project and invited community to planting days, but retained

entire control over resources and the decision-making process—WCC originally had

difficulty developing the community buy-in that it had envisioned. Perhaps most

problematically, PTS suffered from a lack of cohesion and clarity during its early days,

with much disagreement about the purpose and implementation of the project within and

13 A resource consent is the authorization given to certain activities or uses of natural and physical resources as required under the New Zealand Resource Management Act of 1991 (RMA). All activities that are not permitted by the RMA or a rule in the act require resource consents before they are carried out (MfE, 2009).

57

among the PTS team, wider Waitakere City Council, and the Auckland Regional Council

(Trotman, 2007a).

Amid these challenges, PTS managed to get rolling. Significant flooding in the

Henderson Valley stimulated the property purchasing process in 2004; a further $5.2

million dollars of funding was received from ARH for the building of a new cycle- and

walkway along three of the streams in the Project Twin Streams catchment; and two

external advisors—both of whom had served as Waitakere City Councilors during the

early ‘Eco City’ days—were brought into the project to assist in developing the

community engagement and quadruple bottom line aspects of the project. Further, despite

much conflict about whether and how to employ a community contracting approach for

the planting of the streams, the first community contract was signed in late 2004

(Trotman, 2007a; Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

Around the same time that the first community contract was signed, Project Twin

Streams was selected as one of two demonstration projects for the Sustainable

Communities workstrand of the above-discussed Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme

(see Section 4.3). According to Trotman,

PTS was chosen as a Sustainable Communities demonstration project as it was perceived to be visionary and developmental, had-buy in from Council (as required by the Sustainable Communities funding) and support from local communities. This meant up to $80,000 per year from 2004 to June 2007 for PTS, plus in-kind support through staff resource, to support its approach with local communities (2007a: 27).

While there was some initial conflict between the Sustainable Communities program and

Project Twin Streams regarding the purpose and objectives of the partnership, it was

eventually decided that the Sustainable Communities program’s role was to support and

to learn from PTS’s approach (Trotman, 2007a, 2007b). Trotman (2007a) suggests that

participation in the Sustainable Communities program not only provided needed

resourcing for PTS’s community development approach, but also importantly contributed

to the ‘mana’ and credibility of the project and its community engagement approach,

particularly within WCC.14

14 Mana is a Maori term that broadly refers to authority, credibility, and prestige; for more information, see Maori.org.nz

58

4.4.3 Starting to run Trotman describes the period in Project Twin Streams’ development between 2005 and

2007 as a phase in which “scrutiny occurs, better alignments begin, and the approach

with communities deepens and progress is made across all of the major goals of the

project” (2007a: 37). In July 2005, WCC adopted a Strategic Plan for Project Twin

Streams and endorsed a quadruple bottom line approach for measuring its progress. With

the injection of funding and credibility from the Sustainable Communities program and

the adoption of the 2005 Strategic Plan for the project, PTS reached a certain critical

momentum in late 2005 and has developed rapidly ever since (Trotman and Woodley,

2008).

Continuing to progress the project’s community engagement approach, WCC

employed a community broker for PTS in 2005 to develop the project’s ‘innovative’

community contracting system; by the end of 2007, six community contracts had been

signed to engage local communities in the project—five with local community

organizations and one with a local resident (Trotman, 2007a). Seeded by the Sustainable

Communities funding, an Arts Coordinator was brought on in 2005 and various arts,

music, and cultural programs and projects have since been initiated in conjunction with

PTS. Also seeded by the Sustainable Communities program funding, economic

opportunities through PTS were explored starting in 2006, an effort that—while not

proving as successful as originally hoped—did initiate a continuing Sustainable Products

and Services Group (Trotman, 2007a). Recognizing the need for ongoing evaluation of

the project, WCC developed a formative evaluation framework for PTS that was

completed in 2006 (see Trotman and Wood, 2006). Perhaps most significantly, the large-

scale property purchasing process that started in 2004 progressed through a “gentle and

people sensitive approach” (Trotman, 2007a: 28) and has since been deemed a ‘success

story’ with over 77 properties purchased by the end of 2007. These properties are being

used to develop bioengineering solutions such as stormwater ponds in order to support

more natural stream flow in times of flooding (Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

A significant milestone for the project, PTS was selected as one of four finalists

for the International Thiess Riverprize award in September 2007 (Trotman, 2007a). The

Thiess Riverprize is an internationally recognized award for excellence in river

59

management that is presented each year to one Australian and one international

catchment/watershed organization for outstanding achievement in the restoration and

preservation of waterways (International River Foundation, 2009). It has been suggested

that Project Twin Streams’ selection as a finalist for the Riverprize “demonstrates that the

project is considered to be of international best practice in terms of river management”

(Gregory, 2007: 53) and that it “very much validates the amazing work which [WCC

undertakes] in the Eco-City” (Harry O’Rourke from Waitakere City Council, quoted in

WCC, 2007a).

Additionally, in late 2007 WCC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

with ARC to guide in the development of the ‘Project Twin Streams Sustainable

Catchment’. This memorandum and partnership between ARC and WCC seeks to:

develop a shared understanding of what a sustainable catchment is and how to achieve

this; build a long-term strategic plan, business plan, and governance structure for PTS;

and explore and align existing resources for PTS. This partnership includes developing an

integrated water resource management plan (IWRMP) for the PTS catchment. This

IWRMP will take an integrated approach to the management of ‘all four waters’ (fresh

water, stormwater, wastewater, and groundwater) that is based on natural water cycles

(Trotman and Woodley, 2008). According to Trotman and Woodley, “The MOU presents

an exciting new opportunity for a regional and local council to work together on what a

sustainable catchment would look like using a community development approach and

how to work collaboratively to make it happen” (2008: 24).

As part of Project Twin Streams Sustainable Catchment program, the Project

Twin Streams Sustainable Households Sustainable Living Programme was initiated in

early 2008. This program involves working with over 200 households in the PTS area to

address energy, water, and transport use. According to Trotman and Woodley, the

Sustainable Households Sustainable Living Programme “reflects the long term aim of

[Project Twin Streams] to support behaviour change so that people live more

sustainability” (2008: 84).

Key milestones in PTS’s development to 2008 are summarized below in Table 4.

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Table 4: Key milestones for Project Twin Streams to 2008

Date Milestones

1993 − Waitakere City becomes an ‘Eco City’

1994 − WCC develops its Greenprint guiding document. − Region-wide water shortage heightens awareness of water issues

Mid-1990s

− Flooding issues in the Waitakere Region threaten private households − ARC threatens a moratorium on development unless flooding is addressed

1997-1998 − WCC commissions studies regarding the effects of stormwater on the Oratia and Opanuku streams and possible options for addressing its flooding issues

2000 − Professor Schreier visits Waitakere and advises WCC to employ bio-engineering solutions and riparian restoration to address its water concerns

2002-2003 − WCC submits a series of funding applications to IA to secure funding for PTS

2003 − The first funding for PTS is received from IA and a small group from WCC begins the project

− Flooding in the Henderson Valley prompts the initiation of the property purchasing process15

− A new approach to community engagement develops; the community contracting approach begins

− PTS is brought into the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme as a Sustainable Communities demonstration project. PTS receives $280,000 in funding from the New Zealand Central government between 2004-2006 to support the ‘sustainable community development’ approach

2004

− A further $5.2 million is received from Auckland Regional Holdings to support the building of new cycle- and walkways along streams in the PTS area

− The PTS Strategic Plan is approved by WCC. This includes a Quadruple Bottom Line Framework which addresses environmental, social, cultural, and economic objectives 2005

− A part-time Community Broker is employed to further develop the community contracting program; a part-time Arts Coordinator is employed using funding from the Sustainable Communities program

− Greater alignment begins to occur between PTS and ARC regarding Integrated Catchment Management Planning for stormwater in the PTS area

− Economic development opportunities through Project Twin Streams are scoped 2006

− A Formative Evaluation Framework for Project Twin Streams is completed − Project Twin Streams is a finalist for the International Thiess Riverprize award

2007

− ARC and WCC sign a MOU and commit to working together to develop Project Twin Streams as a sustainable catchment. This involves the development of an IWRMP for the Project Twin Streams catchment, the first in New Zealand

2008 − The Project Twin Streams Sustainable Households Sustainable Living Programme officially begins

15 Most of the houses that PTS has purchased in conjunction with PTS have been or will be removed to be replaced with bio-engineering solutions.

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4.4.4 The future of Project Twin Streams As discussed above in Section 4.3, Auckland Region government is currently in the midst

of a major restructuring. This governance shift and the resultant dissolution of WCC at

the end of this year will significantly impact and potentially jeopardize the governance

structure of Project Twin Streams itself and, for this reason, has created significant

uncertainty about the future of the project. The uncertainty about PTS’s future is

exacerbated by concerns about continued funding for the project. The funding provided

by the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme—which largely supported Project Twin

Streams’ social, cultural, and economic aspects—ended in June 2007. Even more

problematically, the IA funding that has underpinned the project will cease in 2012.

Given that the project has a 50-year plus vision and a clear intention of continuing past

2012, securing on-going, large-scale funding for PTS is necessary, a challenge that is

further complicated by the impending dissolution of WCC. Recognizing these formidable

challenges for the continuation of Project Twin Streams, WCC has recently undertaken a

variety of work concerned with securing the future governance structure and developing a

funding strategy for the project (Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

4.5 Project Twin Streams: an urban sustainability case study While PTS has attracted much political attention and academic interest during its eight

years of running, the politics that underpin this project and that brought it into being have

not yet been examined. Given the project’s widespread renown, its perceived success, its

durability, and its widespread reach, it appears that PTS can tell us much about how

meaningful urban sustainability interventions are made and governed. The next chapter

will discuss the methodology through which I examined this case. The findings from my

study will be presented in Chapter 6.

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5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

5.1 Introduction to chapter In Chapter 4, I introduced the case study, Project Twin Streams, and provided contextual

and background information about this project. In this chapter, I discuss the research

methodology through which I examined the making and governance of PTS. As this

entire study—from the questions asked to the way in which research findings were

interpreted and are conveyed—has been underpinned by a certain methodological

framework and influenced by my personal subjectivity (Hay, 2005; Rose, 1997), my

guiding framework, subjectivity, and positionality as a researcher are discussed first. This

is followed by an explanation of my chosen research design and methods. I finish this

chapter by discussing the genealogical approach and explaining how genealogy will be

used to present the findings from my research.

5.2 Guiding methodological framework As discussed in the first part of Chapter 3, this study is largely motivated and inspired by

the more hopeful academic project of Gibson-Graham (2008) and other post-structuralist

and feminist geographers. Convinced by Gibson-Graham’s (2008) arguments around the

need for a new ethics of thinking and taking seriously the performative power of

knowledge production, I adopted an ‘experimental approach’ in this research (see Section

3.2.1). This study was designed to produce ‘weak’ theory, with the goal of exploring and

learning from the experience of Project Twin Streams rather than seeking to assess this

project, to draw universal conclusions from PTS’s experience, or to know whether this

initiative would succeed or fail. Following Gibson-Graham (2008), my intent was simply

to illuminate possible political interventions—in this case, interventions to increase urban

sustainability—and to be open to what such ‘social experiments’ may have to teach us

about the politics of the possible (see Chapter 3).

5.2.1 Critical reflexivity This study has been underpinned by the recognition that knowledge is always situated

and partial (Rose, 1997). The positivist notion that facts, truths, and knowledges can be

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distilled from research, unsullied by our own personal lenses, has increasingly been

displaced by the realization that knowledge does not “exist independently of the people

who created it—knowledges are partial, geographically and temporally located”

(Mansvelt and Berg, 2005: 257). Accordingly, it is argued that our situatedness and

positionality as researchers always influence what we research, how we research it, and

how we interpret our findings—a recognition that disturbs notions of objective research

and knowledge production (Rose, 1997). This appreciation of partial and situated

knowledge also raises questions about the power inherent between the researcher and the

researched, leading Hay to argue that “the key issue of the outsider gazing, perhaps

voyeuristically, at those defined as ‘other’ is an intractable problem that needs to be

recognised even if it cannot be solved” (2005: 16). In light of this, feminist geographers

have proffered ‘critical reflexivity’ as a tool to situate ourselves as researchers and to

acknowledge the insurmountable power dynamics inherent in research; it is hoped that

through deploying critical reflexivity in our research, we may work toward producing

more ethical, ‘honest’ readings of the world (Dowling, 2005; Gibson-Graham, 2008;

Mullings, 1999; Rose, 1997).

Dowling (2005) argues that critical reflexivity is a constant process of self-

conscious scrutiny of both oneself as a researcher and of the research and research

process. Such reflexivity, she suggests, demands that we examine our work with the same

rigor that we regard the subjects of our research. Further, it necessitates that we

acknowledge the complex relations of power inherent in research and appreciate the ways

in which knowledge and knowledge production are both directly and indirectly powerful;

as Dowling (2005: 23) argues, knowledge production is directly powerful through its

input into and influence in policy-making, but it is also indirectly powerful in that the

stories we, as researchers, tell about people’s lives, about society, and about the world

have great potential to change the way those things are thought about and what things are

focused on (see Section 3.2). While it is impossible to eliminate all power dimensions

from one’s research—as power exists in all social relations and situations—it is

suggested that such power dynamics can better be addressed through constant reflection

on the research process and increased awareness of and acknowledgement of these power

relations (Crang, 2002; Dowling, 2005; Rose, 1997).

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According to Dowling (2005) and Rose (1997), critical reflexivity demands that

we pay attention to our subjectivity and positionality as researchers. Intentionally or not,

we all bring our personal histories, perspectives, and knowledges to our research; this

subjectivity and our positionality, in effect, leads us to insert our personal characteristics

and opinions into our research, albeit in typically subconscious or unconscious ways. Our

personal subjectivity not only influences, and to some extent determines, what questions

we ask and how we conduct our research; it also plays a key role in how we interpret our

data (Dowling, 2005; Rose, 1997). In light of this, it is increasingly argued that we, as

researchers, need to move beyond the veil of false objectivity and to make evident the

‘messiness’ of the research process through owning our subjectivities and explicitly

positioning ourselves and our research within the context they are produced (Crang,

2002; Dowing, 2005; Rose, 1997).

5.2.2 Positioning myself and my research Seeking to be critically reflexive on my work, I recognize that the knowledge produced in

this thesis—rather than being some objective reality or complete ‘truth’—is a unique

product of my subjectivities, my chosen engagement with the academic literature, and my

interactions with research participants. I acknowledge that this entire study, from the

questions that I have asked to my choice of case study to the way that I have conducted

my research and interpreted my results, has been influenced by my personal worldview

and politics. I appreciate that my theoretical framework and my overall research

trajectory have been largely influenced by the ideas that I shared with colleagues and

advisors, the papers and books that I happened to pick up, and certain encounters with

certain ideas at certain times. Much the same, the data collected in this study largely

reflects the various subjectivities and positionalities of my participants.

To position myself and my research: I am a young (early 20s) Caucasian woman

who might be considered an ‘outsider’ to both Project Twin Streams and Waitakere City.

I am American citizen and although I now call the Auckland Region my home, I am not

originally from New Zealand and I still have much to learn about New Zealand’s politics

and culture; this gap in my experience and understanding may have manifested itself in

my study and has definitely influenced my research experience. I have a background in

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environmental science and environmental management, with training in both the physical

and social sciences. While my recent study has taken a strongly post-structuralist and

post-positivist turn, I still carry certain structuralist and positivist subjectivities from my

former academic training and have found it challenging to fully embrace a post-

structuralist research methodology and theoretical approach.

I recognize that in undertaking this research, I was driven in part by my own

personal political project: the desire to promote the cause of local urban sustainability

interventions and to make evident that such interventions can and do have significant

impacts on the world. My research has been funded by and is connected to the New

Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities, and for this reason I also recognize that my

research has been influenced—although not directly guided or directed in any way—by

my involvement with this organization and its interest in illuminating how governance

structures can contribute to increased urban sustainability.

Seeking to reduce the veil between the researcher and the researched (Rose,

1997), I shared the above information about myself and my research with all participants

in this study. Additionally, while recognizing that my research was not highly sensitive or

controversial and also acknowledging that the divide between the researcher and the

research cannot be fully overcome, I actively worked to remain conscious of the power

dynamics between my informants and myself throughout the research process.

Recognizing my position as an ‘outsider’ to Project Twin Streams and Waitakere City, I

volunteered with the project and participated in as many Project Twin Streams related

events as was possible so as to both gain familiarity with the project and to develop

relationships with the people involved. While this participation was only intended to help

me gain a better understanding of Project Twin Streams and to give back to the project

and Waitakere City, this involvement also helped me to get past ‘gatekeepers’ (Valentine,

1997) and to gain access to certain information and opportunities that I otherwise may not

have been able to.16

While I did encounter a few gatekeepers in my fieldwork, all participants were

enthusiastic about my research and about being involved in this study. Participants were

16 Valentine (2005) defines gatekeepers as individuals, groups, or organization that have the power to grant or to withhold access to people, situations, or information.

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generally keen to share both their knowledge and their thoughts about PTS with me.

Many participants mentioned that they saw my research as an opportunity to ‘get the

word out’ about Project Twin Streams and that they appreciated the opportunity to share

their thoughts on the project.

5.3 Research design and methods I employed a qualitative case study methodology for this research, using a variety of

qualitative methods to conduct an in-depth study of the particular experience of Project

Twin Streams. Qualitative case study research is argued to provide a deeper investigation

of the complexities and intricate realities of any given phenomenon or situation and is

considered to be a powerful means through which researchers can explore social

structures and individual experiences and the connections between these two disparate

scales (Winchester, 2005). The qualitative case study approach is argued to be

particularly useful in addressing ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions, especially in situations

where the studied phenomenon or situation cannot be separated from its context (Baxter

and Jack, 2009; Yin, 2003). Additionally, it is suggested that qualitative case studies

allow for the emphasis on plurality and greater appreciation of the social construction of

reality (Baxter and Jack, 2008; see also Stake, 1995; Yin, 2003). Such an approach

usefully allows us to read for the contingency of outcomes rather than the unfolding of

pre-determined structural logics and to look for difference and possibility rather than

simply success or failure. As such, a qualitative case study approach fit well with the

theoretical framework described in Chapter 3 and, for this reason, was employed in this

study.

Data for this analysis was collected using a mixture of qualitative methods. Semi-

structured interviews were the primarily source of data. Data gathered from interviews

was augmented by information garnered from secondary sources and insight gained from

participant observation. The results gathered from my research were collated and

compiled into a genealogy, which was then interpreted using the ideas contained in the

first three chapters. My research methods are discussed in greater depth below.

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5.3.1 Semi-structured interviews Semi-structured interviews were chosen as the primary data gathering method for this

study based upon the ability of this approach to gather a diversity of opinions,

experiences, and meanings, and to uncover stories and experiences that cannot be

distilled from official documentation or reports (Dunn, 2005; Valentine, 1997).

According to Dunn, “an interview can be defined as ‘a face-to-face verbal exchange in

which one person, the interviewer, attempts to elicit information of expressions of

opinion of belief from another person or persons” (2005: 79, quoting Maccoby and

Maccoby, 1954: 499). Interviews are a dialogue rather than an interrogation (Valentine,

1997) and usefully allow informants to express and describe their opinions in their own

words. Further, interviews provide a forum in which tentative research conclusions may

be checked and also allow participants to raise issues that may not have been anticipated

by the researcher (Dunn, 2005; Valentine, 1997) For this reason, material generated this

way is ‘rich and multi-layered’ and produces ‘a deeper picture’ than other methods such

as questionnaires or surveys (Valentine, 1997).

I conducted a total of 20 semi-structured interviews with 18 participants.

Interviewees were selected based upon their intimate involvement in the initiation and/or

development of Project Twin Streams, and were chosen to represent a variety of positions

and backgrounds. A diverse range of informants was selected—both internal and external

to WCC—in order to capture differing perceptions and to represent the different

stakeholders involved in the development of the project (see Table 5 below). Ten

participants were initially identified through key informants at Waitakere City Council

and the University of Auckland. ‘Snowballing’—a process through which informants

identify other possible participants (Hay, 2005)—was used to identify the remaining eight

participants.

Before the interview process was initiated, approval was gained from the

University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee. Following this,

participants with publicly available contact information were contacted directly via email

or phone; those without public contact information were contacted through their

respective organizations. All interviews except for one were conducted in person.

Recognizing that the location at which an interview is conducted may affect the

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interviewee’s willingness to share their experiences (Longhurst, 2003), participants were

asked to select their preferred site for the interviews.

Table 5: List of informants and their organizations/connections to Project Twin Streams

Informant number Organization/connection to PTS

1 Auckland Regional Council

2 Auckland Regional Council; Sustainable Communities program

3 Waitakere City Council


5 Community organization








13 Consultancy

14 Academia


16 Department of Internal Affairs; Sustainable Communities program


18 Auckland Regional Council

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Before interviews, participants were provided with a Participant Information

Sheet detailing the purpose of my research and were asked to sign a Consent Form as

mandated by the University of Auckland Ethics Committee. While guiding questions

were used to steer interviews, interview conversations were allowed to wander and most

strayed from the questions and topics provided on this schedule. All participants were

informed that they would remain anonymous and were given the option of having the

interview recorded or not, with all but one consenting. Where consent was given,

interviews were recorded to aid note taking.

For participants’ privacy, all recordings were transcribed and heard only by me.

To protect informants’ anonymity, all interviewees were coded with an informant

number, which was used on their recordings and transcripts (see Table 5 above).

Interviewees are identified by their informant number wherever cited in this thesis (e.g.

Informant 1). In addition to coding informants by number, all participants have been

referred to in the feminine to further protect their identities.

After eighteen interviews were completed, it was decided that a saturation point

had been reached, with little new information being conveyed. As all initial interviews

were done between March and July 2009, secondary interviews were conducted with two

separate participants in October 2009 to learn about any recent developments

5.3.2 Document analysis While interviews provide valuable first-hand insight and data about lived experiences,

written resources can provide useful information about certain aspects that may not be

made readily apparent from interviews, such as insights into the structure and functioning

of organizations (Strauss and Corbin; 1998). For this reason, data gathered from

interviews was complemented by information gained from a variety of secondary data

sources. As mentioned above, Project Twin Streams has been the subject of much official

and academic scrutiny. For this reason, a wide variety of articles, papers, and reports are

currently available, from which a significant amount of information about the project’s

development was discernable. These documents were used to construct the overview of

Project Twin Streams provided above, to generate questions used in interviews, and to

reaffirm and augment data gathered from interviews and observation.

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5.3.3 Participant observation According to Kearns (2005), observation has been an often assumed and therefore

undervalued practice in geographic research. While observation was not a major part of

this research, I did—as mentioned in Section 5.2.2—partake in multiple stream planting

days, seminars concerned with Project Twin Streams, and community programs related to

the project in order to gain familiarity with the project; through these involvements, I was

able to observe and gain insight about PTS. This ‘participant observation’, although not

intended to be a significant part of my research design, helped to deepen my

understanding of Project Twin Streams, to confirm some of my findings, and—as

discussed in Section 5.2.2—to get past certain gatekeepers in order to gain information

about the project.

5.3.4 Analysis of data Using the above-discussed data collection methods, a significant amount of data was

produced, including hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, field-notes, and notes

taken from secondary sources. To manage this large amount of information, data was

‘coded’, which according to Cope, is “an active, thoughtful process that generates themes

and elicits meanings, thereby enabling the researcher to produce representations of the

data that are lively, valid and suggestive of some broader connections to the scholarly

literature” (2003: 457). Coding allows us to reduce the chaos of our data into smaller

‘packages’ of data, helping us to get a handle on what we have and to draw out relevant

information and dominant themes (Cope, 2005: 225). Information was coded according

to both chronological relevance and dominant themes emerging from the interviews. This

data was formed into a genealogy of Project Twin Streams, as described below.

5.4 Genealogical approach The use of genealogy in the social sciences is typically traced back to Fredrich Nietzsche

and Michele Foucault (Evans, 2008). Of particular interest, Foucault conceived of history

in terms of plurality, arguing that rather than following some grand, totalizing, unified

pattern as is often imagined, history actually consists of multiple events that are often as

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much in conflict with one another as they are cohesive. He maintained that history does

not just unfold in an orderly, continuous, linear manner in which historical events neatly

fit together to form regular patterns; it is instead a somewhat chaotic ongoing struggle

among differing forces at differing spatial and temporal scales. Fundamentally,

understanding historical developments in terms of discontinuity and disjuncture rather

than continuity and conjuncture, Foucault deployed a genealogical approach to history,

tracing the multiple beginnings, sudden forward lurches, pauses, and gaps that comprise

historical events (Danaher et al., 2000).

Contrary to most historical investigations—which typically seek to unearth a

hidden source or singular cause of the studied phenomenon or situation—Foucault’s

genealogical approach attempts to ‘dispel the chimeras of the origin’ and to instead make

evident the multiplicity and contingency of historical developments (Harrison, 2003: 122;

citing Foucault, 1977: 144). Such an approach, according to Evans (2008), allows us to

challenge universalizing historical logics and essentialist notions, and to instead open up

a landscape of complexity and diversity. As such, the genealogical approach can

fruitfully be applied to trace the complex reality of the making and governing of political

programs and interventions.

Following Larner et al. (2006) and Lewis et al. (2008) who employ a Foucauldian

genealogical approach to trace the contingent, co-constituted making of political

programs and political projects (see Section 3.3.1.1), I developed a genealogy of Project

Twin Streams. This genealogy draws together the information gathered through above-

described research methods to track the emergence and development of PTS. Through

tracing the project’s movements through political, organizational, and policy arenas, this

genealogy helps to unpack the emergence and developmental trajectory of this urban

sustainability political project. This genealogy is not intended to be a complete history of

Project Twin Streams; rather, rather, it aims to emphasize certain critical moments in

PTS’s coming into being and development so as to explore the politics through which this

project has been made and sustained. This genealogy is my best interpretation of the

making of Project Twin Streams; however, it is recognized that this interpretation is

influenced by my subjectivity and positionality as a researcher (as discussed in Section 5.

2.1) and that other interpretations are possible.

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5.5 Unpacking the political project of Project Twin Streams The following chapter presents the results from my research in the form of a genealogy of

Project Twin Streams. In Chapter 7, I will further unpack and discuss this genealogy and

will consider the implications of my findings for our understanding of the politics of

urban sustainability and how meaningful urban sustainability interventions are made and

governed.

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6 GENEALOGY OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS: TRACING THE MAKING OF AN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY INTERVENTION

6.1 Introduction to chapter In this chapter I draw together the data gathered through the methods described in

Chapter 5 to develop a genealogy of Project Twin Streams. Building on the theoretical

framework discussed in Chapter 3, I unpack how this project has been made, exploring

the conditions, discourses, and practices through which this political project was called

into being, developed, and sustained and to what effects. In so doing, I highlight how the

political project of PTS has become aligned with and co-constitutive of other political

projects.

My findings are presented in a predominantly chronological order. I first illuminate

the conditions of emergence for PTS. I trace the project back to the 1983 WCED, the

1987 Brundtland Report, and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (see Chapter 1); through

bringing the sustainable development discourse into action, these political events appear

to have provided the fountainhead from which PTS emerged. I then examine how

Waitakere’s Eco City vision came to be, arguing that this key moment in WCC’s history

appears to have critically set the scene for PTS’s emergence. Following this, I track PTS

through three key moments in its developmental trajectory—what I refer to, following Li

(2007b; see Section 3.2.1.2), as its ‘assembling’ and ‘re-assembling’. I show how this

project originally emerged as a ‘stormwater mitigation project with sustainable

development aspirations’; how it was then reassembled into a ‘sustainable development

project centered around stormwater’ in the midst of New Zealand’s rising national

sustainable development agenda; and how it now appears to be in the process of being

reassembled into an ‘economically beneficial sustainable development project’ in the face

of a significant change in the political climate. This genealogy and its implications for

our understanding of how urban sustainability interventions are made and governed will

be further analyzed and discussed in Chapter 7.

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6.2 Conditions of emergence for Project Twin Streams When asked about to describe the emergence of Project Twin Streams, most informants

traced the project back to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, Agenda 21, and WCC’s resultant

commitment to the ‘Eco City’ vision. This is reflected in Trotman’s (2007) story of

Project Twin Streams; as she found in her interviews with participants from WCC, “The

1992 Rio Summit and Waitakere City Council’s Eco City vision were seen as the

foundation for PTS” (Trotman, 2007: 6). However, as discussed in Chapter 1, the 1992

Rio Earth Summit and the resultant Agenda 21 themselves can be understood as born

from the 1983 WCED, the consequent 1987 Brundtland Commission’s report, and the

‘sustainable development’ discourse emergent from these political moments; for this

reason, I argue that that the 1983 WCED and consequent 1987 Brundtland Report may be

understood as the fountainhead from which Project Twin Streams emerged. As will be

seen below, the sustainable development agenda born through the 1983 WCED and 1987

Brundtland Report and progressed through the 1992 Rio Earth Summit was to play a key

role in not only the emergence, but also the continued development of PTS.

6.2.1 The Eco City In 1992, Bob Harvey—a man with a background in advertizing and experience working

with environmental campaigns and as an election strategist—attended the Rio Earth

Summit. That same year, he ran for mayor of Waitakere City (WCC, 2009). Waitakere

City had only recently been created through the 1989 LGA and according to informants

was, at that time, governed by what was described as a largely conservative political

body. As described by one informant,

I was on the first term of council after the reorganization of authorities in 1989. That was a very standard sort of council, but I had actually stood for the environment and for involving communities in the sort of decisions that Council was making…for the first three years, it was very frustrating because it was just [one other progressively-minded councilor] and me amid other, much older, more conservative councilors (Informant 6).

‘Inspired’ by Rio, Harvey ran for mayor in 1992 on an environmental platform

with a more progressive vision for the city (Informant 12). As described by many

informants, he did not stand alone; rather, in the words of one informant who was part of

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the coalition that ran with Bob Harvey, “a whole bunch of us stood together as an

averagely left-wing environmental-type bunch” (Informant 12). As further described by

another informant who was also part of that ‘left-wing environmental-type bunch,’ “we

stood with a whole group of people and we got in. We had the majority of the council and

were very ‘green’ oriented, so we had a majority of people who were thinking the same

way, which was very exciting” (Informant 6). ‘Deeply inspired’ by the recent Rio Earth

Summit and influenced by the international discourse of sustainable development

(Trotman and Wood, 2006), Bob Harvey and this council majority of like-minded

‘visionaries’ decided to make Waitakere City an Eco City in 1993, committing the city to

the principles of Agenda 21 and sustainable development (Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

In the words of informants, “it had just been the Rio Summit and Agenda 21 and all of

that was happening and we realized that we needed to be running the city in a different

way” (Informant 12) and “as a result, we quickly adopted Agenda 21 and decided to

become and ‘Eco City’” (Informant 6).

According to informants, WCC’s Eco City vision gave rise to a variety of

progressive efforts, notably Waitakere City’s guiding document the Greenprint and new

district plan as discussed in Chapter 4. Informants suggested that the Greenprint

“translated the Rio Declaration into local Agenda 21” and laid out how Waitakere would

become an Eco City (Informant 9) and that it was “a very innovative piece of work, it

was very leading edge” (Informant 6). Commenting on the Greenprint and Eco City

vision, a long-time leader at WCC simply stated, “ It was just absolutely the way we

needed to run the city” (Informant 12). Waitakere’s Greenprint and ‘innovative’ district

plan were described as being “way ahead of what other councils were doing at that time”

(Informant 6). Commenting on this, multiple informants attributed the development of

Waitakere’s Greenprint and many of the progressive projects that came into being with

Waitakere City’s Eco City vision (see Chapter 4) to the insight and involvement of, in the

words of one informant, a handful of particular “experienced and big thinking people

[who have] a grasp of socio-cultural issues as well as environment and so on” (Informant

3). The involvement of such ‘experienced and big thinking people’ was largely associated

with the above-mentioned 1989 Local Government Act and the resultant amalgamation

of Waitakere City. As Informant 3 explained, “When we amalgamated, because we were

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in a larger council, we had the ability to employ quite experienced and big-thinking

people.”

Reflecting on this critical aspect of the conditions for PTS’s emergence, it is

important to note that the Eco City didn’t just happen. Rather, is seems that the Eco City

can largely be understood as emerging from the confluence of a set of global and national

political shifts, a developing international discourse around sustainable development and,

of particular importance, the resultant inspiration, aspirations, and agency of one man—

Mayor Bob Harvey—and a coalition of like-minded people. As made evident above, the

1989 local governance restructuring and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit set the scene for the

Eco City. It was through the 1989 LGA that Waitakere City and WCC were brought into

being, thereby creating both the conditions for the election of Bob Harvey and the like

minded ‘environmental-type’ coalition and the employment of critical ‘experienced, big

thinking people’, and it was it was Rio and Agenda 21 that inspired the Eco City vision.

However, a critical reading reveals that it was not only from a serendipitous alignment of

these events that Waitakere came to be an Eco City. To the contrary, interviews

suggested that it was through the vision, hard work, and commitment of Bob Harvey and

this ‘environmental type’ coalition that the idea of sustainable development and the

agenda of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and Agenda 21 were mobilized in Waitakere City

to create the Eco City. As stated by one informant from WCC, “The Eco City was always

his [Bob Harvey’s] vision and on the back of Rio, he and a council got elected with the

specific purpose to create the Eco City” (Informant 9).

Building on this, numerous informants described the Eco City as a ‘political

brand’, some suggested that it was in many ways Bob Harvey’s ‘marketing campaign’.

I think it is a brand! I first heard of the idea from the Mayor, who said that he didn’t know what it meant but that it was a unifying idea. It was the essence of what Waitakere could be (Informant 2). There were at least a couple of things going on. Bob Harvey led, from the formation of the city pretty much, as mayor, what it represented [sic]. Now his background is in advertizing and political campaigns. So he very wisely and shrewdly took [the reputation of] ‘Westies’ and instead said ‘Waitakere with beautiful landscapes and the Ranges’, and built a whole marketing campaign around it, branded it Eco City, and it has been a great marketing tool to get it to where it is now…I think it is a success in terms of the brand, and I think that quite a lot of people bought into it (Informant 11).

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I think it is great. I agree with it. I think it is part of the identity of Waitakere City. To some extent, it is a political branding by the local politicians in Waitakere, but it has given vision to the city (Informant 13).

These comments, made in support of but yet critically of the Eco City ‘brand’, indicate

the positive work that this ‘political brand’ has done. As put by Informant 9, “As a single,

organizing idea it was fantastic! It got the West united and proud of the Ranges and

started people thinking about some of the issues [associated with sustainability and

sustainable development].” However such statements also attest to the political, ‘top-

down’ nature of Waitakere’s Eco City commitment and evince the seminal role that

certain key actors played in mobilizing the sustainable development discourse in

Waitakere and thereby aligning the WCC and the city with the larger political program of

sustainable development and Agenda 21.

6.2.2 The seeds of Project Twin Streams

Informants’ descriptions of the conditions leading up to Project Twin Streams’ initiation

generally corroborated the story of PTS as told in Chapter 4. Interviewees widely agreed

that Project Twin Streams emerged as a response to significant flooding and water quality

issues in Waitakere City during the 1990s and the resultant threat to continued

development that this flooding presented. In their words,

At that time [WCC] was really concerned about flooding in Oratia. It was not just the flooding itself, but the fact that it flooded meant that it stopped development in the Oratia foothills (Informant 3). We needed to deal with the flooding in the Oratia area, which was preventing the ARC from permitting any further development. And we had strong pressure from the landowners in the area, which were mainly orchards, commercial orchards that had become non-viable. They were mainly Dalmatian17 growers who were wanting to subdivide their properties (Informant 6). According to these informants, increased issues with flooding, the 1994 water shortage in

the Auckland Region, and growing pressure from ARC and landowners impelled WCC to

commission studies regarding effects of stormwater and possible options for dealing with 17 ‘Dalmatian’ refers to people from the Dalmatia region of what is now Croatia. The first Dalmatians came to New Zealand in the 1880s from what was then Austro-Hungary. For more information see http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/dalmatians/1

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Waitakere’s flooding and water quality issues. Commenting on the result of these studies,

one informant who was intimately involved with the process stated, And then there came up, after many years of research and looking at options, that essentially the ecological restoration of the streams was the best way to manage the flooding. And that required purchasing houses in the flood plains, as well as riparian planting (Informant 9).

Such conclusions well fit with Waitakere’s Eco City vision and were further supported by

Professor Hans Schreier, who visited Waitakere in 2001 and advocated stream restoration

and bioengineering approaches to Waitakere’s stormwater issues. As described by one

informant:

We met up with Professor Hans Schreier and were very interested in his philosophy of working with communities to restore streams and improve stream water flow and quality. As a result, we decided to adopt his principles (Informant 6).

All participants involved in the emergence of PTS agreed that it was from this confluence

of events—what one informant described as the “bits of the puzzle coming together to

create the ground for Project Twin Streams” (Informant 9)—that the seed for PTS was

born, brought into being by a small group of ‘visionaries’ at WCC (see also Trotman,

2007; Chapter 4).

In critically reflecting on the conditions of emergence of PTS, it is important to

note certain facets of this stage of PTS’s development that are not emphasized in WCC’s

reports and are largely overlooked in official accounts of the project. First, not only did

non-pipe solutions such as bioengineering and restoration techniques fit well with the Eco

City vision of the ‘Green Network’ and new, innovative ways of addressing land and

water management; further, it may be argued that the challenge of addressing

Waitakere’s stormwater issues presented a promising opportunity to mobilize the

discourse and vision of sustainable development and to put the Eco City in action. In the

words of one informant, “This project sort of encapsulated the vision that they had for

themselves and the city” (Informant 2). As described by multiple others, it was designed

to be a ‘microcosm’ and ‘flagship project’ of the Eco City (Informant 3, Informant 6,

Informant 7).

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Second, while not explicitly discussed by any informants, it appears that the

support of Professor Schreier—a ‘water expert’ (Trotman, 2007: 19) and therefore

authoritative figure—likely added significant credibility to the nascent project. Indeed,

my findings suggest that Professor Schreier’s support for the project played a key role in

validating the ideas for PTS and making it more politically acceptable. As will be

addressed below, one of PTS’s greatest strengths has been its strong alignment with

academia and the credibility that this association has and continues to provide. In

reflecting on the emergence of PTS, it might be suggested that this alignment began with

harnessing the support of Professor Schreier.

Third, although PTS is now considered to be—and has largely developed into—a

Council-community partnership (see Trotman, 2007; Trotman and Woodley, 2008),

participants traced this project back to a committed coalition of WCC staff and the vision

of one particular key actor in a position of authority at WCC—Tony Miguel, the

Council’s manager responsible for water and stormwater.18 In the words of informants,

the project was Tony’s ‘brainchild’ (Informant 8) and “It was out of Tony’s brain that

Project Twin Streams was born” (Informant 12). As will be demonstrated below, Tony

Miguel and the ‘PTS coalition’ have and continued to play a key role in bringing the

project into being and in keeping Project Twin Streams alive and flourishing through

trials and tribulations.

Fourth, it is important to note that contrary to common conception, this project

appears to have been born as much out of necessity as from idealism. As described by

one informant involved with the development of PTS: [We] got to the point of saying ‘there are no engineering solutions; we’ve got to have a combination of the community understanding it and doing something about it and, second, we’ve got to work in more natural ways. We are going to have to buy all of those houses!’[The only other option would have been] building great pipes and other big technical solutions, which Tony thought would cost millions of dollars and probably wouldn’t work. He got to such a stage where he thought there really was no other option than to buy the houses out and make big ponds. And that is what happened (Informant 3).

18 Peter Reid is also attributed with leading the work behind Project Twin Streams by Trotman and Woodley (2008), although Peter and his role in the development of PTS did not come up anywhere else in my research and was not mentioned in any of my interviews.

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According to many informants, recognizing that there ‘was no other option’, the

visionaries behind PTS this project seized the opportunity emergent from Waitakere’s

stormwater issues to mobilize the Eco City vision (Informant 10, Informant 11, Informant

14).

It appears that from the confluence of necessity, opportunity, and vision, the seed

of Project Twin Streams was born. And as demonstrated below, through the continued

vision, opportunism, political will, and hard work of Tony Miguel and a committed PTS

coalition, the discourse of sustainable development, the Eco City ideal, and a variety of

possibilities were harnessed into transforming Waitakere’s stormwater issues from a stark

problem into an glowing opportunity.

6.3 Assembling the project: a stormwater project with sustainable development aspirations

When asked what key moments defined the development of Project Twin Streams, all

informants agreed that securing the initial funding from Infrastructure Auckland (IA)

was, in the words of Informant 12, the ‘biggy’. Without this large sum of funding, it is

highly unlikely that Project Twin Streams would have ever gotten off the ground,

unlikely that the seed would have ever been planted. Indeed, as stated by one informant

intimately involved with securing the original funding for PTS, “If the funding wasn’t

available through Infrastructure Auckland, the project probably would never have

happened. It is just too much money for the Council to come up with” (Informant 9).

That Project Twin Streams secured the large amount of funding that it did was no

small feat, nor was it a matter of chance. Rather—much like the development of the Eco

City and the emergence of the idea for PTS—this seminal moment in Project Twin

Streams’ development might be understood as a confluence of a certain amount of

serendipity and lot of strategic opportunism. One informant described it as the outcome

of “the right place, the right time, sufficiently visionary people” (Informant 12). However

a more critical reading of the story of PTS reveals that it was not only the right people at

the right places at the right time that brought this project into action. More exactly, it

appears that it was the right people with the right amount of aspiration and ambition

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waiting for the right time, working to make their place the right place in order to deploy

their agenda and vision.

According to informants, how and why PTS received the funding that transformed

it from idea to reality can be traced back to certain key aspects, particularly a) a certain

set of government shifts combined with an ‘economic boom time’ that resulted in the

availability of large amounts of funding for transport and stormwater projects in the

Auckland Region combined with b) a significant amount of dedication and strategic

opportunism on the behalf of the PTS coalition. As discussed in Chapter 4, IA was a

statutory body endowed with the principle purpose of granting funds for Auckland region

transport and stormwater projects that was formed through the Local Government

Amendment Act of 1998 only to be dissolved not many years later in 2004 through the

Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Act of 2004 (DIA, 2009). According to an

informant who long has and who continues to work with regional and national

government, due to the unusual circumstances of IA’s development and dissolution

combined with what another informant described as an ‘economic boom time’ (Informant

14), about $1 billion were left “waiting to be spent” on Auckland Region infrastructure

projects; about $80-100 million of these available monies were set aside specifically for

stormwater projects (Informant 4). It was suggested that the somewhat serendipitous

availability of such large sums of money designated for stormwater projects presented an

ideal opportunity for WCC to deal with its stormwater and flooding issues through the

realization of Project Twin Streams and, in doing so, to action the Eco City vision

(Informant 4, Informant 14).

This opportunity did not go unnoticed. Commenting on the emergence of PTS,

one informant who has been involved with the project from its early days explained,

“There was a champion who saw an opportunity through IA to realize a non-pipe

solution. And in his wisdom, he recognized the opportunity and went for it” (Informant

14). Recognizing the opportunity to get funding to deal with Waitakere’s stormwater and

flooding problems—a venture that was bound to be highly costly due to the need to

purchase and remove of private houses in the 100 year flood plain—a ‘small group of

visionary Council staff’ led by Tony Miguel translated the nascent idea for Project Twin

Streams into the series of funding applications submitted to IA during 2002-2003

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(Trotman and Woodley, 2008: 13). Importantly, this ‘small visionary group’ from WCC

not only seized the somewhat serendipitous IA funding opportunity; they also stood

behind and pushed Project Twin Streams through IA’s ‘lengthy and complex’ funding

process (Trotman, 2007: 6) and, in the course, apparently made the most of arising

openings to expand the project and WCC’s stormwater management agenda.

Reflecting on this critical moment in Project Twin Streams’ emergence, it is

critical to highlight that, while the PTS coalition “always thought of this as a big picture

thing”, the project began as and was originally framed as “clearly a stormwater project”

(Informant 6). It was suggested that the PTS coalition always envisioned the project

becoming a ‘sustainable development’ project and it was recognized that community

buy-in was critical to the long-term success of PTS (Informant 3; Informant 6). However,

many informants made clear that, as above-mentioned, Project Twin Streams was

motivated by the fundamental agenda of addressing stormwater issues in Waitakere

through non-pipe solutions and the contingent need to move houses in the 100-year flood

plain, and that the project was funded as such (Informant 6, Informant 11; Informant 14).

These informants suggested that the community engagement aspect and the Eco City

vision of sustainable development were selling points that helped secure IA funding, but

that IA funded the project as a stormwater project and that, in the words of Informant 11,

their support hinged on PTS ‘delivering the goodies stormwater-mitigation-wise’.

Because of the nature of the [IA] funding and what it was supposed to achieve—which was to improve the infrastructure of the region—some of it was identified as being for stormwater mitigation work. Waitakere got a very big chunk of it to do this work [Project Twin Streams] by putting up a very good case. But it was a very good case built upon delivering the goodies stormwater-mitigation-wise, and that it would bring the community along to make it more likely to be successful long-term. [It was understood that] the most part of the work would be the stormwater mitigation that would reduce flooding issues in the catchment and would also improve water quality in the harbor. I think that was probably the main selling point. I think that if that hadn’t been there, regardless of the Eco City and regardless of the community buy-in, it wouldn’t have gone through (Informant 11).

Like Informant 11, numerous interviewees suggested that WCC made a ‘very

good case’ for Project Twin Streams through linking the project’s broader quadruple

bottom line sustainability aspirations back to the fundamental goal of stormwater

mitigation. It appears that this effort—the justifying of PTS and its more holistic Eco City

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ideals as an appropriate intervention to Waitakere’s stormwater issues—can largely be

traced back to the work of Tony Miguel and the committed PTS coalition. As Informant

12 described, “Tony was able to flesh out and stretch how everything could be liked back

to stormwater, quite appropriately liked back to stormwater,” and it was Tony Miguel

and this committed coalition of Council staff and external consultants that pushed the

vision through this political process and got the project funded. Yet, as will be made

evident below, it was not only this key actor and the PTS coalition that justified and

pushed forward PTS’s sustainable development approach to Waitakere’s stormwater

issues. As further explored below, this development in Project Twin Streams’ trajectory

must be understood as a critical ‘reassembling’ of the project that occurred in the midst of

and contingent to a rise of the sustainable development discourse in New Zealand

politics.

6.4 Reassembling the project: from stormwater to sustainable development

While the coalition responsible for bringing PTS into being had long envisioned the

project being much more a holistic sustainability effort rather than just a stormwater

project, this broader vision for the project was not shared by all. Having emerged and

secured funding as ‘clearly a stormwater project’, Project Twin Streams was originally

placed in Ecowater (Trotman, 2007a), a department of WCC with a strong engineering

focus that is responsible for managing the city’s ‘three waters’: water supply, wastewater,

and stormwater (WCC, 2009). Many of those in Ecowater, true to their engineering and

hard science backgrounds, envisioned the primary purpose of the project to be dealing

with stormwater rather than riparian restoration, community development, and/or broader

urban sustainability (Informant 8; Informant 16). As stated by one informant: When we first kicked off, we were part of Ecowater. They would have rather spent the [IA] money upgrading stormwater ponds and that sort of thing rather than engaging community and planting and cleaning up streams. So it was engineers vs. environmentalists (Informant 8).

Further, while the original coalition behind the project envisioned developing a form of

community governance to which certain aspects of the project could eventually be

handed over, many at WCC questioned this vision and disagreed with the resultant

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community contracting approach that emerged and developed during the first few years

of PTS (Trotman, 2007a). Informants suggested that, given the strong disagreements

about the purpose of the project and how it should be enacted, PTS had ‘mixed support’

from WCC during its early days (Informant 7; Informant 8).

Additionally, despite the PTS coalition’s commitment to making PTS a

community engagement and quadruple bottom line project, the original IA funding was

directed predominantly at the technical, engineering, and ‘purely stormwater’ aspects of

the project, leaving little resource to be directed toward social, cultural, and community

engagement programs (Informant 4). As put by one informant from WCC, the IA funding

covered the engineering and technical aspects of PTS, “but it didn’t cover the quadruple

bottom line approach. None of the funding from Infrastructure Auckland would cover

any of that” (Informant 6). Further commenting on this, Informant 6 suggested that intra-

Council politics and the above-mentioned lack of widespread support for the project

within the WCC prevented the city council from dedicating significant funds to augment

the stormwater funding from IA. In her words,

It has been a very political decision right from the beginning, the Infrastructure Auckland grant. I think there has been a lot of misunderstanding from within the Council and I think a lot of jealousy about so much money coming into the stormwater section of Council. So Council wasn’t willing to put any money in [to areas that weren’t covered by the IA grant]…There has been a real lack of understanding and in some cases resistance. There’s been a total unwillingness to put money into it from the Council (Informant 6).

Not surprisingly given the lack of coherent support and funding limitations, the

engineering and technical aspects of PTS—such as the property purchasing efforts and

contracted riparian planting—progressed rapidly during the first few years of the project

while the community focus and social development aspects of the project ‘lagged’

(Informant 4).

It appears that, despite these contradictions and conflicts, Tony Miguel and the

PTS coalition continued to direct and to some extent push the project toward what they

considered to be a ‘sustainable development approach’. As indicated by multiple

informants and as summarized by Trotman,

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ultimately the Group Manager of Ecowater [Tony Miguel] issued a directive that [the community contracting] approach be followed and that the goals across the four wellbeings would be pursued via PTS (ie that a sustainable development approach would be taken) (2007a: 26).

However, as above-mentioned, it was not only through the vision and intention of this

man with a plan and his coalition that Project Twin Streams was reworked from a

‘stormwater project with sustainable development aspirations’ to become a ‘sustainable

development project centered around stormwater’. Rather, this momentous shift in the

project—the solidifying of its broader quadruple bottom line approach and emphasis on

community engagement—may be understood as a contingent ‘reassembling’ of PTS that

occurred through the co-constitution of Project Twin Streams and the larger New Zealand

central government’s political program around sustainable development.

6.4.1 Alignment with New Zealand’s sustainable development agenda and the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme

PTS fledged and developed during a period in which “sustainable development regained

center stage” in New Zealand (Larner et al., 2007: 235). Officially beginning in 2003,

PTS emerged around the same time that the 2002 LGA—with its focus on community

involvement and progress toward sustainable development—was enacted and during the

same year that the 2003 New Zealand Sustainable Development Programme of Action

(NZSDPOA) and the related Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme (ASCP) began (see

Chapter 4). The fact that PTS emerged in parallel with New Zealand’s sustainable

development agenda not only meant that the project developed in a political environment

that was favorable for a ‘sustainable development’ approach; as discussed below, it

also—critically—appears to have provided the opportunities and resources needed to

push the quadruple bottom line aspects of PTS forward through a contingent alignment

with the Sustainable Communities program of the ASCP.

The ASCP—as part of the Central government’s larger NZSDPOA effort—was a

well funded program; through participating in the ASCP as a Sustainable Communities

program demonstration project, PTS received $280,000 of funding over the three years of

its participation specifically for social and community projects and for the continued

cultivation of a ‘sustainable community development’ approach (Trotman and Woodley,

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2008). According to informants, this funding played a key role in progressing the holistic,

quadruple bottom line and community engagement approach to stormwater mitigation

and sustainable development that the coalition behind PTS had originally envisioned. In

their words, the Sustainable Communities program critically “supported those areas that

weren’t being funded by Infrastructure Auckland” (Informant 6), and provided “a way of

expanding and trialing and doing things [PTS] wouldn’t have been able to do if the extra

funding wasn’t there” (Informant 2).

It was also suggested that involvement with the ASCP and the Sustainable

Communities program gave PTS “the mandate and license to do more community-

focused work” (Informant 16). Involvement with the ASCP not only provided resourcing

for the quadruple bottom line aspects of the project but also significantly increased the

project’s credibility in WCC and built support for the project’s more holistic sustainable

development vision (Informant 2; Informant 6; Informant 16; see also Trotman, 2007a).

Through both providing necessary funding and increasing the credibility of PTS’s

quadruple bottom line approach, this alignment between PTS and the ASCP appears to

have played a key role in shifting PTS from a ‘stormwater project with sustainable

development aspirations’ to a ‘sustainable development project centered around

stormwater mitigation’—a fundamental reassembling of the project that led to and was

solidified by the adoption of the Quadruple Bottom Line Strategic Plan for PTS by WCC

in 2005 (Trotman, 2007; Trotman and Woodley, 2008; see Chapter 4).

In many ways, it appears that this critical reassembling of PTS may be understood

as contingent to significant shifts in the New Zealand political climate. As discussed in

Chapter 4, the New Zealand central government began to articulate sustainable

development as a policy goal in the early 2000s. This was embodied by the 2002 LGA

and, following then Prime Minister Helen Clark’s attendance at the 2002 World Summit

in Johannesburg, the 2003 NZSDPAO and resultant ASCP. As Trotman suggests, Project

Twin Stream’s shift toward a ‘sustainable development’ approach and WCC’s related

adoption of the 2005 Strategic Plan for PTS—with its emphasis on the ‘four wellbeings’:

social, environmental, economic, and cultural— heavily reflected the “impetus in the

Local Government Act 2002 for local authorities to promote wellbeing across these four

interlinked aspects” (Trotman, 2007: 37). Further, as made evident above, it was only

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through the ASCP—a direct result of the central government’s sustainable development

agenda and NZSDPOA—that PTS gained the necessary resourcing and support to realize

its quadruple bottom line approach. Indeed, although often described as being an

‘innovative’ (Trotman, 2007a) and ‘cutting-edge’ (Informant 2) approach, it appears that

Project Twin Stream’s adoption of and emphasis on a sustainable development and

community development approach largely reflected the larger national and international

political climate and discourse.

However, the alignment of Project Twin Streams with the Sustainable

Communities program was not simply the result of a certain political context or a

serendipitous ‘aligning of the stars’. Rather, as made evident by numerous informants,

the alignment of these two political projects was very much the result of certain people

strategically seizing ‘windows of opportunity’ (Informant 16) when they arose and, in

doing so, ‘making the stars align’ (Informant 2). Indeed, like many of the preceding

developments of the project such as the original securing of the IA funding, the alignment

of PTS with the ASCP and the resultant reassembling of the project appear to be the

result of a certain amount of serendipity combined with lot of strategic opportunism.

This was made evident by two informants who worked with PTS through the

Sustainable Communities program. Commenting on PTS’s selection as an ASCP

demonstration project, Informant 16 alluded to the active role that those behind PTS

played in strategically aligning the project with Sustainable Communities program,

stating: “We went through a process of selecting demonstration projects and Project Twin

Streams was one of those that put their hands up and said ‘pick us, pick us! We’re

fabulous!’” Further reflecting on Project Twin Streams’ selection as a demonstration

project and involvement with the Sustainable Communities program, this informant

continued:

I think the Waitakere people were very much in the driving seats of influencing things. In my mind what happened with the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme and the Sustainable Communities program was that they aligned it to achieve their ends. Because that is what they were always seeking to do. They were looking for a strategic alignment to get the spotlight, to get some additional resourcing, to do the things that they hadn’t been able to do through the initial funding they had received from Infrastructure Auckland. But I am not saying that in a negative light at all (Informant 16).

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Informant 2, who also worked directly with PTS through the Sustainable Communities

program, corroborated this. Building on this, she argued that much if not most of PTS’s

development has been driven by a certain amount of strategic opportunism, particularly

on the behalf of certain key agents. In her words: One of the things about Project Twin Streams is that the people involved all of the way along have been quite opportunistic. There was this Infrastructure Auckland money available and [a couple of key agents behind PTS] were looking at how—[they’re] passionate about sustainability—how [they] could access that fund to do this, to bring people together. So it was a personal crusade, if you like. I look at the people at Waitakere City Council…they are fantastically opportunistic [people] who see an opportunity and jump on it and milk it for what it’s got (Informant 2). As both Informant 16 and Informant 2 made very clear in making these assertions, such

statement were not meant in criticism of the project or the individuals behind PTS but

rather to flag agency and to demonstrate the importance—perhaps necessity—and power

of political will, opportunism, and strategic alignments in making interventions and

improvement schemes such as Project Twin Streams successful. Indeed, Informant 2

concluded that Project Twin Streams is a demonstration that “such strategic opportunism,

if backed by integrity and positive aspirations, is great!”

6.4.2 Stabilizing the project: forging alignments, developing a name Following the alignment of Project Twin Streams with the ASCP and the Sustainable

Communities program in 2004, PTS reached a certain critical momentum and has since

developed rapidly. The rapid growth and expansion of PTS from 2005 onward appears to

be the product of a certain stabilizing of the project and the consequent solidifying of

PTS as a ‘sustainable development’, ‘community engagement’, and ‘urban sustainability’

intervention. Of interest here is how PTS was and continues to be stabilized and secured

as an urban sustainability project. In tracing the development of PTS, it appears that the

stabilizing of PTS can largely be attributed to the development of widespread recognition

of the project and the related formation and solidification of numerous associations and

alignments—some strategic, some unintended—between PTS and a variety of other

political projects. As will be discussed below, both PTS’s renown and it these various

alignments have and continue to contribute to the project’s acceptability and credibility as

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a sustainable development and urban sustainability project, and—further—will likely

play a key role in sustaining PTS into the future.

6.4.2.1 Developing a name, positioning the project as a ‘success’

Project Twin Streams, as above-mentioned, has attracted significant national and

international recognition in its eight years of running. Commenting on this, numerous

informants suggested that this recognition and renown has been one of the project’s

greatest strengths. Informants suggested the project’s widespread recognition and acclaim

has both earned external support for the project and has also built and solidified support

for PTS within WCC (Informant 4; Informant 7). Additionally, it was suggested that the

acknowledgement PTS has gained nationally and internationally has inspired other

similar projects and that PTS is now viewed as a ‘demonstration project’ for other

initiatives at the local, regional, and international level (Informant 7; Informant 16).

Many informants suggested that PTS’s selection as a finalist for the International

Thiess Riverprize in 2007 was a critical moment in the project’s development. It was

suggested that through developing a name for PTS at the international level, the Thiess

Riverprize solidified the ‘momentum’ of the project. Discussing this, one informant

stated,

The project is out there. We’ve won awards. We are recognized internationally… It can’t stop now. It’s got too much momentum (Informant 8).

Building on this, another informant suggested that it is this very momentum and

widespread recognition that may sustain PTS as it progresses into its uncertain future

(Informant 14), as will be further discussed below.

Importantly, interviews revealed that that the PTS coalition has actively worked to

create a name for the project. Numerous informants indicated that the key agents behind

PTS have seized opportunities to make the project known. In the words of one informant,

The fact that it has been put forward at various conferences and seminars and put forward as a project for various environmental awards—and received those awards—that has been great for the city and great for the project (Informant 13).

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Commenting on PTS’s recognition, one informant made known: I’ve done a lot of presentations at a range of conferences—from community development conferences to stormwater conferences. We’ve gone down to places like Wellington City Council and Wellington Regional Council to share the way that we have engaged the community, to send off copies of our community contract. And lots of people have come to visit the project (Informant 7).

Summarizing this, informants suggested that the coalition behind PTS has and continues

to work to put PTS in the “spotlight” (Informant 16) and “at the top of the list, always at

the top of the list” (Informant8).

Further, it was suggested that part of the reason PTS has gained so much prestige

is that it has been positioned as a ‘success’. As one Informant described:

Up to now, we have had a lot of stories come out about Project Twin Streams. It has always been up, it has always been ‘Well, we’ve had a few problems but we are great!’ We’ve only had success stories (Informant 8).

This discourse of success was embodied in interviews, where most informants from

within the PTS coalition described the project as being successful. In their words: I think it is the best thing that Council has ever done. It has been incredible successful! (Informant 12) I think it has been spectacularly successful! (Informant 6) I think that this project has been successful…it has all been successful and a little groundbreaking (Informant 13).

While all informants referred to the project positively and suggested that PTS has had

many successes, some informants questioned whether the project has truly lived up to the

ideals envisioned for it and expressed some uncertainty the extent of its ‘success’.

Commenting on whether PTS has been successful, informants said:

Yes, but it is not clear-cut for me. Yes it has been successful in many aspects…it was a real signature project that Council [WCC] could stick its hand up and say ‘We’re all Project Twin Streamers’ and that was very uniting…as an urban sustainability project, I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say is has been successful. Even as an ecological restoration project of waterways, I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say it has been successful (Informant 2).

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It has had a number of successes… Whether it has been successful or not, I don’t know (Informant 14). Things are happening little bit by bit, but is it enough, is it fast enough? (Informant 11).

Although recognizing that PTS has accomplished much in terms of material change,

these informants indicated that one of the project’s greatest successes is the discourse of

success that has been created around it and the credibility, visibility, and support the

project has earned as a result.

6.4.2.2 Alignment with academia

Very much related to and contributing to both the discourse of success around PTS and

the project’s widespread recognition, PTS has become strongly aligned with academia

and a variety of research institutions during its eight years of running. As above-

mentioned, the project originally developed with the support and advice of Professor Han

Schreier. From its early days, PTS has worked with the national research body Landcare

Research. Through commissioning and supporting research concerned with PTS and it

approach, PTS has since created strong ties with numerous other bodies including the

National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and a variety of

departments at the University of Auckland (Informant 9; Informant 14).

Driven mostly through a handful of key individuals, a particularly strong

alignment has developed between PTS and the University of Auckland’s School of

Environment19 in recent years. This mutual relationship between the School of

Environment and PTS has and continues to result in a considerable amount of research

concerning and related to various aspects of PTS. As of late December 2007, the School

of Environment had undertaken eleven separate research projects regarding Project Twin

Streams (Trotman and Woodley, 2008) and my research indicates that at least four more

have been initiated since. These studies range from the analysis of the geomorphic

conditions of urban streams (Brierly et al., 2008) to the exploration of vision generation

and implementation in stream restoration projects (Gregory, 2007). My study, in itself,

19 Formerly the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science (SGGES).

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must be understood as a product and continuation of the strong alignment between the

University of Auckland School of Environment and PTS

Interviews suggest that the alignment between PTS and academia and various

research institutions has proven a highly beneficial mutual relationship. Commenting on

this, informants made evident that this alignment has not only provided PTS with

significant technical support and monitoring assistance, but it has also—critically—

greatly contributed to the project’s merit and political visibility (Informant 4; Informant

14). Building on this, one informant pointed out that this ongoing research and academic

involvement has momentously “kept the passion and energy going around the project”

(Informant 9). Speaking from the academic side, another informant made evident that this

alignment has also proven highly fruitful for the researchers and research institutions

involved with the project. She claimed that the amount of funding and the number of

research grants awarded because of this project has been “huge!” and added, “You

wouldn’t believe the number of proposals that have come across my desk because of

Project Twin Streams!”(Informant 14). As both of these informants indicated, this

alignment has been a great strength for PTS—one that may well help sustain the project

into the future, as further discussed below.

6.4.2.3 Integrated Catchment Management Planning

Largely related to its ties with academia and research institutions, Project Twin Streams

has also become strongly aligned with the political project of integrated catchment

management planning (ICMP) in the greater Auckland Region. According to Hellberg et

al. (2008), stormwater is one of the greatest contributors to the degradation of freshwater

and marine ecosystems in the Auckland region, an issue that in turn negatively affect the

region’s social, cultural and economic values. In light of this, the ARC developed a

Stormwater Action Plan in the early 2000s (Hellberg et al., 2008), around the same time

that PTS fledged. As part of this Stormwater Action Plan, ARC encourages and provides

funding and support for all of Auckland’s local councils to develop ICMPs for their

areas. These ICMPs are to lay out how stormwater will be managed and how water

quality will be preserved in the regional catchments (Informant 1).

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Project Twin Streams emerged and developed in the midst of Auckland’s work

around ICMPs. Although PTS progressed in parallel with Auckland’s ICMP efforts, the

two projects were not well aligned during the first few years of Project Twin Streams’

development (Trotman and Woodley, 2008). Better alignment between these political

projects began to occur in 2006 (Trotman and Woodley, 2008), likely as a result of the

stabilizing of PTS and improved relations between PTS and ARC resulting from joint

participation in the Sustainable Communities program (Informant 1; Informant 14). PTS

has since become well aligned with the ICMP process for Waitakere City and work is

underway to develop an ICMP for the PTS catchment (Informant 1; Trotman and

Woodley, 2008).

Through this alignment with Auckland’s larger ICMP project, Project Twin

Streams has gained support for its stormwater management and sustainable development

efforts. It has been suggested that PTS has the “potential to provide a model for more

integrated ICMP planning for the Auckland region and beyond, and to provide a case

study for innovative approaches to stormwater management, including incorporating its

social, cultural and economic aspects and impacts” (Trotman, 2007: 41; see Chapter 4).

Pushing PTS forward as a ‘potential model’ and ‘case study for innovative approaches to

stormwater management’, WCC signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with

ARC in late 2007 with the goal of using PTS to explore how to develop a ‘sustainable

catchment’. As a result of to this MOU, WCC recently revised the PTS Strategic Plan to

describe the approach to PTS as not only be quadruple bottom line but also as a

‘sustainable catchment’ approach (Trotman and Woodley, 2008).

Exactly how and why PTS has become positioned as what one informant

described as “a model for stormwater management and sustainable catchments within

ARC” (Informant 7) was not made readily evident. However, it appears that this

potentially momentous progression in PTS’s development is—much like creation of the

project’s conditions of emergence, the securing of the original IA funding, and PTS’s

alignment with the ASCP—another instance of a certain amount of serendipity combined

with a lot of strategic opportunism. Interviews suggest that, similar to PTS’s alignment

with the ASCP, the alignment of PTS with Auckland’s ICMP process is the result of

certain agents recognizing a window of opportunity and acting on it (Informant 1;

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Informant 7; Informant 14). As discussed below, this particular alignment may prove

critical for the future of PTS, as it may provide new windows of opportunity—and

perhaps a veritable ‘lifeline’—for PTS as it progresses into an uncertain future.

6.5 Reassembling the project: from sustainable development to …? As alluded to above and in Chapter 4, Project Twin Streams now approaches a critical

moment in its developmental trajectory and, like all of the Auckland Region, sits on the

edge of what might be considered to be an uncertain future. With the current restructuring

of Auckland governance underway and the nearing dissolution of Waitakere City

Council, there is significant concern about the future of PTS post-November 2010. This

concern is exacerbated by the recognition of a fundamental shift in the political climate in

New Zealand away from an emphasis on ‘sustainable development’ toward greater focus

on ‘economic development’ (Informant 12). This political climate change is embodied in

the Auckland governance restructuring which, as suggested in Chapter 4, largely seeks to

secure Auckland’s future as an “internationally competitive city and region” with the

hope of making New Zealand a more “economically successful and sustainable” nation

(Burton, 2007). A far cry from the national discourse around sustainable development

that emerged in the aftermath of the 2002 World Summit, this shift toward a strong focus

on economic growth and development has led to reduced funding and support for what

one informant at WCC referred to as the ‘soft stuff’, such as environmental, arts, and

educational programs (Informant 9). As many informants made clear, it is likely that in

this “different political landscape” (Informant 13) environmental concerns and

community wellbeing—fundamental aspects of PTS’s quadruple bottom line approach—

will not be a priority of the New Zealand central government (Informant 4, Informant 6;

Informant 13).

This national shift away from the emphasis on ‘sustainable development’ toward

a focus on ‘economic development’, paired with the dissolution of WCC due to the

Auckland governance restructuring, has created much concern about the future

governance and funding for PTS. Many informants expressed some amount of angst and

uncertainty regarding the implications of the new Auckland ‘Super City’ and the related

political climate change for the future of Project Twin Streams. As one informant from

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WCC questioned: “How do we keep the governance going, keep the funding going, keep

the energy going when Council is not there as the quiet parental body to make things

happen?” (Informant 12). Commenting on this, another informant who has been

intimately involved with the project from its early days said quite emphatically, “I feel

very concerned about [PTS’s] future given the restructuring and the political climate”

(Informant 6).

Despite concerns about the implications of the Super City and the national

political climate change for PTS, almost all informants described the present moment as

one of ‘opportunity’ and significant potential. Reflecting the certain optimism that

appears to have defined the project throughout its trajectory, informants suggested:

I think there is so much passion and so many people committed to it that I feel really sure that in some way Project Twin Streams will continue…When you look at it you go ‘that is such a huge task and where do you get the funding from and how do you do it?’ and all of those things. But what we know with Project Twin Streams is that people just keep chipping away at it and before you know it you are down the track. You create the path by walking it (Informant 7). I think there is a future for Twin Streams, I think it will be going further into the upper catchment and into the tributaries in the urban areas, possibly into the other catchments in the Waitakere area if funding can be secured…the extent of it, we will have to see, but because the vision is there it will continue to attract funding, I am sure (Informant 13). However, as made evident throughout the story of PTS, it is not only this sort of

optimism that has characterized the project’s development; as argued above, the

trajectory of PTS has most significantly been defined by the strong commitment and a

significant amount of strategic opportunism on the behalf of the PTS coalition. As will be

demonstrated below, it is this PTS coalition’s commitment and strategic opportunism that

now appear to be steering a certain ‘reassembling’ of PTS that is currently underway.

Indeed, as the current moment in PTS’s development makes readily clear, Project Twin

Streams is not simply a bystander or victim of a hegemonic governmental political

project that is rolling itself out; to the contrary, through this agency and the hard work of

a network of agents, the seemingly unfavorable change in political climate is being

harnessed and molded into an ‘emerging condition of possibility’ for this project

(Informant 14).

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6.5.1 From sustainable development… to economic benefit? It appears that the Auckland restructuring and changing political climate in New Zealand,

rather than slowing the project’s momentum, have acted as a catalyst and have pushed

forward WCC’s work around safeguarding the project’s future and have stimulated

significant work around potentially expanding and building on PTS. Actively working to

secure the future of the project, WCC is now driving two particular ‘bits of work’ around

PTS (Informant 9). The first bit of work addresses options for community governance of

PTS, exploring the viability of different sources of long-term funding and seeking to push

forward the PTS coalition’s vision of giving the project to the community (Informant 6;

Informant 9). In addition to and in conjunction with the ongoing work around developing

a long-term community governance model for the project, WCC has also initiated a rather

significant effort concerned with developing the ‘business case’ (Informant 9) for PTS.

This strand of work, is appears, may play a rather momentous role in a critical

reassembling of PTS that is currently underway.

As many informants made very clear throughout their interviews, one of the

greatest challenges facing projects such as PTS is proving and quantifying the value of

these interventions. Unlike ‘hard infrastructure’ such as roads and bridges, the benefits

associated with projects like PTS are much harder to demonstrate and to measure. In the

words of informants:

How you cost a silted harbor and dead fishing grounds and a polluted Waitemata Harbor? How do we cost that and offset that against the replanting or riparian margins to stop siltation and pollution? ...How on earth do we value families coming out of their homes, who might have been isolated, to meet their neighbors? I have no idea how you cost that or value that! (Informant 12). Everybody wants to know ‘If it is going to cost 300 million dollars, are we going to get 400 million dollars worth of benefits?’ Well, it’s pretty hard to put that sort of sums against ecosystems and things like being able to enjoy the harbor and swim in the harbor. What is the value of that? It’s like saying what is the value of happiness? Put a price on that! (Informant 9).

Most of the intended direct and indirect benefits associated with Project Twin Streams—

such as improved stream conditions, reduced siltation of the Waitemata Harbor, increased

community wellbeing, and increased awareness of environmental issues—are long-term

benefits that may not be manifest for decades (Informant 7; Informant 12; Informant 16).

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Further, most of these benefits are non-market values that cannot be easily accounted for

in typical economic terms and which are quite difficult to measure (Informant 14). As

one informant, an academic involved with the project, summarized:

There aren’t the hard, tangible outcomes that you get from buildings and infrastructure. If you were to fund an infrastructure program, a roading program, or a stream restoration project where we put in treatment ponds or something, we could measure the amount of ponds we put in and measure the effects on water quality quite easily. This is different. And when you do something different, there is always a bit of convincing of others that this is the right thing to be doing (Informant 14)

Recognizing that PTS will require much more funding to keep the project going

post-2012 and the significant ‘bit of convincing’ that needs to be done to secure this

funding amid a economically-focused political climate, WCC is now working on

developing the ‘business case’ (Informant 9) or, as another informant described it, the

‘value case’ (Informant 14) for Project Twin Streams. This effort is largely concerned

with developing ‘hard’ economic values (Informant 14) and tangible measures to vouch

for the project’s worth. As described by informants:

What we are trying to do at the moment is to get some leading edge economic analysis of the cost-benefits of Project Twin Streams, because at the moment it is all anecdotal. We are talking about things that have not been measured in this kind of way before (Informant 6).

[PTS] is a long-term project: it’s supposed to be sustainable governance of the streams and it is going to require ongoing financial input to make that happen. There isn’t an endpoint, or that endpoint isn’t going to be 2012 when [the IA funding] finishes. How do you convince the powers-that-be that this needs to continue? That is a big question…it will take all sorts of things. You’ve got to play all sorts of political games. You’ve got to find the right pot of gold to keep it going. You’ve got to structure your argument in terms of economic cost-benefit analysis, economic outcomes (Informant 14).

Seeking to develop the business case for PTS and to structure their argument in

terms of economic cost-benefit analysis, WCC hosted a series of workshops during

winter 2009. These workshops brought together a variety of research institutions and

governmental bodies to discuss pathways forward for PTS and to identify both how to

demonstrate the economic outcomes of the project and what other milestones need to be

achieved to secure future funding for the project (Informant 4; Informant 14). As part of

this effort, WCC is providing research monies for collaborative study regarding the

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economic benefit and value of PTS. In the words of one informant, WCC is now actively

‘driving’ a research effort to make sure that they ‘tick all of the boxes’ that they have got

to tick in order to get more funding for PTS before the ‘black hole’ of the new Auckland

Super City (Informant 14).

This in-process work around building a business case and developing a cost-

benefit analysis for PTS represents a critical moment in both PTS’s alignment with

academia and, significantly, in the developmental trajectory of the project. The project is

actively being repackaged as and economic benefit through the alignment of PTS with

various academic and research bodies; it is hoped that through couching the project’s

objectives in relationship to economic and social advantage, the PTS may be sustained

“in a political environment where everything needs to be accounted for financially”

(Informant 12). It appears that—through a shift that has been largely stimulated by a

momentous change in the political climate but yet steered by the PTS coalition—Project

Twin Streams is being reassembled from a ‘sustainable development project centered

around stormwater mitigation’ to an ‘economically beneficial sustainable development

project’.

6.5.2 From sustainable development…to a sustainable catchment model?

Commenting on the current political moment and its implications for PTS, one informant

mused:

I see the [Auckland restructuring] as an opportunity for Project Twin Stream to cement itself as a success, as something that was tried that could be built upon in a geographical way. At the moment, it is constrained to a certain catchment. But we could take the learnings from this project and apply them elsewhere (Informant 14). This sentiment was shared by numerous other informants, who suggested that the current

political moment not only presents significant challenges to the future of PTS, but that it

more importantly presents great opportunities for the project and its approach to be

extended and applied elsewhere. As Informant 14 further explained,

What happens to PTS after the Auckland governance shift largely depends on the political fallout, really. On the political structures that are put in place. The initial readings of the political landscape is that the that environment will be put very low on the agenda, which is a massive opportunity for something like Project Twin Streams—which is a very big project—to flag that

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environment has been forgotten and that they have a way of environmental governance that can be rolled out… If there is a hole in environmental governance and monies and resources are put elsewhere, then at some point that hole will have to be filled. If is about strategically aligning oneself with that point in time where that void [pause] there’s a vacuum here, something needs to fill this environmental hole that has been left open and what’s that going to be? At some time there is going to be a rush to fill that hole and that’s the opportunity (Informant 14). It appears that, as this informant and multiple other suggested, Project Twin Streams now

has enough momentum and is politically visible enough that it could act as a ‘flagship’

project for the upcoming conglomerate Auckland City. According to informants, PTS is

“increasingly being seen as a model for stormwater management, sustainable catchments

within ARC” (Informant 7) and it is well placed to act as a demonstration for stormwater

and catchment governance for the new Auckland Council (Informant 1; Informant 14).

Recognizing this opportunity, the PTS coalition is now actively working to further

the strategic alignment between PTS and the ICMP process in the Auckland Region. As

above-mentioned, WCC signed an MOU with ARC in late 2007 to guide the

development of PTS as a ‘sustainable catchment’ and also revised the PTS Strategic Plan

to describe PTS as taking a ‘sustainable catchment’ approach. WCC is currently working

on developing an integrated water resource management plan (IWRMP) for the PTS

catchment and they are pushing to complete their ICMP before the governance shift later

this year (Informant 1; Informant 14). It appears that WCC and the PTS coalition are

working hard to—following the above quote from Informant 14—‘cement PTS as a

success, as something that was tried that could be built on’ in order to situate the project

as a model for future stormwater governance in the Auckland Region.

6.5.3 From a significant challenge to a glowing opportunity? It now appears that, largely out of necessity, the PTS coalition is working to align the

project with the New Zealand government’s economic development political agenda and

the Auckland Region’s ICMP political project. Through developing a ‘business case’ for

PTS and working to situate the project as a ‘sustainable catchment model’ for the

upcoming conglomerate Auckland City, it is possible that the PTS coalition may be able

to turn a significant challenge into a glowing opportunity. Much like the entire

developmental trajectory of this project, the current moment of PTS seems to be defined

by a ‘certain amount of serendipity combined with a lot of strategic opportunism.’

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6.6 Chapter Summary

In this chapter I presented the genealogy of PTS, tracking the project’s emergence,

development, and movements through political and organizational arenas. My findings

show that PTS’s emergence can be traced back to the 1983 WCED, the 1987 Brundtland

Report, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and the resultant sustainable development discourse:

through the hard work of Mayor Bob Harvey and an alliance of like-minded actors, this

sustainable development discourse was mobilized in Waitakere City to create the Eco

City, thereby setting the scene for PTS. A flagship project of Waitakere’s Eco City

commitment, PTS was brought into being by the vision and hard work of Tony Miguel

and a handful of other key actors at WCC. Seeking to address Waitakere’s stormwater

issues and to operationalize the Eco City vision, this PTS coalition seized the unusual

funding opportunity available through IA, thereby initiating PTS. Originally developed as

a ‘stormwater management project with sustainable development aspirations’, PTS was

molded into a ‘sustainable development project centered around stormwater mitigation’

through both the effort of the PTS coalition and a critical alignment with New Zealand’s

rising sustainable development agenda. During the eight years of the PTS’s development,

those behind the project have worked to build a name and reputation for the project and

to situate the project as a ‘success’, as well as to develop critical strategic alignments with

academia and other political projects; PTS’s renown and these strategic alignments have

and continue to contribute significantly to the strength and development of the project as

well as its credibility as a ‘sustainable development’ intervention.

Currently, PTS approaches a significant moment in its developmental trajectory

and it appears that the project is now being remade and reassembled to fit a new political

climate. In light the major restructuring of Auckland governance that is currently

underway and a shift in national political focus toward greater emphasis on economic

development, the coalition behind PTS is now actively working to repackage PTS as an

‘economically beneficial sustainable development project’ and to align the project with

the Auckland Region’s ICMP process in an attempt to safeguard the project’s future.

As this genealogy demonstrates, rather than a pre-constituted political project,

Project Twin Streams has been actively made and remade during its eight years of

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running, largely as a response to contingencies imposed by larger political, institutional,

and economic forces. However, this genealogy also makes evident the critical role that

both strategic alignments and key agents have played in making and sustaining this urban

sustainability intervention. From this genealogy, four key ‘phases’ in PTS’s

developmental trajectory and a variety of critical alignments with co-constitutive

‘political projects’ are discernable. These are presented in Table 6 and Table 7. My

findings will be further explored and discussed in Chapter 7.

Table 6: Phases of PTS

Key phases of Project Twin Streams

Emergence

‘Stormwater mitigation project with sustainable development aspirations’

‘Sustainable development project centered around stormwater

mitigation’

‘Economically beneficial sustainable development project’ and

‘Sustainable Catchment model’

Table 7: Alignments

‘Political projects’ aligned with PTS

Waitakere City’s Eco City vision

New Zealand’s sustainable development agenda

Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme— Sustainable

Communities program

Academia and Research Institutions

Auckland Region Integrated Catchment Management Planning

(ICMP) Process

New Zealand’s economic development agenda

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7 THE MAKING OF PROJECT TWIN STREAMS: EMBEDDEDNESS, ALIGNMENT, AGENCY, AND EMERGENCE

7.1 Introduction to chapter In the previous chapter, I traced the making of the urban sustainability intervention

Project Twin Streams, placing particular emphasis on the political processes and practices

through which the project has been made and sustained and illuminating the way in

which it has become entangled in other various political projects. In this chapter, I discuss

the dominant themes emerging from the genealogy of PTS presented in Chapter 6 and

consider what this case study contributes to our understanding of how urban

sustainability interventions are made and governed and to what effects. I first argue that

this example attests to the ‘unbounded’ and ‘embedded’ reality of urban sustainability: it

provides evidence that localized urban sustainability interventions are embedded in and

enmeshed in larger social, economic, ecological, and political processes. However, I

show that this case study not only demonstrates that these larger forces impose

contingencies and barriers on localized urban sustainability interventions; it also proves

that these forces can come together and align to create significant conditions of

possibility. Building on this, I suggest that PTS has in many ways been the product of an

auspicious ‘aligning of the stars’, but that my findings also make evident that ‘stars’ have

not simply fallen into place. Rather, this urban sustainability project has been actively

‘assembled’ and ‘reassembled’ through the effort of agents who have worked to make the

stars align. This finding highlights the critical role that agency has played in making and

sustaining this project. Similarly, my findings also illuminate the ‘politics of place

beyond place’, illustrating that actors at all levels have significant ‘power to act’ in

effecting meaningful change at multiple scales. Much the same, this example provides

evidence that such political projects are always emergent and that things can always be

done differently to different effects. As I will conclude in this chapter and will further

address in Chapter 8, taken together, these findings have significant implications for our

understanding of how urban sustainability interventions are made and sustained.

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7.2 Embeddedness Like many of the critical analyses of urban sustainability interventions discussed in

Chapter 2 (e.g. Braun, 2005a; Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005; Whitehead, 2003), the

experience of PTS attests to the ‘unbounded’ and what I refer to as ‘embedded’ reality of

urban sustainability interventions, demonstrating the way in which socioecological and

political economic forces play out in the making and development of urban sustainability

strategies. PTS emerged from the fertile foundation of Waitakere’s Eco City vision, a

political project which itself can be understood as the product of an international

discourse of sustainable development along with a significant restructuring of Auckland

governance and the resultant election of Mayor Bob Harvey and the like-minded Eco

City coalition. As summarized by one informant:

There are a couple of things behind [PTS]. One was the Rio Conference of 1992, and on the back of that a Council got elected with the specific purpose to create the Eco City. And Bob Harvey, who got elected in 1992, has been the mayor ever since then—the Eco City was always his vision…there are many bits of the puzzle that come together to create the ground for Project Twin Streams (Informant 9).

The project developed in conjunction with the rising sustainable development agenda of

the New Zealand central government; according to informants, this may have been a

dominant reason that the project gained the significant amount of political support and

funding that it needed to turn vision into reality. In their words,

Project Twin Streams was cutting edge; it was a point of difference…nobody knew what it [sustainable development] meant. And this was a way of saying: ‘this is what it means!’ There was the Earth Summit and Helen [Clark] making all sorts of claims about New Zealand moving toward having a sustainable development focus, but no one knew what it meant. PTS gave a tangible answer so people jumped on it, gave it huge amounts of money, and then sort of went ‘All right. Off you go!’… I don’t think that it would get the funding again. If the same [project idea] were presented to a large funding body now, it wouldn’t get it (Informant 2). Auckland and New Zealand were ready for a showcase of doing something differently, and PTS was there (Informant 12).

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Additionally, that PTS secured the significant amount of original funding that it did must

be understood as the result of an unusual opportunity, an opportunity that according to

one informant no longer exists.

[PTS] got funding because there was an economic boom time. There was some money from Auckland Regional Holdings [then IA] for non-pipe solutions, which was recognized and tapped by Waitakere City Council… And now the opportunity has passed. It is not there anymore. It got wrapped up in Auckland Regional Council, who sat on it and did nothing with it for a couple of years, and it took a massive nose-dive this year, which basically wiped out much of the stormwater funding that they had (Informant 14).

Such findings imply that an understanding of PTS’s emergence cannot ignore the

multilevel conditions within which this project was made. To the contrary, PTS’s making

appears to be largely resultant from, embedded in, and contingent to a particular political,

economic, and institutional context.

The continued development of the project has been much the same. The material

and discursive remaking of PTS from simply a ‘stormwater project with sustainable

development aspirations’ to a ‘sustainable development project centered around

stormwater mitigation’ can largely be understood as contingent to the rise of the

sustainable development discourse in New Zealand in the aftermath of the 2002

Johannesburg Earth Summit. It appears that it was through New Zealand’s program of

action for sustainable development and related ASCP that Project Twin Streams gained

both the increased political clout and financial support that it needed to realize its

quadruple bottom line vision. Similarly, a significant material and discursive shift in the

project is currently being driven by the impetus of a shift toward a more conservative,

economically focused political climate in New Zealand, a resultant shortage of funding

for the ‘soft stuff’ such as environmental and social programs, and a related restructuring

of Auckland governance. As made evident in the previous chapter, PTS is currently being

repackaged and remade as an ‘economically beneficial sustainable development project’

in light of this significant change in the political climate.

This genealogy of PTS shows that this project’s emergence and development have

been embedded and enmeshed in a certain set of larger socioecological and political-

economic processes. As such, it strongly substantiates Whitehead’s claim that the urban

sustainability interventions must be “viewed as an intersection of political, economic and

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environmental space” (2003: 1189; see Section 2.4.2). Similarly and in agreement with

the findings of Bulkeley and Betsill (2005), Evans (2007), Kruger (2007) and Whitehead

(2003) as discussed in Chapter 2, my findings demonstrate that this project has been

made and remade—both materially and discursively—during its eight years of

development, largely in relation to the conditions and contingencies imposed by these

changes in political and economic climate. An overview of the relationship between

shifts in the larger political, economic, and institutional context and the key ‘phases’ of

Project Twin Streams’ development as identified in the last chapter is provided in Table

8.

Table 8: Relationship between larger political, economic, and institutional context and phases of Project Twin Streams

Date International and New Zealand Context

Waitakere City and Auckland Region Context

Phase of Project Twin Streams

Early

1990s

− 1989 Local Government Act − 1992 Rio Earth Summit and

Agenda 21 (following the 1983 WCED and 1987 Brundtland Report)

International sustainable

development discourse rises

− 1989 Waitakere Created

through Local Government Act

− 1992 Mayor Bob Harvey and left-wing coalition elected

− 1993 Waitakere commits to

becoming an Eco City

Conditions of emergence for Project Twin Streams

‘Stormwater mitigation project with sustainable

development aspirations’ Early

2000s

− 2002 Johannesburg Earth

Summit − 2002 Local Government Act − 2003 New Zealand Sustainable

Development Programme of Action

Sustainable development agenda

rises in New Zealand

− 2002-2003 Surplus money

available for stormwater and transport projects through Infrastructure Auckland

− 2003-206 Auckland Sustainable

Cities Programme partnership: Sustainable Communities program

‘Sustainable development project centered around stormwater mitigation’

Late 2000s

− 2008 Global economic

downturn − 2009 More conservative,

economically focused central government elected in New Zealand

− 2009 Local Government Act

Economic development agenda

rises in New Zealand

− Auckland governance to be

restructured through 2009 Local Government Act

− Waitakere City Council to be dissolved in late 2010

− Less money available for ‘soft’

stuff such as social and environmental programs

‘Economically beneficial sustainable development project’ and ‘Sustainable

catchment model’

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Importantly, the story of PTS’s making and remaking not only demonstrates that larger

social, ecological, economic, and political forces and processes do—as many such as

Whitehead (2003), and While et al (2004) suggest—influence and impose contingencies

upon urban sustainability interventions (see Section 2.4.2). It also, importantly, provides

strong evidence that such forces can create powerful conditions of possibility if properly

aligned, as discussed below.

7.3 Alignment: ‘an aligning of the stars’

In describing the making and development of PTS, most informants described Project

Twin Streams as the result of propitious ‘alignment’ and as the outcome of a certain

‘aligning of the stars’. In their words:

I firmly believe it is about alignment… it was an alignment of things. It was that vision, and it was those particular people, but it was also Sustainable Auckland, it was also blah blah blah. There’s a whole lot of components in there (Informant 16). It was a combination of those things: the right champion, the right personalities, the right time (Informant 14). At that time it was the right thing to be doing. The right place, the right time, sufficiently visionary people… an alignment of things (Informant 12).

As these informants described and as my findings suggest, PTS emerged from and has

progressed due possibilities created through the auspicious alignment of larger social,

economic, and institutional conditions, a variety of political projects, and the ‘right

people’ at the ‘right time’. The project came into being through the alignment of the Eco

City vision, WCC’s need to address the city’s stormwater issues, and the availability of

funding through IA; it blossomed into a sustainable development project through its

alignment with the ASCP and the New Zealand central government’s sustainable

development agenda; it has largely been stabilized by and expanded through alignments

with academia and other political projects such as Auckland’s ICMP process; and it may

be sustained into an uncertain future through the further development of its connection

with Auckland’s ICMP process and a new alignment with New Zealand’s rising political

mandate of ‘economic development’.

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As such, the example of Project Twin Streams strongly substantiates Bulkeley and

Bestill’s (2005) assertion that processes at multiple sites and scales of governance shape

local capacity and political will for sustainable development, and that they not only can

inhibit but can also enable moves toward urban sustainability. Much the same, it

corroborates Gibbs and Jonas’ claim that local urban sustainability interventions, if they

are to thrive, “must be located within a supportive and supranational framework” (2000:

310). Indeed, my findings speak to the critical role that forces and processes at all levels

play in shaping local efforts to increase urban sustainability, and attest to importance of

aligning these multilevel processes toward the common goal of ‘urban development that

contributes to increased global sustainability’ (see Section 2.4.2).

7.3.1 Alignment of co-constituted political programs

My findings also support the argument of Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron (2007, 2009)

and Lewis et al. (2008) that political programs—in this case urban sustainability political

programs—are dynamic configurations formed through tenuous alignments between

diverse, sometimes seemingly contradictory political projects (see Section 3.3.1.1). The

genealogy of PTS demonstrates that this project has not only been made and remade

through the coming together of certain political, economic, ecological, and social

conditions. It has also been formed and sustained through alignments with myriad

‘political projects’ such as Waitakere’s Eco City, New Zealand’s sustainable

development agenda and the related the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme, and

Auckland’s work around integrated catchment management planning. Further and much

the same, the project is now being safeguarded against an unfavorable change in the

political landscape through alignment with the seemingly adverse ‘political project’ of

New Zealand’s economic development agenda and the related restructuring of Auckland

governance.

It is important to note that PTS’s alignment with these various ‘political projects’

has influenced its developmental trajectory, some associations shaping PTS in small

ways, others in quite significant ways. For example, PTS’s original alignment with the

Eco City was often referred to as the source of the project’s quadruple bottom line

approach (Informant 3; Informant 6; Informant 9; Informant 12); its alignment with New

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Zealand’s sustainable development agenda and related ASCP was attributed with

allowing PTS to realize its sustainable development and community engagement

approach (Informant 2; Informant 6; Informant 16); its on-going alignment with

academia and research institutions was described as providing the project with the

credibility and political visibility that it needed to push the project forward and also as a

critical source of support in the current uncertain moment (Informant 9; Informant 14);

and PTS’s potential alignment with the new Auckland City government and the New

Zealand central government’s economic development agenda will undoubtedly shape the

project in its own way.20 Indeed, following Larner et al., it may be argued that PTS has

been made and remade “as much out of the cross-fertilization among diverse strategies,

projects, and experiments [as] from any prior ideological or structural-functional

coherence” (2007: 246). Additionally, as Larner et al. further argue, “These strategies,

projects, and experiments are co-constitutive” (2007: 246); PTS’s alignment with these

various projects has indeed proven to be co-constitutive, influencing not only the

trajectory of PTS but also these co-constitutive political projects. An overview of these

alignments—as identified in the conclusion to Chapter 6—and some of their ‘co-

constitutive’ effects is provided below in Table 9.

20 Interestingly, this alignment is in many ways is reflective of the ‘urban sustainability fix’ described by While et al (2004). Although a discussion of this finding is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is worth note that this new alignment—an attempt to reconcile the tension between economic and ecological interests—may potentially preclude PTS’s more radical aspirations for urban sustainability (While et al, 2004; Whitehead, 2003; see Section 2.4.4)

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Table 9: Overview of political projects that have been and /or are currently aligned with PTS and the co-constitutive effects of these alignments

‘Political projects’ aligned with PTS

Co-constitutive effects for PTS

Co-constitutive effects for other project

Waitakere City’s Eco City

Commitment

− Support of PTS’s quadruple

bottom line approach − Greater institutional support for

PTS

− ‘Flagship’ project for Eco City − Demonstration of the ‘Eco City

in Action’ − Recognition and publicity

New Zealand’s sustainable

development agenda

− Favorable political climate and discourse for a sustainable development approach

− Increased political support for PTS

− Demonstration project for sustainable development

− An example of sustainable development in action

Auckland Sustainable Cities

Programme— Sustainable

Communities program

− Funding for PTS’s quadruple bottom line and community engagement efforts

− Increased political visibility and credibility for PTS

− Demonstration project for the Sustainable Communities program

− Provided a case study of the community engagement approach

Academia and

Research

− Authorizing knowledge to support PTS’s approach

− Increased credibility and political visibility for PTS

− Technical and monitoring support

− A case study for stormwater management, community engagement, etc

− Research funding through WCC

− Attracts grants and other funding

Auckland Region Integrated

Catchment Management

Planning (ICMP) process

− Support for ‘sustainable catchment’ approach

− Increased political visibility − Positioning PTS as a possible

‘sustainable catchment’ model for the entire Auckland Region

− A leader in Auckland’s ICMP process; a demonstration project

− A potential case study for a ‘sustainable catchment’ approach

New Zealand’s economic

development agenda

− Situating PTS as an ‘economic benefit’

− Positioning PTS as a possible flagship project for the new ‘Super City’; new expansion opportunities

− A possible ‘flagship’ environmental/stormwater management project for the new Auckland Super City

Critically, my findings reveal that these alignments did not just happen. To the

contrary and very much congruent with the ideas of Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron (2007,

2009), Lewis et al. (2008), and Li (2005, 2007b) as discussed in Chapter 3, these

alignments are the product of on-going encounters, engagements, and the active work of

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agents. They have often emerged from serendipitous convergences but have also been

created and steered by actors at different spatial and temporal scales working to further

their own political projects and to achieve certain means. This is made readily evident in

the current moment of PTS’s development trajectory: as the previous chapter

demonstrates, the ‘PTS coalition’ is now actively working to transform the seemingly

unfavorable political climate change in New Zealand into conditions of possibility and to

create strategic alignments so as to sustain this project through challenging times.

Reflective of the entire developmental trajectory of PTS, this moment illustrates the

agency and hard work that has gone into making this project and keeping it flourishing—

as is further discussed below.

7.4 Agency: ‘making the stars align’

The experience of PTS provides strong evidence of the critical role that alignment plays

in supporting and enabling the making, sustaining, and success of urban sustainability

interventions and political programs. As suggested by informants and as discussed above,

this project has largely been the product of an auspicious ‘aligning of stars’. However, the

genealogy of PTS also evinces that it has not simply been a serendipitous ‘aligning of the

stars’ that has made and sustained this urban sustainability project. Rather, it appears that,

as highlighted throughout Chapter 6, the making and sustaining of PTS has been the

outcome of a ‘certain amount of serendipity blended with a lot of strategic opportunism’.

Indeed, my findings suggest that the stars have not simply fallen into place; they have

been made to align.

The genealogy of PTS reveals that, rather than simply the product of

serendipitous alignment, the emergence and development of this project have largely

been the result of the hard work and dedication of a certain key actors. As was made

evident in Chapter 6, the Eco City vision from which PTS emerged was the product of

the political agenda and hard work of Mayor Bob Harvey and a committed alliance of

‘left-wing, environmental type’ councilors. Much the same, the entire trajectory of PTS

has been steered by the vision and hard work of Tony Miguel and a core group of key

actors—a group that I have termed the ‘PTS coalition’. While certain conditions have

played a significant role in the making and development of PTS, it has been largely

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through the effort, opportunism, and strategic mobilization of certain discourses and ideas

on the behalf of these key agents that the ‘stars’ have been made to align. Indeed, it was

through the agency and effort of Bob Harvey and the Eco City alliance that the conditions

of emergence for PTS were made, and it was through the agency and hard work of the

PTS coalition that, following Li (2007b), PTS has been actively ‘assembled’ and

‘reassembled’ (see section 3.3.1.2). This conclusion was corroborated most informants

during interviews (Informant 2; Informant 3; Informant 6; Informant 8; Informant 11;

Informant 12; Informant 14; Informant 16).

In discussing the defining features of PTS’s development, multiple informants

observed that the people behind PTS have been ‘fantastically opportunistic’ (Informant

2), explaining that key agents from the PTS coalition have actively pursued and seized

opportunities to further PTS, to put the project in the spotlight, and to gain additional

financial and political support for it. Building on this, these informants further noted that

the people behind PTS have worked hard to create ‘strategic alignments’ and to ‘get as

much as possible’ out of those alignments (Informant 2; Informant 14; Informant 16). In

their words:

The people involved all of the way along have been quite opportunistic… They found me in the ARC as a friend and they capitalized on it and made the most of it (Informant 2). I think the Waitakere people were very much in the driving seats of influencing things…They were very smart in choosing strategic alignments and partners and then made sure they could get as much as possible out of those partners (Informant 16).

This defining ‘strategic opportunism’ (Informant 2; Informant 14) was not only heavily

reflected in my findings, but it was also, interestingly, embodied in interviews with

informants from within the original PTS coalition. As one such informant made known:

“I am a great believer in seizing opportunities when they occur. You cannot always make

them or predict them but somebody has got to seize them when they are there”

(Informant 3).

Further discussing the critical role of the PTS coalition in making and defining the

project, informants suggested that the development of the project has largely reflected the

‘ethos’ and ‘personalities’ of the PTS coalition (Informant 2; Informant 11; Informant 14;

Informant 16). Informants observed:

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[Their] ethos and values are coming through in the project…it really did reflect the values of the individuals…I definitely think that people used it for their own (Informant 2). I guess PTS evolved…it changes as it goes forward and I think that a lot of it is really due to the different people who have been involved. They all bring their own flavor (Informant 9).

Building on this, many informants indicated that the project’s developmental trajectory

has largely reflected the aspirations, agendas, and ‘personal crusades’ of certain

individuals who were part of the original PTS coalition (Informant 2; Informant 7;

Informant 9; Informant 11; Informant 14; Informant 16). In particular, informants traced

the heavy focus on community development and community engagement back to the

political motivation of certain handful of key people, saying:

We had a group manager who was very visionary and was very committed to wanting the community to take on this way of doing things…[this group manager] was critical to help us stay with the process and to keep people on board (Informant 7). It [the community engagement approach] was the result of the motivation of [a couple of particular people] who became the leaders of the project; they said ‘we need to bring in organized community!’ (Informant 8). [Two certain people] were probably the most influential in formulating the community connection part of Project Twin Streams (Informant 11).

In agreement with such observations, my findings show that the developmental

trajectory of PTS has largely been steered by the strategic opportunism of behalf of a

couple of key agents—the PTS coalition—and that it has reflected the personal political

projects of certain parties involved. As illustrated in the previous chapter, it was the hard

work and commitment of the Tony Miguel and PTS coalition and their desire to push the

Eco City commitment forward that this project into being; it was the PTS coalition’s

vision of a ‘quadruple bottom line’ approach an their strategic opportunism—as well as

the ‘community development’ bent of certain parties involved, as above-discussed—that

aligned PTS with the ASCP and thereby reassembled the project from a stormwater

project into a community engagement, sustainable development project; and it appears to

be this same defining commitment and opportunism on the behalf of the PTS coalition

that now drives the reassembling of PTS as an ‘economically beneficial sustainable

development project’ that is currently underway. This demonstrates that the project has

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not simply been born and sustained through a fortuitous ‘aligning of the stars’; rather, it

has been—as highlighted throughout in the previous chapter—a product of the strategic

mobilization of ideas, discourses, and opportunities on the behalf of a committed

coalition of people who have worked to make the stars align.

7.5 The politics of the possible in urban sustainability This study shows that PTS is embedded in and influenced by larger socioecological and

political-economic processes and that it has become entangled with myriad other political

projects—sometime intentionally, sometimes not. These various forces and political

projects have all influenced the developmental trajectory of PTS, each imposing

conditions and contingencies and co-constituting this urban sustainability political

program in its own way. Importantly, this example shows that these larger processes and

various political projects can, if auspiciously aligned, create significant conditions of

possibility for localized urban sustainability interventions. However, my results make

clear that the stars have not simply fallen into line; they have been made to align through

the hard work and political aspirations of agents and actors at multiple levels.

The findings from this study demonstrate that, as Larner et al. argue, political

programs “have different origins, engage diverse actors, are premised on distinctive

understandings of the problems in the current contexts, and operate at multiple spatialities

and temporalities” (2007: 223). This study makes evident that the making of PTS has not

simply been a linear, uni-dimensional process that has given rise to coherent, knowable

outcomes. It did not appear fully invented, nor has it been the rolling out of a fully

formed political agenda. To the contrary—and very much in agreement with the work of

Larner et al. (2007), Le Heron (2007, 2009), and Lewis et al. (2008) as discussed in

Chapter 3—it has and continues to be made and sustained through on-going

engagements, encounters, contingencies, and the active work of agents: in effect, it is

always emergent.

Much the same, this analysis of the making of PTS strongly supports Li’s (2005,

2007a, 2007b) assertion that the trajectories that political programs follow are largely

determined by different actors working at different spatial and temporal scales to draw

seemingly heterogeneous element together, to align them, and to sustain these alignments

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in the face of tension (see section 3.3.1.2). As demonstrated above, PTS is the product of

the efforts and aspirations of situated bodies who have and continue to work to pull

disparate elements together. Rather than being a manifestation of some prior

preconceived plan, PTS is the outcome of agency and struggle.

Building on this, my findings substantiate Li’s (2005, 2007a, 2007b) claims that

political programs are made and remade through a ‘diverse topography of power’ in

which parties of all descriptions have significant ‘power to act’ (see also Allen, 2003;

Chapter 3). Indeed, the forces that have shaped and have acted on PTS’s trajectory have

been myriad and have ranged from global and national shifts in discourses and political

agendas to the localized work of academics, community members, and other agents—

each underpinned by unique political motivations. At the same time, PTS has in its own

way influenced and co-constituted these contingent forces and political projects. For this

reason, PTS provides evidence of what Massey describes as the ‘politics of place beyond

place’. Demonstrating what she refers to as a ‘constitutive interdependence’, the example

of PTS shows that not only are local places and efforts recipients of the effects of global

forces, they are also the “origin and propagator of them too” (2007: 15; see section 3.4).

Drawing these insights together, I argue that the example of Project Twin Streams

provides strong evidence that urban sustainability interventions are, following Gibson-

Graham (2008), sites of significant potentiality and possibility. This case suggests that

urban sustainability interventions—like political programs in general—are always

emergent: they are spaces with room for significant political intervention, in which things

can always be done differently to different effects.

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8 CONCLUSION: MAKING ‘BETTER’ URBAN WORLDS AND THE POLITICS OF THE POSSIBLE IN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

8.1 Research trajectory, findings, and significance In this thesis, I examined critical thinking around the political nature of urban

sustainability and explored the politics and practices through which urban sustainability

interventions are made and governed. It is increasing argued that urban sustainability is

“fundamentally a political rather than a technical or design problem” (Braun, 2005a: 640;

Hanson and Lake, 2000), a conclusion that has inspired a vibrant discussion around the

political nature of urban sustainability interventions during the last decade. Critical

geography has contributed significantly to this discussion in recent years and has added

much to a more politically and theoretically robust understanding of urban sustainability.

However, as I concluded in Chapter 2, this critical geographic work has proffered little in

the way of a ‘seeds’ for more sustainable alternatives and has largely failed to inform our

knowledge of what politics and conditions of possibility give rise to and sustain

meaningful urban sustainability interventions.

This oversight is particularly problematic given that, as I argued in Chapter 3,

“social inquiry and its methods are productive: they (help to) make social realities and

social worlds. They do not simply describe the world as it is, but also enact it” (Law and

Urry, 2004: 390). Taking seriously the ‘world making’ power of academic research

(Gibson-Graham, 2008; Law and Urry, 2004; Chapter 3) but also seeking to get past

idealistic, apolitical notions or urban sustainability, I have provided a critical, politicized

yet hopeful analysis of the politics of urban sustainability in this thesis. I used the case

study of the urban sustainability intervention Project Twin Streams to examine what

politics and conditions of possibility give rise to and support meaningful urban

sustainability interventions. Reading for the politics of the possible, I drew on

governmentality notions around the making of the political programs—mainly ideas

around the co-constitution of political project and the practice of assemblage—to unpack

the experience of Project Twin Streams and to explore how this project emerged, through

what material and discursive political practices this project has been sustained, and to

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what effects. As stated in Chapter 5, my intention was to draw lessons from this case

study rather than to assess this project, to know whether it will succeed or fail, or to draw

universalizing conclusions from this example.

The findings from my research demonstrate that this urban sustainability

intervention is heavily embedded in larger social, ecological, economic, and political

processes. As I have shown, the emergence and governance of Project Twin Streams

have been—and continues to be—largely conditional upon and contingent to wider

political, economic, and institutional shifts. Thus, this study makes evident that, as

Whitehead’s argues:

the creation of sustainable cities is not simply a technocratic exercise in town planning and urban design, but is part of a wider set of socio-ecological processes of regulation…the sustainable city is a social, economic, and political construct (2003: 1202).

In so doing, this study provides evidence that—as argued by many of the commentators

discussed in Section 2.4.2—our consideration of urban sustainability interventions must

be ‘unbounded’. Indeed, the example of Project Twin Streams suggests that far greater

attention need be paid to the multi-level forces acting at different spatial and temporal

scales that influence such urban sustainability efforts and progress toward more

sustainable urban development.

However, as I argued in Chapter 7, the example of Project Twin Streams makes

evident that larger social, ecological, economic and political conditions do not simply

impose negative contingencies and pressures on localized urban sustainability efforts. To

the contrary, my study has shown that these larger forces and processes can come

together and align to create significant conditions of possibility. Indeed, Project Twin

Streams is in many ways the product of its auspicious alignment with wider political,

economic, and institutional processes; it is questionable whether the project would have

emerged and/or grown into what it has become without the contingencies created by and

the conditions imposed by these broader forces and discourses. Such a conclusion speaks

to the critical importance of aligning efforts, discourses, and processes at all levels

toward the common goal of urban development that contributes to increased global

sustainability. This necessitates that we develop a better understanding of how multi-level

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forces can be mobilized to create enabling conditions for localized urban sustainability

interventions and, similarly, that we work to align localized urban sustainability efforts

with larger scale processes.

In addition to being shaped through its alignment with larger political, economic,

and institutional processes, Project Twin Streams has also been formed and sustained

through its entanglement with myriad other co-constitutive political projects. My findings

demonstrate that these various alignments—whether strategic or not—have all influenced

Project Twin Streams’ developmental trajectory in their own ways. As I argued in the

previous chapter, this calls our attention to the reality that urban sustainability projects,

like all political projects and programs, are always co-constituted and emergent. To use

the words of Lewis et al.:

rather than simply invented or appearing fully formed, they emerge with particular conjunctures of events, ideas, enduring struggles, and emerging conditions of possibility…[they emerge] out of diverse projects, strategies and experiments which are co-constitutive, and through on-going encounters, engagements, contingencies, outcomes and the active work of agents (2008: 43-44).

This importantly illustrates the indeterminacy that defines the development of such

initiatives and importantly, as I argue in Chapter 7, makes evident the significant political

openings inherent in such efforts.

While this study has revealed the critical role of embeddedness and alignment in

the making and governance of this urban sustainability project, my findings strongly

indicate that Project Twin Streams cannot simply be understood as the outcome of a

fortuitous context, nor is it the simply the product of a serendipitous ‘aligning of the

stars’. Instead, Project Twin Streams appears to be the outcome of much effort and a

certain amount of strategic opportunism on the behalf of certain key agents. Project Twin

Streams has been actively ‘assembled’ and ‘reassembled’ (Li, 2007a; Chapter 3) through

the efforts of agents acting at different spatial and temporal scales, working to draw

seemingly heterogeneous, sometimes contradictory, elements together, to align them, and

to sustain these alignments in the face of tension. This urban sustainability project is the

manifestation of people’s hard work; it is reflective of their individual political agendas.

Importantly, this case study shows that, as was demonstrated in Chapters 6 and 7, through

the hard work of certain actors, even seemingly adverse situations can been morphed into

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conditions of possibility for such efforts. Indeed, this example suggests that the stars do

not simply fall into line to create and sustain such political projects; they are made to

align through agency and individual ‘power to act’.

Together, these conclusions indicate that: 1) urban sustainability interventions are

always political—they are inherently reflective of the personalities, political aspirations,

and individual motivations of the people involved; 2) given the key role that agency plays

in making and sustaining such projects, people may be as or more important than

contextual factors and/or political, economic, and institutional processes; and 3) the key

challenge in urban sustainability is to mobilize people, ideas, discourses, institutions, and

practices toward the realization of more sustainable urban worlds. As such, this case

study of the urban sustainability initiative Project Twin Streams demonstrates that,

although the political challenges may be many, it is possible to act to produce more

sustainable, ‘better’ urban worlds.

8.2 Limitations of this research As discussed in Section 5.2, this thesis has sought to produce ‘weak’ theory with the goal

of learning from the experience of Project Twin Streams rather than assessing this

project, comparing this intervention to other projects, or drawing any universal

conclusions from this case study (see also Section 3.2). This exploratory study has simply

worked to be open to what the ‘social experiment’ of Project Twin Streams could teach

us about the making of urban sustainability interventions and what politics are possible in

such projects. It is recognized that the experience of Project Twin Streams may not

translate everywhere; indeed, this thesis is based on a fundamental belief in situatedness,

contingency, and diversity, and the acknowledgement that—as I have argued throughout

this thesis—things can (and will) always be done differently to different effects.

However, it seems likely that the key themes and insights emerging from this study have

significant applicability elsewhere and may provide meaningful insight for future

research.

Similarly, I recognize that my findings and my interpretation of these findings are

a reflection of both the theoretical lens that I applied in this study and my subjectivity and

positionality as a researcher (as discussed in Chapter 5). Many other readings are

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possible, although I firmly believe that this reading has much to offer our understanding

of the politics of urban sustainability.

Fundamentally, I acknowledge that this thesis is an in-depth study into one small

aspect of the rather profound challenge of urban sustainability. That is all it can purport to

be. It is hoped that this thesis—a political project in its own right—may influence and co-

constitute other political projects and, in so doing, promote more hopeful geographies,

greater appreciation of the politics of the possible, and progress toward more sustainable,

‘better’ urban worlds.

8.3 Pathways forward and directions for future work The findings from this study identify several pathways forward for future research. As

above-mentioned, this study indicates that we need to unbounded our conceptualization

and consideration of urban sustainability interventions and that we must pay greater

attention to the way in which such projects are embedded in larger social, ecological,

economic, and political processes. Much the same, greater focus should be directed at

better understanding how these multi-level processes, forces, and discourses can be

aligned so as to create conditions that enable and encourage urban development that

contributes to global sustainability.

Importantly, this study indicates that we need to think more critically about how

urban sustainability interventions are made. This study provides evidence that urban

sustainability projects are always political projects: there are always people with their

own personalities, political agendas, and motivations behind these efforts. However, this

study also suggests that it is not enough to think critically and to call attention to the

political nature of such ventures; we must also look for political openings and

opportunities. We must not let our critical lenses blind us to the politics of the possible.

For this reason, I suggest that significantly more energy need be directed at illuminating

what conditions of possibility give rise to and enable meaningful progress toward

achieving urban development that contributes to greater global sustainability. Much the

same, greater emphasis need be paid to how actors and practices—both discursive and

material—can be mobilized to promote more sustainable urban development. In sum, I

argue that we need pay far greater attention to understanding how, and in what

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circumstances, dynamic, intertwined social, ecological, economic, and political change

contribute to urban development processes and outcomes that are more resilient,

sustainable, and socially just (see Leach et al., 2007).

8.4 Concluding thoughts

My concluding thoughts about this study are well summarized by a quote from Informant

18. In her words,

We need to delve into the political questions around these kinds of projects. It would be an interesting hypothetical question: 'If we were able to strip away the political layer, how would these projects fare?’ Better? Worse? How would they be different? I think these questions are good to keep in mind because they can prevent a predominance of negative criticism and analysis of political complexities from ruining constructive thoughts on how we can find solutions. In suggesting this, I am thinking largely about my attitude and experience at work, in which some days I think the political machine is breaking everything down and then other days I’m not sure how we would survive without it (Informant 18).

As this informant aptly argued, politics and political complexities can be seen to be

‘breaking everything down’; however, they may also provide the way forward toward

meaningful answers. We, as academics, we must be mindful of the performative, world

making power of our knowledge production and we must ‘prevent negative criticism and

analysis of political complexities from ruining constructive thoughts on how we can find

solutions.’ For as this study has shown, politics can be deployed to make meaningful

change, even the smallest actions can have meaningful implications, we all have the

power to act, and ‘better’ worlds are always possible.

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APPENDIX A: TABLE OF KEY ACRONYMS Acronym Full Title Description

ARC Auckland Regional Council The regional authority currently responsible for the greater Auckland Region

ASCP Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme

A three year program concerned with increasing the sustainability of the Auckland Region, running from mid-2003 to mid-2006 and involving a partnership among the Auckland Region’s seven local territorial authorities, ARC, and the central government’s DIA

ARH Auckland Regional Holdings An Auckland Region statutory body that replaced IA and is now responsible for administering funds previously allocated by IA

DIA Department of Internal Affairs A department of the New Zealand central government; one of the partners in the ASCP

LGA 1989 Local Government Act 1989 A New Zealand local government act responsible for a major restructuring of Auckland governance and for the creation of WCC and Waitakere City

LGA 2002 Local Government Act 2002 A New Zealand local government act that mandated local councils to engage local community and to place greater emphasis on sustainable development

LGA 2009 Local Government Act 2009

A New Zealand local government act that is responsible for the restructuring of Auckland Region governance that is currently underway and for the resultant dissolution of WCC

LTA Local Territorial Authority Local government body; there are currently seven LTAs in the Auckland Region, one of which is Waitakere

LTCCP Long-Term Council Community Plan

A plan developed by local council in conjunction with local community that outline community outcomes, as mandated by the LGA 2002

IA Infrastructure Auckland The statutory body through which PTS originally was granted funding; IA has since been dissolved and replaced by ARH

ICMP Integrated Catchment Management Plan

A plan laying out how stormwater will be managed in a given catchment or region

IWRMP Integrate Water Resource Management Plan

A plan laying out how stormwater will be managed in a given catchment or region

NZSDPOA New Zealand Sustainable development Programme of Action

The New Zealand central government’s program of action for sustainable development in New Zealand, developed in 2003

PTS Project Twin Streams The case study urban sustainability intervention in Waitakere City, New Zealand

Rio Rio Earth Summit The United Nations Earth Summit held in Rio De Janiero in 1992, from which Agenda 21 emerged

UN United Nations An international regulatory body

WCED World Conference on Environment and Development

A UN conference held in 1983 as a response to concern about the global state of the environment, from which the 1987 Bruntland Report was developed and the sustainable development discourse emerged

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