Yonn Dierwechter Bücher

In recent years "smartness" has risen as a buzzword to characterise novel urban policy and development patterns. As a result of this, debates around what "smart" actually means have emerged within urban and regional studies. This book explores changes in discourse, rationality and responses of smartness through the theme of 'transition'. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction, 1. The Smart Turn: Tracing Transitions to City-Regional Smartness, 2. Economic Factors in Shaping City Regionalism and 'Smartness', 3. Political Factors in Shaping City Regionalism and 'Smartness', 4. Going for 'smartness': reframing city-regionalism, 5. Beyond Post-Fordist Regimes: Smart City-Regionalism in North America and Western Europe, 6. Beyond Post-Authoritarian Regimes: Smart City-Regionalism in Eastern Europe and South Africa, 7. Conclusions: Smart transitions in city-regionalism

Focusing on Seattle's climate policy, the book examines the city's current initiatives and future challenges against its historical, bio-regional, and metropolitan backdrop. It provides insights into how local policies are shaped by the city's unique environmental context and offers a comprehensive look at the interplay between past decisions and future sustainability efforts.

The recent rise of cities in global environmental politics has stimulated remarkable debates about sustainable urban development and the geopolitics of a changing world order no longer defined by tightly bordered national regimes. This book explores this major theme by drawing on approaches that document the diverse histories and emergent geographies of “internationalism.” It is no longer possible, the book argues, to analyze the global politics of the environment without considering its various urbanization(s), wherein multiple actors are reforming, reassembling and adapting to nascent threats posed by global ecological decay. The ongoing imposition and abrasion of different world orders—Westphalian and post-Westphalian—further suggests we need a wider frame to capture new kinds of urbanized spaces and global green politics. The book will appeal to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in global sustainability, urban development, planning, politics, and international affairs. Case studies and grounded examples of green internationalism in urban action ultimately explore how select city-regions like Cape Town, Los Angeles, and Melbourne are trying to negotiate and actually work through this postulated dilemma.

This book investigates the urban geographies of “smart” metropolitan regionalism in the Greater Seattle area, focusing on the interplay between smart growth planning strategies and the spaces of work, home, and mobility. It examines Seattle within the broader context of the Puget Sound region's space-economy and multi-scaled policy framework, addressing the “intercurrence” of city-regional “ordering.” These concepts reflect the efforts to foster smarter regional development while highlighting the societal and institutional tensions that arise, particularly regarding social equity. Key themes include the historical path-dependencies of uneven economic and social development between Tacoma-Pierce County and Seattle-King County, current job patterns across wage levels, and the evolving spatial and social structure of residential changes related to class and race. Additionally, the book discusses transit trends and new urban spaces aimed at reducing highway congestion and car dependency. Greater Seattle is portrayed as a significant US urban region grappling with the quest for a more sustainable order. This historically-sensitive, theoretically-informed, and empirically relevant work appeals to scholars and students in regional planning, urban geography, political science, sustainability studies, urban sociology, and public policy.