Targeting Sustainability

Targeting Sustainability: Environmental indicators and the greening of Chinese cities

Speaker: Alana Boland
Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto

Friday, November 21, 2008
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
208N – Seminar Room, North House
Munk Centre For International Studies
1 Devonshire Place

Register online http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?eventid=4197

In recent years there has been increasing emphasis on environmental sustainability as a key component of urban development strategies in Chinese cities. This shift to greener forms of urban development is occurring against the backdrop of intense interurban competition and is guided by government programs that track the progress of cities towards more sustainable forms of economic growth. These regulatory initiatives resemble target-setting regimes and other technologies of performance often associated with neoliberal governance. However, in the case of China, the function, and ultimately effects, of indicator-based approaches cannot be understood without reference to governing practices of the earlier socialist period. In this paper, I trace the history of environmental assessment programs directed at improving environmental performance at the city level, and examine some of the economic and political factors that have facilitated the development of these programs, and at times, constrained them.

Alana Boland is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Program in Planning at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on environmental governance and green developmentalism in China. Current projects include a study of state regulatory initiatives aimed at improving environmental conditions in cities and communities, as well as an archival-based study of water management in Chinese cities during the 1950s and 60s.