Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy

This analysis of U.S. environmental policy offers a conceptual framework that serves as a valuable roadmap to the array of laws, programs, and approaches developed over the last four decades. Combining case studies and theoretical discussion, the book views environmental policy in the context of three epochs: the rise of command-and-control federal regulation in the 1970s, the period of efficiency-based reform efforts that followed, and the more recent trend toward sustainable development and integrated approaches at local and regional levels. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the new approaches and places these experiments within the larger framework of an emerging trend toward community sustainability.

Toward Sustainable Communities assesses environmental policy successes and failures at the subnational, regional, and state levels and offers eight case studies of policy arenas in which transformations have been occurring—from air and water pollution control and state and local climate change policy to open space preservation, urban growth, and regional ecosystem management. It discusses the various meanings of sustainability and whether the concept can serve as a foundation for a new era of environmental policy. The second edition has been substantially updated, with five new chapters (including the chapter on climate change) and all other chapters revised and shortened. It is suitable as a primary or secondary text for environmental policy courses and as a resource for scholars and policymakers.

Contributors: Elisa Barbour, Michele M. Betsill, Daniel J. Fiorino, Marc Gaden, Lamont C. Hempel, Michael E. Kraft, William D. Leach, Mark Lubell, Daniel A. Mazmanian, Nicole Nakagawa, Kent E. Portney, Daniel Press, Paul A. Sabatier, Barry G. Rabe, Michael B. Teitz

American and Comparative Environmental Policy series

Daniel A. Mazmanian is Bedrosian Chair in Governance and Director of the John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise at the University of Southern California. Michael E. Kraft is Professor of Political Science and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.