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Policies, goals and objectives


European cities were widely considered to have made more advances in sustainability than North American ones, a 2011 comparison found dramatic success stories in Canada and the US, narrowing if not closing the gap (EIU 2011; Beatley 2012).


In North America there is growing recognition of the fact that many of the most promising advances in environmental response arise from the creative melding of multiple elements of the policy toolkit, and often in ways that have never been used before. As a result, there is heightened interest in sustained efforts to enhance enabling conditions of such policy innovation. For example, investment in methodological research and analytical tools that facilitate natural capital accounting implementation, contributes to the increased resource stewardship, transparency, accountability, and understanding of risk. Likewise, investment in data and information infrastructure, including the legal and policy frameworks that support such infrastructure, facilitates far- reaching activities that seek to leverage the power of data and information for environmental goals.


Cities are increasingly the centres of dynamic innovation regarding


environmental policy in North America.


Recent years have seen a heightened attention on urban environmental policy, characterized increasingly by bold efforts to tackle some of the most challenging elements of the sustainability agenda.


Cities are proving themselves capable of approaching difficult issues in pragmatic and constructive ways, in contrast to the factionalism and polarization that has come to characterize much of the national-scale environmental policy landscape. This contrast between national polarization and urban pragmatism is consistent with a general finding that urban politics are comparatively nonpartisan (Ferreira and Gyourko 2009). Most US cities conduct elections on a nonpartisan basis; of the 30 largest cities, only 8 conduct partisan-based elections (NLC 2015).


In addition to having a favorable political climate, in general, cities also often have a favorable set of policy instruments that are well-suited to the challenging cluster of sustainability


problems because of the difficulties and complexities that bedevil the search for solutions. To a greater extent than national governments, they can coordinate action and investment across multiple sectors; can sustain long-term searches for fair trade-offs and effective policy designs; and can engage in detailed place-based planning.


Innovative approaches to urban infrastructure challenges


Cities serve as experimental locations for the practical expression of sustainability-centred policies and progressive adaptation regimes (Whitehead 2013; Betsill 2001). Threats relating to urban ecological security have prompted cities to respond in innovative ways to mitigate future ecological constraints and protect their social and economic interests. This represents a shift away from conventional wisdom that perceives resource constraints as limiting factors in growth, and instead focuses on a systematic framework recognizing the need to appropriately prepare for an anticipated future (Hodson and Marvin 2009). Cities are distinguished by their abilities and capacities to implement desired change.


Modern cities are often challenged with the problem of surface water runoff due to the impermeable surfaces covering vast urban spaces (Spirn 1984). For example, the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain can cause the city’s aging combined sewer system to discharge significant volumes of untreated sewage and rainfall into waterways (Bauers 2009). To respond to this urban infrastructure challenge, Philadelphia developed the first and only EPA-approved green infrastructure plan that aims to convert 34 per cent of existing impermeable surfaces within the combined sewer drainage areas to “Greened Acres” by 2036, and saves USD 5.6 billion in the process by avoiding the traditional grey infrastructure route.


Philadelphia’s “Green City, Clean Waters” programme is a green stormwater infrastructure project with a “triple bottom line effect,” providing for various environmental, social, and economic benefits. It is estimated that that this plan will offset 1.5 billion pounds of carbon annually, equivalent to removing 3 400 cars from roads, in addition to


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