IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i9p4721-d541781.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability in City-Regionalism as Emergent Practice: The Case of the BRICS

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Harrison

    (School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa)

Abstract

Sustainability concerns transgress jurisdictional boundaries compelling multi-scalar and inter-jurisdictional responses. The city-region is one of the scales at which governance actors may mobilise for sustainability and this is now recognised in literatures on integrated food systems, for example. However, within the mainstream debates on city-regions, sustainability as a motivation for inter-jurisdictional governance is still given scant attention. This paper considers the extent to which sustainability is present as a driver towards city-region governance, using countries within the still underexplored BRICS cluster as cases studies. The paper shows that in practice the connection between environmental sustainability and city regionalism remains mainly limited and fractious. In all cases, however, there are emergent connections which offer the potential for stronger connections. Most importantly, public reaction to a mounting environmental crisis in the BRICS is obliging the actors of governance, concerned with sustaining their public legitimacy, to establish or strengthen inter-jurisdictional and collaborative relationships across city-regions. There are however significant limits to these endeavours, especially where levels of social trust are low, or where sustainability problems are rooted within unsustainable national growth paths.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Harrison, 2021. "Sustainability in City-Regionalism as Emergent Practice: The Case of the BRICS," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-19, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:9:p:4721-:d:541781
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/9/4721/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/9/4721/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonie Janssen-Jansen & Thomas Hutton, 2011. "Rethinking the Metropolis: Reconfiguring the Governance Structures of the Twenty-first-century City-region," International Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 201-215.
    2. Alison Blay-Palmer & Guido Santini & Marielle Dubbeling & Henk Renting & Makiko Taguchi & Thierry Giordano, 2018. "Validating the City Region Food System Approach: Enacting Inclusive, Transformational City Region Food Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-23, May.
    3. Jean-Paul D. Addie & Roger Keil, 2015. "Real Existing Regionalism: The Region between Talk, Territory and Technology," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 407-417, March.
    4. Marielle Dubbeling & Guido Santini & Henk Renting & Makiko Taguchi & Louison Lançon & Juan Zuluaga & Luca De Paoli & Alexandra Rodriguez & Verónica Andino, 2017. "Assessing and Planning Sustainable City Region Food Systems: Insights from Two Latin American Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-15, August.
    5. Woodhouse, P. & Muller, M., 2017. "Water Governance—An Historical Perspective on Current Debates," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 225-241.
    6. Rebecca Neaera Abers & Margaret E. Keck, 2006. "Muddy Waters: The Political Construction of Deliberative River Basin Governance in Brazil," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 601-622, September.
    7. Leonid Limonov, 2013. "St. Petersburg Metropolitan Region: Problems of Planning Coordination and Spatial Development," ERSA conference papers ersa13p70, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Michael Neuman & Angela Hull, 2009. "The Futures of the City Region," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(6), pages 777-787.
    9. Andrew E.G. Jonas & Kevin Ward, 2007. "Introduction to a Debate on City‐Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 169-178, March.
    10. Kevin Ward & Andrew E G Jonas, 2004. "Competitive City-Regionalism as a Politics of Space: A Critical Reinterpretation of the New Regionalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(12), pages 2119-2139, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mattila, Hanna & Heinilä, Aleksi, 2022. "Soft spaces, soft planning, soft law: Examining the institutionalisation of city-regional planning in Finland," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Buser, 2014. "Democratic Accountability and Metropolitan Governance: The Case of South Hampshire, UK," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(11), pages 2336-2353, August.
    2. Raimbault, Juste & Le Néchet, Florent, 2021. "Introducing endogenous transport provision in a LUTI model to explore polycentric governance systems," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    3. Pauline McGuirk & Robyn Dowling, 2011. "Governing Social Reproduction in Masterplanned Estates," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2611-2628, September.
    4. Cattaneo, Andrea & Adukia, Anjali & Brown, David L. & Christiaensen, Luc & Evans, David K. & Haakenstad, Annie & McMenomy, Theresa & Partridge, Mark & Vaz, Sara & Weiss, Daniel J., 2022. "Economic and social development along the urban–rural continuum: New opportunities to inform policy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    5. Simon Berner & Hartmut Derler & René Rehorska & Stephan Pabst & Ulrike Seebacher, 2019. "Roadmapping to Enhance Local Food Supply: Case Study of a City-Region in Austria," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-16, July.
    6. Robert Huggins & Nick Clifton, 2011. "Competitiveness, Creativity, and Place-Based Development," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(6), pages 1341-1362, June.
    7. David Waite & Gillian Bristow, 2019. "Spaces of city-regionalism: Conceptualising pluralism in policymaking," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(4), pages 689-706, June.
    8. Roger Keil & Jean-Paul D. Addie, 2015. "‘It's Not Going to be Suburban, It's Going to be All Urban’: Assembling Post-suburbia in the Toronto and Chicago Regions," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 892-911, September.
    9. Harrison, John, 2012. "Towards the new "regional world"?," Arbeitsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Growe, Anna & Heider, Katharina & Lamker, Christian & Paßlick, Sandra & Terfrüchte, Thomas (ed.), Polyzentrale Stadtregionen - Die Region als planerischer Handlungsraum, volume 3, pages 10-21, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    10. Mariana Filipe & Angela Lomba & João Pradinho Honrado & Andreia Saavedra Cardoso, 2023. "City-Region Food Systems and Biodiversity Conservation: The Case Study of the Entre-Douro-e-Minho Agrarian Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-23, March.
    11. Allen J. Scott, 2019. "City-regions reconsidered," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(3), pages 554-580, May.
    12. Koen van der Gaast & Eveline van Leeuwen & Sigrid Wertheim-Heck, 2020. "City-Region Food Systems and Second Tier Cities: From Garden Cities to Garden Regions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-14, March.
    13. Yanlin Zhen & Dehao Shi & Yanan Lu, 2023. "The Impact of Regional Integration Strategies on the Formation of City Regions and Its Agglomeration Shadow: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-16, May.
    14. Juan Miguel Kanai, 2014. "Capital of the Amazon Rainforest: Constructing a Global City-region for Entrepreneurial Manaus," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(11), pages 2387-2405, August.
    15. Rimjhim M. Aggarwal & LaDawn Haglund, 2019. "Advancing Water Sustainability in Megacities: Comparative Study of São Paulo and Delhi Using a Social-Ecological System Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-30, September.
    16. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    17. Simin Yan & Anna Growe, 2022. "Regional Planning, Land-Use Management, and Governance in German Metropolitan Regions—The Case of Rhine–Neckar Metropolitan Region," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-24, November.
    18. Caroline Patsias & Anne Latendresse & Laurence Bherer, 2013. "Participatory Democracy, Decentralization and Local Governance: the Montreal Participatory Budget in the light of ‘Empowered Participatory Governance’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(6), pages 2214-2230, November.
    19. van Wijk, Michel & van Bueren, Ellen & te Brömmelstroet, Marco, 2014. "Governing structures for airport regions: Learning from the rise and fall of the ‘Bestuursforum’ in the Schiphol airport region," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 139-150.
    20. Hall, Stephen & Foxon, Timothy J., 2014. "Values in the Smart Grid: The co-evolving political economy of smart distribution," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 600-609.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:9:p:4721-:d:541781. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.