Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously

“A welcome corrective to the conventional wisdom about the relationship between sustainability and economic development. The first edition has become essential reading for students and practitioners of urban politics and environmental policy. In this thoroughly revised second edition Portney hones his arguments and updates his evidence to provide a road map for the next generation of sustainable cities. An essential read!” – Richard C. Feiock, Augustus B. Turnbull Professor of Public Administration and the Jerry Collins Eminent Scholar Chair, Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University “In this extensively revised edition of his pioneering 2003 book on sustainable cites, Kent Portney has written a penetrating study of what a difference a decade has made in the building sustainable cities and what progress has been achieved in the scholarly literature on the theory and practice of urban sustainability in America. Portney not only combines his original approach to indexing the extent to which select American cities have taken sustainable city development seriously with new modeling techniques to explain why some cities are leaders in this continuing urban movement; he further updates earlier qualitative case studies of this expanding phenomenon. The result is a book that takes sustainable city studies to a new level, establishing him (again) as one of the premier students of this critical research and policy topic.” – Ernest J. Yanarella, Chair and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky, and coauthor of The City as Fulcrum of Global Sustainability “In Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously, Kent Portney reaffirms his reputation as the nation’s foremost empiricist in explaining the urban sustainability movement in the U.S. Whether you’re a policy maker, professional, student or activist, you need to read this book if you want to understand how cities like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco have translated sometimes abstract concepts into practical and effective policy solutions in sustainable land use, energy, and transportation.” – Matt Slavin, President, Sustainability Consulting Group and editor, Sustainability in America’s Cities

Kent E. Portney is Professor and Senior Fellow in the Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously (MIT Press).

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