Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Summer 8-1-2017 Knowing Nature in the City: Comparative Analysis of Knowledge Systems Challenges Along the 'Eco- Techno' Spectrum of Green Infrastructure in Portland & Baltimore Annie Marissa Matsler Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Sustainability Commons, and the Urban Studies Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Matsler, Annie Marissa, "Knowing Nature in the City: Comparative Analysis of Knowledge Systems Challenges Along the 'Eco-Techno' Spectrum of Green Infrastructure in Portland & Baltimore" (2017). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 3767. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.5651 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Knowing Nature in the City: Comparative Analysis of Knowledge Systems Challenges Along the ‘Eco-Techno’ Spectrum of Green Infrastructure in Portland & Baltimore by Annie Marissa Matsler A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies Dissertation Committee: Connie P. Ozawa, Chair Thaddeus R. Miller, Co-Chair Vivek Shandas Jennifer L. Morse Portland State University 2017 © 2017 Annie Marissa Matsler Abstract Green infrastructure development is desired in many municipalities because of its potential to address pressing environmental and social issues. However, despite technical optimism, institutional challenges create significant barriers to effective green infrastructure design, implementation, and maintenance. Institutional challenges stem from the disparate scales and facility types that make up the concept of green infrastructure, which span from large-scale natural areas to small engineered bioswales. Across these disparate facilities 1) different performance metrics are used, 2) different institutions have jurisdiction, and, 3) facility types are differentially classified as assets, producing epistemological and ontological variegation across the spectrum of green infrastructure that must be negotiated within and across municipal institutions. This has led to knowledge challenges that constrain and shape facility design, implementation, maintenance, and – ultimately – performance on-the-ground. Here, the eco-techno spectrum is developed to highlight the different degree to which biological entities (e.g. plants, microbes) are incorporated as infrastructural components in facilities; this inclusion presents a major knowledge challenge to green infrastructure, namely it brings biological and ecological knowledge into traditionally engineering-dominated decision-making spaces where it does not easily fit procedures for defining, measuring, or valuing existing facility component types. Therefore, municipal institutions have created and vetted new practices, protocols, and institutional structures to appropriately implement and manage green infrastructure. i The institutionalization of green infrastructure is examined in this dissertation using knowledge systems analysis in two comparative case studies conducted in Portland and Baltimore. Discourse analysis provides ‘thick’ description of knowledge systems dynamics within and between different municipal departments in each city; a follow-up Q-method survey is used to further examine these qualitative results and explore the subjectivities that underlie the various ways of ‘knowing’ green infrastructure in the city. ii Acknowledgements I am indebted to the hard-working people in the City of Portland and the City of Baltimore who have made it their career to serve and improve the cities in which they live. This dissertation is about, and for, you. I thank you for sharing your time, your expertise, and your cities with me. I am grateful for the guidance and constructive criticism of my dissertation committee, especially my dissertation chair, Thad Miller. The enthusiasm my entire committee showed for this research helped me get through the more challenging moments of the PhD process and their feedback and mentorship throughout my time at PSU made me the researcher I am today. I am also forever grateful for the advice of Vivek Shandas, who in 2010 recommended that I apply for the Ecosystem Services supporting Urbanizing Regions (ESUR) IGERT program at PSU. Over the course of my PhD program, the ESUR IGERT program became more than financial support of my academic endeavors; the passionate group of scholars in this program became my intellectual family. I am grateful for the support of PI’s Elise Granek, David Ervin, and Darrell Brown, and the phenomenal core faculty team leading the ESUR IGERT. They led by example, showing me interdisciplinary research like I had never seen before. And I would not have survived my dissertation without the amazing students in the IGERT program who inspired me at every turn. Many thanks to the C4SI3 crew, Restoration Club, and Sarissa for your continued intellectual comradery. I can’t wait to see what we collaborate on next! iii I am grateful to Alan Yeakley for bringing me on board the Blue-Green Cities CWFA project. I learned a great deal about the research process from the exceedingly supportive Topic Group 4, led by ‘social beard’ Glyn Everett. I am likewise incredibly honored to have been included in the UREx SRN project as a student through the mentorship of Thad Miller. Thank you, Thad and Alan, for these opportunities; they expanded my mind and informed the path of my dissertation research. I would like to thank Fletcher Beaudoin and the Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS) at PSU for their financial and project management support throughout my PhD process. The ISS projects I participated in moved my dissertation research forward by leaps and bounds, and helped my research remain closely connected to practice on-the-ground. It is also customary to thank one’s family for their support through this process. But it feels strange now that I am writing this; how can I say enough to thank my mom and dad on a piece of paper? They have supported me through a staggering 25 years of schooling, moves across the country and home again…and again, and counseled me through the emotional minefield that is a career spent in one’s mind. I appreciate you both more than you know. I am also exceedingly grateful that my husband went through this process before me, and therefore did not leave me at any number of the moments in the PhD when any reasonable person would have thrown in the towel. Thank you, KC, for your patience, your silliness, your cooking, your support, and most importantly, your unflinching love. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................. viii Dissertation Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Using ‘eco-techno’ hybridity of green infrastructure to examine the knkowledge systems’ challenges of urban nature management ................................... 8 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 8 Theoretical Background ................................................................................................ 29 Conceptual Framing ...................................................................................................... 50 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 59 Chapter 2: Comparison of knowledge systems supporting green infrastructure in Portland and Baltimore: differentiation across the eoc-techno spectrum ................. 61 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 61 Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 63 Contributions................................................................................................................. 64 Case Context ................................................................................................................. 66 Methods......................................................................................................................... 70 Results ........................................................................................................................... 79 Discussion ................................................................................................................... 101 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 112 Chapter 3: Making ‘green’ fit in a ‘grey’ accounting system: valuing urban nature as