Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College Geography Honors Projects Geography Department 4-25-2018 "From the Neighborhood Up!": Neighborhood Sustainability Certification Frameworks and the New Urban Politics of Scale Alex J. Ramiller Macalester College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/geography_honors Part of the Human Geography Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Ramiller, Alex J., ""From the Neighborhood Up!": Neighborhood Sustainability Certification Frameworks and the New Urban Politics of Scale" (2018). Geography Honors Projects. 56. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/geography_honors/56 This Honors Project - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Geography Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Geography Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “From the Neighborhood Up!” Neighborhood Sustainability Certification Frameworks and the New Urban Politics of Scale Alexander Ramiller April 25, 2018 Advisor: Laura Smith Department of Geography Macalester College Saint Paul, Minnesota Abstract Urban sustainability goals are closely tied to the current political context, in which the imperative to attract highly mobile global capital frequently steers the objectives of local government. In this paper, I argue for the incorporation of the neighborhood scale into contemporary understandings of “local” or “urban” sustainability policy, emphasizing the potential for multi-scalar certification frameworks to subvert the predominant global- local relationship. By shifting the conceptualization and implementation of sustainability from globally dependent urban regimes to a diverse array of discrete urban communities, neighborhood-scale initiatives are able to draw greater attention to issues of social equity, environmental justice, and spatially uneven development. At the same time, the ability for those initiatives to operate within (inter)national certification frameworks provides them with guidance, greater legitimacy, and opportunities for knowledge-sharing. I explore this idea through an examination of two neighborhood-scale sustainability certification frameworks: the well-established “LEED for Neighborhood Development” certification that uses a points-based framework to evaluate the sustainability of neighborhood redevelopment designs; and the “EcoDistricts” framework, which uses a general set of “imperatives” to evaluate neighborhood sustainability. Through quantitative analysis, I find that neighborhoods participating in both of these frameworks are at potential risk of gentrification. Through case studies and empirical analysis, I find that certification frameworks and neighborhood-scale projects form a mutually constitutive relationship in which interpretations of sustainability and social equity are generated by neighborhood stakeholders, codified through certification, and evolve through knowledge-sharing and local adaptation. i Acknowledgements I must begin by extending the sincerest gratitude to the members of my Honors Thesis Committee, each of whom made invaluable contributions both to this research project and to my undergraduate experience. I would first like to thank my thesis advisor, Laura Smith, for her invaluable support, encouragement, and guidance throughout this process, even when my project unexpectedly turned in a more qualitative direction. I would also like to thank my academic advisor Dan Trudeau, who first introduced me to the discipline of Geography and provided me with indispensable advice on conducting the qualitative and case study portions of this research. Finally, I would like to thank Patrick Schmidt from the Political Science Department, who provided me with the incredible opportunity to join him on a research project in Denmark almost two years ago that provided me with direct inspiration for this project. In addition, I would like to acknowledge all of the practitioners who agreed to speak with me for this project, as it was their participation and their insights that made this research project possible. On that note, I want to extend special thanks to I-Chun Catherine Chang for providing me with a crucial contact at the United States Green Building Council. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends for their support and advice, and the entire Macalester Geography Department for being the best academic home that any student could ask for. ii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1: CONTEXTUALIZING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY ........................................ 1 CHAPTER 2: SUSTAINABILITY AND THE NEW URBAN POLITICS OF SCALE .......... 8 THE NEW LOCALISM AND URBAN SUSTAINABILITY .................................................................... 8 Policy Mobilities and Multi-Local Networks ......................................................................... 11 THE NEW URBAN POLITICS OF SCALE ........................................................................................ 13 The New Politics of Scale ....................................................................................................... 15 The New Urban Politics ......................................................................................................... 16 The New Environmental Politics of Urban Development ...................................................... 19 NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICAL ECOLOGY ....................................................................................... 21 Uneven Geographies of Neighborhood Development ........................................................... 22 Eco-Gentrification ................................................................................................................. 24 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 26 CHAPTER 3: INTRODUCING NEIGHBORHOOD CERTIFICATION FRAMEWORKS 28 THE NEIGHBORHOOD SCALE ...................................................................................................... 29 CERTIFICATION FRAMEWORKS ................................................................................................... 30 BACKGROUND FOR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ........................................................................... 34 LEED for Neighborhood Development .................................................................................. 35 EcoDistricts ............................................................................................................................ 37 CHAPTER 4: ADVANTAGES OF CERTIFICATION FRAMEWORKS ............................. 40 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................................... 40 GUIDING FRAMEWORK ................................................................................................................ 41 BRAND IDENTITY ........................................................................................................................ 46 GOVERNANCE .............................................................................................................................. 51 iii KNOWLEDGE-SHARING NETWORKS ........................................................................................... 58 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER 5: GEOGRAPHIES OF CERTIFICATION FRAMEWORKS ............................ 66 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................................... 67 Project Boundaries ................................................................................................................ 67 Census Data ........................................................................................................................... 69 Statistical Techniques ............................................................................................................ 74 GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT .......................................................................................................... 75 LEED-ND ............................................................................................................................... 75 EcoDistricts ............................................................................................................................ 76 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME .................................................................................................... 78 RACIAL DEMOGRAPHICS ............................................................................................................. 82 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................................. 85 CHAPTER 6: PORTLAND CASE STUDIES ............................................................................ 88 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................................... 88 PORTLAND’S SUSTAINABILITY REGIME ...................................................................................... 90 SOUTH WATERFRONT CENTRAL DISTRICT ................................................................................