Recent decades have witnessed a significant transformation in strategies of urban environmental governance as authority has shifted from statist command-and-control systems to more horizontal, networked forms of governance-beyond-the-state. In the USA the changing nature of state authority over urban-regional planning processes has been particularly dramatic in metropolitan regions promoting ‘smart-growth’ agendas. Smart-growth strategies address regional planning and land-development concerns through market-based incentive programs aimed at increasing development densities and coordinating other land-management priorities. This paper explores the scalar politics through which smart-growth policies in the Greater Boston region of Massachusetts (USA) are being constructed and contested. In this region the state of Massachusetts has used incentive programs, new forms of regulation, and public-private coalitions to implement a smart-growth agenda that seeks to ameliorate the region's housing crisis and sustain its pool of knowledge-economy workers, but these programs also challenge the traditional authority of local communities in governing land-use decisions. Crucial to this assertion of land-management authority at the state scale has been the legacies of past forms of authority and land management, the ability of the state to exploit the positionalities of key actors associated with the smart-growth agenda, and the role of crises (in housing, congestion) in making increased state control more palatable.
CoxKR, 1998, “Spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or: Looking for local politics”Political Geography171–23
11.
CoxKR, 2009, “Rescaling the state in question”Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society2107–121
12.
CoxKR, 2011, “Commentary. From the new urban politics to the new metropolitan politics”Urban Studies482661–2671
13.
DeNormandieJ, 2009, “Losing ground: Beyond the footprint”, Massachusetts Audubon Society, Boston, MA
14.
DownsA, 2005, “Smart growth: Why we discuss it more than we do it”Journal of the American Planning Association71367–380
15.
GrahamSMarvinS, 2001Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (Routledge, London)
16.
HaeuberR, 1999, “Sprawl tales: Maryland's Smart Growth Initiative and the evolution of growth management”Urban Ecosystems3131–147
17.
HarveyD, 1989, “From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transformation of urban governance in late capitalism”Geografiska Annaler71B3–17
18.
JessopB, 1990State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in their Place (Polity Press, Cambridge)
19.
JessopB, 2002, “Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: A state-theoretical perspective”Antipode34452–472
20.
JonasAEG, 2012, “Region and place: Regionalism in question”Progress in Human Geography36263–272
21.
JonasAEGGibbsDWhileA, 2011, “The new urban politics as a politics of carbon control”Urban Studies482537–2554
22.
JonesMWardK, 2002, “Excavating the logic of British urban policy: Neoliberalism as the ‘crisis of crisis-management’”Antipode34479–500
23.
KeilRMahonR, (Eds), 2009Leviathan Undone? Towards a Political Economy of Scale (UBC Press, Vancouver)
24.
KlingROlinSPosterM, 1991, “The emergence of postsuburbia: An introduction”, in Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War Two Eds KlingROlinSPosterM, (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA) pp 1–30
25.
KruegerRGibbsD, 2008, “‘Third wave’ sustainability? Smart growth and regional development in the USA”Regional Studies421263–1274
26.
LagendijkA, 2007, “The accident of the region: A strategic relational perspective on the construction of the region's significance”Regional Studies411193–1208
27.
LipietzA, 1994, “The national and the regional: Their autonomy vis-a-vis the capitalist world crisis”, in Transcending the State–Global Divide Eds PalanRGillsB, (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO) pp 23–44
28.
MacdonaldSKeilR, 2012“The Ontario greenbelt: Shifting the scales of the sustainability fix?”The Professional Geographer64 (2) 125–145
29.
MacKinnonD, 2011, “Reconstructing scale: Towards a new scalar politics”Progress in Human Geography3521–36
30.
MacKinnonDShawJ, 2010, “New state spaces, agency and scale: Devolution and the regionalisation of transport governance in Scotland”Antipode421226–1252
31.
MacLeodGGoodwinM, 1999, “Space, scale and state strategy: Rethinking urban and regional governance”Progress in Human Geography23503–527
MansfieldB, 2005, “Beyond rescaling: Reintegrating the ‘national’ as a dimension of scalar relations”Progress in Human Geography29458–473
34.
MansfieldB, 2007, “Articulation between neoliberal and state-oriented environmental regulation: Fisheries privatization and endangered species protection”Environment and Planning A391926–1942
35.
MartinRSunleyP, 2003, “Deconstructing clusters: Chaotic concept or policy panacea?”Journal of Economic Geography35–35
36.
Maryland Department of Planning, 1997Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation InitiativeMaryland Department of Planning, Annapolis, MD
37.
MolotchH, 1976, “City as a growth machine: Toward a political-economy of place”American Journal of Sociology82309–322
38.
NeumannRP, 2009, “Political ecology: Theorizing scale”Progress in Human Geography33398–406
39.
OrfieldM, 2002American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC)
40.
PaasiA, 2010, “Regions are social constructs, but who or what ‘constructs’ them? Agency in question”Environment and Planning A422296–2301
PeckJATickellA, 1992, “Local modes of social regulation? Regulation theory, Thatcherism and regional development”Geoforum23347–364
43.
PhelpsNAWoodAM, 2011, “The new post-suburban politics?”Urban Studies482591–2610
44.
PhelpsNAWoodAMVallerDC, 2010, “A postsuburban world? An outline of a research agenda”Environment and Planning A42366–383
45.
PierceJMartinDGMurphyJT, 2011, “Relational place-making: The networked politics of place”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series3654–70
46.
RosanCSusskindL, 2007, “Land-use planning in the doldrums: Growth management in Massachusetts' I-495 region”, Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Cambridge, MA
47.
ScottAJ, 2007, “Inside the city: On urbanisation, public policy and planning”Urban Studies45755–772
48.
SonnJW, 2010, “Contesting state rescaling: An analysis of the South Korean state's discursive strategy against devolution”Antipode421200–1224
49.
SwyngedouwE, 2005, “Governance innovation and the citizen: The Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state”Urban Studies421991–2006
50.
TickellAPeckJA, 1992, “Accumulation, regulation and the geographies of post-Fordism: Missing links in regulation theory”Progress in Human Geography16190–218
