This paper draws on neo-Weberian traditions of social theory to consider smart growth as a territorial programme of the multiscaled state. Responding to recent efforts by scholars within interdisciplinary urban studies to re-engage with neo-Weberian concepts around urban growth and institutional politics, the discussion interprets the implementation of the smart growth doctrine in US metropolitan areas—for example Seattle-Tacoma, the city-region specifically explored here—as the ‘intercurrence’ of various state-ordering arrangements. A conceptual focus on intercurrence, a term derived directly from the work of Orren and Skowronek forges stronger links between planning studies and state theory and thus offers a new way to map political geographies of smart growth.
AlmondG. (1988) The return to the state, American Political Science Review, 82(3), pp. 853–874.
3.
AminA.GrahamN. S. (1997) The ordinary city, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 22, pp. 411–429.
4.
AntonioR. (2005) Max Weber in the post-World War II US and after, Etica & Politica, 7(2) (Antonio_E&P_VII_2005_2.pdf).
5.
APA (American Planning Association) (2002) Policy guide on smart growth. APA, Chicago, IL.
6.
BrennerN. (1997) State territorial restructuring and the production of spatial scale: urban and regional planning in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1960–1990. Political Geography, 16(4), pp. 273–306.
7.
BrennerN. (2002) Decoding the newest ‘metropolitan regionalism’ in the USA: a critical overview, Cities, 19(1), pp. 3–21.
8.
BrennerN.TheodoreN. (2002) Cities and the ‘actually existing’ geographies of neoliberalism, Antipode, 34(3), pp. 349–379.
9.
BuddW.LovrichN.PierceJ.ChamberlainB. (2008) Cultural sources of variations in US urban sustainability attributes, Cities, 25(5), pp. 257–267.
10.
BullardR. (Ed.) (2007) Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
11.
BurchellR.ListokinD.GalleyC. (2000) Smart growth: more than a ghost of urban policy past, less than a bold new horizon, Housing Policy Debate, 11(4), pp. 821–879.
12.
CarruthersJ.ÚlfarssonG. (2008) Does ‘smart growth’ matter to public finance?, Urban Studies, 45(9), pp. 1791–1823.
CookeP. (1983) Theories of Planning and Spatial Development. London: Hutchinson.
16.
CoxK. (2002) Political Geography. Oxford: Blackwell.
17.
CoxK.MairA. (1989) Urban growth machines and the politics of local economic development, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 13, pp. 137–146.
18.
DanielsT. (2001) Smart growth: a new American approach to regional planning, Planning Practice and Research, 16(3/4), pp. 271–279.
19.
DierwechterY. (2008) Urban Growth Management and Its Discontents: Promises, Practices, and Geopolitics in US City-regions. New York: Palgrave.
20.
DilworthR. (Ed.) (2009) The City in American Political Development. New York: Routledge.
21.
DownsA. (2001) What does smart growth really mean?, Planning, 67(4), pp. 20–25.
22.
ErieS.MackenzieS. (2009) The L.A. school and politics noir: bringing the local state back in, Journal of Urban Affairs, 31(5), pp. 537–557.
23.
EthingtonP.LevitusD. (2009) Placing American political development: cities, regions and regimes, 1789–2008, in: DilworthR. (Ed.) The City in American Political Development, pp. 154–176. New York: Routledge.
24.
EthingtonP.McDanielJ. (2007) Political places and institutional spaces: the intersection of political science and political geography, Annual Review of Political Science, 10(June), pp. 127–142.
25.
EwingR.KingM. R.RaudenbushS.ClementeO. J. (2005) Turning highways into main streets: two innovations in planning methodology, Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(3), pp. 269–282.
26.
FainsteinS. (2000) New directions in planning theory, Urban Affairs Review, 35(4), pp. 451–478.
27.
FilionP.McSpurrenK. (2007) Smart growth and development reality: the difficult coordination of land use and transport objectives, Urban Studies, 44(15), pp. 501–523.
28.
GiddensA (1976) Introduction, in: WeberM. (Ed.) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pp. vii–xxiv, transl. by ParsonsT.New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
29.
HarveyD. (1989) From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism, Geografiska Annaler, 71B(1), pp. 3–17.
30.
HaywardC. (2003) The difference states make: democracy, identity, and the American city, American Political Science Review, 97(4), pp. 501–514.
31.
HuxleyM. (2006) Spatial rationalities: order, environment, evolution and government, Social and Cultural Geography, 7(5), pp. 771–787.
32.
HuxleyM. (2008) Planning, space and government, in: CoxK.LowM.RobinsonJ. (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography, pp. 123–141. London: SAGE.
33.
ImmergutE. (1998) The theoretical core of the new institutionalism, Politics and Society, 26(1), pp. 5–34.
34.
JessopB. (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place. Cambridge: Polity Press.
35.
KingD.LiebermanR. (2009) Ironies of state building: a comparative perspective on the American state, World Politics, 61(3), pp. 547–588.
36.
KipferS.KeilR. (2002) Toronto Inc? Planning the competitive city in the new Toronto, Antipode, 34, pp. 227–264.
37.
KnappG.TalenE. (2005) New urbanism and smart growth: a few words from the academy, International Regional Science Review, 28(2), pp. 107–118.
38.
KrasnerS. (1984) Approaches to the state: alternative conceptions and historical dynamics, Comparative Politics, 16(2), pp. 223–246.
39.
KruegerR.AgyemanJ. (2005) Sustainability schizophrenia or actually existing sustainabilities? The politics and promise of a sustainability agenda in the US, Geoforum, 36(4), pp. 410–417.
40.
LandisD. (2006) Growth management revisited: efficacy, price effects, and displacement, Journal of the American Planning Association, 72(4), pp. 411–430.
41.
LangloisP. (2010) Municipal visions, market realities: does planning guide residential development?, Environment and Planning B, 37(3), pp. 449–462.
42.
LangstonJ. (2004) Critical areas ordinance provokes bitter ‘rural vs. urban’ dispute, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16November, p. B1.
43.
LeoC. (1998) Regional growth management regime: the case of Portland, Oregon, Journal of Urban Affairs, 20(4), pp. 363–394.
44.
LevineJ. (2006) Zoned Out. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.
45.
LevineN. (1999) The effects of local growth controls on residential housing production and population redistribution in California, Urban Studies, 36(12), pp. 2047–2068.
46.
LewisP.NeimanM. (2009) Custodians of Place: Governing the Growth and Development of Cities. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
47.
LitmanT. (2009) Evaluating criticisms of smart growth. Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org; accessed 2 December 2010).
48.
LuccarelliM. (1993) Lewis Mumford and the Ecological Region: The Politics of Planning. New York: Guilford Press.
49.
MannM. (1984) The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results, European Journal of Sociology, 25, pp. 185–212.
50.
MarcusA. (2008) Interrogating the neo-pluralist orthodoxy in American anthropology, Dialectical Anthropology, 32(1), pp. 59–86.
McGuirkP. (1993) Economic restructuring and the realignment of the urban planning system: the case of Dublin, Urban Studies, 31(2), pp. 287–308.
53.
MeadowcroftJ. (2005) From welfare state to ecostate, in: BerryJ.EckersleyR. (Eds) The State and the Global Ecological Crisis, pp. 3–24. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
54.
MolotchH. L. (1976) The city as growth machine: toward a political economy of place, American Journal of Sociology, 82, pp. 309–331.
NordlingerE. (1988) The return to the state: critiques, American Political Science Review, 82(3), pp. 875–901.
57.
OrrenK.SkowronekS. (1996) Institutions and intercurrence: theory building in the fullness of time, in: ShapiroL.HardinR. (Eds) Political Order, pp. 111–146. New York: Free Press.
58.
OrrenK.SkowronekS. (2004) The Search for American Political Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
59.
O’TooleR. (2000) Is urban planning ‘creeping socialism’?, The Independent Review (http://www.independent.org; accessed 17 January 2010).
60.
PallagstK. (2007) Growth Management in the US: Between Theory and Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate.
61.
PolanyiK. (1944) The Great Transformation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
62.
SackR. (1983) Human territoriality: a theory, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73(1), pp. 55–74.
ScottJ. W. (2007) Smart growth as urban reform: a pragmatic ‘recoding’ of the new regionalism, Urban Studies, 44(1), pp. 15–35.
65.
SeltzerE. (2004) It’s not an experiment: regional planning at Metro, 1990 to the present, in: OzawaC. (Ed.) The Portland Edge: Challenges and Success in Growing Communities, pp. 35–60. Washington, DC: Island Press.
66.
SettleR.GavigonC. (1993) The growth management revolution in Washington: past, present and future, University of Puget Sound Law Review, 16(1), pp. 867–948.
67.
SkocpolT. (1980) Political responses to capitalist crisis: neo-Marxist theories of the state and the case of the New Deal, Politics and Society, 10, pp. 155–202.
68.
SkocpolT. (1985) Introduction: bringing the state back, in: EvansP.RueschemeyerD.SkocpolT. (Eds) Bringing the State Back In, pp. 3–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
69.
SkocpolT. (2008) Bringing the state back in: retrospect and prospect, Scandinavian Political Studies, 31(2), pp. 109–124.
70.
SkowronekS. (1982) Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
71.
Smart Growth America (2009) The states and the stimulus. Smart Growth America, Washington, DC.
72.
StoneC. (1989) Regime Politics. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.
73.
StorperM. (1997) The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford Press.
74.
SzoldT.CarbonellA. (Eds) (2002) Smart Growth: Form and Consequences. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
75.
TalenE. (2005) New Urbanism and American Planning: The Conflicts of Cultures. New York: Routledge.
76.
TalenE.KnaapG. (2003) Legalizing smart growth: an empirical study of land use regulation in Illinois, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2(3), pp. 345–359.
77.
WardK.JonasA. E. G. (2004) Competitive city-regionalism as a politics of space: a critical reinterpretation of the new regionalism, Environment and Planning A, 36(12), pp. 2119–2139.
78.
WatsonV. (2003) Conflicting rationalities: implications for planning theory and ethics, Planning Theory and Practice, 4(4), pp. 395–407.
79.
WeitzJ. (1999) From quiet revolution to smart growth: state growth management programs, 1960 to 1999, Journal of Planning Literature, 14(2), pp. 266–337.
80.
WhileA.JonasA.GibbsD. (2004) The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability fix’ in Manchester and Leeds, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(3), pp. 549–569.
81.
WolfeJ. (1991) State power and ideology in Britain: Mrs Thatcher’s privatization programme, Political Studies, 39, pp. 237–252.
82.
YiftachelO. (2007) Essay: re-engaging planning theory? Towards ‘south-eastern’ perspectives, Planning Theory, 5, pp. 211–222.
83.
YinM.SunJ. (2007) The impacts of state growth management programs on urban sprawl in the 1990s, Journal of Urban Affairs, 29(2), pp. 149–179.
84.
ZharanS.GroverH.BrodyS.VedlitzA. (2008) Risk, stress, and capacity: explaining metropolitan commitment to climate protection, Urban Affairs Review, 43(4), pp. 447–474.
