{"id":315,"date":"2020-03-30T16:46:36","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T15:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/?p=315"},"modified":"2020-03-30T16:46:44","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T15:46:44","slug":"bristol-an-exemplar-of-reflexive-governance-for-sustainable-urban-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/bristol-an-exemplar-of-reflexive-governance-for-sustainable-urban-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristol: An exemplar of \u2018reflexive governance\u2019 for sustainable urban development?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stephen Hall, Centre for\nSustainable Planning and Environments, UWE Bristol<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aksel Ersoy, Department of Management in the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As scholars living in Bristol, we are fascinated by this old port city and its on-going transformation. Prosperous Bristol has been named as the ‘Happiest city in the UK’ and often features in the ‘Best Place to Live in Britain’ lists. In addition to its high quality of life (for most, if not all, residents) Bristol is home to numerous environmental groups that advocate a stronger ecological approach \u2013 i.e. one that acknowledges and respects environmental limits to human development \u2013to urban governance than the traditional economic growth oriented model. This makes Bristol an anomaly among the UK\u2019s \u2018Core Cities\u2019. There is a broad spectrum of environmental activism in Bristol: green think tanks and pressure groups, energy co-operatives, waste recycling groups, a local currency (the Bristol Pound), local food networks, community self-build housing groups, and major national environmental actors such as the Centre for Sustainable Energy, Sustrans and the Soil Association. Bristol, thus, hosts a critical mass of green activism and expertise. We believe that the dissemination of such a wide range of \u2018alternative\u2019 voices locally is crucial to the debate on urban futures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bristol is home to numerous environmental groups: residents amass outside City Hall to welcome Greta Thunberg on 28th February 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bristol\nwas awarded the title European Green\nCapital 2015<\/em>. Its bid as a \u2018green, inclusionary and diverse\u2019 city was\nframed in conjunction with a strong emphasis on community involvement. The\npolicy discourse that had previously been based on economic development was\nreoriented towards environmentalism and collaboration. Bristol\u2019s stated\naspirations as European Green Capital shifted from the high profile events that\nmight be expected of an orthodox urban entrepreneurialism to a set of ambitions\noriented towards citizen engagement and inclusivity. This prompted us to write\nour paper[1]<\/a> The Bristol Green Capital Partnership: an\nexemplar of reflexive governance for sustainable urban development<\/em>, in\nwhich we argue that Bristol represents, perhaps, an atypical approach to the\n\u2018urban sustainability fix\u2019 (the balance sought between competing economic,\nsocial and environmental demands) in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There exist, in Bristol, genuine differences of substance between local partners, including recent polemical debates on resident parking zones, 20mph speed limits and the planning of the new Bristol Arena. However, in contrast to other UK Core Cities, there is less a sense that environmental interests are left to oppose an apparently antagonistic local authority from the political margins. In other words, Bristol represents a prima facie ideal incubator for the processes that characterise \u2018reflexive governance\u2019. The emerging literature on reflexive governance offers a normative framework for understanding a \u2018learning-based approach to governance\u2019. Reflexive governance prioritises organisational adaptation over technological advancement as a response to the complex challenges of climate change and resource scarcity. It focuses primarily on the process <\/em>of governance, rather than outcome. It respects and exploits diverse forms of knowledge (scientific, political, everyday), and champions continuous institutional transformation to enable, and respond to, broader social dialogue.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Walking along Bristol’s Harbourside <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We\nargue that the governance of Bristol \u2013 embodied in the Bristol Green Capital Partnership<\/em> (BGCP) which was formed by\nBristol City Council to develop the concept of a \u2018low carbon city with a high\nquality of life\u2019 in 2007 \u2013 displays many \u2018reflexive\u2019 characteristics. Bristol\nstakeholders have created a space for dialogue, an interface for diverse voices\nand forms of knowledge that eschews the pursuit of simple consensus; in the\nwords of one local official \u201cif you\u2019ve\ngot something to say, join in \u2026 I do not know of another partnership in which a\nmultinational German insurance company would sit down with a dreadlocked\nactivist from St Pauls\u201d<\/em> It has exhibited considerable institutional\nadaptability, partly in response to the exhortations of the European Green\nCapital competition. BGCP, for example, has evolved from a core group of\nstakeholders, to a large and heterogeneous membership organisation, a grouping\nof over 800 organisations, ranging from transnational corporations to local\ncommunity groups. Nonetheless, the discursive space within which it has\nachieved this transformation remains tightly bounded, defined primarily by\nactors that exhibit an a priori interest in the \u2018green\u2019 agenda; civil\nengineering companies, for whom the sustainable city discourse is framed as an\ninfrastructure investment challenge, and grassroots environmental activists,\nrather than representative of mainstream business or public opinion, especially\nin more disadvantaged areas of the city. Moreover, there are multiple and\ncontested visions within BGCP itself; as another local official noted \u201cdiscussions about renewable energy in Bristol\nattract many suits and very few community activists, whereas meetings about\nlocal food attract very few suits\u201d.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nfindings challenge Bristol\u2019s self-image as a \u2018green capital\u2019, notwithstanding\nthe very real achievements noted above, and highlight the limits of reflexive\ngovernance – a practical approach to inclusion, learning and adaptation \u2013 but\none that, in focusing on dialogue and inclusion, underestimates the real political\ntensions, some of which we also highlight above, that define the actions\nrequired to realise the sustainability of cities, including Bristol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Ersoy,\nA and Hall, S (2020) The Bristol Green Capital Partnership: an exemplar of\nreflexive governance for sustainable urban development, Town Planning Review<\/em>, Vol.91, No.4, forthcoming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Hall, Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, UWE Bristol Aksel Ersoy, Department of Management in the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands As scholars living in Bristol, we are fascinated by this old port city and its on-going transformation. Prosperous Bristol has been named as the ‘Happiest city in the UK’ and often … Continue reading “Bristol: An exemplar of \u2018reflexive governance\u2019 for sustainable urban development?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/sustainable-planning-and-environments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}