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(Re)Analysing the Sustainable City: Nature, Urbanisation and the Regulation of

Socio-environmental Relations in the UK
Mark Whitehead
Urban Stud 2003 40: 1183
DOI: 10.1080/0042098032000084550

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Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 7, 1183–1206, 2003

(Re)Analysing the Sustainable City: Nature,

Urbanisation and the Regulation of
Socio-environmental Relations in the UK

Mark Whitehead
[Paper first received, October 2001; in final form, July 2002]

Summary. The sustainable city has now become a leading paradigm of urban development
throughout the world. Although the practices, discourses and ideologies associated with the
sustainable city have been widely disseminated, analyses of sustainable urban development
remain surprisingly anodyne. Drawing upon the insights of regulation theory, this paper attempts
to develop a critical engagement with the sustainable city as a space of socio-ecological regulation.
Focusing upon two examples of sustainable urban development in practice—the first, the struggle
over work-place environments in Stoke-on-Trent; and the second, the reinsertion of nature into
the Black Country urban region—this paper explores the regulatory geography of the sustainable
city and the environmental visions and practices with which it is associated.

The city has always been an embodiment The qualities of urban living in the 21st
of hope and a source of festering guilt: a century will define the qualities of civilis-
dream pursued, and found vain, wanting, ation itself (Harvey, 1996, p. 403).
and destructive (Raban, 1988, p. 17).
Whether it be in terms of the ecological
The statistical arguments are now well-
footprints of mega-cities or the socio-
rehearsed; with urban areas already provid-
environmental injustices of urban habitats
ing a home for nearly half of the world’s
themselves, the sentiments of Harvey suggest
population, within a generation it is esti-
that the social, economic and environmental
mated that the numbers living in urban com-
conditions of humanity—found both within
munities will have increased by two and a
and beyond the city—are now inextricably
half billion people (that is actually the same
linked to the multifaceted processes of
number of people who currently live in urban
urbanisation.1 Drawing on the insights of
areas) (UNCHS, 2001, p. 6). Perhaps Harvey
Harvey, this paper explores the ways in
(1996) most effectively captures the contem-
which urbanisation—understood as the criti-
porary importance of urban areas in his
cal spatial dynamic in the reproduction and
poignant reflection on the urbanising logic of
regulation of capitalism—is producing, man-
the 20th century:
aging and re-articulating the relationships
The 20th century has been ‘the’ century of which exist between modern society and the
urbanisation … The future of the most of environment.
humanity now lies, for the first time in Although concerns have already been
history, fundamentally in urbanising areas. raised over the kinds of socio-environmental
Mark Whitehead is in the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3DB, UK.
Fax: 01970 622 659. E-mail: msw@aber.ac.uk.

0042-0980 Print/1360-063X On-line/03/071183–24  2003 The Editors of Urban Studies

DOI: 10.1080/0042098032000084550
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1184
relations which are being produced as part
of capitalist urbanisation (see Hardoy and
Satterthwaite, 1992; UNCHS, 2001), the pre-
cise extent and severity of the socio-
ecological problems inherent within the
contemporary urban world continue to be an
object of much debate and conjecture. De-
spite this uncertainty, there does appear to be
a considerable degree of consensus over how
the international political community should
address the complex hybrid of social, econ-
omic and ecological problems which face
urban areas. The axiomatic response at the
moment is to build ‘sustainable’ cities. Given
this overriding consensus, and in order to
explore the emerging relationship between
urbanisation and the socio-ecological repro-
duction of capitalism, this paper focuses
specifically upon the purported emergence of
sustainable cities within the UK.
The concept of the sustainable city has
gained a significant amount of political mo-
mentum in Britain (see DETR, 1999a, ch. 1,
1999b, 2000; DoE, 1994, ch. 26; DoE, 1990,
ch. 8) and in the wider international political
community (European Commission, 1998;
United Nations Centre for Human Settle-
ment, 2001; World Commission on the En-
vironment and Development, 1987, ch. 9)
over the course of the past 15 years. Despite
the rapid proliferation of the sustainable city
ideal, analyses of sustainable development in
urban areas have remained surprisingly ano-
dyne. In this context, this paper is particu-
larly critical of the focus of contemporary
research on the practical implementation of
sustainable development as a policy goal (see
European Commission, 1998, 1996; Hall. P,
1999; Hall. T, 1998; Haughton and Hunter,
1994; Mega and Petrella, 1997; Satterth-
waite, 1999; Whittaker, 1995), while there
has been relatively little analysis of the sus-
tainable city as an object of political contes-
tation and struggle.2
In order to facilitate a broad theoretical
study of sustainable cities, this paper turns to
a series of writings dedicated to the ideologi-
cal and material relationships which exist
between cities, nature and the environment
(see Boyer, 1997; Cronon, 1991; Davis,
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MARK WHITEHEAD
1999; Gandy, 1996; Keil and Graham, 1999;
Harvey, 1996, 2000; Smith, 1984; Swynge-
douw, 1997). Drawing upon these works and
the wider theoretical insights of the regu-
lation approach (see Jessop, 1990; MacLeod,
1997, for reviews), this paper claims that it is
possible to developed a more concerted, criti-
cal analysis of the discourses and material
practices which are becoming synonymous
with the sustainable city. Analysis begins by
charting the emergence of the sustainable
city as an international and national political
objective and briefly considers the different
ways in which this phenomenon has been
analysed. In light of the apparent weakness
of traditional accounts of the sustainable city,
this paper then introduces the regulation ap-
proach to the analysis of social and economic
change and development. Drawing on the
insights of the regulation approach, analysis
explores the potential insights offered when
the sustainable city is understood as part of
the wider regularisation (or normalisation)
of the socio-ecological contradictions of cap-
italist urbanisation. The final section of this
paper considers two examples of the sustain-
able city in practice in the UK. Drawing on
research carried out on environmental health
reform in Stoke-on-Trent and the politics of
nature in the Black Country of the English
Midlands, this paper considers the ways in
which the discourses and practices of sus-
tainable development are simultaneously
defining the problems and potential solutions
to urban development in the UK today. In
particular, analysis considers the ways in
which strategies for urban sustainability are
being forged within the wider socioeconomic
context of neo-liberal regulation and interur-
ban competition in the UK (see Tickell and
Peck, 1992; Peck and Tickell, 1994) and the
effects which this is having on the types of
sustainable city which are being produced.
1. Understanding the Sustainable City:
Some Political and Analytical Contexts
In order to develop a critical analysis of the
sustainable city, it is important initially to
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
Table 1. Major international and European-level policies and initiatives on sustainable urban development
Events and initiatives
United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment (UNCHE)
Habitat I (Vancouver)
Establishment of United Nations
Centre for Human Settlement
(UNCHS)
World Commission on
Environment and Development
Report
United Nation’s Sustainable Cities
Programme
European Commission’s Green
Paper on the Urban Environment
European Commission’s Expert
Group on the Urban Environment
United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development
European Sustainable Cities
Programme
European Sustainable Cities
Campaign
Habitat II—‘The City Summit’
consider what a sustainable city actually is.
The formal naming and prioritisation of sus-
tainable urban development originated within
the dictates of international politics (see
Table 1). The formal political construction of
the sustainable city began in 1972 when, at
the United Nations Conference on the Hu-
man Environment in Stockholm, the import-
ance of developing sustainable patterns of
urbanisation was first discussed at an inter-
national level. ‘Recommendation I’ of the
Stockholm Conference emphasised the im-
portance of planning and managing human
settlements (prime among these being urban
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1185
Year Link to sustainable city agenda
1972 Recommendation I—Planning and Management
of Human Settlements for Environmental Quality
1976 Establishment of international programme
designed to slow down the growth of urban areas
1978 Specific remit to deliver more sustainable patterns
of living in urban and rural areas
1987 Chapter 9 ‘The Urban Challenge’ described the
need to create more sustainable urban
communities both in the developed and
developing worlds
1990 Integration of the sustainable development remits
of the UNCHS and the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP)
1990 Response by the European commission and
leading European cities to the perceived
neglect of urban environmental issues relative to
those of rural areas
1991 Independent group composed of national
representatives and experts with a remit to
consider how future town and land-use planning
could develop the urban environmental facets of
the European Community’s Environmental
Programme
1992 Agenda 21—Chapter 2, ‘Promoting Sustainable
Human Settlement Development’
1993 Launched by the European Commission’s Expert
Panel on the Urban Environment
1994 Coalition of 80 urban and regional authorities
implementing sustainable urban policies
1996 Focus upon the implementation of Local Agenda
21 in urban areas
areas) in a way that was sensitive to local and
global environmental quality (UNEP, 2001).
Following the recommendations made in
Stockholm, in 1978 the United Nations cre-
ated the Centre for Human Settlements
(UNCHS), as an agency with direct responsi-
bility for building more sustainable urban
and rural communities.3 Following these key
international policy statements, the European
Union and the UK have created their own
programmes for sustainable urban develop-
ment (see Tables 1 and 2).
From within these multiscalar govern-
mental programmes, it is possible to derive a
1186 MARK WHITEHEAD

Table 2. Recent UK policies on urban sustainability

Our Towns and Cities: The Future Delivering an Urban Renaissance (DETR, 2000)
Urban Task Force report (chs. 1–2 on the urban environment) (DETR, 1999a)
A Better Quality of Life (Revised UK Sustainable Development Strategy) (DETR, 1999b)
The Single Regeneration Budget: A Guide for Partnerships (including new sustainable development
guidelines, pp. 22–23) (DETR, 1998)
UK National Report for Habitat II (DoE, 1996)
Good practice guide on The Impacts of Environmental Improvements in Urban Regeneration (HMSO,
1995)
Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy (ch. 26 ‘Town and Country’) (DoE, 1994)
This Common Inheritance: Britain’s Environmental Strategy (ch. 8 ‘Towns and Cities’) (HMSO, 1990)

sense of what the sustainable city actually is.
According to the United Nations Sustainable
Cities Programme, a sustainable city is
a city where achievements in social, econ-
omic, and physical development are made
to last. A Sustainable City has a lasting
supply of the natural resources on which
its development depends (using them only
at a level of sustainable yield). A Sustain-
able City maintains a lasting security from
environmental hazards which may threaten
development achievements (allowing only
for acceptable risk) (UNCHS/UNEP,
2001, p. 1).
According to the United Nations, the sustain-
able city constitutes a new moral space,
where social values are transformed and
more durable social, economic and ecologi-
cal relations are established. Echoing the sen-
timents of the United Nations, the European
Commission, as part of its own Sustainable
Cities Programme, suggests that the sustain-
able city is an urban space which is modelled
upon the precepts, patterns and rules of na-
ture
Sustainable urban management should
challenge the problems both caused and
experienced by cities, recognising that cit-
ies themselves provide many potential so-
lutions, instead of shifting problems to
other spatial scales or shifting them to
future generations. The organisational pat-
terns and administrative systems of munic-
ipalities should adopt the holistic approach
of ecosystems thinking. Integration, co-
operation, homeostasis, subsidiarity and
synergy are key concepts for management
towards sustainable development (Euro-
pean Commission, 1996, p. 10)
In light of the progressive language evident
within the official orthodoxies of sustainable
urban development, it appears that the sus-
tainable city is as much a political vision or
social ideal—incorporating its own moral ge-
ography and forms of ecological praxis—as
it is a tangible object, or location on a map.
In light of the wide range of initiatives and
associated meanings and hopes which are
attached to sustainable urban development,
this paper adopts a multifaceted and rela-
tional understanding of the sustainable city.
Consequently, rather than accepting a prede-
termined definition of the sustainable city, or
focusing upon the objects or environmental
artefacts which have traditionally been asso-
ciated with the sustainable city (green lungs,
eco-technologies, community gardens, clear-
air zones), this paper attempts to understand
sustainable cities in terms of the complex
array of ideas, discourses, material practices
and political struggles through which they
are produced and reproduced (see Harvey,
1996; Smith, 1999). In this way, the sustain-
able city is seen as a complex hybrid of
social, economic, political and ecological
forms, which are continually articulated and

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 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
rearticulated within specific spatial contexts
and through particular historical struggles
(Swyngedouw, 1997). But how can this new
urban phenomenon be understood and, more
importantly, how can its potential as a strat-
egy for future socio-environmental develop-
ment be critically interrogated?
2. Analysing and Re-analysing the Sus-
tainable City: A Regulation Approach to
Sustainable Urban Development
2.1 Existing Approaches to the Analysis of
the Sustainable City
Numerous authors have already attempted to
interpret the complex issues surrounding the
ideal of the sustainable city (see Blowers and
Pain, 1999; Hardoy and Satterthwaite, 1992;
Haughton and Hunter, 1994; Lawrence,
1996; Marcuse, 1998; Mega, 1996; Satterth-
waite, 1997, 1999; Swyngedouw and Kaı̈ka,
2000). While offering important insights into
the nascent political struggles and problems
associated with sustainable urban develop-
ment, many of these analyses have failed to
develop an effective critique of the sustain-
able city. The problems associated with
many existing accounts of the sustainable
city can be divided in two broad areas: the
empirical focus of their analyses of sustain-
able urban development; and, their reification
of the sustainable city as an ontological ob-
ject.
In the first instance, a preponderance of
contemporary work on the sustainable city
focuses upon the practical, political im-
plementation of sustainable urban develop-
ment (see Hall, 2001; Haughton and Hunter,
1994; Gilbert et al., 1996; Mega, 1996; Mega
and Petrella, 1997; Pearce, 1994). While it is
important to consider the daunting practical
issues which do confront the effective im-
plementation of sustainable development in
urban areas, such work has tended to reduce
analysis of sustainable urban development to
a technical matter of institutional restructur-
ing, traffic management, architectural design
and the development of green technologies.
By focusing upon the local operational
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1187
efficiency of sustainable development in dif-
ferent urban milieux, accounts of the sustain-
able city have also become increasingly
parochial, with little sense of the wider pol-
itical, economic and ecological forces which
flow through such cities (see Rabinovitch,
1992).
The second, and interrelated, problem with
contemporary work on sustainable urban de-
velopment is the tendency to treat the sus-
tainable city as an ontologically pre-given
object (see Haughton and Hunter, 1994;
Gilbert et al., 1996). In this sense, analyses
tend to assume the prior existence of a thing
called a sustainable, or indeed an unsustain-
able, city and ignore the complex discursive
processes and socio-political struggles
through which sustainable cities are pro-
duced. The reification of the sustainable city
in this way tends to give a neutral, almost
apolitical, veneer to sustainable cities and
conceals the asymmetries of power which
inform the social construction of urban sus-
tainability. This paper asserts that sustainable
cities are never finished objects—whether as
ideological visions/blueprints or material
artefacts—but are rather in a constant state of
becoming.
In light of these criticisms, the remainder
of this section explores the ways in which a
regulationist reading of the sustainable city
can enhance understanding of this new urban
phenomenon and provide a more meaningful
critique of this hegemonic paradigm of
metropolitan development.
2.2 A Regulationist Approach to the Sustain-
able City
Before examining the usefulness of a regu-
lation approach for research on the sustain-
able city, it is important to clarify the
parameters of such an approach. The regu-
lation approach finds its origins in work un-
dertaken by a group of French economists in
the mid 1970s (see Aglietta, 1979; Boyer,
1979; Lipietz, 1980). Put simply, these aca-
demics were concerned to analyse the regu-
lation of the economy beginning from the
insight that continued capital accumulation
1188
cannot be taken for granted or guaranteed in
advance, but instead depends on a series of
social, cultural and political supports. The
approach, therefore, as Bob Jessop states,
aims to study the changing combinations
of economic and extra-economic institu-
tions and practices which help to secure, if
only temporarily and always in specific
economic spaces, a certain stability and
predictability in accumulation—despite
the fundamental contradictions and
conflicts generated by the very dynamic of
capital itself (Jessop, 1997, p. 288).
It is the contention of this paper that the
discourses and practices surrounding issues
of sustainability now appear to be woven into
both the economic and the ‘extra-economic’
(social ⫹ environmental) supports associated
with capitalist urbanisation. Furthermore, it
is asserted that the sustainable city represents
an economic space within which the social,
economic and ecological contradictions of
capitalism are being managed and strategi-
cally addressed.
From modes to processes: changing under-
standings of regulation. While exploring the
socioeconomic supports of capitalism, many
regulationist accounts have adopted the con-
cept of a ‘mode of regulation’. Convention-
ally, the term ‘mode of regulation’ refers to a
specific combination of economic and extra-
economic practices operating together in a
mutually reinforcing way (Tickell and Peck,
1995).4 This paper, however, claims that
more purchase can be gained on the role of
sustainable development within emerging
regulatory forms through the conceptualisa-
tion of regulation as ‘process’ (see Goodwin
and Painter, 1996; Painter and Goodwin,
1995). There are several reasons why this is
the case. These reasons can be summarised
by the view that the term ‘mode’ overempha-
sises the functionality, stability and coher-
ence of regulatory relations, while
underemphasising change, conflict and de-
velopment. A crude account of one stable
and enduring mode of regulation quickly
breaking down and then equally quickly be-
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MARK WHITEHEAD
ing replaced by a markedly different, but
equally stable, arrangement is clearly unsat-
isfactory and historically inaccurate.
The concept of a ‘mode of regulation’ was
first advanced in order to answer the central
question posed by regulation theory—that is,
how is the reproduction of capitalist social
relations secured and developed given the
inherent tendency of these relations for crisis
and instability? Even if the notion of a mode
of regulation were abandoned, this central
question would appear to remain. The ap-
proach taken by Painter and Goodwin (1995)
to answering this, and which this paper fol-
lows, emerges from one further problem as-
sociated with the concept of a ‘mode of
regulation’. An unfortunate connotation of
the concept is the implication that, at any one
time, there must be either ‘perfect’ regulation
(during a mode of regulation) or no regu-
lation at all (during an intermediate crisis
phase). Yet this is clearly absurd. Very
rarely, if ever, does regulation cease alto-
gether (civil war accompanied by the com-
plete collapse of state institutions is perhaps
an example). Equally, even during periods of
sustained economic growth, regulation could
hardly be described as perfect. The system is
simply too complex and the process of regu-
lation too contingent. Any period of stable
development will have its setbacks and
conflicts. Most of the time, therefore, regu-
lation is neither perfect nor wholly absent—
instead, it is more or less effective at
underpinning continued accumulation, de-
pending on the mix and interaction of the
various factors involved.
This paper therefore understands regu-
lation as a process, rather than as a series of
different ‘modes’. Instead of looking for co-
herent ‘modes of regulation’, which neatly
follow one another, this paper prefers to em-
phasise the ‘ebb and flow’ of regulatory pro-
cesses through time and across space. At
certain times and places, those processes will
be more effective than at others. Analysis
claims that the process of regulation is the
product of material and discursive practices
that generate and are in turn conditioned by
social and political institutions. Furthermore,
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
it is argued that these practices and institu-
tions, are increasingly drawing on, and or-
ganising their work around notions of
sustainable development (see section 1). By
focusing upon regulation as a process, this
paper hopes to develop a more contingently
inscribed account of the regulatory
significance of sustainable forms of urban
development and the rise of the sustainable
city. Hence it is hoped to understand sustain-
able development, and its counterpart the
sustainable city, as a key discursive and ma-
terial category through which regulatory
flows are increasingly being channelled,
challenged and contested. Critically, how-
ever, by focusing on the regulatory dynamics
of sustainable development, analysis is not
simply interested in the ways that economic,
social and environmental issues come to-
gether to forge sustainable development poli-
cies. Instead, attention is drawn to the ways
in which specific combinations of economic
and socio-ecological forces converge to
threaten, or to sustain, the reproduction of
capitalism.
The uneven and combined development of
regulation: the sustainable city as a socio-
environmental space. Since this paper claims
that a regulation approach, that treats regu-
lation as process, is able to deal rather more
subtly with temporal and spatial variability, it
is useful to spend a little time exploring the
spatial implications of this type of analysis.
This sensitivity to the spatial dimensions of
regulation appears important if socio-
ecological regulation in general is to be re-
lated to specific sustainable cities in different
social and political contexts. The argument
proceeds along the following lines. Since
regulatory processes are the product of social
practices, they must be understood in relation
to the concrete contexts of practice (Painter
and Goodwin, 1995). As concrete phenom-
ena with specific histories and geographies,
practices must be understood as being intrin-
sically unevenly developed. In other words,
the geography of regulation is not an op-
tional extra or final complicating factor
(Tickell and Peck, 1992). On the contrary,
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1189
the processes of regulation are constituted
geographically.5 They are also organised in
and through key spatial sites of regulation.
The sustainable city may be considered as
one such emerging site of regulation—draw-
ing together a range of practices situated in
economic space (such as the labour process,
urban-regional growth alliances, international
markets), political space (the local state, re-
gional, national and supranational gover-
nance) and ecological space (bio-regions,
ecological footprints, the global environ-
ment). The sustainable city as a site of regu-
lation could thus be viewed as an intersection
of political, economic and environmental
space (see Satterthwaite, 1997). Understand-
ing the sustainable city as a spatial intersect
in this way has two principal implications:
the construction of regulatory problems
within various sustainable city programmes
must be understood in relation to the local
social, political and environmental milieux
within which sustainability is being contested
and realised; and, sustainable cities combine
regulatory practices which derive from a var-
iety of spatial scales. In this way, sustainable
cities represent very specific geographical
manifestations of regulatory processes, with
their own political, economic and ecological
histories and traditions. However, the sus-
tainable city, as a regulatory space, must
always be positioned within the wider re-
gional, national and international regulatory
orders within which it is sustained (Tickell
and Peck, 1995).
Regulation, discourse and the sustainable
city. One advantage of emphasising an ap-
proach to regulation which is based on so-
cioeconomic process is that it reminds us that
issues of social cohesion are politically con-
tested and socially constructed, and will vary
from nation to nation (and even from place to
place within a nation). Moreover, in account-
ing for those mediations which can negotiate
economic accumulation and social cohesion,
attention is focused on discursive as well as
material practices. In principle, regulation
theory has always been concerned with dis-
course and regulationist authors often repeat
1190
the claim that regulation is a social, political
and cultural process (Bakshi et al., 1995;
Hay and Jessop, 1995, p. 305; Jessop, 1997,
pp. 313–318). In practice, however, regula-
tionist accounts have rarely considered the
contribution of discourse to specific regula-
tory processes or, in the more usual terminol-
ogy, modes of regulation. Yet there is no
great difficulty in building a sensitivity to
discourse into a theory of regulation (see
Jenson, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1995). ‘Fordism’,
for example, clearly depended upon some
key discursive constructions associated with
political consensus, the family wage, the lim-
its of collective bargaining, the mass con-
sumption norm and so on.
Critically, for the purposes of this paper,
the regulatory processes emerging after
Fordism—and in particular the purported
social and ecological crises of Fordism—
appear to be mobilising discourses of sus-
tainability. Whereas Fordism was celebrated
as the time of unparallelled economic growth
and proudly labelled the long boom, we are
now firmly fixed in a period where the notion
of sustainability is much more prevalent.
This of course does not mean that the search
for economic growth has suddenly been
halted. Rather, that the search for growth
takes place within a differently constructed
set of mediations which now incorporate sus-
tainability. In this sense, economic develop-
ment is still the prime aim, but now
unfettered growth has been replaced by ‘en-
vironmentally sensitive development’ in a
range of discursive and material arenas. The
very notion of the sustainable city is an
exemplification of this.
An awareness of the discursive qualities of
regulation is vital if the processes surround-
ing the construction of objects of regulation
are to be understood (see Jessop, 1997,
p. 297). Cities are subjects involved in regu-
lating economies, but they are also simul-
taneously objects of regulation. Cities are
objects of regulation to the extent that they
contain many contradictory tendencies which
threaten and undermine regulation. The
identification of regulatory problems within
cities—or specific objects of urban regulation
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MARK WHITEHEAD
(poor health, derelict environments, ailing
economic sectors)—is an inherently discur-
sive process. Within an era of sustainable
development, the power to explain regulatory
crisis—or to construct objects of regu-
lation—hinges on the ability to understand
objects in relation to their social, economic
and ecological form. The multifarious discur-
sive construction of objects of regulation
within the sustainable city reveals the ambi-
guities and uncertainties which surround the
notion of sustainability. The choice of certain
brands of discursive explanation and devel-
opment trajectories over others also reveals
the power relations and regulatory pressures
within which sustainable cities are being
forged.
Regulating socio-environmental relations in
the city. The explicit stated aims of sustain-
able development stress the importance of
combining economic, social and environ-
mental considerations within models of de-
velopment (see World Commission on the
Environment and Development, 1987, ch. 1).
However, the popular dissemination of sus-
tainable development has resulted in the el-
evation of environmental concerns in
particular to new levels prominence within
public policy. Given the new significance
which sustainable development appears to
afford environmental issues, it is interesting
to reflect upon a number of recent attempts
which have been made to unite the regulation
approach with a study of the environment
(see Bridge, 1998; Bridge and McManus,
2000; Gandy, 1996; Leyshon, 1992; Lipietz,
1992, 1996). Within this eclectic mix of
work, there appears to be a growing realis-
ation that just as the economic and social
relations of capitalism are contradictory and
must be regulated, environmental and (hu-
man) ecological relations are equally import-
ant regulatory concerns (Lipietz, 1996,
p. 219). It is perhaps useful to think of the
sustainable city as a strategy designed to
address the traditional social and economic
regulatory problems of urban areas, in and
through a new set of environmental priorities
and ecological practices. If, as this paper
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
suggests, the sustainable city does represent
an active reworking of the relationships
which exist between urbanisation, regulation
and the environment, it is important to con-
sider the different ways in which the environ-
ment is implicated in the regulation of urban
economies. Drawing upon recent work car-
ried out on the relationship between urban
areas and the environment, it is possible to
detect the environmental underpinnings of
urban regulation in two broad ways: the col-
onisation of nature within the urbanisation
process; and, the socio-cultural reproduction
of urban inhabitants.
In the first instance, the work of Davis
(1998, 1999) and Cronon (1991)—although
not explicitly written from a regulationist
perspective—reveals the regulatory inter-
plays which exist between nature and urbani-
sation. In his analysis of Los Angeles, Davis
(1998, 1999) has shown how an understand-
ing of the dialectic interplays between nature
and society is vital to an appreciation of the
material and discursive processes by which
urbanisation proceeds. Drawing on the case
of Los Angeles, Davis explores how urbani-
sation in the region has proceeded through
two dominant ecological forms: an exploita-
tive ecology of evil (1998, p. 4) and a restric-
tive ecology of fear (1999, ch. 1). According
to Davis, it is through these twin ecologies or
environmental relations—one bent on the ex-
ploitative domination and subjugation of na-
ture, the other embodying the responses of
nature to urbanism through earthquakes,
famines and floods—that urbanisation in Los
Angeles has been produced and historically
contested. In a similar vein to Davis,
Cronon’s (1991) book Nature’s Metropolis
reveals how urban development—in this
case, Chicago’s—has been closely tied to the
environmental flows and ecological pro-
cesses of nature. Within a broad-ranging ac-
count of the multiple interplays which have
occurred historically between Chicago and
its hinterland, the American Mid West,
Cronon describes how the Chicago Futures
and Options Market emerged out of the com-
plex socio-ecological processes which
flowed through the wheat landscapes which
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1191
surrounded Chicago (Cronon, 1991, ch. 3;
Swyngedouw and Kaı̈ka, 2000, p. 576). The
work of Cronon clearly reveals the ways in
which economic forms of regulation—in this
case, the financial markets of the city—have
historically been imbricated by environmen-
tal forces.
In addition to the relationships which exist
between urbanisation and various ecological
processes, the everyday environment of the
city itself also plays an important part in the
regulation of urban space. According to
Katz, it is the apparently “mundane” or
“messy” environmental relations of everyday
life which have a crucial role in the socio-
cultural reproduction of urban communities
(Katz, 2001, pp. 711–715). Whether it is
through the ideologies of quality of life, en-
vironmental access and amenity, or the stan-
dards of living and working environments,
the environmental conditions found within
cities constitute key arenas within which the
material and socio-cultural reproduction of
urban communities occurs (Katz and Kirby,
1991). Indeed, some of the earliest attempts
to regulate and ameliorate the socioeconomic
and socio-ecological spaces of industrial cit-
ies in Europe focused upon the need to re-
form the environmental conditions of the
city. During the 19th century, the public
health movement consequently sought to ad-
dress the complex environmental problems
created by the contradictory social, economic
and environmental forces in operation in the
industrial metropolis (Driver, 1988). Within
the practices and principles of the public
health movement of the 19th century, the
socio-ecological pressures and reformist ide-
ologies which have given rise to the contem-
porary sustainable city can both be clearly
discerned.
Whether it be because of the interdepen-
dencies of urbanisation and nature, or the
importance of social environments to the re-
production of urban life, a broadly defined
understanding of the environment appears
crucial to understanding the processes
through which urban regulation proceeds.
The sustainable city appears to reflect a pol-
itical expression of the complex regulatory
1192
Table 3. The main differences between existing analyses of the sustainable city and the
regulationist approach
Existing analyses of sustainable urban
development
Technocratic interpretation of the
procedures surrounding the
implementation of sustainable urban
development (planning restrictions,
political management systems,
architecture and design, environmental
performance indicators)
Identification of an ontologically pre-
given sustainable city (or objective
blueprint for the creation of sustainable
urban settlements)
Focus upon the local process and
parochial debates surrounding the
implementation of a sustainable city
Analysis of the conformity of sustainable
urban development with the agreed
national and international principles of
sustainable development
dynamics which flow between urban social,
economic and environmental systems. But
what does a regulations approach actually
bring to an analysis of the sustainable city?
Table 3 sets out the main differences be-
tween a regulationist interpretation of the
sustainable city and existing accounts of sus-
tainable urban development. This paper
claims that the regulation approach provides
an heuristic framework within which to ex-
plore the processes through which sustain-
able cities are being produced and
reproduced. In particular, it is claimed that a
regulationist-inspired account of the sustain-
able city will combine a rigorous analysis of
the political struggles and regulatory prac-
tices through which specific socio-ecological
objects of regulation are identified and
defined in specific cities, with an integrated
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MARK WHITEHEAD
A regulationist approach to the sustainable
city
Focus upon the contested interplay, flows
and couplings between economic, social
and environmental (or economic and
extra-economic) processes which emerge
in the sustainable city
Analyse how different discursive
combinations of economic, social and
ecological modes of explanation are used
to explain and construct different objects
of regulation within the city
Analysis of the political practices through
which certain visions of the sustainable
city are accepted and normalised over
others
Appreciation of the uneven spatial
development of sustainable cities and
how this unevenness is linked to political
traditions and regulatory practices
Active concern for the structural
regulatory forces which shape, inform
and configure the sustainable city
Analysis of the conformity of sustainable
urban development with the necessary
conditions for the continued reproduction
of capitalist economic and social
relations
analysis of the structural economic forces
within which these struggles are played out.
The remainder of this paper explores the
insights which a regulationist perspective can
bring to the study and critical analysis of
sustainable urban development.
3. Sustainable Cities in Practice:
Analysing the Nature of Sustainable
Urban Development
3.1 The Sustainable City in Practice I: The
‘Sick City’ and the Socio-ecological Regu-
lation of Health
In order to articulate more clearly the regula-
tory framework of analysis outlined above,
this paper turns initially to the regulatory
politics surrounding the construction and
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
implementation of a sustainable city in
Stoke-on-Trent. Stoke-on-Trent is an old in-
dustrial town in the English Midlands. Initial
debates and discussion about sustainable ur-
ban development in the town first started to
emerge during 1990. During the period up to
1990, a team of researchers from the Univer-
sity of Leeds compiled an extensive study of
sickness rates within the area. The final re-
port, published in 1990, revealed some wor-
rying trends in the health patterns of the area.
It claimed that Stoke had high premature
death rates which were linked to elevated
incidence of heart problems, strokes, cancer
and chest diseases. Analysis also showed
that, in some parts of the city, illness rates
were running at three times the national aver-
age (The Sentinel, 2000a). The report con-
cluded that in 20 of the town’s council
wards, half of the men living there could
expect to die before they reached retirement
age. Given the shocking findings of the
Leeds University team, Stoke became infa-
mously known as the ‘sick city’. The Leeds
University report illustrated a number of reg-
ulatory problems facing the town.
Significantly, the social problems associated
with the poor health record of Stoke were
rapidly linked by public officials in the town
to the wider economic decline and regulatory
failings of the urban economy. With high
rates of employee absenteeism (North
Staffordshire Health Authority, 1999),6 a
damaged and thus supposedly ‘inefficient’
general workforce, and poor health condi-
tions among the general population, health
was constructed as a key social barrier to
effective forms of economic regulation in the
city (The Sentinel, 2000b).
In response to the purported social and
economic problems created by ill health in
Stoke, a Local Health Alliance was hastily
formed. Stoke’s Local Health Alliance was
made up of key public-, private- and volun-
tary-sector organisations in the town and was
established in order to forge an integrated
response to the health problems in the area.
The Local Health Alliance was essentially a
political response to the damaging depictions
of Stoke as a sick city. However, as the
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1193
sentiments of Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s
Chief Executive reveal, the health problems
of Stoke not only necessitated the re-imaging
of Stoke, as a ‘fit’ and prosperous place, it
also provided the political impetus for local
health groups to devise new and imaginative
strategies to tackle persistent health problems
We have to change the image of Stoke-on-
Trent from sick city to fit city …
[however] … Health is much more com-
plex than just fitness and there are related
issues such as lifestyle, poor housing and
poverty. We have done a lot of talking and
working together, but most of all we need
action (Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s
Chief Executive; quoted in The Sentinel,
2000b).
In the context of the need to rethink health
policy in the town, the Local Health Alliance
attempted to develop a radical approach to
health policy. The struggles surrounding the
construction of health as an object of regu-
lation by Stoke’s Local Health Alliance re-
veal the role which local political traditions
and cultural practices play in emerging pat-
terns of socioeconomic development. The
particular construction of health as an issue
of urban sustainability by the Health Alliance
also serves to illustrate the contingent and
highly contested discursive compromises
which coalesce around key objects of regu-
lation in urban areas.
In response to the health problems of the
city, Stoke’s Local Health Alliance con-
structed what they termed a ‘social model of
health’. This social model of health created a
local discourse within which ill health in
Stoke was understood not as a medical issue,
but as a product of broader social, economic
and environmental forces. Drawing upon this
social model, or regulatory discourse of
health, Stoke’s Local Health Alliance sought
to address ill health through a broad pro-
gramme of policies which sought to tackle
issues of class inequality and poverty. The
construction of health as a distinctly class-
related object of regulation, was undoubtedly
inspired by the strong socialist political tradi-
tions and cultures which pervaded in the
1194 MARK WHITEHEAD

town. The neo-socialist sentiments of the In an attempt to gain British state and
Local Health Alliance are apparent in one international support for the town’s plight,
local health worker’s description of the root the Local Health Alliance gradually began to
causes of ill-health in Stoke articulate their social paradigm of health pol-
icy through the languages of sustainable ur-
When you break everything down in a
ban development. Consequently, rather than
Western market economy, income is what
utilising more conventional discourses of
determines whether you are healthy or not,
public health reform (underinvestment in the
it determines where your kids are edu-
National Health Service, shortages in the
cated, where you live. I mean social class
provision of community health care services,
is really determined by income, which is
low levels of public health awareness),
linked to the kind of job you have and this
Stoke’s Local Health Alliance chose to inter-
determines where you fit into a system of
pret and position the health problems of the
social classification … there is a very large
city in the context of the wider social, econ-
number of long-term limiting illnesses in
omic and environmental factors which were
the area. With a rich mining tradition in
collectively generating an ‘unsustainable’
the area we find a lot of people with
pattern of urban development in Stoke. The
respiratory problems and a variety of other
integrated, sustainable understanding of
long-term illnesses which prevent them
health developed in Stoke is evident in the
from working, back problems, mobility
candour of a Local Health Authority rep-
problems. These are people who are never
resentative from the area
going to work again so we want to focus
on issues concerning those who can’t im- Local people have a very sophisticated
prove their lot through getting a job, you understanding of what health is. They
know the softer social stuff, accessing the don’t see health as the Health Authority
benefits which they are entitled to and tend to do, in terms of health in a very
improving self-esteem (Project leader, narrow sense … so the kinds of things lo-
North Staffordshire Health Authority, cal people were saying when asked ‘what
1999). do you think affects your health?’ were the
fact that I haven’t got a job, I haven’t got
This social model of health interprets the
any money … the fact that I have got
poor health of the city not as an aberration,
metal frame windows and you know it
or social accident, but as the product of a
causes condensation, the heating bills are
complex array of poor living conditions, un-
too expensive so I can’t have the heat on
safe working environments and high levels
because the house is too draughty because
of social poverty in the city. Understood in
it is not properly insulated … that’s what
these terms, poor health was interpreted in
affected their health and they saw it in a
Stoke as a legacy of erstwhile regulatory
very holistic way, which we expected. So
regimes in the city and used as a political
they felt that what you do to address health
vehicle for challenging existing industrial
needs is to bring more jobs to the area,
practices and social compromises in Stoke.
improve the housing conditions, improve
The effects of this model of health have been
benefits and if people are actually not ac-
twofold. First, it has actively branded health
cessing benefits enable them to do so. So
as a complex and hybrid object of socioeco-
the agenda was a very broad one … all of
nomic regulation within the city. Secondly,
these things are interlinked and health is a
this model of health also suggested that the
very complex issue… (North Staffordshire
key to creating a more ‘sustainable’, ‘healthy
Health Authority, Health Alliance pro-
city’ in Stoke, was not the imposition of a
gramme leader, 1999; emphasis added).
‘rational’ programme of medical reform, but
rather involved changing the overall ecology By relating health to wider social, economic
of the city (Osborne and Rose, 1999, p. 752). and environmental conditions, Stoke’s

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 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
Health Alliance presented a complex picture
of local health conditions in the city. By
describing health in this multifaceted way,
Stoke’s Health Alliance was both conform-
ing to an emerging sustainable health agenda
(see DoH, 1998; Satterthwaite, 1997) and
positioning health reform within the wider
processes of urban socioeconomic restructur-
ing and (re)regulation. Given the shocking
nature of the Leeds University report into
sickness levels in Stoke, and local socialist
empathy with their social model of health,
the Local Health Alliance’s vision of sustain-
ability was able to predominate over other
more ecologically inspired plans for urban
development which were being promoted by
various environmental groups in the town.7
Despite the local prominence of Stoke’s
Local Health Alliance’s vision of the sustain-
able city, their social model of health met
with significant political resistance from the
British state. In many ways, the very concept
of a social model of health was designed to
challenge hegemonic neo-liberal Conserva-
tive ideologies of health. As one local health
worker pointed out
from the late 1970s … government ideol-
ogy, philosophy, thinking about health has
been set by the medical agenda … if you
look at right-wing politics, Conservatism,
it’s about free choice, liberty, individual-
ism and so on … the problems that we had
in trying to develop a social model of
health that recognised that what you have
to do to improve health is to address pov-
erty, unemployment and whatever, which
is about increasing public spending, that is
very much an anathema to the Conserva-
tives (project leader—North Staffordshire
Health Authority, 1999).
In a related vein, one Health Authority mem-
ber claimed that British Conservative health
policy was characterised by a concern for
the symptoms not the causes [of ill health],
so it was about targets set in a very medi-
cal way—i.e. reducing coronary heart dis-
ease, reducing cancer and so on. It was
very much about lifestyle—what causes
people to die is their lifestyle, their
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1195
lifestyle choices. So basically it was seen
that you have to get people to make
healthy choices and victim blaming (proj-
ect leader, North Staffordshire Health
Authority, 1999; emphasis added).
The process of “victim blaming”, common
within Conservative health policy, tended to
fetishise ill health. The social, economic and
environmental causes of ill health were thus
hidden beneath the veneer of rational choice
and personal freedoms. Despite its obvious
shortcomings, this neo-liberal construction of
health did, however, provide an important
political framework for regulating health
problems in Britain. By dislocating health
from its socioeconomic backdrop, neo-liberal
health discourses were able partially to insu-
late the state from health-related crises.
While not resolving health problems, such
discourses did provide a coping strategy
within which unresolved regulatory tensions
could be managed without damaging the
legitimacy of the state (see Peck and Tickell,
1994 p. 319).
By claiming that ill health was linked to
social and environmental injustice, Stoke’s
Health Alliance not only identified health as
a key object of regulation in the city, it also
challenged the prevailing neo-liberal ortho-
doxies and regulatory strategies (see Tickell
and Peck, 1992, 1995). The tension which
existed between Stoke’s local model of
health and existing state conventions of
health care is captured in the comments of a
representative from the North Staffordshire
Health Authority
We couldn’t mention the word poverty in
anything. When the first Single Regener-
ation Budget proposal went in we were
told to take the word poverty out. We had
specific anti-poverty initiatives and the
government said you can’t have that, there
is no poverty, not in this country anyway,
you have got to go to West Africa to see
poverty, because it doesn’t exist here. We
weren’t allowed to use that kind of termi-
nology (North Staffordshire Health Auth-
ority representative, 1999; emphasis
added).
1196
The Conservative government were reluctant
to accept the link between poverty and ill
health and resisted the call of the Stoke’s
Local Health Alliance for a more, not less,
interventionist brand of neo-Fordist/
Keynesian health policy in the city. In light
of these structural constraints, it became
difficult for the Health Alliance to obtain the
necessary statutory and financial powers to
implement sustainable health reform policies
in the town. The barriers to health reform and
certain patterns of sustainable urban develop-
ment in Stoke, reveal the ways in which the
political and ideological structures of the
state play a crucial role in the emergence and
constitution of regulatory processes. The reg-
ulatory form and function of sustainable cit-
ies do not emerge from a neutral vacuum;
they are always conditioned by local, re-
gional, national and international structures
of power (Jessop, 1997).
In light of the structural constraints which
were placed on the policies and ideals of
Stoke’s Health Alliance, the preferred social
model of health and sustainable urban devel-
opment was adapted and reformed within a
series of health programmes which were
deemed acceptable to the state. One of the
most significant of these schemes was
Stoke’s Healthy Workplace Initiative. Work-
ing in liaison with Stoke’s Health Alliance,
the North Staffordshire Health Authority de-
vised the Healthy Workplace Initiative as a
way of contributing to Stoke’s wider pro-
gramme of environmental health reform (see
North Staffordshire Health Authority, 1999).
Drawing together a series of public health
service providers and local employers, the
initiative sought to improve working envi-
ronments throughout the town. From the first
Factories Act of 1833, to the Health and
Safety at Work Act of 1974, the working
environment has long been a basis for social-
ist and wider political struggle in the UK
(Harvey, 1998). In this context, the initiative
conveniently addressed key socialist and
health-related concerns in the town. The fun-
damental premise of the Healthy Workplace
Initiative was to improve working environ-
ments through three broad strategies: per-
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MARK WHITEHEAD
suading employers to develop a new set of
spatial practices of safety and maintenance in
the workplace; encouraging employers to in-
vest in the physical improvement of the
workplace environment; and, informing em-
ployees about practices which help to facili-
tate the self-production of healthy
workplaces, and of the legal rights which
they hold concerning workplace environ-
ments.
Despite trying to create healthier working
environments and improve the overall per-
formance of the city’s economy, however,
the Healthy Workplace Initiative did not al-
ways meet with support from local busi-
nesses in Stoke. One representative of the
Healthy Workplace Initiative articulated the
local resistances which the scheme had en-
countered
The concept of the altruistic, supportive
employer is a nice idea, but in fact if their
priorities are survival—and if we take the
indigenous industries of North Stafford-
shire now there are some pretty severe
problems—the local mining industry has
been decimated … the pottery industries
are going through an enormous change at
the moment because of overseas compe-
tition—it is no use going naively into these
organisations and asking, “Have you
thought about your responsibilities to your
workforce?” (workplace projects leader,
North Staffordshire Health Authority,
1999).
Confronted with increasingly global forms of
competition, the local industries of Stoke
were faced with a regulatory dilemma which
has been etched into the whole history of
capitalism—the predicament that workers are
simultaneously a cost of production and a
source of value (Jessop, 1998). Reconciling
the need to increase productivity, reduce the
cost of production and improve working con-
ditions, is a perpetual problem of capitalist
economies. In the context of the regulatory
difficulties of the working environments of
Stoke, the leader of the workplace initiative
in Stoke reflected on the importance which
had been placed within the project of con-
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
stantly stressing the long-term economic
benefits that a healthy workforce could bring
to employers
Opportunities arise for securing the under-
standing of employers in seeing the advan-
tages from a management point of view
which come from having an efficient
workforce … because I have to say very
clearly my vested interest is to secure for
the director of public health some im-
provement in the health of the population
in some small way, yours is not, yours is
to secure a return for your shareholders …
and continuing profits” (workplace
projects leader, North Staffordshire Health
Authority, 1999; emphasis added).
In this context, it is not difficult to see how
the formation and implementation of local
strategies for sustainable development are al-
ways dependent on economic regulatory
pressures operating both within and beyond
urban areas.
In the context of the economic pressures
facing local employers in Stoke, and because
of the dependence of the Healthy Workplace
Initiative on employers’ co-operation, the
initiative rapidly changed from being a proj-
ect concerned with the socio-environmental
rights of workers, to being a subsidy for
capital improvements in the workplace. Fo-
cusing primarily upon those aspects of work-
place reform which could bring quantitative
economic returns through cost-savings and
improved efficiency, the Healthy Workplace
Initiative has become much more about sus-
taining economic profits, than securing im-
proved working conditions for employees.
The problems and constraints experienced
within Stoke’s programme of urban health
reform illustrate how, within programmes of
sustainable urban development, economic
power can prevail over social and ecological
need.
In regulatory terms, it is important to con-
textualise the economic imperatives of
Stoke’s Healthy Workplace Scheme within
the prevailing neo-liberal economic systems
operating in Britain at the time. While profit
and competition are constant features of cap-
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1197
italist development, Peck and Tickell (1994)
claim that the economic policies adopted by
the British state during the 1980s and 1990s
increased interurban competition and beg-
gar-thy-neighbour politics. As a regulatory
strategy designed to manage the unresolved
crisis of Keynesian/Fordism and the associ-
ated fiscal crisis of the state, such neo-liberal
policies emphasised the need of individual
cities to fend for themselves within an in-
creasingly global economy (Jessop, 2001).
The economic pressures created within this
neo-liberal economic system made local
socialist programmes of reform difficult to
fund and legitimate. In this context, the op-
portunities for a radical programme of sus-
tainable health reform in Stoke were not only
inhibited by the ideological restraints of the
British state, but also by the prevailing regu-
latory practices of the neo-liberal economy.
Ultimately, and despite the progressive
rhetoric of Stoke’s social model of health,
strategies to create more biologically and
environmentally sensitive patterns of urban
development in the city were influenced and
transformed within the combined forces of
the British state, local capital and neo-liberal
economic regulation. It is perhaps also
significant that, despite the apparent func-
tional benefits which existing schemes for
sustainable urban development in Stoke have
for capital, they have failed to address econ-
omic decline and downsizing in the city (The
Sentinel, 2002). Moreover, recent reports
have shown that, despite the best efforts of
the Local health Alliance, sickness rates in
the town remain well above the national
average (The Sentinel, 2001). The failure of
health reform and sustainable urban develop-
ment in the town illustrates that, despite the
intentions of sustainable urban development
strategies, sustainable city schemes often
remain marginal to the wider processes of
urban socioeconomic regulation.
3.2 The Sustainable City in Practice II:
Sustainable Development and the Politics of
Nature in the Black Country
The second example of a sustainable city in
1198
practice to be considered here, relates to the
exploitation, conservation and social utilis-
ation of nature in the Black Country. The
Black Country is an agglomeration of urban
centres in the West Midlands Region of the
UK. These urban centres developed through
intensive patterns of heavy industrial growth
during the 18th and 19th centuries (Wood,
1976). Throughout the early industrial and
later Fordist expansion of the Black Country,
urbanisation was based upon the ravenous
exploitation and consumption of the area’s
rich endowment of natural resources. While
initially an integral part of the economic
success and regulation of the urban economy,
during the 20th century the exploitation of
nature has been constructed as a serious bar-
rier to social and economic development in
the area. In the context of this paper, the case
of the Black Country serves to illustrate the
role of nature within socioeconomic regu-
lation (see Bridge, 1998) and in the forma-
tion of the discourses associated with the
sustainable city movement.
The emergence and construction of nature
as an object of regulation in the Black Coun-
try first began during the post-war period of
reconstruction in the region. At this time
prominent planning groups—like the West
Midlands Group on Post-war Reconstruction
and Planning (often known simply as the
West Midlands Group; see The West Mid-
lands Group, 1948; Holliday, 2000, p. 6;
Wood, 1976)—developed regional plans
through which local nature could be pre-
served and protected from urban industrial
expansion. The main planning document pro-
duced by the West Midlands Group (1948),
entitled Conurbation, focused primarily on
the preservation of rural nature from urban
expansion in Birmingham and the Black
Country. This plan sought to preserve local
nature through a system of green belts and
wedges. In this way, nature was initially
constructed as an unspoilt, external arena,
which belonged to the Arcadian recesses of
the West Midlands Region—not the Black
Country. Here, nature was used as a physical
regulator (in the judico-political sense) of
urban industrial expansion, acting as an
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MARK WHITEHEAD
ecological frontier, or cordon sanitaire encir-
cling industrialisation (Law, 2000, pp. 57–
64; The West Midlands Group, 1948, p. 201).
It was not until the 1970s that nature really
became a broader issue within the socio-
economic regulation of the urban economy
of the Black Country. In the immediate post-
war period, it was the presence of regulation,
expressed through rapid economic expan-
sion, which appeared to create ecology prob-
lems. During the 1970s, however, it was
regulatory failure, manifest in regional econ-
omic recession, which exposed a new set of
tensions inscribed in local socio-ecological
relations. In the context of economic re-
cession, the scorched industrial landscape
and the lack of environmental amenity in the
Black Country became major political issues.
The temerity with which local nature had
been treated historically, rapidly became
constructed as a cause of socio-regulatory
failure. As with health in Stoke-on-Trent, the
emergence of nature as an object of regu-
lation in the Black Country reveals the insta-
bility and internal tensions inherent in
regulatory processes.
In response to the imbroglios of economic
and environmental discontents in the Black
Country, a number of initiatives have been
instigated in the area in an attempt to restruc-
ture local socio-ecological relations—or, in
popular local parlance, ‘turn the Black Coun-
try green’. One of the earliest programmes
was called Operation Greenup. Operation
Greenup was established by the West Mid-
lands Metropolitan County Council in the
1970s and sought to give nature a more
prominent role in urban planning and to im-
plement a suite of environmental improve-
ment projects. This initiative was followed
by the West Midlands Regional Nature Con-
servation Strategy (1986) which was de-
signed to provide a more integrated
framework for nature conservation in the
wider regional economy. These government
led initiatives were essentially a response to
the strong nature conservation lobby which
emerged in the Black Country during the
1970s.8 These early environmental initiatives
of the 1970s and 1980s have recently culmi-
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
nated in the creation of the largest concen-
trated urban greening project in the UK, the
Black Country Urban Forest. While drawing
inspiration from the nature conservation tra-
ditions of the area, the Black Country Urban
Forest, as a designated programme of sus-
tainable urban development, is using nature
as a much more holistic strategy for urban
reform and regeneration (Black Country Ur-
ban Forestry Unit, 1995, p. 4). This paper
claims that the political struggles surround-
ing the forest reveal important regulatory
processes which are associated with the
ecologies of urban development.
Originally, the Black Country Urban For-
est, drawing upon previous urban conser-
vation strategies in the area, was driven by
key ecological objectives of nature conser-
vation and reconsolidation. In this way, the
forest brought together the key ecological
groups in the area, including the Black Coun-
try Urban Wildlife Trust, Groundwork Black
Country—the British Trust for Conservation
Volunteers and the Black Country Urban
Forestry Unit—into partnership. These
groups, which had collectively emerged out
of the struggles and regulatory tensions sur-
rounding the utilisation of nature in the Black
Country after 1945, represented the local
‘voices’ or ‘advocates of nature’. Due to
issues of land-ownership and development
rights, this ecological partnership had to join
forces with the four Local Authorities in the
Black Country (Dudley Metropolitan Bor-
ough Council, Sandwell MBC, Walsall MBC
and Wolverhampton MBC) in order to im-
plement effectively its plans. In addition to
forging partnerships with local government
and in order to fund and resource the urban
forest, environmental groups in the Black
Country also sought central government sup-
port. With the assistance of central govern-
ment, the Black Country Urban Forestry Unit
was created to implement and manage wood-
land reform in the region.9 To date, the forest
programme has involved the planting of over
70 000 trees and the formation of a range of
associated forest enterprise projects.
As previously mentioned, one of the main
consequences of partnership with local and
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1199
national government is that the Black Coun-
try Urban Forest is now more than simply an
exercise in nature conservation—it is a pro-
gramme of sustainable urban development.
From a regulatory perspective, it is interest-
ing to consider the kinds of translation rules
which operate when ecological concern is
re-articulated in the socioeconomic dis-
courses of sustainability. One of the most
obvious manifestations of the regulatory
struggles surrounding the forest has emerged
over the respective social and ecological
functions of the project. From very early on,
it was clear that the urban forest could not
simply be an ecological conserve or a place
for nature. With so much public money
flowing into the forest, the Black Country
Urban Forestry Unit had to repackage the
scheme in order to emphasise its social
benefits. The discourses surrounding the for-
est were consequently transformed from the
languages of ecological science to the lexi-
con of socio-ecological development. As one
project worker with Groundwork Black
Country poignantly put it
We are not just here to plant trees … I
would say the agenda has moved on from
being about the physical environment to
being about sustainable communities, it’s
about sustainable development. Physical
regeneration doesn’t last; it’s of no value if
you don’t include social and economic
regeneration (project worker, Groundwork
Black Country, 1999).
The impossibility—which is inscribed within
the discourses of sustainable development—
of addressing ecological ends without also
tackling key socioeconomic problems has
had a significant impact on the operating
principles of the Urban Forest
In terms of our operating principles, what
we are saying is that it is not just about
places—although we do need to improve
the physical environment, so that we can
create healthy environments—but we need
to work on the social environment, create
social integration, equality of opportunity,
social justice (project worker, Groundwork
Black Country, 1999).
1200
Ecological need is always, to a certain extent,
dependent upon its social articulation. How-
ever, the requirement of the Urban Forestry
Unit continually to couch their objectives in
relation to social and economic advantage
unquestionably inhibits more meaningful and
possibly radical ecological engagements (see
Latour, 1993).
A consequence of the discursive recasting
of the Black Country Urban Forest, is that
the forest is now actively used as a strategy
for tackling social problems in the area. At
one level, the urban forest has been used to
address some of the problems of the local
labour market. The formation and mainte-
nance of the urban forest is in part being
facilitated through the utilisation of the local
unemployed population. Working in con-
junction with the government’s Environmen-
tal Task Force (an intermediate labour
market system), the urban forest has pro-
vided a means of absorbing local labour sur-
pluses. Local unemployed people now
receive training and subsidised incomes in
return for managing the woodlands and pro-
ducing sustainable woodland products.
In addition to absorbing redundant labour,
the forest has also been used as a basis for
building social and community ‘capital’. The
urban forest is consequently now being pro-
moted as an ecological arena within which it
is possible to bring together divided local
communities. Through common ownership
schemes which operate throughout the forest,
the Urban Forestry Unit is now marketing the
project as an effective ecological strategy for
building social cohesion in communities tra-
ditionally ravaged by poverty and urban de-
cline
Urban forestry offers a particularly bold
approach to urban greening. In the plant-
ing and care of all the trees and woodland
in urban areas, and in urban forestry, the
people are as important as the trees. Trees
and woods help make cities healthier and
more attractive for the people who live and
work there. The process of deciding where
trees should go and of planting and caring
for them can bring people together, build
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MARK WHITEHEAD
stronger communities and add local dis-
tinctiveness to neighbourhoods (National
Urban Forestry Unit, 1997, p. 2; emphases
added).
The purported role of nature in the building
of community identity and solidarity was
emphasised by one project worker with
whom I talked
I think that the emphasis has moved away
from environmental issues far more to-
wards social inclusion. Now in my opinion
it is very easy to build links between social
inclusion and the reduction of crime and
the environment … simple projects such
as creating a woodland is a very good way
of getting groups together and to reach a
consensus on issues they feel divorced
from (programme manager, Black Country
Urban Forest, 1999).
Through these popularised narratives of na-
ture, as an ameliorator of social tensions, the
Black Country Urban Forest has been con-
structed as an ecological frontier through
which social tensions as well as ecological
injustice can be tackled. Implicit within the
community discourses associated with the
urban forest, is a new vision of citizenship,
within which social rights and responsibili-
ties are expressed through ecological praxis.
While the social benefits of the forest may
seem questionable, such claims do reveal the
desire and pressure to construct the Black
Country Urban Forest as an arena of urban
social regulation.
So far it appears that the ecological groups
behind the Black Country Urban Forest have
been able to develop a sensitivity to social
needs within their programme, without
overtly compromising their broader environ-
mental objectives. Indeed, fostering local re-
spect and engagement with nature appear
important prerequisites for successful eco-
logical programmes. However, the persistent
economic problems within the surrounding
urban region have presented a more funda-
mental challenge to the ethos of the urban
forest. As previously mentioned, many local
industrialists and civic leaders became in-
creasingly concerned that the poor condition
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
of the Black Country’s environment was a
material and ideological barrier to economic
investment (Birmingham Post, 1999). In the
context of the increasingly aggressive and
diverse urban strategies which are being used
to ‘hold-down’ and attract investment (see
Harvey, 1989), it became increasingly
difficult to justify the existence of the urban
forest independently from its economic func-
tion. In light of the economic problems of the
region and the broader regulatory order of
interurban competition, state funding for the
urban forest and the granting of development
rights by the different local authorities gradu-
ally become tied more and more to the wider
goal of economic regeneration.
In order to gain funding for their ecologi-
cal vision, the Urban Forestry Unit conse-
quently became keen to emphasise, at least
nominally, the potential economic benefits of
an urban forest
In terms of sustainability I think everyone
is trying to encourage urban areas to be-
come more attractive for housing develop-
ers, to want to build there, for people to
want to live there, for industrial activity
… so everyone wants to improve those
urban areas … and make them very at-
tractive places (Chief Executive, Ground-
work Black Country, 1999).
Analysing the forest more closely, however,
it appears that the economic functions of the
project have started to predominate over its
social and ecological roles. Moreover, in pri-
oritising the economic advantages of the for-
est, it appears that many of the ecological
aims of the project are being compromised.
A look at the geography of the forest, for
example, reveals that, rather than focusing on
key ecological areas within the urban conur-
bation, the major destinations for investment
from the £4.5 million scheme have been
located along the key transport arteries in the
region. Called the ‘Woodlands by the Motor-
way Priority Zone’, the location of the urban
forest alongside the M6 and M5 motorways,
represents an attempt to recast the region’s
image to those predominantly living outside
the area. The ecological re-imaging of urban
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1201
economies represents one of the dominant
entrepreneurial strategies used by cities to
create attractive, post-industrial business en-
vironments (Harvey, 1989; Peck and Tickell,
1994). The location of large areas of the
Black Country Urban Forest along key trans-
port intersections has, however, created a
spatially fragmented forest and has prevented
the formation of a more continuous and eco-
logically sustainable forest system.
The designation of funding within the for-
est on the basis of visibility, as opposed to
ecological need, has obvious implications for
the overall rationale of the project. It also
illustrates the difficulties of translating eco-
logical desire into economic function. The
utilisation of the Black Country Urban Forest
as an economic resource, illustrates just one
of the many ways in which nature can be
commodified within urban development
(Katz, 1998). Crucially, the commodified ex-
ploitation of nature in the Black Country has
enabled the area to begin to cast off its
traditional industrial image and to be sold as
a green and pleasant post-industrial land-
scape (see Keil and Graham, 1999). In light
of this commodification process, the case of
the Black Country Urban Forest appears to
reflect what Katz and Kirby (1991) describe
as the aestheticising of nature. According to
Katz and Kirby (1991, p. 265), the aesthetici-
sation of nature involves the distancing of
nature from many of its social and ecological
values. Siginificantly, in the context of this
paper, the commodification and aestheticisa-
tion of nature in the Black Country, or indeed
in any other sustainable city programme,
must be understood as part of the on-going
regulatory struggles which surround urban
nature. Furthermore, this paper asserts that
the exploitation of sustainable development
strategies as a basis, first and foremost for
economic restructuring, is a product of the
contemporary neo-liberal regulatory
(dis)order which is intensifying interurban
competition and zero-sum economic gain.
In many ways, the Black Country Urban
Forest represents a microcosm of the histori-
cal struggles which have surrounded the
socio-ecological regulation of the Black
1202
Country economy. It also illustrates that the
emergence of nature as an object of regula-
tory crisis does not guarantee its place within
any emerging regulatory compromise. The
urban forest has brought undoubted ecologi-
cal benefits to the Black Country urban re-
gion. However, the political compromises
through which ecological concern has been
translated into the discourses and practices of
sustainable development raise important
questions concerning the ways in which
economic, social and environmental issues
become entangled within the on-going pro-
cesses and structures of regulation. If no
local or national support had been gained,
nothing matching the contemporary scale or
ecological significance of the Black Country
Urban Forest would exist in the area today.
Nevertheless, by playing the ‘sustainable de-
velopment game’, ecological groups in the
Black Country have sacrificed many of their
original desires for the forest and reduced the
political space within which more radical
ecological programmes can operate in the
area in the foreseeable future.
4. Conclusion: Researching the Sustain-
able City
This paper has suggested a series of ways in
which the regulation approach can be used to
analyse the material and discursive rise of the
sustainable city. By drawing upon the regu-
lation approach, analysis has sought to illus-
trate that the creation of sustainable cities is
not simply a technocratic exercise in town
planning and urban design, but is part of a
wider set of socio-ecological processes of
regulation. Understood in these terms, the
study of sustainable cities becomes less
about simply reciting a set of universal social
and ecological principles regarding urban de-
velopment, and more about analysing the
ways in which at different times and in dif-
ferent places certain social, economic and
environmental strategies of urban develop-
ment emerge and who benefits most from
these strategic formulations.
But what does a regulatory approach to the
sustainable city actually provide? At one
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MARK WHITEHEAD
level, it serves to illustrate that the sustain-
able city is a social, economic and political
construct. Unlike many existing approaches
to the social and discursive construction of
sustainability (see Hajer, 1995), however, the
regulation approach enables the social con-
struction and production of the sustainable
city to be interpreted within the prevailing
frameworks, structures and practices of capi-
talist development. In this context, the sus-
tainable city is understood both as the
product of historically specific and spatially
inscribed regulatory tensions and as a poss-
ible space within which future regulatory
processes may be realised and contested.
Through the two case studies, this paper has
explored the ways in which the discourses
and practices associated with sustainable ur-
ban development are being used to address
key objects of local regulatory discontent. By
focusing upon the fluidity of regulatory pro-
cesses, analysis has shown the importance of
local political traditions and historical regula-
tory legacies in the discursive construction of
strategies of sustainable urban development.
Crucially, in the context of the two case
studies, this paper has also shown the import-
ance of broader regimes and regulatory struc-
tures in the formation and constitution of
sustainable cities. In particular, analysis has
shown the impacts which neo-liberal state
ideology and interurban economic compe-
tition are having on the shape and content of
strategies of urban sustainability.
In bringing together the ideas of sustain-
able urban development and theories of regu-
lation, this paper has sought to dispel three
myths which appear to surround the sustain-
able city. First, that despite their morally
imbued name, ‘sustainable’ cities, are not
equally sustainable for all social and ecologi-
cal interests. Secondly, sustainable cities are
not generic, planned objects, uniformly im-
plemented throughout the world, but are indi-
vidually constituted phenomena, produced
within specific geographical scales and
spaces. Thirdly, sustainable cities are not
‘simply business as usually’ for capitalist
urbanisation, but involve the active repack-
aging or humanisation of neo-liberal projects
 (RE)ANALYSING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY
in urban areas, through new discursive
regimes and new economic practices (see
Jessop, 2001, p. 1). As a multiple space of
ecological, economic and social activity, the
sustainable city represents a crucial terrain
upon which future battles over territorial jus-
tice will be waged (Amin and Graham,
1997). Crucially, this paper asserts that this
battle can only be won when the fight for
sustainable cities becomes a broader quest
for socio-ecological justice at a variety of
geo-political and economic scales.
Notes
1. Noted here is the distinction which Harvey
(1973, pp. 307–308; 1996, ch. 14) and others
(for example, Lefebvre, 1970; Smith, 1984)
make between cities as ‘things’ and urbani-
sation as a ‘process’. As a process, urbanisa-
tion cannot be contained or defined within
any neat spatial segregation between the city
and the countryside, the metropolis and Ar-
cadia, or society and nature. Urbanisation—
or the production of urban forms—is instead
characterised by a continual state of flux,
change and transformation, which permeates
and affects an increasingly wide range of
social and ecological contexts in the repro-
duction of capitalism.
2. With perhaps the exception of writers such
as Blowers and Pain (1999), Swynegedouw
and Kaı̈ka (2000), Lawrence (1996), Sat-
terthwaite (1997) and Marcuse (1998).
3. During the course of writing this paper, the
UNCHS has been renamed the UN-Habitat
(United Nations Human Settlement Pro-
gramme).
4. Thus the mode of regulation usually labelled
as ‘Fordism’ for example, lasted for around
30 years in the West after the Second World
War, and involved technical change in the
processes of production, organisational
change in capital-labour relations, the politi-
cal implementation of Keynesian demand
management policies and the emergence of a
social norm of mass consumption for manual
workers and their families.
5. Despite an original emphasis of work on
regulation on the national scale as the key
site of Fordist regulation, regulationist re-
search has increasingly focused upon the
multiple spaces and scales through which
regulation is constituted (see MacLeod 1997;
Peck and Tickell, 1995; Tickell and Peck,
1992, 1995). In this way, the sustainable city
or region could be a significant space within
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1203
the emerging regulatory geography of late
capitalism.
6. The levels of worker absenteeism were esti-
mated to be costing the North Staffordshire
economy between £93 and £140 million
pounds per year, an average loss of £10 000
per employee (North Staffordshire Health
Authority, 1999, p. 4).
7. Particularly by Groundwork Stoke and Stoke
of Trent City Council’s Local Agenda 21
scheme ‘Green Steps’.
8. Broadly middle class in its origins, the nature
conservation lobby in the Black Country
eventually saw the establishment of the first
British urban wildlife trust in the area.
9. The Black Country Urban Forestry Unit has
subsequently been renamed the National
Urban Forestry Unit. The National Urban
Forestry Unit now co-ordinates urban for-
estry programmes throughout the UK.
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