Politics of Urban Runoff: Building Relations through Active Citizenship - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 181

aspects of urban water. These activities demonstrate a distinct break from
the conveyance logic of conventional stormwater management, the reform
efforts of Low Impact Development and source control advocates, and
the populist protest of neighborhood residents. There is an emphasis on
the experiential, biological, playful, artistic, and community-building op-
portunities offered by local water fl ows. A distinct feature of these proj-
ects is that they were directed and implemented by local community and
environmental organizations. Various government entities were involved
but generally served as funding sources and a source of expertise on a
limited scale.
The Challenges of Civic Politics
To be sure, civic politics presents a number of signifi cant challenges. Civic
politics does not assume that deliberation and practice are simple tasks
or that they can be conducted without deep disagreement and poten-
tial failure. Indeed, the politics described here are often more diffi cult to
navigate than those of rational and populist politics because the ground
rules have been signifi cantly altered. One of the most damning critique of
civic politics is that existing political structures are simply too entrenched,
making radical transformation impossible. Commenting on the challenges
of deliberative democracy, political scientist James Meadowcroft writes,
“The adversarial political culture, legalistic regulatory approach, litigious
proclivity, and deep suspicion of government found in the United States
may represent insuperable barriers to the growth of this mode of environ-
mental governance.” 100 Furthermore, conservative political actors might
actually be attracted to civic politics because of its potential to dilute
environmental regulation or dispense with it altogether. 101 Thus, there is
a worry that the deliberative process can be used to steer a community
away from prescribed goals by replacing unsatisfactory regulations with
no regulation whatsoever. Indeed, democratic deliberation does not auto-
matically change the ground rules for debate; existing power geometries
and power plays can still be present. 102
These critiques represent a fundamental challenge to developing civic
politics as a viable environmental governance strategy. However, the work
of sustainable community activists and civic environmentalists suggests
that radical political reorientation is possible. They counter the claim that
contemporary politics cannot be rescued from its emphasis on intractable
differences and have developed political processes in which participants
take one another's positions and claims seriously. 103 Here, deliberation