Politics of Urban Runoff: Building Relations through Active Citizenship - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 184

residents need to take their embeddedness in their human and nonhuman
surroundings seriously and engage in deliberation and constructive action
to continually rework and maintain their lived conditions.

Conclusions

The most dominant form of environmental activity today, rational poli-
tics, has made great strides in addressing the environmental impacts of
industrialized societies. Its most prominent victories have come through
the control of point sources, but this approach has also resulted in the
bureaucratization of environmental protection. Populist politics serves as a
check on rational approaches and opens up the tensions of nature and hu-
mans to more actors as well as issues of equity, justice, and context-specifi c
problems. Both approaches are necessary but insuffi cient to address the
complex issues of integrating humans and nature in urban contexts be-
cause they both recognize the state as the ultimate arbiter of human/
nature relations, creating a division between humans and nature as well
as government and citizens.
Civic politics, with its embrace of the complexities and nuances of hu-
man/nonhuman relations as well as its emphasis on engaged citizenship as

Table 7.1
A comparison of rational, populist, and civic politics of urban nature

Rational Populist Civic

Problem-solving
approach

Technocratic gover-
nance

Grassroots organiza-
tion

Deliberative practice

Geographic focus Federal, state Site, neighborhood Site, neighborhood,

city, region

Primary activity Rule making and

enforcement

Community awareness
and protest

Democratic delibera-
tion and action

Key actor Technical expert Local activist Engaged citizen

Austin examples Watershed ordinanc-

es, conservation land
development, SOS
Ordinance

East Austin environ-
mental justice

Country Club Creek
Trail, Envision Cen-
tral Texas

Seattle examples Natural Drainage

Systems approach

Northgate Mall rede-
velopment controversy

Longfellow Creek
Legacy Trail, Grow-
ing Vine Street, Open
Space Seattle 2100