THE IDEOLOGY OF THE ECO-CITY: A DISCURSIVE APPROACH

misbe2011 Tracking Number 95

Around the world, growing concern about the environmental implications of urban living is putting pressure on municipalities to come up with strategies and measures to keep cities liveable, minimize environmental degradation and reduce carbon emissions. One response to these concerns is the emergence of new sustainable urban developments, sometimes called “eco-cities.” In a recent review, Joss (2010) identified more that 70 such projects worldwide. A brief look at such projects demonstrates that the term “eco-city” is being used to describe a diverse range of urban projects which vary in scale, ambition, and design. In this paper, we use discourse analysis to explore these differences and reveal the underlying ideologies of these projects. In the social sciences, discourse analysis is used to study the way in which issues and understandings are socially constructed. It does so through the analysis of both statements, and the context in which those statements are made. A number of authors have demonstrated the value of discourse analysis to understanding how planning decisions are made (Kumar & Pallathucheril 2004; Portugali & Alfasi 2008). Similarly, in the field of environmental sociology, discourse analysis is used to explore the way that environmental issues are constructed by actors (Dryzek 2005; Hajer 1995). The particular value of discourse analysis demonstrated by these works is its ability to reveal the impact of intentional and unintentional expressions of bias and ideology. Building on this work, in this paper we analyse how planners communicate about eco-city projects to the world in order to search for the ideologies underpinning their work. Such an understanding could then inform sustainable planning policy and practice. Our analysis focuses on the positions that planners take on two key issues: their views on how to achieve environmental change and sustainability their views on how to undertake planning practice. The paper consists of two parts. First we present the results of a discourse analysis of documents about a selection of eco-city projects, and of interviews with practitioners working on these types of projects. In the analysis we identify the presence, recurrence and context in which indicative words and phrases, such as technology, participation, and sustainability are used in communicating about the projects. From this analysis, we establish two broad categories that projects fit into, each of which is defined by an underlying ideology about the best way to achieve urban sustainability. From this analysis we identify two categories of eco-cities: the technocentric eco-city, and the process-focused, socially grounded eco-city. In the second part of the paper, the implications of each ideology are further explored through a closer analysis of one example from each category. Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm, Sweden is used to illustrate the technology-focused projects while EVA-Lanxmeer, in Culemborg, the Netherlands is used as an example of the socially grounded eco-city initiative. Our analysis shows that eco-city projects may emerge from very different ideologies about how to undertake sustainable urban planning. The respective roles of technology and of participation emerge as particular points of difference. We believe this demonstrates the need for further constructivist studies of sustainable urban developments to develop a more critical understanding of how contemporary projects propose to achieve urban sustainability.