Introduction

In the quest for sustainable development, researchers need more effective methods for linking knowledge to action. The task is not merely technical. To join science and technology to policy and planning requires ongoing interaction among a diverse ecology of agents (partners from public and private sectors, academia, community-based organizations, non-profit groups). The elements of interaction should include peer-reviewed science, state-society synergy, civic engagement and efforts to advance social democracy. Principles of distributed intelligence, federation, and dynamic knowledge networking are key. In short, we need to develop collaborative, multidisciplinary, "learn-by-doing" approaches. My strategy has been to do work in a wide range of fields and to try and create synergy across these fields. In particular, I see the need to integrate insights from theee domains: new regionalism, sustainability science, and advances in information and communications technology. I've found it useful to think of the theory-building and practice at this nexus as constituting the "frontiers of regional ecology."

Frontiers of Regional Ecology: A Workbench Approach
by Keith Pezzoli

This paper spells out key concerns rooted in efforts to define and implement more equitable and sustainable forms of urban and regional development. I presented the paper at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Annual Conference, Atlanta, November 2-5, 2000. Currently, I am working on book that will expand on these ideas. A copy of the paper can be viewed on-line:

Building a Regional Workbench for Sustainable Development (275kb pdf, plus images 561kb pdf)
Frontiers of Regional Ecology: A Workbench Approach (236kb html)

Abstract
This paper describes a web-based “Regional Workbench” approach to research, education, outreach and training for integrated regional planning. The San Diego-Tijuana global city-region and principles of sustainable development and regional ecology serves as the main point of reference. Traditions emphasizing regional analysis, institutions and idealism frame the paper’s three main arguments. These are: (1) Research Universities should be leading the way in the creation of multidisciplinary, partnership-driven, user-friendly, and, ultimately, globally federated, regional information systems. Regional analysis has a crucial role to play in meeting this need, especially now that information technologies are enabling fruitful methods for creating, integrating, and sharing knowledge across academic divisions, public and private sector networks and political boundaries; (2) Efforts to define and implement the legal-institutional and collaborative basis for regional planning in today’s globalized political economy raises new challenges for management and governance. Regional planners must confront politically charged, often contradictory, views and processes involving such fundamentals as capital mobility, economic growth, land use, trade, territoriality, state intervention, and metrics for measuring wealth and valuing the quality of life and habitat. Ongoing forms of exploitation based on class, race and gender complicate matters. Navigating this terrain in search of the collective good is a technical, political, and cultural process that requires charismatic action-research (programmatic advocacy), the mobilization of civil society, state-society synergy and regulatory innovation, and; (3) The tradition of regional idealism has historically given planning a source of visionary inspiration in seeking the good society; some call this the power of the imaginary. The ability to evoke a meaningful image of the livable city-region, as attempted in classic works of Geddes, Mumford and others, has never been more important.

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General Concepts and Theoretical Perspectives

1. Rapid urban-demographic growth and resource-intensive industrialism have become large-scale biogeophysical forces on earth.

Human Activity is significantly altering many of the planet's life support systems and material cycles including the atmospheric system and the carbon, nitrogen, sulpher, biologic and hydrologic cycles. There has been a five-fold increase in the scale of human economic activity in the post-WWII period. A recent study of Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the US documents the immense volume of natural resources required to run a developed economy; it is in the range of 45 to 85 metric tons of material per person each year.1 Much of this material flow-including mine tailings, eroded soil, logging debris, and excavated earth and rock-does not end up in final products, nor does it ever enter into public view. According to the World Bank, if present productivity and population trends continue, the economic output of Third World countries would rise by 4-5 percent a year between 1990 and 2030. By 2030, Third World economic output would be about five times what it is today. The output of countries in the First World would rise more slowly but would still triple over the same period. Total world output by 2030 would be 3.5 times what it is today. Analysts at the World Bank warn us that "if environmental pollution and degradation were to rise in step with such a rise in output, the result would be appalling environmental pollution and damage" (1992: 9).

2. The world's global city-regions are increasingly interdependent economically and ecologically.

Interdependence among the world's cities and national economies has deepened dramatically over the past thirty years. There are many reasons for this and the move towards greater interdependence is tension laden. The tension stems in part from friction between the call for free international trade on the one hand, and the practice of protectionism at national and regional levels on the other. The growth and decline of cities in today's increasingly global economy is driven by the interplay of global and local dynamics that involve firms, labor, capital and communities. The process has been described as "creative destruction." While much attention has focused on the economics of global integration, less attention has been devoted to understanding, or dealing with, the impacts of urban-ecological interdependencies. City's have an "ecological footprint," that is, a hinterland upon which the city's survival depends. Cities of affluent societies have comparatively large ecological footprints and a staggering throughput of natural resources. Most of us are only dimly aware of the enormity of these flows and their environmental impacts. Environmental problems on a global scale demands that we devise new strategies for urban and regional development. The challenge has prompted a rethinking of how we define wealth, progress and development. The notion of "sustainable development" is one of the products of this new line of thinking.

3. Theories and concepts of development, modernization and progress are rooted in culture and history.

Their meanings change over time. In this respect, theory is important. Joined with practice, theory can be a critical and progressive force. But theory can also be used to justify the status quo or a deepening of exploitation. World system theory aims at explaining today's global economic order including the "global assembly line" and the contemporary division of labor among cities. Economic geographers try to explain such processes as industrial location, technological change and innovation. Insight into such processes is crucial. The best work in economic geography excels at integrating economics with socio-cultural and organizational theory. Regional Ecology integrates the views of political economy with an analysis of ecological systems.

4. Regional ecology and the call for sustainable development reflect a more ecological approach to knowledge creation, integration and sharing.

The concept of sustainable development has changed the terms of debate about environment-development relations and the urban prospect. These changes are promising. "We have in the past been concerned about the impacts of economic growth upon the environment. We are now forced to concern ourselves with the impacts of ecological stress--degradation of soils, water regimes, atmosphere, and forests--upon our economic prospects" (WCED 1987:5). While the mainstream discussion about sustainability is promising, it still suffers from considerable confusion. Often there is a failure to distinguish between growth and development-but some scholars and activists are making considerable advances in conceptualizing the sustainability challenge and a new field of "sustainability science" has emerged. Across a wide range of fields, our understanding of how knowledge gets created, integrated, and shared is dramatically changing. These epistemological shifts-broadly defined here as movement towards more ecological approaches to knowledge production and management-are evident in academic domains including the social, natural, and life sciences; the humanities; computer science and engineering. It is also evident in professional domains involving business, government, and non-profit organizations.

5. The capital-mobility model has dominated thinking about urban and regional economic development.

Development decisions are largely based on the functional logic of market rationality. In opposition to this, some argue that more emphasis needs to be placed on territorial or ecologically based social rationality. So, while there may be widening concern about promoting so-called "sustainable" development, there is wide disagreement on how to get there. There are contradictory views about such fundamentals as capital mobility, trade, state intervention, and metrics for measuring wealth and quality of life.

6.The globalization of capitalism is giving rise to a new regionalism.

In terms of manufacturing, there has been a shift from Fordism to Global Fordism. This shift has spurred export led industrialization (ELI) in developing countries. The impact of global fordism registers in rust-belt cities of the U.S. (e.g., Detroit and Flint in Michigan) and sun-belt cities (e.g., Los Angeles and San Diego). In the world's new competitive landscape city-regions have gained importance as territorial actors in their own right. This has been dubbed as the "new regionalism." City-regions are the locus of "untraded interdependencies"--a term economic geographers use to describe region-specific assets in production (i.e., social capital in the form of networks, conventions, informal rules, and habits). City-regions are the middle ground tying together local and global forces; they are nodal points in globe-girdling networks of consumption, production, distribution and exchange. From a conceptual and practical standpoint, city-regions (as distinct from nation states) are important testing grounds for integrating the three Es of sustainable development: economic efficiency, equity, and environmental stewardship.

7.Global urbanization and uneven development combine in ways that make traditional planning and policy approaches problematic.

City-regions are diverse, often conflicting, aggregations of cities, suburbs, and their environs that need to be organized as integrated systems composed of communicating networks of infrastructures. Yet globalization, uneven development and low-density urban sprawl have combined in ways that make traditional planning and policy approaches problematic. In the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, an estimated 600 million urban dwellers live in "life and health threatening environments because of unsafe and insufficient water, poor quality and often overcrowded shelters, inadequate provision for sanitation, garbage and drainage, unsafe housing sites and a lack of health care" (Mitlan and Bicknel, 1992:3). In developed as well as developing countries, additional concerns include problems with the structure of livelihood opportunities, land use, habitat destruction, pollution and the loss of biodiversity. Urban planning is an interdisciplinary profession that must grapple with these conditions and contradictions.

8. Building "Regional Workbench" programs in the quest for integrated regional planning and sustainable development.

To build consensus for sustainability and to translate it into public policy will require novel forms of social learning, collaboration, and political action, including new forms of coalition building and networking. While sustainable development may require long-term integrated planning, partnerships, and coordinated action, it must also rely on the use of advanced information and communications technology (ICT). ICT has an increasingly important role to play in promoting collective goals of accessibility, accountability, transparency, efficiency, and equity. Yet, as a growing number of analysts point out, electronics-based networks segregate as much as they connect, and they do so selectively (there are serious digital divides within as well as across regions and nations). The development of advanced computational infrastructure should empower new forms of participatory governance committed to peer-reviewed science, civic engagement, state-society synergy and efforts to advance principles of social democracy. At the heart of this challenge is the task of strategically reaping benefits through distributed intelligence, federation, dynamic knowledge networking and collaborative learning. Research universities can play an important role in this regard, for instance, by developing Regional Workbenches--- collaborative, web-based networks for sustainability science, regional ecology and the linkage of knowledge to action.