Water management in California has always been politically charged and fraught with controversy. In the summer of 2009, the last year of a three-year drought, a specific type of “water crisis” emerged in political rhetoric, in which constructing new dams and lifting protections for endangered fish species could solve California’s water problems. This piece critically examines these claims by presenting a brief background on how water is used and managed in California, highlighting the disconnect between the cost to deliver water and the price users pay, and explaining misconceptions that led endangered species protections to be attacked. California needs to take a proactive stance in water management by examining how water is currently allocated, reforming our water rights system, and dealing with difficult water issues before they reach a “crisis” level.

Over the last decade and a half, climate change and its impacts have become increasingly important to local, regional, national and international public policy debates. Since settlement patterns, built form, and transportation contribute significantly to climate-changing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, urban planners are taking a lead in promoting compact, transit, and walk friendly urban development to lower carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions. This paper argues that focusing on climate change as the catalyst for a Kuhnsian paradigm shift in how we think about transportation, rather than as a complex and elusive public policy problem, has a number of risks. Specifically, a n overemphasis on reducing the carbon impacts of transportation projects may lead to weak coalitions for transportation projects, bad decision-making processes, and even some poor planning decisions. Although transportation planning and policy will likely continue to play an important role in efforts to stem the effects of climate change, an excessive focus on GHG emissions may lead to mistakes along the way.

Climate change represents the largest planning challenge humanity has ever faced. Past planning has not only failed to confront the global warming crisis, but has helped increase emissions. Climate action plans being developed by governments at all levels still do not address underlying drivers of the problem such as unsustainable levels of population, consumption, and inequity. Nor do debates around climate change planning address the core reasons why societies to date have been unable to deal with such sustainability challenges: dysfunctional democracy, poorly regulated capitalism, and unhealthy social ecologies. Achieving a sustainable, carbonneutral society requires that planning confront these realities and develop a new conception of itself as a far more proactive endeavor to help societies prepare for a sustainable future.

Using the dual crises of cultural loss in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, and environmental degradation at adjacent Dianchi Lake as background, this paper coins a new term, ignowledge, to describe a particular “technology of rule” in the Chinese political system. Ignowledge is a power tied to culturally specific conceptions of modernity, development, politics, ecology, eco-politics, and environmentality.

As global ecological problems pose increasing risks to human well-being, design and planning can play an important role in developing solutions. However, there is a need for alternatives to centralized, hierarchical, inflexible, and exclusionary approaches that have contributed to problems in the past. We propose an “open source” practice, which links participatory development with networked planning and design, fostering collaboration between government, business, nonprofits, and individual citizens in addressing ecological problems at the local level.

"Shrinkage at the Urban Fringe: Crisis or Opportunity?"
Shrinkage in suburbia has not been widely researched yet. This paper examines communities and towns in Berlin’s suburbs undergoing processes of shrinkage and regeneration after the fall of the Wall. The communities which experienced population decline in 1992–2008 were concentrated in the eastern suburbs. In two thirds of 63 communities, employment declined (1994–2006). Selective population in- and out-migration, lack of land demand and investments, increasing competition, accompanying shock-like transformation and globalisation, plus disadvantageous location factors all tend to cause shrinkage. The Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region is a unique urban laboratory where growth and shrinkage occur side by side and de-centralization and centralisation occur simultaneously, all in a heterogeneous, polycentric urban region. Hence, a patchwork pattern appears on every scale. The paper concludes that shrinkage is not “abnormal” nor is it always negative and needing to be concealed. Rather, suburban shrinkage is an integral, indeed inevitable, part of every city’s life, and it often presents interesting and valuable positive planning opportunities. A major future challenge for urban studies is to discuss how to shift paradigms from “perpetual linear growth” to “cycles that include shrinkage.”

Leipzig, Germany has been continuously shrinking since 1966, a phenomenon accelerated and transformed by the post-socialist transition since 1989. The term “perforated city” was created to describe a new era of cities characterized by simultaneous demographic decline and urban sprawl. Unlike other East German city authorities, such as Dresden’s, Leipzig’s decided to adapt to shrinkage and perforation at an early stage in an attempt to manage the shrinkage process and take advantage of change. City planners aimed to build the image of a dynamic, sustainable city serving as a model of urban shrinkage management. Three main axes can be identified in their planning strategy: preserving the architectural heritage, considered a trademark of the city, creating green spaces and open spaces to replace dilapidated housing estates, and supporting the creation of a micro-scale hierarchy of centres. In practice, these strategies were largely limited to a marketing campaign based on the traditional rhetoric of urban regeneration, as planners lacked the financial and legal tools to fully implement them. Some interventions lead to conflicts with land owners about land use and might further intensify social and spatial differentiations in a context of territorial competition and polarisation. This case study is based on empirical research, including interviews with actors involved in shrinkage management, and an analysis of statistical data. It concludes that Leipzig’s image-based strategy could be, like Maya’s veil, a decoy aimed at hiding lack of influence and financial power to achieve the aim of managed shrinkage.

In the context of globalization, cities have come to the foreground and are now thought of as nodes in the global economic network. This evolution has had various consequences for urban regions, depending on whether one focuses on the centers or the peripheries. It has been beneficial to some areas, but detrimental to others. Urban territories are now experiencing various forms of growth and/or decline, whether demographic, economic, or social. This study aims to analyze the specific processes of decline and revitalization that have affected the cities, and to identify which part public policies have played in this respect.
In order to grasp the varieties of decline in these “first suburbs,” a typology based on socio-economic indicators has been elaborated, which differentiates between four types of evolution patterns for suburbs lying within urban areas faced with globalization. Some of those first suburbs have indeed managed to resist decline: one group uses globalization as a way to become part of the economic center and to attract wealthy households; the second group is confronted with simultaneous social decline and economic success; a third group consists of cities fulfilling a mainly residential function; and the last is made up of localities in transition between the above orientations.
This change of economic and social pattern can thus be seen as a revival, but its consequences are of particular note amidst a global crisis. The sustainability of such a revival must be questioned.

Japanese cities losing population represent an emerging research field among international studies on shrinking cities. Japanese speaking works exploring this topic (Oswalt et al. 2008; Yahagi 2009) use the words toshi no shukusho to translate “shrinking city,” as a notion originating in Western research on urban decline, which particularly affects cities from OECD countries at the beginning of the 21st century (Pallagst et al. 2009). This paper explores the transfer and the idea and whether some Japanese cities in decline constitute a Japanese-specific version of this global phenomenon, combining de-industrialization waves, socio-economic crisis and demographic transition. To see how shrinking cities/toshi no shukusho relates to the evolution of Japanese urban spaces, this article investigates the factors behind urban decline within a metropolitan area considered shrinking in Japan, the Osaka Metropolitan Area. Osaka’s decline is particularly affecting its distant suburbs, where depopulation and devitalization are associated with the rapid aging of its remaining residents in addition to the decline in the manufacturing base of the area. The paper discusses the problems that such patterns of urban decline raise for urban planners in Japan. While certain actors within the public and private have responded to depopulation by creating local policies to serve elderly residents, at a higher level, there are gaps between metropolitan and local views on strategies to address peri-urban decline, as well as between cities and suburbs within regions. This gap suggests urban shrinkage requires regional governance and coordination, in addition to local solutions.