Social learning in planning: Seattle's sustainable development codebooks

This paper investigates the power and potential of studying planning and policy innovations from a social learning standpoint. Social learning is an important but under-investigated feature of planning and policy processes, and a particularly critical goal in the adaptation of innovations. While often cited as part of the desired outcomes of planning and policy processes, social learning is rarely investigated from a process-based perspective able to reveal how and why it occurs to different degrees in different contexts. At the same time, such process-based understanding is precisely what is needed by theorists and practitioners alike in order to improve the impact factor of plan and policy changes, to improve the transferability of ‘best practices,’ and to bolster public support and engagement in public affairs. This kind of research requires a new, comprehensive theory of social learning within planning and policy contexts as well as new analytical tools for studying social learning processes in particular cases.     

Urban policy engagement with social sustainability in metro Vancouver

This article presents an analysis of social sustainability in comparative theoretical context and as a challenge to the post-political interpretation of sustainability in policy practice at the urban and regional scales. Metro Vancouver provides a case study for improving our understanding of the meaning of social sustainability as a framework for social policy in that it is among the handful of cities around the world currently working to define and enact social sustainability in governance terms. Results of this participant research provide evidence that some cities are politically engaging alternative development pathways using the concept of social sustainability. For sustainable development to retain its promise as an alternative policy framework for cities, social sustainability must be at the forefront.