Studies of governance have focused on the interactions among diverse actors while implicitly recognizing the role of power within those relationships. Explicit power analyses of water governance coordination are needed to better understand the conditions for and barriers to sustainability. I therefore utilized a novel conceptual framework to analyze vertical and horizontal governance, along with power, to address how governance interactions affect water sustainability in terms of (1) interactions among governance actors across local to state levels; (2) coordination among actors at the local level; and (3) the exercise of power among assorted actors. I adopted a qualitative case study methodology that involved triangulating interview transcripts, policy documents, and other data in the case study area of Prescott, Arizona.

Across governance scales, my analysis found that informational and contentious interactions occur around water management plans, groundwater withdrawal fees, and growth debates due to the stipulations of Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act. Locally, municipalities in different groundwater basins coordinate by pooling resources for water development due to shared growth visions. However, municipalities within the same groundwater basin are divided in their pursuit of the state-mandated goal of safe yield due to discontent arising from differing growth visions, libertarian values of water control, and unequal responsibilities among actors in conserving water or monitoring use. Finally, local and state actors exercise power through litigation, legislation, and political processes to pursue their interests, thereby limiting coordination for water sustainability.

My explicit analysis of power reveals that coordination occurs not just because of water policies but due to interest-based water narratives (growth and libertarian). The emphasis of growth proponents on supply augmentation and libertarian opposition to regulations pose significant barriers to water sustainability. Successful policy-based pursuits of water sustainability will, thus, require an acknowledgment of these management asymmetries and commitments to addressing them.

Anderies (2015); Anderies et al. (2016), informed by Ostrom (2005), aim to employ robust

feedback control models of social-ecological systems (SESs), to inform policy and the

design of institutions guiding resilient resource use. Cote and Nightingale (2012) note that

the main assumptions of resilience research downplay culture and social power. Addressing

the epistemic gap between positivism and interpretation (Rosenberg 2016), this dissertation

argues that power and culture indeed are of primary interest in SES research.

Human use of symbols is seen as an evolved semiotic capacity. First, representation is

argued to arise as matter achieves semiotic closure (Pattee 1969; Rocha 2001) at the onset

of natural selection. Guided by models by Kauffman (1993), the evolution of a symbolic

code in genes is examined, and thereon the origin of representations other than genetic

in evolutionary transitions (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995; Beach 2003). Human

symbolic interaction is proposed as one that can support its own evolutionary dynamics.

The model offered for wider dynamics in society are “flywheels,” mutually reinforcing

networks of relations. They arise as interactions in a domain of social activity intensify, e.g.

due to interplay of infrastructures, mediating built, social, and ecological affordances (An-

deries et al. 2016). Flywheels manifest as entities facilitated by the simplified interactions

(e.g. organizations) and as cycles maintaining the infrastructures (e.g. supply chains). They

manifest internal specialization as well as distributed intention, and so can favor certain

groups’ interests, and reinforce cultural blind spots to social exclusion (Mills 2007).

The perspective is applied to research of resilience in SESs, considering flywheels a

semiotic extension of feedback control. Closer attention to representations of potentially

excluded groups is justified on epistemic in addition to ethical grounds, as patterns in cul-

tural text and social relations reflect the functioning of wider social processes. Participatory

methods are suggested to aid in building capacity for institutional learning.

This ethnography follows mobile trajectories on roads in Nairobi to investigate how the transformation of transport infrastructure has affected people’s everyday mobility. I follow diverse mobile actors, including pedestrians, handcart (mkokoteni) workers, and minibus (matatu) operators, whose practices and ideas of moving are central to understand the city’s ordinary mobility. I also situate their everyday ways of moving in the rules, plans and ideas of regulators, such as government officials, engineers and international experts, who focus on decongesting roads and attempt to reshape Nairobi’s better urban mobility. Despite official and popular aspirations for building new roads and other public transport infrastructure, I argue that many mobile actors still pursue and struggle with preexisting and non-motorized means and notions of moving that are not reflected in the promise of and plans for better mobility. This ethnography also reveals how certain important forms of ordinary mobility have been socially marginalized. It explores what kinds of difficulties are created when the infrastructural blueprints of road “experts” and the notions that politicians promote about a new urban African mobility fail to match the reality of everyday road use by the great majority of Nairobi residents. By employing mobile participant observation of the practices of moving, this study also finds important ethnographic implications and suggestions for the study of mobile subjects in an African city where old and new forms of mobility collide.

Sustainable development in an American context implies an ongoing shift from quantitative growth in energy, resource, and land use to the qualitative development of social-ecological systems, human capital, and dense, vibrant built environments. Sustainable urban development theory emphasizes locally and bioregionally emplaced economic development where the relationships between people, localities, products, and capital are tangible to and controllable by local stakeholders. Critical theory provides a mature understanding of the political economy of land development in capitalist economies, representing a crucial bridge between urban sustainability's infill development goals and the contemporary realities of the development industry. Since its inception, Phoenix, Arizona has exemplified the quantitative growth paradigm, and recurring instances of land speculation, non-local capital investment, and growth-based public policy have stymied local, tangible control over development from Phoenix's territorial history to modern attempts at downtown revitalization. Utilizing property ownership and sales data as well as interviews with development industry stakeholders, the political economy of infill land development in downtown Phoenix during the mid-2000s boom-and-bust cycle is analyzed. Data indicate that non-local property ownership has risen significantly over the past 20 years and rent-seeking land speculation has been a significant barrier to infill development. Many speculative strategies monopolize the publicly created value inherent in zoning entitlements, tax incentives and property assessment, indicating that political and policy reforms targeted at a variety of governance levels are crucial for achieving the sustainable development of urban land. Policy solutions include reforming the interconnected system of property sales, value assessment, and taxation to emphasize property use values; replacing existing tax incentives with tax increment financing and community development benefit agreements; regulating vacant land ownership and deed transfers; and encouraging innovative private development and tenure models like generative construction and community land trusts.