Planning Ecology

Abstract

This article reviews two areas of environmental policy making in Los Angeles: policies regulating the Los Angeles River, and the South Coast’s air quality management policies. At the empirical base of the article is an analysis of policy and planning documents as well as personal interviews with major policy makers. Engaging with recent literature on ecological modernization and discourse coalitions, the authors argue that during the 1990s, discourses of urban environmental policy making, which have been strongly influenced by environmentalists, have now become the domain of economic forces interested in the region’s growth. Both the air and the river cases demonstrate a shift from environmental questions as ecological and human health concerns to concerns of efficiency, economic well-being, and capital accumulation.