Governing metropolitan green infrastructure in the United States

In this paper we explore whether the enhancement of urban ecosystem services through large-scale, metropolitan tree-planting initiatives is being planned and executed as a component of traditional municipal government or represents new, transdisciplinary strategies in environmental governance. Drawing on qualitative interviews with stakeholders in six major cities (n = 58) we further explore institutionalization of these initiatives and relationships. While much current discourse posits government cannot "go it alone" in providing preventative, "front-end" solutions to complex environmental problems, we found the public sector dominant in the visioning, planning, and management of these green infrastructure initiatives and the role of the private sector to be minimal. We also found that, despite this dominance, the initiatives had limited success in becoming institutionalized. This dichotomy reflects that while discourses labeling the public sector unable to grapple with complex environmental issues and the private sector dominant in environmental governance regimes are premature, institutionalizing the solutions into the machinery of government remains a contested arena. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.