Enabling transformative agency: community-based green economic and workforce development in LA and Cleveland

Lily Song

Planning Theory & Practice, 2016, vol. 17, issue 2, 227-243

Abstract: This article explores enabling conditions of creativity and transformative agency in the field of community development. Based on a comparative case study of the Los Angeles Green Retrofit and Workforce Program and Evergreen Cooperative Initiative in Cleveland, it finds a combination of problematic situations at the field and organizational level, individual biographical factors and available resources, and the presence of trusted intermediaries enabled alternative community development practices. In seeking to contribute to institutional planning theory on the paradox of embedded agency, it builds on the pragmatist planning approach to consider such multi-level enabling conditions and interim activities of individuals and organizations working towards institutional change. At the same time, it addresses shortcomings of pragmatist planning by attending to the role of particular historical actors, institutions, and policies in “problem solving” within the specific case studies along with the implications of structural disadvantage and inequality and sociocultural diversity for governance processes.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2016.1158307

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