So, we're starting to hear a lot about community resilience in the context of global climate change. I would argue that it's not merely that we need to change policies in order to build this resilience, we need to change the policy process as well.
Postmodern urban theory is a kind of theoretical outgrowth of architectural ideas like new urbanism. It deals with fragmentary communities, the need for intensive community discourse, and the various ways outlying growth is reorganizing traditionally central spaces.
So, great, but where do I park my car and can I get fries with that?
Like a lot of postmodern ideas, the discourse opens outward into multi-valent possibilities, which for me is awesome right up until you have to write a policy that actually helps a community. I'm just an old school Jamesian pragmatist like that, boo yah.
So, here's what I wrestle with...
...in this paper: By comparing the analogous frameworks of current liberal and postmodern urban policy, I try and sketch out a productive fragmentation that can be used to make coherent policies. Yep, the policy may look different--and it will certainly write across multiple sectors (nonprofit, social) in ways that current policy would never dream.
But it is policy, you can benchmark it, and that's what maters to me.
In a later paper, I sketch our a research methodology based on this approach. Stay tuned.
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