David Hsu, Ting Meng, and I have a new article in press titled, “Rocky steps towards adaptive management and adaptive governance in implementing green infrastructure at urban scale in Philadelphia” in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

In it, we take an in-depth (and somewhat critical) look at how adaptive governance played out in reality as Philadelphia attempted to rely on stormwater fees and credit programs to incentivize green infrastructure implementation in the city. On the one hand, the Philadelphia Water Department successfully adapted their program by offering assistance on fees and construction costs. On the other hand, the process of adaptation also revealed de-legitimization of the new policies, contested discourses, and pluralization. Our study shows the difficulty of rolling out economic-based incentives for large-scale green infrastructure implementation in large, heterogeneous cities. Despite experimental approaches and adaptive governance/management techniques cities seeking to implement green infrastructure at scale may need to prepare to continuously redefine what constitutes “success.”