Introduction
Research on sustainable cities has served as the core of my research agenda since the late 1990s, when the idea of a sustainable city provided me with a great opportunity to merge my interests in city policies and politics, environmental policy, and citizen participation. I have taken a broad approach to the analysis of city policies and programs, trying to understand a wide array of programs and policies that make up cities’ efforts to try to become more sustainable. I developed a methodology for assessing cities’ policy and program efforts, and have assessed the largest 55 cities. I started doing these assessments by around 2000 for a smaller number of cities, and have conducted updated analyses of the largest cities at least three times. This yielded the Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously book, now in its second edition. I should also add that this has served, in part, as my entrée into the more recent efforts to conduct research of urban water systems and policies. As I have developed this area of research, I have increasingly focused on the role of local groups in promoting and advocating for sustainability policies, and this work has largely been done in collaboration with Jeff Berry. The interest in the concept of sustainability led to the new book called Sustainability published MIT Press, which reviews a variety of conceptual and applied issues. The analysis of city sustainability has now entered a new phase with the inclusion of urban and coastal resilience policies and programs. We have embarked on a project to study the resilience policies and programs in the 101 largest U.S. cities, with plans to expand this to 301 cities.
Books
2015 – Sustainability.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
monograph published in the MIT Press
“Essential Knowledge” Series.
2013 -- Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: Economic Development,
the Environment, and Quality of Life in American Cities.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Click Here for the Corporate Knights' Exclusive "America's Greenest Cities 2012: Which Municipalities are Making the Greatest Sustainability Effort?" Supplement to the Washington Post
Articles, Book Chapters, and Papers
2018 -- Garett Sansom and Kent E. Portney, "Sustainable Cities Policies and Healthy Cities," Chapter 3 in M. Nieuwenhuijsen and H. Khreis, eds. Integrating Human Health into Urban Transportation Planning. Springer International Publishing.
2018 -- Kent E. Portney and Bryce Hannibal, "Urban Governance and Sustainability through the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Evidence from the San Antonio Area Case," Paper presented at the 2018 Meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, January 4.
2018 -- Kent E. Portney, "Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: What Cities are Doing," Chapter 12 in Norman Vig and Michael Kraft, eds. Environmental Policy, tenth edition. Los Angeles: Sage/CQ Press.
2018 -- Ann O' M. Bowman, Kent E. Portney, and Jeffrey M. Berry, “Multilevel Governance and City Sustainability Policies," Paper presented at the 2018 Meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orelans, LA, January 3.
2017 -- Ann O' M. Bowman, Kent E. Portney, and Jeffrey M. Berry, “Multilevel Collaboration in Designing and Managing City Sustainability Policy," Paper presented at the 2017 Meetings of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, September 1.
2017 -- Kent E. Portney and Garett Thomas Sansom, “Sustainable Cities and Healthy Cities: Are They the Same?” Urban Planning, 2 (3), 45-55.
2017 – Jeffrey M. Berry and Kent E. Portney, “The Tea Party versus Agenda 21: Local Groups and Sustainability Policies in U.S. Cities,” Environmental Politics, 26 (1), 118-137.
2017 -- Ann O' M. Bowman, Kent E. Portney, and Jeffrey M. Berry, “Multilevel Governance and Sustainability Policies in U.S. Cities: Does it Exist? Does it Matter?” Paper presented at the 2017 Meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, January 12.
2016 -- Kent E. Portney and Jeffrey M. Berry, “The Impact of Local Environmental Advocacy Groups on City Sustainability Policies and Programs,” Policy Studies Journal, 44 (2), pp. 196-214.
2016 -- Kent E. Portney and Jeffrey M. Berry, “The Group and Ideological Bases of Local Sustainability Policies and Programs,” Chapter 11 in Kevin Archer and Kris Bezdecny, eds. Handbook of Cities and the Environment. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishers.
2016 – Margaret Garcia, Kent E. Portney, and Shafiqul Islam, “A Question Driven Socio-Hydrological Modeling Process,” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 20, 73-92.
2015 -- Kent E. Portney, “Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: What Cities are Doing,” Chapter 12 in Norman Vig and Michael Kraft, eds. Environmental Policy, ninth edition. Los Angeles: Sage/CQ Press.
2014 -- Kent E. Portney and Jeffrey M. Berry, “Civil Society and Sustainable Cities,” in Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp.395-419.
2014 -- Rick Feiock, Kent E. Portney, Jungah Bae, and Jeffrey M. Berry, "Governing Local Sustainability: Agency Venues and Business Group Access,” in Urban Affairs Review, 50 (2), pp.157-179.
2014 -- Kent E. Portney, “Developing Sustainability Indicators for a City,” Chapter 14 in Hilda Blanco and Daniel Mazmanian, eds., The Elgar Companion to Sustainable Cities: Strategies, Methods, and Outlook. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishers.
2014 -- Jeffrey M. Berry and Kent E. Portney, “The Group Basis of City Politics,” in Robert Pekkanen, Steven R. Smith, and Y. Tsukinaka, eds., Nonprofits and Advocacy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
2013 -- Kent E. Portney, “Local Sustainability Policies and Programs as Economic Development: Is the New Economic Development Sustainable Development?,” in Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 15 (1), pp. 45-62.
2013 -- Jeffrey M. Berry and Kent E. Portney, “Sustainability and Interest Group Participation in City Politics,” in “Sustainable Cities” symposium issue of Sustainability, Vol. 5, pp. 2077-2097. Open Access.
2010 -- Kent E. Portney and Jeffrey M. Berry, “Participation and the Pursuit of Sustainability in U.S. Cities,” in Urban Affairs Review, Volume 46, No. 1, September, pp. 119-139.
2010 -- Kent E. Portney and Zachary Cuttler, “The Local Nonprofit Sector and the Pursuit of Sustainability in American Cities: A Preliminary Exploration,” in Local Environment, Volume 15, No. 4, April, pp. 323-339.
2009 -- Kent E. Portney, “Sustainability in American Cities: A Comprehensive Look at What Cities are Doing and Why,” Chapter 9 in Daniel Mazmanian and Michael Kraft, eds., Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformation in Environmental Policy, 2nd ed. Cambridge: MIT Press.
2008 -- Kent E. Portney, “Education and Smart Growth Policies in U.S. Cities,” in Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 89, No. 5, December, pp.1378-1383.
2007 -- Kent E. Portney, “Local Business and Environmental Policies in Cities,” Chapter 10 in Michael Kraft and Sheldon Kamieniecki, eds., Business and Environmental Policy. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 299-325.
2005 -- Kent E. Portney, “Civic Engagement and Sustainable Cities in the U.S.” in Public Administration Review, Vol. 65, No. 5, September/October, pp. 579-591.
2002 -- Kent E. Portney, “Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: A Comparative Analysis of Twenty Four U.S. Cities," in Local Environment, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 363-380.
1994 -- Kent E, Portney, “Environmental Justice and Sustainability: Is There a Critical Nexus in the Case of Waste Disposal or Treatment Facility Siting?" in Fordham Urban Law Journal, Spring, pp. 827-839.
