Governance of 21st Century Sustainable Cities: A Study of Stewardship Networks in Baltimore and Seattle

It has become widely accepted that successful urban sustainability initiatives require city agencies to partner with, and even cede authority to, organizations from other sectors and levels of government. Yet these collaborative networks are often poorly understood. Through two citywide surveys in Baltimore and Seattle, we collected data on the attributes of environmental stewardship organizations and their network relationships. We used social network and comparative analyses to examine a) the organizational composition of the network, and b) how information is shared and distributed throughout the network. We found similarities in the number of actors and their distribution across sectors, but we found considerable variation in the number and distribution of ties in the information networks of Baltimore and Seattle. We discuss these findings and their implications for urban sustainability  governance.