Urban sustainability and political parties: Eco-development in Stockholm and Amsterdam

In environmental planning practice, political parties tend to be perceived as marginal, unimportant or even dysfunctional. Although urban politicians are increasingly important in the formulation of strong sustainable policies, there is little research that explicitly and empirically looks at the role of elected officials in shaping policies for urban sustainability. This paper scrutinizes the role of parties in formulating urban agendas of sustainable development and in triggering projects of eco-district development in Amsterdam and Stockholm. It does so in order to show how parties play a multiplicity of roles: they mobilize voters through differentiated agendas, they organize the translation of agendas into interventions and act as power holders in the formulation of sustainable urban policies. Combining a post-political framework and classic work on electoral politics, we show how this dynamic occurs in practice. We empirically illustrate that the behavior of parties resonates with the insights of a post-political critique but they do not behave linearly and homogeneously in the ‘policing’ process. They show a complex combination of mobilizing, politicizing and depoliticizing tactics. Political parties are relevant to eco-development and should be problematized within contemporary urban research.