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Neighborhoods, Family, and Political Behavior in Urban America. By Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh. New York: Garland, 1998. 197p. $50.00. Over the last decade or so, scholars of political behavior have increasingly [...]

Most research into the connections between water and energy, water and food, and food and energy has been scientific and technical; little research has examined the public’s understandings of these connections. This article studies these understandings and awareness of nexus issues using a 2015 national public opinion survey on the water–energy–food nexus. Responses from this representative sample of U.S. adults are used to create “awareness measures” for elements of the nexus—water and energy, water and food, and energy and food—which are then used as independent variables to investigate the extent to which awareness is associated with support for public policies designed to address these nexus interconnections. All three measures are significantly correlated to support for policy options. Results suggest that awareness of the water–energy–food nexus may represent conditions necessary for supporting policies and that building such awareness could represent an important pathway for increasing support for policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge of meeting increasing water, energy, and food needs is linked not only to growing demands globally, but also to the growing interdependency between these interconnected resource systems. Pressures on these systems will emerge to become hotspots with different characteristics, and will require a fresh look at the challenges existing both within each of the resource systems and at their respective interfaces. Proposing solutions to address different resource hotspots must be multi-faceted and need to acknowledge the multiple dimensions of the biophysical water, energy, and food systems, and the players connected with them. This commentary first explores the multiple dimensions of water, energy, and food systems as these relate to government, business, and society. It then identifies contemporary critical questions at the interface of these stressed resource systems. A 3-Filter framework is then introduced for vetting the feasibility of proposed resource allocation scenarios and to account for the bio-physical resource interactions and trade-offs, the stakeholder interactions and trade-offs, and to address governance and financing schemes for carrying forward the implementation of those scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many cities across the United States have embraced programs aimed at achieving greater sustainability. This may seem surprising, particularly since adopting aggressive environmental protection programs is regarded by some as inimical to economic development. An alternative perspective is that in the modern city sustainability can be part of an economic development strategy. What is largely missing from the literature on sustainable cities' policies and programs is systematic analysis of the political dynamics that seem to affect support for, and adoption and implementation of, local sustainability policies. To explore the actual behavior of cities with respect to sustainability and economic development policies, two original databases on 50 large U.S. cities are used. One source of data is composed of survey responses from city councilors, agency administrators, and leaders of local advocacy groups in each of these cities. The second database contains information as to what these 50 cities actually do in terms of sustainable programs and policies. In testing a series of hypotheses, findings suggest that: a high number of programs aimed at achieving sustainability is linked to the inclusion of environmental advocacy groups; that this relationship is not compromised by business advocacy; and that inclusion of environmental groups in policymaking seems to be supported, rather than impeded, by high rates of economic growth by the cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]