Putting Industrial Ecology into Place Evolving Roles for Planners

Industrial ecology is an evocative metaphor that has evolved into a new paradigm for environmental management. It locates human activity in a larger, environmental context and uses the natural world as a model for organizing industrial activities. To date the concepts of place and jurisdiction have been missing from industrial ecology, even though many important environmental decisions are made within local political boundaries. Planners are uniquely equipped to advance this field because they (a) study locally-open systems such as economies, and (b) link big-picture ideas to incremental decisions. In return, industrial ecology offers planners an integrative framework for describing, explaining, and solving environmental problems.