ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter presents the guiding lines of the book and situates its major premises, by outlining six main interrelated points. The author starts with the commonly accepted idea that there has been a shift “from government to governance” when dealing with sustainability issues. A second section more precisely focuses on the very notion of “sustainability governance”: what is the point of linking and trying to think together two such tricky notions? Third, the author further investigates the notion through the exploration of three conceptual triads: politics-polity-policies/government-governance-governability(or governmentality)/global-local(or territorial)-individual. Fourth, this leads to an analysis of hierarchy issues from three major perspectives: actors and resources; norms and legitimacy; and contents and instruments. A fifth section then suggests ways of thinking together hierarchical and non-hierarchical modes of sustainability governance, in order to account for real-world issues. Finally, the chapter gives an overview of this book, its goals and its organization around the two cross-cutting notions of public governance and urban governance.
