Eco-industrial developments in the U.S. spatial forms, contextual factors, and institutional fabrics of greener plants and offices.

摘要

The main goal of this dissertation is to examine the current practices and strategies of eco-industrial development in the U.S. Traditional studies of eco-industrial development focus on successful case studies and their internal systems, but overlook external systems enabling those cases. By reconsidering eco-industrial development from the viewpoint of agglomeration economies, this dissertation investigates the spatial forms and contextual factors of greener plants and offices as key actors in potential ecoindustrial developments, and the institutional fabrics of on-going eco-industrial developments to identify potentially favorable locations for eco-industrial developments.;Spatial forms of eco-industrial developments tend to follow given geographical distributions of plants in the industrial context and of offices in the post-industrial context. The exploratory spatial data analyses and regression analyses illustrate that larger and greener plants in selected pollution-intensive industries tend to cluster in and around a group of major U.S. cities. Greener offices are also likely to be located in and near the similar group of cities, as revealed from the descriptive analyses.;Selected contextual factors appear to influence the environmental performance and locational behavior of greener plants and offices significantly. Through a series of regression analyses, it is revealed that the economic performance of larger and greener plants is largely conditioned by the internal economies of scale, and the environmental performance is by factors of localization economies. The event-history analyses and panel data analyses of greener offices show that demographic, economic, governmental, and geographic factors have considerable impacts on the adoption speed and size of green building projects at the county level. Factors associated with urbanization economies seems to work significantly in the diffusion of green buildings in the U.S.;Institutional fabrics of on-going eco-industrial developments are probed by a series of case studies on the Rutgers EcoComplex, the regional By-Product Synergy projects, and green towers at Battery Park City in Manhattan. Findings from case studies support the importance of balanced institutional building processes between local communities and non-local networks. The pre-existence of enlightened local anchor is instrumental, while the role of non-local anchor as enabler or facilitator in local eco-industrial development deserves more attention.