Overview
 
We have examined historical and contemporary roles of information and knowledge in urban resource regimes concerned with public health, forests, and parks. Our research shows that information and knowledge are necessary but not sufficient for affecting change. Our studies of Baltimore's sewer infrastructure and comparative research with the Piren-Seine Zone Atelier demonstrate the significant struggles between national/state and city powers. For instance, both Paris and Baltimore had equal science about the causes of cholera and typhoid, but because Paris was powerful as the capital of France and Maryland constrained Baltimore's autonomy, Paris was one of the first cities of its time to adopt a publicly financed and administered sewer system and Baltimore was one of the last. We find too, in this research and our studies of parks and forests, the transition in dominance from private markets and individual decision-making and the Progressive push in the United States in the late 1800s for public institutions, organizational capacity, and professional "experts" to plan and manage newly defined "public" resources associated with ecological systems: particularly water, air, agriculture, forests, and wildlife. This should not be seen, however, as one type of decision making replacing another, since the elites in the City persisted, harnessing the public institutions, organizations, and technocracy to support their interests. Our contemporary studies have found a third type of decision making, collaborative decision making, infused into the organizational ecology of the metropolitan region, which again influences how information and knowledge are legitimized and used to influence the environmental quality of the Region.