Abstract
This paper examines conservancies as potential exemplars of jurisdictions working across jurisdictional lines in developing metropolitan sustainability practices. With conservancies, we examine the promotion of locally constructed environmental values across jurisdictions. This research views conservancies as "intermediate structures" where networked activities traverse boundaries and influence the system as a whole, a characteristic suggestive of complex adaptive systems where connections among emergent networks shape the system as a whole, where collective action transcends boundaries while preserving jurisdictional integrity, and where patterns of interaction build capacity to legitimize collaboration that would otherwise be unacceptable. These intermediate structures create environmental commons among many parcels that, taken together, enhance the ecological sustainability of the region. These commons represent a complex adaptive system enabled by a variety of intermediate structures that facilitates distributed governance.