T. H. Morrison Regional institutional integration is viewed by many as an essential precursor to the achievement of rural sustainability in that it addresses increasing concerns about institutional com- plexity in rural areas and the need to manage ecosystems at a bioregional scale. Governments are requiring planners to engage citizens, organizations, and institutions in regional strategic planning, regional organizational amalgamation, and regional administrative-boundary reconfiguration to achieve such integration. Despite this popularity, these approaches still are not well thought out. In particular, there has been little crit- ical hypothesis development on institutions and regional inte- gration by which planning practice toward achieving rural sustainability can be guided. This article seeks to show how certain elements of the scholarship in a range of disciplines within and outside planning can shed light on the different dimensions of this concept. This review enables important lessons to be drawn for planners, citizens, and governments concerned with institutions, integration, and the environment. Keywords: regionalism; integration; environmental governance; institutions Most environmental planners agree that the institu- tional landscape in rural environments is complex. The reactive response of governments to rural concerns through time and the associated creation of isolated institutional arrangements have inflamed and are symptomatic of a rural landscape’s ecological complex- ity. Furthermore, “changing demographics, coupled with the awakening of new special-interest groups, have transformed the landscape of policy conflict from one in which relatively homogenous stakeholder groups operated in parochially defined issue arenas, to one which is increasingly heterogeneous, encroach- ing upon sacred policy cows” (Warfield 1993, 177). Postmodern conditions of globalization, differentiation, pluralization, and reflexivity now mean that postpro- ductivist ruralities are marked by “uncertain, complex and often contradictory modes of decision making, swayed by multiple interest-groups, each with its own distinctive set of values and ideologies, not susceptible to swift resolution in multiple-value, multiple-use con- tests” (Holmes 2002, 372). Pursuing Rural Sustainability at the Regional Level: Key Lessons from the Literature on Institutions, Integration, and the Environment T. H. MORRISON holds an academic position within the Flinders Institute of Public Policy and Management in the School of Political and International Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, where she specializes in public policy, envi- ronmental governance, and regionalism and decentralization in developed postindustrial countries including Japan, the United States, and Australia. Journal of Planning Literature , Vol. 21, No. 2 (November 2006) DOI: 10.1177/0885412206292261 Copyright © 2006 by Sage Publications