Orchestrating sustainable urban development: Final report of the SASUI project

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School of Engineering | D4 Julkaistu kehittämis- tai tutkimusraportti tai -selvitys
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Date

2016

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Rakennetun ympäristön laitos
Department of Built Environment

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Language

en

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90 + app. 22

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Aalto University publication series SCIENCE + TECHNOLOGY, 1/2016

Abstract

Transition towards a low-carbon society needs the development of innovations, such as solutions of low-carbon everyday mobility or new techniques of collaborative urban densification. Partnerships as social innovations are pivotal in enabling these developments. Cities may take several roles in partnership arrangements. The roles can be anything from being project partners in experiments that are closely related to the jurisdiction of the local authorities to orchestrating whole innovation ecosystems. This report summarizes the findings of the two-year project that aim to serve both as useful theoretical insights and as practical solutions to the described overall challenge and to the problems of the particular cases. We have used the term ‘architecture’ in connection to successful innovation processes, and asked what social, operational and informational architectural prerequisites are needed for successful sustainable urban development. We have developed the conceptual framework further during the project to better acknowledge that there is a clear difference between cities and private sector actors as facilitators of innovation. Whereas the companies operate on the markets and may be interested in long-lasting growth coalitions with the cities, the cities are always accountable also to the people. The partnership arrangements are not of the type public-private but public-private-people. Besides the theoretical development, we have been observers and participants of urban development in our case study areas. We have three main case studies: two from Finland, one from Sweden. The intention has not been to study them in a strict comparative framework, although the cases do offer themselves for some comparisons. It is rather that insights in one case have made us look at the other cases in new ways. Many undertakings of the projects can actually be labelled action research, meaning that we have also been active (co-)producers of interventions with the purpose to make a difference, and have reflected on how the action has taken effect in the case study areas. In this report, we will first outline a general model of the urban governance system as a learning system. While doing so, we will also introduce a number of key theoretical concepts of our study. Then, in the chapters that follow, we will use this theoretical basis in our three case studies: the Otaniemi OK process, the Tammela urban infill case and the Malmö case. Finally, based on our theoretical work and case observations, we will offer some policy recommendations for the development of systemic architectures for sustainable urban innovation in the context of Finnish urban governance. Sustainability is a challenge that addresses the whole governance culture. Especially, it calls for transcending the dysfunctional and legitimacy-eroding effects of poorly managed institutional ambiguity with the idea of hybrid governance that, while nurturing innovativeness and partnerships towards sustainability, is sensitive to its own sources of legitimacy and trust.

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Keywords

sustainable city, social innovation, hybrid governance, institutional ambiguity, trust

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https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-60-6692-9

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[report] Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu / ENG