Transforming Municipal Services to Transform Cities: Understanding the Role and Influence of the Private Sector

Sara Hughes and Jacqueline Peterson
Additional contact information
Sara Hughes: Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S3G3, Canada
Jacqueline Peterson: Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S3G3, Canada

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Municipal services—such as water, energy, and waste management—play a significant role in shaping the sustainability of cities. In many places, these services are also fully or partially delivered by the private sector, but we are only beginning to understand the implications this has for the politics and administration of urban sustainability initiatives. In this paper, we use the case of organics waste recycling in the Twin Cities, Minnesota to identify and discuss three ways private sector engagement can shift the political and administrative landscapes of municipal service delivery: through the presence and form of accountability mechanisms, norms and conditions for entrepreneurship, and the feasibility and appropriateness of traditional policy tools for achieving urban sustainability transformations. The analysis highlights the need to better understand best practices available to local governments for pursuing urban sustainability in the context of privatization, the importance of public sector capacity, and the potential for corporate social responsibility in municipal service delivery.

Keywords: urban sustainability; public private partnerships; urban politics; municipal services; environmental policy; waste management; corporate social responsibility; organic waste recycling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/108/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/108/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:108-:d:125404

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().