Institutional Capacity-building in Urban Planning and Policy-making for Sustainable Development: Success or Failure?

Merritt Polk

Planning Practice & Research, 2011, vol. 26, issue 2, 185-206

Abstract: Local and regional governments are facing extreme challenges regarding their ability to plan for sustainable urban development. The ever-present pro-market policy agenda leaves little room regarding global considerations for long-term environmental conservation and social justice. The complexity of sustainable development also defies the traditional management and problem solving capabilities of most local municipalities. Different types of informal and formal partnerships, networks and arenas have been formed to offset such deficiencies. This paper presents an example of a cross-sector, multi-level civil servant arena and examines its ability to provide a more integrative approach to planning and policy-making in western Sweden. The results were assessed using a combination of theory on institutional capacity-building and sustainability learning. The arena increases institutional capacity by promoting relational links across organizational divisions and governance levels, and by increasing substantive knowledge. At the same time, the more radical and innovative results were either avoided or watered down, and opportunities developed through institutional capacity-building were vastly underused.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02697459.2011.560461 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:cpprxx:v:26:y:2011:i:2:p:185-206

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cppr20

DOI: 10.1080/02697459.2011.560461

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Practice & Research is currently edited by Vincent Nadin

More articles in Planning Practice & Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().