IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cpprxx/v26y2011i2p185-206.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Merritt Polk

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Merritt Polk, 2011. "Institutional Capacity-building in Urban Planning and Policy-making for Sustainable Development: Success or Failure?," Planning Practice & Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 185-206.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cpprxx:v:26:y:2011:i:2:p:185-206
    DOI: 10.1080/02697459.2011.560461
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02697459.2011.560461
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02697459.2011.560461?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Howes & Liana Wortley & Ruth Potts & Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Julie Davidson & Timothy Smith & Patrick Nunn, 2017. "Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Vincent Wretling & Berit Balfors, 2021. "Building Institutional Capacity to Plan for Climate Neutrality: The Role of Local Co-Operation and Inter-Municipal Networks at the Regional Level," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    3. Vélez-Ramírez, Alberto & Rivera-Castañeda, Patricia & Muñoz-Pizza, Dalia M., 2022. "Institutional capacity determinants in a global south city: the case of a wastewater utility in Zacatecas, Mexico," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    4. Terence Fell & Johanna Mattsson, 2021. "The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Housing as a Potential Contributor to Sustainable Cities and Communities: A Systematic Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-25, July.
    5. Vincent Wretling & Berit Balfors, 2021. "Are Local Authorities Building Their Capacity to Plan for Reduced Climate Impact? A Longitudinal Analysis of Swedish Comprehensive Plans," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-20, June.
    6. Camilo A. Ramírez Rincón & João Santos & Leentje Volker & Robert Rouwenhorst, 2021. "Identifying Institutional Barriers and Enablers for Sustainable Urban Planning from a Municipal Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-24, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cpprxx:v:26:y:2011:i:2:p:185-206. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cppr20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.