A project's autonomy, the degree to which a project can evolve without constant interference from the parent organization, is a key feature of innovation projects. The literature treats autonomy as a passive phenomenon and underestimates how projects as temporary organizations interact with more permanent forms of organizations. A dynamic and contextually sensitive understanding of project autonomy is valuable; autonomy can change over the course of the project's lifecycle and evolve into extreme isolation. We show how autonomy is shaped through practices of isolation and how this influences project outcomes. Two innovation projects were studied through qualitative-interpretive methods and we analyzed symbolic, discursive and spatial practices of isolation. These practices facilitate the exploration of innovations but limit the transmission of these innovations to the parent organization. We contribute to the literature on temporary organizations and project-to-parent integration by illustrating and theorizing the role of practices of isolation in this process.

For financial and strategic reasons, public and semi-public construction clients increasingly depend on private parties to carry out public service delivery. They subcontract operational responsibilities to private parties while remaining socio-politically responsible for ensuring public values. Public administration literature mainly addresses the importance of procedural and performance values in safeguarding public values. However, safeguarding the quality of the built environment also requires a focus on product values. In this study, we aim to increase the understanding of the meaning and significance of public values in the daily practice of public construction clients and identify the challenges they face in commissioning these seemingly opposing values. A set of semi-structured interviews with the public administrators of a variety of public and semi-public construction client organizations in the Netherlands shows that both internal and external factors influence the collaborative practices between clients and contractors. This causes a value shift from an emphasis on procedural values to managing performance and product values, indicating that clients need to take on a wider view on public values. Six main public value dilemmas were found that complicate the task of developing an open, transparent and sustainable long-term client-contractor relationship. The current contractual system, however, lacks the flexibility to facilitate this product-based value view in construction.

Policy integration required for delivering multi-functional blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is difficult to achieve, because environmental policymaking is characterised by sectoral responsibilities and institutional structures that hinder collaboration. Both theory and practice consider urban living labs (ULLs) as promising vehicles for policy integration, as ULLs can overcome institutional structures. This article presents a framework that assesses how the urban living lab can contribute to policy integration in BGI projects and applies this to three case studies in Antwerp (Belgium), Dordrecht (the Netherlands), and Gothenburg (Sweden). Our findings demonstrate that ULLs can enhance policy integration through defining integrative aims, creating shared accountability structures, and assigning a clear problem owner with authority. ULLs can equally hinder policy integration because their dependence on sectoral funding results in narrowed-down goals. Moreover, their experimental, non-committal position gives them limited power to pull down institutional structures. Thus, ULLs do not automatically enhance policy integration in BGI projects.

Complex project networks confront project actors, with value pluralism originating from a plethora of competing organizational and institutional systems related to the project environment. Using a single urban redevelopment case study, we present a dynamic understanding of the emergence and nature of conflicts in different conflict arenas of collaborative project networks. We identify seven coping patterns to reduce and engage with this complexity in the process of delivering value throughout projects. The coping patterns enable a more dynamic and flexible approach toward conflict management in project networks with a high degree of conflicting project interests.

Realizing a multifunctional blue-green infrastructure (BGI) as a nature-based solution for the urban water system and built environment within crowded city areas is seen as a promising route for the process of climate adaptation. BGI projects like rain gardens, green roofs, and water squares can be combined to achieve a variety of technical (drainage), environmental (biodiversity), economic (property development) and social (health and wellbeing) goals and values at a local neighborhood level. As integrating such values within local governments' existing fragmented structures and procedures has proved to be challenging, urban governments are increasingly experimenting with innovative governance approaches at different levels to capitalize on the multiple benefits of BGI. Nevertheless, policy actors who try to justify their choices in the face of value conflicts are both constrained and enabled by the institutions they can call on. Using a qualitative comparative case study, this article therefore aims to gain insight into different ways of, or approaches to, organizing value integration. In particular, we compare: (1) a top-down case of programmatic steering to translate value integration into a neighborhood approach; (2) a market-oriented innovative procurement approach to local public-private partnership projects; and (3) a case of invitational governance for a future-proof neighborhood that is striving for a sense of citizen ownership. Our findings demonstrate the conditions, drivers, and barriers to the value integration of different governance innovations in relation to time-related issues, the types of support available, organizational embedding, and stakeholder involvement. Our specific focus is on understanding how social and sustainability and spatial and technical values are integrated. This paper thus helps us to get to grips with different pathways to value integration in the context of urban infrastructures, as well as their applicability and the conditions for success. These insights will enable the further strengthening of our capacity to build climate-proof cities in a value-driven and integrative manner.