The urban governance configuration: A conceptual framework for understanding complexity and enhancing transitions to greater sustainability in cities

Abstract

This article proposes a conceptual framework for analysing and comparing urban governance configurations and their dynamics in the context of sustainability transitions. Our contribution to the debates consists of drawing on a literature review to develop a conceptual framework with the dimensions necessary for understanding urban governance processes and their dynamics; an urban governance configuration framework. We argue that this framework allows us to combine important dimensions (discourses, actor networks, knowledge and material processes) shaping urban development decision‐making and outcomes in their social, economic and environmental domains, in a complex world. The main advantages of this approach are: first, it enables the analysis how complex decision‐making is combined in a particular time and space, generating decisions and outcomes based on a variety of knowledge; second, it allows a comparative analysis of governance configurations across different places within the same city and between cities; and third, provides lessons on how urban governance could shift to more inclusive, sustainable forms of urban development.

An alternative form of bureaucracy; the operational framework of the city’s governing authority

“…Cities, functioning as pivotal nodes within governance networks, resource flows, material contexts, and spatial domains, are considered crucial entities for addressing the amalgamation of challenges associated with the future sustainability of urban environments (Baud et al, 2021). Recent literature on urbanism and sustainability has placed growing emphasis on the inquiry of improving 'resilience' and 'sustainability' or cultivating the 'ecological city.'…”

Rethinking geographies of sovereignty: Towards a conceptual framework of situated sovereignty

“…All these scholars aim at deciphering the processes that are associated with different “sovereignty making”. Scholars debate how the output of planning, dialog, and negotiation processes is used in influencing decision‐making processes (Baud et al., 2021).…”

“…Conceptually, there is a lively debate on how to foresee these activities that aim at realising democratically grounded modes of “doing sovereignty” as “hybrid governance arrangements” (Baud et al., 2021), “reconfiguring urban governance” (Davidson et al., 2019), or new “governance orders” (Young, 2021). Due to the great importance of non‐state actors in our understanding of sovereignty, we acknowledged a great closeness to the concept of governance in our reconceptualisation of the term, with non‐state actors also playing a major role.…”

Unsatisfying Transfer of Climate Research to Urban Planning: The Regulatory Trap in the Triple Helix

“…A way out could be experiments, governance experimentation, socio-technical experimentation, and strategic experimentation as possible means to change urban governance of climate change (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013). But Baud et al (2021) mention that also participatory experiments which try to include people and new knowledge from various sources remain limited because existing regulatory frameworks keep these more inclusive processes outside mainstream administrative processes.…”

“…In such governance arrangements, multiple actors interact to shape the 'rules' and processes needed to manage and transform cities. Governance could be defined as 'the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs' framed by a normative vision for the future (Baud et al, 2021). According to Sato (2017), communication has to happen in the framework of a global knowledge economy, where triple helix (2022) 1-21 | 10.1163/21971927-bja10035 dedicated transfer programs between global and local players as well as public and private stakeholders can be implemented with less complexity.…”