Abstract
The transition towards sustainable cities cannot be solved by individual stakeholders and organisations acting alone. Better governance for tackling such complex problems, including policy change and innovation adoption, will require purposeful collaboration. This is particularly evident in projects that involve integration across scales. Our case-study research compared six water-related innovations in large cities in Australia, the Netherlands, and the US. We found that government agencies, water utilities, professional organisations, and industry innovators were all vital actors, along with supportive community education. In the initiation phase of innovation, informal networks were used by sustainable innovation champions to galvanise support. As pilot projects emerged, more formal supportive processes and financial incentives were crucial. For large projects and for the mainstreaming of pilot projects, the role of formal coordination and integration mechanisms became vital for coherent and successful implementation. Various forms of network-based collaborative work were utilised, but the designation of a key coordinating organisation was found to be helpful in maintaining focus and momentum. Coordination activities across organisations, scales, and time were enhanced by the strength of core values and culture, such as valuing stakeholder engagement, innovation, flexibility, and having a focus on outcomes. Overall, this research demonstrated the need to continually evaluate the innovation process to ensure that key ingredients (suitable for each context) are implemented in a timely manner to strengthen the process and enable effective and purposeful collaboration.
Highlights
The governance of urban water sustainability occurs at the intersection of many policy and planning issues and across several scales of spatial and organisational complexity [1,2]
We aim to investigate the challenges of collaborative governance for urban water governance by asking the following research question: How have collaborative governance principles and practices contributed towards successful innovation in water management? At the heart of the collaborative governance challenges is the need for publics, technical experts, policymakers, and regulators to collaborate to find solutions to emerging sustainability challenges and develop appropriate governance arrangements to support the solutions
A specific bridging organisation can offer the advantage of enabling participating organisations to be represented
Summary
The governance of urban water sustainability occurs at the intersection of many policy and planning issues and across several scales of spatial and organisational complexity [1,2]. The governance arrangements that emerge to support such integrated solutions will need to operate effectively across different organisations, sectors, and levels of government This increased complexity has been underpinned by a broader shift in the structure and operation of Western government bureaucracies. Problems that may be faced include misfits between scales, finding the most “appropriate” scale for establishing multilevel governance arrangements, overcoming problems of interplay between different levels, problems of Sustainability 2020, 12, 4509 reconfiguring scales (rescaling problems), and problems of upscaling and downscaling [11] These challenges were evident in implementing the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) characterised by multiple and nested regional spaces with diverse interests [17]. We endorse the value of supportive collaboration in overcoming the challenges underlying sustainable urban development
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