skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Partnering with Non-State Actors to Govern Nexus Problems and Promote Climate Action in Smart Cities and Regions
While uncertainty remains about what a smart city “is,” significant advances have been made in the technologies and applications that will underpin their roll out. In this paper, we argue that a smart city or region is not truly “smart” unless it places sustainability and quality of life at the center of the planning, governance, and innovation processes. The public sector lacks the resources to operate at this nexus alone, yet legitimacy challenges must be overcome to effectively draw on the capacities of non-state actors. By focusing on the Greater Phoenix Smart Region Consortium (The Connective), established in March 2019, we illustrate the role non-state actors play within the smart cities/regions space and highlight new types of partnerships to address climate change as part of their smart city vision. The regional and multi-stakeholder, participatory approach of The Connective offers lessons for advancing nexus governance in other jurisdictions.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1828010
PAR ID:
10344090
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
SSRN Electronic Journal
Volume:
62
Issue:
2
ISSN:
1556-5068
Page Range / eLocation ID:
111-129
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ( , Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences)
    null (Ed.)
    Despite the known benefits of integrated policy and planning, traditional governance decisions in the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus are often made without cross-sector collaboration, potentially leading to unintended consequences and decreased resource security. Applying collaborative governance approaches to the FEW nexus provides an opportunity to shift towards integrated policy of food, energy, and water governance; doing so first requires an understanding of the limitations of current governance structures and the opportunities for change. We conduct a social network analysis of stakeholders in Phoenix, AZ using secondary data sources to construct the social network of collaboration and to analyze the ability of the governance landscape to facilitate or hinder collaborative governance. The social network measures indicate potential challenges to collaborative governance of FEW nexus stakeholders, such as limited trust between actors. However, leveraging bridging actors provides opportunities to increase collaborative governance between sectors. This research is important for implementing collaborative FEW nexus governance in practice. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ( , Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science)

    Research examining the rise of digital environmental governance, particularly at the subnational scale in China, is fairly limited. Critical questions regarding how digital technologies applied at the subnational level may shape or transform environmental governance are only beginning to be explored, given cities’ increasing role as sustainability experimenters and innovators. In this study, we investigate how smart city initiatives that incorporate big data, artificial intelligence, 5G, Internet of Things, and information communication technologies, may play a role in the transformation towards a “digital China.” We conceptualize three major pathways by which digital technology could transform environmental governance in China: through the generation of new data to address existing environmental data gaps; by enhancing the policy analytical capacity of environmental actors through the use of automation, digitalization, and machine learning/artificial intelligence; and last, through reshaping subnational-national, and state-society interactions that may shift balances of power. With its dual prioritization of digital technologies and climate change, China presents an opportunity for examining digitalization trends and to identify gaps in governance and implementation challenges that could present obstacles to realizing the transformative potential of digital environmental management approaches.

     
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ( , Urban Geography)
    The paper identifies an under-researched mode of smart city-making in Africa characterized by municipal deployments of ICT-driven innovations. This departs from typical framings that view African smart city development as nationally driven, master planned new city developments. An in-depth analysis of the City of Cape Town’s Digital City Strategy provides insights into the mechanisms and processes grounding smart city concepts in African municipalities. Thus, situating Africa’s municipal ICT-driven strategies in the context of a global discourse of smart urbanism and local (and continental) processes of decentralized governance reform. In Cape Town, these global and local forces converge to drive ICT-inspired urbanism that reinforce market-oriented logics of urban governance, largely at the expense of transformative and contextually sensitive ICT deployments. By highlighting the multi-scalar production of smart cities inspired by global discourse yet subjected to local dynamics, the findings offer insights into the political realities of municipal ICT deployments in Africa. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ( , Society & Natural Resources)
    Food-energy-water nexus governance has been promoted as an approach to integrate the management and policy of the three sectors together for coordinated governance. However, there are limited approaches to evaluate, assess, or measure the governance of the food-energy-water nexus. Assessment of the governance process is important to move the concept from conceptualization toward implementation and to understand the specific potential and limits of the nexus governance process. Therefore, this study presents a theoretical framework and associated indicator set to assess urban collaborative food-energy-water nexus governance in practice. This theoretical framework is then applied to two example cases: Phoenix, Arizona, USA and Cape Town, South Africa. The implementation of this framework provides recommended factors needed for improved collaborative FEW nexus governance in cities. These cases showcase the utility of this framework in assessing urban collaborative food-energy-water nexus governance. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; et al ( , Urban Transformations)
    Abstract The Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach has the potential to create enabling environments for social learning and to be a successful arena for innovative local collaboration in knowledge co-creation and experimentation in the context of research and practice in sustainability transitions. Nevertheless, complex issues such as the urban Food-Water-Energy (FWE) Nexus present a challenge to the realization of such ULL, especially regarding their inclusiveness. We present ULL as a frame for a local knowledge co-creation and participation approach based on the project "Creating Interfaces - Building capacity for integrated governance at the Food-Water-Energy-nexus in cities on the water". This project aims at making FWE Nexus linkages better understandable to the stakeholders (citizens and associations, city government, science, businesses), and to facilitate cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. This paper focuses on and discusses inclusiveness as a key aspect and challenge of ULLs and on what literature and our experiences in this regard suggest for the advancement of the concept of ULL towards ULL 2.0. These findings often also relate to framing transdisciplinary research in a wider sense. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email