Becoming smart? Pursuit of sustainability in urban policy design

ABSTRACT

The pursuit of sustainability through various smart solutions has become prominent in urban policy-making. We explore how cities utilize particular planning and management tools in this endeavour. We introduce the concept of sustainability proxies that are necessities in organizing institutional complexity. We show how that complexity is framed differently from the notorious decision-making silos. This paper provides theoretical accounts to understand the ambiguous nature of sustainability as a target for smart urbanity and scrutinizes the uses of sustainability proxies through an empirical case. The paper provides an account of how public management through proxies actually happens in urban policy-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart city
• urbanism
• sustainable urban development
• sustainability proxies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Academy of Finland, Strategic Research Council (Decision number 303551).

Notes on contributors

Ilari Karppi

Ilari Karppi is Adjunct Professor and University Lecturer in Regional Studies at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University. His key research interests focus on smart urbanity with special reference to planning of sustainable urban environments and visionary leadership in urban development/renewal processes. He is also interested in field methods for studying sensemaking in local and regional land-use and mobility planning as well as transit-oriented development.

Jarmo Vakkuri

Jarmo Vakkuri is Professor at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, and the director of the research group on Public Financial Management. His research concentrates on performance measurement in public administration, theories of decision-making, hybrid organizations and governance, and urban policy-making. He is the director of the HYPER project (Performance measurement for hybrid governance), and one of the directors of the ‘Beyond MALPE coordination: integrative envisioning’ (BEMINE), both funded by the Academy of Finland.