Informed Cities

Making Research Work for Local Sustainability

Marko Joas, Kate Theobald, David McGuinness, Cristina Garzillo, Stefan Kuhn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134692743
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Informed Cities looks at the knowledge brokerage processes between cities and higher education institutions, and in particular evaluates governance mechanisms for monitoring local sustainability and the role of research within this.

The first part of the book provides an analysis of tools for governing sustainable cities and develops a typology of existing tools. It then considers approaches to monitor local sustainability on a European level, focusing on a number of key tools such as the Covenant of Mayors, Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities, and Green Capital Award. The second part of the book introduces an explorative application of two tools that the author team have used in practice to monitor local sustainability, Urban Ecosystems Europe and Local Evaluation 21, presenting and evaluating European level data collected from local governments.

The third part of the book looks deeper into a number of case studies discussing how a working and rewarding city-university connection can be created and nourished in an administrative and political setting. Finally, the last part of the book reflects on lessons learned from the application of the tools and accompanying research process and makes recommendations for further developing monitoring tools for urban sustainability on a European level.

This book will be essential reading for professionals in urban and regional planning who are tasked with monitoring the effects of sustainability policies, as well as for graduate students in planning, environmental governance, sustainable development and related disciplines.

Chapter 1

Understanding knowledge brokerage for urban sustainability

Marko Joas and Kate Theobald

Introduction

Decision-making processes are constantly evolving in contemporary society. Case specific scientific knowledge is of growing importance as a basis for decision making, to some degree replacing ideological and other political evaluations. In addition, academic subjects like knowledge management are increasingly used within both private and public organisational decision making, as well as in local governments’ policy setting.

This has put pressure on local level knowledge creation, collection, analytical usage and dissemination, both within the local governments (both the political system as well as administration) and also among citizens. By their nature, local governments tend to be highly service-oriented at the expense of focusing on knowledge acquisition.

Their limited resources and optionally active network governance structures can steer local governments towards cooperation with higher education institutions in order to find solid scientific evidence for their decision making. These ‘knowledge brokerage’ processes are part of contemporary governance.

It is clear that the process of knowledge brokerage – the chain of knowledge – is not a one-way street. Knowledge flows between policymakers, academia and citizens in both directions in a dynamic functioning brokerage process. The effects of knowledge, for example regarding citizen participation in politics, have been rather widely studied (see for example Grönlund and Milner 2006 and Grönlund 2007). For other aspects, as knowledge brokerage processes within local governments, the level of scientific knowledge is still lower.

The first chapter of this book provides the conceptual underpinning for the understanding of the knowledge brokerage processes within local governments, and especially within the sustainability policy sector. It explores knowledge brokerage in the context of policymaking for urban sustainability. While it acknowledges that there are debates on the nature of ‘knowledge’ itself, the focus of this chapter is to understand the processes by which knowledge is exchanged and shared between researchers and policymakers, as well as to analyse the factors and conditions that are required for successful knowledge brokerage.

This chapter begins by exploring the literature on knowledge brokerage in a broad sense, and considering how it is being applied in the social sciences, and more specifically in the field of urban sustainability policy. It goes on to examine the EU-level perspective on knowledge brokerage, which has developed in the past five years in response to concerns that sustainability ‘tools’ developed for – and with – cities have not been fully utilised, indicating a failure of knowledge brokerage and knowledge exchange between researchers and policymakers. It discusses the European Commission’s key role in funding a series of projects specifically focused on improving knowledge brokerage processes around urban sustainability, one of which is the PRIMUS project.¹ Finally, the objectives of the project from which the Informed Cities Initiative was born, and the key mechanisms employed to improve ‘connectivity’ between researchers and policymakers in local governments across Europe, are explored.

Development of debates on knowledge brokerage

As with several other new concepts introduced to the academic debate, knowledge brokerage has emerged from the everyday needs and work within the practice of (local) government, or any other organisation being in need of solid knowledge as a base for decision making. Taking this as a starting point, the need for local knowledge has, in recent years, found its way to academic theories of knowledge brokerage within diverse academic fields including health, economic geography and urban studies, with much of the early conceptual work taking place in Canada in relation to the health sector (Canadian Health Service Research Foundation 2003; see also McAneney et al. 2010: 1493). Consequently, the literature on knowledge brokerage relates to a number of different areas, including health services and the management sector. In both of these contexts, discussions are around ‘intermediary’ roles and ‘boundary spanners’ (Robeson et al. 2008; Singh et al. 1994). Knowledge brokerage has been defined in the context of applied health research and policy as ‘all the activity that links decision-makers with researchers’ by Lomas (2007: 131). Knowledge brokers ‘effectively construct a bridge between the research and policy communities’ (Nutley et al. 2007: 63) by establishing a dialogue between organisations.

However, policy community literature is much older than the knowledge brokerage debate and invites us to consider the relationship between decision makers and stakeholders in a wider perspective than just knowledge. In his seminal work on epistemic communities, Haas states that ‘ideas inform policies’ and that ‘policy choices are often made by discrete networks of actors’ (Haas 1992: 26); policy actors are not working alone.

This analytical framework was constructed for use at an international level, but has gradually been developed into a general network analysis that can be applied at all societal levels. Carsten Daugbjerg defines a policy network as ‘an organisational arrangement created to facilitate the intermediation between state actors and organised interests’, and goes on to say that ‘[p]olitical actors create a policy network when they exchange resources regularly’ (Daugbjerg 1999: 412). Organisations that enter a policy process are dependent on other organisations for resources in contemporary society (Daugbjerg 1999); these resources include knowledge transferred between actors.

Another debate surrounds the role of social networking in knowledge brokerage processes. Social network analysis is used to analyse information and influence traits in policy processes between actors and across policy areas (McAneney et al. 2010: 1493). Social network analysis helps us to understand to what degree actors are embedded in a specific network, but also ‘how a structure emerges from the interactions of actors in the network’ (Behrend and Erwee 2009: 101).

Decision-making processes in contemporary societies, including those at local government level, are highly complex and involve many institutions. Rangachari (2009: 134) notes that ‘[c]omplex systems possess distinctive properties that set them apart from linear systems’. These systems are defined in terms of relationships between actors, both inside and outside the core organisation. Furthermore, the systems are, at least to some extent, self-organising and show clear synergies created by the interaction. Local governments, as well as research organisations, can benefit from mutual cooperation within the local policy spheres, an activity clearly fulfilling the contemporary definitions of governance (see for example Goss 2001 within the topic area).

According to Sheate and Partidário (2010), knowledge brokerage has become a strong driver in current sustainability discourses, with a substantial literature promoting the importance of knowledge sharing and transfer as a way of breaking down barriers that impede interaction, collaboration and healthy communication. They emphasise the ability of organisations to determine access to, and transfer of, knowledge and enhance innovation, and this is linked to the need to approach multi-scale environmental problems in an effective way. A key challenge is how such approaches can be used to communicate essential information to decision makers about choices between alternative strategies, pressures on environmental and social issues, and consequences for sustainability (Vicente and Partidário 2006).

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no single, universally agreed academic definition of knowledge brokerage, but different definitions contain similar features: capacity building; facilitating interpersonal and inter-organisational linkages; promoting access to evidence; building relationships of trust; setting agendas and common goals; clarifying information needs; knowledge creation; commissioning syntheses of research of high policy relevance; communicating and sharing advice; and monitoring the impact on the know–do gap (list adapted and based on van Kammen et al. 2006: 609).

Knowledge brokering is seen as a central element of the human process of knowledge transfer, between both individuals and organisations. Information is moved from a source to a recipient and back in a dynamic process: ‘Brokering focuses on identifying and bringing together people interested in an issue, people who can help each other develop evidence-based solutions. It helps build relationships and networks for sharing existing research and ideas and stimulating new work’ (Canadian Health Service Research Foundation 2003).

A central element is the actors within the process, especially knowledge brokers, described as ‘people or organizations that move knowledge around and create connections between researchers and their various audiences’ (Meyer 2010: 118). The brokerage process links researchers and decision makers together, helps them to understand each other’s working environment and its dynamics, creates new partnerships, and guides all actors to use research-based evidence as a basis for decisions (Canadian Health Service Research Foundation 2003). This is the core of this project.

However, this cannot lead to success unless supportive structures are embedded into the process. As van Kammen et al. (2006: 611) noted while analysing an empirical knowledge brokerage system in The Netherlands, ‘two interrelated core elements to its success were: a carefully designed process to bring the scientific research community and policy-makers together; and an appropriate institutional embedding’. Sheate and Partidário (2010: 279) define such supporting structures as ‘boundary institutions that straddle and mediate the divide between science and policy’. They can also enhance the reciprocity of the process, meaning that decision makers are not just ‘passive recipients of information, but participate in the research and learning process towards the sharing of knowledge’ (Sheate and Partidário 2010: 279).

Universities and other higher education institutions are generally considered to be the most central actors and economic dynamos in the age of the information society; their role in the information economy has been compared to ‘what coal mines were to the industrial economy’ (Castells and Hall 1994: 231). This was initially most apparent in the domain of local economic development, but scholars have increasingly started to forge connections with several other sectors, for example sustainable development (May and Perry 2011a: 720). Universities are therefore ‘implicated in local growth coalitions, not only as estate managers, but also as strategic actors, employers or providers of evidence to inform policy’ (May and Perry 2011b: 352). Local governments are increasingly active in building networks with local higher education and research institutions – and vice versa – in order to promote local development and inform policy development. The development in this path has seen business–university; national government–university; and local government–university networking structures develop within a broad range of policy sectors.

In relation to the field of sustainability, Sheate and Partidário argue that:

Knowledge brokerage has become a strong driver in current sustainability discourses, with a body of literature in multiple scientific areas that is promoting the importance of knowledge sharing and transfer as a way of breaking down barriers that impede interaction, healthy communication and collaboration.

(Sheate and Partidário 2010: 278)

This theoretical framework may be applicable to a complex policy and scientific setting, such as sustainable development.

Processes of exchanging knowledge

Within knowledge brokerage discourses there are debates about the types of knowledge that can be transmitted and the processes that lead to knowledge transfer. Within these debates, the distinction between codified (or explicit) knowledge and tacit knowledge is applied across a number of social science and management disciplines.

The term tacit knowledge refers to ‘all those pieces of knowledge which are not expressed and/or not expressible and/or not transmissible’ (Ancori et al. 2000: 270). Hartley and Allison (2002) elucidate the distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge:

Explicit knowledge can be articulated in formal systems (e.g. language and mathematics) and captured in language-based records (such as those in libraries, archives and databases). Tacit knowledge cannot be precisely communicated through formal language systems i.e. it cannot be written down.

(Hartley and Allison 2002: 104)

Tacit knowledge concerns the know-how, social skills and practical skills which make things function. The transfer of tacit knowledge often implies the need for geographical proximity to the source of the tacit knowledge (Henry and Pinch 2000; Pinch et al. 2003). However, as technology advances, it may be that there are novel approaches to tacit knowledge transfer which challenge the requirement for physical proximity with a network or cluster.

Tacit knowledge is by definition intangible and hard to define. Research in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Understanding knowledge brokerage for urban sustainability
• 2 Approaches to monitoring sustainable urban development in Europe
• 3 Local governments for sustainability and the use of tools
• 4 Explorative application of monitoring tools
• 5 Urban Ecosystem Europe: measuring environmental urban sustainability
• 6 Requirements for a resilient local process for sustainable development
• 7 Building on experience: learning from end users of tools
• 8 Knowledge brokerage in action in European cities: five case studies in focus
• 9 Shaping practice and research together for local sustainability
• Bibliography
• Index