Urban sustainability pilot projects: misfit between challenge and solution or potential for replication and scaling?

Urban areas around the world face tremendous environmental challenges linked to air, water, waste, energy and transport. Dealing with these issues asks for large‐scale investments and holistic policies. Old, well‐established cities ought to transform existing infrastructures to realize more sustainable ways of living. Expanding cities in emerging economies have to serve a rapidly growing population, which puts stress on the creation and provision of basic infrastructure. In both cases, city governments tend to put great effort in high‐profile pilot projects that deal with a limited amount of environmental challenges on a small‐scale, without necessarily embedding these projects in long‐term, holistic policies that will increase the city’s environmental livability. Nevertheless, it is indeed the retrofitting of a municipal building, the creation of a zero emissions neighborhood or the redevelopment of the waterfront in the historic centre that put a city on the map as the next ‘sustainability hub’. Hence, a misfit between the complexity, size and scale of urban environmental challenges and the scope of such initiatives seems to exist. To what extent do these high‐profile pilot projects have a potential for broader societal change? A common answer is that these laboratories or testing grounds are necessary to advance innovative policies on a larger scale. This can happen in three ways. First, experiments with new solutions can generate citizen‐support for broader environmental policies and create local markets for sustainability. Second, literature on city network formation stresses how successful projects are replicated in other cities. Third, national governments might find inspiration in what happens at the local level. Based on empirical evidence from cities around the world, this paper examines the conditions under which high‐profile projects are replicated within and across cities or generate a scaling‐up effect. In other words, it assesses whether and how small‐scale initiatives can go beyond local, short‐term benefits and as a consequence have significance for environmental governance at a larger scale. This exploratory study stimulates reflection on the interaction between the space of places – the high‐profile project in a particular locale – and the space of flows – the potential for replication and scaling through flows of information.nrpages: 25status: publishe