1

Adaptive Cities

The capacity for policy innovation in

response to global change

Claire Mortimer

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts in Public Policy,

The University of Auckland, 2011

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I

Abstract

Urban settlements globally will experience significant and often unpredictable change over the next

decades due to the combined forces of climate change and the peaking of global oil production.

Responding to these forces will require sustainability transitions in urban transport and energy

systems and urban social practices. Urban policy agencies cannot rely on market forces to drive

these transitions in a timely equitable fashion, but will need to facilitate them actively in order to

minimise the social, environmental, and economic impacts of global change.

This presents considerable challenges to urban agencies, particularly when transitions must be

initiated before the impacts of global change are directly felt by urban residents. The thesis explores

factors that build the capacity of urban policy agencies in facilitating urban transitions and factors that

might constrain them. A multi-level framework of critical factors is developed drawing on theories that

examine how change occurs within social, technological and policy domains. The framework is tested

on a case study of a New Zealand urban council that facilitated a sustainability transition in their city

over an 18-year period.

The research identifies that an agency‟s ability to facilitate transitions is constrained by the stability of

the built environment, societal institutions, and values specific to their organisational field. However,

opportunities for change arise when disruptive factors to those stabilising forces combine often across

societal, city, and organisational levels. Entrepreneurial individuals within urban agencies can

leverage these opportunities in order to initiate urban transitions. To ensure implementation, however,

transition policies facilitating an urban transition must become embedded within the agency‟s vision,

culture and decision-making processes and the agency must build strategic coalitions with other

decision-makers and actively engage with their urban community.

The case study identifies that change does not need to wait for the most powerful or obvious

contenders, but rather even small urban agencies can set micro-processes of change into play that

initiate sustainability transitions. However, the transition needs to start from within the agency itself,

and the thesis concludes with recommendations for how urban agencies might intentionally build their

capacity to facilitate change.

II

The work contained within this thesis is my own and has not been used for any other qualifications.

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated those persistent, passionate and inspirational change agents whom I‟ve had

the great pleasure of working with over the years, and without whom I would have much less hope for

the future. In addition I would like to thank Landcare Research for supporting me in undertaking this

research.

Acknowledgements

This thesis has been edited by a professional editor within the specifications outlined in the Policy on

Third Party Editing & Proof-Reading of Theses & Dissertations, Auckland University.

III

Contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1

2 Research design .............................................................................................................................. 3

3 Challenges facing urban policy in the 21st Century ........................................................................ 6

3.1 Peak oil and climate change ...................................................................................................... 6

3.1.1 Global oil supply ............................................................................................................... 6

3.1.2 Impacts of peak oil ............................................................................................................ 7

3.1.3 The degree markets can address peak oil ........................................................................ 8

3.1.4 The belief in a technological fix to peak oil .................................................................... 10

3.1.5 Climate change and its interactions with peak oil .......................................................... 11

3.1.6 Urban transitions required ............................................................................................. 12

3.1.7 Problem characteristics of peak oil and climate change ................................................ 13

4 Adaptive public policy organizations ............................................................................................ 15

4.1 The social and physical landscape ........................................................................................... 17

4.2 Social-technological regimes ................................................................................................... 19

4.3 The organisational field ........................................................................................................... 24

4.3.1 Nature of public policy institutions ................................................................................ 24

4.3.2 Nature of the issue ......................................................................................................... 25

4.3.3 Field disrupters & opportunities for change .................................................................. 26

4.3.4 Nature of the community ............................................................................................... 27

4.4 The organisation ...................................................................................................................... 31

4.5 Individuals ............................................................................................................................... 35

4.5.1 Leading adaptive policy agencies ................................................................................... 35

4.5.2 Leading policy innovation ............................................................................................... 37

4.6 The Adaptive Urban Policy Framework ................................................................................... 41

5 Case study: The Waitakere City Council ‘Eco City’ ....................................................................... 45

5.1 Enablers experienced .............................................................................................................. 45

5.1.1 Initial disrupters at the landscape & organisational field levels ..................................... 45

5.1.2 Disrupters to the established organisational culture ..................................................... 47

5.1.3 Nature of the Waitakere community ............................................................................. 47

5.1.4 A tangible vision with strategic capability to implement it ............................................ 48

5.1.5 A collective belief that change was possible .................................................................. 50

IV

5.1.6 Situational awareness, international networks & seizing opportunities ....................... 51

5.1.7 Creativity & willingness to challenge the status quo ..................................................... 51

5.1.8 An intentional organisational change programme ........................................................ 52

5.1.9 Working with others to achieve goals ............................................................................ 53

5.1.10 Facilitating environmental improvements within a technological regime ................ 54

5.1.11 Adopting new technological niche for urban sustainability ...................................... 55

5.1.12 Working with the community as a core strategic approach ...................................... 56

5.1.13 Working with iwi ........................................................................................................ 57

5.1.14 Demonstrating early success through tangible catalyst projects .............................. 58

5.1.15 Leadership & innovation ............................................................................................ 58

5.2 Barriers .................................................................................................................................... 60

5.2.1 Internal resistance .......................................................................................................... 60

5.2.2 Constraints imposed by some traditional policy mindsets and tools ............................ 60

5.2.3 Loss of key change agents .............................................................................................. 61

5.2.4 The nature of Waitakere’s built environment ............................................................... 61

5.2.5 Shifting social practices .................................................................................................. 61

5.2.6 Limited role and influence of the Council ...................................................................... 61

5.3 Analysis against the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework .................................................... 63

5.3.1 The Landscape and field levels ....................................................................................... 63

5.3.2 Socio-technological regimes .......................................................................................... 64

5.3.3 The Organisational Level ................................................................................................ 65

5.3.4 The individual level......................................................................................................... 66

5.3.5 The nature of the transition ........................................................................................... 66

6 Synthesis ...................................................................................................................................... 69

6.1 Why urban agencies will need to facilitate urban transitions ................................................ 69

6.1.1 To ensure new technologies can compete with incumbent regimes ............................ 69

6.1.2 Markets alone will be too slow to create smooth transitions ....................................... 70

6.1.3 Limitations to rational decision-making ......................................................................... 70

6.1.4 Co-dependency of technology with the built environment ........................................... 70

6.1.5 Resilience is a collective social attribute ........................................................................ 71

6.2 Refinement of the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework ........................................................... 72

6.3 Utilising concepts of social and technological change in urban policy ................................... 78

V

6.3.1 Taking a systems approach in analysis & implementation ............................................. 78

6.3.2 Building both general & specific resilience as risk management strategies .................. 80

6.3.3 Taking collaborative whole sector & multi party approaches ........................................ 84

6.3.4 Developing an adaptive policy culture ........................................................................... 85

7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 87

8 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 90

9 Appendix 1. Interview Questions ............................................................................................... 107

VI

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1 Introduction

In 2006, the eight councils in the Auckland region initiated an ambitious project to develop a strategic

framework to integrate and guide public decision-making in the Auckland region. Distinctive features

of the framework, which was eventually called the Auckland Sustainability Framework (ASF), included

its 100-year planning horizon and its sustainability vision. An initial step of its development was to

explore the „forces of change‟ that might impact on the region over the next 100 years, which included

climate change and the peaking of global oil production (Auckland Regional Growth Forum 2007).

This exploration concluded that due to these forces the region would experience exponential and

often highly unpredictable change over the following 30 years (Auckland Regional Growth Forum

2006a) and that the eight councils1 would need to respond rapidly to address the negative impacts of

these changes (Auckland Regional Growth Forum 2007). The ASF goes on to argue that responding

to these impacts will require “fundamental shifts in thinking, planning, investment and action”

including “activating citizenship”, “reducing the region‟s environmental footprint” and “building a

carbon neutral future” (2007:13). In other words, the region‟s councils will need to change their

traditional approach to urban policy and would need to facilitate significant social and technical

transitions in order to minimise the impacts of 21st century change.

Rotmans et al. (2000) define a transition as a transformation process in which society or a complex

sub-system of society, such as a city, changes in a fundamental way over an extended period of 25

year or more. Facilitating social and technical transitions to respond to global change presents

significant risks and challenges for political organisations. It can require a reorientation and

considerable increase in public infrastructure investment and it inevitably requires the disruption of

the social and business practices of urban communities. In addition, these transitions will often need

to be initiated before significant and direct impacts of global change, including climate change and

peak oil, are felt by city residents, which is likely to delay public support. It is not surprising therefore

that while many public urban strategies including the Auckland Sustainability Framework state the

need for significant structural change, few have been comprehensively implemented on the ground.

This thesis explores factors that may constrain or enable urban agencies to facilitate urban transitions

in response to global change. A framework of critical factors is developed drawing on theories and

concepts that examine how change occurs within social, technological and policy domains. The

framework is tested on a case study of one New Zealand urban council who facilitated a sustainability

transition in their city over an 18-year period. The thesis concludes with recommendations of how

councils might utilise concepts of social and technological change explored within the framework in

urban policy analysis.

1 The seven councils were amalgamated into one unitary authority, the Auckland Council, in 2010.

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The thesis focuses on urban settlements due to the growing need for urban policy to address global

change. The world urban population increased almost ten-fold over the 20th century (Satterthwaite

2007) and in 2007, for the first time in human history, over 50% of the world population lived in urban

settlements. The urban population is expected to double by 2050 with exponential growth in

developing countries and modest growth in developed countries (United Nations 2007). Urban

settlements are collectively responsible for 80% of global carbon emissions; however, through their

population density cities have enormous potential to reduce carbon emissions and energy demand

through high density mixed development and mass transit (Newman et al. 2009). How successfully

global change is addressed in urban settlements will therefore largely determine how successful the

world will be.

While this thesis explores the capacity of policy organisations to facilitate urban social and technical

transitions it does not assume that policy organisations are the only change agents in a city; however,

they will always be instrumental – through their role in creating city visions and long-term plans,

through the influence of planning controls on urban form and ecological health, and through the

manner in which public infrastructure investment provides or constrains city inhabitants‟ transport and

energy choices. In New Zealand, while these public organizations are primarily city and regional

councils, they may also include parts of central government; the term urban agencies and not

councils is therefore used throughout this thesis.

Section two outlines the methodology of the research. Section three illustrates characteristics of

global change issues that collectively create the need for urban transitions by examining how the

peaking of global oil production and climate change may broadly impact New Zealand cities. Section

four develops a framework of enablers of and barriers to policy agencies facilitating urban transitions

based on literature, and Section five tests the framework against a case study. Section six provides a

synthesis of the thesis, arguing why urban policy agencies will need to lead urban transitions versus

relying largely on market forces, the factors that might enable or constrain their capacity to do so, and

how urban policy agencies might utilise concepts of social and technological change explored in the

framework of developing urban transitions policy.

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2 Research design

The thesis explores the following research questions:

1. Can urban transitions in response to global change be largely left to the market or will urban

policy agencies need to actively facilitate transitions?

2. What factors might constrain policy agencies in facilitating social and technical transitions in

urban settlements? Conversely, what factors enable urban policy agencies to facilitate social

and technical transitions in urban settlements?

3. How might policy agencies utilise insights on social and technological change explored in

question 2 for developing urban transitions policy?

Question 1: The degree to which transitions can be left to market forces and the degree to which

urban policy agencies need to facilitate them is first examined in section 4, where literature on the

impacts of peak oil and climate change is reviewed and applied to the context of New Zealand urban

settlements. Two concepts explored in the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework – community resilience

and Multi Level Perspective (MLP) of social-technological transitions – are also assessed to identify

limits in the ability of markets to drive timely and equitable social and technological transitions.

Findings are consolidated in section 6.1.

Question 2: This is the primary question of the thesis. The thesis draws on literature that examines

how change occurs within social, technological and policy domains to develop a multi-level framework

outlining enablers and constraints to urban agencies facilitating sustainability urban transitions.

Theory and fields of literature are selected to examine enablers and constraints situated at different

levels (organisational to societal) and in the three different domains. The multi-level nature of the

framework draws on Giddens strucutration theory (1984), which emphasises the need to examine

social structures and the agency of actors collectively. The purpose of examining a range of theories

and the interrelationships between them recognises that all theory is partial (Midgley 2000: 77) and

exploring theory at different levels can provide a more comprehensive understanding of both the

constraints to transitions caused by societal structures and the agency that urban policy organisations

possess to facilitate transitions.

The framework consists of five levels: the physical and societal landscape; socio-technical systems;

the organisational field; the policy organisation; and individuals within that organisation. The

framework structure is adapted from Potter et al.‟s (2009) framework for examining sustainable

business practice, but unlike Potter et al., the framework includes an additional level of socio-

technical systems and draws on theories of policy process and change. Literature on socio-technical

systems is selected to provide an understanding of how radical technological change occurs.

Literature on policy change includes incrementalism (Lindblom 1968) and punctuated equilibrium of

policy (Baumgartner & Jones 1993) to provide interpretations of the nature of policy change.

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Sociological institutionalism (Greenwood & Hinings 1996; Powell & DiMaggio 1991) is selected to

provide an understanding of how policy fields, and the organisations within them, become more

isomorphic and less adaptive as they mature, thus constraining policy innovation. Sociological

insititutionlism has been criticised for ignoring the role of human agency (Dillard et al. 2004); and

literature on adaptive organisations to climate change therefore provides an organisational level of

attributes that increase a policy organisation‟s ability to lead change (Lonsdale et al. 2009; APSC

2007). Literature on policy entrepreneurs (Kingdon 1984/1995; Roberts & King 1996; Mintrom 2000;

Mintrom & Norman 2009) is selected to examine the role individuals play in creating policy change

and innovation, while literature on transformative leadership (Rook & Torbett 2005; Auguste &

Woodcock 2003) is explored on the assumption that the internal culture and processes of policy

organisations as well as policy per se will need to adapt in order to successfully facilitate transitions in

urban settlements.

The framework is tested on a case study of a New Zealand city council, Waitakere City Council, and

its 18-year transition in developing an „Eco City‟. This case study was selected as the Eco City

transition can be tracked over an 18-year timeframe providing experience of and the timeframes

required to create both organisational change in the council itself and change in the city.

The case study is developed through nine elite interviews with former key staff members and political

representatives.2 Four people (staff and one political representative) were initially selected and

interviewed because of their instrumental roles in initiating the Eco City transition and because they

remained involved throughout most of the 18-year transition. Those preliminary interviews identified

five additional staff members to interview due to their involvement in Council programmes and in

functions critical to the Eco City transition.

The interviews was supplemented by analysis of Council reports including a report commissioned by

Waitakere City Council on its sustainable development transition (Waitakere City Council 2010, report

unpublished), which provides an overview of the Eco City and some key success factors, and

Auckland Regional Council (2004, report unpublished) research on enablers and barriers to residents

reducing private vehicles trips in the township of New Lynn, Waitakere, which provides case study

specific barriers to transitioning from peak oil. The Council‟s sustainability strategy (Waitakere City

Council 1999), partnership policy (Waitakere City Council 2009), and a quadruple bottom line

evaluation of a major water catchment restoration programme (MorrisonLow 2010, report

unpublished) were reviewed to provide background and measures of effectiveness of two key

approaches taken by the Council to implement their transition – developing partnerships and

empowering the community.

Interviewees were all asked a common set of questions and then specific questions pertinent to their

role in the Council (see Appendix 1). Thematic analysis of the interviews, documents, and interview

2 Waitakere City Council, which existed from 1989 to 2010, was amalgamated into the Auckland Council in 2010.

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summaries was carried out. Relationships between the themes were identified from repeated reading

of the data and relationships noted in a data spreadsheet. Several of the interviewees were contacted

a second time to explore specific themes and context in more depth. All interviewees were sent the

case study write up and asked to provide feedback on the accuracy of the information, which in turn

stimulated further discussion to add depth to key themes. Enablers and constraints identified in the

case study were then assessed against those in the Framework.

Question 3 Consideration is given to two concepts of social and technological change utilised in the

Framework – Multi Level Perspective (MLP) and Resilience – on how their insights on social and

technical change might be practically utilised within urban policy aimed at facilitating sustainability

transitions.

The research is underpinned by a realist epistemology position, which, based on March and Furlong

(2002), would argue that:

while some factors shaping social and policy practice can be observed, there are deeper

structures that cannot

the interrelationships of a number of factors are needed to understand the nature of social

phenomena.

In light of this position, the framework is tested through qualitative research of an in-depth case study.

Attention is also paid to the particulars of the case study rather than on generalisations, and research

is reported through rich written descriptions rather than numbers (Creswell 2003). Based on

Creswell‟s recommendations (2003: 196) the accuracy of the qualitative case study research findings

has been validated by:

Triangulation of data: using interviews and council reports

Member-checking: allowing interview participants to check specific elements of the findings

Presenting discrepant data

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3 Challenges facing urban policy in the 21st Century

The policy investigation supporting the Auckland Sustainability Framework concluded that the region

would experience exponential and often highly unpredictable change over the following 30 years.

Since the adoption of the Auckland Sustainability Framework (ASF) in 2007, a number of international

research and policy reports published suggest that the severity and rate of change that 21st century

cities are likely to experience is greater than the ASF anticipated. These reports include Hirsch

(2008), CSIRO (2008), Stern (2009), and the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security

(2010). Drawing on these and other reports, this section highlights specific characteristics of the

impacts that the peaking of global oil production and climate change will have on New Zealand cities.

3.1 Peak oil and climate change

3.1.1 Global oil supply

With oil below $10US a barrel from late 1940s to early 1970s (Lloyd 2010: 15), cities enjoyed rapid

urban expansion predicated on cheap personalized transport. This shaped the design and form of

many cities, including those in New Zealand, where cheap oil contributed to a low-density urban form3

resulting in energy intensive land use patterns and transport systems.

However, the era of cheap and predictable oil prices is drawing to a close as oil nears peak

production globally. Peak production of oil refers to the point at which the rate of global oil production

has peaked and will soon begin a long-term and permanent decline. Peak oil is a highly contentious

issue in terms of when it might occur, what impacts it might have, and what role public policy should

play in response.

While debate continues over how much oil is left in current and undiscovered reserves, consensus

has grown over the last 5 years that global oil production will peak within this decade (Dantas et al.

2006; Hirsch 2008; Lloyd 2010; UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security 2010). Even

the Energy Information Agency of the US Department of Energy (EIA), who historically has been

relatively optimistic over energy reserves, now predicts global oil supply will decline soon after 2012

(see Figure 1). Hirsch (2008) predicts that after peaking, global oil production will decline by 2–5% pa.

The remaining global oil reserves after peak production are more expensive to extract and of lower

quality. For example, early US oil, and oil extraction in the Middle East up until today took only one

barrel of oil to extract and process 100 barrels, an energy returned on energy invested (EROEI ) of

100:1. New oil fields are considerably less productive, with EROEI ratios approximately 12:1 for deep

sea oil and (4.1) for Canadian tar sands (Lloyd 2009). In addition there is a shortage of engineers,

drilling platforms and refinery capacity to meet projected demand and addressing these shortfalls is

3 The average density of the Auckland region is only 989 inhabitants per km

2, with central Auckland reaching an

average density of 2,326 people per km2

(Statistics New Zealand 2008). In comparison, Amsterdam achieves around 4,500 inhabitants/km

2 (Leunig & Swaffield 2008).

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predicted to take at least a decade of concerted effort (The Joint Operating Environment 2010). New

oil fields requiring deep sea drilling also pose environmental and economic risks as evidenced by

BP‟s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Collectively, declining supply, increasing costs of extraction and increasing world demand particularly

from growing economies such as China, India and the Middle East (Statistical Review of World

Energy 2010) are expected to create volatile and persistently higher prices for oil (Hirsch et al. 2005;

Hirsch 2008; Lloyd 2010).

Figure 1. EIA depletion profile for world liquids (Lloyd 2010).

3.1.2 Impacts of peak oil

Energy consumption is strongly linked to GDP rates (Figure 2) and rising oil prices have been

predicted to lead to a slowdown in the global economy. The exact nature of that relationship is

uncertain. Hirsch (2008) predicts a linear relationship whereby a 1% decline in oil production would

lead to a 1% decline in global transport which will lead to a 1% decline in global GDP. Smith (2010)

predicts a less linear trajectory, with the world experiencing a cycle of supply crunches, oil price

spikes, and economic recessions. As oil supply contracts, resulting price spikes will force businesses

and consumers to cut spending in other areas, creating an economic recession, which in turn will

reduce demand for oil, allowing prices to drop and the cycle to repeat. International organizations,

including the UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security (2010) and the US Joint

Forces Command (2010), are warning that another supply crunch is likely by 2013.

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Figure 2. Global energy consumption against global GDP. (Source: Lloyd (2010), who argues that

the decoupling of GDP from oil in the last five years reflects China‟s massive increase in coal

consumption since 2001.)

New Zealand is vulnerable to volatile oil prices due to its high vehicle use, which is the second

highest in the OECD measured by vehicle kilometres travelled per person (Ministry for Environment

2010). New Zealand is a net importer of oil, currently producing 55,000 barrels of oil and consuming

148,000 barrels in 2009 (Smith 2010).

While analysis on the potential economic impacts of peak oil on New Zealand is relatively sparse,

Australian analysis by CSIRO predicts that if oil production declines abruptly and if vehicle and fuel

technology is unable to rapidly transition from oil dependency then: “oil price increases will affect

weekly fuel bills, increasing from A$40 in 2007 to between A$50 and as high as A$220 per week in

real terms by 2018 for a medium passenger vehicle” (2008: 11).

This could lead to a 40% reduction in local freight and passenger trips accompanied by a possible 3%

decrease in GDP in Australia (CSIRO 2008). The transport dependency of New Zealand and

Australia are similar and New Zealand cities and towns are likely to feel the effects of oil price

increases through increased fuel prices, increased prices for many good and services, and

diminished GDP growth and/or global economic shocks. Industry sectors particularly impacted

include retail (Lloyd 2010) and international tourism (Leap 2009).

3.1.3 The degree markets can address peak oil

Debate also exists over the degree to which markets will address peak oil and how much public policy

intervention is required and in what forms. For example, New Zealand‟s Minister of Finance, Bill

English, when questioned over what steps the Government was taking to reduce New Zealand‟s

economic vulnerability stemming from dependence on oil, argued that public policy should aim to

ensure price changes flow quickly through the economy and should leave adaptation to individual

choice (English 2011). This appears to be based on the assumption that as oil prices rise, individual

9

consumers will make rational decisions to reduce their vulnerability to oil creating an aggregated

reduction in social vulnerability. When questioned about his views on a Dunedin City Council report

on reducing the oil vulnerability of their city, English commented “We do not believe an overall

bureaucratic plan will do a better job of adapting than individual New Zealanders can do” (English

2011).

CSIRO‟s analysis of Australia, however, suggests that “there are likely to be only moderate

preparatory responses by individuals and businesses, therefore government intervention will be

required” (2008: 11). This is due to a number of factors including business and public belief that

technology will address the problem and the relatively inelastic nature of demand for oil because

consumers cannot easily or quickly find alternatives (Smith 2010). There may be limited options for

individuals to reduce their vulnerability to higher oil prices over the short to medium term, as many

alternatives for transportation and the redesign of urban settlements will require long lead-in times to

be available to the mainstream market. The Hirsch report to the US Department of Energy on peak oil

(2005: 64) emphasises the long transition time required, warning that:

….. the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade

before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy

transitions were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.

Household vulnerability to oil price rises varies across a city, both because transportation options and

costs vary depending on location (Brookings Institution 2006), and because low-income households

usually have very little income surplus to cover increased transport costs. Often those two factors

have combined to amplify the vulnerability of poorer households. Evidence from Australia suggests

that poorer households are becoming more concentrated on the urban fringes due to cheaper land,

which increases their dependency on private car use (Newman et al. 2009). If adaptation to increased

oil prices is largely left to market forces and individual choice, Newman et al. warn that cities might

become more geographically divided between rich and disadvantaged communities (2009).

Last, due to the predicted pattern of price spikes rather than a smooth and continuous oil price

increase (Smith 2010), consumers may delay those decisions which require significant personal

investment. New Zealanders, for example, travelled less while petrol prices were high in the 2008

spike but reverted to normal practice as soon as prices fell again (Krumdike 2010). The likely trend of

price fluctuation reduces certainty to households and businesses about whether they should make

more permanent investment to reduce their vulnerability to oil prices, for instance buying more

efficient vehicles or moving house. Donavan et al. (2008), in a report to the NZ Transport Agency,

therefore argue that prices alone will not drive adaptation but that policy reform will also be required.

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3.1.4 The belief in a technological fix to peak oil

In 2010, at an Urban Design Protocol workshop4 for New Zealand local council urban planners, Tim

Heath, a retail economist, argued that urban planners had to shift their thinking to align with retail

trends, including the trend for businesses to locate at strip-malls at the edges of urban settlements as

opposed to town centres. When asked how this particular trend, which could increase people‟s

dependence on private vehicle transport, might be impacted by the trend of peak oil he replied that

there would be no impact, because “they will simply design a new fuel to put in our tanks” (Heath

2010). Heath‟s scenario is based on the assumptions that a technological solution will emerge that

will be roughly the same price and compatible with current transport technology.

However, the speed at which technology can be developed and then diffused into mainstream

markets tends to be over-estimated in arguments that technology innovation will substitute oil, or that

alternatively powered vehicles will replace petroleum powered ones. Michael Pacheco (2006) from

the National Renewable Energy Laboratory‟s National Bioenergy Centre warns that the world needs

to start working on replacement fuels 20 years before oil peaks, and that the world is already behind

schedule. Electric vehicles utilising smart grid technologies are a promising technology option, but

Newman (2009) estimates that even moving a small proportion of such vehicles and supply systems

into the transport system could take 20 years.

Last, CSIRO argues that “technology alone will not be sufficient to meet the fuel supply gap” (2008:

11), reflecting BP exploration manager Richard Miller‟s (2004) response to arguments that technology

will fix the oil shortage problem:

this is a classical economist‟s view: something will turn up, when the price is high enough …

But there isn‟t anything conceivable that could replace conventional oil, in the same quantities

or energy densities, at any meaningful price….When oil gets too expensive, surviving

Americans will still obtain energy from alternative sources, but in much smaller amounts and at

much higher prices. (p. 10)

Using biofuels as an example, some studies show that it takes more fossil fuel to produce biofuel than

the resultant biofuels can generate (Pimental & Patzek 2005), while other studies demonstrate that

biofuels cannot fill the oil gap; one study found that if all the solar energy from every bit of plant matter

in the US (food crops, lawns, forests) was converted to biofuels, it would still only meet half the 2006

US demand for fuel (Pimental 2007).

Responding to peak oil therefore is not just about technological change and the development of a

new fuel or more efficient cars, it is also about social change, and about changing the patterns of how

people travel and consume energy. Newman et al. (2009) suggest that it will require that we design

4 The Urban Design Protocol workshops are a series of workshops related to an urban design protocol

developed by the NZ Government that has been signed up to by all city councils in NZ.

11

cities in which we drive 25–50 % less than we do today, and these cities will need to be proactive in

that redesign in order to transition at a rate that maintains “the social fabric of the city in the process”

(p. 33).

3.1.5 Climate change and its interactions with peak oil

At the same time as the world is approaching constraints in oil production it is also witnessing the

systematic breakdown of many of the ecosystem services on which humanity relies, with the

regulation of climate being the critical example (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Urban

responses to climate change can be categorized as mitigation or adaptation responses. Mitigation

aims to reduce green house gas emissions to a level that prevents an increase of more than 2oC rise

in global temperature, which is the maximum increase believed possible before severe global impacts

arise in terms of wide spread food and water shortages, ecosystem degradation and acceleration and

irreversible changes to the climate system (Warren 2006).

Incorporating expected global population increases and a 2% GDP growth rate, preventing an

increase of more than a 2oC rise, would require the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by

80% from a 1990 baseline by 2050 (Stern 2009). This is a substantial undertaking and is expected to

require structural transformation in urban energy and transport systems.

However, even if global temperature increases are limited to 2oC it is still estimated that the majority

of coral reefs will be destroyed globally, three billion people will be exposed to water shortages, and

up to 220 million more people will be exposed to the risk of hunger as a result of changes in global

cereal production (Warren 2006). Locally, New Zealand settlements will have to adapt to increased

extreme weather events: water scarcity or flood risk resulting from changes in rainfall patterns;

heatwaves; the spread of vector-borne tropical diseases (Auckland Regional Council 2006b; Ministry

for the Environment 2008); and the prospect of climate-change refugees seeking settlement (Stern

2007). Globally these impacts will require structural changes in city systems, particulary those cities

situated in vulnerable coastal areas or cities likely to experience climate-related water shortages and

extreme temperatures. It will also require city systems and communities to become better able to deal

with natural weather disasters such as flooding and storms.

Adding to the complexity of dealing with peak oil or climate change is the consideration of whether

policy interventions or new technologies developed to address one issue will either aggravate or help

address another issue. For example two technological responses to reduce oil vulnerability are the

conversion of solid coal to liquid fuel and industrial biofuels. Unless technology eventuates that can

capture carbon emissions released during the process, Lloyd (2010) predicts that the conversion of

solid coal to liquid fuel would exceed the worse case IPPC climate change scenario. First generation

biofuels also increase carbon emissions and have already reduced agricultural land for food

production. For example, biofuel plantations converted from rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia

have carbon debts of over 400 yrs (Fargione et al. 2008). Biofuels production has already had

12

significant impact on food stocks and food prices (Shiva 2008) at a time when close to a billion people

worldwide are malnourished (Newman 2009). Industrial production biofuels require significant

quantities of water, which in many parts of the world could aggravate water shortages (Shiva 2008).

In New Zealand locally produced second generation biofuels (ones produced from waste products,

e.g., dairy by-products) are possible but, due to production capacity, the relatively low energy return

on the energy invested (EROI), and the need for blends in current vehicle stock, Krumdike (2010)

estimates that ultimately New Zealand biofuels are unlikely to provide more than 10% substitution for

oil for the New Zealand market.

Peak oil and climate change have the potential for strong synergies in policy response. Road

transport is the second highest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand (after

enteric fermentation) and transport greenhouse gas emissions increased by 76% between 1990 and

2007, falling slightly in 2008 due to the global recession and increased oil prices (MfE 2010).

Reducing the need for petroleum-based transport will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

3.1.6 Urban transitions required

A number of government and academic reports that examine the impacts of climate change and peak

oil recommend that urban settlements need to transition to low-energy low-carbon transport systems

and urban form, and indicate the need for significant change in urban infrastructure, technologies,

government policies and social and business practices (see for example ARC 2007; ; Krumdike 2010;

Newman et al. 2009; UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security report 2010; World Bank

2010). Reports recommend significant increases in investment in public and active transport

infrastructure (Newman et al 2009, Krumdike 2010), increased intensification of urban settlements

and mixed land use and reduced urban sprawl (Donavan et al. 2008; Krumdike 2010; Newman et al.

2009; World Bank 2010). Donovan et al. (2008), in a report to the NZ Transport Authority,

recommend that historic market distortions in travel and land use in New Zealand have subsidised

private vehicle trips and low density urban land use, and these will need to be removed to facilitate

transport modal transitions. This would require policies for road and parking pricing, zoning for urban

containment and mixed land use, and infrastructure investment based on a „manage and price‟

versus „predict and provide‟ transport provision.

Many policy initiatives to change transport behaviour and reduce fuel use and carbon emissions,

have proved effective. Driving restrictions, congestion charging, and incentives for hybrid or

alternative fuel vehicles resulted in emission reductions of up to 5 tCO2e over a period of 40 years in

Barcelona, Stockholm, and Zurich (Hoornweg et al. 2011). Improvements to infrastructure, such as

the efficiency of public transport, high-density housing, energy-efficient criteria for building codes and

waste-to-energy programmes, are all potential tools available to cities. For example, in terms of urban

form and land use, studies have shown that carbon emissions per capita in inner-city

neighbourhoods of high-density apartments with close public transport were approximately half that of

13

large, single family homes in suburbs far from commercial activity (6.42 tCO2e and 13.02 tCO2e

respectively) (Hoornweg et al. 2011).

3.1.7 Problem characteristics of peak oil and climate change

In summary, peak oil and climate change exhibit the following problem characteristics:

1. The stakes are high: e.g., failure to undertake a smooth transition from oil dependency could

result in a long-term series of global recessions.

2. The impacts will pervasive and cascading: e.g., declining oil reserves will impact urban

settlements across the globe and have cascading impacts on the price of goods and services

and GDP growth.

3. Structural change and significant adaptation will be required: e.g., patterns of urban form,

transportation, supply chains, and consumption have been shaped by cheap oil. The end of

cheap oil requires a structural redevelopment of these patterns.

4. Some suggested technological solutions could intensify other global change issues: e.g.,

converting coal to liquid fuel creates carbon emissions and converting food crops to biofuel

crops is already aggravating global food shortages.

5. Facts are uncertain and contested: there is contention over when peak oil and climate

change will occur, how both issues will play out, and how they might be addressed. This has

helped delay policy and consumer responses on these issues.

6. Shocks and surprise events are likely: climate change at current levels is estimated to

increase extreme weather events. If the global temperature increases crosses the 2oC

threshold, climate change is expected to have highly non-linier impacts

7. Time is running out: to avoid social disruption urban transitions to reduce peak oil and climate

change vulnerability may take decades; however, oil is likely to peak within this decade and

irreversible damage to the climate has already occurred.

Characteristics 1 and 3 stress the need for urban transitions, characteristics 1–4 and 7 suggest that

urban policy agencies will need to facilitate those social and technical transitions to ensure the

transitions are timely and equitable and do not exasperate other critical issues. Characteristics 2, 5,

and 6 suggest the unpredictability of the impacts might result in cities increasingly experiencing

shocks and unexpected events. Collectively these characteristics of climate change and peak oil

suggest that urban transitions in response to global change cannot be largely left to the market but

urban policy agencies will need to actively facilitate transitions and prepare settlements for an

increase in shocks and unpredictable events.

14

The following section explores the nature of social and technological change and the capacity of

urban policy agencies to facilitate urban transitions in response to peak oil and climate change.

15

4 Adaptive public policy organizations

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its

success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things

(Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532)

There are extensive reports and research on alternative energy and transport systems, on the design

of less energy intensive urban form, and on innovative ways to reduce resource use and pollution.

Many of these urban solutions have been implemented, in a somewhat piecemeal fashion, both in

different cities internationally and in New Zealand, tangibly demonstrating that these approaches can

reduce carbon emissions, oil dependency, and environmental degradation. Public agencies are

increasingly producing city strategies similar to the Auckland Sustainability Framework, stating the

need and commitment for taking these approaches. However, policy innovation and implementation

in transitioning urban settlements are relatively sparse compared with the growing number of

strategies and reports on urban agencies‟ shelves. Therefore this section explores the following

questions:

What factors might constrain policy agencies in facilitating social and technical transitions in urban

settlements? Conversely, what factors enable urban policy agencies to facilitate social and technical

transitions in urban settlements?

These two questions are examined by developing an Adaptive Urban Policy Framework (Figure 3)

consisting of five levels of influence on policy practice:

1. The social and physical landscape: the macro social institutions and physical structures that

shape the context within which the policy agency operates

2. Socio-technological regimes: the social and technological systems that provide the dominant

means of realizing different social functions (e.g., land transport, residential energy)

3. The organisational field: the association of actors that frequently and influentially interact with

an urban policy agency and the field-specific institutions that develop between those actors

4. The urban public policy organisation: in New Zealand this is usually a city or regional council

but also include parts of central government

5. Individuals: within a policy organisation.

16

Social & Physical Landscape

Social-Technological Regimes

Urban Policy Organisational Field

Urban Policy Organisation

Individuals within Organisation

Figure 3 Five levels of influence on policy agencies attempting to facilitate urban transitions.

The Framework‟s multi-level perspective recognizes that organisations are embedded within broader

social and physical contexts and their ability to effect change is deeply influenced by those contexts.

However, individuals (Giddens 1984) and collectives (Sewell 1993) posses agency and through their

actions over time, perpetuate or alternatively challenge the institutions that underpin those social

contexts. Understanding how policy agencies create change therefore, requires a combined analysis

of the roles of structure and agency (Giddens 1984) across different levels of society.

At the landscape, social-technological systems and organisational field levels, this framework focuses

largely on factors that shape cities and policy institutions and that tend to constrain policy agencies

facilitating change. Disrupters to the stability of these three levels are also examined. At the

organisational and individual levels, the framework focuses primarily on the role of individual and

group agency, and those attributes and processes that enable policy agencies to facilitate urban

transitions.

The arrows in Figure 3 indicate how the influence of broader structural levels of society permeates

across the lower levels, while the actions of individuals and agencies can also influence the levels

above them.

Direction & weight of influence

17

4.1 The social and physical landscape

The social landscape is comprised of social structures (after Giddens 1984; Sewell 1993) that

transcend any particular city or sector and that have increasingly transcended national boundaries as

a result of globalization of trade, communications (Friedland & Alford 1991), and culture.

Social structures and institutions are often used interchangeably, and have been defined in a variety

of ways. For clarity within this framework, social structures are dominant macro-level institutions and

patterns of social/economic relationships operating at the landscape level that manifest across

different organisational fields, shaping the institutions of those fields. Institutions at the organisational

field level are generally specific to that group of actors operating within that field (Potter et al. 2009).

Institutions explain how social life is developed into consistent and stable patterns (Sewell 1993) and

can be defined as „social rules‟ (Potter et al. 2009) or cultural schemas (Sewell 1993) that become

embodied in formal laws or governing bodies (e.g., the state), or can form the basis for organized

systems of knowledge, beliefs, norms and resource distribution (e.g., the institution of capitalism,

democracy, and family). Institutions provide urban societies with greater certainty and capacity for

collective life and are maintained through pressures to conform to certain ideals and behaviour, which

makes them an enduring aspect of social life (Giddens 1984: 24).

While there are no specific actors at the landscape level per se, the institutions, and distribution of

resources are constantly maintained, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously (Sewell

1993:3), through the collective actions of individuals and organizations. Therefore institutions are

created, maintained, and changed by society as a whole. Institutions are not solely reinforced by

people and organisations] within a specific city but are also shaped and reinforced by individuals and

collectives nationally and globally. Institutions have a marked tendency to favour some interests over

others and therefore these favoured groups have a greater vested interest in maintaining incumbent

institutions than others (Baumgartner & Jones 1993).

The landscape level in this framework is also comprised of the built and natural environment. The

built environment, including urban form and patterns of land use and physical infrastructure, is long

lived with high sunken investment costs, and therefore tends to change incrementally and becomes

locked into particular trajectories such as low or high density urban form. As such, the existing built

environment can inhibit transformative policy change.

The term landscape is used as a metaphor to reflect the relative hardness of the social and physical

factors at this level, which makes them relatively resistant to rapid or significant change compared

with the lower levels (Geels 2002). However, change always occurs at the landscape level. The

dynamic nature of the landscape is evidenced by the shifts in social values and paradigms wrought

by, for example, human rights and environmental movements. Often these shifts, which often

gradually build momentum over the longer term, are accelerated by shocks or events such as a

18

global economic recession or disasters (e.g., the Three Mile Island event). These movements which

mobilise around issues such as climate change or human rights are often heralded by special interest

groups, scientists, and future thinking policy professionals and are gradually taken up by the wider

policy community as growing public concern raises issues onto political agendas (Baumgartner &

Jones 1993).

In addition, there are multiple institutions at the landscape level and lower levels that shape social life

and these often lack internal coherency, creating tensions between different norms, belief systems,

and values which in turn challenges and changes established institutions (Friedland & Alford 1991;

Sewell 1993).

The physical environment, including climate, the terrain, and natural resources including the fresh

water supply, has shaped the historic location, form, and development of cities (Munford 1964).

Changes to the physical environment, such as climate change-related extreme weather events,

coastal inundation, and water supply shortages, can stimulate shifts in social values, lift new issues

onto political agendas, and can stimulate technological innovation.

At a city level, specific events can create windows of opportunity for significantly changing the built

environment. If a major power plant is decommissioned, a window of opportunity is created to rethink

the city energy system, or if major natural disaster destroys part of a city as it did for Christchurch in

2011, an opportunity to rebuild the area in a significantly different way is created. In these instances

structural change in urban design and infrastructure can be more easily introduced at least physically

if not institutionally. A shift in urban development thinking is evidenced in the draft Christchurch City

Centre plan (Christchurch City Council 2011) with a strong emphasis on public transport, walkability,

and use of green infrastructure. What generic factors might inhibit the Council to implement this new

direction is explored throughout the framework. Issues arising from environmental trends can also

disrupt the current trajectory of a city.

To summarise the landscape level (Table 1), social institutions and physical structures at the

landscape level provides the macro-context within which urban policy agencies operate. The

landscape level is more stable than the lower levels of the framework often shaping and maintaining a

city‟s current development trajectory. Landscape level factors therefore constrain significant rapid

change but equally, when shocks occur or slower social or physical trends cross a critical threshold

and disrupt existing institutions or physical systems, they permeate across the many different

organisational fields and organisations within society, creating widespread disruptions to current

institutions and providing windows of opportunity for change.

19

Table 1. Landscape summary of barriers to and enablers of policy agencies facilitating urban

transitions

4.2 Social-technological regimes

A socio-technical regime is an institutionalised means of realising a social function such as transport,

energy or housing (Smith et al. 2010: 440). Regimes can be nested within each other; for example, a

private vehicle regime is nested within a land transport regime, which is nested within a broader

transport regime. A significant number of regimes would operate in any urban settlement.

A regime forms part of the Multi Level Perspective (MLP) of socio-technical transitions developed by

Rip and Kemp (1998) to analyse how one technology has transitioned to a radically new one to fulfil

the same societal function. Fundamental to the concept of a regime is the idea that a technology does

not exist as a discrete technological entity. Instead, using the private motor vehicle regime as an

illustration, the technology exists within a broader social-technological system comprised of industrial

networks, sectorial policy, special interest groups, consumers and their practices, knowledge

networks, systems of production and distribution, infrastructure, the symbolic associations consumers

have with private vehicles, and the media that help creates those associations (Figure 4). The social

actors within this regime include vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers, vehicle owners, public

agencies and transport planners, scientists, banks, insurance companies and societal groups

including environmental groups, road lobby groups, etc.

The different elements within the regime develop inter-dependencies that create specific patterns of

production and consumption, which tend to lock society and a city into a particular socio-technical

trajectory (e.g., a city dominated by private vehicle use and its supporting infrastructure). These path

dependencies arise from:

1. The „routines, habits, beliefs, resources, capabilities, knowledge, and past experience‟ of the

social actors within the regime which collectively create inertia to shift from the incumbent

technological solution (Smith 2006: 441; see also Dosi 1982; Nelson & Winter 1982). For

example, investors and customers are often sceptical of a new, unproven technology, people

develop daily transport habits that are difficult to break, and over time customers and transport

Landscape summary

Barriers to transitions Enablers of transitions

Stability of social institutions

Dominant paradigms (e.g., the imperative for economic growth)

Invested power interests

Long-lived nature of built environment

Shocks (e.g., natural disaster)

Emerging social & environmental issues

Shifts in social values & paradigms

Periods of renewal of the built environment

20

professionals adopt common assumptions and limitations about how urban life and transport

should operate.

2. The sunken investment in hard and soft infrastructure for the existing technologies (e.g., car

manufacturer plant and professional networks and R&D), make transitions expensive and often

cognitively difficult (Scrase et al. 2009). In addition, incumbents seek to protect those sunken

investments (Scrase et al 2009)

3. The cultural expectation and symbolic associations that society and consumers have with the

incumbent technology, e.g., the sense of personal independence in owning a car.

4. The co-evolution of other socio-technical regimes such as housing, where patterns of land use

have co-evolved with the growth of private vehicles. For example, Auckland‟s rapid suburban

development following the 1950s motorway development created a low density built environment

that now locks many residents into private car use. Providing public transport services to, or

transitioning away from, a low density urban form is expensive and slow.

5. Government policies and professional associations, regulations and standards (Unruh 2000i;

Walker 2000) have co-evolved with the current transport regime reinforcing the incumbent

technology and often creating barriers to the introduction of niche technologies.

6. Current practices having developed greater economies of scale compared with niche

technologies (Arthur 1988; Dosi 1982).

According to MLP, once a particular regime matures, further innovation within that regime tends to

optimise current technologies versus transforming them (Rip & Kemp 1998); for example, over time

the private vehicle regime has become significantly more fuel efficient but has remained

predominantly powered by the combustion engine and oil.

However, socio-technical regimes are never „closed for good‟ (Geels 2002: 1258); transitions occur

as a result of processes of co-evolution of technology and society within and between the three levels

outlined in MLP (Geels 2004; Shove 2007), namely the landscape that largely mirrors this

Framework‟s landscape, the incumbent regime, and alternative technological niches developing

within protected spaces in the regime. Shocks or pressures from social or environmental trends at the

landscape level can disrupt the trajectories of the incumbent regimes. For example, global concern

over climate change has stimulated innovation within transport regimes, including changes to the

performance of private vehicles (e.g., cleaner, fuel efficient), and new transport policy aimed at

internalising the externalities of transport (e.g., London‟s road user charging policy, Greater London

Authority 2010).

Those disruptions also stimulate niche developments within socio-technical regimes (Geels 2002;

Smith et al. 2010) (e.g., such as electric vehicle technology) where they are protected from normal

market constraints and selection (Figure 4). This protection allows them to experiment, learn by

21

doing, form social networks (e.g., supply chains, user–producer relationships) that facilitate

innovation, and develop a better understanding of new technology, environmental impacts, user

needs, and the policies needed to develop the niches (Hoogmaet al. 2002). Niche protection is

created through specific sectors (e.g., the military), public R&D, and support from specific niche

customers (e.g., the small but committed customer base for organic food or electric cars).

Figure 4 The social-technological system of a private vehicle transport regime & factors constraining

sustainability innovation (after Geels 2002).

To be successful beyond a small, targeted, niche market, niches eventually need to be taken up by

their incumbent regimes. Geels and Schot (2007) argue that timing is critical to whether niches are

successful in doing this. If a landscape change creates a significant pressure on a regime at a time

when a niche is not yet fully mature, the niche will not be able to take advantage of the opportunity. If

New technologies, e.g., electric

cars, wireless charging

Socio-technical

regime

Technical

niches

Industrial networks: Fuel companies; car manufacturers, garages,& the road construction industry develop interdependencies and vested interests in status quo

Knowledge networks: Sunken costs of incumbent research reduce radical innovation

Culture symbolic meaning/Media: The car as a symbol of independence maintained by multi-million dollar marketing strategies

Infrastructure: Longevity & sunken investment in roads; development of low density urban form & commuter suburbs increase private vehicle dependency

Increasing climate change evidence

Technology & Production: High investment costs in car manufacturing create entry barriers to alternative vehicles. Industry routines, habits, knowledge limits radical innovation

Sectorial policy: E.g., only partial internalisation of environmental costs of motor vehicle

Consumer practices: Maintains high mobility lifestyles reinforcing societal expectation; user habits & routines built around private car use

Special interest groups: E.g. road lobby groups maintain car friendly policies.

Peaking global production of oil

Landscape level

Time

Disrupters to regime

22

the niche is fully developed then it may have the opportunity either to replace the regime by

competing with it (e.g., electric public transport) or be subsumed into the regime as a means of

reducing the landscape pressure (e.g., hybrid cars). This latter adoption, however, might over time

push the incumbent regime trajectory in a new direction, e.g., further stimulating electric vehicle

development.

Regime transitions, Geels (2002) argues, do not occur through a sudden shift from one regime to

another but grow gradually out of old ones through a series of adaptations and reconfigurations

between producers, suppliers, users, regulators, etc. Berkhout et al. (2004) believe that some

transitions occur through a planned and coordinated approach by the niche actors. Geels and Schot

(2007) differ from Berkhout et al. (2004) in how coordinated these transitions are, believing that no

transition is coordinated from the outset but rather coordination develops as the niche matures. MLP

is increasingly used in one field of policy practice termed „transition management‟ to explore how

transitions to sustainable socio-technical systems might be facilitated by policy (Kemp & Loorbach

2006; Scrase et al. 2009; Smith et al 2005) which reflecting Berkhout et al‟s contention that transitions

can be planned and coordinated..

Transition management in the Netherlands has attempted to collectively facilitate sustainability

improvements in a current regime while supporting the development of radical niche innovations to

eventually replace or revolutionise the incumbent regime (Kemp & Rotmans 2004). The aim is to

create a more seamless transition over a 20-year period, based upon the rationale that while the

incumbent regime improves its environmental performance, niche technologies can mature to the

extent that they can provide real alternative options to consumers. Once consumer options are

available, policy then can use pricing and other tools to further disrupt the incumbent regime

stimulating greater uptake of niche technologies. Niche policy support is not based on picking winners

but on providing an enabling environment for a range of technologies to evolve, through for example

public R&D investment in green technologies. The transition management process often begins by

bringing together actors from the incumbent regime and niches to undertake collective re-visioning

and to establish long-term programmes of government intervention and business innovation

MLP and socio-technical transition policy is still a relatively new field, and while there is considerable

understanding of what locks society into certain technological trajectories, there is less understanding

of what might accelerate the unlocking of those trajectories.

To summarise (Table 2), technologies which provide urban functions such as transport or energy are

comprised of systems of interdependent social, institutional and technological factors termed social-

technological regimes. These regimes tend to resist radical change, and tend to optimise the

technology in the current regime versus replacing it with a radically different niche technology.

However opportunities for regime transitions do occur through landscape disruptions. Niche

innovations need to be mature enough, however, to take advantage when those disruptions occur.

23

Policy (at different governmental levels) may support regime transitions through internalising

externalities of the incumbent regime, through supporting niche development, and through facilitating

sector programmes aimed at improving the current regime.

Table 2. Social-technological systems summary of barriers to and enablers of policy agencies

facilitating urban transitions

Social-technological systems summary

Barriers to transitions Enablers of transitions

Invested interests of the incumbent regime industry

Routines, habits, beliefs, resources, capabilities, of

the incumbent regime actors

Policies, standards, knowledge systems that co

evolve with the incumbent regime

Societal expectations & symbolic meaning associated

with incumbent regime

Sunken investment in infrastructure & high cost of

change

Economies of scale of incumbent regime

Landscape disrupters: e.g., resource supply issues,

environmental issues

Policy disrupters: internalising externalities of incumbent

technology

Niche protection for commercialising alternative technologies

Coordinated sector programmes to improve regime

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4.3 The organisational field

The concept of organisation fields was developed out of the work of sociological institutionalists, one

strand of New Institutionalism. The organisational field under examination here is the actors and

organisations that most interact with and influence urban policy agencies and the field-specific

institutions that influence their thinking and practices. These actors include other councils and urban

agencies, local government institutions, parts of Central Government (including the NZ Transport

Agency, Ministry of Social Development, Ministry for the Environment), the professional associations

of public agency staff and importantly, the residents and community, and business groups living in the

urban settlement.

4.3.1 Nature of public policy institutions

Starting with other government actors in the policy organisation‟s professional field, sociological

institutionalism provides insights into how urban councils and public agencies adopt common thinking

and behaviour within their organisational fields, which can constrain their ability to change

(Greenwood & Hinings 1996). Over time, actors within this field shape the formal and informal

institutions of urban councils/public agencies and these become more stable as the field matures

(Greenwood & Hinings 1996). Formal institutions in New Zealand include the Resource Management

Act and the Local Government Act 2002, informal institutions include the practices, beliefs, norms and

paradigms accepted by specific professions working in urban public policy and planning. These

institutions help determine which problems get onto the public agenda, how problems are framed

(March & Olsen 1989), which actors can participate in the policy process (Parsons 2001) and,

therefore, what organisational and policy practices are considered desirable or legitimate.

As outlined previously, the institutions of organisational fields are influenced by the landscape level.

For example, the paradigm of economic growth that permeates the landscape level has become a

dominating lens in the local government organisational field in New Zealand particularly since the

1990s, creating a filtering effect on how other urban functions (social and ecological) are conceived

and prioritised in urban policy (Howell & Mortimer 2009). For example, Waite and Williamson (2007:

21) in a report on Auckland state that “social, cultural and environmental features matter to cities as

they attract high skilled workers to live and work there”. Arguably, the environment also matters

because it provides the ecosystem services cities need to survive, and social and cultural features

matter because they provide urban communities with their sense of identity and quality of life.

Filtering goals around a narrow economic outcome can have implications for environmental and

social policy at the city council level. Environmental amenity may become prioritised over the more

fundamental management of life supporting ecosystem services (Howell & Mortimer 2010). Social

policy, in the meantime, can be encouraged away from those who most need it. For example, Grimes

(2006:13), in a report to the former Government Urban and Economic Development Office in

Auckland, cautions that “government policies cannot be too oriented towards the poorest residents,

25

otherwise the rich will flee to communities that cater for their own needs”. If one lens or paradigm

becomes a dominant institution in the urban policy organisational field, the ideas, language, and

interventions can become framed around that lens or paradigm (Howell & Mortimer 2010).

Policy therefore is not the objective and rational science championed by Herbert Simons and Harold

Lasswell, where problems are defined and decisions are made on comprehensive and best evidence

Rather the dominant paradigms, theories, and values used within policy development determine

which problems get prioritized and how they are defined, which outcomes and whose values and

goals count, and which evidence is accepted (Stone 2002). Attempting to introduce policy innovation

that runs against dominant paradigms is challenging.

Lindblom (1968) also argues that policy is not a rational process: but for two additional reasons that

collectively constrain policy innovation and rapid change. Lindblom believes that policies usually

reflect reactive compromises made between the divergent views of proximate policy makers (those

actors within or influencing the policy process) rather than the best rational option based on complete

evidence. In addition he believes that evidence will always be limited, due to gaps in data, the time

required to collect it, and the human ability to process it; therefore, whether a policy intervention is

optimal cannot be made with any definitive certainty. As a result, policymakers tend to take

incremental policy steps, either in order to avoid stakeholder backlash or to be able to track the

impacts of a policy and reverse it if implementation throws up unexpected issues (Hayes 1992;

Lindblom 1959). Lindblom (1968) argues this leads to incremental policy adoption and constrains

radical policy innovation. Therefore it would be difficult to introduce radical shifts in policy as part of

facilitating urban transitions.

4.3.2 Nature of the issue

The nature of the issue is a critical factor in how difficult it will be to initiate change. Issues such as

peak oil or climate change need to reach the policy agenda before any action constrained or

otherwise can be taken. Agenda setting and the reasons why coalitions are mobilized around some

issues and not others has been a focus of considerable political research (e.g., Marris 1971; Olsen

1965; Wilson 1973). In the context of global issues such as climate change and peak oil, Wilson‟s

theory on concentrated and diffused impacts (1973) is particularly useful. Wilson argues that people

and groups will mobilize for issues and policies that affect them personally in a concentrated way

(e.g., their income or immediate neighbourhood) rather than in a diffused way (e.g., something on the

periphery of their life or in the future). This can be in terms of both benefits and costs to them. Many

climate change and peak oil policy interventions have diffused and future-focused benefits compared

with immediate and at times concentrated costs, which could partially explain why both issues have

struggled to gain public support despite the significant risks they pose. For example, when New

Zealand urban councils have tried to intensify a city neighbourhood, in part to address climate change

26

and oil vulnerability issues at a macro-scale, local residents have often mobilized against the change

if they feel intensification will negatively change the identity of their local neighbourhood.

Policy makers, the media, and members of the public also need to be convinced that the issue is

open to Government intervention (Baumgartner & Jones 1993; Giandomenico 1989). New

Zealanders‟ belief that human activity is the cause of climate change fell steadily 63% in 2003 to 50%

in 2010; rising slightly (53%) in 2011 (UMR 2011). Lack of public belief that climate change is the

result of human action reduces the pressure on the government to intervene.

However, as landscape pressures becomes more serious and persistent, new issues such as climate

change or new concepts such as sustainable development begin to be acknowledged in the rhetoric

of public sector communication. This is often done consciously or unconsciously to maintain an

agency‟s legitimacy within its organisational field (DiMaggio & Powell 1991). Often individuals or

groups within these agencies attempt to create real change but are unable to move their organisation

beyond „non-disruptive‟ responses that do not challenge dominant paradigms or power structures

(Handmer & Dovers 1999). Indeed, policy reports and plans, (such as Long Term Council Community

Plans), often echo the rhetoric of the advocates of change at the front of the document but side with

those seeking to maintain the status quo in the actual policy decisions (Stone 2002).

4.3.3 Field disrupters & opportunities for change

Despite the stabilising forces outlined above, which constrain policy innovation and urban transitions,

institutions within organisational fields are always being contested, both by organisations and actors

within the field or by “destabilizing events or processes” occurring outside of the field (McAdam &

Scott 2005: 16) often at the landscape level. For example, a change of central government can

change which issues or ideas are deemed legitimate. Equally, global shocks, such as the 2008 oil

price spike, might offer a window of opportunity for individuals and advocacy groups to increase

support for their issue/intervention (e.g., climate change/public transport) and get it moved further up

the political agenda (Kingdon 1984/1995). They can do this through a number of means: by creating a

narrative of an escalating problem or crisis (Stone 2002); by aligning the issue to a commonly

accepted symbol (e.g., security); or by broadening the framing of the issue in order to appeal to a

larger constituency (Stone 2002).

Baumgartner and Jones‟ (1993) examination of American politics over the long run identified a

process of long stable periods of macro-policy based on one set of principles, and then short volatile

periods of policy change when new issues and policy principles reach and disrupt political and public

agendas. These periods appear to occur after windows of opportunity open up and Baumgartner and

Jones believe they act more like waves of self-organising and emergent change, created by the

accumulated actions of multiple actors and factors. As new issues or policy principles/approaches

27

replace old ones, new institutions form around them, privileging them over others and stabilising

policy until the next cycle of disruption.

Baumgartner and Jones (1993) note that policy innovation has often occurred at the lower levels of

government who often operate under less political or media risk and can sometimes be more nimble

in experimenting with new policy ideas. Successful experiments at lower levels of government then

get lifted up onto the national agenda.

4.3.4 Nature of the community

While policy research has often explored what creates public support for new policies in terms of the

nature of the issue (Wilson 1973), disrupters to institutions (Baumgartner & Jones 1993), and agenda

setting processes (Stone 2002), the research field has less to say on whether some communities are

more likely to support measures to address future risk than others. To this end the section turns to

community resilience, a rapidly growing field of research that examines the characteristics and

processes that enable some communities to prepare better for and successfully cope with shocks and

significant change than other communities.

Much of the community resilience research has focussed on disasters (e.g., Brown & Kulig 1996/7;

King 2006; Norris et al. 2008; Paton 2006a & b, 2007; Rose 2004), which are generally discrete

periodic events compared with climate change and peak oil, which are persistent pressures (although

climate change will cause for example increased extreme weather events). However, a review of

resilience across different disciplines and contexts (Norris et al. 2008) identified that resilience is

increasingly recognised as the ability to adapt (or transition) in the face of risk as opposed to the

ability to resist or bounce back from a shock. A review of general community resilience characteristics

therefore appears a useful research area to increase understanding of what builds a community‟s

ability to adapt or transition in response to global change.

Two models of community resilience, Paton (2006b) and CCCR (2000), and a body of resilience

literature are reviewed to identify attributes that may increase the capacity of communities to support

and implement urban transitions in response to global change.

Paton‟s (2006b) model of community resilience was developed to assess the level of resilience that a

community has to prepare, respond and recover from a range of disasters. Paton defines resilience

as “a measure of how well people and societies can adapt to a changed reality and capitalize on new

opportunities offered‟ (2006a: 8). General social resilience attributes were selected on the following

criteria: they contribute significantly to resilience; they are amenable to change; and they are

potentially within the control of planning processes (Paton 2007: 20).

The Canadian Centre for Community Renewal (CCCR) model of community resilience was

developed to help communities assess and plan responses for social and economic shocks, primarily

with rural Canadian towns where the nature of exploiting nature resources has created a pattern of

28

boom and bust towns. Community resilience is defined by CCCR as: “the ability to take intentional

action to strengthen the personal and collective capacity of its citizens and institutions to respond to

and influence the course of social and economic change” (CCCR 2000: 1–5).

CCCR identified 23 attributes of resilience through literature and theory; and these are refined

through 10 years of practical application. They are not seen as an exhaustive list but are believed to

be those attributes most predictive of community resilience in the context for which they were

designed. Collectively, these two models and a review of community resilience literature suggest the

following community attributes are important for adaptive resilience:

Community competency (Norris et al. 2008; Paton 2007): refers to the capacity of communities to

identify, mobilize, and address issues, which in turn requires the collective ability for critical

reflection, problem solving, flexibility (Norris et al. 2008) and the cultivation and use of knowledge

and resources (Goodman 1998: 259). The following attributes appear to be prerequisites for

developing community competency.

Communication and critical awareness (Norris et al. 2008; Paton 2006b): whereby individuals,

communities (including public agencies) have access to information on global and local issues

and frequently discuss what those issues mean for their city.

Sense of community, place attachment, social networks and citizen participation: whereby

residents feel a sense of attachment and commitment to the place and the community in which

they live (CCCR 2000; Norris et al. 2008), and residents take action for others through for

example voluntary work, mutual assistance and cooperation (CCCR 2000; Norris et al. 2008).

Social networks are present creating bonding and bridging social capital (Norris et al. 2008).

Individual and collective efficacy: city residents believe they have individual (Paton 2006b) and

collective ability (Paton 2006b; Norris et al. 2008) to deal with challenging situations.

Empowerment, trust and active democracy: citizens are empowered to be actively involved in

democratic processes (CCCR 2000; Norris et al. 2008) through public agencies‟ processes,

sharing of power and social support. Citizens trust the information public agencies provide and

believe those agencies strive to meet citizen‟s needs (Paton 2006b).

Resources, equity and social support: the city has an adequate level and diversity of economic

resources, and there is procedural and distributive justice in allocating those resources (Paton

2006b). Widespread support exists for education at all levels (CCCR 2000). There is fairness

towards/in vulnerability to risks (Norris et al. 2008) and the community supports those most

vulnerable to risks (CCCR 2000).

Leadership and collaboration: public leadership is visionary, representative, and builds

consensus (CCCR 2000) and leadership is present at all levels (CCCR 2000). Public and

29

stakeholder organisations have developed processes and cultures for working together in

collaborative ways (CCCR 2000; Norris et al. 2008).

Paton (2007) emphasises that building resilience cannot be just an individualist pursuit; resilience

needs to be built at and across community and institutional levels. The understanding that “people are

resilient together, not merely in similar ways” (Brown & Kulig 1996/7: 43) is reflected in Rose (2004),

Norris et al. (2008) and Pfefferbaum et al. (2005). Paton‟s model (2006b) stresses the importance of

having linking attributes which bind resilience attributes across individual, community and institutional

scales. These linking attributes are: community competence, procedural and distributive justice,

empowerment and trust, and environment–behavioural links. This also infers that the resilience

attributes are interdependent and therefore a community needs to possess a degree of all of them.

CCCR‟s participatory model is designed to empower communities in assessing their resilience and

taking collective action and therefore the planning process itself is an opportunity to build community

competence, empowerment and trust.

Many community resilience attributes are dynamic, and research has demonstrated that individual

and community resilience may be worn down by repetitive shocks and stress (Norris et al. 2008) or as

a result of changes in community membership and goals (Paton 2007). Equally, general resilience

can be built up over time through increased community and economic development. Many resilience

attributes can take years (e.g., place attachment), decades (e.g., social capital), and even

generations (e.g., social equity) to develop.

To summarise the organisational field, (Table 3) constraints to a policy agency facilitating urban

transitions include established field institutions, the incremental nature of policy change, and

issues/policy interventions with diffused impacts. The organisational field‟s institutions and public

perception of issues can be disrupted however, when issues such as climate change create growing

societal concern resulting in gradual shifts in social values at the landscape level. These are often, as

outlined in the landscape section, accelerated by shocks and events (such as climate change related

natural disasters or oil price spikes). When these disruptions occur, some communities possess

collective attributes that increase their willingness and capacity to undertake individual and collective

action to minimise future threats. However, a policy organisation also needs to have the institutional

capacity to engage and empower their communities to adapt to future threats including threats arising

from global change, which leads us to the organisational level of the framework.

30

Table 3. Organisational field summary of barriers to and enablers of policy agencies facilitating urban

transitions

Organisational field summary

Barriers to transitions Enablers of transitions

Field level paradigms

Political compromises, incomplete knowledge

& risk aversion resulting only in non disruptive

change

Lack of public/media interest/belief in issue;

lack of belief in Gov to address issues or

diffused impact/benefit on vocal/powerful

groups

Disruptors

Immature organisational field with evolving institutions

Concentrated issue/policy impact on vocal/powerful groups

Current policy/field level paradigms losing positive image

Policy innovation reframed to broaden support

Nature of the urban community Strong community leadership & collaboration, a sense of community, strong social networks, social capital and civic participation. Trust built between urban council and community. Community resources, equity & social support

Capacity building across public sector

Institutions developed for joined up inter-organisational planning

Emergence of professional networks of policy agencies instigating urban transitions

Richer analytical frameworks of social & technical change adopted within specific policy professions

Lower levels of government acting as innovation laboratories

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4.4 The organisation

Baumgartner and Jones (1993) argue that policy and political systems are not resistant to change in

the long run, that windows of opportunity for change open periodically but those short periods of

change cannot be planned and directed. Mintrom‟s (2000) research on policy entrepreneurs suggests

a less passive approach to policy change, whereby individuals, groups and organisations have been

instrumental in strategically forcing windows of opportunity for change to occur. This reflects the

concept of individual agency (Giddens 1984) and collective agency (Sewell 1993). The organisational

and individual levels of the framework therefore examine research on organisational change,

leadership, and policy entrepreneurs to identify the attributes of organisations, and the individuals

who work within them, that create significant policy innovation.

A review of literature on adaptive organisations to climate change (public and business organisations)

identifies a number of attributes which support organisational innovation and adaptability;

1. Situational awareness: an organisation requires processes and resources to develop excellent

situational awareness of external and future drivers of change. Importantly the organisation needs

to analysis and articulate how those drivers might impact on its responsibilities (PACT5; UKCIP

2008). Equally an organization needs to maintain a dynamic situational awareness of its

immediate environment, including inter-organizational politics, and the mood and concerns of

local citizens and stakeholders.

2. The ability to plan for, identify, and seize windows of opportunity for change: opportunities for

policy change occur in infrequent bursts. For urban councils these opportunities often occur when

new capital works are required, when new political parties are brought into power, or when an

event or crisis mobilises broader support for an issue. Situational awareness enables

organisations to identify emerging windows of opportunity but the ability of an organisation to

understand how to leverage those opportunities is critical (Longsdale et al. 2010; PACT, no date).

3. Leadership: outlined in detail in section 4.5 on individuals.

4. A clear and shared vision with priority goals for moving towards that vision: articulating the

direction of the organisation helps align different parts of an organisation. Visions that have been

developed with staff are more likely to gain buy-in and be pursued by the organisation as a whole

(Stone L. 2006). For public agencies this would also require developing visions and goals with a

broad range of stakeholders. In addition, organisations operating in a rapidly changing

environment need to evaluate continuously whether new developments in their external

environment require a shift in their activities and at times they may need to review of the

5 PACT (Performance Acceleration through Capacity-building Tool) was developed by Alexander Ballard Ltd with

Hampshire County Council (HCC). The tool arose from research on change management for the EU-funded ESPACE project. The website can be accessed at http://www.pact.co/home

32

continued relevance of their goals. This process of strategic reflection is central to a learning

organisation (see 6 below).

5. A culture of working together internally and externally: having shared visions and goals contribute

to aligning teams; but working together also requires staff with excellent interpersonal skills,

communication and facilitative skills as well as technical skills (Longsdale et al. 2009). In addition,

the more complex an issue, the less likely it can be solved by specialist expertise alone (Casey

1993) and the more likely it will require multi-disciplinary teams who have a range of technical

skills and interpersonal skills (APSC 2007).

Global change issues cannot be solved by a single organisation. An urban policy organisation

needs to develop effective skills and processes for working collaboratively with other agencies,

stakeholder groups and communities. Again, this requires excellent interpersonal skills and

processes for engagement; it also requires the time for relationships, trust and shared

understanding to be developed between groups (Longsdale et al. 2009). For public agencies this

involves utilizing routine and statutory stakeholder engagements (Longsdale et al. 2009: 17). And

critically, as outlined earlier in the community resilience literature, urban policy agencies need to

implement community engagement processes to develop community and institutional resilience.

6. A significant learning culture: developing the traits above will often require an organization to

reverse many aspects of its current culture (Fowler 1997). Organisational change needs to go

deeper than implementing new technical processes; rather, an organization needs to create the

enabling conditions for staff to “adopt new basic operating assumptions and institutional

structures” (Handmer & Dovers 1996: 502). To do this, people and the organisation as a whole

need to be conscious of and able to reflect on their existing ideologies and assumptions. This

ability has been termed as double loop learning (Argyris & Schön 1978), which moves from

asking “are we doing things right?” to asking “are we doing the right things and do our operating

assumptions still hold true?” This enables organisations to reframe their role and purpose, and

broaden the problem framing of issues such as climate change, thus creating possibilities for new

and more comprehensive areas of exploration (Longsdale et al. 2009). Characteristics found

within organizations with a significant learning culture (UKCIP 2008:74) include:

seeking new ideas outside of the organisation

encouraging and exploring dissonant information and ideas

providing informal as well as formal spaces and processes for learning

creating a culture where „mistakes‟ are accepted and used as an opportunity to learn

accepting there is no one right way of doing things

33

providing opportunities for staff and political representatives to question core

assumptions of an organization‟s purpose and how it works.

7. Change is embedded in implementation mechanisms (UKCIP: 77): to move from rhetoric to real

and long-term change, organisations need to systematically embed new organisational culture

and policies into its mechanisms of implementation. Breaking down the traditional silos between

policy development and programme implementation is also critical, particularly for complex

problems such as climate change where knowledge is uncertain and there are no silver bullet

solutions. Policy development therefore needs to be informed by those working in implementation

and then needs to be modified as programmes are implemented in response to what is and isn‟t

working (APSC 2007). Policy for complex problems therefore is not a linear process stepping

from problem definition, policy design to implementation then evaluation; rather, it needs to be an

iterative process of learning and adaptation “with policy changing in response to implementation

as well as vice versa” (Mulgan & Lee 2001: 4).

8. Creating momentum through catalyst projects: Using catalyst projects is a strategy used by urban

public agencies, which consolidates experimentation, learning, and embedding in implementation.

For example Citiesplus

(2003), a long-term sustainability framework for Vancouver, identified a

series of catalyst projects to help initiate and drive Vancouver‟s transition process towards a

sustainable city. Sebastian Moffatt, who led Citiesplus

and a number of urban sustainable

development projects internationally, believes catalyst projects form a critical component of

strategies for managing urban transitions:

A catalyst project should be a combination of new policy and new technology (or process).

Every city and every neighbourhood needs at least one. If it is any good, it will have spun

off another catalyst project well before it is completed. It will also reveal the need for new

policy. (Moffatt 2011)

Catalyst projects aim to leverage system change in a city using the public agencies limited resources.

They do this by being part research, part adaptive management, and part sustainability education of

the public and, importantly, local professionals who take part, learn and then begin to own the new

urban approaches in their subsequent work (Moffatt 2011).

To summarise the organisational level, situational awareness can enable organisations to recognise

and leverage off what Baumgartner and Jones (1993) describe as windows of opportunities for

implementing policy change. In turn, organisations need a strong vision to steer those opportunities

towards a desired urban trajectory. Complex issues such as climate change and peak oil require

inter-disciplinary understanding, and organisations need to bring different disciplines together

effectively and build strong teams and internal and external collaborative processes. Organisations

need to develop a deep learning culture as transitions may involve much experimentation within in a

rapidly changing external environment. As outlined in the community resilience literature,

34

organisations need to build an organisational culture and processes for engaging their communities

meaningfully in discussion on global issues and in civic decision-making. Finally transitions have to

be systematically embedded through implementation mechanisms, including district and asset

management plans and catalyst projects.

Table 4. Organisational summary of barriers to and enablers of policy agencies facilitating urban

transitions

Urban Policy Organisation Summary

Barriers to transitions Enablers of transitions

Narrow, short term & local focus

Lack of direction & long-term planning

Sustainability vision largely rhetoric

Structure, culture & processes within organisation generates silo thinking

Expedient community consultation approaches

Organisational culture & skills Situational awareness

Shared vision & goals

Organisational change processes to align to new vision

Leadership

Significant learning culture

Internal & external collaboration

People skills & technical skills valued

Policy practice

Vision embedded in implementation mechanisms

Diverse policy concepts used

Integration of policy development & implementation

Engagement processes designed to build community empowerment, trust and active democracy

Catalyst projects

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4.5 Individuals

Individual leadership is one of the most commonly cited attributes mentioned in the literature on

adaptive organisations (Lonsdale et al. 2010); therefore while the individuals explored here operate in

policy agencies they are considered important enough to have their own level.

Two types of leaders are characterised at the individual level – policy entrepreneurs within the

organisation and leaders who create the enabling conditions for an adaptive organisation. Policy

entrepreneurs are people (staff or political representatives) involved in public policy who try to

significantly change the current way of doing things in a specific area of their interest and are

prepared to work beyond established institutional arrangements to achieve this (Mintrom & Norman

2009). Leaders in this context are defined as people who hold formal or informal leadership roles

within an organisation and whose actions create the enabling conditions for the organisation to adopt

new thinking and practices. A person may play both roles at the same time and both roles share

many of the same characteristics.

Literature was reviewed for specific characteristics relating to; enabling organisations to be adaptable

(Longsdale et al. 2009; Snowden 2005; UKCIP 2008) the ability to address complexity (Augustine &

Woodcock 2003), and the ability to be innovative (Chambers 2005; Rooke & Torbert 2005; Senge

1990).

4.5.1 Leading adaptive policy agencies

Rooke and Torbert (2005) have developed a leadership model that differentiates seven leadership

profiles based on a leader‟s internal „action logic‟. Rooke and Torbert define action logic as how a

person interprets their own actions and their surroundings and how they react when their power or

safety is challenged. The model is relevant to the Framework‟s consideration of agency]] as it

compares the action logic of lower level leaders who are not change agents with those who are.

Thousands of executives from business, government, and NGOs internationally have been surveyed

and characterised into seven different profiles, which are seen as a continuum in leadership

performance (Table 5). Only the top three profiles – individualists, strategists, and alchemists – who

collectively make up 15% of all executives surveyed, show a consistent ability to innovate and

transform their organisations (Rooke & Torbert 2005: 2). A breakdown of profiles for government

agencies is not given.

Table 5 Seven transformations of the leadership mode, (adapted from Rooke & Torbert, 2005: 3)

Action logic Opportunist Diplomat Expert Achiever Individualist Strategist Alchemist

% of sample

profiled

5% 12% 38% 30% 10% 4% 1%

36

As the four categories of non-change agents (the opportunist, diplomat, expert, and achiever) make

up the majority of formal leaders, this provides more context to the challenge of creating change than

a list of leadership change agent attributes would. For example, Rooke and Torbert comment that the

dominant leadership profile, the Expert, tries to exercise control by perfecting their knowledge and

tends to limit innovation if ideas comes from others who they do not consider experts. They also tend

to view collaboration and skills such as social intelligence as a waste of time. This would suggest they

are less equipped to deal with complex issues where knowledge cannot be perfected and where

collaboration and different ways of understanding a problem are required. Achievers, who are the

second most common leadership profile, hold a more complex understanding of the world, build

strong teams and can successfully implement change programmes. However, their focus on

delivering results constrains their willingness to reflect on goals and practices (Rooke & Torbert

2005), which is critical for the double loop organisational learning highlighted in the organisational

level section.

Exploring the top two of the three change agent profiles identifies attributes needed for policy

innovation associated with urban transitions. The Strategist leaders believe their organisations are

able to transform and they work effectively with people with different action logics to enable change.

They are comfortable with dealing with the conflict that invariably arises in change processes. Finally,

strategists generally work beyond both the typical boundaries of their sector and their individual or

organisational interests. This has led many of them to challenge current paradigms within their

sectors. The rare Alchmist leader is able to lead social transformations. Typically charismatic and

focussed on truth, Alchmists are described as people who are able to catch unique historic moments

and “create symbols and metaphors that speak to people‟s hearts and minds” (Rooke & Torbert 2005:

6), which can occur at an organisational or societal level. In this, they are perhaps able to create short

windows of opportunity for transformative change.

Rooke and Torbert provide less detail on the processes strategist and alchemist leadership take to

facilitate change. Other literature, especially literature focussed on organisations adapting to climate

change, commonly highlight the following leadership processes:

Creating and consistently reinforcing a guiding vision and goals for the organisation that builds

support from those who need to implement that vision (Augustine & Woodcock 2003; Longsdale

et al. 2009; UKCIP 2008).

Developing a realistic picture of the adaptation challenge and ability to mobilize sufficient

resources for the job (UKCIP 2008)

Leading with a „light touch‟ so that ideas can emerge from across teams but consistently

monitoring and adjusting team performance and culture (Augustine & Woodcock 2003). This

suggests less hierarchal structures and shifts in managerial cultures (Chambers 2005; Snowden

2005).

37

Investing time and resources in relationship building, organisational and staff learning processes,

and open-access knowledge systems (Augustine & Woodcock 2003; Senge 1990; UKCIP 2008).

4.5.2 Leading policy innovation

Looking now specifically at leadership in policy innovation, policy entrepreneurs have been defined

through “their desire to significantly change current ways of doing things in their area of interest”

(Mintrom & Norman 2009: 650). As described by Baumgartner and Jones (1993), significant change

in policy is unlikely to occur just because a policy entrepreneur believes change is required. Policy

entrepreneurship is mostly likely to be observed when new challenges demand significant change to

established policy versus incremental adjustments (Mintrom & Norman 2009). At these times people

attempting to bring in new policy ideas are, however, more likely to be successful if they possess the

following interrelated characteristics:

Creativity (Mintrom 2000): includes the ability to conceptualise of problems and solutions in new

ways.

Conviction, passion, and persistence (Mintrom 2000: 89): policy entrepreneurs strongly believe in

the need for change and for their specific ideas and they are prepared to invest their resources

for the future benefits of achieving change (Mintrom & Norman2009). Innovating change is a

substantive task and passion and conviction are required for entrepreneurs to stay the distance.

Social perceptiveness and acumen: policy entrepreneurs have strong interpersonal skills and, like

the Strategist and Alchmist leadership profiles, they are able to understand other people‟s

differing world views (Mintrom 2000), concerns, and motives (Mintrom & Norman 2009). They are

usually well hooked into and make use of their policy networks to develop and promote their

policy innovation (Balla 2001; True & Mintrom 2001; Walker 1969). These aspects provide them

with a number of advantages when driving policy innovation. First, their networks provide them

access to alterative policy ideas or stimulus for new ideas (Balla 2001; Mintrom & Vergari 1998).

Second, they are able to understand the political and social dynamics within their area of interest,

including which individuals or groups are important to bring on board, and how they may need to

frame or tailor their arguments to ensure they are taken seriously by different audiences (Mintrom

2000). Third, their well-attuned social antennae help them pick up weak signals that indicate

where and when windows of opportunity for change might open, enabling them to prepare for and

take advantage of those opportunities (Kingdon 1984/1995).

The ability to mobilise support for change: closely linked to having strong networks and

understanding the world views and concerns of others is the ability of entrepreneurs to frame a

problem or an argument for change in ways that mobilise support from a wider constituency

(Mintrom & Norman 2009; Roberts & King 1991) and that build strategic coalitions of support,

often well in advance of attempting to create the policy change (Rabe 2004). They tend to be

38

persuasive communicators (Mintrom 2000) and good storytellers (Stone 1997/2002). Last, they

often reduce the perceived risk of adopting new policies by implementing working models of their

proposals themselves to provide proof of their viability (Quinn 2000).

The ability to build strong teams: the social acumen of policy entrepreneurs provides the ability to

build strong teams, and they often create teams consisting of very different skill sets and

knowledge (Mintrom 2000; Roberts & King 1996). The combined attributes needed for policy

innovation may be distributed across a team rather than embodied in a single person. For

example one person may have vision while another is good at systematically embedding change

in decision-making processes.

Policy entrepreneurs often get radical policy innovation adopted through what appears at the time, to

be incremental change and therefore it is worth clarifying the distinction between incremental and

significant policy change. Over the long run, Baumgartner and Jones (1993) argue that significant

change occurs over short periods of time. Over the short run this significant change can be more

difficult to identify. Mintrom (2000) argues that what over the short run looks like incremental change

can represent a step change towards more radical policy innovation. He cites school choice policy in

Minnesota where policy entrepreneurs deliberately took a series of policy change steps, pushing for

more radical steps at each stage.

Following this argument, policy entrepreneurs might strategically take a stepped change approach,

whereby they hold a long-term goal in view and need to ensure that each policy step heads them

towards that goal. Initially, they might frame the problem so it can still be taken seriously by those

from whom they need support. For example, Rabe (2004) identified that policy entrepreneurs

attempting to bring in greenhouse gas reduction initiatives commonly emphasized the economic

opportunities of green growth to play down the perception that environmental protection limits

economic growth. Parsons describes this as dressing the innovation or issue up “in old clothes in

order to get the policy accepted” (2001: 573).

To summarize the individual level (Table 6), leaders who can facilitate significant organisational and

social change consistently are in the minority of formal leaders, but they are the people who are

fascinated by and understand the underlying drivers behind the way individuals, organisations, and

broader systems operate. They believe change is possible and have the skills to facilitate it. The more

common and traditional styles of leadership, the „Expert‟ and the „Achiever‟, while providing value to

an organisation, are less reflective, and often create barriers for deeper change and innovation.

People who lead policy innovations have high degrees of social acumen, build strong teams, are

extremely good communicators, and are well linked into social and professional networks. All of these

attributes enable them to mobilise support for their policy innovation, while their persistence enables

them to keep pushing through the resistance to change, often over years, in order to implement their

policy innovations, often through a step change process.

39

Table 6. Individuals level summary of barriers to and enablers of policy agencies facilitating urban

transitions

Individuals Summary

Barriers to transitions Enablers of transitions

Leadership focussed on self-interest or short-term goals or constrained by single disciplinary thinking

Individual disrupters

Visionary leadership

Holistic thinkers who think & act beyond their organisations boundaries & interests

Significant social perception & acumen

Ability to recognise & seize opportunities for change

Creativity & willingness to challenge status quo

Building adaptive agencies

Representative, adaptive & collaborative leadership

Conviction, persistence & ability to mobilise resources required for change

Ability to frame innovation to increase broader acceptance

Leading with a light touch but consistently evaluating progress

Ability to build strong committed multi-disciplinary teams

40

41

4.6 The Adaptive Urban Policy Framework

The social structures at the landscape level shape the institutions of the public sector at the

organizational field level and the social practices, norms, and values of urban communities. Social-

technological regimes that fulfil social functions such as transport co-evolve with the built environment

at the landscape level, developing tight interdependent systems of technical, social, institutional, and

physical elements. Collectively these factors tend to lock urban settlements into specific development

trajectories inhibiting sustainability transitions.

However, disruptions to the physical landscape and to social institutions and cultural values at the

higher levels occur, often through the accumulating pressure of social and ecological trends at the

landscape level, which can manifest as critical events or shocks. These trends and shocks disrupt the

lower levels, creating windows of opportunities for sustainability transitions. At the organizational field

level, policy organizations may adopt the rhetoric of sustainability to maintain legitimacy in the face of

changing cultural values but only implement non-disruptive measures. Significant policy innovation,

however, has often been driven by groups of instrumental individuals whose situational awareness,

vision, and social acumen enable them to frame policy innovation in a way that can mobilize support.

Urban transitions can take decades to achieve and in order to implement a significant shift in policy

direction requires policy organizations to align their internal culture to that new urban vision. To

address complex problems and implement new approaches, policy agencies need to have a strong

learning culture and the skills to work collaboratively, internally, and externally with key stakeholders

and their urban community.

Table 7 summarizes the barriers to and enablers of urban policy organizations successfully instigating

significant policy changes at each of the five levels. However, as Longsdale et al. (2010: 3–4)

comment, “lists of attributes on their own are of limited use especially as many of the concepts used,

though sounding good, have many potential interpretations and do not give specific detail to explain

how they might be used”. The elements of this framework are therefore tested and refined in Section

5 using the context and detail provided in a case study of a New Zealand city council, Waitakere City

Council (WCC) and its 18-year transition in developing an „Eco City‟.

42

Table 7. Barriers to and enablers of urban policy agencies facilitating urban sustainability transitions

Barriers to transitions Enablers of transitions

Landscape level

Stability of social institutions

Dominant paradigms (e.g., the imperative for economic growth)

Invested power interests

Long lived nature of built environment

Disruptors

Shocks (e.g. natural disaster)

Emerging social & environmental issues

Shifts in social values & paradigms

Periods of renewal of the built environment

Social-technological systems

Invested interests of regime industry

Routines, habits, beliefs, resources, capabilities,

of the regime actors

Policies, standards, knowledge systems that have

co evolve with regime

Societal expectations & symbolic meaning

associated with incumbent regime

Sunken investment in infrastructure & high cost of

change

Economies of scale of incumbent regime

Disruptors

Current technology losing positive image due to landscape

disrupter e.g. resource supply issues, environmental issues

Internalising externalities of incumbent technology

Niche protection for commercialising alternative technologies

Coordinated sector programmes to improve regime

Organisational field

Field-level paradigms

Political compromises, incomplete knowledge &

risk aversion resulting only in non-disruptive

change

Lack of public/media interest/belief in issue: lack

of belief in Gov to address issues or diffused

impact/benefit on vocal/powerful groups

Disruptors

Immature organisational field with evolving institutions

Concentrated issue/policy impact on vocal/powerful groups

Current policy/field level paradigms losing positive image

Policy innovation reframed to broaden support

Capacity building across public sector

Institutions developed for joined up inter-organisational planning

Emergence of professional networks of policy agencies instigating urban transitions

Richer analytical frameworks of social & technical change adopted within specific policy professions

Lower levels of government acting as innovation laboratories

Nature of urban community Strong community leadership & collaboration, a sense of community, strong social networks. Trust built between urban council and community.

Community resources, equity & social support exist

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Barriers of transitions Enablers of transitions

Urban Policy Organisation

Narrow, short-term & local focus

Lack of direction & long-term planning

Sustainability vision largely rhetoric

Structure, culture & processes within organisation generates silo thinking

Expedient community consultation approaches

Organisational culture & skills Situational awareness

Shared vision & goals

Organisational change processes to align to new vision

Leadership

Significant learning culture

Internal & external collaboration

People skills & technical skills valued

Policy practice

Vision embedded in implementation mechanisms

Diverse policy concepts used

Integration of policy development & implementation

Engagement processes designed to build community empowerment,

Individuals

Leadership focussed on self-interest, or short-term goals or constrained by single disciplinary thinking

Individual disrupters

Visionary leadership

Holistic thinkers who think & act beyond their agencies boundaries and interests

Significant social perception & acumen

Ability to recognise & seize opportunities for change

Creativity & willingness to challenge status quo

Building adaptive agencies

Representative, adaptive & collaborative leadership

Conviction, persistence & ability to mobilise resources required for change

Ability to frame innovation to increase broader acceptance

Leading with a light touch but consistently evaluating progress

Ability to build strong committed multi-disciplinary teams

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45

5 Case study: The Waitakere City Council ‘Eco City’

In 1992, three years after the Waitakere City Council (WCC) was first established, a political coalition

was elected to Council on the campaign platform of creating an Eco City. This political coalition in

collaboration with the senior officers intentionally brought about new ways of thinking and operating

within the council and, in contrast to many urban public agencies, took sustainable development

beyond rhetoric and began to apply sustainable development practices within its urban settlement.

This case study of WCC‟s Eco City transition is used to provide an initial assessment of the validity of

the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework. A case study can also provide a more nuanced understanding

of how a policy agency developed its capacity for facilitating urban transitions and illustrate how

factors at different levels of the framework are interdependent. This also helps identify which factors

are within the control of a policy agency and which are not. The case study is presented as a

chronological narrative beginning with factors which initiated the Eco City transition and goes on to

describe the enablers and constraints WCC experienced as it implemented the transition within its

organisation and out in the wider Waitakere community.

5.1 Enablers experienced

5.1.1 Initial disrupters at the landscape & organisational field levels Leading up to instigation of the Eco City in 1992, a number of disrupters occurred to established scail

structures and public sector institutions nationally and international institutions, which created more

fertile ground in which the concept of an „Eco City‟ could take root. First, there was growing concern

and activity on environmental and social issues internationally and within New Zealand. At the

international level in 1987 the Brundtland Commission, convened by the United Nations to address

accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources, published Our Common

Future. Our Common Future framed the environment and social-economic development as a single

issue and raised sustainability onto political agendas internationally. In 1992 the United Nations Rio

Earth Summit also focussed on the interdependencies between ecological and socio-economic

systems and developed Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action for transitioning towards a

sustainable development pathway. Global, national, and local organisations were encouraged to

apply Agenda 21 within their localised contexts (United Nations 1992).

At the national level the Labour Government was strongly linked to these international movements,

signing up to a number of international environment conventions during its 1984–1991 terms.6 The

Government also instigated a major natural resource and environmental legislative reform through the

establishment of the Resource Management Act (RMA) which was eventually passed under a

6 Including the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, 1989; South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone

Treaty, 1985

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National Government in 1991. The RMA replaced the Town and Country Planning Act as the key

legislative framework for local government and represented a shift in thinking about the environment

– incorporating „sustainable management‟ as a stated purpose at the heart of the RMA framework.

Exploration of New Zealand‟s potential futures had also been undertaken by the Commission for the

Future (1976–82) and the NZ Planning Council (1982–91) and while both were disbanded by

successive governments because, some argued, they challenged status quo assumptions (Frame &

Pride 2009), the work initiated discussions on how the future might not be just a continuation of the

past.

There was a significant reform of New Zealand local government in 1989, which led to the

establishment of Waitakere City Council and a new group of local councils operating in the Auckland

region. In a drive for efficiencies (WCC 2010), the Labour Government nationally amalgamated 700

local authority units into 86, while in Auckland 30 local authority units were amalgamated into seven,

with Waitakere City Council being created out of Waitamata City and three borough councils. This

shook up the existing local government sector (or organisational field) creating fewer and larger

councils. The 1989 reform also required councils to develop 10-year financial plans which in turn

demanded new skills and processes in long-term planning within the local government sector:

Most of the councillors had been used to running their fingers along a column of figures, not

having plans that took you out 10 years, 20 years, despite the fact that a great deal of where their

money went, .......water, sewage, environment are all long-term things. (ex staff 1)

Historically, New Zealand local government has had a narrower role than many local public agencies

internationally, one commonly described as providing infrastructure services to property (e.g., waste,

water, sewage, local roads) rather than, for example, social services such as education, welfare and

policing. In addition to this relatively narrow role, successive Governments between the ‟80s and early

‟90s put pressure on councils to rely increasingly on the market to deliver many urban outcomes,

reflecting the influences neo-liberal thinking was having on public policy internationally and in New

Zealand over that time period (Ralston Saul 2005).

However, sustained population growth in Auckland placed pressure on existing urban infrastructure

and drove demand for new housing. Councils found that market-led responses to urban development

(e.g., infill housing and cheaply built apartments separated from public transport and other public

facilities) were creating less than optimal social and environmental outcomes for their communities.

So, while local councils were being directed to rely on markets, the growing failure of the market to

provide wider social and environmental benefits from urban development led some councils, including

Waitakere, to adopt a broader remit on how their cities developed.

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5.1.2 Disrupters to the established organisational culture A new Chief Executive, brought in to lead the new Waitakere City Council in 1989, initiated an

intentional organisational change process. He started by creating a distinct combination of senior

management that included women and people with policy and strategy expertise, both of which were

unusual in New Zealand local government at the time. This team combined established local

expertise with new thinking and combined public and private perspectives.

However, substantive change occurred when a coalition of councillors was elected onto Council in

1992. They were young, diverse in their backgrounds, and the majority were women, which broke the

mould of traditional local body representation (WCC 2010) and brought different perspectives and

expertise to the elected Council. The coalition won on the platform of creating an „Eco City‟, which in

part was based on re-creating the identity of the area, from being the poorer west suburbs of

Auckland to becoming the Eco City of Waitakere:

Some people put their names forward for election who were quite different and they were very

young in their approach and fresh and aspirational and they were elected, I think, because they

offered people living in that area – who probably didn‟t have a good self image – hope and pride.

(ex staff 5)

Bob [Harvey] wanted to change the image from Westie – you know, gas guzzling, Foxton

slacks… all the kids going out of the area for education, bad suburbs kind of stuff – to Waitakere

because that was a new name……. the [new] identity was the gorgeousness of the landscape,

the creativity of the people, the ethnic diversity, the potential to make a better places. (ex staff 1)

5.1.3 Nature of the Waitakere community While there was something distinct about the mix of councillors, interviewees commented that there

was something distinctive about the community that elected them. Waitakere had a small population

of 150,000. The area was made up of large dormitory suburbs (WCC 2010) with many residents

travelling to other parts of the region for work and facilities. Waitakere had relatively high social

deprivation, which intensified in the late ‟80s arguably as a result of the Government‟s policies

including market rents for social housing and the liberalisation of markets 7 (WCC 2010). As well as

the more traditional working-class communities, Waitakere also attracted wealthier, creative, and

politically active people, thus creating a demographically diverse mix of community. Interviewees

commented that many residents tended to remain in the west and contributed this stability in part to

the superb environment – the ranges and coast that surrounded the settlement. The small size, mix of

7 Nationally “income inequality grew very rapidly from 1988 to 1992, with higher incomes increasing and lower

incomes decreasing in real terms.” (Source: Ministry of Social Development 2011 Household Incomes Report).

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demographics, the core stable community, and connection to the land may have created a more

receptive community for a transition to an Eco City.

There‟s a really strong sense of identity and it‟s quite rooted in the landscape…. People tend to

stay. There might be transients amongst certain groups and maybe amongst certain parts of

[Waitakere] city … but an awful lot of people that worked at the council were actually born here

and went to school here ... and they‟ve gone away and come back here and their parents still live

here. (ex staff 3)

We should actually be doing a lot worse than we are on the basis of our demographic profile but

we haven‟t so there‟s clearly a whole host of factors in there but the fact that we‟ve got quite a

range of people in different backgrounds, it‟s a big contributor. (ex staff 3)

Over the 1980s and 1990s social deprivation was increasing and perhaps due to this trend there was

a sense of energy for change in the community:

We became aware of some quite strong community initiatives… and that was partly because of

the deprivation of the west … There were leaders who loved the west, could see the challenges

and who had been fighting for improvements for a long time. (ex councillor 2).

In contrast, a Salvation Army policy analyst and long-term resident of South Auckland describes how

over the last 20 years young potential leaders in South Auckland have been moving away from their

communities, creating a leadership vacuum and a hollowing out of social capacity (Johnston 2007).

The community leadership capacity in West Auckland, however, remained.

5.1.4 A tangible vision with strategic capability to implement it

The Eco City provided an extremely tangible vision, which was based on “changing a suburbanised,

job deficient, car dependent, relatively deprived area, back into a set of urban-based communities

connected by public transport with locally available jobs and recreation opportunities” (WCC 2010:

31).

The Mayor and those in key political roles strongly and consistently articulated this vision internally

within the council and out into the community (WCC 2010). The Chief Executive insisted that every

staff member was able to clearly articulate how his/her role contributed to the Eco City vision:

I spent three years chairing the planning committee when I first got on the council, so I learnt a lot

about the regulatory regime…. I was always dealing with the rules, there was no strategic vision,

there was nothing to go this is where we‟re trying to get to, here‟s the principles and the way, the

values, this is the way we want to operate. (ex councillor 2)

For about two years, Bob gave the same speech … Now for me that implies a reframing, that we

knew that in order to get traction, in order to change the way the money was spent and where the

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resources were allocated we had to get people to accept a different direction and we needed to

be able to paint a picture of what that would look like… it was very concrete. (ex staff 1)

In response to the newly elected Council, the Chief Executive changed the structure of the Council,

away from a traditional one reflecting the processes of local government to one that reflected the

outcomes that the new councillors was wanted to achieve. Unusually for local councils at that time, a

Strategy and Development Unit was set up to develop and hold the strategic direction of the council.

Agenda 21, which emphasised the inter-relationships between people, the environment and the

economy, became the basis for the Council‟s work programme. The articulation of Agenda 21 was

the Council‟s „Green Print‟ which provided the Council‟s overarching strategy and remained a guiding

document for a considerable period of time:

I still think that the biggest change was the Green Print… That was an articulation of the idea of

stating where you wanted to get to, who you had to work with to get there, what long term change

you were looking to and then what were the steps over a 10-year period to get there. (ex staff 1)

WCC was well aware that it had limited resources in terms of staff and funding to achieve its vision

and strategy and would have to use those resources in a significantly different way. In response the

council strategic approach represented four interrelated shifts in policy thinking for local government

at that time:

1. strategic long-term planning

2. the idea of the council delivering social, economic and environmental outcomes as opposed

to delivering property services

3. the partnership approach taken by WCC with other public agencies, the business community,

community groups, NGOs and residents to achieve those outcomes, and

4. the idea of integrated policy making in contrast to developing environmental, or transport or

economic outcomes in silos.

These shifts collectively enabled WCC to understand the interrelationships between different issues

and outcomes and often to achieve multiple outcomes from the one activity instead of trading one

outcome off for another. The Green Print‟s focus on multiple outcomes cut across the different

departments of the Council which meant that Council departments had to reframe their role and

purpose. For example teams responsible for potable and wastewater had to shift from their traditional

role of delivering water services and start delivering on environmental, social and economic

outcomes. This demanded new policy thinking and new Council approaches.

As an illustration of this shift, a major water catchment restoration programme „Project Twin Streams‟

was designed not only to reduce flooding and water pollution which was its original driver, but it was

also designed to engage the community in environmental protection, build social capital, and

50

generate local employment. In 2010, seven years after the programme began, evaluation of the

programme indicated that “natural, social, human and produced capital had all been accumulated as

a result of PTS” and will continue to do so (MorrisonLow 2010: 1).

While the idea of pursuing win-wins and long-term planning is relatively common today it was

innovative thinking for New Zealand local government in the early „90s and importantly WCC moved

beyond rhetoric to action partly through instigating systematic policy procedures. The council

expected staff members to have gained the buy-in of all relevant departments before new policies or

programmes were presented to Council which interviewees believed helped develop win-win policy

interventions:

So we had a structure that every report that went to council was read by representatives from

each of the units... it meant over time you developed confidence in each other and backup and

that made such an incredible difference. (Ex staff 1)

Reports to Council also required an explanation of how they gave effect to the Green Print, and some

Councillors would actively check the alignment of Council reports to the Greenprint, demonstrating a

strong political commitment to ensuring strategy influenced Council decision-making. Without this

commitment by senior staff and councillors, the Green Print and the eco city strategy it represented

might never have been comprehensively implemented.

Members of the Strategy and Development Unit invested energy in developing relationships with

critical teams (e.g., asset managers) to ensure the strategy and policies they developed could and

would be translated into action. Policy staff members in the unit were expected to do „the hard yards'

to get their heads around any topic area in which they were working. These processes and

commitments to internal collaboration helped to gradually embed the vision and strategy into the

investment programmes and activities of the council.

5.1.5 A collective belief that change was possible Interviewees often spoke of a shared belief between staff and councillors that change was possible,

and commented on a critical mass of staff and councillors having a shared desire to learn and make a

difference in a much more strategic way than was common in local government at that time:

I feel quite excited about it every time I think about that opportunity which we sort of grabbed….

All of us wanted to learn and try to do things differently and I guess it was part of the excitement

of saying we can see the problems here, the challenges in the west, how on earth do we start

turning it round? (ex councillor 2)

People felt they were collectively changing things, making the world a better place … This was

different from other councils where eyes didn‟t light up. (ex staff 6)

51

Senior staff and the new councillors worked closely together and senior officers were committed to

creating an organisational culture that delivered the aspirations of the elected Council. This was

different from the culture within their organisational field of taking a more managerial approach:

It was very unusual to find senior staff and politicians sitting down and working very

collaboratively with a certain degree of trust and respect both ways, not the „them and us‟ that is

often in many councils. (ex councillor 2)

A critical number of the original councillors and senior staff worked together over a number of political

terms, which provided a realistic time frame to implement organisational culture change, develop new

ways of working with their community, and oversee major projects on the ground.

5.1.6 Situational awareness, international networks & seizing opportunities Another key characteristic distinguishing Waitakere from many other types of councils was the ability

of key staff and councillors to draw threads between international movements and their local city

context (WCC 2010). They invited international experts and alternative thinkers in urban design and

sustainable transport and water management to present leading-edge concepts that started to

challenge and open up the thinking within the council. They were also invited to international forums,

which exposed staff and politicians to new ideas, linked them into international networks of people

and local authorities undertaking similar sustainable development journeys, and gained early

credibility within WCC‟s organisational field for the Eco City approach.

WCC also looked for external opportunities to implement their strategy. This leveraging was important

to expand the Council‟s limited influence and resources:

A developer came to the party and the government all of a sudden runs a prize for best library

design, the drought occurs, something comes up and you seize that and then the changes hang

off that rather small component.(ex staff 1)

For example, WCC used the 1993/4 Auckland water crisis, the result of a major drought, as a means

of introducing the idea of sustainable resource use to their residents while the crisis was at the front

of residents‟ minds. They provided residents with „gizmos‟, simple water saving devices they could

install in their toilets. WCC eventually achieved the lowest per capita water consumption in urban

New Zealand (WCC 2010). However, WCC were not successful in advocating for a water demand

management approach when the issue of regional water supply arose and piping water from the

Waikato River went ahead.

5.1.7 Creativity & willingness to challenge the status quo Key senior staff members were prepared to challenge existing paradigms and explore a range of

different policy approaches. For example, the head of Strategy and Development was described as

being willing to challenge the „sacred cows‟ of policy.

52

She would just challenge…the rationale for government intervention… which starts with a

standard economic textbook thing of you have to have a problem or a market failure before you

intervene. She would challenge that and say Why? Who said? Is this some kind of biblical thing?

(ex staff 5)

Conversely, the head of the Strategy and Development unit brought economics and pricing tools into

the environmental space, which had traditionally used regulatory tools. By challenging staff to utilise a

broader approach, she “forced people out of their boxes” (ex staff 5) and opened their minds to

alternative ways of solving problems.

In the late ‟80s and ‟90s, cities and urban issues were not high on the central government‟s agenda,

and urban settlements were commonly understood in policy “as just places people lived” (ex staff 1).

Waitakere City Council, however, chose to try and lead urban development in Waitakere and as

mentioned previously, drew on divergent thinking nationally, and on internationally leading planning

approaches, including McHarg‟s Design with Nature (1969), for inspiration. This led to the Waitakere

District Plan being developed on the principle that an urban settlement needs to sit within, and relate

to, its natural environment. Waitakere was often described during the process of the District Plan, as

one third settlement, one third rural, and one third wilderness, and it was to preserve WCC‟s rural

functions and wilderness areas that a compact urban form was adopted in the District Plan. The

District Plan eventually won a number of awards nationally and internationally for its content and for

its community engagement process (WCC website

www.waitakere.govt.nz/abtcnl/pp/districtplan/history.asp).

WCC continued to facilitate sustainable urban development through its redevelopment of town

centres. This included the New Lynn town centre where WCC again drew on leading thinking for

urban development, this time from the New Urbanism movement, which advocates for mixed land

use, the reduction of motorised transport, a focus both on neighbourhood level planning, localisation

of goods and services, and compact urban form. In addition, WCC consistently advocated for urban

issues and the relationship between urban and the environment to be given more priority in

government agendas.

5.1.8 An intentional organisational change programme The Chief Executive implemented an extensive culture change process within the council to align the

whole of the organisation (approx 600 people) to the new vision, goals, and values. All staff had to

attend a multi-day retreat, called the Eco City experience, which introduced staff to the Waitakere

vision, strategy, and way of working. Senior management also intentionally identified and developed

champions for the change process across the council (WCC 2009):

53

We did heaps and heaps of training, heaps, on all sorts of levels…. over time shifting people,

letting them ask any question they wanted to because still if they wanted to walk out they‟d walk

out, it‟s not censoring but gradually over time it built up understanding. (ex staff 1)

WCC attempted to build a culture where open discussion could take place and dissenting views were

allowed, experiments could fail and achievements were celebrated (WCC 2010). A critical number of

staff across the council began to embrace the new thinking and were able to translate that thinking

into their own area of responsibility. The culture change was a gradual transition requiring a decade

of culture change, and not everyone in the Council was receptive. The commitment and consistency

from senior management and politicians during those first 10 years was therefore critical.

Recruitment criteria were developed to encourage soft skills sets across the organisation, including

good communication and empathy, as well as technical skills. These people skills were critical for

facilitating integration within the council and for working with external stakeholders and the

community. Recruitment also deliberately encouraged a more diverse range of staff – including more

diverse ages and more ethnic representation (WCC 2010). The Strategy and Development Unit

created an inter-disciplinary team and recruited people with different skill sets to support a more

holistic approach to delivering outcomes. This disciplinary mix appeared to have helped challenge

some of the institutionalised thinking within the council which was constraining the Eco City approach.

5.1.9 Working with others to achieve goals One of WCC‟s key policy approaches was taking a partnership approach and working with other

public agencies, the Waitakere business sector, NGOs and residents to collectively achieve

outcomes. As their aspirations were considerably bigger than their influence, WCC needed to bring

others on board to support the Eco City transition. WCC developed a partnering policy document

(WCC 2009: 10) that describes the rationale for this approach: “Successful city building now relies on

a diverse range of groups and agencies working together in many different ways – pooling

knowledge, resources, assets, ideas, energies and commitments to make change happen”.

The policy outlines a continuum of partnerships, allowing for a flexible approach in working with

others depending on circumstances. Core principles stress holding a holistic outcomes focus,

developing partnerships based on mutual respect, and ensuring equality in working relationships. A

practice guide for staff was developed to help build staff capacity and specific partnering champions

within the council were resourced and supported. A number of successes were attributed to this

approach, including the social benefits achieved through Project Twin Streams (MorrisonLow 2010)

and central government and public private partnerships that facilitated the New Lynn Transit Oriented

Development (WCC 2009).

WCC spent enormous effort advocating their goals to other public agencies and setting up external

partnerships in attempts to gain support and investment to implement them. Some interviewees,

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however, felt that that WCC did not achieve enough benefits for the effort expended, particularly in

terms of advocating public transport initiatives with central government.

5.1.10 Facilitating environmental improvements within a technological regime

WCC continued to adopt a broad role in meeting its sustainability outcomes for its settlement,

including instigating a cleaner production programme with local businesses. For example, WCC

facilitated a sustainability transition within the local printing industry to address the effects that toxins

from the printing process were having on worker health and to address the environmental impacts

that printing chemicals were having in the trade water system. WCC wanted to demonstrate how

environmental printing could be done using low Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) cleaners and

vegetable rather than chemical-based printing inks. The timing for instigating change was right. The

industry was poised to move from plate and ink printing to digital printing, which looked to impact the

viability of many small firms that existed in Waitakere. In addition, research had just been published

linking the toxicity of printing ink used by the industry to health issues experienced by print workers:

We were hearing about examples of printers driving home from work getting breath tested and

finding they were over the alcohol limit. They hadn‟t been drinking at work, they‟d just been working

in the alcohol fumes which came from the cleaning compounds they were using. There was also a

link between people working in the printing sector and alcohol abuse, and this was linked to their

use of the alcohol cleaners. (ex staff 6)

This created an appetite within the sector to explore change. WCC brought together different

organisations including local printers, their supplier, and the union, who then collectively agreed to

reduce toxicity and waste in the printing sector. There was a high degree of interest and energy

present within the group and the social acumen and passion of the project coordinator may have

helped create a catalyst for change: “I think the big success was we managed to actually pull together

quite a diverse group of people who had never talked together before and they all had the same

vision. We shared a common goal.” (ex staff 6)

An initial challenge was to get printers to agree to trial new vegetable-based ink and recycled paper.

In response WCC offered to pay a small premium for their corporate print runs to incentivise the trials.

WCC then worked with the other Auckland councils to develop a larger market for those printers who

choose to transition, i.e. they created a new and secure market for technology adoption.

This enabled a broader uptake of the environmental technology, the early adopters were provided

with a safe, equitable market, and over time other printers realised if they didn‟t transition they would

lose work from some large customers. The programme, even at this small city scale, generated

ripples throughout the printing industry. The project helped to stimulate nationwide adoption of low

VOC cleaners, vegetable based inks, leading to a reduction in industry-related health issues: “Health-

55

related claims had dropped by $1.2 million around the printing industry in one year because of the

shift away from the VOC”. (ex staff 6)

5.1.11 Adopting new technological niche for urban sustainability

As well as facilitating improvements to current social-technological regimes, WCC also attempted to

facilitate the market adoption of an emerging niche technology for stormwater and catchment

management, Low Impact Urban Design and Development (LIUDD). In contrast to conventional hard

engineering approaches, LIUDD manages stormwater by utilising natural systems and minimising

impervious surfaces through low tech devices including swales, rain gardens, green roofs, and ponds.

Compared with conventional development, LIUDD slows peak stormwater flows and reduces water

pollution and stream erosion.

LIUDD was a very new technological approach to stormwater management. Research on barriers to

LIUDD adoption undertaken in the Auckland region in 2004 (Easton et al. 2004) identified common

barriers to niche technology uptake including lack of awareness by developers and residents of

LIUDD as an alternative to conventional approaches and of the additional benefits that LIUDD

approaches can provide, concern over the cost and performance of LIUDD compared with

conventional approaches, lack of demonstration sites to emulate, and lack of skills and knowledge

within the stormwater and construction industry to design, build, and manage LIUDD approaches.

To address this, WCC again used their international links to bring in experts in the field to explore

how LIUDD might provide benefits to WCC. WCC built provisions for LIUDD in the WCC‟s District

Plan and developed LIUDD guidelines in its code of practice for infrastructure (WCC 2008) in order to

facilitate uptake of LIUDD approaches by developers and residents. WCC incorporated LIUDD in new

public buildings and developments to provide demonstration sites. This included partnering with

research agencies to design and monitor the performance of a green roof utilising native plants on the

new council civic building, which helped translate LIUDD design principles to New Zealand conditions

(Landcare Research 2011).

WCC also adopted a LIUDD approach for a major water catchment restoration project, Project Twin

Streams. Project Twin Streams was originally driven by the need to address significant flooding

issues in one suburban catchment. Staff decided that the traditional engineering approach of building

dams and stream channelling would be too expensive and would use an extensive amount of land.

Instead, the Council initiated a major stream restoration project that included buying 100 properties in

the flood zone and then undertook extensive riparian management to improve the catchment water

quality, increase biodiversity, and open the streams up for active transport and public open space.

The project was made possible by a substantial 10-year grant from Infrastructure Auckland.8

8 Infrastructure Auckland was established in 1998 and one of its roles was to allocate grants for transport and

stormwater projects in the Auckland region.

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5.1.12 Working with the community as a core strategic approach The collaborative approach WCC took with the community was a key policy innovation based upon

the belief that it is critical to work with the community in order to achieve outcomes: “A lot of people

believed that that collaborative community way of working was a strong way of working, a respectful

way of working, very challenging and very scary for some of the government departments.” (ex staff

3)

The first District Plan was a critical step in engaging the wider community in long-term implementation

of the Eco City vision. District plans in New Zealand at that time had tended to be very regulatory and

prescriptive. WCC, however, saw the Plan as the opportunity to engage the community in the issues

facing the city, and get community buy-in for a sustainable development approach. Key to the vision

was halting urban sprawl and developing a compact urban form with intensified urban centres.

Because issues such as urban sprawl are complex, WCC held approximately 100 pubic

engagements and used visual communication to get that complexity across in an assessable way:

We used two images, one was of the compact city… it was just a diagram going here‟s the

problem….all the stuff the urban stuff does to the natural environment…We also used a

painting,... as if you were flying over the city and you could see the surrounding of harbours and

you could see the magnitude of the bush. Those were the two symbols of what we were trying to

achieve….to manage urban growth in a way that didn‟t damage the environment and was good

for people. But it also started to let people see the city as a whole...using some images that you

talk to rather than the long reports that we still write and we expect people to read and they simply

won‟t. (ex councillor 2)

Many of the councillors were prepared to listen and to try to find common ground with residents

objecting to the District Plan, increasing informal pre-discussions on the District plan before the

planning hearings. In addition, Dorothy Wilson, the Deputy Mayor at the time, who led the District

Plan development was skilled at achieving political consensus for the hundreds of individual decisions

the Council needed to make to ratify the Plan. Very few decisions failed to reach a consensus. As a

tangible indicator of the effectiveness of that process, WCC was possibly the only council who did not

receive objections to its urban intensification provisions (WCC 2010).

Most urban residents, however, do not get directly involved in their council planning processes and

have very little day-to-day contact or knowledge of what councils are doing. Therefore in the early

days, the Mayor focused on getting the wider community to feel they actually owned or were

connected with WCC. Here the Mayor‟s creativity and ability of creating a sense of occasion was

crucial. He encouraged a wide range of people and groups to get involved in the Council‟s vision,

supporting public art, music, sports, Maori culture, and theatre. Public events were important

especially to connect those hard to reach residents:

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We had a wonderful older women‟s weekend in the council building, we took over the whole

building and had workshops and food and music… and I remember women going “Wow, I feel

different about this place now because it‟s actually ours. It‟s not yours, it‟s ours”. (ex councillor 2)

Over time WCC moved from a community engagement to a community empowerment model. This

started early on with the Council‟s approach to working with community groups in order to support

those groups in achieving their goals rather than trying to direct community-led projects.

The Council eventually began to employ community groups and individuals to implement council

projects including environmental programmes. Project Twin Streams, for example, not only adopted

new LIUDD technologies but also contracted community groups to implement the community-based

stream restoration programme. This was based in part on a belief that successful stormwater

management needs to gain the support of the local community, as it requires their active knowledge

and commitment in terms of behaviour (e.g., not tipping pollutants down stormwater drains and

minimising the impervious surfaces of their properties). Equally, the approach aimed to achieve

multiple outcomes from the one programme, i.e. improve catchment water quality, connect people to

their streams, improve social capital, and create local employment. Monitoring indicates that 12,500

individuals, representing a diverse range of the community, volunteered in this programme

(MorrisonLow 2010). Monitoring also suggests that social capital increased in geographic areas

where residents were most aware of Project Twin Steams, in terms of civic engagement and trust in

neighbours (MorrisonLow 2010). Over the 5 years until its disestablishment in 2010, WCC began to

focus on place-based empowerment programmes whereby specific staff would build relationships

with and support specific neighbourhood communities.

There were different philosophical views within the Council on the approach that should be taken in

working with the community. Some people believed that the Council‟s priorities should focus on what

the community believed were the issues to be addressed, thus creating a very community-led Council

agenda. Others strongly believed that while the community should be part of everything the Council

did, be it stream restoration or town centre redevelopment, the Council still needed to prioritise issues

that might not be currently on the community‟s agenda but were necessary for long-term community

well-being. The strong engagement process from the latter viewpoint was in part to increase the

community‟s knowledge of emerging issues and to provide them with a more informed understanding

of why the Council was pursuing certain goals (e.g., urban intensification). However, this highlights

the potential challenge in providing participatory forms of local decision-making while at the same

time ensuring that more diffused and emerging issues such as climate change are still prioritised on

public and political agendas.

5.1.13 Working with iwi

Early on in the Eco City transition, key political representatives and staff built formal relationships with

the local iwi and as a first for the Auckland region, the council resourced Māori to participate in

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planning processes (WCC 2010), which led to the creation of Te Taumata Runanga, a standing

committee of the Council with a role in the decision-making process on matters of concern and

cultural significance to the Māori community. Staff were given training and support for effectively

working with Māori, including understanding Māori tikanga and te reo Māori9 (WCC 2010).

5.1.14 Demonstrating early success through tangible catalyst projects WCC implemented many visible public projects which some interviewees believed, helped gain

acceptance by both staff and the community: “People loved the building of libraries; they loved the

building of sports centres and stadium, all of that sort of stuff. So they vaguely knew, in my view, that

this was greenie stuff”. (ex staff 1)

The new urban development facilitated by the Council-owned land development agency and the

Council-led redevelopment of urban centres and transport projects, started to put in place the

physical foundations required for a sustainable development transition and these investments

showcased sustainable urban design (WCC 2010). The Council‟s emphasis on infrastructure and

town centre development, both of which support economic development, was also believed to be

more acceptable to Central Government at that time (WCC 2010).

5.1.15 Leadership & innovation While part of WCC‟s ability to initiate and implement the Eco City vision arose from the synergistic

mix of councillors and officers, the contributions of individuals were critical. A number of key

individuals both within the Council and from the community provided the leadership that enabled

WCC to pursue many of its goals. Several key individuals within the council are described below to

illustrate some of the attributes they brought to the transition process.

The Mayor, who served six consecutive terms (18 years), was charismatic and creative with strong

communication skills. He was known and liked by residents, and with a diverse background in sports,

business, and politics he was able to “cross political boundaries, broker deals and build bridges with

diverse groups and individuals” (WCC 2010). He had the confidence to speak about the Eco City

internationally, and the Eco City‟s international coverage helped gained its acceptance in NZ. Last,

while councillors and staff changed over the years, the Mayor consistently carried the Eco City vision

forward.

Several key women councillors, including two deputy mayors, were exceptionally good at working

with communities and in building consensus within the Council. They were holistic thinkers, they had

courage and persistence in achieving council goals, and they had the intellectual capacity to put detail

and implementation mechanisms in the vision.

9 Māori tikanga are general behaviour guidelines for daily life and interaction in Māori culture based upon the

Māori world view and Te reo Māori is the Māori language.

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The initial CE was committed to delivering the political vision (WCC 2010) and was described as

being “amazingly unafraid”. He was prepared to take risks and deal with the conflict that change

processes inevitably generate. He was also able to recognise the strengths of his staff and empower

them to succeed.

The head of the Strategy and Development unit was described as having the ability to see where

WCC needed to go and put that into a stepwise plan of action, internally and externally. She was

/central to linking the council to international and national networks of best urban practice, she

understood the need to work with the implementation departments of the council to translate strategy

to investment and, as previously mentioned, she challenged and broadened conventional policy

thinking.

Without leadership from staff who managed key infrastructure or regulatory functions in the council,

strategies are unlikely to become implemented on the ground. One infrastructure manager in

particular was seen as being particularly proactive in engaging in the new concept of sustainable

development. He consistently sought out examples of how other cities designed and managed their

infrastructure. He was a holistic thinker but was also able to take a pragmatic approach to bedding

the strategy down in the Council‟s asset management system and infrastructure plans (WCC 2010).

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5.2 Barriers Waitakere‟s Eco City vision created a gradual transition that experienced successes but also

experienced the following barriers.

5.2.1 Internal resistance There was considerable internal resistance to the new management and councillors, especially in the

first 3 years. There was also internal resistance to new ways of operating, perhaps due to fear of the

unknown and fear of failure. The latter may have been more of an issue for staff responsible for

physical structures and those in regulatory roles: “All my staff were engineers and I think there‟s an

inherent feeling that we can‟t build things that fail. That inhibits innovation and you tend to take the

tried and true”. (ex staff 4)

Equally, the adoption of the new niche technology of LIUDD met a number of barriers internally.

Despite building provision for LIUDD approaches into the District Plan, interviewees leading the

LIUDD approach found Council consent officers would continue to reject or stall building and resource

consents that utilised LIUDD approaches. This created barriers for developers and residents adopting

LIUDD as it created extra delay and cost involved in consent processing.

… in the early days of the eco city, [WCC] bought over some people from Australia, ...and these

guys said the biggest barrier to change are going to be your regulators,...and I thought to myself,

„Oh that possibly couldn‟t happen in Waitakere city, we‟re all on the same page‟… Lo and behold

that proved to be the case. (ex staff 4)

Interviewees believed this internal resistance to facilitating new practices and technologies often

occurred when staff had not been part of developing the new approach, as they felt no ownership to

make it work: “What I found out with people, is that unless it‟s their own idea they won‟t support it”.

(ex staff 4)

Generally, however, it was individuals who either created or broke down the barriers. Often a new

senior staff in a formally resistant unit would have the ability to see how they could robustly translate

the Eco City approach within their council function, and change occurred. At other times a person with

decision-making power would just find the ideas unthinkable.

5.2.2 Constraints imposed by some traditional policy mindsets and tools

Sometimes resistance also appeared to be a consequence of ingrained thinking within specific

professional groups, for example, one interviewee commented on the difficulty of shifting the transport

planners from a demand and supply model for transport to an approach using investment and policies

to manage transport demand. In addition, the traditional tools used, such as transport models, tended

to reinforce conventional thinking. Traditional tools like transport models however carry a certain

authority: “I know what models are like, they have all sorts of assumptions but they become like little

pieces of magic, everybody believes the result”. (ex staff 4)

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The other tool cited as creating a barrier to change was cost benefit analysis, which often proved a

barrier to WCC‟s multiple-outcome approach because the social and environmental aspects of WCC

projects were hard to measure. WCC often lacked baseline data and it was often difficult to quantify

the multiple benefits of programmes such as Project Twin Streams into single financial figures. Single

financial figures, however, frequently had more power than, for example, narratives of community

engagement in WCC programmes, making it more difficult to communicate the benefits of WCC‟s

LIUDD and community empowerment approaches:

The challenge has always been around the cost benefit. It‟s always come down to the argument

about the dollar,… we say all the right things, sustainability, environmental, social, cultural, but

when it comes to actually putting our hands in the pocket we only understand the dollar sign. (ex

staff 4)

5.2.3 Loss of key change agents

Despite the organisational culture change and processes for strategy implementation there was still

loss of momentum in the overall strategy when key staff or councillors moved on. Individuals often

held strong relationships with other organisations, they often generated excitement and buy-in from

others, and in the political realm they were at times replaced by councillors who did not support the

Eco City vision. As highlighted in the Rooke and Torbert (2005) leadership model, leaders who can

draw people around a new direction are rare and cannot easily be replaced when they move on.

5.2.4 The nature of Waitakere’s built environment Waitakere is geographically spread out, with relatively low population density, and interviewees in the

case study commented that the low density urban form limited what could be done to create a more

sustainable transport system.

5.2.5 Shifting social practices Auckland Regional Council research in 2004 examined how residents in New Lynn, which has a large

new-immigrant population, might be encouraged to reduce private vehicle trips and increase their use

of public transport. Identified barriers from that research included: lack of supporting infrastructure

(see 5.2.4); lack of public transport services (including difficulties in getting competing bus companies

to provide integrated ticketing); concerns over personal safety travelling by bus; and the symbolic

association between personal transport and personal independence, where the research identified

that many new immigrants would stop catching public transport as soon as they could afford a car, as

driving a car was a symbol of achieving success and independence in their new country (Auckland

Regional Council 2004, report unpublished).

5.2.6 Limited role and influence of the Council

Finally, the limited direct influence of local public authorities was seen as a significant barrier to

WCC‟s ability to instigate change. Waitakere's urban form and land use is shaped by the region‟s

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urban form, by the regional transport system, and by labour markets, which collectively influence

where urban growth occurs and where business and industry locate. Central government is

responsible for regional transport, while the Regional Council and other Auckland councils collectively

help shape regional urban form. In addition, none of these agencies has much control over the global

market factors affecting firm location and therefore jobs or local residential housing markets.

WCC could work within its own sphere of influence and grow that sphere through a strong advocacy

role and through its empowerment of community organisations but there were limits to what it could

influence or afford. The Council invested enormous effort in advocating its goals with local

developers, business sectors, and other public agencies. Sometimes progress would be made but

then receptive staff in those other organisations left, or the central government‟s priorities changed,

setting back the progress WCC had made. This limited influence will continue to constrain New

Zealand local councils‟ attempts to facilitate significant urban transitions. In a recent media article,

commentator Rod Oram (Oram 2011) describes how the three major cities in NZ have each recently

released progressive city strategies based on compact urban form, sustainable development, and the

maximisation of their city‟s economic potential. Oram argues that one of their biggest challenges will

be persuading central government to “engage constructively” in supporting these strategies opposed

to what Orum describes as the government push for “more roads, low density sprawl and the least

investment it can get away with”.

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5.3 Analysis against the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework

WCC has often been regarded as a change agent both in Waitakere itself and in New Zealand local

government. WCC introduced a sustainable development approach, LIUDD, urban centres

development and compact urban design before most New Zealand cities. The Council has also been

innovative in policy thinking by taking an integrative approach for managing for multiple outcomes and

adopting community empowerment approaches. When assessed against the Adaptive Urban Policy

Framework some key factors and insights can be highlighted from the WCC case study.

5.3.1 The Landscape and field levels

There were significant disruptions at the landscape and field levels that created enabling conditions

for WCC to instigate a sustainable development approach. The amalgamation of local government in

New Zealand in 1989 created a new group of council organisations providing a window of opportunity

to introduce new people and new thinking into the local government organisational field. Waitakere

was unique among New Zealand councils in grasping that opportunity.

There was growing concern about global environmental issues and social inequality and in response;

forums and networks on sustainable development and futuring were developing internationally and

nationally. Reports such as Agenda 21 provided blueprints for how local government might approach

sustainable development. Key individuals within the Council were adept at making the linkages

between these movements and the Waitakere context, drawing on expert knowledge and resources

from their national and international networks. Bringing international experts to New Zealand and,

conversely, presenting the Eco City vision at international forums, exposed the council to leading

edge thinking and importantly, helped gain credibility within their organisational field for the

sustainable approach on which they had embarked.

In 1989 Waitakere was a low density collection of townships and suburbs with a growing population

and a historic under-investment in physical and social infrastructure (along with the rest of Auckland).

The Government‟s ideology at the time of relying on the market was a potential constraint on WCC‟s

approach of taking a more strategic approach to urban development. However, urban growth and

intensification left to market responses was producing poor environmental and social outcomes,

which provided the impetus for WCC to broaden its role. Similar to Rabe‟s (2004) findings of policy

entrepreneurs involved in GHG reduction initiatives, key individuals in WCC were adept at framing the

new sustainable development approach in the dominant public service paradigm of the time both by

adopting economic tools and by investing in tangible infrastructure.

Growing social deprivation and concern for environmental degradation in Waitakere created an

appetite to instigate a new vision and approach from Waitakere community leaders. The new Council

was elected by a distinctive and diverse community, who appeared to have been inspired by the

promise of an improved identity for their community.

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WCC also seized windows of opportunity created by disruptions from the landscape level to

accelerate change, including leveraging off flooding issues to introduce community-engaged

catchment management, and leveraging off the 1993/4 Auckland drought to encourage household

water conservation.

WCC was able to move urban growth and sustainability onto the public agenda through extensive

public engagement designed to get people to think differently about their city. Building community

buy-in facilitated their ability to implement a degree of urban intensification. They also gained public

support by delivering tangible short-term projects that provided concentrated benefits to residents so

these might secure support for the policies with more diffused and long-term benefits, including

transport and water management. This reflects Wilson‟s theory on concentrated and diffused impacts

(1973). Over time WCC broadened out from a community to a community empowerment approach to

build capacity within the community to contribute to the Eco City vision.

WCC also spent considerable energy on building coalitions of support with NGOs, the private sector,

and government agencies to implement discussion outside their remit. However, there were

significant limits to their influence on shifting central government priorities, and market forces outside

their control constrained their ability to achieve many of their goals.

5.3.2 Socio-technological regimes WCC attempted to influence several existing socio-technological regimes, including adopting LIUDD

for storm water management, facilitating a shift from the private transport regime to active and public

transport use, and reducing toxins in the printing regime.

WCC introduced LIUDD as a catchment and stormwater management technology through Project

Twin Streams, through the design of new council buildings, and through provisions in the District

Plan. Significant flooding issues and Infrastructure Auckland‟s substantive funding for stormwater

projects collectively created a window of opportunity to implement the LIUDD based Project Twin

Streams. WCC encountered many of the technological, social, and institutional barriers highlighted in

MLP when a niche technology competes against the incumbent regime. The Council also met barriers

internally, particularly from consent staff who delayed or rejected LIUDD consent applications, which

in turn reduced developer and community adoption of the technology.

Waitakere‟s low density urban form (at the landscape level), which had co-evolved with the private

car regime, constrained the ability of WCC to facilitate major shifts from private to public transport due

to the high sunken cost of existing infrastructure and the low population base to run financially viable

public transport services. External barriers included inertia from central government for rail

development and the symbolic association between car ownership and personal success that many

local residents held. Staff also met with internal organisational barriers including difficulty in shifting

the paradigm of thinking and the tools used by transport planners from a predict-and-supply model to

managing transport demand.

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Finally, WCC was successful in improving the environmental performance of the local printing

industry, which stimulated a nation-wide adoption of cleaner production within the printing industry.

Economic, health, and environment drivers for change came together at the same time, which helped

WCC secure interest from the different players within the printing industry. WCC reduced industry

resistance to new practices by funding a trial to prove the new materials could work and by creating a

niche market through enlisting other Auckland councils to support early adopters of environmental

printing.

5.3.3 The Organisational Level

At the organisational level, a new larger organisation, new senior management, and a radically

different group of politicians provided the critical mass for initiating the Eco City transition.

Senior officers undertook an intentional organisational culture change process to build the

commitment and the capacity of staff to deliver on the Eco City vision. Many councillors and staff had

strong communication and facilitation skills that enabled them to bring their colleagues and external

stakeholders on board for that journey of implementation.

Key change agents within WCC spent considerable time in the early 1990s working with the

implementation teams of the council to translate strategy into action. The need to embed change in

implementation mechanisms is outlined in the adaptive organisation literature but is less frequently

discussed in policy innovation literature. Systematically embedding new thinking and principles into

council units that implement policy through building strong relationships between policy and

implementation staff was a key factor in WCC‟s success. Importantly, this was coupled with a

comprehensive programme that exposed all staff and councillors to sustainable development

approaches and to WCC‟s core values and principles. Many of the key change agents worked

together for over 6 years, providing time for those changes to be bedded down.

Specific policy and planning tools, including cost benefit analysis and transport models, constrained

the transition. These tools appeared to have built in assumptions and concepts that were not aligned

to the new direction. Equally, some professions, including engineering and consent staff appeared

less innovative than others, possibly because their responsibilities had inherent structural or legal

risks attached to them.

All the organisational attributes outlined in the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework, including situational

awareness, a clear vision and goals imbedded in implementation mechanisms, and a culture of

working together internally and externally, are reflected in the WCC case study. But these

organisational attributes appear to have first belonged to individuals or groups of individuals who then

deliberately institutionalised them in the Council over a decade of change management. The WCC

case study therefore demonstrates that adaptive policy agencies can be created through the

leadership and attributes of a critical mass of individuals.

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5.3.4 The individual level

At the individual level, several key individuals identified in the research exhibited characteristics of

Rooks and Talbot‟s (2005) „strategist leaders‟ namely, thinking and acting across societal levels,

dealing with conflict, and believing their organisation had the ability to transform. These individuals

enabled organisational change to occur through aspects mentioned in the Adaptive Urban Policy

Framework, including creating and consistently reinforcing a guiding vision and goals, investing in

relationship building, and organisational learning. In specifically leading policy change, key individuals

reflected a number of the attributes of the Framework – conviction, passion and persistence,

persuasive communication, and social acumen. Passion and flexibility were identified in the

interviews as important paired attributes to avoid passion leading to people becoming dogmatic in

their beliefs. Additionally, a strong interdisciplinary policy team was developed and policy

entrepreneurs within the Council were unafraid to challenge existing paradigms or test new

approaches.

5.3.5 The nature of the transition

The Eco City illustrated a paradigm shift by the WCC in how cities should develop and in the role

local government should play in facilitating that development. In terms of Baumgartner and Jones‟

(1993) punctuated process policy change, while the Eco City vision was rapid in its initiation through

the Eco City political platform of 1992, it took over a decade to be adopted across most parts of the

organisation, and will take even longer to be implemented on the ground. Interviewees used the

metaphor of a tug slowly turning a ship around to describe the process of shifting Council staff and

councillors onto this new course. This suggests that institutions do not naturally re-orientate to a

newly adopted policy direction and that policy change at this scale requires a consistent commitment

and management over a decade in order to be institutionally bedded-in. A major turnover in key staff

or political representation, for example, could reverse such a paradigm shift, especially when the

initial shift is as innovative in its organisational field as WCC‟s.

To avoid any community/interest group backlash and to be able to step back from approaches if they

didn‟t succeed, WCC took an incremental approach in many of its policies for the reasons outlined in

the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework. At times they realised they could not drive through change for

which the community was not ready and had to step back from some ideas. However, the Council‟s

approach to town centre redevelopment and to developing rail capacity was intended to catalyze a

decisive shift in the city‟s trajectory, in the way that major changes to the physical landscape can.

Baumgartner and Jones (1993) contend that the short periods of opportunity for policy innovation

within their punctuated equilibrium model cannot be planned or directed, only capitalised on. WCC‟s

ability to initiate the Eco City does in part appear to be due to the fortuitous assemblage of external

disruptors to established institutions and the synergistic mix of new councillors and staff who came

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together and who were able to utilise weak signals for change that were being created through

international movements and local issues (see Figure 5).

Figure 5 Initial disrupters creating opportunities for change.

In this sense the assemblage of factors could not be collectively pre-planned; however, it is wrong to

imagine there was simply an empty window of change into which the key actors were able to step.

While global trends created opportunities for the Eco City, pressure to rely on market forces by

successive Governments could have constrained WCC, and WCC could have remained largely a

provider of property infrastructure services. Instead, key actors, sometimes in unison but often as a

loose network, enlarged windows of opportunity through creating linkages with international

movements, through creating a compelling vision, through having the expertise and commitment for

working with their community, and through their ability to work within existing political paradigms while

at the same time challenging and knocking some of the bricks out of them. One of the interviewees

quoted Bob Harvey as saying “it is wrong to be right at the wrong time” to stress how important sense

of timing of key individuals‟ was in judging when those windows of opportunity were opening.

Key individuals strategically embedded that change both into the implementation mechanisms of the

organisation and into the culture of the council itself. It was this persistent focus on culture change

and on the implementation of the vision that distinguishes the Eco City from other sustainable city

visions that have failed to move off the printed page of Council strategies.

Landscape

Org. fiel d

Organisati on

Initial disrupters creating opportunity for change

Growing knowledge/concern over environmental issues Global political movement on sustainability

Individuals/Gov. hooked into global movements

Current neo - liberal policy losing support

Social networks exploring sustainability

Local community mobilization

Local Gov Reform 1998

Eco city political platform

New Organization New CE/Management

New vision and approach for council

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6 Synthesis

The key findings of the thesis are summarised in this section against the following research

questions:

1. Can urban transitions in response to global change be largely left to the market or will urban

policy agencies need to actively facilitate transitions?

2. What factors might constrain policy agencies in facilitating social and technical transitions in

urban settlements? Conversely, what factors enable urban policy agencies to facilitate social

and technical transitions in urban settlements?

3. How might policy agencies make use of insights into the social and technological change

explored in the framework, namely resilience and MLP, in their policy development?

The synthesis draws on the characteristics of peak oil and climate change from Section 4 and on two

theories of social and technological change explored within the Framework – Resilience and MLP – to

address question 1. The enablers and barriers identified in the Waitakere City Council case study are

compared with the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework and key findings are summarised to address

question 2. Finally, consideration is given to how policy agencies might utilise insights into social and

technological change provided by the concepts of MLP and resilience in their policy analysis to

facilitate urban transitions to address question 3.

6.1 Why urban agencies will need to facilitate urban transitions

6.1.1 To ensure new technologies can compete with incumbent regimes

As a conceptual tool for understanding urban transitions, MLP reflects a broadening of explanatory

power of innovation models over the last 50 years, from factors within the control of the firm, to

networks of production, and finally to a system of firms, customers, industry supply chains, regulators,

professional and social institutions, the physical environment, and culture. Due to the

interdependencies between these later factors, society and cities become locked into certain

trajectories even when that incumbent technological solution has become suboptimal (Arthur 1988).

So while market forces, including price signals, are critical in stimulating sustainability technologies,

there are institutional, physical, and social barriers that policy agencies can help overcome (Clayton

et al. 1999; Elzen 2002).

Left to the market, innovation will predominantly optimise the incumbent technology (e.g., increase

car fuel efficiency) rather than radically changing it, unless significant disruptors to the regime occur.

Even then, alternative niche technologies need to be at a mature stage of development to take

advantage of windows of opportunity created by any regime disruption. In addition, some niche

technological solutions could intensify other global change issues, for example, converting coal to

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liquid fuel will increase energy-related carbon emissions, and converting food crops to biofuel crops is

already aggravating global food shortages.

Collectively, these factors indicate that public policy at different governmental levels is required both

to disrupt the incumbent regimes to drive change and to support the development and

commercialisation of sustainable niche technologies.

6.1.2 Markets alone will be too slow to create smooth transitions

It can take decades to fully mainstream new or even improved technologies, particularly those that

need to be embedded in the built environment, and these timeframes may result in cities becoming

significantly impacted by rising oil prices and climate change before a transition to reduce oil

dependency or adaptations to local impacts of climate change can occur. As outlined in Section 4, the

world needs to start working on replacement transport fuels 20 years before oil peaks (Pacheco

2006), and even moving a small proportion of electric vehicles and supply systems into the city‟s

transport system could take 20 years (Newman 2009). However, markets may not fully respond until

significant and consistent impacts are felt, for example, on fuel prices. Public policy is required to

accelerate and thereby create smoother transitions in urban functions such as transport.

6.1.3 Limitations to rational decision-making

Bill English argued in Parliament (2011) that fuel prices will stimulate individual New Zealanders to

make sensible decisions to reduce their dependency on oil and therefore the Government‟s role is

primarily to ensure that changes in price flows quickly through the market. MLP, however,

demonstrates that people and groups develop cultural practices and symbolic associations with an

incumbent technology, which, along with cognitive factors such as habit and skills, also contribute to

individual‟s decision-making. These non-price-related influencers on behaviour can collectively delay

an individual‟s decision to reduce dependency on oil, especially as oil prices are expected to continue

to fluctuate (Smith C 2010), creating uncertainty for consumers about the relative risk of peak oil. This

reinforces CSIRO‟s analysis that “there are likely to be only moderate preparatory responses by

individuals and businesses”, in Australia to peak oil, and “therefore government intervention will be

required” (2008: 11).

6.1.4 Co-dependency of technology with the built environment

MLP also illustrates how infrastructure and the built environment has co-evolved with the private

motor vehicle in New Zealand, creating low density urban form that, while providing lifestyle benefits,

has reduced the transport options of many suburban and peri-rural residents. New Zealanders are

vulnerable to peak oil, having the second highest vehicle use in the OECD (Ministry for Environment

2010).

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Evidence in Australia suggests that poorer households are becoming more concentrated on the urban

fringes due to cheaper land, which increases their dependency on private car use (Newman et al.

2009). If adaptation to increased oil prices is left to market forces and individual choice, cities might

become more geographically divided between rich and disadvantaged communities. Instead,

Newman et al. suggest that cities will need to be redesigned in form and function so that residents

can drive 25–50 % less than they do today, and cities will need to be proactive in that redesign in

order to transition at a rate that maintains “the social fabric of the city in the process” (2009: 33).

Redesigning less oil- and carbon-intensive cities will require united action from a range of parties long

before significant price signals hit. The facilitation of those parties is arguably better placed with public

agencies than left to the invisible hand of the market.

6.1.5 Resilience is a collective social attribute

Resilience research has demonstrated that having a community made up of resilient (or adaptive)

individuals does not necessarily create a resilient community. Rather, people need to be resilient

together to prepare and respond to societal wide threats, and resilience has to be built across

individual, community, and institutional scales (Paton 2006b). Attributes including critical awareness

of future risks and social cohesion help build collective social resilience, and these qualities operate

largely outside the market (Stone 2002). The development of community resilience attributes can be

supported by the culture and practices of urban policy agencies. Urban agencies can choose to focus

solely on risk reduction interventions directed at individuals‟ behaviour, or they can intentionally build

collective community resilience qualities. WCC did this by adopting a community empowerment

approach in their investment programmes including Project Twin Streams, which increased local

social capital as well as environmental capital (MorrisonLow 2010). Many collective attributes

including social capital and social equity can take decades or generations to build, so developing

general community resilience requires a sustained long-term strategy.

In summary, while market forces will always be a major driver in urban transitions, urban policy

agencies will need to facilitate those social and technological transitions to ensure the shifts are rapid

enough to minimise the impacts of global change, are equitable across the urban community, and

that solutions do not exasperate other major urban and global issues.

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6.2 Refinement of the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework

The barriers to and enablers of policy agencies facilitating the urban social and technical transitions

that were identified in the Waitakere City Council case study are now compared with the Adaptive

Urban Policy Framework and key findings are summarised.

The Waitakere City Council case study demonstrates that the enablers of and barriers to an urban

council initiating a sustainable urban transition were present at the five levels of the Adaptive Urban

Policy Framework. Most of the constraints and enablers at the landscape, social-technological field,

and organisational field levels identified in the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework were present in the

case study and these are indicated in dark red in Table 8. All but one of the enablers at the

organisational and individual levels identified in the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework were present in

the case study and these are also indicated in dark red in Table 8. A number of additional factors

across the levels were identified in the case study and these are indicated in bright red in Table 8.

Some of the additional factors are specific to New Zealand local government, including „the limited

role of local government‟, although the breadth of role that any organisation has would be a universal

determinant on what it could influence. Having a new organisation, new senior management, and new

set of diverse yet synergistic politicians was a specific combination of events that occurred in WCC at

that time, but these events collectively represent a more generalised theme of a major disruption to

the culture of the organisation. Some additional enablers also provide more detail to the original ones

in the Framework, for example, having „tangible‟ as well as „shared‟ visions and goals.

The additional constraints found within the case study are:

Limited role & funding of New Zealand local government

Diffused urban responsibility across many public agencies

Risk aversion to innovation by some public agency professions

Incumbent policy tools reinforcing traditional thinking

Reliance on market forces

Individual and group resistance to change

Loss of momentum when key staff/ councillors leave

The additional enablers found within the case study are:

Periods of pressures on the built environment

A relatively stable community that has diverse socio-demographics and a relationship with

the local natural landscape

Establishment of a new organisation & new senior management

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New, diverse & synergistic political representation

Tangible vision & goals

Shared belief that change is possible, and passion

Strong officer-councillor relationships

Reallocation of resources to deliver on new vision

Intensive community engagement to create holistic understanding of issues/innovation

Change agents in organisation long enough to embed change

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Table 8 Barriers and enablers identified for the eco city transition assessed against the Adaptive

Urban Policy Framework

Key: Black – factors in draft framework not found in case study; Dark red – factors in draft framework

found in case study; Red – additional factors found in case study; Italicised Grey – subheadings

Barriers Enablers

Landscape level

Dominant paradigms (e.g., economic growth)

Invested power interests

Long-lived nature of built environment

Disruptors

Shocks (e.g., natural disaster)

Emerging issues challenging existing paradigms

Periods of renewal of, or pressures on, the built environment

Social-technological systems

Societal expectations & symbolic meaning associated with incumbent regime

Co-evolved regulations, knowledge systems & capabilities of regime actors with incumbent regime

Economies of scale of incumbent regime

Disruptors

Current technology losing positive image or resource supply issues

Policy responses

Niche protection for commercialising alternative technologies

Internalising externalities of incumbent technology

Sector programmes to improve or replace regime

Organisational field

Political compromises, incomplete knowledge & risk aversion resulting only in non-disruptive change

Lack of public/media interest/belief in issue; lack of belief in Gov to address issues or diffused impact/benefit on vocal/powerful groups

Field level institutions

Limited role & funding of NZ local Government

Diffused urban responsibility across many public agencies

Risk aversion to innovation by some professions

Incumbent policy tools reinforcing traditional thinking

Reliance on market forces

Disruptors

Immature organisational field with evolving institutions

Concentrated issue/policy impact on vocal/powerful groups

Current policy/field level paradigms losing positive image

Policy innovation reframed to broaden support

Lower levels of government acting as innovation laboratories

Nature of the urban community Strong community leadership & collaboration, diverse socio-demographics, relatively stable community, a sense of community, strong social networks and a relationship with the local natural landscape. Trust built between urban council and community.

Community resources, equity & social support exist

Capacity building across public sector

Institutions developed for joined up inter-organisational planning

Emergence of professional networks of policy agencies instigating urban transitions

Richer analytical frameworks of social & technical change adopted within specific policy professions

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Barriers Enablers

Urban Policy Organisation

Narrow, short term & local focus

Lack of direction & long-term planning

Sustainability vision largely rhetoric

Structure, culture & processes within organisation generates silo thinking

Expedient community consultation approaches

Individual and group resistance to change

Loss of momentum when key staff/ councillors leave

Disrupters

Establishment of new organisation & new senior management

New, diverse & synergistic political representation

Organisational culture & skills

Shared tangible vision & goals

Shared belief that change is possible, passion & a focus on ends not means

Organisational change programme to align to new vision

Leadership

Significant learning culture

Internal & external collaboration

Strong officer-councillor relationships

Situational awareness

People skills & technical skills valued

Policy practice

Vision embedded in implementation mechanisms

Reallocation of resources to deliver on new vision

Diverse policy concepts used

Integration of policy development & implementation

Intensive community engagement to create holistic understanding of issues/innovation

Engagement processes designed to build community empowerment, trust and active democracy

Catalyst projects

Individuals

Leadership focussed on self-interest, or short-term goals or constrained by single disciplinary thinking

Disrupters (to other levels)

Visionary leadership

Holistic thinkers who think & act beyond their organisations boundaries and interests

Significant social perception & acumen

Ability to recognise & seize opportunities for change

Creativity & willingness to challenge status quo

Building adaptive agencies

Representative, adaptive & collaborative leadership

Conviction, persistence & ability to mobilise resources required for change

Ability to frame innovation to increase broader acceptance

Leading with a light touch but consistently evaluating progress

Ability to build strong committed multi-disciplinary teams

Change agents in organisation long enough to embed change

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While primarily drawing on research literature, the Framework has not been applied to a range of

urban policy organisation case studies to test the generality of each enabler or barrier and therefore

should only be seen as an illustrative example of the types of enablers and barriers an urban policy

agency might face when attempting to create sustainable urban transitions. This is particularly true for

the additional findings of the WCC case study, although it is likely that many would to be relevant to

other cities. Further case studies would be required to test their generalisation.

However, a number of initial insights can be drawn from the final version of the Framework that could

be explored within further case study work:

1. The enablers of and barriers to a policy agency initiating urban transitions can be found across

the five levels of the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework.

2. There are significant interrelationships between the five levels of the Framework that constrain

urban transitions and associated policy innovation:

At the landscape level the built environment and societal structures and macro-institutions

shape and maintain a city‟s development trajectory and provide the macro-context within

which urban policy organisations operate. These landscape-level factors are slow moving

and constrain rapid and structural change.

Social technological regimes co-evolve with the built environment and societal institutions

situated at the landscape level, as well as with associated policies at the organizational field

level. These cross-level interdependencies, along with the vested interests, routines and

capabilities within the incumbent regime, can lock society and cities into a technological

solution even when it is becoming suboptimal. These factors constrain the ability of

alternative technologies to gain significant market share.

Established public sector institutions at the organisational field level, which are shaped by

landscape level institutions and values, create an environment of policy conformity versus

innovation.

3. Interactions between the five levels of the framework also enable urban transitions and

associated policy innovation:

While the landscape level generally constrains rapid change, when disruptions at the

landscape level occur they can influence widespread change as they permeate across the

other levels and across multiple regimes and organisational fields.

Opportunities for change are often created through an assemblage of disruptive events

occurring at the different levels of the framework. This means the timing has to be right to

instigate significant change. Entrepreneurial individuals sometimes in unison but often as a

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loose network are able recognize and enlarge these windows of opportunity to initiate policy

innovation.

Success in facilitating urban transitions requires more than the identification of the right set of

interventions. It also requires the right attributes at the organisational and individual levels,

the right attributes within the community, and the presence of broader enabling institutions at

the organisational field-level to support change.

When landscape disruptions to a social-technical regime occur, mature niche technologies

have the opportunity to significantly change or replace the existing regime. Policy innovation

at the organisational field level, which is often driven by individual agencies, can increase

regime disruption through policy by, for example, internalizing the externalities of the

incumbent technology or by supporting the development of niche technologies.

4. Policy innovation has to be embedded within the culture of the organization, and into the

organisation‟s implementation mechanisms to achieve action on the ground and to ensure

momentum is maintained even when key individuals leave the organization. The organisational

and individual levels of the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework (Table 8) outline a range of

attributes and processes that build the capacity of urban policy agencies to facilitate change in

urban settlements. The WCC case study demonstrated that many of these organisational

attributes were intentionally developed within the council over a decade of change management.

This suggests that the capacity for facilitating significant change can be built within policy

agencies in the same way community resilience research suggests general resilience can be

developed within communities (Paton 2006b). Groups of key individuals in policy organizations

are instrumental in developing adaptive policy organizations. They may have complementary

skills, some in initiating and creating visions of change and others in bedding change into

implementation mechanisms.

5. Urban policy organizations are only one influencer in urban transitions and therefore need to work

with other organizations to extend their influence; they also need the skills and institutions to do

this effectively. Their limited role, especially New Zealand city councils, however, may ultimately

limit their ability to effect substantive or rapid change.

6. Equally, societal expectations of high consumption lifestyles and the deeply held paradigm of

limitless economic growth have shaped modern urban societies. These social paradigms, which

are established at the landscape level, will pose significant barriers to sustainable urban

transitions.

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6.3 Utilising concepts of social and technological change in urban policy

The concepts used consciously or unconsciously in policy analysis create “templates for

interventions” (Shove 2010: 280) and therefore dominant policy concepts can influence how and

whether a city adapts to global change. Jake Chapman (2003: 27) argues that managing complex

adaptive systems (such as cities) requires a “richer repertoire of conceptual models” than are

commonly used. In a similar vein, Kenneth Galbraith, in response to the oil crisis in the 1970s, argued

against policy relying blindly on any one concept and set of assumptions, rather that each new

situation needs its own examination:

Over the years, if imperfectly, socialists have had to learn that faith is not enough. Things have

to work. Frequently the best course is to rely pragmatically on the market. Now…the lesson for

conservatives is equally clear. Faith in the universal efficiency and beneficence of the market,

however devout, is also not enough. Here, too, ideology is not a substitute for thought.

(Galbraith1979)

This suggests that the policy organisational field needs to be reflective in the dominant concepts on

which it relies, not allowing policy concepts to become rigid ideologies. No one concept or theory is

likely to be true for all situations, but routine thinking or blind faith in traditional approaches can

prevent people and organisations from considering a problem or situation in new and different ways

(Mintrom 2011). This is just as true in the field of policy analysis, and when faced with new problems

such as climate change and peak oil, policy analysis and agencies require new or more integrative

thinking in order to respond effectively.

Two concepts of social and technological change have been explored in this thesis, Multi Level

Perspective (MLP) and Resilience. This section now considers how these concepts might be utilised

in urban policy practice.

6.3.1 Taking a systems approach in analysis & implementation

MLP conceptualises a social-technical regime as a complex dynamic system where transitions occur

through the interactions of a range of parties and across landscape, regime, and niche levels.

Community resilience research also emphasises that resilience is a system characteristic built across

individual, community, and institutional levels, and socio-ecological resilience research undertaken by

the Resilience Alliance (2010) suggests that two things are critical when assessing the resilience of a

system. First, there is a need to look at the scales above and below the foci of attention, as system

behaviour (e.g., people‟s transport choices) can rarely be fully understood by just examining one

scale (e.g., the household). Second, policies fail when too much detail from one component of a

system and too little detail from the rest of the system are considered (Resilience Alliance 2007:6).

The challenge therefore is to map the wider system in the initial stages of the policy analysis and then

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identify enough but not too many critical factors to build a comprehensive understanding of a

problem.

This suggests that policy should take a systems approach when both assessing the adaptive capacity

of a city and its functions against the impacts of future threats, and when seeking to understand and

influence the wider social, physical, and institutional factors that lock a city into a sub-optimal

technological trajectory. Therefore, if we were analysing the risks and vulnerability of a city‟s transport

system to future drivers of change, and how socio-technical transitions might best occur, the initial

policy questions might be:

1. What were the critical decisions, events and processes that shaped today's transport

system?

2. What is the long-term behaviour of that system – its stocks and flows (e.g., mileage driven,

transport modal share, transport related CO2 emissions)?

3. What current factors contribute to those major behavioural patterns (e.g., which formal and

informal institutions lock those patterns in? How are new social trends (e.g., school drop or

mega malls) influencing the overall transport system? And what therefore is the city‟s

transport systems current trajectory?

4. What issues and benefits is the current system contributing to (e.g., social accessibility

benefits, climate change, congestion costs)?

We might then stretch our thinking forward in time and ask:

5. What emerging forces of change are likely to impact the transport system? Will the impacts

be temporary or persistent and to what degree might they cascade into other city systems?

6. Who or what is vulnerable to those forces of change (e.g., which communities/businesses

have a high dependency on private vehicles/oil)?

7. What resources does the transport system or wider settlement have to address risks (e.g., do

vulnerable communities have high levels of social capital and trust in the council, which could

be used to develop community based transport innovations)?

8. Where are the key leverage points in the transport system to create change (e.g., how might

public policy disrupt the current transport regime to drive innovation? How might policy

support a range of transport niches to develop?)?

9. Will the current or proposed solutions to address future change address the underlying

problem or will they only treat the symptoms over the short term? Will they create other

problems? Can they be designed to solve other problems too?

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Systems analysis is challenging, as it requires thinking of a city as a system, as being part of global

systems, and as having many interrelated subsystems. Then for each system under assessment it

requires a holistic understanding of how that system works. It usually requires multi-disciplinary

thinking where different experts need to be prepared to stretch their thinking, to be flexible, and to

reflect on their underlying and sometimes unconscious assumptions in order to create

interdisciplinary understanding of a problem. Having strong communication and facilitation skills as

well as technical skills in policy teams can also help process of exploration and integration.

Understanding the complexity of urban systems may also involve drawing on the experiences of non-

technical experts and on people who will implement subsequent policies as this can provide a more

holistic understanding of problems and of the consequences of potential interventions (Resilience

Alliance 2007: 7). Therefore, having the organisational culture and skills to work collaboratively

internally and externally is critical for system thinking.

6.3.2 Building both general & specific resilience as risk management strategies

The review of community resilience literature identified a range of general social resilience attributes

that collectively build a community‟s capacity to recognise and respond to a range of threats. Urban

policy might develop paired strategies that aim to build:

General resilience to increase a settlement‟s ability to respond to a range of pressures.

Social attributes of general resilience include foresight, learning, and institutional flexibility.

These are of particular importance, because they enable urban communities to assess long-

term risks systematically, innovate, build a constituency of support to implement urban

adaptations, and cope better with surprise. The general resilience attributes can therefore be

seen as the generic building blocks for facilitating urban transitions.

Specific resilience to enable a settlement to withstand, bounce back from or adapt to a

specific threat. In response to a flooding threat, such examples would include planning

restrictions on building on a city‟s flood zones, creating flood banks, and citizen education on

responding to floods.

This distinction between general and specific resilience can be useful in formulating strategies to

build the adaptive capacity of cities to respond to global change. Specific resilience assessment

would enable an urban council to identify those people and things most at risk from a specified

shock/pressure, and the specific adaptations required, providing a focus for short-term policy

intervention. General resilience assessment, on the other hand, enables an urban policy agency to

assess how adaptive an urban community might be against both unpredicted shocks and a range of

predicted ones.

Not all scholars accept the idea of general attributes of resilience; Allenby and Fink (2005) argue that

resilience is not a global characteristic of a system but can only be determined with reference to a

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specific system and specific challenges. General resilience attributes therefore may need to be

treated as an indication not a prediction of how a community might adapt to any specific set of

pressures. Context is critical and assessment of any city or its subsystem should pay attention to the

nature of the threat /change and the nature of the system under examination.

Building general resilience can occur through direct community development programmes (e.g., the

neighbourhood empowerment programmes WCC was developing) or through the multi outcome

approach that; for example, WCC took through thier Project Twin Streams community engagement

approach, which built local social capital as well as achieving environmental benefits (MorrisonLow

2010).

To illustrate the distinction between general and specific resilience, Table 9 provides questions and

measures for general social resilience, and then questions and measures to assess specifically a

city‟s resilience to one issue – peak oil. The general resilience questions were developed from the set

of resilience attributes outlined in Section 6.2 and measures were identified from New Zealand and

international survey data.

Table 9 Assessment questions & measures of general resilience and specific urban resilience

relating to peak oil

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General social resilience characteristics

Assessment questions Possible measures

Is there a high level of collaboration between the

council and other organisations to pursue city goals?

Evidence of joined-up planning between public

agencies in settlement. (provide examples)

Are urban agencies systematically assessing long

term risks to their settlements? (CCCR) and are

those risk assessments influencing their decision-

making?

Evidence of broad long-term risk assessment by

urban agencies (including oil and climate change

vulnerability studies)(provide examples)

Is community input into local & regional decisions

pro-actively encouraged through formal and informal

processes? (CCCR 2000)

Does the community believe in its collective ability to

influence its future positively? (CCCR 2000)

Residents‟ level of confidence in council decision

making (Quality of Life Survey 2008)

Is there a high value given to the well-being of

vulnerable populations in the settlement? (CCCR

2000)

The proportion of children living in households

with gross real income less than 60% of the

median equivalised national income. (Statistics

NZ. Census).

Do residents have financial resources to cope with

change /shocks?

Household Ability to cover costs of everyday

needs (Quality of Life Survey 2008)

Do residents have a strong sense of community, and

are they investing their time and energy in

strengthening the community? (CCCR 2000)

The proportion of residents who feel a sense of

community in their local neighbourhood (Quality

of Life Survey 2008)

Number of formal unpaid work hours outside of

the home (StatsNZ 2008a)

The degree that residents feel other people can

be trusted (Quality of Life Survey 2008)

To what degree do residents feel they have access

to support in times of difficulty?

The degree people feel that have available

support during difficult times (Quality of Life

Survey 2008)

Is the local economic base diversified and not over-

reliant on a single industry? (CCCR 2000)

Diversity of businesses sectors (Census data of

employment Stats NZ ANZSIC data)

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Is the local workforce innovative and

entrepreneurial?

Rate of business innovation by type (settlement

survey)

Specific resilience characteristics to peak oil

Assessment questions Possible measures

Have councils communicated and engaged the

community on the need to take action on peak oil?

Proportion of residents who are aware of peak

oil impacts on their settlement and support

action to address those impacts (add to Quality

of life Survey)

Which key business sectors are most vulnerable to

rising oil prices? Are they reducing their vulnerability

rising oil prices?

% of oil vulnerability assessments undertaken

for settlement‟s key business sectors

Does current urban form and design reduce

dependency on private vehicle use?

Sprawl index based on; low density, low mixed

real-estate uses (drawing on Ewing et al 2002)

Which residents have alterative transport options to

private motor-vehicles for accessing employment &

basic services?

Mode transport used and distance travelled to

work (Census data)

Vehicle trips to work mapped against low

income households (NZ Census data ) or the

NZ deprivation index ( University of Otago),

Ease of access and affordability of public

transport (Quality of Life Survey 2008)

% public investment in public transport against

roading investment over last 10 years

(settlement assessment public investment)

Transport component of national CPI (Statistics

NZ CPI index)

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The measures in the table can be used for large urban communities using survey data. However, it

could also be refined as a participatory planning tool for smaller settlements and neighbourhoods.

The CCCR assessment tool (2000), on which the table draws, is designed for communities to assess

their own resilience, and the participatory and collaborative nature of their tool helps build community

knowledge of future risks, and engages them in planning for responding to those risks. By using

participatory assessment tool of future risk, communities and local government can actually reinforce

or build social and institutional resilience characteristics. Participatory tools like CCCRs are designed

for working with smaller communities (< 30,000) and are therefore only suited to the neighbourhood

scale of a city or to rural towns.

6.3.3 Taking collaborative whole sector & multi party approaches

In terms of policy practice, MLP has provided a theoretical foundation for a policy approach adopted

by the Dutch Government termed „transition management‟, which aims to create managed transitions

towards sustainable waste, transport, energy, and water systems (Kemp & Rotmans 2004). The

transition management process often begins by bringing together actors from the incumbent regime

and niches to undertake collective re-visioning and to establish long-term programmes of government

intervention and business innovation. Who is selected for those forums is considered crucial to the

programme‟s ability to shift trajectories radically. Experience has shown that if a group is overly

dominated by incumbent players, their invested interests and institutionalized beliefs will constrain

efforts for structural change (Scholten 2008). Kemp and Rotmans (2004) also recommend that the

personal attributes of the actors are critical and that these people need to be forerunners, visionaries,

diverse thinkers, and people ready and with the ability to lead change within their own organisations

(Walford 2011).

Applied examples of the transition management approach, however, have been criticized for not

tackling structural issues and institutional reform, and therefore not disrupting the incumbent regime

and power interests (Scholten 2008). As this is an emerging policy approach that public agencies and

more recently NGOs10

are adopting, more research into success factors would be valuable.

Less ambitious examples of joined-up approaches involving urban councils also exist, demonstrating

the facilitating role an urban policy agency might take to improve or help change incumbent socio-

technical regimes in their cities. One example is the sustainability improvement of the printing industry

led by the WCC, which is discussed in section 5.1.11. Another example relates to trialling niche

transport technology in cities in UK. A New Zealand based company, Halo IPT, has developed

technology that enables electric vehicles to be charged wirelessly so that vehicles can be charged

while parked at the side of the road, or a bus can be charged while picking passengers up at a bus

10

For example, Forum for the Future is leading a sector-wide sustainable shipping initiative in Europe (/www.forumforthefuture.org/project/sustainable-shipping-initiative/overview) and a UK dairy sector programme (see http://www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/dairy2020-kicks)

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stop. Wireless charging radically improves the performance of electric vehicles and the technology is

initially and predominately targeted at urban settlements. To take this niche development beyond the

lab, the company needed to work with a consortium of organisations to trial, demonstrate, and refine

the technology in an urban settlement. This included the local authority of the city, the local power

utility, the car manufacturer, and a charging provider (for smart metering so car owners could sell

their surplus power back to the local power utility). This collaborative partnership cut the red tape

typically associated with inserting new infrastructure into a city and enabled the consortium to apply

for EU funding grants. Trials are now underway in cities the UK and France (Mortimer & Stancu

2011).

Halo IPT has not yet attempted to trial their technology in New Zealand, both because of New

Zealand‟s low density urban form, which makes the technology less cost effective and because

compared with the UK and EU, NZ lacks central government policies to stimulate the electric car

market (Mortimer & Stancu 2011) This emphasises that to stimulate new technologies in a city often

requires supporting policies at different levels of government. The trials in the UK for example have

policy support at the city, national and EU levels.

6.3.4 Developing an adaptive policy culture

Complex issues including climate change, urbanisation, and peak oil will create exponential change

over the next decades and much of this change will be unpredictable. In addition, resilience and MLP

illustrate the dynamic complexity of the social, technical, and ecological systems that shape our cities,

with urban transitions occurring through the combination of multiple factors, some that are within the

influence of an urban agency, many that are not.

These insights suggest that urban policy for facilitating urban transitions will need to be able to

operate within an environment of uncertainty. While policy should seek best evidence, evidence will

always be partial, and forecasts of trends and policy impacts cannot be overly predictive. To describe

the shifts required in public health policy, Plsek (2001) draws on Richard Dawkins‟ analogy of

throwing a rock and a bird for differentiating between the thinking inherent within classic science and

the science of complex adaptive systems. This is an equally tangible metaphor to describe the role of

urban public agencies and the limits to evidence-based policy when confronting complex, wicked

problems. When responding to climate change and peak oil impacts on complex systems such as

cities, public agencies are throwing birds and not rocks in their intervention strategies. We can predict

the trajectory of a rock, but when we throw a bird or the city confronting global change, the trajectory

is far less predictable. Like a bird, a city is not inert, but alive, self-organising, with emergent

behaviour, and climate change and peak oil will create impacts to that city‟s trajectory we cannot

accurately predict.

To respond, urban policy will need to develop approaches that assume surprise is likely as opposed

to maintaining policy approaches that assume issues and outcomes can be well predicted (Wildavsky

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1988). This requires adopting foresight techniques that maintain a dynamic and holistic understanding

of emerging trends and possibilities. It requires policy experimentation and adaptive management,

which in turn require that policy design and implementation are integrated and iterative processes

(Mulgan & Lee 2001: 4).

Last it is not enough to identify the right policy interventions to successfully initiate urban transitions.

Timing is critical and urban policy agencies need to be able to identify when windows of opportunity

are opening to introduce transformative change. In addition, in order to be successful, policy agencies

need to develop the right organisational attributes and have staff with the right individual attributes to

both initiate and implement change. This often requires deliberate and long term organisational

culture change. These attributes have been outlined in table 8.

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7 Conclusion

In terms of advancing theoretical understanding of policy innovation, this thesis recognises that all

theories provide a partial understanding of complex situations (Midgley 2000: 77). In order to provide

a more comprehensive understanding of the barriers to and enablers of urban policy agencies

facilitating change, the thesis draws on a range of theories examining change at different levels and

integrates their insights into the multi-level framework. The case study research finds that critical

processes of change often occur through the interactions between societal levels, for example, when

disruptions at the organisational and landscape levels coincide, creating windows of opportunity for

entrepreneurial individuals to initiate policy innovations.

The WCC case study exhibited the majority of the enablers and constraints identified at the

landscape and field levels and all but one of the enablers at the organisational and individual levels,

indicating that collectively the insights drawn from the different theories were relevant for examining a

New Zealand local council attempting to facilitate an urban sustainability transition. This reinforces the

argument presented in this thesis that single theories used on their own in policy, provide a partial

understanding of how change occurs in complex systems such as a city. Rather, policy analysis

needs to draw on and integrate a range of theories and concepts of social and technological change.

In terms of further research, to test whether the enablers and barriers in the Framework can be

generalised to other New Zealand councils or urban policy agencies internationally, further case

studies could be undertaken of urban agencies attempting to embark on urban transitions. WCC

provided an example of a council-wide change of direction to facilitate the vision of the Eco City, and

similar case studies could be explored and compared to WCC. In addition, comparative case studies

of councils who have attempted a sustainability transition in a specific function such as transport or

urban intensification could be undertaken and the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework could be used

as analytical framework for this research.

While the community resilience research outlined in the thesis identified a range of factors that

increase a community ability to address and respond to disasters and economic shocks, there is a

need for more research to examine the degree to which these factors can also be applied to

communities responding to persistent pressures such as peak oil and climate change. In addition, the

enabling attributes credited to the WCC community could be explored further to identify whether the

same attributes (e.g., stability and diversity of community, attachment to the natural environment)

contribute to other communities ability to successfully prepare for peak oil and climate change.

The WCC case study also suggests that cost benefit analysis and transport modelling approaches

constrained policy innovation and this raises the question of how well conventional policy analysis

and the assumptions that underpin traditional policy analysis tools support policy aimed at facilitating

sustainability transitions. This is an area of research which could be further explored. New policy

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approaches such as the Dutch led transitional management is still at the experiential stage. More

research on what has created success or failure is important to develop this policy approach further.

Finally, in terms of applied policy research, the WCC case study suggests, reinforced by Baumgartner

and Jones‟ research (1993) that new policy approaches are more likely to be adopted when windows

of opportunity open through the combined influence of different factors often operating at different

levels of the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework. In addition, key factors which enable these policies to

become adopted and successfully implemented include the personal and collective attributes of the

individuals driving the new approach. Therefore when policy analysts are assessing whether a

successful policy implemented in another city would be effective in their own, they could investigate

what historic factors led to the policy first being introduced and then what factors, including the

attributes of the people involved, were then key to successful implementation. This could provide

additional information for the comparative policy analysis, including the attributes that might be

required within their own policy organisation and city community to adopt and implement successfully

the policy in question. The five levels of the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework might therefore be

used as an additional tool for comparative policy analysis.

In terms of policy practice, the thesis has argued that while markets are a critical driver of urban

transitions urban policy agencies will need to facilitate those social and technological transitions to

ensure the shifts are rapid, equitable and sustainable enough to minimise the impacts of global

change. This suggests urban policy agencies adopt a broader and more adaptive role in urban

governance. Like WCC this is likely to require a strong facilitation role where councils increasingly

work closely with the business and community sectors to meet urban outcomes.

The thesis is also based upon the premise that the concepts of social and technological change used

within policy processes shape problem definition and influence which interventions are considered.

The thesis argues that the complexity of global change requires urban policy agencies to adopt a

richer and more integrative set of concepts of social and technological change. These concepts in

turn also suggest policy agencies need to take a less anticipatory and a more adaptive and

collaborative approach to responding to complex issues such as climate change and peak oil.

In other words, urban policy agencies need to adopt new forms of thinking and practice, but, as

outlined in the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework, there are many constraints. Policy actors are not

outside the boundaries of the conceptual models presented in the thesis; rather they form part of

these complex systems. Cognitive factors such as habit and knowledge outlined in MLP, and

institutional factors including professional norms and belief systems outlined in MLP and Sociological

Institutionalism, constrain the adoption of alternative policy concepts and practice. Indeed adopting

more complex change models may carry risk for policy agencies. Shove (2010) argues that climate

change policy has limited itself to those theories of social change found in economics and psychology

and which focus on individual behaviour change. This focus on individual behaviour, Shove believes,

89

allows public agencies to step back from making structural changes that might disrupt existing power

interests, reflecting one barrier in the Adaptive Urban Policy Framework.

Policy actors therefore need to recognise that they are constrained by a range of social, political, and

institutional factors in being adaptive in the way they carry out policy and in the degree they can

facilitate urban transitions. The Adaptive Urban Policy Framework has been developed to illustrate

where some of those constraints might lie and, importantly, to identify the range of individual and

organisational attributes that might build the capacity of policy agencies to lead urban transitions

successfully in response to global change.

90

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9 Appendix 1. Interview Questions

Questions to all interviewees

Role and timing of events using time line

1. When did you start working for WCC? Where had you worked before? What was your role?

Drivers for change

2. Why did WCC take the eco city approach at that time and not other councils, what do you think

was different about WCC from other councils in Auckland/NZ at that time?

Urban policy and planning challenges dealing with issues like climate change and

environmental limits

3. Back in the 1990s sustainability and issues like climate change were not a common council focus

and were pretty contentious. How did WCC (or staff within WCC) introduce climate change and

sustainability internally and externally? What key barriers did you experience? How did you

overcome these? Can you give an example?

4. Were global issues more difficult to introduce and get traction on? Was peak oil looked at?

Learning processes

5. Did you find that any of the politicians and staff‟s operating assumptions need to be challenged or

reviewed to take on a sustainability agenda? What were they? What new assumptions/concepts

were introduced? How was this achieved? What barriers to you meet?

6. Working closely with the community approaches has been a key part of the eco city transition.

Why did WCC decide to take that approach? What worked and why? What didn‟t work as well

and what were the challenges of bringing in that approach to council?

Barriers to sustainability transitions

7. Aside from those barriers already discussed so far what were some of the key barriers WCC

experienced in implementing the eco city? May be internal or external to WCC. What did you

personally find the most difficult?

Outcomes and time required

8. What key outcomes do you think WCC has achieved with the Eco City?

9. What were the most difficult outcomes to achieve?

10. What time periods are required to make substantive shifts towards sustainability in a city? The

internal cultural shift and the shifts within the community?

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Specific questions to specific staff

1. Why did you bring the district plan under the policy unit? (Staff 1, Councillor 1)

2. Were any mainstream policy approaches found to be inadequate for dealing with issues such as

sustainability or climate change? What were they? Did they need to be supplemented or

replaced by alternative approaches? (Staff 1, 5,7)

3. ASF strong focus on future uncertainty and the need to move away from predict and provide

planning approaches – did similar concerns arisen at WCC? If so what approaches did WCC

adopt instead? What barriers were there in doing this? Could you give a specific example? (Staff

1, 5,7; Councillor 1)

4. Has urban policy in NZ changed towards the WCC model over last 18 yrs? Or is WCC approach

still unique? Where shifts do you see urban policy still needs to take? (Staff 1, 5,7, Councillor 1)

5. How did the councillors deal with vocal criticism from community in response to eco city and

proposed policies? Did you find this was different to other councils? (councillor 1)

6. How supportive have the community been of the eco city, has that support changed over time?

(councillor 1, staff 3)

7. What were Waitakere‟s overarching community development goals? How would you describe

WCC overall community development approach (staff 3)

8. At the time that Project Twin Streams began what would have been the traditional approach to

dealing with the flooding and stormwater issues? (Staff 4)

9. I see at least three distinct alternative approaches that PTS takes; restoring natural systems to

manage stormwater; working with the community to do it; taking on a very holistic agenda (not

just water objectives). Am I missing any, would you frame them in a different way? (Staff 4)

10. What led you to take these distinctive approaches? What initially enabled or drove these

approaches? (Staff 4)

11. What did you need to put in place to enable you and your team, your contractors, WCC etc adopt

these approaches? What were the most important enablers/ changes? (Staff 4)

12. What barriers did you encounter in adopting these approaches? How did you overcome them?

(Staff 4)

13. To what extent have each of these approaches become more mainstream in urban stormwater

management in NZ? (Staff 4)

14. Did PTS shift the way in which you (and you team/WCC) thought about stormwater

management? (Staff 4)

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15. What do you think have been the most valuable outcomes of PTS and why? (Staff 4)

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