Governing City Infrastructure: Who Drives the Urban Project Cycle?

Abstract

This report represents an effort to show in granular terms how different cities are innovating in distinct ways around sustainable urbanization. Over the last decade, long-term sector-specific plans in energy, transportation, and urban development have become the standard way through which many municipal governments try to influence sustainable development for the medium and long term. We believe practice must move beyond the realm of good planning and into accountability. Is a city delivering on its long-term targets and policies? Is it forging new forms of governance that foster collaboration across the public, private, and civic sectors and at all levels of government—city, suburban, state, and federal? And is it doing so in a way that can be rapidly adapted by other cities and scaled by national governments and global markets?