AUTHOR=Rogers Christopher D. F. , Grayson Nick , Sadler Jonathan P. , Chapman Lee , Bouch Christopher J. , Cavada Marianna , Leach Joanne M. 

TITLE=Delivering sustainable, resilient and liveable cities via transformed governance

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sustainable Cities

VOLUME=Volume 5 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-cities/articles/10.3389/frsc.2023.1171996

DOI=10.3389/frsc.2023.1171996

ISSN=2624-9634

ABSTRACT=Cities are complex systems of systems that need sympathetic and responsive governance to look after: the interests of the people who live, work and engage in leisure activities there; the constructed landscape and the infrastructure systems supporting this social and economic activity; and the natural environment in which all of this is situated. Governance needs both to drive and be receptive to improvements to, or interventions in, this system of systems; it is this feature of governance that forms the primary focus of this paper, which reports a case study trialling a radical change in the approach to governance of Birmingham City Council (BCC). This involved the lead officer for BCC’s Climate Change and Sustainability agenda being seconded into a major programme of research on the sustainability, resilience and liveability of cities, to shape the research, co-design a radically new approach to governance and provide a direct route to impacting BCC’s operations, policy development and subsequent resourcing. 

The most important lesson for cities is effective governance must respond to a profound understanding of what changes are required, and why, in the context in which it is operating. This enabled BCC to commission the specific policies needed for Birmingham in its unique context, rather than adopt a set of undisputedly worthy generic (national or local) policies that could be applied anywhere to deliver an off-the-shelf version of some ideal City X. Moreover, it (helpfully) removes central Government as the fixer of problems; only BCC can know Birmingham’s context in the requisite level of detail, while this approach causes (or empowers) BCC to take responsibility for fixing its own problems. One radical benefit from the collaboration between the academic research team and BCC has been the introduction of environmental considerations to the heart of all decision making in BCC. The paper concludes by making recommendations on principles for city governance that embed the evidence base, current city context and real time observations (in BCC’s case from the Birmingham Urban Observatory), combined with bottom-up and top-down aspirations of citizens and those who govern them, all tested for resilience to contextual change.