Deconstructing Economic, Ecologic and Social Urban Discourses for Innovation Policies

This paper acknowledges that a growing number of (larger) cities present ambitious policy plans and take effective action in the (combined) fields of economic growth, the mitigation of climate change, and improving liveability and sociale inclusion in urban neighhourhoods. However, it also acknowledges that there are limits to the capacities of cities to help achieve innovations, think of cities’ limited abilities to change established large-scale systems in the field of energy production.

The following central question is addressed: Under which conditions are (cooperating) cities able to plan and act quickly and decisively, learn from local experiments, and share insights across national borders and sectoral domains? This question is approached by performing a discourse analysis of the relevant scholarly literature and policies and plans regarding the roles of cities in innovation processes in the combined fields introduced above.

The paper takes the current debate in the Netherlands as a starting point, considering it in the context of related debates in the international arena.