Urban governance dispositifs: cohering diverse ecologies of urban energy governance

Abstract

As cities confront increasingly complex governance problems, conceptions of urban governance are becoming progressively more receptive to grasping its dynamic and multiplex nature, its connection to multiple lines of authority and forms of power, and the socio-material assemblages through which it works. Yet, despite conceptual advances around the dynamism and heterogeneity of urban governing assemblages and their durability, much remains to be understood about the processes and devices that compose and cohere their constituent elements to generate governance capacity. We explore this limitation by deploying Foucault’s concept of ‘dispositif’ to analytically characterize how urban governance capacity is achieved around complex urban problems via processes and devices of composition and cohering. We do so by examining an emergent urban energy governance dispositif focused around top-tier commercial office space in Sydney, Australia: a key site around which multiple elements have been composed in a complex, entangled dispositif to produce effective urban governance capacity and accomplish substantive gains in office building energy performance. We characterise the socio-material elements involved and, more particularly, identify and analyse the processes and devices that compose the dispositif and cohere its governance capacity and we draw out the diverse forms of power that are immanent in these processes. These are, we argue, key steps in refining systematic understandings of the contemporary functioning and politics of the distributed urban governance of complex urban challenges. We conclude with key observations suggested by our analysis for urban governance scholarship.

Reimagining climate networking between cities: clustering cities based on a large dataset of mitigation actions

“…Therefore, we think networking between socio-spatially diverse cities is feasible, as cities facing similar challenges are likely to interact and exchange information [55]. So, our approach can further illuminate the complexity of drivers of climate action beyond cities' geographical and socio-political status and linear processes [15,56]. Therefore, we consider our approach contributing to a theoretical and methodological shift beyond simplistic assumptions of a few factors in cities' climate actions [57], as highlighted by previous studies [29,58].…”

Innovating urban governance: A research agenda

“…Parallel to recent urban political geographical work on the expanding agendas and reimagined progressive potential of urban entrepreneurialism discussed above, a body of work has emerged that explores the diverse urban governance dispositifs that cohere to address emergent challenges (e.g. Braun, 2014; McGuirk and Dowling, 2021). PSI scholarship complements this conceptual lens insofar as it prises open the diversity – of agendas, actors, governance roles fulfilled and ends sought – within innovatory enactments of governance interventions.…”

“…Second is to engage with the multiple lines of authority and forms of power through which innovatory urban governance works. Recent work on urban governance dispositifs (McGuirk and Dowling, 2021; Tozer, 2019), for instance, attends to the diverse and relational forms of power that are immanent in the changing socio-material assemblages involved in governing complex urban problems. This takes us beyond the PSI literature’s focus on authority to the diverse modalities of power through which innovatory modes of governing may operate, including persuasion, seduction, manipulation, inducement and negotiation (see Allen 2003; Kitchin et al, 2017).…”

“…It also diagnoses a distinctive and heterogeneous genre of urban governance practices geared towards agility, responsiveness and speed; experimentation, iteration and the embrace of failure; and multi-sectoral co-design and collaboration. It potentially heralds the shaping of new urban governance dispositifs – assemblages of actors, practice repertoires, techniques and forms of expertise and authority that constitute the capacity for urban governance 1 (see McGuirk and Dowling, 2021) – around a plurality of politically strategic and intentional ends.…”

“…1As we have detailed elsewhere (McGuirk and Dowling, 2021), there are challenges in distinguishing assemblage from dispositif. Both Foucault and Deleuze sometimes merge their uses of the terms.…”