CROWDFUNDING OUR CITIES: THREE PERSPECTIVES ON STAKEHOLDER DYNAMICS DURING INNOVATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE DELIVERY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY KATHRYN E. GASPARRO SUMMER 2019 © 2019 by Kate Elizabeth Gasparro. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/bf989ng4777 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Raymond Levitt, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Douglas McAdam I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Ashby Monk, Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost for Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii iv ABSTRACT Infrastructure is the lifeblood of our cities and towns. While communities benefit from and are impacted by water and sanitation systems, energy and transportation networks, and public buildings and parks, they have limited involvement in the delivery of these infrastructure assets. Crowdfunding is allowing communities and other stakeholders to participate in infrastructure delivery in new ways, by leveraging crowdsourcing science and electronic payment systems. Crowdfunding’s emergence has been enabled by declining and stagnating investment in infrastructure construction and maintenance at federal, state and local levels. Crowdfunding is being used to a greater extent for all types of infrastructure assets, but there is limited understanding of its implications. The necessary and historical involvement of local government agencies in infrastructure delivery adds a layer of complexity that other crowdfunding ventures do not have to consider. This dissertation uses a multimethod, qualitative approach to explore the multifaceted impacts of using crowdfunding for infrastructure delivery in a variety of settings. This dissertation looks specifically at how traditional infrastructure delivery is impacted by crowdfunding. In Chapter 2, I look at the emergence of crowdfunding platforms focused on infrastructure assets. Stagnated investment in infrastructure assets can, in part, be attributed to information asymmetries between local actors who understand the asset’s social, economic, and physical geography and nonlocal investors. These crowdfunding platforms have the capabilities and potential to identify and communicate implicit asset characteristics, thereby facilitating more infrastructure investment. In Chapter 3, I use a matched-pairs case study to compare a traditionally delivered vs. a crowdfunded protected bike lane in Denver, Colorado. This analysis highlights the use of crowdfunding as a consensus-building social movement tactic. As such, the stakeholder that initiates the crowdfunding campaign (the project sponsor) becomes the social movement organization and interacts closely with the local government throughout the infrastructure delivery process. This intimate relationship shifts decision- making power and legitimacy between these two stakeholder groups. Building on the work in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 uses a similar approach to compare two crowdfunded protected bike lanes in different economic and political contexts. Although similar in size and scope, one project in Denver, Colorado was successfully constructed and the other project in Memphis, Tennessee remained unbuilt five years after its successful crowdfunding campaign. This chapter shows how stakeholders, with varying levels of resources and expertise, identify and incorporate crowdfunding into infrastructure delivery. The use of crowdfunding highlights a new type of cross-sector partnership for infrastructure delivery. Using the public administration and partnership literature, I find that the unsolicited and informal nature of this partnership is v mismatched to the resource-intensive, phased, and networked characteristics of infrastructure delivery. Together, these three chapters provide a set of propositions, developed through three different theoretical lenses, for how we can understand the impact of crowdfunding infrastructure assets. Further, this body of work shows us that, as project sponsors and local governments consider new ways to fund much-needed infrastructure delivery, innovative tools (including crowdfunding) must be explored through in-depth, deep analyses that illuminate the dynamics between stakeholders and their impacts on project outcomes. vi PREFACE In the summer of 2014, I worked for the policy consulting arm of an engineering firm in Washington, DC. At that time, the United States Congress was debating the next transportation spending bill, anticipating the current bill’s impending expiration. Growing political partisanship prevented Congress from approving a new, multi-year bill. As a result, state and local governments, concerned about federal funding availability, put the brakes on many projects that would be funded in part by federal dollars (Lu, 2014). At the last minute, Congress passed a one-year extension to ensure projects already underway would be completed. But, without a long-term solution, state and local governments began to shift their project planning strategies, afraid that federal funding would dry up (Ornstein, 2014). I knew local governments were struggling to invest in infrastructure assets. After the Recession, local governments faced dwindling government budgets and increasing pressure to spend on immediate issues related to policing, unemployment, and housing. Forward thinking and capable local governments were looking at alternative mechanisms to pay for infrastructure. More and more government officials spoke about the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure delivery. PPPs became a beacon of hope because they could relieve financial pressure on the public sector and leverage private sector innovation and efficiency. But PPPs were only viable for projects with strong and predictable revenue streams. Local infrastructure projects, that could not collect direct user fees, were neglected. Other industries had struggled with similar issues. Large companies with a reputation and proven revenue streams could easily attract funding for new ventures, while small and medium enterprises had to look for other avenues of funding to support their new ventures. It was this mentality that fed the crowdfunding market. Early stage companies could go to online crowdfunding platforms to source money from anyone (I knew this because I saw it every day as I scrolled through my social media feeds). That’s when it hit me…Could crowdfunding be used to pay for local infrastructure projects? I started looking into this and found that several crowdfunding platforms were positioning themselves to fund civic projects like community centers, parks, and waste collection services (Gray, 2013). While there was a lot of excitement around what crowdfunding could do, people speculated that crowdfunding was increasing inequalities and crowding out government dollars for these civic projects. Despite the growing literature that discussed the benefits and costs of crowdfunding, no one quite knew the implications of crowdfunding civic projects, including infrastructure assets. So, I embarked on my PhD to better understand what crowdfunding infrastructure delivery looks like and its implications. It seemed that crowdfunding could be evaluated through a variety of lenses: How was crowdfunding an example of local investment? To what vii extent was crowdfunding a social movement? Could crowdfunding be a new way to manage stakeholders? How did crowdfunding change the way projects got delivered? Is crowdfunding a complementary strategy or a replacement for traditional public funding? Could crowdfunding improve community engagement? This dissertation is the culmination of four years of research that sought to address these questions. Over these years, the same partisanship and budget constraints I saw in 2014 have only grown stronger, impeding local infrastructure delivery. But, innovative strategies, including crowdfunding, have increasingly been adopted to motivate infrastructure delivery in the face of these trends. As such, this research is critical and timely for helping us understand the ways in which these innovative strategies are being used to influence infrastructure delivery and impact our communities. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This body of work has become a reality through the countless people who have provided guidance and support. Above all, I must thank Dr. Ray Levitt, without whom this work would not have been possible. He was the first person to have faith in my PhD pursuits and has seen this work through its ups and downs. For every