Smart Regulation Explaining Key Concepts for the City of Tomorrow Smart Regulation Explaining Key Concepts for the City of Tomorrow Discussion Paper 25, Grand Rue Case Postale 3200 CH 1211 Geneva 3 Switzerland Facebook: /NewCitiesFoundation Twitter: @newcitiesfound www.newcitiesfoundation.org Smart Regulation This work is commissioned and published by the New Cities Foundation. You can copy, download, or print this report for your own use, and you can include excerpts from New Cities Foundation publications, databases, and multimedia products in your own documents, presentations blogs, websites, and teaching materials, provided that suitable acknowledgment of New Cities Foundation as source and copyright owner is given. All requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should be submitted to [email protected]. Request for permission to photocopy portions of this material for public or commercial use shall be addressed directly to New Cities Foundation at [email protected]. Please cite this publication as: New Cities Foundation (2012), Smart Regulation, ‘Explaining Key Concepts for the City of Tomorrow’ Series, Discussion Paper #1. http://www.newcitiesfoundation.org This project was led and co-ordinated by Naureen Kabir (Director, Urban Lab and New Cities Foundation USA). Berengère de Contenson (Researcher) supervised the project at an early stage. Cristian Santibanez (Program Associate, Urban Lab and Communications) contributed to the final editing. Claudio Altenhain, Arslan Bissembayev, Loik-André Bourgeois and Morgan Mouton (researchers from the Governing the Large Metropolis Master of Arts program at Sciences Po in Paris, France) contributed to the drafting under the supervision of Dr. Alvaro Artigas Pereira. The New Cities Foundation would also like to thank Anil Menon, President of Globalisation and Smart+Connected Communities, Nic Villa, Managing Director, Global Public Sector and Latif Horst, Sales Business Development Manager, Smart+Connected Communities – all from Cisco Systems for their thought leadership and suggestions on this project. Cover and back-cover picture by Cristian Santibanez under Creative Commons License. 3 Smart Regulation Table of Contents Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 6 Part 1: Historical Background Genealogy of a concept ............................................................................................................................ 10 Looking for more efficient regulation models: the United Nations Development Program focus ......................... 10 From Better to Smart regulation: the European Union’s legal approach .................................................................. 12 Smart Regulation Strategy in Canada .......................................................................................................................... 17 Three key components of smart regulation: embedment, responsiveness, sustainability ................... 18 Embedment ...................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Responsiveness ................................................................................................................................................................. 21 Sustainability ...................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Smart Regulation and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) .......................................................... 28 Part 2: Case Studies Towards an operational model of smart regulation ................................................................................. 30 Hospital General de Ciudad Real, Spain ...................................................................................................................... 34 Torre Titanium La Portada, Santiago, Chile ................................................................................................................... 35 Lyon Confluence, Lyon, France ..................................................................................................................................... 36 Vauban, Freiburg, Germany ........................................................................................................................................... 37 CITE City, New Mexico, USA ............................................................................................................................................ 38 Putrajaya-Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia ..................................................................................................................... 39 Smart regulation applied ............................................................................................................................. 41 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 46 Literature Written Material ............................................................................................................................................ 49 Websites ........................................................................................................................................................ 54 4 Smart Regulation Executive Summary The absence of a viable definition of smart regulation gives rise to multiple interpretations, which are sometimes contradictory. Taking into account its different social, institutional, and economic dimensions, this paper, the first in a series by the New Cities Foundation, retraces the concept’s evolution, encompassing first attempts of good governance and co-regulation as well as the best practice objectives of better regulation. Smart regulation draws upon a broad range of policy designs and instrument mixes as it lays claim to be context-independent and able to efficiently implement optimal practices in any context. Based on the inclusion of third parties in a multiplicity of institutional fields, the main innovations of this type of regulation are the endorsement of co-regulation, systematic cooperation, the establishment of governmental feedback loops and a particular emphasis brought upon sustainability in terms of economic, environmental and social issues. Drawing from the existing literature, we propose an accessible conceptual framework based on three key components: embedment, responsiveness, and sustainability. With the new possibilities offered by Information and Communication Technologies, this powerful framework can be used to retrospectively-analyze existing real-estate projects and better understand their failures and successes. Drawing upon these criteria, six case studies in the real estate sector are examined to evaluate whether the proposed framework is consistent with empirical reality. Through this analysis, this paper aims to determine whether smart regulation is an operational concept that can be grounded in reality, or whether it is too a broad framework encompassing scattered elements that cannot be applied to a specific sector. 5 Smart Regulation Introduction The absence of an established and consensus driven definition gives rise to multiple interpretations of the term smart regulation: it is a concept that encompasses so many different social dimensions that it loses meaning. Taking into account its different social, institutional, and economic dimensions, the aim of this short book is to shed light upon this concept so as to move from understanding to application. If the twentieth century established nation states as the fundamental scale for policy of its era, the twenty-first century is likely to shake and re-draw these lines. All forecasts and academic studies agree that the twenty-first century’s most important phenomenon will be urbanization. Cities are growing at an unprecedented pace, and we will have to build them faster and more effectively. Growing cities, however, are paradoxical spaces: while dense and relatively intense in terms of land-use, the much more diverse economic fabric and demographics of cities make them extremely complex political entities to govern. Contrary to nation states, where a city begins and where it ends is difficult to define, creating tensions between administrative boundaries and functional boundaries; decision-making processes involve multiple scale stakeholders; resources are exploited in intensive ways. While cities attract people because of supposed better living conditions than rural areas, they can often become polluted and congested with lines of grey buildings, extreme levels of poverty alongside the wealthiest neighborhoods, and high levels of distrust. Thus, as cities become the focal point of decision-making, this analysis is aimed at clarifying a new mode of governance – smart regulation – for the benefit of local authorities and regulators worldwide who play an increasingly central role in governing these ever more complex metropolitan areas. Historically, the industrial-age model of regulation – or traditional regulation – developed to a large extent on the premise of distrust between regulators and regulatees.