Complexity and Uncertainty in Late-Stage Technocracy: The Case of Urban Sustainability

1. Introduction

Urban policymaking is characterized by the increasing convergence of complex problems. These include not only local challenges like housing affordability and traffic management but also the localized impacts of global crises like pandemics, climate change, investment and capital flow dynamics, and others. This chapter explores how urban problems and the localization of global problems can be understood and addressed through the perspective of complexity science. This conceptual orientation is one way to unseat the predominance of linear, atomistic, and reductionist approaches to managing urban crises that engage only what is measured, focus on optimization of decontextualized metrics, and fail to recognize systemic interconnectedness.

This chapter outlines policymaking approaches regarding complex problems in an urban context, explores the application of complexity science to crisis response, and applies the complexity science approach to urban policy through soft systems methodology. The analysis illustrates how a crisis can be explored thoroughly for its complexity and used to draw practical insights. The chapter begins with a review of the mechanics of urban management in the current era, focusing on two salient issues: technology (e.g., ‘civic technology’ and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies) and external engagement by government parties (e.g., bilateral and multilateral global urban networks). These issues are selected because they play the greatest role, according to the current urban sustainability discourse, in helping cities fortify themselves against climate threats and meet certain SDG targets (e.g., through adoption of SDGs in urban plans – or, ‘SDG localization’). The chapter then examines the theoretical dimensions and applicability of a ‘complexity mindset’ as a crisis response frame for urban sustainability and crisis management. Examples of complexity mindset applications are outlined, including leadership, collaborative policymaking, and systems-thinking tools. The conclusion brings these ideas together under the broader political theme of public trust in expertise and technocracy, populist ‘pushback’ against science and technology, and the implications for new ways of thinking about urban resilience, smart cities, and the ‘wickedness’ of the global sustainability crisis.