Decision Making in a Sustainable City

Abstract: A growing world population and rapid urbanization have resulted in larger cities and greater acknowledgement of the importance of sustainability, hence, sustainable cities have started to emerge. In order to cope with all factors affecting sustainability, better mechanisms for decision making in those cities are requested. The purpose of this report is to increase the understanding and fill the gaps in literature by identifying what factors affect the decision making processes in sustainability initiatives at municipal level in sustainable cities. The method used is divided into two parts. First, a theoretical answer was given to the purpose by separately studying theories of sustainability and decision making which resulted in a theoretical framework. Second, through the empirical findings retrieved from semi-structured interviews with individuals in Chicago, where the combination of factors of work with sustainability and decision making in the municipality were investigated, a developed framework was constructed to give a final answer to the report’s purpose. A qualitative approach with a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning was, therefore, used. The developed framework consists of six dimensions where the two separate areas of sustainability and decision making are merged together into factors affecting decision making in sustainability initiatives. Understanding these dimensions will aid the decision maker at municipal level to pursue the sustainability initiatives. The dimensions of the developed framework are; Centralized/Decentralized, Holistic/Atomistic, Short-Term/Long-Term, Inside/Outside, Visible/Invisible and Information/Intuition.