Strengthening collaborative working for innovation and sustainable development

Collaboration, innovation, and sustainable development are all intertwined through various institutional policies and practices in their efforts to improve mankind’s living environment. However, considerations of achieving sustainability through innovative and collaborative working must take into account that sustainability and innovation are flexible terms and that they can be interpreted differently by different actors leading to possible misunderstanding, conflict or misappropriation of terms for vested interests (Hajer, 1995). While sustainability is about equilibrium and permanence, innovation is about changing the way things are done. This paper explores the scope for planning practice in the developing country context, to incorporate innovative practice, by critically questioning the capacity of conventional planning practice for the delivery of sustainable livelihoods in cities. The paper argues that planning practice that is not engaged with the public creative spaces does not serve public interest. Instead, conventional planning principles conflict with the real-world communities and neighborhood experiences. To achieve sustainable development, planning practice must be innovative and collaborative through encouraging a culture change in the planning profession. Such culture change will commit planners to work with other networks of knowledge systems such as communities, toward achieving sustainable development goals. Dialogue and reasoned argumentation are needed in the use of collaborative working to build mutual trust among “actors” in urban planning and this inevitably calls for authentic cooperation between parties. This paper discusses the integrative perspective and conceptualization of how strengthening collaborative working whilst fostering innovation would be necessary to achieving sustainability and improved quality of living in cities
Key words: Collaboration, innovation, sustainable development, urban planning.