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This paper explores the implementation of the Indian Government's Smart Cities Mission in four cities. The Mission was to be delivered through a tightly specified governance form, known as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), although its function (smart urban renewal) was left more open. The national reform was, however, silent on how the SPV would work within the pre-existing network of actors. Using interviews and documentary analysis, the paper shows how the embedding of SPVs within pre-existing governance networks was strongly shaped by state-level decisions and local institutional dynamics. These insights open up new avenues for research into multi-level meta-governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of current practice in policy transfer, and ways in which its effectiveness can be increased. A literature review identifies important factors in examining the transfer of policies. Results of interviews in eleven cities in Northern Europe and North America investigate these factors further. The principal motivations for policy transfer were strategic need and curiosity. Local officials and politicians dominated the process of initiating policy transfer, and local officials were also the leading players in transferring experience. A range of information sources are used in the search process but human interaction was the most important source of learning for two main reasons. First, there is too much information available through the Internet and the search techniques are not seen to be wholly effective in identifying the necessary information. Secondly, the information available on websites, portals and even good practice guides is not seen to be of mixed quality with risks of focussing only on successful implementation and therefore subject to some bias. Officials therefore rely on their trusted networks of peers for lessons as here they can access the ‘real implementation’ story and the unwritten lessons. Organisations which have a culture that is supportive of learning from elsewhere had strong and broad networks of external contacts and resourced their development whilst others are more insular or inward looking and reluctant to invest in policy lessons from elsewhere. Solutions to the problems identified in the evidence base are proposed. City to city policy transfer is a very active process in the field of transport. Not enough is yet understood about its benefits or the conditions under which it is most effective. Such understandings should help to promote and accelerate the uptake of effective and well matched policies.

A literature review of policy transfer in transport and cognate fields was conducted. It shows that there is little evidence on how cities learn from each other and even less on how this process occurs in the transport sector.The review identified a series of key aspects of policy transfer which the literature suggests might be important in understanding the process of, advantages and barriers to transferring innovative transport policies.Interviews were then conducted in 11 cities to further investigate the process of policy transfer and the role of academics within this. Seven cities were studied in Northern Europe (Leeds, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bremen and Lyon, Nancy) and four in North America (Vancouver, Dallas, San Francisco and Seattle). This report presents the results of the synthesis of the city interviews.The key findings are:1. Cities are actively looking to learn from another but this process is unsystematic and sometimes inefficient2. The search for new policies is constrained by a lack of resources, particularly personnel3. Informal networks and information sharing based on professional contacts is the predominant method of initial knowledge transfer4. Local context is critical in determining whether policies will transfer well across cities and lack of fit is one reason for limited transfer5. Institutional barriers also exist to policy transfer which seem most likely to influence what gets implemented rather than what gets considered6. Key facilitators to overcome barriers to implementation are:a. A supportive political environment;b. Sufficient staff resources to commit to the projects;c. A culture of engaging with other cities and a structure that allows for staff at all levels to seek out information by contacting staff internally or at other organizations that are of a different staff/management level;d. An internal organisational culture to try new things; ande. co-funding of implementation from other government tiers or the private sector7. Academic research is one potential source of information on innovation and implementation but one which is underutilised in many cities. This was particularly true of the European cities compared with those in North America8. The academic and practitioner networks are not well connected and there are both practical and cultural barriers to better integration. In the light of these findings and a more detailed consideration of the cultural and practical barriers to better integration between academics and practitioners nine potential areas for future action are identified.