Self-organizing in urban development: developers coordinating between construction projects

Sustainable urban development districts have become an answer to the challenge of increasing urbanization while decreasing human impact on the environment. Like other domains of public administration, urban development has in recent decades moved towards heterogeneous governance. Urban development becomes project ecologies, where several construction projects are carried out in parallel and in sequence. This paper sheds light on public and private developers’ coordinating between their construction projects and the influence this has on the built environment of urban development districts. The space between projects in project ecologies is relevant to explore further to understand how the long-term goals of urban policy are achieved in practice. Through the theoretical lens of self-organizing, the discussion is informed by a qualitative study of two cases where developers built together in sustainable profiled urban development districts. The paper contributes to construction management research by illustrating how developers play a key role in finalizing the design and construction of new districts through self-organizing. In effect, new urban districts can only be realized through joint efforts and coordination amongst developers. The paper also provides policymakers with insights into how developers become key players in organizing new neighborhoods.