Green fingers anyone? Creating public value in urban gardens

Co-creation has become an undeniable aspect of public service strategies. Governments all over the world and at various levels (i.e. state, country and municipality) seem to value the collaboration with other stakeholders in... [ view full abstract ]

Co-creation has become an undeniable aspect of public service strategies. Governments all over the world and at various levels (i.e. state, country and municipality) seem to value the collaboration with other stakeholders in public service delivery (Osborne & Strokosch, 2013). Co-creating with end-users in public policy involves the inclusion of citizens and other stakeholders into the design, production and implementation of public service delivery. Some even argue that broad involvement is the key condition for creating added value in processes of service delivery or the provision of public goods (Chathoth, Altinay, Harrington, Okumus, & Chan, 2013; Grönroos, 2012; Ind & Coates, 2013). However, although much is known about the factors that explain success and failure of co-creation, much less is known about how more persistent co-creation can be explained. The academic interest in the field of co-creation and co-production is often more focused on the extent to which co-creation projects generated outputs like efficiency (Needham, 2008) or effectiveness (Pestoff, 2006).

The aim of this article is to investigate empirically what factors can influence the durability of co-creation processes between local authorities, citizens and other stakeholders aimed at realizing blue-green infrastructures. Our empirical data consists of 20 cases of co-creation across the Netherlands. These cases are all initiatives launched to create so called blue-green infrastructures, aimed at making cities more ‘water friendly’ and green, and hence more livable and more climate resilient. By using a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we are able to determine what factors influence the durability of the co-creation process in which added value could be created. Because of its comparative nature and the method of QCA, it allows us to determine what kind of factors are necessary or sufficient for continuing processes of co-creation beyond plan development and realization, when it comes to exploitation and maintenance.