Capacity in municipalities: Infrastructures, maintenance debts and ways of overcoming a run-to-failure mentality
Open accessAbstract
There is a growing maintenance debt of ageing and critical infrastructures in many municipalities in European welfare states. In this article, we use the multidimensional concept of local capacity as a point of departure to analyse how and in what ways Swedish municipalities work with the routine maintenance of infrastructures, including municipal road networks as well as water and sewage systems. For the road networks, maintenance is generally outsourced to contractors and there is also a large degree of tolerance for various standards on different road segments within and between the municipalities. Less used road segments are not as prioritised as those with heavy traffic. For the water and sewage systems, in-house technical capacity is needed as differences in water quality are not tolerated. Economies of scale mean that in-house capacity is translated into the creation of inter-municipal bodies. As different forms of capacities tend to reinforce each other, municipal capacity builds up over time in circular movements. These results add knowledge to current research by pointing to the ways municipalities are overcoming a run-to-failure mentality by building capacity to pay off the infrastructural maintenance debt.
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Integrating embodied carbon with existing practices builds on evidence for strategies to buttress capacity including building relationships between departments, involving practitioners as local experts, building intermunicipal linkages, engaging with city networks, and relying on proxy data.
“Integrating embodied carbon with existing practices builds on evidence for strategies to buttress capacity including building relationships between departments, involving practitioners as local experts, building intermunicipal linkages, engaging with city networks, and relying on proxy data (Alm et al. 2021;Caldwell et al. 2021;Krause and Hawkins 2021;Lesnikowski et al. 2021;Oke et al. 2022).”
From Making embodied carbon mainstream: a framework for cities to leverage waste, equity, and preservation policy to reduce embodied emissions in buildings (2023) · cites this paper as Alm et al. 2021
The Discussion (page unavailable) says that linkages within and between municipalities can build capacity, and the Introduction describes specialist expertise and local knowledge in inter-municipal bodies. The paper does not establish the other listed strategies—engaging with city networks or relying on proxy data—or address integrating embodied carbon with existing practices. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThese strategies are ripe for greater uptake by local governments through mechanisms that have been shown to enhance sustainability capacity such as building relationships between departments, involving practitioners as local experts, building intermunicipal linkages, engaging with city networks, and relying on proxy data.
“These strategies are ripe for greater uptake by local governments through mechanisms that have been shown to enhance sustainability capacity such as building relationships between departments, involving practitioners as local experts, building intermunicipal linkages, engaging with city networks, and relying on proxy data (Alm et al. 2021;Caldwell et al. 2021;Krause and Hawkins 2021;Lesnikowski et”
From Making embodied carbon mainstream: a framework for cities to leverage waste, equity, and preservation policy to reduce embodied emissions in buildings (2023) · cites this paper as Alm et al. 2021
The Discussion (page unavailable) says linkages within municipalities and between municipalities can build political and technical capacity, particularly for water and sewage maintenance. It does not establish the full list of mechanisms attributed to the citations: it does not address city networks or proxy data, and it does not show that involving practitioners as local experts enhances sustainability capacity. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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Teicher, H. M. (2023) · Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences · doi:10.1007/s13412-023-00836-7 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
- Authors
- Alm, J., Paulsson, A., & Jonsson, R.
- Affiliations
- Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (SE)
- Lund University (SE)
- Centre for Local Government Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
- Corresponding author
- Paulsson, Alexander
- Venue
- Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2021-03
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 81-97
- ISSN
- 0269-0942 (ISSN-L)
- 1470-9325
- OpenAlex
- W3178983509
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 8.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Local Economy The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DiVA (Linkoping University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Diva portal (Dalarna University Library) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Lund University Publications (Lund University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Stiftelsen för Miljöstrategisk Forskning (2019/0437)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Local Government Finance and Decentralization
- Social Sciences › Geography, Planning and Development › Local Governance and Planning
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Keywords
- local capacity, municipal infrastructure maintenance, aging infrastructure, road network, outsourcing, inter-municipal cooperation, economies of scale, Swedish municipalities, welfare state
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