Research and Solutions: Sustainable Urban Governance: Lessons from Katrina and the Lean Six Sigma

Abstract

Discussions about sustainability are often confined to the subject of natural resources, such as water and fossil fuels, and how to preserve them for the future. This is too limited, particularly in the case of cities, which depend on other resources for their existence. These resources include man-made public assets, defined by this author as flood control levees, roads, water supply and sewerage systems, bridges, roads, other urban infrastructure, and monetary wealth. A major threat to the sustainability of cities is the decline of public assets and the inability of governments to maintain them for generations to come. A case in point is the broken levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Other examples from around the world demonstrate that such failures of infrastructure and government are epidemic. These problems cannot be solved by merely applying green technology. This article proposes a system of sustainable urban governance, based on the concepts of Lean Six Sigma, a structured problem-solving methodology used by businesses.

The author recommends that in order to achieve sustainability, a city government should follow seven steps:

• Define the city's responsibilities (so that all governmental functions are clearly delineated and all personnel know what they are supposed to be doing, how they should be doing it, and when they should be doing it);

• Identify the city's public capital assets and liabilities (perform a comprehensive inventory of all infrastructure and all sources of revenue and financial liabilities, and designate which departments are responsible for maintaining each piece of infrastructure);

• Measure today's baseline performance (i.e., the condition of the infrastructure and how well the city is fulfilling its responsibilities);

• Analyze and solve problems (determine the causes of the problems, identify solutions, and incorporate them into city standard operating practice);

• Sustain improvements to governmental performance (create a continuous monitoring protocol to determine whether everything that needs to be done is in fact being done);

• Create transparency (disseminate to the citizens all information about the city's public business and solicit the community's input); and

• Establish and enforce accountability (create a system of rewards and sanctions for officials and employees of city government).