Feedback Control for Sustainability: Integrated Planning, Capabilities and Performance Management in Constrained Local Governments

Local governments worldwide are increasingly experiencing the impacts of extreme climate events such as flooding, drought and wildfires. This has created a growing impetus on the part of public administrators to better assess and address the sustainability of the infrastructures which support public goods or services. This study investigates efforts to integrate local government sustainability-related planning, capabilities and performance information use as a means of regulatory feedback control. Our primary research objective is to better understand how and why constrained, smaller governments enhance the types of feedback they process in the Anthropocene. Drawing from a unique dataset of text, environmental and survey data from municipalities in the U.S. state of Indiana, we find greater exploratory information-gathering in comprehensive land-use and capital planning, and greater financial investment in sustainability efforts, are positively associated with sustainability-related performance information use. We find no linkage between sustainability-focused economic development planning, dedicated administrative capacity and performance use, indicative of the resource-constraints and challenges in adapting existing processes and capacities for ambiguous threats.