The city is hot: solutions to the world’s everyday problems are increasingly sought at the local level. Local administrations are handed more responsibilities through decentralizations and much is expected of the pragmatic skills of mayors. A great deal of hope is directed at the self-organizing abilities of cities, which can be seen as laboratories for social change and improvement. In this themed issue we will critically review these high expectations of cities and the local level. Can cities live up to these expectations, and at what point does ‘hope’ become ‘hype’? This introductory article mainly focuses on the concept of living labs, which are presented as an accessible, innovative and pragmatic way to address social issues in neighbourhoods.

In his much praised book on mayors, Benjamin Barber argues it’s up to cities to address the world’s most acute problems. These include wicked problems such as climate change, terrorism, poverty and trafficking of drugs, weapons and humans. Cities are not only excellent problem solvers, they are also given a prominent role in innovation and economics, democracy and citizenship, and more recently domestic care. Complicated, wicked and thus knowledge intensive problems are stacking up at the local level. But where to get the appropriate knowledge to tackle these issues?

In this contribution, Gerard Nijboer of Rotterdam municipality describes several living labs in his hometown.

Worldwide, cities are becoming increasingly important in global networks. The rise of cities and urban regions is widely described in academic literature. Cities are becoming essential players in networks on three scales: on an international scale as a hub in global networks, on a regional scale in partnerships as a consequence of the necessity of upscaling and on a local scale, in cooperation with citizens. This article addresses what this rise of the city, operating in complex networks on different scales, means for the position and tasks of the mayor, as a representative of the city. The article describes the modern challenges for the mayoral function and role in an emerging network society and addresses the growing importance of strong personal and transactional leadership while operating in networks both inside and outside the municipality.

Henk de Jong, former chief clerk of the municipality of Amsterdam, spent some years as a management consultant in New York. Back home, he describes what the Netherlands can learn from the American way of managing big cities. Klaartje Peters, professor of Maastricht University, reflects on the lessons he draws.

Over the last couple of decades, metropolitan areas around the world have been engaged in a multitude of initiatives aimed at upgrading urban infrastructure and services, in an effort to create better environmental, social and economic conditions and to enhance cities’ attractiveness and competitiveness. Reflecting these developments, many new categories of ‘cities’ have entered the policy discourse: ‘sustainable cities’; ‘green cities’; ‘digital cities’; ‘intelligent cities’; ‘smart cities’; ‘information cities’; ‘knowledge cities’; ‘resilient cities’; ‘eco-cities’; ‘low carbon cities’; ‘liveable cities’; and even combinations, such as ‘low carbon eco-cities’ and ‘ubiquitous eco-cities’. Each of these terms apparently seeks to capture and conceptualize key aspects of ongoing urban sustainability efforts. Closer examination, however, reveals that the terms are often used interchangeably by policy makers, planners and developers alike. In this article we examine the reflection of the wider policy debate in academic discourse. By subjecting the twelve most frequently encountered categories mentioned above to bibliometric analysis, we aim to identify the distinct conceptual perspectives harbored by each of them.

Willem van Winden has done research about and has worked in several living labs at home and abroad. In this contribution he summarizes several practical lessons based on these experiences.

In this closing article we summarize the results of the individual articles of this themed issue and draw common lessons. With regard to cities as living labs, we conclude that three challenges need more attention: (1) unclear or contradictory goals and expectations, (2) organizational confusion, and (3) the lack of institutional links. Based on these, we offer a number of recommendations for research and practice in public administration.

This article examines whether there is a trade-off between publishing articles in international peer reviewed journals vis-à-vis national and professional work among scholars in the administrative and political sciences. A cluster analysis on their publications results in three publishing profiles: a professional profile, an international profile and a traditional profile. The professional profile author publishes a relatively high number of professional publications. The international profile author publishes a relatively high number of international peer-reviewed papers. The traditional author profile is characterized by a lower number of publications and a more balanced distribution of publications in both international and national categories. The profiles showcase that indeed there is a trade-off between publishing international scientific articles and publishing for practitioners, but only to some extent. Furthermore, the profiles are associated with the university where authors are employed and whether they got their Ph.D. at a Dutch university or abroad.

The economic crisis is forcing Dutch government to deliberate decisions that lead to effective public policy.
There seems to be a trend for the involvement of behavioral insights in the policymaking process, in order to achieve more effective public policy. The Government Strategy Board organized several conferences on this topic and the Scientific Council for Government policy researches this subject.
To what extent can behavioral insights be considered a success formula for policy? This article offers a critical consideration from the findings of the thesis ’Two sides of the coin’, that deals with the relationship between the policymaking process and the effectiveness of public policy and makes it clear that behavioral insights are an important condition for successful policy. However, success demands an update of the current dominant scientific perspective on public policy as well as a realistic judgement of the high requirements on policy makers to involve behavioral insights in the policymaking process.