Bridging the gap between science and practice: an ICLEI perspective

Local governments must continuously innovate to respond to dynamic pressures from changing social, environmental and economic conditions in their localities. Local governments therefore need to have access to the latest technology and techniques developed through research, and in turn, researchers need to respond to the requirements of local governments. In the last decades, many tools and instruments with a focus on urban sustainability have been produced. Nevertheless, the potential of this wealth of knowledge is not fully used, as many tools are hardly known by policy-makers at the local level and thus not employed. This paper acknowledges that scientific research approaches and findings on urban sustainability are not independent from political and institutional contexts. By exploring three different cases through which knowledge is exchanged and shared between researchers and policy-makers, this paper analyses the mechanisms to improve such “connectivity” and outlines the related benefits.