Why are designs for urban governance so often incomplete? A conceptual framework for explaining and harnessing institutional incompleteness

Abstract

This article asks why institutional designs for urban governance are so often incomplete and what a critical perspective on incompleteness may offer. We develop a novel conceptual framework distinguishing between incompleteness as description (a deficit to be ‘designed-out’), action (‘good enough’ design to be worked with and around), and prescription (an asset to be ‘designed-in’). An extended worked example of city regional devolution in England illuminates the three types of incompleteness in practice, whilst also identifying hybrid forms and cross-cutting considerations of power, time and space. Perceiving institutional incompleteness as a design logic in its own right, held in tension with completeness, could help augment institutional design repertoires and even enhance democratic values.