Build Artifacts in Sustainable Urban Projects: When Pragmatism Makes Innovation

This paper explores innovation and social behaviourist theory in relation to sustainable urban projects in the highly institutionalized public sector (towns). Using empirical data from France, we examine the dynamics of a design process in which unexpected practices generated innovative urban design. We show how the fact that the design process did not follow the standard phases of planning meant that the actors redefined themselves in relation to one another. We point out how the absence of urban design plans during a precise phase of an innovative design process drew the actors into a movement of collective action, which presupposed the acquisition of a new identity. Ultimately, our objective is to combine social behaviourist theory and innovation theory and to facilitate innovative design in urban projects.