ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with urban innovations in their institutional context. Innovation is thus a dynamic process through which innovators press to modify an institutional context, through leadership, rational argument and debate, persuasion, compromise, and coercion. Innovation may thus be conceived as a process of value transformation, accompanied by changes in behavioural patterns to support an evolving new configuration of institutions. The institutional context of government constrains innovation in a variety of ways. The institutional context in which innovation networks are situated is itself organized and able to resist change. Structural cleavages within the institutional context of Atlanta may in the end undermine the efforts of this and other reform movements. The institutional structure of a system is stable to the extent it reflects and serves the values of its members, according to the balance of community or organizational power and influence.
