Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. This makes them centres of resource consumption and waste production. Sustainable development is seen as an opportunity to respond to the consequences of urbanisation and climate change. In recent years the concepts of circularity and urban symbiosis have emerged as popular strategies to develop sustainable urban areas. An example is the experimental project “Straat van de Toekomst”, implementing a circular strategy based on the Greenhouse Village concept. This concept implements circular systems for new ways of sanitation, heat and cold storage and greenhouse-house symbiosis. Although many technological artefacts have to be developed for these sustainable solutions, integrating infrastructural systems asks for more than just technological innovation. A socio-cultural change is needed in order to reach systems integration.

The institutional part of technological transitions has been underexposed over the past few years. Besides the fact that systems integration is a relatively new concept, challenges regarding the process towards it have been mainly focussed towards the technological side. There is a lack of a clear answer on what institutional challenges and opportunities emerge during the process of systems integration, as well as a lack of knowledge on its implementation in urban area development.

In order to analyse the process of systems integration in urban area development, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework of Ostrom is used. The framework enables us to identify the influence of important variables on the decision making process. It consists of three exogenous variables (biophysical/ material conditions, attributes of the community and rules) that influence an action arena (action situation and participants) and provides handles to identify interactions and analyze these interactions through evaluative criteria.

A comparative case-study is performed into three cases in the Netherlands: Cityplot in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam; Waterschoon in Noorderhoek, Sneek and EVA Lanxmeer in Culemborg. These were selected on the criteria of encompassing a project integrating infrastructural systems from the “Straat van de Toekomst” and being an urban area development.