The second paper from Dr. Yehyun An’s award-winning PhD research has been published in a special issue of Sustainability focused on Achieving Sustainable and Resilient Urban Development: Effective Governance, Policy, and Practice. This qualitative paper enriches the quantitative findings captured in our World Development paper.

The paper focuses on how the concept of capacity development was applied to one of India’s largest urban infrastructure programs – the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). While the Indian government considered a lack of capacity to be the main problem in project delivery, there is little evidence that explains the relationships between capacity and project delivery. This case study presents the findings from 58 interviews with project engineers, managers, and administrators about the hurdles they experienced at each stage of project delivery and seeks to understand these hurdles through the lens of capacity development. The study identifies the influence of capacity factors on project delivery and the converse influence of project performance and outcomes on capacity development. Ultimately, this study reveals the complex two-way interactions between capacity and project delivery.