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The study of urban governance provides a valuable insight into economic, social, and political forces and how they shape city life. But who and what are the real drivers of change? This innovative text casts new light on the issues and re-examines the state of urban governance at the start of the twenty-first century. Jon Pierre analyses four models of urban governance: 'management', 'corporatist', 'pro-growth' and 'welfare'. Each is assessed in terms of its implications for the major issues, interests and challenges in the contemporary urban arena. Distinctively, Pierre argues that institutions – and the values which underpin them – are the driving forces of change. The book also assesses the impact of globalization upon urban governance. The long-standing debate on the decline of urban governance is re-examined and reformulated by Pierre, who applies a wider international approach to the issues. He argues that the changing cast of private and public actors, combined with new forms of political participation, have resulted in a transformation – rather than a decline – of contemporary urban governance.
With a current population inflow into cities of 200,000 people per day, UN Habitat expects that up to 75% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. Influenced by forces of globalization and global change, cities and urban life are transforming rapidly, impacting human welfare, economic development and urban-regional landscapes. This poses new challenges to urban governance, while emerging city networks, advancing geo-technologies and increasing production of continuous data streams require governance actors to re-think and re-work conventional work processes and practices. This book has been written to enhance our understanding of how governance can contribute to the development of just and resilient cities in a context of rapid urban transformations. It examines current governance patterns from a geographical and inclusive development perspective, emphasizing the importance of place, space, scale and human-environment interactions, and paying attention to contemporary processes of participation, networking, and spatialized digitization. The challenge we are facing is to turn future cities into inclusive cities that are diverse but just and within their ecological limits. We believe that the state-of-the-art overview of topical discussions on governance theories, instruments, methods and practices presented in this book provides a basis for understanding and analyzing these challenges.
Reigning theories of urban power suggest that in a world dominated by footloose transnational capital, cities have little capacity to effect social change. In City Power, Richard Schragger challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that cities can and should pursue aims other than making themselves attractive to global capital. Using the municipal living wage movement as an example, Schragger explains why cities are well-positioned to address issues like income equality and how our institutions can be designed to allow them to do so.
Poverty and governance are both issues high on the agenda of international agencies and governments in the South. With urban areas accounting for a steadily growing share of the world's poor people, an international team of researchers focused their attention on the hitherto little-studied relationship between urban governance and urban poverty. In their timely and in-depth examination of ten cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, they demonstrate that in many countries the global trends towards decentralization and democratization offer new opportunities for the poor to have an influence on the decisions that affect them. They also show how that influence depends on the nature of those democratic arrangements and decision-making processes at the local level, as well as on the ability of the poor to organize. The study involved interviews with key actors within and outside city governments, discussions with poverty groups, community organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as analyses of data on poverty, services and finance. This book presents insights, conclusions and practical examples that are of relevance for other cities. It outlines policy implications for national and local governments, NGOs and donor agencies, and highlights ways in which poor people can use their voice to influence the various institutions of city governance.
Presenting the findings of a major Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project into urban austerity governance in eight cities across the world, this book offers comparative reflections on the myriad experiences of collaborative governance and its limitations.
The objective of this book is to better understand the nature of urban governance regarding the provision of basic urban services in rapidly growing mid-sized towns and cities in developing countries. Set within the context of understanding urban planning and management within the wider city setting, the study focuses on the provision of the basic urban services of housing, water and sanitation especially within informal settlements. Using the case study of the mid-sized city of Jayapura, Papua, Indonesia, the publication explores: (i) the types, processes, and stakeholders that constitute formal urban governance in the provision of basic urban services; (ii) understanding how stakeholders gain and benefit from ‘on the ground’ formal service arrangements, and why; and (iii) for those who do not directly benefit from the formal arrangements, how individuals, groups and communities organize and access governance to meet their basic urban needs. The methods employed to better understand the nature of urban governance and its relationship to the provision of basic urban services comprised primary (face-to-face household surveys interviewing 448 respondents, ground mapping at a plot size level in four informal settlements, and semi-structured interviews with 12 stakeholders) and secondary data regarding urban governance, planning and management. The study reveals that urban governance arrangements in fast growing mid-sized cities have emerged both formally and informally to cope with basic urban service needs across a range of settlement types and socio-cultural groups. The major modes of governance arrangements in the informal settlements consist of traditional, formal and informal, and hybrid governance which co-evolve as their boundaries overlap and intersect through time at varying levels of ‘equilibrium’. The ‘governance equilibrium’ represents a ‘balance’ at a specific point and place in time in how stakeholders utilize and share resources, and access various contributions.
A fresh examination of the relationship between two key issues in the on-going debate on urban governance - leadership and community involvement. It explores the nature of the interaction between community involvement and political leadership in modern local governance by drawing on empirical data gathered from case-studies concerning cities in England, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. It presents both a country specific and cross-cutting analysis of the contributions that communities and leaders can make to more effective local governance. These country specific chapters are complemented by thematic, comparative chapters addressing alternative forms of community involvement, types and styles of leadership, multi-level governance, institutional restrictions and opportunities for leadership and involvement, institutional conditions underpinning leadership and involvement, and political culture in cities. This up-to-date survey of trends and developments in local governance moves the debate forward by analysing modern governance with reference to theories related to institutional theory, legitimation, and the way urban leadership and community involvement compliment one another. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of politics and urban governance, and to all those concerned with questions of local governance and democracy.
This book challenges the concept of ‘urban resilience’ by exploring its impact and limitations in three cities. Resilience has become a buzzword in science, industry, and policy, and this volume offers a fresh perspective on urban resilience as a regulatory and constitutive principle of governance in cities. Cities constitute an extremely relevant playground for resilience, as they are exposed to various disruptions, from natural disasters and pandemics to political conflicts and terrorism. This book traces the evolution of urban resilience, from international development organizations to local governments and communities. It explores how this concept was adopted and mobilized by different actors for different purposes, and analyses the resulting resilience momentum in Barcelona, San Francisco, and Santiago. The book outlines the extent to which resilience has become a universal policy tool and a desired end-state, despite its clearly problematic definition. It also contributes to the discussion about contemporary governance, safety and security in times when their very nature and feasibility are being questioned. This book will be of much interest to students of resilience studies, urban studies, development studies, human geography and international relations.
Over the next 20 years, most low-income countries will, for the first time, become more urban than rural. Understanding demographic trends in the cities of the developing world is critical to those countries - their societies, economies, and environments. The benefits from urbanization cannot be overlooked, but the speed and sheer scale of this transformation presents many challenges. In this uniquely thorough and authoritative volume, 16 of the world's leading scholars on urban population and development have worked together to produce the most comprehensive and detailed analysis of the changes taking place in cities and their implications and impacts. They focus on population dynamics, social and economic differentiation, fertility and reproductive health, mortality and morbidity, labor force, and urban governance. As many national governments decentralize and devolve their functions, the nature of urban management and governance is undergoing fundamental transformation, with programs in poverty alleviation, health, education, and public services increasingly being deposited in the hands of untested municipal and regional governments. Cities Transformed identifies a new class of policy maker emerging to take up the growing responsibilities. Drawing from a wide variety of data sources, many of them previously inaccessible, this essential text will become the benchmark for all involved in city-level research, policy, planning, and investment decisions. The National Research Council is a private, non-profit institution based in Washington, DC, providing services to the US government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The editors are members of the Council's Panel on Urban Population Dynamics.
The book explores and discusses some of the changes, challenges and opportunities confronting local governance in the context of the new urban paradigm associated with the HABITAT III New Urban Agenda, a 20-year strategy for sustainable urbanization, adopted in October 2016 in Quito, Ecuador. The chapters included in the book address public policy issues from different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, written by authors from different academic disciplines within the broad area of social sciences (Geography, Political Science, Public Administration, Spatial Planning, Law, Regional Science, among other fields), and offer an inter-disciplinary vision of these issues. The chapters are written by members of the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Geography of Governance.