Competition through Interurban Policy Making: Bidding to Host Megaevents as Entrepreneurial Networking

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 2638-2653 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lauermann
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Local Development ◽  
Competitive Strategies ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Entrepreneurial Strategies ◽  
Transnational City ◽  
City Policy

Recent scholarship on policy mobility, globally active municipal governments, and transnational city-to-city policy making suggest a new dynamic in entrepreneurial cities: entrepreneurialism based not only on place competition, but also based on practices of interurban networking. This paper argues that cross-city initiatives to share planning expertise can function both as policy-making networks and as markets for policy knowledge, as urban governance stakeholders strategically leverage intercity initiatives for sharing urban planning knowledge. Bidding to host sporting ‘megaevents’ highlights these networked entrepreneurial strategies. A comparative study of bids to host the Olympic Games over a twenty-year period shows that policy-making knowledge (templates, models, and best practices) shared between cities is both necessary for competing to host events, and represents ‘policy commodities’ that planning coalitions can use as part of their entrepreneurial portfolios. While much commentary on interurban policy making focuses on how policy practices are received by cities or mobilized by international businesses or policy makers, this paper signals to a multidirectional entrepreneurial strategy: although megaevents federations and sponsors developed megaevents knowledge networks to leverage urban planning for profit, many local development coalitions have incorporated these same networks into their competitive strategies.

Planning for Growth: Contradictions in the Framework of Economic and Urban Development from the “Spanish Miracle” (1959-1973)

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422098333
Author(s):  
Juan Luis De las Rivas Sanz ◽  
Miguel Fernández-Maroto
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
National Level ◽  
Growth Period ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
Local Planning ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Planning Framework ◽  
Planning Policies

In the postwar period, the strong economic growth in Western countries coincided with the configuration of their modern urban planning systems. This article aims at exploring to what extent the targets of the economic planning that was broadly adopted in this growth period conditioned the performance of urban planning tools by analyzing the case of Spain. During the so-called “Spanish miracle” that started in the early 1960s and lasted until the mid-1970s, there were notable contradictions between economic and spatial planning policies and between the performance of the national and the municipal governments. It is concluded that the lack of an integrated approach to regional and urban planning policies at national level combined to the gap with the actual local planning framework, illustrated through the example of three cities, can help to understand the patterns of urban growth in a context of an expanding economy.

scholarly journals City intelligence for enhancing urban performance value: a conceptual study on data decomposition in smart cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-222
Author(s):  
Karima Kourtit
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Data Decomposition ◽  
Blowing Up ◽  
Technology Age

AbstractThe contemporary ‘digital age’ prompts the need for a re-assessment of urban planning principles and practices. Against the background of current data-rich urban planning, this study seeks to address the question whether an appropriate methodological underpinning can be provided for smart city governance based on a data-driven planning perspective. It posits that the current digital technology age has a drastic impact on city strategies and calls for a multi-faceted perspective on future urban development, termed here the ‘XXQ-principle’ (which seeks to attain the highest possible level of quality for urban life). Heterogeneity in urban objectives and data embodied in the XXQ-principle can be systematically addressed by a process of data decomposition (based on a ‘cascade principle’), so that first, higher-level urban policy domains are equipped with the necessary (‘big’) data provisions, followed by lower-ranking urban governance levels. The conceptual decomposition principle can then be translated into a comprehensive hierarchical model architecture for urban intelligence based on the ‘flying disc’ model, including key performance indicators (KPIs). This new model maps out the socio-economic arena of a complex urban system according to the above cascade system. The design of this urban system architecture and the complex mutual connections between its subsystems is based on the ‘blowing-up’ principle that originates from a methodological deconstruction-reconstruction paradigm in the social sciences. The paper advocates the systematic application of this principle to enhance the performance of smart cities, called the XXQ performance value. This study is not empirical, although it is inspired by a wealth of previous empirical research. It aims to advance conceptual and methodological thinking on principles of smart urban planning.

scholarly journals The Role of Biophilic Agents in Building a Green Resilient City; the Case of Birmingham, UK

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5033
Author(s):  
Linda Novosadová ◽  
Wim van der Knaap
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Climate Resilience ◽  
Natural Land ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Community Projects ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
The City

The present research offers an exploration into the biophilic approach and the role of its agents in urban planning in questions of building a green, resilient urban environment. Biophilia, the innate need of humans to connect with nature, coined by Edgar O. Wilson in 1984, is a concept that has been used in urban governance through institutions, agents’ behaviours, activities and systems to make the environment nature-inclusive. Therefore, it leads to green, resilient environments and to making cities more sustainable. Due to an increasing population, space within and around cities keeps on being urbanised, replacing natural land cover with concrete surfaces. These changes to land use influence and stress the environment, its components, and consequently impact the overall resilience of the space. To understand the interactions and address the adverse impacts these changes might have, it is necessary to identify and define the environment’s components: the institutions, systems, and agents. This paper exemplifies the biophilic approach through a case study in the city of Birmingham, United Kingdom and its biophilic agents. Using the categorisation of agents, the data obtained through in-situ interviews with local professionals provided details on the agent fabric and their dynamics with the other two environments’ components within the climate resilience framework. The qualitative analysis demonstrates the ways biophilic agents act upon and interact within the environment in the realm of urban planning and influence building a climate-resilient city. Their activities range from small-scale community projects for improving their neighbourhood to public administration programs focusing on regenerating and regreening the city. From individuals advocating for and educating on biophilic approach, to private organisations challenging the business-as-usual regulations, it appeared that in Birmingham the biophilic approach has found its representatives in every agent category. Overall, the activities they perform in the environment define their role in building resilience. Nonetheless, the role of biophilic agents appears to be one of the major challengers to the urban design’s status quo and the business-as-usual of urban governance. Researching the environment, focused on agents and their behaviour and activities based on nature as inspiration in addressing climate change on a city level, is an opposite approach to searching and addressing the negative impacts of human activity on the environment. This focus can provide visibility of the local human activities that enhance resilience, while these are becoming a valuable input to city governance and planning, with the potential of scaling it up to other cities and on to regional, national, and global levels.

scholarly journals Whose Health in Whose City? A Systems Thinking Approach to Support and Evaluate Plans, Policies, and Strategies for Lasting Urban Health

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 12225
Author(s):  
Silvio Cristiano ◽  
Samuele Zilio
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
Urban Health ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
World Health ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
The Impact

An increasing interest has been present in scientific literature and policy making for the links between urban environments and health, as also learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic. Collaboration between urban planning and public health is therefore critical for enhancing the capabilities of a city to promote the well-being of its people. However, what leverage potential for urban health can be found in existing plans, policies, and strategies that address urban health? Starting from the relationship between urban systems and health issues, the purpose of this contribution is to broaden the systemic knowledge of urban systems and health so as to try to figure out the impact potential of local urban governance on public health. Considering the systemic nature of health issues, as defined by the World Health Organisation, this is done through a systems thinking epistemological approach. Urban health proposals are studied and assessed in four European cities (Copenhagen, London, Berlin, and Vienna). Current criticalities are found, starting from the guiding goal of such proposals, yet a systemic approach is suggested aimed at supporting and evaluating lasting and healthy urban planning and management strategies.

scholarly journals Actually existing smart citizens: expertise and (non)participation in the making of the smart city

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Shelton ◽  
Thomas Lodato
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The World ◽  
Number Of Individuals

In response to the mounting criticism of emerging ‘smart cities’ strategies around the world, a number of individuals and institutions have attempted to pivot from discussions of smart cities towards a focus on ‘smart citizens’. While the smart citizen is most often seen as a kind of foil for those more stereotypically top-down, neoliberal, and repressive visions of the smart city that have been widely critiqued within the literature, this paper argues for an attention to the ‘actually existing smart citizen’, which plays a much messier and more ambivalent role in practice. This paper proposes the dual figures of ‘the general citizen’ and ‘the absent citizen’ as a heuristic for thinking about how the lines of inclusion and exclusion are drawn for citizens, both discursively and materially, in the actual making of the smart city. These figures are meant to highlight how the universal and unspecified figure of ‘the citizen’ is discursively deployed to justify smart city policies, while at the same time, actual citizens remain largely excluded from such decision and policy-making processes. Using a case study of Atlanta, Georgia and its ongoing smart cities initiatives, we argue that while the participation of citizens is crucial to any truly democratic mode of urban governance, the emerging discourse around the promise of smart citizenship fails to capture the realities of how citizens are actually discussed and enrolled in the making of these policies.

A Brief on the 20th and 21st Century Approaches to City Making

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-67
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Phases Of Development

This chapter will delve on modern approaches to city making (eco-cities, sustainable cities, resilient cities, etc.) explaining their basics and complexity. Additionally, the demands that changing solutions place on the architects, urban planners, and other city designers will be explained. The scope should be treated as the introduction to the circular economy approach; it will also cover other development attitudes where a city was not the initial prime element even if urban planning became one of the main issues during later phases of development. Such attitudes can be traced in the mid-20th century policy making with the car transport being the leading development attitude but having a wide impact on the solutions used in most cities. It will also explain when the urbanization process became part of this economic approach. The chapter will include principles of the modern initiatives in various parts of the world and consider existing movements allowing for a more sweeping coverage.

scholarly journals Mobile Phone Data for Urban Climate Change Adaptation: Reviewing Applications, Opportunities and Key Challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1501
Author(s):  
Sébastien Dujardin ◽  
Damien Jacques ◽  
Jessica Steele ◽  
Catherine Linard
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Spatial Modelling ◽  
Mobile Phone Data ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Digital Information

Climate change places cities at increasing risk and poses a serious challenge for adaptation. As a response, novel sources of data combined with data-driven logics and advanced spatial modelling techniques have the potential for transformative change in the role of information in urban planning. However, little practical guidance exists on the potential opportunities offered by mobile phone data for enhancing adaptive capacities in urban areas. Building upon a review of spatial studies mobilizing mobile phone data, this paper explores the opportunities offered by such digital information for providing spatially-explicit assessments of urban vulnerability, and shows the ways these can help developing more dynamic strategies and tools for urban planning and disaster risk management. Finally, building upon the limitations of mobile phone data analysis, it discusses the key urban governance challenges that need to be addressed for supporting the emergence of transformative change in current planning frameworks.

Embedding futurity in urban governance: Redevelopment schemes and the time value of money

2020 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2093668
Author(s):  
Rachel Weber
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cash Flows ◽  
Value Capture ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Time Value Of Money ◽  
Time Value ◽  
Public Subsidy ◽  
Objects Of Knowledge ◽  
Value Of Money

Whether appraising development projects or underwriting bonds to finance infrastructure, municipal governments rely on “time value of money” (TVM) techniques to discount and convert hypothetical future cash flows into objects of knowledge in the present. I analyze these calculative techniques through participant observation and interviews with professionals involved in redevelopment projects funded by Tax Increment Financing (TIF) in the Midwestern United States. I find that the TVM assumptions used in models to estimate future values help embed financialized modes of futurity into governance, leveraging the tax base for entrepreneurial urbanism. I describe the contexts in which these techniques are used and, drawing on the literature on the social construction of value, the future imaginaries they perform. I explain why the local state adopts the private sector’s low discount rates and the material effects of this mimicry: inflated estimates of future property values, which are capitalized into larger amounts of public subsidy and, possibly, higher actual values. Future values are also the basis for co-rent-seeking, whereby the state attempts to repay debt on infrastructure through the production of surplus value in land. With institutional support, the techniques and assumptions underpinning these land value capture strategies intensify development and create a reinforcing spiral of asset appreciation.

Bureaucrats, Businesses, and Economic Policies in a Globalized China

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Ling Chen
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Foreign Capital ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Single Level ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
National Campaigns ◽  
City Policy

This chapter introduces background on emergence of national campaigns to cultivate domestic competitiveness in contrast to China’s previous role as the “world’s workshop.” It reveals the divergent ways in which localities responded to and carried out policies. The chapter accounts for such variation by breaking down the assumption of a coherent and single-level state that is inherent in the state-centric approach, while at the same time disaggregating the influence of foreign capital assumed by the FDI-driven perspective. By examining the interaction of foreign capital and local states, the chapter discusses how globalization influences the rise of investment-seeking states, the bureaucratic coalitions in city policy making, the effectiveness of policies for local firms, and the varieties of local capitalism. It also discusses the logic of the research design, the major sites of field work, and the sources of qualitative and quantitative data that the book draws on.

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