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Report on Workshop #3: EU Urban Policy vis a vis the Development of New Practices in Urban Policy of European Towns and Cities.
By Paul Kantor, Fordham University, New York City USA
The workshop papers touched on the micro and macro aspects of strategic intervention in contemporary urban policy. Most of the papers focused on the problems and benefits of area based initiatives for urban regeneration in a variety of European and North American contexts. Specific aspects included public participation, new economic actors, neighborhood management, modes of governance, applying the concept of ecological modernization, and the use of pilot projects to test integrated approaches. Some papers took a larger view of urban policy in a cross national perspective, comparing different strategies of cities within which area based initiatives functioned.
The resulting discussion led to the identification of several themes and tentative conclusions by the workshop participants:
– The precise functions of
area based initiatives in the process of urban regeneration were highly
diverse, suggesting that they often represented very different kinds of
political operations. The various papers highlighted the following forms:
-Area based initiatives to decentralize decision making
and bring in to the planning process new actors, especially
non-bureaucratic players and private interest groups. This invariably
included subjecting regeneration goals to wider public scrutiny. -Area based initiatives that functioned primarily to
enhance consultation and provide feed back to policy makers and
bureaucrats seeking to smooth implementation of major project goals. -Area based initiatives to legitimize the process of
regeneration and provide reassurance to residents without opening up the
political process of policy implementation. -Area based projects that mostly functioned to enhance
the attractiveness of disadvantaged neighborhoods and districts to
private capital, improving their ability to compete for jobs and
investment. The precise function served by the various initiatives
seemed to depend on the specific political and economic context of public
policy. North American projects were more private sector oriented, while
European area based programs nearly always functioned to reform aspects of
the public sector processes of urban regeneration. – The actual function and impact of particular
initiatives raised fundamental issues about the proper scope of public
participation in the regeneration process. In particular, those who carry
out programs sometimes see legitimization of projects as sufficient, while
other actors have expectations that the initiatives should be more than
"therapy" and include reform of the decision making process.
– The impact of area programs on democracy and
governance needed examination. Area projects sometimes had the effect of
privileging particular territorial segments of cities and empowering them.
This raised issues of democratic accountability and responsibility in
guiding economic and social redevelopment.
– Area based programs often raised issues of efficiency
vs. democracy. Debate over tradeoffs between implementation and increasing
access to decision making were an implicit part of the project approach.
The "bottom up" vs "top down" approach was a related
aspect of this.
– How the experience of one country with area programs
could be transported elsewhere is debatable since specific programs must
be sensitive to particular contexts and political functions.
– National urban policies played a strategic role in
making local initiatives important contributors to the regeneration
process. The specific links between local efforts and intergovernmental
contexts should be a subject of further research.
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Workshop 3 |