scholarly journals Squandering the territorial capital in the Balkans? Urban megaprojects between global trends and local incentives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Peric ◽  
Frank D’hondt
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Conceptual Background ◽  
Additional Funding ◽  
Actor Networks ◽  
Political Economic

AbstractThroughout its history, but also squeezed between the current challenges of globalisation and sovereignty, the Balkans has been confronted with a number of different political, economic, environmental, and cultural problems. Such a complex social framework inevitably implies spatial degradation, not only in terms of the urban forms as the final planning product, but also in terms of the nature of the planning process and urban governance. Notably, we assume that territorial capital in the Balkans is under serious threat due to the abuse of legal procedures, the neglect of the public interest and the politicisation of planning. To elucidate this, we focus on the megaprojects Belgrade Waterfront (Belgrade) and Hellinikon (Athens) as examples of urban development that require exceptional conditions such as special regulations, additional funding, long-term timeframes, and ad hoc actor networks. Against the conceptual background of multi-level governance and based on in-depth case studies, we examine the nature of vertical cooperation between authorities at different levels (from supranational to local), horizontal cooperation amongst different stakeholders, and the role of planning professionals who are seen as facilitators in this process. Finally, we point out to the most important conditions that enable a democratic social, political and professional framework for urban megaprojects.

Global Trends in the Political Economy of Smart Grids

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherrelle Eid ◽  
Rudi Hakvoort ◽  
Martin de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Smart Grid ◽  
Smart Grids ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industry Structure ◽  
Electricity Sector ◽  
Distributed Energy ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Regulatory Models ◽  
Global Transition

The global transition towards sustainable, secure, and affordable electricity supply is driving changes in the consumption, production, and transportation of electricity. This chapter provides an overview of three main causes of political–economic tensions with smart grids in the United States, Europe, and China, namely industry structure, regulatory models, and the impact of energy policy. In all cases, the developments are motivated by the possible improvements in reliability and affordability yielded by smart grids, while sustainability of the electricity sector is not a central motivation. A holistic smart grid vision would open up possibilities for better integration of distributed energy resources. The authors recommend that smart grid investments should remain outside of the regulatory framework for utilities and distribution service operators in order to allow for such developments.

scholarly journals Stakeholders in the local service centre: who should be involved in the planning process? Insights from Poland, Czech Republic and Denmark

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (43) ◽  
pp. 91-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Łukasz Damurski ◽  
Jacek Pluta ◽  
Karel Maier ◽  
Hans Thor Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Local Service ◽  
Service Centre ◽  
Starting Point

AbstractLocal service centres play a vital role in shaping the quality of life in urban neighbourhoods. They offer access to essential everyday services (shops, education, healthcare, personal services) and to public spaces. If they are properly planned and managed, they can bring particular added values to a local community, such as social integration and territorial identification. The history of urban planning has produced several patterns of local service centres (ancient agora, mediaeval market square, neighbourhood unit, modern agora) but today a question arises: how can a local service centre be successfully planned and organised in post-modern political practice? How can its potential be realised and the ever-changing needs, expectations and preferences of local communities be met? Who should be involved in those processes? To answer those questions in this paper we refer to citizen participation and public communication concepts, where selecting the appropriate stakeholders emerges as a necessary starting point for effective urban governance. We present the results of in-depth interviews with local actors (local authorities, municipality officials, town planners, non-governmental organisations, local leaders) in Poland (Wrocław, Siechnice, Ostrów Wielkopolski, Warszawa and Zabierzów), Czech Republic (Prague) and Denmark (Copenhagen). Depending on the specific local context, various stakeholders are perceived as essential to the decision-making process. The power relations and problems encountered in implementing public policy in particular locations have been summarised in three sections: relationships between stakeholders, leadership, and good practices. The paper concludes with a list of typical actors who should be involved in planning, building and managing a local service centre in an urbanised neigh-bourhood.

Constructing the “Greener, Greater” City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay K. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Urban Forestry ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Urban Nature ◽  
Sustainability Planning ◽  
Actor Networks ◽  
Internal And External Factors ◽  
Over Time

Chapter seven synthesizes these two cases, making comparisons across the three thematic areas explored in the book—politics, discourse, and materiality. It begins by returning to the central question of why urban forestry was so appealing that it merited its own signature mayoral initiative in PlaNYC, whereas urban agriculture was overlooked. It analyzes the networks, public-private partnerships, elite ties, and bureaucratic structures that were involved in PlaNYC, revealing whose voice was heard and whose voice was ignored in the sustainability planning process. Then, bearing in mind that the politics of urban nature is both framed by storylines and influenced by non-human actants, the chapter widens this analysis from a focus on politics and social networks to a focus on actor-networks and key narratives. Finally, the chapter observes how the cases shift over time in response to both internal and external factors, even within a four year window.

Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday: Perspectives from and of the global South

2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442097211
Author(s):  
Yaffa Truelove ◽  
Natasha Cornea
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Global South ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Significant Heterogeneity ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Actor Networks ◽  
Political Ecologies

In the global South, urban infrastructures and environments are marked by significant heterogeneity and the presence of multiple overlapping systems, configurations and actor networks that keep the city working – water flows, electricity is available, and waste is collected. This occurs in the face of what has been traditionally characterized as failed or incomplete infrastructures and the presence of governance practices that often deviate from formalized norms and policies. However, increasingly academics are arguing that such heterogeneity represents not failure but spaces of possibility and transition. This introduction lays out some of the theoretical underpinnings and conceptual ideas that frame urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday. We then outline how the contributions of this Special Issue (SI) reveal the contested, negotiated, and situated nature of everyday urban governance and the multiple ways that politics become spatialized and power shapes contemporary cities, urban environments, and infrastructures. The SI brings together an interdisciplinary and diverse range of contributions focusing on case studies in secondary and metropolitan cities in India, Tanzania, Malawi, Kenya and Guinea-Bissau, and Brazil. Read together, the papers in this issue contribute to four primary debates and discussions in urban studies and social science studies of the urban environment. These include responding to noted absences in studies of urban political ecologies, contributing to new understandings of the urban political, focusing on the practices that produce political subjectivity and render groups governable, and highlighting everyday spaces of possibility for a more equitable urban future.

scholarly journals Complexity and coordination in London’s Silvertown Quays: How real estate developers (re)centred themselves in the planning process

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-382
Author(s):  
Frances Brill
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
Development Organizations ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Real Estate Developers

This paper contributes to existing research on the relational work of real estate developers to demonstrate how internal corporate complexities create opaqueness in governance settings and limit potential community engagement. This work is particularly pertinent at a time when there is renewed interest in the private sector, yet very little analysis that begins from the perspective of the developer. Drawing on the example of London’s Silvertown, this paper shows how the strategies of development organizations evident in existing research, including their work with the public sector, communities and experts, require multiple levels of internal coordination. I argue that because of these sub-centres of power, developers are able to maintain a more deeply entrenched centrality in urban governance.

scholarly journals ‘Deal or no deal?’ Governing urban infrastructure funding and financing in the UK City Deals

Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (7) ◽  
pp. 1448-1476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter O’Brien ◽  
Andy Pike
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
International Investment ◽  
National State ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Administrative Culture ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Political Economic

How urban infrastructure is funded, financed and governed is a central issue for states at the national, city-regional and city scales. Urban infrastructure is being financialised by financial and state actors and transformed into an asset in the international investment landscape. Local governments are being compelled by national state and financial institutions to be more entrepreneurial in their infrastructure funding and financing and to reorganise their governance arrangements. This article explains the socially and spatially uneven unfolding and implications of urban infrastructure financialisation and local government attempts to implement more entrepreneurial practices and governance forms. The empirical focus is the City Deals in the UK: a new form of urban governance and infrastructure investment based upon negotiated central–local government agreements on decentralised powers, responsibilities and resources. The continued authority of the highly centralised UK national state, its managerialist institutions and conservative/risk-averse administrative culture have constrained urban infrastructure financialisation and entrepreneurial urban governance in the UK City Deals. Situated in their particular spatial, temporal, political-economic and institutional settings, financialisation is understood as a socially and spatially variegated process and urban governance is interpreted as the articulation and mixing of new entrepreneurial and enduring managerialist forms.

scholarly journals Actually existing managerialism: Planning, politics and property development in post-1945 Britain

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802094903
Author(s):  
Alistair Kefford
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Urban Redevelopment ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Property Development ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk

This article engages a long-established paradigm within urban studies: that of the transition from managerialism to entrepreneurialism in late 20th-century urban governance and the associated process of neoliberalisation. It begins from a fundamental intellectual problem; although we are well served with studies of urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberalism, we know surprisingly little of the detailed workings of the ‘pre-neoliberal’, managerial era from the 1940s to the 1970s. In the absence of sustained investigation of this period, many chronologies and critiques of urban transformation rest upon a set of assumptions which – as this article shows – are not always accurate. The article focuses upon Britain, tracing the installation of a modern planning regime in the 1940s and surveying some key features of the UK urban redevelopment regime as it evolved over the ensuing decades. It shows that much of what is held to be paradigmatic of neoliberal urbanism (public–private partnerships, urban entrepreneurialism, financialisation) was already powerfully present within British urbanism in the earlier, managerial era. I highlight in particular the dramatic post-war rise of the UK property development industry, and the new urban forms and norms it generated, as a key product of the era of urban managerialism in Britain. I relate these surprising findings to Britain’s distinctive history and political economy but I also advance arguments that are of wider relevance; around the nature and aims of governance from the 1940s to the 1970s, and how we should best conceptualise and explain processes of neoliberalisation.

Invasion and Occupation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Prusin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Military Power ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Economic Space ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
Political Economic

Examines German rule imposed on Serbia after the collapse in Yugoslavia in April 1941. Obsessed with the preparation for the war against the Soviet Union, Hitler relegated Serbia to a source-depot of food supplies and raw materials within the Third Reich’s political-economic space. As a hinterland for the German forces in the Balkans, Serbia became a “state of emergency,” whereby the system of governing was simplified to the direct chain of command from top to bottom for the purpose of fulfilling specific tasks. Initially, the April catastrophe facilitated the image of Germany as an invincible military power and seemingly extinguished popular will to resistance.

Germany’s Balkan initiative will require new approach

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Situation ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Angela Merkel ◽  
European People’S Party ◽  
Commission President ◽  
Political Economic

Subject Germany’s unilateral Balkan initiative. Significance The Zagreb trip of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European People’s Party (EPP) ‘Spitzenkandidat’ for European Commission president, Manfred Weber, lies behind Germany’s attempt to soothe growing Balkan tensions and keep the region out of the European Parliament (EP) elections. Impacts If EU enlargement is abandoned, it will incline the Balkans further towards such foreign actors as Russia, Turkey and China. Bosnia is drifting towards becoming a failed state and breaking up, which could trigger new violence drawing in Serbia and Croatia. The weakening EU role has contributed to a worsening ethnic, security, political, economic and social situation in every Balkan country.

scholarly journals Acompanhamento e avaliação aos municípios: a perspectiva do sistema articulado de educação

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Leda Lira Costa Barbosa ◽  
Katia Cristina Custodio Brito ◽  
Edna de Jesus Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Education System ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Theoretical Studies ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Educational Management ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Articulated Systems ◽  
Political Economic

In this text, with a critical approach, it is discussed about the thematic management of education, with the aim of understanding the accompaniment and the evaluation of municipalities from the perspective of the planning process as an articulator of the Education System. In general, it is understood that the challenges of accompaniment and evaluation in educational management are implicated in the entire planning process that must take place taking into account its role and importance. The theoretical studies announce/denounce that, despite a normative legal context that establishes democratic evaluation, antagonistic conceptions built in conjunctures political, economic and social situations are identified, which causes tensions and creates the need for deepening within the scope of articulated systems of education, bearing in mind the indispensability of grounding conceptions and practices.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document