Urban governance and public leisure policies: a comparative analysis framework

AbstractChina's urbanization has created a large number of urban villages which, although they have been transferred to urban administration, have maintained their collective economies. Using a comparative perspective, this article investigates how villagers, the village collectives and the urban administration organize community governance in three urban villages on the fringes of the cities of Guangzhou, Wuhan and Shenyang. The findings suggest that successful village collective shareholding companies play a leading role in community governance by providing villagers with economic and social welfare, subsidizing community administration services, and mobilizing residents. The comparative analysis also shows that village shareholding companies employ different mechanisms based on the varied histories of their village collective economies, the ability of the village collectives to mobilize resources, and the degree to which the village collectives are engaged in the grassroots administrative structure. The article argues that the “not rural but not urban” governance mode of the urban villages illustrates China's fragmented urbanization planning. At the same time, it illuminates the dynamics of state–society relations during China's urbanization and how landless villagers and village collectives respond to urban transformation by adopting different strategies to preserve their individual and collective interests.

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Between Realism and Revolt

10.1332/policypress/9781529210910.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jonathan Davies

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Financial Crisis ◽

Case Studies ◽

Urban Governance ◽

Global Financial Crisis ◽

State Theory ◽

Regime Theory ◽

Urban Regime Theory ◽

Urban Regime ◽

The Global Financial Crisis

Between Realism and Revolt explores urban governance in the “age of austerity”, focusing on the period between the global financial crisis of 2008-9 and the beginning of the global Coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2019. It considers urban governance after the 2008 crisis, from the perspective of governability. How did cities navigate the crisis and the aftermath of austerity, with what political ordering and disordering dynamics at the forefront? To answer these questions it engages with two influential theoretical currents, Urban Regime Theory and Gramscian state theory, with a view to understanding how governance enabled austerity, deflected or intensified localised expressions of crisis, and generated more-or-less successful political alternatives. It develops a comparative analysis of case studies undertaken in the cities of Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Greater Dandenong (Melbourne), Leicester, Montreal and Nantes, and concludes by highlighting five characteristics that cut across the cities, unevenly and in different configurations: economic rationalism, weak hegemony, retreat to dominance, weak counter-hegemony and radically contagious politicisations.

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Coproducing Urban Governance

Politics and Governance ◽

10.17645/pag.v6i1.1485 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 145-149 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Liz Richardson ◽

Catherine Durose ◽

Beth Perry

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Urban Governance ◽

Future Research ◽

Democratic Values ◽

Local Practices ◽

Daunting Task ◽

Fit For Purpose ◽

Forms Of Knowledge

There are many critiques of existing forms of urban governance as not fit for purpose. However, what alternatives might look like is equally contested. Coproduction is proposed as a response to address complex wicked issues. Achieving coproduction is a highly complex and daunting task. Bottom up approaches to the initiation of coproduced governance are seen as fruitful, including exemplification of utopian alternatives though local practices. New ways of seeing the role of conflict in participation are needed, including ways to institutionalise agonistic participatory practices. Coproduction in governance drives demands for forms of knowledge production that are themselves coproductive. New urban governing spaces need to be coproduced through participative transformation requiring experimentation and innovation in re-designing urban knowledge architectures. Future research in this field is proposed which is nuanced, grounded in explicit weightings of different democratic values, and which mediates between recognition of contingency and the ability to undertake comparative analysis.

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