Plurality of expert knowledge: public planners’ experience with urban contractualism in Amsterdam

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
Tuna Taşan-Kok ◽  
Martijn van den Hurk
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
The Public ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Dutch Experience ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Deal Making

This chapter focuses on the Dutch planning experience in understanding how planners, as government actors, learn to deal with contracts in complex partnerships with private sector actors. It does so in order to question the technocratic logics of contemporary public–private partnerships (PPPs) focusing on an institutional context where public governments still retain a major leading role in planning for urban development but increasingly operate by devising financial agreements with the private sector. This chapter specifically looks at the use of ‘contracts’ in urban development. Consensus building in the Netherlands is the key approach in any decision-making process, implemented through the ‘polder model’, which is defined as harmonious patterns of interaction between social partners. The Dutch experience demonstrates very clearly that the ways of deal making, and the mechanism of checks and balances in this process, are very dynamic and reflect the changing dynamics of urban governance. This also means that public planners, very consciously, try to reposition themselves to safeguard the public interest.

scholarly journals Governing investors and developers: Analysing the role of risk allocation in urban development

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110178
Author(s):  
Frances Brill
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Rental Housing ◽  
Risk Allocation ◽  
Housing Provision ◽  
Institutional Investment ◽  
Housing Systems ◽  
Governance Analysis

This article argues that urban governance, and academic theorisations of it, have focused on the role and strategies of real estate developers at the expense of understanding how investors are shaped by regulatory environments. In contrast, using the case of institutional investment in London’s private rental housing (Build to Rent), in this article I argue that unpacking the private sector and the development process helps reveal different types of risk which necessitate variegated responses from within the real estate sector. In doing so, I demonstrate the complexities of the private sector in urban development, especially housing provision, and the limitations of a binary conceptualised around pro- and anti-development narratives when discussing planning decisions. Instead, I show the multiplicity of responses from within the private sector, and how these reflect particular approaches to risk management. Uncovering this helps theorise the complexities of governing housing systems and demonstrates the potential for risk-based urban governance analysis in the future.

scholarly journals Public Sector Finances as Determinants of Private Investment in PPP Projects – Experiences from Select Countries

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Satinder Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Financial Health ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Private Partnership ◽  
The Public

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects have been gaining in popularity in many developing countries along with developed countries. While there has been sufficient research on private sector capacity to make the partnership successful, not much research exists on the importance of the financial health of the public sector in PPP projects. The premise of the current research is that strong public sector finances instil confidence in the private sector of governments’ ability to honour PPP commitments and that, in turn, increases the attractiveness of PPP projects. Through a number of case studies relating to government finances of Indian states and other countries, it is seen that governments which have checks and balances to issuance of guarantees and other forms of indirect support for PPP projects are actually able to attract higher levels of PPP investment.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Xuefei Ren
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Chinese City ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
China And India ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Alliance Building

This chapter focuses on urban governance in China that exhibits a territorial logic centered on territorial institutions and authorities, such as local governments and officials. It also talks about urban governance in India that features an associational logic and contingent on alliance building among the state, the private sector, and civil society groups. With historical comparative analyses and ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter explains how the territorial and associational approaches to governing cities in China and India are contested and how both approaches have produced new forms of inequality and exclusion. It analyzes the Chinese city by juxtaposing urban development in China with India. It confirms why India is the only other continent-sized country experiencing a similar scale of urbanization to China.

scholarly journals Perspective trends in financing of housing-and-communal services

2018 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 01050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Vasilyeva
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Partnership ◽  
The Public ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Definite Answer ◽  
The City ◽  
Public And Private Partnerships

The article is devoted to the matters of public-and-private partnerships in the field of housing-and-communal services. The author recognizes, that sustainable urban development requires effective funding with the leading role of municipal finances. At the same time, financing of housing-and-communal sector through the municipal budget only would be too burdensome, while the use of the public-and-private partnership scheme has proved to be the good solution of this problem. However, there is no definite answer: whether the housing-and-communal sector is the most developed zone of public-and-private partnership or, on the contrary, it is an obscure and ineffective zone. The author analyzes the Russian experience of use of the public-and-private partnership scheme in the field of housing-and-communal services and reveals the main problems, which prevent the attraction of the private capital to this sphere. Such rather new trends as so called "box decisions" and "pool" securitization of infrastructure projects are considered in the article. According to the author, the use of these options could contribute to the development of housing-and-communal sector and the city infrastructure as well as the urban development as whole.

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 New town development in Indonesia: Renegotiating, shaping and replacing institutions

2011 ◽  
Vol 167 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen Dieleman
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Infrastructure ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
New Town ◽  
Town Development ◽  
Basic Infrastructure ◽  
Public And Private Sector

This article explores how private sector players in new town development in Indonesia have worked around, shaped and replaced urban governance and planning institutions, effectively re-negotiating the boundaries between public and private sector. While most literature views urban development from the perspective of the state, this article complements this with a study of a prominent private sector player, the Ciputra Group. The results of the study suggest that private sector players have appropriated a much larger role in areas such as urban planning, constructing public infrastructure and urban governance than previously acknowledged. This could happen because public institutions were weak and unable to provide basic infrastructure and services to an increasing middle class. While most literature points at the lack of alignment of private developers with national priorities, this article suggests that a more nuanced view of the respective roles of public and private players in urban development in Indonesia is necessary.

scholarly journals Understanding project mobility: The movement of King’s Cross to Brussels and Johannesburg

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Brill ◽  
Veronica Conte
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Way ◽  
Tacit And Explicit Knowledge

This paper builds on policy mobility research to question how loosely deployed references to specific models or sites reveal how tacit and explicit knowledge are required to effectively replicate urban ideas in new places. Departing from existing analysis of policies and the public sector, we use policy mobility framing to critically engage with the strategies of the private sector. We analyse King’s Cross’ arrival in two large-scale redevelopments: Brussels’ Tour and Taxis and Johannesburg’s Modderfontein, questioning how it was referred to, the success of its deployment and the politics of urban learning. We draw three main conclusions: first, the comparison demonstrates private sector agency in their ability to shape the way expert knowledge arrives. Second, we argue that private sector actors require locally embedded practices and tacit knowledge to leverage international points of reference in their projects. Third, in placing the analytical gaze from the perspective of the project ‘arriving’ and adopting a specifically comparative approach, we reveal the myriad of possibilities developers and consultants face and the politics of what they pick from each. Theoretically, these conclusions draw from economic geography’s politics of learning and mobility research to demonstrate the benefit of analysis that traces a project, rather an idea or a policy, and from ‘arriving at’ and the subsequent assembling of different project components.

scholarly journals Hybrid contractual landscapes of governance: Generation of fragmented regimes of public accountability through urban regeneration

2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442093257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuna Taşan-Kok ◽  
Rob Atkinson ◽  
Maria Lucia Refinetti Martins
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Implementation Process ◽  
Public Accountability ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Plan Implementation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contractual Governance ◽  
Public And Private Sector

In this article we explore the idea of public accountability in the contemporary entrepreneurial governance of cities, which are influenced by market dependency and private sector involvement. We specifically focus on the fragmentation of public accountability through hybrid contractual landscapes of governance, in which the public and private sector actors interactively produce a diversity of instruments to ensure performance in service. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional vague norms and values appealed to by urban planning institutions, to safeguard the public interest. We argue that within these complex contractual governance environments public accountability is produced by public and private sector actors, through highly diverse sets of contractual relations and diverse control instruments that define responsibilities of diverse actors who are involved in a project within a market-dependent planning and policy making environment, which contains context-specific characteristics set by the specific rules of public-private collaboration. These complexities mean public accountability has become fragmented and largely reduced to performance control. Moreover, our understanding of contractual urban governance remains vague and unclear due to very limited empirical studies focusing on the actual technologies of contractual urban development. By deciphering the complex hybrid landscapes of contractual governance, with comparative empirical evidence from The Netherlands, UK and Brazil, we demonstrate how public accountability is assuming a more ‘contractual’ and unpredictable meaning in policy and plan implementation process.

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