School of the Built Environment
Urban Governance
Sue Brownill
Department of Planning
Introduction
• Governance is central to debates covering in network
• Two key questions in the proposal
• How is urban governance responding to challenges of
globalisation and climate change?
• Are different, more flexible forms of governing capable of
meeting such challenges emerging?
• But multi-faceted: about climate change and propoor/socially inclusive strategies in an era of
competitiveness
• Poses challenges to urban governments and to how
we understand and characterise urban governance.
• In particular move beyond competencies to explore
multiple modes of governance
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Exploring Governance
• Context
• Framing governance
• The UK experience, with an emphasis on the
Thames Gateway
• Some implications for the network
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Context
• Governance and sustainability, governance for
sustainability
• Multi-level governance – global to local
• Activity on the ground and growing evidence base of
drivers of and barriers to ‘effective’ governance for
sustainability
• Debates about role and nature of governance
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Ways of Seeing
• Narratives of
governance, localism
and sustainability
• Some issues in
practice –but
generally a credible
story
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Some alternative narratives
• Neoliberal governance
• Commitment to markets
• Forms of governance which promote
competitiveness, not inclusivity
• Shift of power to private economic
interests
• Contain tendencies to ‘governance
failure’
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Different Modes or Models of Governance
• Some trying to develop a more nuanced approach around
competing discourses and modes of governance
• Raco -hybridity
• Within these broader debates Bulkeley et al identify a number of
different modes of governance in relation to climate change
have been identified in previous work
• Self-governing
• Provision
• Regulation
• Enabling
• Partnership/networked
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Some Examples
Self-governing/
participatory
Regulation/Authority
Energy efficiency in
municipal buildings
Strategic planning,
targets, laws
Provision
Public transport,
recycling
Enabling
Campaigns, advice
Partnership
Flex-fuel
collaboration Sao
Paulo
An Illustration of Contrasting Modes of Governance; Newman
Decentralisation
Local Flexibility
Networks – flows of power
Diversity of interests
Stakeholders
Consensus
Capacity Building
Empowerment
Counter-publics
Citizen power
SELF-GOVERNANCE
MODEL
OPEN
SYSTEMS
MODEL
Towards
Continuity
Towards
competitiveness
and multi-level
government
RATIONAL GOAL
MODEL
HIERARCHY
MODEL
Formal processes
Statutory
requirements
Representative
democracy
Formal
power/authority
Performance Indicators
What works – guidance
Managerial Framing of
issues
Managerial power
Consumer preferences
and service
improvement
Centralisation
The UK Experience
• Interesting times
• Example of Thames Gateway and Sustainable
Communities
• Example of New Conventional Wisdom – governance
as key to reconcling competitiveness and
sustainability/equity
• However are they complementary or mutually
exclusive? Are forms of governance more likely to
promote competitiveness than sustainability? What
modes of governance can be seen? Are they fit for
purpose? What are the drivers and barriers that
emerge?
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Thames Gateway before:
Eastern Quarry, Ebbsfleet 1997
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Thames Gateway after:
Ebbsfleet Valley 2010
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Thames Gateway
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Aims and Objectives
Our aim is to use growth to
regenerate and develop the
Thames Gateway in a
sustainable way. We want to
create an attractive
environment where people will
choose to live, work and spend
their leisure time (Delivering
the Thames Gateway)
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The Governance of the Gateway
Key.
Sub-regional Partnerships
Thames Gateway London Partnership
Thames Gateway South Essex Partnership
Thames Gateway Kent Partnership
Local Deveivery vehicles
London Thames Gateway
UDCWoolwich Regeneration Agency
Kent Thameside elivery Board
Renaissance Southend
Basildon Renaissance Partnership
Swale Forward
Invest Bexley
Jessop Governance Failure
•
•
•
Self-Organisation
Intersection with other governance structures – issue of resources
Economic context
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Governance Failure?
• Governability v flexibility – crisis of leadership
• Competition v co-operation
• Accountability v efficiency
• Competitivenss v sustainability
• Who is a sustainable citizen
• Open-ness v closure
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Related Issues
• Joining Up: sustainable communities need coordinated delivery
• Funding for infrastructure
• Conflict over who pays between central and local
govt eg London Riverside and between public and
private
• Devolution of responsibility of delivery without power
of resources
• Ability to meet targets ; constraints of the wider
economic context. What trends are showing versus
what is in strategies
• Constraints of strategy - refusal to intervene in
location decisions
• Impact of potential downturn in economy
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Wider Economic Context
• Ability to meet targets ; constraints of the
wider economic context. What trends are
showing versus what is in strategies
• Constraints of strategy - refusal to intervene
in location decisions
• Impact of potential downturn in economy
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Overcoming Failure?
• Despite this there have been some examples
of ‘success’ in Gateway and elsewhere,
suggests that spaces are opened up within
governance arrangements
• Guided bus in North Kent
• Attempts to link social inclusion to new
developments
• Greenwich Millennium village
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Some Issues to Explore
•
Confirms pictures of drivers and barriers eg
• Leadership
• Resources, knowledge and funding
• ‘fit’ with spatial area
• Enabling policy framework
• Capacity for ‘self governing’
• Involving communities
• Framing of issue as of local importance
• Horizontal and vertical integration
• structures
•
But also suggests that ability to act through and co-ordinate different
modes of governing will be critical to success alongside the modes of
governance available to municipalities
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Some Issues to Explore
• Conceptual frameworks; modes/models of
governance
• Resilience and modes of governance
• Joining the gaps between competitiveness and
sustainability and participation
• Governing the future
• Mitigation and adaptation?
• Further case studies and examples
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Over to you?
•
•
•
•
Examples
Thoughts
Issues
Areas for further work
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