PROGRESSIVE AND SUSTAINED SCHOOL REFORMS: FRAMING AND COALITION BUILDING IN SWISS CITIES

ABSTRACT: Urban politics in the early 21st century is structured by conflicts over social cohesion and economic competitiveness. Education policy takes center stage in this struggle as schools are institutions of both social and economic reproduction. I draw on arguments of urban regime and policy frame analysis to examine the politics of urban school reform in two Swiss cities. Empirically, I analyze neighborhood‐embedded bottom‐up school reforms committed to social cohesion. The paths these reforms eventually take were shaped by different coalitions geared around specific school policy frames. Frames indeed play a crucial role in building a coalition toward progressive school reforms. In addition, their sustainability in a political environment, increasingly shifting toward development policies, hinges on the dominant frame underlying the reforms as well as the properties of the network advancing them.     

SCALES,REGIMES, AND THE URBAN GOVERNANCE OF GLASGOW

ABSTRACT: Over the last two decades, urban regime theory has become one of the most dominant paradigms of thought in urban studies. In particular, regime theory offers a complex account of urban governance, or how local governments, the business communities, and community organizations gain the capacity to shape the policies that affect cities, that is, govern. Although regime theory is a dominant theory in urban studies, it does, nevertheless, have its share of detractors, and one criticism has been its failure to take into account geographical scale. While there is an acknowledgment in urban regime theory of wider economic processes, such as the broad transformations in international and national trade, investment, finance, etc., or the role played by federal or state governments, the bias has remained mostly local, particularly in regards to urban governance. In urban regime theory literature the policies and actions of international and national institutions either nicely conjoin with local interests or are nearly totally absent. Due to this oversight, urban regime theory tends to underemphasize how the capacity to govern a city effectively is sometimes the result of the interaction of actions of people at multiple scales. This article attempts to address this oversight in an analysis of Glasgow, Scotland, during the 1980s. By focusing on the role of the European City of Culture in the revitalization of the city, this article demonstrates how the capacity for a ruling coalition to transform the city and to govern effectively was the consequence of the policy and administrative actions undertaken at other geographical scales.     

Regime Theory,State Government,and a Takeover of Urban Education

Abstract State government possesses the resources and authority to directly shape urban education policy but regime theorists understate the roles governors, state legislatures, and other state actors play as members of urban education regimes. This article examines the state takeover of schools in Newark, New Jersey to demonstrate why and how a state government leads an urban education regime. The Newark case illustrates how politics and structural conditions motivated state government to change the nature of the education regime and directly shape education policy at the local level. It highlights the role state government played in reshaping an educator‐centered coalition that operated a poorly performing school district. Despite the existence of a new regime, Newark students’ achievement scores have not significantly improved, and in some instances they have declined under the state‐led regime. This article encourages scholars of city politics to continue to investigate state government's role in urban governing coalitions because state political players maintain the capacity and motivation to join urban regimes.     

The Intergovernmental Regime and Public Policy in Hartford,Connecticut

Regime theorists have not included state government as a member of urban governing coalitions even though governors and state legislatures have the constitutional authority and fiscal resources that can facilitate local governance. In this research, I analyze economic development and education policies in Hartford, Connecticut to illustrate that the governor is a leader of Hartford’s regime. Like other regime actors, the governor provides selective inducements to other coalition members to gain support for his policies. The Hartford regime came to include the governor because the city lost much of its business and political leadership, and management and accountability problems crippled public policy. Because governors have the capacity to act as a powerful regime partner, it is important to study the effect they have on urban governance.     

URBAN REGIMES AND RACIAL POLITICS IN NEW ORLEANS

ABSTRACT: This paper describes and analyzes the nature of the New Orleans urban regime focusing on the first term of Sidney Barthelemy, the second black mayor of New Orleans (1986–1990). First, because the authors believe that regime theory needs to be more carefully theorized in relation to racial politics, they begin by discussing the changing relationship of blacks to the prevailing New Orleans regime. Second, in analyzing this racial politics, they focus on the relationship between the evolving structure of the electoral coalition, governing coalition development strategies, and the stability of the governing regime. They conclude that a caretaker regime is very difficult to maintain in a city with a recent majority black electorate. Such an electoral coalition has a tendency to support either a progressive or corporate regime. Finally, the authors pay particular attention to the development of the consensus-seeking para-apparatus, its relationship to racial politics, and its affect on development policy, governing coalition politics, and regime transition.     

URBAN REGIMES AND NEIGHBORHOOD MOBILIZATION AGAINST URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: The Case of an Arab-Jewish Neighborhood in Israel

ABSTRACT: This study deals with the effects of an urban bureaucratic regime on urban development and neighborhood mobilization. It examines the sociospatial transformations in an Arab-Jewish neighborhood in a major city in Israel. During the period of 1948–1990, the neighborhood experienced population turnover, planned deterioration and decline, and subsequent renewal and gentrification. The paper deals with the factors which shaped those policies and processes. the author argues that the political economy of Israel contributed to the emergence of a bureaucratic urban regime which effectively drove off all private entrepreneurial involvement in the area's development process. It is also shown that the inherent features of the bureaucratic regime facilitated community mobilization opposing development plans and made the governing agencies vulnerable to citizens' protests and court rulings.     

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DECISIONMAKING IN A FRAGMENTED POLITY: Convention Center Expansion in Kansas City

ABSTRACT: Amid recent discussions of the shaping of economic development policies by urban governing regimes, little has been said about how these policies are made in cities which lack an effective governing coalition. This paper examines the planning of a major convention center expansion in Kansas City, Missouri, a city with a crumbling governing regime. That planning process does not conform to the work of Peterson or to Stone's model of regime policymaking where economic development policymaking is accomplished with ease. It conforms instead to a hyperpluralistic model wherein social production becomes a difficult and expensive proposition, requiring the building of a coalition on each issue anew. These findings may have broad relevance because many US cities appear to operate without effective governing coalitions.     

Renewing urban renewal in France,the UK and the Netherlands: Introduction

Three central questions are addressed in this ‘policy and practice’ special issue of the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment; the extent and the nature of changing approaches to urban renewal in France, the UK and the Netherlands; the effects this has on the articulation between public, private and civil actors; and the capacity of different actors to deal with their new roles and positions. This introduction compares the contributions to the special issue. A framework for this comparison is developed and then applied to the three countries under scrutiny. It appears that the objectives of urban renewal have not fundamentally changed. However, a common tendency towards greater involvement of local actors leads to more network-oriented types of co-ordination and thus influences the roles of both public and private actors. Notwithstanding this evolution, the central and crucial role of public actors in urban renewal persists.     

Manufacturing Industrial Decline: The Politics of Economic Change in Chicago, 1955–1998

Contemporary urban political economy emphasizes the role of structural factors in explaining the deindustrialization of cities in the post‐World War II era. Urban economic restructuring, by most accounts, has left city officials with few choices other than to pursue corporate‐centered economic development strategies emphasizing downtown‐area commercial and residential growth. In Chicago, however, a corporate‐center redevelopment strategy advanced by a coalition of downtown business leaders competed with a production‐oriented strategy articulated by a coalition of neighborhood organizations, manufacturers, and labor. Centrally located industrial districts facing gentrification pressures became contested terrain, and manufacturers ultimately benefited from protective measures put in place by a sympathetic administration. This essay argues that urban economic restructuring is open‐ended and politically contested. It concludes that a fuller appreciation of the contingency of urban economic development would help uncover viable regime types featuring governing coalitions that include both community‐based organizations and neighborhood business establishments.     

FOLLOWING THE SIGNS: APPLYING URBAN REGIME ANALYSIS TO A UK CASE STUDY

ABSTRACT: As the debate continues regarding the applicability of urban regime analysis in a UK context, three aspects stand out as highly significant: the target for analysis, the mode of scrutiny, and the context of local governing arrangements with its implications for interdependence as an impetus for co‐operation. This article will examine urban regime analysis and the move from government to governance in order to answer why and how the private, voluntary and public sectors might be inclined to collaborate in regimes. In addition, the regime analysis will provide the parameters for examination whilst the issue of governance will afford context for local governing arrangements. Although some issues require slight reframing to reflect the UK context, the article will follow a rigorous framework for examination utilizing the full weight of regime analysis as articulated by Stone such that it could not be accused of “concept stretching.” Far from it: Through the examination of an informal partnership, a coalition of actors from the public, private, and voluntary sectors that has been in existence for more than 13 years, the article focuses, specifically, on the long‐term, less visible aspects of local governance. As such, it is able to demonstrate how economic and political change can have a tangible effect on the manifestation of interdependence as an impetus for co‐operation, not only for this specific locale but also for other cities facing similar challenges.     

城中村改造中的“增长联盟”研究——以珠海市山场村为例

分析了我国城中村改造中参与主体的联盟、组织和作用机制等问题,指出当前我国城中村改造与城市更新的地方政治结构不同,解释城市更新的“增长联盟”框架不能直接套用到城中村改造中去:一方面,城中村改造突破了“增长联盟”的主体关系,投资方与原有村民结成了紧密的联盟关系,打破了原有政府权力和开发资本的联盟;另一方面,增长与反增长的边界变得模糊,在经济利益的影响下,不同参与主体倾向于选择性增长(介于增长与反增长之间)。以珠海市山场村改造为例,实证了上述研究发现,进一步完善和发展了原有的“增长联盟”理论。     

Infrastructures of displacement: the transpacific travel of urban renewal during the Cold War

ABSTRACT

By examining South Korea’s urban renewal regime in the 1960s, this paper sheds light on hitherto underexplored transpacific connections in the history of urban renewal. The period in question is crucial in that both Washington and Seoul came to regard urban space as a means to maintain an anti-communist regional order, which prefigured major urban transformations in South Korea for the decades that followed. With a focus on the circulation of technologies of governing urban space through particular forms of urban renewal, this paper shows that urban renewal in the mid-twentieth century illuminates the function of three interrelated phenomena during the period: (1) the formation of the transpacific network of power and knowledge; (2) the establishment of legal, financial, and symbolic grounds on which the ideal of homeownership could operate; and (3) the transport of what I call infrastructures of displacement. In doing so, this paper suggests a way of looking at urban renewal in the mid-century as the geopolitical project of disseminating ideas, norms, and technologies of governing cities during the Cold War.     

The Europeanization of urban governance in Greece: a dynamic and contradictory process

The introduction of EU funding programmes in Greek cities has led to new forms of governance, mainly including the emergence of new institutions for partnerships and citizens' participation. Based on theories of Europeanization and on theories of re‐scaling, this paper examines the magnitude and the direction of change in Greek urban policy. It suggests that the new institutions emerging from the Europeanization process face a number of constraints and contradictions emanating from the Greek political system. Empirical evidence shows that three endogenous factors of the Greek political system had impacted negatively upon these partnerships, favouring short‐term institutionalization, unequal power relations inside the partnerships and lack of trust and commitment. These factors amount to the financial and political dependence of local authorities to the state, the weak civil society and, finally, the individualistic political culture. However, processes of policy learning and capacity building have also arisen, presenting new challenges for the transformation of urban policy.     

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO URBAN RENEWAL: The Israeli Experience

ABSTRACT: This article examines the implementation shortcomings of Israel's Project Renewal the major social welfare and urban renewal program of the Begin governments (1977–1984). Despite a government decision to have a unified comprehensive program, the process of implementation resulted in at least three separate and independent programs. Many modern nation states, including the United States, have implemented urban renewal and social welfare policies designed to deal with spatially based social inequality. The Israeli effort shares with them the participation of several autonomous agencies. The emphasis, therefore, focuses on those factors that either facilitate or constrain the coordination of the inputs of two or more separate agencies in policy formulation and service delivery. The findings should lend themselves to a comparison of how the political institutions of different countries affect the implementation of similar policy efforts. These findings suggest that the dichotomy between unitary and federal systems explains less about the causes of shortcomings in policy implementation than do other variables Each country has its own political institutions and variables that help to explain policy implementation There is an additional lesson for public policy which this study underscores. Regardless of the formal structure of government, proposals to achieve greater coordination in the formulation and implementation of national and urban policies assume incorrectly that there is either the existing capacity or the ability to impose coordination, or that all participants wild “naturally” agree to coordinate. Reality was otherwise in the case of Project Renewal in Israel, as it was in similar programs in the United States including OEO and Model Cities     

URBAN REGIMES AND THE CAPACITY TO GOVERN: A Political Economy Approach

ABSTRACT: Regime theory starts with the proposition that governing capacity is not easily captured through the electoral process. Governing capacity is created and maintained by bringing together coalition partners with appropriate resources, nongovernmental as well as governmental. If a governing coalition is to be viable, it must be able to mobilize resources commensurate with its main policy agenda. The author uses this reasoning as the foundation/or comparing regimes by the nature and difficulty of the government tasks they undertake and the level and kind of resources required for these tasks. Political leadership, he argues, is a creative exercise of political choice, involving the ability to craft arrangements through which resources can be mobilized, thus enabling a community to accomplish difficult and nonroutine goals.     

The Politics of Alternative Economic Development: Revisiting the Stone‐Imbroscio Debate

Abstract: A recent debate between Clarence Stone and David Imbroscio focused on the transformative potential of regime theory. Imbroscio proposes a research agenda for regime theory in which the identification of alternative economic development strategies and ideas figures prominently. Stone questions whether such a shift represents a theoretical advance, arguing that Imbroscio's proposed agenda fails to link ideas with political action. This article seeks to further this debate through a case study of an alternative economic development strategy in Chicago, the Local Industrial Retention Initiative (LIRI). The experience of the LIRI program partially supports Imbroscio's optimism about the regime altering potential of alternative economic development strategies and ideas. However, it also suggests that regime theory's lessons about coalition building are crucial in moving such alternatives forward.     

变革中的香港市区重建政策--新思维、新趋向及新挑战

随着由完全市场机制主导、以商业模式运作、忽略社会功能的旧的城市更新体制的失败,香港的城市更新政策近年来开始出现一种新思维、新趋向,体现在政府角色的进一步加强、全面化更新理念的主张以及以人为本、更注重社会效益的城市更新价值观的初步形成。然而,在现实环境及管治体制等各种复杂因素的制约下,新思维还难以取得显著成效、难以真正达成效率与公平的双重目标。     

REGIONAL GROWTH MANAGEMENT REGIME: The Case of Portland,Oregon

ABSTRACT: Students of regime politics have tacitly agreed that the geographic limits of the regime will be the city limits or, at most, the boundaries of the metropolitan area. This is understandable in light of the fact that much of the regime literature focuses on the politics of urban development, that is, the politics involved in the implementation of growth strategies. However, if a ruling political coalition pursues the objective of achieving a plan of growth management for an entire urban region, environmental, land use, and regulatory considerations come into play that have implications far beyond the city limits. In that case, it becomes essential for the regime to establish a regional political base. In this article, I consider the sources of support for such a regime by focusing on the case of Portland, Oregon. I also consider the implications for regime theory of an urban regime that accepts the daunting challenge of constructing a system of regional growth management, as well as a regime that is not confined to a particular urban area.     

Re-imagining City Waterfronts: A Comparative Analysis of Governing Renewal in Adelaide,Darwin and Melbourne

Urban waterfront regeneration is one of the largest changes to the structure of Australian and many world cities over the last two decades. There is no comparative research which evaluates their governing with particular attention to the relationship and responsibility of quasi-public agencies and local government. This study advances the competitive-city paradigm from a focus on global cities to an examination of inter-city urban competition between differently located cities in the urban hierarchy by comparing waterfront renewal projects located in Adelaide, Darwin and Melbourne. Through interview, policy and document analysis, the article offers preliminary insights on current and emergent governance arrangements involved in urban waterfront renewal. In an era of increasing inter-urban competition, the study reveals hybrid forms of urban governance are driving the planning and delivery of these three waterfront renewal projects. Further, there exists a ‘knotty’ tension between these models of urban governance and the capacity for meaningful consultation and participation between governments.     

Critique: building appraisals Álvaro Siza's Bonjour Tristesse: a symphony for a big city

The directors of the Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin (IBA-Berlin) famously created a Janus face for urban renewal through the 1980s, as an attempt to cope with Berlin's struggle for identity during the Cold War. IBA-Berlin's intellectual framework was divided between Kleihues's critical reconstruction of the past (IBA-Neubau), and Hämer's careful urban renewal (IBA-Altbau). While the IBA-Neubau generated famous buildings designed by architects such as Aldo Rossi, Oswald Mathias Ungers, John Hejduk and Peter Eisenmann, the production of the IBA-Altbau section was somewhat more discreet, yet with conspicuous buildings designed by Hinrich and Inken Baller, and by Álvaro Siza.

In this article I will focus on Álvaro Siza's Bonjour Tristesse, designed and built in the early 1980s under the auspices of the IBA-Altbau section. Situated in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, this building simultaneously incorporates and transgresses the urban renewal principles of both Kleihues and Hämer. It challenges existing conventions and typologies, and caters for the urban experience of the migrants arriving in the big city, activating the creative potential of the ‘as found’ as a strategy to enhance collective memory and promote political engagement through conflictive consensus. This article examines the design decision-making process of the Bonjour Tristesse, and the coeval reception of the project. It demonstrates the extent to which Siza's critical account of a confrontation with reality contributed to the development of a project in tune with the ambivalence of modernity, a building that is at the same time strange and familiar, detached and situated, sterile and contaminated.