New urban governance processes on the level of neighbourhoods

Abstract

The spatial concentration of multi-dimensional problems in parts of urban areas and the related trend towards socio-economic and ethnical fragmentations is a known but unanswered question in international urban research as well as of high socio-political relevance. The present study analyses a new model of governing at the urban level which can be described by “New Urban Governance” and the influence it has on the development of urban areas. Beside the term “governance” key terms such as “network of actors”, “change of institutions”, “participation”, “empowerment”, “activating state” or “civil society” are involved in this study, too. In line with a multi-level analysis of New Urban Governance processes the small-dimensional level of a neighbourhood is important here entailing two other topics like “neighbourhood management” and “neighbourhood governance”. With a view to an integrated sustainable urban development the transformation of the urban political-administrative control system into a New Urban Governance culture is analysed in an example of the URBAN II operational programme implemented in Dortmund-Nordstadt where neighbourhood approaches and integrated action programmes are being tried out. The objective of this study is to disclose the connections between actions of actors, political-administrative structures and relevant institutions, the disputes over “space and power” as well as the utilization, adaptation and shaping of place between “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategies against a background of a modern institutional and action-theoretical-orientated geographic urban research to detect entrenched obstacles to and prospects for urban development programmes.