Abstract
Urban stakeholders face a diverse range of socio-economic, cultural, and technical challenges that each demand diverging and partially conflicting answers. In this context, local and regional public actors’ capacity to smoothly govern decision- making processes is structurally limited. Rather typically, conflicts may occur between public administration and the business community or the civil society. Moreover, actors within public administration notoriously clash over priorities. In this paper, we address the case of decision blockades and non-action in urban development politics. More specifically, we advance a network analytical perspective to explore the dynamics that lead to a political deadlock and persistent non-action in the case of Deutz Harbour in Cologne, Germany. Our findings indicate that a distribution of power and a non-prioritisation of frames effectively hinder action towards decision-making.
Highlights
Urban stakeholders face a diverse range of socio-economic, cultural, and technical challenges that each demand diverging and partially conflicting answers
We advance a network analytical perspective to explore the dynamics that lead to a political deadlock and persistent non-action in the case of Deutz Harbour in Cologne, Germany
As regards the network science, this paper employs an analytical perspective informed by social network analysis (SNA), which perceives networks as “a specific set of linkages among a defined set of actors, with the additional property that the characteristics of these linkages as a whole may be used to interpret the social behavior of the actors involved” (Mitchell, 1969: 2)
Summary
The conversion or preservation of the harbour site in Cologne Deutz had been subject to political debates over more than two decades (Stadt Köln, 2009). In 2015, the council of Cologne decided to convert the industrial harbour site into a mixed-used urban quarter (Stadt Köln, 2015). 20 per cent of the area was derelict and only five per cent of the total turnover of the Port of Cologne was generated on this particular site (Stadt Köln, 2008). Due to the attractive central location and the decreasing level of economic activity, a controversial debate on the future development already went off in the 1990s (Stadt Köln, 2009) and revolved around the socio-economic potentials and ecological benefits of the site (see table 1)
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