Spatial dynamics of homicide in medieval English cities: the Medieval Murder Map project

This paper analyzes linkages between rescaling of commercial property markets and changes in urban governance in Lisbon. The paper aims to improve our understanding of globalization in the sphere of immobile property, and to show to what extent globalization in this limited sense has occurred in Lisbon. In earlier research on Copenhagen, a method and analytical framework was developed for analyzing globalization of commercial property markets and for probing the relations with shifts in urban governance. Here, I attempt to apply these to the context of Lisbon. A framework for analysis is presented, methodological problems are reported and cautious comparisons with Copenhagen are made. I conclude that Lisbon has experienced a regional rescaling of its commercial property market and changes in urban governance, and that these processes are inextricably intertwined. The findings indicate, however, that changes in urban governance have been asymmetrical, benefiting private capital more than local levels of government.

Tales of transforming cities: Transformative climate governance capacities in New York City, U.S. and Rotterdam, Netherlands

ABSTRACTThe concept of sustainability transitions has become increasingly prominent in academic and policy discourses during recent decades, but the importance of the link between knowledge-producing epistemic practices and urban governance has been underappreciated in this discourse. Based on a case study of cycling in Copenhagen between 1900 and 2015, and drawing upon a governmentality-inspired analytical framework, this research demonstrates that transformative governance may be initiated by epistemic practices that render urban systems visible in other ways. Urban cycling has been reconstructed over time in Copenhagen as a traffic safety ‘problem’, a component of the experiential and liveable city, and a health-producing (and hence economically valuable) regional transport mode. The research findings emphasise that epistemic practices can provide a powerful stimulus for creating changes in urban governance. The results also provide support for initiatives to broaden the terms of academic debate on sustainability transitions.

The change of governance form in a contemporary society has influenced on the social process through which collective affairs are managed. The aim of this paper is to articulate urban governance form and its influence on plan-making work in Seoul. In doing so, this paper seeks to both provide an account of governance context and explain how the governance change influence plan-making practices in a city. This work was made on the basis of institutional perspectives on urban governance which is necessary for both understanding and evaluating the level of plan-making exercises. As the result of this study, many changes of the planning system, institutional relations and plan-making styles were identified after the 1990s in Seoul. This paper concludes that urban governance change is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition for more democratic plan-making work. If plan-making had followed the changes in the governance context, it would have the following characteristics: 1) establishing more localized governance; 2) wiping out the authoritarian-style governance of the public sector; and 3) balancing power relations between plan-makers and other stakeholders in the production of a plan.

ABSTRACTThis article examines traders’ resistance practices in Kumasi, Ghana and their significance for changing urban governance in Africa. Conceptually, we introduce “activism” as a new variable into the present concept of urban governance as decentralization, entrepreneurialism and democratization (DED). From an empirical study in Kumasi, Ghana, findings reveal that activism by non-state actors does not only occur at the crucial earlier phases of the urban regeneration process, but extends into the subsequent phases, because urban governance is a continuous process. We demonstrate that activism and a multiplicity of resistance practices are embedded and significant dimensions of everyday urban governance in Africa. This paper argues that the additional dimension – activism – is necessary in rethinking urban governance in Ghana and Africa. This conceptualization views non-state actors not as resisters of urban governance but as activists whose resistance practices and innovations produce tangible and far-reaching changes in city governance. We learn that non-state actors do not rely on the state to control all aspects of urban governance but invent new practices to secure their socio-economic interests and provide them with leverage where they have to negotiate with or stand up to authorities. The study shows that successful change in urban governance is a function of the complementary and strategic adoption of contention, subversion and co-production. When the state perceives that the intervention of other key stakeholders legitimizes the grievances of non-state actors, it responds positively.

In this Urban Pulse essay, we explore post-COVID-19 pandemic experiments with integrating cryptocurrency into urban governance. Drawing on the case of the City of Miami, we draw attention to practices and imaginaries of crypto-urban statecraft. This concept signals the recalibration of urban governance using cryptographic technologies. In Miami, crypto-urban statecraft has emerged as a response to multiple layers of crisis associated with COVID-19 and the Anthropocene: the pandemic's impact on the region's tourism and real estate sectors, and growing fears over the threats climate change poses to the region's real estate markets. In response to these conditions, crypto-urban statecraft leverages fantasies of blockchain-mediated transformations of social and political life to advance two distinct but related strategies: the first, a “hostile takeover” of urban space and territory via elite tech investment and real estate speculation; the second, an attempt to deterritorialize urban government from that same volatile urban space, via an increasingly abstracted “third nature” of an informationalized political economy. Crypto-urban statecraft, we argue, signals ongoing changes in urban governance that may increasingly define the terrain of post-pandemic urban politics.

This paper discusses the ideas of urban competitiveness and urban governance in the context of urban transformation in the age of globalization. There are independent spheres of competitiveness at firm, sectoral, urban and national levels due to their own characteristics. But competitive cities are backed by competitive firms. The scope of urban competitiveness includes quality of life and is wider than that of firm competitiveness. Urban competitiveness and urban governance are interrelated and the pursuit of urban competitiveness will necessitate changes in urban governance. There is a great need to pay more attention to comprehensive competitiveness of cities to ensure economic, social and environmental sustainability. A comprehensive perspective on urban competitiveness and urban governance is required for policy-making. Hong Kong is used as a case study to highlight the changing urban governance and new initiatives of HKSAR government to enhance the urban competitiveness. Nevertheless, the role of government should not be overestimated as government can only have limited impact. The ultimate success needs the active participation of business sector and the community at large. The place promotion after SARS is a good example.

This paper analyzes the difference between traditional urban management mode and modern urban governance mode. It further discusses the characteristics of western urban governance, that is, advocating empowerment, emphasizing multi-governance system, focusing on process guiding and regional guiding in decision-making. Reasons for the changes in urban governance are further discussed in this paper, that is, competitions between cities have led to entrepreneurial government action. With the rise of non-governmental organization, the way that government makes policy has changed. Due to the advancement of the democratization, residents have involved in urban governance. The author also put forward her views on the enlightenment brought by western urban governance to city development of China at the end of this paper.

Urban Governance and the Politics of Climate change

This article critically evaluates the practices of entrepreneurial urban governance in China’s urban redevelopment under state-led financialized urbanism. The research identifies a new trajectory of transition in urban governance from the growth machine mentality into a new fashion of debt machines. Urban redevelopment has enhanced land use efficiency, but equitable outcomes for various stakeholders remain elusive. A peculiar pattern of changes in urban governance is unveiled to show how a municipal government under a Party-state has manipulated financial instruments for revenue generation and political ambition. This study contributes insights into the diverse trajectories of changing urban governance in the era of financialization.

This paper considers how changes in urban governance in Delhi over the last two decades have influenced the provision of health care services. It begins by describing the introduction of, or return to, elected governments for the National Capital Territory of Delhi and for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. It then discusses public health care, which in effect serves low-income groups as most higher-income groups now use private services, and how this has changed, drawing on interviews and direct observations of elected representatives and officials at state and municipal levels, political cadres, NGOs, members of residential welfare associations and public health care users. The research focused on four municipal wards that included a middle-class area, a mixed-income area, a ward where many slum communities had been relocated and an “urban village”. The research also included an analysis of the priority given to health care issues (and what those issues are) in the Legislative Assembly and in the Municipal Health Department and Municipal Health Committee. The paper suggests that the opening by state government of new invited spaces for resident welfare associations meant that the elected members of the Legislative Assembly and of the municipal government were by-passed. It increased the influence of resident welfare associations, but these are a feature of middle-class areas whose inhabitants use private health care. It avoided contestation, as the state could decide who was invited. The role of NGOs as advocates for the urban poor also diminished, as many were drawn into becoming implementers of government programmes. In effect, this increase in participation can be seen as a new form of centralization, strengthening the position of senior bureaucrats and by-passing the elected politicians.

In recent years competition between European cities has increased. This article looks at the implications for planning projects in the context of changes in urban governance. Growth machine and urban regime theories are introduced and three case studies explored in detail. Plans and development projects resulting from the arrival of the Oresund bridge in Malmö are examined. In Malmö, public planning is being bypassed in favour of local corporatist objectives and this experience is compared to the approaches developed in the strongly competitive cities of Birmingham and Lille. International comparison reveals the national distinctiveness of the responses to competition. In Birmingham there has been a local political reaction to the economic development‐led city centre strategy, but British central‐local relations restrict the ability of the city to change course. Developments in Lille reflect an integrated public sector approach to the development and marketing of the city and its region. In the three cases social and environmental issues have been raised but the imperatives of competition remain dominant.

Embedding co-production of nature-based solutions in urban governance: Emerging co-production capacities in three European cities

In Sweden, an icon of the post-1945 bureaucratic welfare state, the Social Democrats themselves characterized the 2010 parliamentary elec-tion as a ‘catastrophe for the party’ and were shaken by the fact that only slightly less than a third of the electorate supported them. Yet the norms and forms of welfare state government has been drifting for more than three decades (Blyth 2001). This chapter will address this drift through a focus on changes in urban governance in relation to commer-cial real estate ownership concentration in inner-city Gothenburg. In Gothenburg, with a City Council coalition majority based on the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party, public-private cooperation in inner-city planning and governance is administered through a private joint-stock company called Inner City Gothenburg Co.

This introduction underlines some of the topics the present thematic issue focuses on, such as segregation and security, control and creativity, resistance and networking, presenting continuities and changes in urban governance and urban justice in different parts of the world. We argue that urban theory should be rethought to consider cities as fora that recentre the ‘political’ in relation to gentrification, rights to the city, justice, and alternative urbanisms. We highlight structural aspects of urban policy and planning, including the intersection of mega-development projects with disruptive acts of social dispossession and efforts to depoliticise institutional control. Simultaneously, we emphasise tactics that reinterpret hierarchical modes of governance and create initiatives for enhanced justice through claim-making, negotiation, improvisation, acts of everyday resistance and organised opposition.