Participation, Leadership and Urban Sustainability

Participation, Leadership
and Urban Sustainability





Final Research Report




















This project is sponsored by the Fifth Research Framework Programme
of the European Commission, City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage,
Key Action 4

September 2004

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PREFACE

This report has been prepared for the European Commission by the PLUS Coordination
Team at the Cities Research Centre in the University of the West of England, Bristol in
England. On behalf of all the partners in the project we would wish to thank not only the
Commission for supporting the project, but also all our colleagues in the cities and
universities of the participating countries as well as Eurocities and Quartiers en Crise.
We would also wish to thank Jane Newton, Julie Triggle and Nadia Withers from the
UWE research administration office in Bristol for their invaluable and unflagging support.


Murray Stewart
Laurence Carmichael
David Sweeting
Joanna Howard
Charissa de Zeuw


Cities Research Centre
University of the West of England, Bristol

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FINAL RESEARCH REPORT

SEPTEMBER 2004





CONTENTS


THE PROJECT............................................................................................................... 1
THE PARTNERS............................................................................................................ 2
METHODOLOGY AND PROGRAMME OF WORK ....................................................... 3
THE NATIONAL CASE STUDIES.................................................................................. 4
England..................................................................................................................................... 4
Germany ................................................................................................................................... 6
Greece....................................................................................................................................... 8
Italy.......................................................................................................................................... 10
Netherlands ............................................................................................................................ 12
New Zealand........................................................................................................................... 14
Norway.................................................................................................................................... 16
Poland..................................................................................................................................... 18
Sweden ................................................................................................................................... 20
CULCI – A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS...................................................................... 22
Context ................................................................................................................................... 22
Leadership.............................................................................................................................. 24
Community Involvement ....................................................................................................... 26
Institutional Capacity ............................................................................................................ 28
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE ..................... 30
General Findings ................................................................................................................... 31
Lessons for Policy and Practice .......................................................................................... 33
DISSEMINATION ......................................................................................................... 34
Published Books.................................................................................................................... 34
Distance Learning Materials ................................................................................................. 35

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THE PROJECT



The Participation, Leadership and Urban Sustainability (PLUS) project, funded by the European
Commission from the European Union’s Fifth Framework Programme, examines how leadership
and community involvement can combine to lead to better policies for cities. The cross-national
project has involved universities and cities from across Europe (with an associated project from
New Zealand) in research in a range of different sized cities from nine countries. In each city,
there have been two case studies of policy areas relevant to all cities - social inclusion and
economic competitiveness.


Background

Quality of life in the towns and cities of Europe depends to a considerable extent on the quality of
urban governance, and policy makers at all levels of government now understand the need for
better sustainable approach to urban development. In 1998, the European Commission's
framework document Sustainable Urban Development in the European Union, analysing the
socio-economic and environmental challenges facing European urban areas, advocated both for
improvement in urban governance with citizens' participation, and improvement in policies linked
to the urban environment. As the effectiveness of urban governance is of key importance in the
achievement of good urban living in Europe, city governments must develop institutional forms
and styles of leadership that promote decisiveness, facilitate the use of local knowledge and
enhance public support.

Some European cities have already made progress towards these objectives, achieving more
sustainable urban policies by combining strong urban leadership with expanded involvement of
citizens in local decision-making. But, not all cities are able to tackle new urban challenges, and
the European Commission's 2000 Urban Audit unveiled considerable variation in the quality of
urban life across Europe.

The Project

Set in that European context, the Participation, Leadership and Urban Sustainability (PLUS)
project, funded by the European Commission, examined how leadership and community
involvement could combine to lead to better policies for cities.

PLUS aimed to promote effective urban governance by identifying approaches to city leadership
and community involvement that work well. This was achieved by analysing, comparing and
contrasting alternative approaches to urban leadership and community involvement, promoting
better urban leadership and more effective citizen involvement, studying urban governance in the
fields of economic competitiveness and social inclusion, bringing together academics and policy-
makers and producing practitioner-oriented outputs. Altogether, the comparative analysis
demonstrates the significance of local action, the difficulties of, conditions for, and successes in
sustainable urban governance.

The project has involved academic partners in the nine countries, together with two partner cities
from each country. Eurocities and Quartiers en Crise have also been partners. There have been
four Advisory Committee meetings during the project, in Athens, Heidelberg, Turin and Bristol, at
which the city partners have commented on and contributed to, the progress made. We are
grateful for their support and advice throughout.


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THE PARTNERS









Academic
Country
City Partners
Partner
University of the West
Stoke-on-Trent City
England
Bristol City Council
of England, Bristol
Council
Technical University of Landeshauptstadt
Germany
Heidelberg
Darmstadt
Hannover
Municipality of Athens Volos Municipal
Greece
Panteion University
Development Agency Enterprise
Commune di Cinisello
Italy
Politecnico di Milano
Turin
Balsamo
Netherlands
University of Twente
Enschede
Roermond
New Zealand
Massey University
Christchurch
Waitekere City
Norwegian Institute for
Norway
Urban and Regional
City of Bergen
City of Oslo
Research
City of Ostrow
Poland
University of Warsaw
City of Poznan
Wielkopolski
Sweden
University of Göteborg City of Göteborg
City of Stockholm
The consortium also included the international urban networks EUROCITIES and Quarters en
Crise.



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METHODOLOGY AND PROGRAMME OF WORK

Innovative Approach to Urban Management

PLUS was founded on the assumption that the achievement of effective urban governance and
thus of sustainable policies is strongly dependent on the complementarity of urban leadership
and community involvement - CULCI. This complementarity is in turn dependent on three
variables – context, institutional design and political culture, all combined with the initiative and
action of local actors. The figure below shows how the performance of city management stems
from both contextual and local factors.

Analytical Framework for Understanding and Evaluating City Management



Empirically, the research programme in each country has followed a common design, with data
collected through

• Development of a common theoretical framework within which to conduct the comparative
research (with acknowledgements in particular to the work of Elinor Ostrom, Peter John,
James Svara, and Poul Erik Mouritzen)

• National and local contextual papers establishing the role and function of local
governance in each country as it affects the case study cities

• Analysis of the structures and policies of each of eighteen case-study cities

• Detailed fieldwork on thirty six initiatives using a framework of Institutional Analysis, which
(following Ostrom) identifies the ‘arenas’ within which local action takes place and the
presence of a set of ‘rules’ through which action may be analysed

• A survey of local opinion to establish perceptions of leadership, across both the eighteen
cities and the thirty-six initiatives.

• Comparative analysis of the findings from the nine cities/eighteen initiatives.

The following pages provide a brief sketch of the thirty-six initiatives which have been the subject
of the research, with the broad findings following at page 22 onwards.



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THE NATIONAL CASE STUDIES

ENGLAND

Bristol

COMPETITIVENESS: Broadmead is Bristol’s main shopping central area. In the face of severe
out of town competition, major regeneration and expansion of the centre, discussion across
public and private sectors has been underway for several years. This has resulted in a major
development project, now starting implementation. Political, professional and business
leadership has contributed to bringing together property owners, developers, and retail interests.
The council has played several roles as planner and regulator, with leadership shifting between
public and private sectors. The scheme has latterly generated concern from the local community
with much criticism of the public consultation processes. Most recently, the leader of the city
council, operating through the Local Strategic Partnership has begun to mediate between
developer and community to ensure that the achievement of competitiveness can be also
contribute to goals of inclusion and community benefit.

SOCIAL INCLUSION: The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal requires Bristol,
working through its Local Strategic Partnership to develop a local Neighbourhood Renewal
Strategy. Bristol has targeted ten wards for the establishment of neighbourhood partnerships and
action plans and for allocating Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and reshaping main programmes.
In Lockleaze – not a part of the city which has received much attention in the past – the local
community has been engaged in setting priorities for the area. Neighbourhood renewal is a
major programme in Bristol and the case study examines the extent to which political and
professional leadership has acted to support local communities in relation to inclusion and
empowerment.


Stoke-on-Trent

COMPETITIVENESS: Chatterley Whitfield is the site of a former working colliery and has been
identified as a key economic driver for the North Staffordshire area of the West Midlands, with
major public and private investments planned over the next five years. The site, owned by the
City Council is in a part of Stoke-on-Trent ranked amongst the 11% most disadvantaged wards in
England. The communities surrounding the site face socio-economic difficulties, but benefit from
European Union Objective 2 funding. Chatterley Whitfield is identified for major change with a
focus on conservation-led regeneration. The initiative is being taken forward by a local
partnership which involves the local authority, national and regional agencies and community
interests.

SOCIAL INCLUSION: The ‘Community Facilitation Service’ (CFS) is a city-wide initiative of
Stoke-on-Trent City Council to build partnerships between service providers and citizens in ten
area-based decentralised forums across the city. The aims of the CFS are to generate and
articulate a wide range of views, from citizens, community interests, and service providers and to
use these views to inform the planning and delivery of local services, to co-ordinate the delivery
of services, and ultimately to bend budgets across agencies to effectively target local priorities.
The CFS involves the creation of ten decentralised forums designed to engage communities and
‘join up’ service provision at neighbourhood level for greater efficiency, and to co-ordinate multi-
agency responses to cross-cutting issues such as drug abuse.

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FINDINGS

Urban governance in England is strongly influenced by the requirements and constraints set by
central government. The proliferation of local initiatives, the pressures of performance managing
programmes, and the weight of bureaucracy, all allied to the demands of a local government
modernisation agenda and a national neighbourhoods strategy, makes the process of local
governance complex. The space for the exercise of autonomous local leadership is limited.
Partnership working is widespread but increasingly institutionalised, with public, private, voluntary
and community sector involvement a required condition of many governmental programmes. In
both Stoke-on-Trent on Trent and Bristol, new Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) have been
established to bring together stakeholders and to have an oversight of the Community Strategy
and the Neighbourhood Renewal strategy. LSPs represent a forum for the exercise of
‘collective’ leadership where facilitation and negotiating skills are helpful, but are seen both as an
arena for the exercise of civic leadership and as a threat to traditional representative democracy.

The balance of influence and power in these local partnerships is a function of local historical,
political, and cultural factors. In Bristol, business interests are seen to be more visible and more
active in collaboration with local government than in Stoke-on-Trent, where community
involvement seems more embedded in the local political culture. Strategic partnerships on the
one hand, and neighbourhood partnerships on the other, emphasise the threat to traditional
backbench or ward councillors. Given the limits to local autonomy, the complexity of partnership
working, and the lack of trust from community, local leadership faces a difficult challenge. In the
two case study cities leadership is very much in transition (to a shared administration in Bristol
and to a mayor and city manager in Stoke-on-Trent). Both forms are still young, both leaders
face an inheritance of weak leadership, both face tensions within local party politics.

The difficulties of building sustainable community involvement are often underestimated. The
Bristol case (a neighbourhood initiative in an area with hitherto underdeveloped community
capacity) shows that long-term sustainable community capacity can only be built from an existing
base, at a slow pace, and with clear rules about the processes of engagement. By contrast
Stoke-on-Trent illustrates the possibilities of, but also the challenge to, existing political and
administrative structures of a citywide community facilitation service. Community involvement
provides leaders with democratic legitimacy, with exposure to local concerns, conflicts and
diversity of opinion, and with alternative forums for deliberation and debate.

Local government is not widely trusted; new partnership structures are ill understood and are
often unaccountable. Greater understanding and trust between the various individuals
representing their own institution in partnership working is essential, since there are likely to be
very varying principles and values at stake. Trust building is essential in making urban leadership
and community involvement complementary. The personality and dedication of intermediaries
are crucial to success in terms of making processes work for everyone.

The competitiveness and inclusion agendas - often seen as competing – can in practice be
complementary. In the competitiveness cases, in Stoke-on-Trent a long-standing community
organisation was able to make its voice heard; in Bristol only recently has the leadership grasped
the opportunity to link strategic economic development of the city centre to community interests.
Thus in major economic and commercial development projects, resources need to be allocated to
respond to the concerns and interests of communities. Leaders can play a major role in ensuring
that such resources are allocated and the community interest represented.

Central government initiatives can focus attention on a few high profile localities with the
remainder receiving lower levels and quality of support. The demands made by central
government upon such high profile initiatives may detract local leadership attention from the
(apparently) less important areas, and city wide initiatives, explicitly engaging all communities
and all service providers, may be more inclusive and effective than a strategy which focuses
attention on ad hoc special initiatives for specific areas.
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THE NATIONAL CASE STUDIES

GERMANY

Heidelberg

COMPETITIVENESS: One important element in the Lady Mayor’s reforms in local policy which
were led by the aim to render the administration more client-oriented has been stimulation of the
local economy. In addition to the better delivery of services to the business community (a one-
stop-agency), there have been a broad range of forums in which actors from the local economy
come together in order to discuss problems in, and find solutions for, the economic development
of the city. Forums are organized by the Heidelberg Development Association, a limited
company owned by the city and personally linked with the urban office which is officially
responsible for improving local economy. The main concern the city of Heidelberg faced when it
created these dialogues was not only the aim of confidence building as a precondition of
collective action (creation of social capital), but also to support local economy in the realisation of
their ideas concerning their future development. The PLUS research has investigated one of the
dialogical tools introduced by the Heidelberg Development Association, focusing on network
building in an old industrial area.

SOCIAL INCLUSION: One of the main innovations initiated by the Lady Mayor of Heidelberg
has been the district framework planning (DDP), starting in the early nineties and still continuing.
This is an attempt to decentralise and democratise urban planning by involving citizens,
communities and organisations in the districts in a deliberative way. A special emphasis is put on
the involvement of women. The aim of the DDP is a higher responsiveness towards the needs of
the districts, and an increased identification and responsibility of the citizens for their district and
the city as a whole. The processes of each DDP begin with a stocktaking and a discussion with
the citizens concerning questions of spatial planning and the social structure of the district in
question, followed by a phase in which the administration works out objectives and measures of
development which finally have to be affirmed by the council.

Hannover

COMPETITIVENESS: The 'Hannover Impuls' initiative was originally designed to achieve
economic competitiveness by involving major local companies in a new kind of local business
development. The main aim of the initiative is the creation of 40,000 new jobs by 2013. This was
to be achieved by concentrating the resources for business development onto those sectors of
the local economy which are strong and which present possibilities for expansion. An innovative
concept of participatory business development is being tested as an alternative traditional
methods. Major local companies are participating in the project as partners, either by integrating
themselves in the business plan developed by the initiative company 'Hannover-Impuls' or by
handing over resources to the initiative. The Lord Mayor has been the initiator of the project as
well as its most committed promoter.

SOCIAL INCLUSION: The social inclusion initiative in Hannover has been the planning and
construction of a completely new city quarter on the Kronsberg hill due to a tightening housing
market situation expected in-line with the EXPO 2000. The main goal was to prevent mistakes
similar to those experienced in the development of new city quarters in the 1970s, when large
social housing blocks were built in the city. These soon proved the focus for social problems with
the apartments mainly rented to foreigners, social aid recipients and the unemployed. At
Kronsberg these negative implications of social housing were prevented through citizen
involvement during the construction (implementation) stage. The Kronsberg project was handled
in a typical Hannoverian way of citizen involvement, defining best practice as the duty of city
administration towards the city’s inhabitants. Urban leadership was needed to initiate the whole
project in the frame of the general EXPO application, which was extensively promoted by the
Lord Mayor, who also played a crucial role in the policy development stage.

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FINDINGS

The interplay of leadership and community involvement in Hannover and Heidelberg illustrate
changes in the types of decision making structure from those described in German urban
research in the seventies, both in terms of the differing forms of local government and also in
terms of the relationship between politics and administration: In earlier analyses specific and
differing forms of leadership were ascribed to municipalities with a city director on the one hand
and those with an executive mayor on the other, the crucial difference being that one form united
the functions of political and administrative leadership whereas the other separated them. The
model of executive leadership puts emphasis on giving a strong political leader (the executive
mayor) additional resources (administrative staff, direct legitimacy) by which he/she should be
able to lead the administration. This meant a centralisation of administration in those Länder with
executive mayors. Councils received only a single proposal from the administration, with
alternatives having been decided upon within the administrative arena. Furthermore, the model of
executive leadership stuck to the obsolete idea that implementation could be regarded as simple
execution and was thus outside the political arena. Some suggested a “correlative model of
leadership” which distinguished three functions of leadership: Conceptualising and initiating
programmatic alternatives, selection among programmatic alternatives and control of
implementation.

Whereas under the rule of executive leadership councillors were faced with only with the
possibility of endorsing or rejecting the proposals made by the mayor and the administration
controlled by him/her, in the municipalities with a city director they were included in a set of ‘pre-
decision’ structures. Alternatives were negotiated in a policy network with (quasi full-time) party
leaders, actors from the administration and from the private sector. The city director has
meanwhile been replaced by a directly elected mayor – a shift towards what seems a more open
and democratic structure than that which offers an influential role to council parties in an invisible
structure of ‘pre-deciders’. The shift to a directly elected executive mayor does not solve all
problems of leadership, however. Community involvement and a new administrative culture
could be the keys in this context. At the stage of policy development and pre-decision
formulation of options, the involvement of stakeholders and a more interactive role of
administrative actors, can be regarded as a way to higher legitimacy. At the stage of policy
implementation, both could meet the challenge of politicising implementation.

If increased community involvement is to be introduced, how can it be connected to the
respective formal decision arenas? In Heidelberg’ this is achieved by involving the local
community in the formulation of the “one” alternative that is offered to the councillors. In the case
of economic policy questions these are simply “outsourced” to an organisation accountable to
and empowered by the mayor as the urban leader.

Some scholars stress that the model of “correlative leadership” is unrealistic because it does not
give incentives for council majorities to let the administration interact on equal foot with all political
actors. Indeed, this barrier for the correlative model of leadership is relevant only in case there is
a majority party in the council that has exclusive access to important actors in the administrative
arena. As we have seen, this is not the case in Heidelberg.

It does not require exceptional imagination to come to the conclusion that such administrative-
citizen forms of interactive governance are bound to fail in a setting where party coalitions feel
legitimated to formulate a coherent program and to consequently implement the objectives
agreed upon. Community involvement in the form of quasi-direct democratic elements can be a
solution for such a regime if parties cannot agree on a major decision – as was the case for the
EXPO. And community involvement in the form of interactive governance fits well when a
negotiated policy should get the highest possible responsiveness towards its addressees in the
implementation stage. A directly elected mayor can supplement this style of linking party
coalitions with community involvement.



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