Governing Cities On The Move

This title was first published in 2002: The success of any investment strategy in urban infrastructures is dependent on how people as members of households, companies or institutions will use these infrastructures in their daily lives and how actors take decisions on their investment strategies. Insights into these behaviours can help public and private actors to cope with diversity, complexity and uncertainty in a dynamic urban environment. This book elaborates, both theoretically and empirically, the functional and governance/management perspective of urban infrastructures. It comprises theoretical contributions related to accessibility, land-use modelling and urban governance, while case studies from Antwerp, Geneva, Milan, Oslo, Turin and Zurich effectively analyze the problems associated with mobility, infrastructure, finance, planning, transformation and governance. It will be of considerable value to anyone with an interest in urban performance.

The success of any investment strategy in urban infrastructures is dependent on how people as members of households, companies or institutions will use these infrastructures in their daily lives and how actors take decisions on their investment strategies. Insights into these behaviours can help public and private actors to cope with diversity, complexity and uncertainty in a dynamic urban environment.This book elaborates, both theoretically and empirically, the functional and governance/management perspective of urban infrastructures. It comprises theoretical contributions related to accessibility, land-use modelling and urban governance, while case studies from Antwerp, Geneva, Milan, Oslo, Turin and Zurich effectively analyze the problems associated with mobility, infrastructure, finance, planning, transformation and governance. It will be of considerable value to anyone with an interest in urban performance.

The region is back in town. Galloping urbanization has pushed beyond historical notions of metropolitanism. City-regions have experienced, in Edward Soja’s terms, “an epochal shift in the nature of the city and the urbanization process, marking the beginning of the end of the modern metropolis as we knew it.” Governing Cities Through Regions broadens and deepens our understanding of metropolitan governance through an innovative comparative project that engages with Anglo-American, French, and German literatures on the subject of regional governance. It expands the comparative angle from issues of economic competiveness and social cohesion to topical and relevant fields such as housing and transportation, and it expands comparative work on municipal governance to the regional scale. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars of urban and regional governance, the volume covers conceptual topics and case studies that contrast the experience of a range of Canadian metropolitan regions with a strong selection of European regions. It starts from assumptions of limited conversion among regions across the Atlantic but is keenly aware of the remarkable differences in urban regions’ path dependencies in which the larger processes of globalization and neo-liberalization are situated and materialized.

This book presents the latest research on three issues of crucial importance to Asian cities: governance, livability, and sustainability. Together, these issues canvass the salient trends defining Asian urbanization and are explored through an eclectic compendium of studies that represent the many voices of this diverse region. Examining the processes and implications of Asian urbanization, the book interweaves practical cases with theories and empirical rigor while lending insight and complexity into the towering challenges of urban governance. The book targets a broad audience including thinkers, practitioners, and students.

This title was first published in 2001. This volume is a result of the action COST A9 "Civitas - Transformation of European Cities and Urban Governance", launched in 1995, which looks at the emergence of the urban question. The COST framework is a European mechanism to provide scientific and technical assistance for national research programmes. The text covers the change in the importance of European cities and analyzes how each city re-formulates its policies and methods of governing in response to these changes. This text is to analyze the new forms of urban governance using three points of view, a statistical approach, an economic approach and a sociological approach. This book tackles the fragmentation and social exclusion that occurs in urban society and explores the different forms it takes throughout Europe. It also presents some strategies to combat or at least regulate this fragmentation, to ensure a united European city.

Imagine a system in which a private company offers you protection of life, liberty and property as a "government service provider". This service includes internal and external security, a legal and regulatory framework and independent dispute resolution. You pay a contractually fixed fee for these services per year. The government service provider, as the operator of the community, cannot unilaterally change this "citizens' contract" with you later on. As a "contract citizen", you have a legal claim to compliance and a claim for damages in the event the provider does not perform. You take care of everything else by yourself, but you can also do whatever you want, limited only by the rights of others and some limited rules of living together. And you only take part if and as long as the offer appeals to you. Disputes between you and the government service provider are heard in independent arbitration courts, as is customary in international commercial law. If the operator ignores the arbitral awards or abuses his power in another way, his customers leave and he goes bankrupt. He therefore has an economic risk and therefore an incentive to treat his customers well and in accordance with the contract. This concept is called a Free Private City.The first part of this book deals with fundamental questions that every social order has to face. The concept of Free Private Cities described in the second part is derived from this; historical and current models are examined. The third part deals with concrete questions of implementation of Free Private Cities. Finally, the fourth part provides an outlook on future developments.

This book is about the role that ideas, institutions, and actors play in structuring how we govern cities and, more specifically, what projects or paths are taken. Global changes require that we rethink governance and urban policy, and that we do so through the dual lens of theory and practice.

The book argues that looking at global cities can bring about three fundamental advantages on traditional IR paradigms. First, it facilitates an eclectic turn towards more nuanced analyses of world politics. Second, it widens the horizon of the discipline through a multiscalar image of global governance. Third, it underscores how global cities have a strategic diplomatic positioning when it comes to core contemporary challenges such as climate change.