The burgeoning geographical literature on the financialisation of urban development has focused predominantly on the growing importance within this sphere of financial markets, motives, and ...institutions. This article starts from the observation that in examining such financialisation, scholars have paid insufficient attention to the details of the financial contexts within which it takes place. Through a consideration of certain high‐profile ongoing transformations in the property strategies of English local authorities, the article argues that we need to put urban financialisation – in this case, state‐led variants thereof – in its financial context: it needs to be understood as a response, at least in part, to specific financial conjunctures. After several decades of effective withdrawal, many local authorities have assumed a resurgent role in urban property ownership and development in recent years, and especially since the global financial crisis. This resurgence is apparent, albeit selectively, in regard to both commercial and residential property. On the one hand, local authorities have been rebuilding portfolios of investment (i.e., non‐operational) commercial property; on the other hand, they have been building new homes, typically not for social rent, through arms‐length housing companies. I argue that understanding these trends requires appreciation of local authorities’ particular financial circumstances in the “post‐crisis” era – their operation at the intersection of devolved austerity, reformed housing finance, and unconventional monetary policy – and of the constraints and opportunities that these circumstances shape.
A conjunctural analysis of financialised, state‐led urban development initiatives in England in the period since the financial crisis.
At a time of "austerity localism", this paper explores how local authorities in London, England, are simultaneously addressing the dual pressures of delivering fiscal retrenchment and of enrolling ...citizens in new participatory public service arrangements, asking whether "these trends pull against one another, in opposite directions, or whether they are the tough and tender dimensions of a singular process: austerian management" Drawing on empirical research into the London Borough of Lambeth's Cooperative Council agenda, as well as Foucauldian and Gramscian critiques of participatory network governance theories and practice, this paper shows how participatory forms of governance can be folded into the logic of hierarchy and coercion through various governmental technologies of performance and agency (consent), and through tactics of administrative domination (coercion). As budget cuts continue to affect local government in England, this paper concludes that although small experiments in participatory governance may persist, the dominant mode of governance is likely to shift towards more hierarchical and coercive forms.
The rise of the digital nomad has prompted heated debates, particularly given its rising relevance and projected growth. While a considerable body of academic research has delved into various aspects ...of this phenomenon, local authorities’ understanding and expectations regarding digital nomads remain understudied. This article aims to fill this research gap by drawing on ethnographic research, mainly consisting of eight open-ended interviews with local stakeholders and participant observation in digital nomad gatherings. The findings uncover the perceptions of Zadar’s policymakers about digital nomads as individuals who can financially contribute through spending, extend the tourist season by flocking in during the off-season, and disseminate knowledge. Among other relevant contributions, this paper suggests that digital nomads might rather be thought of as “short-term locals” instead of “long-term tourists” regarding their consumption patterns; argues that tourism stakeholders conceive digital nomads as off-season tourist boosters but not a main tourist target group; and hints at the fact that digital nomad knowledge transfer is unlikely to occur without the needed platforms. In doing so, this article constitutes a timely contribution to the academic literature since it interrogates the approach of local authorities to digital nomadism and unveils its specificities in Dalmatia, Croatia and Southeast Europe.
How can we measure culture in urban areas? Can empirical metrics on culture function as an urban planning tool for cities' well-being? This paper fits into the research path examining the role of ...culture as a resource for development, with a specific focus on empirical measurement aspects. A novel dataset (The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor – CCCM) gathering 29 indicators for 168 cities in 30 European countries is presented. The CCCM measures the presence and attractiveness of cultural venues and facilities (Cultural Vibrancy), the capacity of culture to generate jobs and innovation (Creative Economy), and the conditions enabling cultural and creative processes to thrive (Enabling Environment). Results show that cultural and creative assets are diversely distributed across European cities, which offer local authorities the opportunity to design context-specific development strategies. In particular, many medium-sized cities appear to have, on average, more cultural capital assets per inhabitant than larger cities. On the basis of these findings, we draw conclusions on the conceptual and methodological relevance of the CCCM and advance proposals on how to further use the CCCM data to drive culture-led and evidence-based urban policy design.
•The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (CCCM) is a novel culture-specific dataset covering 168 European cities.•It gathers 29 indicators which relate to the Cultural Vibrancy, Creative Economy and Enabling Environment of a city.•Capitals generally lead on ‘Creative Economy’ but non-capitals, mostly medium-sized, do better on ‘Cultural Vibrancy’.•The CCCM dataset - freely accessible - can support policy-relevant questions and evidence-led urban planning.
In recent years, local authorities in the UK have begun to adopt a variety of “smart” technological changes to enhance service delivery. These changes are having profound impacts on the structure of ...public administration. Focusing on the particular case of artificial intelligence, specifically autonomous agents and predictive analytics, a combination of desk research, a survey questionnaire, and interviews were used to better understand the extent and nature of these changes in local government. Findings suggest that local authorities are beginning to adopt smart technologies and that these technologies are having an unanticipated impact on how public administrators and computational algorithms become imbricated in the delivery of public services. This imbrication is described as algorithmic bureaucracy, and it provides a framework within which to explore how these technologies transform both the socio‐technical relationship between workers and their tools, as well as the ways that work is organized in the public sector.
Local governments will play an important role in the transition towards fully renewable energy systems. In order to develop new roles for themselves in climate and energy planning, they have to be ...creative and find new ways of acting within existing regulatory frameworks. The objective of this paper is to explore the kinds of arguments and discussions local key actors use and encounter when developing innovative activities. We study two exemplary cases using a qualitative research approach based on interviews with key informants: a municipality-owned nearshore wind farm, and a local funding scheme for energy-efficiency refurbishment in single-family houses. Our findings indicate that i) innovative projects grow out of the momentum of previous visions and experiences; ii) key actors balance ‘green’ and economic arguments in order to gain project approval; and iii) innovative projects can sometimes only be realized by drawing on resources from outside the municipal sphere. Even though committed key actors may be successful, it is worth considering how the grip of narrow economic motives can be loosened in order to support the local experimentation and innovation that will become more and more important in green energy transitions.
•Local authorities need to experiment towards smart energy systems.•Unprecedented local energy action is risky and needs convincing arguments.•Key actors balance wide and narrow societal commitments to promote new initiatives.•Space is needed for wider societal commitments in local experiments in the future.
As a response to COVID-19 the population of England was asked to stay at home and work from there wherever possible. This included those working in children’s social care (CSC) who have ...responsibility for child protection and other safeguarding duties.
The study was designed to understand how CSC made the transition from being an office-based agency to one where the majority of social workers were based at home and to understand how CSC perceived the impact on children and their families. Participants and setting Senior members of CSC staff in 15 local authorities took part in the research in June 2020.
Nine interviews were conducted by video call, three by telephone, and three consisted of initial written responses that were then followed by telephone calls.
Service delivery had been maintained across all the authorities with most visits being made virtually after assessments of risk had been conducted on all cases. Multiagency working had improved, with greater involvement of general practitioners and paediatricians. Overall activity in CSC had been lower than normal but as lockdown eased this was changing. Concerns were expressed about how to manage the response that would be required to meet the expected level of harm that had occurred but been hidden.
Responses to COVID-19 prompted widespread innovation and it will be an imperative to evaluate which initiatives have worked for children and families, as well as practitioners, and which should be discarded, sustained or reshaped.
Cities are formalising collaborations across borders at an unprecedented rate: ‘city networks’ now form a wide ecosystem of global partnerships between local authorities that is often underestimated. ...It might be time to think of city networks more explicitly as institutionalised and presenting a challenging form of more-than-local urban governance. To do so, our essay mixes a review of the overall global landscape (beyond the environmental sector where most of the literature is to be found), with both a network analysis of how these institutions work as a web of connections, as well as an ‘inside out’ view of how they are managed and what the challenges of that are. We do this by analysing a database of 202 of these networks, both statistically as well as via social network analysis. We find that: international initiatives are on the rise, but this context of partnerships has a well-established history, producing a wealth of information and outputs and offering a complex organisational landscape for cities to reach out beyond their local confines. We measure the relationship this has to the integration of cities into the global economy, the pathways it opens for further internationalisation of city leadership and the patterns of partnership with business and international organisations that it implies.
This paper discusses the territorial reform in Portuguese parishes in 2013 following the bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission (Troika). ...The purpose of this paper is (i) to frame the reform of the parishes in Portugal in the trends of reorganization at the local level in European countries in recent decades; (ii) to situate the aggregation at the national scale, integrating it in the Reform of Local Administration of the XIX Government (2011-2015); (iii) to analyze, from the Algarve, the changes in the exercise of its powers, in the provision of services to the population and in the relationship with the municipality; (iv) to discuss the results achieved.The methodology is based on the literature review on local territorial reforms in European countries, on the critical reading of the national process, and the empirical approach is based on the perspective of the elected representatives, based on semi-structured interviews with all the mayors of the aggregated parish councils in the Algarve.The top-down aggregation process applied in the country triggered in the region a reaction of sharing and collaboration between parishes, reducing tensions and fractures between communities (but, in other situations, exposing old divisions or fractures). The new map is assimilated, but criticism remains and two reversals have already occurred.
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