1. Changing public accountability mechanisms in the governance of Dutch urban regeneration
- Author
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Tuna Taşan-Kok, Martijn van den Hurk, Sara Özogul, Sofia Bittencourt, Urban Planning (AISSR, FMG), and FMG
- Subjects
business.industry ,Corporate governance ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Geography, Planning and Development ,0211 other engineering and technologies ,0507 social and economic geography ,021107 urban & regional planning ,Urban regeneration ,02 engineering and technology ,Technocracy ,Public administration ,Negotiation ,Urban planning ,Public accountability ,Service (economics) ,Land development ,business ,050703 geography ,media_common - Abstract
Contemporary urban planning dynamics are based on negotiation and contractual relations, creating fragmented planning processes. On the one hand, they trigger technocratic forms of governance, which require the ‘legal instrumentalisation’ of planning in a piecemeal approach ensuring legal certainty. On the other hand, these processes require flexibility to enable easy, fast and efficient forms of implementation due to the increasing involvement of private sector actors in urban development. This article unravels the influence of these conflicting dynamics on the fundamentals of urban planning practices by focusing on changing public accountability mechanisms created through contractual relationships between public and private sector agencies. Dutch urban regeneration has demonstrated changing governance principles and dynamics in the last three decades. Representing instrumental and institutional measures, we connect accountability mechanisms to these changes and argue that they ‘co-exist’ in multiple forms across different contexts. This article embeds this evolution in wider theoretical discussions on the changing relationships between public and private sector actors in urban governance relative to the changing role of the state, and it addresses questions on who can be held accountable, and to what extent, when public sector actors are increasingly retreating from regulatory practices while private sector actors play increasingly prominent roles.
- Published
- 2019