Partnerships and Democracy: A Happy Couple in Urban Governance?

Abstract

This chapter examines 'partnership' as one common manifestation of urban governance. Partnership in the Habitat II context has a very wide scope, encompassing international support programmes as well as capacity-building programmes at the national and sub-national levels. The partnership concept has a stronger ideological load than other members of the network family. In view of the fact that the label of the common policy target, 'urban regeneration', is very ambiguous, caution is warranted when trying to explain the policy effects of regeneration partnerships. After the 1973 economic crisis, urban policies changed dramatically towards regeneration, though the dual focus on the inner city and the suburbs remained. Traditional mechanisms of accountability in representative democracy were never designed to cope with multi-organizational, fragmented policy systems. With the introduction of citizen participation in urban governance, planners can contribute to the democratic debate. The partnership approach in urban politics has a rhetorical strength and a mythical appeal.

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