The EU's Strategy for the Danube Region-new impulses from a "macroregion" for multi-level governance in Central Eastern Europe?

Promoted by the EU commission since 2009 and the Hungarian EU presidency in 2011, EUSDR is a new transnational initiative to promote regional cooperation in Eastern Central Europe. It aims to use the existing financial and institutional means to coordinate and improve the policies and investments of the EU in the context of intergovernmental cooperation in the region. The existing intergovernmental mechanisms are characterized by institutional complexity with different funding structures, policy mandates, political competences, territorial scopes, and membership, addressing diverse stakeholders, e.g. states, regions, local authorities, business interests, NGOs, civic society. Some of these actors have indeed forwarded common interests or various notions of shared identity. But despite a rich and diverse cultural heritage, the regional context is also one of wars, ethnic conflict, as well as deep socioeconomic disparities. Thus distinguishing the EU as supranational regime of multi-level governance, as transnational actor in multi-level cooperation mechanisms, and as normative framework for political mobilization, the paper questions how EUSDR may contribute to regional integration. It takes stock of the EU's policy instruments, the existing transnational mechanisms between states and subnational actors, and various stakeholders' interests. The debates on multi-level governance, new regionalism, and constructivist IR serve to discuss the political rationale and conceptual implications of the new EU policy instrument of a 'macroregion'

KulturPolitik im Wandel: Hauptstadtsymbolik in Wien und Berlin

'Angesichts zunehmenden Standortwettbewerbs bedient sich die Stadtpolitik kultureller Großprojekte als symbolische Strategien zur wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung und WählerInnenmobilisierung. Aber diese multiple Symbolik trägt nicht immer erfolgreich zur Bündelung gegensätzlicher Interessen in einer gemeinsamen Wachstumsstrategie bei. Die Mobilisierung tief greifender Identifikationen mit Stadtkultur kann auch unterschwellige sozio-kulturelle Konflikte berühren, verstärken, und politisch eskalieren. Die lange Entscheidungsfindung über den Bau des Museumsquartiers in Wien und den gegenwärtigen Abriss des Palasts der Republik auf dem Schlossplatz in Berlin sind Beispiele für solche kulturpolitische Kontroversen. Anstatt der geplanten Neudefinition eines kohärenten städtischen Leitbilds wurde Hauptstadtkultur zur politischen Arena symbolischer Konflikte über Globalisierung und nationale Identität. Die spezifischen institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen in Wien und Berlin bedingten jeweils unterschiedliche kulturpolitische Reaktionen auf diese Herausforderungen einer pluralen Gesellschaft. Beide Kulturprojekte stellen gegensätzliche Beispiele eines selbstreflexiven Institutionenwandels 'von unten' dar. Kulturpolitik ist nicht mehr nur ein Politikfeld obrigkeitsstaatlicher Machtausübung oder ein Produkt wirtschaftlicher Globalisierung, sondern - im Sinne des angloamerikanischen Begriffs 'cultural politics' - ein plurales Interaktionsfeld gesellschaftlicher Interessen und Identitäten. In der Pluralisierung der Hauptstadtsymbolik spiegelt sich nicht nur der Wandel der staatlichen Kulturpolitik, sondern auch die Öffnung des Begriffes Politik an sich und seiner Institutionalisierung im Staat für neue politische Handlungsmöglichkeiten und Räume politischer Öffentlichkeit.' (Autorenreferat)'Global capital - or rather the political responses to globalization - transform cities and states, and particularly capital cities as urban centers of state politics. Responding to as well as actively constructing a climate of economic competition, urban policy makers use symbolic flagship strategies to promote economic development and at the same time mobilize collective political action. But the plural nature of capital city culture not only promotes collective mobilization to overcome political economic interest conflicts. Its deep symbolic meanings can also enhance contestation and conflict beyond the initial regeneration plans. The political controversies about Vienna's new cultural district 'Museumsquartier' and the domolition of the 'Palast der Republik' on the Schlossplatz in Berlin illustrate how the leaders of two different European capital cities struggle for a collective basis of political action. The article enquires into these capital cities' diverse institutional potential for governing plural deliberation processes and thus reflexively responding to their changing functions as symbolic centers of transforming states. In this plural context of state-transformation, cultural policy as a government strategy is challenged by cultural politics as a plural interaction. This questions the relationship of cultural and power as a structural representation or a motive and resource of agency. Externally determined political economic changes of the urban context find reflection in urban cultural politics through a dynamic, fluid, and open-ended process of institutional self-transformation.' (author's abstract

Culture-led Strategies for Urban Regeneration: A Comparative Perspective on Bilbao

Culture is used as a development strategy in many European cities, a means to attract capital, to improve the image of the city, and to promote unity and cooperation. Like other strategies, it has winners and losers and, in its symbolic meanings, may provoke conflict

The City without Qualities. Political Theories of Globalization in European Cities

While urban political economy tends to generalize the functional economic pressures upon socio-political transformations of cities, European research has stressed the importance of historical context and political institutions. Both perspectives’ references to urban culture imply either an economization or an essentialization of urbanity, and thus an underconceptualization of political agency. Whether defined economically, politically, or socio-culturally, most research of cities implies - more or less implicitly - a common ideal of urbanity which lies in the integration potential of plural societies. Urbanity, the spatialized ideal of modernity, and cities, its contextual realizations in place, are the two complementary sides of a reflective process which is locally specific as well as globally entangled. At least to enable a counterfactual to either the economicfunctionalist globalization hypothesis or the historic-culturalist European assumption, empirical research should conceptualize this urban process as plural, contextual, and thus open-ended collective action. To approach the structure and agency aspects of urban culture in mediating state transformation, the debates about new institutionalism, social movements, and modernity serve to conceptualize a comparative framework of urban politics beyond the European context. Instead of adding yet another competing model or even a ‘meta-model’, the ‘City without Qualities’ aims to reduce the complexity of the contemporary urban debate by dismantling some of the fashionable urban ‘buzzwords’ to their basic analytical concepts

Capital City Cultures: Reconstructing the state in its urban centers. Multi-level governance and the discursive mobilization of urban collective action for the cultural regeneration of the 'Museumsquartier' in Vienna and the 'Palast der republik/ Schlossplatz' in Berlin

Defence date: 27 October 2004Examining board: Prof. Peter Marcuse (Columbia University) ; Prof. PAtrick Le Galés (CEVIPOF, Science Po Paris) ; Prof. Peter Wagner (European University Institute) ; Prof. Michael Keating (European University Institute, Supervisor)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017Global market competition and the political responses to globalization transform urban societies and states, and thus the cultures of capital cities in contemporary Europe. Vienna's cultural district Museumsquartier and the planned Humboldt Forum on Berlin's Schlossplatz illustrate two of the most controversial sites of urban reconstruction in Central Eastern Europe since the 1990s. Tracing the processes of their political emergence through more than a decade of heated public debates, this book narrates the metaphor-rich and engaging stories about these old European capitals facing change. It compares the reconstruction of political legitimacy and its cultural symbols from two different local perspectives of European state transformation. This enquiry into urban culture highlights the diversity of contemporary cities and their political potential for change

From Cultural Regeneration to Discursive Governance: Constructing the Flagship of the 'Museumsquartier Vienna' as a Plural Symbol of Change

Responding to, as well as actively constructing, a climate of economic competition,urban policy-makers use cultural strategies to promote economic development and at the same time mobilize political support. But the plural nature of culture not only promotes collective mobilization to overcome political economic interest conflicts. Its deep symbolic meanings can also enhance contestation and conflict beyond the initial regeneration plans. The political controversy about Vienna's new cultural district 'Museumsquartier' illustrates how the leaders of an old European capital city, challenged by multiple national, regional and global transition processes, struggle to capitalize on their cultural heritage for a collective future vision. Instead of implementing one coherent political strategy, the city, its architecture, collective memories and spatial frames are ultimately shaped by plural symbolic conflicts that negotiate diverse meanings, values and tastes. The case study shows that urban flagships are not merely spatial expressions of larger capitalist globalization structures permeating the built cityscape. As a contextual outcome of local discussion processes, reflecting diverse urban meanings in the context of larger transformations, the new architecture contributes to Vienna's specific aesthetic character as well as to its political redefinition as a European capital cit

Capital City Cultures: Reconstructing contemporary Europe in Vienna and Berlin

Global market competition and the political responses to globalization transform urban societies and states, and thus the cultures of capital cities in contemporary Europe. Vienna's cultural district Museumsquartier and the planned Humboldt Forum on Berlin's Schlossplatz illustrate two of the most controversial sites of urban reconstruction in Central Eastern Europe since the 1990s. Tracing the processes of their political emergence through more than a decade of heated public debates, this book narrates the metaphor-rich and engaging stories about these old European capitals facing change. It compares the reconstruction of political legitimacy and its cultural symbols from two different local perspectives of European state transformation. This enquiry into urban culture highlights the diversity of contemporary cities and their political potential for change.Preface 9 INTRODUCTION. Capital Cities, Culture, and Political Change in Contemporary Europe 13 CHAPTER 1. European Capital Cities in Transition 31 CHAPTER 2. Reconstructing Capital City Cultures: The Museumsquartier in Vienna 67 CHAPTER 3. Reconstructing Capital City Cultures: The Schlossplatz in Berlin 113 CHAPTER 4. Comparing Capital City Cultures 179 Conclusion 210 Bibliography 221 Appendix 239 Index 259Published version of EUI PhD thesis, 200

Tourism marketing and urban politics : cultural planning in a European capital

Published online: 26 September 2017The cultural heritage of capital cities is a local capital in the global competition for tourism income as well as a public good of urban societies and a symbol of national identities. When developing cultural heritage as an asset for tourism, city marketing turns these complex urban meanings into rather simplistic commercial images. Such symbolic manipulations of culture intervene in deeply affective, institutionalised structures and thus risk political conflict and public contention. The strongly controversial planning for the cultural flagship district of the Museumsquartier Vienna highlighted cultural diversity as an urban characteristic that remains often underweighted in urban political economy's focus on corporate dominance or local community. Enquiring into the discursive-institutional interactions which turned the political economic repositioning of urban culture into a plural political process, what lessons can we draw for tourism planning? As democratic societies meet diverse contemporary challenges in addition to tourism, managing the cultural heritage of cities is indeed a highly sensitive and controversial political task. But what initially appeared a planning failure and even deadlock of democratic government has since emerged as an urban space that is rather well accepted by local and international visitors. In the context of Vienna's international opening as a European capital, the controversial political emergence has contributed to constructing this cultural district as new interpretation of the historic city. Despite many shortcomings, unsolved conflicts and exclusionary decisions, the new landmark offers a specific combination of external images with internal visions, old paths with contemporary needs. Thus, instead of a rigid top-down plan, tourism planning needs to continuously consider diverse social, economic and political claims in an inclusive, differentiated and open-ended approach to urban development.Austrian Zukunftsfonds [P16-2489