Community strategies in England: reshaping spaces of governance?

The preparation of Community Strategies (CS) has been required of LSPs and Local Authorities in England since the passing of the Local Government Act 2000. This paper examines the process and content of two Community Strategies in southern England as part of an ongoing project to understand their impact and explore ways that CSs may be carried through in a meaningful and effective manner. The paper concludes that the two CSs studied illustrate the challenge faced by LSPs in producing Strategies that are meaningful, inclusive and which follow the spirit of the government CS guidance. LAs and LSPs are also posed with a difficult challenge of seeing through an implicitly required transition from a traditional representative democratic structure/process with a more fluid participatory model. Thus we detect that at least two forms of conflict may arise – firstly with elected councillors threatened by a loss of power and secondly between communities and the LAs who are encouraged to problematise local policy and service delivery in the context of limited resource availability

Private consultants, planning reform, and the marketisation of local government finance

This chapter examines the co-evolution between recent reforms to planning systems across the UK, and the growing influence and significance of private sector expert consultants. It shows that in the wake of austerity cuts, local authorities are being incentivised to act more entrepreneurially by increasing the amount of development in their areas and maximising planning gain returns. These reforms are creating new market opportunities for a growing consultancy sector and contributing to the gradual privatisation of the planning system. The chapter assesses the form and character of these changes, and their implications for how places are governed and planned

Towards a pluralistic understanding of Chinese homeowners: the case of 'ordinary' buyers

In this paper we address ‘ordinary’ Chinese buyers in London’s residential real estate market. We argue that current academic and policy analysis, particularly of elites, has focused on the higher-end of the market and over-emphasised the detached nature of international buyers. In contrast, building on, but departing from, existing analyses of the multiple classes of Chinese investors evident in London (see Glucksberg, 2016), we reveal the tactics and motivations of buyers with budgets of less than £500,000. We show that they are motivated by good schools, easy commutes and use similar technologies to mediate and understand the market to local buyers. Such aims and approaches, we argue, show the ordinariness of many Chinese buyers. Underpinning their aims is an aspirational, class-defined desire based on making sacrifices so their children can have a ‘normal British life’. This becomes an elective belonging, as they integrate into the norms of London’s housing market. In demonstrating how the realities of ordinary buyers contrasts with existing narratives of Chinese investors, we highlight plurality of experiences, strategies and aims of Chinese people buying homes. We argue such an understanding forces us to rethink the form and character of Chinese investment practices in western cities by de-centring London’s prime areas and purchasers when analysing property acquisition’s internationalisation. In turn this evidences the false binary of local and international demand and shows the complexities hidden behind narratives of international capital

Postcolonial narratives and the governance of informal housing in London

Housing informality has traditionally been associated with cities in the Global South. And yet, there is growing evidence that informal practices are also present in Northern cities, especially those traditionally considered ‘successful’ or ‘developed’ such as London, in which housing pressures are most acute. This paper, drawing on detailed policy analysis and qualitative in-depth interviews, uses the example of London to examine the rise of informal housing, the ways in which it is both represented and conceptualised as a ‘problem’ of governance to be tackled, and its institutionalisation into programmes of enforcement. It focuses on the emergence of a phenomenon known as ‘beds in sheds’, or the construction of informal housing in between existing buildings. By discussing a planning issue that is generally associated with the Global South in a Global North context, the paper engages with writings on postcolonial theory. It adopts a nexus approach to examine how the issue is embedded within particular configurations of social, political, economic and cultural circumstances. The evidence indicates that the ways in which the problem is framed and understood are underpinned by colonialist views that see migrants and their socio-ethnic communities as agents of informality, whose removal or sanction will ‘solve’ the problem. The paper concludes with reflections on broader debates on informality in urban studies

Critical Urban Cosmopolitanism and the Governance of Urban Diversity in European Cities

This paper draws on the findings of a cross-national European Union project, named DIVERCITIES, that analyses the relationships between narratives and meanings of the term ‘diversity’ and their influence on the governance and planning of European cities. It is widely argued that there is a growing dissonance between the policy narratives and agendas found in metropolitan cities and amongst national governments. The former are characterised as being more pragmatic, tolerant and open in their approaches than the latter who, in many instances, have adopted more assimilationalist and nationalist rhetorics and policies. In exploring these governance dynamics, the paper builds on the work of Delanty to argue for a methodological approach grounded in what he terms critical cosmopolitanism, or a focus on the dynamic interactions between global and local influences on governmentalities and policy priorities. Much of the writing on critical cosmopolitanism has focused on questions of identity. This paper expands the concept and assesses its applicability to understandings and interpretations of urban politics and governance, through the lens of diversity narratives and the ways in which they are ‘fixed’ to broader political projects by regimes in different contexts. It argues that a range of meanings are being attached to ‘diversity’. In some instances, the term acts as a focus for more progressive forms of intervention. In others, however, it is being used to justify divisive forms of growth politics or acts as a lightning rod for existing discontents. The paper concludes by reflecting on the impacts of recent anti-globalisation and immigration politics across Europe and the fragility of existing fixes and policy assumptions

Governing urban diversity: Multi-scalar representations, local contexts, dissonant narratives

In recent academic and urban policy writings the term urban diversity is usually understood, or discussed within the context of, increasing ‘socio-cultural’ diversity in cities or is explicitly connected to debates over immigration and demographic change. Although policy agendas follow certain common trends ‘to deal with’ the consequences of diversity, there is a lack of evidence-based research on how representations of diversity are mobilised and implemented by institutions of governance operating at multiple scales and how these narratives relate to each other. Policy-makers are faced with new dilemmas over how to govern and manage cities that are becoming increasingly diverse, on the one hand, and increasingly ‘sensitive’ to certain channels of flows of people (such as refugees), on the other. In some cases, city authorities promote the idea of inclusive diversity as a mark of modernisation and tolerance. In others, its recognition may be seen as a threat to an imagined social order and is perceived to be fuelling neo-assimilationist policies in many European Union cities. This special issue aims to fill this gap by providing evidence-based research outcomes that tackle different dimensions of the governance of diversity in cities. The principal aim of the research project, named DIVERCITIES, that underpins this collection was to critically assess evidence concerning the range of socio-economic outcomes that may emerge from the presence of greater urban diversity. DIVERCITIES has shown that city policy agendas across Europe are often more ‘positive’ towards diversity than national policies and media reports. Moreover, local policy initiatives, mostly formed at the bottom-up scale, sometimes as a cooperation between state and civic actors and sometimes as purely private or even individual arrangements, address the actual needs of certain population groups by acting as bridge-builders between public authorities and target groups. This collection aims to provide a clear understanding of how diversity is understood, operationalised and dealt with at different scales of policy-making. In focusing on European examples, it provides an important addition to a literature that has become Anglo-American focused, both in terms of the concepts and policy interventions