Assessing institutional relations in development partnerships: the Land Development Corporation and the Hong Kong Government prior to 1997

This paper interprets and develops contemporary notions of partnership in relation to Hong Kong's Land Development Corporation. It demonstrates how such agencies are likely to become overdependent on their private-sector partners or ineffective in policy delivery, unless endowed with adequate powers and resources. In this context, it suggests that the LDC's capacity to promote urban renewal was undermined particularly by the institutional requirement to assemble redevelopment sites in multiple ownership principally through negotiation. While seeking to explain this weakness in relation to the socio-cultural context of Hong Kong, it warns that, in applying the Western experience of partnership elsewhere, full account must be taken of local circumstances and constraints

Partnerships in shrinking cities : making Baltimore ‘liveable’?

The governance imperative to increase the City of Baltimore’s population and thus alleviate its ‘fiscal squeeze’ has brought the liveability of this shrinking city to the fore. City government has long engaged in seeking partnership with private (corporate and non-profit) actors to develop and deliver a policy agenda to stabilise and grow the city. Drawing from empirical research into collaborative governance in Baltimore, this chapter focuses on neighbourhood policy to examine the range of (explicit and implicit) liveability policies and initiatives. By considering the challenge of making Baltimore ‘liveable’ in terms of for whom and where/which neighbourhoods, the research reveals the challenges posed by the city’s deep inequities and exclusionary governance to the realisation of ‘liveability’ for all. It thus challenges how the liveability concept elides the trade-offs regarding who (and where) is included and excluded from the policies which result