This paper introduces a Special Topic on social innovation in the governance of urban communities. It also seeks to widen the debate on the meaning of social innovation both in social science theory and as a tool for empirical research on socioeconomic development and governance at the local level. This debate is organised around ALMOLIN-i.e. alternative models for local innovation as utilised in the SINGOCOM (social innovation in governance in (local) communities) research. The first section explains the role of social innovation in neighbourhood development and how it is best addressed from theoretical, historical and experience-oriented viewpoints. The second section provides a survey of the definitions of social innovation in a variety of social science fields, while the third section mobilises various strands of literature that will be of use for the analytical refinement of ALMOLIN. Section four illustrates how ALMOLIN is used as an analytical tool for empirical research. The final section shows some avenues for future research on social innovation.
This paper explores how the so-called Bilbao effect and Barcelona Model are diffused internationally through what may be called urban policy tourism: short trips made to Bilbao and Barcelona by policy-makers to learn from their regeneration in the past 15 years. The paper reveals for the first time the substantial extent of this practice and contextualises it within a wider phenomenon of urban policy transfer and the international ‘motion’ of urban policies. Although both models are internationally known for a set of elements, this research shows that in fact the messages mutate and shift as they circulate through the policy circuits. Ultimately, however, the popularity of the Bilbao and Barcelona models suggests a process of global urban policy convergence.
This paper draws on institutionalist approaches as developed in the fields of policy analysis and planning, to develop a methodological approach for assessing how the governance capacity for socially innovative action might emerge. After introducing the problematic of the search for governance relations which have the capacity for social innovation, the second and third parts of the paper summarise the emerging social-constructivist 'institutionalist' approach in policy analysis and planning. The fourth part draws on a three-level analytical model of governance dynamics to explore the dynamics and dialectics of urban governance transformation processes, illustrated with a case study of a socially innovative area-based initiative. The final section considers the power dynamics of episodes of socially innovative governance arising from within civil society and their potential to transform wider governance processes and cultures.
This paper examines retail gentrification in the context of neoliberal British city centres. It takes the example of traditional retail markets and looks at developments that have affected Kirkgate Market in Leeds, the largest of its kind in Britain. The paper highlights the role of government in orchestrating a process of urban restructuring that sees disinvestment in the market accompanied by the displacement of existing customers and stall-holders. It argues that Leeds market, and similar establishments in other British cities, represent undervalued and threatened spaces of sociability and non-corporatized consumption. It sees them as being at the new frontier of gentrification, in danger of being turned into 'authentic experiences' in sanitized environments. The paper places this process within a much more critical understanding of retail change in British city centres than has been presented hitherto, and a fuller appreciation of the many ways in which gentrification continues to generate urban change.
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