Changing public accountability mechanisms in the governance of Dutch urban regeneration

Abstract

Contemporary urban planning dynamics are based on negotiation and contractual relations, creating fragmented planning processes. On the one hand, they trigger technocratic forms of governance, which require the 'legal instrumentalisation' of planning in a piecemeal approach ensuring legal certainty. On the other hand, these processes require flexibility to enable easy, fast and efficient forms of implementation due to the increasing involvement of private sector actors in urban development. This article unravels the influence of these conflicting dynamics on the fundamentals of urban planning practices by focusing on changing public accountability mechanisms created through contractual relationships between public and private sector agencies. Dutch urban regeneration has demonstrated changing governance principles and dynamics in the last three decades. Representing instrumental and institutional measures, we connect accountability mechanisms to these changes and argue that they 'co-exist' in multiple forms across different contexts. This article embeds this evolution in wider theoretical discussions on the changing relationships between public and private sector actors in urban governance relative to the changing role of the state, and it addresses questions on who can be held accountable, and to what extent, when public sector actors are increasingly retreating from regulatory practices while private sector actors play increasingly prominent roles.

Hybrid contractual landscapes of governance: Generation of fragmented regimes of public accountability through urban regeneration

“…Depending on the public authorities' intentions and the market conditions, the decision-making processes in the UK vary in terms of the attitudes of developers and investors towards the planning system. Planning agreements are set to regulate each project's special conditions, and legislation allows local authorities to request financial contributions by the developer to pay for infrastructure works that enable the development to go ahead (Tas¸an-Kok et al, 2019b). Private developers often renegotiate these agreements after contracts had been signed (Burgess et al, 2011).…”

“…This illustration is abstracted from more complex institutional maps that provide the existing connections between real actors in the nine case study projects from Brazil, the Netherlands, and the UK. What is important to note is that each project, even within the same institutional system, has its own unique contractual landscape of hybrid relationships, which can be mapped at a point in time, though the reality contains a set of dynamic and ever-changing relations set by regulatory instruments that is difficult to convey in a static institutional map (Tas¸an-Kok et al, 2019b). Although exhibiting different forms and linkages, three categories of relationships emerge: funding; lobbying (informal relationships, advisory relationships, oral consensus, etc.…”

Contractual arrangements and entrepreneurial governance: Flexibility and leeway in urban regeneration projects

“…Where there are no or fewer hierarchical relationships between government actors and other actors, contracts are important accountability instruments. As elaborated elsewhere (Tasan-Kok et al, 2019), they include control mechanisms that aim to increase ‘administrative performance, enhance integrity of public governance, and render perceptions of trustworthiness and transparency with citizens’ (Bouwman et al, 2018: 38). Bovens (2007) and other scholars (Dubnick, 2005; Romzek et al, 2012) characterise accountability as a ‘social relationship’: in it, an accountor feels an obligation to explain and to justify its conducts to an accountee (Bovens, 2007).…”

“…It contains mixed characteristics of managerial, pro-growth and welfarist public administration models (Pierre, 1999), following the implementation of the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm. In this form of spatial governance, contracts are key in regulating the actions of actors involved in urban regeneration projects (Tasan-Kok et al, 2019). Based on an analysis of contractual arrangements for urban regeneration projects in the Netherlands, we show that public parties do not always follow through on what is accommodated in contracts.…”

Multiple land use planning for living places and investments spaces

“…The idea is that enhancing accountability can be a measure to address corruption, for example by endorsing a programme of '(1) a simplification of the rules, (2) public access to information and (3) a sense of the state and appropriate civic behaviour' (Grossi & Pianezzi, 2018, p. 90). The analysis by Taşan-Kok et al (2019) shows that the accurate coding of accountability mechanisms in contracts and establishing who is accountable may help to bring this forward and may help to elucidate the mechanisms can be used to hold parties accountable and identify mechanisms that may be missing or that need to be enhanced in next contractual relationship. Legitimacy in relation to compliance with rules is also an issue relating to formal versus informal development.…”