Community Organizations and Local Governance in a Metropolitan Region

Abstract

In a context of globalization, municipalities and metropolitan regions are involved in international competition to support economic growth. This leads to new forms of collaboration between public authorities and businesses, giving birth to new forms of urban and metropolitan governances. Moreover, many old neighborhoods of the central city and some districts of the old suburbs face growth in unemployment and poverty. In these local territories, community organizations put forward local development practices that aim to improve living conditions. These organizations cooperate with other community organizations, public institutions and private agencies. Thus, they are embedded in a kind of governance: a local governance. This article, based on the case of the metropolitan region of Montreal, highlights the conception of local development of these community organizations, the local governance in which they participate, and the link between this local governance with the urban and metropolitan ones.

‘Social Mix’ and Neighbourhood Revitalization in a Transatlantic Perspective: Comparing Local Policy Discourses and Expectations in Paris (France), Bristol (UK) and Montréal (Canada)

“…Monolithic and top‐down accounts of urban neoliberalism are also inadequate when understanding positions taken on social mix in specific local contexts, because neoliberal thought also embraces ‘community as policy’ via a downscaling of social and economic responsibilities at a local level. This tends to generate multi‐actor forms of local governance, thus providing the conditions for significant local contingency in policy implementation (Larner and Craig, 2005; Fontan et al ., 2009); as found in an in‐depth study of the Hope VI implementation process in four different local contexts in the USA (Chaskin and Joseph, 2010). Consequently, even where broad centralized policy orientations exist (which is not always the case), locally grounded agendas can shape policies in different ways in different places, and the interplay of dynamics set in motion by local systems of actors can create varied and not always predictable outcomes.…”

New urban governance: A review of current themes and future priorities

“…Notes 1. It should also be noted that the bulk of theoretical development has relied heavily on North American and European cases (e.g., Brenner, 1999;Brenner & Theodore, 2002;Fontan, Hamel, Morin, & Shragge, 2008;Frug & Barron, 2008;Stoker, 1998Stoker, , 2011. 2.…”

In and against the neoliberal state? The precarious siting of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) as counter-movement in Montreal, Quebec

“…Yet, when operating independently or on a local scale, their ability to tackle structural change is limited (Visser et al., 2017). And as Martin (2011) points out, despite their activist origins, many non-profit intermediaries end up simply becoming service providers that compensate for the inadequacies of the market (see also Fontan et al., 2009), enabling neoliberalization to proceed amidst constant crises and thereby assuming the role of ‘shadow market’ (Martin, 2011: 2938, see also Mayer, 2007; Pierre, 2009) in addition to that of ‘shadow state’. 3 This tension raises an important question about the prospects for civil society organizations to act in the interests of marginalized segments of society rather than the market or neoliberalizing state - a source of contention between a Polanyian and a Gramscian perspective.…”

“…On the one hand, the institutionalization of WISEs risks straining their ability to balance social and economic objectives and to combat the marketization of labour. WISEs are becoming more accountable to government, and state funding is increasingly tied to meeting short-term program deliverables (Dolbel, 2009; Fontan et al., 2009; Nyssens, 2006). Moreover, the business aspect of their operations places them in competition with other businesses in the same field – businesses that may not face the same turnover or limited skill base (Alberio and Tremblay, 2014; Cooney, 2011).…”