Contracting communities: Conceptualizing Community Benefits Agreements to improve citizen involvement in urban development projects

Abstract

Contractual agreements are becoming increasingly important for city governments seeking to manage urban development. Contractual governance involves direct relations between the local state and different public and private actors and citizens. Although abundant literature exists on public–private partnerships related to urban development projects, agreements made between citizens, interest organizations and market parties, such as Community Benefits Agreements remain under-explored and under-theorized. While it may seem that the state is absent from contemporary forms of contractual governance, such agreements remain highly intertwined with government policies. The central aim of this paper is to better conceptualize Community Benefits Agreement practices in order to build understanding of how contractual governance caters for direct end-user involvement in urban development, and to yield insights into its potential as to render development processes more inclusive. Based on academic literature in planning and law, expert interviews and several case studies in New York City, this paper conceptualizes end-user involvement in urban development projects and innovates within urban planning and governance theory through the use of two new concepts—project collectivity and the image of a fourth chair.

Urban megaprojects and water justice in Southeast Asia: Between global economies and community transitions

“…They offer some alternative to intractable, uneven, power conflicts, operating under superficial urban growth engine positions, in which poorer residents are invariably either forcibly displaced, unable to transition financially, or exposed to environmental hazards (Cain, 2014;Carr, 2019;Janssen-Jansen & Veen, 2017).…”

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

“…All in all, the content and use of contractual arrangements for urban development and regeneration have received attention from scholars but only to a limited depth – often not addressing the actual content of agreements or the ways in which they are used (Janssen-Jansen and Van der Veen, 2017; Van der Veen and Korthals Altes, 2011, 2012). Furthermore, many studies of urban regeneration have focused on policies and practices in Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly the UK and the USA (Guy et al, 2002; McCarthy, 2016), which has had implications for the external validity of the published research.…”

“…If the plans do not offer sufficient flexibility, the social and environmental goals will be sacrificed: either nothing gets built, so they cannot be met, or the most costly parts of their realization are subtracted from the plans since the alternative is that nothing will get built. (Van der Veen andKorthals Altes, 2012: 1054) In theory, contingency provisions contribute to contractual adaptability. However, the actual adaptability of a contract cannot be measured until an unexpected event occurs or new relevant project knowledge is acquired: that is when contingency mechanisms are supposed to come into play and when their real value can be assessed.…”

Consultants as intermediaries: Their perceptions on citizen involvement in urban development

“…Since the 1980s, the planning and realization of UDPs has increasingly become a publicprivate enterprise (Raco et al, 2016;Vogelpohl, 2018). The trend has at least two important indications, the first being that market parties have taken over tasks that were previously fulfilled by the public sector, including the design and planning of urban development plans and participation processes, and the second being that city governments have increasingly made use of new organizational tools from the market sector, such as performance-based indicators and bond financing, to organize their work (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Janssen-Jansen and Van der Veen, 2017;Tasan-Kok, 2010). In these governance networks of public and private actors, contractual agreements are used to coordinate responsibilities and formalize relations (Janssen-Jansen and Van der Veen, 2017).…”

“…Contractual agreements are often dominated by financial arrangements instead of by social goals (Raco, 2013;Van den Hurk and Hueskes, 2017;Vincent-Jones, 2007). In previous research, we emphasized contracts as a tool for organization (Janssen-Jansen and Van der Veen, 2017). Starting from the American example of "community benefits agreements," we studied various examples of "community contracts" (i.e.…”