Making the City, a comparative study into inclusive governance in urban spaces of marginalization
Researchers
- Simone van de Wetering (PhD researcher)
- Martijn Groenleer (supervision)
- Jan Willem Duyvendak (supervision)
Period
- 2018-2022
Summary
European cities are growing geographically, demographically and economically. Simultaneously, inequality within urban areas increases and the segregation between city center and the periphery grows (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, 2016). Not all citizens benefit from the ‘triumph of the city’ (Glaeser, 2012), especially those living in the marginalized spaces of urban regions. Here, people feel increasingly left behind, both in socio-cultural and socio-economic terms: their ideas about the future of their livings spaces not being heard and their disadvantaged socio-economic positions not improved. This (perceived) political exclusion and deprivation of people living in ‘places that don’t matter’ triggers them to use the ballot box or outright revolt to express their discontent, their feelings of being left behind (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018).
Simultaneously, we see governments developing and implementing local, place-specific policies to tackle marginalization in these neighborhoods, often in ‘inclusive’ ways: together with citizens. But it appears difficult to involve (all) citizens within these (new) governance structures (Duyvendak & Tonkens, 2017) and the effectiveness of such policy-making processes are ambiguous (Gustafson & Herrting, 2017). With regard to making urban change, the ideas and efforts of policymakers and those of the residents of urban spaces of marginalization appear to clash. This mismatch between policy and people, between ‘well-intended plans’ (Scott, 1999) and ‘the excluded’ who feel ‘left behind’ (Dikeç, 2017; Rodríguez-Pose, 2018) raises questions about the way in which these urban spaces of marginalization, are and can be governed to make urban change.
This research studies how and by whom urban spaces of marginalization are governed to explain how well-intended -inclusive- efforts to govern urban spaces of marginalization coexist with the persisting discontent of their urban residents. With ethnographic field research in marginalized urban spaces in the Netherlands and France I study strategies of the (local) state and of citizens that they employ to govern or ‘make’ the city. By investigating how citizens and the (local) state in relation to each other govern and perceive the city in places of urban marginalization I ‘problematize’ the concept of ‘inclusive governance’ to develop an understanding of the complexity of putting inclusion into practice. In addition, with this research I aim to contribute to the existing knowledge on urban-regional governance and active citizenship and to suggest ways forward for governance and policy in and of deprived urban spaces in European cities.
Publications
Not yet…