Can Neighbourhoods Save the City?: Community Development and Social Innovation

ISBN-13: 9780415485883 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 248 str.

Frank Moulaert;Erik Swyngedouw;Flavia Martinelli

Opis

For decades, neighbourhoods been pivotal sites of social, economic and political exclusion processes, and civil society initiatives, attempting bottom-up strategies of re-development and regeneration. In many cases these efforts resulted in the creation of socially innovative organizations, seeking to satisfy the basic human needs of deprived population groups, to increase their political capabilities and to improve social interaction both internally and between the local communities, the wider urban society and political world. SINGOCOM - Social INnovation GOvernance and COMmunity building - is the acronym of the EU-funded project on which this book is based. Sixteen case studies of socially-innovative initiatives at the neighbourhood level were carried out in nine European cities, of which ten are analysed in depth and presented here. The book compares these efforts and their results, and shows how grass-roots initiatives, alternative local movements and self-organizing urban collectives are reshaping the urban scene in dynamic, creative, innovative and empowering ways. It argues that such grass-roots initiatives are vital for generating a socially cohesive urban condition that exists alongside the official state-organized forms of urban governance. The book is thus a major contribution to socio-political literature, as it seeks to overcome the duality between community-development studies and strategies, and the solidarity-based making of a diverse society based upon the recognising and maintaining of citizenship rights. It will be of particular interest to both students and researchers in the fields of urban studies, social geography and political science.

Development theory generally assumes that macro rather than micro scales are more appropriate than to initiate city-wide or region-wide development impulses. It is often assumed that this is the appropriate level to assess or to implement urban development policies and strategies. Neighbourhood development is relegated to the domain of social integration policies, usually to alleviate the exclusionary processes unleashed by urban social and economic restructuring dynamics.

Most books on and theories of urban-regional development follow this model, and concentrate on the scale of the city or the region as a whole - it is exactly this perspective that this book challenges. Instead of a top-down approach, it looks at the impact and successes of bottom-up neighbourhood based initiatives.

Using the considerable research has been undertaken into the effects of economic, social and political exclusion processes and practices in particular neighbourhoods in European cities, the core argument of this book is that local initiatives have sparked regeneration processes that have generated substantial city-wide re-development dynamics. The contributions in this book analyse and document a variety of innovative local urban strategies and initiatives in a range of European cities and their impact on wider urban socio-economic and political restructuring processes.

Recenzje

"A common criticism of edited volumes is that they can sometimes be little more than a loosely connected series of chapters. However, Can Neighbourhoods Save the City does not fall into this trap. Not only are the empirical chapters, which form the body of the book, connected through a commonly considered analytical framework, but a solid narrative draws the reader through from conception to conclusion. Ultimately, it is clear that sub-city initiatives provide hugely generative sites of social cohesion that co-exist alongside official state-driven forms of city governance. Many of these initiatives are not new, although the invocation of innovation and enterprise within their analysis may not have been so emphasised in previous eras."–Professor Anna Davies, Trinity College Dublin

Spis treści

1. Social Innovation and Community Development: Concepts and Theories  2. Historical Roots of Social Change: Philosophies and Movements  3. ALMOLIN: How to Analyse Social Innovation at the Local Level  4. Kommunales Forum Wedding – Innovation in Local Governance in Berlin  5. Arts Factory, Rhondda Cynon Taff, South Wales  6. Social Exclusion/Inclusion and Innovation in the Neighbourhood of Epeule (Roubaix). The Case of the Association Alentour  7. The End of Social Innovation in Urban Development Strategies? Neighbourhood Development Corporations in Antwerp  8. How do you Build a Shared Interest? Olinda - a Case of Social Innovation Between Strategy and Organizational Learning in Milano  9. Centro Sociale Leoncavallo - Milan - Italy. A building-block for an Enlarged Citizenship in Milan  10. Associazione Quartieri Spagnoli (AQS) - Naples  11. New Deal for Communities in Newcastle  12. The Ouseburn Valley. A Struggle to Innovate in the Context of a Weak Local State  13. The Contradictions of Controlled Modernisation: Local Area Management in Vienna  14. Self-determined Urban Interventions as Tools for Social Innovation: The Case of City Mine(d) in Brussels  15. Creative Designing the Urban Future: Building on Experiences - A Transversal Analysis of Socially Innovative Case-Studies  16. Socially Innovative Projects, Governance Dynamics and Urban Change: A Policy Framework