Cities between Competitiveness and Cohesion

Discourses, Realities and Implementation

306 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

European cities have for decades found themselves in a phase of important changes. Concomitantly multi-level and multi-actor policy processes have unfolded in the EU. Sub-national governments are facing new challenges as their manufacturing industry withers away, still more responsibility for matching the globalisation ch- lenges such as welfare, employment and general social improvements are tra- ferred from national to sub-national levels. This raises speci?c governance problems for city regions in their attempt to meet the demand from the emerging knowled- based society. Yet, no city or city region exists in a vacuum; they are all embedded in national settings with speci?c structures and traditions as well as different p- ceptions of challenges, needs and solutions. It appears that a general, neoliberal discourse has conquered the political agenda during the last one or two decades: That economic regeneration requires increasing competitiveness achieved by - forced stress on knowledge intensive industries, which itself needs more and better education. However, the implementation of such a strategy has many forms and the realities are often quite a step from the intended outcome. During the last three years, a group of about forty people has met regularly across Europe to develop the ideas as originally presented in the Memorandum of Und- standing, setting the agenda for the analysis of preconditions, strategies and o- comes among different cities in their effort to reconcile welfare and growth.

• Reihe: GeoJournal Library
• Themen: Geowissenschaften, Geographie, Umwelt, Planung Geographie Humangeographie
• ISBN: 9789048178162
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 28.10.2010
• Größe: 23.5 x 15.5 cm
• Verlag: Springer Netherland
• Herausgegeben von: Peter Ache, Hans Thor Andersen, Thomas Maloutas, Mike Raco, Tuna Taşan-Kok