GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES AND MODELS FOR THE CITIES OF TOMORROW

1439 Words3 Pages

The PLUREL project, FP6 programme (2007-11) tackled three main issues; the first one regarding the difficulties in controlling changes in land use in many EU countries. The PLUREL project therefore analysed the levels of organisation, democratic control and fragmentation of governance structures across archetypal rural/urban regions. The second issue regarded problems in spatial planning and urban sprawl, brought about by the NIMBYism mentality, and finally the issue of financial and taxation mechanisms which are also drivers of urban sprawl. The results showed that there is a need for strong democratic governments to manage market forces and aim at avoiding fiscal incentives which might lead to wasteful competition; venture in strategic planning rather than competition. The next project is Joining Forces model which came about as a result of problems between municipalities and urban realities. Various solutions have been tried and tested in the past, such as municipality mergers in Belgium and the creation of metropolitan authorities in French communities, however, most of these solutions proved ineffective! Therefore the results yielded that the bringing together of authorities' resources, would be efficient, however the main issue is wariness of the different entities towards each other! National governments ought to endorse a legal framework in order for this process to take place. The fifth project is URBACT Citylab: Managing metropolitan areas across boundaries and frontiers. Following the ESPON 2007 project, here one can find official definitions of MUA and FUA. This project defined MUA as highly populated areas which do not usually correspond to administrative boundaries. FUAs are defined as areas which are functionally l... ... middle of paper ... ...2014). Prof. Dr. Hartmut Häussermann — Urban Sociology. Retrieved 19 June 2014, from http://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/lehrbereiche-en/stadtsoz-en/faculty/past-faculty/haeussermann TheFreeDictionary.com,. (2014). nimbyism. Retrieved 12 June 2014, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nimbyism Tosics, I. (2011). Governance challenges and models for the cities of tomorrow.Issue paper on behalf of the European Commission-DG Regional Policy. Budapest: Metropolitan Research Institute. Tosics, I. (2013). Sustainable Land Use in Peri-Urban Areas: Government, Planning and Financial Instruments. In Peri-urban futures: Scenarios and models for land use change in Europe (pp. 373-404). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Urbact.eu,. (2014). Metropolitan Governance. Retrieved 20 June 2014, from http://urbact.eu/en/urbact-capitalisation/exploring-our-thematic-clusters/metropolitan-governance/

Open Document