Suchergebnisse

After decades of equity oriented urban policies, the advent of neo-liberalism and the more recent great recession have led to their successive dismantling. On the other hand, these developments, coupled with continuing massive immigration, have led to a call for a 'just city' agenda (Fainstein, 2010) where policies and planning are directed towards equity, diversity and citizen participation rather than growth and cultural protectionism. Given the difficult economic and social environment, however, it is not clear whether such an agenda finds political support even at the level of cities. In this paper, we put forward both a descriptive and an explanatory research question. Firstly, can we find local political support for the 'just city' ideal in Europe? Secondly, what are the local conditions conducive to embracing this ideal? Building on a recent European survey of city mayors, we present a first assessment of local orientations towards the 'just city'. Our cluster-analysis reveals a substantial share of favourably inclined mayors spread unequally across European countries. Capitalizing on subnational variation in mayoral attitudes, our multivariate regressions confirm a strong positive association with leftist party ideology, while also identifying favourable conditions for Christian and conservative mayors (medium-sized cities, low influence of the business sector). Strong voluntary associations, in contrast, are rather associated with participatory and egalitarian mayoral attitudes, but not with a positive stance towards diversity. Moreover, the positive predisposition of leftist mayors seems to wain with increasing dependency on EU funding. The exploratory study thus opens new avenues for further research.

This paper explores the dynamics of urban policy transfer in the European Union (EU), critically examining the process of Europeanization in relation to urban issues. The paper takes a comparative approach, analysing the evolution of urban policy and Europeanization in four member states: France, Italy, Spain and the UK from the 1990s up to the current Cohesion Policy period (2014–2020). Using an analytical framework based on three dimensions of Europeanization (direction, object and impact), we examine the extent to which urban policies are moving towards an integrated approach to sustainable urban development, as supported by the EU. The paper highlights the contradictions between processes of convergence through Europeanization, and path-dependent systems and trajectories that forge alternative paths. In doing so, it advances wider debates on the impact of Europeanization in a neo-liberal context by arguing that member states more likely to be affected by Europeanization are those most impacted by national austerity measures. A process of 'variegated Europeanization' is proposed to capture the differential practices taking place within the EU with regard to the circulation of the EU's approach to urban policy.