Annick Magnier

Urban Systems as Growth Machines? Mayors’ Governing Networks against Global Indeterminacy

Mayors’ behaviour reflects their personality, their background, their political attitudes; but also the urban system in which they act.1 By viewing them as actors within multifaceted social systems, one can obtain valuable insight into some constitutive features of a sociological object that stands at the forefront of current debate: the ‘European City’. The term ‘city’ will not, however, be used here with its traditional evocation of a distancing between two antithetic environments, the city versus the countryside, and the related concepts of the cultural milieu versus the landscape. Rather, given the coalescence of settlements (with the resulting new boundaries in service provision), the phrase ‘urban system’ will be preferred, thus allowing the analysis of local democracy to be interpreted within the framework of European territorial transformation.

Mayors’ Agendas: Emerging Variations on the Theme of Entrepreneurialism

It is assessed which specific objectives of the mayors’ activities have occurred—particularly against the background of the enduring economic crisis and the emergence of new social and environmental issues. Referring to Stone’s analysis of urban regimes, interpreting the data collected during the previous survey on mayors—which dates back ten years ago—it has been shown how intensely local leaders felt responsible for mobilising the resources necessary to face proactively global competition and to assure local development. From the current data emerges a tripartite trend in the European mayors’ agendas: three political patterns where the attention to local development and economic growth is still prevalent. Nevertheless, in comparison with the past, mayors’ political priorities are now characterised by a less marked orientation towards the improvement in local infrastructural endowments, with the relevant exception of eastern European countries. At the same time, the social and environmental challenges bring with them new policy trends. The issues related to land consumption and population density take importance, in particular among the mayors of the cities located in the southern countries of Europe.

Mayors and Spatial Planning in Their Cities

In the last decades, institutional reforms and new informal practices have deeply transformed ‘spatial planning’ systems in Europe; in a context of reduced resources, local actors must simultaneously adapt their agenda and networking strategies for local development and urban transformation. Do European mayors continue to have faith in ‘new’ instruments such as territorial strategic planning, integrated urban projects in public–private partnerships? Or do they presently have more trust in a regulation introduced hierarchically within vertical power relations? Are there particular ‘spatial planning’ practices linked to specific urban agendas? Which are the main difficulties mayors have to face in defining urban plans and projects? The mayors’ declarations on the different ‘spatial planning’ instruments show how local leaders are currently contributing to the re-construction of the planning systems. Under the sign of an increasing adherence to the principles of ‘communicative’ planning emerges a composite trend, in contrast with the hypothesis of a progressive uniformity of cultures and practices around Europe. The three patterns of interpretation of the regulation’s function resulting from the statements of mayors suggest, on the contrary, the appearance of original configurations, new national settings and cultures if not of urban situations, which echo some classical models but, nevertheless, deeply revised.

El "segon nivell" italià a la recerca d’identitat: transformació de la província i naixement de la ciutat metropolitana

El 2014, el govern italia va aprovar una reforma important del govern local, mitjancant la Llei numero 56, relativa a ciutats metropolitanes, provincies, unions i agrupacions de municipis. La llei suprimeix les institucions de segon nivell (provincies) excepte en les arees metropolitanes mes importants, transforma les institucions de segon nivell restants en organs elegits de forma indirecta i en redissenya les funcions. En l’article s’analitza aquesta innovacio. Es combina una analisi secundaria amb una analisi innovadora dels estatuts aprovats en les ciutats metropolitanes; els resultats de la primera eleccio indirecta de presidents, i les dades italianes d’un estudi comparatiu europeu sobre els governs locals de segon nivell que es va fer dos anys abans de la reforma. La reforma va dissenyar-se per controlar els «costos de la politica» i per definir un model de governanca a les arees metropolitanes. Tanmateix, no resol alguns dels problemes mes importants i delega a les regions moltes de les decisions pel que fa a la implantacio del model. Tal com es mostra, a l’analisi, la reforma ofereix l’oportunitat per a reconstruccions diferents de les estrategies politiques en les deu arees metropolitanes.

Municipal priorities in urban planning and local development

The approval of the main documents and policies related to local spatial planning is around Europe a core competence of municipal assemblies. This area of policy ranks among those attracting considerable reform in recent decades, under the impact of European integration and of cultural changes in planning (Faludi 2007; Nadin and Stead 2008). The changing international planning culture increasingly refers to the principles of communicative planning. It calls for improved integration between policies, corresponding frequently with the development of alternative planning processes, entailing the development of strategic plans.

Governing through instruments? The challenging revival of spatial planning in European politics

An ambiguous attitude of politicians (and of sociologists) towards planning is linked to the “governance” discourse. Planning as key practice in governing is often, for example, veiled by the (redundant) label of “strategic planning”. The plan is a governing instrument in which a systematic analysis supports a political project, and as such it cannot be non “strategic”. In planning, the political project (as a set of actions) is rooted in a systematic analysis of the resources available to implement precise objectives.

Sociologia e piani strategici territoriali: alcune osservazioni sull'esperienza italiana

Sociology and territorial strategic planning: some consideration about Italian experience - This work compares two important recent Italian spatial planning movements: the physical planning reform and the territorial strategic planning diffusion. While the former has generated some legal institutional moments and a new juridical reference system, the second has bred a community of different knowledge and informal collective actions that seem disparate in their output. Moreover, these two cultural movements appear as originated by different knowledge: town planning and jurisprudence for the former and social and administration sciences such as economics and, in particular, sociology for the second. There are many advantages deriving from strategic planning, anyway they are darkened by some adaptation problems due to the organization nature. The author aims, in this work, to consolidate the useful tie between intellectual system on one side and administrative and political system on the other side, to give strategic planning the possibility to make its most.