Reinout Kleinhans

Using Social Media and Mobile Technologies to Foster Engagement and Self-Organization in Participatory Urban Planning and Neighbourhood Governance

This editorial explores the potential of social media and mobile technologies to foster citizen engagement and participation in urban planning. We argue that there is a lot of wishful thinking, but little empirically validated knowledge in this emerging field of study. We outline key developments and pay attention to larger societal and political trends. The aim of this special issue is: 1) To offer a critical state-of-the-art overview of empirical research; and 2) to explore whether social media and mobile technologies have measurable effects on citizens engagement beyond traditional mobilization and participation tools. We find that wider engagement only ‘materializes’ if virtual connections also manifest themselves in real space through concrete actions, by using both online and offline engagement tools. Another requirement is that planners do not seek to marginalize dissenting voices in order to promote the interests of powerful developers.

Digital Participatory Platforms for Co-Production in Urban Development: A Systematic Review

A renewed interest has appeared in citizen co-production of public services due to financial pressure on governments. While social media are considered an important facilitator, many digital participatory platforms DPPs have been developed to facilitate co-production between citizens and governments in the context of urban development. Previous studies have delivered a fragmented overview of DPPs in a few socio-spatial contexts and failed to take stock of the rise of DPPs. This article aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of the availability and functionalities of DPPs. Through a systematic review, 113 active DPPs have been identified, analysed, and classified within a citizen-government relationship typology. Almost a quarter of these DPPs demonstrate a realistic potential for online and offline co-production between governments and citizens. The article critically analyses the characteristics of these DPPs and explores their real-world applications in urban development. The article concludes with directions for further research.

Challenges to government use of social media

The use of different kinds of social media by government has been steadily increasing over the last decade. National, regional and local governments often employ social media to communicate and interact with citizens, organizations and/or other government agencies. However, as many authors highlight, the use of social media by government has many challenges, barriers and issues which undermine governments actual use of social media. We argue, however, that prior research has to some extent overlooked the nature of challenges, in so far as it does not fully address differences between them and other elements, such as risks. This has resulted in a debate on challenges that includes both general barriers and risks of social media use by governments which, as a consequence, does not allow for consideration of the different actions that are needed to counter challenges and risks.

Beyond technology : Identifying local government challenges for using digital platforms for citizen engagement

Abstract Previous research has highlighted that there is a lack of advanced technological solutions able to foster government-citizens collaboration. We argue that many examples of digital participatory platforms are already available and also ready to use for governments and citizens. Hence, causes for ineffective citizen engagement and collaboration with local government should not be sought in the lack of advanced technology. Thus, we focus on the issues and challenges that local governments face in fostering online and offline citizen engagement. We also provide a classification of challenges into six categories as a prerequisite to identifying actions and solutions for local governments.

Unravelling the nexus between entrepreneurship, neighbourhoods and communities – introduction: Towards an Understanding of the Economies of Neighbourhoods and Communities

Until recently, entrepreneurship and neighbourhood studies were academic disciplines which rarely interacted with each other. However, recent macroeconomic and societal trends have pointed the spotlight on the nexus between entrepreneurship, neighbourhoods and communities, highlighting not only the importance of ‘the local’ in entrepreneurship, but also the huge gaps in our knowledge base regarding this tripartite relationship. In much of the literature, a distinction is drawn between entrepreneurship taking place in neighbourhoods or communities, and entrepreneurship taking place for neighbourhoods and communities. This chapter starts out from the international call for interdisciplinary approaches to entrepreneurship and firm formation to overcome entrepreneurship research and neighbourhood and community studies’ mutual neglect for one another’s fields of research. This introduction to a volume of chapters aims to shed light on the multiple relationships between entrepreneurship, neighbourhoods and communities across several countries. It asks how neighbourhoods and communities can shape entrepreneurship, a question for which the relevance stems from radical changes of (inter)national and regional labour markets and growing evidence that neighbourhood contexts impact on entrepreneurship and self-employment in various ways. It also asks the ‘reverse’ question: how does entrepreneurship influence neighbourhoods and communities? In doing so, the chapter (and many other chapters in the book) treat ‘community’ as a local, spatially embedded concept. Particular attention is devoted to community-based forms of enterprise and their potential for contemporary bottom-up neighbourhood regeneration.

Understanding entrepreneurship in residential neighbourhoods and communities of place: Towards an Understanding of the Economies of Neighbourhoods and Communities

This chapter provides conclusions regarding all contributions to this volume, which has explored the under-researched interconnections between entrepreneurship, neighbourhoods and communities of place. The key concern has been to contribute to knowledge about how residential areas where people live (neighbourhoods) and interact with co-residents and other actors (communities) are simultaneously shaping entrepreneurship and are being shaped by entrepreneurial activity. It turns out that neighbourhood and community are not contrary but rather complementary concepts for understanding local entrepreneurship. For ‘residentially embedded entrepreneurs’, entrepreneurial activity tends to be related to local market conditions, needs and communities, while ‘residentially disembedded entrepreneurs’ have little or no connection with the local economy, neighbourhood and local place-based community. This volume has also extensively studied community enterprises. The view from entrepreneurship studies on how this type of enterprise can positively impact on neighbourhood development seems more optimistic than in neighbourhood studies where CEs were identified that do not (or cannot) act entrepreneurially in terms of profit seeking and innovation. In fact, ‘successful’ CEs have to balance the (often competing) priorities of innovation, financial stability, accountability to a wider public and long-term sustainability. Several directions for further research have been identified. First, impact and success of CEs are very difficult to assess because they operate in differing fields and timescales and deliver various social, economic and environmental benefits. Secondly, social capital is relevant for entrepreneurship and community enterprises (alongside other capital forms). Further research is required on the nature of and balance among different forms of social capital related to location, size and specific character of the community and to effectiveness and sustainability. Finally, the relationship with active citizenship and local governance merits further study, in particular collaborative arrangements which lead to the organisation, delivery and management of innovative projects by CEs.