Planning and Conflict discusses the reasons for conflicts around urban developments and analyzes their shape in contemporary cities. It offers an interdisciplinary framework for scholars to engage with the issue of planning conflicts, focusing on both empirical and theoretical inquiry. By reviewing different perspectives for planners to engage with conflicts, and not simply mediate or avoid them, Planning and Conflict provides a theoretically informed look forward to the future of engaged, responsive city development that involves all its stakeholders.

In the 1990s, large-scale urban projects were launched in almost every metropolitan region of Europe, but it is not clear that they have achieved their aims of innovative integration of economic and sustainable objectives. In order to successfully coordinate a collection of single-purposed, public and private interests in large metropolitan area's required intelligent strategies of coordination and governance in a world dominated by fragmentary coalitions of power and interest. It also required institutional innovation by crossing through the barriers of the sector-minded, single-issue approaches typical of statutory territorial agencies.
This book draws on research findings to ask crucial questions relating to the performance of large-scale strategic urban projects incuding how do private sector coalitions produce new economic spaces in regional settings, how might these private interests become integrated in collective preferences? What are the competitive alternatives? How can local governance make a difference? How are strategies of "mutual exchange of interests" made successful? And which forces are included and which are excluded in the crucial coalitions of framing, decision-making and organization large-scale urban projects?
The first part of the book sets out the framework for the study and looks at the social, policy and institutional context of strategic urban projects in Europe. Part two uses case studies to discuss recent experiences of large-scale projects in European city-regions. Each case study chapter highlights a different planning issue including: new urbanism, the use of culture to drive the urban economy, information networks, fostering entrepreneurship, public partnerships, technopoles and creating large-scale redevelopment by connecting micro-interventions. Part three assesses the findings of the research exercise and makes recommendations for good practice.

There is little question today that processes of globalization affect national and local economies, governance processes, and conditions for economic competitiveness in the major urban regions of the world. In most liberal-democratic countries, these processes are occurring according to a rationale which attempts to combine strategies of state-supported development with increasing local-regional governmental decentralization and autonomy. Against this background, the issue of metropolitan development is being redefined worldwide, along with its institutional frameworks, modes of governance, policy instruments, and spatial planning strategies. The overarching assumption of this volume is that 'metropolitan space', far from being consolidated as a policy object, is currently being redefined and in some instances 'constructed' and contested as a scale, through a variety of policy practices related to spatial-economic development objectives. Through case studies drawn from across four continents, the authors reveal a range of interesting cross-national commonalities concerning the power that state actors, situated at various spatial scales, exert as agents in these processes. This volume interrogates key research issues raised by these developments, and is intended as a contribution to the establishment of a globally comparative analysis of the construction of metropolitan spaces and scales under conditions of globalization and neoliberalization.

There is little question today that processes of globalization affect national and local economies, governance processes, and conditions for economic competitiveness in the major urban regions of the world. In most liberal-democratic countries, these processes are occurring according to a rationale which attempts to combine strategies of state-supported development with increasing local-regional governmental decentralization and autonomy. Against this background, the issue of metropolitan development is being redefined worldwide, along with its institutional frameworks, modes of governance, policy instruments, and spatial planning strategies. The overarching assumption of this volume is that 'metropolitan space', far from being consolidated as a policy object, is currently being redefined and in some instances 'constructed' and contested as a scale, through a variety of policy practices related to spatial-economic development objectives. Through case studies drawn from across four continents, the authors reveal a range of interesting cross-national commonalities concerning the power that state actors, situated at various spatial scales, exert as agents in these processes. This volume interrogates key research issues raised by these developments, and is intended as a contribution to the establishment of a globally comparative analysis of the construction of metropolitan spaces and scales under conditions of globalization and neoliberalization.

Planning and Conflict discusses the reasons for conflicts around urban developments and analyzes their shape in contemporary cities. It offers an interdisciplinary framework for scholars to engage with the issue of planning conflicts, focusing on both empirical and theoretical inquiry. By reviewing different perspectives for planners to engage with conflicts, and not simply mediate or avoid them, Planning and Conflict provides a theoretically informed look forward to the future of engaged, responsive city development that involves all its stakeholders.

Presenting the findings of extensive research into the development of planning tools and strategies since the early 1970s, this book addresses key issues in urban development/governance and brings together a range of different national experiences. Helpfully divided into three sections, Framing Strategic Urban Projects sets out the study framework, with its social, policy and institutional contexts; uses up-to-date European case studies to highlight different planning issues, including new-urbanism, information networks and public partnerships; and finally makes good-practice recommendations. Offering a systematic comparison of a wide variety of projects and providing useful case study material of these large-scale urban projects and recommendations, this book is essential reading for planners, policy makers and students interested in how to make strategic urban projects work effectively.