Description:
This book presents the findings of a major Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project into urban austerity governance in eight cities across the world (Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Melbourne, Dublin, Leicester, Montréal and Nantes). It offers comparative reflections on the myriad experiences of collaborative governance and its limitations.
An international collaborative from across the social sciences, the book discusses ways that citizens, activists and local states collaborate and come into conflict in attempting to build just cities. It examines the development of egalitarian collaborative governance strategies, provides innovative ideas and tools to extend emancipatory governance practices and shows hopeful possibilities for cities beyond austerity and neoliberalism.
Brief description: Jonathan S. Davies is Director of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity and Professor of Critical Policy Studies at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
Review Quotes:
"The book provides a critical but also nuanced analysis of how policy agendas, dominated by neoliberal visions and austerity, affect practices of collaborative urban governance. Its comparative approach also shows that governance devices can also be host to resistance strategies and policy alternatives to austerity." Gilles Pinson, Sciences Po Bordeaux
"This impressive collection of comparative international case studies offers a highly original and intriguing account of how local collaboration can help to circumvent the negative impacts of austerity on global cities." Sarah Ayres, University of Bristol
"This book provides a unique account of responses to governing, and resisting, austerity. Trends to centralization and authoritarianism are revealed, but alongside glimpses of alternative urban futures. Detailed empirical research is combined with a passion for urban social justice, creating a highly readable resource for academics, activists and urban policymakers." Vivien Lowndes, University of Birmingham