LIST OF PANELS

Urbanization is a worldwide development. People settle in cities to find work and a better future. But the growing population in the cities puts pressure on housing, safety, public health, and the environment. Urban governments are unable to address these major challenges on their own. Creative and innovative solutions need to be found to keep cities livable.

In the public administration literature, there is common ground for the idea that, due to increasingly complex policy challenges and the changing capacity of governments to pursue collective interests, governments need to cooperate in inter-organizational governance networks or in partnerships with citizens, social organizations, and companies (e.g. Rhodes 1997, Pierre 2000, Pierre and Peters 2000, Kjaer 2004, Sørensen and Torfing 2005, Torfing et al. 2012, Michels and Van Montfort 2015). It is often assumed that cooperation in  partnerships and inter-organizational networks leads to better service provision, greater efficiency, and better opportunities for citizen groups to promote their wishes.  In this panel we want to get a better understanding of how partnerships can contribute to livability in urban areas.

The central question in this panel is: How do different types of partnerships between public and private actors contribute to  the livability in urban areas and what can be learned from innovative and/or successful practices?

The focus  in this panel will be on three specific, but interconnected dimensions of livable cities:

• the green city: ‘livable public spaces’ and 'green in the city' (parks, pedestrian areas, roof top gardens etc).
• the safe city: safe neighborhoods
• housing in the city: affordable housing for the poor, elderly and migrants.

‘Public’  includes local, regional and national governments, whereas ‘private’  refers to private companies,  civil society organizations and individual citizens. Public – private partnerships may otherwise vary widely in their nature and scope:  e.g. top down versus bottom up partnerships; partnerships primarily focused on financing versus partnerships focused on policy implementation; and  ‘multi-layered partnerships’, with different partnerships for funding, management and day to day operation within one project.  

The aim of this panel is threefold:

1. to contribute to a better understanding of the functioning and performance of specific types of public-private partnerships that play a role in livability issues in cities. In this panel we take a broad approach of public-private partnerships, and  want to combine approaches of public-private partnerships with a focus on private companies as the main private entities, with approaches from political science and public administration with a focus on citizen participation.
2. to find innovative or successful examples of partnerships that contribute to livability of cities
3. to get a better understanding of the factors for success and failure of different types of partnerships. Because of the often complex nature of partnerships and the contextual differences it is not possible to  pinpoint factors for success and failure that apply to every type of partnership in all circumstances.  Instead, the more interesting question is  ‘what kind of partnership works for whom under what circumstances’(Pawson and Tilley 1997).

Urbanization is a worldwide development. People settle in cities to find work and a better future. But the growing population in the cities also puts pressure on housing, safety, public health, and the environment. Because urban governments are unable to address these major challenges on their own, creative and innovative solutions need to be found to keep cities livable. Partnerships in cities between (local, regional, or national) governments and private parties, including private companies, civil society organizations, and  individual citizens, are believed to tackle these problems and increase livability. In this panel we want to get a better understanding of how partnerships can contribute to livability in urban areas. In this panel we take a broad approach of public-private partnerships, and  want to combine approaches of public-private partnerships with a focus on private companies as the main private entities, with approaches from political science and public administration with a focus on citizen participation.

The central question in this panel is: How do different types of partnerships between public and private actors contribute to livability in urban areas and what can be learned from innovative and/or successful practices?

We focus in this panel on three specific, but interconnected dimensions of livability:

• the green city: ‘livable public spaces’ and 'green in the city' (parks, pedestrian areas, roof top gardens etc).
• the safe city: safe neighborhoods
• housing in the city: affordable housing for the poor, elderly and migrants.

We welcome comparative and country-specific papers based on empirical research in one of the above mentioned fields, that address:

• the functioning and performance of partnerships;
• innovative and successful examples or failures of partnerships;
• the factors and conditions for success and failure of different types of partnerships.