The Challenge of Urban Regeneration in Deprived European Neighbourhoods - a Partnership Approach

The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 37, No. 3, Winter, 2006, pp. 399-422

The Challenge of Urban Regeneration in
Deprived European Neighbourhoods:
a Partnership Approach*

MARY P. CORCORAN

National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Abstract: This paper sets out to critically examine the adoption of a partnership approach to urban
regeneration at neighbourhood level across eight European cities. While all of the cities were
committed to the idea of the socially integrated city, significant differences emerged in the
conceptualisation and practice of partnership at neighbourhood level. This paper draws on case
studies assembled in the course of an EU funded thematic network (ENTRUST) to illustrate, in
particular, the challenges associated with (1) mobilising the private sector and (2) engaging the
local population in the process. The paper concludes that the experience of partnership at
neighbourhood level is largely determined by contextual factors such as local and national
institutional structures, political culture and the relative power of potentially competing actors
within the urban regeneration system.

*This paper was delivered at a conference “Social Partnership: A New Kind of Governance?”
funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute
for Regional and Spatial Analysis and the Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth, 14-15
September 2004.

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