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THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL REVIEW
new approach was put forward in the 1990s, structured around key
development companies working at neighourhood level with the power to draw
together major stakeholders involved in economic and social development,
housing and community capacity building. The success of such agencies in the
social economy is seen to reside in their independence from traditional local
government structures. Hence, the desire to distance them from the public
sector. On the other hand, Berlin and Copenhagen have a tradition of
autonomous municipal government, that enjoys a relatively high degree of
legitimacy reflected in participatory democratic practices at neighbourhood
level. In both of these cities, urban regeneration agencies are not delineated as
separate to the municipal structures, but rather are comfortably embedded
within them. In Dublin, the urban regeneration agenda has been pursued
principally within local government structures, but those structures are
historically weak and are not rooted in a model of active local democracy. The
absence of trust in the local authority “to deliver” is evidenced by the fact that
several flagship projects have been taken out of the hands of the local
government by central government and entrusted to quasi-private develop-
ment agencies (for example, Docklands, Temple Bar, Abbotstown develop-
ment). Local communities, at least until the recent past, have often felt
excluded or marginalised from the processes of urban regeneration in their
localities.
Changes in the wider political and economic arena inevitably bring
changes in the nature of the urban regime. Hamburg is a good case in point.
Federal government grants (one-third) matched by local government funds
(two-thirds) were allocated to a programme aimed at social integration and
sustainable economic development in designated neighbourhoods in the city in
the early 1990s. A specialist agency (STEG) was established by the Hamburg
Senate in 1990 with responsibility for regeneration and redevelopment. The
agency was successful in leveraging private investment into rundown
neighbourhoods and improving the housing stock. A shift to the right in the
political regime in Hamburg in 2001, resulted in the privatisation of the
agency in 2003, and an inevitable re-orientation of its original goals.
In Vilnius, the demise of the centrist state structures has left a political
vacuum at local level. The Old Town Renewal Agency which has responsibility
for urban regeneration is semi-autonomous from the local government.
However, its capacity to act is limited by its small budget, the weakness of civil
society (which makes it difficult for people “to buy in”) and the lack of private
investment capital.
These background contextual factors help to explain the different
positioning of the “private sector” within each city’s repertoire. The not-for-
profit sector (local development agencies) are seen as part of the private sector