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THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL REVIEW
The scale and intensity of community involvement varies across the cities
and their constituent neighbourhoods. In reviewing the case studies presented
over the course of the project we identified a tendency for different kinds of
participation to emerge at different scale levels, and at different levels of
intensity. In summary, these strategies of participation can be described as
representation, deliberation and clientelism.
Representative structures are characteristic of the macro-level of
governance within the locality visible in the presence of a relatively small
number of local residents on advisory boards, monitoring boards and project
boards. Their role is largely to respond to initiatives emanating from the
regeneration agency/municipality, to advocate the position of the local
residents and to advise on the adaptation and implementation of strategies.
Such representative structures are particularly characteristic of regeneration
projects being undertaken in Dublin. These representatives are not
necessarily elected but are generally “social entrepreneurs” that represent
specific interest groups or associations within the neighbourhood or are long
standing activists in the community. They may not necessarily be
representative of the neighbourhood and its various constituencies. As Burton
(2003) points out there is also a serious problem that faces residents who are
inducted into a position of responsibility:
... they can easily find their legitimacy as representatives questioned from
all sides: from other residents who see them as losing touch with their roots;
from local regeneration professionals who doubt their technical skills and
their political representativeness; and from higher level civil servants who
also question their capacity and democratic credentials (2003, p. 24).
When local municipalities are spending considerable amounts of money on
neighbourhood regeneration they are often wary of ceding too much control to
community stakeholders. One way of getting around this problem is to resort
to expert systems who are often called in to provide “objective” analysis of the
problems and outline solutions. This side steps the issue of truly sharing
power with the community, and provides the municipality with a strategy for
stalling on a commitment, or having that commitment re-defined through the
work carried out by the expert analyst. Experts then provide a counterweight
to community representatives. In Dublin, where local government has
traditionally been weak and where urban regeneration is still very new to
local government officials, the practice has been to proceed cautiously when
consulting the local population. Representative structures tend to keep the
community at arms length, and to maintain power and control in the hands of
officials. In cities such as Berlin and Copenhagen, with long traditions of local