urban regeneration in deprived european neighbourhoods 401
municipal/local development personnel. The network was practitioner-led.
The primary objectives of the network were to assemble knowledge about the
state of art in urban regeneration in Europe, and to identify successful
principles and approaches in promoting and sustaining local partnerships.
The overall aim of the project was to distil from a series of regeneration case
studies, a model of best practice for public-private partnerships in the sector.2
While all of the participating cities were committed to the idea of the
socially integrated city, significant differences emerged in how the common
problems were conceptualised, prioritised and addressed. For example, the
definition of public-private partnership on the ground, the levels of engage-
ment of various stakeholders, and the means of community participation
varied widely. While each participating city shared a common focus on
neighbourhood regeneration, how regeneration was imagined and imple-
mented owed much to contextual factors such as institutional structures,
political culture and the relative power of (potentially) competing sets of actors
within the urban regeneration system.
II THE EVOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
Partnership is the preferred mode of regulation adapted by the
contemporary European state. Partnerships are seen as a palatable
alternative to hierarchies and markets, (Benington, 2001, p. 203). Partnership
is not new, as it builds on a history of inter-agency collaboration and
participation by local communities in the implementation of programmes and
delivery of services in many countries, (Geddes and Benington, 2001, p. 25).
Within the specific policy realm of tackling poverty, the focus is increasingly
on the adoption of a more integrated, multi-dimensional and geographically
2 The project proceeded in four phases which involved study visits to each city, the production of
overview reports on each city, the identification of key themes for comparative analysis and the
production of a synthesis report highlighting best practice in each of the participating cities. Over
the two and a half year period, eight cross-city visits took place during which participants spent
two working days visiting regeneration projects in designated neighbourhoods. Each city team
was required to reflect on and report their observations of each visit, and to produce an overview
report on partnership and urban regeneration in the home city, in accordance with guidelines set
down by the group. Four key themes were identified as forming the principal points of analysis
for the project: the aims of regeneration, private sector involvement, community participation,
anchoring and mainstreaming. The material across the eight cities was synthesised under these
themes. The city reports and thematic reports formed the basis for the final project document
which makes recommendations on policy and practice in the field of urban regeneration. See:
Regenerating neighbourhoods in partnership-learning from emergent practices. ENTRUST 2004.