New version of 'From government to governance'
'It's the process, stupid!'.
New ways of looking at leadership: this document shows what is expected of the ones overlooking the process of urban renewal. Governing should be converted into governance. But what exactly is governance?
>>> DOWNLOAD REURBA DOCUMENT 'GOVERNANCE' (in English)
>>> DOWNLOAD REURBA DOCUMENT 'GOVERNANCE' (in Dutch)

Focus on current and future users' demands
This strategy is about the process of restructuring. In order to be successful, your restructuring project should focus on current and future users' demands, from the beginning to the very end. Collaboration with residents, investment partners and stakeholders, as well as communication and marketing is the first step towards successful restructuring.
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(Also see theme meetings on public participation and social landlords.)

From government to governance
Throughout Europe, towns and regions are switching from government to governance. They are no longer making their plans in a top-down way. This was the usual approach until recently: the bureaucrats wrote a plan sitting at their desks and then 'dropped it onto the community'. These days, urban and regional authorities are increasingly engaged with the parties. They now concentrate much more on comparing diaries, establishing networks and forming coalitions to achieve joint aims.

From cows to people
There are a whole range of reasons for the switch from government to governance, and they are extensively described in the literature. It is certainly the case that the switch is closely related to the transition from new buildings to urban regeneration. When towns were still thinking in terms of new buildings and mainly building on green fields, the sequence of events was clear: the civil servants did the planning, other parties did the building, the residents moved in and the managers took over.
As urban regeneration gets larger and larger in scale, the same towns are now dealing with multiple structures. Instead of cows, they now have to deal with thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, of residents and business people in the area, as well as with dozens and even hundreds of professional stakeholders and investors. They must all have a place in the planning process. Urban regeneration at the moment is only successful when towns manage to get local residents and business people involved and to find investors so that the plans can actually be implemented.

Coalitions and networks
This means that there is much more collaboration with other parties at all the stages of plan development for urban regeneration. Governance is not a question of drawing up a plan and establishing support for it. Governance is a question of drawing together all sorts of existing plans and priorities of other parties, and of establishing coalitions. This has to happen as early as the plan development stage. So governance means looking for partners and establishing processes with the aim of establishing links between one's own strategies and those of other people so that everybody is committed to the implementation process.

The governance triangle
The switch from government to governance results in a new three-cornered relationship in urban regeneration:

• the government (municipal authorities, urban districts, regions)
• users (inhabitants, business people in the neighbourhood)
• investors (financial, but also social).

New questions
This means that the focus of the city is no longer just on making good products but also on making good processes. And that raises lots of new questions for urban renewers. How can I involve everybody but keep the process manageable? How can I adopt an integrated approach without getting bogged down in all the different interests? How can I establish a plan in consultation with others and prevent negotiations leading to wishy-washy compromises? How can I manage a process so that it achieves the vital innovation and so that it results in the establishment and implementation of ambitious plans? How can I keep the long-term perspective in mind? How can I avoid raising so many expectations that they are no longer manageable? And how can we establish an effective process that will rapidly reach the implementation stage instead of getting bogged down for years in endless consultations?

New field
All these questions show that governance is an entirely new field. Urban renewers have to develop enterprise, collaboration , and the ability to organise . They have to forge links that there would not have been otherwise. And they have to do that on a playing field with too many parties rather than too few. In addition, on that playing field, it is the question whether the other parties actually want the government to be involved. So towns and regions have to use totally new methods and skills. That means there is an urgent need for new insights, but preferably ones that work in practice!

Governance and ReUrbA 2
This need is clear to see in all five ReUrbA 2 projects. In each of the five projects, the partners have also come up with ideas that breathe new life into the governance process. We bring these experiences together and, in the months to come, we will be supplementing them with information about best practices elsewhere in Europe and with insights from the academic world. In this way, we will establish a concrete method for governance in urban regeneration for ReUrbA 2.