Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity and Social Milieux

Contributors from the background of urban planning, geography, and policy analysis explore a range of efforts to build new institutional capacities for city governance. Their particular concern is to demonstrate the diversity of the social relations between actors, their networks, and the social worlds in which they are embedded; the tensions in the ways these social worlds interact; and the complexity of the time-space relations which are drawn into these interactions. Through exploring the relation between transformation processes, institutional capacity, and social milieux, the authors of the 11 essays included here hope to demonstrate the multiple layering in time and space of urban governance relations and the dynamic interactions between local efforts and broader structuring forces. Specific topics include a review of the concepts of institutional capacity building and social capital, the differential institutional evolutions in a post-communist context of two sides of a town formerly separated by a national border, and a description of an urban region strategy in a context where formal structures and competences for strategy making had been abolished. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)