An Institutional Analysis of Property Development, Good Governance and Urban Sustainability

Abstract

It can be argued that creating a reputation for sustainable development for the benefit of a competitive advantage resonates with institutional theory. In principle, this opens up the possibility to relate a given sustainability agenda with theoretical frameworks based on old institutional economics (OIE) and/or new institutional economics. This is particularly true in arenas where qualitative factors cause a discontinuous change from the previous structure, such as amid urban regeneration. Using empirical evidence from three very different European cities, Budapest, Amsterdam and Trondheim, it is shown that OIE has plenty to offer for a “patchy” and evolving problem area such as the analysis of planning and property development in an urban setting. The position taken here is that good community governance needs the support of the private sector too. Smart policies, regulations and especially incentives set at the local and regional levels are an imperative to meet the sustainability goals set out in the Rio-1992 agenda. This international comparison attempts to provide some guiding answers to the empirical question as to how sustainable the three cases of country- and city-specific governance are in terms of their property development.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version was presented at the EURA Conference “Understanding City Dynamics” 24–26 September 2010 in Darmstadt/Germany, Track 4: “Sustainability: Local meanings and strategies”. I thank the audience for intelligent and helpful comments. I also thank the two anonymous referees and the Editor Phil Cooke.

Notes

For those who are unfamiliar with this city: the Berlin Wall divided the inner areas of the city during the period 1962–1990; on the western side normal residential areas begun immediately next to the wall whereas on the eastern side there was a c. 200-m-wide buffer zone. Tempelhof airport was Hitler's great showpiece and had strategic function during the WW2. Eastern suburbs mainly comprise large-scale housing estates.

To compare, Tiesdell and Allmendinger (2005) define (public) planning as “intentional governmental inventions intended to achieve desirable societal objectives”.

Although with the advent of New Labour policies in the mid-1990s this practice was moderated.

As the format of a journal article does not allow space enough to go into depths, the issues covered are selected based on their ability to lift up typical traits of each case.

In fact, many of the interviewees confirmed this too.

See for example the Duna-Pest residences in the Millennium City Center project (2010, internet). According to Hegedűs (2011) this is a widespread phenomenon in Hungary. He gives the following figures for the share of gated communities of the total housing stock in Budapest: 3.5% on the city level and 2.8–2.9% on a metropolitan level.

The follow-up to this policy is known as Vogelaarwijken, following the cabinet of 2007 (and its Minister for Housing, Neighbourhoods and Integration, Ella Vogelaar). These are supposed to be the 40 worst wijken (i.e. wards, administrative neighbourhoods) in the country.

I thank one of the referees for making this point.