Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Central to this research lays the concept of private sector-led urban development projects (Heurkens, 2010). Such projects involve project developers taking a leading role and local authorities adopting a facilitating role, in managing the development of an urban area, based on a clear public-private role division. Such a development strategy is quite common in Anglo-Saxon urban development practices, but is less known in Continental European practices. Nonetheless, since the beginning of the millennium such a development strategy also occurred in the Netherlands in the form of a concessionsa . However, remarkably little empirical knowledge is available about how public and private actors collaborate on and manage private sector-led urban development projects. Moreover, it remains unclear what the effects of such projects are. This dissertation provides an understanding of the various characteristics of private sector-led urban development projects by conducting empirical case study research in the institutional contexts of the Netherlands and the UK. The research provides an answer to the following research question: What can we learn from private sector-led urban development projects in the Netherlands and UK in terms of the collaborative and managerial roles of public and private actors, and the effects of their (inter)actions? Indications for a market-oriented Dutch urban development practice Urban development practice in the Netherlands has been subject to changes pointing towards more private sector involvement in the built environment in the past decades. Although the current economic recession might indicate otherwise, there are several motives that indicate a continuation of private sector involvement and a private leadership role in Dutch urban development projects in the future. First, a shift towards more market-oriented development practice is the result of an evolutionary process of increased a neoliberalizationa and the adoption of Anglo-Saxon principles in Dutch society. Despite its Rhineland roots with a focus on welfare provision, in the Netherlands several neoliberal principles (privatization, decentralization, deregulation) have been adopted by government and incorporated in the management of organizations (Bakker et al., 2005). Hence, market institutionalization on the one hand, and rising civic emancipation on the other, in current Western societies prevents a return towards hierarchical governance. Second, the result of such changes is the emergence of a market-oriented type of planning practice based on the concept of a deve