Co-producing the cities of tomorrow: Fostering collaborative action to tackle decline in Europe’s shrinking cities

Abstract

Investments through the 2014–2020 European structural funds pursue goals of smart, inclusive and sustainable growth, while many towns and cities in Europe are shrinking rather than growing. Policy makers and practitioners therefore face challenges in ensuring that places with very limited growth potential will not fall further behind. While scholars argue that cities in long-term decline would benefit from enhancing their capacity to develop collaborative initiatives that draw on local resources and assets, in practice local decision makers seem to struggle to engage their communities in the fight against the causes and consequences of decline. This paper advances the argument that the concept of co-production is well suited to explore and explain how collaborative actions unlock new strategic choices that are based on capabilities and resources over which local actors have control. A case study from a small manufacturing town in Germany is used to illustrate how co-production at different levels can lead to tangible, long-term improvements in a context of ongoing shrinkage.

Keywords

Citizen engagement co-production governance leadership strategy urban shrinkage

Introduction

The importance of local collaboration in European policy has been growing continually since the 1980s when partnerships between public, private and third-sector organisations were first promoted through the European territorial initiative LEADER which was designed to tackle complex rural development problems (Soto et al., 2012). The URBAN programmes then successfully applied the partnership principle in urban regeneration contexts during the 1990s. More recently, concepts of ‘partnership’ and the ‘integrated approach’ have become firmly entrenched in local, national and European urban policy through bottom-up policy initiatives such as the Acquis Urban, the Leipzig Charter and the Toledo Declaration. The Cities of Tomorrow report (European Commission, 2011a) builds on these developments and makes a coherent case for investing in growing as well as declining urban areas.

While the funding from European policy instruments can provide opportunities for many cities to advance bottom-up, integrated and sustainable urban development initiatives over the coming years, it remains unclear how places that are caught up in spiral of decline might benefit from them. Established policy rationales are premised on achieving economic growth and do not seem to take much account of cities that can offer only very limited scope for growth. For example, in the structural fund regulations we find no explicit reference to cities affected by demographic change and population decline, even though it is now recognised that the long-term development trajectory of Europe’s shrinking cities is primarily determined by declining birth rates and population loss (Reckien and Martinez-Fernandez, 2011; Tosics et al., 2011). There is no resource stream within the structural funds dedicated to the reversal of long-term urban shrinkage, yet without explicit policy support many cities with poor growth potential might struggle to succeed in the competition for investments from European sources, and most likely also from national sources, thus they are in danger of falling further behind.

Rather than pursuing a logic of achieving growth, which arguably precipitated or at least contributed to the phenomenon of urban decline (Peck, 2012; Schindler, 2014), shrinking cities might need to focus more on their local resources to tackle the causes and consequences of long-term decline (Peck and Tickell, 2012). Drawing on the concept of co-production, this paper illustrates how urban shrinkage can be tackled by fostering collaborative strategy, management and service delivery processes. While recognising the ongoing need for changes to policy, regulatory frameworks and large-scale physical interventions (Bernt et al., 2012; Hollander et al., 2009; Rink et al., 2010), this paper uses the concept of co-production to provide a fresh perspective on collaborative actions to address shrinkage, thereby taking the current discourse on collaboration in the context of urban shrinkage forward (Haase et al., 2012; Hospers, 2012; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012a).

Key challenges for shrinking cities

Increasing numbers of cities in Europe and elsewhere are losing out in the fight for investment and growth, finding themselves on the sidelines of global shifts in production and consumption. This is the central argument of the recently published Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on demographic change and shrinking cities that is based on a wide range of case studies from across the globe (Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012b). The picture that emerges from this and earlier global studies (UN-HABITAT, 2008) is that large cities will continue to attract financial and social capital, which will facilitate their continued growth, while many small and medium sized cities will begin to or continue to decline (Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012a; Pallagst et al., 2013). Latest research suggests that shrinkage tends to be driven by a combination of demographic change, economic transformation, sub-urbanisation, political upheaval and environmental pollution, but the dynamics and impacts resulting from these drivers vary widely and are poorly understood (Wiechmann and Wolff, 2013).

While the debates on the definition of shrinking, declining or stagnating cities are ongoing (Großmann et al., 2012; Pallagst, 2010; Pallagst et al., 2013), there is some consensus that in Europe the proportion of small and medium sized cities caught up in spiral of socio-economic decline has been on the increase for several decades (Bernt et al., 2012; Bontje and Musterd, 2012; Haase et al., 2013b). Using the definition of urban shrinkage developed by the Shrinking Cities International Research Network (SCiRN) and the COST Action Cities Regrowing Smaller (CIRES), Wiechmann and Wolff (2013) show that almost half of Europe’s cities, which are home to one third of Europe’s population, are shrinking. Their comparative analysis of spatial distributions of growth, stability and decline between 1990 and 2010 comes to the following conclusion:

This overview of shrinking cities in Europe provided in this paper clearly demonstrates that urban shrinkage is an incontrovertible and increasingly important fact as well as a major challenge for future urban policies and urban research in Europe. … It proves that shrinking cities can be found in 33 out of 37 countries in Europe and that today a substantial part of cities of all sizes shrink. (Wiechmann and Wolff, 2013: 16)

Many scholars warn that without targeted action the number of urban settlements where local and regional governments are unable to gain control over socio-economic and physical decline will increase, together with the associated effects of unemployment, social polarisation, exclusion and poverty. Academics working on the CIRES project argue that ‘in Europe we are dealing with islands of growth in a sea of shrinkage’ (Wiechmann, 2012: 40), and suggest that decline rather than growth is the most likely ‘development’ trajectory for many European cities (Bernt et al., 2012; Bontje and Musterd, 2012; Mykhnenko, 2005). In drawing together contemporary research on shrinking cities, Großmann et al. conclude:

Shrinkage will not disappear from Europe’s urban picture; on the contrary, given the global demographic change and the local dynamics of the global economy (and of global crisis effects), it is very likely that urban shrinkage will become an even more widespread phenomenon in the near future. (Großmann et al., 2013: 224, parenthesis in original)

Despite a rapidly growing number of studies which show that urban shrinkage is continuous and widespread in Europe, many policy makers and practitioners still consider urban shrinkage as a localised and temporary problem. In an earlier study, Wiechmann shows that administrative systems and strategies in shrinking cities remain solely growth oriented with decision makers believing that strengthening economic competitiveness and encouraging demographic growth will arrest or reverse the shrinkage process (Wiechmann, 2003). Many scholars argue that such attitudes need to change because a market-led recovery of cities in decline cannot be relied upon. They suggest that European Union (EU) policy needs to provide an explicit focus on the needs of shrinking cities (Bernt et al., 2012; Wiechmann, 2012) and that public agencies must develop their abilities to engage local stakeholders to collaboratively develop viable forward strategies (Haase and Rink, 2012; Hospers, 2012; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012a).

While the effects of shrinkage are similar to those found in neighbourhoods targeted by governmental regeneration programmes, the dynamics of urban shrinkage raise questions over the effectiveness of established approaches to regeneration. This is because historically regeneration initiatives are based on the assumption that ‘growth’ can return in some way and will improve the causes of poverty, inequality and exclusion. Such an assumption does not reflect the reality of the drivers that precipitate long-term urban decline that shrinking cities encounter. Furthermore, established approaches to regeneration might enhance capacity for cross-cutting inter-agency initiatives, but in the long run they do little to change patterns of entrenched uneven development and deepening disadvantage, and also seem to have limited impact on changing established practices (Hill, 2013; Hill and Engels, 2012). Bernt et al. (2013) argue that responses to shrinkage must be embedded in local cultures, institutional configurations and opportunities for change to be effective, suggesting that governmental programmes on their own are likely to have limited impacts on the shrinkage process and that effective responses to shrinkage need to start from the ‘bottom-up’.

Tackling decline by fostering co-production

At a time of shrinking budgets and growing social needs, many public agencies are re-discovering the benefits of working more closely with their citizens to govern, manage and deliver services in their localities (Alford and O’Flynn, 2012; Banks et al., 2013; Macmillan, 2013). With regard to the challenges associated with demographic change, for example, we are witnessing a wide range of pioneering national and local initiatives that foster collaboration between service users, volunteers, public, non-profit and commercial organisations (Bovaird and Löffler, 2012; Haase and Rink, 2012; IBA, 2010; Loeffler et al., 2012). Within EU policy we also observe an emphasis on fostering the contribution of citizens to fight poverty, unemployment and social exclusion through social innovation and social enterprise (BEPA, 2010; European Commission, 2011b). However, policies which recognise that the magnitude and complexity of socio-economic challenges we face require collaborative responses do not easily translate into the adoption of different practices. On the contrary, the literature suggests that overcoming resistance to adopting collaborative practices remains a key challenge for public agencies (Brookes and Grint, 2010; Loeffler et al., 2012; Taylor-Gooby, 2013). The reasons for this are complex, but viewing collaboration as a process of co-production has been found to assist in overcoming resistance to change because it provides much needed clarity about the shared interests that paid professionals, politicians and citizens have (Pestoff, 2009; Pestoff et al., 2012). Furthermore, the concept of co-production puts the emphasis on exploring the practical actions partners take to improve living conditions and services, thus focusing on opportunities rather than barriers to change. Hence, the application of the co-production concept promises to support actors seeking collaboration between citizens and public agencies to achieve jointly desired outcomes (Pestoff, 2006; Pestoff et al., 2008).

The development of the concept of co-production goes back to the 1970s when Eleanor Ostrom described the collaboration between the police and citizens as a ‘co-production of services’ (Ostrom, 1975). This led to a wide range of studies which showed that co-production in health care, policing and education could improve service quality and reduce governmental spending at the same time (Brudney and England, 1983; Levine, 1984, 1985; Parks et al., 1981). There is now a rapidly growing body of literature that explores collaboration between public agencies, citizens and civil society organisations in the provision of social welfare services (Verschuere et al., 2012). Central to the theory of co-production is a simple notion however; namely that co-production is

… the mix of activities that both public service agents and citizens contribute to the provision of public services. The former are involved as professionals, or ‘regular producers’, while ‘citizen production’ is based on voluntary efforts by individuals and groups to enhance the quality and/or quantity of services they use. (Parks et al., 1981: 1002)

The conceptual framework established by Victor Pestoff and colleagues (Pestoff, 2012b; Pestoff and Brandsen, 2008; Pestoff et al., 2012) allows us to relate co-production to three different levels of service provision as follows.

Co-governance is about actors from different organisations and sectors coming together to determine policy priorities and to translate these into strategic plans.

Co-management refers to a situation where representatives from different organisations work alongside each other to manage the delivery of a service. For co-management to occur, individual actors use the respective resources that they control to directly contribute to the development and delivery of a service.

Co-production is an arrangement where citizens produce, at least in part, the services they use. This can be with or without direct involvement of government officials but includes public resources of some kind (Pestoff, 2012b: 18).

Thus, co-production conceives of the provision of public services as being a process that brings citizens together with public sector organisations to jointly create desired services and service outcomes. As such, the concept of co-production is based on the acknowledgement that the state is not the sole or even primary actor in the provision of public services and offers a contemporary framework that is closely aligned to current debates concerned with the re-interpretation of the public governance and service delivery process (Alford, 2014; Denhardt and Denhardt, 2008; Osborne, 2010a, 2010b). While co-production is inherent in the provision of many services, securing the explicit co-operation and contribution of citizens in achieving public policy goals poses enduring challenges, as the regeneration and also third-sector literature testifies (Harris, 2010). More specifically, Alford and O’Flynn (2012) suggest that in a context of ongoing cuts, outsourcing, privatisation and marketisation, co-production might be perceived as a ‘cost savings substitute’ that discourages citizen participation. Pestoff (2012a) points to a ‘glass ceiling’ created by professionals who want to limit the influence of citizens on service provision as another barrier. He argues that policy makers have the choice of ‘crowding-in or crowding-out’ the co-production of public services. One option puts the emphasis on managerial models of public service provision, while the other option of ‘crowding-in’ would foster ‘…the growth of new public governance, with greater welfare pluralism and more co-production’ (Pestoff, 2012a: 377). How actors deal with these choices depends on the institutions, interests and cultures in which they are embedded, hence the nature and extent of co-production is likely to vary between services, organisations and also cities.

The following case study of the small manufacturing town of Altena in Germany draws on the co-production concept to illustrate a range of collaborative actions that were taken to tackle problems associated with long-term urban shrinkage. The material presented here is based on a recent URBACT-sponsored project that explored practical responses to urban shrinkage through interviews, expert panels and workshops (Schlappa and Neill, 2013) and is augmented with references to the most recent developments.

Altena in long-term decline

Located on the edge of the Ruhrgebiet in Germany, Altena’s history as a mining and manufacturing town stretches back over several centuries. The town’s prosperity peaked during the 19th and early 20th centuries but in the 1970s the progressive loss of industries began. Between 1974 and 2012 the number of jobs declined by almost 50% and the population shrank from 32,000 to 18,000. The municipality expects this shrinkage to continue at a rate of 1.5–3% each year over the next 20 years, reaching an ‘equilibrium’ at around 12,000 residents in 2030. The ongoing loss of economically active residents has resulted in a high proportion of older people in the population – by 2020 approximately 32% of the population will be over 60 years old – as well as rapidly falling property values, reduced municipal revenues, deteriorating services and physical infrastructures. Due to the high financial deficit, Altena was put into ‘special measures’ in 2002 when its budget became subject to governmental control (Nothaushalt). In 2012 Altena joined a regional government initiative that aims to support the poorest municipalities in the region.

A stable political majority governed Altena from the 1970s to the 1990s, pursuing policies based on the assumption that decline could be reversed at some point in the future. Infrastructures and services that had been developed during times of prosperity were largely sustained and maintained, albeit often inadequately, because it was thought that reductions in areas such as education, childcare, leisure, housing and transport would undermine a return to growth. By the time a different administration was elected in 1999 this strategy had been discredited and the reduction of services and infrastructures became the immediate and overriding priority. This meant closing or reducing local leisure, education, health and transport facilities, but although citizens had voted for a new approach towards dealing with Altena’s decline, any reduction of service levels was met with fierce opposition from residents. To demonstrate that public agencies were not insulated from the consequences of decline, the mayor reduced the municipality staff to the legally required minimum. He also took symbolic actions, such as replacing the mayoral Mercedes with a VW Polo, but this did little to create a more co-operative climate.

Altena was a low investment priority for federal and regional governmental agencies. Scarce resources were channelled into the larger cities within the region that either had better growth potential or higher concentrations of need, or both. To address this issue the mayor initiated a communications strategy which emphasised that Altena had the highest degree of population loss of all cities in West Germany and therefore needed special support. This did not unlock additional governmental resources, neither did it change the attitudes of local citizens. Rather they were angered by broadcasts that portrayed Altena as being a city with no hope of ever regaining its former economic prosperity. Overall, the new approach towards tackling Altena’s problems had little impact: economically active families continued to leave the city if they could, retailers closed their shops and more homes stood empty.

Fostering co-governance

Citizens and municipality clearly had very different ideas about how the city could move forward to a better future. The early years of the new approach towards dealing with decline were characterised by antagonism towards piecemeal actions and a lack of an acceptable vision of what life in Altena might be like in future. In 2005 a study funded by the charitable Bertelsmann Foundation created an opportunity to explore how Altena might address challenges associated with an ageing population. At the same time a small grant was secured from the regional government to support Altena in engaging citizens in the development of a comprehensive strategic framework and new vision for the city. These resources were pooled and, over a period of two years, researchers and consultants facilitated several visioning and scenario planning workshops, complemented by a wide range of working groups and discussion fora organised by the municipality and civil society organisations. This extensive discourse about the future direction for the city resulted in a strategic development framework, ‘Altena 2015’, which in 2007 became the basis for decision making. The strategic development framework consisted of 10 strategic priorities and 317 actions addressing the complex range of problems, such as improving the city centre or developing tourism and enterprise. The continued engagement of civil society was the overarching strategic priority and a not-for-profit organisation was founded by civil society, business and public sector actors to oversee and guide its implementation.

This strategy development process moved the mind-set of local actors away from ideas concerned with re-creating the kind of economic growth that had brought jobs and prosperity in the past and towards the identification of changes that could be achieved with resources over which local agencies and citizens had control. Citizens realised that they had to make tangible contributions if the situation was to improve. Officials and politicians, on the other hand, realised that they could not rely on their democratic mandate to steer and control the future development of Altena; they needed the active contribution of their citizens to bring about change on a scale that was required to make a difference.

This is an example where the contribution of citizens in the political process went beyond consultation and involved decision making on specific objectives and activities, thus reflecting key characteristics of the New Public Governance (Osborne, 2010b). The concept of co-governance emphasises the point that the growing complexity of actors involved in contemporary local governance requires transparent and tangible processes where civil society actors have an influence on deciding the future (Pestoff, 2012b). The case of Altena illustrates that this can be achieved with widely used visioning, planning and engagement methods. Furthermore, our example also shows that co-producing a shared vision, together with a practical strategy to achieve it, can lead to a mutual adjustment of expectations regarding the roles public agencies and civil society play in governing a city that finds itself caught up in a long-term and profound crisis.

Engaging in co-management

The engagement of the older population formed a central and cross-cutting element of the Altena 2015 framework, not only because of the challenges that an ageing population present, but also because older people took a very active interest in the development of the Altena 2015 framework. Early on in the strategy process they formed a cross-cutting working group that included politicians, officials from public agencies providing social and health care services, voluntary organisations, churches and businesses and, over the period of 10 weekend workshops, developed a specific action plan. The first action was to establish a volunteer exchange, led by older people and based in a building owned by the municipality. Well before the Altena 2015 strategy was formally adopted, a wide ranging programme of services and activities was being delivered. This included visitation services to reach isolated or sick elders, art and craft courses, after school clubs, language courses for refugees, reading circles, DIY workshops and much more. Physical improvements were also organised by the volunteer exchange, such as improving public seating, creating a communal barbeque on the river bank or brightening up the city centre with plants. The municipality supported activities and services where appropriate and necessary, but there was no project budget as such. A notional sum of €3000 was made available to support project work, but the collaboration between volunteers and municipality was based almost entirely on support in kind, which included adjusting mainstream service provision so that volunteers could augment and add value where possible. The municipality has a seat on the management committee so that activities and plans are co-ordinated, but by and large the volunteer exchange works through informal liaison between citizens and officials.

Another co-management initiative that emerged from the Altena 2015 process was the medieval festival. The local history society had for many years organised small events, but as a result of identifying the potential that tourism could have in reversing Altena’s decline, public agencies and civil society organisations organised the first large-scale medieval festival in 2009. This is now an annual event that attracts 20,000 paying visitors each year and is considered to be among the most significant of its kind in the region. The festival is co-managed by a group of civil society, public and private sector stakeholders who use their respective resources, expertise and, in the case of the municipality important regulatory powers, to deliver the events.

A related co-management initiative was the establishment of a connection between Altena castle and the city centre. The castle is a high-profile visitor attraction that receives over 100,000 visitors a year, but in the past only about 5000 of them would find their way into Altena because the roads that serve the castle bypass the town. The ‘Altena 2015’ process resulted in a complete re-think of how the castle could be used to generate benefits for Altena. Instead of creating a ‘rival’ attraction, which required heavy investments that could only be realised with governmental support, the idea of building an elevator into the rock on which the castle stands emerged. Starting with support from civil society organisations and a potential sponsor, the municipality formed a company limited by guarantee that eventually secured €5 million in EU funding and a further €2.5 million in sponsorship and public sector contributions. The elevator opened in spring 2014 and carries now nearly 80,000 paying visitors each year, which generates significant benefits for businesses in the town centre, such as supporting the pop-up shop project that is explored further below (Stadt Altena, 2014).

What is common to these examples of co-management is that actors from different sectors and organisations collectively planned and implemented a specific initiative. These examples reflect the principles of ‘partnership working’ but, unlike many regeneration partnerships, collaboration was not funding-led and new projects emerged from a strategic process that had been deep, collaborative and focused on resources that local actors had some control over. Viewing service development as a process of co-management maintains a focus on practical, tangible actions, and while issues concerned with power, institutional structures, control and accountability are important drivers of the service management process, the concept of co-management allows us to pay particular attention to the actions that are embedded in a complex institutional environment (Schlappa, 2012). Furthermore, co-management as a concept of collaborative working embraces a wide range of organisational forms through which cross-sectoral collaboration is achieved – our examples here illustrate that this can include a commercial company, a civil society organisation or a public agency group that use existing organisations to deliver a complex initiative such as the medieval festival – thus focusing on shared goals and resources rather than differences rooted in institutional purposes and structures.

Co-producing services and physical improvements

A pivotal project that nurtured collaborative relationships early on was the pedestrianisation of the main retail street. For many years retailers and residents had called for improvements to the streets that run through the town centre, but due to the dire financial situation proposals for improvements were postponed regularly. In the early stages of the Altena 2015 process the mayor called on the citizens of Altena to get their ‘hands dirty’ if they wanted to see improvements to their town centre. Offering tools and building materials, the mayor invited citizens to take part in resurfacing the retail area. Over a period of two weeks, the first 200 metres were re-surfaced by citizens, traders, municipal employees and elected representatives. It took three further years of collaborative effort for the 800 metre long retail area to be turned into an attractive pedestrianised zone, enhanced by planting and fountains that are in part maintained through the volunteer exchange. In the course of the project traders had made available their privately owned parking areas so that these spaces could be integrated into the pedestrian street scape. This initiative inspired another project that involved the relocation and refurbishment of the bus station as part of the pedestrianisation project. The former bus station is now a one-stop shop for advice and services provided by the municipality.

Another example of co-production is the pop-up shop initiative. In 2013 the municipality secured a small amount of funding from the regional government to temporarily pay shop owners a small fee when they made an empty retail unit available for a period of 6–12 weeks. Local entrepreneurs could rent the units, all of which were in prime locations along the recently pedestrianised retail street, for €2 per square metre. The municipality then handled the contractual arrangements with property owners. The link between the castle and town centre through the new elevator contributed to the pop-up shops becoming a success in Altena. Latest developments suggest that out of 30 pop-ups developed between 2013 and 2014 about 20 are likely to continue on a permanent basis, which represents a significant turnaround from 2005 when nearly 50% of restaurants and shops in the centre stood empty (Hollstein, 2015).

The exemplary collaboration between public, civil society and private sector actors in the governance, management and production of services, as well as physical and economic improvements, has been recognised at regional and national level. For example, in 2011 Altena was awarded the highly coveted Martin Leicht Preis for Urban and Regional Development (Stadt Altena, 2013b) for their collaborative and cross-cutting strategy.

In 2014 Altena won a regional competition for integrated regeneration and in the same year was awarded a national prize for its success in regenerating the city centre (Ministerium für Bauen, Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung und Verkehr, 2014). These and other initiatives that reflect more mainstream approaches to dealing with shrinkage, such as targeted demolition of residential property, upgrading rail services, dealing with derelict land to enhance pedestrian and regional recreational routes (Stadt Altena, 2013a), are having an impact on Altena. The domestic property market is pointing to a growth in sales for the first time in decades and 11 commercial properties that were previously considered unviable were sold in 2014 (Bundesinstitut für Bau Stadt und Raumforschung, 2014; Hollstein, 2015). Recently the city recorded the first, if small, increase in the number of young adults in 30 years and citizens seem to support a collaborative approach to address Altena’s decline – they re-elected their mayor for a fourth term in May 2014.

Discussion

Collaboration between different institutional and societal actors can be found in many urban regeneration settings and are part and parcel of practices associated with ‘partnership working’, ‘cross-cutting initiatives’, ‘integrated strategy’ and ‘community engagement’. The work done in Altena reflects all of these practices but in contrast to such established perspectives on regeneration practice, the concept of co-production encourages us to focus on the actual contributions made by two different types of actors: one is paid through public taxation and the other engages voluntarily, and both work together with the intention to generate outcomes both parties desire. We saw that this principle applies to the actions taken by public, private and civil society actors at strategic levels, shaping a new vision and framework for action, the development and management of new services as well as their actual delivery on the ground. There are of course overlaps between co-production, co-management and co-governance and the blurring of such conceptual boundaries is a reflection of the complex reality in which services, plans and strategies evolve. Public, private and third-sector institutions rarely display ideal type attributes and can usefully be characterised as hybrids that are characteristic of and operate across a wide range of institutional and societal boundaries (Billis, 2010; Evers, 2005). Co-production as a theoretical framework is well suited to the exploration of cross-sectoral practices (Brandsen et al., 2005; Brandsen and Pestoff, 2008) as it directs the inquiry towards the actual collaborations between different societal actors, putting less emphasis on the institutional structures in which they operate (Bovaird, 2007). Furthermore, co-production can start, and the growing number of case studies suggests that co-production often does start, without there being a new pot of money (Pestoff et al., 2012), thus encouraging the development of strategies rooted in existing resources and shared objectives. The absence of substantial EU or governmental funding opportunities might have been a contributing factor in fostering co-production in a context of severe resource constraint experienced by Altena. The case presented here shows that co-production mobilised significant local resources and highlights the central importance of citizens in addressing the causes and consequences of decline.

Altena is a small town and larger cities might have less scope to generate collective action on a city-wide basis. However, as the majority of cities affected by shrinkage have less than 200,000 residents (Bernt et al., 2012), the approaches to co-governance, co-management and co-production presented here could find wider application at neighbourhood or district level in larger cities. Despite its small size, the challenges encountered by Altena are characteristic of urban shrinkage in that industrial re-structuring eroded the economic foundations to such an extent that after a relatively brief period of decline the city is left struggling to establish a new rationale for continued existence in its current form. The case of Altena also reflects earlier research which shows that city administrations tend to remain resolutely focused on growth to the extent that the development of new perspectives on how shrinkage could be tackled requires a ‘paradigm shift’ among decision makers and local stakeholders (Pallagst et al., 2009; Pallagst and Wiechmann, 2005). Making citizens and policy makers face up to the reality of shrinkage can be very difficult, as the case of Altena illustrates, in part because the instinctive reaction that ‘healthy cities always grow and only unhealthy cities shrink’ (Hollander et al., 2009) creates a stigma with which citizens do not want to identify. However, it is also easier to promote initiatives designed to engender development and promise prosperity at some point in the future than to reform the way public agencies operate. Co-production provides a useful conceptual framework to determine whether and to what extent municipalities are facing up to the challenge of reforming their service delivery, administrative and governance processes in ways that engage citizens and other local stakeholders. The case of Altena suggests that such shifts in perspective and practice do not require significant external investments and can be facilitated through established visioning, planning and community engagement techniques. However, the drawn-out process of moving from the acceptance of shrinkage to co-producing solutions could be shortened by targeted capacity building and investments to assist a city in finding ways to ‘shrink smart’ (Bernt et al., 2012).

A third point to be made here is that leadership plays a pivotal role in creating the conditions in which collaborative actions can unfold. In the early stages the newly elected mayor took the traditional hierarchical approach towards leading the change process, such as taking strategic decisions on where reductions in services would be made based on rational analysis, and encountered fierce resistance despite having been elected to do just that. A more ‘distributed’ style of leadership that empowered his followers to contribute to the decision making processes and share responsibility for co-governance, co-management and co-production seemed to be more effective. Much of the public sector leadership literature is concerned with overcoming resistance to change (Brookes and Grint, 2010) and our case here suggests that the constraints of continued shrinkage can become a lever to overcome deep-rooted barriers to change, including changing traditional hierarchical approaches to leading communities (Brookes, 2010; Edwards, 2011).

Implications for policy, research and practice

At these times of continued budgetary austerity it would seem of critical importance to assist cities in creating forward strategies that are based on local resources and capabilities. While this does not remove the need for the development of policy that specifically addresses urban shrinkage at all levels, the promotion of the principles of co-production could provide a simple tool to unlock local resources and create new opportunities.

It is, of course, not realistic to expect municipalities and citizens to transform existing processes into a co-productive system of governance, management and service delivery simply because they accept the reality of decline. Citizens require support to move from the articulation of individual or collective needs towards effectively contributing to strategy and the delivery of tangible services (Crosby and Bryson, 2005; Crosby et al., 2010). Service professionals and politicians, on the other hand, need to develop their capabilities to engage in collaborative service delivery, management and governance (Bovaird and Löffler, 2012; Huxham and Vangen, 2005; Loeffler et al., 2012). Targeted capacity building to help overcome barriers to collaborative working and supporting city administrations to foster co-production at all levels should be a priority in countries where urban shrinkage is a widespread problem. The wealth of case studies, practical tools and guidance on collaborative regeneration practice that resides within repositories of networks such as URBACT, Eurocities or the European Urban Knowledge Network could be used more extensively to systematically support cities in decline. A related point is that we should aim to accelerate the transfer of effective practice across national boundaries where this has the potential to support cities in tackling problems arising from long-term decline (Haase et al., 2013a). The concept of co-production would be well suited to facilitate such cross-national transfers because it provides a simple, easily transferable framework for the analysis of collaborative action.

The pressure that shrinking cities encounter to renew and innovate local governance and service provision makes them promising locations to advance our understanding of the co-production process. Much of the current research on co-production is related to specific services rather than spatially bound contexts, hence the following should be prioritised to assist shrinking cities to develop collaborative responses to challenges they encounter:

refining the concept of co-production specifically in relation to urban strategy development and implementation;

exploring the competencies and motivations that underpin co-production involving policy makers, service professionals and citizens; and

identifying organisational features and capabilities that facilitate co-production.

A final point to be made is that consideration should be given to applying the conceptual framework of co-production in formative evaluations of Community Led Local development (CLLD) policy implementation during the current programming period. This would enhance our understanding of the type, scale and depth of collaborative actions as EU-funded projects unfold, providing an opportunity for contrasting insights gathered from growing and declining areas. The dissemination of such emerging findings, together with enhanced capacity development initiatives for cities in decline, for example through the recently approved URBACT III programme, would be a significant step towards supporting European cities that have to focus on managing their decline rather than growth.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Alford

(2014) The multiple facets of co-production: building on the work of Elinor Ostrom. Public Management Review 16(3): 317–340.

Alford

O’Flynn

(2012) Rethinking Public Service Delivery. London: Palgrave.

Banks

. (2013) Managing Community Practice: Principles, Policies and Programmes. 2nd ed. Bristol: Policy Press.

BEPA (2010) Empowering People, Driving Change: Social Innovation in the European Union. Brussels: Bureau of European Policy Advisors (BEPA).

Bernt

. (2012) Shrink Smart: The Governance of Shrinkage within a European Context. Leipzig: Helmholz Centre for Environmental Research.

Bernt

. (2013) How does(n’t) urban shrinkage get on the agenda? Experiences from Leipzig, Liverpool, Genoa and Bytom. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Epub ahead of print 16 December. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12101.

Billis

(2010) Towards a theory of hybrid organisations. In: Billis

(ed.) Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector. London: Palgrave, 46–69.

Bontje

Musterd

(2012) Understanding shrinkage in European regions – special issue. Built Environment 38(2): 153–161. DOI: 10.2148/benv.38.2.153.

Bovaird

(2007) Beyond engagement and participation: user and community co-production of public services. Public Administration Review 67(5): 846–860.

10.

Bovaird

Löffler

(2012) From engagement to co-production: how users and communities contribute to public services. In: Pestoff

Brandsen

Verschuere

(eds) New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-Production. London: Routledge, 35–60.

11.

Brandsen

Pestoff

(2008) Co-production, the third sector and the delivery of public services: an introduction. In: Pestoff

Brandsen

(eds) Co-Production: The Third Sector and the Delivery of Public Services. London: Routledge, 493–501.

12.

Brandsen

van de Donk

Putters

(2005) Griffins or chameleons? Hybridity as a permanent and inevitable characteristic of the third sector. International Journal of Public Administration 28(9–10): 749–756.

13.

Brookes

(2010) Telling the story of place: the role of community leadership. In: Brookes

Grint

(eds) The New Public Leadership Challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 150–165.

14.

Brookes

Grint

(eds) (2010) The New Public Leadership Challenge. London: Palgrave.

15.

Brudney

England

(1983) Toward a definition of the co-production concept. Public Administration Review 43: 59–65.

16.

Bundesinstitut für Bau Stadt und Raumforschung (2014) Sechs Modellvorhaben erproben Bündelung und Kooperation. Bonn: Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung.

17.

Crosby

Bryson

(2005) Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared Power World. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

18.

Crosby

Bryson

Stone

(2010) Leading across frontiers: how visionary leaders integrate people, processes, structures and resources. In: Osborne

(ed.) The New Public Governance: Emerging Perspectives on Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 200–222.

19.

Denhardt

(2008) The New Public Service: Serving Not Steering. London: M.E. Sharpe.

20.

Edwards

(2011) Concepts of community: a framework for contextualising distributed leadership. International Journal of Management Reviews 13(3): 311–312.

21.

European Commission (2011a) Cities of Tomorrow: Challenges, Opportunities and Ways Forward. Brussels: DG Regio.

22.

European Commission (2011b) Europe Leading Social Innovation (Speech by José

Manuel Barroso

). Brussels: European Commission.

23.

Evers

(2005) Mixed welfare systems and hybrid organisations: changes in the governance and provision of social services. International Journal of Public Administration 28(9–10): 737–748.

24.

Großmann

. (2012) European and US perspectives on shrinking cities. Urban Research and Practice 5(3): 360–366.

25.

Großmann

. (2013) Shrinking cities: notes for the further research agenda. Cities 35: 221–225.

26.

Haase

Rink

(2012) Protest, participation, empowerment, civic engagement in shrinking cities in Europe: the example of housing and neighbourhood development. In: Haase

. (eds) Shrinking Areas: Front Runners in Innovative Citizen Participation. The Hague: EUKN, 29–39.

27.

Haase

Athanasopoulou

Rink

(2013a) Urban shrinkage as an emerging concern for European policy making. European Urban and Regional Studies. Epub ahead of print 9 May. DOI: 10.1177/0969776413481371.

28.

Haase

. (eds) (2012) Shrinking Areas: Front Runners in Innovative Citizen Participation. The Hague: European Urban Knowledge Network.

29.

Haase

. (2013b) Varieties of shrinkage in European cities. European Urban and Regional Studies. Epub ahead of print 12 June. DOI: 10.1177/0969776413481985.

30.

Harris

(2010) Third sector organisations in a contradictory policy environment. In: Billis

(ed.) Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector. London: Palgrave, 25–45.

31.

Hill

(2013) Wege aus der Krise – mehr Mut zum aktiven Handeln. Innovative Verwaltung 11: 11–13.

32.

Hill

Engels

(eds) (2012) Verwaltungsresourcen und Verwaltungsstrukturen (ed Hill

). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

33.

Hollander

. (2009) Planning in shrinking cities. Progress in Planning 72(4): 223–232.

34.

Hollstein

(2015) Altena und der demographische Wandel: Erkenntnisse aus der am stärksten gschrumpften Stadt Westdeutschlands. In: Eichert

Löffler

(eds) Landflucht 3.0: Welche Zukunft hat der ländliche Raum. Freiburg: Herbert Quandt Stiftung, 66–76.

35.

Hospers

(2012) Urban shrinkage and the need for civil engagement. In: Haase

. (eds) Shrinking Areas: Front Runners in Innovative Citizen Participation. The Hague: EUKN.

36.

Huxham

Vangen

(2005) Managing to Collaborate. London: Routledge.

37.

IBA (2010) Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010: Less Is Future. International Building Exhibition. Berlin: Jovis Verlag.

38.

Levine

(1984) Citizenship and service delivery: the promise of coproduction. Public Administration Review 44(1): 178–189.

39.

Levine

(1985) Strategic management. Police Management Today, 22–41.

40.

Loeffler

. (2012) Making Health and Social Care Personal and Local: Moving from Mass Production to Co-Production. Birmingham: Governance International.

41.

Macmillan

(2013) Decoupling the state and the third sector? The ‘Big Society’ as spontaneous order. Voluntary Sector Review 4(2): 185–205.

42.

Martinez-Fernandez

. (2012a) Shrinking cities: urban challenges of globalization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36: 213–225. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01092.x.

43.

Martinez-Fernandez

. (2012b) Demographic Change and Local Development: Shrinkage, Regeneration and Social Dynamics (OECD Working Papers). Paris: OECD Local Economic and Employment Development.

44.

Ministerium für Bauen, Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung und Verkehr (2014) Ab in die Mitte: Die City Offensive NRW. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen. Ministerium für Bauen, Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung und Verkehr, Düsseldorf.

45.

Mykhnenko

(2005) East European cities – patterns of growth and decline 1960–2005. International Planning Studies 13(4): 311–342.

46.

Osborne

(2010a) Delivering public services: time for a new theory? Public Management Review 12(1): 1–10.

47.

Osborne

(ed.) (2010b) The New Public Governance? New Perspectives on the Theory and Practice of Public Governance. London: Routledge.

48.

Ostrom

(1975) The Delivery of Urban Services: Outcomes of Change. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.

49.

Pallagast

(2010) Viewpoint: the planning research agenda: shrinking cities – a challenge for planning cultures. Town Planning Review 81(5): i–iv.

50.

Pallagst

Wiechmann

(2005) Shrinking smart? Städtished Schrumpfungsprozesse in den USA. In: Gestring

(ed.) Jahrbuch StadtRegion 2004/05: Schwerpunkt Schrumpfende Städte. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 147–162.

51.

Pallagst

. (2009) The Future of Shrinking Cities – Problems, Patterns and Strategies of Urban Transformation in a Global Context. Berkley, CA: University of California.

52.

Pallagst

Wiechmann

Martinez-Fernandez

(eds) (2013) Shrinking Cities: International Perspectives and Policy Implications. London: Routledge.

53.

Parks

. (1981) Consumers as co-producers of public services: some economic and institutional considerations. Policy Studies Journal 9(7): 1001–1011.

54.

Peck

(2012) Austerity urbanism. City 6(16): 626–655.

55.

Peck

Tickell

(2012) Apparitions of neoliberalism: revisiting ‘Jungle law breaks out’. Area 44(2): 245–249.

56.

Pestoff

(2006) Citizens and co-production of welfare services: childcare in eight European countries’. Public Management Review 8(4): 503–519.

57.

Pestoff

(2009) A Democratic Architecture for the Welfare State. London: Routledge.

58.

Pestoff

(2012a) New public governance, co-production and the third sector: crowding in and crowding out. In: Pestoff

Brandsen

Verschuere

(eds) New Public Governance, Co-Production and the Third Sector. London: Routledge, 361–380.

59.

Pestoff

(2012b) Co-production and third sector social services in Europe: some crucial conceptual issues. In: Pestoff

Brandsen

Verschuere

(eds) New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-Production. London: Routledge, 13–34.

60.

Pestoff

Brandsen

(eds) (2008) Co-Production: The Third Sector and the Delivery of Public Services. London: Routledge.

61.

Pestoff

Brandsen

Verschuere

(eds) (2012) New Public Governance, Co-Production and the Third Sector. London: Routledge.

62.

Pestoff

Osborne

Brandsen

(2008) Patterns of co-production in public services: some concluding thoughts. In: Pestoff

Brandsen

(eds) Co-Production: The Third Sector and the Delivery of Public Services. London: Routledge, 551–566.

63.

Reckien

Martinez-Fernandez

(2011) Why do cities shrink? European Planning Studies 19(8): 1375–1397.

64.

Rink

. (2010) Addressing Urban Shrinkage across Europe – Challenges and Prospects (Research Brief 1: Shrink Smart). FP7 Research Project No. 225193.

65.

Schindler

(2014) Detroit after bankruptcy: a case of degrowth machine politics. Urban Studies. Epub ahead of print 19 December. DOI: 10.1177/0042098014563485.

66.

Schlappa

(2012) Co-management in urban regeneration: new perspectives on transferable collaborative practice. In: Pestoff

Brandsen

Verschuere

(eds) New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-Production. London: Routledge, 227–244.

67.

Schlappa

Neill

WJV

(2013) From Crisis to Choice – Re-Imagining the Future in Shrinking Cities: Findings from the URBACT Capitalisation Project on Shrinking Cities and Demographic Change. Paris: URBACT.

68.

Soto

Houk

Ramsden

(2012) Implementing Community-Led Local Development in Cities: Lessons from URBACT. Paris: URBACT.

69.

Stadt Altena (2013a) Lennepark und Fussgängerbrücke in Altena: Freiraumplanerischer und architektonischer Wettbewerb, Stadt Altena.

70.

Stadt Altena (2013b) WestfalenSprung 2011: Der 1. Preis geht nach Altena!, 5 November. Available at: http://www.altena.de/Pressemitteilung.723.0.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=346

71.

Stadt Altena (2014) Erlebnissaufzug Burg Altena: Das neue Tor zur Burg, Stadt Altena.

72.

Taylor-Gooby

(2013) New Paradigms in Public Policy. Oxford: The British Academy.

73.

Tosics

. (2011) The Impact of European Demographic Trends on Regional and Urban Development. Budapest: Metropolitan Research Institute.

74.

UN-HABITAT (2008) State of the World’s Cities. New York: Earthscan.

75.

Verschuere

Brandsen

Pestoff

(2012) Co-production: the state of the art in research and the future agenda. Voluntas 23(4): 1083–1101.

76.

Wiechmann

(2003) Zwischen spaktakulärer Inszenierung und pragmatischem Rückbau – Umbau von schrumpfenden Stadtregionen in Europa. In: Hutter

Iwanow

Müller

(eds) Demographischer Wandel und Strategien der Bestandsentwicklung in Städten und Regionen. Dresden: IÖR Schriften Nr 41, 16–28.

77.

Wiechmann

(2012) Europe: Islands of growth in a sea of shrinkage. In: Haase

. (eds) Shrinking Areas: Front Runners in Innovative Citizen Participation. The Hague: EUKN, 40–43.

78.

Wiechmann

Wolff

(2013) Urban shrinkage in a spatial perspective – operationalization of shrinking cities in Europe 1990–2010. AESOP – ACSP Joint Congress, Dublin, July.