European Urban and Regional Studies

This article traces the transfer of competitiveness and cohesion policies from the European Union (EU) institutions to the national and subnational authorities in Greece, both before and after the sovereign debt crisis. We argue that prior to the crisis, the flexibilities of the EU governance system allowed the Greek central government to use the competitiveness and cohesion agenda, as well as the associated funds, to build a domestic socio-political consensus focused on the idea of ‘convergence’ with Europe. The crisis-induced bailout programme deepened neoliberal policies and reorganised vertical and horizontal power relations: policy-making powers have been upscaled towards the supranational level, while the national authorities have been socially disembedded.

The temporary staffing industry has experienced significant growth in recent decades across many countries and sectors. The particular characteristics of the temporary staffing industry are influenced by the national institutional context in which they are embedded. This article presents empirical findings to investigate the concept of a national temporary staffing industry using two case studies, the UK and Germany. Through analysis of two national markets for temporary staffing, the article discusses the importance of investigating the wider institutional environment in which an industry is embedded, the interactions and interdependencies between the actors involved, and the relationships and activities through which an industry is co-created and constituted. Theoretically, this article seeks to stress the importance of considering how institutional systems change, rather than focusing on characteristics used to categorise socio-economic systems. Empirically, this article reveals the features and developments of two national temporary staffing industries within Europe. This advances our understanding of changes in the temporary staffing industry in two European settings, and also highlights the importance of considering geographically specific national varieties of economic systems as dynamic institutional ecologies.

Increasing socio-spatial inequalities in Europe have led to a revival of the term “peripheralization” in urban and regional research. In this context, peripheralization is often seen as an outcome of powerlessness. It is stated that peripheralized actors are lacking the capacities to influence decisions or are excluded from decision-making networks. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between peripheralization and power by empirically testing if the notion of “powerless” peripheries holds true in the light of established theories on local power. Therefore, we refer to the Community Power Debate, especially to concepts known as the “three faces of power” and the distinction between “power over” and “power to”, which were brought forward by Urban Regime theories. We discuss two empirical cases in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and demonstrate that peripheralization here cannot be regarded as the outcome of an intended disadvantage facilitated by powerful elites (“power over”). Rather, we highlight a number of structural constraints, which decisively limit the capacity to act and the scope for local decision-making (“power to”). We conclude that future research should overcome a perspective on peripheries as exclusively being dominated and disadvantaged by the centres and focus on the lack of resources that hinders peripheries to have a more sustained influence in political decision-making.

For more than two decades, cluster theory has served as a basis for widespread implementation of regional development policies in several countries. However, there are still persistent struggles in academia towards agreement on clear operational definitions of a cluster. In this article, we argue that this definitional haziness, reflected by difficulties in demarcating the scale and scope of clusters, leads to a stretching of the cluster concept when put into practice. We show how actors, through cluster projects, are utilizing strategies of “hubbing” and/or “blending” to develop their own understandings of both what clusters are and what they might or should be. Through studies of three Norwegian cluster projects, we argue that national cluster policies, through translation of an academically vague concept, facilitate a stretching of the original definition of clusters, giving regional stakeholders leeway to integrate other theoretical rationales instead. We argue that this is not taken into account in current policies.

Migration is predominantly directed towards cities that have been facing a highly competitive global environment within the last 30 years of globalisation. Against the background of economic restructuring, cities are looking for new forms of city branding. In this process, ethno-cultural diversity is increasingly regarded as an asset, leading to the branding of migrant neighbourhoods, especially those characterised by migrant economies. These agglomerations of shops, cafés and restaurants provide places of leisure and consumption for cosmopolitan urbanites. This paper shows how Berlin’s municipal politicians failed in staging ‘Chinatowns’ and ‘Asiatowns’ as ethnically branded commercial districts and argues that the Vietnamese migrants who are primarily addressed by these projects are not readily marketable by a city-branding approach. The assumed common identity of Asian migrants in Berlin and the city’s top-down municipal approach contradict the structures of the heterogeneous group of Vietnamese residents. This paper traces Berlin’s transition from a reactive to a proactive approach in the marketing of ethno-cultural diversity. My approach is to embed the Dong Xuan Centre in Berlin-Lichtenberg, a Vietnamese-run wholesale centre that was founded through Vietnamese agency, in the local discourse on Asia- and Chinatowns. The study shows that the centre’s management appears to be an active agent in the branding process of the project, modelling itself after the global brand of ‘Chinatown’. However, the centre’s vision of a place of cultural life and trade contradicts German planning laws, a conflict that has led to ongoing negotiations between the centre’s management and the district government, thereby hindering its branding.

The well-known and much investigated rise of urban entrepreneurial policies has fuelled a transformation of urban spaces and landscapes, and has led to changes in the social composition of city centres. This is the case for Oslo, Norway’s capital, where increasingly urban policies are designed to attract transnational companies and those in the creative class. A key strategy to achieve this has been to transform the city’s waterfront through spectacular architecture and urban design, as has taken place in other European cities. Transnational and local architects have been commissioned to design the Barcode, one of the most striking waterfront projects. This article investigates the role of architecture and architects in this process, because architects can be seen as influential generators of urban spaces and agents for social change, and because there is remarkably little published empirical research on this specific role of architects. It is argued that although there was an overall planning goal that the projects along the waterfront of Oslo should contribute to social sustainability, with the implication that planners and architects possessed information about the local urban context and used this knowledge, in practice this was not the case. It is demonstrated that the architects paid little attention to the social, cultural and economic contexts in their design process. Rather, the architects emphasized the creation of an exciting urban space and, in particular, designed spectacular architecture that would contribute to the merits of the firms involved. It is further argued that because of this the Barcode project will not contribute to the making of a just city.

Research has pointed to the importance of artists in the early stages of gentrification; however, few studies have examined specifically the meaning of gentrification and place-change from the perspective of artists themselves, and few studies have investigated the role of ‘creative city’ policies as unintended drivers of gentrification processes. This study generates insights into artists’ own views of gentrification processes within the gentrifying bohemia of the Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. We stress that gentrification in this area cannot solely be understood as a process of displacement, but is also clearly linked to the growth of modes of regulation and commercialisation within social space. Increasing regulation, brought about by greater local state focus on ‘creative districts’, has impacted the Valley. Alongside this, projects of property development as well as a general growth in the popularity of the Valley as a nightlife consumption district and area of production for commercially-orientated creative class workers have challenged artists’ values of the area as a ‘secret garden’ where romantically inflected values of self-expression, autonomy, spontaneity and non-instrumental artist cooperation can be found.