City Government Capacity and Patterns in Urban Development Project Governance

Abstract

This article explores the mutual influence between a city government’s jurisdictional capacity (its ability to plan and implement policy) and its interactions with other governance actors. It does so by quantifying, categorizing, and analyzing the composition of governance actors at various levels (national, regional, local) and of various types (public, private, civic) that are active in large-scale urban development projects in three cities: Hamburg, Manchester, Pittsburgh. Considering these findings in the context of national governance infrastructures, the article argues that divergent arrays of jurisdictional capacity (linked to multilevel distributions of state power) influence how city governments engage with other governance actors and influence which governance actors they engage with. This not only impacts project outcomes but also ultimately reinforces the kinds of governance strategies in which cities engage.