Private Sector-Led Urban Development Projects

Book excerpt: Central to 'Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects' lays the concept of private sector-led urban development projects. 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 'concessions'. 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 book provides an answer to the following 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?