The Synchronicity of the Non-Synchronous: Changing Institutional Systems in Station District Redevelopment in Switzerland
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Date
2022
Publication Type
Other Conference Item
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yes
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Abstract
Station districts are focal points for urban regeneration and play a shaping role in improving compact spaces through transit-oriented development. Redeveloping a station district equals an effort in which actors enter partnerships outside their familiar institutional systems. Therefore, developers must balance traditional collaboration approaches and planning tools (based on formal institutions) with informal institutions, considering planning culture as the specific cultural framework that embeds partnerships. This interaction leads to changing institutional systems. Although planning studies have heeded the importance of informal institutions, they have not explained how institutional change occurs beyond traditional approaches and tools. Meanwhile, research on sustainability transitions has elaborated institutional interaction and change at the actor level of tackling climate change and beyond formal institutions. Hence, the paper explores institutional interaction and change in station district redevelopment, following approaches used to research sustainability transitions. The paper is a work in progress and pursues a qualitative, comparative case study design complemented by process tracing. From 2020 to 2022, data of two Swiss station districts are collected from documents, expert interviews, and participant observation. Preliminary results indicate that actors balanced collaboration approaches and planning tools with tacit intervention knowledge and soft capacities to form alliances within existing partnerships. Actors’ shared expectations toward organizational intervention setups or leadership interacted with approaches based on formal institutions and intended for redeveloping station districts. Moreover, case study analysis has revealed that formal institutions partly faced competition through divergent expectations shared amongst actors toward essential intervention aspects, such as mutual empathy and commitment. Discussing these findings has merged into the question of how to manage different incentive systems shaping local planning culture and actors’ efforts to proceed with redevelopment. The discussion encompasses the divergence between gradual partnerships and near-term profitability, a trade-off often appearing between public authorities and private property owners in station districts.
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published
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Book title
Online Conference on Urban Regeneration Trends in Europe - Program
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Volume
Pages / Article No.
17 - 17
Publisher
Working Group for Urban Regeneration at German-Speaking Universities
Event
Online Conference on Urban Regeneration Trends in Europe
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Software
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Date created
Subject
City-related case study
Organisational unit
02351 - TdLab / TdLab
Notes
Conference lecture held on March 4, 2022.