A Comprehensive Review of Urban Regeneration Governance for Developing Appropriate Governance Arrangements

Abstract

Urban regeneration governance (URG) has become a popular issue in academia, politics and civil society because it has a significant influence on the success of urban regeneration activities. However, a comprehensive review on URG has yet to be produced, which hinders providing references to developing appropriate governance arrangements. Therefore, this study selected 88 relevant literatures from 1990 to 2019 to conduct a critical review. The goal of this review is to conceptualize URG, refine the signature elements of URG, compare the main modes of URG, and analyze the influential factors of URG. As a decision-making mode or a partnership, URG consists of three elements—partner, power and procedure—and influenced by three factors, the plan, place and person. There are three main modes of URG and each has pros and cons. Based on a comprehensive review, this paper concludes some findings and draws an 8p model that can provide an analysis framework for decision makers. Finally, four avenues for future research are proposed.

1. Introduction

Biesides urban sprawl, urban regeneration is a new strategy of urban development l [1]. It can effectively improve the urban physical environment [2], promote economic growth [3,4] and protect cultural heritage [3]. In general, urban regeneration projects include land reutilization [5], reconstruction of old residential buildings [6], redevelopment of brownfields [7], commercial area renewal [8] and other social and cultural improvements. According to different goals of the projects, the managers adopt diverse renewal measures, such as demolishing and rebuilding, repair and environmental restoration [5,9]. Different countries have their own understanding of urban regeneration due to their special history and nation context [1]. For example, urban regeneration referred to slum clearance after World War II, whereas it now refers to the improvement of urban competitiveness against the background of globalization. Nowadays, more and more cities are adopting urban regeneration to activate the old urban area and cope with the negative impacts of urban sprawl, especially in developed countries and some developing countries with rapid urbanization. The concept of urban regeneration has also become a hot topic of research among academic and practical professionals worldwide [10].

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exerted an enormous influence on the global social, economic and environmental order. Our cities faced huge challenges when coping with the public health emergency, which enlightened people to rethink urban development related to complex issues such as public health [11]. Lack of health facilities and public space [12], uneven distribution of resources, weak management of community [12,13] and transnational movement of people [14] were highlighted as the core issues of urban governance and planning of the post-COVID-19 era. For global cities, the pandemic is a challenge as well as a once-in-a-lifetime chance. The new urban governance ecosystems and the new relationship among governments, corporations and civics are shaped [15]. Some new concepts of superblocks, tactical urbanism and 15-minute cities are proposed to optimize the urban design [16]. Natalie Mueller et al. proved that the superblock urban model could help cities become healthier [17]. Urban regeneration is an important approach to achieve these concepts of urban governance and design in the old urban area.

Despite the huge potential of urban regeneration, associated institutional, financial, organizational and managerial challenges have made it hard for cities to achieve expected goals and results [18,19]. Many academic and practical professionals have proposed that a lot of the challenges of urban regeneration come from inappropriate governance arrangements [20,21]. An appropriate governance arrangement can help distribute resources and power, organize partners and resolve conflicts of interest to achieve goals [22]. More and more attention has been paid to the institution, governance structure, participation, empowerment and other aspects of urban regeneration. Some studies have found a link between the performance of urban regeneration and the arrangement of governance. For example, if a region wants to activate the housing market and achieve positive economic growth, private enterprises are supposed to be involved in the governance process [23]. Likewise, if the planning of urban regeneration is failing to connect to the real world, it needs to encourage community participation [24]. However, there is still a continuous and open debate regarding what URG (urban regeneration governance) is and how to develop appropriate governance arrangements for urban regeneration. Meanwhile, the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic also alerts people that the complexity of URG is increasing and changing constantly. Thus, it is valuable to conduct an integrated review of URG to provide a comprehensive understanding of URG, a reference and a guideline for decision makers and to identify the definition, elements, categories and influential factors (as analyzed in this paper) of URG.

Building on previous studies, this paper conducted a comprehensive review of URG. At first, we conceptualized URG. Although many previous articles have explored the definition of URG, a consensus agreement is still lacking. In the research methodology section, we explain the research process and framework and the overview of selected papers. We discuss the selected papers in three aspects: the signature elements of URG, the different modes of URG and the factors influencing URG. As for the first aspect, we refine the elements from selected papers to form a general formula of URG. The second aspect compares the different governance modes by describing the signature elements and pros and cons. The third aspect aims to seize the influential factors of URG. Although the research themes of selected papers are diverse, these papers happened to coincide with each other on the key factors of URG. In the discussion and conclusion section, we proposed some findings and tried to give some suggestions for future research.

2. Conceptualizing the URG

Schenkel stated that URG must address each dimension of urban regeneration, analyze the role, power, and gain and loss of each stakeholder and find the barriers and obstacles of the renewed process [25]. There is still not a standard definition of URG in scholarly articles or publications of professionals. Hence, we collated the definitions of “urban regeneration”, “governance” and “urban governance” to define URG (see Appendix A, Appendix B and Appendix C).

Urban regeneration. Urban regeneration can also be called “urban renewal”, “urban redevelopment”, “urban rehabilitation” or other lesser-used concepts. There a slight difference among these concepts. The 1949 US Housing Act pointed out that “urban renewal project can be all-redevelopment, or all-rehabilitation, or a combination of the two” [9]. Urban regeneration is meant to cope with urban decay while urban renewal fosters new development of cities [26]. Compared with other countries, European countries implemented urban regeneration projects first and gained ground rapidly [27]. In earlier times, urban regeneration was just regarded as a strategy to transform the physical and economic conditions of slums and evict the poorer segments [28,29]. Then, in the 1970s, most urban regeneration projects were led by capitalists and used to profit from property development, which did not guarantee public interests and caused gentrification [26]. Because housing prices and rents increased, people with low incomes were replaced by higher-income social classes [30]. Nowadays, urban regeneration can be seen as a process of realizing a comprehensive vision and sustainable development [31,32]. The contents of urban regeneration included providing affordable housing for low-income groups, providing parks and walkways, retrofitting infrastructure, increasing job opportunities, repairing the urban fabric, promoting social inclusion and so on [33,34]. A complex decision-making process is inevitable in urban regeneration because of a wide variety of actors [23]. The collaboration between stakeholders with different qualities, motivations and resources is the key feature of urban regeneration [35]. Pollock and Sharp pointed out that urban regeneration requires continuous experiences and the establishment of trust due to its long duration and high costs [24].

Governance. For a long time, governance is a pattern of rule or ruling activities in English [36]. Neo-institutionalists spread the word of “governance” from 1970 to depict enterprises’ internal management and administration [22]. Later, the term of governance was introduced to the field of public administration. In a broad sense, it represents emerging decision-making modes that differ from the hierarchical power of government and towards making full use of the market and networks [36]. Tasan-Kok defined governance as a process by which various actors, groups and institutions achieve a common goal and coordinate decision-making [37]. Atkinson and Boisseuil proposed that governance means the changes of institutional arrangement, the understanding of principles and modes of various actors and power over the implementation of each domain [38,39]. Nicholas J. Price pointed out that governance includes structure, oversight responsibilities, talent and culture and infrastructure [40]. However, it is difficult to define the beginnings and endings of governance [41], and sometimes, governance also will be a failure. Thus, good governance was proposed to deal with the governance failure. Good governance refers to not only the effective implementation of policies but also the availability of civil rights [42]. The United Nations Development Program defined good governance as participatory, transparent and accountable. The Institute on Governance also proposed five key elements of good governance, namely direction, accountability, legitimacy and voice, fairness and performance [43].

Urban governance. In a narrow sense, urban governance can be regarded as an approach dealing with various urban affairs, including providing services to citizens, attracting investment and creating jobs [44]. In a broad sense, it refers to blending the differences of stakeholders [21], making the decision-making process more cooperative, democratic, transparent and inclusive [45], and achieving financial decentralization, political decentralization and empowering civic and social groups [46]. Hemphill et al., argued that urban governance includes corporate thinking, political systems, public management and strategic planning [47]. Urban governance does not have an ideal model. Gopakumar held that urban governance is both a technical exercise and a managerial exercise [48]. From the perspective of regime theory, urban governance has a strong link with the urban regime. The politicization of urban space [49] influences the urban regeneration arrangement. Pierre pointed out that urban governance arrangement is not value-neutral and always represents the political value of some parties [50]. Sometimes, urban governance reflects the consistent control of the central government over the local government [51]. In order to consolidate leadership and political philosophy, the ruling party would propose or advocate new urban governance arrangements, such as urban regeneration activities, and apply them in urban affairs. In other words, the governance structure, policies, institutional arrangement and decision-making measures of urban regeneration activities are the microcosm of the urban regime.

Berkel divided the integrated urban development model into two dimensions: substantive and procedural [52]. The substantive dimension is related to the actions and the procedural dimension is related to the managerial ways, institutions and partnerships. Obviously, URG belongs to the procedural dimension of urban regeneration activities and an intersection of urban regeneration and urban governance (Figure 1). By combining these definitions and refining some keywords, such as “decision-making”, “various actors”, “power”, “institutional arrangement”, we can give the following definition of URG: URG is the decision-making mode, the partnership and the institutional arrangement for dealing with events of urban regeneration; URG specifies the rights and accountabilities of different actors when making a decision; URG formalizes policies, standards and procedures for guiding the decision-making.

3. Methodology

3.1. Paper Retrieval

The comprehensive literature review always starts with collecting, selecting and screening related publications. We identified several keywords derived from the definition of urban regeneration and some similar concepts, namely urban, community, neighborhood, renewal, regeneration and governance. The search rules Title (TI) = (urban OR community OR neighborhood) AND Title (TI) = (renewal OR regeneration) AND Topic (TS) = (governance) were used as the Topic Search criterion in the Web of Science Core Collection database. The search was conducted for the period between 1990 and 2019, and 272 papers were identified for further screening. The flow of the screening process is shown in Figure 2.

Based on the language, document type, and research topic, we implemented the first screening. A total of 94 papers were excluded due to language and document type. We collected papers using the English language. Meanwhile, meeting papers, reviews, abstract, news and editorials were rejected to ensure the quality of papers. Then, according to the research topic and focus, 151 articles remained to implement in the next screening.

The second screening was divided into extensive reading and intensive reading. The extensive reading stage included the abstract, keywords and introduction. Although some articles dealt with urban regeneration and mentioned urban regeneration governance, the focus of those articles may not be relevant to our review. Therefore, 53 papers were excluded. The intensive reading stage required an in-depth read of the full paper. If the articles cannot provide valuable opinions and results of urban regeneration governance, they are removed. Finally, 88 papers were selected for analysis.

3.2. A Brief Quantitative Overview of Selected Papers

A brief quantitative overview of the selected papers was devised.

Table 1. The journals and the number of corresponding publications.

Journal Title	Number
Urban Studies	15
International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies	8
Europe-Asia Studies	8
Journal of Housing and the Built Environment	7
Policy and Politics	4
Local Government Studies	4
Cities	4
Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie	2
Sustainability	2
Regional Studies	2
Public Administration	2
Policy Studies	2
Housing Studies	2
Habitat International	2
European Planning Studies	2
Voluntas	1
Urban Research & Practice	1
Urban Geography	1
Urban Affairs Review	1
Sustainable Development	1
Sociology-The Journal of The British Sociological Association	1
Research in Transportation Economics	1
Regional Studies, Regional Science	1
Public Money & Management	1
Public Management Review	1
Public Administration Review	1
Progress in Planning	1
Land Use Policy	1
Journal of Regional and City Planning	1
International Journal of Urban Sciences	1
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space	1
Environment and Planning A	1
Canadian Journal of Development Studies	1
Boletinde la Asociacion de Geografos Espanoles	1
Australian Geographer	1
Asia Europe Journal	1
Area	1
Total	88

lists the journals from where we retrieved the selected papers. Urban Studies is the biggest sources of selected articles. Europe-Asia Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies and Journal of Housing and the Built Environment also provide many papers. The publication sources demonstrate that the selected papers were mostly relevant to urban and regional development.

As shown in Figure 3, although the number of papers between 2013 and 2015 reduced, there is a growing trend in the number of papers published from 1990 to 2019. The trend indicates a sustainable research interest in this topic. Between 2009 and 2012, scholars paid the most attention to urban regeneration governance. The earliest paper was published in 1995. About 75% of selected articles were published in the past 10 years, which also indicates that the attention on urban regeneration governance is increased in recent years and the result are relatively new. The research methods are fairly consistent, 82% of selected papers adopted empirical studies, 15% of selected papers adopted theoretical studies, and others adopted both methods. The empirical studies can provide more objective data for this paper. The regeneration cases in the selected papers were collected from different countries. The largest number of regeneration cases comes from the UK, which is unsurprising because the UK has a long history and rich experience of urban regeneration [53]. Many of the remaining cases come from the Netherlands, Spain, China and the US. The number of regeneration cases in Europe is more than in other continents on account of rapid urbanization.

4. Review of Studies on URG

This comprehensive review aims to identify, understand and analyze the URG to help decision makers develop a suitable URG mode. In this paper, the URG modes are arrangements of participants of urban regeneration activities and their power, tasks and benefits. For this purpose, there are three significant realms that need to be explored: (1) the signature elements which describe the general formula of URG mode, (2) the categories of URG modes based on different arrangements of signature elements, and (3) the factors influencing the practice of URG. By reading the selected papers, we concluded signature elements, categories of URG modes and the influential factors (see Appendix D). Partner, procedure and power were refined to describe the general formula of URG mode. We found that regardless of the category of the URG mode, URG is a process wherein one or more partners use their power to make decisions during some procedures, that is, “URG = partner + power + procedure”. In light of the arrangements of partner, power and procedure, the URG modes can be divided into three categories, government governance, entrepreneurial governance and civic governance, which are from “top-down” to “bottom-up”. Each governance mode has pros and cons. According to cases of previous studies, different URG modes in a particular situation can generate different results, which proved that the success of URG is influenced by some factors. We collected these factors from the selected papers and divided them into three categories: plan, place and person. Thus, we developed a research framework (shown in Figure 4) to analyze URG.

4.1. The Signature Elements of the URG

4.1.1. Partner

The range of partners of urban regeneration is very broad; they can come from the government, market and society [54,55]. Both in the past and now, governments have always held a place in URG owing to their credibility and authority [21]. Governments can be divided into central governments and local governments [29]. The central government drives most previous urban regeneration projects in order to plan and allocate resources well, such as the Council House Building Programme of the UK [56]. However, due to the different urban regimes, the local regeneration is not controlled by the central government. In most cases, local governments play a more predominant role in local regeneration than the central government due to the different urban regime [28]. Market partner means private sector. Amid globalization, regionalism, environmentalism and neo-liberalism, governments encourage private sectors to participate in urban regeneration to promote market-driven economic revival of cities [38,57]. Private sectors always remain synonymous with capitals, productivity and efficiency in the events of urban regeneration [58]. Civil society groups are diverse, such as citizens, NGOs, volunteers, universities and media. In recent years, civil society engagement was repeatedly emphasized to protect the rights of civics [59]. However, it seems that voluntary and community sectors still play little or no role in procedures of URG [60]. Ball and Maginn proposed that not all partners will be involved in URG and the demarcation line of partners is sometimes blurred [56].

4.1.2. Procedure

Urban regeneration includes four procedures: scoping, planning, financing and implementation [61]. URG is related to all procedures and the procedure arrangement of partners has a significant influence on the final results of urban regeneration [62]. For example, Newman found that public sectors control the bidding process is very important because the bidding process needs to take public-good goals into consideration [63]. In addition, Lawson and Kearns concluded that it is necessary to keep community groups engaged throughout planning and implementation to ensure sustainable benefits [64]. Unclear procedure arrangements of partners have a negative effect on results of urban regeneration. For example, it is important to learn from the experience of neighborhood regeneration in Pairs, which had a blurry procedure arrangement as several departments were involved in the same activities, which made things harder [39]. In URG, procedure is a highly complicated issue in which actors participate.

4.1.3. Power

Power is depicted as the capability to influence the process of events, to change behaviors and attitudes, and get people to do something they would not otherwise do [47,65]. Power politics emerge and evolve when partners participate in URG and influence the governance structure [55]. Generally, the distribution of power among the URG partners is hard to balance [58]. Community groups and voluntary sectors often cannot hold actual power, and the central government often retains a concentration of power [56,65]. Van Bortel illustrated that the imbalance of power could produce quite hierarchical relationships that focus on fewer actors [66], in which the views of the powerful agency override the others [65]. On the contrary, Ball and Maginn thought the balanced distribution of power might cause high costs and inaction, leading to dissatisfaction among each stakeholder [56]. Moreover, it is challenging to distribute the power of actors with diverse interests and expectations [66]. Ward posited that the circumstances and the partners of governance would determine the form of the power structure [67]. For example, there is evidence to suggest that the centralization of power in the central and local governments is good for URG with the private sector involved [68].

4.2. The Different Modes of URG

Recent urban regeneration emerged from seeking to reconstruct European cities at the end of World War II [32]. Since then, urban regeneration has experienced four periods: post-war reconstruction, renewal for providing public welfare, redevelopment owing to globalization and regeneration for sustainable development [21,56,69]. Different URG modes emerged in light of the different features of each period [31,70]. These modes reflected the transformation of URG from top-down to bottom-up and from unitary to multiple [24]. According to the partner, power and procedure, the URG can be split into three main modes: government governance, entrepreneurial governance and civic governance (see Figure 5,

Table 2. The signature elements (partner, procedure, power) and pros and cons of different modes of URG.

Mode	Partner	Procedure	Power	Pros	Cons
Government governance (Period: post-war reconstruction and renewal for providing public welfare)	Governments	Scoping	Defining a vision for the city or region Identifying key actions	Can effectively allocate many resources Can avoid a lot of process examinations Can pay more attention to deprive districts Can take social goals into consideration	Causing cost overage and failure of the budget Creating financial pressure Achieving an elitist vision and rejection by the citizens Bureaucracy and corruption Causing the absence of transparency and accountability Racial segregation
		Planning	Making a planning framework and a master plan Defining design standards
		Financing	Making capital plans and a regulatory framework Providing funds
		Implementation	Managing projects Supervising and examining the delivery
	Enterprises	Implementation	Delivering projects according to the instruction of governments
Entrepreneurial governance (Period: redevelopment owing to globalization)	Governments	Scoping	Defining a vision for the city or region Identifying key actions	Much more effective at raising money and using the money Relieving financial pressurePromoting economic growth quickly Sharing the development costs and risks Improving the resource use efficiency Producing better and more efficient policy outcomes	Causing market values override broader civic values Reducing the actions for promoting social inclusion and equity Cannot promote the shift about changing democracy, legitimacy, and the depoliticization Lacking transparency and democratic control Corruption Hard to supervise the behaviors of private sectors Gentrification and social exclusion Rising living costs and unemployment Damaging the cultural heritage and deteriorating the old neighborhoods
		Planning	Organizing the design of planning framework and master planning and make decisions Partnering arrangements with the private sector
		Financing	Analyzing municipal finance tools Making capital plans and a regulatory framework Provide part funds or not
		Implementation	Laying out necessary institutional arrangements and contracts Supervising the projects implementation and behavior of private sectors
	Enterprises	Planning	Participating in the design of planning framework and master planning and asking for things
		Financing	Raising funds and making capital plans
		Implementation	Managing projects, delivering projects and even operating projects
	Residents	Implementation	Asking for compensation
Civic governance (Period: regeneration for sustainable development)	Governments	Scoping	Organizing meetings for generating a vision for the city or region and making decisions with other stakeholders Identifying key actions with other stakeholders	Stimulating and harnessing the energy of local people and good for solving local challenges Bolstering the legitimacy of urban regeneration projects Enlivening the local communities and place identity Attracting multiple investments Increasing social inclusion and social cohesion Good for protecting historical heritage and culture Relieving financial pressure Sharing the development costs and risks	Decision making is ineffectual sometimes An inevitable gap between bureaucratic reality and participant expectations Accountability raised by partnerships have proven difficult to address Added to a sense of complex governance The realization of bottom-up decision-making is often the result of a top-down governmental choice Complex partners might result in time-consuming debates and stalemates The marginalized groups are still excluded from participation Increasing the communication costsCorruption
		Planning	Organizing the design of planning framework and master planning and make decisions with other stakeholders
		Financing	Provide part funds or not
		Implementation	Supervising the project implementation (legality, safety, quality)
	Enterprises	Scoping	Participating the meetings of generating a vision and expressing views
		Planning	Participating the design of planning framework and master planning and asking for things
		Financing	Raising funds or not
		Implementation	Managing projects or delivering projects
	Residents	Scoping	Participating or organizing meetings for generating a vision Identifying key actions of projects
		Planning	Participating or organizing the design of planning framework and master planning and make decisions
		Financing	Analyzing municipal finance tools Raising funds, making capital plans and a regulatory framework
		Implementation	Supervising the project implementation (cost, time, quality) and behavior of private sectors
	Social groups	Scoping	Helping to generate a vision Helping to conduct a strategic assessment to direct future development of the city and the region, including economic, social and physical features
		Planning	Helping to design a planning framework and master planning
		Financing	Donating money
		Implementation	Helping to guide the project implementation

).

4.2.1. Government Governance

In the period of post-war reconstruction and renewal for providing public welfare, urban regeneration was associated with rebuilding cities, resuming production and economic activity, clearing slums, providing social housing and eradicating poverty [69]. Governments were regarded as a steerer in delivering these programs, which was influenced by Keynesian welfare-state systems [71]. Thus, government governance also became the dominant mode to deal with events of urban regeneration (Table 2). Both the Council House Building Programme in the UK [56] and the 1949 federal Housing Act in the US [69] adopted the government governance mode.

In general, government governance involves two partners: governments and enterprises. Governments need to make all relevant decisions from the scoping phase to the implementation phase, and try to take everything under control [72]. Firstly, in the scoping phase, governments define a vision of the city by analyzing the position, economy, society, environment and resources of the city or region [61]. The vision is essential because it determines the future development of the city. Then, governments devise a planning framework and a master planning and develop some design standards for direct implementation [19]. In financing phases, governments underwrite almost all of the development costs. To make full use of resources, governments also need to develop capital plans and a regulatory framework [69]. Finally, governments will supervise the renewal process and examine the delivery to guarantee quality [61]. Compared with governments, under the mode of government governance, enterprises barely have opportunities to make some decisions and they can only deliver projects according to the instruction of governments [21].

Government governance had long been criticized by professionals and scholars. On the one hand, governments have to pay for everything of urban regeneration under the government governance mode, which causes huge financial pressure [39]. Furthermore, due to bureaucracy and corruption, the development costs are often overage and the budget is nearly always ineffective [73]. On the other hand, government governance achieves an elitist vision of cities and ignores the actual demands of other stakeholders [74]. For example, the urban regeneration projects of the 1949 American federal Housing Act were designed by white elites and damaged the interests of Black Americans [69]. Of course, government governance also has some pros. Sagan and Grabkowska proposed that government governance effectively promotes the physical regeneration of cities [70]. Additionally, more attention will be paid to the most deprived regions under government governance and more welfare polices to achieve social goals will be set [39].

4.2.2. Entrepreneurial Governance

The fact that the government cannot afford all public expenditures led to the collapse of the Fordist–Keynesian regime and the failure of government governance [57]. Meanwhile, globalization, regionalism, environmentalism and neo-liberalism caused uneven development among different cities, compelling cities to search for new governance mode to attract capital, drive economic growth and reduce administration costs [75,76,77]. Thus, entrepreneurial governance was launched and became popular in capitalist countries.

Entrepreneurial governance means that the government engages with the private sector and they form a public and private coalition to implement urban regeneration together [32,57]. Therefore, the partners of entrepreneurial governance are governments and private enterprises (Table 2). Under entrepreneurial governance, the government is regarded as a facilitator or a negotiating party and even plays a marginal role in urban regeneration [32,78]. Conversely, the private sector determines a lot of decisions in some aspects [79].

There are two main ways to achieve entrepreneurial governance: principal–agent relationships and public–private partnerships. The differences in these two ways are the distribution of power and procedures between public and private sectors. The Urban Renewal Authority (URA), as a semi-official corporate organization in Hong Kong, is an example of the principal-agent relationship [78]. Public sectors such as the URA sell land to private sectors and supervise the implementation of the private sector and get a cut of the profits instead of developing a region directly [38]. On the other hand, the private sectors need to finance and implement the projects [32]. In this way, public sectors still control the proposal and the strategical planning, while private sectors can only react to the formulated planning [23]. Unlike the principal–agent relationship, urban regeneration projects with a public–private partnership (PPP) have a special purpose company consisting of public sectors and private sectors and implement the projects directly, such as the European Urban Regeneration Companies [79,80]. In PPP, private sectors can be involved early in each process and generate the vision and develop strategic planning and proposals with public sectors [79]. However, no matter which way is applied, residents are regarded as “largely invisible” and can only ask for compensation during project implementation [19,78].

Entrepreneurial governance was proposed to deal with failed federal urban regeneration projects because it can help to handle the fiscal crisis, promote the local economy, improve output at lower costs and share the risks [23]. Though entrepreneurial governance can bring about positive consequences, it also has a lot of disadvantages. Bernt stated that entrepreneurial governance ignores many fields of urban development and pays more attention to the economic outcomes and housing market equilibrium [76]. The deprived areas are always rebuilt into commercial or high-end districts to gain more money, which compel the poor to leave their homes [68]. Obviously, the inhabitants are still excluded during the decision-making process and only elites are allowed to make decisions [77]. Therefore, the transparency, fairness and democracy of entrepreneurial governance is often called into question [23]. Vento concluded that corruption and social inequality ultimately prevail once control of private sectors is lost [77].

4.2.3. Civic Governance

The coalition of the state and the market is on the verge of collapse due to the global financial crisis and industrial restructuring in 1990, with more and more people focusing on the notions of good governance and democratic decision-making [81]. Thus, as an alternative to government governance and entrepreneurial governance, civic governance gains more attention [13,82] (Table 2). Civic governance seeks to deal with regeneration failures and achieve desirable outcomes, such as social inclusion, democracy and sustainable development [83]. Glackin and Dionisio also pointed out that civic participation is fundamental to generate trust and dependability to implement urban policies, although it is challenging to accomplish this [34].

In a narrow sense, civic governance means that residents can be involved in each decision-making process and enjoy equal rights [65]. Glackin and Dionisio thought that residents are a valuable and vital source to collect information and ideas of local areas, especially in the vision and planning phases [34]. Broadly speaking, “civics” not only refer to the residents, but also include some social groups such as volunteers, universities, NGOs and media groups [84]. These groups often play the role of coordinator to coordinate and balance the relationship among the government, residents and markets with their special knowledge and skills [60]. In addition, some groups will donate money or resources to promote urban regeneration [19].

Governments and enterprises still play a key role in civic governance, whether in the vision and planning phases or the financing and implementation phases [85] (Table 2). Governments, as an organizer or a servant, need to arrange meetings to reach an agreement among stakeholders on various aspects of urban regeneration. Enterprises can also express their opinions and ask for things. At the same time, parts of regeneration funds coming from governments and enterprises [19]. Under ideal conditions, there should be a balanced power distribution among the civics, governments and enterprises. However, in practice, civics are always excluded from formal decision-making and play little or no role [29,82], and the key decisions are still negotiated among some powerful actors [86]. Savini complained that the accomplishment of bottom-up decision-making results from a top-down governmental decision [87].

Jones divided citizen participation into seven levels, from manipulative participation to self-mobilization [88]. In most citizen participation cases, only the first five ways and the last two ways are rarely implemented in practice. On the one hand, it is almost impossible to empower all citizens because the number of citizens is too large to manage [89]. On the other hand, the lack of resources, skills, capital and awareness limits citizen involvement [31,83], but this does not mean that self-mobilization cannot be achieved. Kleinhans [90] recorded a way of citizen participation called community enterprises, which are established by local citizens and independent from governments. Community enterprises are not-for-private-profit groups and address the serious deficiencies of areas where other actors cannot provide solutions.

Civic governance is seen as an effective mode to achieve sustainable development [60]. Muir and Rhodes pointed out that the aims of promoting civic participation include, but are not limited to, ensuring the legitimation of projects, developing skills and networks of civics and providing local information to designers [65]. Meanwhile, citizen participation is good for civic political participation, local economic growth, sense of belonging and civic identity and esteem [34,72]. However, civic governance also has been criticized by some scholars. Foley and Dicks proposed that civic governance may exacerbate social exclusion rather than social inclusion due to fragmentation of local people and internal dissent and conflict [29,91]. Moreover, engaging citizens in urban regeneration would lead to going over budget, as well as delays, conflict and division [83], as it is very difficult for all people to come to an agreement, especially in deprived areas where there is a lack active civil society [87,91]. In addition, neighborhood managers feel colossal pressures from both above and below due to the overemphasis on civic governance [92].

4.3. The Factors Influencing the Practice of URG

4.3.1. Plan

The planning of cities can be divided into vision of city and region, and the targets of neighborhoods, communities or projects [32]. The city’s vision depicts the future trajectory of the city and as a guide to establishing differential targets of urban regeneration projects [48,66]. In this case, it is unlikely to form a stable and single partnership among various actors [70]. Parés concluded that if decision makers choose a less comprehensive target of urban regeneration rather than a more comprehensive one, the plural participation can become dysfunctional for institutions rather than become a basic instrument [93]. Similarly, when economic and political interests dominate the targets of urban regeneration projects, the planning process would rarely open to residents [72]. However, citizen participation is heavily emphasized as the planning focuses on promoting social safety, facilities, local services and other public realms [86] because planning for social goals needs to meet the actual demands of citizens, or else it may not work.

4.3.2. Place

Degen and Garcia noted that political elites often ignore the influence of historical-geographical characteristics of different areas and want to copy one area’s mode of urban regeneration to the others [94]. However, sometimes the results and the effects may not turn out the way they expected due to differences in these areas. For example, although many governments encourage community engagement, in reality, in neighborhoods with large populations, it is likely to require significant costs and time to collect the opinions of residents and reach an agreement [29]. Likewise, the historical failure of multiple governance will hinder the collaboration among the stakeholders [45] because the unsuccessful participation history of actors will affect their trust in each other [65]. Another important element is social capital. According to Bull and Jones [95], local social capital can help connect central and local agencies, private sectors, voluntary organizations and community groups to advocate pluralistic participation, but the function of social capital depends on the predominant type. Besides the factors mentioned above, the location, the demographic structure, the development history, the culture and local business are also important historical-geographical characteristics [47,74]. Urban regeneration initiatives consist of various fragmented approaches of community or neighborhood regeneration, which will produce different forms and content of urban governance and regeneration in different places [45,62].

4.3.3. Person

Hemphill found that the individual role has been ignored, although more and more studies have paid attention to partnerships [47]. These key individuals often significantly influence the URG mode and they can come from governments or communities, senior levels or street levels [65]. They always have distinctive characters and personalities, rich experiences and a breadth of relationships so that they can have a greater say and authority [39]. Van der Pennen and Van Bortel concluded four types of key individuals from civics: frontline workers, everyday fixers, social entrepreneurs and boundary spanners [85]. Frontline workers, as important networkers, keep connections with stakeholders and encourage citizens to engage in bureaucratic procedures. Everyday fixers are pragmatists and activists. They can negotiate with private and public actors smoothly and have a positive influence on other people. Social entrepreneurs can easily understand social reality from the view of the inhabitants and collect resources to start an initiative to promote the self-development of communities. Boundary spanners always have multiple identities and can help create networks and deal with conflicts between different groups. These four types of individuals above are conducive to promoting multi-stakeholder participation, especially citizen participation. However, if there is a strong leader, the governance mode may become different. In the cases studied by Sagan and Grabkowska [70] and Boisseuil [39], the government governance dominates the urban regeneration because the city’s leader is an autocrat who will exclude voices different from theirs.

5. Discussions and Findings

5.1. Communication, Collaboration and Accountability of URG

No matter what kinds of modes are implemented in urban regeneration, communication and collaboration are unavoidable challenges. Any URG mode includes internal and external communication and collaboration. Taking government governance as a case, there are two outstanding internal issues, the balance between national and local authorities and the synergy among cross sectors. Local governments often play an enforcer role in central-dominant urban regeneration initiatives. However, in reality, central decisions cannot be effectively implemented sometimes [90]. On the one hand, the information is not accurate because the delivery may pass through various administrative levels. On the other hand, the local authorities are unwilling to do due to limited resources. In terms of the synergy among cross sectors, Boisseuil stated that the disagreement easily happens between administrators who come from diverse departments [39], and this also occurs in entrepreneurial governance and civic governance. Under the entrepreneurial governance mode, conflicts and confrontation are more frequent between public and private sectors because of different goals, interests and values. The complexity of the communication and collaboration is increased, as well. When thousands of citizens are also involved, coming to an agreement is difficult enough before thinking about the conflicts among the various interest groups.

In order to reduce the conflicts in communication and collaboration and achieve a balance of multiple targets, many studies have proposed “accountability” to clarify the boundary and responsibility of various actors [96,97]. Whatever kinds of URG modes are adopted, there are many accountor–accountee relationships between the stakeholders. Governments always play an accountor role in providing public services to citizens. However, in urban regeneration projects with a public–private partnership, governments also act as accountees to supervise the accountors. The instruments and measures to control the implementation of the accountor by the accountee are accountability mechanisms [20]. For example, citizens can know the accountable office holders and evaluate them or remove them from office by some procedures and rules. Likewise, the government can use some indicators to check the performance and outcomes of parts of enterprises; enterprises also can check the responsibility of governments by some contract agreements. However, accountability is often ignored by actors and the accountability measures are still limited.

5.2. Governance Arrangement Is Changeable and Need a Clear Value Orientation

This paper only summarized URG modes into three categories. However, many sub-modes are gradually emerging due to the adjustment of the arrangement of partner, power and procedure in different urban regeneration activities. As mentioned in Figure 5, civic governance includes social group governance and community governance. Community governance can also be divided into seven types [81]. Even so, there is no perfect mode to match with all the situations [25]. Beauregard said the partnerships are “historical chameleons” changed as often as the development of economy, policy and society, just like these three modes have emerged step-by-step in different historical stages [98]. It seems that the emergence of a new URG mode is to deal with the problems that the old mode cannot solve. For example, Dargan said community participation is regarded as a good remedy for previous failure [83]. Even so, it does not mean that the new URG mode is much better than the old one. In recent years, civic participation was overrated. Sometimes, to echo the political value of central government, the public officers vigorously pursued resident engagement without considering the local situation. Many resources were spent with little effect. In fact, each URG mode has its pros and cons, which are discussed in our analysis. An appropriate mode is the best one.

How can we understand the “appropriateness” of governance arrangement? This paper argues that the appropriate governance arrangement should align with the core value of urban regeneration. That is, clear value orientation is one of the preconditions of developing a proper URG arrangement. As we mentioned above, URG is not value-neutral and it is hard to balance multiple goals and conflicts. For example, if urban regeneration initiatives focus more on economic achievements, empowering private sectors can help boost capital efficiency. On the contrary, if reducing social exclusion, activating citizens, and improving public services are the main goals, it should empower citizens to dominate decision-making. From the perspective of the evolution of URG, the value orientation of government governance is control, consolidating power and efficiency, and the value orientation of entrepreneurial governance is economic growth, development and profits, and the value orientation of civic governance are people, democracy and equality. Value orientation has an important influence on urban development strategies, thus further influencing the function and objectives of different urban regeneration projects.

5.3. There Is a Basic Analysis Framework of Developing URG Arrangements: A 8p Model

According to the analysis of this paper, a basic analysis framework of URG can be drawn, named the “8p model” (Figure 6). The 8p model consists of three circles. The first circle is an influential factor circle. The decision makers can clarify the goals, resources and barriers by analyzing the plan, place and person of urban regeneration activities. The second circle is an element circle. The differences among various governance arrangements depend on three important elements: the partner, the power of each partner, the procedure the partner is involved in. The influential circle influences the element circle. By comprehensively considering three influential factors, an appropriate governance arrangement of partner, power and procedure can be proposed. The third circle is a policy circle. The policies aim to enhance the legitimacy of URG, specify the details of URG and promote the implementation of the URG. This 8p model can be seen as a guideline for developing appropriate governance arrangements.

In general, URG can be divided into two dimensions: city and project. In different dimensions, the 8p model has different keywords (see

Table 3. The keywords of the 8p model in different levels.

Level	Plan	Place	Person	Partner	Power	Procedure	Policy
City	comprehensive vision	urban regime and political culture urban entire economic and social development	mayor party leaders business leaders civic leaders professionals	government enterprises citizens other organizations such as NGO, media	give opinions and suggestions approval and approval decision-making	scoping planning financing	strategical development policies related regulations and laws guideline
Project	objectives and highlights	local history and culture social network and social capital buildings and infrastructure	public officials investor, designers, contractors and project managers residents	government design company contractor developer related citizens community other organizations such as NGO, media	implementation give opinions and suggestions complaints and negotiation decision-making payment or requiring compensation	planning financing implementation	rules on contracts action plan

). In the city dimension, URG aims to decide the future direction, area, policy, master plan and regulation of all urban regeneration activities. Thus, the plan is a comprehensive vision of urban regeneration. The urban regime, political culture and the urban entire economic and social development as the important place elements that influence plan, person, partner and power distribution. With the popularity of new ideas such as “people-centered” and “sustainable development” [99,100], in the city dimension, urban governance has transformed from unitary governance into multiple governance. Under this situation, governments are more inclusive to other urban stakeholders and organize many opportunities for various partners to propose their opinions, suggestions and complaints. They stand for or against any ideas of urban affairs, such as hearings. However, if the other stakeholders want to gain actual power, they need some outstanding representatives to fight for rights. Most of them are party leaders, business leaders or professionals. Then they can influence the participation procedure and the policy making. The interaction among the “8p” is shown in Figure 7.

In the project dimension, although the interaction among “8p” is similar to that in the city dimension, the keywords of “8p” are different. Each project has its own objectives and highlights which follow the comprehensive vision but focus on some aspects. Therefore, the governance arrangements of urban regeneration projects are more diverse and easily influenced by place and person. Place elements, such as local history and culture, social network and capital and the situation of buildings and infrastructures, determine whether it is capable and possible to encourage multiple partner participation. Likewise, the capability, knowledge, insight and social relationships of important persons will influence the power distribution, procedure arrangement and the actual participation of different partners. In the project dimension, the policies refer to the action plans and rules in contracts. In general, the rules and actions are always controlled by real powerful partners and people.

6. Conclusions and Avenues for Future

By valuable selected and reviewed papers, this paper defined URG, analyzed its signature elements, compared different URG modes and refined the factors influencing their practices. The comprehensive review provided a simple but comprehensive understanding of URG. As a decision mode or partnership, URG consists of the partner, the power and the procedure. It is influenced by the plan, the place, and the person. There are no perfect modes because different URG modes have pros and cons. Communication and collaboration are common challenges in each URG mode. Therefore, accountability needs to be emphasized in the design of URG modes. According to the analysis of this paper, an 8p model can be proposed to describe the meta-governance of URG.

Urban regeneration has become normalized in global urban development. Thus, URG also becomes an important issue of urban management. As a microcosm of urban governance and public administration, URG is widely related to the economic, political, and social fields. However, empirical studies are still limited and focus more on developed countries. Moreover, the academic research of URG has been lagging behind the practice of URG. Therefore, this paper advocates establishing URG as a distinct research area and proposes four research directions.

• Future research should investigate cases from different countries with different regimes, economic conditions and locations. The case study is a very effective research method to analyze URG development. Diverse cases are better for theory building. Currently, however, a large number of cases mainly come from Europe and the US. Thus, it is difficult to comprehensively understand URG.
• Future research should clarify the details of the factors influencing the practices of URG. In previous studies, most of them found some influential factors but did not conduct deep research. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the degree of influence that different factors can exert on URG under various situations. The results can contribute to the selection of URG modes.
• Future research should adopt more quantifiable approaches to conduct decision-making about URG. Whether practices or academic research, we often advocated learning experiences from other urban regeneration activities. However, it is difficult to find similar and matchable cases that are demonstrated as good practices, so concluding experiences from the practices and transforming the results to a quantifiable approach is very significant.
• Finally, more research of sub-topics of URG should be conducted, as well. Although some sub-topics of URG have been studied, many of them still lack wide attention, such as the longitudinal impacts of URG on the economy, society, and environment, the quantitative evaluation of URG and the transformation and evolution of URG.