2.1.1. Programmes and Institutional Set-Up

• Berlin : Neighbourhood Management Team
• Copenhagen : Kvarterløft Local Secretariat
• Dublin : Integrated Area Plan Manager
• Glasgow : Gorbals Initiative and SIP Boards
• Hamburg : STEG
• Lisbon : Castelo Project Unit
• Valletta : Valletta Rehabilitation Committee
• Vilnius : Old Town Renewal Agency OTRA

In all these cases we find a local coordinator, who in most cases has a local office in the area. These coordinators are either staff members of or contracted by the Municipality or some sort of locally responsible public authority. They are closely connected to one department at municipal level (Finance Department in Copenhagen , Planning Department in Berlin , Hamburg , Urban Conservation and Rehabilitation and Lisbon ).

These institutions are special purpose agencies, their sole task is the implementation of the regeneration process. All of these agencies or teams do implement national programmes or are put into place by state level public institutions. This shows that the issue of neighbourhood development is in all these countries a political issue at national level and goes beyond the local responsibility. The time-limit – under 10 years - and more or less rigid termination of some of the programmes (Berlin, Copenhagen, Lisbon) – as well as the physical bias in some cities - shows at the same time that neighbourhood regeneration is regarded as a temporary necessity to bring the area from crisis back to order: there is no case where the area-based approach seams to be a long-term, mainstream strategy so far. However, we can observe discussions about this at national levels (Germany, UK), and secondly some cases (Glasgow, Hamburg, Berlin, Lisbon, Dublin) show that in practice the invention continues for much longer periods. In Dublin , new structures have recently been established whereby the city is divided into five areas for local service delivery. Area offices and staff structure under an Area Manager have been established. The Project Teams for the IAP's now fit into this area structure and the links established with local communities during the life of the IAP's will continue into the future. In Lisbon the local multidisciplinary offices in charge of urban regeneration exist already since 1985 and will continue their work. Although they might lack in efficiency because of a lack of supportive legislation and of financial resources, they still do exist and people are aware that there is always somebody they can address their concerns and questions to.

In some cases the integration is in addition supported by “institutional interweaving”. This is particularly evident in Glasgow where at a local level this is evident in the relationships with Gorbals Initiative, Gorbals SIP and the New Gorbals HA and city wide we are seeing a fragmented local state with a division of work in particular between GCC (social issues), SEG (economic issues), GHA (housing issues) and some responsibility of the Scottish Executive as well:

“Unlike other countries, the City Council is not responsible for the delivery of all services. Scotland operates a system of Government Agencies; the two most important ones that have a responsibility for regeneration are Communities Scotland and Scottish Enterprise” (Glasgow Case Study, p10).

However, in the other cases, the redevelopment agency is connected to other institutions by steering boards, see here especially Hamburg /STEG and Vilnius/OTRA. This aspect will be dealt with in the next chapter (city-wide embeddedness).

Areas and Programmes: An Overview