Woningcorporaties zullen de komende tien jaar het gat gaan vullen dat nu ontstaat door verkoop van particuliere huurwoningen. Dat vraagt om een goede nieuwbouwstrategie en samenwerking tussen betrokken partijen, stelt hoogleraar Peter Boelhouwer in een interview met Platform31. Boelhouwer brengt zijn expertise in bij de nieuwe Leerkring sociale en betaalbare woningbouw voor corporaties en gemeenten, die deelnemers inhoudelijke en praktische inzichten biedt.

Comprehensive understanding of the merits of bottom-up urban development is lacking, thus hampering and complicating associated collaborative processes. Therefore, and given the assumed relevancies, we mapped the social, environmental and economic values generated by bottom-up developments in two Dutch urban areas, using theory-based evaluation principles. These evaluations raised insights into the values, beneficiaries and path dependencies between successive values, confirming the assumed effect of placemaking accelerating further spatial developments. It also revealed broader impacts of bottom-up endeavors, such as influences on local policies and innovations in urban development.

The emergence of organic planning practices in the Netherlands introduces new, non-conventional, local actors initiating bottom-up urban developments. Dissatisfied with conventional practices and using opportunities during the 2008 financial crisis, these actors aim to create social value, thus challenging prevailing institutions. Intrigued by such actors becoming more present and influential in urban planning and development processes, we aim to identify who they are. We use social entrepreneurship and niche formation theories to analyse and identify three types of social entrepreneurs. The first are early pioneers, adopting roles of a developer and enduser, but lacking position and power to realize goals. Secondly, by acting as boundary spanners and niche entrepreneurs, they evolve towards consolidated third sector organizations in the position to realize developments. A third type are intermediate agents facilitating developments as boundary spanners and policy entrepreneurs, without pursuing urban development themselves but aiming at realizing broader policy goals. Our general typology provides a rich picture of actors involved in bottom-up urban developments by applying theories from domains of innovation management and business transition management to urban planning and development studies. It shows that the social entrepreneurs in bottom-up urban development can be considered the result of social innovation, but this social innovation is set within a neoliberal context, and in many cases passively or actively conditioned by states and markets.

Urban interventions initiated by citizens, (end)users and small independent professionals have increased in number since the recent economic crisis. Many of these ‘bottom-up’ Urban Area Development projects (UAD’s) result from citizens’ dissatisfaction with conventional practices or give room for ambitions to self-organization. Current Dutch policies, in line with EU policies, emphasize the potential and added value of these bottom-up developments in co-creating healthy, inclusive and resilient cities. However, theoretical knowledge of what these ‘bottom-up’ projects are, and proven methods of how they can be successfully supported and governed is lacking.
This paper aims to contribute to filling this gap. It starts with a literature review which identifies the characteristics of ‘bottom-up’ UAD’s and what distinguishes them from conventional, ‘top-down’ organized UAD’s. Drawing on bodies of literature, a framework was developed to analyse the institutions of UAD’s. It introduces a number of variables, influencing processes and outcomes of UAD’s. A first exploration of two distinctive Dutch cases shows to what extent this framework is valid and how different types of UAD’s show a different emphasis on - and implications of - the variables. It also provides a richer picture of the drivers within strategies, developed by actors.
Further analysis shows a dependency on - and necessary collaboration between - bottom-up and conventional top-down actors in order to achieve successful bottom-up UAD’s, amongst others. Future, extensive case-studies within this research will examine the tentative proposition, that this ‘merge’ or ‘cross-over’-approach is essential in order to successfully govern and support bottom-up UAD’s.