Large Scale Urban Development Projects and Local Governance: from Democratic Urban Planning to Besieged Local Governance

This article analyses the interaction between social exclusion in the city, the implementation of large scale development projects and changes in urban governance. The first part of the article analyses the evolution in urban restructuring tendencies and its consequen ces for social exclusion.and integration mechanisms. The relationships between urban restructuring and changes in urban public policy are reflected in the rise of the New Urban Policy* that has provided increasing freedom of action to urban developers and public-private ventures in which the market logic predominates. The remainder of the article focuses on specific features of urban policy and governance as they appear from the case-studies covered in this issue: the physical bias of urban policy, the challenge of mainstream policy by integrated approaches to neighbourhood development, the rise of 'exceptionality' procedures in urban planning, and the threat of New Urban Policy to the good working of local democracy.