The integrated ideal in urban governance: compact city strategies and the case of integrating urban planning, city design and transport policy in London and Berlin

This thesis investigates how objectives of integrating urban planning, city design and transport policies have been pursued in key case study cities as part of a compact city agenda since the early 1990s. Focusing on the underlying institutional arrangements, it examines how urban policymakers, professionals and stakeholders have worked across disciplinary silos, geographic scales and different time horizons to facilitate more compact and connected urban development. The thesis draws on empirical evidence from two critical cases, London and Berlin, established through a mixed method approach of expert interviews, examination of policy and planning documents, and review of key literature. Four main groups of integration mechanisms were identified and analysed: those related to (1) governance structures, (2) processes of planning and policymaking, (3) more specific instruments, and (4) enabling conditions. Based on having identified converging trends as part of the institutional changes that facilitated planning and policy integration in the case study cities, this thesis presents three main findings. First, rather than building on either more hierarchical or networked forms of integration, integrative outcomes are linked to a hybrid model of integration that combines hierarchy and networks. Second, while institutional change itself can lead to greater integration, continuous adjustment of related mechanisms is more effective in achieving this than disruptive, one-off ‘integration fixes’. Third, integrated governance facilitating compact urban growth represents a form of privileged integration, which centrally involves and even relies on the prioritisation of certain links between sectoral policy and geographic scales over others. Integrating urban planning, city design and transport policy at the city and metropolitan level, this thesis concludes, is essentially a prioritisation, which the compact city model implies and helps to justify