Management of urban development: Example of the transformation of two Dutch former port areas

The more traditional approach of developing cities through government lead town planning has been gradually shifting to a more entrepreneurial approach of strategic management of both public and private initiatives in the urban environment. This approach combines aspects of governance, urban planning, economic development, financial management, social planning and marketing and leads to a more integrated strategic decision making process in which both public and private sector are involved. It is the task of urban management to improve the attractiveness of the city and its relative competitive position by developing and implementing an integrated strategy. This integrated strategy can be seen as a way to realise the objective of strengthening the economical, social and cultural situation of the urban region, which, in its turn, can be reached by taking into account all relevant factors that can influence the development process. The ability to develop and implement an integral urban development vision largely depends on achieving sufficient organising capacity. This organising capacity indicates the organisational possibilities that an urban region possess in order to be able to develop and implement an integral strategy. Organising capacity is the ability to enlist all actors involved, and with their help generate new ideas and develop and implement a policy designed to respond to fundamental developments and create conditions for sustainable economic growth.An important aspect of modern urban management is city marketing. In city marketing attention is focused on the urban functions and their target groups: the potential users of these functions. In urban management, on the contrary, stakeholders have a key position. City marketing and urban management can be seen as the‘ invisible hand’ of market coordination versus the‘ visible hand’ of government regulation. This implies that co-ordination and regulation can be considered as decentralised tasks of urban management