Belgian cities and globalisation: disadvantaged areas, models for social innovation and local development coalitions.

This research project analyses models for social innovation and local development coalitions in disadvantaged urban areas. This project aims to broaden the currently dominant concept of innovation, which tends to focus one-sidedly on technology, international competitiveness and formal organisations, to an integrated vision on urban development in the context of globalisation. More specifically, this project will (1) identify the local development potential that is present in disadvantaged areas in five Belgian cities, but that is not stimulated by large-scale urban development projects and (2) analyse under which specific conditions development coalitions emerge and succeed in determining, negotiating and implementing development strategies that stimulate and realise local development opportunities. The project will focus in particular on the formation of new, development-stimulating social relations that help to transcend the fragmentation of local (civil) society and the weak level of coordination between organisations that focus on different dimensions of development and are active on different spatial scales.

Keywords:Globalisation, Urban planning, Urban development, Social exclusion, Urban governance, Social innovation

Disciplines:Economic geography, Human geography, Recreation, leisure and tourism geography, Urban and regional geography, Other social and economic geography, Urban and regional design, development and planning