Street-level collaborative governance for urban regeneration: How were conflicts resolved at grassroot level?

Urban regeneration is one of the most important public administration issues facing modern cities. While abundant studies have focused on the state-led or market-based governance modes of large urban regeneration projects, relatively fewer studies investigate the collaborative governance mode, especially on the numerous street-level small-scale regeneration projects. Street-level small-scale regeneration projects directly touch on citizens’ life and impact governance effectiveness at grassroot level. This paper studies dynamics of collaborative governance of a street-level regeneration that can balance multiple regeneration objectives and successfully address conflicts and tensions inherent in such projects. Our findings are significant in confirming the applicability of the basic tenets of collaborative governance in grassroot level and pointing out some key differences between large-scale collaborative governance projects and street-level small-scale projects in how governance effectiveness could be achieved through different stakeholders’ interactions in urban regeneration.