Local Place-Based Collaborative Governance: Comparing State-Centric and Society-Centered Models

Abstract

Editor’s Note: A two-part podcast featuring a discussion by the authors of the Mini-symposium on Urban Governance can be found at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/uar/podcasts

The renaissance in place-based, cross-sector local collaboratives in American cities is distinguished by diverse strategies and actors. This exploratory research compares early stages of two collaborative initiatives—one relying on traditional state-centric collaboration models and the other drawing on emergent civil society collaboration models—in Denver, Colorado. The FasTracks initiative is a complex public-sector effort involving multiple jurisdictions, private-sector partners, and civic organizations in developing a regional transit system. The Children’s Corridor, spearheaded by the Piton Foundation, links efforts of local government, multiple nonprofit organizations, and private providers to improve children’s well-being in a targeted area. Although the Children’s Corridor collaboration suffered unanticipated disruptions, the argument here is not that one collaborative strategy is more effective than another. Rather, the resilience of the large-scale FasTracks collaborative—despite high transaction costs, diverse interests, eroding trust—was contingent on “bridging the collaborative divide” with dynamic scaling to accommodate multiple governance challenges.