Multiscalarity and Neighbourhood Governance

This article deploys a concept of multiscalarity to criticise current theoretical approaches to governance and to make sense of neighbourhood governance. Drawing on Kooiman’s distinction between hierarchical, self- and co-governance, it is argued, first, that state strategies need to be re-examined in the light of the multiscalarity of governance. Using the example of the neighbourhood and evidence from the author’s own research, the article then provides a detailed illustration of governance multiscalarity. The article has two notably original findings: empirically, only community and residents’ associations have sufficient independence to resist governmental forces on the neighbourhood scale (and these associations have to scale up their activities in order to have any chance of success); and theoretically, the societal predominance of hierarchical governance can be explained largely in terms of asymmetry in the conditions for trans-scalar organisation, with coordination from top downwards being typically easier to achieve than from bottom upwards.