Urbanization and the organization of territorial cohesion – results from a comparative Danish case-study on territorial inequality and social cohesion
Journal of Organizational Ethnography
ISSN: 2046-6749
Article publication date: 11 January 2022
Issue publication date: 4 April 2022
Abstract
Purpose
There is a growing importance for public facilitation of corporate social responsibility and involvement of civil organizations in securing territorial cohesion and development. In the present article, the authors focus on how we are to understand a locally sensitive organization of territorial cohesion in the Danish context. Traditional sociological concepts and standardized area-types used for administrative purposes have turned out not being very helpful in understanding the interrelation between inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion. The authors argue for a processual and relational approach to urbanization.
Design/methodology/approach
The present article is based on interview material and policy documents from three Danish case studies representing urban, suburban and rural forms of settlement. The case studies are part of a cross-European research project.
Findings
The authors show how territorial governance play a key role in the strategies of densification/de-densification facilitating shielding capacities of collective efficacy, and reversely that bottom-up innovations are crucial for the ability of territorial governance to mobilize territorial capital and mediate in effects of territorial inequality. Spatial imaginaries legitimize these efforts to organize cohesion. The spatial imaginaries work as common frame of references for the interplay between strategies of (de)densification and collective efficacy, and they activate particular balances between growth agendas and everyday life.
Originality/value
These findings represent an original perspective on how and why urbanization impact on places in a more specific and variated way than often portrayed as it highlight how social capacities tied to place might work with or against existing social, economic and cultural structures shaping territorial cohesion.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The research that the article is based on is funded by The Horizon 2020 project COHSMO (grant agreement No 727058). COHSMO: Inequality, urbanization and territorial Cohesion: Developing the European Social Model of economic growth and democratic capacity. (2017–2021).
Citation
Jørgensen, A. and Fallov, M.A. (2022), "Urbanization and the organization of territorial cohesion – results from a comparative Danish case-study on territorial inequality and social cohesion", Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 64-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-01-2021-0006
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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