ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

The institutional afterlife of the London Docklands Development Corporation. Lessons about time-limited organisations and the governance of urban regeneration..

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 04 | GOVERNANCE

Speakers

Prof. Mike Raco (Bartlett School of Planning, University College London (UCL))Dr Sonia Freire Trigo (Bartlett School of Planning, University College London (UCL))

Description

A common debate in urban planning and urban regeneration is around the effective and speedy delivery of long-term regeneration outcomes. Time-limited and delivery-focused organisations, such as Development Corporations, have long been posited as ideal mechanisms to achieve that dual aim. But little attention to date has been given to the temporal nature of such organisations and how the knowledge of a limited lifespan has shaped their strategies and long-term impacts. We use the case of the London Docklands Development Corporation to understand such problem. Drawing on documentary evidence and semi-structured interviews with surviving members of the LDDC’s executive management, we highlight the effect that the organisation’s desire for an ‘institutional afterlife’ (after Scheffler 2014) had on its actions and decisions in the run-up to closure. We conclude with a reflection on what the Docklands case means for contemporary planning debates in the UK and beyond.

References

Scheffler, Samuel 2014. Death and the Afterlife. The Berkeley Tanner Lectures. New York: Oxford University Press.