Tracking the complexity of urban transformations: the multiple paths of planning policies

Abstract Cities change: new housing areas are built, former industrial areas are converted into high-rise financial and service districts, and train stations are renewed together with the surrounding neighbourhoods. The ways in which cities transform, and the policy recipes that drive those changes, are multiple. What works in one place may or may not work in another place. But while there are degrees of uniqueness in each city, there are also similarities between them. This defies simplistic causal accounts but also does away with the idea that each city is so unique that comparison is impossible (see e.g. Ragin & Becker, 1992; on this case-based argument). The research presented in this paper aims at identifying the multiple combinations of conditions that stimulate urban transformations. Rooted in a complexity-informed understanding of cases, we carry out a longitudinal comparison of twelve urban transformations in German and Swiss cities. With the aim to track the complexity of urban transformations by using Trajectory-Based Qualitative Comparative Analysis (TJ-QCA). TJ-QCA is a recent conceptual and methodological development of QCA (Ragin, 1987) that incorporates different development stages of individual cases, i.e. trajectories (Gerrits & Pagliarin, 2020; Pagliarin & Gerrits, 2020). We collected data from primary sources (policy and planning documents, council meeting reports etc.) and secondary sources (newspaper articles) that have been coded and calibrated to identify our similar outcomes in urban policy are reached through multiple paths (equifinality) and, vice versa, how different outcomes in urban transformations can stem from similar ‘recipes’. Therefore, our research contributes to a better understanding of complex causality in urban transformations by acknowledging structural differences and similarities between urban policies implemented in cities. Different ‘recipes’ can thus be identified and related to outcomes in urban policies, thus offering limitedly generalisable learning lessons for urban policy making. References Gerrits, L., & Pagliarin, S. (2020). Social and causal complexity in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): Strategies to account for emergence. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 0(0), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2020.1799636 Pagliarin, S., & Gerrits, L. (2020). Trajectory-based Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Accounting for case-based time dynamics. Methodological Innovations, 13(3), 205979912095917. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799120959170 Ragin, C. C. (1987). The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. University of California Press. https://books.google.de/books?id=mZi17vherScC Ragin, C. C., & Becker, H. S. (Eds.). (1992). What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry. Cambridge University Press.