ANÁLISIS CORRELACIONAL

Due to the accelerated mobilization and trans-nationalization of knowledge, policies and strategies, policy transfer and policy learning have become progressively accepted as an

administrative arrangements, institutions, etc. in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place.” Policy comparisons and transfer can contribute to the advancement and innovation of local policy - improving the quality and rationality of the policy-making process.

Research on policy transfer often focuses on the motivation and need for policy transfer rather than detailing a systematic process of how it should occur (Williams et al., 2014). Building upon Rose (2005) and Williams et al. (2014), this section outlines a framework of specific steps to follow in order to assess the potential transfer of shrinkage strategies from foreign experience into the local context. The objective is not to test the effectiveness of the framework, but rather to consolidate policy transfer and urban shrinkage research to provide a baseline approach to transferring shrinkage strategies. Regardless of whether the policy is adopted or rejected, lessons learned from the process may also impact, or even terminate, current policy. As responses to the challenges of shrinking cities do not always come in the form of official policy, the term “strategy” will be used to describe policies, strategies and approaches that propose active measures to address the economic, social or environmental challenges of shrinking cities. Throughout the chapter “foreign” will be used broadly to describe any strategies, domestic or international, external to the local scale and “target” will be used to describe the municipality in need of intervention. A schematic overview of the framework is depicted in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1: Overview of transferability framework

The first step in the framework (Case Study) is to establish a thorough understanding of the target community. Socioeconomic, demographic and economic trends should be identified and academic literature, media, grey literature and government reports should be collected and reviewed to provide context and gain insight to the cause and effect of local government and community action. This analysis should establish the need for a new strategy and the creation of a set of specific goals that the incoming strategy would ideally achieve.

In order to potentially transfer strategies to respond to the challenges resulting from urban shrinkage, an inventory of strategies needs to be established. Academic literature pertaining to the subject matter, in this case shrinking cities, should be identified through keyword title and abstract searches. Government documents from potential donor municipalities, regions and counties should also be identified and examined. Once a broad

categorized according to six components: (1) strategy type, (2) strategy goal, (3) funding type, (4) level of governance, (5) level of civic engagement, and (6) cost. See Appendix G for a full description of the strategy types, goals, engagement and cost.

The strategy types, adapted from Hummel (2014), are land banking, revitalization, demolition, consolidation, greening and other. This is not an exhaustive list of possible strategies, but rather a reflection of the academic literature and government documents, which tend to focus on the physical built environment The second component is strategy goal, which evaluates strategies based on the overarching objective of the intervention in relation to the population loss. Adapted from Hospers (2013), shrinking cities strategies can trivialize shrinkage by not addressing the symptoms, counter shrinkage by attempting to foster growth, accept shrinkage by adopting strategies to mitigate its negative effects or utilize shrinkage to explore unique opportunities associated with depopulation.

The third component examines funding type to determine if shrinking cities strategies are funded publicly, privately or in a public-private partnership. The fourth component examines the level of governance involved in the strategy – intergovernmental, federal, provincial/state, municipal, sub-municipal, multi-level or none. The fifth component uses the summary rungs of Arnstein’s ladder (1969) (citizen control, tokenism or nonparticipation) to assess the level of civic engagement. “Unclear” and “Not Available” are also included as the level of civic engagement can be difficult to evaluate depending on the source. The last component, monetary cost, is particularly difficult to evaluate, therefore fuzzy variables are used to estimate relative cost of different shrinking cities strategies. Although most strategies vary depending on the context and scale, some can be identified as having high (e.g. large infrastructure projects), medium (e.g. demolition projects) or low (e.g. community gardens) costs.

Using the six-component categorization of the strategies, the compatibility step of the framework first filters out strategies that do not match the specific type, funding, governance, cost, goal or engagement needs of the target municipality. Once the strategies have been filtered accordingly, the list of strategies identified from the literature should reflect the need, resources and structure of community. From here a strategy can be selected and adapted to the local context.

Based on Buffet et al. (2011), the last step of the framework adopts four criteria to assess the transferability (magnitude, objective, cost effectiveness and target group characteristics) and five criteria to assess the applicability (political acceptability, social acceptability, stakeholders, institutional infrastructure, and available resources) of the selected strategy. See Appendix G for a full details transferability and applicability evaluation framework. An external reviewer can evaluate the transferability, however the applicability of the strategy to the local context requires local insight. Key informant interviews with local community and government decision-makers can provide the necessary context to determine if the political and social climate of the municipality would be accepting of the selected strategy. Once the transferability and applicability of the selected strategy have been assessed conclusions and recommendations can be made regarding the feasibility of transferring the selected strategy to the target municipality.