Innovation in urban governance and economic resilience. The case of two Romanian regional metropolises: Timișoara and Cluj Napoca

Abstract

This article aims to explain how innovations in urban governance contribute to economic resilience of post-socialist regional metropoles, by retracing the path development process of the local governance systems in two Romanian cities - Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca. Firstly, the paper brings analytical cross-fertilization between urban governance studies and the emerging field of path development, by proposing a combined framework based on four dimensions: structural features, actors, timing and spatiality of resources employed in the process of governance innovation. Secondly, it contributes to the path development literature with evidences from post-socialist regional metropoles, defined by a mix of central and peripheral attributes and therefore constituting a new category of spaces which has not been approached by this strand of literature to date. The methodology includes a comparative case study protocol based on the process tracing method, according to the proposed analytical framework and applied on various sources (interviews, planning documents, reports, newspaper articles). The results reveal an important role of structural inherited features in driving governance innovations, while the public actors and the external resources complement the process in different degrees. However, these tendencies diminish across time, as new actors and roles appear in the city landscape and new challenges arise.