Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are thriving in Western countries. In CBIs, citizens take a leading role in providing public services and goods. CBIs have been acclaimed for their innovativeness, problem-solving capacity, and legitimacy. However, we lack large N studies on performance of CBIs and its antecedents. This article develops and tests a model that identifies relationships between performance and four antecedents by using survey data on CBIs collected in the Netherlands (N = 671). Using structural equation modelling, positive direct and indirect relationships between transformational leadership, boundary spanning leadership, organizational capacity, social capital ties, government support, and performance are found.

This systematic review discusses the shifted paradigm in the place-making concept, from being focused on physical changes in the environment (product-oriented) created by urban planners, towards place-making as an iterative process that involves various actors other than the planning professionals. Despite this conceptual re-orientation that was emerged in the 1960s, important discussions, such as factors that support or obstruct the process of place-making are often mentioned incidentally in publications without being systematically analysed across cases. Therefore, this paper aims to bring a better overview of the concept of place-making as a process by combining theoretical and empirical research in the planning context. To achieve this aim, a systematic literature review of 61 articles published between 1960 and 2016 has been used. This research demonstrates a variety of approaches, influential factors, and outcomes of place-making. It points out the importance to take into considerations the interplays among the roles of actors, along with physical-spatial elements of places. These factors should be acknowledged in combination with the others, rather than being treated as unidimensional. Such circumstances not only lead to viable place-making but also bring positive social impacts to local communities, especially on gaining local empowerment, enhancing social ties, reinforcing place identity, and increasing quality of life.

This paper aims to explain how the governance model changes in smart cities by using South Korea's experience as a case study. South Korean smart city development is divided into three phases according to the national master plan and maturity of smart cities. Phase 1 took place from 2008 to 2013, phase 2 extended from 2014 to 2018, and phase 3 began in 2019 and will last into 2023. The cases under consideration are three representative smart cities: Seoul, Songdo, and Sejong. The analysis traces how the governance model of each city changes throughout the three phases. According to stakeholders’ roles and relationships, the governance model is categorized into four types (corporate, market, multilevel, and network governance). The governance model in all three cities showed little change. In Seoul and Songdo, market governance was dominant, while in Sejong, multilevel governance was. However, in phase 3, the institutional setting is changing to facilitate network governance in all three cities. The government guided the collaboration, giving more opportunities for private, academic, and civil actors to engage.

Research finds that productive interfaces between collaborative and bureaucratic forms of governance hinges on the extent to which public managers act as competent boundary spanners who process information, accommodate communication and align and coordinate behavior, and it seems likely that politicians have an equally important role to play in aligning processes and arenas of collaborative governance with representative democracy. The empirical forms that political boundary making takes are examined in a study of 28 cases of local, regional or national level policy-making in nine Western countries. This study indicates that there is considerable variation in the way politicians perform political boundary spanning particularly with respect to their degree of engagement in collaborative policymaking arenas and the focus of their boundary-spanning activities. Furthermore, the study shows that collaborative governance tends to go best in tandem with representative democracy in those cases where politicians perform both hands off and hands on boundary-spanning activities.

Increasingly, Western local governments are dealing with community‐based initiatives (CBIs) of citizens providing public services. Municipalities possess critical resources CBIs generally lack, including subsidies, buildings, and exposure. There is still little knowledge on CBIs' factors for government support. Therefore, this study adopts an organizational perspective distinguishing among institutionalization (intraorganizational, e.g., organizational size and democratic legitimacy) and interaction (interorganizational, e.g., boundary spanning leadership [BSL]) factors for the support CBIs obtain from local government. Analyzing large N data (N = 2331) from CBIs in six countries by using structural equation modeling, we found that interaction factors are related to more government support, whereas institutionalization factors are less significant. More specifically, we found stronger relationships for BSL and linking social capital than for the factors related to the formalization and development of organizational infrastructure, including the much‐discussed democratic legitimacy of CBIs, suggesting a limited interest of governments in this topic as a factor for support.