Prestigious urban projects demonstrate many insights in the functioning of public administration. Especially, prestigious urban projects can teach us about what we call ‘managerial mania’. Following the perspective of behavioural public administration, this article observes significant characteristics of managerial mania, such as elated behaviour, an exaggerated positive self-image, infectious enthusiasm, selective argumentation, tunnel vision, and an unsubstantiated faith that plans will succeed. As a consequence of managerial mania, prestigious projects are at risk of cost overruns, project fiascos, or underdelivering the expected outcomes promised by politicians or top-level managers. This article explores the phenomenon of managerial mania based on examples of large and controversial urban projects. Furthermore, this article describes and analyses the symptoms of managerial mania, its implications, and its mechanisms. Finally, the authors suggest some means of restraining the most extreme forms of managerial mania.

The extensive growth of urban tourism has influenced the living environment of urban citizens worldwide, which is among others due to changes in the range of commercial amenities. As a manifestation of this development, the existing supply of retail and hospitality services gradually changes from a focus on inhabitants to the tourist. As a result, the call for municipal intervention grows. However, little is known about the steerability of this development. In this article we therefore asses how tourism affects the range of commercial amenities in city streets, and what local policy responses are most suitable. The research builds on the concepts of tourism gentrification and different types of ‘policy-instrument fit’. Our case study of the city centre of Amsterdam, including a media and policy document analysis, as well as in-depth interviews with stakeholders, show that some problems caused by mass tourism require ‘hard’ forms of government control, while others require a ‘softer’ process approach, linking local parties to jointly improve a city street. The presented steering perspectives are not only relevant for the city of Amsterdam, but also for many other towns within, and beyond, the Netherlands, that have been struggling with the growth of tourism. The open attitude towards urban mass tourism has come up for discussion and urban (tourism) policy calls for reconsideration.

In several regions in the Netherlands there are declining population numbers. In those regions, administrators, companies and societal organisations often start regional collaborations in order to anticipate population decline and maintain a good quality of life. This is a logical step, but in practice the collaborating partners face challenges. For this article we analysed over a period of eight years the dynamics of cooperation in the Hoeksche Waard, a region in the province of South Holland that is dealing with a decrease in the number of inhabitants. On the basis of the regime model (Stone 1989), and by conducting qualitative research, in this exploratory study we discerned a paradox of regional cooperation in this ‘shrinking’ region: a decline of population numbers is the reason to initiate informal cooperation in networks, but the complexity of the regional agenda leads to the desire for formalisation of the collaborations in formal decision making structures. This formalisation, in its turn, leads to less commitment from the parties and makes cooperation and achieving results difficult, which increases the need for informalisation.

How do you profile a diverse region? Based on what story, and under what name? The Southern Randstad, a conglomeration of large cities, medium-sized cities and villages in the Netherlands, wishes to make a name for itself worldwide as a metropolitan and innovative region. In this article, we will discuss how such a profiling strategy is realized. We will use insights from public administration, geography and those obtained from forty interviews with regional stakeholders. Selecting a new regional profile is a complex matter and sometimes even inappropriate. From the case study, it will be evident that in a pluralistic region collective profiling is only promising if it does not function as a replacement but as an enhancement. Furthermore, it will become clear that an area reference that refers to the two largest cities (Rotterdam and The Hague) in the region name is the most preferable. Finally, municipalities have to ‘play with scales’,i.e. they will have to align their profiling to suit the scale level at which they are presenting themselves.

Societal challenges are increasingly requiring cooperation and solutions on a regional scale. The recently formed metropolitan regions around Amsterdam, Rotterdam-The Hague and Eindhoven are examples. This essay serves as the introduction to a symposium on regionalization and the substantive and institutional questions that regionalization raises. It deals with the growing differences between regions and the call for a differentiated response. It also discusses the drivers for regional cooperation and the constraints of focusing on administrative structures. The essay exposes a number of tensions regarding the external profiling of regions, the benefits of regional cooperation, and the pursuit of broad societal goals. At the same time, it puts forward suggestions for follow-up research.

On a regular basis, the funding of football stadiums is an issue for large cities. Since football clubs appeal to the municipality for financial support, this is a public matter. Why should a municipality invest in a private project, such as a football stadium? What are the opportunities and risks? What is the public value of a stadium for the city? Based on literature reviews and case studies in Eindhoven and Amsterdam, this article examines what government involvement in stadium projects means, and what the outcomes of this involvement are. The cases show that stadiums may have social and economic spin-off effects on their surroundings, but one cannot take that for granted. Careful processes and elaborate strategies are needed for public investment in stadiums to really add value to the city. Based on the analyses, an assessment framework is presented for the benefit of new stadium project initiatives.

More than twelve years after the appearance of the report of the Dutch Committee on the Future of Government Communication (‘Commissie Toekomst Overheidscommunicatie’) communication as the responsibility of the government is an important issue of debate and a discipline that is alive and kicking. We may even conclude that communication – in the terminology of this report – has conquered a place in the heart of policy. A lot is still unclear about the communicative function of government. On the normative question ‘why should the government communicate’ diverging answers are possible. However, the question is hardly discussed in practice and in science. For this reason the positioning of government communication as a separate discipline is also unclear. Reflection on the elementary values behind the discipline can reveal themes that have been invisible so far. The article investigates which values and motives are attached in theory and in practice to communication as a governmental function. For this reason a content analysis has been carried out of a number of volumes of five Dutch magazines (practical and scientific). The authors conclude that for professionals communication mainly is an instrument to support policy goals. The possibility to make a purposeful contribution with government communication to democratic values hardly is brought about, not so much in Communication Science as in Public Administration.

In the section Review Essay, Gert-Jan Hospers discusses four recent monographies on urban design as a means to achieve political ambitions.

Agricultural production systems may influence each other in a negative way, with conflicts as a consequence. In general, such conflicts are resolved technically in an ad hoc manner, at farm or greenhouse level. There is no structural attention to so-called co-existence problems. This article makes a plea for acknowledging such problems as policy issues and for grouping these together under the label of co-existence conflicts, broadening this phrase beyond its traditional meaning related to conventional, organic and GM crop production. Co-existence conflicts are concrete, local expressions of the tensions between conflicting values incorporated in the current agricultural system. It is argued that because they are manifestations of conflicting value systems, they offer useful stepping-stones to practically organise and channel discussions on sustainable development in agriculture.