The Foundations of Multi-channel Neighborhood Governance

The book addresses the rapid growth in online services, its impact on urban land-use patterns and on local governance processes. Services such as retail, education,healthcare etc. were originally located within neighbourhoods, providing accessibility of everyday facilities for citizens and ensuring profitability for services providers. Today many of those services are being substituted by virtual ones a process referred as conversion or hybridization, depending on the relationship between offline and online channels. The aim of the book is to define a comprehensive method for managing essential services in urban neighbourhoods, with special attention to the integration of online and offline channels. The concept of multi-channel governance (MCG) will be introduced as a response to the process of conversion of services to virtual environment. The book will open new perspectives to urban studies by addressing the issue of aspatiality of online services and its effects to urban governance and neighbourhood planning. It is expected to fill an important gap in the state-of-the-art with a novel method of multi-channel governance. MCG will provide a list of recommendations for urban policy makers and practitioners on how to deal with conversion on the local level, how to manage land-use, how to stimulate entrepreneurship, protect territorial identity and enhance quality of life.