Smart Urban Intermediaries, 2017-2020

This dataset includes 40 interviews with 20 urban practitioners from public, third and community sectors in the UK.

Our cross-national qualitative research design was developed to gain insights into the practices of urban practitioners in four North-Western European cities. We started from a broad interest in practices of agents who were reputed to ‘make a difference’ (Durose et al., 2016). We wanted to empirically understand how they developed, sustained and adapted their work practices. We first identified neighbourhoods where urban development had been targeted, for example through government-led interventions, often related to socio-economic disadvantage, or a reputation for community action. We drew upon the insight of our co-operation partners (national and local organisations knowledgeable in the field of urban governance and regeneration), which informed our selection of Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook (Birmingham), Govan (Glasgow), Nieuw-West (Amsterdam) and Nord Vest (Copenhagen) as our four anchor neighbourhoods.

We started by using a ‘snowballing’ technique, initially informed by our co-operation partners, to generate a database of approximately 200 potential participants across the four neighbourhoods. We then worked iteratively to identify urban practitioners to participate in the study. In doing so, we aimed to ensure diversity in both position – including, for example, active citizens, community leaders, elected representatives, front-line workers, social entrepreneurs and artists, as well as relationship to the neighbourhood, for example, living or being professionally engaged there. We recruited a cohort of practitioners that was gender balanced and reflected the neighbourhoods in terms of ethnic diversity. The cohort was more ethnically diverse in Birmingham and Amsterdam than in Glasgow and Copenhagen, reflecting the demographic profile of those cities. Across the sample, there was an under-representation of younger people, which may reflect the time taken to establish a repertoire of practice, but may also be seen as a limitation of the research.

We shadowed and interviewed 40 practitioners across the four neighbourhoods over a 30-month period. Before and after the shadowing phase, we conducted semi-structured interviews to understand what these practitioners do, how they do it and what enables and hinders them in making a difference. Across the research period, we brought practitioners together locally and cross-nationally in series of interactive workshops to reflect on emerging insights from the research. This resulted in a dataset including notes on around 640 hours of shadowing, 80 reflective conversations, 20 interactive workshops and a total of 80 interviews. This dataset comprises the part of the data that can be shared in open access, namely, the transcripts of the entry and exit interviews.

The dataset deposited here only includes material from the UK strand of the project (Birmingham and Glasgow) due to different consortium funders for the Danish and Dutch strands.

The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service.