Abstract
Urban regeneration has become the dominant paradigm of spatial governance, with planning agreements replacing unilateral powers as the primary instruments for negotiating land-use changes. While this flexibility enables adaptation, it often entrenches power asymmetries and excludes local communities.
The paper models planning agreements as a Stag Hunt game between two strategic players, the municipality and the developer, with the local community as a passive, dummy player. Two Nash equilibria exist: high commitment, which is socially optimal but risky, and low commitment, which is individually safer. Empirical observation suggests that actors tend to converge on the latter.
To shift outcomes, the paper introduces an ex-ante social contract that aligns mental models and makes cooperation cognitively focal, provided the community is structurally included. It also deploys conformity preferences as a motivational mechanism sustaining compliance. Ordered claims and a three-level planning architecture (structural, operational, and regulatory) provide the institutional backbone. The result is a framework for fair, stable, high-commitment cooperation in urban regeneration.
The paper models planning agreements as a Stag Hunt game between two strategic players, the municipality and the developer, with the local community as a passive, dummy player. Two Nash equilibria exist: high commitment, which is socially optimal but risky, and low commitment, which is individually safer. Empirical observation suggests that actors tend to converge on the latter.
To shift outcomes, the paper introduces an ex-ante social contract that aligns mental models and makes cooperation cognitively focal, provided the community is structurally included. It also deploys conformity preferences as a motivational mechanism sustaining compliance. Ordered claims and a three-level planning architecture (structural, operational, and regulatory) provide the institutional backbone. The result is a framework for fair, stable, high-commitment cooperation in urban regeneration.