The Palgrave Handbook of Co-Production of Public Services and Outcomes

Elke Loeffler (Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and Director of the non-profit organization Governance International.) and Tony Bovaird (Emeritus Professor of Public Management and Policy at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Chief Executive of Governance International), are the editors of this new book by Palgrave.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive and authoritative account of the movement towards co-production of public services and outcomes, a topic which has recently become one of the most intensely debated in public management and administration, both in practice and in the academic literature. It explores in depth the processes of co-commissioning, co-design, co-delivery and co-assessment as major approaches to co-production through citizen voice and citizen action and as key mechanisms in the co-creation of public value. The key debates in the field are fully explored in chapters from over 50 eminent authors in the field, who examine the roots of co-production in the social sciences, the growth of co-production in policy and practice, its implementation and management in the public domain, and its governance, including its negative aspects (the ‘dark side’ of co-production). A final section discusses different aspects of the future research agenda for co-production. 

Antoni Remesar (CR POLIS- CRIT) wrote chapter 17th “Co-design of Public Spaces with Local Communities” . This chapter explores the possibilities for co-designing public space with local communities, starting from the experience that the POLIS Research Centre has built up over 20 years working in various neighbourhoods in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. POLIS has developed its interdisciplinary public participation activity in the fields of urban design and public art within the framework of Urban Regeneration processes. It explores the implementation of creative strategies for citizen participation, that can be encompassed under the concept of urban governance, which we take to refer to the quality of participation necessary ‘to ensure that political, social and economic priorities are based on a broad consensus in society and that the voices of the excluded, poorest and most vulnerable are heard in decision–making’ (UNDP in Governance for Sustainable Development: Integrating Governance in the Post-2015 Development Framework, United Nations Development Programme, New York, 2014, 4) and fousses on the present research process at the Bon Pastor Neighbourhood in Barcelona. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-53705-0_17

The e-book version is now available at the Springer site https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-53705-0#toc and printed and hardcover version will be available early 2021