Neighborhood governance during COVID-19: What is lost with reduced face-to-face communication?

ABSTRACT

Neighborhood governance demands ongoing communication between public and private actors. Area brokers, working as boundary spanners, are essential in this process. Their work was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing measures hindered face-to-face (F2F) interaction rituals, such as informal conversations and participation meetings. Therefore, area brokers had to turn to communication technologies to mitigate this loss. This research explored how a shift from F2F to mediated communication, affected area brokers’ effectiveness. In total, 21 sequential interviews and three focus groups were conducted with ten area brokers, acting as so-called boundary spanners, in Amsterdam during three phases of the pandemic. The analysis shows that, while mediated communication helped them to continue their tasks, the relational and functional affordances of communication technologies constrained boundary-spanning activities, impacting neighborhood governance. The paper raises two critical issues for neighborhood governance beyond the pandemic. First, mediated communication can aggravate existing inequalities in the ability of citizens to communicate with local government representatives. Second, although communication technologies are currently on the rise in local governance, they are only effective when coupled with discretionary space for boundary spanners to employ them in fitting ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication affordance
• interaction rituals
• neighborhood governance
• boundary spanning
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pieter Breek

Pieter Breek is a PhD candidate at the University of Tilburg. He is also lecturer at Inholland University of applied science. He focuses on the impact of social media on the social forces that are involved in the construction of place. His work has also been published in City & Community, Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, Journal of Place Management and Development.