The Inefficient Governance of a Net with no Brain. An Analysis of Town Centre Management

The study of an area and its related distributional and commercial dynamics of many types of products, especially with reference to certain territorial areas, calls for the recognition of new aggregative trends among economic operators which gravitate around retail businesses. Interpreting these aggregation tendencies, an organization identified as town centre management (hereafter TCM) has become important for urban development in many cities. The purpose of such an organization should be that of encouraging efficient management of local resources linked to the most attractive factor in the area (religion, commerce, art, culture, etc.) in pursuit of participatory governance through a sustainable point of view while mindful of the numerous demands made by territorial stakeholders. However, TCM often face governance problems due to the lack of a guiding centre and poor coordination and control. In this sense, a structural interpretation of TCM can be effectively made through a reticular point of view by critically analysing if and how much this approach is deemed useful and instrumental in identifying government support activities for TCM in itself. From this standpoint, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not TCM is comparable to a network and then to further analyse the governance potential of TCM