Social Value Creation Through Bottom-up Urban Development: Mechanisms of Self-Organization

This article examines how bottom-up urban development initiators create social value through self-organization in a market-dominated context. Using a multiple case study and a framework combining collaborative governance and network uncertainty theories, we identify two key efforts: shaping initiatives through community building to establish trust, and aligning goals with state and market actors’ spatial-economic interests. State and market support is subsequently gained through goal-interest coupling, grounded in trust and facilitated by temporary use. Incremental self-organization thus involves adapting to market logic rather than opposing it, which contrasts with prevailing paradigms. This adaptation fosters social value but requires compromises from initiators.