Dealing with tensions: the expertise of boundary spanners in facilitating community initiatives

This chapter investigates the tension between bureaucratic expertise and situated knowledge in the context of social innovation. It addresses the frictions that emerge internally in public organisations when they attempt to respond to local demands of social innovation, citizen's engagement, and democratic participation. The chapter's contribution to a critique of contemporary technocratic urban management and planning lies in identifying the key axes of internal conflict between public professional expertise and the situated knowledge in urban neighbourhoods. It particularly looks at the actions of ‘boundary spanners’, and their narratives, to examine the role of a new professional profile within public organisations. Boundary spanners work across organisational boundaries, developing a specific expertise which is instituted to connect the internal working of bureaucracies with the external demands and needs of actors in particular urban areas.