Neighbourhood Governance, Public Steering and Local Cultural Intermediaries: A Bibliometric Mapping and Thematic Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15678/PG.2026.76.2.06Keywords:
neighbourhood governance, public governance, collaborative governance, public steering, public value, cultural intermediaries, bibliometric analysisAbstract
Objectives: This article maps the development and conceptual structure of neighbourhood governance research and synthesises how public steering and local cultural intermediaries support neighbourhood-level public value creation.
Research Design & Methods: A hybrid review combines bibliometric mapping of 850 Scopus-indexed publications (2012–2026) with a focused thematic synthesis of 33 culture-related publications selected from an independently retrieved corpus of 61 Scopus records.
Findings: The bibliometric analysis maps a growing interdisciplinary field in which participation, collaborative governance, co-production, urban governance and social innovation are prominent. The thematic review identifies variation in the depth of community agency: cases reporting more substantive resident influence were commonly characterised by place-based legitimacy, relative autonomy, sustained resourcing and enabling forms of public steering.
Implications / Recommendations: Public authorities should design funding, partnership and accountability arrangements that provide local cultural actors with sustained resources and give residents real influence over decisions, while avoiding their reduction to instruments of service delivery or symbolic participation.
Contribution / Value Added: The article links neighbourhood governance to public steering, accountability and cultural intermediation. It distinguishes four overlapping governance functions of local cultural intermediation and identifies recurrent contextual features associated with more substantive resident influence, while retaining attention to tokenistic, project-based and co-opted participation.
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