Introduction: Social innovation and governance in European cities: Urban development between path dependency and radical innovation

This introductory article does three things. First, it compares neo-liberal and social innovation discourses about urban socio-economic change, including associated policies and key agencies. Second, it seeks to improve the analytical framework of urban development by combining 'spatialized' Regulation Theory with elements from Cultural Political Economy and from Urban Regime Theory.Third, with the help of case-studies, the article illustrates how social innovation is a potentially powerful concept, capable of anchoring urban change movements more firmly into the local social and political fabric. The case-studies, some of which are included in this special issue, analyse examples of social innovation in a number of European urban contexts, within the framework of the FP5 SINGOCOM research project. © SAGE Publications, Inc. 2007.