Between Dreams and Reality, Urban governance in the process of Dutch urban restructuring Abstract The ambition to redevelop post-World-War Two [post-WWII] neighbourhoods (built between 1950-1975) is derived from the slow degradation process that often affected them during the last decades. The urban-restructuring processes mostly take place through the renewal of the housing stock by the demolition, upgrading, and selling of social housing, the building of more expensive dwellings, and the renewal of the public space and all kinds of facilities. We might expect that the neoliberal reforms of the Dutch welfare state since the 1980s have triggered intensive cooperation in urban restructuring policies between government layers, between the local authority and the housing associations, and with residents’ committees: urban governance (the processes of steering and coordinating urban policies between the public, private, and voluntary sectors to achieve collectively-agreed goals). Network-theory approaches stress this self-steering dimension of networks. In contrast, however, the political-economy approach of multi-scalar meta-governance emphasises the strong steering of the central state in local governance arrangements. Therefore, more insight in the usefulness of various theoretical governance approaches is important in the construction of a more appropriate explanation. Furthermore, the differences in perceptions among stakeholders might impair the cooperation processes and have not as yet been systematically researched. Therefore, the research focus is on local stakeholders’ perceptions with respect to intergovernmental relationships in urban policies, the problems and policies for urban restructuring neighbourhoods, and their roles and tasks in the collaboration process. How do local stakeholders enact the management of networks, and the sustaining of the relationships in the area-based partnerships? Moreover, urban restructuring processes require very high investments in social and financial terms. Identifying ...