Prestigious urban projects demonstrate many insights in the functioning of public administration. Especially, prestigious urban projects can teach us about what we call ‘managerial mania’. Following the perspective of behavioural public administration, this article observes significant characteristics of managerial mania, such as elated behaviour, an exaggerated positive self-image, infectious enthusiasm, selective argumentation, tunnel vision, and an unsubstantiated faith that plans will succeed. As a consequence of managerial mania, prestigious projects are at risk of cost overruns, project fiascos, or underdelivering the expected outcomes promised by politicians or top-level managers. This article explores the phenomenon of managerial mania based on examples of large and controversial urban projects. Furthermore, this article describes and analyses the symptoms of managerial mania, its implications, and its mechanisms. Finally, the authors suggest some means of restraining the most extreme forms of managerial mania.

Sometimes dreams become reality, but there are also many examples in which manic ideas for image-defining projects turn into fiascos. How do you find the right balance in the planning and decision-making of image-defining projects between taming manic mechanisms that cause these projects to fail and unleashing manic mechanisms that are necessary to make these projects happen? This article attempts to answer this question by exploring how the taming of mania (through welfare-economic analysis) and the unleashing of vision and ambition (through imagination) can be combined in a better way. We call this a search for an ‘imaginative utilitarianism’ and draw up three preconditions under which this approach can work: (1) more attention to incremental and less grotesque projects, (2) a different appreciation and historiography that places individuals less centrally and also appreciates what has not been built, and (3) a stronger interweaving between the design process and a welfare-economic approach.

Incidents in the semi-public sector regularly reveal the underlying problems of managerial mania and decline. Since the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into Housing Associations and the new Housing Act, there have been fewer incidents involving managerial hubris and risky projects. However, in the event of incidents, the share of administrative decline of often long-serving directors of small corporations in particular is still considerable. The question in this article is what forms of managerial mania and decline occur among corporation directors and what internal and external supervisors can do to identify and mitigate this in a timely manner. To answer that question, this article examines the theory and practice of managerial mania and decline. Case analysis shows which manifestations of managerial mania and decline there were in the housing association sector. Internal and external supervisors can counter managerial mania and decline by exchanging knowledge with each other about the weak signals of decline and effective forms of countervailing power.

Manic mechanisms in all stages of the development of large, prestigious urban projects can be curbed by internal and external contradiction and control. Someone who has studied this for years is Paul Hofstra, director of the Rotterdam Court of Audit and surrounding municipalities. At the end of his term, he uses research reports to look back with us on the role played by the municipalities in major urban projects over the past twelve years. Recently, the Court of Audit published “Public value in trouble” a meta-analysis of ten years of audit of the Rotterdam municipal administration. In retrospect on the past years, four themes always came back: problems in policy design, implementation problems, internal cooperation and management and cooperation with other parties.

Some prestigious urban projects demonstrate many forms of misfit, misfortune, or mismanagement. Without big plans and high ambitions large projects don’t get off the ground, however, with a lack of attention for a diligent implementation and organization, fiascoes will follow. In the city of Rotterdam, the realization of a pop music hall, failed completely. In this case, the municipal public real estate agency played a central role in the failure of this urban project, and even a huge fraud that wasted millions of euros came out in the open. The main question in this article is: what can we learn from projects that fail during the implementation phase, and how can we professionalize public real estate agencies to avoid mistakes, fraud and other fiascoes? Such questions are relevant for public agencies that have to deal with both high and ever changing political and managerial ambitions, as well as with several commercial actors. This article offers insights behind the scenes of a public real estate agency, based on an in-depth case study. The authors demonstrate mechanisms of organizational vulnerability during the implementation of urban projects, as well as critical success factors of a professional, mature public real estate agency.

To get a better understanding of the maniac mechanism that can take place behind the scenes of prestigious projects, we need to further explore practices within the world of commercial real estate that are usually hidden from the public, including public administration. This article presents a conversation with a Dutch research journalist that became famous after his bestseller books about real estate fraud, and his hundreds of national newspaper articles about all kinds of integrity issues. This article delivers insights in the maniac character of commercial real estate within a vulnerable public context. The article demonstrates cases of fraudulent private entrepreneurs and public officials, examples of blind spots in the public management of urban projects that are developed in partnership with commercial real estate firms, and also cases of public failure in preventing integrity issues.

Subsoil interventions in the Netherlands are crucial elements in the transition to a sustainable energy future. These subsoil interventions concern reduction of fossil energy mining, extraction of thermal energy, energy storage and CSS storage. These geo projects cause tensions. Planning under the mining law leads to local resistance, debate and often delay or cancelling of initiatives. The central characteristics of this planning are an important cause. As the transition to sustainable energy asks for more interventions in the subsoil, these tensions get problematic, and hinder the transition. In this article we investigate this problematic nature of planning under the mining law. In examples we show the problems, and accordingly we analyse them. We explore a more prominent role of local actors, using localism and soft power. With this article we want contribute to national and international discussions about the planning and governance of subsoil initiatives and strengthening of local involvement in these.

The cabinet has decided to set up a national inspectorate with the task of supervising the quality and the rule of law of the public services provided by the tax authorities. The reason for this is the persistent problems surrounding the Tax and Customs Administration for years (organization, management, IT, personnel) and more recently the crisis surrounding the supplementary child benefit. The Netherlands is not the first and will soon not be the only country with a special regulator for the tax authorities and which focuses on legal protection of taxpayers and the quality of the service. In this article, we ask ourselves how the institution of the new Dutch inspectorate relates to the situation in various foreign countries and we examine which dilemmas and policy questions these raise. We note that with this new inspection the Netherlands is in tune with the situation in various foreign countries. Regarding the relationship and cooperative relationship with the National Ombudsman, the guarantee of the independent and impartial exercise of inspection supervision and the increasing importance of a Charter of the rights of taxpayers, a few important policy questions remain in a comparative sense.