Governing Cities: Politics and Policy 3030726207, 9783030726201

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GOVERNING CITIES POLITICS AND POLICY M A DEL EI N E PIL L

Governing Cities “This is not just another public policy textbook. Governing Cities is an exploration of theory and practice. The reader is invited to consider how to understand politics and policymaking in relation to cities and how to improve them both. As such, it presents an ambitious discussion of the history, role, and governance of cities, which informs how to engage in urban politics to address the future of cities in relation to crises such as climate change and pandemics. It is a great example of how to make the study of policy jump off the page into real life.” —Professor Paul Cairney, University of Stirling, UK “In weaving critical and comparative perspectives throughout a very lively and accessible exploration of urban governance and policy, Madeleine Pill’s book is a significant achievement. It will reward students at all levels for years to come, especially those who study cities for their political vibrancy and transformative potential.” —Professor Jonathan Davies, De Montfort University, UK “Cities produce significant societal challenges but also generate solutions to these challenges. Governing Cities provides students across planning, public policy, politics and geography the conceptual tools to understand how cities are governed, and how they could be governed in more equitable, democratic and citizen-centred ways. Its use of historical and contemporary examples from a diverse set of countries means that it will become foundational for urban studies teaching and learning worldwide.” —Professor Robyn Dowling, University of Sydney, Australia “This is the book so many of us critically-minded urbanists have been waiting for! A clear, comprehensive, and refreshingly critical introduction to the governance of cities, urbanism, and the possibilities of equitable and just urban social change. Completely accessible to undergraduate students, yet analytically sophisticated and in-depth enough to also serve as a foundational text for graduate students. Although written by a UK-based scholar with extensive experience in Australia, its scope and approach is remarkably broad. Pill’s keen understanding of American cities and public policy shapes much of the presentation, making it ideal for courses on US cities as well.” —Professor David Imbroscio, University of Louisville, USA

Madeleine Pill

Governing Cities Politics and Policy

Madeleine Pill Department of Urban Studies & Planning University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-72620-1 ISBN 978-3-030-72621-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: zphoto This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

The book is inspired by classes I taught at the University of Sydney and the lively and engaged discussions which resulted about making cities more equitable. The premise was that in a majority urban world, not least the especially urbanised Australia, cities form the locus for politics and public policy. Most of us live in cities where we experience how economic, social and political forces shape life and collective action. We focused on governing cities and thus urban politics and policy but recognised the urban as an inherently interdisciplinary research arena. One of the pleasures of the class, initially envisaged as extending the public policy offer to political science majors to encompass urban policy, was that it was also undertaken by those studying city and regional planning and by urban geographers. We all benefited from the interplay of perspectives between those steeped in political science and its focus on power, those immersed in planning and its focus on practicalities, and geographers’ viewpoints on scale, space, place and socio-spatial processes. This potent mix was enhanced by the wide variety of domestic and international students’ urban experiences, in terms of where they were living, had lived, and where they wanted to live, within Sydney, across Australia and worldwide. As scholars, we want to better understand what is going on around us, and reflect on how we live and engage in our city. In the class, we focused on Sydney as the one city about which we all shared experience, whilst drawing from examples and people’s experiences to help us see Sydney ‘through elsewhere’. Sydney provided us with a rich basis for how we interrogated the political and policy challenges of governing cities and considered alternatives. The state-society relationships of governing Sydney well-illustrate the tension between values of equity and of economic growth (people or profit). The role of the state (here at federal, state and local government levels) tends to be conventionally conceived as technical and managerial, underlining the normative power of market ideologies which act to subdue debates about citizens’ role in processes of governing and planning the city. But the city also has a rich realm of everyday political activity and contestation, deriving from the collective action of citizens, which helped us consider the potential to develop alternative visions for the city and to enact these. Students ‘loved talking about real issues in Sydney’ and their contributions ‘as a public servant and as a citizen’ to shaping the city’s future. One explained ‘I work v

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for a homelessness service and every day at work, I see the impact on people’s lives of policies that prioritise profit and reinforce exclusion… [the class] helped me get a better understanding about what is happening in the city of Sydney and cities more broadly and why’. Local policy makers and practitioners gave us insights into working in the public and third sectors, providing frank reflections on the realities and frustrations of their work and the challenges of navigating personal and professional values in political context. Guests also enthused us about the possibilities for effecting change. I want to thank all the students and guests who participated in these classes and inspired me to write this book with the intent to equip and enthuse other budding critical urbanists. My thanks also to my inspiring colleagues at the universities of Sydney, Cardiff and Sheffield. In particular my thanks to my fellow researchers in two international research projects through which we sought to understand the changing nature of state-society relationships and how the state and society can work despite, with, or against each other in determining and enacting how, by and for whom our cities are governed. My research, focused in my home country of the UK, in Baltimore in the US, and in Sydney, Australia, has helped me see cities ‘through elsewhere’, and appreciate that there is always far much more to learn from other people and places. Sheffield, UK

Madeleine Pill

Contents

1 Questions About Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Being Critical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studying Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Intent of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How We Proceed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 3 4 5 7

2 What Is a City and Why Do They Matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is a City? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eras of Urbanisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Do Cities Matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Challenges Arise in Governing Cities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 9 10 11 18 20 24 25

3 How and by Whom Are Cities Governed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is Urban Governance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Regime Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Governance Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modelling Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Managerialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neoliberalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Governance in Policy and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network and Collaborative Governance: Where’s the Citizen? . . . . . . . Austerity Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29 29 30 33 36 39 39 40 41 42 44 47 48 49

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Contents

4 What Policies and Strategies Arise? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is Urban Policy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Policy Is Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theories of Urban Policy as Urban Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ‘Urban Problem’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Triumph of the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Policy in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Policy Transfer and Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Does Urban Planning Shape the City? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Planning as a Solution to Urban Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metropolitan Strategic Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Does This Mean for Governing Cities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 53 54 56 58 60 62 63 65 68 69 71 74 77 78

5 What Happens at Different Scales? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Do We Need to Think About Scale? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State Rescaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The National State Level Continues to Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Different Governmental Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cities in the Rescaled State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Regionalisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Space of Flows or Space of Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Competitive City-Regionalism in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Place-Based Deals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Localisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Neighbourhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defining Neighbourhood and Associated Forms of Governance . . . . . Area Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Private Neighbourhoods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Does This Mean for Governing Cities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83 83 84 86 87 88 92 93 95 97 100 102 104 104 105 109 110 111 111

6 What Are Citizens Doing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Citizenship and the Right to the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rights-Based Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Right to the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Citizenship Under Coercive Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Is Collective Action Changing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Community Organising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transforming Governance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Informal Urbanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

117 117 119 119 120 123 124 125 127 128

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Social Innovation and Civic Enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Commoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Urban Activisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Municipalism and Community Wealth Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Does This Mean for Governing Cities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

130 131 132 133 137 138 139

7 Futures for Governing Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coronavirus Pandemic: Insights for City Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Political City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Challenging the Mainstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Imagining the Future City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Critical Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To Conclude on a Note of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

145 145 146 150 151 152 154 155 155

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2

Urbanisation 1950–2050: percentage of total population living in urban areas in selected countries and global regions . . . . Sub-national territorial organisation in selected countries . . . . . . . Comparing cities and city-regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16 90 97

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Chapter 1

Questions About Cities

The likelihood is that, like most people, you are an ‘urbanite’ or city dweller. In picking up this book, you are likely to be interested in ‘urbanism’, or the distinctive ways of life that characterise cities. By reading this book you will be introduced to a range of ideas, theories, concepts and examples to equip you as an ‘urbanist’, or urban scholar, and more specifically as a critical urbanist, by posing four questions: how are our cities governed, by whom, according to what values—and for whom? In addressing these questions, relevant worldwide, we will examine core theories of urban politics and governance and debates about challenging urban public policy issues, and will continuously return to the challenge of making cities more equitable.

Being Critical Critical urbanists understand that how, by and for whom our cities are governed matters. By taking the perspective of a critical urbanist, we prioritise the question ‘who are cities governed for’ and we care about the answer. Critical urbanists assume that for ‘the many’ or for ‘the people’ are better answers to the question ‘for whom’ than for ‘the few’ or ‘for profit’. Asking this question draws attention to who benefits and who loses in how our cities are governed. It highlights that the ways in which our cities are governed are not value-neutral, but reflect and sustain political values in terms of what and who is deemed to matter and what and who is not. By understanding that how, by and for whom cities are governed, according to what values, determines everyday life in the city, we see that cities and city life are not inherently unequal or unjust and can be made more equal and more just. At the heart of being a critical urbanist is an understanding that cities under capitalism and globalisation are driven by profit-orientated behaviour rather than social purpose in our increasingly unequal society. Market values and activities are privileged over public service provision and amenities. Cities are governed to serve

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_1

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1 Questions About Cities

the wealthy by catering to the needs of elite individuals, powerful corporations and wealthy investors. The luxury housing and office developments of cities such as London and New York are examples of how urban space is optimised for profit (Madden 2020; Atkinson 2020). Critical urbanists seek to challenge the dominance of the market, and of market values, in society. They want ‘cities for people, not for profit’ and thus place equity rather than economic growth and the realisation of profit as central to how cities should be governed. By prioritising equity, critical urbanists align with scholars who argue that the current fixation with economic development hampers social progress and further entrenches inequality (for example, Stiglitz 2012; Sandel 2012). Critical urbanists want cities that are more equitable, democratic and more capable of meeting human needs. The critical urbanist approach underlines that cities are meaningful to us as the places where we live and which shape our lives, and in the governance of which we want to have a say. By focusing on how, by and for whom our cities are governed, we focus on the relationships between the state and society at city level and how these are expressed in urban politics and policy. Core to this is the need to think about power and power relations, in terms of which actors, institutions and interests—and thus which values and priorities—predominate. Power is often thought of as a zero-sum game, with elites who have power wielding it over the powerless. These elites may wield their power through institutions, such as the formal institutions of the state, or they may be economic or cultural elites. But power is also usefully understood as distributed in society and productive of capacities to effect change, even by those assumed to be powerless. Both understandings of power are key to understanding the power relations of urban politics. Urban politics is characterised by its propinquity, meaning the physical closeness of people’s interactions. In cities, groups of similar people can come together to enhance their capacities and pursue their interests. Groups may be elites seeking to maintain the status quo, but may also be those who are excluded or unequal and seek change through social movements and other forms of collective action. Therefore, in considering urban politics we need to look at the formal institutions of government but also at the more informal, grassroots and everyday forms of politics. Having a broader, more inclusive view of urban politics helps us understand that how, by and for whom cities are governed can change. By understanding cities as spaces which shape people’s lives and social interactions and act as sites for alternative forms of political action we move beyond a hierarchical or ‘top down’ focus on urban elites to a ‘bottom up’ perspective drawing from the lives and struggles of ordinary urban residents and diverse social groups in the city. Thinking in this way reminds us that whilst it would be easy to assume that in a globalised world urban politics matters less, ‘on the ground’ politics and power relationships do continue to matter and can be productive of transformative change. Politics operates at city level (whether municipal, metropolitan and/or cityregional) but also at greater and lesser levels of government and through other more informal networks of power. A critical perspective recognises that cities constitute a wide range of institutions, actors and relationships that operate within the city and its neighbourhoods, but also stretch far beyond the city. Cities are interconnected with

Being Critical

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the wider world and are shaped by, but also help shape, processes and flows that go on within them and beyond them. Thinking about cities and how, by and for whom they are governed helps us understand broader society and its institutions, interests and inequalities. But cities are not just a microcosm of society. Cities are distinctive as political, social and economic spaces, where social, economic and environmental processes play out, are constrained or enabled, and come together in locally unique ways. When thinking about cities we need to think about how they are located within wider regional, national and international contexts. The nation state certainly plays an important role in shaping city governance. But even within the same national context, cities differ in terms of the choices made about their governance. And some argue that after several centuries of being subordinate to nation states, cities are again becoming more politically independent as they bypass nation states and build cityto-city networks across international borders. It is therefore important to focus on the processes that go on within cities, the choices made, and the scope for these to change in terms of how, by and for whom the city is governed. Asking these questions provides us with a way of thinking about and approaching how cities are governed in a wide range of contexts. Asking these questions also helps us to be cautious about universal narratives and explanatory theories when each city has its own story and distinctive ways of being governed.

Studying Cities Critical scholars engage with theory and practice in an interdisciplinary and empirical research agenda deriving from diverse global contexts (da Cruz et al. 2019). Studying cities is a far more interdisciplinary field of academic enquiry than most fields of social science. The shared focus is on a particular level, ‘the urban’, encompassing the urban economy, society and politics. Our focus on governing cities draws from political science and public policy but also from important scholarship in geography, sociology, economics, philosophy and political economy, amongst many other disciplines and practices such as city and regional planning. Taking a critical approach to studying cities entails using hybrid approaches drawing across disciplines which challenge conventional understandings. For example, by exhorting urbanists to ‘see like a city’ rather than ‘see like a state’, Warren Magnusson (2011) challenges restrictive disciplinary boundaries that tend to reinforce the siloes used by governments for public policy regarding the economy, housing, education, health, transport and so on. These boundaries obscure the impacts on particular places. By seeing like a city, urbanists locate themselves as inhabitants of place, rather than ‘seeing like a state’ by attempting to produce knowledge that makes sense to the formal institutions of power and is likely to reproduce generally accepted ways of doing things. Seeing like a city challenges nation state-dominated understandings of policy and politics, and draws attention to alternative approaches

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which can be envisaged and enacted in cities. Seeing like a city helps critical urbanists imagine a range of possibilities that pose a challenge to problematic, ‘common sense’ assumptions about how things are and how things should be. In common with other academic realms, studying the urban is skewed towards the Global North (or ‘the West’). Though geographically imprecise, the term Global North refers to relatively rich, increasingly post-industrial countries; and the term Global South refers to relatively poorer, mostly post-colonial countries. Critical urban scholars increasingly acknowledge the tendency to shrink the urban world to the Global North and recognise the dangers of relying on concepts and theories deriving from Global North scholarship, which can lead to an uneven understanding of the world that glosses over legacies of political oppression and colonial economic exploitation. In this book, the majority focus is on scholarship about cities in the Global North and theories of capitalist urbanisation. These are powerful explanatory theories, but should not be assumed to be universal. In turn, Global South scholarship provides new understandings and approaches for the Global North. By using examples of cities around the world, I am inspired by the urbanist Jennifer Robinson (2016: 5) who encourages urbanists to think cities ‘through elsewhere’. As she explains, ‘ideas about what cities are and what they might become need to draw their inspiration from a much wider range of urban contexts’ (Robinson 2006: 112). Critical urbanists can learn a lot by seeing ‘through elsewhere’ as it helps us to rethink our own cities and consider alternatives in how, by and for whom they are governed as part of making them more equitable.

The Intent of This Book The intent of this book is to equip you with ideas, concepts and examples that help you to be critical—not in the sense of being negative, but so that you can question how things are and think about ways of making things better. By being critical, we recognise that our cities and societies can be more equal and more just, and we can be positive in thinking about possible futures for the city. Critically considering how our cities are governed, by whom, according to what values, and for whom, helps us to envisage and enact alternatives for the city yet to come. In other words, this book is not a conventional study guide but rather an introduction to a wide range of concepts and issues to help us understand and seek to improve urban politics and policy.

How We Proceed

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How We Proceed Political scientists have long asked ‘who governs’ in relation to cities. This book draws on a wide range of urban scholarship to ask a broader set of questions about the relationships between the state and society entailed in governing our cities. How are our cities governed? By whom, according to what values? And for whom? The ‘how’ covers urban politics and the resultant policies and policy instruments that are developed and implemented. The ‘by whom’ considers urban politics and the power relations between actors, institutions and interests—some within the city, some elsewhere—and what this means in terms of the values which frame how the city is governed. The ‘for whom’ helps us think about equity in how cities are governed. In addressing these questions, the book provides an overview of the core theories of urban politics and governance, considers the policies that result and strategies used, thinks about what happens at different scales and examines new forms of citizen activism and collective action, before concluding by considering possible futures for cities. In Chapter 2, we start with the vital question of what is a city and then think about why cities matter. Cities can be thought of as bounded spaces, but are also usefully understood as a way of economically and socially organising space. Cities therefore both reflect and contribute towards changes in the way that the economy and society are organised. We review how three eras of production under capitalism have influenced and been influenced by cities before considering the current era of global urbanisation. We then address why cities, which embody economic, social and political processes, matter as the locus for the critical challenges of politics and public policymaking. In a majority urban world, people’s quality of life relates to how their cities are governed. And cities are pivotal in processes of political transformation. The challenges posed by cities vary but a fundamental challenge is the need for cities to provide people with livelihoods and the means to sustain well-being. Inequalities are made manifest in cities and issues of power and politics determine responses to these inequalities. In Chapter 3, we explore the key theories and concepts developed to consider how, by and for whom cities are governed. We first consider the two predominant theories of urban governance, urban regime theory and urban governance theory. These theories seek to describe what is empirically evident (as the world is) but also have normative power (as the world should be). They share an emphasis on how government partners with non-governmental actors to implement policy agendas and raise questions about the capacity at city level to make choices, but differ in how they consider the role of political ideologies and values in shaping city governance. We then consider the transition from managerialism to entrepreneurialism and the rise of neoliberalism as ideologies which have reconfigured governance with the shift to a post-industrial economy and a growing emphasis on city competitiveness to achieve economic growth. We also assess the subsequent rise of austerity politics and changed expectations of citizens and communities. These transitions lead us to consider the extent to which issues of efficiency and profit-seeking override concerns of equity

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1 Questions About Cities

and social justice in how the city is governed. We conclude by considering how the state has sought to enrol citizens in the state-society relationships of governance, and what this means for urban politics. In Chapter 4 we turn to the policies and strategies that result from governance processes. We first examine what urban policy, meaning how the state intervenes in cities, entails. Mainstream accounts consider state intervention as a technical process of planning and implementation, or as part of an administrative, managerial function of governance. But by taking a critical approach we understand that urban policy is inherently political. We review three principal theories of urban policy as politics, which cover conflicts within cities about collective provision, and efforts to manage the effects or capture the benefits of wider processes and flows which affect cities. We then consider the changing construction of the ‘urban problem’ which policy seeks to address over time. After examining urban policy and typical policy instruments in practice, we consider the rise of policy transfer and translation and the use of policy constructs such as ‘smart cities’. We then focus on urban planning as a framework for and key expression of urban policy, which reveals much about the priorities being pursued in the city and how its future is envisaged. Chapter 5 addresses what happens at different scales. We first establish why thinking about scale matters. Cities are sites where scalar processes—global, national, regional, local and neighbourhood—intersect and shape city governance. Scales relate to power and politics and can be changed or ‘rescaled’. Thinking about scale draws attention to the politics of determining the territorial extent of a city and its autonomy amongst vertical state territorial hierarchies. It highlights the continued importance of the nation state in shaping what can be determined and achieved at city level. We contrast different national governmental systems to examine cities’ political status in terms of their capacity to make choices about governance priorities. We then address how the city and its governance has been rescaled upwards by examining competitive city-regionalism and its associated forms of governance. But rescaling has also taken place downwards, which we examine by considering how the local and neighbourhood scales have been revalorised as sites for state intervention, combined with rising expectations of citizen action, along with a proliferation of private neighbourhoods for the wealthy around the world. In the penultimate chapter we focus on the role of citizens in realising alternatives in how, by and for whom our cities are governed. We start with conceptions of urban citizenship through which people claim rights related to their inhabiting of place. By focusing on the collective Right to the City as a concept and in practice, we think about how urban citizens and grassroots organisations can mobilise wider political and social networks to shape the city ‘from below’. And we contrast these normative conceptions of urban citizenship with citizen experiences of coercive governance and social control. We then consider the many forms of collective action through which urban citizenship is expressed. We first look at examples of more traditional forms of contestation and resistance, such as community organising, and how diverse actors and interests in the city can create collective capacity to act. But our focus is on new kinds of everyday, collective political action, seen by some as prefigurative of transformative, socio-political change. Related concepts, such as informal urbanism,

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social innovation and urban commoning, help us to consider these new forms of collective action and citizen engagement and their transformative potential. New municipalism and community wealth building provide us with practice examples of efforts to realise more equitable cities. We conclude by thinking about futures for governing cities. We first consider the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on cities and responses to this crisis, which affirm much of what we have learnt about governing cities. Focusing on the crisis helps us to understand both its immediate social and economic consequences and its implications in terms of the prospects for more equitable cities. We then return to considering the city as a site and space of politics. We revisit mainstream perspectives and reiterate the need to critically challenge these. Our final focus is on ways of imagining the future, more equitable city, including a critical research agenda.

References Atkinson, R. 2020. Alpha city: How London is bought and sold by the super-rich. London: Verso. da Cruz, N., P. Rode, and M. McQuarrie. 2019. New urban governance: A review of current themes and future priorities. Journal of Urban Affairs 41 (1): 1–19. Madden, D. 2020. Our cities only serve the wealthy: Coronavirus could change that. The Guardian, June 2. Magnusson, W. 2011. Politics of urbanism: Seeing like a city. London: Routledge. Robinson, J. 2006. Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development. Abingdon: Routledge. Robinson, J. 2016. Thinking cities through elsewhere: Comparative tactics for a more global urban studies. Progress in Human Geography 40 (1): 3–29. Sandel, M. 2012. What money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Stiglitz, J. 2012. The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

Chapter 2

What Is a City and Why Do They Matter?

Key points • Cities can be conceptualised not only as bounded spaces but as a way of organising space. • A brief review of urbanisation over time shows us how cities both reflect and contribute towards changes in the way that the economy and society are organised. Cities are connected to and embody economic, social and political processes and flows. • As such, cities form the locus for the critical challenges of politics and public policymaking. In a majority urban world, people’s quality of life relates to how their cities are governed. And cities are pivotal in processes of political transformation. • The challenges posed by cities vary but the need for cities to provide people with livelihoods and the means to sustain well-being is fundamental. Inequalities are made manifest in cities and issues of power and politics determine responses to these inequalities.

Introduction ‘The city’ or ‘the urban’ is regularly invoked by politicians, policymakers and ordinary citizens. But peope use these words to refer to different things, and to advance different worldviews. Would our idea of what a city is be the same as someone else’s? Would we all recognise the same group of attributes as being ‘urban’? As urbanists, we need to be able to understand and interrogate what is meant and what is being sought when these terms are used. So before we consider how, by and for whom cities are governed, in this chapter we establish what cities are, before considering why they matter and what challenges arise in governing cities. Cities can be thought of and defined as bounded spaces or territories, which is important in terms of clarifying the powers and responsibilities of different levels © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_2

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2 What Is a City and Why Do They Matter?

of government and citizen representation and voice in influencing government. But cities are also usefully understood as being a way of economically and socially organising space. Cities are the product of urbanisation, meaning the concentration of population and economic activity. The forms urbanisation has taken are intertwined with different eras of production under global capitalism. We briefly review three different eras—industrialisation, Fordism and Keynesianism, and post-industrialism and neoliberalism—to illustrate that cities both reflect and contribute towards changes in the way that the economy and society are organised. We then consider the current era of global urbanisation. Though urbanisation takes place in different contexts in different ways, it occurs globally, and is affected by global, national and urban processes. Cities matter, as urbanists around the world often remind us, not least because most of the world’s population now live in urban areas. About 55% of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2050, that figure is likely to be nearly 70%, as the United Nations explained in 2019: Globally, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas, with 55 per cent of the world’s population residing in urban areas in 2018. In 1950, 30 per cent of the world’s population was urban, and by 2050, 68 per cent of the world’s population is projected to be urban. (UN 2019a: xix)

In this urban, twenty-first century, the urban condition is increasingly the human condition. People’s quality of life relates to how their cities are governed and the choices made and values and goals guiding city governance. As cities embody—by both reflecting and facilitating change in—economic, social and political processes, they form the locus for the critical challenges of politics and public policymaking. These challenges vary, as we shall see, but a fundamental challenge is the economic, social and spatial inequalities made manifest in cities and the issues of power and politics in determining responses to these inequalities. Cities, which bring people together to engage in collective action, are pivotal in processes of political transformation.

What Is a City? That the world is now officially majority urban focuses our attention on the importance of cities. But what does this actually mean? The word ‘urban’ means relating to a city or city living. To define urban areas requires identification of bounded territories. To develop its global estimate, the UN had to accept each country’s different definition, some of which specify a minimum population or population density; or whether infrastructure such as paved roads, electricity and piped water is available; or if public services such as education or health are provided. In terms of what we expect cities to look like, the skyscrapers of Manhattan or the City of London fit the bill, but lower-rise, sparser settlements may not, though they may very well be defined as urban. The point is that cities are not just their built form or bounded

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territory but are the spatial manifestation of wider economic, social and political processes which affect cities and to which cities in turn contribute. If we think of cities as a way of economically and socially organising space we can see that cities change as the economy and society changes. For example, the transition from the economic and social system of feudalism in medieaval Europe to one of capitalism was reflected in, and facilitated by, urbanisation meaning the increased clustering of population in cities. Urbanisation requires a division of labour in society as city dwellers rely on producers elsewhere to provide for their food and other needs. Urbanisation therefore encourages and depends on commodification— the process by which an object, product or capacity is converted into an element of market exchange by being assigned a price. Indeed, the word ‘urban’ was first used in English in the early seventeenth century as the economy and society became commodified (Short 2006). The basic mechanism that drives city formation and urban development is people and firms clustering together in locations they perceive as advantageous and bidding for land in competition with each other. Historically, cities tended to be located on trading routes, such as Xi’an in China and Constantinople in Turkey, both positioned on the ‘silk road’ trading route which commenced operation in Roman times. Cities later developed where industry found suitable locations close to exploitable natural resources. As new trade routes opened up, new technologies and ways of organising production emerged, and innovations in transport occurred, individual cities grew and declined according to their economic viability. But cities are also social places, where people live and negotiate processes of change. As democracy emerged, founded in the Ancient Greek ‘polis’ or city-state, cities became the key arena for participation and political involvement. Therefore cities are shaped by society—how a society operates is reflected by the spaces it produces—but cities can also shape society as they bring people together and enable them to express political cause.

Eras of Urbanisation The following brief history of urbanisation takes a political economy approach (i.e. considering the economic within its social and political context) to show how cities reflect and facilitate changes in the way the economy and society are organised, how cities are connected to wider processes and flows, and how changes in cities cause changes in the way of life of those living in cities. We focus on the changing ways of organising the economy and society (modes of co-ordination) identified under capitalism—grouped into three eras below—as these best help us understand cities, especially in the Global North, in the present. But whilst we focus on the period following the rise of industrial capitalism, we need to remember that cities are as old as human civilisation, and how they are organised for society and the economy is influenced by what has gone before in different settings. Social and built layers of earlier city culture still manifest, giving us hints about how society was

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2 What Is a City and Why Do They Matter?

organised and who wielded power, though these layers are overlain with industrial and post-industrial urbanised forms. The increasing size and scale of urbanisation over time reflects the concentration of economic opportunities and growth in urban centres and the globalisation of local and national economies. Whilst cities have always attracted people, twentyfirst-century urbanisation is accelerating the trend leading to further problems and challenges relating to the quality of life in cities.

Industrialisation The rise of industrial capitalism, which commenced in Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, was a city-based and city-creating process. Cities and their populations began to grow continuously from this period forward, enabled by the organisation and technology of production and modes and networks of transportation, as well as surplus agricultural production. The factory production system needed large numbers of workers drawn from rural areas. The industrial cities which emerged owed their economic success to their ability to specialise in certain products and through deploying efficient production methods and labour processes. Within cities, specialised industrial districts developed given the tendency for firms to cluster to benefit from agglomeration economies such as the availability of skilled labour. Industrialisation brought great changes to cities and the lives of city people. Low wages, overcrowding and poor housing were rife. City elites (groups within society that control large amounts of capital, political power, or social and cultural influence) and forms of activism, including riots and revolts, prompted reforms to the way in which city life was organised, such as the ways in which housing, water, and public health and safety were provided (explained in Chapter 4). Urban reform movements also gave increasing political voice to the working classes (Chapter 6).

Fordism and Keynesianism The early twentieth century saw the rise of Fordism, the system of mass production initially adopted by the Ford Motor Company in the US with use of automated assembly lines. Here, the territorial extent of cities increased as assembly plants located in the suburbs where land was cheaper. Offices came to dominate the city centre or Central Business District (CBD). Increasing numbers of the middle-class followed the outward migration of the wealthy to the sprawling suburbs, aided by mass public transport construction such as rail and trams and later by rising car ownership. The residential population of inner cities became increasingly dominated by those on low incomes. Importantly this era interlinked mass production with mass consumption, highlighting the role of national government. The English economist John Maynard Keynes emphasised the multiplier effect of government spending as a means of

What Is a City?

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increasing aggregate demand to pull industrial economies out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the US, Roosevelt’s administration started deploying this ‘theory of activist government in capitalist society’ (Short 2006). From the late 1940s until the 1980s, many Global North countries across Western Europe, North America and Australasia (Jessop 1999) implemented such Keynesian policy measures to a greater or lesser degree, often targeted at regions and cities where economic activity lagged behind the national average. Government spending stimulated demand to secure employment and sought to ensure social stability by enabling the majority of the population access to relatively affordable health, housing, education and social welfare. Government intervention combined maintaining high levels of aggregate demand with attempts to ensure stability in the workplace by establishing collective bargaining between management and labour unions in the major sectors of the economy. This led to contracts with regular cost-of-living increases for unionised workers, in turn ensuring a mass market for consumer goods for the new middleclass housing of the suburbs (Archer 2013). In the US, homeownership expanded from about 45% of the population in 1945 to 65% in 1973. But by the mid-1970s declining productivity combined with growing international competition and the increasing price of oil strained this ‘Fordist compromise’ (Archer 2013). Production costs increased across the economies of industrialised countries and corporations began to relocate to sites where labour and land were cheaper, either in other countries or within the US from the ‘rustbelt’ to the non-unionised southern and western ‘sunbelt’. By the 1980s corporations were establishing assembly plants in urban regions such as Tijuana on the US–Mexico border, and in export processing zones such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, India and China. Cheap transport and easier global communications opened up new locations for capital investment worldwide. In turn, collectively-bargained contracts for unionised labour and ‘big government’ welfare provision and market regulation began to be framed as constraints on the ability of major corporations to adapt to the challenges posed by the competitive and increasingly global context in which they were operating.

Post-industrialism and Neoliberalism The transition from the Fordist to post-industrial era saw a shift in the role of state and civil society actors such as unions in relation to market actors. State and labour were expected to be much more flexible with regulations and contracts so that corporations could make unfettered decisions about how and where to produce their products. In general, the globalisation of production has strengthened the power of capital. This shift to neoliberal modes of co-ordination is examined further in Chapter 3. Of note here is that the decline of mass production resulted not only in new regional patterns of urban development within North America and Europe (Storper and Scott 1989) but in new global patterns, which heightened competition between cities and nation states seeking to attract investment. Therefore, though many nation states did not develop

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2 What Is a City and Why Do They Matter?

as Keynesian-type welfare states like those of North America, Western Europe and Scandinavia, globalisation is indeed worldwide in its reach and impact. Large corporations increasingly co-ordinated the production process across a range of locations. For example, the multinational Toyota Motor Corporation began its rapid global expansion during the 1960s, using a sophisticated manufacturing network to open a significant global export market. In 1963, the first Toyota vehicle was manufactured outside Japan in Melbourne, Australia. By 2017, the Toyota corporation had extended its global manufacturing operations to 28 countries, and was selling to over 170 countries globally. Toyota’s capacity to co-ordinate its production processes across a range of global locations aided its rapid growth. The decline of Fordism in the Global North, with corporations experiencing declining profits and over-capacity as a result of falling demand, was compounded by declining competitiveness. This was because newly emergent economies, such as Japan’s, replaced the Fordist manufacturing model with a differentiated ‘just-in-time’ mass production system based on the Toyota model. The headquarters of such large corporations tend to cluster in a few major ‘global cities’ (Sassen 2001) which are significant nodes in international networks and act as command centres of the global economy. Research and development could be located in major centres of innovation, such as Silicon Valley in California. As formerly vertically integrated corporations outsourced functions, the professional and management services firms which resulted tended to cluster in post-industrial CBDs. Low-skilled, automated assembly plants could be located in the Global South. The share of manufacturing employment declined in the US from a peak of 28% in 1965 to 16% by 1994, and in the European Union (EU) from a peak of 30% in 1970 to 20% by 1994 (Rowthorn and Ramaswamy 1997). More recent data (which is not directly comparable) estimates the share of manufacturing employment in the US to be 12% and in an enlarged EU to be 21% (OECD 2019). City (and national) economies transitioned from majority manufacturing to majority service sector jobs, though service jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the finance and legal professions were outnumbered by low-paying service jobs in food and retail. Full-time work has increasingly been supplanted by parttime, low-paid jobs and the emergence of an employment culture tolerating flexible working practices. Zero-hour contracts (which do not guarantee employees fixed hours of work) and low-paid, precarious (insecure, unprotected) service jobs are symptomatic of the emergence of the gig economy—a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs. The process of restructuring former major industrial regions occurred unevenly. Different cities experienced different rates of deindustrialisation depending on the types of industries involved, flows of capital investment, rates of deskilling and levels of unionisation, as well as the extent to which national and regional governments were willing and able to subsidise efforts to mitigate the effects of manufacturing loss as Keynesian approaches were not so readily deployed. In turn, the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) on cities and policy responses to it exacerbated poverty and inequality within and between cities (Chapter 3).

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Global Urbanisation The above brief overview of urbanisation, focused on the Global North, shows how its forms are intertwined with different eras of production under global capitalism. The changing organisation of production has produced distinctive patterns of urbanisation and urban development at the global, national and regional scales, as well as within cities. These changing patterns can be usefully understood in relation to the changing needs of capital. Here urban development refers to the creation, destruction, and recreation of urban built environments (land, buildings, and infrastructure) for the purposes of producing and utilising value. Value can be derived from use (a house can be valued for its use as a home), or from exchange as a commodity (such as the purchase of a rental property as a financial asset, not to be lived in by the owner). Drawing from the writings of Karl Marx, David Harvey (1973/2010) argues that the predominant process to better understand cities is the movement of capital in search of profit, an approach that has been revalidated by the onset of neoliberalism with its emphasis on facilitating the actions of market actors. Capital ‘circulates’ looking for the most profitable locations in which to be ‘fixed’ or invested (Harvey 1982/2006), resulting in uneven development patterns. For example, patterns of suburban growth and inner city decline in the Fordist era contrast with patterns of industrial clustering, regional urbanisation and inner city renewal in the post-industrial era. The globalisation of production has manifested in disinvestment from industrial cities and investment in Global South cities, where manufacturing jobs have helped fuel a massive rural to urban migration, creating rapid growth, rapid marketisation of labour and land markets and increasing inequality. Globalisation has intensified competition and reinforced inequality between cities. The rise of global cities capable of attracting the headquarters of major corporations intensifies the process of uneven development, which the state may or may not seek to mitigate through spatial interventions such as spending on major infrastructure projects. The urbanisation processes which began in the industrialising regions of Western Europe and North America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have spread globally, as illustrated in Table 2.1, which shows for selected countries and global regions the proportion of the total population living in urban areas in 1950 and 2000, and the proportion predicted for 2050. As we established earlier, the UN predicts that globally the proportion of the world’s population that is urban will rise from 30 to 68% over this period. There is significant diversity in levels of urbanisation by different geographic regions. Using current (2018) data, the most urbanised geographic regions are North America (82% living in urban areas in 2018), Latin America and the Caribbean (81%), Europe (74%) and Oceania (68%). In Asia, urbanisation is about 50%. In contrast, Africa remains majority rural, with 43% of its population living in urban areas (UN 2019a: xix). China’s urbanisation—of 36% in 2000 (Table 2.1), which rose to 57% in 2016 (Shen et al. 2018: 667, citing National Bureau of Statistics PRC 2016)—is related to its rapid capitalist growth. Since the mid-2000s the Chinese city has been transformed

16 Table 2.1 Urbanisation 1950–2050: percentage of total population living in urban areas in selected countries and global regions

2 What Is a City and Why Do They Matter? Selected country

% of total population living in urban areas 1950

2000

2050

Australia

77

84

91

Brazil

36

81

92

China

12

36

80

India

17

28

53

Japan

53

79

95

United Kingdom

79

79

90

United States of America

64

79

89

Africa

14

35

59

Asia

18

38

66

Europe

52

71

84

Latin America and Caribbean

41

76

88

North America

64

79

89

Oceania

63

68

72

Global total

30

47

68

Global region

Source United Nations (2019b)

by the creation of urban land markets and the rise of land speculation by investors, and a shift in housing from worker compounds to owner occupation, generating increasing inequality (Wu et al. 2007). Urban hierarchies are changing with new, rapidly growing economic centres in cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and others along China’s southern coast. The OECD estimates that China’s total urban population has quadrupled due to internal migration to more than 700 million since 1970 (OECD 2015). Brazil is also particularly noteworthy in terms of the scale and speed of its urbanisation, which rose from 36% in 1950 to 81% in 2000 (Table 2.1) and is currently at 87% of its 211 million population (UN 2019a). New patterns of urbanisation in the Global South, and particularly in Latin America, have growing influence on cities in the Global North (Roy 2009), such as the rise of left municipal governments (addressed in Chapter 6) and mechanisms such as participatory budgeting developed in Brazil (Chapter 3). The experiences of China and Brazil illustrate that urbanisation takes place in different contexts in different ways, and that urbanisation does not necessarily follow the succession of modes of co-ordination through Fordism, Keynesianism and postindustrialism broadly followed by some countries in the Global North. But it is clear that though global, national and urban processes are affecting individual cities around the world in different ways, processes of globalisation are indeed worldwide

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in their reach and impact. As with previous modes of co-ordination under capitalism, urbanisation and capitalism are interwined. This has led to debates about global urbanisation, inspired by the then radical hypothesis put forward by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre in his 1970 book, ‘The Urban Revolution’: Society has been completely urbanised. This hypothesis implies a definition: An urban society is a society that results from a process of complete urbanisation. This urbanisation is virtual today, but it will become real in the future. (Lefebvre 1970/2003: 1)

In simple terms it is evident that global urbanisation has now been realised in terms of the world being majority urban, as discussed above. But critical understanding moves beyond the ‘numbers empirics’ of the UN (Merrifield 2018). Like the industrial revolution, Lefebvre’s urban revolution heralded the onset of a new mode of global capitalism defined by the production of space ‘as a commodity, as a pure financial asset, using and abusing people and places as strategies to accumulate capital’ (Merrifield 2018: 1604). These strategies focus on exchange value (such as through the acquisition of existing assets to gain rent, interest, dividends and capital gains), and thus tend to extract rather than create wealth, and extract it away from where it is generated. As a global mode of capitalist co-ordination, it ‘embroils everybody, no matter where’ (Merrifield 2018: 1604)—whether they are living in an area defined as urban or not. This has led to current academic debates about ‘planetary urbanisation’, in which ‘the urban represents an increasingly worldwide condition in which politicaleconomic relations are enmeshed’ (Brenner and Schmid 2012: 12). Drawing from Lefebvre’s hypothesis, Brenner and Schmid consider how, in the twenty-first century, whilst familiar modes of concentrated urbanisation continue, these take place alongside increasingly extended and differentiated forms which tend to dissolve the distinction between the ‘urban’ and ‘non-urban’, as everywhere has become ‘integral parts of the worldwide urban fabric’ (Brenner and Schmid 2012: 12). This poses a challenge to our focus on understanding ‘the urban’ and ‘the city’ and its governance. If our understanding of what ‘the urban’ is lacks a grounding in conceptions such as agglomeration, centrality, nodality and propinquity it becomes both everything and nothing (Storper and Scott 2016). So whilst ‘methodological cityism’ (Angelo and Wachsmuth 2015)—the tendency to view urban life through the lens of clearly demarcated settlements and administrative boundaries—is powerfully critiqued by advocates of planetary urbanisation, we need to anchor our understanding by using familiar framings (discussed in Chapter 5) such as city and city-region and the jurisdictional bounds of levels of government (local, regional, national and so on) as these are key to understanding the state-society relationships of governance, explained in Chapter 3. Important questions also arise about the political implications of planetary urbanisation—what it means in terms of understanding cities as a political realm, in which citizens have political voice (Madden 2012). Scholars have also drawn from Lefebvre to consider what the shift from industrial to urban society means for politics and the scope for political-economic transformation. We start to consider this in the following section, and in more depth in Chapter 6.

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2 What Is a City and Why Do They Matter?

Why Do Cities Matter? During the industrialisation era, sociologists Georg Simmel (1903/2002) and Louis Wirth (1938/2016) developed the notion of urbanism (or the condition of living in a city) as a distinct way of life. As we have seen, since this period urbanism has become ‘[the] form of life in which most if not all humans are now implicated’ (Magnusson 2010: 49). This reminds us that whilst city location and urban development are fundamentally the outcome of economic processes, cities also embody social and political processes as they reflect and contribute to how societies are organised, as ‘arenas, sites, resources and articulations of power’ (Parker 2011). Given our focus, cities matter because—as the places where most people live—they form the locus for politics and public policy, which we shall now explore. Throughout history cities have been pivotal in processes of political transformation. Cities were the birthplace of citizenship rights and responsibilities and political participation given the need to manage the complex social relations that city life entails. City formation and development is associated with the division of labour. The association of vocation with urban residence gave rise to the new social subject of ‘the citizen’ (city dweller), establishing a political as well as economic relationship between the city and its residents. The Ancient Greek ‘polis’ (now roughly translated as ‘city-state’) provides the model for the notion of democratic citizenship as mutual obligation of individuals to each other (Kitto 1951). The ideal city, according to Aristotle (350 BCE), is determined by its citizens’ common interest in justice and in pursuing the good life. In practice, citizenship was limited to property-owning male elites, deemed able to rule in the interests of all, rather than the model of direct democracy which is sometimes inferred. To this day the granting of formal citizenship remains an instrument of power, control and political exclusion which is not given willingly by those with political power. Demands from the politically excluded in the rapidly growing cities of the industrialising Global North during the nineteenth century constituted a sufficient threat to the ruling elite that political concessions were seen as necessary to avoid or contain social unrest and urban-based revolution. Subsequent grassroots contestations, such as those which took place in the late 1960s and 2011 in different cities around the world, continue to wield sufficient power that changes may result in the city, but also its nation state. Cities’ ability to shape society through contestation relates to the proximity of its residents, enabling them to come together to express political cause. Simmel (1903) and Wirth (1938) disputed this ability, arguing that people living in the industrial city were more alone, despite their proximity to others, and had become individualistic and disinterested in the welfare of others. Later studies questioned this. Herbert Gans (1962) documented how people were involved in building and maintaining strong community bonds in their neighbourhoods or ‘urban villages’. More recently, others have argued that how people live and experience urban life is influenced by a whole series of identities and differences, such as gender, race, sexuality, age, class and disability, which may result in different forms of collective action which

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may or may not be place-based. And there is increasing emphasis on new kinds of collective political action, identified particularly in ‘everyday’ living, which may prefigure transformative change (Chapter 6). But the basic idea—that cities enable ‘the politics of the encounter’ (Merrifield 2012) due to their propinquity—remains key. The urban theorist John Rennie Short describes the city as a site ‘of social aggregation that involve(s) compulsion, order and discipline as well as freedom, anarchy and self-realization’ (Short 2006: 4). In a similar vein, Parker (2011) contrasts the violent, undemocratic and repressive ‘uncivil city’ with the progressive, democratic and tolerant ‘civil city’, both of which have been intertwined throughout the history of urbanisation. Certainly a core role of the state is to maintain social order and it has a ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of force’ (Weber 1946) to do so. But urbanism as a way of life also involves city dwellers engaging in self-government, referring not to autonomy but to internalising and enforcing appropriate conduct of themselves and others, or what Michel Foucault (1994) refers to as ‘the conduct of conduct’. Such practices of self-government, or the ‘individual incorporation of values and standards into a taken-for-granted view of the world’ (Short 2006: 8) meld into practices of formal government by doing the formal government’s work of maintaining social order. In recent debates it has been posited that we are in a ‘post-political’ era in which fundamental conflicts have been smoothed over (Swyngedouw 2010)—as those who may have contested power relations have been co-opted into the prevailing hegemony (dominant worldview held by those with power in society). In this view politics has become ‘straightjacketed as the consensualising post-democratic, technomanagerial governance of financialised capital’ (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017). But the transformative possibilities of city-based collective action, as have been evident throughout urban history, continue to be stressed even in the face of global urbanisation. Change can occur when individuals interact and collectively translate opinions and preferences into political action, and people interact most readily in cities. Magnusson (2011) encourages scholars to ‘see like a city’ (rather than nation state) as cities offer a more direct and visible manifestation of how economic, social and political forces shape life and collective action, enabling us to explore the processes, institutions, interests, inequalities and identities that constitute society. But cities are not just a microcosm of the nation state within which they are located. Cities also help to mutually constitute society and the way it is organised. Cities, like the societies of which they are part, serve people’s interests in uneven and unequal ways. Indicators of this can be gleaned from the urban built environment and the location and form of provision of infrastructure, amenities and services—how a society operates and is governed is reflected by the spaces it produces. Therefore how, by whom and for whom cities are governed matters. As scholars, the immediate nature and visibility of policy choices at the urban level provides an understanding of the role of politics in shaping society. Peter John explained this in terms of the propinquity of urban politics, meaning ‘the closeness of the urban space where actors interact’ (John 2009: 21).

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The huge changes wrought by globalisation and the rise of extractive, ‘place-less capital’ (Hambleton 2015), as discussed in terms of planetary urbanisation above, may be assumed to have changed the location of politics and power away from the local or city level. Certainly formal political institutions at the city level have long been far from autonomous in governing their cities (considered further in Chapter 5). Many urban scholars, encompassing those with a neo-Marxist perspective on the circulation of capital and those with more mainstream views, consider that the city and its local politics is subordinate to the economic flows of globalisation processes and economic restructuring. Global economic conditions, characterised by global competition, seem to foreclose political possibility by making neoliberal (market rather than people-centric) political claims appear inevitable (Madden 2012). This leads to questions about whether it is possible to have a genuine, democratic and participatory politics of debating alternative strategies at city level, as the imperative of being competitive subsumes other imperatives. Critical urbanists stress that this worldview accepts rather than challenges inequality. They seek to counter this by emphasising alternative, place-based visions which can be developed at city level. Certainly in an urban world ‘on the ground’ city politics matters, along with its interactions with lesser (such as neighbourhood level) and greater levels of government and governance. Here, where people live, is where people get involved and seek change. As citizens we tend to be most concerned about the issues and policy challenges which are closest to us and most affect us. We therefore would like to understand who makes the essential decisions shaping the city we live in and try to influence those decisions.

What Challenges Arise in Governing Cities? Cities, where the majority of people live, form the locus for the critical challenges of politics and public policymaking. These challenges vary. In broad terms, in the Global North urbanisation is more established and the emphasis is on managing urban space and associated problems such as congestion, affordability and gentrification (examined below). In the very rapidly urbanising Global South, these problems are extended with the need to create new urban spaces, involving re-assigning rights from rural and provincial interests to municipal governments, as well as dealing with the problems posed by drastically growing existing cities, such as informal settlements (Roy 2005). The scale of unplanned growth indicated by projected population movements to cities in the Global South will exacerbate problems of providing good quality shelter, jobs and safety (United Nations 2015: 3), especially in the world’s poorest countries where the rate of urban population growth will be highest and where government and governance most lack the means to support urban growth with infrastructure. The problem of violence, in its state-sponsored, legitimate form, and in its non-legitimate form as deployed by powerful criminal organisations, is also particularly acute for the urban poor of the Global South (Parker 2011).

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Despite variance in the challenges faced by different cities across the globe, these are underpinned by the crucial social and economic role cities play in society. Fundamentally, cities need to provide people with livelihoods and the means of sustaining life and well-being, ranging from water supplies and sanitary living conditions to reasonable commuting times. One imperative is therefore to enable the social reproduction of urban residents, or the ability to reproduce the means for people to live—a process closely related to the notion of quality of life. The other imperative is the need to manage urban growth, including how urban land is used and reused. These imperatives give rise to many challenges, which may manifest differently in different cities, but which can all be related to uneven development and inequality, evident in the huge variations between and within cities in terms of levels of income, access to services and amenities, safety and security and environmental quality amongst many other issues. A simple illustration of variation between cities is their contribution to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Some countries are dominated by primate cities, which are not only the largest cities in their nation state, but are disproportionately larger than any others in the national urban hierarchy. For example, the dominance of London in the UK, accounting for about 38% of national GDP growth between 2000 and 2016, and Paris in France, accounting for 45% of France’s GDP growth over the same period, is a significant source of uneven development and inequality (OECD 2018) within these nation states. In the UK, the term ‘north-south divide’ is commonly invoked to describe its uneven socio-economic development and inequality. Those living in Greater London and the south benefit from higher average earnings and stronger infrastructure development than elsewhere in the UK (Buchan et al. 2017). In turn, differences within cities are stark. In Sydney, Australia the term ‘latte line’ is used to describe the divide between the well-connected, affluent, and skilled jobs-rich inner suburbs and the poorly-connected, highly car dependent, and lacking employment opportunities outer suburbs. In the Global South, patterns of rapid urbanisation lead to dramatic inequalities between cities, especially as primate cities are prevalent in post-colonial countries, which in turn drive inequalities within these cities. For example, over a third of Bangladesh’s population lives in Greater Dhaka, which has high levels of poverty, and major infrastructure and housing shortages. The inequalities which characterise cities reflect and are constitutive of a society that is economically, socially and spatially uneven. People with more wealth have a greater command over space as they have the resources to choose more places to live within a particular city. Poorer city residents have reduced opportunities to gain access to good quality urban areas. In turn not everyone benefits equally from urban growth and change. Planning is the institution of the state primarily responsible for designing and managing how flows of investment circulate in and out of the built environment (addressed in Chapter 4). Many challenges relate to the planning (or lack of planning) for urban development, the extent of infrastructure provision for what, where and benefiting whom, and how this is funded, implemented and managed. Planning and development are highly political and often the objects of political contestation. The disputes which arise constitute significant and familiar challenges in governing cities—such as whether new developments should replace

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farmland on a city’s edges, whether social housing should be constructed in wealthy neighbourhoods, or whether the gentrification of neighbourhoods should proceed unchecked (see box). Gentrification A common public policy challenge in cities is the lack of affordable rental housing. Considering this in terms of gentrification illustrates how the process of uneven development manifests in cities in ways which directly affect the lived experience of city residents. Gentrification is the process by which urban neighbourhoods become the focus of reinvestment and (re)settlement by higher-income residents, displacing low-income residents (disproportionately minorities and migrants in many cities) as rents and property taxes rise. The term was coined by Ruth Glass (1964) who observed that the return of the property-owning gentry to inner London was displacing working class renters. The impacts of gentrification are continually contested in cities around the world as it has profound material impacts on many people’s lives. Politically it may be framed as urban renewal and actively encouraged by city governments which hope to gain higher tax revenues. Other scholars such as Loretta Lees (2003) see it as a reduction in the opportunities of poorer, vulnerable city residents to gain access to good quality urban areas. Neil Smith (1979) perceived gentrification as driven by capital investment seeking to exploit the ‘rent gap’ between the actual and potential value of urban property, a gap prevalent in older neighbourhoods with run down properties and a lack of reinvestment in infrastructure and services. Smith (1996) went on to describe cities with advanced gentrification processes, such as New York, as ‘revanchist’ (from the French word for revenge) as these processes ware accompanied by aggressive actions such as increasing policing and privatisation of public space to drive out the poor, minorities and homeless people. Gentrification is increasingly associated with processes of financialisation (explained below) as real estate is commodified, disproportionately affecting the vulnerable and poor. Using the term gentrification, as opposed to a term such as neighbourhood change, is not neutral. It draws attention to cities as socio-spatial processes, stressing that change is not simply the result of individual preferences but results from the actions of many actors, such as developers, landlords, mortgage lenders and global private equity firms seeking to extract wealth, as well as government. Larger forces and structures are at play which allow and encourage some people in society to own property—to live in (use value) or as an investment (exchange value)—whilst others cannot or do not. The private property market therefore reflects, enforces and often exacerbates existing inequalities.

Such disputes, founded in unequal power relations, are replicated across policy domains in terms of ‘who gets what, when and how’ (Lasswell 1936) and exemplify the challenges posed by the circulation of capital. For example, aspirations to achieve ‘global city’ status—to become significant nodes in international networks of economic, political and cultural exchanges (Sassen 2001)—may lead to a policy focus on attracting high-skilled jobs rather than rectifying the economic insecurity

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of the low-skilled. Spend on major infrastructure to attract mobile capital may be prioritised over the provision of social welfare through public or social housing, education and health services. Taxation arrangements may seek to encourage or mitigate inflation of a city’s housing market due to property speculation and foreign investment. These disputes reiterate debates about the extent to which ‘cities have choices’ (Savitch and Kantor 2002) in terms of how to seek to locate within broader global flows or to try and resist and protect against these forces. A more recent emphasis in scholarship has been on processes of ‘financialisation’, or ‘the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies’ (Epstein 2005: 3). The increasing role of finance both economically and socially (August and Walks 2018) is reflected in and shaped by cities. David Harvey describes how the expansion of financialisation and ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (meaning the increased concentration of wealth through divesting wealth such as land or property from others) has combined with a systematic retreat of the state from providing or ensuring the means of social reproduction (Harvey 2004). Since the 2008 GFC, real estate has increasingly been commodified by global private equity investors, facilitating wealth extraction which exacerbates inequality (Sawyer 2018). Gentrification (see box) is increasingly driven by financialisation causing the displacement of the poor (August 2020). It is certainly important to recognise that cities are constituted by flows and processes which operate at wider, often global levels. But in terms of politics and public policy, it is also important to think of the city as a defined territory with jurisdictional boundaries (be these municipal, metropolitan or city-regional, explained in Chapter 5). It is at the city level that public policy challenges (such as housing affordability, access to economic opportunity and the delivery of public services and amenities) directly affect individual and community well-being. We need to know who is responsible for what (where infrastructure is provided and services delivered), and who has a say (who is involved in policy formulation and implementation, who gets to vote). But this is complicated. For example, if a city has more than one local government area, it makes sense that public service provision, such as public transport, is co-ordinated at a higher level to ensure there is a transport network that connects residents who live in one local government area, work in another and use services or access amenities like public open space in a third. But is there a level of government for which residents can vote at the level at which this co-ordination takes place? In turn, should non-resident owners of businesses in the city get a say in how the city is run? What about the effects the city has on its surrounding areas, due to air or water pollution or through building on farmland? Should residents of these areas have a say? And what about policies that may not explicitly target or stem from the city or its residents but have significant urban effects, such as immigration and tax policies or the provision of social welfare? Many of the critical challenges of governing cities can be characterised as spatial mismatches—between where housing is affordable and jobs are located, or between jobs and those with the skills required. There is also often a mismatch between local political institutions and the policy domains and flows which affect their constituents.

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These can range from the decisions of remote corporations to close down an office or factory, to national imperatives to sustain and grow economic productivity, to the need to co-ordinate with neighbouring jurisdictions about regional public transport provision to link housing, jobs and other services. These mismatches are explored further in Chapters 4 and 5. Responses involve issues of power and politics, particularly in terms of the ways and extent to which government interacts with citizens in determining and implementing the way forward, ranging from democratic inclusion through forms of tokenism which exclude the poor and disadvantaged from a role in shaping their own future. Part of this challenge is about who is deemed to be a citizen of the city. As international migration flows have increased, questions of citizenship continue to be contested. Increasingly large numbers of people are excluded from the political community of the nation state, as well as of the cities in which they live, which has implications for the stability of social relations and heightened prospects of unrest. In turn, how can city dwellers, whether formally deemed to be citizens or not, engage in the decisions made about who gets what, when and where in their cities? Assembling collective voice and action requires bridging across difference in increasingly socially and spatially fragmented cities. And how valid are concerns about being in a post-political era where contestation is nullified given the power of prevailing ideologies about market-driven growth? Dikeç and Swyngedouw (2017), drawing from Lefebvre, argue the need to see the city as a site of political encounter and experimentation, not only in terms of the more familiar institutions of formal politics or social movements but in terms of other forms of political action (explained in Chapter 6), several of which stem from the Global South.

Conclusion We have seen that cities both reflect and help constitute how society is organised, economically and socially. Simply put, cities matter because most people live in cities. Cities form the locus for politics and public policy as they are political as well as social and economic places where people negotiate processes of change. Cities are shaped by society, but also shape society as they bring people together to express political cause. Therefore struggles—over how, by and for whom cities are governed—are not just urban because they take place in urban settings, but because ‘the urban’ is both a source and a stake of politics. This is even more the case in an urbanised world. Many challenges arise in terms of governing cities. Though global, national and urban processes affect individual cities around the world in different ways, shared challenges centre on how to provide people with livelihoods and the means to sustain life and well-being, and how to manage urban growth. Though these challenges manifest differently in different cities, all relate to uneven development and inequality within cities, between cities within a country, and between cities globally.

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To think about how to deal with the key challenges and questions raised, in the next chapter we explore the key theories and concepts which have been developed to consider how, by and for whom cities are governed. Key sources By necessity this chapter has provided a whistlestop tour of the history of urbanisation. The following books flesh out what has been covered: • Archer, K. (2013) The city: the basics. Abingdon: Routledge. • Parker, S. (2011) Cities, politics and power. Abingdon: Routledge. • Short, J.R. (2006) Urban theory: a critical assessment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Up-to-date data sources include: • https://unhabitat.org/ UN-Habitat is the United Nations programme working towards a better urban future. It supports countries to have access to reliable data and information on urban conditions and trends as part of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11, ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. • https://population.un.org/wup/ The Population Division of UN DESA (the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) regularly issues World Urbanization Prospects, which provides estimates and projections of the urban populations for all countries and their major urban agglomerations • https://www.oecd.org/governance/oecd-regions-and-cities-at-a-glance-26173212. htm OECD (the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) regularly issues Regions and Cities at a Glance, which assesses aspects of economic development, health and well-being for regions and cities across OECD and some non-OECD countries.

References Angelo, H., and D. Wachsmuth. 2015. Urbanizing urban political ecology: A critique of methodological cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39 (1): 16–27. Archer, K. 2013. The city: The basics. Abingdon: Routledge. August, M., and A. Walks. 2018. Gentrification, suburban decline, and the financialization of multifamily rental housing: The case of Toronto. Geoforum 89: 124–136. August, M. 2020. The financialization of Canadian multi-family rental housing: From trailer to tower. Journal of Urban Affairs 42 (7): 975–997. Brenner, N., and C. Schmid. 2012. Planetary urbanization. In Urban constellations, ed. M. Gandy, 10–13. Berlin: Jovis. Buchan, I., E. Kontopantelis, M. Sperrin, T. Chandola, and T. Doran. 2017. North-South disparities in English mortality 1965–2015: Longitudinal population study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 71: 928–936. Dikeç, M., and E. Swyngedouw. 2017. Theorizing the politicizing city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41 (1): 1–18.

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Epstein, G.A. 2005. Introduction: Financialization and the world economy. In Financialization and the world economy, ed. G.A. Epstein, 3–16. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Foucault, M. 1994. Dits et écrits IV. Paris: Gallimard. Gans, H. 1962. The urban villagers: Group and class in the life of Italian Americans. New York, NY: The Free Press of Glencoe. Glass, R. 1964. Introduction: Aspects of change. In London: Aspects of change, ed. Centre for Urban Studies, University College London, xiii–xlii. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Hambleton, R. 2015. The inclusive city: Place-based innovation for a bounded planet. Bristol: Policy Press. Harvey, D. 1973/2010. Social justice and the city. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Harvey, D. 1982/2006. The limits to capital. New York, NY: Verso. Harvey, D. 2004. The ‘new’ imperialism: accumulation by dispossession. Socialist Register 40: 63–87. Jessop, B. 1999. Narrating the future of the national economy and the national state? Remarks on re-mapping regulation and re-inventing governance. In STATE/CULTURE: State formation after the cultural turn, ed. G. Steinmetz, 378–405. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. John, P. 2009. Why study urban politics? In Theories of urban politics, 2nd ed, ed. J.S. Davies and D.L. Imbroscio, 17–23. London: Sage. Kitto, H.D.F. 1951/2016. The polis. In The city reader, ed. R.T. LeGates and F. Stout, 39–44. Abingdon: Routledge. Lasswell, H. 1936. Politics: Who gets what, when and how. New York, NY: Whittlesey House. Lees, L. 2003. Policy (re)turns: Urban policy and gentrification, gentrification and urban policy. Environment and Planning a 35 (4): 571–574. Lefebvre, H. 1970/2003. The urban revolution. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Madden, D. 2012. City becoming world: Nancy, Lefebvre, and the global–urban imagination. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (5): 772–787. Magnusson, W. 2010. Seeing like a city: How to urbanize political science. In Critical urban studies: New directions, ed. J.S. Davies and D.L. Imbroscio, 41–53. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Magnusson, W. 2011. Politics of urbanism: Seeing like a city. London: Routledge. Merrifield, A. 2012. The politics of the encounter and the urbanization of the world. City 16 (3): 269–283. Merrifield, A. 2018. Planetary urbanisation: une affaire de perception. Urban Geography 39 (10): 1603–1607. OECD. 2015. OECD urban policy reviews: China 2015. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD. 2018. OECD regions and cities at a glance 2018. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD. 2019. OECD employment by activity. Paris: OECD Publishing. Parker, S. 2011. Cities, politics and power. Abingdon: Routledge. Rowthorn, R., and R. Ramaswamy. 1997. Deindustrailization: Its causes and implications. International Monetary Fund Working Paper WP/97/42. Washington, DC: IMF. Roy, Ananya. 2005. Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association 71 (2): 147–158. Roy, Ananya. 2009. The 21st century metropolis: New geographies of theory. Regional Studies 43 (6): 819–830. Sassen, S. 2001. The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Savitch, H., and P. Kantor. 2002. Cities in the international marketplace: The political economy of urban development in North America and Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sawyer, M. 2018. Financialisation, financial crisis and inequality. In Inequality trends, causes and consequences, ed. P. Arestis and M. Sawyer. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Shen, L., Z. Huang, S.W. Wong, S. Liao, and Y. Lou. 2018. A holistic evaluation of smart city performance in the context of China. Journal of Cleaner Production 200: 667–679.

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Short, J.R. 2006. Urban theory: A critical assessment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Simmel, G. 1903/2002. The metropolis and mental life. In The Blackwell city reader, ed. G. Bridge and S. Watson, 11–19. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Smith, N. 1979. Toward a theory of gentrification: A back to the city movement by capital, not people. Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (4): 538–548. Smith, N. 1996. The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. Abingdon: Routledge. Storper, M., and A. Scott. 1989. The geographical foundations and social regulation of flexible production complexes. In The power of geography: How territory shapes social life, ed. J. Wolch and M. Dear, 21–40. Abingdon: Routledge. Swyngedouw, E. 2010. Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change. Theory, Culture and Society 27 (2/3): 213–232. United Nations. 2015. World urbanization prospects: The 2014 revision. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations. 2019a. World urbanization prospects: The 2018 revision. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations. 2019b. World urbanization prospects: The 2018 revision. Online Edition. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. New York, NY: United Nations. Weber, M. 1946. Politics as a vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, ed. and trans. H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills, 77–128. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wirth, L. 1938/2016. Urbanism as a way of life. In The city reader, ed. R.T. LeGates and F. Stout, 115–123. Abingdon: Routledge. Wu, F., J. Xu, and A. Gar-On Yeh. 2007. Urban development in post-reform China: State, market, and space. Abingdon: Routledge.

Chapter 3

How and by Whom Are Cities Governed?

Key points • Theories and concepts help us to understand how, by and for whom cities are governed. • Two main theories, urban regime theory and urban governance theory, model how government partners with non-governmental actors to determine and implement policies for cities. These theories draw attention to who is included and who is excluded from city governance. But they differ in the extent to which they take the role of political ideologies and values in shaping city governance into account. • Scholars identify transitions in governance ideologies and the rise of neoliberalism, with emphasis on city competitiveness to achieve economic growth and changing roles for the state and citizens further accentuated under austerity. • These changes lead to questions about the extent to which efficiency and profitseeking overrides concerns of equity and social justice in how the city is governed. We consider how the state has sought to enrol citizens in the state-society relationships of governance, and what this means for urban politics.

Introduction The way cities are governed is affected by processes and flows which operate both within and beyond the city. This chapter focuses on the make-up and operation of governance forces and processes within the city—in terms of who governs, and how they govern, for whose benefit, with what goals and values to the fore. Cities constitute and are constituted by many different political actors. A range of theories have evolved over time to consider both who governs and how the process of governance operates. Different theories reflect the different cities and governmental systems in which they have been formulated, different disciplinary perspectives (particularly political science and political sociology, urban geography and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_3

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public management) and different worldviews. All seek to describe what is empirically evident but also have normative and ideological power as they frame what ‘the problem’ or challenge is and therefore what the solutions should be. Some ways of thinking about how and by whom cities are governed take broader structural forces and multi-scalar relations into account more than others (Peck 2017), meaning that different emphasis is placed on the scope for and constraints upon political and policy choice at city level. Within the city, a common theme across approaches is unequal power relations between different interests and groups, and the extent to which, and how, ‘the people’ are included in the governance of the city. Pierre (2014) usefully summarises the shared concerns of scholarship as the causes and consequences of the different forms of relationships between local state and society actors in governance processes. Despite varying perspectives on their collaborative, contested, co-optative or coercive nature, there is consensus that contemporary urban governing is undertaken by the local state along with a variety of non-state actors. Scholarship has sought to capture the diversity of actors involved in urban policy and politics beyond the formal machinery of government; the reconfiguration of the local state (city or local government and its agencies); and changes in governance priorities. In this chapter, we first focus on the two predominant theories of urban governance, urban regime theory and urban governance theory. These both consider how government partners with non-governmental actors to implement policy agendas, but differ in how they consider the role of political ideologies and values in shaping city governance. Both underline the inherent tension in processes of urban governance between elitism and pluralism, or hierarchy and networks. We consider how these theories reflect where and when they were formulated, and their ongoing usefulness in terms of understanding contemporary cities. We then consider the transition in governance ideologies from managerialism to entrepreneurialism and the rise of neoliberalism. These transitions model the shift to a post-industrial economy and a growing emphasis on city competitiveness to achieve economic growth, as well as the subsequent rise of austerity politics and associated reconfigurations of the local state. This leads us to consider the extent to which issues of efficiency and profitseeking override concerns of equity and social justice in how the city is governed. We conclude by considering how the state has sought to enrol citizens in the state-society relationships of governance, and what this means for urban politics.

What Is Urban Governance? In its broadest sense, urban governance is the process through which a city is governed. As a process, it encompasses not just who governs the city but how the city is governed, and therefore also helps us to think about for whom the city is governed in terms of who benefits and who loses. Urban governance encompasses city government and its relations with other, non-governmental actors and interests in the private and third (charitable, non-profit,

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voluntary and community) sectors. It is characterised by the ‘search for co-ordination’ (Cochrane 2007) between these different actors and interests in determining and achieving political and policy outcomes. Urban governance can therefore also be thought of as a way of examining state-society relationships at the city level, the level which forms the focus of this chapter. But it also involves different government agencies and non-governmental actors at different levels, with different interests and responsibilities in relation to the urban arena, which they may pursue or disregard. The multi-level character of urban governance is the focus of Chapter 5. As we saw in Chapter 2, cities had become significant centres of economic and political life by the early decades of the twentieth century, the high point of industrialisation in the Global North. Their importance was reflected not only in city government institutions but also in the variety of city-based civil society, business and labour interests. Sociologists and political scientists started to consider the relationships between the state, economy and society. Cities provided a convenient scale from which to draw more general conclusions about the operation of society as a whole, but scholarship also paid attention to questions about cities’ role in constituting broader society and its economic and political structures. The urban governance theories and approaches that arose, largely in the US and Europe, have been shaped by their national contexts, institutional arrangements, political culture and urban political economy. This leads to questions about the extent to which theories can travel or be applicable to cities in different national contexts, a question which continues to be salient in terms of more recent debates which critique what some see as the blanket imposition of concepts of globalisation and neoliberalism versus consideration of city and country-specific processes and responses. Early studies conducted by political scientists in US cities to identify ‘who governs’ identified an elitist city politics, wherein a relatively small group of people made most of the decisions with very little direct input from the greater city population, save for periodic formal votes. But Robert Dahl (1961) found that as the city of New Haven, Connecticut had grown and its demography and economy diversified, a wider range of groups gained the ability to mobilise, dispersing power within the city amongst a range of competing interests. He therefore posited a more pluralist process wherein a wider array of people and interests had a say in decision-making. The resultant ‘community power’ debate between elitists and pluralists on whether power is dispersed or concentrated in urban communities continues to resonate. The debate represents differences in approach, as elitists focus on who wields power whilst pluralists focus on identifying the range of interests involved in specific decisions. In turn, community power theorists were critiqued for being more concerned with power than with communities or their relationships to places (Harding 2009). As urban political economy and sociology approaches developed in the 1970s, critical scholarship began to consider the wider economic, social and political forces shaping cities. As set out in Chapter 2, David Harvey’s Marxist-influenced urban political economy approach to explaining how global urbanisation and global capitalism are intertwined remains highly influential and has great explanatory power. At the individual city level, its validity in emphasising the force of structural change over which city elites have minimal control is generally acknowledged, and its

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emphasis on the commodified nature of land, and the conflict between use values and exchange values, is a useful underpinning to understanding urban power structures. But Harvey’s assertion that the problems of the city are ‘mere reflections of the underlying tension between capital and labour’ (1976: 289) was widely critiqued as a reductive focus on class struggle (Fainstein 2014). A tension emerged within debates about urban governance between neo-Marxist urban political economy approaches, which explain cities in terms of the operation of capitalism as a mode of production; and urban political sociology approaches which saw merit in empirically investigating the relative power wielded by a variety of urban actors. The extent to which there is policy choice at the city level given broader power structures, flows and processes remains an overriding debate. Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist, aligned with neo-Marxist approaches in stressing the role of cities in social reproduction, or the delivery of services and goods by the state to support the reproduction of labour power. He argued that the lives of many poor people in urban society are shaped by crises of collective consumption, or the unaffordable nature of many goods and services necessary for their sustenance (Castells 1983). In contrast, in his book ‘Whose City?’ (1970), the British sociologist Ray Pahl argued that the distribution of urban resources reflected the fact that there were important managers or controllers of local goods and services who were able to act as gatekeepers whilst still operating within the constraints set by elites. This heralded a longstanding interest in the role played by managers, public sector professionals and those ‘on the ground’ in the strategic organisation and distribution of resources. Michael Lipsky (1980) called those ‘at the frontline’ of urban service provision (such as teachers, fire fighters, police officers, social workers and housing managers) ‘street level bureaucrats’ as they acted as policy makers due to the discretion they had over the lives of citizens and their relative autonomy within the organisational hierarchy. Typically, street-level bureaucrats need to deal with both limited resources and a lack of consistency, focus and direction on the part of higher level bureaucrats who are meant to provide an institutional policy agenda. As a consequence, frontline workers have some agency (capacity to act independently) in how they develop ways of working round the policy. In the US, sociologist Harvey Molotch (1976) investigated the power wielded by coalitions of interests seeking city economic growth. Growth coalition theory identified economic growth and the realisation of profit through land and property development as the primary concern of city politics, casting the city as an urban investment vehicle or ‘growth machine’ (Logan and Molotch 1987). Growth coalitions arise when developers, real estate agents, banks, investors and associated interests such as local businesses combine with city political elites to direct policies towards stimulating investment and economic growth. The resulting higher levels of economic activity generate more demand for urban land (for housing, workplaces, and amenities and infrastructure) and increase exchange value for landowners and their clients. But not everyone favours unrestricted growth, in particular city residents who benefit from the use values associated with lack of development (such as more open space, lower levels of traffic congestion and pollution, and more affordable rents). Therefore the basic tension in this approach is between growth coalitions seeking to advance

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exchange values and those looking to protect use values (Jonas and Wilson 1999). This tension has become ever more palpable in current debates playing out in cities across the world regarding neighbourhood redevelopment, such as gentrification and displacement, but also densification and the loss of public open space. Although drawing from a different disciplinary tool kit, political scientists aligned with the emphasis on city growth identified by sociologists in urban governance processes in the US. By locating cities within the structure of American federal government, Paul Peterson (1981: 25) argued that ‘urban politics is above all the politics of land use’, as cities need to compete for growth to gain the tax base to be able to provide public goods. City boosterism—which refers to elites seeking development to gain competitive advantage—is a familiar trope. However, the most prominent theory drawn from political science in the US, urban regime theory, provides a more refined approach to understanding urban governance.

Urban Regime Theory Urban regime theory derives from political scientist Clarence Stone’s (1989, 2005) empirical studies of Atlanta, Georgia. Like growth coalition theory it was influenced by the community power debate, but the two theories’ different disciplinary origins in urban sociology and political science account for their contrast. Growth coalition theory starts with the private sector and considers why and how it influences government, whereas regime theory starts with government, acknowledging the lead role played by city political elites as agents of coalition formation and partnership development. Therefore, Stone centres politics and government in his analysis, but he also emphasises the power of private property, explaining that regime theory ‘recognizes the enormous political importance of privately controlled investment, but does so without going so far as to embrace a position of economic determinism’ (Stone 1993: 2). Stone therefore takes care to locate urban regime theory in the middle range, drawing from preceding theories rather than asserting a further, allencompassing theory. As such it has proved both an enduring and adaptable approach to considering how and by whom a city is governed, and also one which has been subject to much critique. As a theoretical approach, urban regime theory broadened analysis of urban governance from who governs to how they govern. Stone’s starting point is that city government cannot undertake the task of governing the city alone, as the local state’s institutional capacities are insufficient to address the challenges facing the city such as economic development, public service delivery and modernising infrastructure (Pierre 2014). Therefore city governments seek to increase their ‘capacity to act’ through forging long-term alliances with resourceful societal actors (Stone 1989: 229). The resultant urban regimes are ‘the informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interests function together in order to be able to make and carry out governing decisions’ (Stone 1989: 6).

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Stone emphasises the challenges of agenda-setting, resource mobilisation, and coalition building. Determining an agenda or set of purposes entails struggle and conflict between partners, especially before they settle into the long-term relationship of a regime. Those engaged have to ‘educate one another about the nature of their interdependence’ (Stone 1993: 14). Stone stresses that a regime is not a hierarchy, but a collaboration which involves ongoing negotiation. He emphasises the need to build the ‘capacity to govern’. The focus is on how regimes provide ‘power to’, the capacity to do something, rather than ‘power over’, or domination, which Stone sees as the focus for pluralists and neo-Marxists. Achieving the capacity to act is not certain; co-operation needs to be created and maintained. Regimes overcome problems of collective action and secure participation in the governing coalition through the distribution of selective incentives such as contracts, jobs, or facilities for a particular neighbourhood. The benefits realised by participants may be purposive as well as material, such as the opportunity to achieve an organisation’s particular goal. Therefore co-operation does not imply consensus over values and beliefs, but participation in order to realise ‘small opportunities’ (Stone 1993: 11). As the predominant US approach to analysing the process of governing the city, urban regime theory has been subject to much critique, particularly regarding what is perceived as its narrow focus. Criticisms include its disregard of broader structural economic forces and the restructuring of the capitalist economy (Chapter 2) and its inattention to the multi-scalar context of city governance (Chapter 5). It is also criticised for its lack of consideration of the role of other actors, including those from civil society—as the theory is commonly interpreted to mean that a city’s corporate leadership is central to any regime given private capital’s ‘systemic power’ (Pierre 2014). However, urban regime theory has proved adaptable to being used to identify changing city governance processes in the transition from the industrial to the postindustrial city, including a broader, more inclusive analysis of the range of actors involved (Stone 1993). The ‘iron law’ of regime theory is that ‘in order for a governing coalition to be viable, it must be able to mobilise resources commensurate with its main policy agenda’ (Stone 1993: 21). Stone therefore argues that, depending on the agenda, ‘neither business nor any other group is necessarily a required member of the governing coalition’ (Stone 2005). Central city regimes (as in Atlanta) consisted of alliances between business interests and city government. But even here the need to maintain political support across a coalition of varied political interests tempered the pro-growth lobby, with incorporation of neighbourhood and citizen activist groups seeking local reform. Stone describes the accommodation of a ‘restive and assertive younger generation of African Americans’ through adjustments to Atlanta’s governing arrangements (Stone 1993). In contrast to growth coalitions, urban regimes are not necessarily pro-growth, as politicians can select their allies to promote a variety of policy outcomes. As Parker (2004: 206) observes, labour unions, community and neighbourhood organisations, faith groups and other non-business interests are likely to have some influence in American cities or there would be no reason for many of them to exist. Thus regimes can coalesce around different agendas, some more progressive than others, which

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may be inclusionary or elite-focused and exclusionary. This highlights that city governance imperatives change, depending on for example the nature of the commitment of businesses to particular cities as capital becomes increasingly mobile. The options open to and concerns of urban regimes can vary over time and space (see box). Urban regimes Stone (1993) identified four types of urban regimes in the US: • Development regimes—similar to growth coalitions as under both a coalition between city government and private business interests work together to promote growth. • Middle-class progressive regimes—seek neighbourhood and environmental protections and greater redistribution of city resources to support affordable housing and urban amenities. San Francisco (in the 1970s and 1980s) provides an example as activists and neighbourhood groups achieved concessions to comply with growth, via community benefits agreements and affordable housing provision by non-profit community development corporations. • Lower class opportunity expansion regimes—require considerable mass mobilisation, and are regarded as largely hypothetical due to lack of resources, though community-based organisations (often reliant on philanthropic foundation funding) may achieve some gains. • Maintenance regimes—which carry out routine service delivery functions of city government.

Despite its critics and purported US bias, regime theory has been deployed in other national contexts, proving a sufficiently flexible theoretical framework to analyse governance variation both within and between cities (for example, Davies and Blanco (2017) use it to compare the governance of six cities in Spain and the UK). Whilst Stone (1993) anticipated that middle-class progressive and lower class opportunity expansion regimes would be infrequent because of the difficulties they face in mobilising resources to pursue their agendas, Blanco (2015) finds that in Barcelona these types of coalitions can be built in some policy domains, acting to counterbalance a development regime. Therefore different coalitions can mobilise different sets of resources over time and in different policy domains. From this example, we can see that the approach certainly has utility in thinking about how urban governance arrangements change within and between cities and over time. But a significant criticism of regime theory remains its emphasis on elite deal-making rather than democratic decision-making, focusing attention on city politics in terms of accommodation and compromise rather than contestation (Short 2006) about what should take priority—equity (social redistribution) or efficiency (economic growth). In revisiting regime theory, Stone (2015) asserts that more progressive, equitable governing arrangements can arise from the ‘middle range accommodations’ and incremental change of regime governing arrangements. He argues that the challenge of change is organisational rather than ideological, with accommodation reached through piecemeal but cumulative adjustment rather than fundamental alteration of

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a city’s governing arrangements. Such adjustment is illustrated drawing from case studies of US post-industrial cities (Baltimore, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles), where Stone perceives complementarity between economic growth and neighbourhood improvement (Stoker and Stone 2015). Developers and low-income residents share overlapping interests and realise these through such mechanisms as community benefits agreements. Though Stone and Stoker acknowledge that results are limited and uneven, they cite these as evidence that choices made locally can lead to positive outcomes. Others critique such incrementalism as part of the mainstream pro-growth orthodoxy and the dominance of market-led redevelopment, even if its locus now includes neighbourhoods primed for gentrification, albeit with improved mitigating measures (Weaver 2018; Pill 2020). In this worldview, although low-income communities have an enhanced role, it is in ‘negotiating the terms of surrender’ to market forces with which pro-growth interests align (Davies and Pill 2012). This worldview can be described as that of the critical urbanist who prioritises equity over efficiency imperatives in governing cities. The critical urbanist perspective calls for a fundamental shift in governing priorities away from the imperatives of the market. Timothy Weaver (2018) cites the need to take stock ideologically, ‘seeing… beyond neoliberalism, with its obsession with market-based competition, and [in a way] that recognizes the limits to liberal incrementalism’. So whilst Stone may see incrementalism as a politically feasible pathway to progressive change, it can also be regarded as a ‘realistic’ or ‘common sense’ argument that is co-optative as it inculcates the urban poor into accepting pro-growth governance imperatives under which their needs will not be met through social welfare provision. Shifting the focus from the incrementalism of regime theory leads to consideration of the ‘ideological challenge’ of urban governance theory, which emphasises the role of ideas and values in framing and structuring governance change. It also introduces the challenge of taking moral considerations into account as to what policies should be adopted to attain ‘the good city’ (discussed further in Chapter 4).

Urban Governance Theory Urban governance theory gained prominence in the 1990s, especially in Europe, concurrent with and reflective of the changes which resulted from the shift to a post-industrial economy. Like urban regime theory, urban governance theory starts from the premise that city government cannot perform key governing roles on its own. But instead of city government forming a coalition with (often assumed to be corporate, private sector) actors to gain ‘power to’ define and implement an agenda for which resources can be assembled, in urban governance theory the role of city government is focused on goal-setting and decision-making whilst partners engage in implementation. At first glance this distinction may seem minor, but it is key to understanding why the theories differ. Urban governance theorists see themselves as

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trying to ‘bring democracy back in’ (Pierre 2000; Hendriks 2014) as they emphasise how political values shape urban governance, in contrast with the ‘middle range accommodations’ (Stone 1989) of urban regime theory. Jon Pierre (2014), one of the principal proponents of urban governance theory, explains this crucial difference in terms of the main role of local political institutions being to co-ordinate agency across the local territory towards collective goals. Authority (the formal right to make decisions) and agency (the execution of those decisions) is separated. The role of political institutions is to ensure that decisions are implemented in concert with societal partners (who may be actors drawn from the private or third sectors). Therefore, elected officials largely control goal-setting and decision-making to ensure accountability, whilst societal partners help provide resources for collective projects and for implementation. This goal-setting role is seen as vital in determining the politics and therefore the policies of urban governance—the how, by and for whom. It underlines that governance processes are not value-neutral but reflect and sustain political values (Pierre 1999). In his book, The Politics of Urban Governance (2011), Pierre takes an institutional approach to consider the different goals which cities prioritise and the effects on urban governance. Institutional theorists see institutional systems as reflections of values and norms (March and Olsen 1989; Lowndes and Roberts 2013). Pierre emphasises that institutions comprise not only the structures of local politics but their overarching goals or values which help constitute policy agendas and individual and collective action in response. Thus institutions matter in two ways: firstly, local political institutions are the structures which embody political authority. Though greater reliance on state-society partnerships has blurred the role of formal political institutions, these remain vital to representative government as a mechanism which provides citizens with opportunities to influence city politics and hold those elected to democratic account. The growing significance of non-elected actors and informal partnerships in urban governance in many countries increases the need for political accountability mechanisms for urban governance. Secondly, institutions also comprise the values or overarching goals of urban politics. These goals are institutions because they guide individual and collective action. They tell us about ‘what kind of city this is’ and what its population wants it to be (March and Olsen 1989). Therefore, political priorities are reflected in cities’ governing processes in terms of the goals set and the ways in which state and societal actions are co-ordinated towards these goals. As Pierre summarises, ‘cities that define their role as primarily catering to private businesses will have a different structural design compared to cities who have made social justice and distributive policies their main concern’ (2011: 117). This usefully reiterates the two principal goals which underline theoretical consideration of urban governance—efficiency (or economic growth) and equity. Pierre does recognise that urban governance plays out differently in different national contexts, as political, institutional, economic and cultural factors shape governance, such as the different roles of local government and the extent of its powers (Chapter 5). He also stresses that goals and thus governance processes will vary within cities by policy domain and over time. For example, tensions are likely between different forms of governance, as city government economic development

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officials may be engaged in pro-growth governance, whilst social workers will prioritise the needs of their clients. These tensions help to explain what is sometimes referred to as the ‘ungovernability of cities’ or ‘governance gaps’ (Pierce 1993) caused by the challenge of co-ordination. But Pierre’s approach most usefully draws attention to the overriding priorities or goals of urban governance. Informed by empirical models drawn from the US and UK, Pierre (2011) posits ‘ideal type’ urban governance models, two of which are especially prevalent in theory and practice as they are ‘market-conforming’ and thus align with efficiency imperatives (see box). However, whilst these are the most prevalent models in practice, Pierre aligns with other scholars in arguing that choices of political, economic and social priorities can be made and are critical in shaping the future of the city and who the city is for. Market-conforming urban governance models • Managerial governance: in this model, associated with New Public Management (below), emphasis is on relaxing political control over the city administration and service production. Public services are frequently contracted out or privatised. Service production is oriented to ‘customer’ choice rather than political decisions. Managers are given substantive discretion and autonomy, whilst elected officials mainly define long-term goals and objectives. Its emphasis on managerialism and the downplaying of the role of politicians raises questions about democratic accountability and transparency, with the citizen as consumer. Its key actors are managers of organisations producing and delivering public services. Its goals are to enhance efficiency of public service production and delivery. • Pro-growth governance: this model is described by Pierre (2011) as the ‘most familiar abstraction of urban politics’ with good reason. It draws from the USderived growth coalition and urban (development) regime theories explained above. Here economic growth is the overarching governance objective, justified in terms of growth being in everyone’s interest and therefore beyond political debate. Key actors comprise a city’s corporate and political leadership. City government controls the political process and has the legal authority essential to corporate interests in terms of planning, land use and infrastructure. City government depends on the corporate sector for job creation, growth and financial and organisational resources to implement political projects. Such restricted participation compromises the integrity of the city’s political leadership and institutions by catering to privileged actors. It is the most recognisable model of public-private interdependency in cities worldwide (Pierre 2014).

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Modelling Reality In practice, there is broad consensus that Stone’s development regimes and the managerial and pro-growth modes of urban governance described by Pierre are the most prevalent. These align with the effects of globalisation and capitalist restructuring as posited by neo-Marxist approaches to thinking about urbanisation and globalisation (Chapter 2). Some scholars caution that such accounts are excessively reductive, as they fail to recognise the complex variation in urban governance across time and space. They point to a need to reconnect ‘meta-narratives of urban governance with micro-level accounts of the messiness of local politics and practices’ (Blanco et al. 2014). Stone’s range of urban regime types and Pierre’s urban governance models can be deployed in a way that seeks to capture this messiness, for example by examining the variance of models within cities across different policy domains according to who is involved, what resources they have and what their agenda is. Refining our understanding of the process through which a city is governed is important not only to help us understand how, by whom and for whom cities are governed; but also to envisage what we want the ‘future city’ to be and the changes in politics and policy achieving this would entail. This will be explored in Chapters 6 and 7. But here we focus not only on how approaches to understanding urban governance reflect the worldview of their proponents (as the world should be), but on how governance as a way of thinking about cities has come to prominence empirically (as the world is). Despite variance in ways of thinking about how cities are governed within and between disciplines, all the approaches seek to capture the greater diversity of actors involved in urban policy and politics beyond the formal machinery of government; the reconfiguration of the local state; and changes in governance priorities.

Managerialism Taking a public management perspective highlights that public management reform and the related reshaping of the local state mirrors the changes in urban governance processes mapped in other disciplinary approaches (see for example Bovaird and Löffler 2009). In a Global North context, Gerry Stoker (2011) explains three ‘eras of local governing’: traditional public administration, dominant in the 1950s and 1960s (the industrialised, Keynesian period); which came under pressure from New Public Management (NPM) from the 1970s onwards (aligning with the post-industrial era and the rise of managerial governance); which, Stoker argues, has in turn been challenged since the 1990s by the rise of network governance (examined below). Whilst in practice the approaches overlap and elements of them sustain through different eras, the division between eras is useful in understanding governance change.

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In traditional public administration, the role of city government is to extend social welfare and collective consumption for the entire city population, seen as clients. In the UK for example, the state expanded a wide range of public services free at the point of delivery (such as education, health care, public open space, policing, waste management and social security); plus a range of public services requiring some service user payment (such as social housing, sports facilities and public transport). However, as we saw in Chapter 2, the old certainties of the industrialised period broke down with the advent of the post-industrial era. In the 1970s the ‘traditional’ approach became framed as overly bureaucratic, paternalistic and expensive. The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of NPM and associated public sector reforms, particularly in the UK, the US, Australia and New Zealand. There are clear links between NPM and managerial models of urban governance. NPM had significant effects at the local level where public services are delivered. Reform measures characteristic of NPM include: the transfer of private sector management principles to the public sector; privatisation with the transfer of public sector enterprises to private ownership; contracting out of service delivery to private for profit or non-profit organisations; and the establishment of semi-autonomous agencies responsible for implementation, justified on efficiency grounds in terms of isolating implementation from political pressures. Under NPM, the role of the state was framed as ‘steering’ or coordinating, rather than ‘rowing the boat’ or both determining and delivering policy (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). Thus under NPM the local state increasingly engaged in public-private partnerships and emphasised competition to enhance efficiency. These changes heralded a shift in the understanding of the role of the local state from ensuring social welfare for the city population to strengthening measures to ensure the city’s economic competitiveness.

From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism Those taking an urban political economy approach described a shift ‘from managerialism to entrepreneurialism’ (Harvey 1989) in urban governance. Cities which have to ‘fend for themselves’ through greater reliance on their own, local tax base have to be through necessity more entrepreneurial. In national governmental systems where cities are more reliant on fiscal transfers of tax revenue from higher levels of government (processes examined in Chapter 5), a more managerial style could be expected as cities have to be accountable to higher government levels for the effective management of funds. But initially in the US, and now globally, a reduction in transfers of funds from higher levels of government, combined with globalisation and capital mobility, has incentivised city governments to be more entrepreneurial in pursuing economic growth to solve fiscal problems. This highlights that whilst urban governance theories (such as that of development regimes) can be readily critiqued for their US-basis—and bias—they may have explanatory power in other settings, not least as US city governing processes may be a harbinger (or salutary warning) for cities elsewhere.

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The shift in city government priorities from the equity of Keynesian commitments to collective consumption towards the efficiency of what the OECD (2007) describes as the ‘entrepreneurial paradigm in spatial development’ has been sufficiently pronounced to be described as the ‘New Urban Politics’ (Cox 1993; MacLeod and Jones 2011). The rise of competition between cities for investment, jobs and fiscal resources has induced city governments to introduce a range of policy initiatives, such as enterprise zones, urban development corporations, and public-private partnerships, intended to make the city more attractive to investors (see Chapter 4). Much of the business of urban competition also involves seeking to attract ‘creative’ workers who, it is argued, are increasingly sensitive to the quality of life package offered by different cities (Nevarez 2003). Richard Florida (2005), an economist, posited that ‘the creative class’ are a key driving force for the economic development of post-industrial cities, a proposition that has had significant policy influence and has been critiqued as ‘cappuccino urban politics’ (Peck 2005) given the distributional impacts on other city residents such as the poor and unemployed (McCann 2007).

Neoliberalism It is no surprise that the conception of the entrepreneurial (or the competitive, or creative) city is so common in scholarship about urban governance, reflecting Pierre’s ‘most familiar’ pro-growth governance model and its US-based theoretical counterparts of growth coalitions and development regimes. It is intertwined with the rise of ‘the neoliberal city’ in scholarship which critically considers how neoliberal ideology is applied to cities (Walliser 2013) to the detriment of equity. Neoliberalism is used to refer to a set of ideological values in which the state’s primary role is envisaged as ensuring the smooth operation of the market. It does not necessarily mean less government, but rather that government’s role changes to align with and seek to facilitate what the market, and private interests, need (Cahill and Konings 2017). Peck and Tickell (2002: 384) identify two interrelated phases of neoliberalism, which reflect how other approaches seek to explain changing state-society relationships. The first phase, ‘roll-back’ neoliberalism, refers to ‘the active destruction or discreditation of Keynesian-welfarist institutions’. It involves privatisation, including sale of public assets, public service cutbacks and contracting out of services to for profit and non-profit agencies—the ‘marketisation’ of social and economic relations. The second phase, ‘roll-out’ neoliberalism, refers to ‘the purposeful construction and consolidation of neoliberalised state forms [and] modes of governance’. This includes policies and programmes, such as welfare-to-work, which are coercive in that they seek to discipline and control poor and marginalised social groups. Neoliberalism manifests in cities in an emphasis on the necessity of economic growth, the primacy of business interests in achieving growth and the need to focus state intervention on creating the conditions for economic growth (Burton 2014), along with more punitive policies targeted at and seeking to manage the urban poor.

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The ‘neoliberal consensus’ to generate economic growth is critiqued by those who advance the equity imperative in terms of how it is presented as common sense, the only ‘responsible’ mode of ‘good governance’ (MacLeod 2011). Short (2006) describes the institutionalisation of business interests and their ‘growth is good’ ethic, which he sees as prohibiting development of alternative visions for the city and its governance. He cites terms such as ‘the bottom line’ and ‘fiscal realities’ as typical of rhetoric that closes off an alternative discourse about other, more equitable priorities and choices. Who could argue? Only someone who was unreasonable, and not capable of understanding everyday ‘common sense’. This links to debates about whether we are in a ‘post-political’ era (Swyngedouw 2010) as the ‘new conventional wisdom’ (Gordon and Buck 2005) has become hegemonic, and the policy preferences which result from the prevailing neoliberal (pro-growth and pro-market) ideologies and governance goals have become widely shared. In considering US urban governance, Paul Peterson presaged this debate by suggesting that city officials are so conditioned by corporate requirements that to talk of business interests is to give the mistaken impression that there are other credible policy alternatives to a pro-business agenda (Peterson 1981). Roger Keil (2009) goes on to propose a third phase neoliberalism—‘roll-with-it’ neoliberalism—to capture what he describes as its normalisation. Others disagree, citing the continued need for the state to deploy coercive strategies to contain those seeking to contest the governance priorities which arise from neoliberalism (Davies 2014). Certainly considering the empirically evident shift from equity to efficiency in governance goals leads to questions about who benefits and who loses. The mainstream, familiar justification is that once the city economy is growing successfully, the proceeds of such success will ‘trickle down’ to meet the needs of the broader city population. Peterson (1981) argued that the growth of cities is to the benefit of all residents because any development project has only positive consequences for the city overall, as a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’. Others with a different worldview argue that local economic growth does not necessarily promote the public good (Peck and Tickell 1995). Short (2006) sees this as leading to a less caring city where being poor is not a condition but framed as a moral failing. To be economically marginal in the neoliberal city is to be at best a drain on society, at worst a social threat. The kind of city which results is seen less as one ‘where people live’ (and where the ability to reproduce the means for people to live is prioritised) as one which is a ‘growth machine’ (where economic growth is prioritised).

Urban Governance in Policy and Practice A range of theories have been propounded about who governs cities and how. In turn, there is increased understanding of governance as the structures, processes and values that shape relations between ‘society’ (including the private and third sectors) and the state which has been very influential in shaping policy and practice. Knill and Tosun (2012) and Cairney (2011) provide a broader perspective on governance

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and public policymaking, and Bovaird and Löffler (2009) show how the governance concept has influenced public management. Globally, it is unsurprising that the concept of ‘governance’ has become of increasing interest not only to academics, but to practitioners and politicians given the shift to a post-industrial economy and a growing emphasis on city competitiveness to achieve economic growth. These intertwined changes have heightened the imperatives for the local state to enrol a wide variety of societal actors drawn from organised interests, civil society and private business into city governing processes and service delivery. Taking a governance approach enables us to consider the state’s role in the context of the relationships between the state and society—as it encompasses not only government but processes of influencing and negotiating with a range of other actors to achieve desired objectives and provide direction to society. It is therefore useful to define governance as ‘processes through which public and private resources are co-ordinated in the pursuit of collective interests’ (Pierre 2011: 20). Governance includes but extends the traditional notion of ‘public policy’ as being ‘what governments do’ (discussed in Chapter 4) as it implies the use of a variety of governing strategies and the inclusion of a range of non-governmental actors. Therefore, whilst scholars vary in how they perceive the centrality of political institutions or the significance of networks and collaborative forms of governance, in the context of thinking about cities government remains ‘a, if not the, key actor in governance’ (Pierre 2011). But government’s role has changed. Its main role is as a formal political institution which establishes collective priorities and goals, the pursuit of which is conducted in concert with societal actors. How governance is structured, in terms of which actors are included and excluded and what policy instruments are selected, reflects political values—the who and how of urban governance has implications about for whom the city is governed. The concept of metagovernance, or ‘the governance of governance’ (Jessop 2004), is useful to consider state dominance, as it leads to questions about the extent to which government seeks to control which powers go to what institutional level (Chapter 5) and to enhance its capacity to realise political priorities through steering other governance actors. Of course one of the main challenges to the political institutions and actors of urban governance is that the levers they control are inferior to broader structural forces (Chapter 2). In turn, what can be achieved relates to their relationship with national and regional institutional structures (discussed in Chapter 5), not least the extent of local government autonomy within the governmental system. Scandinavian countries and Japan have fairly strong, autonomous local government. In countries such as the US, UK and Australia, local government is a ‘creature of the state’ and can therefore only do what higher level government prescribes or allows. In the absence of some autonomy in relationships to higher levels of the state and some leverage to steer local society, there is little motivation for citizens and other societal interests to engage in urban politics. The scope and range of urban policy choice has always been restricted by forces in the urban political economy (Chapter 2), by national politics and by the constitutional arrangements of local government (examined in Chapter 5). At city level, much

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debate has focused on the capacity of urban political actors to impose collective preferences on policy choice despite these constraints. Drawing from urban regime and urban governance theory, the general consensus is that political actors are capable of pursuing policy preferences, but that policy choice is deeply embedded in economic structures. Structural factors ‘set the stage, but do not write the script of the play’ (Stone 2004: 11). It is this leeway, or extent of agency, how it is taken advantage of, and with what results which is of particular interest when thinking about how city governance can be changed to realise different goals, or achieve a better balance between the imperatives of efficiency and equity. Here the role and abilities of the citizen, individually and collectively, to get involved and seek change, come to the fore. We focus on this in Chapter 6. Here we consider state-led forms of citizen involvement.

Network and Collaborative Governance: Where’s the Citizen? The identification of collective preferences and the extent to which these are manifested in policy choices is linked to the city’s machinery of representative and participatory democracy. How much do formal urban political institutions, as the ‘official’ linkage between a city’s residents and its elected officials, listen and respond to what citizens want and shape urban policy choice accordingly? And how effective are other state-led forms of citizen participation? These questions are important as they help us to consider the relative emphasis between the democratic workings of the city versus the focus on realising managerial, entrepreneurial (and neoliberal) governance goals. For example, managerial cities may tend to regard the provision and allocation of public goods as a techno-bureaucratic activity, and lose sight of the imbalance in power between the local state and civil society. And in neoliberal critiques of urban governance, civil society may be co-opted or marginalised—or indeed subject to coercion—when it seeks to contest governance priorities. Since the 1990s the theory and practice of urban governance has undergone ‘both a collaborative and participatory turn’ (Dean 2018), becoming intertwined with debates about ‘network’ and ‘collaborative’ governance. Particularly in European scholarship, there is a fundamental tension between two opposing interpretations of the implications. One perspective sees it as a reform process that overcomes both the rigidities of the preceding bureaucratic, traditional public administration era and the inequities generated by subsequent NPM reforms by incorporating a wide range of groups into policymaking (Rhodes 1997). Involving citizens or local communities is intended to have a dual purpose: of democratising urban governance by repairing the relationship between citizens and the state in light of citizens’ declining interest and participation in democratic politics; and by making policy outcomes more responsive to citizen and community needs (Barnes et al. 2007). The alternative perspective sees such governance as reflecting the dominance of co-operative relationships between economic and institutional urban elites (as captured in the development regime and pro-growth city governance models) into which some societal actors are enrolled, and

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some are excluded (Davies 2011). This ‘networks/neoliberalism dualism’ (Blanco 2015) has echoes of previous debates such as the ‘community power’ debate between elitists and pluralists in the US. In the UK, Gerry Stoker and Rod Rhodes were influential not only in theorising about the shift to network governance, but in seeking to change the practice of local governance accordingly, especially under the New Labour central government of the 1990s and 2000s. Governance research entering the world of practice was seen as a challenge to the managerial ideology of the 1980s, making a normative case for networks as a more inclusive form of co-ordination towards societal goals (in contrast to the hierarchy of traditional public administration and the marketisation of NPM). Examples in practice included the establishment of Local Strategic Partnership (LSPs) in each local government area of England, which brought together public, private, voluntary and community sector representatives with local government in the lead role. Illustrating the tension between viewpoints in scholarship, and the practical challenges of realising the network governance ideal, empirical research on LSPs revealed that they did not live up to the inclusive promise of network governance as they replicated preceding hierarchies, exclusions and inequalities, with increasingly tokenistic citizen participation (Foley and Martin 2000; Davies 2011). In effect, their principal goal was to gain efficiencies by delivering improved services at lower cost. In hindsight, Gerry Stoker (2011) questioned the viability of what he termed ‘community network governance’ if local government’s role is limited to attempting to co-ordinate network governance. He stressed that local governments need ‘hard power’ (in terms of command and incentives and the resource this requires), as well as ‘soft power’, or the ability to get people to share your vision. By the 2000s, especially in European cities, different forms of collaboration between governmental and non-governmental actors were prolific. ‘Collaborative governance’ dominated, defined as ‘a government arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decisionmaking process that is formal, consensus oriented, and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets’ (Ansell and Gash 2008: 544). It is associated with a range of forms of participatory and deliberative democracy, such as community boards, deliberative forums, citizens’ juries and participatory budgeting (an approach transferred from the Global South) which a leading governance theorist, Archon Fung, deploys as an example of ‘empowered participation’ (Fung 2004) (see box). Participatory budgeting In 1988, Porto Alegre, a Brazilian city of four million, elected a left-wing Popular Front coalition government dominated by the Brazilian Workers Party. The city embarked on an experiment in participatory democracy to fulfil the administration’s commitment that its budget would be determined directly with the people. The commitment was seen as an instrument for ‘reversing the priorities’ of public policy in favour of the poor (Gret

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and Sintomer 2005). The city government and participatory budget council prioritised spend in city districts with higher levels of participation, which created an incentive to engage. It was widely regarded as a success. Capital spending was redirected to focus on priorities identified by citizens, such as sewer and water connections and schools. This example has been formative across the world and there are now many varieties of participatory budgeting. But whilst the original idea was radical, many cities which claim to have adopted it are pursuing a ‘pale imitation’ (Hambleton 2015), by for example only devolving a token amount to neighbourhoods to determine how to spend. In turn, even the original Port Alegre experiment (no longer operating) was critiqued as over time the role of citizens became marginalised (Parker 2011).

Though collaborative governance is supposed to enable participating citizens to influence elites, debates reveal the gulf between rhetoric and reality. The paradox is that collaborative governance is implemented via state-led citizen participation (Parés et al. 2017). The multiplicity of initiatives established by the state (especially local governments) share some common features. They try to engage civil society in terms of associations or individuals. The state plays a central role, establishing the participatory rules, and leading and organising the process or implementing the results. The terms of the debate are pre-determined and mechanisms tend to be used to reach consensus on a specific public policy. Such ‘government arrangements’—wherein citizen participation is state-led and controlled—are therefore readily critiqued for how they privilege those who want and are able to collaborate over those who are unable to participate or who want to contest what is proposed. Determination of what is up for discussion and deliberation and what is not—framing the debate and setting the agenda—is down to the state. When considering English LSPs, Davies described community partnership members as being trapped in a medium of social control, making adversarialism taboo (Davies 2011: 70–71). Collaborative governance in practice has tended to privilege the interests of powerful state actors. In this vein, critics argue that collaborative governance is a strategy to legitimise public decisions rather than a real or radical form of public participation. This has led to these mechanisms being characterised as post-political, as conflict is avoided and dissidents excluded from debate. Reflecting the ‘networks/neoliberalism’ dualism, urban governance arrangements are not perceived as extending participation and deepening democracy. Rather, the ‘consensual managerial policies’ which result from arrangements in which the state and ‘responsible’ partners co-ordinate activities remove scope for meaningful radical dissent, critique and conflict (Swyngedouw 2005, 2010). Critical urbanists (who prioritise equity over efficiency goals) link post-politics to the ‘rational’ or ‘common sense’ arguments deployed to justify entrepreneurial or competitive (neoliberal) city policies. MacLeod (2011) goes on to contend that theories about city governance processes (such as urban regime and urban governance theory) have distracted academic inquiry away from the asymmetries of power in cities, and the conflict and resistance these entail (explored further in Chapter 6). David Imbroscio (2010) emphasises the need to ‘keep critical’ by being aware of what the mainstream is and

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how to challenge it. All these debates link to critical urbanist critiques of the dominance of the market and of the economic growth imperative, which are implicated in widening socio-spatial inequalities.

Austerity Governance These debates overlap with significant shifts in the context for urban governance due to the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 and subsequent austerity politics— which have spurred efforts by scholars to understand changes in urban governance and rising inequality. ‘Austerity governance’ refers to the logic and practices of governing under conditions of ‘extreme economy’ (Peck 2012) or reductions in state spending. It considers how the local state-society relationships of urban governance are reconfigured under austerity’s public spending cuts and associated justificatory narratives and practices. In US cities, Jamie Peck argues, austerity governance has been the norm since the initial roll-back of the state in the 1970s and 1980s. The logic or political ideology invoked under austerity governance asserts the neoliberal argument of bloated and inefficient local states that hamper the operation of market forces. Austerity governance practices in cities are characterised as downscaling (localist), with the devolving of risks and responsibilities to the local level, and as offloading (privatist), with the outsourcing and privatisation of government services and social supports. Thus austerity measures ‘concentrate costs and burdens on those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, compounding economic marginalization with state abandonment’ (Peck 2012: 651). In the US, the GFC became a crisis of the local state through processes of downscaling and offloading. Peck describes this as ‘roll-back redux’, or a replay of the initial ‘roll-back’ of the state from its Keynesian welfare state provisions which are now being further dismantled. The GFC thus exacerbated state withdrawal and encouraged more privatised urban governance, and not only in the US. It was used to justify neoliberal policy approaches to reduce public spending, retrench state welfare, privatise public assets and increase the power of private, corporate actors with the financialisation of urban infrastructure, services and property markets (Guironnet et al. 2016). Raco (2012) describes these approaches as the pursuit of a growth agenda in the absence of growth. Sociospatial inequalities have increased. For example, major cities lack sufficient decent, affordable housing, with unprecedented rises in house prices and rental levels, and consequent rises in displacement and homelessness. In Europe, academics have considered the effects of austerity measures on collaborative urban governance after its highpoint in the 2000s. The prior dominance of collaborative forms of urban governance has declined as local governments across Europe have sought to rationalise their interactions with citizens (Davies and Pill 2012; Durose and Rees 2012). But collaborative urban governance has been challenged not only by austerity politics but also by alternative, innovative and perhaps insurgent forms of political participation. Recent research, particularly in Spain,

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points to interesting developments. New citizen-led initiatives of collective action have emerged ‘from below’ rather than from local governments, which challenge state-led understandings of civil society’s role in tackling collective problems. These initiatives are shaped by local factors and institutional path dependencies, such as the strength of prior collaborative structures and whether local government is open to collaboration with ‘new urban activisms’ (Walliser 2013). In Spain at least, there are signs of a movement from top-down, deliberative and consensus-oriented mechanisms of collaborative urban governance to new and more autonomous forms of participation. The political change witnessed in some Spanish municipalities (such as Barcelona and Madrid), where new citizen-based political coalitions won the 2015 local elections, has opened up opportunities for alternative governance arrangements, with different structures and values. Other forms of ‘new municipalism’ are becoming evident in other countries (such as in Preston in the UK and Jackson, Mississippi in the US), which are explored further in Chapter 6.

Conclusion Governance, and theories of urban governance, help us think about how and by whom our cities are governed. They capture how ‘more than government’ is enrolled in the processes through which a city is governed, and how the boundaries are blurred between the state and society, the government and the market, and the public and private, in these processes. Themes include the challenge of governing in a fragmented, multi-interest (and multi-level) context and the extent of choice at city level. But theories also have normative power in shaping people’s worldviews. Critical urbanists warn that we must focus on the power relations entailed. For example, an emphasis on the importance of reaching consensus obfuscates how the powerful can set and further their goals by enrolling others into their worldview. This understanding is of importance to public policy as it draws attention to how and by whom policy is framed, formulated and implemented—and for whom, with what goals and outcomes in mind. At the heart of critical urbanist approaches lies the claim that cities tend to be driven by profit-seeking (efficiency) rather than social purpose (equity). To reiterate in terms of urban governance theory and its emphasis on values, cities that define their role as primarily catering to the profit-seeking of private actors will have a different structural design compared to cities which prioritise social justice and distributive policies (Pierre 2011: 117). The needs and desires of the less powerful tend to be neglected, justified by the ‘common sense’ that these will be taken care of once economic growth occurs. Increasingly privatised city governance has become the norm in most globalising cities as a result of neoliberal policies. Rising levels of inequality have led some to propose that a dual city structure now characterises most major cities—a polarisation of wealth and poverty in cities’ built and social environments which have very little direct relationship, economically,

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socially or culturally. But whilst stark contrasts such as this help us to conceptualise our cities, caution is needed when attempting to understand what is actually happening. In terms of the models set out above, a mix can apply—at different times, and across different policy domains and spaces within the city. Others argue that the polarisation of wealth and poverty is less a simple duality and more a mosaic, and that in turn there are ‘variegated’ forms of local governance (Brenner et al. 2010). The core duality of efficiency and equity that is threaded throughout the theories we have reviewed reflects that these theories comprise an attempt to explain what is happening, but also reflect a worldview about what should happen. The ideological basis of these theories is normatively powerful, leading to different political positions and different framings of policy challenges—but reality is more complex, a theme which we explore in the next chapter as we turn to urban policy.

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Chapter 4

What Policies and Strategies Arise?

Key points • Urban policy—how the state (and non-state actors) intervene in cities—is a particularly complex and fragmented policy domain which varies enormously in different places and over time. • Mainstream accounts consider state intervention as a technical process of planning and implementation or as an administrative, managerial function of governance. But by taking a critical approach we understand that urban policy is inherently political. • Three principal theories of urban policy as politics cover conflicts within cities about collective provision and efforts to manage the effects or capture the benefits of wider processes and flows which affect cities. • In practice, urban policy and changing constructions of the ‘urban problem’ which policy seeks to address have changed over time. Considering changes in urban policy and the policy instruments deployed shows the increased transfer or translation of policies around the world, along with the use of policy constructs such as ‘smart’ or ‘liveable’ cities. • Urban planning, a key expression of urban policy, reveals much about the priorities being pursued in a city and how its future is envisaged.

Introduction Urban policy—how the state (and non-state actors) intervene in cities—is a particularly complex and fragmented policy domain which varies enormously in different places and over time. But there are common challenges faced by every city. How and where will we house everyone? Where will people work? And how will we move everyone into, out of, and around the city? If and how these challenges are tackled— such as whether congestion leads to better public transport, or whether gentrification results in better tenant protections against displacement—embody the core tension between efficiency and equity in the power relations of the city. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_4

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Many of these challenges are spatial mismatches—such as between where housing is affordable and where jobs are located. Land use (for housing, for employment and for open space), and mobility between the locations of these different land uses, form the basis of attempts to plan cities. Planning thus provides a framework for and is a key expression of urban policy. But urban policy encompasses a much wider range of policies that affect ‘the urban’. Some policies explicitly target the urban in terms of the place or the people who live there. Policymakers can seek to manage the effects or capture the benefits of the wider, often global, socio-economic processes and flows of people, finance, goods and services which affect cities. And many policies, such as social welfare provision or immigration, are not urban-targeted but have substantial urban effects. We can see, therefore, that urban policy is not just what city or local government can do. Other levels of government are important as they develop concerted urban policies, or create other public policies that are in effect urban policies given their urban consequences. And of course non-state actors and citizens can also shape urban policy. In other words, urban policy is a function of how, by and for whom our cities are governed. Urban policies shape urban development and the everyday experience of living in cities. In terms of the fundamental tension between efficiency and equity, does urban policy prioritise private investment activities over efforts to tackle socio-spatial inequalities and create a more equitable or just city? This tension plays out in the formulation and implementation of urban policy, informed by the prevailing ideologies and values of society, how the future city is envisaged and what has gone before. We can learn a lot about what a society values and its vision for the future by looking at the current array of policies which affect cities. We first discuss what urban policy is and explain how it is indivisible from urban politics. We then review three principal theories of urban policy as politics, before considering the changing construction of the ‘urban problem’ which policy seeks to address. The subsequent overview of urban policy in practice over time includes the global rise of policy transfer and translation and the use of policy constructs. We then focus on urban strategic planning as a key expression of urban policy, before considering the implications for urban politics and governance.

What Is Urban Policy? To understand urban policy we need to first think about public policy. A common broad understanding is that public policy is ‘anything a government chooses to do or not to do’ (Dye 1972, cited in Cairney 2011), and the impacts of these decisions and actions. Three broad conceptualisations of policy arise from thinking of policy as what governments do (and don’t do). The first is that we can think of policy as a process, with government a machine that produces policies by steering bills through legislatures, or using mechanisms such as constitutional procedures, public consultations or referenda to legitimate policy choices. The second conceptualisation, of more use to us, is in terms of

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policy instruments, or the ‘myriad techniques at the disposal of governments to implement their policy objectives’ (Howlett 1991: 2). Policy instruments can seek to tackle problems, through the use of public information campaigns, the application of regulations, financial incentives and penalties, or the provision of public services for example. But instruments can also try to achieve outcomes, such as to reduce crime, quell civil unrest or create businesses. And they can seek to benefit or limit the benefits to particular target groups, like the young or the elderly, residents of particular places, or business and property owners. Instruments may not achieve their desired outcomes for a host of different reasons—policies often fail. In turn, instruments may not be designed to be effective as policymaking can be symbolic rather than substantive (Cairney 2011). For example, governments may use ‘placebo policies’ (McConnell 2020) to give the impression of tackling a ‘wicked problem’, such as poverty, which has complex causes and about which there are fundamental disagreements about solutions. And different instruments are more or less feasible in different contexts—what is realisable, acceptable and legitimate in one place at one time may not be elsewhere. Thinking in these terms helps us understand the third, most important conceptualisation—of policy as politics, involving the government making choices about when and how to intervene in what, informed by how ‘the problem’ to be tackled or outcome that is sought is understood (or ‘framed’), according to what values. Policy is ultimately about power, who has it and how it is wielded—whether in ways that include or exclude those affected, and in ways that seek to maintain or redress inequalities. Indeed, power may be used to keep important issues off the agenda (Cairney 2011). And as we have seen, ‘the government’ is not the only source of power, which is vested in other economic and societal actors as well as diffused through vertical power relations (Chapter 5). These insights from public policy scholarship help us understand ‘urban policy’, which similarly lacks a definitive definition. It has been described, rightfully, as a ‘chaotic conception’ (Atkinson and Moon 1994). Fundamentally, urban policy is how ‘the state’ (government and its agencies) intervenes in ‘the urban’ as an arena for the formulation, implementation and contestation of policies. But in an urban society, it is hard to distinguish between urban and other public policies (Cochrane 2007). For example, changes to social welfare policies may not be formulated to target people living in urban areas, but as the majority of the population does live in urban areas, such policies will have significant urban effects. What does distinguish urban policy is its spatial focus on the city—raising the issue of what ‘the urban’ is or how it might be understood (Chapter 2). When thinking about politics and policy, we need to know who is responsible for what, and who gets to have a say (via their elected representatives or by being directly involved in formulating and implementing policy). But bounding these spaces is complicated. Urban areas tend to be made up of more than one local government area, so public services like transport need to be co-ordinated at a higher level to give access to residents who live, work and access amenities across different areas. In many countries there has been an increasing focus on long-term, strategic planning for metropolitan areas (comprising several local government areas) and the development of associated governance structures

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(Chapter 5). And, as discussed in Chapter 2, cities are not just their bounded territory but the spatial manifestation of wider processes and flows. So how does policy attempt to take these into account? Urban policy can also be thought of as policy to address ‘urban problems’. This leads to questions about whether urban problems are distinctively urban or symptoms of broader challenges manifested in urban places. If the urban problems which policy seeks to tackle are perceived as resulting from the characteristics of specific places, policies may seek to address these by focusing on the place and/or the people who live there (Cochrane 2007; Imbroscio 2013), explored further in Chapter 5. An alternative perspective is that the problems manifested in places are created by broader, often global, socio-economic, structural processes. As the geographer Doreen Massey explained (1995: 54), ‘it is not ‘space’ itself which accounts for the impact… but social and economic processes operating spatially’. These perspectives form part of the critique of capitalism as a mode of production and draw attention to the socio-spatial inequalities which result. In any case, the formulation and implementation of urban policy is challenged both by the complexities of processes of urban governance (Chapter 3) and the ambiguities of urban space (Chapter 2). Urban governance involves different government agencies at different levels (Chapter 5) with different interests and responsibilities in relation to the urban arena, which they may decide to pursue (such as providing major transport infrastructure) or disregard (such as ensuring access to safe, secure affordable housing). Policy co-ordination across the government portfolios of transport, housing, infrastructure, environment, finance, education, health and social services would be needed to gain a holistic perspective on the cross-cutting, multi-level challenges cities face which require multi-agency, cross-sector interactions in response. In Magnusson’s (2011) terms, this would involve ‘seeing like a city’ rather than ‘seeing like a state’. And as we have seen, urban governance also involves other, non-governmental actors and interests in the private and third (non-profit or community) sectors, who may wield power or can be co-opted or coerced into or seek to resist prevailing arrangements and ideologies. It is therefore unsurprising that urban policy is characterised by its ‘search for co-ordination’ (Cochrane 2007).

Urban Policy Is Politics These challenges of co-ordination across different levels, actors and spaces are substantive before even explicitly considering urban politics. Mainstream accounts of urban policy consider how the state intervenes in ‘the urban’ as a technical process of planning and implementation, or as part of an administrative, managerial function of governance. But a critical approach to considering the formulation and implementation of urban policy entails understanding that (as with all forms of state intervention) it is inherently political. Urban policy results from what is on the agenda for ‘the urban’. Some issues tend to remain constant—like planning and land use (examined below), but other items come onto and drop off the agenda according to

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prevailing ideologies and priorities—and associated changes in how the state’s role in the urban is conceptualised. The urban political agenda is therefore constantly being ‘reshuffled’ (Pierre 2011). Policy, planning and governance arrangements for the urban stem from political contestation and conflict between different actors and interest groups with different levels of power, different stakes in the city, and different priorities and values. The actions of national, regional and local levels of government, as well as private, corporate interests, landowners, along with social movements, residents and communitybased organisations, all shape urban policy. As a policy domain, urban policy requires understanding of the underlying rationales for state interventions and how these are contested by different interests seeking to assert their vision for the city and to create and implement policy agendas guided by this vision. In other words, whilst the objectives of urban policy tend to be presented as seeking to enhance the quality of life of those living in cities, the actual policies adopted will draw from the dominant vision of how to achieve this. Fainstein and Fainstein (1982: 9) contrast the vision of ‘urban areas as residential areas for the mass of the population’ (cities as places to live) with ‘urban space as a vehicle for accumulation’ (cities as growth machines in which the goal of profit-seeking dominates). The first formal urban policy interventions (including planning, explained below) began to emerge in the industrial city of the nineteenth century as a response to the social and economic problems of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. In some major cities, interventions were accompanied by the creation of a new, metropolitan level of governance, like the London County Council, which could engage in citywide service provision and redistribution. As explained in Chapter 3, from 1945 until the late 1970s equity concerns shaped policy in North America, Western European and Scandinavian countries, with redistributive policy programmes that provided resources to poorer places and people. Keynesian state interventions in planning the economy and society included provision of public housing, education, transport, infrastructure and income support programmes. Even when not specifically urbantargeted, these policies had significant implications for cities and their residents. Since the late 1970s, urban policy has been primarily influenced by efficiency criteria with a shift away from redistribution towards the pursuit of private sector-led strategies of wealth creation or ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ (Harvey 1989). State assistance to poorer regions drastically reduced as state infrastructure spending became justified in terms of promoting global competitiveness rather than seeking to redress domestic spatial imbalances. A political commitment to government investment in public infrastructure and the public control of significant assets shifted to the sale of assets and their control and management by quasi-governmental and private sector agencies as well as the outsourcing of service delivery to private or third sector providers. Social welfare provision was also ‘rolled-back’ (Peck and Tickell 2002). The assumption became that the role of government should be to implement policy interventions to remove impediments to growth whilst seeking to ensure that the economic system is operating to enhance people’s well-being. But two kinds of challenges have remained constant—enabling social reproduction (the ability to reproduce the means for people to live), and managing growth

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(Chapter 2). Thus the perennial debate continues about what should be the overriding priority of urban policy—equity (social redistribution) or efficiency (economic growth). Equity goals suggest that everyone ought to be provided with equality of opportunity to access jobs, goods, services and amenities. Efficiency goals justify urban policies which support urban economies by making the use of land and infrastructure to enhance productivity and wealth creation.

Theories of Urban Policy as Urban Politics Three theoretical approaches, introduced in Chapter 3, aid understanding of the ongoing and fundamental tension between equity and efficiency goals in governing cities. The first focuses on the role of cities in processes of social reproduction by thinking about cities as sites of collective provision and consumption; the second emphasises cities’ role in processes of production or in realising profits from property development; and the third, related to the second, locates the city within global flows.

The Collective City Neo-Marxist approaches (Chapter 3) conceptualise cities as spaces of collective consumption (Cox and Jonas 1993) where the state directly or indirectly delivers goods and services which are or can be collectively consumed—like housing, transport, education and training, health care, social welfare and public safety (police, fire and building and food health and safety standards). Indeed, many people consider the principal function of city government to be the provision of such essential goods and services, which enable social and labour force reproduction (for example, by training the workforce or connecting homes and workplaces by public transport). Some forms of collective provision (like roads or policing) involve the majority of households and therefore tend to stay on the political agenda. Others (such as public housing) are allocated on the basis of need or merit and tend to figure lower politically (Short 2006). These goods and services are organised into public or private provision (for example, roads tend to be directly provided by the state but toll roads entail market provision) and public and private consumption (for example, using roads by taking a public bus or driving a private car). The state’s role is to co-ordinate and regulate across collective provision and consumption, whether public or private. How this collective project varies over time and across space points to shifts in the balance between equity and efficiency goals. Through the twentieth century, government intervention in terms of public goods and services provision increased. But more recently—and around the world—there has been a shift from public to private provision and consumption which has undermined the collective organisation of the city (Short 2006). This is despite the vital role public services and basic infrastructure play in the city’s everyday social and economic life. Neoliberal policies of privatisation, fee-based services and a general roll-back of the state’s social welfare

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function create political conflicts between those propagating profit-seeking and those favouring welfare via state support for collective good provision. In this shift from the public to private city (Frug 2017), the conception that everyone contributes to and benefits from public provision—either directly (for example, those allocated public housing) or indirectly (public safety)—is being replaced with the conception of city residents as market consumers who only pay for the goods and services they use. Why should those without children pay for schools, or owner-occupiers for public housing? Whilst there are some recent signs of recollectivisation (for example of water and child care) in ‘fearless cities’ such as Barcelona (Chapter 6), the general trend remains towards the private city. The increasing intrusion of private interests into the urban public realm (Ward 2010) exemplifies the public to private shift as public space has been privatised, reducing the number of spaces in the city accessible to ordinary urban residents. The shift in power from public to private control of urban spaces was first evident with the building of suburban shopping malls in the US in the 1950s and 1960s, replicated worldwide as the privatised alternative to the marketplace or town square. The privatisation of public space undermines opportunities for free speech (Kohn 2004) as private owners, via private security, can enforce what activities are permitted in private space. Additionally, spaces which remain in public ownership are increasingly subject to commodification where they are closed off for ticketed events or spectacles such as concerts. In the UK, Anna Minton’s analysis of the erosion of the public realm details how models of urban development designed to suit private sector interests have led to a shift from streets, public places and buildings in public ownership to the creation of new private estates, primarily shopping and office complexes (Minton 2009: 20–21). Brett Christophers (2018) documents that about 10% of the UK land mass has passed from public to private ownership since 1979, with the selling off of forest land, land owned by government for collective provision (such as land used by defence and health services), and especially local government selling off its land used for school sports, recreation and housing—a process intensified under austerity.

The City as Growth Machine These theories (detailed in Chapter 3) argue that the focus of urban politics and thus policy is economic growth and the realisation of profit through land and property development. The theories’ identification of urban policy as a mechanism to promote economic growth and boost urban competitiveness chimes with the shift towards a neoliberal political agenda. Typical entrepreneurial policies (see box) focus on major urban redevelopment led by partnerships between the public and private sectors, with associated planning instruments, financing mechanisms and incentives targeted at private actors which in turn constrain spending on important collective provision.

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Globalising the City A third, related perspective on the rise of the pro-growth, entrepreneurial city is provided by considering policy as seeking to globalise cities by positioning them within global flows of people, finance, goods and services. Such understanding has been used to justify major investment and infrastructure projects, accompanied by typical entrepreneurial policy instruments such as place-branding and marketing, and the provision of incentives, including land and tax breaks, to attract major global investors (see box). City economies are increasingly bifurcated between skilled, well-paid, professional work in advanced services and knowledge-based industries, and low-paid, precarious (insecure, unprotected) service jobs (exacerbated by use of digital platforms, below). For example, in Australia employment precarity increased following the GFC of 2008, but lower levels of precarity were experienced by professionals and managers in contrast to labourers and those working in the community and personal services sector (Cassell et al. 2018: 33). Spatially, precarious workers subsisting on low wages may be pushed to the margins of the city, facing long and costly commutes to centrally located jobs, whilst global elites can afford to live in the central city.

The ‘Urban Problem’ The predominance of the pro-growth, entrepreneurial city is reflected in the changing social construction of ‘the urban problem’ which policy seeks to address. In terms of people, the prevailing construction is one of poor city residents lacking the skills to compete in job markets and generate the means to look after themselves. This framing is used to justify cuts to and more punitive forms of social welfare provision (such as workfare, where welfare recipients are required to work in exchange for benefits) by promoting the moral imperative of self-improvement. Others counter that this is a form of social pathology, or blaming people for their problems, rather than relating these to the inequities resulting from global processes and state withdrawal of social welfare and collective provision (O’Connor 2001). How public subsidies are framed reflects the dominant ideology. Subsidies to corporate interests or tax concessions for house purchase are subject to far less discussion about whether the recipient is ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ than income support or public housing provision to low-income households. Their respective framing indicates the dominance and legitimacy accorded to efficiency goals of profitseeking predicated on ‘trickle down’. Some attempts have been made to reframe debates about the need for affordable rental housing as vital to a city’s productivity or efficient functioning (for example Shoag 2019; Glossop 2008). Others make the case to subsidise housing for ‘deserving’ key workers, who provide collective services used universally or by the majority of households—such as police, nurses, fire fighters and teachers. But these piecemeal, targeted programmes do not disrupt the overall lack of decent, affordable housing witnessed in cities worldwide, despite the threat

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this poses to their efficient as well as equitable functioning. House prices are beyond the incomes of many and homelessness, or resorting to precarious and informal housing, is a threat or reality. Homeownership has declined as incomes fail to keep pace with house prices. For example, it is estimated that the rate of homeownership has halved amongst those aged 25–34 in the US, UK, Germany, Spain and Denmark between the late 1970s and the early 2010s, and by nearly two-thirds in Italy (Fuller et al. 2019: 19). In turn, cities as places have been demonised in political rhetoric. As examined in broader public policy scholarship, in determining solutions (policies and governance arrangements) much rests on the interpretation of underlying causes (stemming from politics and ideologies). The notion of crisis has long been deployed as a metaphor in policy discussions about cities as it provides an opportunity to exploit the ‘crisis’ for political purposes. Crises generate ‘framing contests’ to interpret events, their causes, and the responsibilities and lessons involved in ways that suit political visions of future policy directions (Boin et al. 2009: 81). Weaver (2017) examines how the US use of the term ‘urban crisis’ has changed since the 1950s to frame the ‘policy problem’ of cities in accord with prevailing political ideologies. Post-war industrial decline and state-supported suburbanisation (via policies of highway construction, tax deductions for homeowners, and federally guaranteed mortgage loans) enabled some people to move away from the central city as they moved up the income scale. This combined with racially restrictive practices (such as the ‘redlining’ of minority neighbourhoods within which mortgage finance was not available) to result in ‘white flight’ from, and the concentration of racial minorities and the poor in, city neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods continued to experience underinvestment as landlords tried to protect profits, propelling further deterioration and dwindling city tax revenues. By the 1960s, major industrial cities such as Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles had worsening built environments and residents experiencing economic neglect and social discrimination, compounded by abuse and oppression at the hands of city police. The riots which resulted were described as a ‘rebellion of the poor’ (Castells 1978). The policy response to this ‘urban crisis’ comprised the people- and placetargeted urban policies of President Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ (such as the Community Action programme; food stamps; and social security payments). Other responses to restore social control, in particular harsher policing, have helped sow the seeds for further crises. Police brutality towards African Americans continues to spark uprisings, for example in Los Angeles in 1992, in Baltimore in 2015, and in cities across the US in 2020. In other words, not only did the responses to social unrest fail to tackle the underlying causes of racialised inequalities such as racist lending and employment practices but over time have exacerbated the problem. By the 1970s the economic downturn (linked to the oil crisis and deindustrialisation) compounded the city tax base decline and led to deficits, as city expenditures exceeded revenues. In 1975, New York City’s deficit became framed as a ‘fiscal crisis’. Yet crucially, the dominant narrative that emerged focused on overspending by a profligate city government, obscuring other causes of the ‘crisis’. President Ford’s administration refused financial support to the city, prompting the newspaper

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headline ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’. This refusal was a significant turning point which set a precedent within the US, presaging the continued withdrawal of transfers from higher levels of government and reductions in redistributive social welfare over subsequent decades. Following this watershed, city governments needed to rely more on retaining a strong credit rating (accorded by private agencies such as Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s) to be able to borrow money, heralding the rise of financialisation (Chapter 2). These ratings are based not only on a city’s finances but also on the policies pursued. Policies that are considered too radical by the conservative credit agencies result in a drop in a city’s credit rating (Short 2006). Thus the ability to pursue redistributive policies has been severely curtailed and the impetus heightened for cities to pursue ‘common sense’ neoliberal policies of efficiency (economic growth and profit-seeking) rather than equity as private, financial actors become more powerful in urban governance. Weaver’s (2017) examination of ‘urban crisis’ in the US shows that rather than being used to denote a problem which requires urgent and definitive policy action, it has been deployed to present urban problems as intractable, and caused in part by the inefficiencies of city government and the type of people who live in cities. This sustains a longstanding trope of American politics where cities are portrayed as places where the welfare state, bureaucracy and immigration have eroded ‘traditional’ values. In the second presidential debate of 2016, Donald Trump described cities as ‘a disaster—education-wise, job-wise, safety-wise’. In his inaugural address, Trump talked of ‘mothers and children trapped in our inner cities’, and reiterated the social pathology argument in decrying ‘the crime and the gangs and the drugs’.

The Triumph of the City From the 1960s until the mid-1980s ‘urban decline’ was seen as inevitable and intractable as many Global North cities continued to undergo job and population losses. Attempts at policy interventions to solve the ‘urban problem’ were regarded as hopeless, and some heralded ‘the death of cities’ (Dennis 1978). But in the late 1980s the discourse of urban decline was challenged and the characterisation of the ‘urban problem’ changed. The social pathology argument remains strong to this day (as illustrated by the preceding Trump quotes), but the predominant urban problem became framed as cities needing to pursue the ‘right’ (entrepreneurial) policies to enable growth and development. These approaches spread rapidly across the Global North—and worldwide—with the encouragement of transnational actors such as the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (OECD 2007). The OECD seeks to anticipate and articulate ‘mainstream’ policy positions amongst the world’s rich countries (Peck 2011: 170). In the words of economist Ed Glaeser (2011), the city has triumphed. Cities are presented as ‘growth escalators, offering the opportunity to lift millions out of poverty, and serve as centres of knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship’ (Glaeser and Joshi-Ghani 2014: 1). This is a neoliberal view (Hambleton 2015) as

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it does not regard growing inequality as problematic, and assumes that the economy will operate (eventually) to enhance people’s well-being. The triumph of the city has been accompanied by policy constructs such as that of ‘inclusive growth’, championed by the OECD (2016) as ‘economic growth that is distributed fairly across society and creates opportunities for all’. Though this may be perceived as an incremental way of broadening ‘policy logics’ from a narrow focus on competitiveness (Waite and Bristow 2019), it still unambiguously prioritises economic growth over equity as the central aim of urban policy. In the Global South, in particular, it helps justify growing concentrations of poverty in sprawling cities, where the urban fabric is extended without being supplied with collective goods and services (including paved roads, water and sewer infrastructure) or adequate housing. World development indicators (World Bank n.d.) include the proportion of a country’s urban population living in a slum household, defined as a household lacking at least one of the following conditions: access to improved water or sanitation, sufficient living area, and durability of housing. These estimates range from nearly half of Pakistan’s urban population to between 20 and 25% of Brazil, China and India’s urban populations. Equivalent estimates for the Global North are challenged by the hidden nature of ‘informal’ housing (Chapter 6).

Urban Policy in Practice The shift in the state’s role, from helping to secure social reproduction as regulator of the market (the Keynesian model) to assisting in capital accumulation by enabling the market (under neoliberalism) highlight key aspects of today’s actually existing urban policy. Economic success is framed as the necessary precondition for people’s welfare rather than the existence of an extensive welfare state. Urban policy is now predominantly shaped by political objectives to pursue economic growth and land and property development as a means to boost profits and wealth creation, following the logic promoted in political rhetoric that people’s well-being is best secured by disciplining individuals into an acceptance of the efficacy of the market, from which they will benefit sooner or later due to the ‘trickle down’ of growth. Thus urban policy is an inextricable element of the governance of cities, in ways in which the primacy of the market, and private interests, are paramount. Urban entrepreneurialism is characterised by the use of special purpose agencies like public–private partnerships (PPPs). As captured in Pierre’s (2011) pro-growth governance model (Chapter 3), government (the public side of the partnership) has the planning, land use and infrastructure powers essential to corporate interests (the private side). Agencies seek to foster economic growth through the use of special development zones and can engage in (corporate-style) risk-taking and incentive strategies underpinned by government fiscal tools such as tax incentives. These powers are transferred to the agency from other levels of government, including local government, so enabling higher levels of government to sidestep lower levels which may be ideologically opposed to pursuing neoliberal strategies. In the UK, for

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example, Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) were described as ‘parachuted in’ to ‘bypass local authorities’ (Jones and Evans 2013: 16). Examples of entrepreneurial policy instruments (Jonas and McCarthy 2009), which are often deployed in combination, are set out in the pop-up below. These agencies and instruments are used to facilitate flagship urban redevelopment or major infrastructure projects. Some may be megaprojects—defined as large-scale, complex ventures that typically cost a billion dollars or more, take many years to realise, involve multiple public and private stakeholders, and affect millions of people (Flyvbjerg 2014). A formative example is the redevelopment of the London Docklands since the 1980s centred around the redevelopment of Canary Wharf as a major corporate and financial centre. Such projects tend to be accompanied by place promotion and the provision of incentives to attract global investors. Cities compete to host corporate headquarters and prestige sporting and cultural events, including global mega events like the Olympics, on the assumption that these will attract further mobile capital alongside a creative class of professionals and revenue-generating tourists. Agencies are run largely on a for profit, corporate basis with substantial operative discretion. Despite using public funds to leverage private investment, they are subject to little government oversight or regulation. Operating at arms-length from local accountability mechanisms means that projects are insulated from local concerns, justified on the basis that such major or megaprojects are of strategic, wider-scale importance and that details of private financing cannot be subject to public scrutiny due to their commercial sensitivity. However, despite claims that they induce economic development, such approaches often have limited broader benefit and their use of the power of eminent domain (compulsory acquisition of private property in situations deemed to be of overriding public interest) often generates public opposition. For example, in 2014 the New South Wales state government created the Sydney Motorway Corporation, a private company responsible for financing and delivering the WestConnex motorway scheme, which involved the compulsory purchase of residential and commercial properties, some of which were heritage listed. It faced intense opposition from residents and local government councillors of affected areas. It also garnered opposition from pro-public transport and anti-toll groups, as the project is part-financed through the introduction of toll roads (an example of the private provision and consumption of a collective good). To justify its construction, its strategic importance as a state-wide transport infrastructure priority was stressed, but the project’s strategic objectives and financing were not made available for public scrutiny. Entrepreneurial urban policy instruments The sites of major and mega-urban redevelopment projects are designated as special purpose districts, managed by ‘arms-length’ agencies like PPPs accorded special powers. Urban development corporations (UDCs) such as the London Docklands

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Development Corporation are granted local planning powers. The influence of examples such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the US in the 1970s and London Docklands in the 1980s are evident worldwide. Sydney’s Darling Harbour redevelopment was overseen by a development authority established in 1984, and its current waterfront redevelopment is led by the Barangaroo Delivery Authority, created by state government in 2009. All typically combine mixed office, retail and luxury residential accommodation with spaces for public (or fee-paying) consumption of spectacle. Firms which locate within tax-subsidised zones are eligible for tax subsidies, on the assumption that as the zone yields jobs and profits, tax revenue will exceed that expended in tax subsidy. US examples include Enterprise Zones, latterly Empowerment Zones (introduced in 1994) and Opportunity Zones (2018) targeted at lowincome neighbourhoods. These have been found to have very little if any effect on economic growth (Peters and Fisher 2002) with opportunity zones critiqued as tax cuts for gentrification. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are common in the US and multiplying elsewhere. These property owner organisations are authorised by legislation under which businesses, landowners and sometimes residents within a bounded area agree to pay additional taxes for ‘extra’ street cleaning and maintenance, private security patrols and marketing. They foster privatised city services and city governance (Ward 2010). Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is widely used in the US and increasingly elsewhere. Under enabling legislation, a public-private agency sets up a tax increment district (TID) for a specified period (often at least 20 years), typically raising money by selling bonds. As redevelopment occurs, property values theoretically rise and the ‘tax increment’ (or property tax income above the pre-redevelopment rate) pays off the bonds. TIFs are criticised for channelling resources away from general urban social provision such as local education (Weber 2003). In Baltimore, the use of TIFs favours the spatial priorities of city elites—prestige waterfront and central city developments— to the detriment of surrounding poor, majority African American neighbourhoods (Pill 2020).

Policy Transfer and Translation As cities become more entrepreneurial, and aspire to attain or retain global city status, they tend to undertake similar redevelopment activities, offer similar incentives, and produce similar built environments—with developments of office, hotel and conference centres and redevelopment of former dockland and industrial sites, seeking to create ‘mixed-use creative cultural quarters, buzzing economic districts, heritage and tourism villages and gentrified apartments’ (MacLeod 2011: 2630). This is the built form manifestation of cities competing to attract the same mobile capital, firms and people regarded as providing the best multiplier effect for the city economy. Thus instead of seeking to diversify in different ways, cities are offering the same sort of amenities, leading some to argue that the focus is on the consumption

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of ‘experiences’ and spectacle (Parker 2011) rather than on the actual production of goods and services, with the majority of jobs created in low-skilled, low-wage leisure and maintenance services. In turn, as cities are redeveloped in the same way, and offer the same incentives via the same policy mechanisms to remain competitive, they become harder to differentiate, encouraging mobile capital to demand more in the form of subsidies and incentives to locate in one city rather than another. Such global similarity in urban policy instruments reflects a tendency for policy transfer from elsewhere to realise the entrepreneurial (or ‘creative’ or ‘global’) city, policy transfer being the ‘process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting’ (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000: 5). The UK, for example, has long looked to the US for policy lessons (Cochrane 2007), adopting UDCs, BIDs and TIFs, whilst the US version of Enterprise Zones was inspired by its UK equivalent (see box). Certainly, new policy ideas perceived as effective can quickly gain a global audience (Peck and Theodore 2015)—the proliferation of megaprojects and the conception of ‘global cities’ is as marked in the Asia-Pacific region as it is in the Global North. But policymakers’ search for ‘what works’ further disjoints understanding of what is already a fragmented policy process (Cochrane 2007)—in two ways. Firstly, it takes the initiatives out of the context that has facilitated them. As Halsey (1978) observed about US to UK policy transfer, ‘ideas drift casually across the Atlantic, soggy on arrival and of dubious utility’. Scholarship about policy transfer is critiqued for assuming that policies move fully formed from one place to another (Temenos and McCann 2013). Its limited conceptualisation of context, including governmental system and scalar distributions of state power, elides understanding of the political (McCann and Ward 2013). In seeking to redress this, policy mobilities scholars draw from geographical scholarship to consider how policies mutate as they move to other places due to the influence of policy communities, institutional contexts and governmental systems. The policy mobilities approach recognises that whilst policy lessons are drawn from elsewhere in our ‘fast policy world’, these are translated rather than directly transferred into policy arrangements. Therefore, though policymaking is globalising, policy outcomes remain localised and context-specific (Peck and Theodore 2015). Secondly, it separates initiatives from an understanding of their wider (dis)benefits. The costs of making the city ‘fit for global consumption’ (Parker 2011)—by pursuing policies such as tax breaks which cut into city revenues and reduce the ability to pursue redistributive policies—tend to be obscured and lack public scrutiny. The social and economic disbenefits for cities of not considering equity goals are not accorded due consideration. Policies of ‘inclusion’ (such as key worker housing and the planning mechanism of inclusionary zoning, explained below) are piecemeal and tokenistic. They are insufficient to maintain efficiency (in terms of enabling social reproduction) let alone in terms of striving for equity. Widespread and often interlinked policy constructs deployed about cities (like smart, liveable, sustainable and resilient) share a broad, ‘common sense’ appeal— who cannot want a city that is more ‘liveable’?—which aids their wide and rapid

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translation into different contexts. The ‘smart city’ construct (see box) has spread globally. Examples include the Australian government’s putative national urban policy, entitled the ‘Smart Cities Plan’ (2016); the Indian government’s 2015 announcement that it sought to transform 100 urban areas into ‘smart cities’ (Praharaj et al. 2018), and China’s range of smart city initiatives. By 2015, it was estimated that US$147 billion had already been invested into ‘smart cities’ globally (Shen et al. 2018: 668, citing Guo et al. 2016). These constructs ostensibly focus on the techno-managerial process of making cities work better and be more efficient, making them better places to live, rather than on the political implications in terms of the city’s power relations and inequalities. The perennial challenges of how, by and for whom, deploying which priorities and values, remain—but tend to be obscured as these constructs can be interpreted to mean different things by different interests. The ‘smart city’ construct well-illustrates the ‘power dynamics of knowledge production’—or how policy constructs are deployed to bolster policies that favour the needs of the market over the needs of residents (McArthur and Robin 2019). Smart cities In a ‘smart city’, digital technologies enable the city to make ‘optimal use of all the interconnected information available today to better understand and control its operations and optimise the use of limited resources’ (IBM, cited in Centre for Cities 2014). Common tools include sensors gathering data on pedestrian movements, public and private transport use and waste collection. Real-time data flows optimise systems through ‘digital twins’ (virtual models of real-world processes) to enable energy savings, mobility and transport efficiency and sustainable land use. Critiques focus on the role of private corporations in gathering data and in determining the uses to which it can be put to manage cities and citizens. Zuboff (2019) coined the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ to describe the commodification of personal information and the power of corporations to predict and control people’s behaviour— without democratic accountability. What about citizens’ digital rights to privacy and data ownership? An example in Toronto, Canada also highlights the continued reliance on typical entrepreneurial policy instruments in deploying smart technologies. A Googleaffiliated company, Sidewalk Labs, in partnership with the city’s arms-length waterfront redevelopment agency, proposed a ‘flagship’ smart city precinct, Quayside, with a familiar mix of offices and retail along with more ‘radical’ makerspaces, robots and underground waste disposal. The proposal led to major concerns about the role of private corporations in governing the city, triggering a backlash about digital rights and the ownership of data collected by the precint’s sensors. The company’s longer-term plans involved seeking a share of development fees and property tax uplift (Wakefield 2019), which would reduce city government’s ability to redistribute wealth across the city. In 2020 Sidewalk Labs abandoned the project, citing the economic uncertainty resulting from the coronavirus pandemic (Cecco 2020). Citizen-focused definitions conceptualise the smart city as one in which smart citizens can hold governance systems to account. A city being ‘smart’ is considered in

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broader terms of how digital platforms can enable the exchange of information or services. Such platform urbanism, ‘a complex platform-based ecosystem encompassing private and public organisations and citizens’ (van der Graaf and Ballon 2019), holds the potential to be led by and engage with a wider range of governance actors, including citizens (an example is in Barcelona, Chapter 6). But the most pervasive current platforms are owned by private, corporate entities, such as Uber and Airbnb (associated with another easily appropriated policy construct—the ‘sharing economy’).

How Does Urban Planning Shape the City? We can see that conflicts about urban development and redevelopment combine with everyday struggles about public services, housing and infrastructure to focus attention on urban (and regional/metropolitan) planning as a framework for and key expression of urban policy. In simple terms, urban planning is about how urban growth is managed. However, it is more revealing to think of planning as the institution of the state responsible for managing how flows of investment circulate into and out of the built environment and seek to co-ordinate public and private investments in urban infrastructure and shape the land market. One of its core mechanisms is zoning, or separating the city into different zones which have restrictions in terms of what kinds of buildings and uses can be developed within them. Zoning is commonly used to restrict the types of businesses that can operate in certain areas, such as a ban on industry or warehousing in residential areas. Other forms, such as inclusionary zoning, can be more progressive, for example by requiring provision of affordable housing (subsidised housing for the lower-income delivered by the private sector or non-profit organisations) in new developments. As urban planning shapes urban development, it therefore shapes the living patterns and everyday experiences of living in the city. It embodies power (Short 2006) by ordering and regulating the lives of city residents (Parker 2011)—where and how people live, work and spend their free time, which spaces and uses they can access for free (or for a fee), and which spaces and uses of the city are closed or inaccessible to them. So whilst as a regulatory framework planning is often presented as a technical and politically neutral process, it is inherently political. Through its role in regulating economic growth and social redistribution, it embodies the tradeoffs between the priorities (of profit-seeking, of social purpose) being pursued in the city. In turn, as a future-orientated activity, planning explicitly captures current conceptions of the future vision for the city and thus provides powerful insights into which interests wield power and what is valued.

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Planning as a Solution to Urban Problems Planning emerged as a set of practices to intervene in the urban at the end of the nineteenth century, when urban life was ‘confused and complicated… a jumble of sites and buildings with few formal frontiers’ (Briggs 1965: 23, cited in Edwards and Imrie 2015). Industrial cities grew organically based on the private property market, with no overall plan or regulation of city layout and growth. Planning became necessary to combat the public problems posed by proximity and density—problems such as providing clean water and sewerage to prevent contagious diseases, and protecting against fire. With the rapid urbanisation brought on by industrialisation, these problems affected all residents throughout the city irrespective of their wealth and power, meaning they got onto the policy agenda. In turn, the rapidly growing presence of a non-elite majority heightened the imperative to maintain social order and support the status quo, again ensuring that action was taken. A formative example is provided by the remodelling of Paris conducted by Georges Haussmann in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The city was overwhelmed by population growth and associated problems of disease, but also of political instability. Riots posed a threat to both city and French national authorities. Haussmann’s new street pattern, with water and sewer provision, made the city more sanitary and efficient, but also enabled military and police access across the city. The wide, straight ‘grand boulevards’ were constructed through many of the city’s poorest areas, demolishing much slum housing and making many homeless. Haussmann’s reshaping of Paris thus heralded large-scale, future-orientated urban planning that focuses on the built environment rather than on the needs of the majority of city residents. Its influence is clearly discernible in the ‘city beautiful’ movement of the early twentieth-century US, which saw creation of Haussmann-style boulevards along with public realm parks and civic architecture such as city halls, police and fire stations, libraries, schools and museums. Then, as now, redevelopment sought to attract and retain city elites and businesses and the poor were displaced, exacerbating slum housing conditions in ‘non-beautified’ areas. Planning’s origins can therefore be seen as motivated by supporting processes of social reproduction (keeping the workforce well-housed and healthy) but also to maintain social control, both necessary to underpin capitalism as a mode of production. Indeed, some of the earliest policy interventions in cities were led by private rather than state interests. One example in the UK is the model village of Bournville in Birmingham, developed by the Cadbury family for their confectionary workers and families, and built in line with their Quaker beliefs (no public houses selling alcohol but much open space for recreation). Another private endeavour in the UK, garden cities, remains very influential in urban planning, though its more radical aspects were not realised. Ebenezer Howard (1902) envisaged garden cities that were planned not only in terms of their built form but their social environment. Each city would have a population of around 30,000, with adequately spaced and sized housing and businesses and much landscaped open space. The influence of the built form aspect of Howard’s vision remains evident in

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many subsequent planning approaches, such as new towns and even private gated communities. The radical component was that city property was to be owned and managed co-operatively by its citizens—seen by Howard as crucial to maintaining the city’s social fabric. But this aspect of the garden city ideal was not fulfilled in the two cities constructed with private investment (Letchworth, founded in 1903 and Welwyn in 1920), nor in later approaches influenced by the garden city movement. We will return to ideas of community ownership and management of the urban public realm (‘urban commoning’) in Chapter 6. The post-war, Keynesian period was the high water mark of state-led urban planning in the Global North, particularly in rebuilding a ravaged Europe. Here state intervention to provide public housing as a collective good contrasted with the more privately driven development trajectory of the US’s urban sprawl. The new town movement originated in the state-orchestrated reconstruction of the UK. It harked to the garden city ideal, by rebuilding cities whilst attempting to limit their size with population dispersed to satellite new towns, combined with enforced green belt boundaries, a hallmark of later, sustainable planning endeavours (below). Though urban planning had become a professionalised and bureaucratised state institution, and as such is still often presented as a technical exercise of determining and monitoring the application of codified processes in managing growth, it embodies and enables dominant political ideologies. As Ray Pahl observed, ‘the will of the community is mediated through the political process, so that those with the most power set the goals, which makes the planner simply the tool of the elite’ (Pahl 1970: 206). Pahl’s view captures the increasing public dissatisfaction with authoritarian ‘top-down’ plan formulation and implementation that emerged in the 1960s. In the US there was public dissent over the social effects of what was termed urban renewal, or major state-led redevelopment that involved the mass demolition and reconstruction of whole neighbourhoods, combined with major highway construction. As we have seen, these approaches fuelled suburbanisation and the concentration of poverty in inner cities on racial lines, exacerbating ‘the urban problem’. Understanding grew that cities were being planned for efficiency (and car dependence) rather than for people. In her book ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ (1961), Jane Jacobs sought to re-evaluate the role of urban planning in the quality of city life. She stressed that successful urban places require public activity and vitality, with street life enabled by a mix of land uses and building types, accessibility and intense use of public space (influential in later policy conceptions such as the night-time economy where a mix of uses such as restaurants is planned to attract people out of regular business hours). Greater community or participatory planning, involving stakeholders from business, activist groups and average residents, was suggested as a way to gain representation of all such interests in city planning processes. Such approaches remain influential but are generally tokenistic, particularly in terms of the diversity of those consulted and their ability to challenge elite priorities and visions for the future city. By the 1980s, the dominance of efficiency goals was clear in how those modelling urban governance defined urban politics—as ‘above all the politics of land use’ (Peterson 1981: 25). In identifying the city as ‘growth machine’ (Chapter 3), Logan

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and Molotch argued that ‘local conflicts over growth are central to the organisation of cities… not only the economic imperative of the larger system but also the striving of parochial actors to make money’ (Logan and Molotch 1987: viii). Local conflicts were thus characterised as between growth elites (who prevail) and those who oppose growth (who lose). Since the 1990s the typical pro-growth or entrepreneurial policies of major urban redevelopment (in the UK termed property-led regeneration) have deployed the state institution of planning in implementation. But the neoliberalisation of the state has involved the privatisation of elements of planning, such as much greater use of private planning consultancies rather than state-employed planners. And the arms’length special purpose agencies established to implement major and megaprojects remove local planning powers from the hands of local planners, justified in terms of the development being of ‘strategic’ interest. This further diminishes the scope for participatory planning wherein diverse community members are engaged in the formulation of local plans. Disciplinary values of planning for the public good are further undermined, reasserting Pahl’s (1970) description of planners as ‘tools of the elite’.

Metropolitan Strategic Planning Since the 1950s, the emphasis of urban planning has widened from land use planning—the preparation of plans designed to control the pattern of urban development—to more proactive spatial planning. In traditional land use planning, attention centres on the regulation of urban development with the creation of master plans for future development including designated zones for particular activities. In contrast, spatial planning focuses on the process of co-ordinating and integrating the actions of different agencies and actors in a locality. Attempts to strategically plan urban areas over the long-term often focus at the metropolitan level, thus incorporating and attempting to co-ordinate across several constituent local government areas. These long-term, often thirty-year plans, set out how growth will be managed by seeking to co-ordinate provision of land (such as for housing, jobs and amenities) whilst enabling accessibility of and mobility between these land uses. Strategic plans encapsulate planning’s role in orchestrating urban investment and the spatial distribution of collective good provision and thus in shaping urban lives. But experiences of strategic planning affirm how such efforts are bounded by the political nature of any policy as well as the urban impacts of other processes and policies not within the purview of strategic planning. Strategic planning has been accompanied by a series of variously defined policy constructs to describe new modes of urban living—such as ‘the compact city’ (Randolph 2006; Bunker 2015) and ‘thirty-minute city’ (Newman 2016). These draw from previous conceptualisations of the future ‘ideal’ city. Common themes are a focus on the efficient use of urban space through the prioritisation of redeveloping ‘brownfield’ sites over urban expansion into ‘greenfield’, bounding the urban area.

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They also focus on spatial mismatches between land uses and securing mobility between these. The ‘thirty-minute city’ derives from the idea of an urban travel time budget, which should ideally average an hour a day, thus placing emphasis on proximity between where we live and what we do. A typical strategic planning response is the designation of centres (with concentrations of services, employment and residential land uses) connected by transit corridors along which to further concentrate such land uses, deploying planning instruments such as increases in development density and rezoning for mixed use. These responses, often referred to using the concept of polycentricity, hark to Howard’s initial intent to create small garden cities as nodes within larger metropolitan areas, connected by public transport. The North American concept of ‘smart growth’ also shares elements of this vision. It emphasises increasing the density of development, use of green belts (such as the ‘urban growth boundary’ of the formative smart growth city of Portland, Oregon), deploying mixed land uses including green space, and enabling transit-oriented development (close to public transport provision, such as bus, train or light rail) as well as ‘active transport’ (walking and cycling, through provision of pedestrian and cycle routes). It thus seeks to reshape urban life away from the low density, car-dependent urban sprawl synonymous with North American post-war suburbanisation. But though attempts to ensure that urban development is contained, dense and well-connected to other land uses seem ‘common sense’, the ways in which this is realised are readily critiqued for how they perpetuate inequalities. For example, ‘density fetishism’ (McFarlane 2016) is criticised for its disregard of the challenges posed for those lacking housing choice, such as lack of privacy, noise disturbance, and conflicts over shared spaces and services; as well as in terms of how higher density urban renewal drives gentrification and displacement (for an analysis of Sydney, see Easthope et al. 2017). In turn, these ‘common sense’ attempts at state intervention in urban development are extremely hard to realise in practice. The reasons for this are manifold. They include the power of neighbourhood-based interests to resist redevelopment and densification, and disagreement amongst constituent jurisdictions about who takes what growth and who pays for associated collective goods and services such as roads, schools and hospitals (Filion and McSpurren 2007). Such multi-scalar considerations are further explored in Chapter 5 and point to the particular co-ordination challenges of urban policy and strategic planning. Planning, as an expression of urban policy and politics, is subject to changing priorities and the state’s changing capacity to intervene—given shifts in how the role of the state is conceptualised (from Keynesian regulator of the market to neoliberal enabler of the market). The ability to long-term plan is susceptible to such shifts as plan realisation depends on state institutional structures that have sufficient power to not only formulate but also to co-ordinate the implementation of plans over the long-term. Institutional structures need to be sufficiently stable to give certainty and consistency to those who the plan is seeking to influence and regulate (such as landowners and property developers, as well as lower-level local government and other state agencies). In turn, interests with power can influence and dilute how the

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growth is envisaged to occur, and for whom. For example, attempts to set targets for and use inclusionary zoning mechanisms to provide affordable housing for those on low incomes within new housing developments have long been resisted, and are often eroded in implementation as deals are struck by developers pleading prohibitive costs. The process is captive to private property and financial interests, who support pro-growth imperatives which dominate state approaches and downgrade planning in terms of how that growth is accommodated, with ‘a weakening of the influence of planning agencies in shaping metropolitan policy’ (Dodson 2009: 110). For example, in Australia development and construction industry interests have gained generous provision for greenfield development despite the imperatives of the ‘compact city’ contained in metropolitan strategic plans and the plans’ ambitious targets for the proportion of growth to occur via densification of the existing urban fabric (Bunker 2015). The influential industry maintains that restrictions on urban growth at the periphery, or inclusionary zoning requirements for subsidised affordable housing in higher density redevelopments, raise land and housing prices to the detriment of overall housing affordability. State actors internalise these perceived prerogatives. Gurran and Phibbs (2015) consider why policy change has not resulted to redress inequalities despite the attention given to lack of affordable housing in policy debates. They conclude that ‘busy work’—such as policy discussion and review—defers substantial change. They describe this as an ‘expedient strategy for politicians beholden to home-owning electorates, industry sponsors, or ideological interests’ (Gurran and Phibbs 2015: 718). It is also a ready strategy to shift blame to another level of government (Chapter 5). Industry criticisms tend to be accompanied by allegations that development and growth are constrained by the time taken and difficulties in obtaining development approvals and the complexity of the planning system. Calls for the deregulation of planning to ‘streamline’ the system are common, aligning with the neoliberal conceptualisation of the state’s role as being to facilitate the operation of rather than direct the market. But we need to remember that actually existing urban policy has an imperative to address the key underlying tension between equity and efficiency—even if this is solely considered in terms of enabling social reproduction to support the needs of capital (by sustaining a workforce). In assessing strategic planning for the Sydney metropolitan region, Pauline McGuirk (2007) finds that though broadly reflecting a neoliberal commitment to further Sydney as a global city, what she terms ‘redistributive compromises’, including collective good provision, are necessary to achieve this. She therefore describes strategic planning as an ‘institutional site of negotiation’ which results in a ‘neo-Keynesian’ metropolitan strategy—so described as it seeks to address demands on the state made by capital, as well as communities, for investments in collective consumption. This highlights the complex, variegated ways in which the core duality of efficiency and equity plays out in real cities.

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What Does This Mean for Governing Cities? We can see that urban policy—how the state intervenes in the urban—is a complex and fragmented policy domain which is part and parcel of urban politics and thus how cities are governed. Urban planning is a key institution of the state that shapes the city and its residents’ lived experience by orchestrating flows of public and private investment into the built form and collective good provision (such as housing, transport and the urban public realm). As a framework for and expression of urban policy, urban planning encapsulates the priorities being pursued in the city and how its future is envisaged. So, what do current policy tools tell us about how, by and for whom cities are governed? A pro-growth, entrepreneurial urban governance dominates in which attention and resources are not targeted at attaining social reproduction or realising social purpose. Tools prioritise economic growth and profit-seeking through land and property development, seeking to facilitate private investment activities at the expense of focusing on community or social concerns. Critical urbanists point to how urban policy contributes to widening inequalities in society as the demands of powerful corporate interests are prioritised over the demands of (especially poorer) city residents. The resultant shift towards fragmented, privatised forms of governance and policy (such as BIDs and gated communities) indicates that socio-spatial inequalities will intensify in the absence of a change in values guiding urban policy. This leads to questions about the scope for concerted efforts to redress sociospatial inequalities through state interventions, especially in urban planning and collective provision. Thinking about alternative forms of urban governance involves thinking about policy not just as a techno-managerial framework but as the expression of politics and ideologies, currently encapsulated in the increasing encroachment of private interests into the urban public realm. Thinking in this way reasserts ‘the urban’ as an arena for conflict and contestation—as a political arena—to challenge the prevailing ‘common sense’ of market-enabling neoliberal aims and objectives (Swyngedouw 2010; Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017). Actually existing urban politics and practices show that the blanket imposition of concepts of globalisation and neoliberalism—and associated accounts of rapid policy transfer—are overly reductive, despite their power in explaining what is empirically evident, such as the replication of similar major urban redevelopments around the world. McGuirk’s (2007) explanation of how ‘competitive cities’ need to continue to accommodate values of equity as well as growth is a good example of this variegation within a city. The complex variation in urban governance across time and space, as exemplified in how policies are translated rather than transferred into new contexts, does provide alternatives and hints at possible, and more progressive, urban futures. Thinking in this way we start to conceptualise the equitable (rather than neoliberal or entrepreneurial) city, a process we will embark upon here by focusing on urban planning, and will continue in Chapters 5 and 6.

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Planning is also thought of as ‘place making’, or the planning, design and construction of places (Hall 1988). Throughout urban history places have been physically made, incorporating public space s such as squares as well as monuments which indicate and reinforce the power of elites. The institutionalisation of planning heralded by Haussmann’s reshaping of Paris was that of place making focused on the built environment rather than the needs of all city residents. Since the 1960s’ backlash against top-down planning and the disassociation of local communities and major redevelopments, the notion has gradually been extended beyond the built form to an understanding of place making as the creation of a ‘people-friendly urban environment’ (Hambleton 2015: 91), and more recently to incorporate greater understanding of the natural environment, ranging from the implications of climate change to the creation of healthy urban places (Academy of Urbanism 2012; Girardet 2008; Gehl 2010). Since the 1990s a plethora of policies have emerged under the banner of ‘sustainability’, though many are critiqued for paying lip service to equity, empowerment and environmental protection (Raco 2005). There has been some use of some policy interventions to reduce environmental impact, such as ‘smart city’ technologies deployed to monitor and manage energy use (Imrie and Lees 2014). But any progress towards a sustainable ideal remains challenged by the politics and power relations of how our cities are governed and the imperatives which are pursued. Elites retain significant power to impose their visions of what place making means. And, as is the case with other commonly used policy constructs, ‘sustainability’ is attractive given its openness to appropriation by and appeal to manifold interests. It can mean many things to many people, but overall is deployed in a way that aligns with continued growth (Edwards and Imrie 2015). From our standpoint of considering the equitable city, the rise of the notion of place shaping (as opposed to place making) is important as it considers what shapes quality of life beyond the physical environment. Hambleton defines place shaping as ‘elected local authorities adopting a strategic role to shape the places they govern in order to promote the well-being of all the people who live there’ (2015: 245). That the place shaping concept had normative appeal and became prominent in the centralised UK governmental system (Lyons Inquiry 2007) rather than in a decentralised federal system (Chapter 5) can be understood as an attempt (not realised) to shift power downwards. But what is important here is that the concept stresses equity—in terms of the well-being of all—rather than economic growth, and thus constitutes a political challenge in terms of the values guiding urban governance, and who gets what or how resources are distributed as a result. By emphasising local, accountable leadership assumptions are made that more equitable decisions will result as power imbalances are redressed. Different approaches to making urban planning more equitable share a focus on the need for greater local leadership along with greater local say in plans and their realisation. In her formative work on ‘the just city’ (2010, 2014), Susan Fainstein identifies three core values for governance, the first two of which, democracy and diversity, emphasise local leadership and local say. But Fainstein prioritises the third

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core value—of equity in terms of addressing disadvantage—as the most important in envisaging the ‘good’ or equitable city. In proposing the urban planning policies of an equitable city, Fainstein echoes many of the (often unrealised) aspirations of strategic planning. Policies include housing development for low-income households to prevent displacement, cheap public transport linking communities, amenities and employment across the city, provision of widely accessible public space and mixing land uses, as well as ensuring broad and representative consultation mechanisms (Fainstein 2014: 12). But Fainstein asserts that taking a ‘people-centred’ approach, in terms of meeting the human needs and capabilities of the city’s residents, is of most importance in realising an equitable city. This approach stands in stark contrast to the neoliberal imperative of economic growth, however softened this may be by more placatory policy constructs such as that of ‘inclusive growth’ (OECD 2016). It derives from the capabilities approach (Sen 1992; Nussbaum 2000), which defines necessary human capabilities for life, health, bodily integrity, access to education, and control over one’s environment (political as well as material). Fainstein (2014) argues that translated from an individualistic to a communal ethic, the capabilities approach enables assessment of whether the distributional outcomes of urban policies enhance the capabilities of the disadvantaged. If they do not, she asserts, then the policy should not be adopted. Policies that are adopted on this basis would directly improve the lived experience or quality of life of residents—thus creating a truly ‘liveable city’ in contrast to the way this malleable policy construct is currently deployed (see box). Liveable cities Liveability, a policy construct common in urban strategies and policy documents, has great discursive power as it can be imbued with many meanings by different actors and groups (Clarke and Cheshire 2018), thus acting to conceal conflicts about who gets what and where. As cities try to compete globally, the business of ranking cities by how they perform in terms of liveability or quality of life indices has grown (Mould 2019). The vast majority of these rankings are conducted by private companies, not city governments, and target an audience of mobile global capital and ‘talent’. Well-known examples are the Global Liveability Index, prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Quality of Living City Ranking, prepared by the global consultancy company Mercer. The ratings are composites derived from a range of indices (which include mostly qualitative measures of collective goods such as healthcare, schools and infrastructure, along with crime and safety). These are predicated on the package of amenities that reflect the preferences of ‘well-educated, internationally mobile individuals and families’ (McArthur and Robin 2019: 1720), and not the majority of current city residents. Thus the construct of liveability is combined with that of the entrepreneurial, competitive city—as informed by the creative class thesis (McCann 2007, 2013)—rather than any notion of the equitable city. The socio-spatial inequalities evident in cities at the top of these rankings (such as Frankfurt and Melbourne) are glossed over when city politicians use their city’s high ranking to justify not only their marketing efforts but

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the benefits that purportedly accrue to city residents. The assumption of ‘trickle down’ remains. Liveability indices are subject to major critique as they act to reinforce the power differentials of urban governance and the inequalities which result, rather than encouraging efforts to improve the lived experience of the majority of residents. What would actually improve a city’s liveability would be to establish with the diversity of residents what is needed to improve their quality of life, and then seek to directly meet their diverse needs by confronting inequality and ensuring access to collective goods and services.

Conclusion Cochrane (2007) describes the ‘search for co-ordination’ as an enduring theme of urban policy because cities face cross-cutting, multi-level challenges which require multi-agency, cross-sector interactions in response. This is often perceived as a seemingly insurmountable co-ordination challenge in such fragmented systems of governance. Indeed, many urban problems remain regarded as intractable and ‘unmanageable’—leading some to describe the city as ‘ungovernable’ (Yates 1978) or at least to highlight the ‘governance gaps’ (Pierce 1993) that arise. Urban policy is indeed particularly susceptible to policy failure, and not only because of short timeframes, unrealistic expectations, lack of sustained funding, and the tendency for initiatives to be piecemeal and tokenistic, targeting symptoms and not causes and lacking sustained political commitment. The likelihood of policy failure is heightened by the very nature of such a fragmented and ill-defined policy domain. These complexities aside, what is clear is that urban policy is ideological and currently seeks to propagate neoliberal values rather than responding to the needs of the many. But it is also useful to remember that urban policy is constantly in the process of being redefined and reimagined, drawing on a particular menu but combining its elements in different ways, at different times and in different places (Cochrane 2007). For us, this highlights the importance of political debate about how our cities are governed, by whom, guided by what goals—and for whom. Hambleton (2015) stresses the importance of powerful local self-government and bold, city leadership for radical change. This leads to questions about urban politics and what can be achieved at city level given the importance not only of conflicts that go on within cities—about planning and collective provision—but what goes on beyond cities, whether these be flows of investment, intervention by higher levels of the state, or urban policy transfers.

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One important theme we address in the next chapter is how the city and its governance is rescaled: upwards with the creation of city-regional governance; and downwards as cities become more fragmented and privatised. But distributional struggles—who gets what, when and where—remain part and parcel of the urban political arena and point to alternatives. This leads to questions regarding the Right to the City—who is the city for, and what the role of policy is in facilitating people’s access to, and uses of, the goods, services and spaces of the city. We will consider this in Chapter 6.

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Chapter 5

What Happens at Different Scales?

Key Points • Cities are sites where scalar processes—operating at the global, national, regional, local and neighbourhood scales—intersect and shape city governance. • Thinking about scale draws attention to a city’s autonomy within the vertical state hierarchy (national, regional and local government). Questions arise about the scale at which decisions are made, by which institutions or actors, and in whose interests, that are core to understanding how, by and for whom cities are governed—and what can be achieved at the city or local level. • By contrasting different national governmental systems we can examine cities’ political status in terms of their capacity to make choices about governance priorities. The nation state continues to be important in shaping what can be determined and achieved at city level. • Scales relate to power and politics and can be changed or ‘rescaled’. Competitive city-regionalism is an example of how the city and its governance has been rescaled upwards. But rescaling has also taken place downwards to the local and neighbourhood scales. Neighbourhoods are sites for state intervention which also give rise to different forms of citizen action.

Introduction The complexity of urban politics and policy—and thus how our cities are governed— relates in part to the variety of spatial scales at which the state (national, regional and local government and its agencies) seeks to intervene and attempts to co-ordinate its own and others’ actions. In turn, a range of non-state, private and third sector agencies and interest groups operate at different scales and seek to uphold, change or contest the governing arrangements currently in place. Therefore, how cities are governed is shaped by their context—which comprises a mixture of transnational as well as national and sub-national (regional and local) politics and policies. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_5

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So whilst urbanists focus on ‘the urban’, this does not mean that scholarship solely focuses on city government or ‘the local state’ as the appropriate unit of analysis. Cities are usefully conceptualised as socio-spatial relations as they are not only territorial (bounded) but relational spaces (Chapter 2). Taking a critical perspective involves recognising that cities are the product of a wide range of structures, institutions, actors and relations that operate locally but also far beyond the city. We can therefore think of the city as a site where scalar processes intersect—the city is located within multiple and interacting scales of the global, national, regional, local and sub-local (neighbourhood). Scholars consider the ways in which the local state is affected ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’, as well as how global flows and processes affect the city. Questions arise about the scale at which decisions are made, by which institutions or actors, and in whose interests, that are core to understanding how, by and for whom cities are governed—and what can be achieved at the city or local level. We first establish why thinking about scale matters in terms of the politics of determining the territorial extent of a city and its autonomy amongst vertical state territorial hierarchies. We consider the continued importance of the nation state in shaping what can be determined and achieved at city level, before contrasting different national governmental systems to examine cities’ political status in terms of their capacity to make choices about governance priorities. We then address how the city and its governance has been rescaled upwards by examining competitive city-regionalism and its associated forms of governance. But rescaling has also taken place downwards, which we examine by considering how the local and neighbourhood scales have been revalorised as sites for state intervention, combined with rising expectations of citizen action, along with a proliferation of private neighbourhoods for the wealthy around the world.

Why Do We Need to Think About Scale? Urban governance processes take place in a multi-scalar or multi-level context (a sub-national context depicted in Fig. 5.1). The difference in terminology relates to the discipline of the urbanist. Geographers tend to think in terms of scale (and space), whilst political scientists and policy scholars tend to think in terms of different levels of government and the power relations inherent in interactions between these. Both ideas of scale and level combine to enable better understanding of urban governance. As depicted in Fig. 5.1, we focus on the sub-national scales typically of interest to urbanists. But whilst urbanists often focus on the local or municipal scale—the scale most associated with ‘the city’—it is necessary to consider the lesser and greater scales of governance in which the local is embedded, such as upwards to the city-regional, regional and national levels, and downwards to the sub-local, neighbourhood level. As scale is a conceptual arrangement of space that is socially produced, scales are not ‘natural’ and fixed, but social and political. Scales relate to power and politics

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Fig. 5.1 Urban governance processes operate in multi-scalar context

and as such can be changed or ‘rescaled’—thus ‘new urban spaces are produced through the rescaling of state space’ (Brenner 2019: 23). Spatial scale is therefore conceptualised ‘as something that is produced historically; a process that is always deeply heterogenous and contested’ (Swyngedouw 2000: 70). In terms of cities, ‘the urban space is itself perpetually in flux’ (Harvey 1989: 127). Thinking about scale draws attention to the power and politics inherent in determining the territorial extent of a city or a neighbourhood. As Cochrane (2012: 104) explains, a defined territory should ‘not be taken as something given, somehow pre-existing and waiting to be filled with politics, but rather as something that is actively formed and shaped through the political process’. Thus a key aspect of the politics of urban governance is the power to ‘temporarily fix the limits of governable urban space for certain political purposes’ (Martin et al. 2003: 116). Thinking about scale emphasises political conflicts about territorial organisation, identity and autonomy amongst vertical state territorial hierarchies. Thinking about cities in their multi-scalar context also helps us to understand how economies and societies are changing, because cities reflect but also help constitute the way the economy and society is organised. Scholarship on the urban effects of globalisation and the rise of neoliberalism benefits from an appreciation of cities’ location in multi-scalar systems of governance (Keil 2003). For example, global cities are not only nodes in world networks of goods, services, labour and capital but also form the dominant urban agglomeration nationally. In turn, cities also form the local site where people live, work and consume collective goods and services—which shape their quality of life. Thus cities—not only global cities but the ‘ordinary cities’ often neglected in scholarship in which much of the world’s majority urban population lives (Robinson 2006)—are usefully conceptualised as global-local assemblages of politics, policies and practices (McCann 2011). Thinking in a multi-scalar way helps highlight why the (local, regional and national) particularities of politics and institutions (as both structures and practices) matter, enabling a more nuanced understanding of how globalisation and neoliberalism manifest in different cities and different countries over time (Peck and Tickell 2002). Taking multiple scales and their associated state hierarchies or levels into account thus helps refine theories of urban governance (Chapter 3), validating

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common critiques such as how urban regime theory’s focus on the local precludes consideration of how the multi-scalar context shapes city governance (Jessop et al. 1999; McGuirk 2003).

State Rescaling Global political and economic shifts are linked to a ‘rebalancing of scalar power ensembles’ (Parker 2011). Common to these accounts is the weakening of the dominance of the national scale, and a greater role for both the transnational and subnational (regional and local) scales as authority and responsibility are transferred from the national state: upwards to transnational forms of governance (such as the European Union); and downwards to sub-national forms via processes of decentralisation, referring to the transfer of authority and responsibility for public functions from national to subordinate levels of government. This rescaling has been termed a process of glocalisation—a simultaneous globalisation and localisation of the global political economy (Swyngedouw 2004). At sub-national scales, scholars have identified the emergence of ‘new regionalisms’ and ‘new localisms’ as part of state rescaling, with ‘new urban spaces’ resulting (Brenner 2019). The political science concept of multi-level governance considers rescaling upwards and downwards from the national state. Deriving from scholarship about the transnational European Union (Bache and Flinders 2004; Hooghe and Marks 2001), the concept has been applied to a wide range of multi-tiered settings across the world. As a model of ‘contextually defined, non-hierarchical governance, where transnational and sub-national institutions engage each other without necessarily considering the nation-state level’ (Pierre 2011: 128), it considers policy implementation as well as formulation. The range of participants varies by policy issue. Whether a city engages relates to the relevance of the issue, as well as its political entrepreneurship and institutional capacity (in terms of expertise and resources) to engage. Transnational institutions such as the European Union and international agreements (such as Local Agenda 21, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement) all have implementation processes which involve decisions and actions at several levels within the domestic governmental system. Indeed, some international agreements target sub-national government directly, demonstrating the capacity of cities to work across borders in international networks without the involvement of national governments. This points to ways in which cities can claim some autonomy within the vertical state territorial hierarchies in which they are embedded via international networks. Cities’ vertical links to international actors through participating in international projects can also link cities horizontally with each other so they can share knowledge and expertise. Pierre (2019) thus describes multi-level governance as a ‘strategy to build capacity in cities’. Tavares’ (2016) identification of 120 different networks of cities globally points to the importance of city activism, which may be encouraged by frustration with national state inertia.

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Environmental issues provide a range of examples, pertinent as cities are estimated to emit 60% of global greenhouse gases and are particularly vulnerable to the adverse implications of climate change (Bulkeley and Betsill 2013: 137). Local Agenda 21, a blueprint for sustainable development in the twenty-first century (signed in 1992), drew on direct administrative contacts between international and sub-national institutions as a strategy to tackle city sustainability. This arrangement reshuffled intergovernmental relationships by giving local governments a clear role in the implementation process independent of national government. The World Urban Forum, organised by the UN Human Settlements Program, seeks to build city capacity and assist cities to manage pressing policy issues including climate change mitigation. In the wake of the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change (2016), cities have collaborated in declaring ‘climate emergencies’ in 1143 jurisdictions, including London, New York, Sydney, Vancouver, Auckland and Paris, leading UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres to describe city mayors as the ‘world’s first responders’ to climate change (Mahr 2019)—particularly significant in the context of perceived national inaction (Turney 2019).

The National State Level Continues to Matter Arguments about the increased importance of the local, regional and global are persuasive. Globalised forms of urban policy (Chapter 4) do indicate constraints on autonomous national urban policy development. But the national state’s ability to assert its power remains evident even in the largest, most powerful global cities. Its ability goes beyond its power to rescale the defined territory of the city and shape its governance arrangements. Domestic, nation-city intergovernmental relationships remain key—but have been reworked. In some cases, there is a renewed relationship between the national level and selected, often primate, global cities. For example, London and Paris benefit from huge investment by national governments keen to retain and extend their global connectivity (for example, for transport infrastructure such as additional airports or runways, and rail connections between airports and the central city). Short (2006) argues it is smaller cities that have become uncoupled from nation-city relationships, as these cities are now less protected by national state intervention but are expected to compete in the market. Thus some assert that differences between cities reflect national economic priorities rather than local political decisions (Jessop et al. 1999), an argument influential in encouraging proponents of ‘place-based leadership’ (Hambleton 2015). Pierre (2011) concludes that cities lack the key political instruments to assert control over their economic base—as a single significant ‘footloose’ private corporation can drastically weaken the city economy by relocating to another city or country. In this view, the extent to which a ‘city has choices’ (Savitch and Kantor 2002) is clearly limited, in turn undermining the democratic role and authority of local government given its context of higher-scale forces and flows.

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Over time, national (central or federal) governments wax and wane in the amount of attention they pay to cities in the form of a national urban policy. But whether there is an explicit national urban policy or not, decisions made at the national level have significant implications—intended or not—for cities. Even in the federal, decentralised US governmental system, national state policies have had enormous effects on cities. As considered in Chapter 4, two major national policy initiatives (the nationally backed mortgage assistance programme and federal support for highway construction), led to the rapid suburbanisation of jobs and people (and the loss of city government tax revenues to suburban jurisdictions). This increased the tax burden on and reduced public services for the poorer, often African American people left in the city. These national policies thus played a significant role in creating the contemporary pattern of city development in the US. But they were not conceived as policies specifically for cities, but as part of a package of incentives to encourage economic growth that stimulated private housing development and supported infrastructure provision. If these policies had been formulated differently (for example, geared towards public rather than private forms of housing and transport provision), city development would have followed a very different pattern.

Different Governmental Systems To ascertain the political status of cities and the extent to which they have choices, it helps to unpick where power lies in the vertical hierarchies of different governmental systems, and thus the capabilities of the local government level in urban governance (Pierre 1999). Considering this also provides insights into the relative importance of place, and place-based leadership, in public policymaking. Local government, with its locally elected leaders and local officials, is expected to have a more holistic understanding of the challenges faced by their local communities of place (Hambleton 2015). And these communities are more likely to identify with their locality rather than with a higher, more abstracted level of government. Higher government levels also tend to have ‘siloed thinking’ in terms of different departmental and agency responsibilities and priorities (transport, housing, health, education, etc.), whilst local government is closer ‘to the people’ and thus more likely to ‘see like a city’ (Magnusson 2011). As explained in Chapter 2, theoretically, the managerial form of urban governance is associated with cities that are reliant on higher levels of government for fiscal transfers as they have to be accountable for the effective management of funds. The entrepreneurial styles associated with the rise of neoliberal, market-conforming forms of urban governance are associated with cities that have to fend for themselves as they are more reliant on their own, local tax base. The extent of national state involvement in cities varies. In broad terms, European national governments have continued to play a significant role, especially those with centralised governmental systems, with more managerial forms of urban governance and greater fiscal transfers from higher levels of government. In the US, the national state has generally played

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a much lesser role due to its federal (decentralised) political system, rooted in the country’s founders’ distrust of centralised power (as a British colony). Thus in the US, cities have generally been entrepreneurial, though there have been times of greater federal involvement (the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Society programmes formulated in response to the ‘urban crisis’ of the 1960s—Chapter 4). But the general consensus of a global shift towards cities being more self-reliant, with the shift from managerialism to entrepreneurialism, does establish the experience of US cities as a harbinger (and set of warnings) for cities across the world. Thinking about where power lies is aided by the public finance concept of fiscal federalism, which describes how competencies (the ability to make expenditure to realise each government level’s responsibilities) and fiscal instruments (to raise revenue, particularly in terms of the ability to borrow and levy taxes, user fees and charges) are allocated across vertical levels of government. In these terms, the ‘political autonomy’ of a level of government—its capacity to make choices about how it uses resources to pursue an agenda that deviates from the agenda of higher government levels—relates to its abilities to generate revenue rather than being reliant on transfers from higher levels of government. The concept thus aligns with the ‘iron law’ of urban regime theory—that the resources assembled by a governing regime must be commensurate with the agenda it pursues (Stone 1993, 2015), as explained in Chapter 3. Urban ‘fiscal crises’ (Chapter 4) occur when national government passes down competencies (responsibilities which involve spending) whilst retaining fiscal instruments (and thus a large proportion of tax revenue). In the US, for example, Peck (2017) describes a pattern in which fiscal stress has been ‘localised and urbanised’, due to a combination of factors including increased reliance on local tax revenues with the decline of federal transfers, state-imposed limits on local (property, sales and income) taxes and the privatisation of municipal borrowing. These measures have been accompanied by ‘moralising and scapegoating’ narratives that cities in fiscal crisis have forfeited the right to self-governance. Peck concludes that financial control is being centralised (upscaled) whilst many of the costs and risks are being devolved (downscaled)—a form of austerity governance (Chapter 3). In the US and around the world, city governments are seeking to draw down new powers from higher government levels to be able to levy taxes and retain a greater proportion of taxation revenue, as well as to develop new self-financing mechanisms. Of course, these processes play out within a huge variety of governmental systems. Systems broadly share a three-tier (national, regional and local or municipal) system—whilst some (such as France, Germany and China) also have an intermediate level between the regional and local levels. Table 5.1 sets out the sub-national territorial organisation in selected countries. In simple terms, it is useful for us to contrast (decentralised) federal states with (centralised) unitary states in terms of what this means for how power is distributed. This relates to fiscal federalism debates about which level is best for making decisions about public spending and taxation. All national states make fiscal transfers to subnational governments, but these transfers are more significant in more centralised systems. In terms of the regional level, federal states (e.g. the US, Australia and

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Table 5.1 Sub-national territorial organisation in selected countries Country

Local/Municipal level (average population)

Intermediate level

Australia

571 local government areas – (41,005)

6 states, 2 territories

Brazil

5570 municipalities (36,400)

–

26 states, 1 federal district

Canada

3805 municipalities (8205) –

10 provinces, 3 territories

China

2852 district municipalities 334 prefectures (491,267)

23 provinces, 4 province-municipalities, 5 autonomous regions, 2 special administrative regions (2019)

France

35,885 municipalities (1855)

101 departments

18 regions

Germany

11,092 municipalities (7320)

402 districts

16 states

Greece

325 municipalities (33,410) –

13 regions

India

250,671 local bodies (5167)

–

28 states, 7 territories

Indonesia

508 regencies and cities (500,894)

–

34 provinces

Ireland

3 city councils, 2 city and county unitary councils and 26 country councils (149,530)

–

–

Italy

8047 municipalities, including 14 metropolitan cities (7545)

107 provinces

20 regions

Japan

1718 municipalities and 23 – special wards within Tokyo (72,715)

47 prefectures, including Tokyo Metropolis

Mexico

2457 municipalities (45,740)

31 states, 1 federal district

Portugal

308 municipalities (33,400) –

2 autonomous regions

Spain

8119 municipalities (5605) 50 provinces

17 autonomous communities

UK

389 local authorities (166,060)

26 counties, Greater London Authority, 10 combined authorities (2019)

3 devolved nations

US

35,879 municipalities, towns, townships (8990)

3031 counties

50 states, 1 federal district

–

Source OECD and United Cities and Local Government (2016)

Regional/State level

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Germany) have powerful sub-national, regional tiers of elected government with budgetary and legislative powers and the right to levy taxes. In ‘classic’ unitary states (e.g. Greece, Ireland and Portugal), any regional tiers are not elected, have no budgetary powers and no right to levy taxes—meaning that all financial resources are transferred from the centre. In between these two extremes are two intermediate types of system, in which the regional level has some decision-making power about how to allocate national transfers within their territories. In regionalised states (e.g. Spain and Italy) a regional level has an elected parliament with limited budgetary powers and limited rights to levy taxes. In devolving unitary states (e.g. the UK and France), the process of devolution—a type of decentralisation in which national governments transfer authority to elected forms of sub-national government—has created elected regional parliaments (such as for Scotland and Wales since 1999) which also have limited budgetary powers and limited rights to levy taxes. In the UK and Spain, some regions also have strong national identities which bolster demands for self-government. For example, three of Spain’s 17 regional ‘autonomous communities’ are described as ‘historic nationalities’ because they have their own language and culture. Two of these, Catalonia and the Basque Country, have strong nationalist movements which seek independence from Spain. What do these varied structures mean for the local level? A key point is made in a (pre-devolution) comparison between the UK’s centralised system, which has a strong tradition of direct national government intervention (exemplified by the Keynesian welfare state), and the US’s decentralised system, characterised by limited higher level intervention in the local level. In the UK, local government is a ‘creature of central government’ (Wolman and Goldsmith 1990), meaning that any powers it has have been specifically authorised at national level. In the UK there have been attempts to shift power (or at least responsibilities) downwards—with devolution and in terms of the ‘new localisms’ examined below—but the locus of power remains firmly at the national level. In the US (like the Canadian and Australian) federal system, local government is a creature of state (regional level) government, which therefore determines local level powers. But, as many US states grant their local governments varying degrees of general competencies through ‘home rule’ provisions (the principle of self-government by localities), the locus of authority and responsibility sits at the local level. This key difference between the two countries’ governmental systems is core to arguments that urban regime theory is inapplicable to UK cities as US cities have comparative political autonomy (Davies 2004). Given the value accorded to ‘the right of cities to self-rule’ (Judd and Swanstrom 2008: 5), permissive state laws have historically required very low population thresholds in order for new municipalities to be incorporated (acquiring the right to tax, educate and police), resulting in a comparatively high number of local governments (see Table 5.1). However, though local government has relatively greater powers in the US, its ability to exercise these is extremely constrained by its ‘fiscal squeeze’ as it lacks the revenue to deliver its responsibilities. Austerity governance has been the norm for city governments since the 1970s (Chapter 3).

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In contrast, within the federal systems of Canada and Australia, the local government level is in a relatively weak position as a ‘creature’ of regional government (provinces, states or territories) whilst lacking ‘home rule’ provisions. In Australia, local government does not play a substantial role in the country’s governing arrangements, in part due to its comparatively narrow range of functions (Aulich 2005). Collective services such as policing, fire protection, schools and public housing are provided by state government. In both highly urbanised countries, a link is perceived between cities being the responsibility of regional governments and the lack of priority accorded to cities at the national level. However, the national state can intervene when it chooses, particularly in terms of providing funds for major urban infrastructure projects deemed to be in the national interest (such as airports). Australia’s extreme ‘vertical fiscal imbalance’ (whereby the national level collects most taxation revenue, well in excess of its expenditure responsibilities) means that states depend on grants for nearly half their revenue (Tomlinson 2017). This enables national government, when it chooses, to have a say in policy areas which in theory under the country’s constitution are matters for the states. For example, highly contested major road projects such as the East West Link in Melbourne, Perth’s Roe 8 highway extension and Sydney’s West Connex show how state priorities are greatly influenced by funded federal priorities (Pill and Rogers 2019). China is a distinctive example. Since the economic reforms of the 1980s, marketdriven land and planning policies and urban boosterism (Chapter 3) have consolidated the power of party elites in cities throughout the country’s urban hierarchy. The priority status accorded to urbanisation is clear in scalar territorial designation and in the assignment of functions and rights. At the district municipality level, which has the right to prepare urban plans and issue land use and building permits, the allocation of land has created alliances between local state officials and private developers (Wu 2004). Four of the country’s most significant urban areas (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing) have been accorded the status of province-municipalities, the highest level of sub-national government. China also has nearly 300 prefecture-level cities at the intermediate tier between the level of the province and district (see Table 5.1). Achieving the goal of rapid urbanisation is aided by the relative ease in which a oneparty authoritarian state, which holds the monopoly on land ownership, can easily appropriate land for development and quickly realise infrastructure megaprojects (such as the world’s longest high-speed rail network, which connects the capital Beijing with Guangzhou on the south coast).

Cities in the Rescaled State Research on the changing role of the national state (Brenner 1998; Jessop et al. 1999) underpinned research into how certain city-regions emerged as powerful nodes in both sub-national and global political economies (Scott 2001; Scott and Storper 2003; Taylor 2000). At the global level, the identification of new scales of urbanisation which stretch beyond any single metropolitan region and often traverse

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multiple national boundaries (Brenner and Schmid 2012) has fuelled subsequent debates about planetary urbanisation (Chapter 2). Examples of such ‘urban galaxies’ include ‘BosWash’ (Boston-Washington DC); ‘San San’ (San Francisco-San Diego) in California; the ‘blue banana’ encompassing Western Europe’s major urbanised regions; the Pearl River Delta in south China, as well as several incipient megaurban regions in Latin America and South Asia. Several, such as the Yangtze River Delta (Shanghai Municipality and neighbouring provinces) in China, population 115 million; or Greater Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolis and neighbouring prefectures) in Japan, population 38 million, form territories which generate more economic activity than entire countries. But our focus here is on the role of cities within the national state—and how the city (in the narrow, municipal sense) became regarded as ‘less an appropriate or viable unit of local social organisation than city-regions’ (Scott 2001: 11). At the subnational scale, downward shifts in the state territorial hierarchy may be constructed as more democratic and responsive, with government ‘closer to the people’, as well as a way of seeking to spatially rebalance uneven regional development. But in critical terms these shifts are associated with the rise of neoliberal ideals of the competitive city (and city-region), due to the ‘changing internal structure of the state, as the responsibility for some of its functions [are] rescaled, licensed out to non-elected agencies or simply rationalised’ (Ward 2000: 173). In these interpretations, city-regionalism is a top-down phenomenon delivered primarily through neoliberal changes at national government level (McGuirk 2007). As national states devolved responsibilities whilst reducing fiscal transfers, urban and regional governing institutions sought to ensure their areas could compete in the wider global economy whilst also delivering broader neoliberal policies. As we have seen, prioritising pro-growth, entrepreneurial competitiveness became accepted as ‘common sense’. This has been accompanied in many countries by the creation of new, city-regional territories, conceptualised as the most efficient state space to realise economic development and growth, with associated city-regional governance structures (which may or may not comprise a level of government assigned with specific rights and functions, and which may or may not be directly elected and accountable). Therefore, from the perspective of the city, governance has been rescaled—upwards to the city-region; as well as downwards as cities become more fragmented and privatised (examined later).

New Regionalisms In the shift to increasingly neoliberal and competitive modes of co-ordinating the economy and society, the local and regional state—and thus the governance of the city—has been rescaled and reconfigured. The prime example is the rise of the cityregion as a state-designated ‘functional economic area’, combined with ‘new regionalisms’ seeking to promote greater collaboration amongst fragmented governments and agencies, as well as private and perhaps civil society actors.

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City-regions are framed as engines of national productivity, vital to capturing global flows of finance, elite workers and investment and to fostering agglomeration economies. Along with related notions such as of the competitive and creative city, these policy constructs have been—and continue to be—very influential globally. City-regionalism has been championed by international organisations. The OECD explains that ‘policies for regions are most effective when infrastructure investment, spatial planning and regional economic development policies are well co-ordinated with each other’ (OECD 2010). Research it has sponsored stresses that ‘cities with fragmented governance structures have lower levels of productivity’ (Ahrend et al. 2014). Critical interpretations describe these changes as a ‘state territorial fix’ to enable the ‘competition state’ (Ward and Jonas 2004). The origins of the city-region concept lie in attempts from the 1950s onwards to develop a more efficient state space for the delivery of strategic infrastructure and collective provision, manifested in attempts at metropolitan level strategic planning (Chapter 4). These approaches have been revalorised under city-regionalism, but the bounds of the city-region extend beyond those of the metropolitan area. Cityregions are defined functionally in terms of the ‘economic footprint’ of the city, as represented by its labour market. In Australia, for example, Greater Capital City Statistical Areas are designed to represent the functional extent of the country’s state capitals by using census travel-to-work data to bound the area in terms of the majority of its commuting population, which is not contained within the built-up urban area. This contrasts with definitions of the ‘municipal city’—the bounded, local government area, which forms only the central part of the built-up urban area (for example, the City of Sydney); and the ‘metropolitan city’, which comprises several local governments which cover the built-up urban area. The policy logic is that administrative boundaries do not relate to people’s everyday lives and how they criss-cross boundaries to get to work, shop, and be entertained and educated. City-regions—conceived as the motors of economic development and thus the ideal scale at which economic competitiveness can be fostered and maintained (Brenner 2002)—lead to an emphasis not on self-contained city government but rather on higher-scale forms of city-regional governance. There is an extensive literature on the functional features of global cities (really global city-regions) and why they are crucial to the operation of the international economy (e.g. Sassen 2001, 2005). In turn, national states use ‘economic powerhouse’ arguments about the contribution made by (often capital) city-regions to the national as well as global economy to justify downward transfers of resources, such as for major infrastructure provision, and perhaps the transfer of powers like the ability to levy taxes to associated governance structures. Such spatial focus channels resources away from other regions and ‘ordinary’ cities that may have formerly benefited from state-redistributive policies. McGuirk’s (2007) study of Sydney illustrates how the economic powerhouse argument is deployed by city-region business and political elites seeking to draw down resources. In this example, national neoliberal reforms (such as market liberalisation and deregulation) were not place-targeted, but did help nurture ‘a loosely allied discourse community of strategic political actors including state agencies,

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local government, business groups and newly formed coalitions of business leaders’ (McGuirk 2007: 181). These elites promoted the Sydney city-region as Australia’s ‘golden egg’, lobbying for policy changes that could protect and enhance this national status. Similarly in London, the pro-growth business-led coalition London First, representing many of the global companies headquartered in the city, aligned with the agenda of the national state by endorsing creation of the Greater London Authority to advance the competitiveness agenda. The restructuring of Toronto, Canada’s governance was critically interpreted as it being ‘moulded into a competitive city defined by a complex of class alliances and political coalitions, neoliberal planning and economic policies’ (Keil and Kipfer 2002: 229). In the US, the political impetus mostly derived from state governments and big city mayors seeking to make their city-regions more economically competitive, not least given the co-ordination challenge amongst dozens of municipalities (see Table 5.1), but also school boards, transit and port authorities and state and federal agencies. The call for new regionalist approaches was intensified by the ‘fiscal crisis’ widespread amongst major US cities by the 1980s, compounded as the majority of those employed in the (municipal city) core contribute their income taxes to (metropolitan) suburban jurisdictions given the historical pattern of urban development. However, in the US— compared to elsewhere and especially Europe—there has been little enthusiasm for the creation of city-regional government or governance structures (see boxes). This can be related to the political fragmentation of metropolitan areas, and how this is rooted in deeply held notions of a constitutional entitlement to self-govern (‘home rule’). National level attempts to encourage co-ordination are far less interventionist and modest, the most recent being the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant Program which provided funds for regional actors to develop regional plans that sought to join up housing, transport and environmental policy (Gough and Reece 2017).

Space of Flows or Space of Places Critical themes emerge that underscore the tension between the goals of efficiency (and the functional need for co-ordination) and goals of equity, as well as the scope for local autonomy and democracy in governing cities. A useful approach is to contrast the city-region as a ‘space of flows’ or a ‘space of places’. This derives from Castells’ description of the emergence of a ‘network society’, in which he questioned the continued importance of place in describing ‘the historical emergence of the space of flows, superseding the meaning of the space of places’ (Castells 1989: 348). Both academic and policy literatures have tended to construct city-regions as ‘spaces of flows’ which are thus in competition to capture and benefit from global flows of investment and labour and to draw down national state funding for major or megaprojects. These accounts focus on the economic-functional needs of cities rather than on state collective provision and distributional struggles, though city-regions

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are also sites of social reproduction, ‘spaces of places’ where people’s everyday experiences determine their quality of life (Ward and Jonas 2004). Understanding of a city-regional politics of collective consumption is lacking— though distributional issues of infrastructure, housing, land use and other matters of collective provision are central not only to issues of equity. They are also fundamental to the competitiveness of city-regions, as captured in debates about the productivity gains from affordable housing provision, and in the ‘redistributive compromises’ McGuirk (2007) described as necessary to further Sydney as a global city (Chapter 4). Overall, however, the political impetus for and thus overriding priority of city-regionalism has been economic competitiveness rather than to mitigate the inequities of what Brenner (2002: 3) described in the US as the ‘socio-spatial polarisation and uneven geographical development that have been crystallising in US cityregions under conditions of post-Fordist urban restructuring and neoliberal (national and local) state retrenchment’. In turn, the challenge of reconciling the ‘space of flows’ and the ‘space of places’ is captured in the territorial mismatch between (higher scale) spaces which align with the functional need for co-ordination (efficiency) and (lower scale) spaces which align with the territorial identity of communities of place and their demands for self-rule (democratic accountability). What Parker (2011) describes as the elision of ‘community’ with territory is a common feature of policy discourse used to affirm the validity of state spaces to govern. But do people identify themselves as residents of an abstracted Greater London, Sydney or Tokyo functional economic area? People have the strongest attachments to place at the local and sub-local level in cities, and as it is at this level that people live their everyday lives. Though Castells (1989) questioned the continuing relevance of place, much of life remains place-based and place can thus become a source of alternatives and resistance to the ‘place-less’ space of flows (Hambleton 2015), considered further in Chapter 6. Even when focusing solely on efficiency goals, reconciling the ‘space of flows’ and the ‘space of places’ in the sense of the bounds of government remains a challenge. The mismatch between the bounds of existing (metropolitan) city jurisdictions and the functionally defined city-region is illustrated by Vogel et al.’s (2010) comparative research into six global city-regions (three of which are compared in Table 5.2). All are governed by a metropolitan city government (with constituent local governments), the boundaries of which were extended in the twentieth century to capture urban growth on the cities’ fringes. But, with the exception of Shanghai, the city-region now extends far beyond the boundaries of the metropolitan city. Shanghai Municipality, as a regional government, does govern the larger city-region territory, illustrating the status accorded by China’s one-party state to its global cities and the state’s ability to impose its policy preferences. In contrast, New York city-region’s high number of ‘local governments’ in Table 5.2 affirms the particular co-ordination challenge posed by the political fragmentation of the localist, home rule US—comprising not only municipalities across three states but other agencies with considerable responsibility for raising their own revenues.

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Table 5.2 Comparing cities and city-regions City

New York

London

Shanghai

Population

8.4 m

7.6 m

18.15 m

Land area

km2

Government

785

1572

6340

City of New York (5 boroughs)

Greater London Authority (32 boroughs and Corporation of London)

Shanghai Municipality (17 urban and one rural district)

18.8 m

21 m

18.15 m

39,751

6340

City-region Population

Land area km2 12,615 Government

2000 forms of National government seeks Shanghai Municipality (special local to co-ordinate status of province) government in parts of 3 states

Source Adapted from Vogel et al. (2010: 8)

Competitive City-Regionalism in Practice Competitive city-regionalism has promoted a variety of institutional realignments seeking to minimise destructive forms of competition between municipalities, coordinate planning and policy, and create new frameworks to stimulate and manage economic development (Brenner 2019: 227). In other words, the main political response has been to try and secure a better alignment between functional economic areas and governance structures through rescaling, which asserts the dominance of goals of economic agglomeration and capital accumulation rather than democratic control and distributive justice (Jonas and Moisio 2018). Responses range from creating new forms of government with specific rights and responsibilities, as in Shanghai’s regional government (above) and the consolidated metropolitan governments of Paris and Manchester (see box); to forms of governance of varying types, such as a government agency with a devolved budget and responsibilities overseen by a directly elected assembly (Stuttgart). Responsibilities centre on the functional need for co-ordination, with strategic planning, including for employment uses, housing, transport and environmental issues, to the fore. All the examples in the boxes are European, reflecting the relative enthusiasm for the creation of city-regional governance arrangements and the role of the European Union in valorising and supporting these (e.g. Keating 1998). A key principle of governance in the European Union is ‘subsidiarity’, or the devolution of decisionmaking authority to the lowest level where it can be effectively executed. With the overriding prioritisation of economic growth and competitiveness, the city-regional level is presented as the lowest level of government which should have responsibility and funding to effectively pursue these goals.

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Early Examples of City-Region Governance Stuttgart, Germany: the city-region’s population of 2.6 million lives in 179 municipalities. The early 1990s economic recession triggered debates about the need to strategically plan for and thus develop a governance structure to enable co-ordination across the city-region. When its constituent municipalities failed to agree a solution, the Baden-Wurttemberg Land (state) government intervened to create the Verband Region Stuttgart in 1994. As a public agency, it is tasked with strategic planning, but also economic development and public transport, the duty for which was transferred from state government. Accountable political oversight is provided by a Regional Assembly of 90 members—notable as the first directly elected city-region assembly in Europe. The Randstad, the Netherlands: a polycentric urban agglomeration in the western Netherlands, comprising Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and several smaller cities located across four provinces, with a population of 7 million. In its territorial review, the OECD (2007) concluded: ‘The Randstad does not seem to exploit well the proximity among the four large cities, and does not represent an integrated functional urban system… Changing the governance framework is a key condition of success’. National legislation created an additional city-regional level so that provinces could enforce co-operation between municipalities for spatial planning, housing, transport, economic development and the environment. However, in practice city-regional governance has proved weak within the Dutch governmental system, which is predicated on the self-government of provinces and municipalities (Lambregts et al. 2008). It has also been subject to changing levels of national state support given pressures to maintain government which is ‘close to the people’.

The principle of subsidiarity notwithstanding, the examples of the forms taken by city-regions considered above (the early adopters) and below (consolidated metropolitan governments) illustrate the national state’s power in shaping the bounds of and associated governance structures for this level, whether by direct intervention, new national enabling legislation or the deployment of incentives such as funding for major transport infrastructure that are too good to refuse, leading to (perhaps grudging) co-operation by lower levels. The city-regional governance arrangements pursued therefore highlight the conflicts—about political autonomy amongst vertical state territorial hierarchies, and about territorial identity. The tensions in creating new levels of governance are clear, as these pose a threat to the power vested in existing higher levels, even when encouraged from the ‘top down’ (as in the case of The Randstad), as well as to the power vested in lower levels (as in Stuttgart and Paris). The examples also show a range of attempts, from weak to relatively strong, to retain some form of democratic accountability between upscaled city-regional governance and its constituent communities of place which tend to identify with lower-scale localities. These conflicts, tensions and challenges led Scott (2019: 570) to observe ‘it is probably fair to say that no actual city-region in the world today has succeeded in constructing a stable, durable, and comprehensive framework of governance, no matter what its organizational form’.

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Consolidated Metropolitan Governments Paris, France: the city-region’s population of 7.5 million lives in 131 communes (municipalities). Debates arose about the need to co-ordinate across government levels (communes, départements and regions) to maintain and strengthen Greater Paris’ global city status. In 2010, the National Assembly considered a proposal for a consolidated metropolitan government with decision-making authority and a budget. This was opposed by the Île de France region (which encompasses the city-region plus a further 5 million residents) and the City of Paris, the two governments whose power was most under threat. However, all the major actors agreed on one element—an expanded transit network that would double the length of the Paris Métro by 2030, a powerful incentive for co-operation, aided by introduction of a form of place-based deal (below) which set housing and economic development targets proximate to new metro stations (Gallez 2014). The resultant governance compromise was creation in 2016 of La Métropole du Grand Paris (Greater Paris Metropolitan Authority), an elected metropolitan assembly of 209 councillors. The constituent communes have been restructured into agglomerations of at least 300,000 people. These ‘agglos’ are assuming joint decisionmaking responsibility for housing projects, local planning, local utilities and climate action, along with the custodianship of major sports venues (including those for the forthcoming prestige event to be hosted in Paris, the 2024 Olympics). Manchester, UK: the city-region comprises 10 local government areas with a total population of 2.7 million. In contrast to the reticence amongst some municipalities in the examples above, these local governments have worked together voluntarily since the 1990s on regional transport, regeneration, and attracting inward investment (Harding et al. 2010), and joined with other UK city-regions to lobby at national level for the decentralisation of powers and responsibilities. Such ‘bottom up’ commitment, combined with ‘top down’ state rescaling, led to national legislation that enabled creation of combined authorities. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority has a range of powers and associated devolved budgets regarding planning and transport, but also housing, police, fire, skills, justice and health. It is gradually acquiring further powers, such as to create new self-financing mechanisms. Political oversight is provided by the elected leaders of the 10 constituent local governments jointly with (since 2017) a directly elected ‘metro mayor’ enabled by further national legislative change.

A non-European example—Sydney, Australia—is distinctive as its form of cityregionalism lacks the decentralisation of state powers such as for public transport or revenue-raising, and it is not accompanied by the creation of an elected, representative form of consolidated city-regional government, thus lacking a way to enable voice about planning, resource allocation and major strategic issues. Since 2015, strategic planning for Greater Sydney, with a population of 5.1 million across 35 local government areas, has been the responsibility of an organisation created and funded by the New South Wales state government, the Greater Sydney Commission. In the Australian federal government structure, the power to create city-regional governments lies with the states. But as with its European counterparts, creation of such new forms is perceived as posing a threat to state and federal power, as well as to already weak local governments that resist amalgamation on the basis of efficiency.

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Thus in Australia, state governments’ pursuit of global city competitiveness is not accompanied by decentralisation. Indeed, the national level is seeking to assert itself at the state and local level via its translation of a UK policy instrument (City Deals) to realise major infrastructure projects.

Place-Based Deals In the UK and elsewhere, the development of intergovernmental contracts, typically between higher (national or state) and lower (state or local/municipality) levels of government which also provide a basis for engaging non-governmental agencies and organisations in forms of horizontal co-ordination, have been presented as a form of decentralisation. The policy logic deployed is that such ‘deals’ bring together separate powers, responsibilities, funds, programs and expertise—which often straddle different levels of government as well as portfolio responsibilities—into a ‘package’ that reflects place-based conditions and priorities (Barca 2009). By their very nature as conditional, performance-related contracts primarily seeking to bolster economic growth and productivity, deals are a policy instrument easily aligned with neoliberal ideologies in which the role of the state is conceived as market-enabling. Deals are a quintessential entrepreneurial policy instrument, implying innovation and speculation on the part of the entrepreneurial local state (O’Brien and Pike 2019). Deals combine with other entrepreneurial instruments (detailed in Chapter 4) with expectations of self-financing and that partnership working will achieve more efficient cross-scalar co-ordination. But the deployment of ‘top down’ vertical power is clear—deals are conditional on what objectives are agreed and the creation of institutions in place to realise these, which can then negotiate for additional powers and resources. In our terms, the overriding imperative is efficiency—to facilitate economic growth and development, often measured in terms of increasing the area’s economic productivity. Considerations of equity are certainly not to the fore. But the examples now examined also illustrate that whilst global imperatives and neoliberal ideologies encourage competitive city-regionalism, particularities of national, regional and local politics and institutions intervene and combine in different ways—policies are translated, not transferred (Chapter 4). In the UK, City Deals are a form of place-based deal presented as a partnership between national government and city-regions, where constituent groupings of local governments identify economic development opportunities, often associated with major transport infrastructure provision, and strike a deal with national government to secure the powers and funding needed to realise these opportunities. Some of the financing structures are predicated (like TIFs, Chapter 4) on the uplift in property values close to transport developments. City Deals form part of a broader package of ‘devolution deals’, premised on the devolution of powers down the state scalar hierarchy to new governance structures—combined authorities of local governments with political leadership provided by directly elected ‘metro mayors’. As of 2019, ten combined authorities have been established in England (see Table 5.1)—eight

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of which have metro mayors, covering a population of 12 million (nearly 20% of England’s population). Greater Manchester, the most advanced example, was the first city-region to sign a City Deal with national government in 2012. This and subsequent deals have enabled a £1.2 billion local transport infrastructure fund, predicated in part on gaining further funds from national government when agreed growth targets are met; job apprenticeships and skills training; and a Housing Investment Fund to develop (private) housing. It has also committed to reducing carbon emissions. Critical interpretations describe the ‘Manchester model’ as based on ‘financialised residential and commercial property development’, with limited ability to provide widely distributed social benefits (Moran et al. 2018: 213) such as prioritising social housing and lower public transport fares. The emerging self-funding fiscal model, drawing on the retention of taxes paid by local businesses and land value capture mechanisms, relies heavily on further concentrated commercial and residential property development. Therefore whilst powers and responsibilities have been decentralised, the reliance on the ability to meet the economic productivity terms of the ‘deal’ with the national level, and increasingly to self-generate funds, constrains the extent to which place-based leadership has autonomy in determining the balance between efficiency and equity. The UK City Deal approach (and in particular, ‘the Manchester model’) has been translated in Australia. City Deals were included in the national government’s urban policy statement as partnerships between federal, state and local government to ‘drive national priorities tailored to local needs’ (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 2016). But in contrast, in Australia powers are not devolved, and representative associated governance forms are lacking. For example, the Western Sydney City Deal (2018), a place-based funding agreement between federal government, the New South Wales state and eight local governments, seeks to create a ‘a liveable 30-minute city, with infrastructure and facilities that bring residents closer to jobs, services, education and the world’ (Department of Infrastructure 2019: 1). Its key drivers are realisation of the federal government priority megaproject of a new airport in Western Sydney, and improved connectivity centred on a new rail link. But it lacks both decentralised powers to raise funds and also ‘downwards’ accountability measures other than those provided through existing (weak) local government. Though the terminology deployed is similar, the UK and Australian versions of City Deals have different state rescaling rationales underpinning the approaches implemented. In the UK, critical scholars locate City Deals as one element of the larger and longer process of state rescaling in operation since the 1990s, interpreted as enabling neoliberal ideals of the ‘competition state’, sweetened by limited increases in lower-level democratic control. Decentralisation is being undertaken in a context of austerity—the downscaling of government responsibilities, leaving city-regions to ‘fend more for themselves’ and enabling the nation state to shift blame down the scalar hierarchy whilst London continues to disproportionately benefit from public subsidy (for example, a single bus fare is nearly three times cheaper in London than Manchester). Amidst unprecedented reductions in public expenditure, local actors have little choice but to engage (Pike et al. 2016). This leads some scholars to highlight that though decentralisation rhetoric is deployed, managerialism and

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centralism underpin how the UK central state orchestrates, makes and manages deals (O’Brien and Pike 2019), firmly retaining the role of metagovernor (Chapter 3). In turn, in Australia, City Deals are critiqued for being about realising national government’s neoliberal priorities of major infrastructure provision, and thus as a policy instrument are being deployed as a tool of centralisation—despite urban policy ostensibly being the policy domain of state government (Tomlinson 2017).

New Localisms Sub-nationally, scholars also identified ‘new localisms’ as a result of state rescaling processes. As a putative policy construct encouraged by mainstream scholarship in the US, ‘new localism’ has been used to describe the efforts of local ‘government, business, philanthropy, universities, and the broader community’ (Katz and Nowak 2018) to spur economic growth. It thus ascribes some autonomy to local or urban politics, inferring that the local level has power as well as responsibilities. Critiques reiterate those levelled at urban regime theory, describing the ‘so-called new localism’ as not resulting from local self-determination and leadership but as ‘the political expression of multi-scalar state strategies’ (Brenner 2019: 23). In these critical interpretations, new localism refers to the now familiar competitive city form of urban governance, in which the commonality of entrepreneurial policies (Chapter 4) means, paradoxically, that ‘unlocal’ strategies are pursued (Peck and Tickell 1994). Whilst it is important not to discount the progressive and radical possibilities of local action—stemming from local elites and/or citizens (Chapter 6)—the term ‘new localism’ is not used in critical scholarship in this regard. In the highly centralised UK, it is unsurprising that the terms ‘localism’ and ‘new localism’ feature significantly in policy discourse about decentralisation— wherein normative appeals are made about the importance of the local level, closest to the people, whilst furthering neoliberal ideals of self-reliance. Whilst localism can be thought of as a relatively recent trend in the UK, its ideas are rooted in a long history (Wills 2016). The roots of the modern notion of localism lie in the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s Thatcher government to counter the centralisation of the post-war welfare state in the belief that centralised bureaucracy compromised market functioning and government efficiency. As market-discipline was imposed on public service delivery through New Public Management, central-local government relations became increasingly antagonistic, with central government and its agencies acting as strategic overseer. The first New Labour government (1997–2001) retained local government in a strict delivery relationship with the centre (Stoker 2004). But by its second term in office, the notion of ‘new localism’ was deployed to present an alternative. It was ‘new’ as it drew on the perceived benefits of community network governance, requiring local government to work in partnership with communities and other stakeholders, and was accompanied by local government reform, with expectations

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that community strategies were prepared, and Local Strategic Partnerships established (Chapter 3) to enable ‘place shaping’ (Chapter 4). But it remained set in a ‘context of national framework setting and funding’ (Stoker 2004). With the election of the (Conservative-Liberal) Coalition government in 2010, continuities were evident in terms of the retention of locally distinctive policymaking by those with greater contextual understanding. But New Labour’s performance management had sought to assure baseline standards for public services with additional resources allocated accordingly—localities had to ‘earn autonomy’ given the priority accorded to equity. Under the Coalition, the link between service outcomes and local resource availability was decoupled. Local variation was presented as an outcome of local priorities—‘presumed autonomy’ (Coaffee 2005). These variants of localism illustrate the ‘strategic dilemmas integral to governing’ (Davies 2008) which necessitate trade-offs between equity and efficiency, and choice and control. The New Labour variant sought to achieve a balance by enforcing national standards in service provision, therefore diluting localism with centralisation. The Coalition variant was less concerned with equity but did not accompany its localism with the powers for the local level to meet its greater responsibilities. The national Localism Act (HM Government 2011) ostensibly increased the power vested at the local (and sub-local) level by introducing community rights to challenge and bid to take over public service delivery and manage community assets such as libraries and pubs. But this downscaling of responsibility was not accompanied by resource, as the central state cut its funding to local government in England by a third (Pill and Bailey 2014). Critical interpretations see the decentralisation of localism as placing the onus on local governments (and communities) to self-help, aligning with neoliberal values where ‘big government’ is presented as suppressing the capacities of local communities for self-determination. Such shifts affirm the salience of arguments that posit the localist, home rule US as a harbinger for cities elsewhere. As with other policy constructs (Chapter 4), localism is used instrumentally as a political strategy, justified in policy discourse as stemming from normative concerns about the power inequalities of central-local intergovernmental relationships in the UK. In actuality, localism is deployed as part of the ongoing process of state rescaling which in this case involves bounding and ‘responsibilising’ localities and their communities of place. Thus whilst the Coalition’s policies were seen as showing ‘traces of an ideological commitment to localism’, critical interpretations described policies as a product of ‘savage public spending cuts and the need to externalise responsibility for performance failure’ as much as ‘a principled commitment to more autonomous local governance’ (Lowndes and Pratchett 2012: 22, 38). This constrains the ‘shaping’ role of local government envisaged under ‘community network governance’ (Stoker 2011) as it lacks the requisite additional powers and resources to do so (Chapter 3).

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The Neighbourhood Our consideration of sub-national scales culminates at the scale below that of local government—the neighbourhood. As with all scales, the neighbourhood is socially constructed, by those who live there and by the state according to its priorities. The neighbourhood has a long history as a scale created for top-down state intervention, but also as a resident-identified site for bottom-up action (considered more fully in Chapter 6). Different constructions of the neighbourhood have different purposes, rationales and justifications (see for example Lowndes and Sullivan 2008)—and therefore different territorial bounds and associated governance arrangements.

Defining Neighbourhood and Associated Forms of Governance Certainly, policy has long understood the importance of neighbourhoods as ‘units of identity and action’ (Chaskin and Abunimah 1999: 60). But in considering the construction of ‘neighbourhood’, scholars contrast the lower scale at which residents tend to identify their neighbourhood with the higher scales constructed by the state for political and managerial purposes (Kearns and Parkinson 2001; Power 2004), replicating the mismatch between territories designed for functional purposes versus those reflecting the territorial identity of communities of place. The ‘home area’ of the home and immediate neighbours is where people organise their private lives. In contrast, the larger territory of a ‘neighbourhood environment’ is the scale delineated for public service provision, such as waste collection and primary education, which is also often a political unit (for example, a city government ward or district with elected councillors). This territory is also often the one deployed for the purpose of specific ‘area interventions’ (below). It in turn is encompassed by a larger ‘urban district’ that provides broader social and employment opportunities. This conception is deployed in metropolitan strategic planning (Chapter 4) as a way of better co-ordinating and connecting where people live with what they do, but is a scale with which people do not generally identify as ‘where they live’, and is generally too large a territory for managerial, public service delivery purposes. Neighbourhoods are subject to their multi-scaled governance context, but may also have neighbourhood-based forms of governance, including formal government (such as community councils) with tax-raising powers and responsibilities; local state-created sub-local governance structures such as neighbourhood forums (Burns et al. 1994; Berry et al. 1993), often focused on service delivery; as well as initiative governance structures resulting from area interventions, which may involve residents along with service providers and elected representatives. In these formal forms of governance ‘neighbourhood space and identity are shaped by the agendas of a broader set of stakeholders’ beyond its residents (Fraser 2004: 438). In turn, there may be informal, ‘bottom up’ governance structures, such as residents’ associations, often associated with attempts to resist redevelopment and densification (Chapter 4),

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along with private forms of governance such as the homeowner associations of gated communities. These may or may not align with other territorial designations used for managerial or political purposes. Overall, the purposes and priorities of neighbourhood-based forms of governance are subject to a wide range of interpretations, ranging from being part of a devolutionary, empowerment strategy, to a way of co-opting communities into neoliberal priorities, or as a discharge strategy passing responsibility to them. In policy discourse, ‘neighbourhood’ is often conflated with ‘the community’ as ‘in urban policy practice a community is generally simply understood to incorporate those who live in a particular locality’ (Cochrane 2007: 48). This conflation supports the conceptualisation of the neighbourhood as a site and scale of proximity and interaction between citizens, service providers and decision-makers—with the local state’s role conceptualised as developing devolved and responsive governing and service delivery structures and processes. Certainly consideration of a neighbourhood scale of urban living has been a recurring feature of urban policy (Edwards and Imrie 2015)—highlighting the prevalence of the ‘governance of daily life, neighbourhood and residence in urban politics’ (McGuirk and Dowling 2011).

Area Interventions Use of the neighbourhood as a spatial scale for intervention by higher levels of government has long been a dominant feature of urban policy. ‘Area interventions’ seek to intervene in the problems associated with a place. But conceiving the urban problem as place-based leads to identifying the people resident within the place as part of the problem, including their values, attitudes and lifestyles (Edwards and Imrie 2015). As introduced in Chapter 4, if urban problems are framed as resulting from the characteristics of specific places, policies focus on the place but also on the people who live there (Cochrane 2007; Imbroscio 2013a). The history of urban policy is replete with examples of such interventions, which the following review of the intertwined development of US and UK policies illustrates. The evolution of area interventions at neighbourhood level tracks broader changes in the organisation of the economy and society—and related shifts in how our cities are governed, by whom and for whom. In the US, a variety of neighbourhood-level initiatives aimed at ‘problem’ places included the Community Action Program (CAP) of the 1960s (introduced as a response to the ‘rebellion of the poor’, Chapter 4). The programme’s remit was to provide services to those in need, notably with the ‘maximum feasible participation’ (Arnstein 1969) of the poor residents of neighbourhoods targeted. In turn, the UK’s Community Development Projects, inspired by the US’s CAP, were regarded as the ‘high water mark’ of local involvement in area interventions (Foley and Martin 2000). But the neo-Marxist critique developed by the programmes’ local teams questioned the assumption that such action at the local level could tackle the wider challenge of economic restructuring (Taylor 1995). Both approaches, which led to radical critique

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of the status quo, became regarded as a threat by higher levels of government and were short-lived—though they did inspire subsequent grassroots political activism and community organising seeking to empower those marginalised in the urban economy and society. However, in the following decades, neighbourhood-based organisations with their roots in this period became increasingly enmeshed in and dependent upon managerial local service delivery relationships (as public services were contracted out) which tended to compromise and supplant their community organising and advocacy efforts. By the 1980s the policy shift to an economic and property-led focus to tackling the ‘urban problem’ was reflected in the rise of entrepreneurial area interventions such as tax-subsidised zones (Chapter 4), mirrored in the UK (though here central government took much more direct control, bypassing local government in the process). Local residents were not directly targeted—if considered at all it was as potential beneficiaries from the trickle down of wealth generated—and became increasingly alienated. However, by the 1990s the underpinning social pathology rationale—of poor people taking responsibility for their plight by changing their behaviour and attitudes—was more explicitly reasserted in a renewed focus on the people within problem places. In his book, ‘The truly disadvantaged’, Wilson (1987) described jobless US neighbourhoods isolated from social networks that provide opportunities for social mobility. The neighbourhood became increasingly regarded ‘as an important setting for many of the processes which supposedly shape social identity and life chances’ (Forrest and Kearns 2001: 2125). The ‘neighbourhood effects’ literature which resulted found that people’s life chances within poor places are constrained by lack of job opportunities and social networks, which might otherwise provide support for people to gain access to employment, and that people are exposed to criminality and social disorder, which does not provide ‘positive role model behaviour’ (Goetz and Chapple 2010: 210). The overall conclusion—that neighbourhoods of concentrated poverty have a negative effect on life opportunities (for example, Ellen and Turner 1997)—was very influential in both area intervention and broader policies. Conceptualising the urban problem as the shaping of life opportunities by individual character became a dominant theme of policy prognoses. In terms of area interventions, people in problem places were framed as ‘difficult populations’, deemed to pose a threat to the social order, who did not comply ‘with the norms of the market’ (Dikeç 2007: 25). Area interventions therefore sought to remedy local deficiencies including people lacking the skills and education to compete in job markets. The primary target of area interventions was concentrations of ‘problem people’, often in mass housing schemes (the result of earlier state interventions) located in peripheral parts of cities and in which poor, often ethnic minority communities were segregated. These British council housing estates, US housing projects (and French ‘banlieues’) were ‘seen as a residual locale of spatialised social problems’ (Johnston and Mooney 2007: 128). Programmes were premised on breaking cycles of deprivation and disadvantage by intervening in areas exhibiting higher than average levels of multiple deprivation, relating to a range of indicators such as educational attainment, housing quality and unemployment rates. The resultant range

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of ‘place and people-based’ regeneration (in UK policy discourse) or ‘community building’ initiatives (in the US) targeted at deprived neighbourhoods tend to have been instituted and supported by central government in the UK, and by city elites, including philanthropic foundations such as the Ford Foundation, in the US (Chaskin and Abunimah 1999). UK examples of area interventions in deprived neighbourhoods reinstated local government along with local community ‘stakeholders’ in the partnership approach, though central government remained in control. Funds for the City Challenge (introduced in 1991) and Single Regeneration Budget (1994) programmes were allocated on a competitive bidding basis. But in practice the community was the weakest partner, ‘given a mere presence rather than a voice’ (Cameron and Davoudi 1998: 250). The later (1998) New Deal for Communities programme placed more emphasis on the capacity building of communities to provide them with ‘the skills and knowledge to become active in eradicating (their) deprivation’ (Imrie and Raco 2003: 21), heralding the rise of the self-help ethos. But the programme remained dominated by central government directives, demonstrating that ‘communities are often “shoehorned” onto local policy initiatives according to central government guidelines’ (Imrie and Raco 2003: 27). This period saw a further ‘turn to community’ with mechanisms such as Local Strategic Partnerships (Chapter 3) that seemingly heralded a different approach to deprived neighbourhoods, with the reliance on short-term, special initiatives replaced by a more ‘strategic’ approach and an emphasis on ‘bending’ mainstream spending programmes to redress spatial inequalities (Imrie and Raco 2003). But central government was not willing to trust communities and local service providers with ‘policy space, resources and greater autonomy’ (Foley and Martin 2000: 488) to realise these approaches. And certainly all such area-based approaches remained ‘disengaged in terms of the broader societal and structural processes that shape neighbourhoods’ (Hastings 2003: 100)—the problem initially identified by the communitybased teams engaged in 1960s era programmes. Programmes became regarded as a way of containing poverty, or of being seen to tokenistically do something about it, rather than as part of a concerted effort to alleviate it (Pill and Bailey 2012, 2014). Part of the urban problem evident since the 1990s has been state withdrawal both of welfare and of programmatic support for area interventions—supplanted by a rhetoric of self-help (Edwards and Imrie 2015; Davies and Pill 2012). In the UK, the ‘new localism’ of the Coalition government (explained above) did ostensibly valorise the local—and sub-local—levels with greater autonomy such as via encouraging community ownership of assets—but requisite resource is lacking. The onus is on local government to ‘self-help’—by generating funding through partnerships with the private sector, but also to experiment with decentralised forms of sub-local, neighbourhood governance. These not only enable the tailoring of public services, but increasingly seek to inculcate self-help behaviours amongst communities expected to provide their own services through voluntary efforts. Therefore, neighbourhood policy in the UK increasingly shares the US self-help ethos, affirming the ‘responsibilisation’ (Cochrane 2007: 52) of communities of place to realise neoliberal political imperatives through providing the ‘non-market conditions of economic growth’

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(Mayer 2003: 111)—for example through containing demands for collective provision. The downscaling and offloading trends documented within sub-national governmental systems in the Global North align with arrangements associated with austerity governance (Peck 2012) under which the neighbourhood has been revalorised as a site for self-help—for those able to do so, especially given the increasing absence of programmatic ‘capacity building’ resource. In the US especially, another important set of policy approaches valorised by the neighbourhood effects literature is described as the ‘mobility paradigm’ (Imbroscio 2012). From this perspective, the locational concentration of people in pockets of poverty requires them to be moved (or for other ‘successful’ people to be moved in)—the ‘deconcentration of the poor’ as the way to solve urban problems. This logic is predicated on the understanding that poor areas benefit from bringing in a greater range of people, particularly those with higher incomes. Its influence is clear in policies to disperse the ‘deserving’ urban poor, for example through the allocation of housing vouchers to public housing residents for private rental housing beyond city boundaries, framed as ‘moving to opportunity’. However, as a policy tool mobility is likely to have limited effects on people’s material circumstances given the challenge of overcoming low incomes, poverty and social disadvantage. The paradigm’s influence is also discernible in efforts to attract higher-income residents to create more socially mixed neighbourhoods, often by breaking up major public housing projects (perceived by critics as gentrification through the displacement of the poor). One example, the federal HOPE VI programme (in operation since 1992) awards grants to cities to redevelop public housing on a mixed-income basis. Such efforts were found to realise ‘the goal of deconcentrating the poor… largely at the expense of the poorest of the poor’ (Stoker et al. 2015: 57). In considering the policy construct of the ‘deconcentration of the poor’, Crump (2002: 581) argues it reduces the understanding of poverty to individual deficits as a way to justify ‘simplistic spatial solutions to complex social, economic and political problems’. This highlights the constraints on place-(and people-) based policies which conceptualise urban problems as resulting from the characteristics of specific places, rather than from broader ‘social and economic processes operating spatially’ (Massey 1995), as discussed in Chapter 4. In turn, Imbroscio (2012, 2013a, b) rejects the mobility paradigm and its associated policies on the basis that these rupture people’s attachments to place and fragment their social bonds, thus weakening civil society and the scope for collective action—ultimately creating ‘less neighbourly places’. He critiques mobility policies, as with prior urban renewal approaches, as being ‘more place-destroying than place-strengthening in nature’ (Imbroscio 2012: 11). This returns us to the theme of the scope for place-based leadership which we shall return to in Chapter 6.

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Private Neighbourhoods City governance has been downscaled to the neighbourhood (and particularly poor communities of place) by the state for the purposes of intervention and responsibilisation. Wealthier communities of place increasingly live in privatised neighbourhoods. These are privately developed for profit and privately governed by homeowners’ associations that retain revenue for the benefit of residents via homeowners’ fees. Examples in the US, Australia and East Asia are governed by homeowner associations that regulate the physical environment via covenants, controls and restrictions (such as regarding the paint colours allowed and prohibitions on behaviours such as hanging washing outside). Associations impose statutory levies to maintain community amenities (such as roads, pavements and open space) and deliver services (like waste collection and security). The appeal to urban governments of allowing such privatised governance is clear given the perceived imperative of fostering growth whilst relieving them of the pressure to provide services and infrastructure. In some respects these new communities realise the garden city ideal (Chapter 4)— they have green spaces, adequate housing, are pedestrian friendly and are locally governed (Archer 2013). But ‘traditional public goods and services have been commodified, privatised and contractualised’ (McGuirk and Dowling 2011: 2615) and governance is private, meaning it is solely for the social welfare of those rich enough to buy community membership. Taking a critical perspective, such communities are an institutional expression of the ideological shift towards privatism (MacLeod 2011)—the tendency to only be concerned with what affects you as an individual. People’s sense of ‘community’ and ‘neighbourhood’ have been commodified. In examining the ‘self-governing middle-class consumer citizens’ of such communities in Sydney, McGuirk and Dowling (2011) conclude that the social contract of neighbourhood, based on social interaction, has been replaced by depersonalised legal enforcement—citizens are acting as individual consumers, not as members of a community. The proliferation of private neighbourhoods around the world (Webster et al. 2002; Atkinson and Blandy 2006) exemplifies the privatisation of the urban, reducing opportunities for social mix and thus undermining notions of an urban community. They do not provide a solution to the problems that affect entire city populations and hinder development of collective action ‘across difference’ to seek change (Chapter 6). Indeed, the shift from ‘traditional’ neighbourhoods (with public streets and services) to privately governed communities (with private streets and services) is perceived as driven by demand for a ‘putatively utopian lifestyle through a privatised life in an exclusive neighbourhood’ that in turn enables a ‘secession from responsibility’ as the wealthy isolate themselves and eschew any commitment to collective consumption (MacLeod 2011) or notions of the public good. Such—often gated— communities are socially segregated enclaves that enable wealthy city residents to retreat from the larger city and urban public space (Short 2006).

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What Does This Mean for Governing Cities? Thinking of cities not only as territorial but relational spaces helps us understand that urban politics and governance operate both within and through cities’ multi-scalar context. Our ability to consider how, by and for whom cities are governed benefits in particular from a critical understanding of state rescaling—in terms of for whom and for what purpose changes are made in designating territories and assigning state functions, rights and responsibilities to different scales (Parker 2011)—and how the state relates to other governance actors at these scales. Considering governance in this way enables a richer and less prescriptive analysis than would be achieved by ascribing a purely neoliberal content to the objectives pursued at whichever level. Some scholars posit a ‘double-tracked politics’ or ‘two-speed city’ (Hohn and Neuer 2006; Keil 2006) wherein efficiency goals are pursued at the (competitive) city or city-regional level; whilst more redistributive approaches are pursued via partnership processes between the state and civil society at the (particularly poor) neighbourhood level. Thus it is envisaged that neoliberal strategies dominate at higher scales, with political and business elites often seeking new powers, resources and expenditures from higher levels of the state for the city (and city-region) to realise a competitive agenda. And neo-communitarian strategies—‘arrangements to encourage neighbourhood solutions’ and ‘revalorise neighbourhood support mechanisms’—are pursued at the neighbourhood level, ‘even in the most neoliberal cases’ (Jessop 2002: 464). But in all cases, the state retains its unique right (as metagovernor) to change governance arrangements—illustrated by state withdrawal from neighbourhood partnership arrangements in the US and UK. And many scholars point to the deficit in democratically responsive decision-making processes at all levels. Research undertaken for international actors such as the World Bank and OECD posits that strategies can be pursued at city and city-regional levels to enable ‘economic inclusion’ (Briggs et al. 2015) or ‘inclusive growth’ (OECD 2016). A focus on economic inclusion, it is argued, would shift the emphasis from competition for investment to the quality and accessibility of jobs available. Strategies suggested include helping existing city businesses, stimulating start-ups, and encouraging local employment and procurement practices by city ‘anchor institutions’ (socalled due to their locational ties, making it unlikely they will relocate—such as universities and hospitals). Others critique such strategies as a continuation of the mainstream economic growth model, continuing to inculcate compliance with the market; and as incremental, echoing Harvey’s argument that such approaches ‘recognise inequity but seek to cure that inequity within an existing set of social mechanisms’ (Harvey 1973/2010: 136). In seeking equity, it is argued, more radical strategies are needed which ‘build community wealth’ through community ownership (considered in Chapter 6).

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Conclusion Considering how our cities are governed in their multi-scalar context highlights the importance of political debate about how, by and for whom governance is undertaken. The question of jurisdiction (Skelcher 2005) is vital in understanding the different responsibilities and priorities of different levels of government and their agencies and how these different levels relate to each other, all adding to the territorial (dis)organisation of functions at the municipal, metropolitan and city-regional levels and the co-ordination challenges which result. Thinking about how our cities are governed in their multi-scalar context also underlines that governance arrangements are always subject to change. So whilst for practicality we need to fix analytical framings—such as cities and city-regions, and their associated forms of municipal, metropolitan and city-regional government—we can usefully draw a lesson from proponents of planetary urbanisation (Chapter 2) who emphasise ‘the relentless production and transformation of socio-spatial organisation across scales and territories’ (Brenner and Schmid 2012). Neil Brenner advises that instead of focusing on a single spatial scale it is more helpful to think about ‘interscalar flux’, as this captures how previously subordinate or marginal spatial scales can gain renewed importance as part of ongoing ‘socio-spatial transformations’ (Brenner 2019: 281). We have established that the city is a site where multi-scalar processes intersect, but these processes not only derive from neoliberal strategies of capital accumulation, which include enabling the social reproduction of the workforce, but also from sociopolitical struggles striving for equity. In the next chapter we consider signs of a revival of the city as a site of struggle, with new forms of democratic participation and collective action seeking to enact radical change—which in our terms seeks to redress the balance between goals of equity and efficiency.

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Chapter 6

What Are Citizens Doing?

Key points • Citizens are vital in realising alternatives in how, by and for whom our cities are governed. • Different conceptions of urban citizenship help us to understand how people claim rights related to their inhabiting of place. The concept and practice of the Right to the City shows how urban citizens and grassroots organisations can mobilise wider political and social networks to shape the city ‘from below’. But such normative conceptions contrast with citizen experiences of coercive governance and social control. • Urban citizenship is expressed through many forms of collective action, from more traditional forms of contestation and resistance such as community organising, to new kinds of everyday actions seen by some scholars as prefigurative of transformative, socio-political change. • Concepts such as informal urbanism, social innovation and urban commoning help us understand the potential of these new forms of collective action. New municipalism and community wealth building provide us with practice examples of efforts to realise more equitable cities.

Introduction We now focus on the scope for and attempts to realise change in how, by and for whom our cities are governed. Critical urbanists boil this down to the core question of whether the city is for people or for profit (Brenner et al. 2009). Here the role and abilities of citizens, individually and collectively, to get involved and seek change come to the fore in terms of alternative ways of governing cities. We have seen that cities tend to be governed according to goals and values of profit-seeking and economic growth rather than social purpose and redistribution. Urban governance tends to reflect the interests of powerful alliances between the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_6

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state and market elites, downplaying the voices and activities of ‘ordinary people’ and the scope for alternative goals and values. Political actors at the urban level may have some, limited capacity to impose collective preferences (‘for the many’) on the imperatives pursued—despite the constraints imposed by the urban political economy (Chapter 2), cities’ multi-scalar context and the rights vested in and responsibilities of local government (Chapter 5). But the ‘neoliberal common sense’—that the market and economic growth must prevail out of necessity, with consideration of equity and social redistribution relegated and determined in ways that serve the market—tends to prevail. The philosopher Michael Sandel pithily describes this as ‘we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society’ (Sandel 2012: 9). For critical urbanists this conventional wisdom forms the basis of a critique of visions and values which do not represent or respond to the needs of the many. Mainstream theories of urban governance (Chapter 3) are perceived as emphasising consensus and thus glossing over the asymmetries of power in cities. The dominance of economic rather than social (and environmental) imperatives in how cities are governed results, they argue, in a lack of attempts to envisage, let alone enact, alternatives. But despite the depoliticising neoliberal consensus, scholars do identity potential for change. Progressive possibilities are inherent not only in terms of the locally specific and flexible ways in which policies can be implemented; but also in terms of the development of alternative, more equitable visions and values for the city. Change can be engendered through more ‘traditional’ forms of contestation and resistance, related to the extent to which diverse actors and interests in the city can create the collective capacity to contest how, by and for whom their city is governed. Here cities are envisaged not as growth machines but as places where conflicts can be translated into democratic engagement, as sites for struggles over social justice and equity, and against the intrusion of neoliberal ideas and marketbased reforms into the urban public realm. And increasingly, scholars seek to counter the seeming inevitability of market-rather than people-centric politics and policies by ‘recentre[ing] the urban political’ (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017) through focusing on new kinds of collective political action, identified particularly in ‘everyday’ living, which are seen as prefigurative of transformative, socio-political change away from urban neoliberalism. We first look at conceptions of urban citizenship through which people claim rights related to their inhabiting of place. We focus on the collective Right to the City as a concept and in practice, and contrast this with citizen experiences of coercive governance. We then consider the many forms of collective action through which urban citizenship is expressed. We first look at examples of more traditional forms of contestation and resistance and the importance of collective capacity to act. But our focus is on new kinds of everyday, collective political action. We review concepts, such as informal urbanism, social innovation and urban commoning, that help us consider the transformative potential of new forms of collective action. And we consider practice examples of efforts to realise more equitable cities.

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Urban Citizenship and the Right to the City Urban citizenship is expressed through collective (political) action, which takes many forms. It is useful to think about collective action in terms of social capital (Putnam 2000)—the existence and operation of trust-based relationships as a resource that shapes group as well as individual behaviours. Interpersonal networks of co-operation link people in communities. People can bond with people ‘like them’—in communities of place (a neighbourhood), of identity (such as LGBTQ groups) or of shared interest (like combating climate change). This is referred to as bonding social capital. But to engender mass mobilisiation, such diverse groups need to be able to forge links across difference, known as bridging social capital.

Rights-Based Approaches Rights-based approaches—drawing from conceptions of urban citizenship—have gained renewed momentum in attempts to change how, by and for whom cities are governed. The common conception of citizenship is that it is a formal status conferred by the nation state which entails certain rights (like voting) and responsibilities (like paying taxes). In contrast, urban citizenship stresses the importance of ‘the urban’ in people gaining a political identity which ‘allows them to act as members of a community who either have rights or who should have rights’ (Staeheli 2003: 100). Thus urban citizenship is about the ways in which people claim rights related to their inhabiting of place rather than their official status. It involves people who are not part of the traditional citizenry (such as undocumented migrants) and tends to be expressed in mobilisation and protest rather than in more traditional ways such as voting (which many urban citizens may not have the formal right to do). Critical urbanists see urban citizens as participating in urban-based struggles. These struggles open up opportunities for a wider range of people and groups to engage in resistance against dominant power structures than would be envisaged under mainstream conceptions of formal citizenship and state-led forms of citizen participation (Chapter 3). Rights can be individual or collective. On an individual basis, Marshall (1950/1992) identifies a progression of citizenship through three phases as people have claimed more rights—civil (for legal equality), political (to participate in the exercise of political power irrespective of economic status or gender) and social. Marshall’s definition of social rights, ‘the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society’ (Marshall 1950/1992: 8), relates in some countries to the growth of the Keynesian welfare state and collective provision of housing, health and education. In 1948, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 25) asserted social rights in that ‘everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself [sic] and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care’. Asserting these rights does not automatically confer them,

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but the Declaration constitutes an instrument that supports struggles to gain these rights. Struggles and resistance are spurred when lived urban experience conflicts with the dictates of the market (Short 2006). This is most explicit in terms of the urban public realm—the traditional space where people voice their dissatisfaction with ‘the state’ (and capitalism as a mode of production). Throughout history cities and their public spaces have formed the sites of mass demonstrations against the authority of ruling elites—up to and beyond 2019’s mass protests in Hong Kong regarding its relationship with China, and in Santiago, Chile about inequality. Cities, which tend to concentrate poorer populations and exhibit greater inequalities, will continue as important sites of resistance (Leitner et al. 2007). That urban entrepreneurialism and privatism have eroded the urban public realm and thus the spaces accessible to ordinary urban residents that are core to urban struggles leads to questions about who has the Right to the City, as captured in people’s access to, and uses of, not only the spaces but the goods and services of the city.

The Right to the City Collective rights are captured in the Right to the City (RTTC) concept, originally developed by Henri Lefebvre who was inspired by how students and workers had combined in protests in Paris (Lefebvre 1967/1996). It was later rediscovered by critical urbanists (such as Harvey 2008, 2012), who explains ‘the RTTC, as is now constituted, is… in the hands of a small political and economic elite who are in a position to shape the city more and more after their own particular heart’s desire’ (Harvey 2008: 35). What Lefebvre saw in Paris was an urban struggle which resulted from the linked claims of different groups—alienated students and exploited workers—to challenge state authority. This points to the importance of connection across difference in new struggles over the RTTC. In considering the mass protests in the urban public realm of major cities across the world in 2011 (such as in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece and Spain), Mason (2012) emphasises the importance of bridges across difference—between alienated young people, the poor and organised labour—to enable concerted action to contest the status quo. Formation of these alignments is aided by people being able to share ideas and strategies through social media. A survey of participants in Egypt’s Tahrir Square protests revealed that social media provided information beyond the national regime’s ready control, crucial to co-ordinating collective action (Tufekci and Wilson 2012). Social media’s power in this regard has since been recognised by repressive regimes, which have shut down mobile Internet services in the face of anti-government protests (for example, in Bangkok, Thailand and Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2018). But even in the absence of such efforts to contain protest, concerted action across difference is not easy—‘manifesting, simultaneously, the transformative potential and the endemic difficulty of united, collective action across diverse constituencies’

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(Brenner et al. 2009). In describing protest as the culmination of people’s collective frustration, a chance to actively exert their democratic rights, Merrifield (2011) questions how ‘the intensity of the encounter’ can be sustained over the long-term to become an ‘authentic politics of transformation’. Extending the collective power of the RTTC requires not only the broad political inclusion of urban citizens through the mobilisation of collective interests that are capable of sustaining action, but of envisaging a new urban society (Parker 2011). RTTC approaches have been criticised for not specifying what a more equitable (democratic, just and socially inclusive) city entails (Fainstein 2014) as a basis for transformative political mobilisation. On returning to his RTTC conception in his final essay, Lefebvre affirmed the need for people to claim their rights to a collective urban life, explaining ‘the right to the city implies nothing less than a revolutionary conception of citizenship’ (Lefebvre 1989, cited in Merrifield 2018: 1606), but he did not consider what may encourage a transformative urban politics (Madden 2012: 783). Attempts to incorporate the RTTC into public policymaking—such as Mexico City’s charter for the RTTC (Wigle and Zarate 2010)—have been contested, not least as it is very hard to codify or arrange into a systematic code. In 2016, delegates convened in Quito, Ecuador at the United Nations’ conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to agree the third New Urban Agenda. This convening takes place every twenty years to mandate the United Nations’ work in cities (through its UN-Habitat programme) and to provide guidance for member states’ urban policies and governance, including citizen participation and democratic processes. The third agenda builds from the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 for the year 2030, particularly SDG 11, to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. However, the vision adopted only notes rather than explicitly enshrining the RTTC: We share a vision of cities for all, referring to the equal use and enjoyment of cities and human settlements, seeking to promote inclusivity and ensure that all inhabitants, of present and future generations, without discrimination of any kind, are able to inhabit and produce just, safe, healthy, accessible, affordable, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements, to foster prosperity and quality of life for all. We note the efforts of some national and local governments to enshrine this vision, referred to as “right to the city”, in their legislations, political declarations and charters. (UN-Habitat III 2017: 5)

Though many question its usefulness in practice, as a concept of collective rather than individual rights the RTTC does help us think about how urban citizens and grassroots organisations can mobilise wider political and social networks to pursue alternative approaches and shape the city ‘from below’ (Brenner et al. 2009). The RTTC is not a legal claim enforceable through law, but a moral claim, founded on ‘fundamental principles of justice, of ethics, of morality, of virtue, of the good’ (Marcuse 2009)—in our terms, the visions and values which guide how, by and for whom the city is governed. As a collective right to ‘a better system’ (Marcuse 2009), it can embrace multiple realms such as public space, services, information and transparency, and acknowledges the rights of all societal groups—invoking the need to address discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age.

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The RTTC tends to be invoked by those who advocate a right of no exclusion for marginalised populations from urban society as a way to inspire collective action (Purcell 2013). Many urban movements are engaged in various ways in demanding the RTTC—whether in the form of affordable housing, the ‘regularisation’ of refugees and migrants, access to decently paid employment, collective provision of education, health and welfare and a safe environment. For example, various women’s movements, such as the Brazilian Safe Cities for Women Campaign, assert the RTTC. It is commonly invoked in response to redevelopment and gentrification and the associated displacement of poorer, marginalised communities, or indeed the forcible clearance of the homeless from city spaces earmarked as spaces of consumption attractive to ‘creatives’ and tourists. In the US, the RTTC Alliance emerged as a response to gentrification and the displacement of communities of colour (Liss 2012: 250). In the lead up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the RTTC was deployed by those protesting the significant scale of evictions. Similarly in South Africa, the Abahlali baseMjondolo (‘shack dwellers’ movement) cited the RTTC in its protests against evictions (Huchzermeyer 2014). And following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, grassroots activists in Barcelona, Madrid and elsewhere in Spain joined together as La PAH (‘Mortgage Victims Platform’) to make the RTTC central in their calls for housing rights given the mass evictions taking place. The RTTC is used by activists as ‘a claim and a banner under which to mobilize one side in the conflict over who should have the benefit of the city and what kind of city it should be’ (Marcuse 2009: 192). But as a claim, scholars caution that it is open to appropriation, for example to legitimate existing, weakly participatory forms of urban governance (Brenner et al. 2009). Merrifield (2014) argues that urban citizens should use the RTTC as a banner if it works ‘tactically and practically’, but that what matters is not rights per se, but whether people engage in effective action. He sees building a progressive movement as crucial—‘nothing less than the battle to invent another, upgraded notion of collective consumption, a public prophylactic to the private parasites lurking in our midst’ (Merrifield 2014: xviii). The RTTC is useful as a concept, but may be more or less useful in attempts to shift from critical urban theory to radical urban practice. It emphasises mass mobilisation, stemming from ‘a convergence of all… around a common set of objectives’ (Marcuse 2009: 192)—but the RTTC may not form the common cause. In turn, it does not capture the scope for fostering alternatives through the everyday activities of urban citizens. Recent scholarship, explained below, returns not to Lefebvre’s RTTC but to his ‘urban revolution’ (1970/2003), referring not only to global urbanisation (Chapter 2) but to active efforts to realise socio-political transformation. In particular, Lefebvre’s distinction between ‘worldly inhabiting and global agglomeration’ helps consider how ‘inhabitating’, or everyday living in the city, can reactivate a politics which seeks to transform the injustices and inequalities of an urban planet (Madden 2012: 779).

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Citizenship Under Coercive Governance Normative conceptions of urban citizenship which seek to realise the equitable city, however envisaged, stand in stark contrast to scholarship regarding coercive governance and its strategies of social control. These strategies seek to target and contain social groups constructed as posing a threat to society (Wacquant 2008)—as expressed in urban policy’s focus on the people within problem places (Chapter 5). Davies (2014) argues that we should think of coercion not as exceptional but as an intrinsic part of neoliberal urban governance, which relies not only on ‘hegemony by consent’ (with the neoliberal common sense), but on domination through the use, or threatened use, of force. As Short explains, ‘violence and conflict continue to be used as a key resource of power and domination in the control of cities… both legitimate and non-legitimate force has reduced and is reducing the right to the city around the world’ (Short 2006: 8). Graham (2012) describes the use of military technologies to control urban spaces, as evident in the heavily armed response to anti-racist protests in cities across the US in 2020, as ‘military urbanism’. These combine with ‘smart city’ technologies (Chapter 4) to aid the surveillance and control of urban populations, which is why Hong Kong protestors in 2019 targeted CCTV cameras deploying facial recognition technology. To assert the coercive role of the state in the lives of the ‘raced and criminalised poor’ in the US, Miller and Stuart (2017) describe the political identity of those convicted of a crime as ‘carceral citizenship’. Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are well-documented—African American people are twice as likely to be arrested as whites (Epp et al. 2014) and it is estimated that one in three working age ‘inner-city’ black men will experience incarceration (Pettit and Western 2004). Carceral citizens are also subject to ‘collateral consequences’ that constrain their geographic and social mobility upon release from incarceration. Western (2006) draws from Marshall’s conception of social citizenship (above) to explain how mass incarceration erodes social rights by excluding those with convictions from the labour market. But the conception of carceral citizenship does not only apply to those who have been imprisoned. It also applies to those living in the poor, African American neighbourhoods subject to carceral governance, which operates both through the criminal justice system and broader tools and practices of containment and control which limit social rights to prevailing living standards. Citizens are subject to everyday (coercive, traumatic) experiences, such as ‘stop and search’ policing, which shape their relations with the state—the political identity of their citizenship. These experiences may lead citizens to seek to claim their RTTC by engaging in protest against unjust governance (as seen in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement which arose across the US as a response to police violence); but may also quell contestation and collective action due to the perceived and actual threat of violence or other forms of social control.

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How Is Collective Action Changing? As we have established, urban citizenship is expressed through collective action— which takes a variety of forms, related to: the goals sought; the opportunities and constraints provided by the state; the capacities within and barriers between different social groups and the economic, social, spatial and political context (Parker 2011). Forms of collective action change. From our perspective of considering for whom cities are governed, with what visions and values, it is useful to focus on the scope for a shift from efficiency to equity—namely, how collective action can foster alternatives to neoliberalism. Debates about urban or local-level collective action mirror those deployed about the ‘networks/neoliberalism’ dualism and collaborative governance (Chapter 3). Some stress local action’s potentially empowering effects, others interpret it as an expression of state power under neoliberalism, wherein collective activities substitute for retrenched state provision. Accounts that emphasise empowerment are criticised for being too optimistic about bottom-up agency, neglecting structural constraints and power imbalances (Williams et al. 2014). Those which emphasise the imposition of neoliberalism are critiqued for being overly pessimistic about citizen agency and for disregarding the variegated forms of local governance that result (Brenner et al. 2010; Blanco et al. 2014). Questions arise about how collective action affects and is affected by local state-civil society relationships—are these collaborative, co-optative or coercive? Is there space for contestation? Scholarship increasingly focuses on the importance of the ‘everyday’—what is ‘produced within current conditions and tight corners’ (Tonkiss 2013: 321). Such activities are undertaken despite, with, or against the state—despite (for example, coping self-help activities as the state has retrenched); collaboration with (which may or may not be state co-optation); and against (contestation of existing governance, which may seek transformative change). These three forms overlap and can combine. And, depending on worldview, the new forms of collective, political action identified can be perceived as modelling alternative ways of everyday living and therefore may be prefigurative of transformative, socio-political change. We first look at more traditional, oppositional forms of collective action which seek to contest the state. The formal and informal institutional forms which such collective action may take are set out in the box. Oppositional forms of collective action • a forum where groups come together around varying issues to exchange experiences and debate • a coalition (or temporary coming together) around a specific issue • an alliance (a more permanent coalition) associated with community organising (below)

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• a movement (unstructured collective action) which can ‘appear’ given particular issues/events, such as Black Lives Matter which arose as a response to police killings of African Americans in 2013 in the US; or the Umbrella movement which protested the Chinese government’s refusal to allow universal suffrage in the election of Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2014 • an assembly, which is a single (or many single) ‘coming togethers’ of multiple groups for varying levels of common thinking, sharing and action, as deployed in new municipalist approaches (below).

Community Organising Community organising, which takes the institutional form of an alliance (see box), is a longstanding approach to collective action which has proved adaptable to changing circumstances. It is ‘a field of practice in which residents collaboratively investigate and undertake sustained collective action regarding social issues of mutual concern’ (Christens and Speer 2015: 193). It draws from a community’s local and wider networks and thus its ability to develop its own stores of bonding and bridging social capital (with people like them and with people not like them). It is reliant upon the existence of viable local community institutions, such as churches, schools and community groups, and is community of place-based (whether at neighbourhood or higher, local and urban levels). The approach is rooted in Chicago, where Saul Alinsky established the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in 1940 after developing the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, which had brought disparate groups together across racial and religious divides to develop their voice in decisions affecting the community. Subsequent successes elsewhere deployed the same community organising principles of a long-term process of developing community leaders and relationship building across difference, seeking partnerships with local religious and civic organisations to build broad-based organising projects and citizen-led action. The modern IAF has professional community organisers who provide community leadership training, and a network of national and international affiliated urban alliances which follow its principles for community organising (see box). Since the 1980s the field has expanded with a range of models for practice. It retains its long-term focus ‘to build power and sustain organising initiative over time and across multiple issues’ (Christens and Speer 2015: 194). Other commonalities are efforts to expand the groups engaged, increase connections and partnerships (such as with researchers and philanthropic foundations) and increase scale (moving beyond the local to regional and national policy advocacy). Community organising became increasingly influential in labour organising as the power of unions declined with the end of the ‘Fordist compromise’ (Chapter 2). For example, a union funded the initial costs for a professional community organiser to start the long-term relationship building that resulted in the Sydney Alliance (see box). But these changes contain

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vulnerabilities, such as an alliance’s ability to sustain with funding from members or its increased reliance on outside funders like philanthropic foundations who have their own priorities. And the approach’s popularity has led to its appropriation both in rhetoric about community engagement not founded in community leadership, and in attempts to enrol organising and associated community-based activities as substitutes for state service provision as the state retrenches. Urban Alliances Sydney Alliance: Founded in 2011 with 45 partner community, non-government and faith-based organisations, unions and schools, the Alliance was the first Australian application of the IAF’s community organising principles. It seeks to act for the ‘common good’ by providing the community with a voice to express common values and aspirations for a fair and just Sydney through building ‘grassroots power’ (Tattersall 2015). Iveson (2013) considers the Alliance’s efforts to create an alternative politics in Sydney in terms of relationship building across difference. Substantial political change has not (as yet) been achieved but he finds the Alliance has effectively engaged many of the (sub)urban poor (who are involved in churches and community organisations as well as unions). However, the requirement for involvement in an organisation to participate in the Alliance is a barrier for many young people not engaged in formal civil society. Iveson (2013: 676) concludes that ‘the mutual isolation of the networked and outraged young from the suburban poor and organized labour has not been overcome’. It is also limited by ongoing funding issues, as well as its multi-scalar context subject to three fragmented levels of formal government (Chapter 5), complicating its efforts to access governance ‘from below’ rather than be engaged in tokenistic, ‘top down’ consultation processes. The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO): Founded in 1999, TELCO is the London Citizens’ alliance in east London (forming, with alliances in five other UK cities, Citizens UK, also an IAF affiliate). TELCO covers some of the UK’s poorest and most ethnically diverse areas. Its 60 affiliate organisations include local religious organisations and unions, schools and the student union of a local university (Wills 2011: 122). Organisation leaders share common concerns about the quality of the local environment, services and jobs and the lack of affordable housing. TELCO has led campaigns in support of the living wage, migrants, community safety and affordable housing. As in Sydney, Wills (2011) finds weaknesses in TELCO’s structuring and practices, such as the exclusion of the most vulnerable and marginalised who are least likely to be members of the groups which form TELCO’s institutional membership. And TELCO needs funds to employ the professional organisers vital to building the relationships that underpin the alliance. Funds come from the dues paid by member groups, but larger amounts have also come from philanthropic foundations, which have their own agendas and require measurable outcomes.

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Transforming Governance? Whilst community organising has proved adaptable to its changing context, it is only one approach amongst an array. Some approaches retain a similar oppositional model of politics. Other approaches are increasingly perceived as an alternative politics focused on the ‘everyday’ rather than overtly seeking to contest state power. But importantly, through establishing alternative ways of everyday living, such approaches may be implicated in ‘transformative governance projects’ (Newman 2014). Considering governance transformation is helped by thinking about the changing conceptualisations of the role of the urban and its citizens in seeking change in critical urban scholarship. Neo-Marxist urban theorists like Harvey and Castells (Chapter 2) argued that the dynamics of capitalist urbanisation mobilise the urban. Harvey (1973/2010) focused on class struggle, Castells (1983) conceptualised the urban as a space of collective consumption, with urban conflicts waged by urban social groups who come together in urban social movements seeking state provision of collective infrastructures and services. Certainly such distributional struggles— who gets what, when and where—remain part and parcel of the urban political arena. But ‘new’ urban social movements are perceived as more voluntaristic and individually expressive forms of collective action, rather than resulting from class or distributional struggles. Collective action is generally expressed in terms of specific issues such as housing and participation; more global issues such as climate change (e.g. the School Strike for Climate since 2018) and inequality (the Occupy movement in 2011); on behalf of groups such as refugees or the homeless; or in identity-based movements focused around gender, sexuality, ethnicity and faith (Leitner et al. 2007; Hamel et al. 2000). The changing character of urban movements, combined with shared understanding of a post-political, techno-managerial governance consensus in which fundamental conflicts are smoothed over (Swyngedouw 2010), has led to a shift in scholarly focus towards the ‘political terrain of social transformation’ (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017; Davidson and Iveson 2015). This draws from Lefebvre’s (1970/2003) ‘urban revolution’ (explained above). It also draws from Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) theorising of the urban not only as a space for the organisation of capitalist society (as deployed by the neo-Marxists) but also as an arena for enacting transformative struggle. Scholars consider how the new forms of ‘bottom up’ urban activism evident in the urban political arena worldwide address ‘politicisation’ or the transformation of the state: The very definition of the political, long understood in social movement worlds as a strategically-organized confrontation between the dominant and the dominated, may need to be enlarged if we are to recognise forms of action increasingly important in our urban world. (Mayer and Boudreau 2012: 288)

In this approach, scholars consider the city as a political realm in new ways beyond formal politics or urban social movements, thus moving beyond the blunt duality of power versus resistance (Las Heras 2018) to encompass everyday activities

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which may be prefigurative of socio-political transformation. Scholars recognise that everyday activities can exercise performative power by modifying ‘the map of what can be thought, what can be named and perceived, and therefore also of what is possible’ (Swyngedouw 2007: 72). For example, in examining (and also through participating as an activist scholar within) the Occupy Movement in London in 2011, Janet Newman found that the movement combined a traditional adversarial politics (contesting entrenched forms of power) with the prefigurative practices of everyday activities modelling alternative ways of living and conducting politics (Newman 2014: 141). A range of overlapping concepts—such as informal urbanism, social innovation and urban commoning—help us to consider these new forms of collective action and citizen engagement ‘from below’ in urban governance and their transformative potential. These interlinked concepts, which describe practices often drawn from the Global South, can be seen as constitutive elements of the equitable city. Scholars highlight the generative effects of 2008’s GFC and the subsequent economic crisis and introduction of austerity measures in the Global North in encouraging such engaged actions on the part of urban citizens. Spain has received much scholarly attention in this regard. Here earlier forms of (often co-optative) collaborative governance implemented via state-led citizen participation (Chapter 3) have been superseded by more innovative forms of ‘participation-by-mobilisation’ (Parés et al. 2017) involving ‘new urban activisms’ (Walliser 2013). In turn, many of the practices which these concepts describe are used by those seeking to enact the ‘new politics and new economics’ of new municipalism and community wealth building in cities around the world, examined below.

Informal Urbanism Informality is increasingly used to understand everyday urban activities—in terms of people meeting their basic needs but also as a prefigurative practice for change. Scholarship on informal urbanism in the Global South has had significant influence in the Global North. It is associated with subsistence urbanism—people getting by— with 883 million people, or 23% of the world’s urban population, living in informal settlements or slums on the urban periphery (UN 2019: 4; Davis 2006). Therefore informal urbanism is also a driver of rapid urban growth—much new building is illegal; much economic activity is informal and many incoming urban residents are undocumented (without formal, legal status). National contexts and governmental systems frame how this is realised. For example, in China, all citizens are classified under the ‘hukou’ household registration system which determines the state benefits, such as education and healthcare, they receive. Most of the nearly 300 million internal migrant workers living away from their place of registration cannot transfer their hukou to their place of work, affirming the temporary nature of their lives in the city. In India, people are largely free to migrate to cities’ informal settlements, the clearance of which is often met with stiff opposition, showing the

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political potentialities of informality. But in the absence of state benefits, many Indian migrant workers are precariously employed on a daily wage with no formal protections. Their city lives are therefore also precarious, as demonstrated by the mass exodus of daily wage workers back to their home villages to stave off starvation as India went into lockdown to halt the spread of coronavirus in 2020. Informality is useful in understanding cities in the Global North. For example, Tonkiss’ (2013, 2014) explains how state retrenchment under austerity has encouraged informality as responsibilities are offloaded to those who have to ‘get by’. This underscores that the state is engaged in producing informality as well as in responding to it, whether through formalisation, toleration or eradication (Iveson et al. 2019; Harris 2018; Tonkiss 2013). That informality is engendered by the state from the top-down as well as by the activities of urban citizens bottom-up refines the general association made of the state with ‘the formal’ and citizen or community activity with ‘the informal’. Scholars stress the importance of discarding binary conceptions of ‘formal versus informal’ to appreciate that the two are mutually constitutive (Acuto et al. 2019), with both combining to produce ‘everyday lived experience’ (Iveson et al. 2019: 4). In our terms, informal, everyday practices can be undertaken not only despite (coping self-help), but with (co-opted or not) or against (contesting) the state—and in these alternative ways of everyday living may lie the seeds of transformative change. Global North expressions of informality range from those focused on consumption (such as ‘pop ups’, temporary uses of vacant spaces for retail) to those driven by poverty and social exclusion, manifested in informal housing and the informal economy. ‘Pop up’ uses—such as of empty high street retail units by local craftspeople, or of sites awaiting redevelopment like the ‘pop up mall’ comprised of shipping containers on a former railyard site in Shoreditch, London—are encouraged by local governments as a policy tool to reactivate and protect spaces in the interim before more valuable uses emerge. Critiques of ‘pop up’ uses point to the focus on consumption rather than on creating equitable communities. Such uses appropriate spaces and displace the marginalised who are or could use these (such as rough sleepers or squatters), whilst providing protections to absent property owners and future developers. Such efforts are described as using ‘the rhetoric of amateurism, marginality and informality to make space in the city… (but) it is a partial claim; it cannot account for the marginality of others, and risks overriding it with an appropriative “chic”’ (Deslandes 2013: 218). Traditions of informal housing in the Global North include squatting in vacant buildings (often eradicated by the state through criminalisation) and self-organised co-operative housing, as well as forms of share accommodation. Squats and cooperatives can be seen as promising, prefigurative alternatives, heralding nonmarket systems of organising space and distributing urban resources (Tonkiss 2014). But such alternatives are increasingly subject to commodification, with companies offering ‘co-living’ arrangements such as small residential ‘pods’ in converted warehouses in which tenants lack privacy and choice about who they share living space with.

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Much recent literature on Global North informality focuses on informal housing as a source of otherwise scarce affordable housing. Several of the UN-Habitat defined elements of shelter deprivation (such as overcrowding and lack of tenure security) associated with Global South slum housing are equally persistent in Global North cities, with examples including backyard units in Los Angeles, roof top houses in Hong Kong and ‘beds in sheds’ in the UK (Gurran et al. 2021; Lombard 2019). But data on the extent of informal housing is scarce, as it is ‘hidden’ and not easily captured in standard housing and tenancy data (Gurran et al. 2019), which makes it easier for the government to tolerate or ignore. Informal housing has become a ‘significant resource for the landlord class everywhere’ (Tonkiss 2014: 97). Landlords capitalise through practices such as informal subdivision of properties and subletting, which exacerbate exclusion and inequality as tenants of overcrowded and unsafe housing have little or no recourse to formal legal protections. The state can respond to informality through formalisation (i.e. introducing regulation enforceable by law) which can afford residents of informal housing some basic protections. But research into Global South legitimisation of informal housing heralds problems (Porter 2011). These efforts, which typically involve the assignment of property rights, often privilege the wealthy through processes of gentrification and displacement. This illustrates one of a complex series of contradictions and dilemmas that informality poses for policymakers (Tonkiss 2014). A key contradiction is that between self-help and abandonment, where self-help refers to the informal networks of social welfare provision that may provide services beyond or instead of the retrenching state. The contradiction is that the more the community engages in self-help, the less state provision is required. Under austerity, local governments are increasingly seeking to collaborate with citizens through ‘coproduction’ of public services, as well as transferring assets such as libraries and community centres to community management or ownership. Questions arise about where these responses lie on a continuum between at one extreme, the local state seeking to genuinely engage communities in ensuring that public goods and services meet their needs; through the local state helping to cultivate self-reliance through informal agency; to the other extreme of abandonment, in which ‘urban territory is ceded to independent agency’—the ‘last resort’ of ‘extreme economy’ evident in some US cities, particularly its deprived, minority neighbourhoods (Davies and Pill 2012; Peck 2012).

Social Innovation and Civic Enterprises Moulaert et al. (2005, 2007) conceptualise social innovation as satisfying human needs through the increased participation of urban citizens in ‘bottom-up’ governance. Citizens are empowered in the process through increasing their ‘socio-political capability and access to resources needed to enhance rights to satisfaction of human needs and participation’ (Moulaert et al. 2005: 1976). In contrast to the state’s ‘top

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down’ area interventions (Chapter 5), social innovation derives from neighbourhoodbased, citizen-led governance and the collective ability of urban citizens to not only engage in self-provisioning but to exert their urban citizenship by making political demands based on their rights. Practice examples are provided by civic enterprises, ‘initiatives arising from the sphere of civil society’ which produce ‘social goods’ or public services and products (Wagenaar et al. 2015: 558). In considering the transformative potential of a range of civic enterprises across Europe, including a renewable energy co-operative in Spain and co-operative housing in Germany, Wagenaar et al. (2015) find that many focus on everyday self-provisioning—the practical delivery of a particular activity in a specific context. But in doing so, those engaged in civic enterprises are motivated by a range of aims, including radical ideas about alternative lifestyles and broader ambitions to challenge market dominance and transform governance. As such, civic enterprises are not only alternative but may be prefigurative. Jonas (2013) reiterates this distinction in contrasting ‘substitute’ and ‘oppositional’ alternative urban enterprises in the informal economy. Substitute enterprises enable people to ‘get by’, such as street hawking or busking. Oppositional enterprises are created to challenge the mainstream, formal economy. These are undertaken initially at the scale of the community but ultimately with a view to connecting to wider social and political movements. Examples include radically different approaches to trade and exchange. One illustration is provided by timebanking—a ‘community currency’ which imposes equivalence on the value of people’s time. Under its ‘one hour equals one hour’ principle, those enrolled in a timebanking scheme can earn and spend ‘timecredits’ in and on self-provisioned services (Gregory 2014). For example, one hour spent on community gardening earns a timecredit which can be spent on one hour’s childcare in the community crèche. The approach draws on a community’s stores of bonding social capital to constitute a non-monetary mode of exchange. It thus provides a radical, prefigurative alternative to current market-based forms of service provision. But the dilemma posed above, between self-help and abandonment, remains. For example, debates about national and local state encouragement of timebanking in the UK have involved critique of timebanking as a way of further marginalising poor communities of place and containing them away from mainstream society, whilst further enabling the state to retrench.

Urban Commoning Urban commoning refers to community ownership and management of the urban public realm (public spaces, buildings and services), entailing the creation of systems to manage shared resources. Examples include co-operative housing, community gardens and data commons (enacted in Barcelona, explained below). The concept draws from a variety of disciplines. In neo-Marxist scholarship, the ‘new urban commons’ draws from Marx’s arguments about how capitalism created

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a landless class of wage labourers, who no longer had access to land and property once held in common as it was ‘enclosed’ by those engaged in private profit-seeking. It provides a way of thinking about current urban enclosure practices, such as privatised housing provision, which are part of the degradation of the urban public realm (Hodkinson 2012). It thus invokes the struggle to reclaim the city as a resource held in common rather than by elites. Commoning also invokes Elinor Ostrom’s (1990) Nobel Prize-winning work on governing the commons, in which she considers the ways people self-organise to manage resources beyond state-centric and marketorientated forms of co-ordination. Ostrom’s work presaged the later emphasis in scholarship and policy on social capital, or trust-based networks of co-operation.

New Urban Activisms Scholars increasingly consider new forms of ‘bottom up’ urban activism, including everyday activities, which are enacted beyond formal politics and urban social movements. In Spain, Walliser contrasts the anti-austerity mobilisations of the ‘Indignados’ (outraged) movement which occurred across the urban public realm of major cities in spring 2011 with ‘traditional’ forms of collective action (Castells 1983). The ‘collaborative urban interventions’ he identifies in Madrid provide examples of Global North informal urbanism. They include temporary appropriations and permanent interventions in the urban public realm, such as community gardens, along with self-managed community centres in publicly owned sites (earmarked for a stalled sports development) and buildings (an old tobacco factory leased by local government to a network of community groups). But fundamental to Walliser’s argument is the changes he describes in how urban citizenship is expressed by politically active citizens. ‘New urban activisms’ are undertaken by educated groups using professional expertise—a different expression of social action which seeks to ‘transform the city, share knowledge and contribute to a more just city’ (Walliser 2013: 340). Such activisms fill gaps in public services that have resulted from economic crisis and neoliberal restructuring, including neighbourhood-level self-provision. But they also involve some (‘genuine’ rather than co-opted) collaboration with the local state in terms of publicly funded programmes and grants. And they provide un- and underemployed professionals (such as architects, designers and lawyers) with opportunities to use their skills. Activisms are thus characterised by the blurring of boundaries between political activism, voluntarism and professional activity, a blurring which aligns with Bang’s (2005) conception of ‘everyday makers’. Everyday makers are citizens with a ‘project identity’ rather than an ‘oppositional identity’, who gain their political identity (as urban citizens) from ‘being ordinarily engaged in the construction of networks and locales’ (Bang 2005: 172). Both everyday makers and new urban activists, therefore, are not defined by their links with established (and discredited) formal political organisations and in seeking to oppose the state. But their activities, such as strengthening the urban

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public realm, have potentialities in terms of transforming governance, as we shall see (below) using the example of Barcelona.

New Municipalism and Community Wealth Building Efforts to pursue these two related approaches in cities around the world illustrate how the concepts explained above are being put into practice to realise more equitable cities. These approaches challenge post-political understandings of the neoliberal ‘common sense’ by seeking the democratic transformation of the local state and local economy (CLES 2019). New municipalism seeks to establish a ‘new politics’—new forms of ‘bottom up’ local democracy and alternative forms of collective action which foster mutual aid and solidarity. Relatedly, community wealth building seeks a ‘new economics’ based on solidarity and co-operative ownership, through creation of a ‘circular’ local economy (which generates financial resources from within). These approaches seek to mitigate the marketisation of social and economic relations (Chapter 3) and the problems of wealth extraction associated with financialisation (Chapter 2). The Global South has been formative in new municipalism. The rise of left municipal governments in Latin America in the 2000s led to radical local developments such as participatory budgeting which influenced Global North debates about public participation and participatory democracy (Chapter 3) which have informed new municipalist practice. The influence of subsequent radical expressions of ‘horizontalism’ in Brazil and Argentina—local non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian governance (Geddes 2014)—is also clear. Such grassroots community-based urban movements, combined with a more ‘porous’ formal politics (Parker 2011), provides a counterpoint to Global North urban politics and has proved a source of inspiration for efforts to transform it. But there is a history of such efforts in the Global North. New municipalism is ‘new’ to distinguish it from ‘old’, late nineteenth century ‘municipal socialist’ local states which emerged in cities such as Birmingham, Glasgow and London in the UK as well as elsewhere in Europe. Municipal socialism resulted from the rise of organised labour movements and associated political parties. Once in power at the local level, radical working class parties engaged in social redistribution, collective ownership and international solidarity. In the deindustrialising UK of the 1980s, attempts were made by left-wing cities such as Liverpool and Sheffield to replicate these approaches. At the time, this further encouraged national government to reassert its power and ideology via measures like the marketisation of NPM (Chapter 3) and the creation of special purpose agencies to bypass local government (Chapter 4). But some ‘old’ municipalist themes are sustained in its new incarnation in cities around the world. For example, international solidarity is indicated by attendance at the first global summit of the ‘fearless cities’ international network, which attracted 700 representatives from six continents to Barcelona in 2017 (Russell 2019). And both certainly share an

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emphasis on power vested at the local level rather than centralised authority, refined by more radical Global South approaches to enacting local democracy. We are already familiar with many of the other key features of new municipalism: its break with traditional party politics; its emphasis on alternative forms of collective action and urban citizenship based on residence and participation; its development of assembly-based democracy; its focus on meeting human needs, fostering sharing and co-operation, mutual aid and solidarity, and women in leadership (CLES 2019; Baird 2017). New municipalism is especially prominent in Spain. Since 2015 both Barcelona and Madrid have been governed by anti-austerity coalitions drawn from a variety of social movements (such as La PAH, the anti-housing eviction movement) and political organisations, stemming from or brought together by the 2011 Indignados mobilisations. These coalitions share a rejection of traditional party politics in favour of the creation of ‘platforms’, and favour radical deliberative processes of citizen participation. We focus on the highly influential example of Barcelona. The city, with a population of 1.6 million, is the capital of the autonomous community and ‘historic nationality’ of the Catalonia region (Chapter 5). After hosting the 1992 summer Olympics, it became a tourist hotspot and one of Spain’s most prosperous cities. The ‘Barcelona model’—one of typical entrepreneurial governance, including seafront redevelopment (Chapter 4)—became an influential ‘policy imaginary in urban policy networks [and] in peripatetic practice’ (Peck and Theodore 2010: 170). However, following the GFC of 2008, citizen concerns about job insecurity, public sector retrenchment, housing exclusion and socio-spatial inequality heralded the resurgence of the progressive left. This was compounded by the precarity faced by the young, who in 2011 used the slogan ‘no jobs, no houses, no pension, no fear’. The progressive resurgence culminated in the victory of Barcelona en Comu (BComú) in the city elections of May 2015 (see box). BComú has since come to represent a progressive social force which has given critical urbanists and activists around the world cause for optimism about the scope for alternatives and the prospects for transformation.

Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona in common) BComú’s agenda, as a radical left political platform, combines socio-spatial redistribution with radical forms of citizen participation and urban commoning, emphasising the importance of the urban public realm. In the words of Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona (and former La PAH leader), ‘the more public space there is, and the better its quality, the better the quality of the democracy’ (Gessen 2018). Measures adopted include reforms in participatory rules, structures and processes, accompanied by the development of an open source participation tool (‘Decidim’, now used in 80 cities across 20 countries), wherein the ‘smart city’ is one in which citizens can have a say (Chapter 4). There is a new regulation for the community management of public facilities and spaces. Attempts have been made to reverse processes of privatisation by seeking to ‘remunicipalise’ basic services such as water and child

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care provision, and local identity schemes for undocumented migrants have sought to include urban citizens excluded from formal citizenship. BComú’s emphasis on the self-governing practices of urban commoning has led to the transfer of public buildings to local communities and data commoning (via platforms where data as a common asset is stored and shared under agreed principles). These platforms champion citizens’ digital rights (to privacy and the transparent and responsible use of algorithms). BComú has challenged the power of corporate digital platforms. It requires licensing of Airbnb properties, with licenses refused in neighbourhoods already deemed saturated with tourist accommodation, thus protecting long-term rental property availability for residents. Airbnb agreed to give city officials access to listings data to enable enforcement. BComú seeks to ‘feminise politics’, referring to women’s descriptive representation (more female politicians) and substantive representation (‘acting for’ women, and promoting women’s interests) (Kenny and Mackay 2018). In describing this, Ada Colau asserts a transformational rather than ‘as usual’ politics: transforming the values… upgrading the forms of political participation, to demonstrate that co-operation is more effective and more satisfactory than competitiveness, and that politics done collectively are better than those done individualistically. I think these collective values of co-operation and solidarity are values that we can contribute to feminise politics, and with that, not just women will win, women and men will both win. (Gessen 2018)

BComú has generated great expectations about the potential for new municipalism. And it has faced significant obstacles. For example, it lacks a solid majority in the City Council, forcing it into coalition, a situation maintained in the 2019 elections though Ada Colau was re-elected mayor. It has had to deal with resistance from within the city bureaucracy. And it has to operate within the bounds of fiscal federalism and the powers and responsibilities of city government (Chapter 5), lacking power in key policy domains such as housing. But despite these constraints, its experiences show that it has agency in realising its goals, demonstrating scope to impose collective preferences (‘for the many’) on urban governance. Research in the city (Davies 2017; Blanco et al. 2020) has revealed a repertoire of strategies to promote radical, transformative political change at city level. These include making maximum, creative use of the powers of city government, and recognition of the importance of building alliances with social movements and community organisations to contest the power of upper levels of government. These approaches, deemed to have performative power through ‘transform[ing] citizen perceptions of what is possible’ (Davies 2017: 17), are therefore also regarded as prefigurative of a transformed urban governance and politics. BComú has inspired the creation, encouraged the progression and linked with similar platforms elsewhere. Platforms represented at the ‘fearless cities’ summit hosted by BComú in 2017 included: Cambiamo Messina dal Basso (Let’s Change Messina from the Bottom Up), Italy; Miasto Jes Nasze (The City is Ours), Warsaw, Poland; Beirut Madinati (My City), Lebanon and Zagreb je NAŠ! (Zagreb is OURS!) in Croatia. Global South platforms represented at the summit included the

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Movimiento Autonomista of Valparaiso, Chile and Ciudad Futura (Future City) in Rosario, Argentina (Russell 2019). All the platforms share a commitment towards progressive, citizen-centric urban politics. One example, Zagreb je NAŠ!, seeks to build a new politics based on wide participation, inclusiveness and openness, through creating a crowd-sourced basis for determining the direction of local public policy (Rilovi´c 2017). More recently, the victories of numerous platforms bringing together left and green candidates with social movements in the French local elections of June 2020 indicate the appetite for alternatives built from the bottom-up. Community wealth building has strong ties to and may be deployed in combination with new municipalism. It aims to democratise and create circular, self-contained local economies through development of ‘locally rooted, broadly held ownership’ (Kelly et al. 2016). Theoretically, Imbroscio (2013) locates the approach as part of a needed shift in the US away from the ‘mobility paradigm’ (Chapter 5) in which poor people are connected or relocated ‘to opportunity’ towards a paradigm of ‘localist ownership’. Here a city’s productive assets (land and enterprises) are community-owned, which alters the structural arrangements of city economies that generate inequality. The ‘neoliberal common sense’ of attracting economic growth on the assumption that its benefits will trickle down is replaced by the local generation of economic growth and local retention of its benefits. Examples in practice share a focus on locally containing the purchasing power of ‘anchor institutions’, so-named as they cannot easily relocate but are embedded in the locality (such as universities, hospitals and local governments). Imbroscio (2013) cites the flagship example of Cleveland, Ohio, where since 2008 the Evergreen Co-operative Initiative has developed three employee-owned co-operatives based in low-income neighbourhoods near the local university. The co-operatives meet the university’s procurement needs, such as for laundry services, thus retaining jobs and income locally. Some US cities have adopted community wealth building policies inspired by the ‘Cleveland model’, through promoting ‘inclusive ownership, smart local procurement, and an intentional focus on equity’ (Duda 2018). The approach has also spread to the UK. In 2013, Preston City Council started developing placebased procurement processes for six local public (anchor) institutions, including the council, in an effort to retain investment in the local economy (Schaefer 2018). In 2013 these anchor institutions spent £38 million in Preston, which by 2017 had grown to £111 million (Chakrabortty 2018). But though cities may pursue ostensibly similar approaches through local procurement policies, it is the co-operative ownership of the enterprises fulfilling the needs of anchor institutions which is a more significant step towards transformative change. In Preston, local procurement helped both local businesses and the development of local worker-owned co-operatives. A more radical example, and one more akin to new municipalism, is that of Co-operation Jackson in Mississippi in the US, which was founded in 2013 as a workers’ collective. It seeks to establish a circular and sustainable local economy through developing co-operatives, but it is also developing people’s assemblies and a participatory model of city budgeting (Moskowitz 2017; Beattie 2018), inspired by lessons from the Global South (Chapter 3).

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What Does This Mean for Governing Cities? Scholars have attempted to envisage what a city governed for people rather than profit (with goals of equity rather than efficiency) would look like—what David Harvey (1973: 314) calls the search for a ‘genuinely humanising urbanism… an urbanism appropriate for the human species’. In focusing on realising the equitable city, Susan Fainstein (2014) argues for a ‘people-centred’ approach, in terms of inclusive participation, in meeting (collective) human needs and capabilities (such as food, shelter, sanitation, health, education and safety) of the city’s residents, and by focusing on their quality of life (Chapter 4). A famous example is provided by Enrique Penalosa, who as Mayor of Bogota, Peru, decided to focus on the urban governance goal of making Bogotans happier (Montgomery 2013). To do so, he halted the city’s highway building programme, created cycle paths and a bus rapid transit system affordable to those on low incomes, developed new collective provision such as libraries, schools and nurseries and extended the urban public realm with parks and squares. But, as Fainstein explains, merely encouraging a discourse of equity is important in improving urban citizens’ quality of life. This is because much policymaking is concerned with best practice or what is deemed to ‘work’ in relation to specific, and often siloed goals, such as producing more housing or more jobs (Cochrane 2007). An emphasis on equity broadens out thinking to encompass governance goals—how, by and most importantly for whom the city is governed—therefore encouraging a more ‘people-centred’ approach that makes inequity explicit. Relatedly, Weaver (2018b) draws from Marshall’s social rights to propose an ‘urban social citizenship’ in which social rights combine with civil and political rights to address structural inequalities. According to the standard of urban social citizenship, Weaver (2018: 99–100) envisages an equitable city which entails access to housing, healthcare, transport and education (thus collective goods and services); and recognition of groups marginalised on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity or country of origin (and thus recognition of their RTTC). With its emphasis on rights to prevailing living standards, urban social citizenship also implies going beyond redistribution to non-capitalist forms of ownership and production. This chimes with Imbroscio’s (2013) call for an alternative, localist ownership paradigm under which ownership of productive assets is broadened as a concerted move towards realising equity, away from the tokenism and incrementalism of notions of equality of opportunity. Collective action by urban citizens (who express their political identity in seeking their rights and through undertaking ‘everyday activities’) can lead to changes in how, by and for whom our cities are governed. In considering urban governance, it is important to consider the range of forms which this collective action may take, from the more formal (such as engagement in formal politics), through more ‘traditional’ forms of collective action such as community organising alliances, to the transformative potential of the ‘everyday’. This moves beyond the focus in mainstream governance scholarship on collaboration with, co-optation by or contestation of the state, to its transformation.

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Thinking about the transformation of urban governance is helped by thinking about governance as state-civil society relations (Chapter 3), and ways in which the boundaries between what is the ‘local state’ and ‘local civil society’ can be and are regularly crossed, as BComú illustrates. Some scholars conceptualise a plural (state and society) ‘everyday local state’ (Hilbrandt 2019; Pill and Guarneros-Meza 2019) in which everyday practices shape the state, revealing ‘an active politics of the present’ (Lowndes and McCaughie 2013: 546) which is expressed in contextcontingent, creative responses—which may be transformative. In practice, the growth of new municipalism and associated community wealth building approaches around the world does herald progressive possibilities in terms of cities governed ‘for the people’. Cities pursuing these approaches offer the ‘spaces of hope’ sought by critical urbanists (Harvey 2000), providing examples of what ‘real utopias’ (Wright 2011) might look like. They combine a ‘new politics’ of direct citizen participation, with a ‘new economics’ of co-operative ownership and urban commoning—and in so doing, offer glimmers of transformative, socio-political change towards a new urban society. This is the ‘urban revolution’ achieved through ‘worldly inhabiting’ which Lefebvre (1970/2003) posited. Of course, it remains to be seen whether these prefigurative practices will culminate in transformative change.

Conclusion Theoretically we can envisage the equitable (or just, or inclusive, or indeed good) city as a way of redressing the increasing inequalities that have resulted from the rise of market-driven ideologies and approaches. Fundamentally, these are moral arguments about the kind of society we want to live in—though the need to (at least be seen to try and) make society more equal is also important in attempts on the part of elites to contain political instability, along with other more coercive strategies. As Hambleton (2015: 6) explains, the case for creating more inclusive societies goes beyond the moral argument, because as cities become more unequal, the quality of life of the wealthy as well as the poor is threatened. In our terms, the emphasis on how the city can be ‘politicised’ and thus transformed challenges the incremental accommodations emphasised in mainstream theories of urban governance (Chapter 3), such as the middle-class progressive urban regimes posited by Stone (1993) which grant neighbourhood and environmental concessions in return for compliance with the continued predominance of entrepreneurial urban growth. It instead places the emphasis on everyday efforts to realise the equitable city in practice—these may be small, but prefigurative steps towards transformative change. In new municipalism we see how urban citizens and grassroots organisations have mobilised their local and wider networks of social capital to shape the city ‘from below’, creating in some cases powerful political platforms such as BComú that are now engaged in a transformed formal city politics. This aligns with Hambleton’s (2015) emphasis on the importance of powerful local self-government and bold, city

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leadership for radical change, within but also contesting the bounds of its multi-scalar governance context. Thus whilst we have identified constraints on policy choice at the urban/local level (Chapter 5), a broader, more inclusive understanding of how cities are governed needs to encapsulate how urban politics is changing and how it remains vital as the propinquity of cities continues to generate change. Barcelona and other ‘fearless cities’ are cited as examples of a performative and prefigurative staging of the equitable city (Harvey 2012). This highlights that urban governance is always a ‘fix’, and as such is open to challenge and change. Understanding how small, everyday steps can be progressive rather than tokenistic makes the challenge of achieving transformational change seem less daunting. Such changes are needed given the manifold, daunting policy challenges cities—and society—face.

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Chapter 7

Futures for Governing Cities

Introduction We have seen that urbanism, or the ways of life pursued in cities, is increasingly characterised under capitalism and globalisation by the market as a mode of coordination and as a set of values through which our cities and society are governed. But such market-orientated urbanism has also generated demands for a greater stake by urban citizens in their urban futures. We can identify two very different backlashes against global capitalism and the market-based, neoliberal urbanism with which it is intertwined. On the one hand, the rise of ‘populist’ nationalism with 2016s Brexit referendum in the UK to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency can be seen as a backlash. But on the other hand, the array of new municipalisms emerging around the world, with their emphasis on solidarity, democracy and equity, potentially pose a more profound and transformative challenge. I write whilst under lockdown in the UK during the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis is global, and it has challenged global capitalism due to its huge constrictive effects on economies worldwide and its constraints on international flows of trade and travel. In policy scholarship, a ‘crisis’ is defined as a situation where there is a threat to core societal values, urgency to take action and uncertainty about what courses of action to take (Rosenthal et al. 1989). Crisis management scholarship focuses on governmental and societal actions in response (Weible et al. 2020). Considering the impacts of the crisis on cities and responses to it helps us understand both its immediate social and economic consequences—and its implications in terms of the prospects for socio-political transformation towards more equitable cities. These debates are insightful to our concluding focus on futures for governing cities, including the values and visions underpinning their governance. Interpretations and debates about possible futures for cities relate to the worldview of those asserting these.

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We first consider the immediate and longer-term implications of the coronavirus pandemic for cities. We then return to considering the city as a site and space of politics, revisiting mainstream and critical perspectives, before focusing on ways of imagining the future, more equitable city, including a critical research agenda.

Coronavirus Pandemic: Insights for City Futures Considering the pandemic underlines our foundational questions of how, by and for whom cities are governed. Though the pandemic has affected everybody, the way it has affected different groups in different ways in different places clearly highlights the socio-spatial inequalities which have been widening under neoliberal urbanism (Chapter 3). At city level, those on lower incomes (a characteristic closely linked to race and health) are more vulnerable, less able to work from home and to self-isolate (Atchison et al. 2021). The effects are worse in more deprived areas—for example, deaths involving the virus have occurred at more than twice the rate in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods compared with the least deprived. London’s poorest, most racially diverse boroughs had the highest death rates (ONS 2020). In the US, African American are dying at disproportionately higher rates compared to all other ethnicities. By highlighting that governments have the prime responsibility for responding when society-wide crises occur (Stilwell 2020) the crisis has drawn attention to state capacity to respond—its ability to determine the course of action and to coordinate its implementation. The state’s central role in crisis response is captured in the UK government’s definition of ‘critical workers’ during the pandemic. The listing reasserts the essential nature of public services and the central role of the state in social reproduction and collective good provision to meet basic human needs. Workers deemed critical are those in health and social care, education and childcare, key public services (including third sector service deliverers), food and other necessary goods, public safety and national security, transport, utilities and communication, along with employees of local and national government (UK Government 2020). The listing draws attention to how public provision in the UK has been denuded by ongoing waves of roll-back and roll-out neoliberalism (Chapter 3), with the privatisation and contracting out of many public services. For example, the shortages of essential medical equipment and protective clothing witnessed in the UK and US relate to the adoption of business-inspired ‘just-in-time’ supply chains which hinder the state’s crisis response capacity. The listing underlines the state’s reliance on the third (charitable, non-profit and voluntary) sector to not only deliver but also subsidise essential public services, a sector experiencing unprecedented service demand whilst facing the financial implications of the pandemic’s economic impact (Weible et al. 2020). And it points to how many critical workers—in health and social care, delivery drivers, those in the food sector—are not adequately rewarded in terms of their pay and often precarious employment conditions (Chapter 4).

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The critical nature of sub-national government is clear. In the UK, local government is responsible for supporting the most vulnerable in society through provision of child and adult social care services and is responsible for public health. But UK local government’s capacity has been severely undermined by austerity, and the most deprived areas have also suffered the most from austerity, including cuts in funding for public health. Globally, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights observed that ‘austerity policies have weakened the ability for societies to build resilience in the face of shocks like the pandemic’ (Mahmood 2020). In turn, although the goal (under crisis) is streamlined state hierarchical co-ordination of the response, the power struggles and blame-shifting between national and subnational levels of government continue (Chapter 5). In the US, this was evident in tussles between New York State Governor Cuomo and President Trump over the gravity of New York’s situation and the lack of federal government support of New York State’s efforts. In the UK, local government public health teams were hampered by central government not sharing local testing data to improve ‘on the ground’ public health responses. The pandemic has drawn attention to the importance of housing and home for health and well-being. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing describing housing as ‘the frontline defence against the coronavirus. Home has rarely been more of a life or death situation’ (UNHR 2020). This description was widely cited by advocates seeking to cease evictions due to rental or mortgage arrears during the pandemic, asserting the use rather than exchange value of housing (Chapter 2). In some cities, hotels were initially requisitioned as refuges for the homeless. And the overcrowded and unsanitary nature of housing for the poor and marginalised, whether in the London Borough of Newham, the Bronx in New York or the slums of Mumbai, is cited as a causal factor in the spread of the virus. Such overcrowding is the result of ‘inequality and the housing crisis, not an unchangeable feature of urban life’ (Madden 2020). Overall, the pandemic has highlighted the cruelty of contemporary urban inequality and the inadequacy of existing state capacity to respond, casting a harsh light on the state’s ability and willingness to seek to protect those who are most vulnerable—ranging from the plight of rough sleepers in London and New York to the daily wage workers of Indian cities left without their livelihoods or state supports during lockdown. What are the medium and longer-term implications? Interpretations and debates about possible futures relate to the worldview of those asserting these. The GFC heightened appreciation of the importance of collective public goods and led to similar debates about the opportunities crisis presents for more progressive, even radical, alternatives. Perspectives included how the GFC was used to justify austerity governance, becoming a crisis of the local state through processes of downscaling and offloading (Chapter 3), whilst others pointed to its generative effects in encouraging anti-austerity mobilisations, urban citizen engagement and forms of everyday reproduction implicated in transformative changes in local governance (Chapter 6). Viewpoints vary about the implications of the pandemic in terms of the role of the state—as Keynesian regulator of the market, or neoliberal enabler of the market.

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A useful insight from the policy sciences is that whilst there is normative appeal in thinking that ideological conflicts can be suspended in times of crisis—‘we’re all in this together’—crises do provide opportunities for political gain. Success in crisis politics from the perspective of government can be assessed in terms of reputation and popular support, and also in terms of government’s capacity to maintain its ideological visions and values (Weible et al. 2020). In the short term, neoliberal discourses about the imperative of austerity and the limitations of public policy may be downplayed. Keynesianism and expectations of state intervention come to the fore, seeking to minimise the economic and social effects of the crisis, including to ‘bail out’ private companies (Saad-Filho 2020; Stilwell 2020). The crisis has certainly drawn attention to the role of the state in social reproduction and collective provision in the public realm. But whether and where a new consensus emerges on the role of the state—and different levels of the state—remains to be seen. And of course this has significant implications for the governance of cities and accordingly for the quality of everyday urban life. The pandemic can also lead to authoritarian, racist and reactionary responses. It has provided opportunities for the state to assert control and challenge democracy. In Hong Kong, pro-democracy activists were arrested at a time when the pandemic posed too great a risk for mass protests to occur (Davidson 2020). China then passed a national security law curtailing Hong Kongers’ abilities to criticise Beijing. The antiracist protests in cities around the US, triggered by the police killing of an African American man in Minneapolis, were a response to society’s racialised systemic injustices and institutionalised violence. Violent policing responses, including deployment of the National Guard, affirmed the centrality of coercive governance (Chapter 6). The tracing and tracking apps introduced during the pandemic, ostensibly a rational, techno-managerial element of crisis management, provide an opportunity for further securitisation and state surveillance (Graham 2012). The state may become accustomed to using authoritarian powers legitimised by the crisis, and continue imposing controls such as on movement at the sub-national and international scales in its aftermath. And many cite the unprecedented economic downturn as heralding a worldwide recession far greater than the impacts of the GFC. As previously, will the crisis of the pandemic be used to justify neoliberal austerity as ‘inevitable’, or will it lead to other forms of more authoritarian or carceral governance? In contrast, some perceive the pandemic, combined with the environmental crisis, as a ‘wake up call’ which signals the need for more than short-term correctives (Stilwell 2020). Scholarship on policy change talks of ‘policy windows’ in which advocates for certain policies look for the opportunity to attach their preferred solution to a current policy problem (Cairney 2011). The pandemic may provide such a policy window—to not merely enact short-term fixes, but to establish more durable policy changes to improve quality of life—in critical urbanist terms, to further progress towards ‘cities for people’. Taking this perspective, management of the crisis is perceived as an opportunity to pursue transformative policy measures which address social and environmental challenges. These include proposals to improve welfare through introducing a Universal Basic Income; the adoption of a Green New Deal to address climate

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change and economic inequality; co-operative forms of local economic organisation and (re)municipalisations or nationalisations of services deemed crucial (like public housing and transport). Thus whilst Keynesian economic stimulus measures can help with short-term crisis alleviation, more radical policies could result which address the structural problems particularly associated with neoliberalism and its brutal inequalities. In suggesting the metaphor of the pandemic as a portal into a new world, the novelist Arundhati Roy alludes to the transformative possibilities envisaged by some urban scholars (Chapter 6): Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (Roy 2020)

Possibilities in part relate to the temporalities (short-, medium- or long-term) of the pandemic and responses to it, which also vary spatially due to its uneven global geography. To what extent do new ways of doing and being—new routines, habits and structures—have a chance to become institutionalised, leading to different types of urban life and city living? What are the opportunities for radical, rather than reactionary, values and practices to become embedded? In terms of cities, many small and everyday changes in practice could, cumulatively, hold the potential to reshape urban life. Examples include how the pandemic has revalorised the importance of the neighbourhood as a site for collective solidarity, with the quick development of grassroots networks of support and mutual aid evident across the world. It has drawn attention to the need to shorten or localise food supply chains. The rise in active transport—walking and cycling—may lead to demands for better provision, seen in short-term rapid responses such as closing streets to traffic and the creation of new cycle ways. People spending more time at home and in their neighbourhood has also deepened attachments to and raised expectations of ease of access to open, green public space. Other forms of ‘relocalisation’ may include the greater prevalence of co-operative ownership and urban commoning as pursued in forms of new municipalism (Chapter 6). As we have seen, much depends on viewpoint—the extent to which the changes which have emerged under the pandemic, combined with greater understanding of the need for bolstered state capacity to meet basic human needs—are regarded as prefigurative of transformational change. The crisis certainly altered political priorities and forms of everyday reproduction in the short term and showed that rapid responses, to house the homeless, halt evictions, adjust traffic patterns and provide necessary health care, were possible. Whether, and where, this heralds more longlasting changes in the urban political realm remains to be seen, but does affirm that ‘the structures sustaining the unequal city are movable’ (Madden 2020)—that changing cities so that they are for people rather than for profit is possible.

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The Political City Whilst debates about planetary urbanisation (Chapter 2) raise important theoretical questions about whether the city can still function as a political realm in our majority urban world, in reality we have seen that cities are unquestionably political and that citizens have political voice whether through formal or informal, antagonistic or everyday means. Cities endure—as governed places, important sites for collective consumption and as key spaces of competition and conflict over resources, identities and values (Parker 2015). We have seen that governing cities is extremely complex, operating in and through a fragmented, multi-actor, multi-interest and multi-level context. Our focus has been on how and by whom cities are governed, guided by what priorities and for whom. Returning to the predominant theories of urban governance which focus within cities (Chapter 3), both urban regime and urban governance theory consider who governs and how they govern. Both theories agree that city government needs to work with societal partners in determining priorities and in seeking to realise these. But the theories differ in an important way. Urban governance theory envisages that the process of determining governance priorities is democratically accountable to citizens. There is a strong normative component to this. As Jon Pierre explains: We want urban politics to be democratic [thus] we assume and hope that elective and representative institutions really play a significant role in shaping urban policy choice. (Pierre 2011: 23)

Urban governance theory thus brings the fundamental tension between (inclusionary) networks and (exclusionary) hierarchical forms of governance to the fore. But we need to exercise caution in assuming that greater inclusion leads to more equitable, fairer priorities being pursued. Post-political critiques of such network theories of governance see them as ‘smoothing over’ fundamental conflicts as participants are co-opted into the hegemony of ‘common sense’ neoliberalism. Indeed, we have seen that the most recognisable model of city governance deriving from either of the principal theoretical approaches is an alliance between political and business elites with the overarching priority of economic growth—justified as being in everyone’s collective interest and therefore beyond political debate. This most common model therefore aligns with the neoliberal ideology of the state’s role being to enable the market as the predominant mode of societal co-ordination. In turn, we know that cities are located within complex, multi-level systems of governance and are subject to, as well as contributing towards, wider, often global, processes and flows. Thus we also need to be cautious about the extent to which greater inclusion and participation in city governance, even if realised, would lead to more equitable governance priorities that can provide a panacea for structural inequalities (Lee et al. 2015). The political autonomy of city government—the extent to which it is able to co-ordinate governance to realise a locally determined agenda—is constrained. As we have seen (Chapter 5), political autonomy relates in significant part to the distribution of spending and revenue-raising powers across vertical levels of government. This varies across different governmental systems, and

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changes within these due to the national state’s role as metagovernor. For example, research into austerity governance shows how city government has been disempowered due to centralising (top-down control) and decentralising (bottom-up responsibilisation) measures (Chapter 3). The national state uses such downloading and offloading measures as a mechanism for political displacement (Theodore 2020). By limiting resources, these measures narrow political choices and capacity to pursue more radical alternatives—and thus act to reinforce ‘common sense’ neoliberalism. The political conflicts amongst vertical state hierarchies illustrates that city futures remain highly dependent on decisions made by national states. Indeed, the UN’s third New Urban Agenda (Chapter 6) was negotiated and adopted by, and will be implemented or discarded by, member states. Therefore whilst it is essential that cities seek greater political autonomy it is also critical that national states develop urban policies that enable city governments to fulfil their crucial role—entailing a devolution rarely seen given the challenges it poses to national state power.

Challenging the Mainstream So far, so pessimistic. But we also have seen that in practice, governance takes a vast array of forms which point to the limitations of a totalising conception of neoliberalism—highlighting the need to understand the specific and contested practices of governance in particular places (Leitner et al. 2007). Whilst Global Northderived theories of urban governance did pave the way for the analysis of urban politics beyond the formal institutions of government (Mossberger and Stoker 2001), scholars have increasingly recognised the limitations of these theories (Robinson 2011). Emphasis has expanded to encompass ‘ordinary cities’ as everyday spaces in which most people in the majority urban world live (Robinson 2006; Simone 2010). Here cities are recognised as sites for radical socio-political change and alternative forms of collective political action. Regime theory emphasises incremental adjustment to incorporate dissent, and is thus critiqued for overlooking the disruptive potentialities of urban political life (Davies and Blanco 2017). Urban governance theory’s emphasis on values does seek to ‘bring democracy back in’, but is subject to similar critique for its emphasis on elites and on consensus. Considering the urban political drawing from the experiences, lives, practices and struggles of ordinary residents as well as those of elites moves us beyond a critique of dominant neoliberal representations of the city to consider the future city. Current academic debates argue that critical scholars should spend less time developing their diagnoses of urban neoliberalism, and more time considering the kinds of political action that might transform it—encompassing more traditional but also new kinds of collective political action identified particularly in ‘everyday’ living. More optimistic prospects for city futures draw from the empowering effects of local action, the scope for bottom-up agency despite its structural constraints, and the ability to focus equity as the core value of city governance. In this view, neoliberalism can be contested through traditional struggles (as seen in the rise of union activity

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related to employment in the so-called ‘sharing economy’) but also by ‘new urban activisms’ which cultivate practical solidarities and forms of everyday reproduction (Chapter 6). For example, whilst political autonomy at the city level is constrained, the example of Barcelona en Comú shows us how citizen concerns, in this case exacerbated by austerity measures, can lead to political change and a more equitable agenda. In its efforts to make maximum use of the powers of city government, BComú is supported by its roots in and ongoing alliances with social movements, community organisations and the meaningful engagement of urban citizens who share an agenda of radical, equitable change. Here the prospects of Global North urban politics becoming more porous along the lines of Latin American grassroots community-based urban movements are made palpable. Barcelona shows us how political alternatives can be pursued through strategies of collaboration, collective action and contestation, changing the state-society relations of governance in the process (Chapter 6).

Imagining the Future City Theories seek to describe what is empirically evident (how the world is) but also have normative and ideological power (how the world should be). Conventional discourses about cities—such as global, competitive, smart and liveable—dominate mainstream theory and practice. To change the dominant discourse of the city yet to come requires challenging mainstream visions and values of the ‘future city’. The urban theorist John Rennie Short describes such discourses—which act as representations of and constructors of reality—as ‘urban imaginaries’ (Short 2017). As with policy constructs (Chapter 4), urban imaginaries are contested as they embody power relations in terms of competing normative and ideological visions of the ‘future city’. Contesting ‘common sense’ mainstream normative visions is helped by thinking about how, by and for whom cities are governed. For example, one powerful urban imaginary of the ‘smart city’ is presented in the mainstream as enabling techno-managerial efficiency, stifling debates about transparency and citizen surveillance and control. But the ‘smart city’ can also be envisaged as a city of smart citizens empowered through data commoning to hold government to account. This example illustrates the need for inclusive political debate about the values underpinning our cities’ governance—about what kind of city we want this to be. Technology may contribute to making cities more inclusive and equitable, but only if its use is driven by public purpose, which is determined in a democratically accountable way (Hambleton 2015). To repoliticise the post-political city, we need to engage in fundamental debates about the priorities being pursued. Current imaginaries of the ‘urban now’, such as the global and neoliberal city, can be contrasted with emergent alternatives (Short 2017). Global flows of people, finance, goods and services have made cities much more diverse. The cosmopolitan city is one imagined by several scholars as an alternative to the anti-globalisation backlash seen in the emergence of ‘populist’ reactionary and racist nationalism,

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manifested in securitised cities that criminalise social difference and use military technologies in efforts to control citizens. In contrast, the cosmopolitan city is one which is ‘open to difference’ and committed to creating more just outcomes (Short 2017). Its realisation requires negotiation rather than negation of social and cultural difference, requiring urban citizens to ‘conceptualise, and then to help establish in reality, a true cultural mixing where each diverse ingredient is treated in a relatively equal manner’ (Archer 2013: 197). Relatedly, Merrifield (2018: 1603) praises planetary urbanisation as offering a viewpoint founded in commonality rather than difference, encouraging a conception of a mutually shared planet that provides ‘an antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our toxic times’. Short’s (2017) future city imaginery of the compassionate city encompasses many critical urbanist ideas—such as the RTTC and Weaver’s (2018) urban social citizenship—to create equitable ‘cities for people’. A basic requirement of a more compassionate city, Short argues, is the ability to imagine ourselves living the lives of others and to understand that our socio-economic position is not much related to individual effort. Therefore, a compassionate city requires a ‘collective imagination to see the city as a shared community’ (Short 2017: 186). Similarly, Hambleton’s (2015) vision of an inclusive city is that of a critical urbanist, with equity rather than economic growth as its core guiding principle. Like Pierre’s (2011) idealised model of urban governance, the inclusive city is ‘governed by powerful, place-based democratic institutions’ and ‘all residents are able to participate fully in the society and the economy, and civic leaders strive for just results’ (Hambleton 2015: 25). In Hambleton’s future city imaginery, place-based leaders ‘articulate public purpose and exercise well-informed, value-based judgements in their decision-making to advance it’ (Hambleton 2015: 291). Such alternative visions of the cosmopolitan, compassionate and inclusive city are easily dismissed as idealistic and utopian. But critical urbanists reject conforming with ‘common sense’ neoliberal hegemony. A future version of the urban world ‘might be utopianism, but it is utopianism based upon a critique of the urban world as it exists’ (Madden 2012: 783). As we have seen, scholars identify signs of hope for ‘still possible cities’ (Osborne 2019) in everyday practices perceived as prefigurative (Tonkiss 2013; Newman 2014). These scholars provide ways of imagining ‘not some fantasy of an elsewhere, but existing alternatives to hegemonic systems’ (Halberstam 2011: 89, cited in Osborne 2019: 147). Indeed, whilst Hambleton (2015) acknowledges that his vision of an inclusive city is utopian, he points to many concrete examples around the world which challenge market dominance through the assertion of ‘community based values against the aggressions of place-less power’ (Hambleton 2015: 315). Scholars counter utopian critiques by proposing a ‘realistic utopianism’, ‘real utopia’ or ‘practical utopia’ (Fainstein 2010; Wright 2011; Parker 2015). We are familiar with the elements that combine to realise the practical utopia of an equitable city (Chapter 6). An equitable city is public, not private; offers urban social citizenship—decent incomes, housing, schools, health care and amenities—to all,

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irrespective of income, gender, nationality, sexuality or race, thus enabling ordinary people to live dignified lives; has accountable, democratic and representative leadership; and has the necessary political autonomy to realise these elements. Radical visions of the future city share an emphasis on its governance being placebased and participatory, vital to enabling inclusive political debate about the core values guiding governance. Asserting a city as a shared community of place able to determine its own values and shape its governance accordingly is challenged by its political autonomy in multi-level systems of governance. But as we have seen, cities do have capacity to bypass national states, whether this is to tackle transnational problems such as climate change (Chapter 5), or to develop alternative local economies and politics, as seen in new municipalisms (Chapter 6). In creating cityto-city networks for mutual learning, support and activism, the practices of real cities enact the international orientation envisaged in the cosmopolitan city imaginary. The cosmopolitan city imaginary is also invoked in describing cities as ‘institutional and constitutional havens for resistance’ (Barber, quoted in Florida 2017) against the national state. Under President Trump’s brand of populist nationalism, cities were affirmed as sites of opposition, expressed via the women’s marches following Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and in the mass protests against police violence which occurred in cities across all 50 states in spring 2020. Trump’s policies have furthered the cause for self-declared ‘sanctuary cities’, which limit their co-operation with federal immigration law enforcement, for example by stopping local law enforcement from questioning criminal suspects about their immigration status. In protecting undocumented immigrants and refugees from deportation by federal authorities, sanctuary cities recognise urban citizenship based on people’s inhabitance of place rather than their official status (Chapter 6). As Barber (2017) sees it, ‘the resistance will be localised’. Here the ‘local’ does not mean parochial but cosmopolitan, alluding to the values of diversity and tolerance which Wirth (1938/2016) recognised when he described ‘urbanism as a way of life’. In encouraging scholars to ‘see like a city’ rather than ‘see like a state’, Magnusson is arguing not only that cities form a microcosm of society, but that cities pose a challenge to the status quo as they help shape society and collective action. The city is not a ‘stable order, so much as a field of possibilities generated by diverse human efforts’ (Magnusson 2011: 117). It is these possibilities for alternative city futures that engage and encourage critical urbanists in their efforts to envisage and enact more equitable cities.

A Critical Agenda Critical urbanists consider the forms and possibilities of alternative urban politics as a crucial part of realising more equitable cities. Embracing the political leads to many avenues for further research. We need to better understand the diversity of struggles for urban social citizenship and the RTTC, and consider how to create effective alliances and social movements. We need to develop a far better understanding of new

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forms of political participation and activism. And we need to better understand alternative state-society relations of governance, such as new municipalist approaches, the new forms of local politics and local economies which are arising, and the role of city government and societal actors in facilitating, co-opting or blocking these. Research is needed to ascertain what conditions enable these alternatives in different places, such as the ability of city government to put its powers to best use, the importance of alliances with citizens, community groups and civil society organisations and the role of city-to-city solidarities within and across international borders. We also need to better understand how new municipalist approaches replace, combine with or are separate from so-called ‘normal’ local politics and ‘place-less’, market-led extractive economies. What is clear is that attaining more equitable cities requires getting urban governance right. Critical scholars need to engage with theory and practice in an interdisciplinary and empirical research agenda deriving from diverse global contexts (da Cruz et al. 2019). The central argument made in this book is that critically considering how our cities are governed, by whom and for whom, according to what values, helps us to envisage and enact transformative change. This critical urbanist stance challenges the dominance of imperatives of efficiency and economic growth over equity, and points to alternatives for ‘the city yet to come’ (Gibbons et al. 2020).

To Conclude on a Note of Hope In simple terms, the pessimistic scenario is of continuing widening inequality and division and greater repression, and the optimistic scenario is of greater equity, cohesion and empowerment. We can take heart that whilst cities face challenges they also embody possibilities and hopes and thus the scope for transformative change. To affirm cities’ ongoing, critical potentiality for transformation, Madden (2012: 782) describes the ‘eternal return of radical urban movements across the world’. We can see that cities remain at the forefront of this evolving, contested social order, as captured in the anti-racist and anti-capitalist protests on the streets of Global North cities in June 2020. At any one point in time the mainstream worldview may seem entrenched—but assumptions, practices and values can and are supplanted over time. Herein lies the possibility for a different, more equitable future.

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Index

A Action, 2, 6, 15, 19, 22, 24, 37, 54, 57, 62, 69, 71, 83, 86, 99, 102, 104, 105, 117– 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 132, 145, 146, 151 Activism/activist, 5, 12, 13, 34, 70, 86, 106, 127, 128, 132, 154, 155 Affordability, 13, 20, 22, 23, 32, 54, 60, 121, 137 Affordable housing, 13, 35, 47, 56, 60, 68, 73, 96, 122, 126, 130 Africa, 15, 16, 122 African American, 34, 61, 65, 88, 123, 125, 146, 148 Agglomeration, 12, 17, 25, 85, 94, 97–99, 122 Airbnb, 68, 135 Airport, 87, 92, 101 Alliance, 33, 34, 92, 95, 117, 122, 124–126, 135, 137, 150, 152, 154, 155 Alternative, 2–4, 6, 20, 42, 44, 47, 48, 56, 59, 74, 77, 96, 102, 117, 118, 121, 122, 124, 126–129, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 147, 151–155 Amsterdam, 98 Anchor institution, 110, 136 Area intervention, 104–107, 131 Argentina, 133, 136 Asia, 15, 16, 66, 93, 109 Assembly, 12–14, 97–99, 125, 134 Atlanta, 33, 34 Auckland, 87 Austerity, 5, 29, 30, 47, 59, 101, 128–130, 132, 134, 147, 148, 152 Austerity governance, 47, 89, 91, 108, 147, 151

Australia, 14, 16, 21, 40, 43, 60, 67, 73, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 99–102, 109 Authoritarian/authoritarianism, 70, 92, 148 Autonomous/autonomy, 6, 19, 20, 32, 38, 40, 43, 48, 83–87, 90, 95, 101–103, 107, 134

B Baltimore, 36, 61, 65 Bangladesh, 21, 120 Barcelona, 35, 48, 59, 68, 122, 131, 133, 134, 139, 152 Barcelona en Comu (BComú), 134 Basque Country, 91 Beijing, 92, 148 Beirut, 135 Birmingham, 69, 133 Black Lives Matter, 123, 125 Bogota, 137 Boosterism, 33, 92 Boston, 93 Bottom up, 2, 84, 99, 104, 127, 132, 133, 135 Boundary/boundaries, 3, 17, 23, 48, 70, 72, 93, 94, 96, 108, 132, 138 Bournville, 69 Brazil, 16, 63, 90, 133 Brexit, 145 Business Improvement District (BID), 65

C Canada, 67, 90, 92, 95 Capabilities, 76, 88, 130, 137 Capacity, 5, 6, 11, 14, 32, 34, 43, 44, 72, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 107, 118, 146–149, 151, 154

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Pill, Governing Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8

175

176 Capital, 12–15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 32, 34, 35, 40, 46, 63, 73, 76, 85, 92, 94, 97, 111, 134 Capitalism/capitalist, 1, 4, 5, 10–13, 15, 17, 31, 32, 34, 39, 56, 69, 120, 127, 131, 137, 145 Carceral citizenship, 123 Carceral governance, 123, 148 Caribbean, 15, 16 Castells, Manuel, 32, 61, 95, 96, 127, 132 Catalonia, 91, 134 Central Business District (CBD), 12 Centralise/centralised/centralisation, 75, 88, 89, 91, 102, 103, 134 Chicago, 36, 61, 125 Chile, 120, 136 China/Chinese, 11, 13, 15, 16, 63, 67, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 120, 128, 148 Chongqing, 92 Citizen, 5, 6, 9, 17, 18, 20, 24, 29, 30, 32, 34, 37, 38, 43–48, 54, 67, 68, 70, 102, 105, 109, 117, 118, 123–128, 130–132, 134–136, 150, 152, 153, 155 Citizen action, 6, 83, 84 Citizen engagement, 7, 128, 147 Citizen participation, 44–46, 119, 121, 128, 134, 138 Citizen representation, 10 City challenge, 3, 107 City deal, 100–102 City-region/city-regional, 2, 17, 23, 78, 84, 92–101, 110, 111 Civic enterprise, 130, 131 Civil society, 13, 31, 34, 43, 44, 46, 48, 93, 108, 110, 124, 126, 131, 138, 155 Cleveland, 136 Climate change, 75, 87, 119, 127, 149, 154 Cluster, 11, 12, 14, 15 Coalition, 32–36, 45, 48, 95, 103, 107, 124, 134, 135 Coercive governance, 6, 117, 118, 123, 148 Collaboration/collaborative, 30, 34, 43–45, 47, 48, 93, 124, 132, 137, 152 Collaborative governance, 44–46, 124, 128 Collective action, 2, 5–7, 10, 18, 19, 34, 37, 48, 108, 109, 111, 117–120, 122– 125, 127, 128, 132–134, 137, 152, 154 Collective consumption, 32, 40, 41, 58, 73, 96, 109, 122, 127, 150 Combined authority/authorities, 90, 99, 100 Commodification/commodified, 11, 22, 23, 32, 59, 67, 109, 129

Index Communication, 13, 146 Community/communities, 5, 18, 23, 24, 31, 34–36, 44–46, 56, 57, 60, 66, 70, 71, 73–76, 88, 90, 94, 96, 98, 102– 107, 109, 110, 119, 122, 125, 126, 129–136, 152–155 Community Action Program (CAP), 61, 105 Community building, 107 Community organising, 6, 106, 117, 124– 127, 137 Community power, 31, 33, 45 Community wealth building, 7, 117, 128, 133, 136, 138 Commute/commuting, 21, 60, 94 Compact city, 71, 73 Competitive city, 76, 93, 95, 102 Competitive city-regionalism, 6, 83, 84, 97, 100 Competitiveness, 5, 14, 29, 30, 40, 43, 57, 59, 63, 93–97, 100, 135 Consensus, 30, 34, 39, 44–46, 48, 89, 118, 127, 148, 151 Contest/contestation, 6, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 30, 35, 42, 44, 46, 55, 57, 74, 83, 85, 92, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 135, 137, 151, 152, 155 Co-operation Jackson, 136 Co-operative/co-operatives, 44, 129, 131, 133, 136, 138, 149 Co-optation/co-optative, 30, 36, 124, 128, 137 Co-ordinate/co-ordination, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23, 24, 37, 38, 43, 45, 46, 55, 56, 58, 68, 71, 72, 77, 83, 94–100, 111, 132, 146, 147, 150 Co-production, 130 Corporate/corporation, 2, 13–15, 24, 34–36, 38, 41, 42, 47, 57, 60, 63, 64, 67, 68, 74, 87, 97, 135 Cosmopolitan city, 152–154 Creative city, 94 Creative class, 41, 64, 76 Credit agencies, 62 Crisis/crises, 7, 47, 61, 89, 128, 132, 145– 149 Critical urbanist, 1, 2, 4, 20, 36, 46–48, 74, 117–120, 134, 138, 148, 153–155 Croatia, 135

D Decentralise/decentralised/decentralisation, 75, 86, 88, 89, 91, 99–103, 107

Index Democracy/democratic, 2, 11, 18–20, 24, 35, 37, 38, 44–46, 67, 75, 87, 93, 95–98, 101, 111, 118, 121, 133, 134, 145, 148, 153, 154 Denmark, 61 Density/densification, 10, 33, 69, 72, 73, 104 Denver, 36 Detroit, 61 Devolution, 91, 97, 100, 151 Dhaka, 21, 120 Digital platforms, 60, 68, 135 Digital rights, 67, 135 Digital urbanism, 68 Displacement, 23, 33, 47, 53, 72, 76, 108, 122, 130, 151 Diverse/diversity, 2, 3, 6, 15, 30, 39, 70, 71, 75, 77, 118–120, 126, 146, 152–155

E East London Communities Organisation, The (TELCO), 126 Economic development, 2, 21, 25, 33, 37, 41, 64, 93, 94, 97–100 Economic growth, 2, 5, 29, 30, 32, 35–38, 40–43, 47, 48, 58, 59, 62, 63, 65, 68, 74–76, 88, 97, 100, 102, 107, 110, 117, 118, 136, 150, 153, 155 Economics/Economy, 2–5, 7, 9–13, 16–24, 31–34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 47, 54–58, 61, 63, 65–67, 71, 86, 87, 92–98, 101, 105, 106, 108, 118–120, 124, 128, 132, 133, 145, 146, 148, 149, 153 Education, 3, 10, 13, 23, 40, 56–58, 62, 65, 76, 88, 101, 104, 106, 119, 122, 128, 137, 146 Efficiency, 5, 29, 30, 35–38, 40–42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 62, 66, 67, 70, 73, 95, 96, 99–103, 110, 111, 124, 137, 152, 155 Elite/elites/elitism/elitist, 2, 12, 18, 30–33, 35, 44–46, 60, 65, 69–71, 75, 92, 94, 95, 102, 107, 110, 118, 120, 132, 138, 150, 151 Eminent domain, 64 Empower/empowering/empowerment, 75, 105, 106, 124, 130, 151, 152, 155 England, 45, 100, 101, 103, 146 Enterprise zone, 41, 65, 66 Entrepreneurial/entrepreneurialism, 5, 30, 40, 41, 44, 46, 59, 60, 62–67, 71, 74, 76, 88, 89, 93, 100, 102, 106, 120, 134, 138

177 Entrepreneurial city, 41, 60, 74 Environment, 15, 19, 21, 48, 56, 61, 65, 68, 69, 75, 76, 98, 109, 122, 126 Equality, 58, 119, 137 Equitable city, 7, 75, 76, 117, 118, 123, 128, 133, 137–139, 145, 146, 153–155 Equity/equitable, 1, 2, 4, 5, 22, 23, 29, 30, 35–37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58, 61–63, 66, 73–75, 95, 96, 100, 101, 103, 110, 111, 118, 121, 124, 129, 136–138, 145, 150–153, 155 Europe/European, 11–16, 31, 36, 47, 57, 70, 88, 93, 95, 97–99, 131, 133 European Union (EU), 14, 86, 97, 145 Everyday, 1, 2, 6, 19, 42, 54, 58, 68, 94, 96, 117, 118, 122–124, 127–129, 131, 132, 137–139, 147–153 Everyday makers, 132 Eviction, 122, 134, 147, 149 Exchange value, 17, 22, 32, 33, 147 Exclude/exclusion, 2, 18, 24, 29, 43, 45, 46, 55, 122, 126, 129, 130, 134, 135 F Fainstein, Susan, 32, 57, 75, 76, 121, 137, 153 Fearless city/cities, 59, 133, 135, 139 Federal, 33, 75, 88–92, 95, 99, 101, 108, 147, 154 Feminism/feminist/feminise, 135 Finance, 14, 23, 54, 56, 60–62, 64, 89, 94, 152 Financialisation, 22, 23, 47, 62, 133 Fiscal, 40, 41, 63, 88, 89, 92, 93, 101, 135 Footloose, 87 Fordism/Fordist, 10, 12–16, 125 Formal, 2, 3, 18–20, 24, 30, 31, 37, 39, 43– 45, 57, 69, 104, 119, 124, 126–133, 135, 137, 138, 150, 151 Forum, 45, 104, 124 Foucault, Michel, 19 France/French, 17, 21, 22, 69, 89–91, 99, 106, 136 Frankfurt, 76 Future, 4–7, 17, 24, 25, 38, 53, 54, 61, 68–71, 74, 121, 129, 145–147, 151, 153–155 G Garden city/cities, 69, 70, 72, 109 Gentrification, 20, 22, 23, 33, 36, 53, 65, 72, 108, 122, 130 Geography, 3, 29, 149

178 Germany, 61, 89–91, 98, 131 Gig economy, 14 Glasgow, 133 Global, 3, 6, 10, 13–17, 20, 22–24, 31, 54, 56–58, 60, 64, 66, 76, 83–87, 89, 92– 95, 100, 122, 127, 133, 145, 149, 150, 152, 155 Global city, 22, 65, 73, 96, 99, 100 Global financial crisis (GFC), 14, 23, 47, 60, 122, 128, 134, 147, 148 Globalisation, 1, 12–16, 20, 31, 39, 40, 74, 85, 86, 145, 152 Global North, 4, 11, 13–16, 18, 20, 31, 39, 62, 63, 66, 70, 108, 128–130, 132, 133, 151, 152, 155 Global South, 4, 14–16, 20, 21, 24, 45, 63, 128, 130, 133–136 Global urbanisation, 5, 10, 15, 17, 19, 31, 122 Governance, 1–3, 5, 6, 10, 17, 19, 20, 29–49, 53–57, 61–63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 77, 83–89, 93–95, 97–105, 107, 109– 111, 117, 121–124, 126–128, 130, 131, 133–135, 137–139, 145, 147, 148, 150–155 Government, 2, 3, 5, 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 22–24, 29–31, 33–41, 43, 45–48, 54– 59, 61–65, 67, 73, 77, 84, 86–89, 91– 107, 111, 120, 125, 126, 130, 133, 135, 146–148, 150–152, 155 Governmental system, 6, 29, 40, 43, 66, 75, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91, 98, 108, 128, 150 Grassroots, 2, 6, 18, 106, 117, 121, 122, 126, 133, 138, 149, 152 Greece, 90, 91, 120 Green belt, 70, 72 Growth coalition, 32–35, 38, 41 Growth machine, 32, 42, 57, 70, 118 Guangzhou, 16, 92 H Hague, The, 98 Harvey, David, 15, 23, 31, 32, 40, 57, 85, 110, 120, 127, 137–139 Haussmann, Georges, 69, 75 Headquarters, 14, 15, 64, 95 Health, 3, 10, 12, 13, 23, 25, 40, 56, 58, 59, 76, 88, 99, 119, 122, 137, 146, 147, 149, 153 Hegemony, 19, 150, 153 Hierarchy/hierarchical, 2, 21, 30, 32, 34, 45, 47, 83, 86, 92, 93, 100, 101, 147, 150

Index Homeless, 22, 69, 122, 127, 147, 149 Homeownership, 13, 61 Home rule, 91, 92, 95, 96, 103 Hong Kong, 13, 120, 123, 125, 130, 148 HOPE VI, 108 Housing, 2, 3, 12, 13, 16, 21–24, 32, 54, 56, 58–61, 63, 66, 68, 69, 71–74, 76, 88, 95–99, 101, 106, 108, 109, 119, 121, 122, 127, 129–132, 134, 135, 137, 147, 153 Howard, Ebenezer, 69, 70, 72 Hukou, 128 I Identity, 85, 96, 98, 104, 106, 118, 119, 123, 127, 132, 135, 137 Ideology/ideologies, 5, 24, 29, 30, 41, 42, 45, 47, 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 70, 74, 100, 133, 138, 150 Include/inclusion, 24, 25, 29, 30, 34, 36, 40, 41, 43, 45, 48, 54, 55, 57, 63, 65– 67, 72, 76, 93, 101, 105, 110, 111, 121, 126, 129, 131, 132, 134, 135, 147–150 Inclusionary zoning, 66, 68, 73 Inclusive growth, 63, 76, 110 Income, 12, 21, 22, 36, 57, 60, 61, 65, 68, 73, 76, 89, 95, 108, 136, 137, 146, 148, 153, 154 India, 13, 16, 63, 90, 128, 129 Indignados, 132, 134 Individual, 2, 11, 16, 18, 19, 22–24, 31, 37, 46, 63, 76, 106, 108, 109, 119, 121, 153 Indonesia, 90 Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), 125, 126 Industrialisation, 10, 12, 18, 31, 57, 69 Inequality/inequalities, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 14–16, 19–24, 45, 47, 48, 54–56, 61, 63, 67, 72–74, 76, 77, 103, 107, 120, 122, 127, 130, 134, 136–138, 146, 147, 149, 150, 155 Informal/informality, 2, 20, 33, 37, 61, 63, 104, 124, 128–131, 150 Informal urbanism, 6, 117, 118, 128, 132 Infrastructure, 10, 15, 19–23, 32, 33, 38, 47, 56–58, 60, 63, 64, 68, 76, 87, 88, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100–102, 109, 127 Inner city, 15 Institution, 2, 3, 5, 19–21, 23, 24, 31, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 83–87, 93, 100, 125, 136, 150, 151, 153 Interdisciplinary, 3, 155

Index Investment/investor, 2, 13–16, 21–23, 32, 33, 41, 54, 57, 60, 64, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 77, 87, 94, 95, 99, 101, 110, 136 Ireland, 90, 91 Italy, 61, 90, 91, 135

J Jackson, 48, 136 Jacobs, Jane, 70 Japan, 14, 16, 43, 90, 93 Just, 1, 4, 54, 56, 74, 121, 126, 135, 138, 153 Just city, 54, 75, 132

K Keynesian/Keynesianism, 10, 13, 14, 16, 39, 41, 47, 57, 63, 70, 72, 91, 119, 147–149 Keynes, John Maynard, 12 Key worker, 60, 66

L Labour, 11–15, 18, 31, 32, 34, 58, 85, 94, 95, 120, 123, 125, 126, 133 Landlord, 22, 61, 130 Land use planning, 71 Latin America, 15, 16, 93, 133, 152 Lebanon, 135 Lefebvre, Henri, 17, 24, 120–122, 127, 138 Letchworth, 70 Liveable, 66, 101, 152 Liveable city, 53, 76 Liverpool, 133 Local Agenda 21, 86, 87 Local government, 23, 30, 37, 43, 45–48, 54, 55, 59, 63, 64, 71, 72, 83, 87, 88, 90– 92, 94–97, 99–104, 106, 107, 118, 121, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136, 147 Localism/localist, 47, 96, 102, 103, 137 Local strategic partnership (LSP), 45, 103, 107 London, 2, 10, 21, 22, 57, 64, 65, 87, 90, 95–97, 101, 126, 128, 129, 133, 146, 147 Los Angeles, 36, 61, 130

M Madrid, 48, 122, 132, 134 Magnusson, Warren, 3, 18, 19, 56, 88, 154

179 Managerial/managerialism, 5, 6, 19, 30, 38– 40, 44–46, 53, 56, 67, 74, 88, 89, 101, 104–106, 127, 148, 152 Managerial city, 44 Manchester, 97, 99, 101 Market, 1, 2, 11, 13–16, 20, 22–24, 36, 41, 47, 48, 58–60, 63, 67–69, 72–74, 87, 88, 92, 94, 100, 102, 106, 110, 118, 120, 123, 129, 131, 132, 138, 145, 147, 150, 153, 155 Marx, Karl, 15, 131 Mayor, 87, 95, 99–101, 134, 135, 137 Megaproject, 64, 66, 71, 92, 95, 101 Melbourne, 14, 76, 92 Messina, 135 Metagovernance, 43 Metropolitan, 2, 23, 55, 57, 68, 71–73, 90, 92, 94–99, 104, 111 Mexico, 90, 121 Migrant/migrants, 22, 119, 122, 126, 128, 129, 135 Migration, 12, 15, 16, 24 Minneapolis, 148 Mobile capital, 23, 64–66 Mobility paradigm, 108, 136 Multi-level governance, 86 Mumbai, 147 Municipal/Municipality, 2, 16, 20, 23, 48, 84, 89–93, 95–100, 111, 133 N Nation/national, 3, 6, 10, 12–17, 21, 24, 31, 35, 37, 40, 43, 57, 67, 69, 83–89, 91– 103, 120, 121, 125, 128, 131, 133, 146–148, 151, 154 Nation state, 3, 6, 13, 18, 19, 21, 24, 83, 84, 101, 119 Neighbourhood, 2, 6, 18, 20, 22, 33–36, 46, 61, 65, 70, 72, 83–85, 104–110, 119, 123, 125, 130–132, 135, 136, 138, 146, 149 Neighbourhood effects, 106, 108 Neoliberal/neoliberalism, 5, 10, 13, 15, 20, 29–31, 36, 41, 42, 44–48, 58, 59, 62, 63, 72–74, 76, 77, 85, 88, 93– 96, 100–103, 105, 107, 110, 111, 118, 123, 124, 132, 133, 145–151, 153 Neoliberal city, 41, 42, 46, 152 Netherlands, 98 Network, 2, 3, 6, 12, 14, 22, 23, 30, 43–45, 85, 86, 92, 99, 106, 117, 119, 121, 124–126, 130, 132–134, 138, 149, 150, 154

180 Network governance, 39, 45, 102, 103 New Deal for Communities, 107 New Labour, 45, 103 New localism, 86, 91, 102, 107 New municipalism, 7, 48, 117, 128, 133– 136, 138, 145, 149, 154 New Public Management (NPM), 38–40, 44, 45, 102, 133 New regionalisms, 86, 93 New South Wales, 64, 99, 101 New town, 70 New urban activisms, 48, 128, 132, 152 New Urban Agenda, 121, 151 New York, 2, 22, 61, 87, 96, 97, 147 New Zealand, 40 Night-time economy, 70 Non-profit, 30, 35, 40, 41, 56, 68, 146 North America, 13–16, 57, 72 O Obama, Barack, 95 Occupy movement, 127, 128 Oceania, 15, 16 Olympics, 64, 99, 122, 134 Ordinary cities, 85, 151 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 14, 16, 21, 25, 41, 62, 63, 76, 90, 94, 98, 110 Outsource/outcourcing, 14, 47, 57 Owner, 15, 16, 23, 55, 59, 65 P Pakistan, 63 Pandemic, 7, 67, 145–149 Paris, 21, 69, 75, 87, 97–99, 120 Paris Agreement, 86, 87 Participation/participatory, 11, 18, 20, 34, 38, 44–48, 70, 71, 105, 111, 122, 127, 130, 133–137, 150, 154, 155 Participatory budgeting, 16, 45, 46, 133 Partner/Partnership, 5, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 46, 59, 63, 67, 100–102, 107, 110, 125, 126, 150 Peck, Jamie, 30, 41, 42, 47, 49, 57, 62, 66, 85, 89, 102, 108, 130, 134 Perth, 92 Peru, 137 Philanthropy/philanthropic, 35, 102, 107, 125, 126 Philosophy, 3 Pierre, Jon, 30, 33, 34, 37–39, 41, 43, 48, 57, 63, 86–88, 150, 153

Index Place-based leadership, 87, 88, 101, 108 Place branding, 60 Place making, 74, 75 Place shaping, 75, 103 Planetary urbanisation, 17, 20, 93, 111, 150, 153 Planning, 3, 6, 21, 38, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 63, 65, 66, 68–75, 77, 92, 95, 97, 99 Platform urbanism, 68 Pluralism/pluralist, 30, 31, 34, 45 Poland, 135 Police/policing, 22, 32, 40, 58, 60, 61, 69, 91, 92, 99, 123, 125, 148, 154 Policy choice, 19, 30, 32, 43, 44, 54, 139, 150 Policy construct, 6, 53, 54, 63, 66–68, 71, 75, 76, 94, 102, 103, 108, 152 Policy instrument, 5, 6, 43, 53, 55, 60, 64, 66, 67, 100, 102 Policy mobilities, 66 Policy transfer, 6, 54, 66, 74, 77 Political autonomy, 89, 91, 98, 150–152, 154 Political economy, 3, 11, 31, 32, 40, 43, 86, 118 Political science, 3, 29, 33, 86 Politics, 1–7, 9, 10, 17–20, 23, 24, 29–33, 35, 37–39, 43, 44, 47, 53–56, 59, 61, 62, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77, 83–85, 96, 100, 102, 105, 110, 118, 121, 122, 126– 128, 132–139, 146, 148, 150–152, 154, 155 Polycentricity, 72 Poor, 12, 20, 22–24, 32, 36, 41, 42, 45, 60– 62, 65, 69, 105, 106, 108–110, 120, 123, 126, 131, 136, 138, 147 Population, 10–13, 15, 16, 20, 21, 25, 31, 37, 40, 42, 55, 57, 62, 63, 69, 70, 85, 90, 91, 93, 94, 97–99, 101, 109, 120, 122, 123, 128, 134 Populism/populist, 145, 152, 154 Pop up, 129 Porto, Alegre, 45 Portugal, 90, 91 Post-industrial, 4, 5, 12–15, 30, 34, 36, 39–41, 43 Post-political/post-politics, 19, 24, 42, 46, 127, 133, 150, 152 Poverty, 14, 21, 48, 49, 55, 61–63, 70, 106–108, 129 Power, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 18–20, 22, 24, 30–33, 37, 40, 43, 44, 46–48, 53,

Index 55–57, 59, 63–72, 74–77, 83–85, 87– 89, 91, 92, 94, 98–104, 110, 118– 121, 123–128, 133–136, 147, 148, 150–153, 155 Precarity/precarious, 14, 60, 61, 129, 134, 146 Preston, 48, 136 Primate cities, 21 Private/privatised/privatisation, 6, 22, 23, 30, 33–38, 40–43, 45, 47, 48, 54, 56– 59, 62–65, 67–71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 83, 84, 87–89, 92, 93, 101, 104, 105, 107–109, 122, 132, 134, 146, 148, 153 Privatism/privatist, 47, 109, 120 Production, 5, 10–15, 17, 32, 38, 56, 58, 66, 67, 111, 120, 137 Productivity, 13, 24, 58, 60, 94, 96, 100, 101 Profit, 1, 2, 5, 14, 15, 29, 30, 32, 40, 41, 48, 57–65, 68, 74, 117, 132, 137, 149 Pro-growth, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 60, 63, 71, 73, 74, 93, 95 Property, 15, 18, 22, 23, 32, 33, 47, 55, 58, 59, 63–65, 67, 69–74, 89, 100, 101, 106, 129, 130, 132, 135 Propinquity, 2, 17, 19, 139 Province, 90, 92, 93, 97, 98 public–private partnerships (PPPs), 40, 41, 63, 64 Public housing, 57–60, 70, 92, 108, 149 Public policy, 1, 3, 18, 22–24, 43, 45, 46, 48, 54, 55, 61, 136, 148 Public realm, 59, 69, 70, 74, 118, 120, 131–134, 137, 148 Public services, 1, 10, 23, 33, 38, 40, 41, 55, 58, 68, 88, 102–104, 106, 107, 130–132, 146 Public space, 22, 59, 70, 75, 76, 109, 120, 121, 131, 134, 149 Q Quality of life, 5, 9, 10, 12, 21, 41, 57, 75–77, 85, 96, 121, 137, 138, 148 R Race/racism/racist, 18, 61, 121, 137, 146, 148, 152, 154 Radical, 17, 46, 62, 67, 69, 70, 77, 102, 105, 110, 111, 122, 131, 133–136, 139, 147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155 Rail, 12, 72, 87, 92, 101 Randstad, The, 98

181 Redistribution/redistributive, 35, 57, 58, 62, 66, 68, 94, 110, 117, 118, 133, 134, 137 Redlining, 61 Reform, 12, 34, 39, 40, 44, 92, 94, 102, 118, 134 Regeneration, 71, 99, 107 Region/regional, 3, 6, 13–17, 24, 25, 43, 57, 66, 68, 73, 83–87, 89–100, 134 Renewal, 15 Rent gap, 22 Rescale/rescaling, 6, 77, 83–87, 93, 97, 99, 101–103, 110 Resistance, 6, 46, 96, 117–120, 127, 135, 154 Revanchist, 22 Revolution, 17, 18 Rights, 6, 18, 20, 91–93, 97, 103, 110, 117–123, 130, 131, 137, 147 Right to the City (RTTC), 6, 77, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123 Riot, 12, 61, 69 Road/roads, 10, 58, 63, 64, 72, 92, 109 Robinson, Jennifer, 4, 85, 151 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 13 Rosario, 136 Rotterdam, 98

S Sanctuary cities, 154 San Diego, 93 San Francisco, 35, 93 Sassen, Saskia, 14, 22, 94 Scale, 5, 6, 12, 15, 16, 20, 31, 61, 64, 69, 83–87, 92–94, 96, 104, 105, 110, 111, 122, 125, 131, 148 Scandinavia, 14, 43, 57 School, 46, 59, 69, 72, 76, 92, 95, 125, 126, 137, 153 Scotland, 91 Self-help, 103, 107, 108, 124, 129–131 Service, 14, 19, 21–24, 32, 35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 54, 56–60, 63, 65, 66, 68, 72, 75, 77, 78, 85, 92, 101, 103–107, 109, 120, 121, 126, 127, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 146, 147, 149, 152 Shanghai, 16, 92, 93, 96, 97 Sheffield, 133 Short, John Rennie, 11, 13, 19, 35, 42, 58, 62, 68, 87, 109, 120, 123, 152, 153 Silicon Valley, 14 Singapore, 13 Single Regeneration Budget, 107

182 Skill, 12, 14, 21, 23, 60, 66, 99, 101, 106, 107, 132 Smart city, 67, 75, 123, 134, 152 Smart growth, 72 Social capital, 119, 125, 131, 132, 138 Social citizenship, 123 Social control, 6, 46, 61, 69, 117, 123 Social housing, 22, 23, 40, 101 Social innovation, 7, 117, 118, 128, 130, 131 Social justice, 6, 29, 30, 37, 48, 118 Social media, 120 Social movement, 2, 24, 57, 127, 132, 134– 136, 152, 154 Social reproduction, 21, 23, 32, 57, 58, 63, 66, 69, 73, 74, 96, 111, 146, 148 Social welfare, 13, 23, 36, 40, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 109, 130 Society, 1–3, 5, 9–13, 17–19, 21, 22, 24, 30– 32, 42, 43, 48, 54, 55, 57, 63, 74, 85, 89, 93, 105, 106, 118, 119, 121–123, 127, 131, 138, 139, 145–148, 153, 154 Sociology, 3, 29, 31–33 Socio-spatial, 22, 47, 54, 56, 74, 76, 84, 96, 111, 134, 146 Solidarity, 133–135, 145, 149 South Korea, 13 Spain, 35, 47, 48, 61, 90, 91, 120, 122, 128, 131, 132, 134 Spatial mismatch, 23, 54, 72 Spatial planning, 71, 94, 98 Speculation, 16, 23, 100 State, 2, 5, 6, 11, 13, 15, 19–21, 23, 29–33, 37, 39–44, 46–48, 53, 55–61, 63–66, 68–74, 77, 83–96, 98–107, 109, 110, 118–121, 123, 124, 126–133, 137, 138, 146–151, 154 State-society, 6, 17, 29–31, 37, 41, 47, 152, 155 Status quo, 2, 69, 106, 120, 154 Stone, Clarence, 33–37, 39, 44, 89, 138 Strategic planning, 54, 55, 71–73, 76, 94, 97–99, 104 Street-level bureaucrats, 32 Stuttgart, 97, 98 Subsidiarity, 97, 98 Suburb/suburban/suburbanisation, 12, 13, 15, 21, 59, 61, 70, 72, 88, 95, 126 Surveillance capitalism, 67 Sustainability, 75, 87 Sustainable development, 25, 87 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 121

Index Sydney, 21, 64, 65, 72, 73, 87, 92, 94–96, 99, 101, 109, 126 Sydney Alliance, 125, 126 T Tax, 22, 23, 33, 40, 60, 61, 63, 65–67, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 101, 104, 106, 119 Tax Increment Financing (TIF), 65 Technology, 11, 12, 67, 75, 123, 152, 153 Territory/territorial, 6, 11, 12, 23, 37, 56, 84– 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 104, 105, 110, 111, 130 Thatcher, Margaret, 102 Third sector, 37, 42, 57, 83, 146 Thirty-minute city, 71, 72 Tianjin, 92 Timebanking, 131 Tokenism/tokenistic, 24, 45, 66, 70, 77, 126, 137, 139 Tokyo, 90, 93, 96 Top down, 2, 84, 98–100, 126, 131 Toronto, 67, 95 Toyota, 14 Transform, 67, 122, 131–133, 135, 151 Transit-oriented development, 72 Transport, 3, 11–13, 23, 24, 40, 53, 55–58, 64, 67, 72, 74, 76, 87, 88, 95, 97–101, 137, 146, 149 Trickle down, 42, 60, 63, 76, 106, 136 Trump, Donald, 62, 145, 147, 154 U Uber, 68 Umbrella movement, 125 Unequal, 1, 2, 19, 22, 30, 138, 149 Uneven, 4, 15, 19, 21, 22, 24, 36, 93, 96, 149 Union, 13, 34, 125, 126, 151 United Kingdom (UK), 16, 21, 35, 38, 40, 43, 45, 48, 59, 61, 63, 66, 69–71, 75, 90, 91, 99–103, 105–107, 110, 126, 130, 131, 133, 136, 145–147 United Nations (UN)/UN-Habitat, 10, 15– 17, 20, 25, 119, 121, 128, 130, 151 United States (US), 12–14, 16, 31–36, 38, 40–43, 45, 47, 48, 59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 69, 70, 88–91, 95, 96, 102, 103, 105–110, 122, 123, 125, 130, 136, 145–148 Unrest, 18, 24, 55, 61 Urban/urbanisation, 1–6, 9–13, 15–25, 29– 44, 46–48, 53–59, 62–77, 83–86, 88, 89, 92–94, 96, 98, 102, 104–106,

Index 108–110, 117–135, 137–139, 145, 147–155 Urban citizens/citizenship, 6, 117–119, 121– 124, 128–132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 145, 152–154 Urban commons/commoning, 7, 70, 117, 118, 128, 131, 134, 135, 138, 149 Urban crisis, 61, 62, 89 Urban development, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 41, 54, 59, 68, 71, 72, 95 Urban Development Corporations (UDCs), 64, 66 Urban governance theory, 5, 29, 30, 36, 37, 44, 46, 48, 150, 151 Urban growth, 20, 21, 24, 68, 72, 73, 96, 128, 138 Urban imaginaries, 152 Urbanism/urbanist, 1, 2, 4, 6, 18, 19, 36, 47, 48, 68, 75, 84, 117, 118, 128, 132, 137, 145, 146, 148, 153, 155 Urban policy, 6, 30, 39, 43, 44, 49, 53–59, 61, 63, 67, 68, 72–74, 76, 77, 87, 88, 101, 102, 105, 121, 123, 134, 151 Urban problem, 6, 53, 54, 56, 60, 62, 69, 70, 77, 105–108 Urban regime theory, 5, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 86, 89, 91, 102 Urban renewal, 22, 70, 72, 108 Urban social citizenship, 137, 153, 154 Use value, 22, 32, 33 Utrecht, 98 V Valparaiso, 136

183 Value/values, 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 15, 19, 22, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 41–43, 48, 54, 55, 57, 62, 65, 67, 68, 71, 74, 75, 77, 91, 100, 101, 103, 105, 117, 118, 121, 124, 126, 131, 135, 145, 148–155 Vancouver, 87 Violence, 20, 123, 148, 154 Voice, 10, 12, 17, 24, 99, 107, 118, 120, 125, 126, 150 Vote, 23, 31

W Wales, 91 Warsaw, 135 Washington DC, 93 Wealth, 17, 21–23, 48, 49, 57, 58, 63, 67, 69, 106, 110, 133 Welfare, 13, 18, 41, 47, 59, 60, 63, 107, 122, 148 Welfare state, 14, 47, 62, 63, 91, 102, 119 Well-being, 5, 9, 21, 23–25, 57, 63, 75, 119, 147 Welwyn, 70 Wirth, Louis, 18, 154 World Bank, 63, 110 World Urban Forum, 87

Z Zagreb, 135, 136 Zero-hour contracts, 14 Zoning, 68