Secondary Cities: Exploring Uneven Development in Dynamic Urban Regions of the Global North 9781529212082

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s e c o n d a ry cities ______

E x p lo r i n g U n e v e n D e v e lo p m e n t i n D y n a m i c U r b a n Re g i o n s o f t h e g lo b a l n o r t h

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edited by

Mark Pendras Charles Williams

SECONDARY CITIES Exploring Uneven Development in Dynamic Urban Regions of the Global North Edited by Mark Pendras and Charles Williams

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-1207-5 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-1209-9 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1208-2 ePdf The right of Mark Pendras and Charles Williams to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Andrew Corbett Front cover image: Overtacoma Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Figures and Tables iv Notes on Contributors vi Acknowledgements ix 1 Secondary Cities: Introduction to a Research Agenda 1 Mark Pendras and Charles Williams 2 Shedding Light or Casting Shadows? Relations 25 between Primary and Secondary Cities Evert Meijers and Rodrigo Cardoso 3 Small and Medium-Sized Towns as Secondary Cities: 55 The Case of Switzerland Heike Mayer, Rahel Meili and David Kaufmann 4 From Sleepy Hollow to Winning from Second: 79 Identity, Autonomy and Borrowed Size in an Australian Urban Region Louise C. Johnson 5 Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional 103 Contrasts: The Uneven Fortunes of English Secondary Cities Rodrigo Cardoso and Evert Meijers 6 Situating the Secondary City: Uneven Development 133 and Regional Gentrification in Tacoma, WA Charles Williams and Mark Pendras 7 Borrowed Social Performance: Labour and 157 Community Organizations in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California Gary Hytrek 8 Intra-Regional Relationality and Green City- 181 Regionalism: Placing the Role of ‘Secondary Cities’ Yonn Dierwechter 9 Conclusion: Advancing the Secondary City 209 Perspective Charles Williams and Mark Pendras Index 223

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List of Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1 2.2

The Randstad Holland The extended ‘borrowed size/agglomeration shadow’ framework 2.3 Classification of municipalities in the Randstad 2.4 Historical importance 2.5 Population size 2.6 Economic structure 2.7 Social status 2.8 Network embeddedness 2.9 Tourism 2.10 Borrowed functions 2.11 Borrowed performance 4.1 False map published by Melbourne merchants 5.1 Urban functions’ share and demographic divergence 5.2 Connectivity index boxplot for British city-regions 6.1 Historical patterns of population growth, Tacoma and Seattle 7.1 Location of Long Beach, CA 8.1 Shifting class structure in Seattle, 2010–2017 8.2 Annual growth rates in Tacoma, 1980–2019 8.3 Tacoma employment dynamics, 2002 vs 2017

31 33 35 37 38 38 39 40 40 42 45 84 117 124 138 160 197 199 199

Tables 3.1 4.1 5.1 5.2

Comparing the two secondary cities CoGG industry sector of employment, 2006 and 2016 Analysed cities and respective populations Summary of characteristics of supergroups 2–8

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64 94 113 115

List of Figures and Tables

5.3 5.4 5.5

Main functional and demographic indicators of core cities Population growth, % values, 2001–11 Road and rail connectivity index, quadrant averages

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118 122 123

Notes on Contributors Rodrigo Cardoso has studied in Porto, Barcelona and London and is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he coordinates the Urban Geography course. His research interests include the features and challenges of secondary cities and city-regions in the European urban system and the spatial, functional, symbolic and institutional dimensions of metropolitan integration processes. Yonn Dierwechter is Professor in the School of Urban Studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. After several years working in South Africa and the United States, he received his PhD from the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics. Professor Dierwechter’s current research focuses on urban political geography, spatial planning systems and global sustainability. His recent books include Urban Sustainability through Smart Growth, Smart Transitions in City-Regionalism and The Urbanization of Green Internationalism. In 2019, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study the social and environmental implications of smart cities in Canada. Gary Hytrek is a community-based researcher whose research focuses on movement building and the potential to construct meaningful spaces of participation and self-determination under conditions of neoliberal globalization. Of particular interest is how labour and community groups actively influence their immediate political-economic landscapes through multi-scalar organizing and how those actions in turn shape future organizing possibilities. Louise C. Johnson is an Honorary Professor at Deakin University. A human geographer, she has researched suburban housing, changing manufacturing workplaces as well as the dynamics of Australian regional economies. She has researched Geelong’s textile industry, documented the experiences of displaced car industry workers, women in the service sector and the growth of the creative industries. This work has informed

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policy development and service interventions. Louise has also done research on urban access and inclusion and on the Indigenous absence in Australian urban planning. In 2011 she received the Institute of Australian Geographers Australia and International Medal in 2011 for her contribution to urban, social and cultural geography. David Kaufmann is Assistant Professor of Spatial Development and Urban Policy at ETH Zürich and the Deputy Director of the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development. He is part of the editorial board of the journal Urban Affairs Review and of the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association, section Urban and Local Politics (2020–22). His research examines the intersections of public policy, urban politics, spatial planning and migration studies. He studies local economic development policies, urban migration policies as well as how cities can densify themselves democratically and without intensifying social inequalities. Heike Mayer is Professor of economic geography at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Her research is in local and regional economic development with a focus on dynamics of innovation and entrepreneurship, place making and sustainability. Heike started her academic career in the United States, where she completed a PhD in Urban Studies (Portland State University) and held a tenured professorship at Virginia Tech University. She is author of the book Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Second Tier Regions (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham), co-author of Small Town Sustainability (Birkhäuser Press, Basel) and co-author of The Political Economy of Capital Cities (Routledge, London). Evert Meijers is Associate Professor in Economic Geography at the Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University. He also is a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation. Until recently, he was associated with Delft University of Technology and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. His research interests include the evolution of the spatial organization of territories and cities and how this organization affects social well-being, environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness, the rise of city network externalities next to agglomeration externalities and the growth and decline of cities and regions more generally. Rahel Meili is a consultant in regional development. She designs and manages projects and policies in the Swiss mountain regions that help to enhance the quality of life and economic prosperity. Her dissertation

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was about economic dynamics and innovation mechanisms in small and medium-sized towns. Mark Pendras is Associate Professor in the School of Urban Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma. He also serves as Book Review editor for the journal Urban Geography. His research broadly centres around urban political economy, with an emphasis on uneven development, capital mobility, interurban competition and alternative local economic development strategies. Recent work interrogates urban industrial planning and the contributions of urban manufacturing to inclusive economies and urban sustainability. Charles Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science and Labor Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma. His research focuses on American political development, emphasizing issues of labour, race, political radicalism and urban political economy. His recent work has turned to the Pacific Northwest, in particular examining the racial and class politics of Tacoma from the late 19th century to the present.

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Acknowledgements The seeds for this book were planted in 2010, when one of our many conversations about urban politics and development turned to the topic of Tacoma, the city where we live and work, and our efforts to make sense of the city’s development experiences. At the time, as the financial crisis still had a firm grip on the world, Tacoma was struggling mightily under the weight of years of only marginally successful efforts to achieve the kind of urban renaissance that seemed to have enveloped other cities. As had happened so many times in the city’s history, something (in this case, the financial crisis) came along to take the wind from the city’s sails just as it was gaining some momentum. For decades the city seemed to have been doing everything right, following all the prescriptions for successful redevelopment. Theatre district? Check. Waterfront clean-up? Check. Downtown university campus? Check. Museums? Check. Light rail? Check. Lofty claims to being ‘wired’ and ‘global’? Check. Nothing quite seemed to work as planned and there wasn’t much in the urban politics and development literature to explain why not. Meanwhile, the city of Seattle, some 35 miles to the north, continued its meteoric rise to superstar city status. As academics, the juxtaposition of what appeared to be, and was typically represented as, unbridled ‘success’ in Seattle and perpetual struggle in Tacoma was irresistible. How could neighbouring cities, which had at one time competed as equals for regional dominance, experience such divergent development paths? It took some time for us to connect with the literatures and terminologies that felt like the right fit. For, as discussed in Chapter  1, we found that most scholarly engagements with ‘regions’ and ‘city-regions’ and processes of ‘metropolization’ tended to approach ‘regional’ experiences from the perspective of the core city of the region and simultaneously to collapse the ‘other’ cities of the region into the core city experience. The conditions and circumstances of the region’s ‘secondary’ cities didn’t seem to register. This project is thus motivated by the need to represent the secondary city perspective. Of course, there is no one secondary city perspective, and any particular secondary city will undoubtedly encompass a variety of experiences. So the aim is not to capture ‘the’ secondary city

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perspective but rather to try to approach urban and regional development relationally and to do so by taking as the starting point a perspective other than that of the core city. Most of the authors included in this edited volume participated in a workshop on regional second cities that we hosted on the University of Washington Tacoma campus in August of 2018. That workshop was productive and stimulating and no small amount of fun. We thank all contributors for their open-minded curiosity and the excellent work they put into their chapter contributions. All were mindful of important deadlines, responsive to feedback and a pleasure to work with. Our colleague, Yonn Dierwechter, has been an especially ardent supporter and a terrific interlocutor throughout the project. We would also like to thank the University of Washington Tacoma for providing the facilities and other resources for the initial workshop, and the School of Urban Studies and the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences for financial and administrative assistance throughout this project. Emily Watt and her editorial team at Policy Press deserve special thanks for supporting this work from the beginning and for keeping things moving through the system in a timely manner. And we thank our anonymous reviewers for sharpening our thinking about key topics and improving the proposal and final product. Finally, we thank our families for providing the time, space and support needed for us to pursue this project across the years. Their curious questions, open ears and steady encouragement kept us on track and fuelled our progress and for that we are endlessly grateful. Mark Pendras and Charles Williams Tacoma, WA, 2020

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Secondary Cities: Introduction to a Research Agenda Mark Pendras and Charles Williams

Introduction The concept of ‘secondary cities’ is both intuitively obvious and empirically slippery. Everyone seems to know what secondary cities are; they are the other cities, the less recognized, less celebrated cities you haven’t heard of, located just next to the famous cities that gather all the attention. Secondary cities aren’t suburbs, or edge cities or the storied hinterlands that nurture the metropolitan hordes. They don’t fit neatly into established categories of urban scholarship. Consequently, they are also difficult to define empirically; they are increasingly collapsed into broader metropolitan statistical areas or otherwise interpolated into the ‘city-region’ defined by their dominant neighbours. The contributions assembled in this book aim to bring some light to the secondary city experience and open some space for thinking of these cities as distinct and worthy of attention. By definition, the idea of ‘secondary’ involves a relationship, a comparison with a dominant other, and along with simply calling more attention to the distinct experiences of such places we want to expressly argue that understanding these cities – as well as their dominant neighbours – requires a relational perspective. This book explores the secondary city concept in order to emphasize the significance of intra-regional relationality to contemporary urban conditions and to the development possibilities facing many cities. Particularly in a moment

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when there is a welcome turn to greater attention on ‘ordinary’ cities (Amin and Graham, 1997; Robinson, 2002, 2008), small cities (Bell and Jayne, 2006), shrinking cities (Fol, 2012; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012; Mallach, 2017), legacy cities (Mallach, 2012; Hollingsworth and Goebel, 2017) ‘left behind places’ (Hendrickson et al, 2018), ‘places that don’t matter’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2017), and cities otherwise understood to fall outside the usual emphasis on global winners, we evoke the secondary city concept as way to highlight the importance of relationality to understanding contemporary urban conditions. In employing the secondary city concept, we want to clarify a few points at the outset. First, we distinguish secondary cities from ‘second cities’ (Hodos, 2011), ‘second-tier cities’ (Markusen et al, 1999) and ‘secondrank cities’ (Dijkstra et al, 2013; Camagni et al, 2016), primarily in terms of geographic scale. While these similar concepts all evoke relationality, the latter three emphasize the national scale and situate cities in relation to each other within a national urban system. We also note that the ‘secondary cities’ term has been used in the development studies literature (Rondinelli, 1983; Roberts, 2014; Marais et al, 2019), but in ways that mirror the emphasis on national-scale analysis and thus more closely resemble the concept of ‘second tier’ cities found in the urban studies literature. In contrast, we define ‘secondary cities’ as cities that fuel, compete with and are otherwise relationally connected to larger and putatively more ‘successful’ neighbouring cities, but which simultaneously maintain a degree of independent history and identity that mitigates against uncritically collapsing them into the mass of the ‘city-region’. In other words, these can be thought of as regional secondary cities, and our emphasis is on intra-regional relationality, considering the relations between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ cities at the regional scale. This intra-regional dynamic, we argue, warrants more attention than it has thus far received from urbanists. Second, we recognize that the term ‘secondary cities’ threatens to evoke urban hierarchies in ways that have been unproductive in the past, particularly for the way they tend to advance ‘a competitive approach to city development … [that] privileges the interests and activities of a small sector of the city economy’ (Robinson, 2005: 760). We nevertheless continue with this language purposefully to acknowledge differential positionalities within regional political economies. In the burgeoning wave of inter-urban (and inter-regional) competition for mobile capital investment, some places are better able to capture investments and desired resources than others (Partridge et al, 2009; Jonas et al, 2017). We seek here to challenge some assumptions about how ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ that competition are defined and envisioned, and to consider alternative development priorities for cities. But as we do so we also appreciate

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that in terms of existing urban and regional development orthodoxies, being located nearby a widely recognized ‘winner’ impacts the plans, experiences and possibilities in secondary cities (Rousseau, 2009; Cardoso and Meijers, 2016). The secondary city terminology thus engages with lived experiences in ways that enable us to acknowledge existing patterns even as we also seek to challenge and move beyond them. Finally, we emphasize here the relational rather than the ordinal qualities of the ‘secondary’ concept. We are less concerned with defining and locating the secondary city in a particular region – which implies that there will then be a tertiary city, a quaternary city and so on – than we are with identifying the relations that situate some cities as secondary to the dominant city in a region. There may be multiple and various secondary cities in any particular city-region. What matters to us are the relational connections that shape the experiences, choices and possibilities for secondary cities and their inhabitants. It is also worth noting that the focus here is on cities in the Global North. We expect that many of the insights gained from this research may extend to other regions and contexts, but as initial observations and motivations emerged from research connected with the historical development trajectory of industrialization-deindustrialization-recovery common to cities of the Global North, we have begun our investigations there. While we hope to explore possible connections to cities and experiences in the Global South in future projects – for example, how our attention to secondary cities in the Global North might connect with the term’s distinctive usage in the development studies literature – we have chosen not to project these patterns from north to south here at the outset. This book is intended as the beginning of a conversation, one that we hope complements existing work and will grow and evolve with subsequent discussion and debate. With the remainder of this introductory chapter, our goal is to sketch the outlines of the secondary cities research direction to be examined in this book and through future work. We start in the next section by situating the concept in the urban studies literature and connecting with emerging efforts to understand and improve conditions in ‘overlooked’ cities. We emphasize that in contrast to the decades of urban crisis, when most cities of the Global North shared similar experiences (or at least concerns) of decline and abandonment, the current post-crisis urban experience is more variegated. Some cities have clearly shifted from combating decline to managing growth, while others continue to struggle for solvency and stability. It is this landscape of uneven development, with its particular guiding logics and path dependencies, that has inspired scholars to break from the focus on a handful of global winners and bring new attention to previously overlooked cities and urban spaces. After outlining these

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efforts, we then emphasize the importance of approaching such cities relationally and of calling into question the standard terms of success as often framed in urban development research and practice. We will finish with an overview of the organization of the book, highlighting emerging insights and important threads that stitch together the various arguments and examples. Our intent here is to provide just enough context to clarify our approach to the secondary cities concept and to help situate the chapters in relation to one another. We will then let the excellent work from the various contributors explore the concept’s utility and potential.

From crisis to renaissance (and back again) In advancing the concept of secondary cities we begin by engaging briefly with the scholarship on economic restructuring and urban crisis in order to clarify the current urban development context. Yet, as so much of that story has been extensively and excellently covered elsewhere (see, for example, Massey, 1995, 2007; Sugrue, 1996; Brenner, 2002; Hackworth, 2005; Harvey, 2005), we opt here for a brief and selective discussion of key dimensions of that history that bring us to our current postcrisis moment. The general narrative of global economic change and industrial transition that shaped cities’ development experiences since the mid-20th  century emphasizes how the concomitant processes of deindustrialization, industrial decentralization and global capital mobility generated extensive crisis conditions in many formerly dynamic urban locations. Since the 1970s,1 the overlapping processes of shifts in industrial production (from manufacturing to services), technological innovations and political changes – particularly the ‘roll out’ of neoliberalism on a global scale, marked by a deep ideological commitment to free enterprise, state support (legal, regulatory, political) for flexible specialization/ accumulation, and state retreat from social service provisions – resulted in a vastly changed political economic landscape (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982; Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck and Tickell, 2002; Hackworth, 2005; Harvey, 2005). As Brenner (2002: 16) explained, the resulting environment of intense inter-urban competition that enables capital to shop between cities in search of what is perceived to be the best climate for profit-making created serious problems for cities:2 [T]hese shifts have intensified interspatial competition between fiscally distressed localities for external capital investment, which is increasingly seen as the most effective means to enhance local tax revenues … [I]nsofar as these rescalings of

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state power have institutionalized a survival of the fittest among subnational administrative units based upon the logic of costcutting, deregulation, interspatial competition and enhanced commodification, they have also severely intensified uneven geographical development, sociospatial polarization and fiscal inequities between and within major US cities. For many readers, this is all well-travelled intellectual territory, as much urban development scholarship over the past several decades has explored the various causes of urban decline and the many and varied efforts advanced by cities to recover by winning that interspatial competition and securing elite status within the changing global economy (Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 1991, 2006; Knox and Taylor, 1995; Florida, 2002; Dicken, 2015). By now we know that though neoliberal urbanism hasn’t ‘solved’ any form of capitalist crisis, the concerns connected to the urban crisis of the 1970s – generalized disinvestment, depopulation, decay, abandonment – are no longer ubiquitous. The vaunted ‘urban renaissance’ of recent decades, driven by the emergence of financialization (Weber, 2010; Ashton et al, 2016; Aalbers, 2017) and by factions of capital seeking to ‘revalorize abandoned, derelict or declining locations within “hollowed out” central city nuclei and inner ring neighbourhoods [as] corporate citadels, tourist oriented consumption spectacles and luxury residential enclaves’ (Brenner, 2002: 11–12), means that times have changed for many cities. The focus of urban concerns for a wide selection of cities is less on confronting decline than on managing growth and tackling the problems that accompany growth, such as sustainability, congestion, gentrification, affordability, and homelessness (Dierwechter, 2013, 2014, 2017). As Mallach (2017: 111, original emphasis) notes, by the early 2000s ‘enough different cities were seeing enough positive change in their individual trajectories to make clear that decline could no longer be considered a generic feature of older American cities’. In other words, recent decades have seen the patterns and experiences of a general ‘urban crisis’ give way to a newly differentiated urban landscape. This dynamic of uneven development between and within cities raised concerns about a ‘new’ urban crisis that has emerged on the heels of the ‘old’ urban crisis and as a consequence of how cities have approached regeneration (Florida, 2017). As critical scholars have warned for decades (Peck and Tickell, 1994; Harvey, 2000; Smith, 2002; Peck, 2005) the prescribed crisis responses of post-Fordist neoliberalism – the familiar formulas targeting finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors, technology hubs, festival marketplaces, entertainment districts and the like – and the accompanying logics of agglomeration, ‘creative synergy’

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and ‘buzz’, have served to reinforce and exacerbate uneven development even as they wiped away the previous sense of pervasive urban decline. The financial crisis that emerged in 2007 and the subsequent global recession that gripped cities around the world only exacerbated these problems, as the fledgling gains made by cities still recovering from deindustrialization were especially vulnerable (Hadjimichalis, 2011; Aalbers, 2013, 2017; Oosterlynck and Gonzalez, 2013). The ‘leaders’ emerged from the financial crisis in a position to consolidate their gains and capture an inordinate share of desirable jobs and investments while the ‘laggards’ were left searching for the magic spell that could reproduce the winning strategies. That search has engendered a vast network of experts ready to carry the next crop of promising development policies to cities around the world (Larner and Le Heron, 2002; Larner, 2003; McCann and Ward, 2011). Which policies become ‘mobile’ is, of course, a political question, as some policies serve dominant interests more than others and thus gain the attention and support needed to circulate, creating markets for some policies but not others (Peck, 2011) (various financialization and neoliberal development policies are good examples here, but nothing captures this point more clearly than the ‘creative cities’ boom that emerged in the early 2000s (Florida, 2002; Peck, 2005)). Similarly, not all policies find equally fertile ground in all cities. Even as popular policies are edited, adjusted and ‘reassembled’ in an effort to fit each new context, success is far from assured (Ward, 2011; Peck, 2011). The combination of inter-urban competition, varying local political characteristics and broader ‘structural’ advantages/disadvantages (Jonas et al, 2017) brings different results to different cities from the same (or at least similar) policies. In short, widely prescribed development remedies may have cured certain city ailments connected with urban crisis in some places, but they simultaneously exacerbated others, making it clear (again) that not every city can win the competition for mobile capital investment, and that winning itself brings new challenges that few cities have yet to manage successfully.

Relationality, uneven development and wrestling with ‘the region’ Setting aside for the moment the costs and challenges associated with ‘winning’, we return to our interest in exploring how these post-crisis development dynamics shape and are shaped by intra-regional relations, with special attention to the experiences of cities other than the celebrated centres of urban renaissance. For it seems that in the search for solutions to the urban crisis of the 1970s urbanists largely followed capital to the

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bright lights of big-city investments, neglecting the spaces that fall outside the spotlight. Bell and Jayne (2006: 2), focusing on small cities, capture this sentiment well: The woeful neglect of the small city in the literature on urban studies means that we don’t yet have to hand wholly appropriate ways to understand what small cities are, what smallness and bigness mean, how small cities fit or don’t fit into the ‘new urban order’, or what their fortunes and fates might be. Parnell and Robinson (2012: 596) extend this idea by considering the limits of urban knowledge when ‘an unequal distribution of scholars and research resources across the world of cities’ brings ‘disproportionate visibility’ to some ideas, places and processes while others remain relatively ignored. And Cardoso and Meijers (2016: 997) raise the prospect that ‘second-tier’ cities are typically either ignored or else treated as ‘less successful versions of their larger counterparts, failing or succeeding according to how fast they move towards that status [and thus] perpetuating their position as entries in a ranking measured against a particular standard’. The lack of knowledge about a wide range of cities – the conditions, social relations and political processes experienced outside of the typical success stories – makes it difficult to answer questions about how such overlooked urban spaces ‘fit’ into the global economic landscape. We are therefore encouraged by the emerging and varied body of scholarship bringing attention to these overlooked cities, the most obvious example of which is a recent Brookings report (Hendrickson et  al, 2018) on ‘left behind places’. Yet we find that, with significant exceptions (for example see Mallach, 2012; Silverman, 2018), such work tends to either underemphasize relationality or else focus on a different spatial scale of relationality than we want to emphasize here. For example, the literature on small cities emphasizes city ‘size’ over other qualities. Work on shrinking cities, legacy cities and other ‘places that don’t matter’ highlights industrial histories and path dependencies (an emphasis on change over time rather than positionality in relation to other cities). And the growing attention brought to ‘second-tier’ and ‘second-rank’ cities positions cities within national as opposed to regional urban systems (for example, following that approach, the city of Seattle, WA, would be considered a ‘second-tier’ city (Markusen et al, 1999) rather than the dominant primate city at the regional scale). While generally valuable, our concern is that this broad body of work conveys an overly fragmented

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sense of the urban landscape involving an array of distinctive city types rather than a sense of how the conditions experienced in different cities are connected with one another, thus missing an important dynamic and scale of analysis. The secondary city concept is one attempt to bridge some of these limitations by considering how many overlooked cities may be unified by their secondary status relative to a regionally dominant neighbouring city. Why focus on the region? Regional planning has a long and storied history as a utopian solution to ‘urban’ problems (see Chapter 8, this volume), punctuated by moments of modernist ambition, idiographic interrogation, nomothetic exploration and critical reconsideration (Varro and Lagendijk, 2013; Paasi and Metzger, 2017). Despite the existence of conflicting spatial imaginaries and metageographical attachments (Murphy, 2008; Paasi and Metzger, 2017), the ‘region’ emerged from the rubble of urban crisis as an arguably more accurate representation of urban social and economic life and a potentially promising vehicle for economic redevelopment (Scott, 2019). For scholars, the region offered an escape from narrow conceptualizations of cities as bounded objects and an opportunity to explore the possibilities of regional cooperation in the context of changing political economic conditions – particularly the global economic restructuring and political rescaling emerging in the 1970s. The political motivations for the focus on regions are also clear as various forms of political reshuffling signalled the emergence of ‘new state spaces’ (Brenner, 2004). Whether emphasizing vertical shifts associated with ‘glocalization’ (Swyngedouw, 1997), horizontal shifts associated with new political networks (Jones et  al, 2007), or topological shifts associated with the reconfigurations of state ‘reach’ (Allen and Cochrane, 2010), attention turned to the potential of the region to overcome the perceived and experienced limitations of the nation state to manage and navigate global competition. In combination with emerging global-scale institutions, the region thus offered ‘a more rational and cost-efficient state space with respect to the delivery of strategic infrastructure and services’ (Jonas, 2012: 822). But arguably the most immediate inspiration for exploring new regional configurations was the socio-economic challenges facing cities in the context of global economic restructuring (Rodríguez-Pose, 2008; Scott, 2019). As cities put forward efforts to ‘enhance their strategic development roles and infrastructural capacities in the global economy’ (Jonas, 2012: 823), they pursued strategies that could enable ‘regions to become more productive, to become competitive and – above all – to move on from the failed industries of the past’ (Cochrane, 2013: 88). Regional perspectives theorizing how cities have, can, could and should harness the resources of a broad range of people

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and places to improve conditions thus emerged with force in the decades following the onset of urban crisis in hopes of identifying new political and economic possibilities. In making the shift from ‘cities’ to ‘regions’ however, scholars quickly encountered many of the same challenges that plagued thinking about cities, challenges related to spatial fetishism and defining regional ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’, borders and boundaries, identities, relations and territories. This is not the place for a reconstruction of the debates that emerged around those challenges (see Ward and Jonas, 2004; Rodríguez-Pose, 2008; Varro and Lagendijk, 2013; Paasi and Metzger, 2017; Scott, 2019). Instead, we want to connect specifically with aspects of Doreen Massey’s (1984, 1995, 2007) contributions to those debates as her work has been most influential to our understanding of secondary cities in connection with the long history of urban crisis, urban and regional recovery and uneven development. Most readers are undoubtedly familiar with Massey’s conceptualizations of ‘spatial divisions of labour’ and the various ways that cities are situated within production relations ‘stretched across space’ (Massey, 1994: 63). Massey uniquely navigated the dialectic between relationality and territoriality by theorizing how the fates of cities are tied to one another and shaped, in part, by ‘the changing relationship between the requirements of private production for profit and the spatial surface’ (1994: 63). In other words, whatever conditions caused particular industries to emerge in particular places – be that because of geographic specificities like ports or mineral deposits, or central locations, or historical connections to key individuals or simple serendipity – they become rooted in place, evolve according to prevailing market conditions and political climate, and contribute to the production of place identities, cultures and built environments. Changes in industrial conditions – technological innovations, arrival of new competitors, emergence of new alternatives – therefore manifest spatially, resulting in place-specific outcomes. The most famous examples are steel-making, coal mining, and the textile industry, changes which translated to massive transformations (and struggles) in numerous cities around the world, most visibly in England’s industrial north and the rust belt of the United States. The general familiarity with how Massey’s work helps clarify and explain the globalization and economic restructuring that emerged in the 1970s can sometimes obscure the (perhaps subtler) contributions of her work to the understanding of regional development. She insisted that urbanists recognize how industrial and economic shifts resulted in new geographies of production, favouring some locations over others and thus resulting in new configurations of leaders and laggards. In so doing, Massey (1994: 63) shifted blame for urban problems away from the victims

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of urban change and instead challenged urbanists to ask new questions about ‘regional’ problems: In what sense, then, are ‘regional’ problems regional problems? Clearly such inequalities do not result from a simple absolute deficiency  … [H]ow often are the problems of peripheral regions laid at the door of ‘a lack of native entrepreneurship’, a ‘deficiency of atmosphere of growth’? But these are effects, not causes … By this means, regional problems are conceptualized, not as problems experienced by regions, but as problems for which, somehow, those regions are to blame. This passage captures two intertwined points of emphasis that we carry forward in the current book: the importance of approaching space relationally, and the questions, geographies and politics of responsibility that follow from that relationality. Together, these confront what Massey (2007: 97) refers to as the ‘golden goose’ problem in urban and regional development, whereby ‘leaders’ are treated as inherently special places that must not be disturbed lest they stop producing their golden eggs, while ‘laggards’ are characterized as ‘deficient’. Such a perspective, she argued, overlooks the role of relationality in producing both outcomes, the extent to which successes in some places are linked with – indeed fed by – struggles in others, and vice versa. In asking the question ‘who owes whom?’ (Massey, 2007: 130) when cities and regions experience divergent fortunes, she thus crystallizes the ‘distributional dilemmas underpinning the politics of city-regionalism’ (Jonas, 2012: 823) that continue to challenge development scholars and practitioners. As we connect with Jonas’s focus on ‘distributional struggles within city-regions’ (Jonas, 2012: 823), we depart from Massey (or perhaps bring Massey with us) to shift the scale of analysis. Whereas she confronted the growing unevenness between different regions at the national scale – situating London and the South as the ‘golden goose’ relative to the ‘lagging’ North in the UK – we concern ourselves with the experiences of different cities ‘within’ the region. That is not to suggest that interregional competition is no longer important. On the contrary, as recent scholarship on shrinking cities, left behind places and places that don’t matter indicates, the questions and concerns Massey raised about interregional competition have only gained in significance since the late 1990s. Rather, we add consideration of differential experiences within regions as a way to challenge implicit assumptions about the outcomes of interregional competition and to question who benefits from what kinds of urban and regional development. Too often, economically leading regions

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are characterized as ‘winners’ and economically lagging regions as ‘losers’, without attention to intra-regional distributional imbalances. Just as there are winners and losers between regions, there are winners and losers within them; even in dynamic urban regions, different cities – and different people in those cities – experience differential access to decision-making power and other resources.3 The various contributions in this book seek to call attention to these dimensions of uneven development within dynamic urban regions by shifting scales and perspectives on regional studies. These shifts underscore the importance of engaging regional development questions from outside the core city perspective. While region may have replaced city as the scale of choice for conceptualizing urban activities post-urban crisis, ‘city-region’ has emerged more recently as the preferred term to capture contemporary political and socio-economic conditions (Scott, 2001; Jonas and Ward, 2007). For our purposes, that terminological shift from ‘region’ to ‘city-region’ is important for the way it signals the centrality of primate cities to regional dynamics. Though there are various ways to define the city-region, and examples of truly multi- and poly-centric regions can be identified (for example, Chapter 2, this volume), most definitions at a minimum involve the presence of ‘a core city linked by functional ties to a hinterland’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2008: 1027). Some characterizations stretch further yet to ‘include identity and the social and cultural domination by the core city as essential elements of a city-region’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2008: 1027). Such definitions raise important questions about whether the vision for the city-region model is as a region of cities, where decision-making power and other resources are shared within the region, or rather instead as a city’s region, where processes of metropolization consolidate power and resources in the core city and distribute them carefully in ways that preserve the status of the ‘golden goose’. As Rodríguez-Pose (2008: 1036) notes, the evidence thus far points more to the latter than the former: ‘In fact, most models show that with declining transportation costs or increasing diversification in cities agglomeration forces outweigh dispersion forces, giving rise both to a greater polarization within city-regions and to the emergence of primate-city structures.’ The implications of the resultant ‘primate-city structures’ for intra-regional politics and the conditions of secondary cities, we argue, warrant attention.

Borrowing, shadowing and intra-regional urban politics Building on the concept of the ‘city’s region’, whereby the compulsion to prioritize the ‘golden goose’ feeds agglomeration logics and favours

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specific sectors, qualities and locations (FIRE, the creative class, entertainment, consumption), this book explores how these dynamics shape the experiences of secondary cities. While some cities are praised for their attractiveness to favoured-sector interests, others are disparaged for lacking desired characteristics, and all are appraised for their ‘fit’ into existing city-regional networks. In this book, these intra-regional tensions are addressed primarily through the concepts of ‘borrowed size’ and ‘agglomeration shadows’ and viewed specifically from the perspective of the secondary city. Emerging in the urban studies context through economist William Alonso’s (1973) research on changing conditions in US cities in the 1970s, arguments about borrowed size and agglomeration shadows have been more recently refined and advanced by urbanists seeking to make sense of the economic prospects of the small- and mid-sized cities most common in the European context (Champion, 2001; Burger et al, 2014; Cardoso and Meijers, 2016, 2017; Meijers et al, 2016; Meijers and Burger, 2017). The central idea is that the familiar pattern of urban agglomeration that concentrates resources – jobs, industries, investments in housing, infrastructure, entertainment and other cultural amenities – in select locations (for example, global cities) raises important questions about inter-urban collaboration and competition. On one hand, agglomeration dynamics are recognized as allowing proximal and/or otherwise networked cities to ‘borrow size’ from one another to function and perform in ways that they might not be able to on their own. On the other hand, despite the ongoing celebration of agglomeration economies, existing scholarship also points to the limitations of agglomeration, noting the problems that arise both for the cities where resources are concentrated and for those cities – typically small and mid-sized cities – bypassed by agglomeration. In terms of the former, the development of diseconomies of scale – overcrowding, traffic congestion, high land costs and sclerotic decision-making – that often accompany the spatial concentration of resources suggests that alternative visions of urban development are needed (Meijers et al, 2016; Cardoso and Meijers, 2017). The latter problem, concerning cities unable to access agglomeration benefits, is another way of acknowledging the projection of agglomeration shadows, or the competitive disadvantage faced by neighbouring cities that exist in the ‘shadow’ of the primary city’s vibrant glow. To be clear, this scholarship is not denying the ongoing value placed on agglomeration or long-running observable patterns of cumulative causation that bring recurring waves of new investments to specific locations. It does, however, recognize that though such patterns may be common, they might not be desirable in the face of the challenges that accompany them.

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Scholars also recognize that the experienced patterns of agglomeration, borrowing and shadowing are not natural and necessary, but rather the outcome, at least in part, of politics and planning decisions, suggesting that alternatives are conceivable but also subject to opposition from powerful interests (Meijers et al, 2018). Chief among the alternatives is metropolitan coordination in pursuit of polycentricity. If properly planned and executed, polycentricity is advanced as a strategy that can capture the benefits of agglomeration while avoiding big city diseconomies of scale (Camagni et al, 2016; Cardoso and Meijers, 2017). Such an approach would reflect a strategy of borrowed size, allowing a group of cities to develop distinctive and mutually beneficial functions that would not be feasible in any given city in the absence of proximity to the others. In essence, if executed carefully and intentionally, this is a version of the ‘region of cities’ idea discussed previously, where some degree of powerand resource-sharing achieves a modicum of regional socio-economic balance. That vision points to the importance of regional planning to coordinate efforts across an expansive metropolitan area, and attention at the regional scale to the often contentious politics of distribution. In connection with our interest in understanding the perspective and prospects of secondary cities, we find that the scholarship on borrowed size and agglomeration shadows leads the urban studies field in emphasizing relationality at the intra-regional scale. However, this work also raises a number of important questions related to conceptual precision and the politics of borrowing and shadowing. In terms of the former, while the language of agglomeration shadows is clear, the language of ‘borrowing’ is less so. Existing research often presents the terms as a binary, implying borrowing or shadowing. But these concepts need not be mutually exclusive; cities may simultaneously borrow size in some ways and experience agglomeration shadows in others. Additionally, while sectoral analyses can identify different types of borrowing, it is not always clear who borrows what from whom. The idea is that urban network connections enable outsized functions and performance, but the directions of the borrowing/lending require some additional clarification. Some of these questions of conceptual precision are taken up here in the various chapter contributions, and then revisited in the conclusion in Chapter 9. This book also addresses the politics of borrowing and shadowing in a variety of ways. While existing scholarship has contributed much to the field by defining, illustrating and measuring borrowed size as an ‘analytical concept’ (Meijers and Burger, 2017: 272), more work is needed that interrogates some of the social and political implications of this type of relational urbanism. For example, while we can determine and measure whether borrowing/shadowing is occurring in any particular regional

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context, the tasks of pinpointing causal linkages, evaluating the social and political impacts of a borrowing/shadowing relationship, determining who benefits from what kinds of borrowing/shadowing and, finally, evaluating the character and location of decision-making power over the borrowing/shadowing relationship, have thus far proven much more elusive. In terms of planning, is this a world of decision-making reserved for corporate elites and elected officials, or are there broader implications for community involvement? While we do not claim to settle all of these uncertainties in the present book, we do aim to make a start and in doing so to provide new understandings of the regional politics of production and distribution that shape secondary city experiences.

Organization of the book As different planning contexts produce different expressions of the secondary city experience, the remaining chapters in the book are organized geographically, with each exploring a different socio-spatial context in an attempt to build a broad understanding of how the secondary city concept can help us make sense of existing urban development conditions. While this comparative work is not intended to be comprehensive or to produce an exhaustive typology of secondary cities, it does allow us to identify important patterns that illustrate common practices, conditions and challenges. We begin in the Netherlands, with Meijers and Cardoso’s engagement with the Randstad, the multicentric region of the country that has received much attention for the way neighbouring cities have balanced competition and collaboration. Drawing from a variety of indicators representing urban functions and performance, in Chapter 2 Meijers and Cardoso aim to identify the characteristics that distinguish primary and secondary cities and shape their challenges and opportunities. Doing so, they argue, is an important first step in the search for causal relationships that might reveal the kinds of policy interventions that could improve intra-regional cooperation and the sharing of development costs and benefits. Their investigation sets the stage for the focused case studies from the Swiss (Chapter 3) and Australian (Chapter 4) urban systems by pointing to the importance of gathering the stories that might shed some light on the historical production of secondary city characteristics. For the Swiss example, Mayer, Meili and Kaufmann chart the experiences of two secondary cities neighbouring Zurich (Wädenswil) and Bern (Thun), situating those cities within their historical and geographic contexts to illustrate the choices they face as they navigate path dependencies and the challenge of finding a niche in relation to

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their dominant neighbours. Through their attempts to leverage their strengths and unique qualities, each of these cities sought to secure an economic identity beyond the ‘residential economy’ default facilitated by the Swiss urban system. Through their analysis, Mayer, Meili and Kaufmann reveal both common structural constraints that limit choices and a degree of agency for Swiss secondary cities. In addition to leveraging unique economic sectors, secondary city gains were linked to their ability to embrace their historical strengths and identities and their willingness to dedicate a significant amount of focused effort to the cause of economic diversification. Johnson’s investigation of the city of Geelong, located 30 kilometres outside of Melbourne, in Australia, reaches similar conclusions, but in a very different urban system. In addition to a long history of competition between settler colonial cities vying for regional dominance, understanding the case of Geelong requires recognition of the specific historical and geographic context: the formal establishment of dominant colonial capital cities and an arid geography that concentrated populations in the early port settlements. As a result, Johnson notes that secondary cities in Australia are commonly overshadowed by their neighbours in multiple ways – politically, economically and culturally. As in the Swiss example, however, that is not the end of the story. The urban system presents some structural limitations but also leaves room for secondary city agency and experimentation. The story Johnson tells is one of struggle as the secondary city attempts to find its footing relative to a dominant neighbour, echoing the point made in Chapter 3, that carving out a unique economic identity requires, among other things, focus and dedication. But, in Johnson’s telling, Geelong’s story is not simply one of endless struggle, but also no small amount of triumph. Choices made and actions taken by local decision-makers helped to position Geelong to take advantage of its positionality, to the point where it is now recognized as ‘winning from second’ (Chapter 4) in a way that offers lessons for other secondary cities. From Australia, we pivot back to the European context to explore the landscape of secondary cities in the UK. Emphasizing that secondary cities are not simply scaled-down versions of their dominant neighbours but rather have their own histories, identities and challenges, in Chapter 5, Cardoso and Meijers set out on the ambitious task of characterizing 64  secondary cities in eight city-regions in the UK and distributing them in four quadrants of a ‘functions-demography matrix’. Assessing the presence or absence of a variety of traits related to demography and economic function and performance, that matrix is intended to illustrate which secondary cities are benefiting from metropolization (improved

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integration with the core city of the city-region) and which are being left out. The resulting matrix helps to clarify the wide variety of secondary city experiences, capturing the messiness of intra-regional relationships as some cities sit squarely in agglomeration shadows, others are clearly borrowing size and still others experience elements of both simultaneously. Despite the variety, however, Cardoso and Meijers find that most secondary cities in the UK fall into ‘shadowed’ quadrants, indicating the need for additional research into the incentives and disincentives to metropolitan integration that currently exist and, ultimately, to find strategies for metropolitan integration that improve secondary city conditions. Having secondary city characteristics so clearly identified and organized raises questions that cannot be easily explained by a matrix, questions about cause and effect, about historical trajectories, about how the different quadrants might be experienced by residents and about how political power shapes a secondary city’s placement in and ability to move out of any particular quadrant. Such questions are variously explored, though by no means resolved, by the final three chapters drawing from the West Coast of North America. Offering a focused investigation into the case of Tacoma, WA, located outside of Seattle, in Chapter 6, Williams and Pendras target some of the historical and political-economic dimensions of the secondary city experience in order to reflect critically on the ‘benefits’ that come from borrowing size. The transition from a ‘shadowing’ to a ‘borrowing’ relationship with the dominant neighbour, they argue, should be recognized as bringing different benefits for different populations rather than treated as a clear sign of ‘success’. Allowing room for a variety of experiences, Williams and Pendras suggest that moving from one quadrant of the matrix to another (as per Chapter 5) or experiencing certain kinds of development successes (Chapter 4) may not benefit all secondary city residents equally and may instead make life more difficult for those reliant on previous conditions. Understanding who benefits from which kinds of borrowing or shadowing, then, becomes an empirical question, and securing desired benefits becomes a question of politics and organizing. Hytrek (Chapter  7) and Dierwechter (Chapter  8) round out the collection by digging deeper into the details of intra-regional politics. Drawing from the case of Long Beach, CA, located just outside of Los Angeles, Hytrek shifts attention from the common emphasis on economic development to instead consider how patterns of borrowing and shadowing have shaped the politics of social justice activism in the region. Just as elites face challenges to regional coordination related to power, competition and resource-sharing, so social justice organizers often struggle to navigate competing visions and priorities as they build networks of cooperation and solidarity. Hytrek uses the Long Beach/

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Los Angeles story to demonstrate how ‘social performance’ can also be borrowed by activist organizations within the region in order to build networks of power and influence. Specifically, Long Beach activists have drawn on the resources and support of Los Angeles organizations in rapidly forging a movement capable of challenging the elite-led vision of Long Beach’s development. In this way, the Long Beach/Los Angeles example opens space for bottom-up mobilizations that could widen the scope of secondary city possibilities. In the penultimate chapter, Dierwechter continues the movement away from the typical economy-centric themes and towards the realm of climate action, reminding us all that there is much more to intra-regional politics than just growing and slicing the economic pie. Chapter 8 also returns the discussion to questions of how we conceptualize cities and regions. Internationally famous primary cities like Seattle (US) and Vancouver (Canada) may gain recognition for ‘their’ sustainability efforts and climate plans, but those cities and the plans they develop, Dierwechter argues, rely on secondary cities for realization. Some primary cities may do a better job of collaborating and sharing power and resources with secondary cities than others, or perhaps some regions have stronger political infrastructures in place to ensure balanced growth. But whether characterized by borrowing or shadowing, Chapter 8 reminds us that primary and secondary cities are always already constituted, in part, by their relations with one another, highlighting the importance of intraregional relationality to transnational carbon politics and to urban scholarship more generally. The concluding chapter offers some reflections on important themes that carry through the other chapters and explores prospective themes for future research. While each chapter explores a different regional secondary city context, the juxtaposition of cases helps to illuminate some challenges and experiences commonly shared by secondary cities. Most strikingly, the cases included here illustrate that, regardless of whether a particular secondary city is considered ‘successful’ or ‘struggling’, the range of development choices available to secondary cities is circumscribed by their dominant neighbours. We discuss these patterns and their implications in greater detail in Chapter 9, but we note here that these preliminary findings point to the importance of focusing new attention on intra-regional relationality and how decision-making power and resources are shared and distributed at the regional scale. As we enter a period of unprecedented turmoil and uncertainty with regard to how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact cities and urban development patterns around the world (a crisis that emerged as this book was heading to print), we hope the insights on intra-regional relationality advanced in

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this book can contribute to new and positive expressions of regional solidarity and collaboration. Notes 1

2

3

These processes had in fact been unfolding for decades prior to the 1970s, but it was in the 1970s that concern over the consequences of these dynamics for cities became widespread. The accuracy and political implications of this representation of capital mobility have been challenged by various scholars (Gibson-Graham, 1996, 2006; Kelly, 1999; Pendras, 2009). Nevertheless, the narrative of ‘placeless’ capital persists. Similarly, differential experiences exist in lagging regions as well, as elites are positioned to capture benefits while others struggle. See Silverman’s (2018) discussion on ‘dual peripheral cities’.

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Shedding Light or Casting Shadows? Relations between Primary and Secondary Cities Evert Meijers and Rodrigo Cardoso

Introduction Until recently, it was rather common to perceive the hinterland of cities as ‘rural’, directing research to the study of linkages, relations and dependencies between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ (for example, see Hoggart, 2005). This widespread traditional conception of cities having a predominantly rural hinterland needs to be challenged, as processes of spatial upscaling and expansion have made many cities find other cities in their hinterland, suggesting that a focus on regional urban–urban relations is just as valid as a focus on urban–rural relations. Put simply: many functional urban areas or metropolitan areas – terms traditionally used to denote a city and its surrounding commuting area – are nowadays composed of multiple cities. It makes sense to address these regions as multicentric urban areas or as ‘polycentric urban regions’ when these cities do not differ widely in terms of size or overall importance. Champion (2001) has distinguished three modes through which such multicentric urban regions arise. First, he distinguished a ‘centrifugal mode’: some smaller cities in the sphere of influence of larger cities may have risen as satellite towns of the latter, as a result of core city expansion and redistribution. Second, an ‘incorporation mode’ is discerned when a

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larger city extends its sphere of influence to include a formerly rather selfsustaining surrounding town or small city, or a set of several such cities. Third, the ‘fusion mode’ denotes that previously distinct and independent cities of rather similar size become integrated due to the advancement of connective infrastructure and technology, and the spatial extension of activity and travel patterns of people and firms. Basing our research on European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) data (projects 1.1.1 and 1.4.3 in particular; see ESPON, 2005, 2011), we can calculate that 1,001 out of the 1,967 European cities are actually located in a multicentric metropolitan area (meaning that they are located in the sphere of influence of another city and vice versa), whereas the others are the sole centre of their functional region. In terms of population, the share is even larger: out of the 265 million inhabitants of these 1,967 cities, almost 192 million people (72.4 per cent) live in a multicentric urban region, while only 73 million people live in cities that do not have other cities in their hinterland. Hence, in sharp contrast to popular conceptions, multicentric urban regions are the dominant mode of urbanization in Europe, not the single city with its more or less suburban commuting area or rural hinterland. This poses an interesting challenge for researchers and policy-makers alike, because many of our urban theories still depart from this outdated notion of city plus hinterland. In policy practice, the complexity of governing multicentric urban regions, with their overlapping boundaries and powers but shared challenges and priorities, needs little emphasis. With the rise of multicentric urban regions, we also require a framework to capture and describe the unfolding spatial organization of the process of metropolitan integration that they are experiencing. As is widely known in economic theory and in transport geography, increased integration leads to a rearrangement of economic activities, people and urban functions over space, creating new interactions and interdependencies between the cities making up multicentric urban regions. It is also known that even though there are socio-economic benefits arising from integration (the generative effect), these benefits and the costs of integration do not necessarily spread evenly over a region (a redistributive effect), even when a strong governance framework is put in place (Lefèvre, 1998; Hincks et al, 2017). Recently, a novel framework for capturing the spatial organization of multicentric urban regions was developed, building on the concepts of ‘borrowed size’ and ‘agglomeration shadows’ (Meijers and Burger, 2017). It is assumed that stronger integration with other cities allows a city to ‘borrow size’: to tap into the agglomeration benefits of nearby cities if they are sufficiently integrated. This could become visible in higher growth

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rates, or in having more, or more specialized, functions than one would expect given the size of those places. But at the same time, a process of metropolitan integration may lead to cities being in an ‘agglomeration shadow’ when the presence of certain economic activities or urban functions in nearby places means that there is no room to develop these themselves, or when the process of integration empties out these places of higher-order activities and functions since they can be served from other cities. So far, it has remained unclear why one city profits from metropolitan integration in the sense of borrowing size, whereas another may face the agglomeration shadows of nearby cities. In this chapter we explore and empirically substantiate this framework of borrowed size/agglomeration shadows by positioning cities in a classic multicentric urban region, the Randstad Holland, in the framework developed by Meijers and Burger, and explore which factors are associated with a position in the ‘agglomeration shadow’ or the ‘borrowing size’ quadrants. It is not our intention to establish causality at this early stage of exploration, which would also allow robust policy recommendations, but rather to seek general characteristics that typify primary and secondary cities, and hence, what differentiates them, and the challenges they face. These different points of departure are important to avoid ‘one-size-fitsall’ urban development strategies, not just with respect to the differences between primary and secondary cities, but also taking the heterogeneity among secondary cities into account. In the process, we will also test the borrowed size/agglomeration shadow framework and ultimately develop it further. The theory section goes deeper into the process of increased integration between cities and its associated benefits and costs – so-called ‘network externalities’. Subsequently, we expand the current ‘borrowed size/ agglomeration shadow’ framework and present an empirical exercise that leads to the classification of places in the Randstad into this framework. This classification is then associated with six factors, whose relevance we explain later in this chapter: historical importance, size, sectoral composition of the local economy, social status, network embeddedness and tourism. Finally, the conclusion synthesizes our findings and sketches a research agenda that emerges from these results.

Theory The basic idea that further integration between cities yields important benefits is widespread. It would lead to what Capello (2000) has termed ‘urban network externalities’. This concept refers to the benefits originating

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from relationships between places (see also Camagni, 1993; Meijers, 2005; Boix and Trullén, 2007; Van Oort et al, 2010; Burger and Meijers, 2016) and can be described as external economies from which firms and households can benefit by being located in agglomerations that are well embedded or positioned in networks that connect with other agglomerations. While an emerging scholarship on the benefits of such networks between cities is developing, the simple importance of relationships between cities has been stressed many times in historical accounts of the evolution of the European urban system (for example, De Vries, 1984; Hohenberg and Lees, 1985). The idea that ‘the spatial organisation in which cities operate is fundamental to understanding their efficiency, growth, factor productivity and sometimes their specialisation’ (Capello and Camagni, 2000: 1484) is also at the heart of the urban systems literature that had its heyday in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s (Pred, 1977; Bourne and Simmons, 1978). Currently, we are witnessing a revival of such scholarship as there are five different schools studying relationships between cities (Peris et al, 2018): one predominantly focusing on the regional or intra-metropolitan scale and centred on concepts of polycentricity (for example, Kloosterman and Musterd, 2001; Parr, 2004); one addressing the global scale with a focus on world city firm and communication networks (see Alderson and Beckfield, 2004; Taylor and Derudder, 2016); one somewhat diffuse school rooted in urban economics (‘the new economic geography’) employing economic modelling approaches (for example, Fujita et al, 1999; Partridge et al, 2008); one school employing simulation and complexity theories to understand the behaviour of individual and institutional agents building the urban system from the bottom up, often drawing inspiration from physics (see Batty et al, 1999; Bretagnolle and Pumain, 2010); and, finally, one seeking regularities (‘laws’) with respect to city size distributions within an urban system (see Gabaix and Ioannides, 2004; Bettencourt et  al, 2007). Despite their many ontological and epistemological differences, these approaches share a focus on functional and economic types of relationships and networks between cities. Despite this attention, it is hard to quantify or precisely define the importance of network embeddedness for individual cities. While studies repeatedly show the importance of a city’s embeddedness in large-scale networks of all kinds – firms, capital, knowledge, people, goods – for its performance (Taylor, 2003; Bel and Fageda, 2008; Neal, 2013; Meijers et al, 2016), how such networks’ importance compares to local factors is largely unknown. Some time ago, scholars argued that local factors still seem to substantially outweigh network effects (Boix and Trullén, 2007), but it appears that the importance of network externalities is growing as

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the connectivity of places has been rapidly increasing in the past decades. McCann and Acs (2011) argue that nowadays national and international connectivity is more important for performance than size. This was empirically substantiated by Meijers et al (2016), who found that the presence of particular metropolitan functions was better explained by connectivity than by local size – for example, international organizations, headquarters, advanced producer services, banks, fairs, conferences, patents. It would seem that networks substitute for proximity (Johansson and Quigley, 2004), but this could also be a more complementary relationship – particular local conditions may, for instance, also foster a good network embeddedness. The nature of the interaction between local factors and network factors is unknown, and in this light, this chapter associates local factors with network relatedness and ultimately with the outcome of network integration. Some studies have shown the presence of such network externalities in the particular context of multicentric urban regions (see Maly, 2016). It was found, for instance, that the more closely cities were integrated, the more network externalities were present, while the lack of integration between nearby cities would even lead to negative urban network externalities (Meijers and Burger, 2017). Recently, it was shown that higher levels of functional integration and institutional integration (metropolitan cooperation) contribute to the presence of more agglomeration benefits at the scale of a network of cities within a single urban region (Meijers et al, 2018). However, while positive urban network externalities arise at the level of urban regions as a whole (or, perhaps better put, at the level of the network of cities), it remains a question whether individual cities profit from metropolitan integration by definition. It could well be that a generative effect at the level of urban regions hides an intra-regional distributive effect. Such effects have been established in transportation studies and in economic theory, most notably the New Economic Geography. In transportation studies this has been referred to as ‘the twoway road argument’ (Preston, 2001: 18), meaning that new infrastructure (that is, stronger integration) between a core and peripheral region can promote outward investment just as easily as inward investment. The core–periphery models of the New Economic Geography suggest that integration expands market areas, but also leads to more competition between firms in the periphery and in the core city. The latter are often producing more advanced products, while the former are losing their local monopoly. The outcome of integration depends on the balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces (Krugman, 1991; Fujita et al, 1999), and transportation costs are a central element in determining this balance.

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Low costs make it possible to serve the region from one place, so it then makes sense to profit from agglomeration economies in the largest place. The presence of such distributive effects of new infrastructure has been shown by, for instance, Meijers et al (2012). Local politicians and policy-makers often pay lip service to the potential generative effects of city network integration, but are probably most interested in the distributive effects. The simple fact that the number of functions and activities in any multicentric urban region is not infinite, and that their distribution basically is a zero-sum game, means that cities compete heavily with other cities in their multicentric region, certainly if their tax revenues are mostly comprised of local taxes. Recently, a conceptual framework was introduced that captures the possible outcomes of further integration in multicentric urban regions (Meijers and Burger, 2017). It builds on two concepts: ‘borrowed size’ (Alonso, 1973) and ‘agglomeration shadows’ (appropriated from the New Economic Geography literature, for example Krugman, 1993). Size borrowing occurs when a city exhibits urban functions and/or performance levels normally associated with larger cities that enjoy corresponding agglomeration externalities, and this pattern is a consequence of being integrated with those cities. Agglomeration shadows are essentially the opposite effect, yet are also the product of integration with nearby or more distant cities. It could be said that a place is under an agglomeration shadow when it has fewer functions and lower performance levels than expected given its size, because of competition effects from cities with which it is integrated through networks and relations. Volgmann and Rusche (2020) draw an interesting parallel with the regional concept of spread and backwash effects, conceptualized by Myrdal (1957).

Classifying cities in the Randstad In this chapter we explore why one city profits from metropolitan integration in the sense of borrowing size, whereas another may face the agglomeration shadows of nearby cities. We present a case study of the Randstad Holland region, a classic example of a multicentric metropolitan region (see Hall, 1966; Kloosterman and Musterd, 2001). We will first classify cities by positioning them in the ‘borrowed size/agglomeration shadow’ framework. Then, we will seek for factors that can be associated with this classification. The Randstad is not just a multicentric region, as the rather equal size distribution of its main cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht) also makes it polycentric. It may seem that this means that

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there are no secondary cities in the region, but the opposite is true. There are many other medium-sized cities (for example, Haarlem, Leiden, Dordrecht, Delft, to name but a few) as well as numerous smaller ones. There is no precise or formal delimitation of the Randstad – meaning the population estimate varies between 7 and 8 million inhabitants – and only about a third of this population lives in the four main cities; thus, the presence of the secondary cities is very important and the region is truly multicentric. Some proxy the area by the four provinces it covers, but we adopt a more commonly agreed upon delimitation that excludes the (former) island of Goeree-Overflakkee, the Noordoostpolder, most of the north of Holland (for example Alkmaar) and the Noordoostpolder in Flevoland province. ‘Our’ Randstad had 7.46 million inhabitants in January 2018 (see Figure 2.1). Generally, the cities in the Randstad all have distinct histories and identities and they share a long trajectory of being related to and also competing with each other. Only a few places can be considered suburban new towns – but such ‘growth poles’, Figure 2.1: The Randstad Holland Groningen Leeuwarden

Zwolle

Randstad

Apeldoorn Arnhem

Nijmegen Breda Tilburg Eindhoven Venlo Maastricht

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Haarlem

Almere

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stemming from the 1980s, have also developed their own identities that fuel, compete with and are related to the larger neighbouring city that once acted as their metropolis in the proper Greek meaning of that word (the mother city from which settlers came). Our unit of analysis will be the 120 municipalities in the Randstad. These municipalities will be positioned in the ‘borrowed size/ agglomeration shadow’ quadrant matrix, which requires us to assess, first, the connection between their size and the urban functions present in the city. Second, we explore the connection between their size and their performance in terms of urban dynamics. We proxy urban functions with two variables: the number of jobs (2016; data from Statistics Netherlands) and the presence of restaurants (2011, data from the Bedrijfschap Horeca en Catering). We used 2011 data, as this measurement allowed us to compare the development of restaurants over the 1996–2011 period. Several studies have used restaurants as a proxy for the presence of agglomeration benefits, their number to proxy advantages of scale and their variety to explain advantages of scope (Schiff, 2015; De  Vos and Meijers, 2019). Here, performance was proxied with the population growth (2002–18) and the development of the number of restaurants (1996–2011). Obviously, one of the omissions of the current ‘borrowed size/ agglomeration shadow’ framework is that many places do not have more or less urban functions than expected given their size, or a development trajectory that is better or worse: many places simply have the expected number of functions or development dynamics. As such, the four-quadrant framework needs to evolve into a nine square matrix that allows for this classification. Each of the nine squares can be labelled according to its most defining characteristic. The two squares in the upper right can both be titled ‘borrowed functions’ and the two in the bottom left both classify as ‘borrowed performance’. Figure 2.2 presents this extended framework. To position the cities, we calculated the number of restaurants and jobs per capita for the 120 municipalities in the Randstad. The average number of restaurants per 1,000 people was 0.55 (standard deviation (SD) = 0.30), with a minimum of 0.17 and a maximum of 2.47. The average number of jobs per 1,000 people was 40.11 (SD = 15.55), with values ranging from 17 to 107. Those places that had jobs and restaurants above the mean + 0.75 SD were considered to have more functions than expected. Likewise, those that had greater than 0.75 SD below the average value, were considered to have fewer functions than expected. A similar procedure was applied to explore whether population growth and development of functions (restaurants) was above or below the expected value. The average population growth in the Randstad region was 8.4 per cent over the 2002–18 period (SD = 10.79), and the average

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Figure 2.2: The extended ‘borrowed size/agglomeration shadow’ framework Connection size  function Fewer functions than expected given size

More functions than expected given size

Performs less well than expected given size

Agglomeration shadow

Borrowed functions

Performs better than expected given size

Borrowed performance

Borrowed size (function and performance

Dimensions of borrowed size

Connection size  performance

Connection size  function Dimensions of borrowed size

Connection size  performance

Less functions than expected given size

As many functions as expected

More functions than expected given size

Performs less than expected given size

Agglomeration shadow

Performance shadow

Borrowed functions

Performs as expected

Functional shadow

As expected

Borrowed functions

Performs better than expected given size

Borrowed performance

Borrowed performance

Borrowed size

increase in restaurants was 9.69 per cent (SD = 29.32). Again, we used deviations in excess of 0.75 SD to determine which places performed better or worse than expected. One complication with this procedure is that in quite a few cases a place performs better according to one indicator, but worse according to another that measures the same dimension. For instance, a place may have more jobs than expected, but less restaurants than predicted for its size. In those cases, if a place scores better or worse on one indicator, and

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as expected on the other, we categorized it as scoring better or worse. In the unusual case that a place scored better on one indicator and worse than expected according to the other, we classified it as ‘as expected’ on this dimension, unless the average standardized score was still above 0.75 SD (categorized as ‘better than expected) or below 0.75 SD (worse than expected). This resulted in the following classification of Randstad municipalities (Figure 2.3).

Explaining patterns in the Randstad Research approach In what follows we will explore which factors correlate with whether a place is able to borrow performance, functions, size or, instead, faces a performance or functional shadow. In this explorative phase, we will consider six possible factors using descriptive methods to explore their association with our classification. First, it can be assumed that path dependency plays a role. Places that were traditionally important centres for their region may have retained that historically established position, even though other places may have grown faster. For each contemporary municipality, we identified the largest city and considered its population size in 1849. The first census in the Netherlands is from this year. We subsequently constructed an indicator that gives the rank of a city in 1849. The higher ranked (so, the lower the number), the more historically important a city is. Second, we simply assume that size plays a role. In line with previous findings (Burger et al, 2015; Meijers et al, 2016), the general pattern seems to be that larger cities more often borrow size, while smaller places are more likely to experience an agglomeration shadow. We use population size for 2016. Third, we consider the sectoral composition of the local economy, which has long been known (Echevarria, 1997) to lead to unbalanced growth (Gardiner et al, 2013). Here, we calculated the ratio between white-collar workers (employees in the public and private services sector) and blue-collar workers (employees in construction and manufacturing). We assume that high scores are associated with function-rich places. Data on sectoral composition of the economy of municipalities is available through Statistics Netherlands, and refers to the year 2016. Fourth, we include the social status score. This is a composite measure reflecting residents’ level of education, position in the labour market and income, and is calculated by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research.

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Figure 2.3: Classification of municipalities in the Randstad Dimensions of borrowed size

35 Connection Performs as size  performance expected

Fewer functions than expected given size

As many functions as expected

More functions than expected given size

Agglomeration shadow Dronten, Maassluis, Nissewaard, Strijen, Oegstgeest, Kaag en Braassem, Papendrecht, Hardinxveld-G., Oostzaan, Binnenmaas, Korendijk, Oudewater, Haarlemmerliede en S.

Performance shadow Blaricum, Huizen, Dordrecht, Montfoort, Veenendaal, Zederik, Bloemendaal, Vlaardingen, Soest

Borrowed functions Zoeterwoude, OuderAmstel, Laren, Gorinchem

Functional shadow Rhenen, Landsmeer, Heemskerk, Zuidplas, Alblasserdam, Voorschoten, IJsselstein, Hellevoetsluis, Heemstede, Lopik, Eemnes, Molenwaard, Wormerland, Leiderdorp, Krimpen a/d IJssel

As expected Ridderkerk, Cromstrijen, Zoetermeer, Amstelveen, Leerdam, Lelystad, Zaanstad, Nieuwkoop, Zwijndrecht, Capelle a/d IJssel, Uithoorn, Oud-Beijerland, Baarn, Hillegom, Woerden, De Bilt, Beemster, Westvoorne, Brielle, Giessenlanden, Noordwijkerhout, Bodegraven-R., Wassenaar, Weesp, Krimpenerwaard, Purmerend, Katwijk, Alphen a/d Rijn, Teylingen, Schiedam, Gooise Meren, Stichtse Vecht, De Ronde Venen, Velsen, Waterland, Gouda

Borrowed functions Amsterdam, The Hague, Westland, Beverwijk, Renswoude, Zeist, Haarlem, Hilversum, Wijdemeren, Delft, Lisse, Noordwijk, Utrechtse Heuvelrug, Sliedrecht, Zandvoort, Nieuwegein

Borrowed performance Midden-Delfland, Bunschoten, Bunnik, Waddinxveen, Edam-Volendam, Leusden, Woudenberg

Borrowed size Barendrecht, Diemen, Aalsmeer, Utrecht, Vianen, Haarlemmermeer, Rijswijk, Amersfoort, Leiden, Rotterdam

Performs Borrowed performance better Pijnacker-N., Houten, Lansingerland, than Uitgeest, Albrandswaard, Hendrik-Idoexpected Ambacht, Almere, Wijk bij Duurstede, given Castricum, Leidschendam-Voorburg size

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Performs less well than expected given size

Connection size  function

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Since it is calculated at the neighbourhood spatial scale, we calculated a population-weighted average at the municipal level. Data is for 2016. We assume that places with a lower social status are more often in the shadow of other places. Our fifth factor appeals quite literally to the idea that cities can borrow size in networks (Meijers et al, 2016), and that networks may substitute for the benefits of agglomeration (Johansson and Quigley, 2004). We created a network embeddedness factor to find out whether places that are more strongly related to other places do indeed perform better or have more functions than expected. In other scientific fields, the co-occurrence of phenomena in texts is used as an indicator of their relatedness, and likewise we can assume that when two cities are often mentioned in the same breath, they are related to each other, more so than cities that are hardly mentioned together. Important to understand is that this conceptualization of relatedness is broader than connections or physical flows between cities. Our measure of relatedness is based on the co‑occurrence of Dutch place names in all (25 million) websites with the .nl extension (the most commonly used extension in the Netherlands) – see Meijers and Peris (2019) for its exact calculation. The absolute pattern of relationships, based on the frequency of co-occurrences, was explained by applying the gravity model. This allowed us to gain a relative understanding of the importance of a relationship. For instance, Rotterdam and Amsterdam are the cities that are most often mentioned together on Dutch websites, but you also expect this to be the case given the sheer size of both cities and the limited distance between them. If we correct for the size of the places, and the distance between them, by using the gravity model, we are able to compare predicted strengths of relationships between places with actual strengths (co-occurrences). Predicted values of less than 0, which happened for pairs of small villages far from each other, were set at 0. Our indicator gives the aggregated difference between all predicted values of the strength of the relationship with almost 1,700 other Dutch places, and the actual value. To move from place level to municipal level, we approximated the municipal network embeddedness with the relationships of the place that gave its name to a municipality, and when no such place name was used, we took the largest place in that municipality. In the handful of cases where the municipal name is composed of two place names, we took the average values. Sixth, a clear example of a means through which size can be borrowed is tourism, as tourists temporarily add to the size and hence support base for functions, while this sector has also grown considerably in many places. Our ‘tourism’ indicator gives the number of hotel beds per capita in 2011 – data is derived from the Bedrijfschap Horeca en Catering.

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Results: aggregate patterns We explore the association between six categories of our ‘borrowed size/ agglomeration shadow’ framework and these six factors through a series of box plots (Figures 2.4–2.9; for visibility, we leave out the ‘as expected’ category). The shades used refer to the shades given to these categories in Figures 2.2 and 2.3. The pattern regarding the historical importance of places is quite clear. Places that were important 170  years ago tend to be relatively more represented in the ‘borrowed size’ and ‘borrowed function’ category. Most of them seem to have kept their functional centrality and, consequently, we don’t find the most historically important places in a ‘functional shadow’ or in the ‘borrowed performance’ category. The historically most important place that is now in an agglomeration shadow is Maassluis – this former fishing town close to Rotterdam seems to have become overshadowed by its larger neighbour. On the other side, Haarlemmermeer was totally insignificant in 1849 (ranked 119 out of 120), and now borrows size. It is the municipality close to Amsterdam where Schiphol Airport is located – an obvious case of borrowing size indeed. Places that borrow performance tend to be historically less important. Hence, their growth may be explained more in terms of suburbanization – actually several growth centres are included here: for example, Almere, Houten, Lansingerland, Pijnacker-Nootdorp (see Figure 2.5). Turning to contemporary importance in terms of size, it is quite obvious that larger cities are more often in the borrowed size or the borrowed functions category. Almere is growing rapidly and can be considered in many Figure 2.4: Historical importance

Rank population size 1849

120 100 80 60 40 20

Edam-Volendam

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Figure 2.5: Population size Almere 

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ways a suburb of Amsterdam, but its position in the borrowed performance class means that it has not been able to develop functional importance (yet). Smaller cities are more often in a functional or agglomeration shadow. Nissewaard, including the city of Spijkenisse, is also not able to live up to the expectations created by its size – this is an example of one of the earlier growth poles near Rotterdam that grew rapidly due to industrialization in the 1970s and 1980s but has stagnated in more recent years – perhaps in many ways similar to the ‘first suburban ring’ in the US. The economic structure does play a role in positioning cities in our framework (see Figure  2.6). Those in which manufacturing is

Economic structure (white collar/blue collar)

Figure 2.6: Economic structure 50

Bloemendaal

40 Albrandswaard 

30 20

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stronger, and which have relatively fewer services, tend to experience an agglomeration shadow more often, while the median values of places in performance and functional shadows suggest the same for those categories. The local economy of places that ‘borrow’ tends to be more characterized by services. In terms of social status, the pattern is rather mixed – or simply absent (see Figure 2.7). The social status of places in the agglomeration shadow does not seem to differ too much from those that borrow size. In fact, the place with the lowest social status – Rotterdam – is borrowing size. Noteworthy perhaps is that places that are growing more tend to have a somewhat higher social status, while quite a few municipalities that are in a performance shadow are among the socially weaker. A link can be established with the fact that those places in the borrowed performance category include more recent suburban areas to which relatively affluent families tend to migrate. The boxplot for network embeddedness is interesting from various perspectives (see Figure 2.8). First of all, the places that borrow size are much more related to other places, whereas at the opposite end, those that are in an agglomeration shadow have far fewer relationships with other places. Second, places that borrow function also seem to be able to do so because they have stronger relationships. Third, places in a performance shadow also tend to be slightly more related to other places. This seems to call for further analysis in the types and directions of relationships, an issue that needs to be taken on board when the toponym co-occurrences method is further developed. Their opposite – the places that borrow performance – are actually less strongly related to other places. We had Figure 2.7: Social status 2

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Figure 2.8: Network embeddedness

Network embeddedness

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expected that places in a functional shadow would also have stronger relationships with other places, to make up for the lack of functions locally, but this is not the case. Tourism adds, temporarily, to the size of a place, and is one of the clearest examples of borrowed size from elsewhere (see Figure 2.9). It obviously has a positive impact on the functions in a place, as the borrowed size and borrowed function categories are more touristic. However, it does not lead to borrowed performance. Places in a shadow – whatever type – tend to be less touristy. Note that our indicator – hotel beds – does not just refer to touristic places; places that are central in business networks also pop up. The clearest example is Haarlemmermeer (Schiphol). Figure 2.9: Tourism Noordwijk

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Results: functional dimension Figure 2.10 presents the association between our factors and whether places have more or fewer functions than expected given their size. When comparing municipalities that have more functions (N = 30) with those that have fewer functions (N = 38), it turns out that municipalities that punch above their demographic weight are those that are: (a) historically important: t(66) = –4.0, p = 0.000; (b) larger: t(30) = 2.5, p = 0.017; (c) have a lower social status: t(66) = –2.2, p = 0.033; and (d) draw more tourists: t(32) = 2.4, p = 0.022. Somewhat counterintuitive is that places with a lower social status manage to have more functions than expected. Perhaps this is because function-rich larger cities are often also home to lower social classes, as well as a comparatively smaller upper class. While places that do better also seem to have a more services-oriented economy, this difference between ‘more’ and ‘fewer’ functions was not statistically significant. Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, places with stronger relationships with other places tend to have more functions: t(66) = 4.9, p = 0.000. This provides an important empirical underpinning for the proposition that networks substitute for size. We also ran an ordinal regression model explaining the score on the functional dimension, and including all six covariates simultaneously. In this model, tourism and network embeddedness turned out to be significant factors (p < 0.05), with historical importance being significant only at the p < 0.10 level.

Results: performance dimension When zooming in on just the performance dimension, associations with most of the six factors become clearer (Figure  2.11). In comparison to places that underperform, places that grow faster seem to be: (a) historically more important; (b) larger; (c) have a higher social status; (d) have more service sector jobs; (e) have more visiting tourists; and (f) are more strongly related to other places. However, comparing the mean scores for the ‘better’ and ‘worse’ categories renders only the difference in size significant, t(28) = 2.1, p = 0.046. The difference in tourism is significant only at the p = 0.094 level, t(50) = 1.7. Note that there are just 27 municipalities in the ‘better’ category and 26 in the ‘worse’ category, while at least N = 30 is recommendable for independent samples t-tests. All in all, this performance dimension shows weaker differences between the categories in comparison to the functional dimension.

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Figure 2.10: Borrowed functions 120

1,000

800

Population size (000s)

80

60

40

600

Amsterdam 

Rotterdam  The Hague 

400

Utrecht

200

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Rank population size 1849

100

Zaanstad

Almere  Nissewaard Leidschendam-Voorburg

0

0

More functions

Functions as expected

Fewer functions

More functions

Functions as expected

Fewer functions (continued)

Figure 2.10: Borrowed functions (continued) 50

2 Bloemendaal 

Laren

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40

Albrandswaard 

30

Blaricum   Amstelveen  Leusden

Leidschendam-Voorburg

20

Social status

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Economic structure

1

0

Baarn

–1 10

0

Rotterdam

–2

More functions

Functions as expected

Fewer functions

More functions

Functions as expected

Fewer functions (continued)

Figure 2.10: Borrowed functions (continued)

Almere

20

0.10

0

Zandvoort 

Tourism

0.08

–20 –40 Ouder-Amstel

Giessenlanden Oud-Beijerland

–60 Bunschoten

Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht

Noordwijkerhout 

Westvoorne  Waterland

0.04

Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude  Brielle Eemnes   Leusden Castricum Bunnik Rhenen Wassenaar

Korendijk Molenwaard  Hardinxveld-Giessendam

–80

0.06

Haarlemmermeer   Amsterdam

0.02

 Zuidplas

0

–100

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Functions as expected

Fewer functions

More functions

Functions as expected

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Network embeddedness

0.12

Bloemendaal

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Noordwijk 

Figure 2.11: Borrowed performance 120

1,000

800

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Rank population size 1849

Amsterdam 

60

40

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The Hague 

400

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Utrecht  Almere  Amersfoort Haarlemmermeer

Haarlem Zaanstad

Dordrecht Nissewaard

0

0

Better

As expected

Worse

Better

As expected

Worse (continued)

Shedding Light or Casting Shadows?

100

Figure 2.11: Borrowed performance (continued) 50

2 Bloemendaal 

40

Amstelveen Leusden

Blaricum 

Leidschendam-Voorburg

20

Social status

30

Albrandswaard 

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Sliedrecht Schiedam

–1 10

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Economic structure

1

Rotterdam

–2

Better

As expected

Worse

Better

As expected

Worse (continued)

Figure 2.11: Borrowed performance (continued) Delft

40

0.12

Dordrecht Bloemandaal Huizen

0.10

0

Zandvoort 

0.08 Touorism

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Network embeddedness

20

–20

Haarlemmermeer 

0.06

–40 Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht Oud-Beijerland

–60 Bunschoten

–80

Ouder-Amstel Korendijk

0.04

Hardinxveld-Giessendam 

0.02

Noordwijkerhout  Amsterdam  Westvoorne  Waterland

Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude 

As expected

Worse

Molenwaard

Zuidplas 

0

–100

Better

As expected

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Haarlem

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An ordinal regression model explaining the score on performance and including again the six covariates, identified social status as the most significant factor (p = 0.028), followed by population size (p = 0.052) and network embeddedness (p = 0.091).

Conclusion While much attention has been devoted to understanding city network externalities, as a substitute and/or complement to agglomeration externalities, research has focused much less on how the costs and benefits of the further integration of cities in networks are distributed over the cities in the network of cities. The ‘borrowed size/agglomeration shadow’ framework (Meijers and Burger, 2017) proposed previously to identify the different outcomes of network integration at the scale of individual cities was taken as a point of departure in this chapter. We have proposed a further refinement of this original four quadrant matrix, and now identify seven possible local outcomes of network integration. Cities can: (1) experience an agglomeration shadow; (2) experience a performance shadow; (3) experience a functional shadow; (4) perform as expected; (5) borrow functions; (6) borrow performance; and (7) borrow size. This elaboration of possible local outcomes was further explored and tested for the Randstad Holland region, a classic multicentric and polycentric urban region in the Netherlands. Each of the 120 municipalities in this metropolitan region (7.5 million inhabitants) was positioned in the elaborated ‘borrowed size/agglomeration shadow’ framework. In terms of the secondary cities that resemble the definition used in this book (see Chapter 1) most are positioned in very different quadrants. Some face a ‘performance shadow’ (Dordrecht, Vlaardingen), some perform as expected (Schiedam, Zaanstad), while others ‘borrow functions’ (Delft, Haarlem, Hilversum) and two manage to ‘borrow size’ (Amersfoort, Leiden). While it is noteworthy that none of these cities has fewer functions than expected, these varied positions at the same time suggest that the group of ‘secondary cities’ is quite heterogeneous, as is also discussed in Chapter 5, this volume. The ‘first cities’ either borrow functions (Amsterdam, The Hague) or borrow size (Utrecht, Rotterdam). Given this heterogeneity, it makes sense to explore how local conditions are associated with the positioning of cities. In this chapter, we associated six factors with this positioning: historical importance, size, sectoral composition of the local economy, social status, network embeddedness and tourism. All factors seem to play a role in the positioning. This role is sometimes easier to understand when looking at the functional and

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performance dimensions of the ‘borrowed size/agglomeration shadow’ framework separately. Places that have more functions than expected are associated with being historically important, and also with being more populous, while this population on average has a lower social status. But most particularly, they draw relatively more tourists (a very clear example of borrowing size of course) and they are much more strongly related to other cities than places that have fewer functions than expected. This provides clear support for the idea that networks substitute for size. Places that witnessed stronger development since the late 1990s, are, in comparison to places that underperformed, characterized by a greater population size, while they also have a higher social status and draw more tourists, and more relations with other cities (network embeddedness). The boxplots in Figure  2.11 suggest some evidence for the two remaining factors. While processes of further integration are positive for the region as a whole, the benefits and costs are not spread evenly over primary and different types of secondary cities. Our results suggest that local circumstances and path dependencies may influence the capacity to exploit processes of integration in multicentric metropolitan areas. One could argue that cities have different roles to play in such a region, after all, the essence of networks is that they allow for specialization. But this does require insight into the new interdependencies and a regional planning strategic framework to make the most of the possibilities of metropolitan network integration, especially if we are to ensure that costs and benefits of this process are spread more evenly. It may have been noted that we refer to those relationships as associations and not as causal relationships. We believe that this fits better with the explorative nature of the empirical analysis here presented. But the issue of causality is of great importance, and in many ways deserves further careful analysis. This analysis may be more a matter of discussing the evolution of secondary cities in relation to first cities in the region than of mere quantitative statistical analysis to establish causality, since historical pathways are likely to play a key role. The city of Dordrecht, for instance, was definitely one of the most important Dutch cities in the 16th and 17th centuries. But it has gradually been overshadowed by Rotterdam, which, among other factors, enjoyed a more favourable location for trade and political prioritization, translating into more public investment in the last century when its large harbour and associated industrial complexes were considered the economic engine of the Netherlands. Of course, the growth and decline of the most important economic sectors are likely to play key roles, as is perhaps sheer coincidence. For instance, Schiphol

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Airport, in the last decades another engine of economic growth, would probably have been relocated from its current position near Amsterdam to a place near Leiden and The Hague by the end of the 1930s if the war with Germany had not loomed on the horizon. Therefore, through such historical accounts, we may get an understanding of why some cities possess the factors that seem to allow them to borrow size, whereas others lack them. Importantly, such accounts will also reveal that there are shifts in the positioning of some cities – those that borrow size nowadays may have faced agglomeration shadows in the past. It is very possible that we will witness a shift in the coming decade (2030) – the quick rise of agglomeration costs in the largest cities (rents, congestion, ‘touristification’ of city centres) already leads to many spillover effects in nearby places, a process likely to be further aggravated by the need for space during pandemics like COVID-19. There is one important difference, though, with previous patterns in suburbanization. The households and firms that are attached to the urban way of life do not move to nearby ‘bedroom communities’ that lack urban charm, but ‘hop over’ to secondary cities that tend to be well connected and rich in functions and that have historical urban character and identity – an emerging process in the Netherlands that we could perhaps call ‘hop-over urbanization’. Consequently, in addition to our ‘snapshot’ that was based on a rather limited number of indicators to capture the functional and performance dimensions of each city, further research could adopt a dynamic perspective and try to explain shifts in positions of cities, thereby building on a more comprehensive analysis of: (a) proxies for functions and performance; and (b) a larger set of factors that can be associated with these two dimensions. It is not unlikely that this leads to the observation that cities have simultaneous and overlapping experiences with borrowing and shadowing, demanding a more careful account of their position. The issue of causality is also pertinent when it comes to the role of relationships between pairs of cities and the networks these shape at the scale of the urban system. Do these relationships develop because of the many functions a city has, or do these relationships indeed substitute for size and allow a city to sustain more functions? Both explanations are obviously possible, and, for instance, an instrumented variables approach may add some clarity here. Also, there are many opportunities to further elaborate the network embeddedness variable, such as considering network embeddedness on different spatial scales or, in the case of secondary cities, the levels of relationship with just the first city. There are many exciting research avenues possible that can build on, and further develop, the approach and the framework presented and explored here.

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References

Alderson, A.S. and Beckfield J. (2004) ‘Power and position in the world city system’, American Journal of Sociology, 109(4): 811–51. Alonso, W. (1973) ‘Urban zero population growth’, Daedalus, 102(4): 191–206. Batty, M., Xie, Y. and Sun Z. (1999) ‘Modeling urban dynamics through GIS-based cellular automata’, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 23(3): 205–33. Bel, G. and Fageda, X. (2008) ‘Getting there fast: globalization, intercontinental flights and location of headquarters’, Journal of Economic Geography, 8(4): 471–95. Bettencourt, L.M.A., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kühnert, C. and West, G.B. (2007) ‘Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(17): 7301–6. Boix, R. and Trullén, J. (2007) ‘Knowledge, networks of cities and growth in regional urban systems’, Papers in Regional Science, 86(4): 551–74. Bourne, L.S. and Simmons, J.W. (eds) (1978) Systems of Cities: Readings on Structure, Growth, and Policy, New York: Oxford University Press. Bretagnolle, A. and Pumain, D. (2010) ‘Simulating urban networks through multiscalar space-time dynamics: Europe and the United States, 17th–20th centuries’, Urban Studies, 47(13): 2819–39. Burger, M.J. and Meijers, E.J. (2016) ‘Agglomerations and the rise of urban network externalities’, Papers in Regional Science, 95(1): 5–15. Burger, M.J., Meijers, E.J., Hoogerbrugge, M.M. and Tresserra, J.M. (2015) ‘Borrowed size, agglomeration shadows and cultural amenities in north-west Europe’, European Planning Studies, 23(6): 1090–109. Camagni, R. (1993) ‘From city hierarchy to city networks: reflections about an emerging paradigm’, in T.R. Lakshmanan and P. Nijkamp (eds) Structure and Change in the Space Economy: Festschrift in Honour of Martin Beckmann, Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp 66–87. Capello, R. (2000) ‘The city network paradigm: measuring urban network externalities’, Urban Studies, 37(11): 1925–45. Capello, R. and Camagni, R. (2000) ‘Beyond optimal city size: an evaluation of alternative urban growth patterns’, Urban Studies, 37(9): 1479–96. Champion, A.G. (2001) ‘A changing demographic regime and evolving polycentric urban regions: consequences for the size, composition and distribution of city populations’, Urban Studies, 38(4): 657–77. De  Vos, D. and Meijers, E. (2019) ‘Information technology and local product variety: substitution, complementarity and spillovers’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 110(4): 486–506.

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De Vries, J. (1984) European Urbanization 1500–1800, London: Methuen. Echevarria, C. (1997) ‘Changes in sectoral composition associated with economic growth’, International Economic Review, 38(2): 431–52. ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) (2005) ‘ESPON 1.1.1. Potentials for polycentric development in Europe’, ESPON and Nordregio Project Report (rev. version), Brussels and Stockholm. ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) (2011) ‘ESPON 1.4.3 Study on urban functions, 2007’, ULB IGEAT/ESPON Project Report (updated version), Brussels and Luxembourg. Fujita, M., Krugman, P. and Mori, T. (1999) ‘On the evolution of hierarchical urban systems, European Economic Review, 43(2): 209–51. Gabaix, X. and Ioannides, Y.M. (2004) ‘The evolution of city size distributions’, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse (eds) Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, vol. 4, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp 2341–78. Gardiner, B., Martin, R., Sunley, P. and Tyler, P. (2013) ‘Spatially unbalanced growth in the British economy’, Journal of Economic Geography, 13(6): 889–928. Hall, P. (1966) The World Cities, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Hincks, S., Deas, I. and Haughton, G. (2017) ‘Real geographies, real economies and soft spatial imaginaries: creating a “more than Manchester” region’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41(4): 642–57. Hoggart, K. (2005) The City’s Hinterland: Dynamism and Divergence in Europe’s Peri-Urban Territories, London: Routledge. Hohenberg, P.M. and Lees, L.H. (1985) The Making of Urban Europe, 1000–1950, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Johansson, B. and Quigley, J. (2004) ‘Agglomeration and networks in spatial economies’, Papers in Regional Science, 83(1): 165–76. Kloosterman, R.C. and Musterd, S. (2001) ‘The polycentric urban region: towards a research agenda’, Urban Studies, 38(4): 623–33. Krugman, P. (1991) Geography and Trade, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Krugman, P. (1993) ‘On the number and location of cities’, European Economic Review, 37(2): 293–8. Lefèvre, C. (1998) ‘Metropolitan government and governance in Western countries: a critical review’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 22(1): 9–25. McCann, P. and Acs, Z.J. (2011) ‘Globalization: countries, cities and multinationals’, Regional Studies, 45(1): 17–32. Maly, J. (2016) ‘Small towns in the context of “borrowed size” and “agglomeration shadow” debates: the case of the South Moravian Region (Czech Republic)’, European Countryside, 8(4): 333–50.

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Meijers, E.J. (2005) ‘Polycentric urban regions and the quest for synergy: is a network of cities more than the sum of the parts?’, Urban Studies, 42(4): 765–81. Meijers, E.J. and Burger, M.J. (2017) ‘Stretching the concept of “borrowed size”’, Urban Studies, 54(1): 269–91. Meijers, E.J. and Peris, A. (2019) ‘Using toponym co-occurrences to measure relationships between places: review, application and evaluation’, International Journal of Urban Sciences, 23(2): 246–68. Meijers, E.J., Burger, M.J. and Hoogerbrugge, M.M. (2016) ‘Borrowing size in networks of cities: city size, network connectivity and metropolitan functions in Europe’, Papers in Regional Science, 95(1): 181–98. Meijers, E.J., Hoogerbrugge, M. and Cardoso, R. (2018) ‘Beyond polycentricity: does stronger integration between cities in polycentric urban regions improve performance?’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 109(1): 1–21. Meijers, E.J., Hoekstra, J., Leijten, M., Louw, E. and Spaans, M. (2012) ‘Connecting the periphery: distributive effects of new infrastructure’, Journal of Transport Geography, 22: 187–98. Myrdal, G. (1957) Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, London: Hutchinson. Neal, Z. (2013) The Connected City: How Networks are Shaping the Modern Metropolis, New York: Routledge. Parr, J.B. (2004) ‘The polycentric urban region: a closer inspection’, Regional Studies, 38(3): 231–40. Partridge, M.D., Rickman, D.S., Ali, K. and Olfert, M.R. (2008) ‘Lost in space: population growth in the American hinterlands and small cities’, Journal of Economic Geography, 8(6): 727–57. Peris, A., Meijers, E. and van Ham, M. (2018) ‘The evolution of the systems of cities literature since 1995: schools of thought and their interaction’, Networks and Spatial Economics, 18(3): 533–54. Pred, A. (1977) City-Systems in Advanced Economies: Past Growth, Present Processes, and Future Development Options, New York: Wiley. Preston, J. (2001) ‘Integrating transport with socio-economic activity: a research agenda for the new millennium’, Journal of Transport Geography, 9(1): 13–24. Schiff, N. (2015) ‘Cities and product variety: evidence from restaurants’, Journal of Economic Geography, 15(6): 1085–123. Taylor, P.J. (2003) World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis, London: Routledge. Taylor, P.J. and Derudder, B. (2016) World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis (2nd edn), Abingdon: Routledge.

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3

Small and Medium-Sized Towns as Secondary Cities: The Case of Switzerland Heike Mayer, Rahel Meili and David Kaufmann

Introduction The largest cities in Switzerland are not very large, at least from an international comparative perspective: in 2016, Zurich was the biggest Swiss city and was home to 402,762  residents. Geneva had 198,979  residents while Basel counted 171,017. Lausanne and Bern were about the same size, counting 137,810 and 133,115  residents respectively. Among the cities with more than 100,000 residents, there is only Winterthur (109,775) in addition to the ones already mentioned. Four more cities (Biel, Lugano, Lucerne and St. Gallen) make it onto the list of cities with more than 50,000 residents (SSV and BFS, 2018). As a result, the vast majority of Swiss cities need to be considered as small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs). There are a total of 152 SMSTs with a population up to 50,000 residents.1 In many cases, these SMSTs take on the role of secondary cities in the context of the larger urban agglomerations. Take, for example, the two case study cities that will be discussed in this chapter, Thun and Wädenswil. The city of Thun had 43,568 residents in 2016 (SSV and BFS, 2018). Because Thun is located only about 30 km south-east of the city centre of Bern, a large majority of Thun residents commute daily

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for work between Thun and Bern. In addition, there are numerous other close links between these two cities. Yet Thun, historically supported by tourism and military spending, has played a rather inferior role when compared to Bern. From 1384 until 1798, Thun was subordinate to Bern; during this time the latter became the most important city-state north of the Alps. Around the year 1800 writers noted about Thun that this ‘city is only of mediocre size, poorly built, and poorly populated’ and that Thun ‘is neither large nor beautiful, atrophied in its system, Thun is in this regard like many other Swiss small towns’ (Bähler, 2018: 38). The other case study is Wädenswil, a small town of around 21,797 residents that is located on the shore of Lake Zurich, about 25 km south of Zurich’s downtown area. Wädenswil’s industrial history is rooted in the textile and agricultural industries. Through structural changes in these industries, the city had to reorient its economy and started to focus on research and education in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a secondary city in the metropolitan region of Zurich, Wädenswil is able to hold on to higherlevel knowledge-intensive activities despite being small and despite the danger of standing in the shadow of Zurich. Recent research illustrates that smaller cities and towns play an important role in European countries and that they have performed particularly well when compared to large cities (Dijkstra et al, 2013). There is also evidence that the relationship between city size and economic performance is not linear (McCann and Acs, 2011; Frick and Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). Factors such as institutional capacity and positioning strategies seem to be important for the success of smaller cities and towns. Yet it is unclear to what extent economic and political actors in SMSTs in countries like Switzerland are aware of the potential of their jurisdictions and the importance of how they position their town as a secondary city within the context of larger metropolitan regions. This chapter illustrates how two SMSTs function as secondary cities in a polycentric urban context and how they employ positioning strategies in order to step outside of the agglomeration shadows of their larger neighbouring cities. We specifically focus on secondary cities in the context of the metropolitan regions of Bern and Zurich, considering how they situate themselves within the context of a larger, more prominent neighbouring city. Methodologically, we draw on case study research that we conducted within the framework of a larger research project on the economic role of SMSTs in Switzerland.2 The questions of function and development strategy at the regional scale are important because today’s global economy exerts great pressure on cities to concentrate economic activities in the most prominent locations. Moreover, due to the demand for high-quality residential

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space close to cities, it is lucrative in many secondary cities to build housing on brownfields instead of establishing a new office building or creating an industry zone. Becoming a bedroom community is not necessarily negative, because the residential economy can generate local business activities and employment, and Swiss cities and towns can tax personal income and personal wealth (Segessemann and Crevoisier, 2016; Kaufmann and Wittwer, 2019). Yet, becoming a bedroom community would mean the town losing its identity as economically significant, being more dependent on the nearby city, losing (economic) activity during workdays as well as depending solely on tax revenue from residents. In what follows, we argue that despite the pressures of agglomeration, it is possible for secondary cities to sustain economic trajectories that avoid these problems. Leaders in the two towns investigated in this chapter are aware of the dangers of becoming bedroom communities and have taken active steps to avoid this outcome. In particular, this means building on pre-existing sectoral strengths and trying to position their town in a regional niche of not only industrial production but also educational activities. Therefore, these two cases illustrate the wiggle room that smaller towns have in a context of polycentric development provided they recognize the potential challenges they are facing. Knowing more about whether these small and medium-sized cities have room to manoeuvre is especially important given that politicians and policy-makers ascribe a certain dominance and unique function to their larger neighbouring cities such as Zurich or Bern. The questions we ask are particularly relevant in the context of the European city, which historically was characterized by an urban morphology, a high degree of political autonomy and a unique identity (Siebel, 2012). SMSTs are examples of the traditional European city, and given that suburbanization, globalization and structural economic changes are challenging their status as such, we need to engage in a debate that highlights their relational roles and functions. By knowing more about this, scholars and policy-makers will gain a better understanding of the possibilities smaller cities have to position themselves as secondary cities that benefit from their relationships with their more dominant neighbours.

SMSTs as secondary cities A discussion about the role of secondary cities in the context of a country in which a large share of the population lives in SMSTs necessitates an engagement with the literature on smaller urban areas and the ways in which they are related to their larger urban neighbours. In the case of

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Switzerland, the larger neighbour is usually a dominant city that is not only nationally but also internationally recognized. We can think about Zurich and its global importance for the banking and finance industry. Geneva is another case in point as it is the location for a number of international governmental organizations such as the United Nations. Basel hosts an internationally recognized life sciences industry with globally competitive firms like Novartis or Roche. Finally, Bern is known as the Swiss capital city and functions as the country’s political centre.3 While one might be aware of the global reputation of these dominant cities, Swiss secondary cities are usually more or less unknown beyond the nation’s borders. The reader may have not heard of secondary cities like Thun, Köniz or Ittigen, which are located in the Bern metropolitan region. Similarly, few know about cities like Wädenswil or Bülach, which represent secondary cities in the Zurich metropolitan region. Such cities in Switzerland typically have long histories as independent cities, having gained city and market rights during medieval times, and they still represent an urban morphology that reminds us today of this history. In contrast, SMSTs that statistically qualify as such because of size, density and so on, but that are rather suburban in terms of their morphology, fall outside of the secondary city dynamic we are interested in exploring here. For example, two small cities, Kloten and Adliswil, which are located in the Zurich metropolitan region, should not be considered as secondary cities in the sense we are using here, as they lack their own long-standing urban histories. Kloten grew from the 1990s because it is home to the country’s largest airport and its development was spurred by the expansion of the airport. Adliswil is a small town that is close to downtown Zurich and hosts a number of large, knowledge-based businesses such as insurance companies and banks. It grew because of its accessibility to downtown Zurich. While we make a distinction between SMSTs that fit this specific conception of secondary cities and those that do not, public discourse only distinguishes between metropolitan regions such as Zurich, Basel, Geneva and Bern and a network of SMSTs. A public discussion about SMSTs and their relation to larger neighbouring cities is absent. There is also generally a lack of research on the question of whether SMSTs are shaped by their position as secondary cities within the region, and on the challenges this brings for the development of these towns. The focus on city size has often obscured an explicit relational perspective in which the smaller city is discussed in relation to its larger neighbour. As a result, the literature on SMSTs suffers from a myopic focus on the city itself and on questions regarding the implications of smallness for quality of life, economic development, planning and so on (Ofori-Amoah, 2007; Knox and Mayer, 2009). Yet it seems obvious that a focus on city size

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is very limiting, as city size nowadays does not explain success. Rather, studies of smaller urban places need to think about the ways in which SMSTs are able to build networks (Camagni et al, 2014) or how they can borrow functions or performance from a larger place nearby (Camagni and Capello, 2014; Meijers and Burger, 2017), or how they may be limited by the agglomeration shadows cast by their dominant neighbours. The relational perspective is emphasized by McCann and Acs (2011: 17) when they state that ‘for industrialized countries the size of a city is nowadays much less important than its level of global connectivity’. Empirical evidence from Switzerland as well as other European countries suggests that smaller urban places that are closer to core cities have higher growth rates and boast more specialized economies than towns farther away (Polèse and Shearmur, 2005; Gatzweiler et al, 2012; Hamdouch et al, 2017; Meili and Mayer, 2017). To understand why SMSTs display growth rates and functions normally associated with large cities, Alonso (1973) originally introduced the concept of ‘borrowed size’, which Meijers and Burger (2017) reintroduced and extended to better understand today’s urban systems. In this concept, smaller cities are able to access the advantages that a larger city nearby offers without providing these themselves. A prerequisite is that the smaller city is functionally interconnected and accessible to the larger city. If these smaller places show higher levels of performance or a higher level of functionality than is normally expected in cities of this size, then these smaller places likely borrow from their larger neighbour. Smaller cities may also stand in the agglomeration shadow of their nearby larger neighbour. This is the case when they experience negative effects from being located near a larger neighbouring city, such as having fewer functions than normally associated with cities their size. Thus, ‘borrowing size’ and ‘agglomeration shadow’ can be considered as ‘two sides of the same coin’ (Burger et al, 2015: 1093). According to Meijers and Burger (2017: 257), ‘the fortunes of small cities are strongly linked to their positioning relative to other places’. This, however, does not mean that a small city that is not near a larger city cannot borrow size. Indeed, there are cases in Switzerland of SMSTs that are outside the main metropolitan regions but nonetheless sustain important connections to larger cities. Here we think of Chur, Lausanne or Biel. These cities can borrow size from larger cities because they are well connected, for example, by public transportation or roads. Yet, these cities would need to be considered second cities from a national perspective and not from a regional perspective. Given the polycentric context of Switzerland, it is more interesting to focus on SMSTs as secondary cities on the regional level.

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Small cities situated as secondary cities within dynamic urban regions may be able to benefit from interactions with the regional first city. For example, such cities may be able to access the regional first city’s population and extend on their function as a place to live given wellfunctioning accessibility. It may also offer the firms located in the secondary city access to a specialized labour pool, services and so on that may be present in the nearby regional first city. Borrowing size is not only functional, but the benefits from borrowing size may be stimulated by local economic development policies and locational policies. These local policies aim to develop the local assets that are considered to be most competitive (Kaufmann and Arnold, 2018), and they are formulated based on place-specific economic and political conditions as well as on the position of a jurisdiction within its metropolitan region. The positive consequences of borrowing size, such as higher growth rates or hosting a wide range of functions, can also have negative side effects for secondary cities. Case studies in Switzerland show that a high demand for residential and commercial buildings in secondary cities resulting from a lack of space in the region’s first city, might lead to uncontrolled growth and urban sprawl. Moreover, after the disappearance of traditional industries (such as the textile industry), the secondary city might not have been able to attract new businesses due to high land prices caused by high demand for housing by commuters. In this way there is the danger that the secondary city may become a residential town without an independent economy (Kaufmann and Wittwer, 2019). However, as will be discussed later in this chapter, secondary cities can choose targeted development strategies that build from their historical strengths and can realize their relational advantages to borrow size from dominant neighbours.

The Swiss urban context The Swiss urban context is characterized by a polycentric urban system with 10  large cities and 152  SMSTs. In the German language, these towns are referred to as cities (Stadt) as there is no difference between the word ‘city’ or ‘town’. Swiss SMSTs are quite heterogeneous and show a high degree of economic specialization (Meili and Mayer, 2017). The majority of small cities are residential economy towns, meaning that their local economy serves primarily local, residential needs as the towns are home to a large share of commuters who work in the neighbouring bigger city. In most cases, the residential economy towns are located within or near a metropolitan region or urban agglomeration. There are, however, also towns that host vibrant export-oriented sectors. These

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towns can be called knowledge-intensive towns if they host firms in the knowledge-intensive business services or knowledge-intensive financial services sectors, or high-tech towns or low-tech towns if their economy is oriented towards such sectors. There are also towns that function as business hubs. These towns are home to national or even globally oriented business headquarters. As Switzerland boasts a large tourism industry, we also find Alpine tourism towns that specialize in catering to (winter) tourists. Yet these towns are often further away from the major metropolitan areas. Overall, the best predictor for employment development in these SMSTs is the employment development of the towns and cities in the same region (Kaufmann and Wittwer, 2019). Thus, a relational perspective that considers other cities and towns in the same region is important when examining economic development of Swiss SMSTs. Swiss SMSTs are often part of demographically and economically growing metropolitan regions. These metropolitan regions are characterized by high institutional fragmentation because Swiss cities and towns cover a relatively small surface area. Metropolitan governments or metropolitan policy enforcement mechanisms are largely absent and thus cities and towns only coordinate their policies voluntarily (Kaufmann and Sager, 2019). Even compared to other federal states, Swiss cities and towns enjoy a comparatively high local autonomy (Sellers and Lidström, 2007), meaning that they have authority over many policy fields, such as economic development and urban planning. Specifically, Swiss cities and towns have high tax autonomy as they are allowed to levy direct taxes on personal income and property as well as corporate income and capital. This leads to rather intense locational competition within Switzerland, in which cities and towns compete for mobile tax bases, resulting in high fiscal revenue differences between different localities (Kaufmann and Arnold, 2018). Given these freedoms, Swiss policy-makers are reluctant to implement redistributive regional policies. However, there is a national fiscal equalization system between Swiss cantons, and all Swiss cantons have their own form of a fiscal equalization system between municipalities. While the specificities vary considerably between the cantonal fiscal equalization systems (Rühli, 2013), these systems aim to compensate for the most striking fiscal revenue differences that emerge from tax competition and from topographical and socio-demographic differences. These fiscal equalization systems are often contested, particularly by cantons and municipalities that are net contributors to these systems, and by conservative political parties that are generally opposed to fiscal redistribution. High local autonomy, locational competition and reluctance to implement redistributive regional policies all contribute

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to the Swiss neoliberal urban and regional policy framework that shapes primary/secondary city relationships. The national planning context does not sufficiently address the role of SMSTs in the Swiss urban system. In 2008, the Federal Office for Spatial Development launched a process by which the entire country was grouped into different spatial types. The so-called Raumkonzept Schweiz represents a national strategic framework that provides guidance for polycentric development. The framework identifies 12  different functional urban types, including the 4 metropolitan regions (Zurich, Basel, Geneva-Lausanne and Bern), 5 regions that are shaped by SMSTs (Lucerne, Città Ticino, Jura region, Aare region, North-Eastern Switzerland) and 3 functional Alpine regions (Gotthard, Western Alps and Eastern Alps). The framework shows an implicit hierarchy as the four metropolitan regions are labelled the ‘primary motors of the Swiss economy’ (Bundesamt für Raumentwicklung, 2008: 36). SMSTs are seen as towns with their own profile and individual strengths and, as such, they offer a high quality of life. They are also described as being located close to metropolitan regions and are seen to fulfil a ‘bridging function’ between metropolitan regions and rural areas. The report notes that these places have a high potential for development since they benefit from the growth dynamics in the metropolitan region due to their fast transportation connection to the metropolitan centres and high quality of life. However, the national spatial concept does not oblige places to fulfil certain purposes; it rather illustrates the relationships different places in Switzerland have with each other. A distinct national development strategy or a national programme for SMSTs have not been elaborated so far, and thus the national planning context does not sufficiently address the role of SMSTs, including those we are analysing as secondary cities. While the national planning strategy puts Zurich and Bern on paper on the same level, the history of how these places were labelled as metropolitan regions tells a different story. In the initial versions of the strategy, Bern was not included in the list of cities that belong to Switzerland’s metropolitan regions (Kaufmann et al, 2016). Only Zurich, Basel and Geneva/Lausanne were included, and the maps that were issued by the Federal Office left Bern as a White spot. Objectively Bern did not fulfil all the functions of a metropolitan region (such as international transportation connections, presence of headquarters and so on) and should have not been included. Yet the political outcry in the Bern region – particularly related to the argument that as a capital city it needed to be included in a national strategic framework – helped to lift the Swiss capital city to the same level as the other three regions. As a capital city, Bern does fulfil important functions, particularly with regards to its

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representation function but also to its specific political economy (Mayer et al, 2018). Since then, Bern has struggled with its role at the national level, yet it has succeeded politically through increased coordination efforts at the regional level. Only after it established a metropolitan organization that is in charge of lobbying and coordinating those cities and regions interested in working together in the capital city region (through the initiative Hauptstadtregion Schweiz), has Bern received recognition as a metropolitan region (Kaufmann, 2018). Zurich’s status as a metropolitan region in the Swiss national planning framework is uncontested. Zurich is also known as a global financial centre, as the banking and finance industry dominates its economy. While the city has been placed on the second or third tier among global cities, Zurich stands out against other Swiss metropolitan regions (Thierstein et al, 2003). Besides the city of Zurich, the metropolitan region of Zurich includes 45 SMSTs and, in addition, one city with 109,775 inhabitants called Winterthur. The SMSTs within the metropolitan region are well connected through a well-developed and fast public transportation system to the city of Zurich and constitute the urban agglomeration of Zurich. Since the late 1990s, SMSTs within the metropolitan region of Zurich benefited from the lack of space for new commercial space in the city of Zurich and were able to attract insurance offices and banks that could not expand in the city. Some SMSTs in Swiss metropolitan regions are passively enjoying the benefits of the larger urban neighbour and one could say they are ‘chilling in the agglomeration shadow’. Others are strategically working towards borrowing size. Depending on the current economic situation, the efforts of local officials and the different preconditions (such as the availability of land, budgets, local partners and so on), SMSTs can be either passive or active in implementing economic development strategies, as studies in the metropolitan region of Zurich show (Kaufmann and Meili, 2019). The following two case studies illustrate two secondary cities that actively borrow size. We outline the economic development history of the two cases and highlight the strategies these SMSTs implement in order to position themselves in the metropolitan context and develop their own economic structure. There are, however, differences between these cities that might result in differing development paths.

Case studies In the Swiss metropolitan context, secondary cities are those that represent the typical European city. Yet, given metropolization and globalization

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trends as well as structural changes in industries, their relationships to larger and more dominant cities such as Zurich or Bern have changed over time. For this project we chose to focus on two secondary cities: Wädenswil and Thun. They share historical importance for their region as employment and residential centres. Both towns are about a 20-minute train ride away from the urban core of their metropolitan region (Zurich and Bern respectively). Thus, Wädenswil and Thun both benefit from being close to their larger and more dominant urban neighbour through intricate links via commuting, knowledge exchange, engagement in metropolitan/regional organizations and so on. Both towns are residential economy towns (Meili and Mayer, 2017) and thus their economies specialize in goods and services that serve local needs (Segessemann and Crevoisier, 2016). Simultaneously, the two towns represent secondary cities from two different contexts. Wädenswil is in close proximity to a global city. Thun is close to a capital city. As Table 3.1 illustrates, their socio-economic development indicators differ regarding size, change in population and employment, but also percentage of out-commuters as a share of the working population. The shared role of the two towns as secondary cities with a mainly residential economy offers a good starting base for comparing their respective positioning strategies. Both towns have formulated strategies to diversify their roles as residential regional centres and to foster employment development. When comparing the positioning strategies of the two towns, we have to keep in mind socio-economic differences as potential explanatory factors. Our case studies are informed by semi-structured,

Table 3.1: Comparing the two secondary cities Wädenswil 21,797

Thun 43,568

+13.6%

+6.26%

Number of employees in secondary and tertiary sectors, 2015

8,713

28,067

Change in employment in secondary and tertiary sectors, 2011–15

+3.1%

–1.3%

Number of out-commuters to the regional first city, 2014

2,982

2,925

% of out-commuter as a share of the working population in the town, 2014

44.5%

68.7%

Time taken to reach the regional first city by train (fastest connection, sbb.ch)

17 min

18 min

Number of residents, 2016 Change in population, 2004–16

Source: BFS 2020 (Federal Statistics Office, 2020)

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in-depth interviews with local elites as well as by reviews of statistical data, reports, press articles and other secondary literature.

Case study 1: Wädenswil Wädenswil is located on the shore of Lake Zurich, approximately 20 km from Zurich. As one of 45 SMSTs in the metropolitan region of Zurich, Wädenswil was chosen by us because it represents a town that managed to transform its relationship to the regional first city through a number of strategic efforts. As a result, Wädenswil was able to transition from an industrial town to a residential town with a research and education focus (Westermann, 2010). Today, Wädenswil fulfils an important role as a secondary city in the metropolitan region of Zurich by providing residential space and by hosting a number of higher education and research institutions. Wädenswil’s flourishing industry at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th led to a high rate of population growth. Between 1888 and 1910, the number of residents grew from 6,338 to 9,067. Most new residents came from other towns or cantons, or even from abroad. Nevertheless, it took Wädenswil another 40 years to hit the threshold of 10,000 residents in 1950. Population growth accelerated again after 1950, reaching 15,695 by 1970. At the time, the economy was oriented towards rather traditional sectors and the main employers were a brewery, a starch plant and a number of silk-weaving firms and cloth factories (Ziegler, 1988). Although the two dominant cloth factories survived the world economic crisis and the Second World War, both firms had to shut down in the second half of the 1970s. Eventually, the beer brewery closed in 1991. The decline of these textile companies also marked the end of Wädenswil’s status as a predominantly industrial town. Because of the industrial decline, numerous vacant industrial buildings and brownfield sites were scattered across town and were subsequently used for new development projects. For example, one of the buildings was turned into a campus for a higher education and research institution. The majority of conversion projects, however, included apartments, and a small shopping centre was built too. Most of the brownfields have been turned into housing due to high demand and greater returns on investment (Westermann, 2010). This development has a lot to do with Wädenswil’s favourable location near Zurich. Good transportation connections and great proximity to Zurich has allowed Wädenswil, in recent years, to attract more out-commuters than in-commuters, who are primarily heading to downtown Zurich. Hence, although the number of

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residents has increased continuously to the present, the number of jobs has not, and there is an increasing imbalance between residents and jobs. Local politicians such as the mayor consider the distance to Zurich as a constraint when, for example, attracting international firms. Along those lines, some local experts and representatives even stated that Wädenswil is in the periphery of the metropolitan region of Zurich. Generating economic activity beyond the residential sector thus requires Wädenswil to identify and build from its own strategic advantages without duplicating or directly competing with its dominant neighbour. The crucial historical event that helped Wädenswil develop into a more dynamic city with a unique identity was the foundation of the agriculture research and education centre in 1890. Laboratories, greenhouses and numerous fields for researching vegetables and fruits were created and an extensive test site was built on land that was made available by a bailiwick. The bailiwick gave the land to the research institution due to the dominant role the agriculture sector played in Wädenswil at that time. Over time, agricultural research and teaching activities were enlarged. For example, in 1942 the Swiss school for fruit processing opened its doors (Ziegler, 1988). In 1950, the oenological school affiliated with the fruitprocessing school and the Swiss fruit and wine college (Schweizerische Obst- und Weinfachschule) was created. New degree programmes in food technology and biotechnology were established in 1988 and 1994. Eventually research and teaching activities concerning fruit, wine and horticulture were renamed environmental engineering. This also represented an opportunity to expand the higher education institution into other fields such as life sciences. Another opportunity arose when in 2007 the network of Swiss universities of applied sciences was created and, as a result, the school for fruit processing merged with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, ZHAW). A new department was created in Wädenswil with the name Life Science and Facility Management (Hasler Roumois et  al, 2011), which, by 2016, had 1,561 students and 605 employees (Rektorat ZHAW, 2017). Following this merger, in 2014 the agriculture research centre became part of the newly established federal research institute Agroscope. The historic presence of the agriculturally oriented research institutions laid the foundation for Wädenswil’s strengths in research and development, but also teaching. Numerous other schools and training institutions complement the offerings. For example, Wädenswil is home to the Zurich International School. Being well connected by public transportation to Zurich and the rest of the region seems to help Wädenswil to promote itself as a suitable place for research and educational institutions. Hence,

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Wädenswil clearly benefits from the embeddedness into the metropolitan region of Zurich. Ongoing success along these lines is not an outcome that inevitably follows from location and past results. Indeed, there has been some risk that research and educational resources will be siphoned off to other cities, including Zurich. To position itself as a secondary city that does not simply stand in the agglomeration shadow of Zurich, Wädenswil chose to aggressively focus on its historical strengths as a location for research and education institutions. The town actively pursues various projects that aim to leverage the economic effects of higher education institutions (Kaufmann and Meili, 2019). First, an obvious strategy that the town chose is to work on its image as a research and education town. As such, it actively promotes this image through brochures and documents, but also more visibly throughout the town, through, for example, signage of public space and public events. Second, the authorities created a working group composed of representatives of the different schools and research institutions to develop a common strategy and launch new projects. This has helped to unify goals, exchange ideas and coordinate the actors. Third, the infrastructure for students and staff has been improved. Wädenswil has thereby worked to not only be a destination for in-commuting students, but to also capture the economic benefits of having students live in town. To do this, the town became active in the acquisition and renovation of houses and, together with investors, created additional affordable residential space for students. Along related lines, Wädenswil worked hard to customize its public transportation system to the needs of the schools and institutions. Fourth, specific research districts have been defined. This is a rather innovative strategy for a Swiss SMST such as Wädenswil, because typically zoning is divided into residential and industrial. Dedicated districts for innovation, research and education are rare. Within those districts in Wädenswil, research and educational concerns are given priority. Wädenswil has also partnered with other institutions to foster entrepreneurial opportunities emerging from higher education. The town is a partner in a business incubator called Grow. Grow supports start-up founders with low-cost premises, infrastructure (laboratories and so on) and financing, and helps them to collaborate with the ZHAW or Agroscope. Wädenswil also aims to benefit from the potential of so many young people studying in town. Regarding the start-up and spinoff potential, the rather strong pull effect of Zurich might make it difficult for Wädenswil to establish itself as a dynamic entrepreneurial place for new firms. The efforts, however, go beyond town hall and higher education institutions as the local trade association encourages newly founded

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start-ups to join it. Another project highlights Wädenswil’s economic development efforts. This is called Foodplus and it was launched in partnership with the region’s economic development organization. The project focuses on the development of a food industry cluster and aims at developing cooperation between economic actors and research institutions, such as the ZHAW or Agroscope. Following this clear strategy to become a higher education town has not always been particularly easy. Regarding public perception especially, public officials and institutional representatives had to become innovative. In order to bring the town and the ZHAW closer together, the two organize events such as a ‘Hochschulspektakel’ or ‘Night of Research’. Some members of the town’s parliament do not recognize the importance of the ZHAW and some projects in support of the university face resistance. Even though the support of the general population is not always there, Wädenswil’s officials are eager to keep the ZHAW. This was especially evident some years ago when a discussion took place about relocating the department from Wädenswil to Zurich or Winterthur. Wädenswil’s local officials resisted and combated these plans successfully. Today, this focus on research and education might also have helped Wädenswil to be chosen as new location for a cantonal secondary school. This is important because the school fills a gap in the regional educational system and allows Wädenswil to strengthen its position in the region. Although the focus on research and education is dominant, the town recognizes the need to also incorporate other types of development objectives. Given its industrial past and path development, public officials are aware that a diversified economy is important to minimize cluster risk and not just depend on jobs offered in the city of Zurich. Moreover, firms also contribute to the tax revenue of the town. After the Second World War, Wädenswil started to actively attract new firms, exploiting the fact that the town is able to offer cheap land and tax reductions. More recent economic development policies that have been adopted include the newly established industrial park at the edge of the town. In order to stop the shrinkage of jobs and improve the town’s tax base, the local government has started to develop this park. These efforts are coordinated with other political actors in the metropolitan region as, for example, the canton of Zurich also defines this park as a strategic regional employment centre. Wädenswil is actively collaborating with the metropolitan location promotion organization Zurich Park Side in the development of the project. Even though there is substantial demand for residential development in Wädenswil, the town decided to rezone the land from residential to industrial in order to accommodate an industrial park. The park has already reaped economic benefits, as some businesses

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that left the town in the past returned to the new area (for example, a construction company). The land is also comparatively cheap and the hope is to attract additional industrial firms and build a viable employment base. Wädenswil was, during the entire 20th century, a secondary city with an economic specialization in industry, agriculture, and technical and professional education. Hence, Wädenswil was never only a residential town for people working in the city of Zurich. However, after the loss of important industrial firms, it developed more and more into a residential and education and research town. Besides the endeavour to establish the town as an education and research town, local government has the goal to develop a stable and diversified employment base. Since Wädenswil is considered to be slightly too far away from Zurich to be attractive as a location for internationally oriented knowledge-intensive businesses, Wädenswil seeks to attract industrial and construction firms. Next to the motorway, some kilometres away from the lakeside and the town centre, suitable land has been found for creating an industry zone. The local authorities hope that new firms will be attracted to Wädenswil because of this new industry zone, but also that local businesses that do not have enough space will be encouraged to stay in Wädenswil. In general, Wädenswil pursues a relatively independent economic development strategy without much involvement in regional or cantonal economic development structures. The decision-makers in the town build on and complement its path-dependent economic structure with the aim of avoiding becoming a residential town. In sum, Wädenswil represents a very good example of an SMST that functions as a successful secondary city. Wädenswil features a residential economy, but it does not rely passively on spillover effects from the nearby larger neighbouring city of Zurich. Rather, Wädenswil utilizes a clear strategy to promote itself as a research and education town and as a regional employment centre. This is notable because, compared to other SMSTs in the Zurich metropolitan region (Kaufmann and Meili, 2019), Wädenswil pursues a clear development strategy. This strategy has helped Wädenswil to actively harvest ‘borrowing size’ benefits.

Case study 2: Thun Our second case study is Thun. Although Thun has, like Wädenswil, a strong residential economy, it stands in contrast to Wädenswil because Thun lacks the presence of a diverse set of higher education institutions and struggles to balance residential development with industryoriented development. Thun takes on the role of a secondary city in

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the metropolitan region of Bern, and its history is quite interesting, especially concerning its relationship to Bern. From the 14th century until the late 18th century, Bern held a very powerful position as the largest aristocratic city-state north of the Alps. Through various invasions, conquests and acquisitions, Bern extended its reach during this period. The Bernese Oberland, where Thun is located, was one of the areas that the patrician families controlled at arm’s length from Bern. During this time, citizens of Thun could not vote in the cantonal parliament (Grosser Rat) as this privilege was reserved to the citizens of Bern. After the so-called ancien régime, Thun managed to escape the grip of Bern and even became the capital city of a new canton, the so-called Canton Oberland. This status, however, lasted only for five years, from 1798 to 1803, when it was incorporated into the newly created Canton of Bern (Gerber-Visser, 2018). Being located on the edge of the Alps, Thun is considered the gateway to the Bernese Oberland, which is one of the major tourist destinations in Switzerland. As such, Thun not only functions as a secondary city in relation to its dominant neighbouring city Bern, but also as a regional centre for a vast mountainous hinterland. This hybrid role has challenged Thun in various ways, but has also given the town a variety of options for economic development. Thun is located about 30 kilometres south of Bern. By the end of 2016, the population of Thun stood at 43,568. The population modestly increased by 6.2 per cent in the period 2004 to 2016, but, compared to other similarly sized Swiss SMSTs, Thun does not belong to those that have shown strong growth. Thun’s economic history is also quite interesting and marked by large sectoral shifts. The town started to specialize in tourism during the early heyday of tourists coming to Switzerland from abroad, at the beginning of the 18th century. Tourism was tied to the emerging interest in mountaineering, but also to tourists’ desire to spend some time in pristine nature. The majority of tourists were English and they wanted to escape industrializing British cities. Entrepreneurs in Thun started to meet the increasing demand and built a number of hotels. Subsequent improvements to accessibility through roads and train connections helped boost tourism. At one time, there was even a direct train connection from Calais in France (where the British would enter continental Europe) to Bern, thereby making the Bernese Oberland and Thun in particular accessible to visitors from abroad (Raaflaub, 2018). The tourism industry started to stagnate and then decline after 1914 (Lüthi, 2018). This was primarily due to a change in focus on behalf of city leaders, as they put much more effort into growing a military presence in Thun. In addition, Interlaken – a town located south- west of Thun –

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started to focus on its tourist industry and overtook Thun. More broadly, tourists changed their travel habits as they ceased to stay for long periods and the rise of the automobile allowed them to become more mobile and travel further. Tourism eventually declined even more after the Second World War, and today Thun is overshadowed by other tourist destinations in the Oberland (for example, Interlaken, Grindelwald, Adelboden and so on) and even the larger city of Bern, as urban tourism has become quite successful in recent years. Military and related activities, such as the production of ammunition or the construction of military equipment, stepped into the breach as the tourism industry declined. This was largely driven by the decision to establish a central military school in Thun in 1819. Eventually Thun became the largest military site in Switzerland, and it remains so today. With this rise as a military location, Thun attracted the attention of a number of industrial firms who supplied the military. Yet this military industrial complex did not lead to the development of innovative or entrepreneurial undertakings such as new start-up firms or spinoffs, because the military was more oriented towards improving processes than inventing new technology or products (Lüthi, 2018). While the military presence helped Thun buffer some of the economic crises, and especially the decline in tourism, it did not lead to economic diversification. Moreover, this orientation towards the military was not without its ups and downs. For example, during the Second World War, the ammunition factory employed up to 2,450 people. This was cut back to around 1,000 employees in 1990, marking the start of a significant change in military employment. In the end, Thun lost around 1,800 jobs in the military sector during the 1990s (Häberli and Zellweger, 2009). As a result, numerous suppliers had to close, to relocate their operations (companies such as Selve, von Roll and so on) or were acquired by other firms (Nobs, Studer). At the time, one of the major local banks went bankrupt, which aggravated the local crisis (Lüthi, 2018). As a result, the city started to strengthen its efforts towards economic development. City leaders succeeded in attracting a branch of a federal research institute (Empa) and today Thun hosts one of Empa’s three branches. Thun also started to collaborate with surrounding jurisdictions on issues related to economic development, and a regional economic development association (Wirtschaftsraum Thun) was founded. Yet a profound change in economic development strategies or major reorientation did not happen in Thun, and some observers have noted that because Thun never experienced a deep economic crisis – such as was the case in the watch-making towns in the Swiss Jura region – local leaders never had to completely reinvent themselves or adopt radical strategies (Häberli and Zellweger, 2009).

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Nonetheless, newer documents that describe and analyse Thun’s current situation point to the city’s economic limitations and dependence on Bern. One economic development document, written in 2009, states that ‘Thun does not have an economic identity’ (Häberli and Zellweger, 2009: 2) and that the ‘proximity to Bern is one of the reasons why Thun never became an independent regional center’ (Häberli and Zellweger, 2009: 66). Given these concerns, recent efforts illustrate the ways in which Thun is working towards bolstering its economic identity as distinct from simply becoming a bedroom community for Bern. As mentioned earlier, Thun is the location of a branch of one of the federally funded research institutes. When the military closed some of its operations, Thun managed to convince the federal government to locate this branch in town in close proximity to the remaining military installations. Today, Empa employs around 70 scientists and a number of technicians; its staff total is 1,100 (Stadt Thun, 2017). To date, around 9 spinoff companies have emerged from the institutions, with total employment in these firms that stands around 50. The history of Empa in Thun, however, is not without its crises. Because Thun is located relatively far away from leading Swiss universities (primarily the ETH Zurich and École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), and from the Empa headquarters in the Zurich metropolitan region, various efforts were advanced to close or relocate the branch. In 2005, the first effort was averted through an interpellation of a nationallevel politician (Ursula Haller). In 2007/08, the question whether Empa should remain in Thun came up again; however, local leaders, together with cantonal leaders, managed to convince federal leaders to keep Empa where it was. In 2016, Empa leadership approached the local government and illustrated the costs of remaining in Thun in the face of federal budget cuts. They pushed local and cantonal leaders to commit financial resources in order to keep the operation in Thun. These efforts succeeded in early 2017 when local government committed CHF 1.7 million and cantonal investments committed CHF 10 million (Drenkelforth, 2017). The research institute Empa will emphasize ‘smart manufacturing’ in its activities, and the goal is to also establish a technology transfer platform (Stadt Thun, 2017). Besides ensuring the transfer of new ideas into the region’s and canton’s existing small and medium-sized businesses, the city of Thun will, in partnership with Empa, develop space for start-ups and spinoffs close to the research institute. These economic development efforts are promising, especially for existing firms in Thun. The story around the challenges to keep the research unit of Empa in Thun and to develop its presence in the future illustrate nicely how a secondary city struggles on various levels. The battle to retain Empa was particularly fierce at the federal level because national leaders, in charge

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of the federal research unit, would have liked to see Empa consolidate at its main campus in the Zurich metropolitan region. Yet, since Thun was historically a military town and Empa was located there because of its historical connection with the military, local leaders resisted the relocation and mobilized at the federal level. The focus on smart manufacturing makes sense because of the strong presence of industry in the Thun region. Besides the military and Empa, there are a number of exportoriented industrial firms that utilize smart manufacturing, and the hope is to connect with local industry. These developments perhaps illustrate a level of emancipation for Thun from decisions made in Bern as the capital city. As these ideas illustrate, for most of its recent history Thun remained relatively dependent on its larger neighbour Bern, particularly when with regard decision-making and investments in the military. Another form of dependence is Thun’s emerging role as a location for out-commuters. Out-commuters who work in Bern face a very comfortable situation, as there are numerous train connections within the hour to Bern. The journey takes about 20 minutes and the standard of living and quality of life in Thun are relatively high. The problem, however, is that while outcommuters do pay taxes in Thun, they often spend a large part of their income where they work rather than where they live. As a result, Thun developed a relatively strong specialization in the residential economy (Segessemann and Crevoisier, 2016; Meili and Mayer, 2017). Recent development projects that aim towards establishing new residential space in immediate proximity to the train station will amplify this situation. The challenge for Thun as a secondary city will be to balance the residential economy with a value-adding and productive industrial economy. Thun’s rather reluctant focus on leveraging industry to maintain some degree of an older autonomous identity and distinctive economic base in relation to Bern most likely has to do with its long-standing dependence on the military and its comfortable status related to the economic development spillovers associated with this. Yet its future will probably not depend on the military. Just recently, the federal government announced additional privatization of parts of the military which have a presence in Thun. Therefore, industrial, but also residential, development will be more promising areas to develop in the future.

Conclusion We compared the economic development and the positioning strategies of two Swiss SMSTs that boast similar economic characteristics but

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are situated in different metropolitan regions. These towns are both secondary cities which possess unique identities and historically rooted importance for their respective regions. Both are trying to develop by employing a variety of local policies and positioning strategies to diversify their residential economies. Our analysis shows that in both cases specific strategies are used to create jobs in knowledge-intensive sectors. Wädenswil is very active in fostering its higher education and research profile and it additionally tries to develop itself as a regional employment centre. Thun is slightly more passive, but local officials engage in efforts to keep a federal research organization in town. Regarding the difference in context, the two case studies illustrate that a secondary city in Switzerland depends heavily on its specific metropolitan context. The local positioning strategies of both secondary cities under scrutiny concentrate on fostering the development of employment in knowledgeintensive sectors as well as in industrial sectors, through building on past economic specializations. In Wädenswil, agricultural research centres laid the foundation for the research and education focus of the town and, in Thun, the presence of the military was crucial in attracting the federal research lab Empa. Thus, it seems important for secondary cities to build on existing competences and exploit those economic sectors that have the potential to develop or attract knowledge-intensive jobs. Moreover, both towns are trying to improve conditions for industrial firms by providing suitable land. They aim to leverage economic sectors that the regional first city or other towns in the region are not able to accommodate due to land shortage or unsuitable transportation connections. Hence, regional economic dynamics and the availability of land are key factors influencing firms and institutions moving to a secondary city. Local policies generally have more of a supportive effect and do not induce the initial choice of location. These cases indicate that local positioning strategies are path-dependent as they build on pre-existing and promising economic sectors as well as the availability of suitable land and buildings. Local authorities in Swiss SMSTs aim to keep or develop knowledge-intensive jobs in their towns, given the overall development of the Swiss economy in favour of knowledgeintensive services. By doing so, local authorities try to avoid their area becoming a mere bedroom community. Given the competition for these knowledge-intensive jobs, Swiss SMSTs can only keep or attract such jobs in specific niches where they exhibit a path-dependent advantage (such as education jobs in Wädenswil and research-intensive jobs in and around Empa in Thun). The most important tool of Swiss SMSTs is active landuse planning to provide such knowledge-intensive firms with suitable land and buildings as well as securing access to transportation networks. Hence,

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active land-use planning seems to be crucial for the development of a Swiss secondary city and one of the main challenges policy-makers face is to professionalize their land-use planning competencies. Our comparison suggests that Swiss secondary cities have to undertake considerable efforts to diversify their economies and to strengthen their profiles as regional employment centres. The residential economy is often the economic base of Swiss secondary cities because such cities benefit from proximity to a growing regional primate city and its urban core and a good integration in metropolitan networks, as well as cheaper land prices and rents. Residents often work in the regional first cities but live in secondary cities. Thus, secondary cities do not have to formulate strategies to position themselves as residential towns, but they struggle to provide knowledge-intensive jobs, to rebuild their industrial base and to develop into employment centres of regional importance. Notes 1

2

3

To be defined as a city in Switzerland, a settlement must have a density of inhabitants, jobs or equivalent for overnight stays, which sum is higher than 500 per km2 in a grid cell with an edge length of 300 metres (see Goebel and Kohler (2014) for more information about the definition). Our research draws on a multi-year project that involved various methodologies, including cluster analysis, to develop a typology of SMSTs, and extensive case study research that included interviews with firm representatives and local officials. The project, ‘Urban Prosperity beyond the Metropolis: Analyzing Small and Medium-Sized Towns in Switzerland’, was funded by the Swiss National Sciences Foundation (grant no. 159324). Bern plays an interesting role because, at the national level, it can be considered a second-tier city while the metropolitan regions of Zurich, Geneva and Basel are considered first tier (Mayer et al, 2018). We will discuss this peculiarity in the following section of this chapter, ‘The Swiss urban context’.

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Kaufmann, D. and Sager, F. (2019) ‘How to organize secondary capital city regions: institutional drivers of locational policy coordination’, Governance, 32(1): 63–81. Kaufmann, D. and Wittwer, S. (2019) ‘Business centre or bedroom community? The development of employment in small and mediumsized towns’, Regional Studies, 53(10): 1483–93. Kaufmann, D., Warland, M., Mayer, H. and Sager, F. (2016) ‘Bern’s positioning strategies: escaping the fate of a secondary capital city?’ Cities, 53: 120–9. Knox, P.L. and Mayer, H. (2009) Small Town Sustainability: Economic, Social, and Environmental Innovation, Basel: Birkhäuser. Lüthi, C. (2018) ‘Regionalzentrum mit rüstungsindustrie’, in A. Bähler, A. Egli and C. Lüthi (eds) Thuner Stadtgeschichte 1798–2018, Thun: Weber Verlag, pp 73–109. McCann, P. and Acs, Z.J. (2011) ‘Globalization: countries, cities and multinationals’, Regional Studies, 45(1): 17–32. Mayer, H., Sager, F., Kaufmann, D. and Warland, M. (2018) The Political Economy of Capital Cities, London: Routledge. Meijers, E.J. and Burger, M.J. (2017) ‘Stretching the concept of “borrowed size”’, Urban Studies, 54(1): 269–91. Meili, R. and Mayer, H. (2017) ‘Small and medium-sized towns in Switzerland: economic heterogeneity, socioeconomic performance and linkages’, Erdkunde, 71(4): 313–32. Ofori-Amoah, B. (2007) Beyond the Metropolis: Urban Geography as if Small Cities Mattered, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Polèse, M. and Shearmur, R. (2005) ‘Why some regions will decline: a Canadian case study with thoughts on local development strategies’, Papers in Regional Science, 85(1): 23–46. Raaflaub, C. (2018) Gurnigelbad: Die Stadt im Walde, Thun: Weber Verlag. Rektorat ZHAW (2017) ‘ZHAW Jahresbericht 2016’, Winterthur. Rühli, L. (2013) ‘Irrgarten finanzausgleich’, Avenir Suisse, 10 October, Available from: www.avenir-suisse.ch/publication/ir rgartenfinanzausgleich/ [Accessed 28 October 2020]. Segessemann, A. and Crevoisier, O. (2016) ‘Beyond economic base theory: the role of the residential economy in attracting income to Swiss regions’, Regional Studies, 50(8): 1388–403. Sellers, J.M. and Lidström, A. (2007) ‘Decentralization, local government, and the welfare state’, Governance, 20(4): 609–32. Siebel, W. (2012) ‘Die europäische Stadt’, in F. Eckhardt (ed) Handbuch Stadtsoziologie, Wiesbaden: Springer, pp 201–12. SSV and BFS (Schweizerischer Städteverband and Bundesamt für Statistik) (2018) ‘Statistik der Schweizer Städte 2018’, Bern and Neuchâtel.

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Stadt Thun (2017) ‘Standortsicherung und Ausbau Em pa Thun’, Stadt Thun. Thierstein, A., Dümmler, P. and Kruse, C. (2003) ‘Zu gross, um wahr zu sein?’, DisP: The Planning Review, 39(152): 87–94. Westermann, R. (2010) ‘Begehrte filetstücke: wo einst produziert wurde, wird heute an Vorzugslage gewohnt’ Hochparterre, 23(5): 10–13. Ziegler, P. (1988). Wädenswil (2nd edn), Wädenswil: Verlag Stutz.

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4

From Sleepy Hollow to Winning from Second: Identity, Autonomy and Borrowed Size in an Australian Urban Region Louise C. Johnson

Introduction The Australian urban system has been shaped by its historical origins: separate periods of colonization and dependent development within the British Empire (Arnold et al, 1993; Schreuder and Ward, 2010). Six very separate colonial centres were established over the course of the 19th century as England occupied the country – Sydney as the capital of New South Wales (NSW) was created as a convict camp in 1788, as was Hobart on the southern island of Van Diemen’s Land in 1804 and Moreton Bay-Brisbane in 1824 in south-eastern Queensland. In contrast, other colonies in the west – King George Sound (later Perth, 1826) – and south – Melbourne anchoring the Port Phillip colony (1835) and Adelaide, South Australia (1836) – were established as ‘free’ colonies based on commercial land uses. Limited by an arid interior and boosted by their roles as administration hubs, these ports and points of initial settlement in turn became the major centres of their 19th-century export-oriented economies: wheat from South and Western Australia, wool and meat from the remainder. While large and dominant economically and politically, with all but Brisbane and Hobart becoming primate cities, the presence of these colonial

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capitals did not preclude the existence of other townships, servicing their inland pastoral, agricultural and later mining economies. Some of these centres saw themselves as successfully rivalling the first-order cities and, in the 20th century, grew on the basis of particular industries; examples include the steel cities of Newcastle and Wollongong adjacent to Sydney, Whyalla north of Adelaide and Kwinana near Perth (Rich, 1987). Despite the existence of such specialized centres, however, Australia remains a highly concentrated nation, with 70 per cent of its population residing in its state capitals, most of which show a high degree of primacy (Tomaney, 2010). Thus, in 2016, Sydney accommodated 65 per cent of its state population, Melbourne 75 per cent, Adelaide and Perth 75 per cent (ABS, 2018). This is despite many a political intervention – emanating from state and federal governments and supported by the regions – to decentralize the population. Being a secondary city in such a system therefore means being much smaller and massively overshadowed economically, culturally and politically. The ‘first city bonus’ in Australia is a large one (Cardoso and Meijers, 2010). This chapter explores the struggles and development potential of secondary cities in the context of Australia through a case study of the city of Geelong in Victoria. In an era of neoliberal dominance, regions in Australia have been left to compete with each other on the basis of ‘selfsufficiency’. However, recent years have brought new forms of integration between secondary cities and their more dominant neighbours. This integration has fostered new appreciation for the growth potential of ‘regions’ as well as new opportunities for secondary cities. Yet, in the case of Geelong, recent success is not only about proximity or connectivity to a major centre. The city’s boom is also built on sustaining separateness and an autonomous identity rooted in Geelong’s history and promoted by local interests. Geelong is now associated with a vision for ‘winning from second’ that sheds light on how secondary cities might integrate into dynamic urban regions on their own terms. Geelong, 75  kilometres south-west of Melbourne, emerged as a successful port city in the 1830s and evolved into the ‘Pivot’ of the Western District wool-growing area by the 1930s, with its economy also boosted by manufacturing. Those same industries became a brake on the city as economic restructuring from the 1970s saw the closure of its car- and truck-making, aluminium-smelting and textile plants (Johnson, 1992). Struggling to restore its economy and overturn its ‘Sleepy Hollow’ image, this secondary city of 233,000 has long been overshadowed by the capital Melbourne, which, with its current population of 5 million, is 20 times larger (ABS, 2018). Melbourne also industrialized from the 1950s, but restructured itself and emerged from the 1970s as a major finance and business-services

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centre. The metropolis assumed the social outlook and economic structure of a world city – though only ranking in the second tier of Sassen’s World City pantheon (Sassen, 1994) – variously embracing waterfront renewal, creative city and globalization agendas to ensure sustained and rapid growth. But increasingly it was a city beset by high property prices, strained infrastructure and rising diseconomies of scale. Melbourne overshadows its vast region – which goes beyond state boundaries into Tasmania and NSW – offering high-order services and employment. Within its commuting zone, Geelong has benefited or ‘borrowed size’, with close to 15 per cent of its workforce going daily to the metropolis for employment (Terio, 2010; Burger et al, 2015; Evans, 2015; Correia and Denham, 2017). This proximity, and the growing diseconomies of scale within Melbourne, are now stimulating political interventions to foster outmigration, primarily to peri-urban areas and an array of regional centres within 150 kilometres. The intra-regional relationship between the primary and secondary cities in Australia’s urban system is one of overshadowing and borrowed size but also something else: struggles over separateness and identity. This struggle is evident in Geelong as it seeks to maintain its autonomy and to exert some control over its integration into a Melbourne-centred urban region. Taking advantage of its physical geography – adjacent to a spectacular surf coast with a fine north-facing waterfront – proximity to Melbourne and political marginality, Geelong has come to embrace its secondary status and capitalize on the Melbourne connection. From being in the economic doldrums throughout the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, the city has created mechanisms to exert effective political pressure – including G21 (Geelong Region Alliance) and the Committee for Geelong – in order to facilitate borrowing size from Melbourne, the success of which can be seen in major road and rail upgrades, significant ‘restructuring’ investments and the relocation of state agencies to Geelong. Combined with investment in physical and social infrastructure, including in waterfront renewal, the expansion of Deakin University and slick marketing, this city is now one of the fastest growing in the nation at 1.3 per cent per annum (ABS, 2018). Most recently, the business-dominated Committee for Geelong has argued that the city can/is ‘winning from second’, if it pursues an agenda which takes advantage of state government policies for de-concentration, maintains its united voice, promotes its lifestyle benefits and pursues ‘smart specialization’ (Correia and Denham, 2017). Integration into the metropolitan region is therefore to be embraced, but tempered by local identity and control, enabling this secondary city to dominate an expanded hinterland with a complementary economic structure to that of the metropolis.

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After first outlining Geelong’s origins, this chapter will consider the various policy frameworks within which this secondary city has successfully transitioned from being overshadowed to being integrated into a broader urban region while maintaining a separate identity. The account will highlight the unique elements in the city’s leadership, governance and particular relationship with Melbourne, which explain its recent success and present acceptance of its second place. The combination of developing local assets and agendas in the context of a particular set of historical, political and economic relationships is something that other secondary cities could learn from, if they too wish to ‘win from second’.

Histories matter in shaping an urban identity We can only understand the scope and foundations of Geelong’s recent success by tracing its emergence and earlier struggles as a secondary city. The Port Phillip colony of south-eastern Australia was ‘settled’ by the immigration of pastoralists from the more established colony of NSW and across the Bass Strait from Van Diemen’s Land in the 1830s. It was an illegal occupation in the eyes of the colonial authorities, as their aim was to restrict settlement to surveyed areas around Sydney and Hobart (Jeans, 1972; Boyce, 2013). It was also illegal in another sense, in that the Australian continent had been occupied without any recognition of its indigenous population. Port Phillip was a brief exception. Here a treaty was negotiated in June 1835 by pastoralist John Batman with a group of Kulin clan heads by which he exchanged blankets and trinkets for 500,000 acres of prime grasslands, including those now occupied by the cities of Melbourne and Geelong. Once it came to the notice of the authorities, however, the treaty was speedily annulled by Governor Bourke in a decree which affirmed eastern Australia as solely British Crown lands (Attwood, 2009; Jackson et al, 2018). The township of Melbourne was laid out soon after in 1837 by surveyor Robert Hoddle. Less than a year after Batman’s arrival, 30,000 sheep, 500 cattle and 80 horses had been imported to the area, along with around 500 people, beginning one of the most rapid occupations of any region on the Australian continent (Critchett, 1998). The area that was to become Geelong was initially mapped by Surveyor General Charles Grimes in 1803. He reported it as unsuitable for settlement. Subsequent contacts between Wathaurong and Europeans led to the adoption of indigenous names – Jillong (jillong) for the white cliffs abutting Corio (corayo) Bay. After Bourke’s decree, W.H. Smythe

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marked out the grid-like pattern of Geelong’s urban and suburban blocks onto a blank canvas, the Indigenous population having been decimated by two smallpox epidemics and the inflow of squatters and their flocks. The rectilinear plan for Geelong was anchored by shipping on Corio Bay and fresh water offered by the Barwon River. The northern part developed at the expense of the southern, becoming the main commercial and port centre of the emerging township (Wynd, 1979: 5–6). The location of what became the central business district (CBD) has barely changed since. If the early pattern of Geelong comprised a town centre anchored by the port and river, the gold rushes of the 1850s saw the population treble – from 8,300 in 1851 to 23,300 in 1857 – and the original core extended to the boundaries of the town reserve. Gold also meant that many such regional centres came into existence while the move from alluvial to reef mining saw some towns – such as Ballarat and Bendigo – not only become extremely wealthy but also grow exceedingly large, surpassing Geelong in their scale and grandeur by the end of the 19th  century. Melbourne too grew rapidly at this time, with its population of 29,000 in 1851 rising rapidly in 10 years to 125,000 (Davison, 1978). There developed a fierce rivalry for the population and commerce generated by gold between the urban centres. While Melbourne was the undisputed political capital, Geelong aspired to being the commercial centre of the fledgling colony. In response, there was successful lobbying for railway construction to the goldfields as well as between Melbourne and Geelong. The rivalry between Geelong and Melbourne inspired a ‘false map’ (Figure 4.1). Published and widely disseminated by Melbourne merchants, the map showed Melbourne as far closer and better connected to the inland goldfields than Geelong. This map and the role of Melbourne as a port, political capital and centre of a radial railway system, meant that its population continued to surge, to 191,000 in 1871 and then to 268,000 in 1881, while, at the same time, Geelong’s fell to around 20,000 (McCarty, 1974). While the gold rush population tended to remain in regional Victoria, their children moved with their wealth to the growing metropolis and they, along with many a speculator, created a massive land boom in what became internationally recognized in the 1880s as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, one of the great Victorian cities of the age (Cannon, 1966; Briggs, 1968; Davison, 1978). On the other side of the urban ledger, as the goldfield towns and metropolis surged ahead, Geelong assumed the debilitating label of ‘Sleepy Hollow’, which it has struggled to shake off for over a century.

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Figure 4.1: False map published by Melbourne merchants

Note: This map distorted the distances between the metropolis and Geelong and the goldfields, and was aimed at regaining trade lost to Geelong (it even shows the Murray River as being closer to Melbourne than Geelong!). Source: Wynd (1979: 15)

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The subsequent development of Geelong was limited until after the First World War. Along the Barwon River from the 1860s to the 1890s, noxious industries were established, building on the agricultural foundation of the colony, especially wool washing and woollen mills, tanneries, rope works and fell mongers (Wynd, 1971, 1979). After the Federation of Australia in 1901 (which brought the six colonies together), a deliberate policy of promoting overseas investment behind a high tariff wall led to an inflow of industrial capital. The woollen textile industry continued to expand – leading the city to be labelled the ‘Bradford of the South’ in 1935 (Johnson, 1990) – along with other agricultural-processing industries, including the Corio Distillery in 1928 and the Phosphate Co-Operative in 1925. Most significant, however, was the attraction of the Ford Motor Company to the town in 1925 and the related growth of suppliers, such as Pilkington Glass (1938) and Henderson Springs. Lured by local and state governments’ desire to spread ‘development’, cheap serviced land was offered along with payroll tax exemptions, a port with connected railway, compliant migrant labour and public housing. Ford was joined by other transport and engineering industries, including International Harvester in 1940 (Galloway, 2011). During and after the Second World War, even more industrial companies were attracted by a host of federal and state government incentives, most significantly Alcoa Aluminium (1962), a second cement works (in 1964) and the Shell oil refinery (1954). By the 1960s, this secondary city was an industrial powerhouse, with over 30 per cent of its largely migrant workforce in manufacturing (Johnson, 1990). The oil shocks of the 1970s and beginning of a new wave of globalization were met by a cutting of tariffs and the opening up of the Australian economy (Fagan and Webber, 1999). As a result, Geelong’s fortunes again fell as industry either closed, or introduced new technologies and shed labour. There began a concerted effort from within the city to ensure its future, as it bid successfully for a new university – Deakin in 1974 – and an array of new policies and organizational units from the 1980s – including the Geelong Regional Commission, G21 and the Committee for Geelong. These developments occurred in the context of changing federal and state government policies which were to shape the relationship between this centre and the metropolis, as each level of government attempted to smooth the process of manufacturing decline and develop new industries in the regions. Local and higher-order politics often worked together but also in opposite directions, as the primary metropolis strove for world city status and secondary cities for survival. The result were cities of very different scales and economic structures, but ones that were increasingly integrated and complementary.

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Policy and political context Crucial to understanding these changes is comprehending the political structures within which Australian primary and secondary cities are located. In 1901, when Australia became a federation, two tiers of government were enshrined in its constitution – the federal and state levels – with a third dependent on its local land rate base and the financial generosity of state and federal governments. The Commonwealth commands most resources while responsibility for urban planning, education and health services falls to the states. Federal governments vary in their levels of interest and intervention into cities, regions, road and rail infrastructure, but influence spatial planning through their constitutional power over international migration and trade, the location of airports and primary responsibility for tertiary education. Federal parliaments are constituted through seats determined on the basis of population (for the government-forming lower house) and equal numbers of state members in the upper house or Senate. State parliaments – with the exception of Queensland – have a comparable system, allowing small states like Tasmania to exert massive political influence and relatively small regional centres to have significant political sway, especially in close elections (Evan, 1990; Lovell et al, 1998). The Geelong region has two federal lower house seats, one of which has been marginal for over five years, and three state seats, all of which were strongly contested in the 2018 election. The number and volatility of such seats potentially gives Geelong and other secondary cities in Australia considerable political clout, which they are not averse to utilizing to extract resources from Commonwealth and state governments. This political structure is complicated by a fiscal arrangement whereby, since the Second World War, the federal government has collected most revenue, primarily from income and sales taxes as well as from mineral export royalties, while constitutionally only being responsible for defence, airports and telecommunications. In contrast, the states deliver most social and physical services funded by land, gambling and, more recently – since 2001 – goods and services tax (GST) or sales tax revenue (Miragliotta et al, 2013). As the locations of state government administration, and with large populations, metropolitan centres tend to command most political and financial interest. However, politics and socio-spatial equity also mean that regional areas demand and receive federal and state government attention. What form this takes varies with political ideologies – which range from interventionist and centralist to laissez faire and regionalized – political vulnerability of government seats, the intensity of regional lobbying and perceived need.

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In Australia, regions are defined as places large enough to have an impact in competitive global economies, yet small enough for their inhabitants to share identities and trust as part of a community. As they do not include the dominant metropolises, they are places on the nation’s peripheries (Eversole, 2015). Regional development policy has long been fragmented across the two major levels of government, with regional initiatives inadequately funded and patchily pursued (Dollery et al, 2011). Active interventions to support regions have sporadically emanated from the federal level – such as just after the Second World War, with a commitment to decentralization and the creation of regional development committees. Unfunded, these committees did not survive the change in government. So too in 1972 when the Whitlam Labor government created the Department of Urban and Regional Development to guide massive federal intervention into the nation’s cities and to facilitate the development of a few select localities (Correia and Denham, 2017). This system did not survive the change of government in 1975 either. Labor governments again moved to support regions in the 1980s and early 1990s but, since the late 1990s and neoliberal dominance, regions have been left to compete with each other (Tomaney, 2010). In general, regional policy has rarely been a high priority and has tended to facilitate private developments and promote local infrastructure around election time (Dollery et al, 2011). As well as overseeing sporadic and largely ineffectual local development policies, the federal government has made numerous industry and regional interventions, usually in times of crisis. Most notably for Geelong, there have been interventions from the federal and state governments to support the region’s textile and car industries, regional development authorities and, more recently, the area as a whole before the challenge of heightened globalization and industrial decline. The most recent and expensive industry support measure was the Automobile Competitive Investment Scheme at A$7 billion (Beer, 2015). This joined a number of packages directed to the car industry since the 1980s – including the Button Plan (1984) and the Green Car Fund (2007– 13) – as well as a long history of slowly declining tariff protection, which was meant to impel new technologies to meet greater global competition (Clibborn et al, 2016). Such interventions did facilitate some upgrading of existing car plants as well as the export of vehicles. However, despite vast government expenditures, the Ford engine plant in Geelong began downsizing in the 1990s. From a high of 3,000 workers in the 1970s, this plant, along with International Harvester, who employed 2,500 workers, was ultimately closed – Harvester in 1983 and Ford in 2016. In addition to industry supports, there have been government programmes geared specifically towards reducing the impacts of closures

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on communities and regions. These comprise mainly labour market schemes which assist displaced workers. Such help includes expedited access to income support, training assistance and advice to establish a business. Such programmes operated in Geelong through the technical training Gordon Institute to facilitate the retraining of displaced Ford Company and Alcoa aluminium workers. Such schemes are dependent on the possibility of other, relatively similar employment, which for many years Geelong lacked. With the Australian labour force relatively immobile, solutions to labour displacement usually need to be found locally; in their absence unemployment rose dramatically over the 1980s and remained above the regional and metropolitan average (Beer, 2015). The most concerted central government effort to support local employment growth was the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund (GRIIF), established when Ford announced the closure of its engine plant in 2013.1 Running over three years, the scheme involved the expenditure of A$24.5 million (with A$15 million from the federal government, A$4.5 from the Victorian State and A$5 million from Ford) to generate a projected 840 new jobs and diversify the regional economy (AusIndustry, 2013). Over 350 of these jobs were to be located in the most depressed northern parts of Geelong, notably at the expansion of the Cotton On clothing importing head office, with a tax-payer subsidy of A$3.4 million and company expenditure of A$8.72 million. Support was also given to existing engineering and agricultural-processing firms to expand.2 Thus, Geelong has a long history of being supported by industry policy. Partly as a result, the city maintains 7,700 workers – or 7.5  per cent of its workforce – in manufacturing,3 though this is a far cry from the 30 per cent or over 20,000 of the 1960s (Victorian Year Book, 1971). This sector remains the largest contributor to regional economic activity, though no longer the largest employer. Though well intentioned, Australian regional development policies have thus been sporadic, resource-constrained and unpredictable, leaving secondary cities to either fend for themselves or seek out state/regional support to advance their interests in a competitive development environment. The history of government-supported regional development agencies is also worth noting, with the Geelong Regional (Planning) Authority of the mid-1970s being supplanted by the Geelong Regional Commission (from 1977 to 1993) and thence the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) from 1993 (McLean, 2005). If CoGG was the product of state-driven local government amalgamations rather than a specific move towards regional planning, the creation of the G21 across five local government areas – a mix of official, private and community organizations – has been a critical development, driving concerted lobbying across its eight

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pillar or action groups. These include Economic Development; Arts, Heritage and Culture; Education and Training; Environment; Health and Wellbeing; Sport and Recreation; Transport; Planning and Services. There is also a business-dominated Committee for Geelong, which acts as a self-interested and effective lobby group for federal and state government largesse. Taken together, these various efforts, within the context of Australia’s political structure, have been relatively effective in ensuring not only the flow of federal government restructuring and infrastructure funds, but also the actual relocation of government agencies to this secondary city. Millions have therefore been secured to improve road and rail connections across the region but especially to Melbourne, in upgrading arts, tourism and cultural infrastructure, and in revitalizing the CBD of the city. While ineffectual in changing the pattern of primacy towards a more ‘balanced’ urban system, such interventions have been critical in ensuring the integration of Geelong into the metropolitan region.

Tracking the secondary city: Geelong from 1980 to 2018 From the 1830s to the 1860s then, Geelong had moved from being the ‘Pivot’ of the western district wool trade to being ‘Sleepy Hollow’. Despite the inflow of industry, this image was affirmed a century later when manufacturing too began to decline. It therefore became a city renowned for economic dislocation, provincial outlooks and few prospects. In the 1970s and 1980s, economic decline was also a fate that bedevilled the metropolis, as Melbourne too was a major industrial centre and was famous nationally for the outflow of its population north to an emerging Queensland sun belt (Salt, 2004). The response in Melbourne and Geelong was comparable, as each city established unelected planning authorities, and moved to regenerate their waterfronts and reconstruct their CBDs, borrowing heavily from international models of urban regeneration (Harvey, 1989; Brownill, 1990; Dovey, 2005). Thus, from 1977, the Geelong Regional Commission was charged with making the city and its region more attractive to new business investment. In the 1980s, this authority and the city council embraced the international trend for waterfront renewal, creating the ‘City by the Bay’ as a vehicle to renovate the industrial port area, aiming to attract business investment, tourists and migrants to the city. The image has undergone a number of refinements since then – including a relabelling as ‘Steampacket Place’ in 1994 – and new agendas – to become a ‘festival

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city’ and an arts and cultural city in the 1990s and ‘Waterfront Geelong’ in 2000 (City by the Bay, 1987; CoGG, 2000). This occurred at the same time as Melbourne embarked on a major renewal project on its riverside – creating Southbank – and again in the later 1990s and early 2000s in establishing Docklands (Dovey, 2005). The metropolis also created the business-heavy Committee for Melbourne and a year-long major events calendar, aggressively pursuing everything from high-profile sporting events – such as Formula One to the Commonwealth Games (in 1996) – to major musicals and festivals. Here then was the postmodern city-ofspectacle agenda being pursued by both the metropolis and, at a lesser scale, by the secondary city (Harvey, 1989; Hannigan, 1998). One major project that distinguished Geelong at this time was a bold bid to capture a Guggenheim Museum for the city. Modelled deliberately on Bilbao’s arts-led regeneration and informed by the rhetorical flourishes coming from Richard Florida and Charles Landry (Landry and Bianchini, 1995; Landry, 2000; Florida, 2002, 2005; Johnson, 2009), Geelong’s agenda shifted towards the city being a ‘Creative City’. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on feasibility studies, study tours and lobbying for this project between 2001 and 2003 (Johnson, 2009). Here was a provincial city seeking to outdo its metropolitan rival, stealing an iconic architectural and artistic marvel for itself in a desperate effort to reverse economic and demographic decline and remake its image. The failure of this bid as a result of its hard-headed economic evaluation was something of a turning point in the recent history of this secondary city, as local lobby groups moved from attempting to snare an iconic event or investment to a more broadly based agenda, driven by the eight ‘pillar groups’ of G21 and the Committee for Geelong. G21 has successfully argued for the expansion of local Avalon Airport to now include international flights to China, the building of the Geelong Ring Road and associated industrial estates, small business development and the promotion of a skilled workforce. Kilpatrick (2013) singles out G21, the Committee for Geelong – and the Geelong Football Club – as key organizations that have facilitated understanding and agreement across the region of common goals. Each has a bank of prioritized projects and the ear of state and federal governments to successfully attract large projects, all the more potent at election time as a result of the marginal seats in the area. In addition, there is a large regional council – the CoGG. In 2004 and again in 2017 the council reaffirmed the city as ‘creative’, and lobbied for a major convention centre as well as a revamped cultural precinct, both successful with the injection of significant state and federal government funds. CoGG joined G21 in the realization that no one organization was

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sufficient to kick-start the regional economy and that what was needed was a ‘dynamic city to attract the creative class’. Invoking Richard Florida again, the city pursued a broader, multifaceted economic agenda focused around the knowledge economy. This agenda was to be based around the university – its expansion into a medical school and its research into high-end metal and textile production – along with federal, state and industry funds to boost existing industry, encourage business relocation and support commuting. There was an array of successful local lobbying efforts to the state government to relocate major insurance operations from Melbourne to Geelong. Thus, in 2006, the Transport Accident Commission, with 850 workers, was moved from Melbourne to Geelong, as was WorkCover, with a further 600 employees, in 2018. After further lobbying, the federally funded National Disability Insurance Agency was established in Geelong in 2017. All of these relocations and expansions supported the growth of employment in the health, insurance and higher education sectors. As a result, the massive loss of jobs associated with the closure of Ford and Alcoa did not lead to significant levels of unemployment or a protracted property downturn. On the contrary, as of 2018, this regional centre was booming. Kilpatrick argues that Geelong is proof that government investment in ‘lagging’ regions can pay off, but this funding must be targeted to projects aligned with a regionally developed and shared vision as well as a plan based on strengths, hard evidence and research (Kilpatrick, 2013; see also McKinsey & Co., 1994; Daley and Lancy, 2011). But such an outcome is not only the result of an agreed local agenda and effective lobbying. The success of these campaigns is also tied to the changing economic and political relationships between the metropolis and the secondary city. In Melbourne, CBD revitalization and waterfront renewal, along with a decisive move towards becoming a regional finance and biotech centre, meant that its growth began to accelerate from the early 2000s. The metropolis boomed, with huge population and investment inflows. Geelong was to benefit in a very different way from borrowing size, this time as a result of the diseconomies experienced by the metropolis and its political response. Pressure on metropolitan infrastructure joined with the political volatility of Geelong to readily support improvements in the railway and freeway links between the two cities, making Geelong an increasingly viable commuter centre. Such investments and others in Geelong arose as much from the politics and economics in the centre as from the region. Thus, in 2002, as the city of Melbourne struggled with its booming population, its Melbourne 2030 plan envisaged a ‘Network of Regional Cities’ as one way this pressure could be eased. Direct state investment was thereby directed into a further upgrade of the regional

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rail line and the freeway connection between Melbourne and Geelong. In 2008, Melbourne @ 5 million re-emphasized the challenge of meeting the city’s growth, and it was the costs of meeting this – as well as regional lobbying and politics – that led to the relocation of 1,000 state public servants from the metropolis, not only to Geelong but also to Ballarat and Bendigo as part of a regional growth strategy. Plan Melbourne in 2014 explicitly includes an objective to redirect population growth from Melbourne to regional areas. Further, a ministerial Advisory Committee Report in 2015 recommended that Geelong be formally recognized as the state’s second city. Significantly, in 2010 the Committee for Geelong too had embraced the idea of Geelong as a ‘second city’. In 2015 it commissioned research and a study tour to other second cities in England, Europe and the United States in a quest to understand just how this formulation could best progress Geelong’s commercial interests. The idea of the secondary city as discussed here is one that is now adopted by both the state government and the Committee for Geelong, and the city’s embrace of this label is now associated with a plan to ‘win from second’ via ‘smart specialization’, along with concerted and focused marketing of the economic, cultural and social assets of the region (Correia and Denham, 2017). ‘Smart specialization’, based on existing strengths, is now seen as the future for this secondary city (see Beer and Clower, 2009).

Theorizing and explaining the secondary city What then does the historical and more recent story reveal about secondary cities in the Australian context? The first point to make is that the story is a variable one and that cities’ positioning as first or second or anywhere within an urban hierarchy is not solely the result of economic mechanisms. Rather, as this account has shown, Victoria’s urban hierarchy is the outcome of places and people asserting policies, making investments and decisions on the location of industry, infrastructure and themselves. The pattern is underpinned by economics but it also has a great deal to do with politics, image, culture, perceptions of distance and marketing, as the ‘false map’, infrastructure investment and the location of state and federal public servants demonstrates for Geelong. Second, the urban pattern of Australia does not and has never conformed to that theorized for Europe by Walter Christaller in the 1930s, with nested hexagonal hinterlands serviced by a hierarchy of centres with clear linear relationships to each other. Nor is there a systemic rank size, following Zipf ’s law, with the second city being half the size of the first (Anderson, 2012). Rather, the pattern since the early 20th century – 1921

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in the case of Victoria – has been of the capital city accommodating more than 50 per cent of the state’s population, a pattern of primacy which is increasing, despite the diseconomies of scale that have now set in. Thus, Melbourne in 2018 has 76.9 per cent of Victoria’s population and is expected to have over 80 per cent in the next ten years (Wright, 2018). How then to theorize the relationship of such a centre to other cities, such as Geelong, around it? The idea of the networked post-industrial city, no longer tied to locale but rather operating primarily within the global virtual relationships of the knowledge economy (Castells, 1989; Castells and Hall, 1994; Batten, 1995), is similarly inapplicable to Melbourne as well as Geelong, as much of its economy is anchored in place, offering education, health, construction and retail services to its population. So too the notion of a polycentric urban region, where there are a number of smaller cities with no clear dominating city (Kloosterman and Musterd, 2001). Rather, the more viable conceptualization is of a metropolitan region across which there are cities of very different sizes, performing complementary functions related to their sizes (Friedmann and Miller, 1965; Cardoso and Meijers, 2010; Brenner and Schmidt, 2014). At 233,400  people, Geelong is undoubtedly secondary to the Melbourne metropolis (nearly 5  million) (ABS, 2018). This is not only the case in terms of population, but also in terms of economic structures and engagements with the global economy. Thus, if a key driver of urban status and growth is the presence of producer services, information technology, knowledge workers and command and control functions for multinational corporations – as theorized by those looking at world and global cities (such as Friedmann, 1986; Friedmann and Wolff, 1982; Sassen, 1991, 1994; Scott, 2001; Taylor, 2004) – then only Melbourne and Sydney measure up (Searle, 1996; Connell, 2000). As O’Connor et al (1998) argue, the new economy based on knowledge and outsourcing has strengthened the interdependencies between firms and the advantages of geographical proximity, heightening the advantages of locating in Sydney and Melbourne with their global connections and state-based supply systems. They conclude for Australia that only the mega-metropolitan regions are now of sufficient size to participate in the global economy, with their vast urban regions providing a further round of economic locational advantages (O’Connor et al, 1998: 221; see also Birrell and O’Connor, 2000). The distinction between first- and second-order cities therefore includes not only their size but their global status and connectedness as well as their economic structure (Cardoso and Meijers, 2010). While Sydney is clearly the national global gateway with a large number of transnational head

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or regional offices and significant numbers of financial and knowledge workers, Melbourne readily ranks second in these terms (Hu et al, 2013; Hu, 2015). Therefore, between 1989 and 1997 Sydney captured 60 per cent of new South East Asian regional headquarters, while Melbourne captured 30 per cent (OECD, 2003). In contrast, Geelong comes 17th nationally, well after all capital cities and after the Queensland regional centres of Toowoomba and Mackay. In terms of the proportion of professionals, managers and those with tertiary qualifications, it lags well behind Melbourne (Pratchett et al, 2017). Despite the spectacular and celebrated examples of new boutique and high-tech industries emerging in Geelong – such as Carbon Nexus and Carbon Revolution on the Deakin University campus, the Runway tech hub in the old Federal Woollen Mill and wind turbines being made in the old Ford plant – the economic structure of the secondary city remains very different to that of the metropolis, as does its global orientation. As Table 4.1 indicates, the two cities have divergent employment structures, with Melbourne clearly far stronger in those sectors associated with global city status – producer services, finance, professional, technical and scientific services. Indeed, Geelong’s much celebrated IT and foodrelated activities remain relatively insignificant in the overall structure of its economy. Rather, it is health, education, construction and retail Table 4.1: CoGG industry sector of employment, 2006 and 2016 Economic sector Manufacturing Construction Retail trade

2016 2006 Geelong Melbourne Geelong Melbourne 7.5 7.7 14.3 12.9 9.8

8.2

8.8

7.4

11.8

10.1

13.7

11.3

Accommodation and Food

7.3

6.5

6.4

5.6

Financial and Insurance Services

2.8

4.5

2.4

4.7

Professional, Scientific and Technical Services

5.5

9.0

4.8

8.2

Administration and Support

3.0

3.6

3.1

3.5

Public Administration and Safety

6.2

5.0

5.6

5.0

Education and Training

9.8

8.6

8.6

7.6

Health Care and Social Assistance

15.3

12.0

11.8

10.0

1.7

2.1

1.4

1.7

Arts and Recreation Services

Source: https://profile.id.com.au/geelong

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which dominate its employment structure as this secondary city grows and extends its command over its immediate hinterland. Thus, over the 5 years from 2011 to 2016, close to 5,000 people per year migrated into Geelong, with the previous 15  years (from 2001 to 2016) seeing only 3,000 per annum. Of 4,000 people who moved into Geelong from 2011 to 2016, over half were from various parts of Melbourne but, significantly, a quarter were from the hinterland areas of Surf Coast and Colac-Otway and another quarter from the regional cities of Ballarat, Bendigo and Shepparton.4 What is occurring then is that the diseconomies of Melbourne – especially soaring house prices – are pushing metropolitan residents to consider Geelong as an alternative. They are, in turn, both gaining employment in the expanding service sectors but also commuting back to the primate city. This connectivity is fundamental to incorporation into the urban region of Melbourne. Geelong then, remains overshadowed but is now benefiting from borrowed size and incorporation into this urban region. It is not a localized development but one shared with regional centres in NSW such as Newcastle and Wollongong, along with the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast near Brisbane in Queensland and Wanneroo and Mandurah adjacent to Perth (McGuirk and Argent, 2011). In addition, though, as the employment structure of Geelong indicates and as the pattern of in-migration confirms, it is also a secondary city that is serving an expanding hinterland – as it draws population from the third-order cities of Ballarat and Bendigo – but also offers high-order education, social and health services to more and more people across the western part of the state. It is these demands, as well as the inflowing population, that are supporting the growth of these employment sectors. Exploring such linkages beyond the secondary city, or the connections between secondary cities and their surrounding hinterlands, is beyond the scope of the present chapter but constitutes a promising direction for future research. While in Australia secondary cities have long been seen as lesser or provincial, more recently, as major centres top 5 million and become increasingly unaffordable and poorly serviced, some regional centres are booming. But this is not occurring for all regional centres, with Townsville in far northern Queensland, for example, in the economic doldrums. Closeness to the metropolis is key – with Newcastle and Wollongong in NSW echoing the experience of Geelong in Victoria. All are less than 200 kilometres from their state capitals and primate cities with good road and rail connections. However, it is not only about proximity and connectivity to the major centre. For Geelong it is a boom built on separateness and an

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autonomous identity, one promoted successfully by local lobby groups and their embrace of wider development agendas that work – waterfront renewal, CBD revitalization, creative city attractiveness, tourism and quality transport, health and education infrastructure. The attractiveness of this regional centre is also based on its history. For Geelong is a regional centre proud of its identity and fiercely loyal to the only non-metropolitan Australian Rules football team (Button, 2016). Further, the planning and lobbying authorities’ (CoGG, G21 and Committee for Geelong) longterm embrace of the creative city agenda is producing a provincial city that increasingly has a cultural heart – a dynamic cultural precinct, a revitalized waterfront, CBD and night-time economy – one that does indeed attract the ‘creative class’ and many more besides. It is therefore an increasingly attractive city for those escaping the diseconomies of the metropolis. Thus, from 1996 to 2001 27,359 people moved into the G21 region, 37 per cent of whom were from Melbourne, 24 per cent from the rest of Australia and 19 per cent from other parts of Victoria (MacroPlan, 2005). With this influx of residents come ongoing commuter linkages – 15,000 per day on the freeway and another 7,000 on the regularly improved rail service – representing 17 per cent of the city’s workforce (compared to 10 per cent in 2001). This aspect is the most tangible evidence of the agglomeration shadow effect (Burger et al, 2015). Another next step in this research will be to explore how the city navigates potential tensions between these ‘newcomers’ from the metropolis and existing residents more familiar with the city’s days as ‘Sleepy Hollow’. The relocation of industries (such as state and federal government insurance agencies) and residents, and regular upgrades to connective infrastructure, have emerged from consistent and effective lobbying, helped by the presence of a number of politically volatile electorates. And in these lobbying efforts, united voices and an agreed list of major project priorities as well as the strong sense of local identity based on the history, location and particular sociology of the city have been key. The result is increasing functional integration of the two centres, one which is providing real benefits. There is economic and employment differentiation, improved connectivity, concerted and unified lobbying, an extending hinterland supported by higher-order education and health services, support for a tourist economy based on the physical geography of Corio Bay, the Great Ocean Road and Bells Beach, a creative economy along with inner-city revitalization and a forthright local pride and identity registered most powerfully in the local Australian Football League team. It is these elements together which have allowed Geelong to move from being Sleepy Hollow, a shrinking rust-bucket city of industrial decline, to becoming a growing secondary city in a dynamic urban

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region. As Cardoso and Meijers (2017) observe: metropolitan integration entails functional, institutional and symbolic dimensions with potential to improve secondary city disadvantage. The advantages include borrowing size from the neighbouring city’s agglomeration benefits – in this case commuting, being an attractive residential and holiday destination – efficiently deploying shared metropolitan resources – such as health and education – and acquiring political and institutional influence over higherlevel policy-making – seen readily in the mutually beneficial embrace of the agenda by both Melbourne and Geelong and the relocation of state agencies. This secondary city, thus, is now integrating into an expanding urban region, but on its own terms. Notes 1

2

3 4

See Australian Government (2016). ‘The Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund (GRIIF).’ https://www.business.gov.au/assistance/geelongregion-innovationand-investment-fund/griif-projects-supported (Accessed 27 November 2016) See Australian Government (2016). ‘The Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund (GRIIF).’ https://www.business.gov.au/assistance/geelongregion-innovationand-investment-fund/griif-projects-supported (Accessed 27 November 2016) Australian G See https://profile.id.com.au/geelong/industries. See https://profile.id.com.au/geelong/migration-by-age-by-location (2018).

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Scott, A.J. (2001) Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, New York: Oxford University Press. Searle, G. (1996) Sydney as a Global City, Sydney: Department of Urban Affairs and Planning. Taylor, P.J. (2004) World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis, New York: Routledge. Terio, H. (2010) ‘Cities, hinterlands and agglomeration shadows: spatial developments in Finland during 1880–2004’, Explorations in Economic History, 47(4): 476–86. Tomaney, J. (2010) ‘Place-based approaches to regional development: global trends and Australian implications’, Australian Business Foundation Report, Sydney. Victorian Year Book (1971) Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Wright, S. (2018) ‘The capital cities that ate Australia’, Melbourne Age, 29 December. Wynd, I. (1971) Geelong: The Pivot, Melbourne: Cyprus Books. Wynd, I. (1979) ‘Economic geography and Australian regionalism: case study of Geelong; chapter 15 part two’, supplement to ‘HU211: Regionalism and Australia, study guide C’, Open Campus Program, School of Humanities, Deakin University, Geelong.

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5

Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts: The Uneven Fortunes of English Secondary Cities Rodrigo Cardoso and Evert Meijers

Secondary cities in European urban regions: integration and antagonism The attention given to secondary cities by scholars, policy-makers and businesses has been steadily increasing in recent years (OECD, 2012; Dijkstra, 2013; Camagni et al, 2015; Parkinson et al, 2015; Cardoso and Meijers, 2017; Meili and Mayer, 2017). This is a welcome development that expands debates beyond the dominant interest in the spectacular successes and failures of the largest cities, popularized by ideas about how we now live in an ‘urban age’. Secondary cities can be defined both at national and regional scales. In Europe, national secondary cities are those lacking the economic weight, political voice and attractive pull of primate cities (generally capitals) but still important enough to play a relevant role in national and international contexts (ESPON, 2012). Regional secondary cities, the focus of this chapter, are small and medium-sized cities that are part of an interdependent urban region and often lie in the sphere of influence of a larger core city, fuelling its economy, cooperating and competing with it for population, activities and resources, and interacting with it through various flows (Chapter 1, this volume).

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While both types of city may share similar problems – policy neglect in comparison with more ‘successful’ cities, emptying out of functions, population or activities due to the dominance of a larger competitor, incapacity to profit from synergies with other cities nearby (Hodos, 2011; Cardoso, 2016a) – the existing literature on regional secondary cities is thinner on the ground. Although urban regions are recognized as relevant arenas of economic activity, institutional cooperation and functional interaction, the small and medium-sized cities that constitute them are often seen as a rather indistinct, semi-dependent hinterland of the core city (Servillo et al, 2017). This is a remarkable oversight, particularly in Europe, built around a patchwork of cities and towns in close proximity, many of which, with centuries-old development paths, do not necessarily emanate from the influence of a centre. Rather than a downscaling of the large city theme, the historical trajectories, features and challenges of secondary cities represent a conceptually distinct problem and deserve a dedicated research agenda (Lorentzen and Van Heur, 2012; Kresl and Ietri, 2016). This means that closer attention must be paid to European multicentric urban regions built by tight networks of cities of different importance and size, which need to operate in conjunction to manage the challenges and enjoy the benefits of the metropolitan scale. Integrated urban regions allow their constituent cities, large and small, to profit from mutual interaction and tap into higher levels of agglomeration benefits, a concept known as ‘borrowed size’ (Meijers and Burger, 2017; Meijers et al, 2018). And many urban regions are indeed pursuing strategies to capitalize on that potential. However, there are several unanswered questions about how to make this process beneficial for more than a handful of leading cities. The consolidation of a fragmented urban region as an integrated system at a higher spatial scale, defined here as a process of metropolization (Cardoso, 2016a), does not evolve seamlessly and has to muddle through various obstacles (Lefèvre, 1998; Lambregts, 2006; Nelles, 2013). Even though metropolization can bring advantages for individual cities, traditional forms of core city-led metropolization have often excluded secondary cities from its potential benefits, due to policies focusing on favouring the central places with the greatest growth potential and seeing integration with secondary cities merely as support for the decentralization agenda of the core. An alternative perspective on metropolization is therefore needed, because if secondary cities cannot see the local benefits, they will not actively engage with an integration process. As integration strategies formalize the relations among the various secondary cities, as well as between them and the core, synergies are captured together with existing imbalances and antagonisms, which may hamper the integration process. Therefore, to discuss how secondary cities can benefit

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Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts

from metropolization, this chapter looks at intra-regional contrasts between cities, seen in the literature as a major factor influencing such processes. Such contrasts involve not only size, political power and economic clout, but also excessive differences in the presence of urban amenities and the socio-demographic profile of nearby cities. Both may create additional distances in terms of cultural mindsets, political preferences, cooperation opportunities, attractiveness for firms and people and quality of life. Europe is a textbook illustration of these problems, historically defined by a highly networked system of proximate but differentiated small and medium-sized cities. Historical legacies based on centuries of economic and functional interaction perpetuate unique local cultures, rivalries and power imbalances which hinder integration efforts, or, at least, cause a decoupling between spatial, functional and economic activity patterns and the institutional and cultural setting that might govern them (Salet et al, 2015). We use the case of the UK to carry out a study of such intra-regional imbalances in urban regions (known as city-regions in the UK). British city-regions are undergoing major changes in their spatial-institutional organization, with the emergence of combined authorities with extensive powers and resources. But their constituent cities have long and distinctive historical trajectories and are contrasting in many dimensions (Cox and Longlands, 2016), which makes Britain a topical case. We first discuss metropolization and some features which arguably indicate that secondary cities benefit from that process, explaining the focus on urban functions and demographic composition. Then we assess 64 secondary cities in eight city-regions on how they capture these features, situating them in four quadrants of a functions-demography matrix. While checking what they have in common, we find a variegated landscape of secondary cities sharing features based on: (1) the structure and size of the respective cityregion; (2) local spatial-environmental factors; (3) demographic profile; (4)  functional performance; (5)  population growth; and (6)  transport connectivity. We conclude by discussing incentives and deterrents to metropolization typical of each quadrant to show the need for governance and planning to adopt a model of metropolitan development that stimulates integration in ways that better serve the interests of secondary cities.

The process of metropolization Networked urban regions The positive externalities of metropolitan agglomeration amount to benefits delivered by size, density and diversity accessible primarily in

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large cities. These include the clustering of, and access to, flows of capital, knowledge, cultural production and information, a large and diverse labour market, the presence of high-quality infrastructure, public goods and advanced producer and consumer services, diversity of lifestyles and amenities and higher economic productivity and income, as urban concentration multiplies the potential for contact between agents with different needs, skills and aims, who can engage in ‘share, match and learn’ interactions (Combes and Gobillon, 2015). But the benefits of concentration in a single large city are limited by pollution, congestion, higher land and housing prices, competition for inelastic space, poor governability and social segregation, among other problems (Storper, 2014; Camagni et al, 2015), and ways to enjoy the benefits of agglomeration while mitigating the costs of overconcentration need to be considered. Capturing the added functional-demographic mass and diversity spread across a highly urbanized region through a system of well-connected cities operating in close interaction carries an opportunity to achieve that balance, as network economies, partly independent from local size and proximity, substitute for classic agglomeration economies (Johansson and Quigley, 2003; Meijers et  al, 2016). The potential advantages of nurturing such urban networks led policy-makers to consider metropolitan integration a desirable strategy, and turned it into a popular planning approach in Europe, in different institutional forms. In the UK, it appeared in the context of devolution of power to subnational levels as combined authorities, government bodies made of several local authorities coordinating responsibilities and decision-making powers over services and economic development options, aspired to tap into metropolitan agglomeration benefits to boost growth. Indeed, the added economic and functional performance of, say, five nearby cities of 200,000 inhabitants is usually not as high as one large city of one million (Meijers, 2008) because flows of people, goods and ideas do not travel seamlessly between the different cities of an urban region (Parr, 2004). This is due to several obstacles that single large cities do not experience as strongly: functional redundancies, uncoordinated transportation, institutional fragmentation, disconnected housing markets, disparities in public investment and lack of common cultural or political references able to shape joint strategic priorities or a single metropolitan identity (Lambregts, 2006; Nelles, 2013; Cardoso, 2016b). This means that the benefits of urbanization can be better organized over large geographical territories if, more than just adding up disconnected resources, cities overcome these obstacles and combine synergistically their size, mass and diversity into a larger, complementary and interconnected urban system, characterized here as a metropolization process.

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What about regional secondary cities? Two different prospects are at stake when pursuing a metropolization strategy. The first one, enjoying greater returns of size, density and diversity without the costs of overconcentration, mainly concerns core cities. They have an interest in expanding their sphere of influence, capturing the mass of metropolitan population to support their urban functions and redistributing their activities across the larger region to reduce the pressure on the core. They may also expect to keep some functional control over that redistribution and use the region to leverage their policy and economic agendas (Cardoso and Meijers, 2020), which implies an imbalanced distribution of power and a tendency to prefer strong core–periphery hierarchies. Indeed, many early integration experiments amounted to ‘technocratic projects dominated by the central cities’ (Lefèvre, 1998: 21). The gains from integration for regional secondary cities must be framed in a different way. Stakeholders in these cities are unlikely to see any incentive to pursue metropolization if their main expectation is to be on the receiving end of core city decentralization and host the functions, groups or activities displaced by the centre (Cardoso, 2016b; Cox and Longlands, 2016). This is indeed the case in the vicinity of many large European cities, notably capitals, where secondary cities find their available options regarding economic specialization, demographic mix or land-use strategies narrowing down rather than opening up. Phelps et al (2006) write about small cities ‘on the edge’ of large, dominant European capitals, which have difficulties in tracing an independent trajectory due to the excessive, and often unwelcome, role of the core city in every sector of their local economy. This loss of independent agency with little perceived return suggests that the advantages of metropolization are often unclear to secondary cities. By giving up some autonomy and redirecting their resources to metropolitan, rather than local, priorities, they need to know what is in it for them. The answer is usually that, as part of the urban region, they may gain access to greater agglomeration benefits than they would on their own. The arguments implicate the concept of borrowed size. As formulated by Alonso (1973), small cities integrated in a larger metropolitan system can perform economically better than in isolated settings because they can access and share the resources of other nearby cities, including the core. They retain the advantages of smaller size, such as lower cost of living, affordable property markets or higher quality of life, but can enjoy the benefits of scale, through easy access to population, workforce and functions present elsewhere. Meijers and Burger (2017)

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elaborate on this concept, distinguishing ‘borrowed performance’ (a city growing more quickly in terms of population or economic clout) from ‘borrowing functions’ (a city hosting multiple functions and activities which it had no critical mass to support on its own). It is also possible that none of these mechanisms work in some cities, as in the aforementioned case of small cities close to large capitals studied by Phelps et al (2006), where competition effects result in low attractiveness for people, firms and investments, as well as a dearth of top-level amenities. In opposition to the borrowed size concept, this ‘emptying out’ is known as an agglomeration shadow. As Volgmann and Rusche (2019) show for Germany, small and medium cities in the same urban region can experience independent dynamics of borrowed size, borrowed performance, borrowed functions or agglomeration shadow, pointing to the role of policy-making in the different fortunes of cities rather than grand structural processes valid everywhere. Meijers and Cardoso (Chapter  2, this volume) explore the Dutch Randstad to see which secondary cities capitalize on their network position and why, finding likely answers in spatial, demographic, economic and historical factors. While it is hard to come to general conclusions about what may help secondary cities benefit from a metropolization process, the literature has provided some important insights. Meijers et al (2018) show that functional integration, proxied by fast and frequent intra‑regional transport links, is a key factor of economic success in polycentric urban regions, presumably enhancing borrowed size abilities across all cities. Similarly, Cox and Longlands (2016) add that socio-economic advantages in city-regions in the UK would be better distributed if policies prioritized distributed intra-regional connections between smaller cities, rather than centralized inter-regional links between each main core. The excessive weight of the core is indeed problematic, and, in general, being part of a polycentric system without a dominant partner, in terms of size and political power, seems to allow greater borrowed size potential in secondary cities. On one hand, large size differences distort competition for jobs, households, economic activities and urban functions. On the other hand, institutional power centralization affects the perception of fair distribution of gains and reduces partners’ willingness to cooperate (Feiock, 2007; Cardoso, 2018). Secondary cities in this situation are probably very dependent on the core, in terms of economic activity and institutional capacity, resulting in an inability to choose and follow autonomous development agendas (Phelps et al, 2006). This means that, adding to the original formulation by Alonso, secondary cities not only profit from their connections to a large core city, but also (and perhaps

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more so) from interaction with a variety of dynamic nearby cities of similar size and institutional capacity.

What kind of secondary cities benefit from metropolization? Being the result of centuries of development and larger power structures, institutional power imbalances and city size are hard to overcome. And there are inevitable performance gaps between cities in urban regions which are explained by these contrasts – borrowed size and agglomeration shadow dynamics occur when the gaps are, respectively, smaller or larger than size and power differences can explain (Cardoso and Meijers, 2016). The question becomes, then, what kind of secondary cities are able to reduce the gaps predicted by these differences or, alternatively, are even less privileged than their structural differences would suggest. Among the many proxies which have been used to measure this – economic weight, population growth, functional performance – we will focus on two issues for which there is general agreement that they are important for urban economies and are in principle related to the size and centrality of a city, allowing us to infer borrowed size abilities. Furthermore, these city traits are themselves likely to be the outcome of historical metropolitan relations based on specific governance and planning strategies. As a result, their analysis may not only reveal important intrinsic features of secondary cities but also offer clues towards future strategies that might improve their condition: 1. The share of important urban functions located in a secondary city, from all the functions present in the urban region, compared to the average share of cities in that region. 2. The demographic composition of a secondary city, namely whether it approaches the profile otherwise found in the core city in terms of representation of socio-economic groups and population diversity.

Urban functions The German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung; BBSR) developed an index of functional performance to classify every metropolitan area in Europe (BBSR, 2011) and found that many urban areas exhibit a range of urban functions below what their demographic weight would yield, adding that ‘these areas either have

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further development potentials or that their metropolitan importance is historically undermined’ (BBSR, 2011: 102). We use a similar logic to assess whether secondary cities benefit from a metropolization process by borrowing size to punch above their weight. Indeed, the presence of many and diverse urban functions has been associated with higher economic productivity, as there are ‘advantages associated with diversified cities which exhibit many different sectors and activities, rather than specialized cities that exhibit a smaller number of specific sectors and activities’ (McCann, 2015: 22). Cities also tend to be more attractive for residents and firms when many amenities and services are present (Glaeser et al, 2001). While size is the main predictor for the presence of urban functions (Burger et al, 2015), due to the need to have a minimum critical mass to support them, a well-connected urban region may well disperse its top-level functions across several cities, not justified by their individual size, but by the capacity to serve the entire urban region regardless of location, thanks to connectivity and integration. This is an important dimension of borrowed size because although these urban functions operate for the larger scale, they provide many local benefits for the cities in question, including more local taxes, jobs, consumption opportunities, a variety of services and activities attracting people, firms and investments, and an incentive to locate new and complementary functions closer to existing ones. As a result, secondary cities are hardly satisfied with complementing the functional offer of other secondary cities for the benefit of the region; they rather compete to attract important metropolitan functions – once typical of large cities – and host a higher share of all the functions available in the urban region. Only some are able to achieve that, therefore we argue, following Cardoso and Meijers (2016), that a secondary city with an above-average share of functions is borrowing size.

Demographic composition Population size and change have been often used to determine ‘vibrant’ or ‘shrinking’ city trajectories. In urban regions, stark population growth or decline may serve as a proxy to check if a secondary city is experiencing borrowed size processes (in this case of the ‘borrowed performance’ variant) or eventually an agglomeration shadow. However, the qualitative dimension of population composition is also a meaningful way to assess urban prospects. A growing population made of vulnerable and deprived groups does not mean the same for a city as growth fuelled by wealthier, educated and cosmopolitan residents. Indeed, the over-

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or underrepresentation of different groups and the levels of population diversity influence urban economies (Syrett and Sepulveda, 2010; Dembski et al, 2017). Studies point to positive associations between high population diversity, especially when combined with the presence of wealthier, younger and more educated groups, and stronger economic growth, better liveability, more amenities and even more tolerant and progressive societies (Quigley, 1998; Ottaviano and Peri, 2006). There is equally a large amount of literature discussing the downsides of low diversity in culturally stagnant cities and suburbs, as well as the suburbanization of poverty trend (Bailey and Minton, 2018) caused by the clustering of vulnerable or deprived groups in some cities. However, as in the case of urban functions, the potential benefits of a demographic mix are scale-dependent, and complementarity at the larger scale has little bearing on the prospects of individual cities – a homogeneously deprived population in a secondary city may contribute to an overall diverse and balanced city-region, but is little consolation for the city in question. Therefore, secondary cities also strive to locally achieve high population diversity and a balanced representation of different socio-economic groups. Like urban functions, such a population profile is typically associated with larger cities – the presence of a diverse and cosmopolitan demography, enabled by size and density, has been an assumed advantage and hallmark of ‘cityness’ for centuries. Therefore, if regional secondary cities are able to approach a demographic profile otherwise found in a larger core city, we may infer borrowed size effects, whereas if they are consistently unable to capture that demography and cluster groups in contrast with those in the core – eventually pushed out of the latter – we may be witnessing an agglomeration shadow. By exploring functional and demographic features, we overcome the tendency in the literature to focus on a single borrowed size indicator in each analysis. Cities may indeed borrow size in one dimension but experience an agglomeration shadow in another. If both dimensions interact, one’s disadvantages may cancel out the socio-economic advantages brought by the other. Analysing the combination of two aspects therefore provides a more solid indication of their borrowed size prospects.

Secondary cities in British city-regions: analysis and results We now analyse the functional performance and demographic composition of 64 secondary cities in eight 8 British city-regions. The selected cityregions all feature an important core city – London, Birmingham,

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Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle – and are experiencing integration processes, either functional or institutional. The selection of the 64 secondary cities includes the main city-regional centres in every case. They are defined from the lowest scale of statistical output areas, aggregated into wards and then into urban areas. The latter are based on ward boundaries and built-up continuity, to achieve an adequate approximation of the morphology of the cities, and are rarely coincident with local authority boundaries. We adopted a broad population interval ranging from 41,000 (Kirkby) to 336,000 (Coventry) to capture a wide variety of cases. In some situations, cities that have morphologically merged together are modelled as one (for example, Clevedon–Portishead). Table 5.1 shows the list of cities in the analysis.

Demography and urban functions To proxy urban functions performance, we adapt the index from the panEuropean study on metropolitan functions compiled by the BBSR (2011). This database includes standardized values for all European metropolitan areas according to the size and scope of functions in six major domains (Institutional, Economic, Scientific, Transport, Culture and Sports) and includes individual functions such as government agencies, universities, research centres, firm headquarters, airports, stations, stadiums, galleries, museums, sports and music events and others. The location of these functions is plotted at the lowest possible scale (second-level local administrative units, corresponding to a sub-municipal level in most countries) without being directly attributed to a city, metropolitan or regional boundary, meaning that the functional index can be measured at any scale, according to the number and size of functions aggregated in our desired spatial perimeter. Since the BBSR index focuses on functions usually present in larger cities, which may lower the results of some secondary cities, we compensate for this bias by adding another indicator applicable to every city size, namely a single ‘Health and Leisure’ measure, compiled for the UK by the Consumer Data Research Centre, and proxied by the presence of leisure and health services and the amount of green space per resident (see detailed indicators in Daras et al, 2017). Like the other urban functions, this measurement is done at the smallest possible statistical unit (output area in the UK) and can be aggregated at any scale. This and the six BBSR indicators are added, all with equal weight, and then the seven indicators are normalized into a single index. The final functional index attributed to a city is then given as the share of functions in that city of all the functions present in the respective city-

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Table 5.1: Analysed cities and respective populations Manchester Bolton 162,019

Liverpool Warrington 172,671

Birmingham Coventry 336,261

Newcastle Sunderland 175,595

Sheffield Rotherham 103,518

Leeds Bradford 322,296

Bristol Bath 94,462

Reading 234,190

Oldham 160,583

Birkenhead 151,361

West Bromwich 322,712

Gateshead 96,380

Doncaster 102,261

Huddersfield 157,519

Weston 82,333

Luton 216,791

Salford 159,029

South Shields 83,204

Mansfield 91,511

York 155,695

Clevedon-Portishead 47,664

Aldershot 190,213

Sale-Altrincham 124,247

Bootle-Crosby 110,165

Wolverhampton 256,621

Blyth-Cramlington 56,230

Barnsley 89,552

Dewsbury-Batley 137,763

Yate 42,587

Slough 147,181

Stockport 116,853

St Helens 104,125

Telford 135,344

Washington 55,021

Chesterfield 66,993

Wakefield 94,213

–

Crawley 111,375

Rochdale 110,270

Southport 91,786

Solihull 101,401

Wallsend 52,613

Worksop 45,127

Halifax 80,363

–

Basildon 108,746

Wigan 103,541

Chester 81,534

Walsall 92,729

Durham 51,474

–

Harrogate 75,058

–

Chelmsford 104,019

Ashton-u.-Lyme 71,506

Wallasey 61,133

Nuneaton 82,973

–

–

Keighley 51,604

–

Watford 96,773

Bury 57,879

Kirkby 41,495

Redditch 78,963

–

–

–

–

Maidstone 93,893

–

–

Tamworth 76,955

–

–

–

–

High Wycombe 80,959

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

Widnes-Runcorn Dudley-Stourbridge 120,498 317,634

Note: For simplicity, the designation of each city-region – for example, West Midlands – has been replaced by the name of the core city.

Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts

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London Medway 242,902

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region, measured against how much it deviates from the average share per city in that city-region, to reduce bias between city-regions with many and few cities. This means that the results are contextualized for the conditions in each city-region, as the same index may be an insignificant share in a large and powerful region like London but represent an important functional node in a smaller city-region like Newcastle, for instance. For guidance, the city-regional share of urban functions in secondary cities ranges from a deviation of –0.110 in Yate (Bristol, pop. 42,587) to +0.079 in Gateshead (Newcastle, pop. 96,380). For the measure of demographic composition, we use the outputs from the DataShine OAC (Area Classification for Output Areas) project, a geodemographic classification of eight prevalent population ‘supergroups’ (SG), derived from the clustering of similar characteristics taken from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2011 UK Census, and developed by Chris Gale (UCL) and the ONS as part of the Economic and Social Research Council BODMAS (Big Open Data: Mining and Synthesis) project (Gale, 2014; ONS, 2016). This is now called the 2011 OAC and covers many socio-economic indicators available at the smallest possible statistical unit, the output area. An initial list of 167  variables about demographic features, household composition, housing, socio-economic conditions, lifestyle and employment was successively transformed and standardized, and then subject to a cluster analysis algorithm to build groups with minimum within- and maximum between-differences. The results led to eight main demographic SGs, of which we exclude one (called SG1–Rural Residents), which is virtually inexistent in the cities under analysis. We work hereafter with seven SGs. Table 5.2 provides the main characteristics of each one. Although the group distinctions are based on non-spatial variables, spatial autocorrelation allows prevalent groups to emerge at particular locations, at the scale of output areas. This allows us to simply count the proportion of output areas attributed to each SG to obtain the SG distribution for each city in the dataset. To exemplify, the city of Stockport has 389 output areas, with 0 attributed to SG3 (0 per cent) and 123 to SG5 (32 per cent); Huddersfield has 483 output areas, ranging from 5 in SG2 (1 per cent) to 191 in SG4 (40 per cent). This data allows us to conduct a large variety of measurements, such as the study of population diversity (by measuring the balance of the distribution among SGs) and the clustering of specific groups in specific secondary cities. Here, however, our concern is the hypothesis that a secondary city approaching the population profile found in its respective core city (again, assessed by city-region to contextualize their specific conditions) may be borrowing size, in the sense that:

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Age

Tenure

Housing type

Education

Jobs

Population density

Transport mode

Immigration ethnic mix

younger

private rent

flats

higher

high-end services

higher

public

higher

SG3 Ethnicity Central

younger

private rent

flats

–

services

higher

public

higher

SG4 Multicultural Metropolitans

–

social + private rent

terraced

mid-lower

low-end services + admin.

higher

public

higher

SG5 Urbanites

–

private rent

flats + terraced

average

services + public sector

average

–

mid-higher

SG6 Suburbanites

older

Buy

detached

higher

services + public sector

lower

private

lower

SG7 Constrained City Dwellers

older

social rent

flats

lower

–

higher

private

lower

SG8 Hard-Pressed Living

–

social rent

terraced

lower

industrial + retail

lower

–

lower

Supergroup SG2 Cosmopolitans

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Notes: See more details and pen portraits in ONS (2016). Comparisons (for example, ‘lower’ or ‘higher’) are with the UK as a whole. Cells where no feature is given mean that the group is not clearly distinctive in that particular variable.

Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts

Table 5.2: Summary of characteristics of supergroups 2–8

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(1)  it hosts features otherwise reserved to larger cities; and (2)  these features arguably correspond to urbanization benefits (for example, a more diverse demography, higher representation of wealthier or educated groups rather than vulnerable or deprived ones). To synthesize this insight, our calculations refer simply to an ‘index of divergence’ from the core city – how much does the SG distribution composition in each secondary city differ from the respective core city? This is calculated by the numeric difference between the proportion values of each SG in the core city and the secondary city (absolute value). The seven values are then added up and turned into an index. For guidance, the values range from 0.28 in Coventry (most ‘similar’ to the respective core, Birmingham) to 1.53 in Basildon (most ‘different’ from the core city, London). As perhaps could be expected, London cities top the list of highest divergence.

Discussion of results To allow a synthetic visualization of where British secondary cities stand in the two dimensions discussed previously, Figure 5.1 shows a functionsdemography matrix with four quadrants, divided horizontally by the positive and negative deviation of a city’s urban functions’ share from the average city in that city-region and vertically by the average index of core city divergence in demography (0.81). Since the assumption is that greater demographic similarity to the core is a positive asset and this is indicated by lower index values, we invert the scale in the X-axis, with lower values towards the right. We thus build four quadrants, as shown in Figure 5.1. A city in Q1, for instance, has an above-average share of urban functions and an above-average demographic divergence from the core. Cities in Q3 have a low share of urban functions and also differ demographically from the core. Cities in Q2 have a high share of city-regional urban functions and a demographic profile which is closer to their respective core city; would they be also the ones experiencing borrowed size? To help situate the discussion, it is important to mention first how the core cities score in these indicators, otherwise the comparison with secondary cities becomes hard to follow. Table  5.3 provides their basic features: population, share of city-regional urban functions and demographic profile, divided into a diversity index (based on the measure of concentration versus heterogeneity among groups given by the reciprocal of the Herfindahl–Hirschman index, with higher values corresponding to higher diversity) and the relative proportion of SGs SG2/3 and SG7/8, respectively the wealthiest/more educated/ cosmopolitan and the more deprived/vulnerable. The core city numbers

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Figure 5.1: Urban functions’ share and demographic divergence

Q1

Q2

0.050

R² = 0.1503 0.000 1.600

1.400

1.200

1.000

0.800

0.600

0.400

0.200

117 –0.050

–0.100

–0.150

Q3

Q4

 More divergent London

Birmingham

Less divergent 

Demography

Manchester

Liverpool

Leeds

N(Q1) = 5 N(Q2) = 13 N(Q3) = 24 N(Q4) = 22

Sheffield

Newcastle

Bristol

Note: City-regional urban functions’ share (Y-axis) and demographic divergence from core (X-axis, values inverted) in British secondary cities. Bubble size represents population size.

Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts

Avg=0.81

0.100

Table 5.3: Main functional and demographic indicators of core cities Population diversity (1/HH-Index) Core Avg2

Proportion of SG2/SG3 Core Avg2

Proportion of SG7/SG8 Core Avg2

Population

London

8,778,500

0.538

3.70

3.31

0.53

0.08

0.02

0.16

Birmingham

1,124,569

0.235

3.23

3.54

0.10

0.02

0.16

0.31

Manchester

541,263

0.254

3.70

4.40

0.30

0.04

0.17

0.39

Liverpool

484,578

0.186

5.26

3.27

0.17

0.02

0.50

0.49

Leeds

571,505

0.160

6.25

4.18

0.16

0.06

0.28

0.27

Sheffield

538,361

0.201

5.88

3.66

0.12

0.01

0.35

0.49

Newcastle

274,721

0.194

6.37

3.52

0.22

0.05

0.38

0.60

Bristol

454,213

0.424

5.56

3.38

0.26

0.11

0.23

0.26

Note: Average demography of secondary cities in each city-region is given for comparison.

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are provided in Table 5.3, together with the average of the respective secondary cities. With this knowledge, it is easier to understand what it means for a secondary city to have a high or low share of urban functions and a population mix similar to or different from the core. Some results immediately stand out: • Core cities do take a significant share of the available city-regional functions, but usually not more than all the secondary cities combined. Except for London (a dominant capital city) and Bristol (with only four secondary cities), the other core cities host 16 to 25 per cent of the city-regional functions. This means that most city-regions have a relatively balanced functional distribution, and that the core city is not necessarily a dominant partner. • Population diversity is indeed a typical core city trait, with higher indexes in every case except for Birmingham and Manchester, where slightly higher diversity is found in the average of secondary cities. • Regarding the representation of different socio-economic groups, the presence of the cosmopolitan and educated SG2/SG3 is indeed reserved for the core cities, with much smaller proportions in secondary cities. As to the more deprived groups, the tendency is inverted, with secondary cities having a higher representation of SG7/SG8. • Overall, a ‘typical’ core city demographic mix includes high population diversity conjugated with a high presence of wealthier, younger and educated socio-economic groups (Fainstein, 2005), and a low representation of the less privileged sectors of population. In recent years, these two features appear in the literature as beneficial for the economy and mostly available in large cities, following the reurbanization trend, in which vibrant, dense and diverse urban cores become popular again for certain sectors of the population (Davidson and Lees, 2005; Cheshire, 2006). This comes with a shift of vulnerable or deprived groups which used to cluster in inner-city areas of the core before reurbanization started to change urban demography, to smaller, more affordable and more remote cities in the city-region, which also offer fewer opportunities and amenities (Dembski et al, 2017).

The functions-demography matrix We now turn to the functions-demography matrix, where Figure 5.1 reveals different insights. First, there is a slight positive association between a population profile closer to that in the core city and a higher share of urban functions. Although the R-value is not too high (0.15),

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the ascending slope provides this indication – cities which are more capable of hosting a demographic mix otherwise found in the core city also tend to host an important share of city-regional functions. Note that there are very few cities with a high share of urban functions and demographically divergent from the core (five in Q1). This may signal a negative interaction of population profile and functional performance, and a consequent inability to experience borrowed size effects. But there are many cities (Q4) demographically similar to the core but with a low urban functions share. Therefore, we may be seeing a hint at causality, although more research is needed to strengthen the association: while the presence of urban functions, especially amenities allowing higher quality of life, may be conducive to the establishment of certain demographic profiles, the reciprocal is not true: the presence of these demographic profiles is not a guarantee that a higher urban functions index will follow. Urban functions are likely to have greater spatial inertia than demography, which is more fluid. While some cities excel in their ability to retain urban functions, most secondary cities lie in quadrants 3 (#24) and 4 (#22), with a belowaverage share of city-regional functions. All the London cities are in this condition, expressing the discrepancies between core and periphery in the case of a dominant capital, with a larger share of size and economicpolitical power compared to all other cases. By contrast, smaller cities in smaller city-regions tend to have higher urban function shares, indicating a more balanced distribution. Although size tends to be the main predictor of the presence of top-level urban functions (Burger et al, 2015), this is not the case, at least for relative values: cities with lower shares in Q3 and Q4 have an average population of 113,825 and 152,497, respectively, while cities in Q1 and Q2 average at 132,968 and 94,512. There is a relation between higher functional performance and proximity to the core (average distance in Q3/Q4 is 31 km and in Q1/Q2 is 22 km) but it disappears once the cities in the larger London region are removed. Regarding demographic divergence from the core, we find that cityregions differ substantially. Secondary cities around Sheffield and Leeds are quite clustered in the more ‘similar’ quadrants Q2 and Q4, while Manchester and Birmingham have very contrasting secondary cities close to both ends of the spectrum – some are demographically quite similar to the core, others are very different. We cannot claim a single explanation for this differentiation but will discuss later in this chapter an association between less contrasting secondary cities, demographically speaking, and better transport connectivity across the city-region. As in the case of urban functions, demographic divergence is not linked to either population size or proximity to the core once London cities are removed.

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Defining features of the various quadrants If size and proximity are not decisive features to capture potentially beneficial characteristics typically reserved for core cities – both functional and demographic – what commonalities are there between the secondary cities in each quadrant? It is unsurprising that Q2 – higher functional index and a demographic mix closer to the core – has relatively few cities. If we see these combined features as indications of borrowed size abilities, then they are indeed reserved to a handful of cities. Several appear to form a near duopoly with the core. Gateshead, close to Newcastle, Wallasey, next to Liverpool, and Salford, neighbouring Manchester, are cases in point. This is not about general proximity, but being physically adjacent to the main city. Another insight is that Q2  cities often tend to be historic and/or university cities. Such are the cases of York, Bath, Durham, Doncaster and Chester, which are not among the largest secondary cities in the sample and yet are all in this quadrant. Indeed, a large university-related population may skew the results towards an overrepresentation of SG2/3. The corollary is that this may contribute to higher housing demand and prices and the prevalence of job sectors which exclude SG7/8 groups, shifting the overall population profile closer to the typical core city. At the same time, historic features and their associations with cultural and social vibrancy and population diversity are often attractive for those younger, educated and wealthier population groups following the reurbanization trend, as mentioned earlier for core cities. This is also an incentive to locate more and more diverse urban amenities, which in turn may attract more of the same demography (and consequently exclude poorer groups who cannot afford the general increase in cost of living often typical of amenity-rich, cosmopolitan cities). Overall, we can suggest that being adjacent to the core city and, especially, being an historical or university city facilitate enhanced borrowed size abilities – these are not assets, however, that secondary cities have the option to capture anew. While Q2 is our main interest – these are the cities arguably borrowing size to punch above their weight in terms of functional performance and demographic profile – it is harder to find common features in the other three quadrants. As mentioned earlier, there are very few cities in Q1, suggesting that great demographic divergence from the core may hamper functional performance, or itself may already be a reflection of marginalization from core city activities. Q3 is skewed by the London cities (10 out of 11), naturally very different from the core city both functionally and demographically. Q3 also includes many cities (six out of nine) in the Manchester city-region, an early adopter of the combined

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authority model, whose institutional success was nonetheless achieved at the cost of a Manchester-centric mindset where the core city exerts substantial decision-making power over the region and investments are quite centralized. Cases of core city-centrism, like London and Manchester, may bring advantages for secondary cities, such as the spread of agglomeration economies, the visibility of the core city ‘brand’ and economic specializations which efficiently complement the city-regional mix, but that trade-off may also hamper the ability for these cities to locally attract an economically beneficial demographic profile and toplevel urban functions, increasing inequality and divergence (Hincks, 2017).

Population growth and transport connectivity We test two further indicators to differentiate the four quadrants. The first is population growth. If the assumptions so far are correct, we would expect secondary cities in Q2 to grow faster – another manifestation of borrowed size, this time of the ‘borrowed performance’ variant. Table 5.4 confirms that expectation. With an average growth of 7.2 per cent between 2001 and 2011, these cities grew faster than other types, including core cities, with Salford, York, Durham and Walsall in the double digits. Cities in all the other quadrants grew below the national average and, notably, the results of Q3 are again skewed by the faster growth in the London region – if we remove London cities, the average population growth in these amenity-poor cities with a demography divergent from the core was only 4.7 per cent, on par with Q1 (see values excluding London cities in brackets, where applicable). Therefore, population growth rates strengthen the claim that cities in Q2 are indeed enjoying stronger borrowed size effects in their city-regions. Cities with a higher share of city-regional urban functions and with a demographic profile more similar to the core city are also the ones growing faster. Cities with a lower functional share and a divergent demography grow less. The last indicator to test is transport connectivity. In a pan-European study of polycentric urban regions, Meijers et  al (2018) show that functional integration is the most important factor of enhanced Table 5.4: Population growth, % values 2001–11 Average core cities 5.9% (5.5%)

Q1 4.6%

Q2 7.2%

Q3 6.4% (4.7%)

Q4 5.3% (5.2%)

Note: UK average population growth = 6.9 per cent. Values in brackets and italics exclude fast-growing cities in the London region.

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city‑regional performance. According to Jenks et al (2008), multicentric urban regions increase fragmentation of labour and housing markers, and institutional capacity and transport connectivity are essential to minimize those problems. In the UK, Jones et al (2009) detect an overall balanced pattern of more productive firms, a skilled workforce and good-quality housing in regions with more complementary linkages, opposed to greater contrasts between productivity levels, worker skills and housing quality in regions lacking such linkages. Against the agglomeration economics ‘trickle-down’ discourse that defends as many links as possible to the core city and between main centres in different regions, Cox and Longlands (2016) argue that small and medium-sized cities would be better served by smaller-scale intra-regional links between many cities. Following that, we can suggest that good intra-regional transport links are a carrier of borrowed size dynamics, and that secondary cities enjoying potential borrowed size manifestations, such as a high urban functions share, a core city-like demographic composition and quicker growth, are also likely to be well connected within their city-region. We evaluate this by building a connectivity index responding to these criteria, measuring the travel distance in kilometres covered per minute in the morning rush hour (8.00 am), both by road and rail, between every city in each cityregion, including the core city. For each city, the average of the distance per minute covered to and from all the others was then calculated. The road and rail values were added into a final connectivity index. The average results for each quadrant are given in Table 5.5, again showing the results without London cities in brackets for comparison (Q3/Q4). As Table 5.5 shows, the results of Q3 and Q4 cities are indeed skewed upwards by the London cities. If they are removed and all other secondary cities are considered, Q2 has the highest average index, on par with the typically well-connected core cities. Small and medium-sized historic cities like York (1.984), Chesterfield (1.773) and Durham (1.617) have some of the highest values outside the London region. Cities in Q1, Q3 and Q4 (excluding London) all have similarly lower average connectivity indexes. Figure 5.2 compares the connectivity of all the city-regions. Again, London cities are outliers – unsurprisingly, their connectivity is higher than anywhere else in the country. It is a larger and more populated cityTable 5.5: Road and rail connectivity index, quadrant averages Average core cities 1.568 (1.475)

Q1 1.277

Q2 1.480

Q3 1.518 (1.293)

Q4 1.342 (1.309)

Note: Values in brackets and italics exclude cities in the London city-region.

123

Figure 5.2: Connectivity index boxplot for British city-regions = Core city

2.3 2.1 1.9

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1.7 124

1.5 1.3 1.1 0.9 0.7

London

Birmingham

Sheffield

Leeds

Bristol

Newcastle

Manchester

Liverpool

Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts

region, where fast long-distance connections are necessary, especially by rail and, accordingly, the per capita investment in infrastructure is much larger than the rest of England. The figure also shows that the core cities usually have a higher connectivity index than the respective secondary cities, mainly due to more rail connections. Regarding intra-regional imbalances, the boxplots show Sheffield and Leeds having smaller variability across the spectrum, meaning that their cities are fairly similarly connected, while Birmingham and Bristol results are more spread out, indicating the contrasting presence of both wellconnected and poorly connected cities. Note that we previously saw that Leeds and Sheffield are also the city-regions whose secondary cities present the fewest discrepancies across the functions-demography matrix, indicating that the overall city-regional balance in those indicators is also mirrored by a balanced connectivity index. Birmingham cities, by contrast, have a wider spread across the functions-demography matrix, and the contrasting connectivity indexes among them seem to express that imbalance again. In summary, leaving out the distorting effects of London – a truly exceptional case in every dimension of the analysis – the secondary cities which manage to host a large share of the city-regional urban functions and a demographic composition more similar to the core city are also the ones growing faster in terms of population and with better connectivity within their city-regions, regardless of their size, location or distance to the core.

Incentives and determents to metropolization in secondary cities Previous research has looked into the incentives and barriers needed for a metropolization process whose benefits are wide-ranging rather than reserved for a handful of leading cities. It was established that excessive differences in size and institutional power are important factors influencing the relations between cities and the divergence of their development paths, thus increasing city-regional inequalities. To these factors, we now add differences in demographic composition and functional performance, using the UK as a case study. Core and secondary cities in British city-regions differ substantially in the share of city-regional urban functions that they can individually capture as well as in their demographic composition. In the former aspect, core cities typically take the lion’s share of urban functions, but not always, and the respective secondary cities combined can host a significant number of

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functions. Regarding demography, the contrasts lie mainly in the levels of population diversity and the presence of different population groups. We have seen that functional or demographic complementarity – contributing to the overall balance of the region – offers poor consolation for the cities in question, as the potential benefits of hosting urban functions or a socioeconomically favourable demography are scale-dependent and need to be locally harvested to produce local benefits. But while secondary cities may compete for these benefits, they also differ among each other. Through a functions-demography matrix with four quadrants, we assessed the state of 64 British secondary cities and suggested that the cities more likely enjoying borrowed size effects were the ones showing an above-average share of city-regional urban functions and a demographic mix otherwise found in the core. Most cities fail in at least one of these features, with the large majority lying in quadrants 3 or 4. Very few cities are able to enjoy high functional performance while having a demography divergent from the core (Q1), and only 20 per cent of the secondary cities (13 out of 64) are able to secure both features (Q2), indicating that most British secondary cities are in some way overshadowed by their core city neighbour. Overall, London cities are the ones where differences from the core are most pronounced along both axes of the matrix. Leeds and Sheffield have a more balanced set of secondary cities, but Manchester and Birmingham host quite contrasting cities. Similarities within and differences between quadrants suggest that Q2 cities – those most likely to be borrowing size – tend to be adjacent to either core or historic/university cities, have a fast-growing population and have the best intra-regional connections. The city-regions with cities that differ less in terms of their individual connectivity indexes are also those differing less along the functionsdemography dimensions. Large connectivity contrasts between cities in a city-region seem to correspond to large differences along these dimensions too. We find, therefore, a limited number of secondary cities with access to borrowed size abilities in the indicators we studied, and an apparent nexus of causality between: (1) the structure and size of the city-region; (2) the spatial-environmental features of the cities; (3) their demographic profile; (4) their functional performance; (5) their population growth; and (6) their transport connectivity. The small size of the sample, the nuanced differences between cities and the myriad variables contributing to these differences do not advise the running of regressions to obtain solid statistical evidence and a direction of causality. However, despite this limitation, we see clear associations between the factors summarized, which warrants further research to better understand their positive or negative interaction.

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Metropolization Processes and Intra-Regional Contrasts

We need a better understanding of the various ways in which these types of secondary cities experience incentives or deal with obstacles to engage in a metropolization process. Rather than assuming there is a preferred quadrant to be in, all permutations across the spectrum enable a variety of incentives and deterrents, which must be mutually assessed. For instance, cities in Q1 with a high share of urban functions may host economic specializations on which the city-region depends, therefore perceiving their functional role as important, leading to balanced inter-city relations, which encourage integration. But their demographic divergence from the core may create an additional ‘mental distance’ between core and secondary cities – see the typical opposition between progressive, liberalleaning core cities and conservative small towns – thus harming political and economic collaboration. The same is valid for cities in Q3, who may add to the cultural-political mindset distance caused by a divergent demography, a perception of uneven distribution of city-regional functional resources and a fear of the core city impact on their economic autonomy. While core city decisionmakers may lack confidence in secondary city capabilities, second city residents may be suspicious of the value of a city-regional governance structure and find the usual core city-led narrative of economic competitiveness unpopular (Terlouw, 2019). However, their secondary city situation may also provide metropolization incentives – these may include struggling cities being more eager (at least at the level of policymakers, not necessarily the population) to adopt the core city or cityregional ‘brand’ advantages and to put their faith in a leading actor (the core city) with the power and resources to implement a city-regional agenda. That adherence may, however, be merely symbolic and fail to attract local improvements. Cities in Q4, also lacking urban functions but demographically (that is, culturally and politically) closer to the core, may, on the one hand, perceive similar barriers to metropolization, but be even more aware of the unfair functional distribution in the city-region, when their demographic profile – for example, regarding demand for consumer amenities – does not differ substantially from the core city. On the other hand, potential incentives to engage in deeper integration include accessing those core city amenities and exploiting their cultural proximity to the strong symbolic identity provided by the core, both of which depend on good connectivity. This is not specific to Q4 cities, of course – attaching their identity to the core city can encourage comparably anonymous secondary cities to pursue greater integration to boost their (inter)national visibility. Cities in Q2 should perceive the advantages of being well integrated in a powerful city-region, where they can borrow size from the larger

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scale, capturing a higher number of urban functions than they would do in isolation, attracting an economically beneficial demography and growing faster without excessive dependence on other cities to choose their development paths. They punch above their weight and may have a strong voice in city-regional negotiations and a strong identity of their own. These are all incentives to metropolization, but even here there might be deterrents. First, a balanced city-regional distribution of functions and population does not necessarily come with an equally fair redistribution of power. Second, if a perceived lack of individuality is an incentive for secondary cities to attach to a stronger core city or city-regional identity, these secondary cities may also follow the opposite path and become eager to preserve their autonomy untouched, resulting in a weaker willingness to cooperate with others and redirect resources to city-regional, rather than local, priorities. Moreover, the existence of several functionally and economically strong cities in a city-region, without a too dominant core, may also mean the absence of a leading actor able to mobilize the leadership and resources necessary to implement a metropolization project. In conclusion, every secondary city inherits positionality within the region and has a different bundle of incentives and disincentives to engage in metropolization; cities in some quadrants which might gain more from deeper integration may also be those lacking the political, economic and symbolic power to materialize it. Indeed, having the incentive and having the ability to pursue metropolization is not the same thing. In general, secondary cities need to anticipate a fair distribution of benefits, seeing local objectives met while working for the benefit of the city-region. Transparency and dialogue are important to mitigate the effects of decaying perceptions of those benefits that seem to exist in cities which are more spatially, economically and culturally distant from the core (Cardoso, 2016b). There needs to be a strong ‘metropolitan identity’, a shared understanding of the meaning and value of the cityregion – as Nelles (2013: 1353) writes, ‘capacity cannot be attributed to an abstraction’, but that must not erase local identities. For this to happen, core cities have the responsibility of treading a fine line between necessary leadership, to mobilize the resources and lead the metropolization project, and unwelcome dominance, which alienates partners and intensifies real and perceived inequalities between places.

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Situating the Secondary City: Uneven Development and Regional Gentrification in Tacoma, WA Charles Williams and Mark Pendras

Introduction In 2017, a local reporter opened a story on the ongoing construction boom in Tacoma, Washington, with the observation that ‘Tacoma learned long ago that it will always be second to Seattle, but the city is now embracing that as a positive. The money the city is leveraging from all the action in Seattle is a vital part of Tacoma’s game plan.’ The reporter noted how local officials had for some time been preparing for the building boom with an array of public projects intended to attract developers to the city. Tacoma Economic Development Director Ricardo Noguera described the city’s enthusiasm for riding Seattle’s economic coat-tails, highlighting how residents priced out of Seattle and the surrounding suburbs were joining new arrivals to the region in moving to Tacoma. Characterizing 2017 as ‘the year of the crane’, Noguera outlined the city’s development philosophy: ‘I can’t compete with Goliath … [instead] it’s feeding off of the beast. Seattle-Bellevue is the beast’ (Sullivan, 2017). This brief news story is telling both for the way it presents Seattle as central to the economic and policy options facing Tacoma and for how this relationship is simultaneously depicted in strongly optimistic and

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pessimistic terms. Behind this tension is a long history of anxiety that Tacoma has already lost out or is about to be bypassed by some new wave of regional development. Much of this history, both real and imagined, is best understood through the lens of Tacoma’s ‘secondary’ status relative to Seattle, which dates back to the late 19th century. As scholars grappling with the possibilities for alternative economic development in the city, we have accordingly often come up against an array of questions about just what ‘success’ for Tacoma would look like in relation to the surrounding region and in particular Seattle. In other words, we ask what regionalism looks like from a secondary city perspective: How are Tacoma’s current and future conditions tied to Seattle? What are the costs and benefits of this relationship and who in Tacoma does it serve? Is there the political capacity and will in Tacoma to carve out a distinctive development future despite the varied pressures of proximity to Seattle? To address these questions, the following analysis explores Tacoma’s historical and contemporary experience as a secondary city relative to its dominant regional neighbour, Seattle. We approach this analysis through the dynamics of ‘agglomeration shadows’ and ‘borrowed size’. The core ideas associated with these terms are straightforward ones. Borrowed size emphasizes how spatial interdependencies allow cities to utilize the capacities of their neighbours in order to ‘host functions that they could not have hosted in isolation’ (Burger et al, 2015: 1092). Framed a little differently, borrowed size occurs when cities enjoy urban functions or performance levels normally associated with larger cities (Meijers and Burger, 2017). This may mean smaller cities accessing the agglomeration benefits of their larger neighbours, or larger cities incorporating assets from their smaller neighbours to better compete with other larger cities on a national or international scale. This borrowing process contrasts with the obverse idea of an agglomeration shadow, where large cities hinder the growth and range of functions in surrounding smaller places due to the regional concentration of development in the dominant city (Burger et al, 2015). Cities operating in their neighbour’s agglomeration shadow find it difficult to compete in key sectors or industries, with private-sector capital concentrating in the regionally dominant city. The typical implication is that agglomeration shadows pose serious problems for secondary cities, while opportunities for borrowed size offer a path to greater participation in a region’s success, especially understood in terms of economic growth, capitalist investment, and the availability of cultural and other amenities. In our view, the experience in Tacoma both reflects and complicates this understanding. For much of the city’s history, the agglomeration shadow cast by Seattle has contributed to economic setbacks and a dearth of private-sector investment in Tacoma. It is then

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possible to argue that Tacoma’s recent boom signals a successful transition out of that shadow as the city now attracts private-sector investment and significant population growth through its geographical and economic relationship to Seattle. However, we also want to emphasize how this negative/positive dichotomy breaks down in several fundamental ways. On the one hand, much of Tacoma’s current borrowed size continues to take place in a context where core business functions remain concentrated in Seattle. On the other hand, to the extent there has been a surge in investment in Tacoma with regard to new housing and various consumer amenities, this is in many respects creating or exacerbating problems faced by the working-class residents of the city. Particularly pressing are rising housing costs and the displacement caused by gentrification. In some ways, Tacoma was thus a more liveable place for many residents in the years typically characterized as the bad or stagnant times for the city. Beyond arguing for the importance of understanding secondary cities relationally through the lens of agglomeration shadows and borrowed size, this chapter accordingly stresses two further points. First, Tacoma’s recent experience highlights the need to think in terms of both of these processes occurring simultaneously and in interrelated ways rather than as simply an either/or question. Second, we need to recognize that questions concerning what constitutes a positive or negative relationship to the regionally dominant city are not as straightforward as is often assumed. Against the view of borrowed size as an uncomplicated success relative to the underdevelopment associated with an agglomeration shadow, we note that such ‘success’ can in fact both exacerbate social and class inequalities in the secondary city and threaten to foreclose alternative development possibilities that might constitute (for some) a more desirable trajectory. The rest of this chapter proceeds as follows. We begin by tracing the centrality of intra-regional dynamics to Tacoma’s urban history, emphasizing the real and perceived ways in which Seattle’s successes complicated Tacoma’s development visions. We then turn to an analysis of Tacoma’s more recent development experiences in order to highlight how Tacoma’s secondary status within the region continues to define the city’s development possibilities, even as the city celebrates new development successes. We conclude by reflecting more broadly on how secondary cities might navigate the intra-regional relations that shape their choices as they pursue inclusive development.

Historical emergence of a regional secondary city While an analysis of Tacoma might begin with the early days of place competition with neighbouring cities – a typical starting point for many

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US urban histories – it is important to recognize the region’s deeper roots. The White settler establishments of the mid-19th-century Pacific Northwest were built on the lands, and with the help, of the region’s indigenous inhabitants, who were subsequently displaced to outlying reservations. The Puyallup Tribe of Indians had long lived where White settlers built the city of Tacoma, establishing the space as attractive to the outsiders who first exported lumber from the area in the 1850s. Under growing pressure from White arrivals, the US government established a 1,280-acre Puyallup Reservation east of Tacoma as part of the sweeping 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek, involving many of the region’s tribes (Thrush, 2007). That political intervention facilitated permanent White settlement in what became ‘Old Town’ Tacoma in the 1860s. Formally incorporated in 1875, virtually all of Tacoma’s history from that point onward has been strongly associated with an intra-regional competition with Seattle (Morgan, 1979). Seattle’s clear ascendance to the dominant economic position by 1900 marked the start of a long relationship in which Tacoma was defined by industrial and peripheral economic activities such as raw materials processing and manufacturing while Seattle captured the bulk of the region’s commercial and financial activities. By the 1970s this dynamic ushered in an increasing sense of urban crisis in Tacoma, with industrial production stagnating and city officials (and private-sector elites) starting to look for alternative avenues to economic revitalization. This effort intensified from the 1980s onward, producing fairly limited results until the recent period of relative but problematic revitalization. The current resurgence is one that city leaders have significantly associated with a strategy of capturing overflow benefits from Seattle’s success, a process that indicates a beneficial connection to the regionally dominant city but also suggests the constraints of an ongoing peripheral position. An overview of the longer-term historical interaction between Seattle and Tacoma accordingly provides the context for understanding the city’s recent development as a reflection of both borrowed size and a long-standing agglomeration shadow. In the 1870s and 1880s, much of the competition with Seattle revolved around which city (if either) would become the terminus for the transcontinental Northern Pacific Railroad. Tacoma’s selection by Northern Pacific in 1873 led to its characterization as the ‘city of destiny’ – a moniker the city continues to embrace – and in turn set off a sustained but ultimately unsuccessful effort by Seattle elites to persuade the company to reverse the decision. With the rail line completed in 1883 (with a more direct route through the Cascade Mountains to follow in 1888), Tacoma went from approximately 1,000 residents in 1880 to over 36,000 in 1890, not far behind Seattle’s population of nearly 43,000

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(Morgan, 1979; Williams, 2019). Tacoma elites projected a future as the regional transit hub and commercial centre for the emerging Northwest economy. Along with the rampant boosterism in relation to the railway, there were, however, also substantial local conflicts with Northern Pacific in the 1880s. Most significantly, many White workers and small business interests perceived the railway as dominating Tacoma’s economy at their expense. As one historian (Ficken, 2002: 185) notes, The Northern Pacific and [its offshoot] the Tacoma Land Company were by far the largest Pierce County property owners. Charles Wright’s reputation as ‘the father and founder of Tacoma’ was factually based. In addition to the railroad and the townsite firm, the Philadelphia investor presided over the concerns providing water, gas and electricity. This divide was also used to frame a year-long mobilization against Chinese workers by White workers, small business owners and local political elites (including the mayor) that culminated in the expulsion of all of Tacoma’s Chinese residents, defined in racist terms as ‘coolie’ or slave labour associated with rail company profits and power (Williams, 2019). Nonetheless, as the 1880s came to a close there remained considerable confidence in Tacoma’s future as the regional dynamo. As Rudyard Kipling was to put it when he visited the region in 1889, ‘Tacoma was literally staggering under a boom of the boomiest’ (cited in Morgan, 1979: 270). While Tacoma could now boast a vibrant port, substantial manufacturing and a rail terminus, Seattle was nevertheless the more established city, with a second-generation political and business leadership that was less constrained by outside business interests. The Panic of 1893 then hit Tacoma particularly hard, disrupting both the many fragile businesses of recent origin and Northern Pacific, which went into receivership. Of the 21 banks in Tacoma in May of 1893, only 7 survived a year later. Seattle, by contrast, benefited from the opening of (Northern Pacific rival) Great Northern Railroad’s transcontinental terminus in the city just as the economic downturn hit, blunting some of the impact of the Panic (Morgan, 1979). For these and other reasons, Seattle was in a better position to respond to the Klondike Gold Rush that remade the Northwest in the late 1890s. As one early scholar of Tacoma described, Klondike gold was the principal factor which turned Tacoma’s development into industrial rather than commercial channels

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and pushed Tacoma into a secondary position on Puget Sound. In 1890 Seattle and Tacoma were practically the same size; by 1900, however, Tacoma had less than half the population of its sister city. The outfitting and supply trade, little of which was handled in Tacoma because there were fewer railroads and fewer ships available, gave Seattle impetus as a commercial center, while Tacoma developed more slowly as an industrial city. (McKean, 1941: 312) In terms of capital flows, bank deposits in Seattle went from $4.6 million in 1897 to $7 million in 1898 and $12.3 million in 1899, while bank clearings went from $36  million to $92  million in the same period. Seattle’s population reached 80,676 in 1900, while Tacoma, at 37,714, was only marginally above its 1890 figure and significantly down from a previous peak reached just before the Panic (Morgan, 1979). Launched on this trajectory, Seattle experienced rapid population growth for most of the 20th century while Tacoma’s population increase has been much slower, although steady (see Figure 6.1). Like many cities around the country, Tacoma’s industrial economy did enjoy significant development – notably in the period around the Second World War and the post-war boom. By the late 1940s, Tacoma was no longer simply a ‘timber metropolis’, with significant employment in shipbuilding, finished lumber products, metal smelting and refining, chemical and allied products, canning and freezing, and food manufacturing. Just as significantly, the federal government was by Figure 6.1: Historical patterns of population growth, Tacoma and Seattle Tacoma

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this time the largest source of employment in Pierce County, mainly due to military and civilian personnel at the Fort Lewis (US Army) and McChord Field (US Air Force) facilities (Tacoma News Tribune, 1947). But Tacoma’s industrial growth still emerged in a context where the agglomeration of core corporate functions in Seattle set boundaries on the character of the city (McKean, 1941; Office of Economic Adjustment, 1976; Morgan, 1979). Thus, despite the relative economic stability, notable concerns emerged by mid-century that too much of Tacoma’s economy was tied to basic raw materials production that contributed to more advanced industry and economic accumulation elsewhere. One prominent local journalist went so far as to characterize Tacoma’s situation as ‘economic semi-colonialism’ (Wolverton, 1957b: 11). In a series of articles on the economic and political choices facing the city, the same author contrasted Seattle’s recent annexation of surrounding suburban areas and population with Tacoma’s failure to take such actions, arguing that Seattle’s coordinated planning had positioned the city for ongoing prosperity while Tacoma risked fragmentation and further regional marginalization (Wolverton, 1957a). The limits of Tacoma’s industrial identity were increasingly clear by the 1970s. Reflecting a familiar urban trajectory, the city was deeply mired in the difficulties of a relative decline in manufacturing alongside a hollowing out of downtown. While ongoing public-sector employment helped to mitigate the economic problems, the loss of downtown retail to the suburbs (including the Tacoma Mall) along with fears of over-reliance on military-related federal investment set off considerable efforts to diversify the economy. Among the views commonly put forward by local elites to explain the city’s struggles in that period, one report noted the ‘firm belief that the area has lagged because it is “too near Seattle”’ (Office of Economic Adjustment, 1976). A county-level Economic Well-Being Policy Group, comprised of local officials and business leaders, reached similar conclusions, viewing Seattle’s success as coming at Tacoma’s expense and concluding that ‘as other areas of the region prospered a slow decline took place in Pierce County’. Beyond economic competition, this included the claim that ‘the increasing prestige of Seattle’s art and cultural activities has drawn from Pierce County to the detriment of local events’. Caught in this agglomeration shadow, Tacoma was willing to accept industries that ‘have taken advantage of our need to sustain our economy at any cost’. This meant that the very businesses that continued to thrive in the city were ‘those which a more prosperous community would not accept because they give the community a negative statewide image. Tacoma and Pierce County’s image as a smelly and dirty area is hard to overcome’ (Economic Well-Being Policy Group, 1978: A1). These

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expressions of relationality are subtle and difficult to capture statistically. One can chart regional occupation patterns and diverging growth rates, but the meaningful story is found in the nuances that defy easy measurement or characterization: emerging image insecurities; mounting anxieties over the contrasts between local struggles and a neighbour’s growing prestige; path dependencies initiated by choices made in the context of limited options. It is true that Seattle also experienced setbacks in this period, notably the ‘Boeing Bust’ at the start of the 1970s, when difficulties in the commercial aircraft market and a cancelled (government-sponsored) supersonic jet programme led to sharp employment declines at Boeing. Over 60,000 Seattle-area jobs were cut in the period between 1968 and 1971, with many former employees leaving the region in the absence of other job opportunities (Sale, 1976; Gibson, 2004). The city in turn experienced a substantial population decline in the 1970s. Ultimately, however, elite efforts to diversify the economy by building on existing public- and privatesector foundations in trade, research and business services positioned Seattle for a major boom in the 1980s (Abbott, 1992; Gibson, 2004). By the end of the 1970s, then, the relationship between Seattle and Tacoma had evolved from an intense competition for regional primacy to one defined by sharply contrasting economic profiles and a deep sense of Tacoma’s economic subordination to Seattle’s growth and dynamism. This is not an uncommon story. The crisis conditions that spread through most cities of the Global North in the 1970s were widely shared but differently experienced. However, rather than tracing these variations to national and international shifts in investment patterns – for example, from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt or from the US to overseas – the Tacoma/ Seattle experience calls attention to intra-regional developments and the ways that long-standing borrowing and shadowing dynamics structured the post-crisis trajectories of secondary cities. This becomes clear when we turn to Tacoma’s struggle since the 1980s to redefine its economy and place in the region, a process continually informed by a path dependency that has secured the city’s secondary status.

Redefining development from the 1980s to the 2000s Counter to Seattle’s ongoing regional dominance, Tacoma elites entered the 1980s with an increasing sense not only that Tacoma needed to move in a new economic direction but also that the city’s long-standing place in the regional economy directly hindered that possibility. As one consultantled development report noted in 1984,

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Tacoma’s policy conflict is that its existing resource based industries make the area unattractive to new technology and service based industries. The industries with long term growth potential for the Tacoma area, such as electronics, computers, accounting and legal services, simply do not locate near copper smelters, aluminium smelters, chemical plants and paper mills. (SRI International, 1984: 3) Even as key elements of the city’s industrial economy experienced further decline – most dramatically the closing of the Asarco copper smelter in 1985 – the ongoing perception of pollution associated with businesses such as the Simpson Tacoma Kraft paper mill was seen by local elites as hindering downtown office construction while Seattle boomed (Gillie, 1989). As described by Juli Wilkerson, Tacoma’s economic development director in the early 2000s, ‘in the mid-1980s Tacoma, Washington was considered by most to be a city on the decline: crime was rampant and the city’s downtown waterfront – a federally designated “Superfund” site – sat wasting away. Pulp mills choked the air … most investment went north to Seattle and retail left downtown for the mall’ (Wilkerson, 2004: 8). Per capita incomes in Tacoma and Pierce County as a whole were now below the US average (compared to just above average in 1969), with the gap relative to Seattle and King County also increasing (Gillie, 1988). The conclusion that followed was not, however, that an economic development strategy for Tacoma required a creative vision that moved beyond the history of ‘competition’ with Seattle. Instead, city officials and development consultants emphasized the existing assets that could position Tacoma to keep pace with Seattle if only local leaders embraced the right approach: Pierce County is blessed with abundant natural physical beauty. It has Mt. Rainier and the State’s best destination ski resort, expanses of scenic farmland, a superb natural deep-water port, and easy recreational access to the Puget Sound. It also has a growing far-eastern trade, is the home of an expanding health-care industry, and has two private universities, excellent community colleges, and vocational schools. Pierce County provides diverse cultural opportunities from professional sports to opera, ballet, and theater. It also has a fine art museum, a symphony orchestra, and a world-class zoo. The global, U.S., and statewide economic prospects, strengths, and weaknesses provide no indication of any externally-imposed constraints that should render Pierce

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County’s economic performance any less robust than King County’s. (Pierce County Government, 1987)1 What emerged was a familiar strategy of revitalizing the downtown economy through public-sector investments and business incentives in the hopes of attracting major corporate interests along with retail and tourist activity. At various points since the mid-1980s this has included projections of Tacoma as a centre for international finance, a leader in information technologies and a global trade hub (HUD, 1998; City of Tacoma, 2001, 2008; AngelouEconomics, 2008). As one notable example, Tacoma spent years billing itself as ‘America’s #1 Wired City’ after the city utility invested nearly $100 million laying 700 miles of fibre optic cable in the late 1990s. Advertising the network’s business benefits on billboards in Seattle, the city managed to persuade a few firms to relocate as part of the more general emergence of a small high-tech sector in Tacoma (Starner, 2000; Wilkerson, 2004). But projections of Tacoma’s imminent emergence as a tech hub were greatly overstated, such that similar recent attempts by the Economic Development Board for TacomaPierce County to claim that ‘Tacoma is a tech town’ have been met with scepticism as a repeat of past marketing exaggerations (Virgin, 2018). The actual transition away from the old economy from the 1990s onward has been a partial one. Downtown is in several respects thriving compared to the 1980s, with city efforts resulting in a state history museum, a convention centre, several art museums, a growing campus for the University of Washington and an increasing residential population. Yet, at the same time, the port and related elements of an industrial economy remain a central presence in Tacoma, while the downtown private-sector economy has never become the kind of FIRE-based (finance, insurance and real estate) anchor that city officials projected. A 2008 downtown development proposal prepared by yet another consulting firm summarized the situation in the following way: ‘Although downtown has become a hub of cultural, educational, and residential opportunities, there has been stagnant commercial investment in the city that would provide expansion opportunities for high-impact office employers’ (AngelouEconomics, 2008: 3). Not only did the city struggle to attract new ‘high-impact office employers’, but key firms with a long history in the city also opted to relocate to Seattle, notably including Pacific First Federal Savings Bank in 1989 and global firm Russell Investments in 2010. By a more circuitous route the same was true for wood products and real estate giant Weyerhaeuser – perhaps the most significant of all Tacoma-associated companies – which finally moved its headquarters to Seattle in 2016 after leaving Tacoma in 1971 for a suburban campus positioned between the two cities. Again reflecting the

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agglomeration dynamics that motivated the relocation of other companies, the company CEO described the move to Seattle as a matter of ‘attract[ing] the next wave of young employees’ (Rosenberg, 2016). As the largest downtown private-sector employer and one with a very long history in Tacoma (dating back to 1936), the departure of Russell Investments was particularly significant in both concrete and symbolic terms, calling into question the plausibility of the city’s longstanding hopes of operating on the same terrain as Seattle. Russell in 2010 had more than 1,800  employees worldwide and managed over $151 billion in assets. Faced with the threat of relocation to Seattle, city leaders collaborated with state officials and Representative Norm Dicks in a ‘Tacoma Partnership’ that offered an array of incentives to keep the company in Tacoma. In total, the mix of federal, state and local tax breaks, streetscape improvements and a publicly financed parking garage were valued at more than $148 million. The city also put forward a plan to make Russell Investments the foundation for a downtown international financial services area. But none of this was enough to compete with the inherent attractions of Seattle in the context of the reduced commercial real estate costs in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. Russell opted to take over a building formerly occupied by the defunct Washington Mutual (Brunner, 2009; Tacoma Daily Index, 2009). Until very recently, then, Tacoma existed in a kind of stasis in which elements of the old economic order persisted alongside a very partial transition in the downtown core, with local political elites struggling to attract business interests even as they embraced a standard range of development strategies (Williams and Pendras, 2013). Among the central obstacles facing the city throughout this history was the regional pull of Seattle as a centre for core business functions that continually served to draw capital away from Tacoma. This is not to say that the city did not also enjoy some elements of borrowed size in relation to Seattle, for instance through the regional impact of Boeing. But given that a number of key firms opted to move to Seattle and that the contrasting roles and reputations of the two cities repeatedly emerged as a problem from the perspective of Tacoma elites, it is clear that an intra-regional analysis of agglomeration is essential to understanding Tacoma’s historical trajectory.

Borrowed size, agglomeration shadows and Tacoma’s current boom In light of the long-standing efforts to redefine the city’s economy and status within the region, the current wave of outside investment in Tacoma

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has been enthusiastically embraced by public officials and local privatesector elites alike. Downtown Tacoma, in particular, is now characterized by an influx of private investment both springing directly from Seattle and emerging in response to the limits and complications of that city’s growth. As one developer described the decision to build a $60 million mixed-use development adjacent to the University of Washington Tacoma, ‘Tacoma is becoming a destination. Seattle is packed, overcrowded. There’s no parking and it’s extremely expensive’ (Martin, 2017a: 1A). Other projects include a $150 million Marriott hotel adjoining the convention centre, a multi-block apartment and retail complex, and an array of waterfront condominiums (Cockrell and Martin, 2018). Reflecting the same considerations, another news article highlighted the proliferation of originally Seattle-based restaurants into Tacoma as owners seek to escape rising rents and intense competition (Rutz, 2018). Much of this development fits into a broadly defined conception of borrowed size, with Tacoma now attracting residents, resources and cultural amenities that it would not obtain to the same degree in the absence of proximity to a booming Seattle. Thus, after only a 2.5 per cent increase in population in the decade between 2000 and 2010, from 2010 to 2019 Tacoma grew by 9.9  per cent (United States Census). The rate of growth has also been accelerating, with the city growing by over 5 per cent between 2015 and 2019 (the most recent year for which data is available). More broadly, according to estimates from the Puget Sound Regional Council, between 2018 and 2019 Pierce County grew more rapidly than Seattle-dominated King County, and was the only one in the four-county central Puget Sound region ‘with a higher growth rate compared with the previous year, growing by 1.8%’ (Puget Sound Regional Council, 2019: 2). Tacoma’s housing market is also undergoing rapid price increases tied to the overflow impact of Seattle, again signalling the city’s recent economic dynamism. After ranking as one of the bottom 20 metropolitan areas with the lowest annual rate of house price appreciation as recently as 2012, by the fourth quarter of 2017 Tacoma-Lakewood had the highest rate of house price appreciation in the country, just ahead of Seattle-Bellevue-Everett (Federal Housing Finance Agency, 2018). Summarizing the regional factors shaping Tacoma’s recent trajectory, a 2016 HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development) report analysing the early stages of the revitalized housing market noted that ‘the relatively lower cost of living, especially housing costs, makes the Tacoma-Lakewood metropolitan area an attractive place to live for commuters; net migration from King County to Pierce County averaged an estimated 3,150 people annually from 2009 through 2013 [and] this trend is expected to persist’ (HUD, 2016). Data

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from 2017 confirmed that prediction, with nearly 18,000 residents of King County moving to Pierce County that year, a figure 25 per cent higher than two years earlier (Khashimova Long, 2020). At a more general level, by 2017 only 25 per cent of Tacoma’s residents also worked in the city, compared to 33 per cent in 2002 (see Chapter 8, this volume). Taking stock of such developments, Elly Walkowiak, the city’s Assistant Director of Community and Economic Development, could accordingly declare that ‘2017 was a phenomenal year …There was amazing growth in all different sectors. You saw the rise of the multifamily sector and a balanced economy; it hit all the marks. There was the implementation of foreign investments in the city and that represents the largest projects in the downtown’ (Fickes, 2018: 1). Yet in our view it would be wrong to see this new moment of development as, in any simple sense, an advance upon the years of ‘underdevelopment’ in Seattle’s shadow. This is true both because there are ongoing constraints associated with proximity to Seattle and because there are real questions about who is benefiting – and who is suffering – from this particular form of borrowed size. As noted previously, borrowing size is typically represented as a symbol of effective regional integration and/or as a mechanism for securing desirable development gains. But if the gains secured come at the expense of existing residents – through increased cost of living without increased job opportunities – then those gains warrant critical re-evaluation. This is an argument Rousseau (2009) makes in connection with the tendency to pin urban redevelopment dreams on the hopes of making a city suitable to a new class of residents. By shifting from job-creation strategies to the creation of new urban landscapes of consumption – new homes, retail markets, restaurants, theatres and other entertainment venues – cities increasingly try to ‘adapt the city centre to the taste of the middle classes, whose arrival – not only to live, but also to consume – is eagerly expected to overcome economic decline’ (Rousseau, 2009: 771). Such amenities can, in theory, serve the interests of both newcomers and existing residents alike. But, too often, when such economic development strategies ‘work’ they result in heightened gentrification and displacement pressures. Hollingsworth and Goebel (2017: 7–8) acknowledge similar dynamics at play in legacy cities that ‘generally do not benefit from the pattern of increasing consolidation, in which corporations move to thriving global cities’. Instead, cities – in this case, Lowell, MA – have attempted to rebound ‘from the depths of economic distress’ by ‘turning millions of square feet of vacant industrial space into apartments, artists’ studios, and retail stores’ (Hollingsworth and Goebel, 2017: 11). For some older industrial cities, their positionality relative to their neighbour can therefore narrow their development options: in the face of failure to attract desirable

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firms and industries, they embrace a consumer-based development strategy aimed at attracting middle-class residents who work nearby, while core economic functions remain in the dominant city. That transition from city to suburb, from cultivating rich local traditions and identities to feeding the needs of a dominant neighbour, can be unsettling and come at the expense of previous residents (see Chapter 8, this volume). We see these concerns playing out clearly in Tacoma. While the city’s focus on residential and consumer-oriented development projects has achieved notable gains, the long-expressed desire to compete with Seattle in attracting a larger corporate presence and core office-based economic functions has met with limited success. One way of capturing this ongoing limitation is to note the general absence of Class A office space in Tacoma versus the huge and rapidly growing presence of such space in Seattle. Generally defined as high-quality office space able to command a given locality’s top rents, Class A space is also often understood to mean relatively recent construction, usually no more than ten years old. Yet as of 2018, the most recent Class A office space built without city assistance was in 2004, and there had been no new Class A space of any kind in over a decade. The Tacoma News Tribune accordingly lamented this situation in a 2017 editorial observing the concentration of corporate headquarters in Seattle and Bellevue and asserting that ‘to be a first-class city, Tacoma needs Class A offices’ (Tacoma News Tribune, 2017). In total, the city had just over 1 million square feet of Class A office space at that time (Martin, 2017c). Some recently completed mixed-use developments do include Class A space, but with limited square footage, such as the 75,000 square feet of office space incorporated into a ‘Brewery Blocks’ project that emphasizes residential and retail development (Bartlett and Dargan, 2018). To put that in context, the Washington State Commerce Department estimates that a single tech firm with 2,000 employees would require at least 250,000 square feet of Class A space. The contrast with Seattle is striking. As of 2017, downtown Seattle had about 33.5 million square feet of Class A office space, and 14 million square feet of new office space was built in the decade between 2007 and 2017 alone. More recently, ‘about 4.5 million square feet of office space was delivered last year [2019] … And about 7.8 million square feet was under construction at the middle of last year’ (Miller, 2020). Investors continue to have no apparent hesitation embracing new construction in Seattle, confident of market demand and the ability to command sufficient rents to make a profit. By comparison, the prevailing view regarding Tacoma is that major office construction would only be feasible following a tenant commitment to occupy the majority of the space (CBRE, 2014; Martin, 2017c).

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It is therefore appropriate to see Tacoma’s current downtown revitalization as reflecting not just borrowed size but also an ongoing agglomeration shadow: while the city borrows some consumptionoriented amenities, the commercial and financial interests the city has aspired to attract remain tied to Seattle and its immediate suburbs. Indeed, the older pattern of major firms departing Tacoma continues up to the present. State Farm – which in 2013 moved into the office space vacated by Russell Investments and employed 1,400 people in Tacoma – left at the end of 2018 (Martin and Cockrell, 2018). Adding to this sense of the city replaying past experiences, another of Tacoma’s largest privatesector employers, healthcare company DaVita, announced in 2017 that it would move its remaining Tacoma employees to the former Weyerhaeuser campus in Federal Way by 2021, ‘vacating a 10-story tower in the heart of downtown’ (Martin, 2017b). As Tacoma struggles to attract ‘desirable’ tech jobs, the ‘old economy’ associated with the port and related industrial activities remains relatively healthy. For example, the WestRock pulp and paper mill (formerly Simpson Tacoma Kraft), in 2018 announced plans for an equipment upgrade and substantial expansion in production (Dunkelberger, 2018). Three new multimillion-dollar industrial centres encompassing 3.9 million square feet of space were also completed in 2018 (Fickes, 2018). In 2020, UPS opened a new regional ground package and sortation hub adjacent to the port that added 777,000 square feet of processing capacity to its global network (Berman, 2020). More contentiously, Puget Sound Energy, a private energy utility, is building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility at the port, which has met with major opposition from the Puyallup Tribe and a number of Tacoma residents and activist organizations. Alongside environmental and other concerns about the working waterfront (including important issues of tribal sovereignty in the case of LNG specifically), one issue at play for some critics is the perceived conflict between this industrial development and the consumerand middle-class-oriented vision of a new downtown. The following commentary, submitted by Bliss Moore on behalf of the Sierra Club Tatoosh Group of Pierce County in connection with a recent conflict over industrial zoning and land use in the Port of Tacoma, captures these tensions well (Moore, 2017: 7, original emphasis): Our Point is: In this Port/Tidelands Sub-area, we DO NOT want to see generation of any more industrial pollutants that will re-contaminate our air, soils, and waters of our New Cleaner Greener Revitalized City of Tacoma! To assure our continued success in redeveloping Greater Tacoma to attract

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new residents, clean green businesses, and visitors, we must have strict interim regulations in the Port/Tideland Subarea … Also, the additional toxic air emissions from the fossil fuels will likely keep new residents from occupying residential areas in NE Tacoma and other near-by neighborhoods resulting in a drop of property values there. WE DO NOT WANT TO SEE TACOMA REGRESS TO ‘THE BAD OLD DAYS’ AND BECOME A 3RD CLASS DYING CITY FROM FOSSIL FUELS!!! Tacoma thus remains uncertainly balanced between its earlier industrial and affordable niche in the regional economy and the prospect of building on a different relationship to Seattle.

The perils of (narrow) prosperity To the extent Tacoma is now emerging as a ‘winner’ in capturing the kind of creative class residential upsurge once presented as the solution to urban crisis in old industrial cities, the outcome is one that entails substantial displacement and obstacles for working-class residents. This is clearly a potential issue in any conflicts over the loss or retention (and possible expansion) of jobs tied to the industrial activity at the port (and more broadly). More immediately, there have already been significant costs associated with the housing boom in Tacoma. With Seattle’s workforce facing one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, an increasing number of both renters and buyers have turned to Tacoma as an opportunity to reside in a city at much lower cost. As Tacoma officials note, this is in turn pushing up local prices, raising ‘concern about displacement pressure’ among residents (City of Tacoma, 2018, Appendix B, 13). While this dynamic has a longer history, going at least as far back as the earlier rapid increase in Seattle housing costs between 1997 and 2007, the pressures on Tacoma over the past few years have been particularly intense. As of 2019, the view put forward by the housing division of Tacoma’s Community and Economic Development Department was that buyers ‘fleeing Seattle and heading south are “a significant driver” for Tacoma’s hot market’ (Roberts, 2019). At a macro level, the trends in housing costs since 2016 have exacerbated what was already a major issue for lower-income residents in Tacoma. In the period between 1990 and 2016, median rents in Tacoma increased by 39 per cent and median home values nearly doubled, while median household incomes only increased by 20 per cent. The problem has grown

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worse since then, with median rents up another 16 per cent between March 2016 and March 2018 and more recent estimates (July 2018 to July 2019) showing a further 7 per cent increase in a year. Similarly, the median home sale price increased by 33 per cent between 2016 and 2018, and by the spring of 2019 Tacoma had replaced Seattle as the hottest housing market in the country (City of Tacoma, 2018; Roberts, 2019). City officials accordingly pointed to significant unmet need with regard to the affordable housing supply, particularly among households defined as ‘extremely low income’ and (to a lesser extent) ‘very low income’. Combining those two categories, the current supply of affordable housing is well below half of what is required. In all, the city estimated that in 2018, 40 per cent of households in Tacoma counted as ‘cost-burdened households’ under the HUD definition, paying gross 30 per cent or more of their monthly income on housing costs (City of Tacoma, 2018). This general transformation is also having a dramatic impact in displacing residents from particular neighbourhoods. In the historically Black working-class neighbourhood of the Hilltop, for instance, the median home price increased 18 per cent between May 2017 and May 2018, with ongoing increases projected in part due to a light-rail project – slated for completion in 2022 – that will further link the centrally located neighbourhood to downtown. Reflecting this transition, local developers are buying up a significant number of buildings in the neighbourhood for renovation on the assumption that ‘Hilltop will be the next up-andcoming neighbourhood that will attract Seattle businesses because the corridor there sits near the planned light-rail station, near a handful of planned mixed-used developments and is a five-minute drive from Interstate 5’ (Vinh, 2018: A1). According to one estimate, 35 per cent of the Hilltop’s Black residents have moved out of the neighbourhood since 2010, with a 2017 report on affordability in the neighbourhood more generally concluding that ‘many Hilltop residents, particularly renters, cannot keep pace with rising housing costs’ (Vinh, 2018, A1). That same report stated that 45 per cent of Hilltop residents were costburdened in 2017, compounding a longer-term trend in which the percentage of residents in the neighbourhood experiencing cost burdens had already nearly doubled between 2000 and 2014 (Federal Transit Administration, 2017). This problem of gentrification is of course well recognized in cities like New York, San Francisco and Seattle. But the intra-regional relational aspect of this issue – what we might call regional gentrification – has received much less attention. Tacoma’s recent ‘success’ in riding Seattle’s coat-tails lies at the heart of a growing problem in a city that was long noted for its relative housing affordability. We can see this relationship

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in microcosm in the recent displacement of tenants from Tacoma’s Tiki Apartments. Until 2018, the apartments were home to a number of lowincome residents, many with disabilities and on fixed incomes. In April 2018 the 58-unit complex was purchased by a Seattle-based developer, CWD Investments, known for overhauling buildings and creating micro apartments aimed at millennials ‘from the barista to the Microsoft engineer’ (Porter, 2016). Citing plans for a major renovation (along with major rent increases), CWD moved to evict the residents on short notice – in some cases giving tenants less than a month to move out – in exchange for a one-time relocation benefit of $900. Such actions were legally compliant with city requirements for removing tenants renting on a month-tomonth basis, with minimum notice set at 20 days. Asked about the impact on the displaced tenants, company owner Chad Duncan asserted that ‘most of these people were living in squalor and an unsafe environment’. He went on to cite alleged issues like rats and cockroaches, concluding that ‘for most, moving will be an improvement’ (Driscoll, 2018). With similar problems currently emerging at other apartment complexes around central Tacoma, the experience at the Tiki Apartments is indicative of the pressures on working-class residents that come with the overflow investment into Tacoma. As the city moves to attract middle-class residents and embrace a role as consumer satellite to Seattle, we might accordingly characterize this particular mode of borrowed size as a setback rather than an advance from a working-class perspective. This highlights the need to disaggregate in arriving at any conclusions about the positive or negative impact of any particular agglomeration shadow or instance of borrowed size in a secondary city. Of course, that leaves open an array of questions about possible community and political responses to issues such as displacement and declining affordability (and a major tenant-organizing and housing-access effort has indeed emerged in Tacoma). But at the least this ongoing gentrification makes clear that a ‘successful’ manifestation of relating to a regionally dominant city can come with problems as damaging as those associated with a more clear-cut ‘losing’ experience.

Conclusion Tacoma’s actual and perceived secondary status is central to its historical arc from incorporation to the present. Once Seattle emerged as a commercial centre, Tacoma was consigned to a slower process of industrial development. This path dependency persists to the present moment, so that even Tacoma’s current boom reflects the ongoing logic of capital accumulation and concentration in Seattle. While Tacoma is

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now borrowing size in ways that fuel downtown growth and outside investment, the parameters of this boom (to date) reflect a focus on consumer amenities and housing development. This suggests that Tacoma’s likely future is as a more urban (and tourist-friendly) variation on a bedroom community – the city that becomes a suburb, as Dierwechter (Chapter 8, this volume) puts it – in the regional shadow of Seattle’s continuing agglomeration of core business functions. Indeed, just as some of Tacoma’s earlier industrial functions advanced Seattle’s commercial development, Tacoma’s current evolution entails taking on more of the social reproduction that enables Seattle’s economic dynamism. This can be seen as evidence of an expanding process of metropolization that brings Tacoma into Seattle’s regional orbit in new ways, but it also sheds light on the need to consider metropolization from the perspective of those being pulled into the metropolis. This is not simply a neutral or natural ‘spread’ of primary city benefits outward from the core to the periphery (Partridge et al, 2009). Seattle’s ability to centralize high wage positions and externalize the spaces and costs of social reproduction, and Tacoma’s decades of struggle followed by skyrocketing real estate costs, are expressions of the same relational politics. Massey (2007) reached similar conclusions years ago when exploring the connections between London’s ‘successes’ and the struggles of ‘lagging’ regions. Neighbouring cities are always already part of the metropolis, as metropolitan growth and development are produced in and through relations to other cities, near and far. The question is how neighbours are connected and the terms of the relations that link cities together. At the same time, the gains associated with this kind of ‘secondary city boom’ should also be interrogated more closely in terms of who actually benefits and suffers. Debates around borrowed size and agglomeration shadows have too often operated at an aggregate, city-wide level, obscuring the ways that race, class and other social relationships enter into the equation. As Silverman (2018) has argued, ‘redevelopment’ of struggling cities often advances the interests of some residents and activities over others, creating ‘dual’ cities on the urban periphery that mirror the tensions and inequalities of the core (primary) city. Once again, this complicates the representation of the simple ‘spread’ of benefits from one location (primary cities) to another (secondary cities) and points to the uneven development geographies associated with these relations; different populations experience enhanced intra-regional connections in different ways. In Tacoma, rising housing costs and the related influx of new residents are gentrifying downtown and the surrounding neighbourhoods, pushing out the city’s multiracial working class. Some elites may feel a sense of accomplishment for facilitating this wave of investment, but such

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developments also undermine the city’s affordability and jeopardize the remnants of Tacoma’s industrial economy (including the still vital working waterfront) that continues to be a source of better-paying, unionized jobs. Finally, the consolidation of Tacoma’s new economy also threatens to foreclose alternative development possibilities. The absence of a full-fledged ‘growth coalition’ and the weakness of local capital once provided (largely unrealized) opportunities for unorthodox and social justice-oriented policy agendas to potentially gain a hearing (Williams and Pendras, 2013). Now the growing presence of real estate speculation threatens to secure a politics locked in to perpetuating property development as the primary economic strategy. In the absence of a more varied and expansive view of what development might entail, the city’s celebration of this newfound success also encourages residents to see the embrace of such ‘growth coalition’ agendas as unreservedly desirable, or at the least as necessary and unavoidable. Given these economic and political pressures, a simple call for improved regional planning to better integrate places like Tacoma into the cityregion dominated by Seattle is appropriate but not sufficient. Again, metropolization can share development benefits more broadly within a region, but it can also bring new development problems that require attention. A heightened awareness of how the primary city shapes the terms of secondary city development (and vice versa), and the character of secondary city inclusion within the scope of the metropolis, is needed if we are to break with the tendency to characterize secondary city struggles as simply a reflection of internal shortcomings rather than connecting them to specific forms of regional integration. In other words, it is not that such places are ‘left behind’, as much of the current discourse has it, but instead that they are already deeply intertwined with the conditions of success for the superstar cities they are encouraged to emulate. Getting policy ‘right’ is then closely tied to questions of political power in the region and within particular cities. Where elites have long benefited from the uneven development that defines the Seattle/Tacoma relationship – including its current manifestation – the periodic upsurge of radical dissent across the region highlights the underlying class character of this ‘left coast’ development. A more equitable form of regional integration depends on labour and community organizing both within secondary cities and across the region (see Chapter 7, this volume, for the promise of such organizing across city lines). In an important sense, the dynamic in Tacoma reflects a race between the pace of transformation already underway and the growing organizing capacity of community activists and others with a different vision for the city who have mobilized in response to the pressures of gentrification and urban displacement.

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Note 1

This quotation also reflects the growing sense of confusion and frustration experienced by local decision-makers as they navigated Seattle’s agglomeration shadow. Indeed, the city seemed to have all the right ingredients for success, ingredients that worked well elsewhere, but the desired results were not forthcoming in Tacoma.

References

Abbott, C. (1992) ‘Regional city and network city: Portland and Seattle in the twentieth century’, Western Historical Quarterly, 23(3): 293–322. AngelouEconomics (2008) ‘Downtown Tacoma strategic plan’, draft prepared for the City of Tacoma, July, Austin, TX. Bartlett, M. and Dargan, D. (2018) ‘Horizon Partners taps another historic development’, Daily Journal of Commerce, 28 June. Berman, J. (2020) ‘UPS opens up new Tacoma regional hub’, Logistics Management, 28 July. Brunner, J. (2009) ‘Tacoma vs. Seattle: fight over Russell Investments worth millions’, Seattle Times, 7 June. Burger, M.J., Meijers, E.J., Hoogerbrugge, M.M. and Tresserra, J.M. (2015) ‘Borrowed size, agglomeration shadows and cultural amenities in north-west Europe’, European Planning Studies, 23(6): 1090–109. CBRE (2014) ‘City of Tacoma market demand analysis’, Tacoma, WA. City of Tacoma (2001) ‘Destination downtown’, Community and Economic Development Department, Tacoma, WA. City of Tacoma (2008) ‘Downtown plan update’, Community and Economic Development Department, Tacoma, WA. City of Tacoma (2018) ‘Affordable housing action strategy’, Community and Economic Development Department, Tacoma, WA. Cockrell, D. and Martin, K. (2018) ‘Gentrification in Tacoma has its own ZIP code’, Tacoma News Tribune, 1 March. Driscoll, M. (2018) ‘New Tacoma landlord to desperate tenants he’s evicting: “moving will be an improvement”’, Tacoma News Tribune, 20 April. Dunkelberger, S. (2018) ‘Pulp mill prepares for expansion on Tideflats’, Tacoma Weekly, 12 July. Economic Well-Being Policy Group (1978) ‘Economic policy recommendations’, Growth Policy Association of Pierce County, Tacoma, WA. Federal Housing Finance Agency (2018) ‘House price index quarterly report’, 2017Q4, 27 February, Washington, DC. Federal Transit Administration (2017) ‘Proposed strategies to increase affordability and stem displacement on Hilltop’, United States Department of Transportation Draft Report.

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Ficken, R.E. (2002) Washington Territory, Pullman: Washington State University Press. Fickes, A. (2018) ‘Economic development boom continues for Tacoma in 2018’, Tacoma Weekly, 15 February. Gibson, T.A. (2004) Securing the Spectacular City: The Politics of Revitalization and Homelessness in Downtown Seattle, Boulder, CO, and New York: Lexington Books. Gillie, J. (1988) ‘Pierce public slips back on income scale’, Tacoma News Tribune, 15 November. Gillie, J. (1989) ‘Downtown Tacoma struggles as Seattle booms’, Tacoma News Tribune, 31 July. Hollingsworth, T. and Goebel, A. (2017) Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities: Strategies for Postindustrial Success from Gary to Lowell, Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development) (1998) ‘What works in the empowerment zones and enterprise communities: volume II’, Washington, DC. HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development) (2016) ‘Housing market profiles: Tacoma-Lakewood’, Office of Policy Development and Research, Washington, DC. Khashimova Long, K. (2020) ‘As Seattleites and their money flow south, Tacoma residents grapple with changing neighborhoods’, Seattle Times, 17 February. McKean, G.L. (1941) ‘Tacoma, lumber metropolis’, Economic Geography, 17(3): 311–20. Martin, K. (2017a) ‘Development would bring 14-story high-rise to Tacoma’, Tacoma News Tribune, 3 July. Martin, K. (2017b) ‘Large employer announces it’s leaving Tacoma’, Tacoma News Tribune, 3 August. Martin, K. (2017c) ‘What would it take for Tacoma to become a hub for high paying tech jobs’, Tacoma News Tribune, 4 October. Martin, K. and Cockrell, D. (2018) ‘State Farm leaving Tacoma in 2018’, Tacoma News Tribune, 11 January. Massey, D. (2007) World City, Cambridge: Polity Press. Meijers, E.J. and Burger, M.J. (2017) ‘Stretching the concept of “borrowed size”’, Urban Studies, 54(1): 269–91. Miller, B. (2020) ‘On the block’, Daily Journal of Commerce, 20 February. Moore, B. (2017) Comment letter on Tideflats Interim Regulations, Amended Ordinance No. 28470, 22 June, City of Tacoma, Tideflats Interim Regulations, Available from: https://cms.cityoftacoma.org/ Planning/Tideflats/InterimRegulations/WrittenComments8-2-17.pdf [Accessed 4 December 2020].

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Morgan, M. (1979) Puget’s Sound: A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Office of Economic Adjustment (1976) ‘Economic adjustment plan for the Tacoma area of Washington’, United States Department of Defense, Washington, DC. Partridge, M.D., Rickman, D.S., Ali, K. and Olfert, M.R. (2009) ‘Do new economic geography agglomeration shadows underlie current population dynamics across the urban hierarchy?’ Papers in Regional Science, 88(2): 445–66. Pierce County Government (1987) ‘Strategic economic development plan’, Tacoma, WA. Porter, L. (2016) ‘Developer building up a portfolio by creating housing for millennials’, Daily Journal of Commerce, 21 October. Puget Sound Regional Council (2019) ‘Puget Sound trends’, 5 August. Seattle, WA. Roberts, P. (2019) ‘Tacoma’s housing market is now the hottest in U.S. – and Seattle knows why’, Seattle Times, 24 May. Rosenberg, M. (2016) ‘Weyerhaeuser sets down in urban Seattle after decades in Federal Way’, Seattle Times, 10 October. Rousseau, M. (2009) ‘Re-imaging the city centre for the middle classes: regeneration, gentrification and symbolic policies in “loser cities”’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(3): 770–88. Rutz, D. (2018) ‘Seattle restaurateurs escaping rising rents see brighter future in Tacoma’, Seattle Times, 11 May. Sale, R. (1976) Seattle, Past to Present, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Silverman, R. (2018) ‘Rethinking shrinking cities: peripheral dual cities have arrived’, Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(3): 294–311. SRI International (Stanford Research Institute International) (1984) ‘Strategies for Tacoma’s economic development: phase II final report’, Menlo Park, CA. Starner, R. (2000) ‘Tacoma: wired for growth’, Site Selection, [online] 25  September, Available from: https://siteselection.com/ssinsider/ special/000925tacoma.htm [Accessed 10 October 2019]. Sullivan, C. (2017) ‘Tacoma is OK riding Seattle’s coattails’, KIRO Radio/ My Northwest, 7 March. Tacoma Daily Index (2009) ‘Russell Investments moving to Seattle’, 9 September. Tacoma News Tribune (1947) ‘Tacoma no longer lumber “mill town”’, 10 January. Tacoma News Tribune (2017) ‘Our view’, 7 May. Thrush, C. (2007) Native Seattle, Seattle: University of Washington Press.

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Vinh, T. (2018) ‘As Tacoma’s Hilltop changes, residents are priced out’, Seattle Times, 13 May. Virgin, B. (2018) ‘Calling Tacoma a “tech town” is a far-fetched’, Tacoma News Tribune, 21 March. Wilkerson, J. (2004) ‘From Superfund site to wired city’, IEDC Economic Development Journal, 3(1): 8–15. Williams, C. (2019) ‘Labor radicalism and the local politics of Chinese exclusion: Mayor Jacob Weisbach and the Tacoma Chinese expulsion of 1885’, Labor History, 60(6): 685–703. Williams, C. and Pendras, M. (2013) ‘Urban stasis and the politics of alternative development in the United States’, Urban Geography, 34(3): 289–304. Wolverton, C. (1957a). ‘Drift or direction – what’s Tacoma future? Part VII’, Tacoma News Tribune, 27 April. Wolverton, C. (1957b) ‘Drift or direction – what’s Tacoma’s future? Part VIII’, Tacoma News Tribune, 28 April.

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Borrowed Social Performance: Labour and Community Organizations in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California Gary Hytrek

Introduction Cities have long functioned as primary drivers for trade, investment and regional economic development, as well as sites where individuals emerge from their private spaces, connect with each other, form solidarities, politicize themselves and begin to think as a group with distinctive interconnected interests (Hytrek, 2020), to create what Mouffe (1996) calls chains of equivalence. Particularly in the US, cities manage a broad array of offloaded regulatory responsibilities and socio-economic risks and are important geographical targets and institutional laboratories for a variety of neoliberal market-based policy experiments (Peck et al, 2009: 58). These range from place marketing, enterprise zones, property redevelopment schemes and local tax abatements to workfare policies and new strategies of social control, along with a host of other institutional modifications within the local governmental apparatus. Even as US cities increasingly function as sites for neoliberal strategies and for securing order and control of marginalized populations, they remain incubators of and platforms for counterhegemonic movements. Yet the politicizing effects

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of cities are not uniform across space, with new movements emerging in some unlikely cities, those without histories of progressive activism. In this chapter, I analyse one such case, Long Beach, CA, where a long history of conservative politics was dramatically and quickly reversed by the unexpected gelling of a historically fragmented labour and community sector into a viable progressive movement. To understand the rapid turnaround, the analysis draws upon the secondary city literature that examines the mechanisms through which smaller regional (secondary) cities are able to ‘punch above their weight’ and achieve economic performance unique for their size. In effect, smaller regional cities experience a ‘first city bonus’ due to their proximity to larger primate cities, manifested in economic growth that outperforms larger cities (Camagni and Capello, 2015: 1041). In the original conceptualization of borrowing size, Alonso (1973) argues that smaller cities located in a larger ‘megapolitan complex’ perform better because they have access to agglomeration benefits of larger neighbouring cities. The literature on agglomeration economies has traditionally highlighted proximity to inputs or specialized infrastructural requirements that produce significant advantages, even in an adverse business climate. For firms, this clustering ‘represents a mediating environment that supports interfirm relationships and higher levels of social capital that facilitates the sharing of knowledge and innovation’ (Rosenfield, 2003: 1). Distance is crucial, but so too are accessibility and interaction, with the latter constituting ‘both a measure of, and the mechanism enabling, borrowed size’ (Phelps et al, 2001: 615; Parr, 2002). Therefore, smaller regional cities in which interactive networks can be established will experience better economic performance, while delivering substantial cost savings for firms and households. Smaller cities that allow for high levels of interaction are potentially more attractive to firms than equally sized cities without a large neighbour because of the possibility of maintaining face-to-face contacts with partners in the neighbouring metropolis without incurring the costs related to congestion, housing, taxes and regulation of an intrametropolitan location. Advantages for firms that locate in secondary cities include access to specialized labour and informational external economies of larger nearby places, lower rents and less congestion, reduced transaction costs, enhanced tacit knowledge and increased flexibility (see Storper, 1997; Phelps et al, 2001). In turn, smaller regional cities may also see an increase in supportive professional and business services for which they, independently, lack the supporting critical mass. Meijers and Burger (2017: 276) refer to this as ‘a case of institutional borrowed size rather than as a functional process’.

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I propose to extend the analysis of proximity, borrowing and networking beyond economic performance, to what I refer to as ‘social performance’. If economic performance is affected by a city’s location in a larger ‘megapolitan complex’ and the possibility of ‘borrowing size’ is due to the proximity to larger cities, might these observations be transferable to social (justice) performance? Can emerging social movements in secondary cities leverage proximity to larger movements in movement-rich neighbouring cities to create an organizational infrastructure – beyond their independent capacity – to sustain emancipatory social justice projects? In other words, can the same mechanisms that facilitate cross-city relationship-building (or network connectivity) for economic ends, be leveraged to generate the requisite trust and emotional solidarities critical to creating the deep personal ties that socialize and connect activists, facilitate information flows and help create solidarity through shared identities and meanings? This chapter explores these questions through an analysis of Long Beach, CA, the second-largest city in Los Angeles County behind the larger social movement-rich city of Los Angeles. Three points are important here. First, I am concerned with the development of borrowing and interaction among subaltern groups in society for social movement purposes. The existing literature emphasizes elite/business social network connectivity to promote their interest in maximizing growth. Second, the focus is on borrowing social performance, rather than on functions, as the nascent social justice movement in Long Beach achieved greater gains than one might expect given the movement’s infancy and lack of a supporting critical mass. Third, proximity does not automatically engender network connectivity supportive of movement-building to challenge hegemonic conservative politics. As Hytrek and Márquez (2013: 499) argue, under certain conditions network connectivity (what they call contiguous interdependencies) may fail to develop. For instance, metropolitan areas with diverse cultural and social characteristics, patterns of economic or demographic isolation or an antagonistic history between larger and small cities may find these issues undermine the development of connectivity and interaction. Moreover, the larger neighbouring city with greater social movement resources, and larger more experienced organizations, can potentially displace local voices and ignore local historical and social conditions, thereby undermining the building of relationships (that is, chains of equivalence) indispensable to creating an organizational infrastructure to sustain long-term local power-building. In situations where agents face structural impediments, cultural dissimilarities or histories of conflict and tension, borrowing and networking are unlikely to emerge, inhibiting collective activity and resource mobilization. These are not insurmountable, however; Long Beach demonstrates the

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possibilities for better-than-expected social performance in secondary cities characterized by these historical, social and political challenges. In exploring the Long Beach case, the chapter begins with an overview of the city’s political economy and its position as a secondary city in the region. Next, I apply the analytical concepts of proximity, borrowing and networking to briefly examine the historical relationships between Los Angeles and Long Beach elites, and then to analyse the emergence of the Long Beach social justice movement. I conclude with a discussion of potential fruitfulness of the literature for understanding how social movement and labour organizing in secondary cities can benefit from borrowing performance at an intra-regional level to enhance social performance.

Long Beach: a secondary city Long Beach is a highly diverse city of 484,958 residents in one of the country’s most strategic locations in Los Angeles County in southern California (see Figure 7.1). Among the criteria used to establish secondary city status, Long Beach fits the basic geographical and functional definition as laid out by Alonso (1973). The city is part of the Long BeachFigure 7.1: Location of Long Beach, CA

Source: PolicyLink and USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (2019: 14)

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Los Angeles-Anaheim metropolitan statistical area and forms part of the same functional entity of the region. The cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach share the largest and second-largest ports in the US, which collectively account for 40 per cent of the nation’s imports, and they collaborate on the logistical movement of goods. Another noteworthy indicator is faster job growth: a 3.9 per cent increase in Long Beach, 2008 to 2015, compared to 2.2  per cent for Los Angeles County (Downtown Long Beach Alliance, 2019: 17). Moreover, only about 22 per cent of people who live in Long Beach actually work in the city (Mehlinger, 2018), due to lower housing costs and less congestion relative to Los Angeles. Long Beach is also experiencing a construction boom driven in part by fewer regulatory hurdles for developers.1

The political-economic context Although Long Beach has its own history and identity, distinct from that of Los Angeles, elite cross-city connectivity and economic development are intertwined. Elites in both cities historically shared similar competitive concerns, and their ability to construct regional networks created a powerful alliance to dominate their respective local city politics, to promote economic growth consistent with their interests, and to impede challenges from labour and community groups. The structural context for these patterns in Long Beach must be seen within the global economic and geopolitical forces that have long conditioned Long Beach, dating from the founding of the Long Beach Port in 1911 and the anchoring of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet in 1919 (Hytrek, 2020). Over time, the city evolved from a sleepy resort town and haven for Midwesterner migrants (aka ‘Iowa by the Sea’), to an industrial and maritime powerhouse heavily dependent on the US Navy and the Douglas Aircraft Company (later McDonnell Douglas and then Boeing). From the end of the Second World War to the 1990s, Long Beach benefited enormously (albeit unevenly) from military spending, with the Navy and Douglas becoming at various times the city’s largest employer (Miller, 1994: 5). The near complete dominance of defence spending in tandem with the city’s economic integration into a region linked to global economic and geopolitical processes meant that shifting military spending and priorities were felt beyond the immediate military and aerospace sectors in all ancillary industries (Hytrek, 2020). Throughout the 20th  century, a small, tightly connected group of conservative, wealthy, White men, interlocked through elite social and business connections, drove Long Beach politics (Reasons and Goodman,

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1976; Madden, 2014). The origins of this dynamic can be found in the early decades of the 20th century and the creation of a powerful anti-union strategy – the open shop – through the efforts of the influential Los Angeles Times and the powerful Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association (M&M). The Los Angeles Times not only controlled public perception, but also provided what Mike Davis calls a ‘monolithic direction and vision’ for the region, which was unique among ‘great American cities’ (cited in Jones and Catalena, 2009). Industrial freedom and the open shop were strategies Los Angeles elites used to out-compete San Francisco and attract investment by keeping labour costs low and the labour market unorganized. Early on, the Los Angeles political class recognized the success of the open shop model required the participation of Long Beach, which they saw as a potential ‘source of union labor difficulties …’ and thus needing support to combat ‘radical labor elements’, ‘subversives’ and ‘unionism’ (Los Angeles Times, 1936).2 At the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, the Long Beach city council officially endorsed the open shop principles in 1920 (Los Angeles Times, 1920), creating the opportunity for Long Beach elites to forge regional connections with M&M affiliates, producing a powerful alliance to defend their local interests. Henry Barbour, a director of the Long Beach–Los Angeles Dock and Terminal Company, summarized the Long Beach position in 1922: ‘the great American principle of industrial freedom and the open shop’ is what has made ‘Long Beach the fastestgrowing city in the United States’ and ‘the fourth manufacturing city in California’ (Los Angeles Times, 1922, 1930). The Los Angeles Times was joined by the local Long Beach press – all run by prominent local conservatives – in valorizing and reinforcing the ideals of individualism, competition and private property while denigrating labour unions as inconsistent with American and local values. These media interests were all closely linked through economic, political and personal connections (Norfleet, 2004: 26–31; Hytrek and Márquez, 2013). Along with the M&M, the Los Angeles Citizens’ Alliance, to which most of the region’s major business owners belonged, promoted anti-union efforts by disseminating information and money (Fredericks, 1990). Beyond the opportunities to build supportive markets, access to financial resources was determined by membership in employer associations, which in turn funded the violence that impeded labour organizing by hiring strikebreakers and special police. If any businessmen had doubts about their position on organized labour, they ‘found their credit cut off at local banks, and members who weakened in the face of union demands had their products boycotted’ (Kahrl, 1983: 171). In effect, the press and employer organizations – open to anyone not belonging to or supporting

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a labour union – not only shaped employer identity but promoted public disdain for unions and support for the open shop principle and effectively limited opportunities for network-building among community and labour groups. A number of factors account for the lack of labour/community organizing during this period. While cross-city networking among local elites meant access to organizational and financial resources, labour and community activists remained isolated or adopted an inward strategy. Legal restrictions and the level and threat of violence also minimized organizing opportunities. Furthermore, the major industrial economic drivers during this period (for example, shipbuilding, ironworks, automobiles, canneries) were spatially restricted offshore in the harbour complex, while the notoriously difficult to organize tourist and service occupations dominated (the ‘mainland’) central Long Beach. Not surprisingly, the port industrial complex created similar wage and working conditions that generated the most significant collective mobilizations of labour in the region during the 1900–30 period. Yet the city of Long Beach was conspicuously absent in that effort, as the regional infrastructure patterned organizing that followed the movement of goods along the major railways and trucking routes from the port, passing through San Pedro, Wilmington and Los Angeles (see Hytrek and Márquez, 2013). Long Beach was integrated into the Southern California economy and transportation system as a tourist destination, not as an industrial hub, isolating the (central) city’s workers from organizing themselves regionally. From the 1910s through to the 1970s, the specific interaction of structure and agency within the regional context produced strong crosscity elite networks and weak ties among labour and community residents. Arrayed against labour and community residents were a small number of elites who constructed a regional network of personal and professional linkages and coalesced around an open shop, growth-first strategy. As a result, Long Beach emerged from this period with a fragmented labour and community sector set against a powerful, ideologically driven political class. Development after 1980 continued to be driven by a unified governing coalition with its roots in the pre-1970 period. Even as Long Beach faced dislocations similar to Los Angeles in the post-1980 period – the spillover of civil unrest and economic downsizing – the city did not experience the progressive turn characteristic of Los Angeles. As recently as 2007, the political class successfully thwarted attempts by labour to implement progressive equity-based policies; yet, by 2014, a series of similar policies were in place. The rapid turnaround is notable for a city with no history of labour-community organizing; whereas in Los Angeles, from the 1965

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Watts Uprising through the Justice Uprising in 1992, social and labour activism underwent crisis, transition and redevelopment, so that by 2000 Ruth Milkman could write about the ‘LA Model’ (Milkman, 2006; also Soja, 2010). Long Beach has no such history; nonetheless, by 2014 a Long Beach version of the LA Model was driving social performance beyond what one would expect in such a short time. As the region underwent an entrepreneurial turn in the post-1980 period, driven by enormous economic, social, political and cultural dislocations, its political class envisioned a plethora of regional growthoriented tourist and port development projects. Similar to the situation in the early 1900s, Long Beach emerged as pivotal in determining whether a growth or growth-with-equity vision would guide future regional development (Hytrek, 2020). Determined to leverage Long Beach’s centrality to this strategy, Los Angeles and Long Beach activists founded the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community (LB Coalition) in 2008. Activists in both cities recognized that a counterhegemonic equity-based strategy had to be regional, and thus required the inclusion of the region’s second-largest city. While an earlier organization, Long Beach Area Citizens Involved (LBACI), laid some of the foundation for the LB Coalition’s work, the basis for a ‘LB Model’ emerged from the work of the LB Coalition in developing an organizational infrastructure to deepen and broaden the participation of ordinary residents in positions of power and public policy-making. Drawing on their partners in Los Angeles, the LB  Coalition focused on transforming the low-wage service economy and reframing the development discourse around the idea of responsible development (growth with equity) and participatory democracy. Currently, social performance borrowing continues to sustain the effective mobilization of resources and the deepening of the relational process in Long Beach through the California Endowment (TCE)’s Building Healthy Communities (BHC), Long Beach project, which functions as a source of grants and as a convening space to assist with facilitation, coordination and strategic planning.

Back to the future: reinventing the tourism industry By the late 1970s, Long Beach was ranked by a federal government report as among the most socially, economically and financially distressed cities in the country (Hytrek, 2009). The Navy had begun downsizing, while increased regional competition – with the location of the Lakewood Center Mall in nearby Lakewood, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park and

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Disneyland in Anaheim – devastated downtown. Long Beach, already reeling from the loss of major regional department stores, suffered two additional blows. In 1978, the passage of Proposition 13 slashed property taxes, so that by 1998 property taxes as a proportion of the general fund revenues were cut in half (Baenen et al, 1999), and after 1980, the Reagan administration gutted federal urban spending (Purcell, 2000). The deepening crisis triggered massive White flight from downtown to east Long Beach and surrounding cities. By 2010, less than 26 per cent of the central city’s population was White, compared to 93 per cent in 1960; Latino and Asian – mainly Cambodian – immigrants filled in the gap (Hytrek, 2010). Despite the political and economic crisis, the links between city officials and developers survived and the governing coalition launched an entrepreneurial-based corporate-centred strategy based on tourism, downtown office and hotel construction, and middle-class residential development to rebuild the city. Dubbed the ‘Downtown Plan’, the multimillion-dollar effort was designed to brand Long Beach ‘as the largest and most compelling waterfront destination in Southern California’ (Pope, 1994). Between 1977 and 1986, the city dropped over $1.5 billion into the downtown tourist and hospitality industry (Kelley, 1987), creating significant vested economic and political interests. With the downsizing and eventual exodus of the military and Boeing by the mid-1990s, the city redoubled its commitment by injecting an additional $750 million into downtown, spurring new office, residential and industrial development in the city by 2008 (Kohli, 2009: 7). Tying the city’s economic fortunes to tourism is neither uncomplicated nor a new strategy. From 1900 to 1920, city leaders sought to transform Long Beach into the ‘Coney Island of the West’. The dream of making Long Beach the premier tourist resort on the Pacific Coast never quite materialized; rather than a tourist destination, Long Beach became a military, industrial, port and aerospace town. All this changed after 1980, and by 2007 Long Beach was once more positioning itself as the Southern California tourist destination. Incentives succeeded in luring high-end hotels and generating considerable growth in the hospitality and tourist sector. Earnings among the major downtown Long Beach hotels in 2007 surpassed 18 of the 26 largest hotel markets in the US (Kohli, 2009: 32–3), and the sector emerged as the third-largest source of employment in the city in 2005, behind transportation logistics and health (Magaddino, 2006). By 2007, the Urban Land Institute listed Long Beach as having ‘one of the top 10 revived downtowns in the United States’ (quoted in Kohli, 2009: 7). Another Long Beach existed, however – one characterized by povertylevel jobs, displacement and gentrification, a disappearing middle class and unmitigated environmental impacts. According to a comprehensive

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analysis, the post-1980 strategy substituted lower-paying service jobs for lost manufacturing ones without relieving the problems faced by lower-income working families (Baenen et al, 1999: 47–8). Visible in the shadows of the downtown pricey high-rise condos, boutique hotels and showy tourist attractions lived the ‘other Long Beach’. In this Long Beach, childhood asthma rates exceeded the national, state and county levels (Nicholas, 2012). Over 27 per cent of children lived in poverty (Hytrek and Ursua, 2011), while 28.5  per cent of full-time workers earned less than $25,000 per year (Kohli, 2009: 25) and nearly half of all renters spent more than 35 per cent of their income on rent (HLB, 2013: 5).3 Thus, while the city of Long Beach was doing quite well, many residents were not. The first real community-based challenge to the post-1980 growth-first governing coalition was the LBACI (Madden, 2014). Spurred by the lack of meaningful opportunity for political participation, along with major corruption and political upheaval in the 1970s (Hytrek, 2020), LBACI formed in 1974 (disbanded in 1994) as a group of progressive, mainly White, homeowners attempting to open up the political structure to greater community access. Although a number of community groups emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, such as Centro Shalom, the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Center, the Federation of Filipino American Associations and the Mexican American Political Association, they were largely issue or service based and focused on meeting the needs of specific populations in the city. In contrast, LBACI was the first organization to emphasize citywide issues and to challenge the local power structure, including the politicians and their developer allies who came to run the city after 1980. In the aftermath of the 1970s political scandals, LBACI was in a position to push progressive Black and female city council candidates and create district-wide city council elections and school board elections (see Reasons and Goodman, 1976; Rempel, 1976). The larger reform efforts to transform the power structure and the city leadership profile into a more open one reflecting the city’s changing demographics were never quite realized (Madden, 2014). The inability to hold those elected accountable through an organized and mobilized base, a failure to recruit new and younger members into the organization, weak ties to non-White residents and other organizations – particularly labour organizations – within the context of a still powerful business sector ultimately undermined the sustainability of LBACI (Madden, 2014: 113–19). Perhaps most importantly, LABCI failed to build regional relationships, remaining locally focused and resource challenged. While the reforms initiated by LBACI began to change Long Beach, the political system remained impervious to efforts by working-class

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interests to promote equity-based policies. Developers solidified their position as the city’s ‘partner’ and the main force driving the growth-first tourist-based strategy after 1980. Cosy relationships between developers and lobbyists with city officials resulted in routine zoning variances and generous public subsidies to incentivize developers. Emblematic of the distribution of power is the failure of outside union activists to pass a Labor Peace Ordinance in 2006 and Big-Box Ban in 2007.

Borrowed size, social performance and the LB Coalition The policy failures in 2006 and 2007 prompted a series of reflective meetings among organizers in Los Angeles and Long Beach activists to dissect the history of Long Beach and develop a strategy for building a community–labour coalition. From these meetings emerged an agreement along two lines of thought (Hytrek, 2020). First, Long Beach lacked a cadre of existing justice-based organizations and an infrastructure capable of initiating and sustaining grassroots organizing, leadership development and empowerment. Therefore, any challenge to the growth-first model necessitated extensive base-building, which in turn, would require ‘external’ support and resources. Internally, there was an intense debate over who would lead the organizing. For the Long Beach activists, the prominent role of an Orange County union local in the failed policy initiatives evidenced the importance of local (Long Beach) leadership to legitimize the movement. The resulting consensus was that Los Angeles organizations would share resources, while Long Beach activists would be the public face of the movement. Second, organizing would emphasize transforming the rooted tourist/ hospitality sector through a responsible growth frame (or growth with equity) as opposed to attracting or retaining industrial jobs. A lesson Los Angeles activists drew from earlier unsuccessful campaigns, such as the Coalition to Stop Plant Closings (later called the Los Angeles Coalition Against Plant Shutdowns), was the need to focus on transforming rooted industries. It was clear by the late 1990s that Long Beach’s industrial base was not coming back, and attracting or retaining industrial jobs was not possible, particularly with city officials heavily tied to a tourist-based development trajectory. Within these social and structural parameters, Los Angeles and Long Beach activists founded the LB Coalition to build a movement capable of addressing ‘the growing inequality and poverty in Long Beach by promoting living wages, responsible development, affordable housing and healthy communities’ (LB Coalition, nd). Students, educators, university

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researchers, immigrant workers, religious leaders, environmentalists, peace groups, LGBTQ leaders, former LBACI members, and women, labour and immigrant rights activists coalesced into the LB Coalition – the city’s first multiclass/multiracial/multigenerational alliance (see LB Coalition, nd). While Long Beach residents led the movement, the LB Coalition included well-resourced organizations, notably Los Angeles Unite Here Local 11, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. Forming the LB Coalition meant that Long Beach activists had access to requisite resources, for example, money, human and cultural capital, and media, legal and organizational skills, to build the movement. Los Angeles organizers in turn were able to scale up regional power. Leveraging proximity was neither easy nor automatic. A large swath of Long Beach residents, including existing and potential supporters, had a strong distrust of outsiders, in particular of glamorous Los Angeles and the motives of Los Angeles organizations – after all, Los Angeles had tried to annex Long Beach up to the 1920s. Among these cross-city tensions were disagreements over tactics and strategy between nascent and seasoned organizers. A strategic compromise was tricky, yet activists in both cities realized their longer-term success at implementing progressive urban policy required cooperation. Yes, Los Angeles organizations had resources, but within a regional context in which a plethora of regional growth-oriented tourist and port development projects were in the queue, Long Beach was the linchpin in determining whether a growth or a growth-with-equity vision would guide future regional development. The hook? Los Angeles needed Long Beach as much as Long Beach needed Los Angeles. The emergent symbiotic relationship played out in February 2009, when the LB Coalition went public with its commissioned ‘Tale of two cities’ report at the ‘Subsidizing Poverty: How Are We Investing in Our Community?’ town hall that detailed the impact of structural shifts on inequality and poverty. The analysis drew upon LAANE’s research capacity and work around living wages and community benefit agreements to create the context for the LB  Coalition to reframe the development narrative around responsible and participatory development. With Long Beach providing millions of dollars in public subsidies to the tourist industry, the report called for greater accountability and transparency, and the need to hold recipient firms to a higher standard. For its part, the LB Coalition leveraged resources from its coalition partners to launch an intense community organization programme. Building upon LBACI’s creation of district-wide council elections, activists targeted political education, relationship-building and data

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collection operations in strategic city council districts. At the same time, LB  Coalition activists recognized that Long Beach residents lacked a way of conceptualizing the scope of the city’s transformation as well as an ability to transform individual-level problems into equity-based political change (Hytrek, 2020). Confronting its history of fragmentation, the LB  Coalition sought to fashion a coalition through one-on-one organizing, popular educational workshops and support for other campaigns to build relationships within the Central, West, and North Long Beach working-class council districts of colour and between those areas and the affluent White neighbourhoods in East Long Beach. As a means to build local relationships and knit them together regionally, members of the LB Coalition supported underground union organizing and leveraged existing personal relationships to create broader organizational networks. All the major actions and debates between 2009 and 2013 saw LB Coalition activists at the centre. These included union organizing (and boycotts) at the Long Beach Hilton and Hyatt Regency hotels, challenging the 2nd & PCH and Sierra Hotel development projects, inclusion of community benefits in the city’s Downtown General Plan, along with policy debates around the reintroduction of the Project Labor Agreement Ordinance, a new city lobbying ordinance, and funding for the language access policy. LB Coalition activists also brought together allies from both cities through organized events and workshops, such as the ‘Inspiring Activist Women of Long Beach Awards Night’, Christmas toy drives for Hilton and Hyatt hotel workers, a Community Benefits Agreement workshop, candidate forums and a poverty briefing (Hytrek, 2020). Understanding the importance of elected allies, the Coalition collected over 3,000 surveys in 2009 to serve as a basis for a candidates’ forum as part of the effort to elect (successfully) one of its steering committee members to the city council in 2010. Emblematic of the early challenges organizers faced was the updating of the city’s Downtown General Plan. Beginning in 2006, the city sought to update the plan to incentivize downtown development by removing certain environmental reporting requirements, thereby streamlining and fast-tracking future projects. Backed by the Chamber and Downtown Business Associates, the revisions sought (once more) to lure middle- and upper-class residents to drive the downtown economy by increasing density and building heights. The plan called for thousands of new residential units, millions of square feet of office and retail space, and nearly 1,000 new hotel rooms and added restaurant space (Zonkel, 2011). Downtown residents, of which 75 per cent were people of colour, feared massive displacement.4 Curiously, during the fight to incorporate affordable housing and local hire community benefits, the city suddenly cut the

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budget for language interpretation at council meetings. With 46 per cent of Long Beach residents speaking a language other than English at home, organizers from the LB Coalition, the Filipino Migrant Center, Khmer Girls in Action and Housing Long Beach (HLB), and attorneys from Legal Aid Foundation Los Angeles (LAFLA), created the Language Access Coalition (LAC). While LAFLA and HLB anchored and led the LAC, the LB Coalition and its labour partners organized and mobilized community members. Through a series of popular educational community forums, and by mobilizing existing service-based organizations, rallies, testimony at city council meetings and personal stories through community-based media, the LAC succeeded in forcing the city to adopt a citywide language access policy in 2013.5 The victory was tarnished, however, by the city adopting the Downtown Plan (in 2011) without any community benefits. The passage of the plan underscored the need for deep organizing and capacity-building.

Foundational moments: LBRising! The fight over the Downtown Plan provided further evidence in support of the LB Coalition analysis: resources were a necessary but insufficient condition for transforming the development trajectory. Long Beach not only lacked an organizational infrastructure, but there were no advocacy organizations nor any community-based organizing capacity. In response, the LB  Coalition launched a four-day training programme called ‘LBRising!’ in fall 2011 (then called the LBRising Civic Engagement Program). LBRising! was a leadership training space to develop a common vision for Long Beach residents by promoting ‘civic participation, alliance building, voter engagement and community organizing amongst communities historically marginalized from the political process, including low-income communities’ characterized by high levels of poverty, pollution and other adverse urban conditions (LB Coalition, 2011, 2013). Together with coalition partners LAANE, Unite Here Local 11 and the recently formed Filipino Migrant Center – co-founded by one of the LB Coalition’s steering committee members – the LB Coalition created a curriculum and launched training in December 2011. Borrowed size was clearly at work. Without the burgeoning crosscity networks, it would have been impossible for Long Beach activists to develop an organizing, political analysis or political strategy training that culminated in a canvassing programme in less than two months. Long Beach lacked the organizational capacity as well as the requisite organizational and financial resources of its Los Angeles coalitional

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partners. The ability to leverage its proximity generated better-thanexpected social performance, initially reflected in the success of LBRising! and further evident in the formalizing of LBRising! as a platform for the LB Coalition’s broader efforts at building community organizational capacity through power-building training and popular education efforts.

People’s State of the City At the LB  Coalition retreat in early 2012, members of the steering committee reflected on the purpose of the LBRising! training and how to build the movement’s base. Halfway into the day-long retreat, and during a discussion about ‘identifying organizing opportunities’, one participant remarked that she was tired of hearing the ‘same-old boosterism’ from the mayor’s state-of-the-city speech (scheduled for midJanuary). What is needed, she argued, ‘is a realistic discussion of the state of Long Beach’. Her casual remark caught fire, and a popular education style ‘People’s State of the City’ (PSOTC) programme was framed out in the retreat. Over the next six weeks, planning and organizing the event deepened existing relationships among labour organizations, the African American community, educational and faith-based partners; developed new partnerships with unlikely allies, including the LGBTQ community, environmental organizations and youth serving organizations; and saw other organizations shift towards a greater focus on policy advocacy.

Living wage campaign: Measure N Within the ongoing discussions among Long Beach and Los Angeles activists, Long Beach activists argued for base-building to enact worker protections, beginning with a living wage campaign. The Long Beach economy was increasingly driven by low-wage retail and service-sector jobs that left working families stuck in an endless cycle of poverty. Measure N emerged within this context. While the living wage proposal resonated with Los Angeles activists and organizations, particularly LAANE, Long Beach still lacked a mobilized base. These discussions took on new meaning in 2012. Hesitant to take on a living wage fight, Long Beach activists also knew their responsible development message resonated with residents, and with 2012 being an election year, they knew supporters would turn out. With Los Angeles coalition partners providing campaign support as well as financial and organizational resources, and the LB Coalition armed with a substantial list of supporters from their recent

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LBRising! canvassing programme, the living wage campaign was launched at the 2012 PSOTC. LBRising! was critical to this effort; programme graduates were central to gathering the signatures (over 36,000) necessary to qualify the measure for the ballot. Many then went on to be some of the 800 volunteers who worked on the 8-week Get-Out-The-Vote campaign launched on Labor Day with ‘Labor and the Pulpit’ events in over 17 faith-based venues in the city. The ordinance, officially titled Measure N, required hotels with more than 100 rooms to pay workers $13/hour, to provide 5 sick days per year, to ensure service charges went to the employees and to implement an annual cost-of-living allowance. Given the narrow coverage of the ordinance – about 2,000 (overwhelmingly immigrant) workers – the LB Coalition developed a specific frame embedded within the responsible development language collected as part of the ‘LB Rising!’ canvassing programme. The LB  Coalition argued that the majority of workers who would benefit lived in Long Beach, and the added income would stimulate the local economy and support small businesses, as well as help raise workers above the poverty level and bring stability to working families (Hytrek, 2020). Using research showing the multiplier effect of the living wage boost to the local economy would be $7 million, the LB  Coalition effectively embedded their message within the existing Chamber’s ‘city nationalist’ growth frame, but in a more inclusive way. In this way, the LB Coalition pivoted the pro-growth message of the Chamber to one based on growth with equity and delivered the message through street actions, media campaigns and reports, discussion with council members and a ground game in which over 100,000 residents were contacted between February and November. As one LB Coalition member remarked, ‘we were infiltrating every nook and cranny of this place [Long Beach], if we didn’t get you in church, if we didn’t get you in the classroom, we’d get you in your neighbourhood; there was no place to hide; we had flyers everywhere, even in laundromats!’6 Combining partner-generated research on the multiplier effects of the wage boost with an inclusive responsible development message influenced over 130 small businesses to join the campaign. In the end, Measure N passed with 64 per cent of the overall vote, including majorities in all nine city council districts (Hytrek, 2012). Measure  N was a risky and daring campaign that became a game changer in Long Beach politics. Well aware that the ‘normal’ process of sustainable movement-building required ever-larger victories, what Max Weber argued was the ‘slow boring of hard boards’, Long Beach activists saw this as an opportunity to force people (including small businesses) to take a stand either for the status quo or for a new, more inclusive

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and equitable city. The campaign was won ‘one-by-one-by-one-by …’. Yet the better-than-expected social performance reflected in the win, or the ability of Long Beach to ‘punch above its weight’, was due to the cross-city networks forged with Los Angeles social justice organizations. Borrowed size was manifested through access to ‘external’ resources critical to the mobilizing and reframing efforts; at the same time, it was the on-the-ground community-based organizing and reframing by Long Beach activists that deepened existing relationships and bridged differences between unlikely allies. Many of the environmental, LGBTQ and labour activists heretofore held little interest in collaborating with the LB  Coalition. In making Measure  N a metaphor for responsible and participatory development, the LB Coalition sparked broad-based support among residents and organizations even marginally connected to hotel workplace issues. Finally, the Measure N campaign boomeranged regionally as the campaign – including the participation of small businesses – became a template for the 2014 ‘Raise LA’ campaign to increase the LA minimum wage to $15 per hour. Long Beach activists actively supported the Los Angeles campaign, demonstrating growing social integration and the potential for secondary cities to affect politics in primate cities.

Post-Measure N The LB Coalition’s organizing philosophy is based on making justice work accessible and creating opportunities for residents to participate meaningfully in reimagining and remaking their city. Reframing the developing narrative was about inspiring hope; that they too were socially and politically part of the city. The challenge was in getting residents – long marginalized and treated as economic fodder – to first question the existing development model, to realize the effects on them, their neighbours and their communities, and then to provide a policy solution that could only be achieved though collective efforts. This, however, required continual capacity-building, so in spring 2013, the LB Coalition held its second LBRising! programme, which led to the second PSOTC, a Power Analysis Workshop (PAW) series and boards and commission training designed to build power though a collective knowledge of the local centres of power. Technical assistance and other resources from coalitional partners within Long Beach and Los Angeles were critical to the success of the training courses. According to then LB Coalition organizer, Nikole Cababa, the training courses were meant to create a more responsive local government; to make ‘sure residents understand the importance of organizing and being civically engaged as a way to

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address issues they care about and shape the future of their city’ (quoted in Moore, 2013). Exemplifying this is the budgeting PAW that introduced participatory budgeting (PB) to the broader Long Beach community and launched Southern California’s first PB process in 2014.7 Leveraging the political capital from the Measure N fight and the energy generated through the new training courses, the LB Coalition developed a campaign to implement policies to ‘protect taxpayers’ interests’ in the event of changes in city subcontractors or labour disputes within the tourist sector. With the city increasingly dependent on tourism, the LB Coalition raised the spectre of externally driven economic disruptions. In December 2013, the LB Coalition succeeded in organizing support on the city council to pass a second living wage ordinance, a worker retention regulation and a labour peace agreement with veto-proof majorities. Although narrowly targeting workers at the Long Beach Airport and the convention centre, the policies focused on the Long Beach tourist-sector core and reinforced the LB  Coalition’s narrative crafted for Measure N. Thus, while the LB Coalition was able to use the success of the Measure N campaign to move city council members to support the policies, the conditions were a product of the borrowed size that allowed the LB Coalition to build a viable movement well beyond their own rather limited capacity. Moving along a track parallel to the LB  Coalition, and with the participation of some LB Coalition members, TCE launched its ten-year BHC in Long Beach in 2009. While neither TCE nor BHC Long Beach are directly involved in policy development equal to the LB Coalition, TCE’s ‘hub’ organizational structure facilitates local, regional and statewide connectivity and the strengthening of organizational infrastructure in Long Beach. Two examples illustrate the ongoing impact of TCE–BHC to further the participatory policy work initiated by the LB Coalition: immigration rights and housing justice. In terms of immigrant rights, TCE convened a grantees meeting following the 2016 presidential election where grantees raised concerns over immigrant rights and the new administration. Further conversations led to the founding, in 2017, of the Sanctuary Long Beach Coalition, consisting of a regional ‘group of individuals and organizations that empower migrants, immigrants, and refugees’ (Sanctuary LB, nd). Sanctuary Coalition members include interfaith organizations, Sacred Resistance (which includes a number of other Los Angeles-based organizations) and various immigrant serving organizations, as well as HLB, LB Coalition and the National Immigration Law Center. By 2018, the Coalition successfully advocated for the adoption of the Long Beach Values Act that limited city cooperation with Immigration and Customs

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Enforcement, established the Long Beach Justice Fund to provide free legal representation to Long Beach residents facing deportation and created the Long Beach Community Defense Network, a regional network designed to disrupt deportations. The housing justice movement has been similarly productive. In summer 2019, planning for the LBRising! training programme identified housing justice as the core issue around which to organize the training and canvassing component. At this point, the Long Beach housing justice movement was in disarray and LB Coalition organizers sought to use the training as a vehicle to get the movement back on track. The strategy was to identify and mobilize residents, through a pledge-based canvassing component, to participate in a Housing Justice Forum focused on tenant rights and recent city- and statewide housing legislation. Funding from the LB Coalition supported two organizers to continue community outreach beyond the LBRising! training. Organizing the Housing Justice Forum led to the formation of the Long Beach Housing Justice Coalition (HJC) as a means to address the dramatic increase in displacement, educate tenants about their rights, and increase affordable housing units. Long Beach Residents Empowered (LiBRE) anchors the HJC, which includes HLB, the LB Coalition, Everyone in LA and Legal Aid of Los Angeles, among other justice organizations. The forum was the catalyst gelling these organizations, which had no real prior working relationships, together. The HJC continues to build the housing justice movement through housing and worker-based policies as part of the #HealthyLB campaign that is a response to the COVID-19 crisis, but designed to establish citywide policies supporting working families beyond the pandemic. The Sanctuary and the Housing Justice Coalitions thus underscore some of the essential lessons of the LB Coalition’s story. Sanctuary and the HJC are largely Long Beach-led coalitions, but with critical financial, organizational and technical support from Los Angeles and statewide organizations. Funding from TCE was critical, as was support from experienced ‘external’ Los Angeles organizations. What is different from 2008 or 2011 is that the Sanctuary and Housing Justice Coalitions are led by and are largely combinations of existing Long Beach organizations, and can call upon other existing Long Beach (and Los Angeles) organizations to provide policy support and mobilize residents for actions and city council meetings. Thus, not only is a Long Beach social justice movement coming into its own, the organizational infrastructure has matured to a level capable of initiating and sustaining grassroots organizing, leadership development and resident empowerment. In essence, the Los Angeles and Long Beach social justice movements have merged into a regional

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collaborative movement providing mutual support, whereby Long Beach activists take the lead on Long Beach campaigns and vice versa. The resulting collaborations allow the more experienced Los Angeles organizations to offer crucial support while honouring local historical and social conditions and preserving local voices.

Discussion and conclusion In Los Angeles, generations of agile and savvy union and community organizers partnered with university scholars to build a social justice movement that came to be called the LA Model. In contrast, Long Beach labour and community groups remained marginal to civic decisions well into the 2000s. Yet, by 2014, there was a growing consensus that these groups ought to be (meaningfully) included in major civic decisions. Although Long Beach activists will remind us that the city still lacks the robust organizational infrastructure characteristic of Los Angeles, the analysis given in this chapter shows how far and how quickly the Long Beach social justice movement has come into its own. Critical to the dramatic turnaround was the emergence of intense intra-regional networks that sparked and sustained the movement, as activists in both cities stretched the Los Angeles organizational infrastructure over Long Beach. Proximity and possibilities of borrowing across city boundaries have been essential conditions for Long Beach’s social performance. While dramatic structural changes and an accompanying intensification of inequality in Long Beach objectively created organizing opportunities, the structural imperatives did not automatically produce union and community cooperation or translate grievances into collective mobilizations. Policy failures in 2007 support the argument that structural opportunities are unlikely to be seized in the ‘absence of sufficient organizational capacity’ and the ‘impetus for action is as much a cultural construction as a function of structural vulnerability’ (McAdam et al, 1996: 8). Through the organizing and popular education work of the LB  Coalition, residents could make sense of events that highlighted a collective (and integrative) set of values and beliefs. The effort to reinterpret the meaning of events and subjective experiences in cognitive and emotional ways facilitated mobilization around a social justice framework. In other words, intra-regional networks socialized and connected activists, facilitated information flows and helped create solidarity across disconnected residents and groups through shared identities and meanings. The result of this, that social performance exceeded expectations (developed more rapidly), is a dimension of borrowed size not reflected

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in the existing literature. Proximity creates the possibilities to develop trusting relations, intensify emotional solidarities and reduce uncertainties critical to creating deep personal and emotional ties. We saw this historically with the Long Beach political class, who leveraged proximity to maximize their economic interests and marginalize the poor, near poor and other non-affluent residents from meaningful influence over city decisions. A century later, these once marginalized groups leveraged the same proximity to construct networks with activists in ‘external’ well-resourced organizations, and rapidly built a ‘movement from below’ capable of influencing social justice policies unthinkable a few years earlier. By forging deeper (bonding) relationships with each other, and more extensive (bridging) networks across space, activists developed more sophisticated interpretative frameworks and creative political campaigns while marshalling resources to build a more robust movement. Finally, borrowing social performance was not unidirectional; while Long Beach was able to ‘punch above its weight’, the intra-regional justice networks ultimately affected the political economy of the entire region. Clearly, access to ‘external’ resources helped facilitate the growing organizational and organizing capacity in Long Beach, but the result was a more sustainable and regional movement. Applying the borrowed size concept in the Long Beach case suggests that grassroots movements in secondary cities might not just be shaped by the relationship with the dominant city, but may also play a role in shaping wider developments that encompass the primary city itself. As was the case in the 20th century, in the 21st century Long Beach is vital to how development in the region as a whole unfolds. This time, however, a cross-city coalition of labour and community organizations is challenging an elite-led growth strategy with one based on equity and social justice. Notes 1 2 3 4

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A point made to the author by an affordable housing developer. On the open shop citadel, see (Stimson, 1955: 156; Garnel, 1972: 94). These data are quoted in Hytrek (2020). These fears were warranted, according to independent analysis, funded by TCE, which showed that 24,000 residents would lose housing under the revisions. Although the LAC succeeded in re-establishing multilingual services, the programme was unfunded for the first year. The programme still lacks structural funding and remains underfunded. Thus, the LAC continues to fight for funding, with Legal Aid of Los Angeles providing leadership and technical assistance. Interview with LB Coalition organizer, Long Beach, 9 July 2013. PB is a decision-making process, through which citizens deliberate and negotiate over the distribution of public resources (Wampler, 2007: 21).

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References

Alonso, W. (1973) ‘Urban zero population growth’, Daedalus, 102(4): 191–206. Baenen, R., Fernandez, C., Heffernan, K., Hughes, T., Ishimatsu, J., Lee, K., Marks, W., Monterrosa, C., Serlin, J., Valencia, A. and Woosley, C. (1999) ‘Banking on blight: redevelopment in post-proposition  13 California’, UCLA Comprehensive Project, School of Urban Planning, June. Camagni, R. and Capello, R. (2015) ‘Second-rank city dynamics: theoretical interpretations behind their growth potentials’, European Planning Studies, 23(6): 1041–53. Downtown Long Beach Alliance (2019) ‘Downtown Long Beach economic profile, 2019’, Long Beach, CA. Fredericks, W.B. (1990) ‘Capital and labor in Los Angeles: Henry E. Huntington vs. organized labor, 1900–1920’, Pacific Historical Review, 59: 375–95. Garnel, D. (1972) The Rise of Teamster Power in the West, Berkeley: University of California Press. HLB (Housing Long Beach) (2013) ‘Housing matters: a brief historical context and framework for equitable housing policy in Long Beach’, White Paper. Hytrek, G. (2009) ‘Foreword: A tale of two cities: tourism and shared opportunity in Long Beach’, in J. Kohli ‘A tale of two cities’, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy Report. Hytrek, G. (2010) ‘Community well-being in Long Beach: historical legacies and contemporary strategies’, presented at the Making the City: Comparative Perspectives on Power, Policy, and Institutions panel at the 35th Social Science History Association Annual Conference, Chicago. Hytrek, G. (2012) ‘Election 2012: the battle for living wages in Long Beach’, Frying Pan News, 9 November. Hytrek, G. (2020) ‘Space, power, and justice: the politics of building an urban justice movement, Long Beach, California, USA’, Urban Geography, 41(5): 736–59, Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 02723638.2019.1693171 [Accessed 3 November 2020]. Hytrek, G. and Márquez, A.H. (2013) ‘Path dependency and patterns of collective action: space, place, and agency in Long Beach, California, 1900–1960’, Urban Geography, 34(4): 496–522. Hytrek, G. and Ursua, S. (2011) ‘Balancing tourism with quality of life’, Press Telegram, 6 June, Available from: https://www.presstelegram. com/2011/06/06/balancing-tourism-with-quality-of-life/ [Accessed 3 November 2011].

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Jones, P. and Catalena, M. (2009) Inventing LA: The Chandlers and their Time, Los Angeles, CA: Public Broadcasting Service. Kahrl, W.L. (1983) Water and Power: Conflict over Los Angeles Water Supply in the Owens Valley, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kelley, D. (1987) ‘City is no longer “Iowa by the Sea”: once moribund Long Beach is booming’, Los Angeles Times, 8 September. Kohli, J. (2009) ‘A tale of two cities’, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy Report. LB  Coalition (Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community) (nd) About us, Available from: http://www. longbeachcoalition.org/?page_id=104 [Accessed 3 November 2020]. LB  Coalition (Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community) (2011) ‘LBRising!’, flyer. LB  Coalition (Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community) (2013) ‘LBRising! 2013–2014 program’. Los Angeles Times (1920) ‘Long Beach declares for open shop’, 13 March. Los Angeles Times (1922) ‘Prize-winning speech brings forward greatest American principle’, 22 January. Los Angeles Times (1930) ‘An open shop milestone’, 2 January. Los Angeles Times (1936) ‘Long Beach fights unions’, 7 August. McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. and Zald, M. (1996) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, New York: University of Cambridge Press. Madden, L. (2014) ‘Rights to the city and spatial justice: the search for social justice in post-1970 Long Beach’, MA thesis, California State University, Long Beach. Magaddino, J.P. (2006) ‘The Long Beach city economy’, Office of Economic Research, California State University, Long Beach. Mehlinger, S. (2018) ‘CSULB economic forum: U.S. approaching record economic expansion; Long Beach experiencing development boom’, Long Beach Business Journal, 7 May. Meijers, E.J. and Burger, M.J. (2017) ‘Stretching the concept of “borrowed size”’, Urban Studies, 54(1): 269–91. Milkman, R. (2006) L.A. Story, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Miller, J. (1994) ‘Long Beach, California: a model military re-use plan’, Economic Development Commentary, 18: 4–10. Moore, G. (2013) ‘Teaching the ABCs of power in Long Beach’, Long Beach Post, 10 July. Mouffe, C. (1996) ‘Deconstruction, pragmatism and the politics of democracy’, in C. Mouffe (ed), Deconstruction and Pragmatism, London and New York: Routledge, pp 1–12. Nicholas, E. (2012) ‘Social determinants of health: asthma and obesity’, PowerPoint Slides. California State University, Long Beach, 1 November.

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Norfleet, B., Jr (2004) ‘Who rules Long Beach? From Merrian to Iron Duke: the hidden history of Republican machinery in Long Beach California’, Southlander, 1: 13–47. Parr, J.B. (2002) ‘Agglomeration economies: ambiguities and confusions’, Environment and Planning A, 34(4): 717–31. Peck, J., Theodore, N. and Brenner, N. (2009) ‘Neoliberal urbanism: models, moments, mutations’, SAIS Review of International Affairs, 29(1): 49–66. Phelps, N., Fallon, R. and Williams, C. (2001) ‘Small firms, borrowed size and the urban–rural shift’, Regional Studies, 35(7): 613–24. Pope, J. (1994) ‘Keeping tourism afloat: Long Beach pins its future on splashy waterfront development’, Los Angeles Times, 3 November. Purcell, M. (2000) ‘The decline of the political consensus for urban growth: evidence from Los Angeles’, Journal of Urban Affairs, 22(1): 85–100. Reasons, G. and Goodman, M. (1976) ‘Long Beach – government by newspaper’, Los Angeles Times, 14 December. Rempel, W. (1976) ‘Council districts issue on ballot in Long Beach’, Los Angeles Times, 29 October. Rosenfield, S. (2003) ‘The social imperatives of clusters’, paper presented at the Regional Technologies Strategies Conference on Rethinking Regional Development Policies: The Role of Social Capital in Promoting Competitiveness in Less Favoured Regions, Ostuni, Italy, 2–5 July. Sanctuary LB (nd) About #SanctuaryLB, Available from: https://www. sanctuarylb.com/about [Accessed 3 November 2020]. Soja, E.W. (2010) Seeking Social Justice, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stimson, G.H. (1955) Rise of the Labor Movement in Los Angeles, Berkeley: University of California Press. Storper, M. (1997) The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy, New York: Guilford Press. Wampler, B. (2007) ‘A guide to participatory budgeting’, in A. Shah (ed), Participatory Budgeting, Washington, DC: World Bank, pp 21–54. Zonkel, P. (2011) ‘Long Beach council approves downtown expansion plan’, Long Beach Press Telegram, 11 January.

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Intra-Regional Relationality and Green City-Regionalism: Placing the Role of ‘Secondary Cities’ Yonn Dierwechter

Introduction This chapter considers the implications of Pendras and Williams’s emphasis on ‘intra-regional relationality’ for work in city-regionalism (Moisio and Jonas, 2018), particularly where this work involves planning, growth and urban development practices around global climate action and the new politics of ‘carbon control’ (While et al, 2010; Granqvist et al, 2020). Selective empirical examples derived from my own past and forthcoming work (and the work of others) within the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Europe are briefly referenced throughout the chapter to emphasize how ‘intra-regional relationality’ sheds a different theoretical light on the politics, policies and practices of green urban and metropolitan action. ‘Greater’ Vancouver and ‘Greater’ Seattle, including Surrey and Tacoma, respectively, receive special consideration at the end of the chapter. Ultimately, the discussion explores how the central concept of ‘intraregional relationality’ helps urban and regional scholars to place the alternately complementary and contradictory roles of regional secondary cities in multi-scalar urban development regimes now struggling to balance economic competitiveness with ecological resiliency and social cohesion, that is, urban sustainability. As more such cities – for example, Tacoma,

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Geelong, Long Beach, Malmo, Porto, Stellenbosch – adopt and implement green policies and also pursue global carbon control politics, the discussion considers how the concept of intra-regional relationality shifts our interpretation of these developments in urban studies and global affairs. The analytical focus on urban green policy adoption and global carbon geopolitics – or what I have elsewhere called ‘variegated urbanizations of green internationalism’ (Dierwechter, 2019: 50) – may seem arbitrary; but this empirical focus represents a useful way to explore the theoretical relevance of intra-regional relationality in studies of the ‘greening’ of city-regions, whether mapped through the piecemeal adoption of ‘local’ sustainability policies or, more recently, through transnational carbon mitigation efforts. As shown later in this chapter, many of these studies explore and explain the diffusion of green policies and global carbon geopolitics through relational metaphors of inter-city ‘teaching and learning’ (Lee and van de Meene, 2012); but rarely do scholars highlight the city-regional context – or intra-regional relationality, as Pendras and Williams prefer it – within which specific ‘leading’ cities engage in transnational network activities. Core (or ‘primate’) cities like Seattle, Copenhagen, Freiburg and Portland are instead de-territorialized and too often abstracted from their localized city-regional relationships of economic production and social reproduction. As I hope to show, these intra-regional relationships of production and reproduction matter for how we read the putative successes and failures of local sustainability efforts, a particularly crucial problem given the growing and even existential crisis of global climate change and, quite possibly, civilization as presently understood (Bootle, 2009; Foster et al, 2010; Barry, 2012). Borrowing a phrase from Mosner and Miller, I argue that primate cities like Vancouver or Seattle are not ‘actors’ in charge of their ‘own’ sustainability, but places whose green successes are dialectically related to the neighbouring role(s) of ‘secondary cities’ in poly-nodal cityregional complexes. This changes how we map and explain the ‘urban’ sustainability of both primate and secondary cities.

Beyond the ‘ordinal’ city: intra-regional relationality in urban studies Conceptual progress is important but few theoretical concepts, whether normative, diagnostic or explanatory, are wholly original. Intra-regional relationality has its own bloodlines. I review my own understanding of this concept in this first section before turning to a more explicit discussion of city-regions and city-regionalism.

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One of the most successful concepts in urban studies – Ebenezer Howard’s ‘garden city’ – drew on various streams of utopian thought in the 19th century, including Kropotkin’s anarchism and the actual early 19th-century urban design for Adelaide, Australia. Lewis Mumford’s later attempts to imagine an American republic of ecological regions incorporated Howard’s garden city forms into a deeper cultural engagement with the ‘applied civics’ of Patrick Geddes – a regional project that started to influence empirical planning discourses in places like Portland from the 1960s, albeit not in ways that most had anticipated (Luccarelli, 1995). For ‘civics’ meant active, ongoing, participatory production of eco-regional knowledge, which potentially modified traditions of place-making and ‘good’ design. Garden cities often turned into compromised suburbs in practice – such as apartheid-era Pinelands outside of Cape Town or Radburn in New Jersey. In theory, of course, they promised a wider territorial (and functional) setting that Howard called the ‘social city’. This suggested a city-regional complex of interacting urban forces and social aspirations (old and new) that typically involved a dominant ‘core’, such as London, but that also foregrounded a utopian future of slumless and smokeless cities on the metropolitan periphery. Howard’s socio-spatial theory was thus both ‘intra-regional’ and ‘relational’. Mumford famously later noted in The Culture of Cities that the hope of the city lies outside itself. Few observers today see the ‘hope’ to primate London in post-war Milton Keynes, or the hope to contemporary Amsterdam in, say, the modernity of Almere. Yet Almere – or Tacoma, Geelong and Surrey – illustrates how today’s secondary cities fuel, compete with, and are otherwise relationally connected to larger and/or putatively more successful neighbouring cities (see Chapters 1 and 2, this volume). Intra-regional relationality nonetheless has struggled to emerge in the face of the heuristic powers associated with what might be called instead the ‘ordinal city’. This point is central to this book’s critiques. Captured by the explanatory allure of Zipf ’s law and central place theory in the urban geographical canon, the place of the ‘ordinal city’ – any city; anywhere – is simply the ‘number’ it is assigned in a bounded, nationalized, urban ‘system’ of places. But as Peter Taylor (2013) shows, cities blow across bounded, nationalized, urban ‘systems’. Cities are ‘extraordinary’, he argues, because their commercial interrelations within one another are so powerful and their internal complexity so generative of innovation; yet our treatment of cities still reflects an embedded statism. The ‘American’ or ‘French’ system of cities is ‘ordered’ through territorial rankings (Agnew, 1994). Paris, then Lyon and Marseilles; New York, then Los Angeles and Chicago. ‘Regional’

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cities – Ballarat, Australia, for example, or Meixian, China – organize the territorial space economy further down the national hierarchy; a thousand small towns provide limited services. Although helpful in many ways, and certainly neat and elegant, this theoretical focus on ‘central places’ and ordinal ‘ranks’, in Taylor’s opinion, leads us to misunderstand the dynamism of cities, both past (ancient Jericho, Merv, Çatalhöyük) and present (Jakarta, Milan, Mombasa). This famous approach should therefore be complemented, if not replaced, with what he calls ‘central flow theory’, a profoundly relational concept. Central flow theory challenges the verticality of embedded urban hierarchies to consider the many ongoing processes of ‘non-local inter-city relations’ that create an ‘interlocking network model’ and thus a city-centric world history and meta-geography (Soja, 2000). In what may be his most influential work, Taylor (2004) argues relationally for the importance of a new, if unevenly constituted, ‘world city-network’. These ideas have considerable importance for how we describe new trends in global geopolitics in general (Agnew, 2000; Herrschel and Newman, 2017) and global environmental and carbon politics in particular (Magee, 2016; Johnson, 2018). But Taylor’s work hardly ignores the importance of uneven development within global networks. In fact, his world city-network theory makes direct use of but also ‘urbanizes’ Immanuel Wallerstein’s well-known world systems theory, famous in the development studies literature for suggesting that the world’s development since the 16th  century has forged a ‘core’, a ‘semi-periphery’ and a ‘periphery’. Networks appear flat, yet they are better described as an ecosystem of mountains and valleys (Rodríguez-Pose and Crescenzi, 2008). Some mountains are more powerful than others – a point also developed by Van  Hamme and Pion (2012) in their empirical work on the ongoing relevance of Wallerstein’s world system approach for explaining the uneven globalization of economic flows and networks through strongly and weakly interconnected cities. Inspired more by Doreen Massey’s work, Pendras and Williams are not content to harness and reapply the various urbanisms of Howard or Taylor or indeed other theoretical traditions. In their view, the relational effects of the intra-regional dynamic need more explicit attention, perhaps picking up once again on the ‘social city’ relationality of early regional planning theory and applied practice. The intra-regional effects of various relationships between neighbouring cities that together, if often uneasily, constitute a ‘city-region’ are of special interest to me. From this perspective, this central claim runs, Amsterdam is Amsterdam (in part) because of neighbouring places like Almere – and vice versa. Similarly, Seattle does not ‘explain’ itself; Seattle requires us to think through its geohistory

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and present performance with, and even partially through, neighbouring Tacoma and its suburban and exurban frontiers. These frontiers ‘fuel’ and ‘compete’ with Seattle, creating complex geographies around the metropolitan condition. As I have previously argued in my work on how smart growth planning for urban sustainability has shaped the uneven geographies of regional development across Greater Seattle: Understanding Seattle’s ‘city’ geographies  … demands a relational engagement with its wider ‘regional’ development patterns, and vice-versa. Seattle cannot explain its internal ‘trait’ geographies without this commitment … Nor for that matter can [the metropolitan region’s other communities such as] Tacoma, Bellevue, Everett, Renton, tribes, King County, University Place, Pierce County, key ports, or any other number of places that together constitute the global city-region of Greater Seattle. (Dierwechter, 2017: 8) As one example, Tacoma is a ‘secondary city’ because intra-regional relationality has long shaped what I have called above its ‘trait’ geographies. Within the American national urban system, Tacoma is ranked 102 out of 314 cities with more than 100,000 people – about the same size as Des Moines, Iowa. But Tacoma’s theoretical status as ‘a regional second city’ in the shadow of, borrowing size from and absorbing the reproduction costs of nearby Seattle gives Tacoma a different urban quality. Or at least, that is the central theoretical logic of intra-regional relationality. Unlike Des Moines, Iowa, Tacoma (and more like Geelong near Melbourne) once again in theory ‘borrows size’ from a bigger and more famous neighbour, even as it concomitantly struggles to emerge from the long economic and political shadows cast by that same neighbour. What this may mean in a specific territorial setting, however, is highly variegated and rather complex. Accordingly, in the next section, ‘The rise of city-regional spaces and the new politics of city-regionalism’, I consider how these claims might help to inform an important development in global urban studies over the past few decades – the rise of city-regions and the parallel concern with what Jonas (2012a, 2012b, 2015) and others call the politics of ‘city-regionalism’.

The rise of city-regional spaces and the new politics of city-regionalism Interest in the spatial development and political management of ‘city-regions’ re-emerged forcefully in the 1990s (Jonas and Ward, 2001; Davoudi, 2009;

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Moisio and Jonas, 2018). Yet serious debates about ‘city-regions’ as human habitats are now over 100 years old (Simmonds, 2000; Davoudi, 2009). These debates include the seminal ideas of Patrick Geddes (1950 [1915]) and later Lewis Mumford (1938), for instance, on how cities and urbanindustrialized cultures might evolve within their bioregional environments and through ‘folk-work’ histories. City-regions are material formations, Geddes and Mumford both held, even as they are ecological, political and cultural relations, too. They are ‘places’ that result from dynamic, elongated ‘flows’ – of investments, ideas, ecosystems, people, pollutants, energies, vehicles and so on. Exactly how (and ‘where’) we see city-regions thus depends methodologically on what we aim to see and/or seek to accomplish, as increasingly heated debates about ‘planetary urbanization’ make clear (Brenner, 2014; Oswin, 2018; Swyndedouw, 2016). As material artefacts, city-regions refer specifically to the scalar stretching of urban space economies. Starting in 17th-century England, the economic-industrialization process that abruptly carbonized mercantileera capitalism shattered the inherited spatialities and sociologies of the pre-industrial (and trade-mercantilist) city. In brief, the ‘historic’ city – spatially compact, demographically small, relatively undifferentiated – gave way as mechanization, new inanimate energy sources like coal, and new economic and land-use specializations collectively set in motion an overall transformation that Soja (2000) later called the ‘regionalization of cityspace’. The compact cities of the past became more extended, fragmented, specialized metropolitan spaces. Globalization in turn produced ‘post-metropolitan’, poly-nodal, informationalized, city-regional complexes. To call 21st-century Tokyo a ‘city’ is therefore a mere convenience. Tokyo is a sociotechnical complex of 38 million people. Its globalized space economy produces about the same value in goods and services as the entire Canadian economy (which is itself large enough to be part of the elite G7 club). More and more, it is helpful to understand the overall geopolitical economy of the US, in consequence, as an archipelago of ‘metro-areas’. Yet these increasingly large and strategic metro-areas are not singular entities; they are internally complex places of uneven economic development and social reproduction that need far more detailed internal attention to strengthen wider accounts of their global ascendance. As political artefacts, city-regions manifest contradictions between the relational geographies of wealth production and the spatialities of territorial authority. For many decades, especially in the US, academic debates about the appropriate management of city-regions were dichotomous discussions between ‘metropolitanists’, on the one hand, and ‘public choice’ scholars, on the other (Katz, 2000; Frisken and Norris, 2001; Swanstrom, 2001, 2006; Basolo, 2003; Savitch and Adhikari, 2017).

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Metropolitanists long argued – and often still argue – for the consolidation and centralization of formal government functions and services across the relational geographies of wealth production, and especially for the creation of legally powerful and comprehensive regional government institutions with strong regulatory and investment remits. D’Apolito (2012: 105) calls this the case for ‘authoritative regionalism’. Post-apartheid South Africa’s ‘unicities’ – Cape Town, Johannesburg-eGoli, Durban-eThekwini, for example – are recent examples of these arguments in action (Cameron, 2000). Another example is found in the 1988 proposal by St.  Louis, Missouri, to reduce the number of official municipalities by about twothirds, create a unified economic development district, incorporate unincorporated areas and establish a ‘Metropolitan Commission’ across the city-region (Phares, 2004). Economistic public choice scholars have argued against authoritative regionalism (Swanstrom, 2006), contending that urban areas should be governed by fragmented local authorities who are encouraged to compete with one another for ‘consumer-voters’ and thus – much like firms – enhance overall efficiency through service specialization (Tiebout, 1956). The more the better, their logic runs. From this perspective, empirical politics become normative economics. Public choice scholars continue to champion ‘fragmentation’ along with intra-regional service specialization (Savitch and Adhikari, 2017), although concerns with regional cooperation include work around transaction costs and the role of external state coercion through both financial and legal means. At the same time, original debates about institutional centralization and consolidation have shifted in recent decades to an interest in socalled ‘new regionalist’ governance arrangements (Katz, 2000; Norris, 2001; Vogel et al, 2010; D’Apolito, 2012), also called ‘city-regionalism’ in Europe, China, Canada, Australia and many other world regions (Jonas and Ward, 2001; Ward and Jonas, 2004; Herrschel and Dierwechter, 2018; Moisio and Jonas, 2018). Following Thibert’s (2015: 17) definition, city-regionalism – the governance of city-regional space – involves ‘crossjurisdictional coordination … through other means than the establishment of a metropolitan government’. These ‘other means’ vary. Drawing on metropolitan concerns but many public choice insights, new regionalists (or city-regionalists) have focused mainly on horizontal cooperation between local governments, business organizations and third-sector entities – ‘governance networks’ – that are aimed at accomplishing different types of common goals. These efforts generate what some scholars now call ‘soft spaces’ of collaboration (Ward and Jonas, 2004; Pezzoli et al, 2006; Swanstrom, 2006; Clark and Christopherson, 2009; Waite and Bristow, 2019). Soft spaces reflect

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policy or project-specific networks characterized by varying degrees of formality, funding and institutionalization (Thurmaier and Wood, 2002). Unlike legally constituted institutions, they are relatively easy ‘to enter and to exit’, and thus appear more politically non-threatening to smaller communities and municipal jurisdictions typically wary of ‘big city’ hegemony. That theoretically encourages active participation, even as critics ask whether non-threatening collaboration can sufficiently address ‘intractable regional problems’ like air pollution, traffic congestion, housing affordability and climate policy for which ‘no one governmental entity wants to take responsibility’ (Thibert, 2015: viii–ix). Moreover, otherwise helpful notions of ‘new’ vs ‘old’ regionalism running from ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ forms of institutionalization probably suggest a much ‘cleaner’ and temporally linear history of distinct phases in time than is historically accurate in most places and societies. The story of actually existing regionalism is advanced by elevating how secondary cities shape this history. Indeed, recent work on city-regionalism suggests an array of motivations (Jonas and Ward, 2001; Harrison, 2010; Jonas, 2012b; Moisio and Jonas, 2018). The desire for enhanced competitiveness is a key theme. In addition, Waite and Bristow (2019: 690) remind us that ‘city-regionalism may also emerge as a product of various social and environmental movements and in response to struggles and strategies around the effective management of social relations of production and matters of collective consumption’ (see also Jonas and Ward, 2001; While et al, 2004). In their view, future studies of city-regionalism should focus more on political pluralism and diverse territorial outcomes of local experiences. Put simply, city-regionalism produces variegated geographies, including new forms experiencing what Herrschel and Dierwechter (2018) have called ‘smart transitions’. Such transitions involve inter-local agreements between government officials and other key stakeholders. These range from a ‘simple handshake’ among officials to ‘written agreements’ and multi-year institutional collaborations (D’Apolito, 2012). At the same time, Benner and Pastor (2012) show how regional arrangements sometimes forge ‘epistemic communities’ who, in certain conditions, are able to construct a wider narrative that ultimately builds trust between otherwise diverse stakeholders. ‘Trust’ in turn vastly improves the efficacy of extant political coalitions (Fukuyama, 1995; OECD, 2013). Frequently, processes of trust-building involve leadership from a formal governmental institution, such as a metropolitan planning organization, although a host of looser state–society bodies can sometimes perform this same role, as seen in the European Region of Nuremberg, for example or the governance work of ‘G21’ in Geelong, Australia (OECD, 2013).

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That said, an extensive empirical literature shows that the ‘messy politics’ of building regional authority are generally easier to manage when focused on economic growth for everyone (‘a bigger pie’) than when directed at more contentious problems like local land-use reform, social housing provision, educational quality, ecological protection measures and/or redistributive social equity policies (how the pie is ‘sliced up’) (Dierwechter, 2008; D’Apolito, 2012). Yet land-use reforms, housing provision, educational services, ecological protection and social equity policies (no less than economic growth) are part and parcel of the wider search for sustainability (Portney, 2015; Eran, 2017; Kwon et al, 2018). Efforts to merge often competing goals like these are increasingly common, as seen, for example, in diverse forms of cooperation across regions around Vienna, Helsinki, Munich and Rotterdam, who have each effectively formed networks in recent years to pursue ‘sustainable regional competitiveness’ (Otgaar et al, 2008). In sum, the economic rise of large city-regional complexes and attendant political and policy arguments for a renewed city-regionalism of cooperation to confront global problems like climate change takes us beyond the scalar problems of municipal fragmentation in otherwise shared ecological and economic regions. However, despite many important theoretical and empirical contributions, work on city-regionalism still does not adequately address the ‘ordinal’ urbanism presumptions that Pendras and Williams critique in their call for greater conceptual and analytical sensitivity to the intra-regional relationalities of city-regional (re)development. In the next section, ‘Intra-regional cases of relational green action and carbon politics’, I discuss two important case studies in the Pacific Northwest – Greater Vancouver-Surrey, British Columbia, and Greater Seattle-Tacoma, Washington – to show how this matters for empirical research that seeks to understand the roles of ‘secondary cities’ in the search for greener city-regions.

Intra-regional cases of relational green action and carbon politics: placing the regional roles of secondary cities in city-regional complexes It is increasingly commonplace to identify innovative urban leaders in global green action and climate/carbon geopolitics (Toly, 2008). In particular, work on ‘transnational municipal networks’ like C40 Cities, the Global Covenant of Mayors, the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives’ Cities for Climate Protection and the International Solar Cities Initiative, amongst many others, have focused

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attention on the urban geopolitics of green internationalism (Dierwechter, 2019). This work builds on global cities research in the 1990s (Bouteligier, 2012) and has usefully disrupted ‘ordinal’ approaches in comparative urban studies that, once again, over-focus on national hierarchies of cities-insystems; indeed, new analyses of transnational municipal networks often embody some of the core insights associated with Taylor’s aforementioned ‘central flow theory’ and the uneven relationalities of ‘teaching and learning’ that structure these networks (Lee and van de Meene, 2012). One of the core claims in this new urban literature is that cities like Barcelona, New York City, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Freiburg – or indeed, the Pacific Northwest’s Vancouver and Seattle, about which more in a moment – ‘innovate’ and ‘lead’ by developing progressive desirable qualities in loco that then (in theory) diffuse out through new global policy networks of change. A corollary is that transformation is led by dynamic global mayors like Anne Hidalgo in Paris, for instance, who, Ben Barber (2013) famously argued, should (and do) ‘rule the world’. However, as I originally suggested in my introduction and wish to develop further here, primate cities like Seattle, Copenhagen and Freiburg are inadvertently de-territorialized and too often abstracted from their localized city-regional relationships of economic production and social reproduction. This matters. Amsterdam does not sustain itself. As Mossner and Miller (2015: 19–21) put it in their critique of Freiburg, Germany, which is often heralded as one of Europe’s greenest cities: Given that sustainability deals with issues of energy flows, resource flows, human mobility, and other relationships that extend beyond the boundaries of any individual city, we ask whether it makes sense to conceptualize sustainability as a quality of discrete places … Freiburg has often been portrayed as an actor in charge of its own sustainability … Clearly there are limits to this characterization. Scholars of new global green networks rarely highlight the city-regional context of ‘discrete places’, within which specific ‘leading’ cities engage in transnational network activities. So the urbanization of green internationalism (Dierwechter, 2019) reflects uneven local development patterns that require us to pay more attention to the complex roles of secondary cities like Malmo, Geelong, Almere, Tacoma or Surrey in the reproduction of these global networks. Put another way, we need to think more about the regional role(s) of secondary cities in dense city-regional complexes rather than in ‘abstract’, and ‘explain’ the green successes of core cities that otherwise build a legitimately new and important trans-

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local geopolitics of carbon action. Doing so, I argue, changes how we both map and explain urban sustainability as we follow the relational geographies and inter-urban flows that shape green polities. I briefly illustrate these arguments with empirical reference to recent initiatives in two city-regions in the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver-Surrey and Seattle‑Tacoma.

Case study 1: greening with Surrey? Smart mobility corridors across Metro Vancouver Vancouver, British Columbia, is not ‘an actor in charge of its own sustainability’ (Mossner and Miller, 2015: 19–21). As part of a wider regional governance experiment, Metro Vancouver, the core city of Vancouver, has long focused on coordinating growth policies with key neighbours, including adjacent Surrey, with whom it both competes and cooperates. More recently, efforts to coordinate ‘smart city’ investments have revealed the new ways in which urban sustainability efforts and global carbon action reflect intra-regional relationalities. Since the early 1970s, the Vancouver metropolitan region – the city-region – has grown by an average of about 30,000  people per year, precipitating an annual need for the net production of roughly 15,000  housing units as well as the careful management of a host of growth-related challenges and concerns. These include integrating landuse regulations with transport investments to sewerage and water provision and monitoring regional air quality. Unlike most city-regions in both Canada and the US, Vancouver’s development story has been shaped by a strong regional planning and governance entity: the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), known since 2007 as ‘Metro Vancouver’. As a governance body, Metro Vancouver is composed of 21 municipalities, the Tsawwassen First Nation and one electoral district. While Metro Vancouver has undoubtedly inherited a planning culture from the long GVRD era that was institutionally devoted to protecting environmental amenities and resource lands while curbing sprawl, its efficacy has shifted with the swings and cycles of provincial politics in British Columbia (Tomalty and Alexander, 2005: 19). During the 1970s, GVRD’s planning powers expanded under the support of the National Democratic Party (NDP), but provincial re-election of the fiscally and socially conservative Social Credit Party in 1983 substantially curtailed planning powers of all 29 regional districts within British Columbia. This enervated GVRD’s planning service functions. As growth pressures kept mounting, however, regional planning powers increased again in the

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1990s (and again under the provincial support of an NDP government) – especially with passage of the Growth Strategies Act in 1995 and the Livable Region Strategic Plan (LRSP) in 1996 (Bish and Clemens, 2008). Regional planning for growth management per se evolved into smart growth policies by 1998. Transportation services of the Greater Vancouver Transport Authority, or more simply TransLink, merged more strategically with the LRSP’s revived efforts to channel new rounds of residential and commercial growth into the ‘metro core’ (Vancouver) as well as ‘regional’ and ‘municipal’ centres. Smart growth implementation into the 21st  century, though, was locally uneven. Some municipalities paid ‘lip service’ to regional planning visions and local responsibilities. Others, notably Vancouver, North Vancouver and Richmond, were more ‘explicit and aggressive’ in pursuing densification strategies, mixed-use development, transit policies and so on (Tomalty and Alexander, 2005: 25). Vancouver and North Vancouver accelerated efforts to convert industrial areas into new housing and mixeduse projects. Richmond targeted the uses of cul-de-sacs (Tomalty and Alexander, 2005). Densification across the city-region has gone up overall, but not sufficiently in many suburban areas to accelerate transit use, a cornerstone of smart growth’s incremental ‘spatialization’ of urban sustainability goals (Dierwechter, 2017). Urban intensification efforts, particularly in Vancouver, have led to contradictory problems with housing affordability. This has opened up city and regional planning advocates to charges of elitism from pro-development constituencies with vested interests in producing landscapes of low-density sprawl and, thus, the ‘local control’ over land-use policies ideologically championed in the past by the Social Credit Party and other conservative institutions. GVRD–Metro Vancouver has long provided a ‘regional forum’ to build collaborative visions and to forge policy consensus (Smith, 2009), including around recent plans like Metro Vancouver 2040; but it also suffers from what Smith and Kennedy call the limits of ‘gentle imposition’ (cited in Friesen, 2014: 3), or what many others have called new regionalism. From this perspective, iterative, softer processes of collaboration between governments and a huge range of other urban actors are more important than formal, hard ‘structures’ (Swanstrom, 2001; Jonas and Pincetl, 2006; Perlman and Jimenez, 2010; Savitch and Adhikari, 2017; Herrschel and Dierwechter, 2018; Moisio and Jonas, 2018). Friesen (2014: 7) notes that as a distinctive form of what Jonas (2012b) and many others call ‘city-regionalism’, Metro Vancouver represents ‘a hybrid between a formal institution and an approach grounded in governance through consensus and collaboration’. It is a mistake, however,

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to isolate this political ‘hybrid’ from longer-running economic changes across both the province and Canada. This can be clarified further by briefly exploring recent ‘smart city’ developments in Greater Vancouver. Such developments refer to how digital, communication and information technologies produce spaces of ‘ubiquitous engagement’ (Roy, 2017) – people-to-people, people-to-things, things-to-things and, possibly, placesto-places. Monfaredzadeh and Krueger (2015: 1112), for instance, think of smart cities ‘as a matter of incremental [ICT] enhancement … tacked on to spatial and institutional arrangements that already exist’. Building on its long institutional history of new regionalism within the wider Metro Vancouver planning culture as well as Vancouver’s own Digital Strategies Plan, Vancouver coordinated with nearby Surrey, a municipality of nearly 500,000 people (City of Vancouver and City of Surrey, 2019). As elsewhere in Canada, this city-regional partnership between strong local authorities was rewarded with further support by Infrastructure Canada, a federal agency that has coordinated new investments in smart city technologies in recent years. Focusing their original and later refined joint proposal on implementing Canada’s first two collision-free multi-modal transportation corridors, Vancouver and Surrey have Twitter-promised to be ‘#Smarter Together’. Their smart city plan seeks to use autonomous shuttles and smart technologies ‘to demonstrate the path to safer, healthier, and more socially connected communities while reducing emissions, improving transportation efficiency, and enhancing livability in the face of rapid growth and traffic congestion’ (City of Vancouver and City of Surrey, 2019: 2). This smart city plan, then, is more accurately seen as a ‘smart’ intra-regional vision of change that highlights new, untested, theories of greener mobility and inter-city relationships as part of a nationally supported carbon reduction strategy. Improving ‘mobility through data’, the plan’s main theme, is hardly original; yet the strong policy emphasis on smartly redesigning ‘mobility’ through new kinds of metropolitan ‘corridors’ is instructive. ‘Collisionfree multi-modal transportation corridors’ that link together cities and suburbs are fast-emergent kinds of metropolitan space, creating, the plan claims, ‘a catalogue of replicable projects and processes’ (City of Vancouver and City of Surrey, 2019: 5). Not only what to do, but how to do it. From a federal perspective, ‘replication’ of both form and process is valorized, as various experiments in new models of region-building vie for national attention. ‘Collision-free multi-modal transportation corridors’ are therefore specific expressions of how this type of ‘digital–physical nexus’ constitutes a new kind of territorial strategy of governance in the early 21st century, where ‘scalability’ is a powerful trope.

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Importantly, the scalable nexus as mobility corridor is planned for two key areas: Vancouver’s ‘South False Creek Innovation Corridor’ and the ‘Surrey Innovation Corridor’. The False Creek area is arguably one of Canada’s best-known examples of inner-city ‘smart growth’ (Spaxman, 1994; Punter, 2003), while the proposed Surrey Innovation Corridor (similarly) cuts through a ‘densifying suburban area’ (City of Vancouver and City of Surrey, 2019: 5), an oxymoronic term that challenges longaccepted images of ‘suburban’ North America in the first place. Surrey is more accurately conceptualized as a city, or perhaps a secondary city that committedly fuels and competes with – and thus increasingly constitutes – Vancouver stricto sensu. Like the ‘Silk Roads’ of the ancient and early modern world (Frankopan, 2016), these two smart corridors are multi-lane conduits, linking key ‘nodal’ functions at different speeds with continuous ‘flanking’ activities. Like the Silk Roads, they are presumed to be generative spaces of sparkling innovations, new developments, new ideas and even new forms of economic and cultural transformation. The modern ‘silk’ in the two ‘physical’ corridors – densifying through years, even decades, of strong spatial planning policies – are the ‘augmentations’ provided by three specific forms of ‘digital’ technology: a ‘Smart City Integration Hub’, which is basically a software platform to confect ‘corridor security, privacy, and interoperability’; autonomous vehicle shuttles and ‘last mile’ mobility vehicles for ‘all’ residents; and, finally, the famous data-harvesting ‘sensors and controls’ embedded into existing traffic infrastructures (City of Vancouver and City of Surrey, 2019: 2–11). Like the Silk Roads of history, though, future forms of mobility will not only bring milk and honey, harmony and happiness, caravans and souks. Cities, as Robert Beauregard (2018) argues, are fundamentally about the concomitant production of ‘contradictions’, which he defines as opposing tendencies: wealth and poverty; sustainability and destruction; democracy and oligarchy; tolerance and intolerance. It is impossible that Vancouver and Surrey have ‘solved’ these contradictions with #SmarterTogether. Consider the evidence (March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2016). Studies of recent socio-spatial changes in Greater Vancouver emphasize the empirical importance of contradictions much more than practical memes like #SmarterTogether (can) allow. Marit Rosol (2013: 2251), for example, shows how efforts to embed smarter forms of growth across Vancouver through new ‘eco-density’ strategies struggled, even as proponents built a discourse that ‘fixes its meaning onto sustainability and other hegemonic … elements like affordability and livability’. Whatever their biophysical effects on nature, Noah Quastel (2009: 694) nonetheless saw smart growth and eco-density developments within Vancouver in the

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early 2000s as ‘political ecologies of gentrification’. These treatments do not deny prima facie the (hopeful) empirical possibilities that smart spaces – compact urban forms, mixed-use buildings, transit choices, open space networks, collaborative decision-making, pedestrian-scale urbanism and so on – can deliver more sustainable effects. They point out that they also generate innumerable contradictions, as cities always do. In this sense, building ‘collision-free multi-modal transportation corridors’ is likely to do the same, especially as such corridors are ‘replicated’ through ‘scalable’ networks of multi-level governance in Canada. The concept of a smart mobility corridor is a contradictory idealization of planning and project. The hope is to blend new forms of movement with fixity, new flows (of things, people, data) with the solids of infrastructures, buildings, wires, natures. Deploying Miller and Ponto (2016), we might call this type of digital–physical nexus as ‘mobility amongst the spatialities’. For a ‘variety of spatialities’, Miller and Ponto argue, are implicated in what they call, inspired by Henri Lefebvre, ‘the production of mobility’. The production process includes the territoriality of the state; the roles of diverse places; the construction of scale; and the management of various kinds of networks. ‘Territory, place, scale, and networks’, they suggest, ‘are employed as spatial technologies of power, enabling or constraining the production of mobility. Conversely, mobility, as a spatial technology of power, has implications for territorial, place-based, scalar, and networked relations’ (Miller and Ponto, 2016: 269). Vancouver and Surrey’s intra-regional relationalities around jointly confected dreams of smartness ‘draw down’ the Canadian state’s territorial projects in ways that cannot be explained through rank-size powers over adjacent space. In consequence, Vancouver’s much-touted ‘success’ in this area is less about ‘place’ attributes per se and more about intra-regional relations with Surrey, as both communities forge (horizontal and vertical) policy collaborations around ‘city-regionalized’ climate action through novel smartness policies.

Case study 2: sustaining Seattle through … Tacoma: new ‘regional geographies’ across Puget Sound Seattle, Washington, is also not ‘an actor in charge of its own sustainability’ (Mossner and Miller, 2015: 19–21). Like Vancouver, Seattle is often noted for its green policy commitments; for ‘taking sustainability seriously’ (Portney, 2003); for leading policy innovations in new climate action networks, such as the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (Dierwechter, 2010) and, more recently, participation in C40 Cities. In

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important ways, this is entirely merited. The Seattle city council reacted officially in the early 1990s – well ahead of most cities – to international concerns with global climate change. Seattle’s 1994 comprehensive plan is well known in US planning history for its strong orientation around sustainability values (City of Seattle, 1994). Seattle is today an active participant in an expanding array of transnational climate action networks. The city council is today committed to a local Green New Deal. Like Vancouver, though, Seattle has struggled in recent years to transform into an ‘emerald city’ rather than ‘an elite emerald’ (Dierwechter, 2014). As the city restructures spatially and socially around the high-tech ecosystems of Amazon and Microsoft, class structures are shifting ‘upwards’, putting enormous pressure on reproduction costs that reverberate across the wider city-region (see Figure 8.1). Extruded from Seattle, middle-class and lower-income households are forced to go further afield to find affordable housing, particularly in Pierce County, the home of Tacoma. Sustaining Seattle therefore requires, I would argue here, ‘a reproduction frontier’, wherein much of the region is tasked with keeping labour reproduction costs lower through (lower-density) housing costs (Dierwechter, 2021). Paradoxically, this is one main reason why, at the scale of Seattle proper, per capita carbon use is declining but per capita carbon use across the Seattle-Tacoma city-region is expanding: the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metropolitan Statistical Area has not reduced per capita automobile emissions of CO2 nearly as well as, for instance, metropolitan Portland, San Francisco, San Jose or even Los Angeles (Gately et al, 2019). Seattle’s hypothesized urban sustainability sits within a sea of regional unsustainability. How to interpret these uneven patterns of carbon action? One possibility is to focus on the failures or deficiencies of communities outside of Seattle, including secondary cities like Tacoma. From this perspective, Seattle is ‘ahead’ or ‘more advanced’ than its regional neighbours, much like modernization theorists in the 1960s imagined social development as a unilinear and more or less inexorable process of discrete ‘stages’. Thus, underperforming cities – much like Third World societies – advance towards a higher stage of development already achieved by mature peers. Places are ‘behind’ in developmental time, but move forward as they add sophistication and refinement, as they import in new governance techniques and ways of doing business (Agnew, 1994). Intra-regional relationality challenges this perspective, suggesting instead that – in the present case – sustaining Seattle means thinking through Seattle’s unsustainable ‘reproduction frontier’ as a structural component of core city sustainability – a controversial and demanding thesis but one that is similar to ideas offered by other scholars on other cities

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(Mossner and Miller, 2015). Similarly, central flow theory recognizes that city networks are built as systems of uneven development, just as Wallerstein imagined world systems theory in the 1970s, notwithstanding efforts to trace ‘teaching and learning’ amongst core city participants in transnational municipal networks. Paying more comparative attention to the diverse relationalities of secondary cities in city-regional complexes tests the thesis here that localized reproduction frontiers are (or are not) part of how superstar cities now succeed. As in Vancouver, ‘planning as state intervention and planning as a method of policy formulation’ are attempts to manage these contradictions (Foglesong, 1986: 7). In consequence, the core problem of uneven regional development across Puget Sound is central to how public officials and planners seek to reshape socio-spatial patterns of production, consumption and circulation. Growth strategies for the overall Puget Sound region, for example, have long emphasized a future vision of metropolitan change that is focused on building a balanced hierarchy of ‘regional geographies’. In brief, this approach allocates specific numeric shares of growth (that is, people and jobs, known euphemistically as ‘activity units’) in order to support an overall development pattern that minimizes environmental damage and maximizes compactness. ‘Geographies’ are defined by the notion that ‘different types of cities and unincorporated areas will play distinct roles in the region’s future based on regional centers, access to high-capacity transit, and future planning’ (Puget Sound Regional Council, 2020: 26). After years of ‘slow growth’ or ‘no growth’, Tacoma has shown recent signs of vitality if not quite ‘go growth’ (Figure 8.2). But one theory is that Tacoma’s new-found vitality, albeit still fragile, only indicates a new kind of transition – from city to suburb. As one Seattle commentator puts it: ‘Tacoma has found a new role for itself: Seattle’s bedroom community’ (Horsey, 2020). While Tacoma still imports more workers than it exports – the classic definition of city rather than a suburb – its development story in recent decades also suggests that regional policy efforts to support improved geographies of ‘work–life balance’ are struggling. This is shown in Figures 8.2 and 8.3. Population growth is now accelerating (Figure  8.2), yet Tacoma’s employment strength as a destination for commuters has barely budged since 2002. Its ‘total jobs/total worker’ ratio is unchanged (Figure 8.3). Worse, the percentage of residents who both work and live in Tacoma has decreased from 35 per cent in 2002 to 25 per cent in 2017 – the opposite of what planners and public officials would like to see (Figure 8.3). Locked in a dialectic of uneven development, the, albeit now more demographically dynamic, secondary city of Tacoma is nonetheless struggling to compete with Seattle as a production space; it is too busy fuelling Seattle’s structural

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needs for social reproduction. The circulation of workers flowing north on congested highways thus emit more carbon as increasingly ‘elite’ Seattle seeks an emerald path to transnational sustainability (Figure 8.1). Though reshaped in recent years by Amazon, the city-region’s overall space economy still reflects Boeing’s original ‘hub-and-spoke’ industrial structure rather than, for instance, the more evenly distributed, smallbatch production networks associated with Marshallian districts like Silicon Valley or Portland’s electronics industry (Gray et al, 1996).

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Conclusion As one of the major spatial expressions of late capitalism, large, economically powerful, city-regional complexes of port and trade cities, growing suburbs, towns and various kinds of ex-urban areas are also increasingly critical agents in the new ‘geopolitics’ of carbon control (Jonas, 2012a; Dierwechter, 2019). Yet much of what we know about ‘urban’ sustainability and carbon policy tends to valorize the ‘trait’ geographies of sexy cities often abstracted from their functional territories – cities like Seattle and Vancouver, for instance, or Barcelona and Melbourne (Johnson, 2018). While much of this work usefully emphasizes transnational municipal action, and sometimes relational concepts like Taylor’s central flow theory, the role of ‘second’ cities embedded within these complexes is poorly understood. Given that lacuna, this chapter has explored the implications of Pendras and Williams’s concept of intra-regional relationality for understanding the planning, growth and urban development practices around global climate action and the new politics of ‘carbon control’. As discussed earlier, much of the literature on new (or city-) regionalism, in North America and elsewhere, focuses on multi-scalar and especially cross-jurisdictional efforts to build and effectively mobilize ‘collaborative’ spaces of territorial governance in order to engender improved competitiveness and/or more meaningful sustainability efforts. Merging these two crucial goals through David Harvey’s oeuvre, While et al (2004) memorably theorized such spaces as the search for a ‘sustainability fix’. Benner and Pastor (2012) focus in turn on new arrangements in the US that tend to forge ‘epistemic communities’ across fragmented metropolitan areas, which Hooghe and Marks (2016) interpret creatively as a specific kind of ‘regional authority’ that results from the messy, contingent, economic, cultural and political struggles in specific places between the sociality of ‘community’ and the efficiencies of ‘scale’. Elevating secondary cities in complex ‘intra-regional’ relationships with larger, putatively more successful neighbours – the trendy winners, the superstar cities – requires us to see global development challenges like carbon action in new ways, in theory complementing rather than displacing these other types of city-regional readings. Thus, in the present chapter, Surrey competes with, cooperates with and constitutes Vancouver, as both cities together seek to forge collision-free multi-modal transportation corridors that represent what I have elsewhere analysed with Tassilo Herrschel as smart transitions in city-regionalism. Vancouver does not explain itself. Such transitions – in Vancouver but also Berlin, Prague, Turin, Lyon, Johannesburg and Cape Town, to name only a

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few places – seek competitiveness through sustainability or sustainability through competitiveness, deploying new practices of ‘smartness’ to do so (Herrschel and Dierwechter, 2018). Long in the shadow of Seattle, the secondary city of Tacoma similarly competes with, cooperates with and constitutes its famous neighbour. This has uneven geographical effects. For Pendras and Williams – and for me – this structural reality does not eliminate politics. Quite the opposite. Tacoma’s future – like Surrey’s or Geelong’s – remains open. But that future is subject to how different kinds of intra-regional relationships between Tacoma and Seattle – and other cities – are both imagined and supported. If Tacoma’s recent residential trajectory is not complemented by an attendant growth in local employment, intra-regional relationalities probably mean Tacoma’s steady suburbanization. For the demands of the region’s reproduction frontier will most shape local (and regional) political choices, a reality equivocated by ‘more activity units’ in ‘the regional geographies’ of planned change. If growth in local employment spaces means mimetic reflections of – or spillovers from – Seattle that accrue mainly to high-tech hipsters and computer programmers, intra-regional relationalities mean that Tacoma’s future may be more ‘self-contained’ or balanced but also more elite and thus, more socially unsustainable. Either way, placing the role of communities like Tacoma and Surrey – and other regional second cities discussed in this book – is an important part of how we should analyse the rise of city-regionalism as a new strategy of transnational carbon politics and urban development. It is no longer all that interesting (or compelling) to claim abstractly that Seattle and Vancouver are sustainable if Tacoma and Surrey are relationally constitutive of Seattle and Vancouver. References

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Conclusion: Advancing the Secondary City Perspective Charles Williams and Mark Pendras

The varied contributions to this book confirm the value of employing a relational analysis to understand the conditions and prospects of secondary cities across a wide range of urban contexts. While a welcome and growing body of research has moved beyond ‘global winners’ to focus on ‘small cities’, ‘shrinking cities’ and ‘legacy cities’, it is essential to highlight the connections between different cities if we are to avoid an overly fragmented accounting of contemporary urban conditions. In Ward’s (2010: 477) terms, following Tilly (1984), this work constitutes a form of ‘individualizing comparison’ focused on exploring the relationship between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ cities within the context of post-crisis urban redevelopment in the Global North. In line with Massey’s (2007) insights (and, we hope, avoiding the essentializing tendencies that Ward (2010) critiques), we suggest that taking a relational approach to this investigation of multiple cases can help us to see how the ‘failings’, struggles and policy dilemmas faced by secondary cities are often intimately tied to the ‘successes’ of larger, dominant cities. Such cities have often been construed (especially in the US) as ‘left-behind’ places (Hendrickson et  al, 2018) that should look to superstar cities to identify their own paths forward. Conversely, more dynamic secondary cities have at times been celebrated for their niche identities and associated economic success. Counter to this kind of decontextualized emphasis on the policy choices and internal strengths

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or shortcomings of particular secondary cities, the approach taken here highlights instead the extent to which the trajectories of these cities need to be understood as already reflecting a history of interactions with their more dominant neighbours. This emphasis on relationality in turn raises crucial issues of scale. Analyses of ‘second cities’ in the US have almost entirely focused on national-level relationships between cities like New York and Chicago or Philadelphia (Hodos, 2011). But to understand cities such as those explored in this book we need to operate at the regional level, to grapple with how proximity to a regionally dominant city plays a central role in defining a range of economic, social and policy opportunities and limitations. This is not, of course, to rule out other scales of analysis in assessing, for instance, how capital and population flows have reached or evaded otherwise similar cities. But there are distinctive forces at play at the regional scale with regard to the economic circuits involved in the production of everyday life, and underemphasis on this intraregional context limits our understanding of urban development. While existing scholarship on regionalism and city-regionalism addresses some of those dynamics, the dominance of the core city perspective often means little attention is paid to the ‘distributional struggles within cityregions’ (Jonas, 2012: 823). In contrast, a central aim of this book has been to consider city-regionalism and such distributional struggles from the secondary city perspective in hopes that doing so might offer new ways of understanding and approaching regional politics. In this conclusion we draw out some key insights about these relationships based on the findings in various chapters, first focusing on the value and nuances of the borrowed size/agglomeration shadow framework and then turning to a broader consideration of what this all means for how we understand regional development.

Borrowing size and agglomeration shadows The relational tensions shaping regional secondary cities, both in the longer term and with regard to the development patterns of recent decades, can be fruitfully explored from the perspective of agglomeration shadows and borrowed size. Beyond effectively utilizing the agglomeration shadow/borrowed size framework, we hope the book successfully identifies important ways to deepen and extend this mode of analysis. Here we want to emphasize four points in particular: the importance of a broad approach to how we use the concepts, the need to go beyond thinking of borrowed size and agglomeration shadows only in binary

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terms, the current significance of ongoing agglomeration for the development of secondary cities, and the need to take a strongly political approach to understanding the causes and consequences of borrowing/ shadowing dynamics.

Extending the concepts While the borrowing and shadowing concepts are rooted in economic and quantitative analysis, different chapters within this book illustrate multiple ways to creatively apply this approach to better situate and explain the experiences of secondary cities. Thus, a more historical and qualitative engagement with agglomeration shadows leads several authors (see Chapters 3, 4 and 6, this volume) to emphasize how path dependencies have significantly constrained the economic options facing secondary cities once a neighbouring city emerges as a regional centre. Dominant cities tend to sustain their position, with secondary cities playing supportive roles that enable that ongoing success (with mixed consequences for the secondary cities). This is a point confirmed in more quantitative terms in Chapters 2 and 5, by Cardoso and Meijers. Their work also shows how a framework informed by borrowed size and agglomeration shadows can help to map a variegated landscape of secondary cities based on the distribution of specific characteristics across a given region. This in turn opens up crucial questions – and related policy considerations – about what explains the greater or lesser success of specific cities with regard to how they share in the benefits of metropolitan integration. Hytrek picks up this theme of metropolitan ‘benefits’ in Chapter 7 and turns it over, highlighting the value of shifting our attention away from borrowed size at the level of elite policy-making and economic performance to an analysis of ‘social performance’. Recognizing that grassroots politics and community organizing have also experienced borrowing/shadowing dynamics, Hytrek charts the intra-regional evolution of social justice activism. Finally, in Chapter 8, Dierwechter extends these ideas beyond traditional political economic concerns and carries them to the realm of climate action, demonstrating the role that secondary cities may play in enabling core city sustainability visions. Like Hytrek, Dierwechter’s work pushes us to consider borrowing and shadowing from a new angle, in this case in terms of how core/secondary city relations are embedded in the politics of global climate action. Taken together, these chapter contributions pick up the threads from existing scholarship and explore creative applications of the borrowing/shadowing framework to provide new perspectives on intra-regional development.

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Beyond the shadowing/borrowing binary In addition to extending the existing concepts, the contributions assembled here also complicate common understandings of the relationship between borrowed size and agglomeration shadows. In particular, various authors illustrate that these are not mutually exclusive experiences but can instead occur simultaneously and in interrelated ways. This is particularly evident in recent instances where secondary cities have arrived at development strategies premised on responding to the various dimensions of a primary city’s success. Geelong, for instance, embraced a role as a residential commuter centre serving Melbourne, which retains key economic sectors including producer services, finance, and professional, technical and scientific services. Borrowing size offered a way forward for Geelong, but only in the context of – and as the result of – an agglomeration shadow that made the city attractive for overflow residential activities that could not be sustained in Melbourne. The resulting revitalization of Geelong has been both meaningful and reflective of deliberate policy initiatives pursued by the city. But even here the terms of development have partly been dictated by Melbourne, as the Melbourne 2030 plan envisioned a network of regional cities to reduce the pressures associated with the core city’s diseconomies of scale. As Chapter 4 concludes, Geelong remains overshadowed while benefiting from borrowed size and more effective incorporation into the urban region. A similar story can be told about Tacoma, where years of failed business competition with Seattle have given way to a model focused on middle-class residential development and consumer amenities reliant on the arrival of new residents who work in and around Seattle. This is a perspective rooted in the conclusion that since it is impossible to escape Seattle’s shadow, the next best thing is to ride that city’s coat-tails. The borrowed size/agglomeration shadow matrix developed by Meijers and Cardoso (Chapter 2) as an extension of their earlier work further illustrates this type of outcome, highlighting cases where a given city borrows size in one dimension (say, urban functions) while experiencing an agglomeration shadow in another (performance). It is accordingly imperative that debates about the determinants and significance of borrowed size and agglomeration shadows incorporate a more integrated assessment of how these experiences often unfold concurrently in specific cities rather than marking strictly divergent possibilities. The simultaneity of borrowing and shadowing also raises important political questions about who borrows what from whom and how such decisions get made, a point we discuss in greater detail later in this chapter.

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Current trajectories for secondary cities How then should we understand the current conditions facing secondary cities? Recognizing the complexities noted earlier, the analyses in the book point to ongoing agglomeration shadows as one major factor shaping uneven development at the regional level. Absent active intervention by local or other levels of government, the (at least partial) hollowing out of secondary city economic activities is a recurring experience in a context of greater regional integration. This is evident both in the qualitative analysis of specific secondary cities in Switzerland, Australia and the US and in the overview findings from Cardoso and Meijers (Chapters 2 and 5), indicating that, despite their many variations, few of the secondary cities in England or the Randstad are able to match the markers of success associated with regional primary cities. In that light, successful transformation into a prosperous bedroom community that borrows size from the primary city often appears as an attractive ‘solution’ versus relegation to more marginal economic activities – however much such a ‘choice’ is in practice defined and closely circumscribed by core/ secondary city relations. This move from ‘city to suburb’ (Chapter 8, this volume) has potentially troubling consequences, but that in part depends on how the transition is navigated by particular cities. In its more appealing forms, ‘winning from second’ (Chapter 4, this volume) can also include considerable success in maintaining a more diverse economy and retaining elements of a distinct local identity. As Chapter 3 shows, smaller Swiss cities have been able to build on their historical strengths to avoid becoming exclusively bedroom communities dependent on their primary neighbours, but this requires active measures based on a clear understanding of existing agglomeration pressures. Wädenswil, for example, has retained and extended its emphasis on education and research around agriculture, but only through political interventions to counter the risk of having such activities siphoned off to Zurich. Similarly, in Chapter 4 Johnson highlights the expansion of Deakin University to encompass a medical school and applied research on high-end metal and textile production. This is an important anchor for Geelong that also connects to the city’s manufacturing history. Combined with other federal and state funding to promote existing industry (as well as business and commuter relocations), this suggests the possibilities for a balanced secondary city development model that strategically accommodates to new conditions while simultaneously retaining and benefiting from elements of a longer-term local identity. None of this is to claim that there are not real conflicts inherent in such a model, for instance around the difficulties of combining some forms of ongoing

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industrial activity with the urban ‘quality of life’ expectations that shape middle-class residential and consumption patterns. But it does illustrate that significant results are possible with public-sector interventions that extend beyond a narrow neoliberal framework. It is arguable that the stakes of effectively responding to agglomeration pressures are even higher for secondary cities in the US, especially in comparison to Europe. In many European contexts, variations in local conditions remain to some extent mitigated by national-level social provisions to meet the needs of residents across different communities. Economic decline in US cities is more comprehensively tied to local immiseration. But this also means that the complications of particular forms of ‘success’ for secondary cities need to be especially scrutinized. Here we can clearly see the perils of becoming a bedroom community from the perspective of working-class residents. In Tacoma, the recent ‘success’ in borrowing size from Seattle effectively amounts to regional gentrification, with downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods increasingly transformed into expensive residential locations geared to middle-class consumption. The relative lack of public (local, state, federal) support for affordable housing, renter protections and other social provisions has exacerbated the economic pressures on the city’s multiracial working class, which is being displaced from central Tacoma. We thus envision comparative research into how extra-regional political structures shape intra-regional political relations as one promising next step in secondary cities research.

The politics of intra-regional relationality This points to the more general need for a strongly political analysis of secondary cities and their trajectories as they interact with their dominant neighbours. By this we mean a close consideration of the conflicting interests associated with different outcomes in secondary cities, as well as the processes by which those interests organize and exert power (through the state and otherwise) in pursuit of their particular goals. We find the concepts of borrowed size and agglomeration shadows extremely useful for thinking about secondary cities in relational terms. But there is also a tendency among urbanists to assume that borrowed size is inherently preferable to (and stands neatly in contrast with) the problems associated with an agglomeration shadow, and thus that regional planning and policy efforts in secondary cities should aim to foster such an outcome. The analysis of Tacoma’s recent experience highlights several potential problems here. Most obviously, we need to ask who benefits and who

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loses (and in what ways) from any particular expression of borrowed size. Put another way, this means disaggregating with regard to understanding the race, class and other social and economic consequences of particular developments within a given secondary city. Moreover, it may be the case that some experiences of ‘success’ along these lines are, simultaneously, manifestations of ongoing constraint, and that moving along a particular path forecloses other possibilities. For example, the emergence of a middleclass bedroom community may entail a rejection of any remaining ‘gritty’ industrial pursuits – and the people, places and companies associated with them – and therefore may consolidate a set of political interests that advance a commercial and residential property development agenda at the expense of industrial space. Thus, as we acknowledge the benefits that come from ‘winning from second’ (Chapter 4) or from matching core city performance or demographic characteristics (Chapter 5), we should also acknowledge that not everyone shares equally in those benefits. Bearing in mind the path dependencies identified in many chapters of this book, this is a worrying possibility if we aspire to more equitable forms of regional development. These concerns also call attention to the importance of political analysis in another way, as an assessment of how different groups and interests mobilize to shape the outcomes associated with particular manifestations of borrowed size and agglomeration shadows. The impact of securing one result over another is clearly both substantial and uneven across different communities. In that context, analyses of who holds political and economic power, and how that power is expressed within and between cities, should take a more central place in the borrowing/shadowing scholarship. Chapter 7 is especially significant in illustrating this point, showing how Los Angeles and Long Beach business interests historically collaborated to define a particular regional development model with narrowly distributed benefits in each city, and how that agenda was challenged and partly reversed by community and labour organizing across city lines. For Long Beach, these outcomes can be understood as involving different forms of borrowed size from Los Angeles that are grounded in strongly contrasting class politics. At the same time, Hytrek’s analysis concludes that what happens in Long Beach is also significant to the larger political and economic possibilities in the region, revealing how struggles over power in secondary cities also matter for the trajectory of the primary city.

Toward a region of cities The emphasis on politics returns us to normative consideration of the city-region. Whether we are focused on relations or on the formal legal

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terms of territoriality, regions are actively and politically constructed through decisions made and actions taken by people (Jonas and Moisio, 2018; Paasi and Metzger, 2017). How regions are experienced by residents thus depends on the terms on which they are constructed, the terms that manage whether and how power, decision-making and important resources are distributed (Jonas, 2012). While most of the chapter contributions assembled here point to the goal of finding strategies to secure conditions favourable to secondary cities, most also note that recent decades have largely prioritized primary city development over other considerations. Some cities are able to find their niche (Chapter 3), build capacity to ‘win from second’ (Chapter 4), match core city characteristics (Chapter 5), or otherwise ride the wave of regional growth to capture overflow investments (Chapter 6), but none of these examples confronts the ‘golden goose’ scenario that Massey (2007) articulated years ago. Regional development efforts remain focused on ensuring that primate cities can produce their golden eggs, can secure the investments needed to fuel the region’s growth. Encouraging secondary cities to accommodate, adjust to and fit in with core city visions and development demands does not signal a balanced approach to city-regionalism. As Jonas (2012) notes, one way to understand struggles over the distribution of resources (institutional as well as financial) within regions is in terms of broader processes of ongoing state restructuring. This might help explain common tendencies across the cases examined here towards ‘primate city structures’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2017) that bet on the ‘golden goose’ while circumscribing secondary city options; in essence, feeding winners to advance neoliberalization. Such patterns and practices reinforce the conceptualization of the city-region as a city’s region – or a region that belongs to and serves the interests of the core city – rather than a region of cities that treats the various cities of the region as valued and integral components of the regional project. Dierwechter’s excellent historical discussion in Chapter  8 clarifies that such imbalances were not part of the original and arguably utopian city-region concept; nevertheless, the practical trajectory has carried the idea forward in ways that privilege core city performance over visions of a more balanced ‘social city’. The challenge, as is so often the case, is identifying openings for intervention and change. The rich typologies generated by Meijers and Cardoso in Chapters 2 and 5 do much to clarify the landscape of secondary cities and the characteristics of different kinds of cities experiencing different kinds of connections with their core city neighbours. Yet a snapshot of existing conditions, however detailed, cannot establish the causal linkages needed to clarify where to intervene in order to change and improve circumstances. The manoeuvring reflected

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in the Swiss (Chapter 3) and Australian (Chapter 4) cases demonstrates that there are gains to be made for secondary cities, but the onus is still on those cities to adapt, adjust and find the right ‘fit’ in relation to their dominant neighbours. The other side of the relational equation – the status of the golden goose and the distribution of benefits accrued from prevailing intra-regional relations – remains unexamined. One way to bring in the other side of the equation is to focus more directly on regional governance and the political structures – both formal and informal – that manage how the regional pieces fit together. This evokes questions of territoriality, or the on-the-ground mechanisms through which ‘territorial forms are constructed politically and reproduced through everyday acts and struggles around consumption and social reproduction’ (Jonas and Ward, 2007: 170). While implicit in investigations of the characteristics and conditions found in various cities and differences between cities in any particular region, none of the chapter contributions engage territoriality explicitly in a substantive way, though Chapter 8 evokes the prospects and limitations of doing so. In terms of the prospects for a region of cities, the language of cooperation and coordination is widely adopted and celebrated (Swanstrom, 2006; Scott, 2007; Etherington and Jones, 2009), indicating an awareness of shared experiences and an openness to sharing resources. Yet, as noted in Chapter 8, by relying on the soft spaces of voluntary cooperation, the new regionalist governance strategies often leave many of the hardest challenges – air pollution, traffic congestion, housing affordability and climate policy – unmet. Achieving a vision for a region of cities, with the power and resource-sharing that vision involves, thus seems unlikely to be taken up voluntarily in the face of prevailing economic development logics that privilege agglomeration and buzz-enhancing employment concentrations. The Dutch (Chapter 2), Swiss (Chapter 3) and Canadian (Chapter 8) contexts appear more inclined towards that kind of balance; yet, even in those leading examples, secondary cities remain on the margins either as somewhat invisible contributors to core city successes, or as outsiders struggling to find their regional niche. As we search for new openings for challenge and change, two additional points are worth exploring. First, the limitations of voluntarism in regional governance point to the importance of organizing to establish regional networks of solidarity that might confront the patterns of core city domination (as well as related iniquities within the core and other cities). Chapter  7 is particularly instructive in this regard. Stretching the borrowed size concept beyond the usual confines of economic thinking, and building on Meijers and Burger’s (2017) idea of ‘borrowed performance’, Hytrek explores how social justice activists in Long Beach

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learned to ‘borrow social performance’ by building coalitions with more established and better-resourced activist groups in neighbouring Los Angeles, enabling them to assert pressure and make gains that had previously been out of their reach. This is key – it is not just about moving away from voluntary planning to something firmer. It is about who would have power in that context. Second, the very logic that fuels the existing patterns of centralization, agglomeration and the emergence of ‘superstar cities’ is itself facing critical reconsideration. Just as the dangers of allowing some places to be ‘left behind’ and the problems associated with diseconomies of scale gather greater attention, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated new doubts among pundits and policy-makers about the desirability and sustainability of high-density settlements (Dillon, 2020; Riley, 2020; Tavernise and Mervosh, 2020). Prognosticating about long-term impacts is a dangerous business, especially this early in a global-scale event that is sure to evolve significantly over time. And it is equally plausible that in the absence of primate city growth, and in the face of mounting uncertainty, the perceived stability of core cities could lead to an increase in the consolidation and concentration of resources rather than new patterns of decentralization – such as occurred, for example, after the Great Recession. Nevertheless, while we lament the fact that these dense and vibrant urban landscapes are now equated not only with synergistic possibilities but also with health-related fear and anxiety, we also recognize that the current moment could raise, and indeed already has raised (Florida et al, 2020), new questions about the value of secondary cities. It is not unreasonable to see the current conjuncture leading to new appreciation for the perceived less frenetic environments of secondary cities, thus opening space for productive considerations of a more polycentric form of urbanism. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed deeply worn patterns of uneven development, particularly in the US, with the impact of the pandemic playing out in ways that mirror existing racial, gender and class inequalities. As a consequence, new practices of sharing and new expressions of solidarity have gained significant purchase, a process now tied to a Black Lives Matter movement that has the potential to transform city politics. While we are not in a position to substantially explore these developments here, we might expect them to lend new levels of support for the types of organizing and coalition-building that Hytrek explored (Hadden and Goger, 2020). In short, if the region of cities vision hinges on sentiments of solidarity and inclusion, then the current moment may open space to make gains that have in the past proved elusive.

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Conclusion This book pulls together and builds on extant threads from urban studies scholarship to explore the experiences of secondary cities and the importance of intra-regional relationality. As always, there is more to say and more to learn. We know that easy conclusions about the benefits of borrowing size are to be avoided and that whether any particular borrowing or shadowing experience is positive or negative (or both) for secondary city residents cannot be assumed a priori, but rather should be seen as an empirical question to be answered through focused research. But to inform activist mobilizations or policy interventions to improve secondary city conditions, more information is needed. Similarly, though we know that intra-regional organizing for social justice gains can be effective in the same ways that elite development plans have been in the past, there is more to learn about how the rich traditions of community and labour organizing can apply in this context and help point the way to strategies for building primary/secondary or secondary/secondary city solidarities. We also still need to identify what new coalitions might do to realize a more balanced region of cities, and what such coalitions might mean for local organizing and the politics of class and race. Finally, we want to reiterate that the present collection intentionally narrows the discussion of secondary cities to the Global North, where preliminary observations and investigations have originated and where a shared history of urban crisis and post-industrial ‘recovery’ provides a context for understanding current patterns of uneven development at a regional level. Whether these patterns might be fruitfully explored in the Global South, and whether it would be appropriate to do so, remains an open question. We are wary of the damage that comes from projecting experiences across disparate social, political and historical contexts, shoehorning development patterns from one place into the theoretical constructs derived from another. Once again, the intention here is to provide a starting point that opens space for new directions of enquiry. The intra-regional dynamics explored throughout the book are fundamentally important to understanding the trajectories and development possibilities of secondary cities. As we likely enter into a new period of health and social crisis that is intertwined with existing urban (and other) disparities, this is a crucial context for efforts to advance more equitable outcomes. Only by understanding how the conditions in particular cities are intimately tied to conditions in their neighbours can we hope to identify political and policy strategies for a more balanced regional landscape.

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References

Dillon, L. (2020) ‘Virus ruins state’s plan for urban density: in aiming to counter housing crisis, strategy to promote transit and home building near jobs has a new enemy’, Los Angeles Times, 26 April. Etherington, D. and Jones, M. (2009) ‘City-regions: new geographies of uneven development and inequality’, Regional Studies, 43(2): 247–65. Florida, R., Rodriguez-Pose, A. and Storper, M. (2020) ‘Cities in a postCOVID world’, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2041, Utrecht University. Hadden, T. and Goger, A. (2020) ‘In the age of American “megaregions”, we must rethink governance across jurisdictions’, Brookings Institution, 7 May. Hendrickson, C., Muro, M. and Galston, W. (2018) ‘Countering the geography of discontent: strategies for left behind places’, Brookings Institution, November. Available from: https://www.brookings.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2018/11/2018.11_Report_Countering-geographyof-discontent_Hendrickson-Muro-Galston.pdf [Accessed 5 November 2020]. Hodos, J. (2011) Second Cities: Globalization and Local Politics in Manchester and Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Jonas, A.E.G. (2012) ‘City-regionalism: questions of distribution and politics’, Progress in Human Geography, 36(6): 822–9. Jonas, A.E.G. and Moisio, S. (2018) ‘City regionalism as geopolitical processes: a new framework for analysis’, Progress in Human Geography, 42(3): 350–70. Jonas, A.E.G. and Ward, K. (2007) ‘Introduction to a debate on cityregions: new geographies of governance, democracy and social reproduction’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(1): 169–78. Massey, D. (2007) World City, Cambridge: Polity Press. Meijers, E.J. and Burger, M.J. (2017) ‘Stretching the concept of “borrowed size”’, Urban Studies, 54(1): 269–91. Paasi, A. and Metzger, J. (2017) ‘Foregrounding the region’, Regional Studies, 51(1): 19–30. Riley, J. (2020) ‘Does coronavirus doom density? The pandemic will make suburban, exurban and rural life more tempting for some, but cities will survive’, Wall Street Journal, 28 April. Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2017) ‘The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it)’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(1): 189–209. Scott, J.W. (2007) ‘Smart growth as urban reform: a pragmatic “recoding” of the new regionalism’, Urban Studies, 44(1): 15–35.

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Swanstrom, T. (2006) ‘Regionalism, equality, and democracy’, Urban Affairs Review, 42(2): 249–57. Tavernise, S. and Mervosh, S. (2020) ‘America’s biggest cities were already losing their allure. What happens next?’, New York Times, 20 April. Tilly, C. (1984) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Ward, K. (2010) ‘Towards a relational comparative approach to the study of cities’, Progress in Human Geography, 34(4): 471–87.

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Index Note: Page numbers for figures and tables appear in italics. #HealthyLB 175 #SmarterTogether 193, 194

A Acs, Z.J. 29, 59 Adelaide 79, 80, 183 Adliswil 58 Africa 187 agglomerations 12, 28, 29, 30 agglomeration shadows 12, 13, 26–7, 30, 33, 59, 109, 210–15 definition 30, 108 and demography 111 Geelong 96 Maassluis 37 Randstad 32, 34, 39, 48 Switzerland 63 Tacoma 134–5, 139, 147 agricultural research centres 66, 74 Agroscope 66, 67, 68 Alcoa Aluminium 85, 91 Almere 37–8 Alonso, W. 12, 59, 107, 158, 160 Alpine regions 62 Alpine tourism towns 61 Amsterdam 36, 37, 38, 183, 184, 190 Anaheim 165 AngelouEconomics 142 anti-union strategy 162 Asarco copper smelter 141 asthma rates 166 Australia 79–97, 212, 213 Australian Football League 96 authoritative regionalism 187 Automobile Competitive Investment Scheme 87 autonomy 61–2, 81, 127, 128 Avalon Airport 90

B Bähler, A. 56 bailiwick 66 Ballarat 83, 92, 95, 184 Barber, Ben 190 Barbour, Henry 162 Basel 55, 58, 62 Basildon 116 Bath 121 Batman, John 82 BBSR (German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development) 109–10, 112 Beauregard, Robert 194 bedroom community 50, 57, 72, 74, 213, 215 Tacoma 151, 198, 214 beer brewery 65 Bell, D. 7 Bendigo 95 Benner, C. 188, 200 Bern 55–6, 58, 62–3, 70, 72, 73 Bernese Oberland 70 Biel 59 Big-Box Ban 167 Birmingham 119, 120, 125, 126 blue-collar workers 34 Boeing 143, 165, 199 ‘Boeing Bust’ 140 borrowed functions 37, 40, 42–4, 45–7, 48, 108 borrowed performance 37, 38, 39, 45–7, 108, 122, 217–18 borrowed size 13–14, 26–7, 33, 50, 108, 109, 158, 210–15 and above-average share of functions 110

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borrowed size (continued) British cities 114, 116, 121, 126, 127–8 definition 59, 104, 107, 134 and demography 111 Geelong 81, 91, 95, 97 and good intra-regional transport links 123 Long Beach 170–1, 173, 174, 176–7 Randstad 30, 32, 34, 37, 39, 48 Switzerland 60, 63, 69 Tacoma 135, 143, 144, 145, 150, 151, 185 and tourism 40 Bourke, Governor 82 Brenner, N. 4–5 Brisbane 79 Bristol 119, 125 Bristow, G. 188 Britain 105, 106, 108, 111–28 British Columbia 191–5 brownfield sites 57, 65 Buena Park 164 Building Healthy Communities (BHC) 164, 174 Burger, M. 13, 59, 107–8, 158 Burger et al 134 business hubs 61 Button Plan 87

C C40 Cities 189, 195 Cababa, Nikole 173–4 California 158, 159–77, 215, 217–18 California Endowment (TCE) 164, 174, 175 Camagni, R. 28 Canada 191–5, 200 cantonal secondary school 68 Capello, R. 27, 28 carbon control 181, 182, 200 Carbon Nexus 94 carbon politics 189 Carbon Revolution 94 Cardoso, R. 7, 97 CBD (central business district) revitalization 89, 91, 96 central flow theory 184, 190, 198 central places 104, 184 centrifugal mode 25 centrism, core city 122

Centro Shalom 166 Champion, A.G. 25–6 Chester 121 Chesterfield 123 Chinese residents 137 Christaller, Walter 92 Chur 59 city networks 30, 48, 163, 170, 173, 198 City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) 88, 90–1 city-regional complex 183 city-regionalism 181, 185–201 city-regions 11–14, 105, 111–28 class 135, 197 Class A office space 146 Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice 168 climate change 182, 189, 196 Coalition to Stop Plant Closings 167 Cochrane, A. 8 collision-free multi-modal transportation corridors 193, 195, 200 colour, people of 149, 165, 166, 169 Committee for Geelong 81, 85, 89, 90, 92 commuting 60, 64, 81 Geelong 91, 95, 96, 97, 212 Tacoma 144, 198 Thun 55–6, 73 Wädenswil 65, 67 competition 30, 61–2 competitiveness 188, 201 connectivity 29, 95, 123, 125 network 159 core–periphery models 29, 107 Cotton On 88 Coventry 116 COVID-19 pandemic 218 Cox, E. 108, 123 The Culture of Cities 183 CWD Investments 150

D D’Apolito, R. 187 DataShine OAC 114 Davis, Mike 162 DaVita 147 Deakin University 85, 213 demography 110–11, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127 see also population

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deportations 175 Dierwechter, Y. 185, 188 discrete places 190 Disneyland 165 diverse territorial outcomes 188 diversity, population 119 Doncaster 121 Dordrecht 49 Douglas Aircraft Company 161 downtown economy 142, 144, 146–8 Downtown General Plan (Long Beach) 165, 169, 170 Duncan, Chad 150 Durham 121, 122, 123

E economic development 71–2 economic performance 159 economic structure 38–9 Economic Well-Being Policy Group 139 education 94–5, 96 higher 65, 66, 67, 68, 74, 91 education and research town 68, 69 education institutions 66–7 elites 161, 162, 163 embeddedness 28–9, 36, 39, 67 Empa 71, 72–3, 74 employer associations 162 employment 61, 199, 201 entrepreneurial opportunities 67 epistemic communities 188, 200 European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) 26 Everyone in LA 175

F False Creek 194 federal governments 86 federal parliaments 86 Federation of Filipino American Associations 166 Ficken, R.E. 137 Fickes, A. 145 Filipino Migrant Center 170 fiscal equalization system 61 Foglesong, R.E. 198 Foodplus 68 football 96 Ford Motor Company 85, 87, 88, 91 Fort Lewis 139

fragmentation 61, 106, 123, 139, 169, 187 Freiburg 190 Friesen, M. 192 fruit processing 66 functional integration 108, 122–3 functional shadow 34, 37, 39, 40, 48 functions-demography matrix 119–25, 126 fusion mode 26

G G21 85, 88–9, 90–1 Gale, Chris 114 garden city 183 Gateshead 121 Geddes, Patrick 183, 186 Geelong 80, 81–3, 84, 85, 87–92, 94–7, 212, 213 political structure 86 population 93 Geelong Football Club 90 Geelong Regional Commission 85, 88, 89 Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund (GRIIF) 88 Geneva 55, 58, 62 gentrification 145, 149–50, 151, 165, 195, 214 geographies, regional 198 German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) 109–10 Germany 108, 190 Get-Out-The-Vote 172 global climate change 182, 196 Global Covenant of Mayors 189 globalization 8–9, 85, 87, 184, 186 global status 93–4 Goebel, A. 145 gold 83 ‘golden goose’ 10, 11–12, 216, 217 goods and services tax (GST) 86 Gordon Institute 88 governance networks 187 gravity model 36 Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) 191–2 Great Northern Railroad 137 green action 189–90, 195–6 Green Car Fund 87

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green internationalism 190 Green New Deal 196 Grimes, Charles 82 Grow 67 growth rates 199 Growth Strategies Act 192 Guggenheim Museum 90

H Haarlemmermeer 37 Häberli, P. 72 health sector 91, 94–5, 96 Helsinki 189 Herrschel, T. 188 Hidalgo, Anne 190 higher education 65, 66, 67, 68, 74, 91 high-tech sector 142 high-tech towns 61 Hilltop 149 historical importance 37, 41, 49 historic cities 121, 123, 126, 186 HJC (Housing Justice Coalition) 175 Hobart 79, 82 Hoddle, Robert 82 Hollingsworth, T. 145 Hooghe, L. 200 housing 57, 60 Long Beach 161, 169 Seattle 196 Tacoma 144–5, 148–50, 151, 214 Vancouver 192 Wädenswil 65 Housing Justice Forum 175 housing justice movement 175 Housing Long Beach (HLB) 170, 174, 175 Howard, Ebenezer 183 Huddersfield 114 Hytrek, G. 159

I immigrant rights 174 Immigration and Customs Enforcement 174–5 incorporation mode 25–6 industrial economy 138, 139, 141, 147, 152, 163 industrial freedom 162 industrial park 68–9 Infrastructure Canada 193 institutionalization 188

insurance 58, 63, 91 integration 26–8, 29, 97, 104, 105, 106, 107, 152 Australia 80, 81, 89, 96 city network 30 functional 108, 122–3 Long Beach 161, 173 network 48 Randstad 49 Switzerland 75 UK 112, 127, 128 Interlaken 70–1 International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives’ Cities for Climate Protection 189 International Harvester 87 International Solar Cities Initiative 189 interregional competition 10 intra-regional relationality 1–2, 6–13, 181, 182–5, 189–201, 214–15 intra-regional service specialization 187

J Jayne, M. 7 Jenks et al 123 jobs 108, 110 Geelong 88, 91 Long Beach 166, 167, 171 Randstad 32, 33, 41 Seattle 140 Switzerland 75 Tacoma 147, 148, 152, 198 Thun 71, 74 Wädenswil 66, 68, 74 Jonas, A.E.G. 8, 10, 192, 210, 217 Jones et al 123 Justice Uprising 164

K Kahrl, W.L. 162 Khmer Girls in Action 170 Kilpatrick, S. 90, 91 King George Sound 79 Kipling, Rudyard 137 Klondike Gold Rush 137–8 Kloten 58 Knott’s Berry Farm 164 knowledge economy 91, 93 knowledge-intensive jobs 74 knowledge-intensive towns 61 Krueger, R. 193

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L ‘Labor and the Pulpit’ 172 Labor Peace Ordinance 167 labour activism 164 labour unions 162–3, 167 Lakewood Center Mall 164 land-use planning 74–5 Language Access Coalition (LAC) 170 Lausanne 55, 59, 62 LB Coalition (Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community) 164, 167–8, 169, 171–2, 176 and LBRising! 170, 173–4, 175 LB Model 164 LBRising! 170–1, 172, 173, 175 Leeds 120, 125, 126 Lefebvre, Henri 195 Lefèvre, C. 107 Legal Aid Foundation Los Angeles (LAFLA) 170 Legal Aid of Los Angeles 175 Livable Region Strategic Plan (LRSP) 192 Liverpool 121 living wage campaign 171–3, 174 lobbying in Bern 63 in Geelong 83, 88–9, 90, 91, 92, 96 in Long Beach 167 London 116, 119, 120, 121, 122, 126 and connectivity 123, 125 Long Beach 158, 159–77, 215, 217–18 Long Beach Area Citizens Involved (LBACI) 164, 166, 168–9 Long Beach Community Defense Network 175 Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Center 166 Long Beach Housing Justice Coalition (HJC) 175 Long Beach Justice Fund 175 Long Beach Residents Empowered (LiBRE) 175 Long Beach Values Act 174–5 Longlands, S. 108, 123 Los Angeles 161, 163–4, 167, 168, 173, 175–6, 215 elites 162 Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) 168, 170 Los Angeles Citizens’ Alliance 162

Los Angeles Times 162 Los Angeles Unite Here Local 11 168 lower-income households 196 low-tech towns 61

M Maassluis 37 Mallach, A. 5 Manchester 119, 120, 121–2 manufacturing 38–9, 88, 139 Marks, G. 200 Márquez, A.H. 159 Martin, K. 144 Massey, Doreen 9–10, 151, 184, 209, 216 Mayors Climate Protection Agreement 195 McAdam et al 176 McCann, P. 29, 59, 110 McChord Field 139 McKean, G.L. 137–8 Measure N 171–3, 174 Meijers, E. 7, 13, 59, 97, 107–8, 158 Meijers et al 29, 30, 108, 122–3 Melbourne 80–1, 82, 84, 89, 91–2, 94, 95, 212 established 79 population 83, 93 riverside 90 Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association (M&M) 162 metro-areas 186 metropolitan areas 25, 26, 49, 144, 159, 200 Europe 109, 112 Switzerland 61 metropolitan centres 86 metropolitanists 186–7 metropolitan regions 61, 62–3, 93 metropolitan spaces 186 metropolization 11, 15, 104, 105–11, 125–8, 151, 152 Metro Vancouver 191–2 Mexican American Political Association 166 middle classes 146, 147, 150, 165, 196, 212, 214 the military 71, 73, 74, 139, 161, 165 Miller, B. 190, 191, 195 mobility 193, 195 mobility corridor 194

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LA Model 164, 176 Monfaredzadeh, T. 193 Moore, B. 147–8 Moreton Bay-Brisbane 79 Mossner, S. 190, 191, 195 multicentric metropolitan area 26 multicentric urban areas 25, 26 multicentric urban regions 26, 29, 30, 31 multiracial working class 214 Mumford, Lewis 183, 186 Munich 189 Myrdal, G. 30

N National Democratic Party (NDP)/ Canada 191, 192 National Disability Insurance Agency (Australia) 91 National Immigration Law Center (US) 174 Navy, US 161, 164 Nelles, J. 128 Netherlands 30–50, 189 network connectivity 159 networked urban regions 106 network embeddedness 28–9, 36, 39–40, 41, 48, 50 ‘Network of Regional Cities’ 91–2 Newcastle, NSW 95 Newcastle, UK 121 New Economic Geography 29 new regionalism 192 new regionalists 187 Nissewaard 38 Northern Pacific Railroad 136, 137 North Vancouver 192

O OAC (Area Classification for Output Areas) 114 O’Connor et al 93 office space 63, 141, 146, 147, 165, 169 ONS (Office for National Statistics) 114 open shop 162, 163 ordinal city 183 out-commuters 64, 65, 73

P Pacific First Federal Savings Bank 142 Panic of 1893 137

Parnell, S. 7 participatory budgeting (PB) 174 participatory democracy 164 Pastor, M. 188, 200 path dependencies 3, 7, 34, 140, 150, 211, 215 Pendras, Mark 184, 189 ‘People’s State of the City’ (PSOTC) 171, 172, 173 performance, borrowed 37, 38, 39, 45–7, 108, 122, 217–18 performance, social 159, 164, 176–7 performance dimension 41, 48 performance shadow 39, 48 periphery 29, 66, 120, 151, 183, 184 Perth 80 Phelps et al 107, 158 Pion, G. 184 Plan Melbourne 92 planning powers 191–2 political class 163, 164, 177 political pluralism 188 political structure 86 politics 161–2 polycentricity 13, 28, 30 polycentric urban regions 25 Ponto, J. 195 population 49, 110–11 British cities 120, 122, 126 diversity 119 Geelong 93 Long Beach 160, 165 Melbourne 83, 93 Randstad 32, 38, 48 Tacoma 136, 138, 144, 198 Thun 70 Wädenswil 65 Port Phillip colony 79, 82 poverty 165, 166 Power Analysis Workshop (PAW) 173, 174 Preston, J. 29 primate-city structures 11, 75, 95, 216 Project Labor Agreement Ordinance 169 property taxes 165 Proposition 13 165 public choice scholars 187 public-sector employment 138–9 Puget Sound 198

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Puget Sound Energy 147 Puget Sound Regional Council 144 Puyallup Reservation 136 Puyallup Tribe of Indians 136, 147

Q Quastel, Noah 194–5

R ‘Raise LA’ 173 Randstad Holland 30–50 Raumkonzept Schweiz 62 raw materials production 139 Reagan administration 165 redistributive regional policies 61–2 the region 6–10 regional development policy 6–11, 87 regional employment centres 68, 69, 74, 75 regional geographies 198 relatedness 29, 36 reproduction frontier 196, 201 research institutions 65, 66–7, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74 residential economy 73, 75 residential economy towns 60, 64 responsible development 164, 167, 171, 172 restaurants 32, 33 retail 94–5 reurbanization 119, 121 Richmond 192 Robinson, J. 2, 7 Rodríguez-Pose, A. 11 Rosenfield, S. 158 Rosol, Marit 194 Rotterdam 39, 49, 189 Rousseau, M. 145 Runway tech hub 94 Rusche, K. 30, 108 Russell Investments 142, 143, 147

S Sacred Resistance 174 sales tax revenue 86 Salford 121, 122 Sanctuary Long Beach Coalition 174–5 satellite towns 25 scalability 193–4 Schiphol Airport 49–50

Seattle 133–5, 136, 137, 138, 145, 150, 184–5, 195–9, 201, 214 and Class A office space 146 and coordinated planning 139 and economic dynamism 151 housing 148 jobs 140 problems due to growth 144 and Weyerhaeuser 142–3 secondary school 68 service specialization 187 shadowing 12, 13–14, 26 see also agglomeration shadows Sheffield 120, 125, 126 Shell oil refinery 85 Silverman, R. 151 size borrowing see borrowed size small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) 55–75 smart cities 193 ‘Smart City Integration Hub’ 194 smart growth policies 192 smart manufacturing 72, 73 smart mobility corridors 194, 195 smart spaces 195 smart specialization 92 smart transitions 188 Smythe, W.H. 82–3 social and labour activism 164 Social Credit Party 191, 192 social inequalities 135 social justice 159, 173, 175–6, 177, 217–18, 219 social performance 159, 164, 176–7 social status 34, 36, 39, 41, 48, 49 socio-economic groups 109, 111, 119 soft spaces 187–8 Soja, E. 186 South Africa 187 spending, federal urban 165 SRI International 141 start-ups 67–8 State Farm 147 state parliaments 86 St. Louis, Missouri 187 Stockport 114 ‘Subsidizing Poverty: How Are We Investing in Our Community?’ 168 suburbanization 50 supergroups (SGs) 114, 115, 116

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Surrey 191, 193, 194, 195, 200 Surrey Innovation Corridor 194 sustainability 196, 200, 201 Switzerland 55–75, 213 Sydney 79, 80, 93–4

Tacoma 133–52, 185, 196, 198–9, 201, 212, 214 see also Los Angeles; Seattle US Navy 161, 164

V T Tacoma 133–52, 185, 196, 198–9, 201, 212, 214 Tacoma News Tribune 146 taxes 61, 86, 165 Taylor, Peter 183, 184, 190 tech hub 142 territoriality 9, 195, 217 territorial rankings 183–4 textiles 65 Thibert, J. 187, 188 Thun 55–6, 64–5, 69–73, 74 Tiki Apartments 150 Tilly, C. 209 Tokyo 186 tourism Geelong 96 Long Beach 163, 165, 167, 168, 174 Randstad 36, 40, 41, 49 Switzerland 61, 70–1 Townsville 95 TransLink 192 transnational municipal networks 189–90 Transport Accident Commission 91 transport connectivity 122–5, 126 Treaty of Medicine Creek 136 trust 188 the two-way road argument 29

U UK 105, 106, 108, 111–28 unemployment 88 uneven development 11, 184, 198, 218 unicities 187 Unite Here Local 11 170 university cities 121, 126 UPS 147 urban functions’ share 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 125–6, 127, 128 Urban Land Institute 165 urban network externalities 27–8 US 186, 200, 210 Long Beach 215, 217–18 St. Louis, Missouri 187

Vancouver 191–5, 200 Van Hamme, F. 184 Vienna 189 Vinh, T. 149 Volgmann, K. 30, 108 voluntarism 217–18

W Wädenswil 56, 64–9, 74, 213 Waite, D. 188 Walkowiak, Elly 145 Wallasey 121 Wallerstein, Immanuel 184, 198 Walsall 122 Ward, K. 209, 217 Washington 133–52 waterfronts 89, 90, 96 Watts Uprising 164 WestRock pulp and paper mill 147 Weyerhaeuser 142–3 While et al 200 white-collar workers 34 White neighbourhoods 165, 169 Wilkerson, Juli 141 Williams, Charles 184, 189 Winterthur 55 Wollongong 95 Wolverton, C. 139 woollen textile industry 85 WorkCover 91 working classes 148–50, 166–7, 169, 214 world city-network 184 world systems theory 184, 198

Y York 121, 122, 123

Z Zellweger, L. 72 Zurich 55, 56, 58, 62, 63, 65, 66–7, 213 Zurich International School 66 Zurich Park Side 68 Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) 66, 67, 68

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“This timely and important edited collection explores the political and economic dynamics of secondary cities. In foregrounding the stories of subordinate cities, the book offers an important corrective to research on ostensibly more powerful ‘primate’ or ‘global’ cities.” Andrew E.G. Jonas, University of Hull

Mark Pendras is Associate Professor in the School of Urban Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma Charles Williams is Associate Professor in Political Science and Labor Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma.

This book explores cities and the intra-regional relational dynamics often overlooked by urban scholars, and it challenges common representations of urban development successes and failures. Gathering leading international scholars from Europe, Australia and North America, it explores the secondary city concept in urban development theory and practice and advances a research agenda that highlights uneven development concerns. By emphasizing the subordinate status of secondary cities relative to their dominant neighbours the book raises new questions about regional development in the Global North. It considers alternative relations and development strategies that innovatively reimagine the subordinate status of secondary cities and showcase their full potential.

ISBN 978-1-5292-1207-5

@BrisUniPress BristolUniversityPress bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

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