Mike Raco

Bio: Mike Raco is an academic researcher from University College London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Urban planning & Government. The author has an hindex of 34, co-authored 103 publications receiving 3794 citations. Previous affiliations of Mike Raco include University of Reading & Royal Holloway, University of London.

Urban renaissance? : New Labour, community and urban policy

Abstract: Part One: The role of community in urban policy - debates: The importance of community in urban policy Rob Imrie and Mike Raco Social capital and neighbourhood renewal Ade Kearns Community regeneration and the discursive construction of 'urban renaissance' Loretta Lees Part Two: Community involvement in urban policy - the evidence: Addressing urban exclusion through community involvement in urban regeneration: possibilities and constraints Rob Atkinson Community participation in multi-level urban governance Annette Hastings 'Pathways to integration': community involvement in urban regeneration on Merseyside Richard Meegan Community action and partnerships for urban regeneration - new sites of struggle? Peter North Contradictions in 'tackling social exclusion' in communities: issues of redistribution, recognition and respect in a Single Regeneration Project in Blackbird Leys estate, Oxford Zoe Morrison Community, disability and the discourses of the Single Regeneration Budget Claire Edwards Citizenship, community and participation in small towns: a case study of regeneration partnerships Mark Goodwin Economy, equity or empowerment? Urban policy evaluation and discourses of community involvement Stuart Wilks-Heeg Part Three: The future for community in urban policy: The new urban policy: towards empowerment or incorporation? Allan Cochrane Assessing the prospects for community involvement in urban policy: will 'community' remain a meaningful term? Mike Raco.

Sustainable Development, Rolled-out Neoliberalism and Sustainable Communities

Abstract: Recent contributions by geographers on the relationships between states and citizens have documented the rise of rolled-out neoliberalism. Development agendas are, it is argued, increasingly dominated by the principles of market-driven reforms, social inequality, and a drive towards enhancing the economic competitiveness of the supply side of the economy. However, at the same time, a parallel set of discourses has emerged in the development literature which argues that it is principles of sustainable development that have, in practice, become dominant. The emphasis is, instead, on democratic empowerment, environmental conservation, and social justice. This paper examines the relationships between these ostensibly very different interpretations of contemporary development with an assessment of one of the Labour government’s most ambitious planning agendas—the publication in February 2003 of the document Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future. The proposals are promoted as a ‘‘step change’’ in the planning system with a new emphasis on tackling shortages of housing in the South East and reviving the economy of the Thames Gateway area. The paper assesses the different ways in which such programmes can be interpreted and argues that contemporary development practices in countries such as Britain are constituted by a hybridity of approaches and rationalities and cannot be reduced to simple characterisations of rolled-out neoliberalism or sustainable development.

Governmentality and rights and responsibilities in urban policy

Abstract: We deploy aspects of Foucault's concept of governmentality to discuss the argument that the recent shift towards a ‘rights and responsibilities' agenda in urban policy is part of broader transformations in the rationalities and techniques of government. Following Rose, we characterise the emergent forms of urban policy as part of ‘advanced liberalism’ or strategies which seek to activate citizens, individually and collectively, to take greater responsibility for their own government. Such strategies are, as Rose notes, seeking to govern through the instrumentalisation of the self-governing properties of the subjects of government themselves in a whole variety of locales. We develop the argument in three parts. The first part justifies the use of a Foucauldian framework in seeking to understand the new political and policy agenda on ‘rights and responsibilities’. In a second part, we investigate the changing nature of governmental rationalities and techniques of governmentality primarily through the contex...

Remaking Place and Securitising Space: Urban Regeneration and the Strategies, Tactics and Practices of Policing in the UK

Abstract: Urban regeneration programmes in the UK over the past 20 years have increasingly focused on attracting investors, middle-class shoppers and visitors by transforming places and creating new consumption spaces. Ensuring that places are safe and are seen to be safe has taken on greater salience as these flows of income are easily disrupted by changing perceptions of fear and the threat of crime. At the same time, new technologies and policing strategies and tactics have been adopted in a number of regeneration areas which seek to establish control over these new urban spaces. Policing space is increasingly about controlling human actions through design, surveillance technologies and codes of conduct and enforcement. Regeneration agencies and the police now work in partnerships to develop their strategies. At its most extreme, this can lead to the creation of zero-tolerance, or what Smith terms 'revanchist', measures aimed at particular social groups in an effort to sanitise space in the interests of capital accumulation. This paper, drawing on an examination of regeneration practices and processes in one of the UK's fastest-growing urban areas, Reading in Berkshire, assesses policing strategies and tactics in the wake of a major regeneration programme. It documents and discusses the discourses of regeneration that have developed in the town and the ways in which new urban spaces have been secured. It argues that, whilst security concerns have become embedded in institutional discourses and practices, the implementation of security measures has been mediated, in part, by the local socio-political relations in and through which they have been developed.

Governmentality, subject-building, and the discourses and practices of devolution in the UK

Abstract: This paper uses a Foucauldian governmentality framework to analyse and interrogate the discourses and strategies adopted by the state and sections of the business community in their attempts to shape and influence emerging agendas of governance in post-devolution Scotland. Much of the work on governmentality has examined the ways in which governments have developed particular techniques, rationales and mechanisms to enable the functioning of governance programmes. This paper expands upon such analyses by also looking at the ways in which particular interests may use similar procedures, discourses and practices to promote their own agendas and develop new forms of resistance, contestation and challenge to emerging policy frameworks. Using the example of business interest mobilization in post-devolution Scotland, it is argued that governments may seek to mobilize defined forms of expertise and knowledge, linking them to wider political debates. This, however, creates new opportunities for interests to shape and contest the discourses and practices of government. The governmentalization of politics can, therefore, be seen as more of a dialectical process of definition and contestation than is often apparent in existing Foucault-inspired writing.

The New Imperialism

Abstract: From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

Planning in the Face of Power.

Abstract: Abstract Information is a source of power in the planning process. This article begins by assessing five perspectives of the planner's use of information: those of the technician, the incremental pragmatist, the liberal advocate, the structuralist, and the “progressive.” Then several types of misinformation (inevitable or unnecessary, ad hoc or systematic) are distinguished in a reformulation of bounded rationality in planning, and practical responses by planning staff are identified. The role and ethics of planners acting as sources of misinformation are considered. In practice planners work in the face of power manifest as the social and political (mis)-man-agement of citizens' knowledge, consent, trust, and attention. Seeking to enable planners to anticipate and counteract sources of misinformation threatening public serving, democratic planning processes, the article clarifies a practical and politically sensitive form of “progressive” planning practice.

Deliberative policy analysis : understanding governance in the network society

Abstract: Editors' introduction Maarten A. Hajer and Hendrik Wagenaar Part I. Policy Conflict and Deliberation in the Network Society: 1. Collaborative policy making: governance through dialogue Judith Innes and David Booher 2. Place, identity and local politics: analysing initiatives in deliberative governance Patsy Healey, Claudio de Magelhaes, Ali Madanipour and John Pendlebury 3. A frame in the fields. Policy making and the reinvention of politics Maarten Hajer Part II. Rethinking Policy Practice: 4. Democracy through policy discourse Douglas Torgerson 5. Understanding policy practices: action, dialectic and deliberation in policy analysis Hendrik Wagenaar and Scott Noam Cook 6. Reframing practice David Laws and Martin Rein Part III. Foundations of a Deliberative Policy Analysis: 7. Beyond empiricism: policy analysis as deliberative practice Frank Fischer 8. Accessing local knowledge: policy analysis and communities of meaning Dvora Yanow 9. Theoretical strategies of post-structuralist policy analysis: towards an analytics of government Herbert Gottweiss.