Showing papers in "International Journal of Urban and Regional Research in 2008"

Participatory Budgeting in Europe: Potentials and Challenges

Abstract: The ‘transfer’ of participatory budgeting from Brazil to Europe has been a highly differentiated process. In Porto Alegre, this innovative methodology enabled democratization and social justice to be articulated. In Europe, participatory budgeting relies on multiple procedures, and it is therefore necessary to give a clear methodological definition of it so that cases can be coherently compared and ideal-types constructed to understand the variety of concrete experiments. The six ideal-types we propose (Porto Alegre adapted for Europe; representation of organized interests; community funds at the local and city level; the public/private negotiating table; consultation on public finances; proximity participation) show striking differences that are highly influenced by existing participatory traditions. It is, above all, with the models Porto Alegre adapted for Europe and community funds that an ‘empowered participatory governance’ can develop and that a fourth power, beyond the three classical ones, is developing — that of the citizenry when it directly (or through delegates) assumes a decision-making power. However, other models have their strengths, too, for example with regard to the reform of public administration which is a critical aspect in the search for ‘another possible world’.

Occupancy Urbanism: Radicalizing Politics and Economy beyond Policy and Programs

Abstract: This article proposes a narrative of city contestations beyond policy and programs. It considers why Indian metro elites, large land developers and international donors paradoxically lobby for comprehensive planning when confronting ‘vote bank politics’ by the poor. Poor groups, claiming public services and safeguarding territorial claims, open up political spaces that appropriate institutions and fuel an economy that builds complex alliances. Such spaces, here termed ‘occupancy urbanism’, are materialized by land shaped into multiple de-facto tenures deeply embedded in lower bureaucracy. While engaging the state, these locality politics remain autonomous of it. Such a narrative views city terrains as being constituted by multiple political spaces inscribed by complex local histories. This politics is substantial and poses multiple crises for global capital. Locally embedded institutions subvert high-end infrastructure and mega projects. ‘Occupancy urbanism’ helps poor groups appropriate real estate surpluses via reconstituted land tenure to fuel small businesses whose commodities jeopardize branded chains. Finally, it poses a political consciousness that refuses to be disciplined by NGOs and well-meaning progressive activists and the rhetoric of ‘participatory planning’. This is also a politics that rejects ‘developmentalism’ where ‘poverty’ is ghettoized via programs for ‘basic needs’ allowing the elite ‘globally competitive economic development’.

Old Mega-Projects Newly Packaged? Waterfront Redevelopment in Toronto

Abstract: The mega-project is experiencing revived interest as a tool for urban renewal. The current mode of large-scale urban development is, however, different from its predecessor in so far as its focus is flexible and diverse rather than singular and monolithic. However, the diversity that the new approach offers, we argue, forecloses upon a wide variety of social practices, reproducing rather than resolving urban inequality and disenfranchisement. Further, we suggest that the diversity of forms and land uses employed in these mega-projects inhibits the growth of oppositional and contestational practices. The new mega-project also demonstrates a shift from collective benefits to a more individualized form of public benefit. The article is based on Toronto's recent waterfront development proposals, which we identify as an example of a new paradigm of mega-project development within the framework of the competitive city. Its stated but paradoxical goal is to specialize in everything, allowing for the pretence that all interests are being served while simultaneously re-inscribing and reinforcing socioeconomic divisions. Our findings are centred on four areas: institutional change; the importance of mega-projects to global interurban competition; the exclusive nature of public participation processes; and the increasing commodification and circumscription of urban public space.

Mega-projects in New York, London and Amsterdam.

Abstract: Recently we have witnessed the mounting of very large development projects (mega-projects) in European and American cities. There is a striking physical similarity among the schemes and also a convergence embodied in private-sector involvement and market orientation. They differ, however, as to whether they provide affordable units and tie together physical and social goals. This article investigates new mega-projects in New York, London, and Amsterdam. The dissimilarities among them indicate the extent of variability in contemporary property capitalism. The comparison shows that public-private partnerships can provide public benefits, but also shows that these large projects are risky for both public and private participants, must primarily be oriented toward profitability, and produce a landscape that does not encourage urbanity. Whether the gains from increased competitiveness are spread throughout the society depends on the size of the direct governmental commitment to public benefits. This is greatest in the Netherlands, where the welfare state, albeit shrunken, lives on; it is least in the United States, where the small size of national expenditures on housing and social welfare means that low-income people must depend almost wholly on trickle-down effects to gain from new development. During the most recent decade we have witnessed the mounting of very large development projects (mega-projects) in European and American cities. After a hiatus during the 1990s brought on by the real-estate bust early in the decade, major cities have responded to the pressures of the global economy by using very big, mixed-use developments as attractors of multinational business and sites for new housing. 1 There is a striking physical similarity among the schemes, irrespective of the city in which they are located. At the same time they differ in social outcomes and planning processes, reflecting the level of commitment that the host city has toward social equity. Examination of three mega-projects, all in their beginning stages, reveals the underlying forces producing them as well as their similarities and differences in relation to social inclusiveness. The three to be discussed in this article are Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, NewYork City; Stratford City and the larger Thames Gateway of which it forms a part, in London; and Amsterdam South, consisting of the South Axis and Amsterdam Southeast developments.

Governing the Contaminated City: Infrastructure and Sanitation in Colonial and Post-Colonial Bombay

Abstract: This paper examines specific ways in which sanitation infrastructure matter politically both as a set of materials and as a discursive object in colonial and postcolonial Bombay. It reflects on a history of sanitation as a set of concepts which can both historicise seemingly ‘new’ practices and shed light on the contemporary city. It considers two moments in Bombay’s ‘sanitary history’ – the mid-nineteenth century and the present day – and elucidates the distinct and changing spatial imaginaries and logics of sanitation in their broad relation to urbanization and nature. The paper conceptualises colonial discourses of a ‘contaminated city’ and public health, and finds productive sites of intersection between these discourses and contemporary debates and practices in Bombay, including bourgeois environmentalism, discourses of the ‘world city’, and logics of community-managed sanitation infrastructures. It highlights an important role for urban comparativism, in the context of different imaginaries and logics, in both cases. By connecting infrastructure, public health discourses and modes of urban government, the paper traces a specific historical geography of cyborg urbanization that is always already splintered, unequal and contested. For the urban poor in particular, much is at stake in how the sanitary city is constructed as a problem, how the solutions to it are mobilized, and how improvement is measured.

Relocating Gentrification: The Working Class, Science and the State in Recent Urban Research

Abstract: This article amplifies Tom Slater's diagnosis of the causes of the gentrification of recent gentrification research. It argues that the shift from the denunciation to the celebration of gentrification, the elision of the displacement of the established residents, and the euphemistic focus on ‘social mixing’ partake of a broader pattern of invisibility of the working class in the public sphere and social inquiry. This effacing of the proletariat in the city is reinforced by the growing heteronomy of urban research, as the latter becomes more tightly tethered to the concerns of city rulers. Both tendencies, in turn, reveal and abet the shifting role of the state from provider of social support for lower-income populations to supplier of business services and amenities for middle- and upper-class urbanites — among them the cleansing of the built environment and the streets from the physical and human detritus wrought by economic deregulation and welfare retrenchment. To build better models of the changing nexus of class and space in the neoliberal city, we need to relocate gentrification in a broader and sturdier analytic framework by revising class analysis to capture the (de)formation of the postindustrial proletariat, resisting the seductions of the prefabricated problematics of policy, and giving pride of place to the state as producer of sociospatial inequality.

The Chengzhongcun Land Market in China: Boon or Bane? — A Perspective on Property Rights

Abstract: With the rapid expansion of China's cities since the 1978 economic reform, more and more villages have been swallowed up by urban sprawl. The retention of collective land ownership in chengzhongcun has, on the one hand, made low-rent housing affordable for migrants; on the other hand, however, it has exposed chengzhongcun to many social, economic and environmental problems. Based on a case study of chengzhongcun in Guangzhou, and using an analytical framework of property rights, this article has found that maintaining collective land ownership in chengzhongcun has been socially and economically costly, but a redevelopment strategy without a complementary affordable housing scheme may be problematic. In order to solve the problems of chengzhongcun, an institutional reform of collective land is required.

The New Mega‐Projects: Genesis and Impacts

Abstract: Critiques of urban renewal and large-scale developments were prominent in the period 1960–80. In particular, they emphasized the negative environmental and social consequences of these schemes and especially attacked them for displacing low-income and ethnically different populations. In the 1980s and 1990s, we saw a decline in such projects in many places, responding to popular protest and intellectual dissent, along with a new emphasis on preservation. More recently, however, we see the revival of mega-projects, often connected with tourism and sports development and incorporating the designs of world-famous architects. Frequently these are on landfill or abandoned industrial sites. The symposium for which this is an introduction shows the growing convergence of North American and European projects. This convergence is visible in their physical form, their financing, and in the role played by the state in a world marked by neoliberalism. At the same time, the new projects do display a greater environmental sensitivity and commitment to urbanity than the modernist schemes of an earlier epoch.

Political Infrastructures: Governing and Experiencing the Fabric of the City

Abstract: There has been a profusion of work in recent years exploring the links between infrastructure and the city. This has entailed a conceptualization of cities and infrastructure that recognizes their mutual constitution and the inherently political nature of networked urban infrastructure. In introducing this symposium, we find that a comparative approach to infrastructure can reveal a diversity of ways in which the urban fabric is produced, managed and distributed, and comes to matter in everyday life. We argue for a more globally informed conceptualization of the politics of infrastructure by exploring three key themes in the symposium: fragmentation, inequality and crisis.

‘Cold spots’ of Urban Infrastructure: ‘Shrinking’ Processes in Eastern Germany and the Modern Infrastructural Ideal

Abstract: This article explores the unfamiliar, but increasingly prevalent problem of overcapacity in urban infrastructure systems in regions subject to dramatic socio-economic restructuring. Taking the case of water supply and wastewater disposal systems in Eastern Germany as an example, it examines firstly how infrastructure overcapacities have emerged since reunification in 1990 as a result both of sharply declining water consumption in the wake of ‘shrinking’ processes and of infrastructure expansion. Secondly, the article analyses what impact chronic overcapacity is having on the governance of water infrastructure systems. This empirical analysis is framed conceptually in terms of the current debate on the changing relationship between infrastructures and the localities they serve. It assesses specifically how far and in what ways the phenomenon of overcapacity in technical networks resonates with the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis developed by Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin. It argues that the serious technical and economic problems posed by overcapacity are intensifying spatial disparities in service quality and price, and — more fundamentally — are challenging the supply-driven ‘modern infrastructural ideal’ of universal and equitable water services.

Technologies of Government: Constituting Subjectivities, Spaces, and Infrastructures in Colonial and Contemporary Jakarta

Abstract: his article seeks to extend recent debates on urban infrastructure access by exploring the interrelationship between subjectivity, urban space and infrastructure. Specifically, it presents a case study of the development and differentiation of the urban water supply in Jakarta, Indonesia. Drawing on concepts of governmentality and materiality, it argues that the construction of difference through processes of segregation and exclusion enacted via colonial and contemporary ‘technologies of government’ has spatial, discursive and material dimensions. In particular, it seeks to ‘rematerialize’ discussions of (post-)colonial urban governmentality through insisting upon the importance of the contested and iterative interrelationship between discursive strategies, socio-economic agendas, identity formation and infrastructure creation. In exploring these claims with respect to Jakarta, the article draws on data derived from archival, interview and participant observation research to present a genealogy of the city's urban water supply system from its colonial origins to the present. We illustrate how discourses of modernity, hygiene and development are enrolled in the construction of urban subjects and the disposition of water supply infrastructure (and are also resisted), and document the relationship between the classification of urban residents, the differentiation of urban spaces and lack of access to services. The article closes with a discussion of the implications for analyses of the differentiation of urban services and urban space in cities in the global South.

Forging Glocal Governance? Urban Infrastructures as Networked Financial Products

Abstract: Urban infrastructure provisions are increasingly shifting from public good to private property, with cities and regions valued merely on a quarter-to-quarter basis. The argument in this article is threefold. The urban infrastructure landscape is undergoing financialization. Additionally, building on Graham and Marvin who describe how infrastructure networks are being unbundled locally, these infrastructures are simultaneously being interlinked internationally via specialist global infrastructure funds. Third, non-local owners, by abiding by contractual obligations, play an increasing role in the governance of infrastructure projects at the urban scale, and a ‘glocal’ form of governance is developing. These arguments are illustrated by an investigation of the privatized toll road 407 in the Greater Toronto Area, where the leading investment bank in ‘infrastructure’ is one of the global owners. With increased use of the international norms of commercial law and the fluctuating cycle of local, national and supranational politics, a toll-pricing controversy occurred wherein provincial politics challenged a ‘self-regulating’ contract encouraging the private owners to increase the toll charges when both the traffic and toll thresholds were met, so as to create congestion relief on this particular road. Road users, provincial and federal Canadian governments, and even the European Union were involved.

Mumbai's Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development

Abstract: For over a decade, researchers have analyzed the effects of liberalization and globalization on urban development, considering the local political implications of shifts at the national and global scales. Taking the case of Mumbai, this article examines how the past 15 years of political reforms in India have reshaped property markets and the politics of land development. Among the newly empowered actors, local criminal syndicates, often with global connections, have seized political opportunities created by these shifts to gain influence over land development. The rise of Mumbai’s organized criminal activity in the 1950s was closely linked to India’s macroeconomic policies, with strict regulation of imports fuelling the growth of black market smuggling. Liberalization and deregulation since the early 1990s have diminished demand for smuggled consumer goods and criminal syndicates have since diversified their operations. With skyrocketing real estate prices in the 1990s, bolstered by global land speculation, the mafia began investing in property development. Supported by an illicit nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and the police, the mafia has emerged as a central figure in Mumbai’s land development politics. The article examines the structural shifts that facilitated the criminalization of land development and the implications of mafia involvement in local politics.

The Urban Question Revisited: The Importance of Cities for Social Movements

Abstract: What roles do cities play in fostering general social movements? This article maintains that cities facilitate particular types of relations that are good at making high-quality resources available to mobilizations operating at a variety of spatial scales. However, while large and complex urban systems may be well suited for these types of relations, whether they actually develop depends on the nature of local power relations between political authorities and civic organizations. In certain cities local configurations of political power may favor the growth of these relations, with these cities becoming important nodal points in geographically extended social movement networks. In other cities, by contrast, local configurations of political power may hamper the formation of these relations. This is a theoretical article that draws on network theory to inform the conceptual framework and a variety of empirical cases for illustrative purposes.

Implementing Social and Environmental Policies in Cities: The Case of Food Policy in Vancouver, Canada

Abstract: Recent years have seen the appearance on urban agendas of social and environmental issues not conventionally understood as municipal concerns. Often framed as policy areas that promote sustainability, quality of life or social inclusion, these new arrivals are complex not only because they are often cross-sectoral, but equally because there are few regulatory tools and resources to support their implementation. This trend has resulted in a growing body of research that asks what factors result in some social and environmental policies being adopted by municipalities, while others are not? And why in certain places and not others? Such research typically focuses on factors and processes that contribute to getting an issue on the official agenda of a municipality, but offers comparatively little by way of analysis of what happens next. This article addresses this gap by providing an in-depth analysis of the early stages of implementation of an emerging urban issue, food policy, in the City of Vancouver, Canada. The article draws attention to the often overlooked spaces and contours of governmental institutions as sites of organizational learning and capacity building in support of sustainability. In this way, the analysis brings deeper understandings of a specific case of food policy implementation by a municipal government, while also advancing research on how similar cross-cutting social and environmental issues are implemented by local governments elsewhere.

Making Class Politics Possible: Organizing Contract Cleaners in London

Abstract: This article tells the story of community and union-led efforts to re-regulate the contract cleaning sector and to organize cleaners at Canary Wharf and in the City of London. It provides a historical overview of the campaign and highlights its innovative responses to subcontracted employment in the city today. The article starts by outlining anti-essentialist approaches to the politics of class before using the campaign to flesh out what such politics might look like. In this case, the successful prosecution of class politics has depended upon the politics of class moving far beyond any particular workplace. Workplace issues have been recast as matters for the wider community engaging a diverse set of actors including workers, community organizations, contractors, clients, the media and London’s politicians.

Carceral Chicago: Making the Ex‐offender Employability Crisis

Abstract: This article explores the urban labor market consequences of large-scale incarceration, a policy with massively detrimental implications for communities of color. Case study evidence from Chicago suggests that the prison system has come to assume the role of a significant (urban) labor market institution, the regulatory outcomes of which are revealed in the social production of systemic unemployability across a criminalized class of African–American males, the hypertrophied economic and social decline of those ‘receiving communities’ to which thousands of ex-convicts return, and the remorseless rise of recidivism rates. Notwithstanding the significant social costs, the churning of the prison population through the lower reaches of the labor market is associated with the further degradation of contingent and informal-economy jobs, the hardening of patterns of radical segregation, and the long-term erosion of employment prospects within the growing ex-offender population, for whom social stigma, institutional marginalization and economic disenfranchisement assume the status of an extended form of incarceration. Resume La politique publique d’incarceration massive, aux implications largement prejudiciables aux communautes de couleur, affecte egalement le marche du travail des villes. Une etude de cas sur Chicago indique que le systeme penitentiaire a fini par devenir une institution importante du marche du travail (urbain) dont les reglementations se traduisent a la fois par la production sociale d’une inemployabilite systemique pour une classe criminalisee de males afro-americains, par le declin economique et social hypertrophie des ‘communautes d’accueil’ vers lesquelles retournent des milliers d’ex-prisonniers, et par l’accroissement impitoyable des taux de recidive. Malgre de forts couts sociaux, le brassage de la population carcerale dans les niveaux inferieurs du marche du travail se combine a la degradation accrue des postes occasionnels et offerts par l’economie parallele, mais aussi au durcissement des types de segregation radicale et a une erosion durable des perspectives d’emploi au sein de la population grandissante des ex-delinquants pour lesquels stigmatisation sociale, marginalisation institutionnelle et non-reconnaissance economique revetent une forme d’incarceration prolongee.

The only class in town? gentrification and the middle-class colonization of the city and the urban imagination

Abstract: This essay argues that Tom Slater's article makes several important points regarding what he rightly suggests is the disappearance of a critical edge from much of the recent gentrification literature. It explores one of these points in greater depth, i.e. the notion that the working class occupy a 'backstage' role vis-a-vis the analysis of gentrification. This is done via a discussion of gentrification and London's class structure in relation to the work of Tim Butler and Chris Hamnett. The essay makes a plea for more 'bottom up' accounts of gentrification which focus upon the urban working class, especially in relation to contemporary processes of policy-driven state-led gentrification.

On Some Challenges and Conditions for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to be an Effective Economic Re‐activator

Abstract: The mission of a museum is essentially cultural, however this is not the case for all museums. There are a minority of universally famous museums, like the Tate Liverpool, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Tate Modern London, the new forthcoming Louvre-Lens (France), the Guggenheim-Hermitage in Vilnius (Lithuania) and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) whose principal aim is the re-activation (and/or the diversification) of the economy of their territories, in addition to the obvious cultural aim. The effectiveness of a large heritage investment in developing a city depends on at least four variables. First, heritage investments become effective employment creators only to the extent that they become effective tourism magnets. Second, the impact of investments on cultural heritage could be negative if the heritage industry is a big portion of the whole economy. Third, the more the redevelopment zone's markets are integrated, the easier the absorption of price tensions caused by urban revitalization. Fourth, the greater the productivity of the city's economy, the greater the absorption of price tensions. The aim of this essay is to give empirical support to these hypotheses for the case of Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum.

Resurgent Metropolis: Economy, Society and Urbanization in an Interconnected World

Abstract: An urban problematic is identified by reference to the essential characteristics of cities as spatially polarized ensembles of human activity marked by high levels of internal symbiosis. The roots of the crisis of the classical industrial metropolis of the twentieth century are pinpointed, and the emergence of a new kind of urban economic dynamic over the 1980s and 1990s is discussed. I argue that this new dynamic is based in high degree upon the growth and spread of cognitive-cultural production systems. Along with these developments have come radical transformations of urban space and social life, as well as major efforts on the part of many cities to assert a role for themselves as national and international cultural centers. This argument is the basis of what we might call the resurgent metropolis hypothesis. The effects of globalization are shown to play a critical role in the genesis and geography of urban resurgence. Three major policy dilemmas of resurgent cities are highlighted, namely, their internal institutional fragmentation, their increasing character as economic agents on the world stage and the concomitant importance of collective approaches to the construction of localized competitive advantage, and their deepening social disintegration and segmentation.

Uneven Development, Inter‐scalar Tensions, and the Politics of Decentralization in South Korea

Abstract: In this article, I examine how the spatiality of the state and its associated territorial politics can have an impact on the spatial and scalar restructuring of the state. Building on recent theoretical developments on state space, this article examines how territorial politics can be organized under the particular spatiality of the state, and how that particular form of territorial politics can have an impact on the future restructuring of state spatiality. In particular, by focusing on the spatial processes of state restructuring in South Korea, I will attempt to conceptualize the ways in which the spatiality of top-down regulatory processes led by the state can generate inter-scalar tensions between the national and the local; this, in turn, results in the downward rescaling of the state. More specifically, the empirical focus is on how the processes of decentralization in South Korea have been shaped by the influences of various kinds of territorial politics (for example, inter-scalar tensions between the national and the local, territorialized party politics, etc.) that occur within the context of uneven regional development stemming from the spatial selectivity of state regulation.

Urban Interventions: Art, Politics and Pedagogy

Abstract: Challenging perspectives on the urban question have arisen in recent years from beyond academic realms through the work of artists and cultural practitioners. Often in dialogue with urban theory and political activism, and employing a range of tactical practices, they have engaged critically with cities and with the spatialities of everyday urban life. They are typically concerned less with representing political issues than with intervening in urban spaces so as to question, refunction and contest prevailing norms and ideologies, and to create new meanings, experiences, understandings, relationships and situations. Such interventionist practices may rarely be seen as part of the traditional purview of urban studies. Yet in asserting their significance here, this essay argues that growing dialogues across and between urban and spatial theory, and artistic and cultural practice, have considerable potential for inspiring and developing critical approaches to cities. The essay highlights a number of specific challenges thrown up by such interconnections that are of political and pedagogical significance and in need of further debate.

'A Literal Necessity to be Re-Placed': A Rejoinder to the Gentrification Debate

Abstract: This rejoinder begins and ends with some remarks on the gentrification strategies taking place in post-Katrina New Orleans, and responds to and builds on the commentaries by outlining, first, how the eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research has continued, second, how displacement must be understood as multifaceted and contextual, and third, how urban researchers have become seduced by the rewards of claiming ‘policy relevance’. It concludes by offering some thoughts on the state of resistance to gentrification, and how much more research is needed not just on working-class experiences of gentrification, but on how people fight for their right to place in the gentrifying city.

The Politics of Urban Waterfront Regeneration: The Case of Haliç (the Golden Horn), Istanbul

Abstract: This article analyzes the efforts to regenerate Istanbul's urban waterfront area of Halic (the Golden Horn), since the mid-1980s, from the perspective of the actors involved and their power dynamics. It uses as examples three projects: the Fener-Balat neighborhood rehabilitation, Feshane Cultural Center, and Rahmi M. Koc Museum initiatives. It argues that the case of Halic cannot be understood through concepts such as the public-private partnerships, intense processes of urban entrepreneurialism, gentrification etc., which have often explained the experience of the North American and Western European city. Instead, this process has been shaped by a top-down initiative on the part of public sector actors initially, and a lack of private sector involvement, ambivalent public sector actors and reluctant local communities subsequently. One needs to highlight the particularities of the institutional arrangements and urban politics at the district, city and national levels in order to explain the case of Halic. These concern low amounts of self-generated revenue in district and metropolitan municipalities, the specificities to be found in the local community–municipality relations in Istanbul, the presence of a relatively weak private sector in Turkey and, finally, the unfavorable market position of Halic more generally and the projects in question more specifically.

Stating the Production of Scales: Centrally Orchestrated Regionalism, Regionally Orchestrated Centralism

Abstract: Under the banner of the new regionalism, the past decade has witnessed a revival of academic and political interest in the region as a strategic site for economic activity and scale for socially integrating civil society. What remains unclear, however, are the ‘actual mechanisms’ that connect this new politics of economic development with transitions in the regulation and governance of contemporary capitalism and its territorial form. This article seeks further connection by distinguishing between the processes of centrally orchestrated regionalism and regionally orchestrated centralism in the production of regions. While sympathetic to the general tenor of the new regionalism, this article presents an account of England's unique new regionalist policy experiment to pose searching questions relating to the future direction of the new regionalism. Arguing that the new regionalism remains a fruitful avenue for unravelling the processes involved in the production of spatial scale(s), the article concludes that uncovering the politically charged processes involved in the production of subnational space remains an urgent task for urban and regional scholars.

Transitory Sites: Mapping Dubai's ‘Forgotten’ Urban Spaces

Abstract: Seeking to uncover a hidden side of Dubai, this article investigates the city's ‘forgotten’ urban spaces. I use a theoretical framework that responds to a shift in global city research, emphasizing the everyday as well as transnational connections in which the local and the global are closely intertwined. I argue that such processes can be observed in these ‘forgotten’ settings, which, as well as being major gathering points, are utilized by Dubai's low-income migrant community for the exchange of information. Through an analysis of users and their activities as well as of the morphology of these spaces, I situate them within the overall development of Dubai. A key construct developed in this study and used as a unit of analysis is the notion of transitory sites — viewed as a major element in understanding migrant cities. The architectural and urban character of these sites is identified. A key finding is that low-income migrants resist globalizing influences by claiming these settings and establishing linkages through them to their home countries.

Plural governance, participation and democracy in cities

Abstract: In recent years there has been a growing interest in new participatory forms of urban governance. This introduction provides readers with a basic review of current debates in the literature and a summary of the articles presented in the symposium. The introduction highlights two major tensions in the literature. First, many scholars operate under an assumption that plural actors can achieve a lasting and rational consensus on certain issues. Others believe that where there is consensus, there is also a silenced margin. For these critics, rather than focusing on building power-laden consensus, it is better to recognize and respect conflict and difference as normal parts of the governance process. Second, the introduction considers some of the possibilities for cross-national comparisons of participatory governance regimes. Scholars should not limit their analyses to institutional designs across countries but assess the importance of particular sociopolitical contexts in giving formal institutions their actual meanings and functions.

Accra's Sounds and Sacred Spaces

Abstract: This article explores the sonic sacralization of urban space in the multicultural city of Accra. In Ghanaian cities today religious groups increasingly vie for public presence. It is especially the religious manifestation in the urban soundscape, most forcefully by charismatic-Pentecostal churches and preachers, that has of late generated controversy. While charismatic-Pentecostal ‘noisemaking’ leads to conflicts all year round, it is especially during the annual traditional ‘ban on drumming and noisemaking’ that the religious confrontation over sound and silence in the city comes to full and violent expression. Approaching the articulation between religiosity and urban space through the aural, this article examines how religious sound practices create, occupy and compete for urban space. Comparing the nexus of religion, urban space and aurality in charismatic Pentecostalism and Ga traditional religion, it seeks to establish two points. First, that behind the apparent opposition between Pentecostalism and traditional religion is a difference in religious spatiality, but a remarkable similarity in the place of sound in relation to the spiritual. Second, it argues that the religious clash over sonic sacralization of urban space should not only be understood as a competition for symbolic control of spaces, but also as a spiritual struggle over the invisible, but all the more affective powers felt to be present in the city.

Citizen Participation in a Mediated Age: Neighbourhood Governance in The Netherlands

Abstract: Two developments — the fragmentation of governance and the mediatization of politics — lead governmental organizations to engage in discursive and institutional competition. These new circumstances also drastically change the relationship of governmental organizations to clients, target groups and the citizenry as a whole. We empirically investigate these changes through a study of a privately funded community development organization in the Netherlands, the Neighbourhood Alliance. In this case, it is no longer the citizenry that articulates a public discourse, but a public discourse that, through the mediation of an institutional entrepreneur like the Neighbourhood Alliance, stipulates what type of participation is appropriate. This development raises the critical issue of the nature and mechanisms of democratic engagement in a fragmented, mediatized polity.