Showing papers in "International Journal of Urban and Regional Research in 2011"

Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism

Abstract: ijur_1051 223..238 This article is an intervention in the epistemologies and methodologies of urban studies. It seeks to understand and transform the ways in which the cities of the global South are studied and represented in urban research, and to some extent in popular discourse. As such, the article is primarily concerned with a formation of ideas — ‘subaltern urbanism’ — which undertakes the theorization of the megacity and its subaltern spaces and subaltern classes. Of these, the ubiquitous ‘slum’ is the most prominent. Writing against apocalyptic and dystopian narratives of the slum, subaltern urbanism provides accounts of the slum as a terrain of habitation, livelihood, self-organization and politics. This is a vital and even radical challenge to dominant narratives of the megacity. However, this article is concerned with the limits of and alternatives to subaltern urbanism. It thus highlights emergent analytical strategies, utilizing theoretical categories that transcend the familiar metonyms of underdevelopment such as the megacity, the slum, mass politics and the habitus of the dispossessed. Instead, four categories are discussed — peripheries, urban informality, zones of exception and gray spaces. Informed by the urbanism of the global South, these categories break with ontological and topological understandings of subaltern subjects and subaltern spaces.

Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture

Abstract: Cities exist in a world of cities and thus routinely invite a comparative gesture in urban theorizing. However, for some decades urban studies have analytically divided the world of cities into, for example, wealthier and poorer, capitalist and socialist, or into different regional groupings of cities, with subsequently very little comparative research across these divides. Interest in drawing comparisons among different cities has escalated in an era of ‘globalization’, as economic and social activities as well as governance structures link cities together through spatially extensive flows of various kinds and intense networks of communication. Nonetheless, scholars of urban studies have been relatively reluctant to pursue the potential for international comparative research that stands at the heart of the field. Where an interest in globalization has drawn authors to explicit exercises in comparison, both the methodological resources and the prevalent intellectual and theoretical landscape have tended to limit and even undermine these initiatives. This article seeks, first, to understand why it is that in an intrinsically comparative field with an urgent contemporary need for thinking across different urban experiences, there has been relatively little comparative research, especially comparisons that stretch across the global North–South divide, or across contexts of wealthier and poorer cities. Secondly, through a review of existing strategies for comparing cities, the article considers the potential for comparative methodologies to overcome their limitations to meet growing demands for international and properly post-colonial urban studies. Finally, it proposes a new phase of comparative urban research that is experimental, but with theoretically rigorous foundations. Resume Les villes existent dans un monde de villes et invitent donc normalement a un mouvement comparatif au sein de la recherche urbaine. Toutefois, depuis quelques decennies, les demarches analytiques des etudes urbaines ont scinde le monde des villes en, par exemple, riches et pauvres, capitalistes et socialistes, ou en d’autres regroupements par regions, ce qui s’est traduit par de rares comparaisons entre ces grandes divisions. L’interet pour les travaux comparatifs entre villes s’est accentue au fil de la ‘mondialisation’, les activites economiques et sociales ainsi que les structures de gouvernance reliant les villes par des flux de plusieurs types et de grande envergure spatiale, et par d’actifs reseaux de communication. Pourtant, les auteurs d’etudes urbaines se sont montres peu enclins a approfondir le potentiel de recherches comparatives internationales qu’offre ce domaine. Lorsqu’un interet pour la mondialisation a pousse certains a des exercices comparatifs detailles, tant les ressources methodologiques que le contexte theorique et intellectuel dominant ont plutot limite, voire aneanti, ces initiatives. Dans un premier temps, cet article cherche a comprendre pourquoi, dans un domaine comparatif par nature ou un besoin urgent appelle a une reflexion associant differentes experiences urbaines, les etudes comparatives sont relativement rares, notamment les comparaisons qui depassent la division entre Nord et Sud, ou entre les villes les plus riches et les plus pauvres. Ensuite, faisant le bilan des strategies de comparaison existantes, il envisage les methodologies comparatives qui pourraient repousser leurs limites pour repondre aux demandes croissantes en etudes urbaines internationales et reellement postcoloniales. Pour finir, l’article propose une nouvelle phase experimentale d’etudes urbaines comparatives, egalement dotee de fondements rigoureux sur le plan theorique.

Speculative Urbanism and the Making of the Next World City

Abstract: This article explores the process of making Bangalore, India into a ‘world city’ by focusing on specific world-city projects, the parastatal government agencies managing them, the explosive IT industry as the putative engine behind this world-city making, and the inter-urban dynamics across world cities such as Dubai and Singapore. Most of these activities are linked to the highly remunerative challenge of transforming rural economies into urban real estate. Land speculation and active dispossession of those working and living in the rural periphery, on land upon which the new world-city projects are being built, is the main business of government today in Bangalore. This article suggests that this temporary ‘state of exception’, with both its attendant suspensions of civil and human rights as well as their institutionalization into government practices, reflects a shift into new forms of ‘speculative’ government, economy, urbanism and citizenship.

The dream of Delhi as a global city

Abstract: The ambition to develop Delhi as a global city is rooted in the liberalization reforms of the 1990s. Parts of the city region were integrated with the global economy, providing international firms with investment opportunities and outsourced services, while the metropolitan area emerged as a significant agglomeration of Export Processing Zones. The development of modern infrastructure, high-end residential complexes and exclusive shopping malls, in line with the rise of consumerism and middle-class ideology, has spectacularly transformed the urban landscape. This drive for global competitiveness involving image-building has had negative consequences, especially for the poor, through ‘cleansing’ the city of slums and other alleged undesirable elements, and has exacerbated socio-spatial polarization. Delhi's experience thus exemplifies the problematic implementation of a Western construct — the global-city model — in a metropolis of the South characterized by strong socio-economic inequalities as well as the ascent of urban entrepreneurialism and its translation into a ‘revanchist city’. Although Delhi's trajectory is not unique in this respect, the magnitude of the informal sector combined with the increasing assertiveness of the social groups who have benefited most from the economic reforms provides a context in which the imposition of a new economic model and urban aesthetics generates particularly tangible tensions. What also makes the case of the Indian capital remarkable is the conjunction of structural factors — the overriding power of the state and the decisive intervention of the courts in urban affairs — with an international event — the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Resume L'ambition de transformer Delhi en ville globale est ancree dans les reformes de liberalisation des annees 1990. Certaines parties de la region metropolitaine se sont integrees dans l'economie mondiale, en fournissant aux entreprises internationales des possibilites d'investissement et de services externalises, tandis que l'aire metropolitaine apparait comme une agglomeration importante de zones franches. Le developpement d'infrastructures modernes, de complexes residentiels haut de gamme et de centres commerciaux elitistes, en conformite avec la montee du consumerisme et de l'ideologie des classes moyennes, a transforme le paysage urbain de maniere spectaculaire. Cette course a la competitivite globale, impliquant la construction d'une certaine image urbaine, a eu des consequences negatives, surtout pour les pauvres, par le biais de ‘nettoyages’ destines a debarrasser la capitale de ses bidonvilles et autres elements juges indesirables, et a exacerbe la polarisation socio-spatiale. L'experience de Delhi illustre ainsi la mise en œuvre problematique d'un concept occidental — le modele de la ville globale — dans une metropole du Sud caracterisee par de fortes inegalites socio-economiques, ainsi que la montee de l' ‘entrepreneurialisme’ urbain et sa traduction en une ‘ville revancharde’. Bien que la trajectoire de Delhi ne soit pas unique a cet egard, l'ampleur du secteur informel, combinee avec l'affirmation croissante des groupes sociaux qui ont le plus beneficie des reformes economiques, fournit un contexte ou l'imposition d'un nouveau modele economique et d'une nouvelle esthetique urbaine genere des tensions particulierement tangibles. Ce qui rend aussi le cas de la capitale indienne remarquable, c'est la conjonction de facteurs structurels — le pouvoir preponderant de l'Etat et l'intervention decisive des tribunaux dans les affaires urbaines — et d'un evenement international — les Jeux du Commonwealth de 2010.

Gentrifying the State, Gentrifying Participation: Elite Governance Programs in Delhi

Abstract: Recent scholarship has highlighted the central role of India’s ‘new middle class’ in gentrifying and ‘cleaning up’ its cities. According to this literature, this class experienced a political awakening in the 1990s and began mobilizing to reclaim urban space from the poor. Using the example of Delhi’s Bhagidari scheme, a governance experiment launched in 2000, I argue that urban middle-class power did not emerge from internal changes within this class itself (as is commonly argued), but was rather produced by the machinations of the local state. In particular, I show how Bhagidari has realigned the channels by which citizens can access the state on the basis of property ownership. In so doing, it has undermined the electoral process dominated by the poor, and privileged property owners’ demands for a ‘world-class’ urban future. By examining the ‘new state spaces’ it constructs, I show how Bhagidari has effectively gentrified the channels of political participation, respatializing the state by breaking the informal ties binding the unpropertied poor to the local state and thereby removing the obstacles to large-scale slum demolitions. In making this argument, the article introduces a unique approach to mapping state space that aims to reveal the relationship between state form and political participation.

The Infrastructural Limits to Growth: Rethinking the Urban Growth Machine in Times of Fiscal Crisis

Abstract: Since the 1970s, centralized interventions into the infrastructural affairs of US cities have been in decline As a result, local entities have been compelled to shoulder a greater share of the burden for developing the urban infrastructure networks and public works needed to support growth Under conditions of neoliberalism, local officials and growth-machine participants have pursued this local infrastructural imperative by means of increasingly speculative and risky financing strategies deployed through the ‘back door’ of traditional democratic channels The following analysis is empirically focused on three Californian cities — Emeryville, Oxnard and Vallejo — which achieved impressive levels of growth around the turn of the twenty-first century However, these cities subsequently suffered precipitous economic contraction As such, they demonstrate the unprecedented challenges now facing the urban growth machine in the wake of the current global economic crisis Two emergent challenges, in particular, appear poised to challenge the historical resiliency of the growth machine: the ‘reverse infrastructural trap’ and nascent conflicts between municipal bondholders and municipal employees The cases presented here thus raise important questions about the continued viability of the pro-growth agenda in the context of structural fiscal deficits, chronic infrastructural decline and extreme capital-market volatility

Squatting and Urban Renewal: The Interaction of Squatter Movements and Strategies of Urban Restructuring in Berlin

Abstract: Squatting as a housing strategy and as a tool of urban social movements accompanies the development of capitalist cities worldwide. We argue that the dynamics of squatter movements are directly connected to strategies of urban renewal in that movement conjunctures occur when urban regimes are in crisis. An analysis of the history of Berlin squatter movements, their political context and their effects on urban policies since the 1970s, clearly shows how massive mobilizations at the beginning of the 1980s and in the early 1990s developed in a context of transition in regimes of urban renewal. The crisis of Fordist city planning at the end of the 1970s provoked a movement of "rehab squatting" ('Instandbesetzung'), which contributed to the institutionalization of "cautious urban renewal" ('behutsame Stadterneuerung') in an important way. The second rupture in Berlin's urban renewal became apparent in 1989 and 1990, when the necessity of restoring whole inner-city districts constituted a new, budget-straining challenge for urban policymaking. Whilst in the 1980s the squatter movement became a central condition for and a political factor of the transition to "cautious urban renewal," in the 1990s large-scale squatting — mainly in the eastern parts of the city — is better understood as an alien element in times of neoliberal urban restructuring.

The Local Wreckage of Global Capital: The Subprime Crisis, Federal Policy and High-Foreclosure Neighborhoods in the US

Abstract: The article discusses the U.S. financial crisis, referred to as the U.S. subprime crisis, and foreclosure rates in U.S. neighborhoods. The author describes the origins of the crisis and the evolution of home foreclosures that followed. The author also discusses the so-called Neighborhood Stabilization Program, the U.S. federal government response to the foreclosure problem. The article attributes the U.S. subprime crisis to a direct link that existed between global capital markets and homeowners and a lack of oversight and restraint in the public sector.

Moving up the Ladder or Stuck on the Bottom Rung? Homeownership as a Solution to Poverty in Urban South Africa.

Abstract: In the global South, policies providing property titles to low-income households are increasingly implemented as a solution to poverty. Integrating poor households into the capitalist economy using state-subsidized homeownership is intended to provide poor people with an asset that can be used in a productive manner. In this article the South African 'housing subsidy system' is assessed using quantitative and qualitative data from in-depth research in a state-subsidized housing settlement in the city of Cape Town. The findings show that while state-subsidized property ownership provides long-term shelter and tenure security to low-income households, houses have mixed value as a financial asset. Although state-subsidized houses in South Africa are a financially tradable asset, transaction values are too low for low-income vendors to reach the next rung on the housing ladder, the township market. Furthermore, low-income homeowners are reticent to use their (typically primary) asset as collateral security for credit, and thus property ownership is not providing the financial returns that titling theories assume.ResumeLes pays du Sud instaurent de plus en plus souvent des politiques publiques qui octroient des titres de propriete aux menages a faible revenu afin de lutter contre la pauvrete. Integrer les menages defavorises a l'economie capitaliste en leur permettant une accession a la propriete financee par l'Etat a pour but de leur procurer un bien utilisable de maniere productive. Le systeme sud-africain de logements subventionnes est evalue a partir de donnees quantitatives et qualitatives issues d'une etude detaillee sur une implantation de logements subventionnes par l'Etat dans la ville du Cap. Les resultats montrent que, dans ce cadre, l'accession a la propriete offre aux menages defavorises un abri a long terme et une securite de maintien dans les lieux, mais que les maisons ont une valeur inegale sur le plan financier. Meme si celles-ci constituent un bien negociable financierement, les valeurs de transaction sont trop faibles pour que les vendeurs a bas revenu puissent atteindre l'echelon suivant sur l'echelle des logements: le marche des townships. En outre, comme les nouveaux proprietaires rechignent a recourir a leur bien (generalement principal) pour garantir un credit, l'accession a la propriete ne procure pas les benefices financiers theoriquement associes a la delivrance de titres de propriete.

Lagos, Koolhaas and Partisan Politics in Nigeria

Abstract: Architect Rem Koolhaas and his team from Harvard regard Lagos as an extreme and pathological form of the city in Africa and as a paradigmatic case of a modern avant-garde city. In rehabilitating the informality at work in Lagos, they put forward a romanticized vision of a self-regulatory system working outside state regulation and political influence. In this article I consider that the crisis of urban infrastructure in Lagos is less the result of the weakness of the Nigerian state than of a historical opposition between the Federal government and Lagos State leaders, especially concerning the allocation of resources to the city. I also suggest that informality and state decline analysis are inadequate theoretical frameworks for detailing the way Lagos has been planned or governed since the end of the colonial period. Instead, this article, based on empirical research covering local government, motor parks and markets, considers that the city’s resources have been used to build political networks between state officials and a number of ‘civil society’ leaders. This process and the reinforcement of taxation in the last 30 years are not so much a manifestation of informality and state decline as part and parcel of the historical state formation in Nigeria and in Lagos.

Distribution Centers among the Rooftops: The Global Logistics Network Meets the Suburban Spatial Imaginary

Abstract: Changes in shipping over recent decades have altered the geography of freighttransportation in the USA in a number of ways. In particular, significant volumes offreight traffic are now traveling inland to the Ohio River valley and the Midwest. Withinmetropolitan areas here, large amounts of land on the suburban fringe are beingdeveloped as logistics or distribution centers in municipalities that are experiencingotherwise typical greenfield suburban growth. This article explores this developmentthrough a case study in the southwest suburbs of Chicago that are experiencing rapidgrowth in both population and freight distribution activity. Here, in a so-called globalera of placeless flows, land use and economic development continue to be based largelyon a spatial imaginary of bounded and discrete territories, with long-term environmentaland economic consequences for the political units in question.

Dead Malls: Suburban Activism, Local Spaces, Global Logistics

Abstract: An entire category of urban space, albeit hardly recognized as such, is disappearing across North America. As retail logistics globalizes and big-box power centres replace enclosed shopping malls from the postwar era, a distinct form of social infrastructure vanishes as well. ‘Dead malls’ are now a staple of North American (sub)urban landscapes, and have provoked local activism in many places. But despite popular concern for the demise of mall space, critical urban scholarship has largely sidelined the phenomenon. Much of the disjuncture between popular outcry and academic silence relates to conceptions of ‘public’ space, and specifically the gap between formal ownership and everyday spatial practice. Spatial practice often exceeds the conceptions of designers and managers, transforming malls into community space. This is particularly true in declining inner suburbs, where poor and racialized communities depend more heavily on malls for social reproduction as well as recreation and consumption. In this article we investigate the revolution in logistics that has provoked the phenomenon of ‘dead malls’ and the creative activism emerging that aims to protect mall space as ‘community space’. Taking the case of the Morningside Mall in an old suburb of Toronto, we investigate the informal claims made on mall space through everyday spatial practice and the explicit claims for community space that arise when that space is threatened. We argue that many malls have effectively become community space, and activism to prevent its loss can be understood as a form of anti-globalization practice, even if it never employs that language.

International Events and Mass Evictions: A Longer View

Abstract: Mass evictions have been increasingly linked to large international events, often called mega-events, around the world. This article looks back at the residential redevelopment in Seoul that surged just prior to the 1988 Olympic Games there to better understand how large events bring about change in cities. When existing documentation of the new housing construction boom and a corresponding large-scale dislocation of urban poor residents via aggressive evictions in the mid-1980s are correlated with data from primary and secondary historical sources, there is incontrovertible evidence of a causal link between event hosting and forced evictions. However, the data goes on to reveal that large-scale clearance, evictions and demolitions occurred in Seoul over an extended period before the Olympics as well as long afterwards, which suggests that the Olympics was in fact part of a broader process and practice of urban transformation in Seoul. Without discounting the effect of event hosting in this case, this raises the question of what motivates both event hosting and residential redevelopment, and whether the event offers an opportunity to refine and further institutionalize certain practices. The article proposes taking a longer historical view of the practice of clearance, evictions and demolitions in order to foresee the dynamics of event hosting in a specific city and to inform event-related planning.

Legacies, Change and Transformation in the Post-Apartheid City: Towards an Urban Sociological Cartography

Abstract: The post-apartheid city represents an important test case for assessing how the spatial dimensions of social inequality shape the dynamics of urban transformation Most analyses of urban segregation have focused on race or class as key drivers of mobility or maintenance, for instance in the classic spatial assimilation versus place stratification debate Yet the mechanisms of segregation and mixing play themselves out differently according to urban spatial structure We use the case of Durban, South Africa, to show that the spatial legacies of apartheid are powerful, and much of the city has undergone little change since apartheid Through a spatial analysis at the neighbourhood level, we also find that even in the short time between 1996 and 2001 a significant number of neighbourhoods experienced measurable shifts in their racial and socio-economic composition We develop what we call a sociological cartography of the city, which shows how race, class and space have combined to generate three distinct but interconnected types of stasis and transformation: the racialized city, the class-stratified city and the transformed city The racialized city is the most direct legacy of apartheid spatial development, encompassing neighbourhoods composed of essentially a single race group In the class-stratified city, multiple race groups of similar class status are represented Finally, the transformed city represents new configurations that cut across both race and class divisions of the apartheid city

The Role of the Public Sector in the Provision of Housing Supply in Turkey, 1950–2009

Abstract: This study examines the changing role of the public sector in Turkey with regard to housing provision since 1950, and particularly since 2000, and seeks to clarify how public intervention has affected housing provision and urban development dynamics in major cities. Three periods may be identified, with central government acting as a regulator in a first period characterized by a 'housing boom'. During the second period, from 1980 to 2000, a new mass housing law spurred construction activity, although the main beneficiaries of the housing fund tended to be the middle classes. After 2000, contrary to emerging trends in both Northern and Southern European countries, the public sector in Turkey became actively involved in housing provision. During this process, new housing estates were created on greenfield sites on the outskirts of cities, instead of efforts being made to rehabilitate, restore or renew existing housing stock in the cities. Meanwhile, the concept of 'urban regeneration' has been opportunistically incorporated into the planning agenda of the public sector, and - under the pretext of regenerating squatter housing areas - existing residents have been moved out, while channels for community participation have been bypassed.

Public Participation and Local Sustainability: Questioning a Common Agenda in Urban Governance

Abstract: In the context of calls for more effective processes to facilitate deliberative democracy in cities, and the connection often asserted between participatory means and sustainability ends in urban governance, this article examines a case of public participation for sustainability indicator selection in Vancouver, Canada. Sustainability indicator systems are often introduced via participatory exercises, but the quality of this participation and its outcomes are questionable. Based upon current debates in deliberative democratic theory, our judgment of the quality of a particular process depends on the level and mode of interaction. Do we expect, along with Healey, that participants build a rational consensus beginning from root values and visions, or do we expect, along with Mouffe, a conflictual consensus among participants working from incommensurably diverse life worlds? An examination of governmentality theory, based on the work of Rydin, adds to this a way of understanding the impact on participation outcomes of what participants learn about their own and others' roles in democratic urban governance as they prepare recommendations specific to local sustainability. This case study analysis reflects on these theoretical debates in terms of the unfolding of a public participation process for sustainability indicator selection. It offers lessons for public process design that is better aligned with the expectations of radicalized communicative rationality and for the specific learning values of engagement for participants, which were at least as strongly related to democratic practice as they were to sustainability per se. Sur fond de demandes de processus decisionnels plus efficaces facilitant la democratie deliberative dans les villes, et de lien souvent revendique entre methodes participatives et objectifs de developpement durable en matiere de gouvernance urbaine, l’article etudie un cas de participation publique visant la selection d’indicateurs de durabilitea Vancouver, au Canada. Les systemes d’indicateurs de durabilite apparaissent souvent avec les pratiques participatives, mais la qualite de cette participation et ses resultats sont discutables. D’apres les debats actuels sur la theorie de la democratie deliberative, l’evaluation de la qualite de tel ou tel processus depend de ses niveau et mode d’interactions. Veut‐on croire, tel Healey, que les participants bâtiront un consensus rationnel en commencant par des valeurs et perspectives fondamentales ou, telle Mouffe, qu’un consensus conflictuel se creera entre des participants emanant d’univers de vie sans commune mesure? L’etude de la theorie de la gouvernementalitea partir des travaux de Rydin offre un moyen de comprendre comment les resultats de la participation sont affectes par ce que les participants apprennent sur leur role personnel et sur le role des autres dans la gouvernance urbaine democratique, pendant qu’ils preparent leurs recommandations en matiere de durabilite locale. L’analyse de l’etude de cas revient sur ces debats theoriques pour expliciter un processus de participation publique visant la selection d’indicateurs de durabilite. Elle en tire des enseignements qui suggerent une conception des processus publics plus conforme aux attentes d’une rationalite communicative radicalisee et qui determinent, pour les participants, les valeurs d’apprentissage social propres a l’engagement, valeurs qui ont ete liees a la pratique democratique au moins autant qu’au developpement durable lui‐meme.

Questioning the Theoretical Basis of Current Global-City Research: Structures, Networks and Actor-Networks.

Abstract: The article critiques the theoretical basis for researching global cities as structures, networks, and actor-networks. First, Sassen’s and Taylor’s concepts for global urban command are closely examined to reveal, amongst other things, their inherent contradiction. This revelation is of fundamental importance because current research is proceeding apace on the assumption of their compatibility. Second, we move beyond a critique of structures and networks to expose a problem with re-conceptualizing cities as actor-networks. We explain how actor-network theory runs aground on a ‘plasma’ and consequently suggest a route out of that theoretical impasse by arguing for a re-conceptualization of cities modelled on the work of Badiou. Finally, we demonstrate how such a conceptual shift provides the theoretical basis for a new type of urban analysis that examines how cities strive to prohibit and dissimulate their unbinding and destabilization as networks. Thus, the article advances a new model for global-urban studies about how cities as networks are fragile, ongoing achievements, not only because — as actor-network theory has taught us — they hold together only because they are held together, but because — as Badiou shows us — they are blind to what they cannot take into account: multiplicity and event as products of subtraction.

State and Society in Local Governance: Lessons from a Multilevel Comparison

Abstract: A generation of literature on local governance has established it to be largely a matter of relations between society and the local state. Existing typologies of national infrastructures for local governance, however, have neglected national variations in the shape of civil society to focus exclusively on governmental institutions. In this article we propose a new typology of national infrastructures of local governance that takes the structure of civil society into account. We test the typology as a predictor of local patterns of influence in a multilevel comparative analysis of data from the UDITE survey of over 4,000 local officials in fourteen OECD countries. The analysis demonstrates that certain types of national infrastructures consistently affect local power relations, as do the parallel infrastructures common to distinct sectors of policy. The effects from these infrastructures generally depend on synergies with the influence of local actors in civil society as well as in the local state.

Democracy on the edge: limits and possibilities in the implementation of an urban reform agenda in Brazil.

Abstract: The 1990s in Brazil were a time of institutional advances in the areas of housing and urban rights following the signing of the new constitution in 1988 that incorporated the principles of the social function of cities and property, recognition of the right to ownership of informal urban squatters and the direct participation of citizens in urban policy decision processes. These propositions are the pillars of the urban reform agenda which, since the creation of the Ministry of Cities by the Lula government, has come under the federal executive branch. This article evaluates the limitations and opportunities involved in implementing this agenda on the basis of two policies proposed by the ministry — the National Cities Council and the campaign for Participatory Master Plans — focusing the analysis on government organization in the area of urban development in its relationship with the political system and the characteristics of Brazilian democracy.

Polycentricity, Commuting Pattern, Urban Form: The Case of Southern California

Abstract: This article investigates the dynamics of commuting patterns using the 2005 American Community Survey for Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in Southern California. Using various analytical approaches, the article illustrates that spatial/temporal patterns of employment should be utilized to develop a better understanding of the spatial dynamics of commuting patterns. The results suggest that (1) counter to popular belief, not all residents of suburban locations suffer from long commutes, (2) polycentric urban employment patterns may provide a better explanation of commuting patterns, and (3) the commuting pattern of low‐income populations may be the most challenging issue to resolve, given the decentralized nature of service employment. Overall, the article suggests that advocacy for any particular urban form may be premature and less than efficient if we do not take into account the reality of commuting patterns as they relate to our fragmented and decentered metropolitan areas.

Heritage Production and Urban Locational Policy in Lijiang, China

Abstract: Despite the fact that much literature has focused on the centrality of heritage to urban regeneration and economic restructuring in Western cities, heritage production has remained largely absent from accounts of urban studies in the context of China. This article addresses this neglect by examining the process of constructing an invented heritage (Mu Palace) in Lijiang Old Town in China, and how town residents have responded to this invented heritage. Drawing on a framework situated in urban political economy and the cultural politics of heritage, this article analyzes the local government's role as the principal actor in integrating Mu Palace into locational policies aimed at achieving urban competitiveness and reaping economic returns. Simultaneously, the article asserts the dissonance in which local residents contest the state's efforts. It sheds light on local ruling elites' entrepreneurship in mobilizing urban heritage for economic growth and political control, and on how locational policies of place-making are contested by ordinary people in China.

Gated Communities for Security or Prestige? A Public Choice Approach and the Case of Budapest.

Abstract: ijur_996 735..752 While in the mainstream narrative gated communities are regarded as incidental or deviate developments, this article attempts to offer, on the basis of public choice theory, an alternative answer to the fundamental question: why are people moving to gated residential areas? Drawing on the case of Budapest, it discusses the dominant theses and concludes that eagerness for prestige seems to surpass both fear of crime and the urge for self-segregation on the part of the affluent as the dominant motive. The search for prestige is particularly intense in Budapest, where local governments possess very weak fiscal autonomy and depend strongly on state grants, making them hardly able to provide the public goods and services that meet citizens’ preferences. Consequently, in Budapest and to some extent rather ironically, the rise of gated communities, which in the literature is vehemently disputed as a socially problematic process, has become a manifestation of the revolt of the upper middle class against a grossly overcentralized government.

Journeys and returns: home, life narratives and remapping sexuality in a regional city

Abstract: This article explores intersections of home, mobility and sexualities. We draw on the narrated journeys of young lesbian- and gay-identified people who left and then returned to their hometown of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Their stories of journeys and returns rupture boundaries that fashion both regional Australia as a closeted space and metropolitan centres as places of sexual tolerance. Attention to individual narratives provides a nuanced interpretation of how those initially displaced by the stigma of their sexuality opt to return. 'Finding themselves' and calling this regional centre 'home' requires transforming the spaces of Townsville both materially and symbolically. Narrated journeys and returns can contribute to recent discussions of home that emphasize the situated spatiality of subjectivity.

Urban Politics: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Abstract: Urban politics is a multidisciplinary field, in other words a number of bits — so tospeak — of different disciplines work on it. While those in political science might claimto produce the bulk of the work in this field, others in anthropology, economics, humangeography, planning, social policy and sociology can also claim to be making acontribution. The introduction situates the six sections comprising this essay, in whichcontributors discuss what their respective disciplines bring to the wider field of ‘urbanpolitics’ and highlight some possible areas for future work.

Gender Water Networks: Femininity and Masculinity in Water Politics in Bolivia

Abstract: The article discusses water policy in Bolivia and the role of gender and feminism in its formulation. Anti-dam and anti-privatization efforts that involve women reportedly have resulted in increasing the dialogue of feminists and nonfeminists in water policy. The article evaluates understandings of gender relationships in the context of water policy deliberations. The article assesses how gender views are produced and disrupted in networks of conflict. The article also discusses sexuality, femininity, and heroic masculinity in national and transnational settings including Bolivian politics.

The Belgrade Wall: The Proliferation of Gated Housing in the Serbian Capital after Socialism.

Abstract: In this article, we discuss the proliferation of gated housing in the Serbian capital of Belgrade since the end of state socialism in 1989. We argue that Belgrade offers insights into the phenomenon of gated housing that the rapidly burgeoning global literature on gated communities has thus far overlooked. Specifically, whereas the literature has focused on the gated community per se (i.e. on relatively large residential groupings to which outsider access is restricted), most gated housing in Belgrade is fenced off and securitized individually or in very small groups. Using qualitative data collected between 2007 and 2009, we suggest reasons for the popularity of gating in addition to those commonly cited in the literature (e.g. security and status). We point to Belgrade’s historic traditions in gated housing. We also discuss the uniqueness of the socialist and post-socialist housing experience, and emphasize the importance of physical enclosure as a means of asserting private ownership and territoriality — spatial behaviors that were suppressed during socialism. Finally, since large Western-style gated communities have only just emerged in Belgrade, we discuss the evolution of gating in the city, from a phenomenon with a local flavor to one that may share the features of gated communities around the world.

The Citizen Participation of Urban Movements in Spatial Planning: A Comparison between Vigo and Porto

Abstract: The urban planning of municipal territory is still a key element of urban politics despite competition from other types of spatial planning and the influence of supra-local policies such as those introduced by European institutions. To gauge its importance, I selected the last two master plans developed in the cities of Vigo (Spain) and Porto (Portugal) and examined the contributions of urban movements to citizen participation in these plans. The periods of transition to democracy in both cities prompted the appearance of important citizen movements, but these have evolved differently in each city. This article describes the evolution of these movements in both cities and explains why they culminated in a conflictive participation model in the master plan of Vigo, while in Porto the opportunities for citizen participation in the master plan were neutralized. To conclude, it is argued that this comparison reveals the importance of local contexts of urban governability shaped by a history of strategic interactions between urban movements and elites, which reduces the validity of neoliberal conceptions of governance to explain citizen participation in relation to spatial planning.

The Qualities of Local Participation: The Explanatory Role of Ideology, External Support and Civil Society as Organizer

Abstract: ijur_1018 932..948 Previous research into local participation (often based on in-depth studies of the most successful examples of the phenomenon) has highlighted its qualities and potential. In this article we adopt a different strategy, in the first part building an explanatory analysis of the procedural qualities of local participation based on a mapping of local processes. This mapping — comprising 103 experiences drawn from Catalonia (Spain) — allows us to make a more accurate assessment, and to get a more plural and diverse (albeit less optimistic) picture of this reality. The second part of the article suggests a multidimensional strategy to capture some of the important democratic qualities of local participation, and discusses the role that several factors play in the explanation of these qualities. We pay special attention to the ideology of political parties in the development of participatory processes, the role of external support from supra-local institutions, and the role of civil society (which emerges as the most crucial explanatory factor) in the promotion of these experiences.

Knowledge‐Based Economy and Social Exclusion: Shadow and Light in the Roman Socio‐Economic Model

Abstract: The article aims to analyse the evolution and modernization of Rome in the last 30 years. To this end, we focus on both structural and institutional change and try to identify the main ruptures, continuities and driving forces of the new Roman model. After the second world war, Rome was generally considered to be a cumbersome capital city with a heavy bureaucratic sector and without any strong 'local' political forces and social movements capable of bringing about economic and political change. Nevertheless, a new and more democratic local governance and subregulation mode emerged during the post-Fordist era, which allowed the production and reproduction of new socio-economic relations that in turn influenced a new economic model for the city. This new governance has led to some interesting forms of 'democratization' that are difficult to find in other post-Fordist metropolises. However, the Roman model is also characterized - as in other global metropolises - by forms of social exclusion, poverty and polarization between the peripheries and central/high-income districts, in a sort of two-speed development. At the same time, the traditional bureaucracy and its connected 'state bourgeoisie', although still relevant, are no longer dominant. New service activities have brought about new agents, new powers and new institutions.

State Tansformation and Regional Development in Taiwan: From Developmentalist Strategy to Populist Subsidy

Abstract: ijur_971 600..619 This article deals with the transformation of the state and the change in industrial and regional development policy that took place in Taiwan in the context of a globalizing economy. Taiwan’s authoritarian Kuomintang regime was able to concentrate resources on developing strategic industries in key regions, notably Hsinchu, and rendered rural industrialization possible by extending the global production network to central Taiwan. Dramatic change occurred when external economic pressure and domestic political struggle challenged the arbitrary power of the state after the mid-1980s. To keep business rooted at home, the state led the industries to upgrade by offering preferential subsidies, at the same time forbidding the outflow of key industries to China. This policy was not entirely successful. When the populist Democratic Progressive Party came to power, it reinforced the policy by launching new science parks to both compensate business groups for losses due to the detention policy, and balance regional disparity for electoral gain. The major industrial and regional competitiveness measures that resulted reduced resource allocation to a pork barrel, while Hsinchu’s competitive advantage in cross-border regional integration was gradually lost as a collective order came to govern the process. The article ends with some reflections on the post-developmental state and the interplay of populist politics, the liberalized economy, and the new regionalism.