Competition and community in Edinburgh: contradictions in neoliberal urban development

Abstract

Cities have long been recognised as key spaces for neoliberal interventions. Identified by municipal leaders as instruments in competition for internationally mobile labour and capital, cities like Edinburgh, Scotland, have increasingly been shaped by urban development practices justified by the exigencies of competition. Any project to centralise urban development processes, however, must navigate the potential obstacles to efficiency found in the discipline of urban planning, which privileges community involvement in such processes. This article explores the tension between the values of community and efficiency in urban development, showing how, in the case of a proposal for development named Caltongate, the role of a community in the planning process was disputed, precisely because of its potential, qua community, to levy moralised claims to representation. I suggest that this case is not exceptional. Rather, it illustrates a characteristic contradiction of community as a politicised identity in neoliberal urban development: it is elevated in (often moralised) rhetoric but in practice is subordinated to the objective of efficiency in the delivery of centrally determined development outcomes.