Introduction: territory, the state and urban development

Abstract

The matter of where the ‘urban question’ fits within state theory (and, by extension, approaches to state territoriality) has already preoccupied the critical social sciences for several decades, yet it remains a vital intellectual point of departure in critical urban studies. In the West, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, the urban question was typically framed in terms of the devastating fiscal and social impact of national urban renewal policies on inner-city communities or the failure of the Keynesian welfare state to deliver socially necessary consumption goods and services equally to all urban residents irrespective of class, race or gender. In the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis shifted towards understanding the role of neoliberal state policy and regulation in the restructuring and transformation of urban economies (e.g. efforts to attract and valorize ‘knowledge’ and ‘creativity’), the rise of urban entrepreneurialism and the privatization of city services. Even if the nation-state was seen as being hollowed out simultaneously from below and above, the state in some form or another nevertheless remained a visible player in the politics of urban development, particularly in countries emerging from decades of colonialism and seeking to align urban economic development with nationalist aspirations and imaginaries.