"Third Way" Urban Policy and the New Moral Politics of Community: Conflicts Over the Virtuous Community in Ballymun in Dublin and the Gorbals in Glasgow

Abstract

While the United Kingdom's emerging brand of Third Way Urban Policy (TWUP) often associates itself with a kind of anarchic vision of self-regulating and self-reproducing local communities, it can in fact be thought of as a thinly veiled moral crusade against vulnerable residents living in deprived neighborhoods. Indeed TWUP might be best conceived as a "flanking support" for the neoliberal turn in urban governance in British cities; morally commendable communities are defined as those who can reattach themselves to the "mainstream" and stand on their own two feet within the terms set by neoliberal market economics. When these morally charged interventions fail to connect locally, they have the potential to stir conflict over who has the authority to judge forms of community life. Mapping and accounting for the uneven development of moral conflicts over community is therefore a pressing concern. To this end, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the different ways in which moral disputes over community have surfaced in two neighborhoods, in particular—the Gorbals in central Glasgow and Ballymun in north Dublin, neighborhoods that have become iconic of the British approach to urban renewal.