Entrepreneurial Urban Governance Research Articles

The socio-ecological fix by multi-scalar states: The development of ‘Greenways of Paradise’ in Chengdu

This paper examines the recent green turn in China by investigating a large-scale urban greenway project. Using the perspective of the socio-ecological fix, we demonstrate that multi-scalar states strive to upgrade environmental quality. Specifically, the local state seizes the opportunity for ‘ecological civilisation’ envisioned by the central state to carry out green infrastructure development. We reveal complex motivations to incorporate ecological changes into entrepreneurial urban governance instead of encroaching greenspace for economic growth. Our state-centred analysis reveals that such an environmental strategy, the making of Chinese green urbanism, is promoted like a political mission, despite its operation by the development corporation. We argue that, while the socio-ecological fix facilitates capital accumulation, its deployment must be understood through state politics and actors.

Hybrid entrepreneurial urban governance in post-colonial Ghana: an analysis of Chinese funding of the Kotokuraba market project in Cape Coast

ABSTRACT Conventional forms of entrepreneurial urban governance are characterized by strong municipal urban governments, who have the autonomy to use and decide over innovative financing instruments and public–private partnerships, and whose decisions are not overly influenced by the national political interests of central government authorities. This article examines the extent to which this conceptualization applies in an African context, particularly Ghana. Drawing on a case study of Chinese funding of market infrastructural redevelopment in Cape Coast, we demonstrate that the existing conceptualization is inadequate to understand the framework and dynamics of entrepreneurial urban governance in Ghana, where mayors are appointed by Presidents, can “only” secure large-scale funding with the support of the central government, and are obliged to protect the political interests of the President and the ruling political party. Consequently, we argue that a new concept – hybrid entrepreneurial urban governance – is crucial to denote the Ghanaian variant of entrepreneurial urban governance and to analyze the multi-scalar mechanisms and local politics of urban governance in post-colonial Ghana. We argue that hybrid entrepreneurial urban governance thrives on a strong relationship between local and national politics. This article recommends that there is the need to strengthen multi-scalar collaborations not only in securing large-scale funding for capital infrastructure but also through to the subsequent stages of pricing and repayment.

Governing through the NGO—community eldercare in Beijing and Shanghai

ABSTRACT Recently the Chinese government has been actively collaborating with nonprofit nongovernmental organizations to provide social welfare services to older adults at the community level. The role played by NGOs in facilitating governance has only recently gained attention in the literature on Chinese NGOs and urban governance. Addressing this gap, the paper advances geographers’ understanding of State–NGO collaborations in facilitating urban governance in the Chinese context using fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai on the provision of community eldercare services as an example. It also explains the political control of these NGOs and their changing role in the eldercare market. We argue that collaborations between the state and NGOs in China have gradually transferred eldercare services to the NGOs, and led to a fragmented welfare system, which, as a consequence, has facilitated entrepreneurial urban governance. The paper sheds light on community-based organizations, their collaboration with local governments, and how they have become not only welfare providers but a significant site for social control.

Résister à l’exclusion spatiale et lutter pour l’inclusion économique : Les commerçants immigrés africains dans les espaces commerciaux publics de la ville du Cap, en Afrique du Sud

Around South Africa, the major cities are being narrated around entrepreneurialism, which emphasises competitiveness, innovation and partnership between local government and private corporates in the marketing of the city within and beyond the national borders. A large fraction of the population living in those cities is made up of immigrants from other African countries, who are frequently subjected to economic-driven xenophobic violent attacks by local citizens. African immigrants mostly operate in the informal sector and largely remain on the fringes of the city mainstream economy and social fabric. This article interrogates the extent to which the interventions implemented in the City of Cape Town in South Africa by the authorities, within the framework of reimagining the city as a world city, contribute either to the spatial inclusion or the exclusion of African immigrants’ petty trade activities in the design of urban development. The central argument to the article is that, in the pursuit of the entrepreneurial strategy advocated by the City of Cape Town, there are strong indications that some of these interventions are constraining and repressive, exacerbating the economic and social exclusion of African immigrants. Besides, these interventions have tended to increase the social hostility toward immigrants. Against the repressive law enforcement measures for regulating the urban space, there has been, however, a somewhat progressive public shift toward more accommodating efforts that have benefitted African immigrant business owners. The article is informed by the theoretical perspective on entrepreneurial urban governance and data from empirical sources are used in support of the arguments. The results reported show that in the city of Cape Town, the occupancy of any space for trading purpose is restrained by a bundle of by-laws. In responses to the variety of interventions, business owners have displayed different reactions ranging from compliance to subversive acts including resistance or negotiated arrangements have been at time used to influence the direction of other interventions.

Demolition-Based Urban Regeneration from a Post-Socialist Perspective: Case Study of a Neighborhood in Novi Sad, Serbia

Although a growing body of literature examines the post-socialist European context of urban regeneration, studies on the demolition-based approaches are relatively scarce. Moreover, the regeneration policies of cities in non-EU Balkan countries with a distinctive transitional path remain largely unexplored. The paper contributes to filling these voids by investigating a specific demolition-based urban regeneration strategy named permanent reconstruction, which has been launched in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city, and applied to low-density neighborhoods with a derelict housing stock, being seen as a tool for achieving sustainable urban development. The specific research aims are to explain the origin of this strategy; analyze the institutional and planning framework, mechanisms, and dynamics of the regeneration process through a case study; and assess its outcomes based on a mixed methodology. The main research objective is to identify the issues of a post-socialist entrepreneurial urban governance, primarily deriving from Serbia’s distorted transition, which hampered the development of a strategic, integrated, and locale-conscious approach. The findings suggest that Novi Sad and other Serbian cities necessitate socially responsible and context-perceptive regeneration that would produce sustainable regeneration projects. The authors propose the means for redefining them, emphasizing the responsibilities of the public sector and the significance of involving the local community in the planning and decision-making process.

Politics of Urban Transformation in Pre-Olympic Rio de Janeiro: Contentions and Confluences Between Citizen- and Market-centred Agendas

This article uses an urban upgrading programme (PAC Favela) as a lens for examining the contextual dynamics and forms of neoliberal urban development in pre-Olympic Rio de Janeiro. Critical scholarship has contended that Rio’s entrepreneurial governance and mega-event induced state of exception pushed forward a neoliberal urban agenda. While not rejecting this overarching narrative, the present article argues that this tendency was shaped by contextual politics at different scales, producing variegated forms of urban development. At the federal level, urban policy and practice under lulismo – the political ideology characterizing the 2002–2016 Workers’ Party governments – was marked by an ambition to achieve both social and economic transformation. The PAC Growth Acceleration Programme’s investments in favela upgrading were emblematic of this ambition. Through a multi-scalar case study of the social and economic interests and actors at the community, state and federal levels that engaged with PAC in the Rocinha favela in Rio, the article shows that PAC’s interventions were the outcome of contentions and confluences between citizen- and market-centred urban agendas. While the balance gradually shifted in favour of the market-centred, neoliberal agenda, outcomes should still be seen as inherently hybrid. On the one hand, the case of PAC in Rocinha presents a perspective ‘from below’ and important insights into the contested and contradictory nature of urban transformation in pre-Olympic Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, it illustrates the necessity for contextual analyses of perceived de-politicized neoliberal entrepreneurial urban governance and development.

Entrepreneurial urban governance and talent policy: the case of Shanghai

Globally, cities undergoing economic and governance transformations have experienced surging demand and ample challenges with regard to the competition for talent at all levels. While competition for talent takes shape in a wide range of political-economic settings, it remains unclear how talent policy can be rationalized and implemented in Chinese cities where migration is subject to various degrees of control. This paper unravels the framework, nature and ramifications of talent policy through the explication of Shanghai’s case, a China’s most economically viable, migrant-receiving city. We show that the city’s talent policy is manipulated by selectively inclusive politics that has a binary effect of enabling the expansion of entitlements to talented migrants while at the same time justifying the significance of migration control. We posit that such selectively inclusive politics is embedded in entrepreneurial urban governance that prioritizes economic imperatives over the rights of migrant citizenship. Talent policy animated in Shanghai is functionally analogous to national policies employed by many countries to regulate immigration and citizenship status.

The Trap Within Anticipated Regrowth : Two Sides of Strategic Response to Urban Decline in Leipzig

Although a considerable body of literature on shrinking cities has been produced in the recent years, a majority is focused on the experiences of declining industrial regions from the Global North. Nonetheless, these cases still hold a significant basis for understanding a range of manifestations of urban decline and could also serve as important frameworks for evaluating effectiveness of urban governance models. Thus, the research presented in this paper focuses on the well-known case of Leipzig, which has been represented as a prime example of urban decline in Europe for decades. Through analysis of secondary literature sources, various urban redevelopment frameworks, and media coverage, this study contributes two major insights on strategic response to decline in Leipzig. First, many opportunities that national and international subsidy programmes offered, alongside with entrepreneurial urban governance managed to provide a locally adapted strategic framework that precipitated the return towards the trajectory of urban growth. Second, although the major growth objectives were finally achieved, the example of strategic planning in Leipzig also showed a general lack of preparedness in local governance with regards to considering and dealing with a broader spectrum of challenges that often occur alongside rapid urban regrowth.

‘Deal or no deal?’ Governing urban infrastructure funding and financing in the UK City Deals

How urban infrastructure is funded, financed and governed is a central issue for states at the national, city-regional and city scales. Urban infrastructure is being financialised by financial and state actors and transformed into an asset in the international investment landscape. Local governments are being compelled by national state and financial institutions to be more entrepreneurial in their infrastructure funding and financing and to reorganise their governance arrangements. This article explains the socially and spatially uneven unfolding and implications of urban infrastructure financialisation and local government attempts to implement more entrepreneurial practices and governance forms. The empirical focus is the City Deals in the UK: a new form of urban governance and infrastructure investment based upon negotiated central–local government agreements on decentralised powers, responsibilities and resources. The continued authority of the highly centralised UK national state, its managerialist institutions and conservative/risk-averse administrative culture have constrained urban infrastructure financialisation and entrepreneurial urban governance in the UK City Deals. Situated in their particular spatial, temporal, political-economic and institutional settings, financialisation is understood as a socially and spatially variegated process and urban governance is interpreted as the articulation and mixing of new entrepreneurial and enduring managerialist forms.

Governance of urban transitions: towards sustainable resource efficient urban infrastructures

The transition to sustainable resource efficient cities calls for new governance arrangements. The awareness that the doubling of the global urban population will result in unsustainable levels of demand for natural resources requires changes in the existing socio-technical systems. Domestic material consumption could go up from 40 billion tons in 2010, to 89 billion tons by 2050. While there are a number of socio-technical alternatives that could result in significant improvements in the resource efficiency of urban systems in developed and developing countries (specifically bus-rapid transit, district energy systems and green buildings), we need to rethink the urban governance arrangements to get to this alternative pathway. We note modes of urban governance have changed over the past century as economic and urban development paradigms have shifted at the national and global levels. This time round we identify cities as leading actors in the transition to more sustainable modes of production and consumption as articulated in the Sustainable Development Goals. This has resulted in a surge of urban experimentation across all world regions, both North and South. Building on this empirically observable trend we suggest this can also be seen as a building block of a new urban governance paradigm. An ‘entrepreneurial urban governance’ is proposed that envisages an active and goal-setting role for the state, but in ways that allows broader coalitions of urban ‘agents of change’ to emerge. This entrepreneurial urban governance fosters and promotes experimentation rather than suppressing the myriad of such initiatives across the globe, and connects to global city networks for systemic learning between cities. Experimentation needs to result in a contextually appropriate balance between economic, social, technological and sustainable development.

Municipal statecraft

The entrepreneurial city is no longer (only) a growth machine: recession and austerity, new forms of financialization, and diverse experiments in urban policy have diluted local elites’ focus on growth. But entrepreneurial urban governance remains remarkably resilient despite its inability to deliver growth. Indeed, in many cities entrepreneurial tactics – e.g. municipal speculation, place branding, and inter-urban competition – are simply standard operating procedure. Recent scholarship on entrepreneurial urban governance demonstrates a need for re-theorizing the assumed interdependence between entrepreneurial practices and growth politics. This calls into question the nature of the ‘entrepreneurs’ of the entrepreneurial city, that is, the nature of municipal states. They increasingly (i) apply entrepreneurial practices to multiple governance agendas in parallel to growth, (ii) evaluate their portfolios in both speculative and more broadly experimental ways, and (iii) challenge top-down narratives about inter-urban competition through inter-urban diplomacy. Each of these characteristics shows the disruptive potential of interventionist forms of municipal statecraft.

Infrastructure Alliances: Supply-Chain Expansion and Multi-city Growth Coalitions

abstractRecent scholarship has suggested that infrastructure development is fragmenting local urban politics, but I argue that it has had the opposite impact at the multi-city regional scale. New multi-city growth coalitions are currently emerging across the United States, united by a shared interest in supply-chain expansion—the extension of effective supply chains and the intensification of circulatory possibilities in regional transportation networks. In this article I develop a theoretical account of these novel infrastructure alliances, and explore empirical examples across the domains of (1) logistics and trade, and (2) manufacturing and resource extraction supply chains. I conclude by considering possible future trajectories for infrastructure alliances and entrepreneurial urban governance.

Towards a critique of cybernetic urbanism: The smart city and the society of control

The smart city has become a hegemonic notion of urban governance, transforming and supplanting planning. The first part of this article reviews current critiques of this notion. Scholars present three main arguments against the smart city: that it is incompatible with an informal character of the city, that it subjects the city to corporate power and that it reproduces social and urban inequalities. It is argued that these critiques either misunderstand how power functions in the smart city or fail to address it as a specific modality of entrepreneurial urban governance. The second part advances an alternative critique, contending that the smart city should be understood as an urban embodiment of the society of control (Deleuze). The smart city is embedded in the intellectual framework of second order cybernetics and articulates urban subjectivity in terms of data flows. Planning as a political practice is superseded by an environmental-behavioural control, in which subjectivity is articulated supra-individually (permeating the city with sensing nodes) and infra-individually (making citizens into sensing nodes).

City branding research and practice: An integrative review

Closing the gap between theory and practice presents a major challenge for branding. However, a disconnect has formed between city branding research and practice. This article argues that the divergent evolutionary paths of city branding research and practice contribute to this disconnect. Specifically, we review the evolution of city branding research and practice through a macroscopic lens in order to delineate major shifts in the philosophies and assumptions shaping each trajectory. In terms of practice, we map the development of city brand management over five waves covering primitive attempts to adjust what cities mean to people, boosterish city promotion, entrepreneurial urban governance, formalised city marketing and, finally, a rhetorical city brand focus. We then identify four major waves in city branding research: (i) initial possibilities, (ii) application and adaption of existing branding theory, (iii) development of a critical lens and (iv) progressive approaches that intersect with the co-creation branding paradigm. As well as providing a basis for mutual understanding and collaboration between researchers and practitioners, examination of both evolutionary paths indicates major research gaps in the city branding literature that appear particularly pertinent to bridging the city branding theory-practice gap.

Bargaining for nature: treating the environment in China’s urban planning practice

ABSTRACTIn much of the contemporary academic inquiry and political discourse on Chinese cities, urban entrepreneurialism and environmentalism often appear to be analyzed disjointedly and unreflectively. They are portrayed as two conflicting interests. Commentators also view urban planners as a homogenous group of professionals and/or state agents being forced to give up environmental goals to pursue economic value of space. Using the case of Tianjin Eco-City planning, this article interrogates the bargaining process between the “ecological value” and “commodity narrative”. It offers three major arguments. First, even though the discourse of environmental sustainability has been used to legitimize economic transformation, ecological demands are creating new pressures on entrepreneurial urban governance. Second, rather than treating Chinese planners as a fully constituted, internally coherent, organizationally-fixed, and operationally-consistent group, they should be viewed as hybrid, and diverse entities that represent divergent and sometimes contentious state interests. Third, planners, though still under tremendous pressure from landed interests, can become active players to positively influence urban transformation toward more environmental care.

Financializing Detroit

abstractTaking as its focus the not-so-special case of Detroit, which recently experienced the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, this article explores the financialization of American urban governance in both conceptual and concrete terms. The financially mediated restructuring of Detroit, through the imposition of emergency management by the state of Michigan and subsequently through the federal bankruptcy code, has been portrayed as an extreme event, with deep roots in histories of deindustrialization, racial exclusion, and suburban flight. It is not to downplay the significance of this experience to suggest, however, that the Detroit case also represents an ordinary crisis of a faltering regime of financialized urbanism. Compounding a shift toward entrepreneurial urban governance, cities now find themselves in an operating environment that has been constitutively financialized. Bondholder-value disciplines have become systemic in reach, along with an amplified role for financial gatekeepers like credit rating agencies; technocratic forms of financial management have been spreading and deepening, both in supposedly normal times and under externally imposed emergency measures; and in some cities the routinized play of growth-machine politics is being eclipsed by a new generation of debt-machine dynamics. While the ultimate focus of this article is on Detroit, its chief concern is with the framing of the city’s storied financial crisis—theoretically and then institutionally.

Physical Planning in Entrepreneurial Urban Governance—Experiences from the Bo01 and Brunnshög Projects, Sweden

Recent research has argued that urban policy has turned towards entrepreneurial forms of urban governance, resulting in a more fragmented and decentralized setting within which public policy is formulated and implemented. This implies that the context for public sector urban planning is also influenced by this “turn”. This article questions this “turn” by arguing that, in Sweden and in practice, forms of fragmentation and decentralization coexist with remnants of coherence and centralization. It focuses on two planning projects, one in Malmö and one in Lund. A case study approach is followed, using official documentation and expert interviews. The article indicates that public authorities and planners remain crucial in urban development projects as initiators of projects, when they bring in financial incentives or lease out the plots for development, or when they add to the project's political legitimacy and bring to the table different actors that would otherwise be less likely to join forces. It concludes by discussing how public sector urban planning is adjusting to the changes brought forward by entrepreneurial urban governance. The article contributes to the literature on how urban planning is adapting to changes in the context for urban governance.

Glurbanization of the Chinese megacity Guangzhou – image-building and city development through entrepreneurial governance

Abstract. The continuing integration of the Chinese economy into the globalizing world and increasing intercity competition have had significant and comparatively recent implications for post-socialist urbanization in China. Driven by market-oriented development and globalization, decentralization of economic decision-making and downscaling of governance from the central state to local governments and authorities characterize the changing role of the state from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism. Drawing on Jessop's definition of the entrepreneurial city and his concept of glurbanization, this paper aims to identify and analyse different modes of entrepreneurial urban governance based on the example of Guangzhou, a Chinese megacity that has been under intense pressure to revitalize its leading role as an economic, commercial and cultural centre in the Pearl River Delta and the rest of southern China. To face globalization and promote competitiveness, Guangzhou pursues various innovative interscalar entrepreneurial strategies in an active entrepreneurial fashion through adopting an entrepreneurial discourse. This is critically reflected upon within this article.

Feeding the downtown monster: (Re)developing Baltimore’s “tourist bubble”

Baltimore has been long recognized as an innovator in downtown redevelopment, with the transformation of its Inner Harbor starting in the late 1960s, and including such visitor-oriented amenities as Harborplace, the National Aquarium, and the Camden Yards sports complex (Norris, 2003). These facilities anchor Baltimore’s ‘tourist bubble,’ through which the city rebuilt its onceindustrial core into a enchanted center of post-industrial urban consumption (Ritzer, 2010): an appealing site for visitor outlay and corporate investment (Harvey, 1989). However, such is the halflife of late capitalism’s enmeshed cultural and economic logics, that consumption sites almost unavoidably experience a diminution of their very uniqueness – hence, their ability to enchant – as their success becomes compromised by a combination of consumer fatigue and indifference, and competitor imitation and innovation. Cities such as Baltimore are compelled to engage in never-ending cycles of urban redevelopment and investment towards maintaining and enhancing their appeal to potential consumers. As outlined within this paper, Baltimore is clearly engaged in this process, through its hosting of a new Indy Car Race – the Baltimore Grand Prix (BGP) – and, the proposed development of a new downtown arena, convention center, and hotel complex, whose combined cost could exceed $900 million. In examining the BGP and new arena complex within the historical context of Baltimore’s visitor-oriented development strategies, this discussion locates these empirical sites as the corollaries of contemporary conditions of inter-urban or “inter-local” competition, and examines them as exemplars of entrepreneurial urban governance strategies (Kipfer & Keil, 2002).

Building Hangzhou's new city center: mega project development and entrepreneurial urban governance in China

Politico-economic landscapes in China have experienced profound changes since the late 1970s. Local governments have transformed their role in urban governance from conventional regulator to entrepreneurial agent. Entrepreneurial urban governance defines the relationships between local government and other interest groups in the urban development process. These issues can be most clearly observed in mega urban project development. Using entrepreneurial urban governance as an analytical approach, this study examines the so-called “government led but market oriented operation” of a new city center development process in Hangzhou. The study uncovered a dominant role of local government in entrepreneurial urban governance, which featured participation by other interest groups. The study also revealed the applicability and variations when applying the concept of urban entrepreneurialism to a socialist economy in transition. Issues concerning development motivations and strategies, civil society, amphibious institution and local elitism make entrepreneurial urban governance in China unique.