Global Urban Strategy Research Articles

Participation as a Global Urban Strategy Towards Resilience

A recurring theme in urban planning and urban design, citizen participation has been adopted by international organisations (UNECE, 1998; UN, 2016; OECD, 2022) and, has recently, been reinstated in different conceptualizations, planning scales and political meanings, both through formal processes incorporated into legal planning frameworks or led by the local authorities and through citizen-led initiatives with varying degrees of interaction and conflict with formal urban policies (Cornwall, 2009; Miraftab, 2004; Kapsali 2023). The paper discusses the way participation in public space production is conceptualised in prominent urban strategies towards resilience as triggered, formulated and promoted globally by the Rockefeller Foundation Initiative “100 Resilient Cities”. First, the emergence of philanthropic foundations as new social actors of urban development in Greece, is understood as part of a new governance regime formulated in the context of austerity politics. A brief examination of prominent projects of public space creation that were funded by foundations during the crisis illuminates specific hegemonic discourses endorsed through the foundations’ granting initiatives for public space. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation and embarks on a critique of the way participation is conceptualized within the initiative and in the “Resilience strategies” of Athens and Thessaloniki. Notwithstanding their inclusive rhetoric, participation is instigated by an international benevolent foundation, facilitated by global consultants acting in parallel and not from within locally instituted planning processes. It is argued that within the framework of this global initiative, participation becomes a matter of techno-managerial “know-how” and its potential to unsettle unjust socio-environmental processes and act towards justice and democracy is questioned.

Development of a Multicriteria Scheme for the Identification of Strategic Areas for SUDS Implementation: A Case Study from Gijón, Spain

Spain has been pinpointed as one of the European countries at major risk of extreme urban events. Thus, Spanish cities pursue new urban plans to increase their resilience. In this scenario, experiences in the implementation of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) have increased substantially. Nevertheless, few cities have developed a global urban strategy for SUDS, lacking, in many cases, a method to identify strategic areas to maximize their synergetic benefits. Furthermore, there is still a need for a holistic Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) framework that considers the four pillars of SUDS design. The city of Gijón, NW Spain, has been selected as a case study due to its environmental and climatic stresses. This research presents the methodology developed for this city, which aims to analyze the need for SUDS implementation throughout the identification of strategic areas. With this aim, a combination of Geographic Information System (GIS) software and the MCDA Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) were proposed. The results show the potential for SUDS’ implementation, according to nine criteria related to the SUDS’ design pillars. We found that the areas where the implementation of SUDS would bring the greatest functional, environmental and social benefits are mainly located in consolidated urban areas.

Introduction

Introduction

Gentrification and the Right to the City: Community Conflict and Casinos

ABSTRACT:Henri Lefebvre’s right to the city concept is increasingly used to challenge the development prerogatives associated with neoliberal development. These challenges are more common as gentrification becomes a global urban strategy. This article is an empirical investigation that examines competing claims to community legitimacy and authenticity in a conflict over gentrification in a Philadelphia neighborhood. This conflict emerged in Fishtown when long-time established residents went head to head with upper-income gentrifiers over the location of a casino in the neighborhood. Place-based identities and the temporal connection individuals had to Fishtown contributed to the differences in perspectives on the costs and benefits of the casino and on the legitimacy of long-time residents versus newcomers to be representative voices on behalf of Fishtown. The findings illuminate problems in applying the right to the city to neighborhood struggles when communities are divided over what constitutes a benefit to the community. The right to the city may not be a universal claim, particularly within a neoliberal urban context.

State Dominance in Urban Redevelopment

This article will revisit Smith’s seminal argument that gentrification is a global urban strategy. The article pays attention to the role of the state and displacement during the process of redevelopment. Through an in-depth study of a dilapidated neighborhood with concentrated migrant population in Shanghai, it is revealed that state control is behind the deterioration of the neighborhood prior to its redevelopment. Inadequate services and poor housing conditions are undeniable. Informal development has been quickly realigned by state dominance. The self-building neighborhood is eventually replaced by state-sanctioned development projects. The article echoes the debate over displacement in the West and suggests that recent urban redevelopment in China has gone beyond both the sporadic middle-class return to the city and residential changes backed up by state actions, revealing hegemonic power of the state over spatial production. Through urban redevelopment, the state attempts to regularize informal areas into new production spaces for its revenue maximization.

Public Space and the Public Sphere: The Legacy of Neil Smith

AbstractThis article attempts to untangle two threads of the intellectual and political legacy of Neil Smith. The first concerns the work that Neil and I did together on theThe Politics of Public Space(Low and Smith, Routledge) on public space and the public sphere and then explains how our paths diverged. I elaborate some of the ways that the public space and public sphere have been expanded by later researchers and that left me with a sense of optimism about the future of public space as a forum for new social and political encounters. The second part of the discussion turns to Neil's thinking and writing as he moved away from having any faith in liberal urban policy, and his conclusion that neoliberalism was waning. Drawing upon publications by his students, I have attempted to assess the impact of his work—particularly on anthropology students focusing on his contribution to gentrification as a global urban strategy and his later turn to revolution as the necessary corrective to the death of neoliberalism. I contrast his revolutionary imperative with my desire to imagine new kinds of translocal public spaces that could expand into a global public sphere.

Green Infrastructure Development in Sustainable Water Resources Management System

The main challenge in the twenty-first century is to work towards a more resilient urban world and sustainable. In the context of a global urban strategy, endurance is the attention to the capacity of urban systems, including the natural environment, the built environment, social and economic elements; to be able to manage change, to learn from a difficult situation and be in a position to rise from urban problems. Globally, the townsfolk face a water crisis within the next ten years, as the impact of climate change in exhaust emissions will affect the quality of air, land and water; which will ultimately reduce the quality of the environment. Sustainability questioned whether certain aspects of the day-to-day activities, and the systems of community life, can be ongoing into the futureonce again from the standpoint of social, economic and environmental. Eco city is a phrase that is often used in ecological issues raised in the concept of sustainable urban planning and green city embodiment of the challenges ahead in sustainable economic development, and the future development of smart green city. The convergence of technology and environmental issues has changed the world economy that offers a green city promising future - a city that appreciates natural heritage and offer all parties involved. This paper will discuss green infrastructure as water management control system in urban development concepts that contribute to build a sustainable green city management.Key words : green infrastructure, water management system.

Post-Fordist Urbanism in France’s Poorest City: Gentrification as Local Capitalist Strategy

Gentrification is currently perceived by many critical scholars as a global urban strategy. However, cities differ in their attractiveness for the globalized actors often described as the main force behind this process. The question of the origin of the capital fuelling gentrification in unattractive cities appears therefore crucial. Drawing on the case of Roubaix, an example of the ‘successful’ politics of gentrification in a French ‘repulsive’ city, I will show that it is indeed local capital which starts the process. In this perspective inspired by both the regulation and the Lefebvrian theories of urbanization, the spread of gentrification in declining cities appears less the result of a top-down project driven by the key players of the globalized real estate market, than of a bottom-up project resulting from the needs of local capitalists to find a new way of realizing profits after the collapse of industrial production. In terms of urban politics, the implications are huge.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Gentrification: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Can Be Done About It

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Gentrification: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Can Be Done About It

Being there and away. Gentrification and globalization in Andromeda Hill Project, Jaffa, Israel

- Recent studies on gentrification identify its sociological and structural relationships to globalization, mainly as being a global urban strategy or a form of class reproduction. However the relationship between gentrification and globalization may be generated and fostered by real estate capital agents and architects, who use global narratives within the urban development discourse to create a distinguished urban habitat, which is detached from the immediate gentrified neighborhood. Such a relationship is evident in the case of Andromeda Hill Project in the Arab city Jaffa, Israel, which finds its assertion through the mobilization of global narratives, images and capital oriented towards a cosmopolitan audience outside of Jaffa. The deployment of images of ‘authenticity' and ‘orientalism' served in this project as a means to face outward of Jaffa's urban space and towards a mythical Mediterranean space and international arena, to reconstruct it as an ‘old-new city'. This process results in the devalorization and erasure of the local urban space and its longneglected Arab population, and consequently in the creation of alienated, exclusive, Jewish gated community which ignores its social and physical surroundings.

Istanbul’s Choice

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 ‘Avrupa yanlıları baskı altında’ (European supporters are stifled), Der Spiegel interview with Orhan Pamuk published at the same time in Radikal, 29 April 2007. 2 Fuat Keyman, ‘Türkiye’nin İki Yüzü, İyi Yönetim ve Sol Siyaset’, Radikal 2, 18 March 2007 3 Çağlar Keyder, ‘Globalisation and Social Exclusion in Istanbul’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29:1, 2005, p 130 4 A Alp and O Şentürk, ‘İstanbul’da 1 Milyon ev yıkılacak’, Ekonomist, 11 November 2007 5 Quoted in E Boztepe, ‘Topbaş: İstanbul’un trafik sorununu çözmek için 15 milyar dolar lazım’, Radikal, 2 January 2007 6 Murat Güvenç, unpublished manuscript, no date 7 Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins, ‘Istanbul between Civilisation and Discontent’, New Perspectives on Turkey, no 10, Spring 1994 8 İhsan Bilgin, ‘Kent üretiminin ve kamu yaşamının örgütlenmesinde güncel eğilimler’, Toplum ve Bilim, issue 105, 2006 9 Suzy Menkes, ‘A Futuristic Mall is New Turkish Playground’, International Herald Tribune, 4 December 2006 10 Tom Dyckhoff, ‘Turkey’s New Delights’, Times Online, 15 August 2006 11 İhsan Bilgin, ‘Kent üretiminin ve kamu yaşamının örgütlenmesinde güncel eğilimler’, Toplum ve Bilim, issue 105, 2006 12 IMP, ‘İstanbul Çevre Düzeni Planı: Özet Rapor’, Istanbul, July 2006 13 Orhan Pamuk, ‘My Father’s Suitcase: Nobel Lecture, December 7 2006’, trans Maureen Freely, available at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (accessed 5 April 2007) 14 Aslı Onat, ‘Dünyaya İstanbul’dan Bakmak’, Milliyet, 15 March 2007 15 Andrew Finkel, ‘İstanbul Modern’, Today’s Zaman, 11 March 2007 16 Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, ‘Cities and Geographies of “actually existing neoliberalism”’, Antipode, 34, 2002, p 368 17 Orhan Esen, ‘The Tightrope Walk of the Middle Class in a Fractured Istanbul’, Writings from the 9th International Istanbul Biennial, İKSV, Istanbul, 2005 18 Menderes Çınar, ‘Yenilikçi gündem küreselleşmeye mi ihale edildi?’, Görüş, March 2003 19 Neil Smith, ‘New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as a Global Urban Strategy’, Antipode, 34, 2002 20 Kadir Topbaş, ‘Istanbul için Yeniden Adayim’, Bugün, 20 January 2008 21 Keyder, ‘Globalisation and Social Exclusion in Istanbul’, op cit, p 130 22 D Behar and T İslam, eds, Istanbul’da ‘Soylulaştırma’ (‘Gentrification’ in Istanbul) Bilgi University Publications, İstanbul, 2006; also refer to Işık and Pınarcıoğlu, 2001; Kurtuluş, 2005; Writings from the 9th International Istanbul Biennale, 2005 23 Neil Smith, ‘Which New Urbanism? The Revanchist 90s’, Perspecta, 30, 1999, pp 98–105 24 Keyder, ‘Globalisation and Social Exclusion in Istanbul’, op cit, p 130 25 Brenner and Theodore, op cit, p 376 26 Ibid

Placeand Process: Culture, Urban Planning, and Social Exclusion in São Paulo

Since the 1990s, the São Paulo government has attempted to transform the low-income Luz neighbourhood into a so-called ‘Cultural Pole’ through cultural institutions and urban design. Architects and government officials have represented their audience as an all-inclusive ‘public’. However, the Cultural Pole actively promotes gentrification, that is, social exclusion. I contrast the official notion of ‘public’ brandished by the São Paulo government with a critique of space—not only the space designed by architects, but also that configured by use, occupation, and conflict. I consider how social groups have protested the Cultural Pole, building a realm of debate, conflict, and negotiation. I characterize this realm as a public sphere relating to and intersecting the spatial domain. By pointing to the intersection of discourses, social representations, and spatial practices, I suggest that these realms are mutually constitutive. While the revamping of the Luz neighbourhood and the proposed Cultural Pole are steeped in the particular context of São Paulo—a deeply unequal metropolis in a country marked by severe social disparities—the present discussion holds global value. First, the Cultural Pole is part of far-reaching urban and economic processes associated with globalization—as Smith puts it, gentrification as a new ‘global urban strategy’. Second, inequality is not exclusive to poorer countries. The restructuring of labour and production markets and the pressure for financial competitiveness have sharpened differences within wealthier regions. The focused examination in this paper is thus also intended to resonate with other places and processes.

Gentrification as a Governmental Strategy: Social Control and Social Cohesion in Hoogvliet, Rotterdam

The emergence of gentrification as a ‘global urban strategy’ (Smith, 2002, “New globalism, new urbanism: gentrification as a global urban strategy” Antipode 34 427–451) is clearly visible in the peripheral boroughs of Dutch cities. We suggest, however, that the driving force of gentrification in these areas is not the local government's need to strengthen its tax base or developers' pursuit of profit. Gentrification is also not a response to the housing demands of a new middle class. Instead, we conceive of state-led gentrification in the Netherlands, and perhaps elsewhere as well, as an attempt by a coalition of state actors and housing associations at generating social order in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Gentrification is used to pacify tensions and to reduce concentrations that pose a problem for authorities. In many cases, residents support this strategy, either actively or passively. But, at the same time, interaction between low-income and higher-income households, and between renters and homeowners, in restructured neighbourhoods are often superficial at best and hostile at worst. Thus, gentrification undermines social cohesion and thereby reduces the chance that residents will find solutions for tensions in the neighbourhood.

New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy

This paper uses several events in New York in the late 1990s to launch two central arguments about the changing relationship between neoliberal urbanism and so–called globalization. First, much as the neoliberal state becomes a consummate agent of—rather than a regulator of—the market, the new revanchist urbanism that replaces liberal urban policy in cities of the advanced capitalist world increasingly expresses the impulses of capitalist production rather than social reproduction. As globalization bespeaks a rescaling of the global, the scale of the urban is recast. The true global cities may be the rapidly growing metropolitan economies of Asia, Latin America, and (to a lesser extent) Africa, as much as the command centers of Europe, North America and Japan. Second, the process of gentrification, which initially emerged as a sporadic, quaint, and local anomaly in the housing markets of some command–center cities, is now thoroughly generalized as an urban strategy that takes over from liberal urban policy. No longer isolated or restricted to Europe, North America, or Oceania, the impulse behind gentrification is now generalized; its incidence is global, and it is densely connected into the circuits of global capital and cultural circulation. What connects these two arguments is the shift from an urban scale defined according to the conditions of social reproduction to one in which the investment of productive capital holds definitive precedence.