Neoliberal Urbanism Research Articles

On the margins of citizenship: youth participation and youth exclusion in times of neoliberal urbanism

ABSTRACT Over the last few decades there has been growing interest in youth participation, at policy level and in research. Generally, this is attributed to growing public concern regarding the ‘youth participatory deficit’ and youth dissatisfaction in European societies. In contemporary discourse young people are positioned as a problem associated with a lack of participation in economic, social and political processes, which in turn is seen as a threat to the very foundation of democracy. Taking into consideration the neoliberal transformation of Western European cities towards increasing socioeconomic and ethno-cultural segregation, the authors argue that there is a pressing need to analyse youth participation as it is shaped by structural order and unequal access to resources, which creates spatial, material and symbolic divisions between different categories of young people. By placing it within a framework of citizenship theory, the authors analyse the enigmatic concept of ‘youth participation’ through the prism of social exclusion, arguing for an understanding of participation as embedded in the social landscape of unequal power relations and life opportunities which are essential characteristics of the neo-liberal city.

Beyond neoliberal urbanism: Assembling fluid gentrification through informal housing upgrading programs in Shenzhen, China

Over the past decade, Chinese metropolitan cities, Shenzhen included, have waged large-scale gentrification campaigns through land appropriation and demolition of old neighborhoods, resulting in the financialization of the urban property market. Since 2018, however, a new gentrification scheme under the rubric “comprehensive improvement” has been introduced in Shenzhen, in which the rehabilitation and formalization of informal housing arrangements in urban villages, instead of sweeping demolition, have become the focus. Based on fieldwork in a migrant community experiencing gentrification, I argue that the new gentrification scheme is fluid in the sense that, first, it comprises an assemblage of heterogenous actors, socialist institutions, market mechanisms, and a development regime. Even though the relationships between these components are not stable, this assemblage of factors enables the state to maintain some degree of power that it uses to regulate and channel the capital involved in the scheme. Second, gentrification is not a coherent process driven by a single force inevitably towards neoliberalism. Rather, it serves multiple purposes. Other than capital accumulation, fluid gentrification also functions as infrastructure for incorporating young professionals into state-led development. Fluid gentrification therefore goes beyond neoliberalism, pioneering a post-industrial mode of urban regeneration that is unstable, temporal and flexible in nature.

THE IMPACT OF MEXICO’S LAND REFORM ON PERIURBAN HOUSING PRODUCTION: Neoliberal or Neocorporatist?

AbstractChanges to Mexico's Constitution in the 1990s marked the end of agrarian reform and the Revolutionary land regime which had allowed beneficiaries to work but not to sell their land. New legislation allowed individual parcels of ejido land to be converted into private property. Many observers link this ‘privatization’ with a transformation of the periurban landscape resulting from private developers’ construction of mass ‘social housing’ developments: a classic example of neoliberal urbanism. We examine evidence for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area, finding that, although some developments do occupy former ejido land, developers mostly prefer private property, including former haciendas. Private sector interests are wary of the ejido for reasons that stem from its place in the corporatist political system that characterized twentieth‐century Mexico, and the patchwork of privatized individual parcels clashes with developers’ land acquisition strategies. Ejidatarios often prefer to retain control over their land, selling plots piecemeal. Our findings demonstrate the continuing significance of urban informality—on a scale that exceeds the development of ejido land for formal housing—and the intertwining of formal and informal. We interpret these interrelated processes of housing production as legacies of corporatism, underlining the significance of political influences on Latin American neoliberalism.

Neighbourhood exceptionalism and racial liberalism in the Great Society city: integration as civic showpiece at St Louis’ LaClede Town

AbstractThis article analyses the role of LaClede Town, a nationally lauded housing development in St Louis (USA), in metropolitan and national contests over race, segregation and urban equity from the 1960s to 1990s. Built on the site of a massive slum-clearance project, the federally supported complex gained widespread fame for its startlingly heterogeneous racial mix and ostensibly colour-blind lifestyles. As the article argues, the quasi-utopian language applied to the neighbourhood illustrates the contours and limitations of a 1960s racial liberalism that sought to overcome structural inequalities through face-to-face neighbourly contact. Yet the project's 1990s demise signals that older ideology's supersession by a newly dominant urban neoliberalism.

Community gardening in Hellinikon as a resistance struggle against neoliberal urbanism: spatial autogestion and the right to the city in post-crisis Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to explore how community gardening can embed and foment grassroots resistance to the privatization of urban space in the current configuration of a prolonged socio-economic and ecological crisis in European cities. We focus on the emblematic case of the Hellinikon self-organized garden; a case of guerrilla gardening that emerged as part of a social movement against the real estate development of the former International Airport of Athens. Community gardening in Hellinikon emerged as a resistance struggle against a controversial urban regeneration plan that combined green gentrification with unsustainable development and as a prefigurative politics of radically different sociospatial and socionatural relationships. We argue that community gardening initiatives that are part of broader urban struggles and grassroots activism denote a radical practice that has the potential to challenge crisis-driven dispossessions and claim the right to the city through spatial autogestion. This theorization of community gardening can shed light on the emergence of a new era of urban politics where demands for the re-appropriation of urban space by its inhabitants coalesce with demands for radically different urban socionatures in crisis-ridden megacities linking struggles for the right to the city to struggles for the right to urban nature.

Social Inclusion Indicators for Building Citizen-Centric Smart Cities: A Systematic Literature Review

Despite the rhetoric of “citizen-first,” which has been tokenized in recent years by the smart city administrations, what it means has long been unclear to many, including the public at large. Put simply, this rhetoric concerns the mindset of the members of a local community and places them at the heart of the smart city initiatives. In order to bring further clarity to this issue under the current neoliberal urbanism, this study aimed to identify the key indicators of citizen-centric smart cities from the perspective of participative governance practices and citizens’ responsibilities. To achieve this aim, this study involved a systematic literature review of the social inclusion indicators for building citizen-centric smart cities. The social inclusion indicators that were formed were verified by practitioners to suit the local contexts of an emerging and developing country, in this case, Malaysia. The findings of the review revealed that: (a) the acceptance of social inclusion indicators was mainly limited to the realm of democratic developed countries, leaders’ understanding of citizenship, the delegation of decision-making power in governance practices, the participative culture of societies, and individual citizens’ self-discipline; (b) the social inclusion indicators may not be welcomed in emerging and developing countries; (c) in the long term, these indicators would shed light on the rise of self-organizing cities that will gain popularity in potential city developments, be it in developed or developing countries.

Neo-liberal urbanism and sustainability in Turkey: commodification of nature in gated community marketing

Neoliberalism arose as a project to reinforce the power of capitalism against the working class in the post-1970 period and created unequal geographies as well as unearned income-oriented urban development practices in which the capital-owning class is operative. As in many other countries, urbanization and the construction sector have been used as important powers in Turkey in absorbing the plus value created by capitalism. After 1980, with the influence of the perspective towards the construction sector and the housing policies of Turkey, luxurious gated communities’ production started in metropoles. In an environment of increasing competition, these housing projects started to present nature as a commodity by referring to projects’ concepts such as natural life, sustainable environment, eco-friendly, etc. however, in contrast, the living environments they create. This paper aims to evaluate the physical and urban sustainability performances of luxurious gated communities that emphasize natural life and present nature as a commodity by emphasizing natural life and sustainable living environments in Konya by using an indicator-based approach. Even though these new living environments claim to create a sustainable and natural living environment and be eco-friendly projects, it can be seen after the evaluation results that they cannot go further than presenting nature as a commodity. In fact, in this capitalist system, while the construction sector destroys nature, it aims to increase the sales rates of the projects by making use of people's longing for nature.

Neoliberal Urbanism and Commodification of Urban History as a Marketing Tool in Public Recreation

Neoliberal Urbanism and Commodification of Urban History as a Marketing Tool in Public Recreation

The Comedy of Redevelopment: Romantic Comedy, Real Estate, and the "New" Times Square

Times Square was radically redeveloped in the 1990s, becoming a key site of neoliberal urbanism, and this "new" Times Square has featured frequently in the romantic comedy. This article reads three Times Square romcoms—Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007), Friends with Benefits (Will Gluck, 2011), and New Year's Eve (Garry Marshall, 2011)—against the history of Times Square's redevelopment, arguing that they both rely on and repress Times Square's history and that the new Times Square's presence in the romcom is a product of the genre's investment in real estate: its predilection for both property development narratives and redeveloped or gentrified spaces.

Everyday erotics in urban density: an ethnography of older lesbian and bisexual women in Hong Kong

Lesbian spaces, in terms of their social, cultural, sexual or political purposes, have been dwindling in recent years within global North lesbian geographies. For this article, I would like to put forward a historical analysis of social spaces in Hong Kong through a qualitative ethnographic study of 12 older lesbians and bisexual women aged 60 years and above. Expanding upon Yue and Leung’s theoretical assertion of disjunctive modernity and urban neoliberalism, I proceed to develop my argument that lived experiences in an urban environment diffuses and decenters the assertion of one’s lesbian identity and sexual subjectivity across time and space. Under the British colonial era, the assertion of one’s Chinese womanhood as independent and modern intersects with rapid industrialization and social transformations which lead to culturally-specific spatial practices in locating lesbian desires. I call this mode of spatial practice as everyday erotics in density to describe the way of navigating sexual desires in relation to urban development, where becoming a woman with lesbian desires mean not only carving out one’s alternative erotic space but also disengaging with traditional gender roles in one’s life course and redefining gender and sexuality for an older generation of women.

Pacifying Police Units and private interests in Brazil

This article analyzes a concrete policy in the framework of Brazilian Public Security: the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs). It describes this policy and justifies, through an ethnographic case study, how the so-called “pacification of the favelas” articulates a logic of neoliberal urbanism and police infrastructure, understanding the residents of the favelas as potential consumers of their services. The article contextualizes the UPPs model as a paradigmatic case of public security in Latin America in which the discourse of violence/pacification is the main catalyst for private investments. More specifically, the article demonstrates how private companies resort to proximity conflicts mediation as a way of avoiding the judicialization of conflicts with the residents after the “Pacification”. With this case, we expect to illustrate the patrimonialism and clientelism that shapes the Brazilian State and its ambiguous relationships between private and public interests.

Tracing the Links between Infrastructure‐Led Development, Urban Transformation, and Inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative

AbstractIn this paper, I explore the links between infrastructure‐led development, urban transformation and inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). I theorise the BRI as a spatial fix to the overaccumulation problems of Chinese capitalism and I pay particular attention to the role of urbanisation. By drawing on postcolonial geographies, my goal is to offer a relational analysis of divergent trajectories of socio‐spatial urban change driven by BRI projects in Athens, Colombo and London. My key argument is that urban transformation driven by the BRI signals the emergence of a new form of infrastructure‐led, authoritarian neoliberal urbanism. This engenders both new urban formations and new urban politics that, despite variegated expressions across different contexts, are reconfiguring urban space and are transforming the social geography of each city by creating, facilitating or exacerbating spatial fragmentation and social segregation.

Gardening in Times of Urban Transitions: Emergence of Entrepreneurial Cultivation in Post–Katrina New Orleans

Expanding scholarship on urban farming has not systematically examined what spurs the proliferation of cultivation practices, especially when the city is undergoing economic and social transitions. This study examines the development of the urban cultivation (UC) scene in New Orleans over the decade following Hurricane Katrina with a particular focus on entrepreneurial UC projects. By contextualizing in–depth interviews with the growers in the historical events in the city, the study finds that the dominant motives of cultivation projects shifted from social missions to economic interests over time, as the city transitioned from recovery to redevelopment. The study highlights the heterogeneity of UC practices, and questions the current scholarship's tendency to situate urban gardens in opposing theoretical frameworks: tools for neoliberal urbanism or food justice activism. The findings show that the distinction between socially motivated and economically motivated UC cannot be easily drawn. Most of the socially motivated UC projects began adopting market participation over time, while many of the economically motivated UC projects operated as social entrepreneurialism. While growers tended to view themselves as alternative to the dominant political–economic system, they also undoubtedly benefitted from the market–driven redevelopment of the city that expanded UC opportunities.

Reconfiguring urban waterscape: water kiosks in Delhi as a new governance model

AbstractInternational organizations firmly ratifying the human right to water though neoliberal reforms have pushed for increasing commodification and marketization of water. Accelerated urbanization in cities of the Global South have intensified problems associated with access to water and innovative solutions such as water kiosks are seen as the future of water access in underserved areas. This paper studies access to potable water in four resettlement colonies of Delhi with a focus on the water kiosks which operate in these colonies. Tracing the broader reforms which have been initiated in the public utility (Delhi Jal Board), the paper investigates the model of water kiosk of these colonies and the extent to which access to water has been impacted by the introduction of the water kiosks. Based on the processes of changes and continuities in the waterscapes of formal yet marginal spaces in the city and concomitant reconfigurations in urban governance, the paper argues that water kiosks serve to reproduce the uneven power relations embedded in the process of neoliberal urbanization.

Wetland Governance: Contested Aspirations and Reflexive Roles of Local Professionals Toward Worlding Cities in Tai Lake Basin

This paper examines the contested agendas generated by Tai Lake Basin’s recent wetland constructions and how these dynamics have stimulated the particular aspirations concerning nature among various local actors. Through interviews with local ecologists, landscape architects, and environmental engineers, this paper details how they convergently subscribe to the ethical claims of humans and nature during the decision making in constructing wetlands, which I have termed as ‘Ecological Governmentality’. Under the influence of environmental conservation as a global consensus, the idea of ‘wetland’ has regained prevalence among Chinese cities’ plans and policies in recent decades. In the Tai Lake Basin, one of the most developed regions in southeast China, over 800 ‘wetland parks’ have been established. Situated in the basin context, this paper further problematizes three modalities of wetland construction in the case of Suzhou city, namely: National Certificated Wetland Parks propelled by international environmental conservation agendas, Urban Wetland Landscape Parks associated with urban redevelopment, and Engineering Constructed Wetlands generated by the opening niche market for municipal water works. The construction of these parks has made prominent attempts to rewild the urban environment through re-territorialization, design, and technology innovations intersected with moral claims that go beyond pure scientific concerns of ecology. Building on the concept of ‘worlding practices’ and ‘governmentality’, three cases in this paper illustrate how the mainstreaming of wetlands in Suzhou has been materialized along with the shared notion of city branding from global neoliberal urbanization. More specifically, this paper explores the diverse materialization through the lens of contested ethical aspirations and transferred roles taken by different actors in the local wetland governance. The emerging ‘Ecological Governmentality’ in wetland construction helps to consolidate the unique ecological imaginary in China and diversify the Chinese cities’ globalization in the making.

Metelkova as Autonomous Heterotopia

AbstractThis article examines conflicts concerning urban space, focusing on relationships between autonomous space and neoliberal urbanism through the empirical example of the cultural centre AKC Metelkova Mesto in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Through a thematic discourse analysis of activist interviews and collective statements by activist groups connected to Metelkova, research questions concern how urban conflict is constructed from the vantage point of autonomous space; what role autonomous space is assigned in relation to such conflict; and how tensions and antagonisms within the autonomous space can be understood. Theoretically we engage in a reinterpretation of the notion of heterotopia in conjunction with critical urban theory, analysing Metelkova as an autonomous heterotopia. Further, we argue that theoretisations of autonomous spaces need to consider experiences from Central and Eastern Europe, in which the conditions are shaped and constructed in conjunction with particular configurations of abruptly implemented neoliberal governance and the rise of the authoritarianism.

Actually existing managerialism: Planning, politics and property development in post-1945 Britain

This article engages a long-established paradigm within urban studies: that of the transition from managerialism to entrepreneurialism in late 20th-century urban governance and the associated process of neoliberalisation. It begins from a fundamental intellectual problem; although we are well served with studies of urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberalism, we know surprisingly little of the detailed workings of the ‘pre-neoliberal’, managerial era from the 1940s to the 1970s. In the absence of sustained investigation of this period, many chronologies and critiques of urban transformation rest upon a set of assumptions which – as this article shows – are not always accurate. The article focuses upon Britain, tracing the installation of a modern planning regime in the 1940s and surveying some key features of the UK urban redevelopment regime as it evolved over the ensuing decades. It shows that much of what is held to be paradigmatic of neoliberal urbanism (public–private partnerships, urban entrepreneurialism, financialisation) was already powerfully present within British urbanism in the earlier, managerial era. I highlight in particular the dramatic post-war rise of the UK property development industry, and the new urban forms and norms it generated, as a key product of the era of urban managerialism in Britain. I relate these surprising findings to Britain’s distinctive history and political economy but I also advance arguments that are of wider relevance; around the nature and aims of governance from the 1940s to the 1970s, and how we should best conceptualise and explain processes of neoliberalisation.

Re-imagining cities as ecosystems: environmental subject formation in Auckland and Mexico City

ABSTRACT The constitution of environmental subjects by governments and civil society organizations around the world has taken place within a framework of neoliberal urbanization. This entails promoting an individual sense of responsibility over urban environments among city dwellers. The approach used is not so much governmentality as environmentality, because of its focus on environmental matters. We claim that the tools used in this process are designed to generate among urban dwellers an imaginary of the cities they inhabit as ecosystems. Using qualitative methods, we examine cases in Auckland and Mexico City regarding water management.

The big bang of neoliberal urbanism: The Gigantomachy of Santiago’s urban development

This study presents a spatial history of the origins of Santiago’s neoliberalisation, unveiling its urban history from the critical point of view of land at the centre of social classes’ dispute over city life. It situates the contestation and struggle over land in a genealogical progression from the origins of the disciplinary field of urbanism (1932) to the transformation of its regulatory framework, making it an exclusively profit-oriented practice complementary to processes of wealth creation through urban transformations (1979). As an allegory, we used the Gigantomachy to interpret these struggles. Special emphasis is given to the land struggles that occurred in Santiago as a part of this migratory process and how the contestation of private land became an alternative to the government’s incapacities to resolve the urban poor condition. This contestation would lead to the dominant class looking for alternative politics that ensure the defence of their property. This study presents neoliberalism as a response to such a call. Neoliberalism in Santiago was the way to transform the problem of housing scarcity in big business for the dominant class. The study historically outlines this process in what may be considered as the first neoliberal urban policy in the world, depicting the big bang of neoliberal urbanism.

Placing cities in the circular economy: neoliberal urbanism or spaces of socio-ecological transition?

ABSTRACT The last decade has seen the adoption of the imaginary of a circular economy (CE) by cities. To date, much of the debate has been technical in orientation, making that the implications of the CE for urban theory and praxis have hitherto not been explored in great depth. This Debates and Interventions contribution collects work from diverse disciplinary quarters and geographical contexts, documenting the CE as an emerging alternative space of urban politics and praxis albeit constrained by neoliberal urbanism. The selected contributions show that circular strategies constitute a ‘spatial fix’ marrying capital accumulation with the rising environmental challenges at the urban scale, hence reproductive of the splintered urbanism that mark contemporary neoliberal cities. At the same time, it appears the CE can be embedded in value systems that challenge neoliberal urbanism, opening spaces for a socio-ecological transition that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has made more urgent than ever.