Politics Of Urban Development Research Articles

The emergence of a multiscalar growth regime and scalar tension: the politics of urban development in Songdo New City, South Korea

This study approaches the politics of urban development from within the framework of the emergence of a new multiscalar growth regime and the path dependence of the Korean developmental state. Through a case study of the Songdo New City development in South Korea, this study looks at how the scalar division of labor among various actors has interacted with the emergence of a multiscalar growth regime. We focus on the logic by which different scales of governmental and nongovernmental actors cooperate and, at the same time, compete with one another for authority over economic development. Our findings demonstrate, first, that the new regime resulted from the emergence of downward state rescaling to the local scale and of private business as a key actor. Second, the regime actors have been involved in scalar tensions and have constantly negotiated the scalar divisions of labor among them. This research provides a contextualized example of a spatiotemporal logic in which statehood has been transformed into a network.

Comparing the Politics of Urban Development in American and Canadian Cities: The Myth of the North-South Divide

The politics of urban development has been a major area of study in the United States for some time, and while the field is smaller in Canada, the study of urban development has always been an important aspect of the study of urban politics in this country. However, a fruitful discussion comparing Canadian and American cities has only emerged recently and is still largely in its infancy. Supposed institutional, legal, and cultural differences between the two countries continue to be cited as barriers to such research. This paper questions such assumptions. Drawing on existing empirical literature, and the author’s current and past research on the politics of urban development in Canadian cities, this paper argues that what cultural distinctions exist are minor and often peculiarities of specific cities, states, and/or provinces and that differences in planning law and institutions, though substantial, are not defined by a north–south divide. Rather, planning law and planning institutions vary significantly in both countries. Many Canadian jurisdictions have more in common with American jurisdictions than with fellow Canadian ones. These institutional differences do not act as a barrier to comparison, however, but are a useful means for gaining insight into the politics of urban development in both countries.

Grasping micro-macro-interactions in urban development politics: a multidimensional network approach to collective action

Grasping micro-macro-interactions in urban development politics: a multidimensional network approach to collective action

Politics of Urban Development in India

Politics of Urban Development in India

Politics of Urban Development and Wildfires in California and Turkey

While Turkey and California suffer similar wildfire risks, they have developed diametrically opposed fire-suppression strategies: the former adopted an increasingly centralized strategy, while the latter depends upon a highly decentralized system. This paper is a comparative analysis that relates the politics of land use in wildland–urban interfaces (WUIs) to this divergence in firefighting strategies. Our argument is that the evolution of the divergent fire-suppression strategies in California and Turkey are linked to two different types of rent-seeking behavior. Developers and landed interest seek absolute rent in Turkey and differential rent in California. The decentralized strategy in California allows property prices to be distinguished between areas of low and high protection, and commodifies safety as a form of investment regulating the market prices of land. In Turkey, the tendency toward centralization of firefighting is a part of the composite political strategy to open new land for development by completing the hitherto unfinished cadastral records of the WUIs. Thus, the centralized firefighting strategy leads indirectly to extensive commodification of the WUIs in Turkey and expands the national land market.

Misplaced Ekistics: Islamabad and the politics of urban development in Pakistan

Islamabad – Pakistan's purpose-built new capital city at the foothills of the Himalayas – was one of the most significant urban reconstruction projects of the twentieth century. It marked the coming together of two historical events: on one side, the takeover of power of General Ayub Khan and his need to prove to his nation and the world at large that he was better at doing ‘development’ than any previous administration; and on the other, the rise to promise of a global discourse of developmental urbanism, epitomized by Islamabad's chief designer, the Greek architect and development consultant Constantinos A. Doxiadis. Drawing on new and not previously used primary material from Doxiadis's company archives, this article offers a historical contextualization and an interpretation of the Islamabad project. The commission to build a new city did not fall into Doxiadis's lap as a stand-alone project, but marked the culmination of years of lobbying work in Pakistan, in which international players like the Ford Foundation were closely involved. Moreover, the ‘meaning’ of Islamabad cannot be properly evaluated without seeing it in conjunction with its ‘sister’ project – also a Doxiadis creation – the refugee resettlement township of Korangi in Karachi. This article argues that Islamabad's design is best understood as a case of ideological ‘displacement’. This is to say that it was not just another example of how top-down planning inevitably ‘failed’ in the Third World, even though Doxiadis's trademark approach of Ekistics easily lends itself to such an interpretation. Rather it was a case of deploying a planning methodology designed to make future megacities ‘safe’ to an urban space that was in no danger of ever becoming such a megacity. Islamabad's closest equivalent in the planning history of South Asia was in fact the colonial Hill Station, an idealized mountain ‘village’ from where the most striking features of urbanity had been deliberately removed.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES ANALYSIS IN BUCHAREST CITY USING CORONA, SPOT HRV AND IKONOS IMAGES

Abstract. Bucharest, capital of Romania, deals with serious difficulties as a result of urban politics: influx of people due to industrialization and development of dormitory areas, lack of a modern infrastructure, absence of coherent and long term urban development politics, continuous depletion of environment. This paper presents a multisensor study relying on multiple data sets, both analogical and digital: satellite images (Corona – 1964 panchromatic, SPOT HRV – 1994 multispctral and panchromatic, IKONOS – 2007 multispectral), aerial photographs – 1994, complementary products (topographic and thematic maps). Georeferenced basis needs to be generated to highlight changes detection. The digital elevation model is generated from aerial photography 1:5,000 scaled, acquired in 1994. First a height correction is required followed by an affine transformation to the ground control points identified both in aerial photographs and IKONOS image. SPOT-HRV pansharpened satellite image has been rectified on georeferenced IKONOS image, by an affine transformation method. The Corona panoramic negative film was scanned and rubber sheeting method is used for rectification. The first 25 years of the study period (1964–1989) are characterized by growth of industrial areas, high density apartment buildings residential areas and leisure green areas by demolition of cultural heritage areas (hundred years old churches and architectural monuments). Changes between the imagery were determined partially through visual interpretation, using elements such as location, size, shape, shadow, tone, texture, and pattern (Corona image), partially using unsupervised classification (SPOT HRV and IKONOS). The second period of 18 years (1989–2007) highlighted considerable growth of residential areas in the city neighborhood, simultaneously with the diminish of green areas and massive deforestation in confiscated areas before and returned to the original owners.

Rhetorical strategy in stadium development politics

In this article, I develop a framework to account for how groups craft arguments about the costs and benefits of professional sports facilities. My empirical approach centers on two stadium financing referenda in the Seattle area in the 1990s. I analyze 158 op-ed articles, buttressed by archival research and several stakeholder interviews, to examine expectations regarding the capacity and incentives of groups to either frame the issue to highlight different attributes or engage the opposition in dialogue by focusing on the same attributes. The analysis extends research on communication frames to consider how organizational resources and agenda access interact with environmental factors to shape rhetorical strategies. The final section of the article explores the implications of these findings for rhetorical strategy in urban development politics, more generally.

No Rest for the Wicked

Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart (eds), Restless Cities, London, Verso, 2010; 344pp, 12.99 [pounds sterling] paperback; Susan S. Fainstein, The Just City, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2010; 232pp, 18.50 [pounds sterling] hardback It seemed like a good idea at the time: rather than review the collection Restless Cities on its own, I would twin it with something harder-headed--a careful, sober study of the politics of urban development. Restless Cities, I surmised, would be a witty, clever, and well-written set of essays in cultural criticism, devoted to anatomizing and celebrating the fluidity of urban life. It would mix political comment and cultural scholarship with shrewd, first-person observation of and reflection on everyday urban experience. It's a well-established genre by now and while I fully appreciate its virtues, I was beginning to wonder whether we needed further reminding that cities, particularly huge metropolitan ones, are sites of 'endless making and unmaking'. Maybe it was time to focus on something a little less exciting: how cities limit us with soul-destroying routines, with terrible housing and terrible jobs, with the experience and the scene of massive and enduring inequality. Things didn't quite work out as I had planned. Not because Restless Cities didn't turn out to be, in fact, just as witty, intelligent and well written as I'd expected. It's a thoughtful book, covering a wide range of urban experience with considerable flair and insight. Nor is it because it contained perhaps the most eloquent essay ever written on the subject of coffee and baked goods ('The donut I ordered that day was a ring donut and it was an amazing donut': that threw me, I'll admit, though that may be because I live in Toronto, a city intent on turning itself into one giant bakery). No, the problem was that halfway through Susan Fainstein's The Just City--an admirable and also well-written study of the injustices that have attended postwar urban planning and development--I realised that Restless Cities was more hard-headed than the book I had chosen as its foil, which tends to go soft round the edges. Fainstein's explicit aim is to examine the degree to which considerations of justice have entered into planning and development practice in New York, London and Amsterdam. She discovers--to no one's surprise, I assume--that they haven't had much impact at all (although a great deal more in Amsterdam than in New York or London): planning is driven by the profits that accrue to developers and the desire to provide the wealthy urban middle class with places to live and places to spend. But Fainstein is no angel of history: she finds silver linings even in progress's worst hurricane. Speaking of the conversion of New York's Battery Park district into posh housing and posh shops (with planning directed by a wholly unaccountable board) Fainstein claims it was 'not a clear-cut example of an unjust policy: it did not displace people, it generated substantial tax revenues by attracting major firms, and it provided ample public spaces that were open to the general public' (p100). By contrast, the ruminations on waiting, imaging, lodging, driving, gardening, the use of phone boxes and so on in Restless Cities (the chapter titles are, in fact, a series of verbs in tidy alphabetical order: 'Archiving', 'Bombing', 'Commuting' ... 'Waiting', 'Zigzagging') are haunted by the immovability, the unjustifiable givenness of the structures around them. 'Waiting', for instance, written by Michael Sayeau, begins with a discussion of the British Airport Authority's cynical manipulation of those waiting for flights at Heathrow's Terminal 3, where the dearth of seats and the placement of departure boards far away from what seats there are ensures that waiting passengers spend their 'free' time in profitable shopping rather than fruitless sitting. From this everyday observation Sayeau extemporizes on waiting as a 'barometer of political atmospherics', in which queues for buses, food and the NHS show us how the powers-that-be demonstrate their mastery by making us wait for the delivery of the stuff we need. …

Creating ‘a Generation of NIMBYs’? Interpreting the Role of the State in Managing the Politics of Urban Development

The traditional relationship between politics and policy making has been challenged in recent years, highlighting how policy itself can generate political action. This raises questions about how conflict produced or mediated through the policy process is managed, particularly within what has been described as a ‘postpolitical settlement’ where fundamental politicoideological issues are liable to be ‘displaced’ rather than opened up for debate. I argue that such displacement generates its own distinctive politicomanagerial logic. Drawing on the discourses and practices of planning reform in England, I suggest that ongoing systemic reform might be understood as a product of a politics of displacement that seeks to cover over the causes of the antagonism generated by the logic of urban development. Tracing this logic through the policy process, I further suggest that displacement has a range of underexamined effects on local democracy and the legitimacy of local government.

Venue Shopping and the Politics of Urban Development

How does the new institutional ecology of city politics structure opportunities for urban growth? We draw on policy agendas theory to explore two central aspects of this question: the process by which urban actors attempt to reach development policy goals by “shopping” for alternative institutional venues and the conditions under which extraurban institutions—such as state and special-purpose governments—provide favorable alternative decision settings. We conduct a comparative case study of two prominent megaprojects—Chicago’s new Comiskey Park (1986-1991) and Seattle’s Safeco Field (1994-1995)—in which policy-making authority shifted from city government to extraurban venues. Our analyses illustrate how the interplay of several factors, including the resources and capacity of relevant coalitions and the issue politics that surround the project, shape venue-shopping opportunities for urban megaprojects. In advancing these arguments, this research underscores the more general significance of venue shopping in urban growth policy processes.

Resilience Planning, Economic Change and The Politics of Post-recession Development in London and Hong Kong

For much of the 1990s and 2000s, the emphasis of urban policy in many global cities was on managing and mitigating the social and environmental effects of rapid economic growth. The credit crunch of 2008 and the subsequent recession have undermined some of the core assumptions on which such policies were based. It is in this context that the concept of resilience planning has taken on a new significance. Drawing on contemporary research in London and Hong Kong, the paper shows how resilience and recovery planning has become a key area of political debate. It examines what is meant by conservative and radical interpretations of resilience and how conservative views have come to dominate ‘recovery’ thinking, with élite groups unwilling to accept the limits to the neo-liberal orthodoxies that helped to precipitate the economic crisis. The paper explores the implications of such thinking for the politics of urban development.

The New Urban Politics as a Politics of Carbon Control

The new urban politics (NUP) literature has helped to draw attention to a new generation of entrepreneurial urban regimes involved in the competition to attract investment to cities. Interurban competition often had negative environmental consequences for the urban living place. Yet knowledge of the environment was not very central to understanding the NUP. Entrepreneurial urban regimes today are struggling to deal with climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon reduction strategies could have profound implications for interurban competition and the politics of urban development. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon urban polity—carbon control—and examines its potential ramifications for a new environmental politics of urban development (NEPUD). The NEPUD signals the growing centrality of carbon control in discourses, strategies and struggles around urban development. Using examples from cities in the US and Europe, the paper examines how these new environmental policy considerations are being mainstreamed in urban development politics. Alongside competitiveness, the management of carbon emissions represents a new yet at the same time contestable mode of calculation in urban governance.

Regime or coalition? Power relations and the urban agenda in Saint John, 1950‐2000

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the forces and actors that shaped urban development in a mid‐sized Canadian city over a half century.Design/methodology/approachThis case study adopts a qualitative research approach based on government documents, planning studies, the media and non‐governmental organization sources to examine the applicability of regime theory versus growth coalition theory in the Canadian context.FindingsThe paper concludes that the broader urban agenda in Saint John, with its focus on economic competitiveness, has been shaped by shifting growth coalitions supported by both the private and public sectors.Research limitations/implicationsOne limitation is that analysis is based mainly on documentary evidence and the public statements of elected officials and business interests. Future research would attempt to conduct oral interviews with representative informants.Practical implicationsOne practical implication for urban researchers is the need to look beyond electoral politics and partisanship in order to understand how urban development is shaped in the medium and long term. The research findings suggest also the need for informed citizens to adopt a more critical stance to business and political leaders, and to the local media, in their own communities.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the few to address the politics of urban development in Saint John, New Brunswick's largest city. It also contributes to the literature on regionalism and mid‐sized cities.

New Actors, New Political Spaces, Same Divided City? Reflections on Poverty and the Politics of Urban Development in Salvador, Bahia

Critics of Lula’s administration argue that business has greatest weight in setting its priorities and that anti-poverty programmes based on conditional cash transfers have little long-term structural impact on social inequality. Yet the coherence and scope of these programmes is now an order of magnitude greater than under the previous administration, their impact on poverty has so far proved sustainable, and poor people themselves often express satisfaction with them. This paper argues that critics who see retreat from universal social benefits as undermining political commitment to reducing social inequality underestimate the countervailing force of the capacity of some poor communities to seize the opportunities that have emerged to oblige politicians to reengage with both poverty and the roots of social injustice. Analyses that focus solely on economic precariousness and the decline of sociability are ignoring the ways in which third sector activity and social change have produced new kinds of political actors and group identities, particularly amongst young people, that may be ambivalent in nature but indicate that levels of politicisation are not being reduced. Nevertheless, optimism about poverty reduction needs to be tempered by appreciation of how problems of violence and insecurity also shape state interventions in, and in some cases virtual withdrawal from, poor communities. The rationality of party politics may have a more negative effect on securing the longer-term patterns of public investment required to reduce social inequality than it has had on the administration of the Bolsa Familia programme. In the case of Salvador, Bahia, where urban real estate interests remain as politically influential as ever, change will depend on the strength of pressures from above and below on municipal and state governments, but although anti-poverty programmes help keep people invested in the political system, they can also increase aspirations for greater economic and racial equality.

Políticas de ordenación territorial urbanística en los espacios costeros andaluces

El paisaje costero está afectado por la concentración de numerosas actividades en una escasa superficie y por la presencia de importantes continuos urbanizados. Esta situación provoca alteraciones irreversibles, fundamentalmente en los ámbitos urbanos, en las áreas turísticas y en las zonas especializadas en torno a la agricultura intensiva. De especial trascendencia será en un futuro la aplicación real de políticas de ordenación territorial y urbanística orientadas hacia la disminución de la presión urbana y de infraestructuras en el litoral, así como hacia su regeneración, recuperación y acondicionamiento para uso y disfrute público. En este texto, se exponen los marcos legislativos y criterios de ordenación territorial y urbanística a distintos niveles: comunitario, nacional, autonómico y local.

How to Study Comparative Urban Development Politics: A Research Note

The article presents information on ways of studying comparative urban development and politics. Sociologist Emile Durkheim's dictum that science begins with comparison underscores the value of systematically, analyzing a large number of cities across different national cultures. As Durkheim (1982) suggests, only by comparing and measuring relationships can we achieve greater certainty. There are other reasons why comparison enables scholars to clarify and better explain phenomenon. Consistency of application improves clarity, enabling researchers to highlight similarities and differences. The study of urban politics needs to be systematic. By the term systematic it means that an explicit framework should govern the analysis, providing testable and deductible propositions for comparative examination; comparisons should be made through the use of common categories, concepts or variables that can be measured and comparisons should steadily run throughout the work.

Covering the world‐class downtown: Seattle's local media and the politics of urban redevelopment

Local disputes over land use and urban development generate some of the most heated struggles in American politics. Yet the role of local media organizations in covering debates over urban development has been woefully understudied by media scholars. To address this soft spot in the critical media literature, this article offers an investigation of how the local press covered a particularly bitter debate over one urban redevelopment proposal in Seattle during the mid‐1990s. Drawing on Hallin, who predicts that reporters will abandon professional codes of neutrality and balance when they perceive the political field to be unified around a single position, an examination of sourcing patterns in the Seattle case suggests that local reporters cover debates over urban development from a spurious assumption of “consensus”—an assumption that privileges the voices of downtown business leaders and pro‐development public officials. A concluding section offers suggestions for future investigation into the intersection of local media and urban development politics, drawing particularly on Bourdieu's notion of “symbolic capital” to explore how such presumptions of consensus are cultivated, maintained, and contested within the local public sphere.

How suburban sprawl shapes human well-being.

It is not often that one has an opportunity to consider the politics of urban development and its relationship to human well-being. Many discussions of this kind are limited to political issues—or how groups use power to acquire terrain, set land use rights, and promote building policies. Other analyses point to the effects of urban development on land use—or how building policies change the placement of jobs, transportation, and commerce. Most socially oriented studies deal with how urban development affects income, class, or race. Economists tackling the issue are most interested in job creation, revenue generation, fiscal questions, and the like. These are not unimportant questions. Indeed, they touch our daily lives. After all, politics shape the rewards obtained by different groups, social relations determine where we live, and economics bear directly on the creation of wealth. Apart from these perspectives, human well-being has unique attributes and presents special opportunities. As I use the term well-being, it encompasses two components: (1) the evolving condition of our natural environment, and (2) the changing profile of our general health. Reversing the order somewhat, the World Health Organization employs the notion of health to include a variety of factors, defining it as not just the absence of disease but as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well being.” This approach points up the essential qualities and fundamental aspects of our existence. What can be more crucial than the surroundings in which we spend our waking lives, the relations we have with others, and our own physical vigor? Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, to what purposes should we apply our energies? Why is it that we struggle over rewards to be obtained from designing the built environment? The answer lies in the improvement of our well-being. While we can all agree on the general goal of improved well-being, achieving it is more easily said than done. The issue of well-being is confounded by the larger problem of how we change. Beyond this are corollary questions that require us to understand why certain situations cannot be changed, why some things might be changed, and how some situations can be changed. Addressing these questions requires backing up a bit—first by reviewing those forces that propel urban develop-

Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany's Capital City

Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 Part One: The Political and Economic Context of Urban Development Chapter 3 The Political Life of the City Chapter 4 Central City Development Chapter 5 The Politics of Post-Socialism Chapter 6 Economic and Fiscal Crisis Part 7 Part Two: Actors and Their Roles Chapter 8 The Public Sector: Actors and Processes in Berlin's Development Chapter 9 Real Estate Development Chapter 10 Experts, Aesthetes, and the Built Environment Part 11 Part Three: Case Studies Chapter 12 Planning the National Capital Chapter 13 Three Central City Areas in Transition Chapter 14 Conclusion