Urban Regime Research Articles

Why is austerity governable? A Gramscian urban regime analysis of Leicester, UK

ABSTRACTAusterity has been delivered in the UK without durably effective resistance. Read through a dialogue between urban regime theory and Gramsci’s theory of the integral state, the article considers how austerity was normalized and made governable in the city of Leicester. It shows how Leicester navigated waves of crisis, restructuring, and austerity, positioning itself as a multicultural city of entrepreneurs. The article explores historical influences on the development of the local state, inscribed in the politics of austerity governance today. From a regime-theoretical standpoint, it shows how the local state accrued the governing resources to deliver austerity while disorganizing and containing resistance. Imbued with legacies of past struggles, this process of organized disorganization produced a functional hegemony articulated in the multiple subjectivities of “austerian realism.” The article elaborates six dimensions of Gramscian regime analysis to inform further research.

When contradicting public space regimes collide: The case of Palestinian Israeli towns

The logic, meaning, and functioning of public spaces differ substantially between cultures and places. While Western public spaces are affected by democratic urban regimes and enhanced commercialisation, public spaces in traditional Muslim, Middle Eastern cities that were originally supervised by the community according to cultural norms are not easily adapted to contemporary changes. This paper thus analyses the unique case of Palestinian Israeli towns, reflecting the coexistence of these two sets of ruling public spaces, also affected by global economic changes and national political complexities. These towns consist of two different built environments: old neighbourhoods based on hierarchic, socially affiliated public spaces and new neighbourhoods created by the Israeli modern planning system, strictly dividing public spaces from private ones. The analysis provides a comparative framework discussing how this emerging urban condition affects the performance of public spaces. In addition, it enables a new perspective on Palestinian society, torn between tradition and Westernisation.

Generative urbanization in Africa? A sociotechnical systems view of Tanzania’s urban transition

ABSTRACTAfrica’s recent growth successes are raising hopes that its cities can generate the positive externalities needed to sustain long-term development. This paper examines the prospects for such a transformation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A sociotechnical systems framework is elaborated: one which conceptualizes urbanization pathways as determined by the practices, modes of governance, couplings, and multiscalar relations that constitute production, consumption, and infrastructure regimes in cities. The framework is deployed to assess whether Dar es Salaam’s industries, markets, public services, and built environments are generating distributive development outcomes. The analysis shows that the city is experiencing socioeconomically and spatially uneven development driven by processes of extraversion, intraversion, and splintering. Urban regimes are thus serving a more “parasitic” role by channeling capital offshore, bringing imports onshore, and creating highly uneven distributions of basic services. The paper highlights points of intervention and the value of the conceptual approach for comparative urban research.

The role of Alpine development regimes in the development of second homes: Preliminary lessons from Switzerland

In a majority of the tourist municipalities of the Swiss Alps, more than 50% of residences are second homes. However, the growing awareness that second homes contribute to the shortage of available land and to the standardization of landscapes in sensitive alpine environments has had little effect on the pace of development. Following the adoption of the popular initiative “Stop the endless construction of second homes”, which aimed to limit the share of second homes in a municipality to 20% of homes in the area, a new law came into force on 1 January 2016, taking a clear stand against further uncontrolled development of second homes.Although it is too early to measure the impact of this new legislation, many observers proclaimed the beginning of a new development era in alpine regions. However, this optimism did not consider the strong position of the developers in these regions and their strong ties to local decision makers. This article appraises the impact of the new legislation on the long-term development model of Alpine tourist destinations, which is still largely based on strategies of land rent capture. Relying on urban regime theory, we maintain that the impact of the new regulation will depend on its ability to weaken Alpine development regimes. Urban regime theory allows us to capture the complexity of the changing context of the tourism industry and highlight five main factors that potentially impact the status of the development of second homes as a central issue of local governance. Based on empirical evidence from the Upper Engadin region, we discuss the measures implemented to regulate the growth of second homes and formulate preliminary remarks on the effectiveness of the new regulations in curbing development of second homes.

Migration, Mortality and Medicalisation: investigating the long-run epidemiological consequences of urbanisation 1600 - 1945

Today life expectancy is generally higher in urban than rural populations, but early modern towns and cities were demographic sinks with extraordinarily high mortality, especially among the young and migrants who were essential for city growth. The breakthrough to urban natural increase that occurred in the late eighteenth century and the eradication of the urban penalty in the 1930s mark the endpoints of major epidemiological transitions. We seek to investigate how and when cities transformed from urban graveyards into promoters of health between 1600 and 1945. We hypothesize that the processes of endemicisation and exogenous disease variation were key to the evolution of both urban and non-urban mortality regimes, especially with respect to: infectious disease among the young, maternal health, adult migrants and their health/immunological status. This project brings together evidence from institutions (including medical and welfare), registrations of deaths and cause-of-death statistics to provide a continuous overview of the long-run pattern of urban life chances in Britain. The experiences of other European and North American populations will also be employed to elucidate the extent to which towns were drivers of epidemiological change during the first demographic transition, and the differing roles of health and welfare provision, industrialisation and migration in these processes.

Climate adaptation in the Anthropocene: Constructing and contesting urban risk regimes

The Anthropocene heralds a new era of heightened and unknown risks, particularly regarding the impacts of climate change. This article explores the initial phase of organizing for climate adaptation in Boston, Massachusetts, examining how multiple actors, including business, government, and community organization, are interacting as they attempt to comprehend, assess, and act on this issue. To understand this process of organizing, we develop the concept of ‘risk regime’ as a contingently stabilized system with governance, economic, and discursive dimensions. We draw from theories of risk, organizational resilience, and urban regimes and value regimes to develop the ‘risk regime’ framework, which provides a nuanced view of contestation, collaboration, and accommodation among actors with differential interests, knowledge, and influence on the process. We suggest how the character, evolution, and stabilization of the regime is influenced by competing imaginaries regarding, for example, the nature and manageability of risk, the need for radical change, and the role of markets versus regulations in addressing tensions between economic and sustainability goals. We demonstrate that the regime for adaptation has grown out of the organizational and discursive infrastructure for addressing climate mitigation, or carbon control, but that the unique character of adaptation presents different, and perhaps more difficult challenges.

Removing the public from public housing: Public–private redevelopment of the Ellen Wilson Dwellings in Washington, DC

ABSTRACT In the United States, urban regimes have long brought together public and private actors to provide public services. Given this, how do public–private partnerships (PPPs) change public housing? To answer this question, I examine a public housing project: the Ellen Wilson Dwellings in Washington, DC. In 1993, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded one of the first federal HOPE VI grants to a PPP to demolish the Ellen Wilson Dwellings and construct the mixed-income Townhomes on Capitol Hill in its place. The redevelopment that was supposed to help the residents of the Ellen Wilson Dwellings, in fact, permanently displaced nearly every one of them. I argue that the PPP, within the context of the 1990s dismantling of the state’s democratic accountability and welfare functions, allowed business groups and homeowners to stage a coup and take control of the Ellen Wilson Dwellings.

Public–private synergies: Reconceiving urban redevelopment in Tübingen, Germany

ABSTRACT The public–private development (PPD) model created in Tübingen, Germany, exemplifies an alternative to traditional PPD practices that engage high-capacity business stakeholders, such as large developers and real estate investment firms. Although working in a context of fiscal duress, the local progressive urban regime created a PPD partnership to impede private investment from distorting development patterns. Public authorities deployed a 3-pronged approach: they maintained an authoritative position, created different stages and modes for participation, and diffused power over multiple small developer groups. They did not pursue a progrowth policy agenda but sought to produce broader social values through a community-building governance strategy and the promotion of what Imrobscio (2013) calls an “ownership paradigm.” The model points to a well-calibrated urban regeneration strategy that creates a positive synergy between the regulatory authority and the administrative and fiscal capacity of the local state and private sector and community entrepreneurialism.

Encircling Cities From Rural Areas? Barriers To The Diffusion Of Solar Water Heaters In China’s Urban Market

Abstract Researchers have contributed a fruitful understanding of the facilitating factors for solar water heaters (SWH) diffusion in China at different governance levels. However, the barriers to its further diffusion in the urban environment have so far not been addressed. One feature of SWH diffusion in China is that it emerged from the rural market, mainly driven by market demand. This article explicitly focuses on China's diffusion of SWH from rural areas to urban cities and explores the problems and barriers obstructing its full potential in cities. Applying the Multi-level Perspective (MLP) framework, the results find that the technological niche is still not mature enough, and the urban regime is still powerful in terms of building infrastructure, consumer demand, policy coordination and vested interests. SWH development in China is promoted more as a business opportunity, while environmental discourses have not been powerful enough to promote further diffusion in the urban context. We suggest there is a need to focus on technology innovation with higher industry standards and to implement more benefit-based incentive policies to motivate incumbent actors.

Donor-driven democracy? Governance implications of foundation-dependent revitalization

ABSTRACTPhilanthropic foundations and nonprofit financial intermediaries have become critical funders of community revitalization in many U.S. cities, often moving beyond their traditional role of passive, reactionary funders to initiators and lead coordinators of broad-based, collaborative revitalization initiatives. This role can give foundation leaders critical influence on resource allocations in cities, even leading to enduring influence as part of the governing regime. Because of their missions and collaborations with communities, foundations may also be able to incorporate interests into the regime that are traditionally excluded. Through a case study of foundation involvement in the Detroit revitalization since the mid-2000s, including an embedded case of the Detroit Works/Detroit Future City project, this article examines the extent to which increased active leadership of foundations in urban revitalization expands their influence on local policy decisions and enables them to incorporate interests not typically incorporated into decision making of urban regimes.

지역정책수요와 시민조직화가 정책의제에 미치는 영향 : 도시레짐이론을 바탕으로

지역정책수요와 시민조직화가 정책의제에 미치는 영향 : 도시레짐이론을 바탕으로

Local interest groups and the perception of power in Spanish cities

Studies on local interest groups have generated a considerable number of theories on urban power that have eventually become the basis of far-reaching approaches on democracy and collective action. Such literature has been especially concerned with discovering who governs the city, paving the way for discussions on elitism, pluralism and urban regimes. Some approaches consider that the business elite dominates local politics, while other theories assert that interests other than business (neighbors, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, civic groups) have been gaining relevance and access to local government. The POLLEADER survey (2006) provided data on the influence of certain social groups as perceived by mayors in Spain. Data showed that the local business community was, at best, as influential and active as voluntary associations. With recent data from the POLLEADER II survey (2015), this article confirms a certain pluralistic model of local power and, it considers the number of inhabitants and the Mayors’ ideology as key factors to determine variation in the way interest groups’ influence is perceived.

New development: Lean Thinking in smart cities

The smart city concept lacks a set of coherent criteria for evaluating its effectiveness as an urban management system, its compatibility with human rights principles, and its contribution to a democratic, participatory, social urban regime. The author explains why Lean Thinking principles can be applied to evaluate the ‘smartness’ of cities and serve as guidelines for improvement.

Sport facility development: municipal capital and shutting out the private sector

ABSTRACTRegime theory provides a framework for exploring changes in development patterns and internal dynamics of growth coalitions. Academic debates on sport and urban development have focused on large American and European markets, where such venues are increasingly led by urban regimes that aim to leverage public goals through private investment. Based on a detailed qualitative analysis of four projects in three major Israeli cities, this work examines a different typology of sport venue development – ‘public regime’, which operates in a small market context. The Israeli public regime neither allows the private sector to assume central roles in the design, development and operation of venues nor does it stimulate real estate development anchored by the venue. The assumption that professional sports is not a viable business in small markets is used to justify the public monopoly that regards the venues as public amenities, legitimizing the lack of strategic and business plans, producing benefits for the local political elite but doing little to stabilize professional sport and secure economic returns for the public. The more affluent city of Tel Aviv demonstrates a breakout from a pure public regime, where public control is retained but more business-oriented considerations are incorporated.

The Significance of Place in Urban Governance: Mart 125 and the Politics of Community Development in Harlem, New York

AbstractThe paper highlights the nexus between place and identity on the one hand, and urban entrepreneurialism on the other, which has become important nationally and internationally in recent decades. This refers to a form of urban governance that mixes together state with civil society and private interests to promote urban development. The city as a product of a common if perpetually changing and transitory urban life, “growth machines” or “urban regimes” play a significant role in the relationship between place and identity. This paper documents an instance of this relationship where the “growth machines” played themselves out in Harlem, New York City.

Encircling cities from rural areas? Barriers to the diffusion of solar water heaters in China's urban market

Researchers have contributed a fruitful understanding of the facilitating factors for solar water heaters (SWH) diffusion in China at different governance levels. However, the barriers to its further diffusion in the urban environment have so far not been addressed. One feature of SWH diffusion in China is that it emerged from the rural market, mainly driven by market demand. This article explicitly focuses on China's diffusion of SWH from rural areas to urban cities and explores the problems and barriers obstructing its full potential in cities. Applying the Multi-level Perspective (MLP) framework, the results find that the technological niche is still not mature enough, and the urban regime is still powerful in terms of building infrastructure, consumer demand, policy coordination and vested interests. SWH development in China is promoted more as a business opportunity, while environmental discourses have not been powerful enough to promote further diffusion in the urban context. We suggest there is a need to focus on technology innovation with higher industry standards and to implement more benefit-based incentive policies to motivate incumbent actors.

The Urban Politics of Juventus’ New Football Stadium

This article examines the local politics around a new private football stadium construction project in Southern Europe, within the frame of urban regime theory. The project aimed at demolishing a recently renovated municipal stadium in Turin, Italy and building a new one for Juventus FC. This new stadium project was the product of an urban regime that governed Turin for some years, an outcome that raises an important issue as, in the US, the explanatory power of regime theory for most stadium projects is in doubt. Using this evidence, the article adds to the ongoing debate on whether US urban politics theories can explain urban affairs in European cities and draws some similarities and differences between European and US urban politics.

WHEN DEMOCRACY DISAPPEARS

AbstractIn this case study, I look at Benton Harbor, Michigan’s tenure under a state-appointed “emergency manager,” with extensive local powers replacing all local elected government, and a single imperative to balance the city’s budget. The law, ostensibly race-neutral, wound up targeting almost all of Michigan’s cities with significant Black population. The law ultimately disenfranchised half the state’s Black population but only two percent of Whites. This law invalidates a basic civil right and prerequisite for urban political theory: electoral democracy. Who holds power in the urban regime when the state takes over? Drawing on forty-four interviews, observations and archival research, I argue aWhite urban regimegoverns without elected representation in this majority-Black city. The ideological framing of emergency management as “neutral,” and Black politics as “corrupt” or “self-interested,” provides the logic to blame Black governance for structural disinvestment and White-led extraction.

Land and freedom: urban regimes and protest communities in Siberian cities

Land and freedom: urban regimes and protest communities in Siberian cities

Filling in the Resource Gap of Urban Regime Analysis to Make It Travel in Time and Space

Responding to recent studies that have argued that urban regime analysis (URA) is inappropriate for studying urban politics in Europe or in the twenty-first century, this article argues that URA is a powerful analytical tool to understand the dynamics of contemporary urban governance. It does so by drawing on evidence from the Swiss cities of Zurich and Bern since the turn of the millennium. In both cities, the realization of major urban projects has relied on strong public-private cooperation structured around the mobilization and exchange of five resources (“land,” “law,” “money,” “expertise,” and “democratic support”). Drawing on this empirical evidence, the article concludes by presenting two types of regimes: the PRIVATE-public regime and the PUBLIC-private regime.