Urban Restructuring Research Articles

Multiple Actors and Contested Terrains Strategies of Pro-poor Action in Contemporary Urban Restructuring

Neoliberal approaches to urban restructuring may favor the wealthier and more powerful, but neoliberalism alone cannot account for the varied outcomes found among poor urban residents. Using field studies and documentary research on five cities in French-speaking West Africa and India, this study looks comparatively at how different groups use multiple forms of power to pursue individual and collective benefits. Dominant structures produced contradictory discourses that created spaces that served as terrains of struggle between the more and less powerful. Rich and poor created cross-class alliances that sometimes brought incremental benefits to the poor; the poor also used their agency to pursue individual advancement and collective resistance. These efforts have not changed the basic structures, but they have improved urban living conditions.

City of Man, City of God: The Re‐Urbanization of American Evangelicals

AbstractIn post‐World War II America, U.S. Evangelicalism became a religion deeply entrenched with suburbanization and commercial sprawl. This article examines the growing phenomenon of middle‐class white Evangelicals who are returning to the city. Since September 2008 I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork with nearly 100 Evangelicals in the post‐industrial, Rust Belt cities of Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Middletown. I argue first that Evangelical re‐urbanization is structured by two cultural logics: a biting cultural critique of suburban megachurches, and a desire for the “reconciliation” of urban life to “the kingdom of God.” Second, re‐urbanized Evangelicals necessarily encounter the dilemmas of late modern urbanism, including structural processes like neighborhood gentrification. I stress the importance of this phenomenon for both the impact of religion on America's cities and the impact of urban restructuring on American religion.

Commercial Gentrification and Entrepreneurial Governance in Shanghai: A Case Study of Taikang Road Creative Cluster

Commercial gentrification—based on the adaptive reuse of historic dwellings for upscale shopping, dining and culture—is emerging as a new model of neighbourhood regeneration in China. Through an analysis of Shanghai's urban restructuring and a case study of Taikang Road Creative Cluster, this article demonstrates that entrepreneurial local government is a key facilitator. Conscious of the synergistic value of restored urban heritage with conspicuous consumption, tourism and even the creative industries, local officials have utilised their urban planning authority to open up urban heritage to a host of gentrifiers including businesses, artists and creative firms. In terms of social outcomes, some local residents have capitalised on inflated property values and gained the opportunity to move out of poverty. Nevertheless, socially exclusive outcomes have also been evident, as commercialisation eroded the living environment of rural migrants and other poor residents.

Tourism and cultural identity: Promoting Buenos Aires as the cultural capital of Latin America

Some urban areas in Buenos Aires were neglected for many decades by both public and private investment. As a result these areas underwent a process of degradation. However, in the last twenty years the city has undergone renewal processes and urban restructuring that have slowly redefined different cultural and tourist enclaves. As part of this process, and in the context of a tourist boom, public and private investment flourished, rooted in new public policies whose main purpose was to promote cultural tourism. At the same time several cultural manifestations considered threatened by globalizing forces were protected by heritage legislation. The main purpose of this article is to analyse the role of culture in tourism promotion of Buenos Aires. In particular, it examines the urban heritage and local identity valorization processes as part of tourism policies developed specially during the 2000s.

SUCCESSFUL MIXING? EFFECTS OF URBAN RESTRUCTURING POLICIES IN DUTCH NEIGHBOURHOODS

ABSTRACTConcentrations of poverty in urban neighbourhoods are generally unwanted, because of all kinds of presumed negative consequences for the social mobility and the quality of life of the residents. Because of these negative associations, policies in Western European countries are often aimed at breaking up these poverty concentrations by mixing the population composition through changing the housing stock. However, whether these policies are successful remains to be seen. We asked residents of urban restructuring areas in six Dutch cities about the consequences of mixing policies. The number of residents who perceive improvements in the neighbourhood in the past few years is substantially outnumbered by the residents who report a decline in neighbourhood quality. However, many residents have high hopes for their neighbourhood's future. This finding indicates that social mixing policies have not matched the policy‐makers' expectations yet – but may do so in the course of time.

Better City, Better Life

The 2010 Shanghai World Expo lasted from May 1 through October 31, 2010, and represented a tremendous mobilization of capital, human resources, and urban restructuring. It was in every respect a massive spectacle, giving its 70-plus million attendees (overwhelmingly from the PRC) a vision of contemporary and future Chinese and global urbanism, as well as signifying to the world, as the Beijing Olympics had done, China's massive presence in the global arena. Ideologically, its thematics of material and architectural innovation, sustainability, harmoniousness, urban order, cultural heritage, and the ubiquitous and all-inclusive virtue of “civilization” (wenming) provided a comprehensive vision of a new, urban-centered, globalized China. The particular erasures, contradictions, and inconsistencies in the Shanghai Expo's vision of futurity, as well as the nature of expo attendees' varied experiences of the spectacle, provide important insights not only into the nature of the party-state's ideological project and the citizenry's experience of that project, but also into some wider questions about the fate of the future in our current period.

Urban shrinkage as a performance of whiteness: neoliberal urban restructuring, education, and racial containment in the post-industrial, global niche city

Although Detroit is not a centre of global finance, and plays a declining role in global production, it nevertheless participates in the present remediation of the relationship between cities and the globe. Manoeuvring to reposition the city as the global hub of mobility technology, metropolitan Detroit's neoliberal leadership advances particular development strategies in urban education, housing, infrastructure, and governance, all with implications for social exclusion. This paper analyzes Detroit's neoliberal policy complex, uncovering how rituals of place-making and suburbanite nostalgia for the city intersect with broader struggles over the region's resources and representation.

Environmental Affordances and Children in Post-conflict Belfast

This paper examines the experiences of children in post-conflict Belfast as peace and social change afford new opportunities at the same time as they regulate behaviours and spatial practices. Theoretically and empirically it draws on the concept of environmental affordances in order to map the experiences of 11-year-old children in separate inner-city segregated and middle-class communities. Whilst the recession has affected the pace of urban restructuring, children in the expanding mixed and largely middle-class city extract multiple advantages from their area in ways not available to segregated communities. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for effective listening strategies in the management of divided communities.

Multiple Transformations

This paper develops a conceptual framework for interpreting the process of urban change in post-communist cities. The departure from the legacies of the communist past has been effected through multiple transformation dynamics of institutional, social and urban change. While institutional reforms have been largely accomplished, the adjustment of urban land use patterns to new societal conditions is still ongoing. Hence, post-communist cities are still cities in transition. Using this interpretative framework and referring to a wide spectrum of academic work, the paper provides an overview of urban restructuring in post-communist countries over the past two decades with a specific focus on the examples of mutual integration of the three fields of transformation.

EVALUATION OF SCENARIOS FOR URBAN COMPACTIZATION BY QUANTITY OF CO2 EMISSION

We establish the standard emissions of CO2 from the work of construction, demolition/scraping and renewal /maintenance and get these following results.1. We establish the standard emissions of CO2 per area from the work of construction, demolition/scraping and renewal/maintenance of the urban facilities as well as buildings by calculating 5 years construction work in Nagaoka city to facilitate comparison of scenarios for the urban restructuring.2. We create 3 scenarios for compactization for the urban image of Nagaoka in the year of 2050. They are Market Scenario, Monocentric Scenario and Polycentric Scenario.3. By evaluating long-term CO2 emissions which includes both the reconfiguration period and the following operation period, we conclude the polycentric Scenario is the most desirable toward compact city among three sceinarois.

Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract (review)

Reviewed by: Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract Zhuoyi Wang (bio) Yomi Braester. Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. xiv, 405 pp. Hardcover $89.95, ISBN 978-0-822-34706-4. Paperback $24.95, ISBN 978-0-822-34723-1. Since the 1990s, both the massive urbanization in China and the rapid development of Chinese cinema have drawn much academic attention. Film scholars have quickly grown interested in the so-called urban generation films as reflections of the physical and emotional impact of urban transformation. Few, however, have studied the active and productive role played by films and theatrical performances in shaping the urban landscape. Continuities between the Maoist urban aesthetics and the seemingly new urban concern in recent films have also been largely ignored. Yomi Braester’s Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract neatly fills these two gaps. Based on extensive archival research, wide-ranging interviews, discourse analysis, and close readings of as many as 150 films and stage plays from 1949 to 2008, the book offers, as the author states, “a corrective history of Chinese urban cinema, with emphasis on its historical roots” (p. 8). [End Page 36] At the center of the book are two key concepts Braester adopts and adapts from other scholars. He borrows the term “urban contract” from Manuel Castells and Jordi Borja but does not use it to prescribe an integral city policy. Instead, he uses the term to draw attention to the power structure in urban transformation, in which filmmakers can mediate among the three major players — the government, the developers, and the residents — by offering “different visions of the city” (p. 6) and contributing to “a discursive framework for urban policies” (p. 5). To “foreground the shifting power relations in the urban contract,” Braester arranges the book around cinematic manifestations of various “chronotopes,” or “the coupling of specific locations and temporal perceptions.” The concept was first used by Mikhail Bakhtin for “the imaginary place and time frames that forge fictional realms.” The cases Braester presents, however, “depict real places, forcing the spectators to interpret the films in the factual and symbolic registers at the same time” (p. 18). The first chapter examines the urban restructuring in Beijing immediately following the Communist takeover and focuses on how Lao She’s Dragon Whisker Creek (stage play 1951, film 1952) “bridged the material city and its allegorical visualization” and “retooled the audiences’ vision” of the city (p. 27). Braester argues that the play, which had been written and performed before the depicted construction at the Dragon Whisker Creek compound was actually completed, projects onto the present an ideal socialist vision of urbanization and contributes to urban discourse a “prescriptive chronotope” (p. 28). Compared to Dragon Whisker Creek, a proletarian district, the city of Shanghai and its Nanjing Road received much more ambivalent treatment for having been both the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party and a colonial commercial center. Chapter 2 discusses the constantly changing ideological colors of Shanghai painted by films from 1949 to the 1990s, with a particular focus on Sentinels under the Neon Lights (stage play 1963, film 1964) as the centerpiece of the Good Eighth Company campaign that vilified the city. Braester argues that films culminating in Sentinels under the Neon Lights present Nanjing road as the location of a “recidivist chronotope” and make it “the centerpiece of the urban makeover” (p. 58) that involved both physical and symbolic changes. Chapter 3 surveys post-Maoist state-sponsored plays concerning the demolition of traditional courtyard houses in Beijing and their former occupants’ subsequent relocation. Braester argues that these plays further develop the prescriptive chronotope in Dragon Whisker Creek into a “chronotope of instantaneity” (p. 97), presenting an “upbeat illusion of an instantly rebuilt and modernized city” (p. 226). Braester continues discussing urban policy in state propaganda in the first half of chapter 4, focusing on the normative cinematic portrayal of Tiananmen Square “as a space for state parades and spectacles” (p. 154). In the second half of this chapter, he turns to alternative urban visions in films, TV series, and video artworks, challenging...

Revisiting Shibboleths of Race and Urban Economy: Black Employment in Manufacturing and the Public Sector Compared, Chicago 1950-2000

ijur_942 110..129 Despite a singular focus on the linked fate of blacks and manufacturing in many accounts of race and urban economy, black workers in Chicago have relied upon the public sector as a critical route to economic security throughout much of the twentieth century. Four significant trends are identified for the period between 1950 and 2000: (1) African Americans were disproportionately concentrated in the public sector — to a greater degree than in manufacturing; (2) both blacks and whites were disproportionately concentrated in manufacturing — blacks only slightly more; (3) Latinos were most disproportionately concentrated in manufacturing yet experienced no aggregate losses over the 50-year period; (4) the disproportionate decline in black male public employment during the 1990s is a marked break from past sector trends of black male employment growth and stability. These findings emphasize the need to reassess the role of the public sector — the postwar economy’s ‘other’ high wage, unionized sector — in racialized accounts of urban economic restructuring. Recognizing the public sector as not only the most pronounced black employment niche, but also as a labor market standards-setter, sharpens our understanding of the racialized impacts of contemporary public employment trends (e.g. privatization) linked to neoliberal political shifts in urban governance.

Partnerships in Urban Restructuring: Building Long-term Relationships or a Pragmatic Managerial Tool? The Dutch Experience

Abstract In urban governance literature, much attention is paid to the ideas and ideals of cooperation in policy networks, in particular to the motives and objectives of cooperation at the start of urban restructuring processes. However, little consideration has been given to the dynamics of working in partnerships or to the conditions for long-term joint capacity building. In this article, we call attention to these issues. The main question addressed is: Which factors contribute to long-term cooperation? We have elicited the information required to answer the question through in-depth interviews with professionals and residents' representatives working in six Dutch urban restructuring neighbourhoods. Although we found some attempts to build long-term joint working capacity to address residents' needs, the findings indicate that this endeavour is impeded by the dominance of a scaled neoliberal governance arrangement in Dutch urban restructuring that features a strong market rationality with fragmentation in policies, time, space and decision-making power. We show that this situation hampers success in integrally addressing residents' needs in urban restructuring neighbourhoods. We conclude that, for more inclusive and coherent policies, the abandonment of neoliberal rationalities in urban policies is a first requirement for developing a real joint working capacity to address residents' needs in distressed neighbourhoods. Résumé Les textes de gouvernance urbaine s’intéressent beaucoup aux idées et idéaux de coopération dans les réseaux de l’action publique, et notamment aux motivations et objectifs d’une coopération en début de processus de restructuration urbaine. Toutefois, peu de réflexions portent sur les dynamiques de travail dans le cadre de partenariats ou sur les conditions permettant de bâtir une capacité conjointe sur le long terme. Attirant l’attention sur ces aspects, l’article s’interroge surtout sur les facteurs qui contribuent à une coopération à long terme. Les éléments nécessaires à la réponse sont tirés d’entretiens approfondis avec des experts et représentants d’habitants qui œuvrent dans six quartiers urbains en restructuration aux Pays-Bas. Même si les résultats révèlent quelques tentatives pour construire une capacité collaborative à long terme afin de répondre aux besoins des habitants, ils indiquent aussi que ces efforts sont entravés par l’omniprésence d’un dispositif redimensionné de gouvernance néolibéral, propre à la restructuration urbaine aux Pays-Bas et caractérisé par une forte rationalité de marché avec une fragmentation au niveau des politiques publiques, du temps, de l’espace et du pouvoir décisionnel. Cette situation nuit au traitement exhaustif des besoins des habitants dans les quartiers en restructuration. En conclusion, des politiques publiques plus complètes et cohérentes devront passer d’abord par l’abandon des rationalités néolibérales en matière d’action publique afin de développer une réelle capacité de collaboration pour répondre aux besoins des habitants des quartiers défavorisés.

Squatting and Urban Renewal: The Interaction of Squatter Movements and Strategies of Urban Restructuring in Berlin

Squatting as a housing strategy and as a tool of urban social movements accompanies the development of capitalist cities worldwide. We argue that the dynamics of squatter movements are directly connected to strategies of urban renewal in that movement conjunctures occur when urban regimes are in crisis. An analysis of the history of Berlin squatter movements, their political context and their effects on urban policies since the 1970s, clearly shows how massive mobilizations at the beginning of the 1980s and in the early 1990s developed in a context of transition in regimes of urban renewal. The crisis of Fordist city planning at the end of the 1970s provoked a movement of "rehab squatting" ('Instandbesetzung'), which contributed to the institutionalization of "cautious urban renewal" ('behutsame Stadterneuerung') in an important way. The second rupture in Berlin's urban renewal became apparent in 1989 and 1990, when the necessity of restoring whole inner-city districts constituted a new, budget-straining challenge for urban policymaking. Whilst in the 1980s the squatter movement became a central condition for and a political factor of the transition to "cautious urban renewal," in the 1990s large-scale squatting — mainly in the eastern parts of the city — is better understood as an alien element in times of neoliberal urban restructuring.

Rethinking oil depletion: what role can cycling really play in dispersed cities?

What is the role of cycling in dispersed cities under Peak Oil? This research sought to appraise the bicycle's mitigating potential in an oil crisis, and to identify the specific ways planners may respond to maximise these effects. An overview of cycling in dispersed cities, focused on US and Australian cities, highlights low bicycle mode shares and low participation rates for women, children and seniors at present. Yet cycling can flourish in suburban settings, with low-density, outer-suburban communities in many European cities having very high bicycle mode shares, and strong participation across all demographic groups. Under a variety of Peak Oil scenarios, the bicycle is shown to play specific roles in supplying local mobility and access to and from mass public transport for longer distance trips. In conjunction with minor urban restructuring and public transport networking, many suburban areas could still function without reliance on large quantities of oil for access and mobility. Planning priorities include cycle network planning, ensuring current infrastructures can meet demand, links to public transport and end-of-trip facilities, and socio-cultural research into suburban bicycle sub-markets to better inform targeted behaviour change interventions.

Public Participation in Post‐Fordist Urban Green Space Governance: The Case of Community Gardens in Berlin

This article examines citizen participation in the governance of contemporary urban green space. Rather than exploring normative questions of ideal forms of participatory democracy, it focuses on changing roles and relationships between local state and non-state actors in order to identify and explain the changing nature of participation. I argue that neoliberal urban restructuring has changed the conditions for participation and thus participation itself in fundamental ways and that we need an account of changes in statehood and governance in order to capture this conceptually. Based on the case of community gardens in Berlin, the article discusses the extent to which this changed relationship is expressed by current citizen participation as well as the potential and problems that result from it. My empirical results show the emergence of a new political acceptance of autonomously organized projects and active citizen participation in urban green space governance. The central argument of this article is that this new acceptance can be conceptualized as an expression of the neoliberalization of cities. Nevertheless, this neoliberal strategy at the same time leads to complex and contradictory outcomes and the resulting benefits are also acknowledged.

Residential Outcomes of Forced Relocation

Fear of the detrimental effects of ethnic segregation has pervaded the debate on the population composition of cities and neighbourhoods. However, little is known about mechanisms underlying the spatial sorting of ethnic minorities. Hence, policies aimed at desegregation may result in exactly the opposite - that is, new ethnic concentrations and segregation. This paper studies the residential outcomes of 658 forced movers from urban restructuring areas in The Hague. Compared with "native" Dutch (those with both parents born in the Netherlands), ethnic minorities report neighbourhood improvement less often and are more likely to stay within or move into other ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods. These differences are not fully explained by differences in individual characteristics, resources, institutional factors, pre-relocation preferences or other relocation outcomes. Ethnic specificities in neighbourhood choices thus remain a pressing issue for further research.

Gentrification and Community Fabric in Chicago

Critical authors of gentrification point to its deleterious impacts on displaced residents. Research on the nature or actual forms of impacts has not advanced much, however. This paper attempts to specify impacts on low-income racial/ethnic groups (Latinos in particular) in five Chicago neighbourhoods, with a particular focus on neighbourhood-based fabrics of support and advancement. Limited in their mobility and exchange value resources, lower-income groups depend on such fabrics far more than do the higher income. In fact, they have fewer choices and are most vulnerable to place-based shifts. The case seems especially challenging for minorities who, like European immigrants before them, depend largely on place-based platforms/social fabrics but, unlike them, confront the added factors of race and urban restructuring.

Private initiatives in German urban development policy

Business Improvement Districts (BID) and Housing Improvement Districts (HID) are a new instrument of urban development policy in Germany. Their use reflects the fact that public assistance for urban development, while necessary, is not sufficient on its own to bring about the required change. They can be seen as a specific version of public–private partnership, which is to some extent also the philosophy underlying government-backed public assistance. Based on private initiative, they may be formalized (on the basis of legislation) or more informal. The first formalized German BID was established in Hamburg in 2005; a HID will follow soon. The Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs has set up a scientific research initiative, Urban Improvement Districts in Urban Restructuring, with 14 model projects around Germany, on a more informal basis. The Ministry wants to learn how BIDs and HIDs will fit into legislation on, and give financial assistance to, urban development, as public engagement will increasingly reach its fiscal limits and the role of private initiatives in urban development will increase.

Combining forced residential relocation with supportive services: What can Dutch housing associations learn from the American HOPE VI programme?

Urban restructuring programmes targeting distressed-poverty neighbourhoods have broadened their approach in recent years to address not only physical problems, but also social issues of individual residents. These programmes often include forced residential relocation, due to demolition of public or social rented housing. This paper identifies key parallels and differences in the combined urban restructuring–social service and support approaches employed in the US and the Netherlands. Within the context of forced relocation, important lessons are highlighted, learned from the US HOPE VI programme, which are relevant for advancing the development of the recent ‘behind-the-front-door’ approach in the Netherlands and beyond. Six significant issues are discussed which have key management implications for housing associations taking this approach: the challenges presented to housing associations as they assume the dual role of housing manager and service provider; the importance of offering services beyond the time limits of relocation; the necessity to balance the location and mobility of new services; the complexity of acquiring and maintaining trust and confidentiality among residents; the challenges of determining appropriate programme goals and overcoming fundamental obstacles to progress; and the crucial role of evaluation and research in developing, implementing and improving such complex initiatives.