The Urban,Politics and Subject Formation

In contrast to more traditional debates about voting patterns, local versus state administrations, and individual rights and participatory democracy, this article addresses the question of urban politics through an analysis of subject formation. By taking subject formation as the analytical focus, research questions about ‘politics’ shift from traditional ones about local or state government and the development of consensus, for instance, to ones about the constitution of subjects who are governed and govern themselves in particular ways. Using the emergence of two increasingly commonplace subject forms in contemporary China — urban professionals and volunteers — as examples, the article considers how modes of self‐regulation become political problems and also how subjects may be of the urban as well as located in the urban. The problematizations of socialist state planning have led to new governmental rationalities and technologies that not only produced new subject positions, but also new urban spaces, landscapes, economies and lifestyles. From this view, the article is an intervention into discussions about the ‘where’ of urban politics. It also argues that it is critical to examine politics as problematization and normalization if we are to understand what is at stake in the constitution of potential ‘communities of action’.     

An Ethnographic Perspective on Urban Planning in Brazil: Temporality,Diversity and Critical Urban Theory

This article provides an ethnographic perspective on urban planning by presenting the creative practices of marginalized slum residents in Recife, Northeast Brazil, who are affected by planners’ decisions. It argues that such a perspective contributes to current critical urban theory in three ways. First, while many studies of urban planning follow the temporality of the timeframe of a particular project (‘project time’), this analysis emphasizes the timeframe of the lives of the affected residents (‘people's time’). Second, it attends to diversity, taking account of the variety of affected residents and the diverse consequences of urban planning on their lives. Third, it shows how urban interventions — similar to marriage, divorce, the birth of children and the death of loved ones — are high-impact life events for the urban poor. Finally, the article assesses the engagement between ethnography and critical urban theory and argues in favour of ‘grounding’ the latter better in the analysis of actual practices and experiences.     

The Symbiosis of the Urban and the Political

Historically, the urban was the condition of possibility for the political, but the symbiosis of the two has been concealed by the rise of the state and the concomitant development of the social sciences. The effort to recover the connection by denoting a separate domain of ‘urban politics’ is self‐defeating, because it re‐instantiates an ontology of the political that consigns the urban to the domain of ‘low’ politics. The dominant ontology suggests that ‘high’ politics — the most serious politics or politics proper — is always in the domain of states and empires, and that everything else is subject to it. This view is constantly reaffirmed by the political theory that underpins the state system and the modern social sciences. Nevertheless, a different ontology of the political is always already implicit in the concept of the city, understood as a local phenomenon and a global way of life. To see the political through the city is to notice how proximate diversity stimulates self‐organization and self‐government, generates politics in and between authorities in different registers, and defers the sovereignty claims it produces. On this view, the urban is neither high nor low, but is instead the very form of the political, encompassing states and empires as much as anything else.     

Urban Warfare Ecology: A Study of Water Supply in Basrah

This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step‐wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain‐drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases.     

Historicizing Planning,Problematizing Participation

In this article, I offer speculations which share the intentions of this symposium to bring to light seldom acknowledged configurations of knowledges, and to indicate different ways of thinking historically about urban problems and planning policies. I suggest that a genealogical or critical historical sensibility has much to contribute to these projects by tracing how policies and programmes come into being in response to specific conditions and within specific sets of presuppositions, and are rarely the products of unified histories or singular rationalities. But these policies are also configured in discursive terrains that already shape the form of problems and their possible solutions. That is, before policies or concepts can ‘travel’, they have to come into being under certain ‘conditions of possibility’. The main focus of this article is to suggest that posing a policy, programme or set of practices as a ‘problematization’ as a consequence of certain conditions of possibility can productively indicate different avenues of enquiry that trace the disparate ‘pre‐travel’ emergences of what may (or may not) then become ‘travelling’ policies. I indicate some questions and possible research directions arising from taking participation in planning as a particular form of problematization and calling attention to the taken‐for‐granted nature of ‘participation’ as it is theorized and practised in the fields of urban planning and participatory development.     

Neighborhood as Spatial Project: Making the Urban Order on the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront

This article argues for a reconceptualization of one of the most basic concepts in urban studies: the neighborhood. Traditionally neighborhoods have been understood as clearly bounded, quasi‐Westphalian containers or as ‘natural areas’ of urban community. But this approach is widely acknowledged to be under‐theorized. And it fails to account for the ways in which the production of neighborhood is inherently political and often conflictual. After reviewing the ways in which neighborhood has been used in urban sociology and urban planning, this article offers a critical conception of neighborhoods as ‘spatial projects’ on the submetropolitan scale. This approach captures the ways in which neighborhoods are not abstract spaces on a city map, but the uneven, unequal products of complex, ongoing struggles between various groups and institutions. This approach is developed through an ethnographic and historical case study of neighborhood formation in one part of Brooklyn, New York. The article concludes with a discussion of how the language of spatial projects refocuses urban research on the political and economic forces that produce neighborhood in the contemporary city.     

Governing ‘Sustainable Urban Development’ Through Self‐Build Groups and Co‐Housing: The Cases of Hamburg and Gothenburg

This article critically examines the governing of ‘sustainable urban development’ through self‐build cohousing groups in Gothenburg and Hamburg. The two case cities have been selected because both are currently involved in major urban restructuring, and have launched programmes to support self‐build groups and cohousing as part of their emphasis on promoting urban sustainable development through this process. Departing from a theoretical discussion on advanced liberal urban governance, focusing in particular on the contemporary discourse on sustainable urban development, we examine the interaction between political institutions, civil society and private actors in the construction of cohousing as a perceived novel and alternative form of housing that may contribute to fulfilling certain sustainability goals. Questions centre on the socio‐political contextualization of cohousing; concepts of sustainability; strategies of, and relations between, different actors in promoting cohousing; gentrification and segregation; and inclusion and exclusion. In conclusion we argue that, while self‐build groups can provide pockets of cohousing as an alternative to dominant forms of housing, the economic and political logics of advanced liberal urban development make even such a modest target difficult, particularly when it comes to making such housing affordable.     

Living on the Edge: Lessons from the Peri‐urban Village

The idea of an urban renaissance — based on a celebration of city life and its possibilities — is timely given half of the world's population now resides in urban areas. Yet, as appealing as this prospect may be, both in principle and planning theory, it remains at odds with the desires of many residents who seek ‘lifestyle living’ in low‐density suburban or ex‐urban settings. This article presents the results of a qualitative investigation of what it means to ‘live on the edge’ in a peri‐urban village, as understood by residents living in those settings. These results are evaluated in light of phenomenological literature on authentic and inauthentic places, and the myriad reasons so‐called amenity migrants choose the peri‐urban village as their preferred residential location. The results of in‐depth interviews with 28 residents are presented as a four‐part typology of ‘active’ lifestylers and those searching for community, and ‘passive’ speculators and those seeking a civilized society. Though prior work suggests people are attracted to the peri‐urban village for its bio‐physical environmental features, this research suggests socioeconomic factors and opportunities for active place‐making experiences are as, if not more, important.     

THE ROLE OF TENURE SECURITY IN HOUSING SELF-IMPROVEMENT: A CASE-STUDY OF SURABAYA, INDONESIA

Some developing countries are tapping into the opportunities offered by self-help gradual improvement of houses in order to relieve the environmental problems besetting their urban areas. For decisionmakers and planners it is important to know the factors that can entice slum dwellers to improve their houses. Using Indonesian data, this paper has tested and verified the assumption that tenure security is a powerful factor that can entice slum dwellers to internalize the benefits from neighborhood environmental quality improvement.     

Urban Governance and the ‘European City’: Ideals and Realities in Dublin,Ireland

Throughout recent decades, a significant amount of attention has been given to the notion of the ‘European city’ within policy formation and academic enquiry. From one perspective, the ideal of the ‘European city’ is presented as a densely developed urban area with a focus on quality public transport and a more balanced social structure. More recently, however, the particular elements of the ‘European city’ associated with pedestrianized public space, urban design and image‐making strategies have become central features of entrepreneurial urban policies throughout Europe. This article undertakes an examination of the notion of the ‘European city’ in urban change in Dublin since the 1990s. Specifically, the article illustrates the degree to which a wholly positive spin on the urban design and image‐making elements of the ‘European city’ in Dublin has served as a thin veil for the desired transformation of Dublin according to neoliberal principles.     

‘There are Really Two Cities Here’: Fragmented Urban Citizenship In Tel Aviv

The inflow of African migrants into Tel Aviv's southern neighborhoods has aroused much resentment from long‐term residents. Contesting the uneven burden sharing, which exacerbates already poor conditions at the local level, southern residents have aimed their grievances at municipal and national policymakers as well as the city's more affluent northern residents. In analyzing the contestation, this article challenges traditional conceptions of migrants as the binary opposition to residents of the host city, intruders on the shared and socio‐culturally homogenous urban arena. We build on recent theorizations of urban citizenship as an agency‐centered process to think through the ways in which city residents articulate their identities relationally and hierarchically against new and old ‘others’ and argue that international newcomers have destabilized long‐conceived social relations. Using narratives of long‐term southern residents, we illustrate how the uneven geographies of African migrants' settlement in Tel Aviv have (re)set in motion a process of urban citizenship formation by southern residents, thereby adding new layers of contention to what was already a highly stratified realm.     

San Francisco Through Bogotá’s Eyes: Leveraging Urban Policy Change through the Circulation of Media Objects

This article connects two emerging debates in urban studies—the need to pay more attention to the role of nonhuman actors in urban planning and the ways in which media objects affect urban politics and planning—by examining how a video on Bogotá’s car‐free Ciclovía program facilitated the adoption and implementation of a similar program in San Francisco. The analysis shows that media objects have the capacity to act as fulcrums in processes of leveraging urban policy change owing to their potential to alter urban governance structures. The article analyzes the digital storytelling and ‘eye‐opening’ practices through which the video enabled policy changes to be implemented in San Francisco, while also tracing the local and transnational actors, networks and agendas that were involved in the production and circulation of the video through digital archival research and multi‐sited fieldwork. In doing so, it shows the active role that media objects play in shaping urban policymaking processes and provides an example of a relational methodology for studying the digital materialities through which urban policy ideas increasingly circulate.     

Breaking With Neoliberalization by Restricting The Housing Market: Novel Urban Policies and the Case of Hamburg

Hamburg currently exemplifies the departure from a straightforward neoliberal urban track. The city's neoliberal path only moved into full swing in the first decade of the 2000s. During this period, urban development was primarily subject to property market mechanisms—with projects being granted to the highest bidder—prompting effects such as rapidly rising rents, deepened social segregation and increased property‐led displacement. Since 2009, however, the city's entrepreneurial urban policy encountered comprehensive resistance movements that eventually led to the rediscovery of a political will for a new housing policy and interventionist policy instruments. This article focuses on the turning point of neoliberal policies and examines the wider scope of the contemporary urban agenda in Hamburg. We first conceptualize potential limits of the neoliberal city in general and then discuss three momentous local policy experiments—the International Building Exhibition, promising ‘improvement without displacement'; the rediscovery of housing regulations through the ‘Social Preservation Statute'; and the ‘Alliance for Housing', aiming to tackle the housing shortage. We discuss these approaches as funding, regulation, and actor‐based approaches to limiting the neoliberal city.     

Demarcation of the core and periphery dichotomy: evidence from Turkey's shipyards for a paradoxical precarity model

Combining ethnographic inquiries with questionnaires, this article rectifies the dearth of systematic research on core employees in Turkey's shipyards. In doing so, it revises conventional associations of precarity with the peripheral jobs both exclusively and predominantly. In particular, we point to the rise of a peculiar model, ‘paradoxical precarity’, as the core jobs have become more identifiable with precarity than the rest. Paradoxical precarity has four distinguishable contours: (i) The masses of core employees lost their jobs to precarious workers. (ii) Even so, a substantial proportion of employees remain at the core. (iii) This, however, came at a cost: they became more dissatisfied than others with remuneration, job security, employee involvement and job intensity whilst frustrated with unions and (iv) paradoxical precarity has faced political and economic challenges but it is reproduced by a managerial short‐termism under competitive pressures to save on high skills thanks to an ever‐increasing number of graduates.     

Engineering Formality: Flyover and Skywalk Construction in Mumbai

This article investigates the engineering of elevated transport infrastructure in contemporary Mumbai. It argues that the conception, construction and implementation of flyovers and skywalks in Mumbai over the past 20 years has been part of elite efforts seeking to instil a more free‐flowing, predictable and regulated city. The techniques, routines, standards and visualizations comprising these engineering schemes have promised ways of reshaping the socio‐material configurations and everyday landscapes of Mumbai into a more knowable, functional and integrated realm. The article suggests that this can be understood analytically as a means of trying to establish and maintain ‘formal’ ideals, citizens and spaces in Mumbai against wider urban contexts perceived as increasingly ‘informal’. The article thus emphasizes the importance of exploring how the ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ are actively produced and imagined against each other through material practices and procedures, and the central role of urban engineering in attempts at reconfiguring the social and political dimensions of urban life.     

How Interspersion Affects Class Relations

Scholars have identified a new configuration of spatial inequality in several of the largest cities in the developing world. This configuration, which I label interspersion, is characterized by the general proximity of classed spaces, particularly ‘slums’ and ‘enclaves’. There is disagreement about how interspersion affects class relations. One side argues that it worsens class relations by foreclosing substantive class interaction; the other side maintains that it improves class relations by enabling greater class interaction. I argue that it is not the extent but the form of class interaction that matters. Interspersion worsens class relations by promoting categorically unequal interaction. It provides regular opportunities for the imposition of spatial boundaries on slum residents. Regular experiences of boundary imposition deepen their sense of discrimination. This argument is based on an ethnographic study of the relations between slum and enclave residents in Metro Manila.     

Financialization,Urban Governance and the Planning System: Utilizing ‘Development Viability’ as a Policy Narrative for the Liberalization of Ireland's Post‐Crash Planning System

Drawing upon the Irish case, this article explores the interaction between the financialized economy and the urban planning system. While considerable scholarship has examined the financialization of real estate, it remains unclear how planning systems are being repurposed to facilitate a finance‐led regime of urban growth or how the ‘real estate–financial complex’ seeks to enact planning policy transformations that support its interests. This article explores how such actors have advanced the concept of ‘financial viability of development’ as a means of influencing the post‐crisis re‐regulation of Irish planning policy. This group has argued that housing construction in post‐crash Ireland is unviable given the high development finance costs, onerous planning gain contributions and the lack of development certainty in the planning process. As such, housing construction has been at an all‐time‐low, leading to a new crisis in affordable housing provision. In response, a complicit state has further liberalized the planning system, introducing an array of policies that are evermore facilitative of development interests. Empirical findings, based on interviews with developers, lobbyists and planners, emphasize the importance of informal access to policymakers, the wielding of ‘expert knowledge’ and media management to co‐opt the state into adopting financial viability within planning policymaking.     

Where is Urban Politics?

We outline the rationale for reopening the issue of the spatiality of the ‘urban’ in urban politics. There is a long tradition of arguing about the distinctive political qualities of urban sites, practices and processes. Recent work often relies on spatial concepts or metaphors that anchor various political phenomena to cities while simultaneously putting the specificity of the urban itself in question. This symposium seeks to extend debates about the relationship between the urban and the political. Instead of asking ‘what is urban politics?’, seeking a definition of the urban as a starting point we begin by asking ‘where is urban politics?’. This question orients all of the contributions to this symposium, and it allows each to trace diverse political dimensions of urban life and living beyond the confines of ‘the city’ as classically conceived. The symposium engages with ‘the urban question’ through diverse settings and objects, including infrastructures, in‐between spaces, professional cultures, transnational and postcolonial spaces and spaces of sovereignty. Contributions draw on a range of intellectual perspectives, including geography, urban studies, political science and political theory, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, planning and environmental studies — indicating the range of intellectual traditions that can and do inform the investigation of the urban/political nexus.     

Playing with the Rules of the Game: Social Innovation for Urban Transformation

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.