Decentralizing Indonesian City Spaces as New ‘Centers’

Since the introduction of regional autonomy legislation in 1999, Indonesia has embarked on the world's biggest experiment with democratic decentralization. The intertwined processes of democratization and decentralization have dismantled Indonesia's centralized authoritarian system and reordered its governmental structures. These conjoined processes have set in motion conditions for the transformation of a number of Indonesia's secondary cities into regional ‘centers’ through the influx of new peoples, funding and ways of interacting within localized contexts and with the outside world. In this article I consider Indonesia's decentralization processes through the lens of the city, focusing on three key areas in the rising profile and development of urban centers. First, I look at the framing of Indonesian cities within contemporary urban discourses to highlight the array of urban spaces that coexist in the era of decentralization. Second, I describe how Indonesia's decentralization laws have structurally privileged cities by bypassing the provincial level and devolving most state powers directly to sub‐provincial administrations. Third, I explore how Indonesian cities compete and cooperate over limited state resources under the decentralized system and why some cities have been able to reinvent themselves as new centers in planning, practice and innovation, and why others continue to lag behind.     

The Euro System as a Laboratory for Neoliberalism: The Case of Spain

Since the 1970s, neoliberalism has evolved from ideology to political agenda, from political program to public policy, and from public policy to a system that replaces democratic control over economic policy with a system of elite economic management. This process of change has been possible due to the endorsement of a meta‐political theory that destroys democracy and legitimizes technocratic despotism, financial deregulation, the debasement of labor into a new proletariat, and the purging of constitutional politics. In this article, we analyze this profound transformation of social and legal relations in the “euro system” and, specifically, in the regressive policies that have emerged from the “crisis” in Spain, a peripheral country of the European Union. The problems in contemporary Europe are a direct consequence of the neoliberal version of European economic unity. Their solution will depend on the capacity of the member states to create a social Europe that strengthens institutional democracy and develops universal systems of social protection. This, in turn, will depend on the ability of citizens to remodel state institutions in accordance with new social goals that place life at the center.     

China's Emergent City‐Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State‐orchestrated Rescaling

This article examines the emergence of city‐region governance as a specific state spatial selectivity in post‐reform China. The process has been driven by the state in response to the crisis of economic decentralization, and to vicious inter‐city competition and uncoordinated development. As part of the recentralization of state power, the development of urban clusters (chengshiqun) as interconnected city‐regions is now a salient feature of ‘new urbanization' policy. I argue in this article that the Chinese city‐region corresponds to specific logics of scale production. Economic globalization has led to the development of local economies and further created the need to foster ‘regional competitiveness'. To cope with regulatory deficit at the regional level, three mechanisms have been orchestrated by the state: administrative annexation, spatial plan preparation and regional institution building, which reflect recent upscaling in post‐reform governance.     

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco,Mexico City

This article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach that is now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone of Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of ‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and then classifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land‐use regularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’ spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so‐called ‘green’ conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now an important part of enacting land‐use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneer through which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study of an irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the production and regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. The research explores how planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ help to create fragmented but ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land‐use regularization. The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that, among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.     

Post‐Reunification Restructuring and Corporate Re‐bundling in the Bitterfeld‐Wolfen Chemical Industry,East Germany

While earlier research has shown that regional restructuring after reunification has led to broad de‐industrialization processes in eastern Germany's chemical industry, this article focuses on how re‐bundling processes at the corporate level have stimulated adjustments to the changing economic and political environment leading to a renewed regional development trajectory. The analysis is based on a conceptualization that assesses diachronic processes of rupture and re‐bundling by applying a bottom‐up perspective of how corporate adjustments and restructuring processes generate re‐bundling types that manifest themselves in broader regional re‐bundling scenarios. The empirical analysis focuses on a qualitative case study of Bitterfeld‐Wolfen, the eastern region with the largest chemical industry. The research provides evidence that, although new firm formation has remained weak and acquisitions of chemical multinationals have generated structures only tenuously embedded in the regional economy, modernization and re‐bundling process have contributed to a renewed, smaller yet stable, regional chemical industry. The analysis further shows that the associated processes depended on the roles of individual industrial leaders in the region, who acted as network builders, mobilized joint action and stimulated the development of a collective regional spirit.     

Désurbanisation et développement régional au Viet Nam (1955-77)

Hyper-urbanization has been used in South Vietnam (1960-74) as a strategic weapon to dominate and enslave the country. Since liberation in April 1975, the government has undertaken gradual but large-scale de-urbanization to create favourable conditions for development based on a policy of regional industrialization in support of agriculture. The experience of North Vietnam (1954-75) has proved that it is possible to speed up industrialization and modernization in a poor country without precipitating an exodus from the countryside or huge urban concentrations. However, this policy of decentralized development has its own contradictions.     

Questioning the use of ‘local democracy’ as a discursive strategy for political mobilization in Los Angeles,Montreal and Toronto

Between 1997 and 2002, homeowners in various parts of Los Angeles sought to secede from the City. At the same time, in Toronto, the province of Ontario forced the amalgamation of six municipalities forming a new megacity of 2.4 million. Residents mobilized for several months. In 2000, the province of Quebec forced the merger of 28 local municipalities in Montreal, forming a new city of 1.8 million. Angst came mostly from suburban Anglophone municipalities, where it was felt mergers would affect linguistic privileges. In the three cases, but stemming from different positions on the Left‐Right political spectrum, social actors claimed more local autonomy ‘in the name of local democracy’. Comparing these cases where institutional reforms and claims for local autonomy captured the political agenda, the article asks whether the use of ‘local democracy’ as a legitimizing tool for territorial claims may point to the emergence of a new generalized discursive strategy. Comparing variations in interpretations, and locating them in their respective local political cultures and in relation to the political positioning of claiming groups, highlights the processes by which socio‐political movements mobilize residents to their cause while avoiding accusations of NIMBYism. In the end, the article questions the moral tone attached to the expression ‘local democracy’.     

Urban Waterscapes: The Hydro‐Politics of Flooding in a Sinking City

The threat of flooding in cities is often compounded by political and economic decisions made on watershed management, land development and water infrastructure and provisioning. It has also become a point of conflict between cities’ objectives for development and modernization, and the struggles of marginalized residents living in low‐lying coastal and riverine areas to remain in place. Flooding takes on different forms depending on one's point of view. It is a biophysical issue, involving geology, geography, meteorology and ecology. It is one of urban governance, involving planning and maintenance of infrastructure and land use. And it is sociopolitical, involving historical social and spatial marginalization and contestation. This article, based on mixed‐methods research in Jakarta, Indonesia, traces the conceptual and physical contours of urban waterscapes across these conflicting ideas and narratives. It brings into dialogue theories of urban political ecology, landscape ecology and environmental ethnography to explore the interrelationships between biophysical and sociopolitical factors behind urban flooding. In the article the focus is on the varying materialities and scales involved, including the ecological scales of the watershed, the infrastructural scales associated with flood protection, and the urban scales of planning, governance and social activism. The article concludes with a proposition for a multidimensional approach to thinking and acting on problems of urban ecological change.     

北京市构建区域创新体系的综合战略研究

本文通过分析北京市区域创新体系建设的服务体系和创新环境,识别了创新体制、创新资源和创新体系建设等方面的问题,提出从创新资源综合配置平台建设、创新主体建设以及创新环境建设三个方面构建北京市区域创新体系建设的综合战略。     

Statehood,democracy and preindustrial development

This paper proposes a growth model linking state history to economic development. It considers three state systems: non-statehood, authoritarian statehood, and democratic statehood. These differ in the way a public good is provided, which in turn determines growth rates. Under certain assumptions, democratic states grow faster than authoritarian ones, which in turn grow faster than non-states. All societies start with non-statehood and transition into authoritarian statehood at some point, but the timing is random. When later given the opportunity, only those societies that transitioned relatively recently to authoritarian statehood transition to democracy. When they do, they begin to grow faster, eventually overtaking older and still authoritarian states. This generates an inversely U-shaped cross-sectional relationship between development and state history consistent with modern cross-country data.     

国际化大都市背景下推进教育创新的措施研究——以西安市为例

教育是创造知识经济的必要途径,是国际化大都市发展的内在支撑因素。本文以西安市为例,通过分析教育机制的现状,提出深化教育改革、加快教育发展需要从创新教育理念和推进教育结构调整两方面着手,而教育创新则应以教育信息化带动教育现代化建设、完善职业教育、构建终身教育体系等措施来保障实现。     

The wisdom of demagogues: institutions,corruption and support for authoritarian populists

This article analyses the drivers of support for authoritarian populist parties in Europe. Such parties claim to represent the interests of ordinary people against greedy and out‐of‐touch elites. Simultaneously, they reject conventional constraints on democratic policymaking. In recent years, such parties on the political left and right have been gaining influence in countries across Europe. Using a panel data set from 1980–2016, we use semiparametric Tobit models with country fixed effects to explain support for authoritarian populists. We find that large vote shares of right‐wing – but not left‐wing – authoritarian populists are associated closely to corruption. Other commonly cited explanations such as unemployment, inequality and immigration perform poorly in predicting support for populist political platforms on the political right. While a full theoretical explanation of the link between corruption and right‐wing populism remains beyond the scope of this article, we suggest that the mechanism involves political trust. Corruption weakens trust in political institutions, which populists exploit. Curbing the rise of right‐wing authoritarian populism in Europe will thus require restoring trust in the integrity of politics.     

‘Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Lower Your Carbon Footprint!’ — Urban Laboratories and the Governance of Low‐Carbon Futures

The increasing threat of climate change has created a pressing need for cities to lower their carbon footprints. Urban laboratories are emerging in numerous cities around the world as a strategy for local governments to partner with public and private property owners to reduce carbon emissions, while simultaneously stimulating economic growth. In this article, we use insights from laboratory studies to analyse the notion of urban laboratories as they relate to experimental governance, the carbonization agenda and the transition to low‐carbon economies. We present a case study of the Oxford Road corridor in Manchester in the UK that is emerging as a low‐carbon urban laboratory, with important policy implications for the city's future. The corridor is a bounded space where a public‐private partnership comprised of the City Council, two universities and other large property owners is redeveloping the physical infrastructure and installing monitoring equipment to create a recursive feedback loop intended to facilitate adaptive learning. This low‐carbon urban laboratory represents a classic sustainable development formula for coupling environmental protection with economic growth, using innovation and partnership as principal drivers. However, it also has significant implications in reworking the interplay of knowledge production and local governance, while reinforcing spatial differentiation and uneven participation in urban development.     

From Territorial Cohesion to Regional Spatial Justice: The Well-Being of Future Generations Act in Wales

The European Union's flagship Cohesion Policy faces evidence of dubious economic effectiveness and growing political and philosophical critiques of the very ideals of furthering European integration. This article examines ambitions for territorial cohesion as they have been operationalized through regional development in Wales. We argue that a potential alternative to the failed realization of territorial cohesion lies in the principles of spatial justice. While territorial cohesion has typically emphasized the redistribution of funds to ‘lagging’ regions, spatial justice, as we define it, is premised upon enabling regions to assert their own capacity to act and pursue positive visions of regional futures, consider the implications of space and scale for the achievement of justice, and define well-being, development and the ‘good life’ in ways that reflect regional priorities. We examine three ways in which recent political discourses and policy mechanisms in Wales resonate with these ideals. We focus on attempts to envision a progressive Welsh future, develop alternative spaces and scales of governance, and redefine and pluralize understandings of progress and well-being. The article concludes by reflecting on the practical and conceptual implications of rescaling spatial justice to regional contexts.     

Identification and Estimation of Club Convergence Models with Spatial Dependence

This article deals with heterogeneity and spatial dependence in economic growth analysis by developing a two‐stage strategy that identifies clubs by a mapping analysis and estimates a club convergence model with spatial dependence. Since estimation of this class of convergence models in the presence of regional heterogeneity poses both identification and collinearity problems, we develop an entropy‐based estimation procedure that simultaneously takes account of ill‐posed and ill‐conditioned inference problems. The two‐step strategy is applied to assess the existence of club convergence and to estimate a two‐club spatial convergence model across Italian regions over the period 1970 to 2000.     

Collective memories,propaganda and authoritarian political support

Can experience with democracy affect political support for a dictator? We develop a political economy model with endogenous reference points, where a dictator strategically reactivates traumatic collective memories about a past experience with democracy, to convince the population that a democratic alternative is inferior to the autocratic status quo. We find that a more traumatic experience with democracy in the past renders propaganda more efficient and increases the level of authoritarian political support per unit of memory recollection. We support these findings with panel data evidence from 103 countries.     

From Frontier to Bridgehead: Cross‐border Regions and the Experience of Yunnan,China

Drawing on recent theoretical tenets regarding cross‐border regions, this article analyzes China's state spatial policies that aim to transform Yunnan from a peripheral frontier into an economic bridgehead. The purposes of the present study are threefold: to contextualize the formation of Yunnan as China's frontier; to examine why Yunnan has been strategically selected as a bridgehead to promote China's transnational economies; and to explore the central–provincial alliance as an innovative institutional arrangement and look at how this alliance can convert Yunnan into a space of exception or new state space of development. This study finds that in order to convert regional assets into real competitiveness, the Chinese state (national, provincial and local) emphasizes transnational cooperation, endeavors to maximize Yunnan's place‐specific locational advantages and promotes the differentiation of regional developmental trajectories across China's national territory. The article contributes to studies of institutional arrangements for cross‐border cooperation in a non‐Western context and sheds light on China's regional development policies in its hinterland.     

Thermal Eco‐cities: Green Building and Urban Thermal Metabolism

Eco‐city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the globe and are often marketed as ‘new’ urban environments focused on achieving sustainable urban living while promoting environmental–economic transitions towards a low‐carbon technological and industrial base. The article argues for the need to consider the thermal aspects of urban metabolism, while at the same time focusing on the link between individual buildings and eco‐city master plans and wider economic development strategies at a state level. In so doing, the article encourages critical analysis of eco‐city design and planning, while keeping a focus on the role of specific building structures within eco‐cities as examples of the intermeshing of what can be termed a ‘political ecology of scale’ which stretches from specific buildings' climatic characteristics, to the metabolic master plan for eco‐cities, to provincial, regional and state‐level plans for the integration of eco‐cities within wider economic and political development trajectories. The article focuses on Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, an eco‐city under construction at the time of writing.