The Urban Unbound: London's Politics and the 2012 Olympic Games

Global events such as London's 2012 Olympic Games raise questions about the ways in which embedded political arrangements take their shape from relationships that stretch across and beyond urban boundaries. In this article, the urban politics that we wish to capture is not one that is merely located in the city, but rather one that has to constantly take into account the mediated demands folded (as it were) into the urban arena. In the first part of the article, the corporate politics of an Olympic‐related urban regeneration are outlined and then considered, first as a staged setting for interaction, a kind of placeless political engagement, and then as a more embedded spatial politics that takes into account the leverage of networked groups acting within and beyond the city. Following that, we explore the politics of regeneration when campaign groups and alternative coalitions of interest raise their own political demands by drawing on references outside of their immediate urban area and attempt to steer political dialogue in ways that extend the reach of urban politics. The urban politics at stake in this context, we argue, appears to work more through topology than a series of mapped connections; through actors registering their presence in ways that often dissolve the tension between inside and outside rather than define it in terms of separate political spaces.     

Glocalizing protest: urban conflicts and the global social movements

The emergence of global social movements is essentially symbolized by the names of cities like Seattle, Genoa or Porto Alegre. This is not accidental, because groups stemming from various parts of the world need places to constitute themselves as movements. But the role of cities in representing great parts of the movements' consciousness also hints at the importance urban struggles have for global protests. The article examines the relationship between urban conflicts and global social movements. By looking for continuities and ruptures between former and current urban conflicts it points out the specificity of the latter: to politicize the contradictions of neoliberal restructuring; to challenge the discursive and institutional terrains of urban politics which were shaped in the 1990s, often with active participation of former movement actors; and, finally, to act simultaneously on various spatial scales. In the last part of the article some examples of ‘glocalized’ urban protests are presented and analysed, pointing out their ambiguities as well as the specific contribution they can make to the strategic orientation of the global social movements: to fight the destructive influences neoliberal globalization exerts on everyday life and, thereby, to develop alternative forms of societalization.     

From Occupation to Recuperation: Property,Politics and Provincialization in Contemporary Madrid

Recent debates have once again engaged with the substance and meaning of urban politics within our increasingly complex and startling contemporary landscapes. Yet these debates, while giving nods in the direction of feminist and postcolonial scholarship, largely work through traditional lenses of class, labor and the dynamic workings of neoliberal capitalism. In this article, I focus on spaces of difference and their engagement with the urban to demonstrate how politics ‘happens' in locations often left off the map of both scholarship and popular imaginaries, and, crucially, how those locations can, in fact, illuminate shifting political arrangements elided by other methodologies. By juxtaposing European okupa debates with postcolonial discussions of urban informality, I trace what I argue is a new iteration of squatting within a city both ravaged by edicts of neoliberal austerity and buoyed by the efflorescence of social movements and alternative political projects. I then explicate the role of property in constituting the urban within Spain, using the concept of ‘provincialization'. In doing so, I think relationally between systems of property and emergent forms of insurgency to argue that we are witnessing an anticipatory politics that fundamentally challenges hegemonic relationships between everyday citizens and regimes of property ownership.     

Governed Through Ghost Jurisdictions: Municipal Law,Inner Suburbs and Rooming Houses

This article examines the legal geography of municipal bylaws regulating rooming houses in the City of Toronto. Using a legal geography analysis of Toronto's rooming house licensing bylaw, I argue that this bylaw is a ghost jurisdiction that designates part of the city as illegal and has implications for governance of the inner suburbs. In so doing, I push the debate on legal geography forward by suggesting that we, as urban scholars, take the temporal seriously in our analysis of space. Drawing from semi‐structured interviews, archival data and participant observation, I analyse seemingly mundane legal mechanisms through the case study of suburban rooming houses. Overall, in this article I make three contributions. First, I demonstrate how a temporal analysis is important to legal geography inquiries of uneven regulation and spaces of poverty. Second, I suggest that studies of legal governance are integral for redefining suburban governance amidst socio‐economic decline in the inner suburbs. Third, I argue that studying urban legal mechanisms in the suburbs is essential for moving beyond downtown analytical frameworks and is needed to address how low‐income suburban tenants, a large majority of whom are racialized newcomers, are unevenly regulated and unfairly governed by local government.     

The Urban Question under Planetary Urbanization

In Le Droit à la Ville (1968), Lefebvre projects the urban trajectory of his day into the sci‐fi imaginary of Isaac Asimov's remarkable Foundation series, recognizing the germ of ‘Trantor’ in our midst, the planet of 40 billion inhabitants where urbanization has reached its absolute maximum; all 75 million square miles of Trantor's land surface are a single city. In La Révolution Urbaine (1970), Lefebvre had already begun hinting at a new reality, not only an urban society, but of planetary urbanization. Today, four decades on, Asimov's extraterrestrial universe seems closer to home than ever, and closer to Lefebvre's own terrestrial prognostications: planetary urbanization is creating a whole new spatial world (dis)order. But how shall we reclaim the shapeless, formless and boundless metropolis as a theoretical object and political object of the progressive struggle? If the arena of politics has no discernible form, what would be the form of these politics? What, exactly, are urban politics? This article tries to rethink theoretically the urban question and the question of urban politics in our era of planetary urbanization, working through the political role of the urban in the light of recent ‘Occupy’ mobilizations.     

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, making the claim that, through these processes, informality becomes translated into institutionalized city planning. Commoning is analysed through a comparative study that utilizes contingent features of urbanity and three modalities accommodating the informality–formality meshwork during urban change. The article contributes to research on urban transformations by integrating commons, informality dynamics and the constitution of state institutions. This focus is elaborated with reference to collective gardening practices in the context of two of the less studied European cities, Narva in Estonia and Tampere in Finland. The results of the study indicate that urban commoning takes place through delegating a public mandate and enacting uncertainty, two processes that informalize city government practices. Particular differences appeared in regard to the institutional porosity that enables unregulated spaces of collective gardening to be mobilized as part of urban politics. We argue that networked movements appear as an essential part of the urban logic of action producing meaningful connections in an informal–formal meshwork and bringing together multiple sites in the commoning process.     

Politics in the Informalizing Metropolis: Displacement,Resettlement and Unstable Negotiations in Uncivil Ahmedabad

This article documents the displacement of Baoris, an adivasi (indigenous) community living in the city of Ahmedabad, India, and their subsequent resettlement along the city's precarious urban–rural frontier. I argue that this process signals the informalization of rights and territories, representing a political regime of governing in the remaking of the contemporary Indian metropolis. Recent actions taken by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to evict Baoris from the inner city are situated within the entangled processes and politics of urban restructuring, liberalization and Hindu nationalism. The absence and erosion of democratic protections, however, has not precluded the possibility of political negotiations with the local agents of state and capital, and this article assesses the tactics that community residents have deployed in their bid to maintain claims to territory, labour and services. I end by tempering enthusiasm for the informalizing city as a site for realizing alternative forms of justice and possible democratization.     

Legal Technologies of Primitive Accumulation: Judicial Robbery and Dispossession‐by‐Restitution in Warsaw

Among the ‘extra‐economic means’ that facilitate primitive accumulation, or accumulation by dispossession, the law plays a prominent role. But works on neoliberal urban restructuring rarely engage with concrete legal technologies. Analysing judicial property restitution (‘reprivatization’) in Warsaw, this article grasps the machine of accumulation by dispossession at a moment of faltering and exposes the distinctive legal technologies behind its troubleshooting. It makes three contributions to critical urban studies. First, it demonstrates how judicial systems can steal political conflicts that obstruct the cycle of accumulation by dispossession. It thus introduces the notion of ‘judicial robbery’, a non‐legislated expropriation of common property through judicial engineering that simultaneously deprives the public of political agency. Second, it shows that seemingly neutral legal technicalities, usually sheltered from political debate, can become a key locus of urban politics. Third, it examines the agency, scope and spatial patterns of ‘dispossession by restitution’, the term I use for a locally specific form of accumulation by dispossession in Warsaw. Lastly, I raise the question of political struggle against primitive accumulation. Is the judicial robbery reversible? If we can reclaim property, can we also reclaim political conflicts that have been stolen by the law?     

Placing the Urban Village: A Spatial Perspective on the Development Process of Urban Villages in Contemporary China

The rapid urbanization of China since the mid‐1980s has led to the development of a new spatial category, the urban village (chengzhongcun). The dominant neoliberal urban development regime approaches urban villages as a social, spatial, economic and political problem, and as targets for aggressive redevelopment and eradication policies. In this article, I propose a spatial perspective that makes use of several theoretical ‘anchors' to analyze the influence of urban village spatiality on its development process and to explore alternatives to the dominant redevelopment model. I begin by examining the spatial conceptualization of the urban village as a non‐place, arguing that this spatial reading undergirds the redevelopment‐by‐demolition model and tends to obscure alternative conceptualizations. I then move on to propose three alternative readings of urban village space, examining it as an everyday space, a liminal space and a neighborhood. Combining these three readings with the ‘non‐place' conceptualization provides a nuanced understanding of urban villages' unique spatial attributes and social roles, by evoking spatial and social processes that take place in most urban villages across China. Taken together, these spatial readings challenge the social and spatial rigidity of dominant representations of urban villages and supply a much‐needed spatially based conceptual framework that can be used to develop new urban planning models.     

Reconceptualizing public and private in urban regime theory: governance in AIDS politics

Based on life-stories, in-depth interviews and informal conversations, this article focuses on the lived experiences of the inhabitants of a slum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first part of the article explores the political-economic context of deepening marginalization of the slum population in contemporary Argentina, paying special attention to the mutually reinforcing processes of massification of under- and unemployment, impoverishment and state retrenchment. The second part of the article analyses the impact of such increasing marginalization on the lived experiences of slum-dwellers in Villa Paraiso. In particular, it focuses on (a) the dominant antagonisms that divide the residents of this destitute neighbourhood; and (b) the feeling of social isolation and abandonment that pervades much of the reality of slum-dwellers. The article finds some experiential similarities between slum-dwellers in Argentina and residents of other enclaves of urban poverty in advanced societies. A partir d'histoires de vie, des entrevues en profondeur et des conversations informelles, cet article a pour objet les expériences vécues des habitants des taudis de Buenos-Aires en Argentine. La première partie de l'article explore le contexte socio-politique de marginalisation croissante des habitants des taudis dans l'Argentine contemporaine, attirant particulièrement l'attention sur les processus de massification, de sous-emploi et de chômage, d'appauvrissement et de retrait de l'état qui se renforcent mutuellement. La seconde partie de l'article analyse l'impact que cette marginalisation grandissante a sur l'expérience des habitants des taudis de Villa Paraiso. Il examine en particulier (a) les antagonismes dominants qui divisent les résidents de ce quartier sans ressources et (b) l'impression d'isolation sociale et d'abandonnement qui imprègne une bonne part de la réalité des habitants de taudis. L'article met en evidence certaines similarités entre les expériences des habitants de taudis en Argentine et les résidents d'autres enclaves de pauvreté urbaine dans les sociétés avancées.     

Relational Comparison and LGBTQ Activism in European Cities

This article examines the role of city twinning as a device for conducting transnational activism around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics. It focuses on the city of Leiden in the Netherlands, examining how the city's twinning links with the cities of Torun in Poland and Oxford in the UK have been used at different times as a device to mobilize transnational solidarities with LGBTQ people outside of the Netherlands. Drawing on qualitative semi‐structured interviews with LGBTQ activists in Leiden as part of a wider study of transnational LGBTQ activism in Europe, I seek to understand how twinning links are used to forge sustainable solidarities both across national boundaries and within Leiden. I suggest that relational comparisons about the status and treatment of sexual dissidents in Leiden and its twin cities are central to the production of these solidarities. While twinning has significant potential as a device for the production of sustainable transnational LGBTQ activism, I also suggest that it can be used to advance problematic geo‐temporalities about the relative ‘progressiveness’ or ‘backwardness’ of LGBTQ politics in specific cities.     

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.     

Scalar Narratives in Bilbao: A Cultural Politics of Scales Approach to the Study of Urban Policy

In this article I explore how theoretical metaphors about the contemporary rescaling of the capitalist economy are used by local policy actors to justify an entrepreneurial urban policy. I develop a new theoretical concept (scalar narrative), suggest an analytical approach (cultural politics of scales) and give evidence of a particular case (Bilbao). The article is structured in the following way. First, I briefly review the literature on politics of scales and contribute to the debate with an approach that incorporates elements from cultural political economy and interpretative policy analysis. Within this approach I mobilize the concept of ‘scalar narrative’ that has already been suggested in the literature but not fully explored. I then put this approach into practice with a particular case study, Bilbao, a city in the north of Spain, which has recently gone through extensive urban regeneration, where I describe the appropriation of three scalar narratives by the policymakers. To show this I draw from empirical work done in Bilbao that looks at statutory and strategic planning documents as well as urban marketing literature and interviews with key informants.     

SOCIALLY ENGAGED MUNICIPAL STATECRAFT IN URBAN CHINA? The Shenzhen Biennale as Situated Planning Experiment

In this article I build on scholarship that calls for attention to the interventionist role of the municipality in steering development beyond growth to introduce the situated planning experiment as a mechanism through which municipalities practice socially engaged statecraft. The situated planning experiment foregrounds place-based innovative planning practices that incorporate the participation of citizen intellectuals who act as advocates for marginalized groups in China. I frame the Shenzhen Urbanism\Architecture Biennale (UABB) as a situated planning experiment, tracing its influence on the municipality's shift in approach to planning for urban village redevelopment. I show how the UABB is leveraged as an instrument for the municipality to connect social and economic objectives in development and how it presents differentiated opportunities for migrant residents to make viable urban lives. The article offers one possibility for theorizing the changing relationship between municipal entrepreneurialism and urban planning and critically evaluates the potential for socially engaged municipal statecraft, considering the Xi regime's focus on people-oriented urbanization. It represents one way in which studies of municipal statecraft can consider the variegated logics and forms of emerging post-growth state programmes and politics.     

Debating the State in Private Housing Neighborhoods: The Governance of Homeowners' Associations in Urban Shanghai

This article examines the transformation of state power in urban China by investigating how the state governs a newly emerging type of neighborhood organization connected with housing privatization, the homeowners' association (HA). Based on a series of extensive field research visits in Shanghai from 2006 to 2012, it analyzes the contradictory rationales behind HA policies in Shanghai, and elaborates the debates between state actors and non‐state actors on the boundary of state intervention. It finds that the state in Shanghai has engaged multiple goals in its governance of the HAs: regularizing the real estate market, promoting self‐organization at the neighborhood level, and channeling homeowners' participation in urban politics. The neoliberal rationality of governing through subjects' autonomy and a tradition of the socialist discourse on party leadership co‐exist in the state's toolkit for governance. But the state's capacity to coordinate these different governing techniques varies across fields. I highlight the dilemma a non‐liberal state confronts in cultivating self‐organizing and self‐responsible individuals. This contrasts with some of the studies on ‘China's neoliberal state’, which argue that the bureaucratic system has been resilient in coping with the contradictions and imbalances inherent in neoliberalism.     

Contesting Sustainability: ‘SMART Growth’ and the Redevelopment of Austin's Eastside

The compatibility between an agenda for sustainable urban development and the neoliberal economic restructuring of urban space has been observed within cities in developed countries across the globe. From providing economic support to local ‘green’ industries to creating bike lanes, municipalities develop sustainability strategies that are designed to boost their competitive advantage. Moreover, municipalities are responding to demands from popular social movements and national governments that seek to reconfigure societal relationships with the natural environment in cities. Cities are increasingly understood not as part of the ecological crisis but as part of the solution, or as places where alternative patterns of sustainable consumption and new socially and ecologically responsible industries can be developed. Over the last decade in Austin, environmental sustainability has become an uncontested paradigm that has progressively shaped the city's urban space and policy. Two competing conceptualizations of the environment, so‐called ‘environmental’ and ‘just’ sustainability groups, are explored in this article. I demonstrate how the notion of environmental sustainability has been selectively incorporated into the hegemonic vision of Austin's strategic growth plan. I argue that the dominance of this conceptualization is best understood by asking what counts as the ‘environment’ for environmentalists, and understanding the unstated assumptions about the environment shared by the business community and environmentalists.     

The Trouble With Flag Wars: Rethinking Sexuality in Critical Urban Theory

Critical urban theory (CUT) provides intellectual support for a politics of the right to the city. However, CUT has rarely engaged with the rich scholarship on sexuality and the urban, much of which directly addresses questions of social justice. CUT has most often treated sexuality as an attribute, rather than a diffuse discourse of subject‐producing power intimately connected with race, class and gender. This article highlights two strands in contemporary queer studies––queer subjectless critique and queer temporality––that can enrich understandings of the key concepts of alienation, deprivation and resistance in the city. I illustrate the salience of queer thinking for CUT through a close reading of Flag Wars (2003), a documentary film recognized for its engagement with gentrification and the politics of difference in the United States. While the film ostensibly explores the problem of gay gentrification in a working‐class black neighborhood, a queer subjectless approach asks how discourses on sexuality produce residents at risk of displacement as deviant, immoral and queer––regardless of sexual orientation. I argue that recognizing the wide range of ways in which narratives about sexuality can deprive and alienate urban subjects could generate additional alternative bases for solidarity in the struggle for a just city.     

A Socio‐Technical Perspective To The Right To The City: Regularizing Electricity Access in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas

This article takes the contemporary transformation in electricity access in Rio de Janeiro's favelas as a starting point for a broader review of the relationship between the right to the city in informal settlements and the neoliberalization of the electricity service (introduction of full cost recovery and ‘the user pays' principle). It examines the socio‐technical process through which contractual customer relationships have been established or restored through regularization of the electricity service in two favelas, namely, the installation of meters and networks. I suggest that applying a science and technology study perspective to the right to the city helps explore both the materiality and the spatial dimension of power and politics and, in so doing, provides an insight into some of the forms of mediation that help reshape recognition, urban practices and the favela dwellers' position within such an essential service. Our analysis shows how the means of recognizing these city dwellers ‘by the network' are materially and symbolically reshaped by commercial processes. The question then is whether this right to the city, which is being reshaped by commercial processes, will be the source of new inequalities or new politicizations.     

Making ‘Global Sydney’: Spatial Imaginaries,Worlding and Strategic Plans

This article critically examines the expression of global spatial imaginaries in urban policy and planning. Following recent calls to understand how the global is ‘made up' in and through cities, we argue for the usefulness of Roy and Ong's concept of ‘worlding’. By analysing how strategic spatial plans envisage ‘Global Sydney’, the article reveals a constitutive spatial imaginary informed by the articulation of three interrelated elements: global city standards, comparative techniques and extra‐local policy models. Unpacking how cities are selectively worlded through spatial imaginaries, the article advances an approach to urban globality as actively cultivated and differentially produced.