Lisbon After the Crisis: From Credit‐fuelled Suburbanization to Tourist‐driven Gentrification

This article examines Lisbon's post‐crisis transition from a once dominant process of suburban expansion enabled by abundant credit to one of ongoing gentrification of its historic centre. In my research, I draw on quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the remarkable growth of the metropolitan area's population and dwelling stock until the global financial crisis—which affected the Portuguese economy in the course of a process of financialization that relied heavily on the housing industry—and the intensity of urban rehabilitation in subsequent years. However, there is evidence that the latter has not halted nor reduced the loss of long‐term residents in the historic centre, as tourists and other international gentrifiers occupy the upgraded dwelling stock amid an escalation of house prices and rents. The specific contribution of this research lies in the link that it establishes between Lisbon's ongoing process of inner‐city gentrification and the lack of suburban expansion after 2007. By showing that the credit crunch triggered a shift in the geographic location of real‐estate capital that materialized in a new urban development model, this research adds an empirical layer to the study of the spatial effects of the crisis and contributes to the literature on the subsequent restructuring of southern European housing markets.     

Anti‐Communism,The Growth Machine and the Remaking of Cold‐War‐Era Pittsburgh

This article develops a new perspective on urban growth machines through an analysis of the relationship between Pittsburgh's Renaissance and cold‐war‐era anti‐communism. In order to facilitate urban (re)development, growth machines foster a shared sense of metropolitan citizenship and a corresponding ideological belief that coalitions of business, government and other elite actors can renew regions for the collective good of their residents. During the early years of the cold war, anti‐communism was a key means by which growth machines could create this shared sense of metropolitan belonging. The members of Pittsburgh's widely celebrated growth coalition used anti‐communism to advance their interests in four key ways: (1) by encouraging residents to see the Renaissance as part of the larger struggle against communism; (2) by eliminating a deeply rooted radical political culture; (3) by, in the process, curtailing opposition to their effort to remake the region into a post‐industrial economy based on free capital mobility; and (4) by having it serve as a shared tactic and ideology that stitched together and legitimated capitalist development at all scales from the factory to the globe. Pittsburgh's Renaissance provides an important example of how growth machines not only produce space, but also citizenship and the conditions of political possibility.     

Jews,Arabs, Russians and Foreigners in an Israeli City: Ethnic Divisions and the Restructuring Economy of Tel Aviv, 1983–96

This article examines the role of urban economic restructuring in the emerging new ethnic division of labor in Tel Aviv, in the context of large waves of migration to and from the city. The occupational structures of four groups – veteran Jews, Israeli Arab citizens, new immigrants from the former USSR who are Israeli citizens, and non‐citizen foreign workers – are analyzed. Study of the evolution of polarized occupation and income levels in the city of Tel Aviv relative to the rest of Israel shows that both aspects of polarization widened in the city of Tel Aviv as the restructuring process advanced. The findings are discussed in view of the theoretical debates regarding polarization, professionalization and the emergence of a new urban ‘underclass’. The data are based on Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) censuses and labor force surveys. Cet article examine le rôle de la restructuration économique urbaine dans la nouvelle division ethnique du travail à Tel Aviv dans le contexte des grandes vagues de migration vers la cité et loin de la cité. Les structures professionnelles de quatre groupes – les vétérans juifs, les citoyens israéliens arabes, les nouveaux immigrants de l'ancienne URSS qui sont des citoyens israéliens, et les travailleurs étrangers qui ne sont pas des citoyens – sont analysées. Une étude de l'évolution de l'occupation et du niveau des revenus polarisés dans la ville de Tel Aviv par rapport au reste d'Israël montre que les deux aspects de la polarisation se sont agrandis dans la cité de Tel Aviv durant la progression du processus de restructuration. Les résultats sont discutés par rapport aux débats théoriques sur la polarisation, la professionnalisation et l'émergence d'une nouvelle ‘sous‐classe’ urbaine. Les données sont basées sur les recensements du Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) et sur des enquà tes sur les travailleurs.     

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.     

‘Eco’ For Whom? Envisioning Eco‐urbanism in the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin Eco‐city,China

Eco‐cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new‐build eco‐city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals to build a ‘harmonious society' in which environmental sustainability and social stability are mutually reinforcing. We critically analyse the case of the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin eco‐city to demonstrate that the eco‐city's ecologically modernizing visions of eco‐urbanism construct a protective environment for its residents that constrains broader consideration of social sustainability. Through analysis of the marketing and presentation of specific domestic and other spaces of the eco‐city, we examine the application of ecologically modernizing construction and technology to the design of the city. We argue that the eco‐city is discursively constructed as ecologically beneficial for its inhabitants rather than for the broader socio‐environmental landscape. Our analysis of residential spaces in Tianjin eco‐city introduces the question of what ‘eco’ means when considering the construction of eco‐urban environments for the city's residents.     

Remaking Shanghai: New Divisions in an Expanding Metropolis

This study of Shanghai analyzes the city's emerging patterns of residential settlement in 2010. Most previous research on China focused on central city patterns, but by 2010 urban development in major metropolitan areas was taking place predominantly in the suburbs. The analysis re‐examines and extends previous studies of the level of segregation by various key population characteristics, showing that the highest segregation is found in the suburban ring, where original villager residents are now joined by an influx of migrants from other regions and by intracity movers. We probe the sources of the segregation pattern in multivariate analyses at two scales—an innovative analysis at the level of individuals that shows how people's citizenship status, occupation and education affect the type of housing that they are able to live in, and jointly contribute to their location in the metropolitan area. We show that the patterns attributable to the market reform period mostly did not supplant the socialist urban structure, but rather used it as its foundation. Segregation today can be attributed less to current class inequality than to state policies in the distant and recent past that have determined when, where and for whom housing is built.     

Reassembling Lesseps Square,Rethinking Barcelona: A More‐than‐Human Approach

This article discusses the great paradox of the planning of public spaces in Barcelona. While for years the city's residents, politicians and experts have been steeped in democratizing, participatory discourses, the interminable controversies almost all the council's initiatives in the streets and squares of Barcelona have aroused are evidence of a clear short‐circuit. Somehow this participatory‐democratic consensus has run up against a collective discord which, in my view, indicates the incapacity of the current channels and mechanisms of citizen participation to truly give shape to a more democratic city, one which does not block dissent or stand in the way of the possible. I discuss this short‐circuit through a case study, the Lesseps Square controversy, including a methodological and epistemological debate which, in order to study how the square was reassembled in practice after the participatory remodeling process, puts forward an actor‐network‐theory‐inspired approach to the study of public space. I argue that Barcelona, a city whose public institutions are deeply committed to creating channels for residents to participate in public processes, is at the same time enacting a closure of its public spaces. My contention here is that the urban environment is already distributed (in Rancière's sense) before it is given over to participation, and that this prevents the emergence of a (more‐than‐human) demos that could redistribute public space by taking account of innumerable unrepresented parties.     

Urban Citizenship and Right to the City: The Fragmentation of Claims

In this symposium, we explore how urban citizenship is about expressing, if not producing, difference, and how fragmentation of claims affects urban citizenship and right to the city movements with their universal, all‐inclusive ideals. Investigating social movements, political participation and conflicting diversities in public space in Tel Aviv and Berlin, we see a trend towards a diversification of interests, a weakening of movements, and even a competition over rights and resources rather than a development of mutual support and solidarities among various groups on the pathway to a livable city. This tension, we argue, deserves attention. Radical urban scholarship and politics need to better understand the historical and place‐specific contexts that structure the formation of citizenship claims and the courses that citizenship struggles take. Celebrations of urban citizenship as a more contextualized, community oriented, and bottom‐up framework (in comparison to national citizenship) should therefore be complemented by a careful investigation of their fragmented and fragmenting practices.     

Urban Citizenship,the Right to the City and Politics of Disability in Istanbul

Since the late 1990s, the ‘urban citizenship’ literature has accentuated the burgeoning potential of the city as host to more democratic interpretations of citizenship. A more recent literature highlighted the ‘local trap’ in such assumptions, arguing that the local cannot exist outside of neoliberalization. This article examines some of the recent institutional transformations in Istanbul's local government and seeks to understand where these might be situated in this discussion. Three institutions dealing with disability are scrutinized with regard to their power dynamics, discourses and practices. The argument is that, although superficially such developments seem to represent some of the tendencies highlighted by the urban citizenship literature (in terms of their scale, timing and appeal to a group previously excluded from modern citizenship), deeper analysis shows that these often promote charity‐ rather than rights‐based approaches. This is because the push factors in the emergence of these institutions are not the urban struggles on the part of the disability community, but rather the ruling party's populism, the impact of supranational agencies and the demands of non‐disabled residents at district level. Each of the three institutions examined is shaped primarily by one factor, leading to differing degrees of charity‐ and rights‐based practices. Arguments concerning the prospects of more democratic interpretations of citizenship at local level need to consider experiences in diverse settings.     

From 'A Frontier Land' to 'A Piece of North Africa in Italy': The Changing Politics of 'Tunisianness' in Mazara del Vallo,Sicily

This article analyzes the conditions leading to the ‘ethnic packaging' of the Casbah neighborhood in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, and the economic and political struggles that ensued. By studying the changing relationship between the neighborhood's built environment, the racialization of Tunisian migrants and the town's transitioning economy, it analyzes transformations of the Casbah from a working‐class Sicilian neighborhood, to an ‘insanitary' Tunisian ghetto, to a showcase of the town's Mediterranean multiculturalism. Through this analysis, the article makes three arguments. Firstly, by showing that ‘ethnic packaging' does not always lead to gentrification but may engender other types of conflict, it argues that the ‘marketization' of urban diversity has a variety of consequences tied to cities' positions in broader geographies of uneven development. Secondly, by showing that the changing racialization of Tunisian migrants was produced both through changes to Mazara's built environment and through shifting territorial relations within Italy and across the Mediterranean, it develops a multi‐scalar analysis of racialization. Thirdly, by showing that Sicilian depictions of Tunisian migrants changed according to shifting understandings of Sicilian modernity vis‐à‐vis the north of Italy, it argues that Italian immigration discourses develop in relation to internal forms of ‘othering' of southern Italians.     

‘Street Music’, Urban Ethnography and Ghettoized Communities

Hip‐hop is a definitively urban movement, born in the crisis of the Fordist city and rooted in the 1970s street culture of poor and working‐class African Americans and Latinos in New York City. Engaging with the contributions of Beer and Lamotte, this essay addresses two questions. Firstly, can we understand hip‐hop as a politics of resistance, a social movement rooted in a claim on urban space and a practice of urban citizenship? And secondly, is hip hop, and particularly rap music, a form of urban and regional research? I argue that as a primarily artistic movement and black expressive culture (subject to commercial imperatives), hip‐hop has a layered and complex relationship with the social, political and spatial fabric of urban America. The complexity of this relationship renders problematic attempts to understand hip‐hop as urban ethnography or as a resistance politics. I conclude by discussing the potential of an engagement between hip‐hop and critical urban studies.     

Glorified Fantasies and Masterpieces of Deception on Importing Las Vegas into the ‘New South Africa’

With the end of apartheid, Johannesburg and other South African cities are now part of a new global race to become ‘world‐class’ tourist and business centers. At the center of this development is the importation of Vegas‐style spectacle by local entrepreneurs, firms and other city boosters who create fantasyscapes such as the Emperor's Palace and GrandWest. Financed and run by South African impresarios — whose luxurious empires transcend the continent — these resorts represent not only the globalization of gaming but the way in which South African cities see themselves within the worldwide urban hierarchy. As such, this article seeks to untangle the global and local aspects of importing fantasy into the ‘new South Africa’.     

City Children and Genderfied Neighbourhoods: The New Generation as Urban Regeneration Strategy

Former industrial cities in the West are employing gentrification as urban policy. In these policies, women and families currently play an important role as gentrification pioneers. In my analysis of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I propose the term genderfication to understand the gender dimensions of this process. Genderfication refers to the production of space for different gender relations. I analyse Rotterdam's urban planning program for becoming a ‘child‐friendly city’, which entails replacing existing urban dwellings with new, larger and more expensive ‘family‐friendly homes’ as a strategy for urban re‐generation. Urban re‐generation supplements regeneration in the form of material and economic restructuring, and refers to the replacement of part of the current population by a new and better suited generation. The ‘child‐friendly city program’ is considered in tandem with punitive ‘youth policies’.     

Embedded Enclaves: Cultural Mimicry and Urban Social Exclusion in Iran

This article argues that symbolic boundaries and their spatial manifestation into embedded enclaves have become new forms of urban social exclusion. Based on participant observation and interviews among lower‐ and middle‐/upper‐class residents in the city of Sari, Iran, the article analyzes how the poor's physical circulations in the city and their performances of class and status have led to an elite backlash, as the latter find more refined markers of social separation in an effort to bolster their own exclusivity. Social distancing through the denigration of the poor and the construction of embedded enclaves brings to the fore the class tensions that are temporarily masked by the urban poor's spatial practices and cultural mimicry. As an advanced form of codified status inequality, embedded enclaves rely on the poor's citywide circulations and on increasing inter‐class interactions in order to communicate difference. Embedded—rather than cordoned off—in prominent areas of the city, such enclaves function as a reminder to the poor of all they cannot have. The upsurge of such establishments in the wake of Iran's shifting economic environment represents an attempt to shore up social position and restore the status quo.     

Justifying Redevelopment ‘Failures' Within Urban ‘Success Stories': Dispute,Compromise, and a New Test of Urbanity

Large‐scale waterfront redevelopment projects, an urban development phenomenon that originated in the 1970s, are attractive to a growing suite of cities worldwide. But why? These mega‐projects are full of pitfalls, broken promises, cost overruns, disappointments and are often accused of promoting inequality. In this article, we consider the specific case of Melbourne's Docklands, which local popular opinion has roundly judged a failure despite the countervailing judgment of success in the revival of ‘liveability' of the adjacent Melbourne central business district. We use the Docklands case to illustrate the utility of a ‘critical pragmatic' framework of analysis to get behind dominant explanations of the demands of the urban growth machine and postmodern neoliberal capitalism. Without denying the existence of these dynamics, nor their hegemony, we nevertheless explicate how a critical pragmatic analysis can reveal the social dynamics driving the judgments and justifications offered by actors in urban redevelopment. A pragmatic analysis of these dynamics of argument and action at critical moments in the long process of an urban redevelopment can reveal new kinds of compromises and tests by which these projects are judged. In other words, what counts as failure and as success in the work of city building will shift, depending on what actors do and how they talk about it, and on how well these actions and justifications hold up to public challenges about the true character of a successful city. By gauging how these challenges are constituted and settled, we can better understand the evolution of the urban value proposition, and the new notion of justice grounded in urbanity that is emerging at the urban redevelopment frontier.     

Urban poverty and marginalization under market transition: the case of Chinese cities

Rapid urban growth in China has been accompanied by rising social inequality and marginalization of disadvantaged social groups such as laid‐off workers of the state‐owned enterprises and rural migrants. The Chinese government has officially acknowledged the existence of ‘marginal groups’ and prioritized combating the new urban poverty as an urgent task to eliminate the root of potential social instability. This article proposes the concept of ‘poverty of transition’ from the institutional change perspective to examine how the ‘new’ urban poverty is created by the disjuncture between the old and new institutions. Specifically, the poverty of transition suggests that the main cause of the new poverty is structural, i.e. economic restructuring and the release of redundant workers previously hidden inside the workplace, and the increasing migrant population who are excluded from the formal urban institutions. A sizable underclass is now under formation in the sense that they are institutionally detached from mainstream urban society. To close the disjuncture between the marketization of labourers and the transition in welfare provisions requires more than just a policy of poverty relief; instead it requires a fundamental vision of the new ‘citizenship’ in the Chinese city. En Chine, la rapide croissance urbaine s'est accompagnée d'une aggravation de l'inégalité sociale et d'une marginalisation des groupes sociaux défavorisés tels que les ex‐employés des entreprises nationalisées et les migrants ruraux. Le gouvernement a officiellement reconnu l'existence de ‘groupes marginaux’ et annoncé comme une priorité la lutte contre la nouvelle pauvreté urbaine afin d'éliminer cette source potentielle d'instabilité sociale. L'article propose le concept de ‘pauvreté de transition’ dans une perspective d'évolution institutionnelle, afin d'examiner comment la ‘nouvelle’ pauvreté urbaine naît de la rupture entre institutions anciennes et nouvelles. Notamment, ce concept suggère que la cause première de la nouvelle pauvreté est structurelle, autrement dit émane de la restructuration économique et du dégagement des ouvriers en surnombre précédemment dissimulés sur leur lieu de travail, ainsi que de la population migrante croissante, exclue des institutions urbaines officielles. Une classe inférieure considérable est en cours de formation au sens que ses membres sont isolés institutionnellement de la société urbaine normale. Combler cette rupture entre la marchandisation des ouvriers et la transition des mesures sociales exige, davantage qu'une simple politique publique d'aide aux pauvres, une vision fondamentale de la nouvelle ‘citoyenneté’ dans les villes chinoises.     

‘It is the People that Have Made Glen Innes’: State‐led Gentrification and the Reconfiguration of Urban Life in Auckland

Public or state housing has ordinarily been viewed as an impediment to the forces of gentrification, as private property owners or developers are limited in their ability to purchase, renovate or redevelop houses in otherwise desirable areas. As a result, neighbourhoods with significant proportions of state‐housing and low‐income residents have often been able to establish unique identity and character, sense of place and belonging and strong social support networks. This article examines changes underway in Glen Innes, a central suburb of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. Here, established norms around community and urban life are being rapidly and radically reworked through a wave of state‐led gentrification. We focus on experiences of displacement, the disruption of long‐established community forms, and the reconfiguration of urban life. Our particular contribution is to consider the speed and trauma of gentrification when the state is involved, the slippage between rhetoric and reality on the ground, and the challenges of researchers seeking to trace the impacts of gentrification in the lives of those who have been displaced.     

Be Berlin! Governing the City through Freedom

In this article, I examine how contemporary Berlin is governed, with a particular focus on the production of urban space. My points of reference are the term ‘government’ (as employed by Foucault) and the field of governmentality studies (where it is applied empirically). Based on a critical discourse and dispositive analysis of the city's current urban development policy, I propose that urban governance in Berlin may be analysed through the lens of three central dispositives: the dispositive of governing through citizenship; the dispositive of the creative city; and the dispositive of the social city. I discuss the characteristics of these dispositives of urban governance, drawing on a number of examples taken from the discipline of urban space production in order to look specifically at the aims and objectives of governance, its subjects and the ways it manifests itself. In conclusion, I suggest that the new forms of governance based on empowerment and cooperation have by no means replaced disciplinary technologies of governance, but are rather embedded within them.     

The Eurozone Crisis and Emerging‐Market Expansion: Capital Switching and the Uneven Geographies of Spanish Urbanization

The theory of capitalist urbanization posits that the built form serves as a crucial sink through which overaccumulated capital is ‘switched' from industrial production into long‐term investment in urban infrastructure. Since Harvey's (1978) deployment of the theory, researchers have attempted to empirically substantiate the switching thesis with limited success. Christophers (2011) revisited the debate with new data and methods to support the claim that significant investment had switched into the built environment at the onset of the 2007/08 financial crisis. However, Christophers' study overlooks how crises are also geographically displaced. This article analyses Spanish trade data for the years 1993 to 2013, the years prior and subsequent to the housing‐induced economic crisis (1997 to 2006). Two studies are undertaken. The first replicates Christophers' methodology to assess how and to what extent a sectoral switch into property investment occurred in Spain between 1997 and 2006. The second modifies the methodology to investigate the extent to which overaccumulated capital in Spain has been geographically displaced through investment in the Moroccan building industry since 2006. These approaches situate uneven development (geographical switching) and turnover time (sectoral switching) as the twin dynamics through which capitalist urbanization is spatio‐temporally fixed.     

Seeing Like a City‐State: Behavioural Planning and Governance in Egypt's First Affordable Gated Community

Haram City is Egypt's first ‘affordable’ gated community, hosting both aspirational middle‐class homeowners and resettled poor urban residents. Amidst legal ambiguity during Egypt's 2011–2013 revolutionary period, the management team of this public–private partnership was tasked with creating a ‘fully self‐sufficient’ city. While Haram City is the product of top‐down ‘seeing like a state’ master planning (Scott, 1998 ), the day‐to‐day resolution of class vulnerabilities and disputes over ‘reasonableness’ in city life requires forms of interpersonal adjudication otherwise addressed through local urban law—‘seeing like a city’ (Valverde, 2011 ). This article uses ethnography of management techniques aiming to ‘upgrade behaviour’ to theorize that a private entity, in a strategically indeterminate relationship with the state, reconciles future‐oriented planning and storied prejudices by merging two visions of governance. Imitating the repertoire of urban law, managers plan the very realm of bottom‐up decision making. They then adapt top‐down urban planning to bottom‐up dispute resolution to spatially consolidate the ‘consensual’ outcomes of a rigged game. Evoking both colonial Egyptian vagrancy laws and neoliberal paternalist welfare, ‘seeing like a city‐state’ governance amounts to authoritarianism that conceals itself within custom, appearing neutral so as to plan streets, codes and inner lives at once.