‘Generation Rent’ and The Fallacy of Choice

The now widely used term ‘Generation Rent’ reflects the growing phenomenon in the UK of young people living in the private rental sector for longer periods of their lives. Given the importance of leaving home in youth transitions to adulthood, this is a significant change. It is further critical given the rapid expansion of the private rented sector in the UK over recent decades and the more limited rights that private tenants have. This article draws on qualitative evidence to highlight the impact this has on young people's lives, and broader patterns of social‐spatial inequality. Our research highlights that, whilst young people retain long‐term preferences for homeownership, they nonetheless deconstruct this normalized ideal as a ‘fallacy of choice', given its unachievability in reality. Influenced by the work of Foucault, Bourdieu and Bauman, we emphasize how these dominant norms of housing consumption are in tension with objective reality, since young people's ability to become ‘responsible homeowners' is tempered by their material resources and the local housing opportunities available to them. Nonetheless, this does not exempt them from the ‘moral distinctions' being made, wherein renting is problematized and constructed as ‘flawed consumption'. These conceptual arguments advance international scholarly debates about the governance of consumption, offering a novel theoretical lens through which to examine the difficulties facing ‘Generation Rent’.     

Comparative Urbanism and the ‘Asian City': Implications for Research and Theory

While voices in the comparative urbanism literature call for researchers to approach comparison with more experimental and critical methodologies, there remains no consensus on how to design and realize these studies. This essay examines the implications of comparative urbanism for researching the ‘Asian City'. Given the critique of existing modes of comparison embedded in recent calls for a new comparative urbanism, researchers are faced with a number of pressing questions: How do we approach this ‘regional' topic in a way that both resists categorizing the ‘Asian City' as an exotic ‘other', elevating it onto a mythical pedestal, yet appreciates its differences, localisms and unique ‘cosmopolitan vernacular' (Clifford, 1997; Werbner and Modood, 1997)? This essay thus highlights the multiple challenges of applying the comparative lens to the ‘Asian City', arguing that broader conceptualizations of the ‘Asian City' help to address the dangers in isolating Asian research into its own canon of parochial urban theory and offering a greater diversity of possibilities for justifying case selection in comparative approaches. In doing so, we hope that this essay responds to the comparative turn by illuminating to some extent its inherent complexity and methodological challenges.     

From ‘spaces of place’ to ‘spaces of flows’? Territorial and functional governance in cross‐border regions in Europe and North America

To what extent are we experiencing a transformation from ‘spaces of place’ to a ‘space of flows’ as proposed by Manuel Castells? Applying his thesis to the political system leads to the following implications. Socio‐economic processes of ‘glocalization’ are undermining the gate‐keeper position of national governments. Furthermore, governance is becoming ‘deterritorialized’, an aspect which is characterized by Elkins as an ‘unbundling’ of identities and jurisdictions. But does this process of unbundling lead to a federal system of multi‐level governance where the national level is complemented by supranational and subnational levels of governance; or does it imply an even more radical transformation towards an architecture of governance which is characterized by a proliferation of single‐purpose governments with variable and flexible spatial scales? A final implication is the transformation from ‘government to governance’— which means a broader array of actors and changing modes of interaction. This article traces these theses by analysing institutions of governance in four cross‐border regions in Europe and North America. In all regions we indeed find many cross‐border networks and institutions undermining the national gate‐keeper position. In Europe, cross‐border collaboration is producing another soft, but institutionalized, comprehensive, stable and territorially‐defined layer in the European ‘multi‐level‐system’. In North America, by contrast, only informal, fluid, specific and non‐territorial institutions are evolving across national borders. Here, the territorially‐based nation state is not complemented by similar kinds of political institutions, but is instead being challenged more fundamentally by new kinds of institutions: transnational socio‐economic exchange networks and transnational ideological coalitions which embody enormous transformational power. In conclusion, cross‐border regional governance in Europe still follows the logic of ‘spaces of place’, whereas in North America quite different ‘spaces of flows’ are emerging as complementary logics of community and institution building. Jusqu'où s'exerce la transformation d'un ‘espace de lieux’ en ‘espace des flux’, comme le suggère Manuel Castells? L'application de cette théorie au système politique a plusieurs implications. Les processus socio‐économiques de ‘glocalisation’ désagrègent la position de garde‐barrière des gouvernements nationaux. De plus, la gouvernance se ‘déterritorialise’, phénomène qu'Elkins appelle la ‘séparation’ des identités et des domaines de compétence. Mais à quel type de gouvernance cette ‘séparation’ mène‐t‐elle: à un système fédéral à plusieurs niveaux où le plan national est complété de plans supra‐ et infra‐nationaux de gouvernance? ou à un changement plus radical vers une architecture caractérisée par une prolifération de gouvernements à finalité unique dont les échelles spatiales varient et s'adaptent? Une dernière conséquence est le passage de gouvernement à gouvernance, qui se traduit par une diversification des acteurs et de nouveaux modes d'interactions. L'article retrouve ces thèses en analysant des institutions de gouvernance dans quatre régions transfrontalières européennes et nord‐américaines. Dans toutes les régions, l'étude identifie en effet de nombreux réseaux et institutions transfrontaliers qui minent la position de garde‐barrière nationale. En Europe, la collaboration transfrontalière crée une strate souple, quoique institutionnalisée, étendue, stable et aux limites territoriales définies dans le ‘système européen à plusieurs niveaux’. En Amérique du Nord, en revanche, n'interviennent à travers les frontières que des institutions informelles, fluides, spécifiques et non‐territoriales; l'État‐nation lié au territoire n'est pas complété d'institutions politiques de types similaires, étant plutôt profondément mis en cause par des institutions d'un genre nouveau: réseaux d'échanges socio‐économiques et coalitions idéologiques transnationaux qui expriment une énorme dynamique de transformation. Pour conclure, la gouvernance régionale transfrontalière en Europe obéit encore à la logique des ‘espaces de lieux’ tandis qu'en Amérique du Nord, des ‘espaces de flux’ tout à fait différents apparaissent dans une logique complémentaire de construction de communautés et d'institutions.     

Renaissance Revisited: Singapore as a ‘Global City for the Arts’

Singapore is renowned as a global business and financial centre, an international hub of air and sea transport, and Asia's leading convention city. In the new millennium, the government has envisioned a new role for the city‐state as a ‘Renaissance City’ and ‘Global City for the Arts’. This vision is premised on Singapore becoming an investment base for leading arts, cultural and entertainment enterprises in the region, the theatre hub of Southeast Asia, and an entertainment destination for tourists. This article examines the challenges and accomplishments in Singapore's quest to be a Renaissance City. Drawing on literature on ‘global cities’ and concepts relating to ‘globalization’ and ‘localization’, it argues that the key challenge facing Singapore is how best to ‘go global’ and ‘stay local’ at the same time. Developing a Renaissance City entails a balancing act between globalizing local sensibilities on the one hand, while localizing global best‐practices on the other. This global‐local nexus can be approached in three ways: (1) by striking a balance between the economic and humanistic objectives of the arts; (2) by importing world‐class arts talents and exporting home‐grown skills; and (3) by globalizing local peculiarities in line with best practices from around the world. The need to balance global standards with local interests is not easily achieved, however, making Singapore's ‘Global City for the Arts’ vision one of its most ambitious goals to date. Singapour est célèbre en tant que centre mondial de la finance et des affaires, pivot du transport aéro‐maritime international, site de premier plan pour les salons en Asie. Avec le millénaire naissant, le gouvernement a envisagé une nouvelle fonction pour la cité‐État, celle de ‘Ville de la Renaissance’ et ‘Ville mondiale des Arts‘. Préalablement, Singapour doit devenir non seulement une base d'investissement pour les grands projets artistiques, culturels et de divertissement dans cette partie du monde, mais aussi le nud théâtral de l'Asie du Sud‐Est et une destination touristique de loisirs. L'article étudie les défis et réalisations qui jalonnent cette entreprise. Exploitant les documents traitant des ‘villes mondiales’ et des concepts liés à la ‘mondialisation’ et à la ‘localisation‘, il démontre que le grand problème auquel Singapour se heurte est de concilier simultanément les deux démarches ‘agir mondial‘ et ‘rester local‘. Développer une Ville de la Renaissance implique un équilibrage entre la mondialisation de sensibilités locales d'un côté, et la localisation des meilleures méthodes internationales de l'autre. On peut aborder ce lien mondial‐local de trois manières différentes: trouver un juste milieu entre les objectifs économiques et humanistes des arts; importer des talents artistiques de dimension mondiale et exporter les compétences nationales; mondialiser les particularités locales cohérentes avec les meilleures méthodes internationales existantes. Atteindre l'équilibre nécessaire entre normes mondiales et intérêts locaux est loin d'être aisé, ce qui fait de la vision de Singapour en ‘Ville mondiale des Arts‘ l'un des buts nationaux les plus ambitieux à ce jour.     

Social Control,Urban Planning and Ethno‐class Relations: Mizrahi Jews in Israel's ‘Development Towns’

Urban planning is usually portrayed as a benign and progressive societal force. This interpretation is critically examined through an evaluation of Israel's development town project. According to the ‘best’ planning concepts available during the 1950s, Israel built 28 new towns, mainly on the country's peripheral ‘frontiers’. New immigrants, chiefly low‐income Mizrahi Jews, were housed in the towns, which provided a cornerstone of Israel's national project of ‘Judaising’ the country. The evidence shows that the planning of the towns has had many regressive consequences: it reinforced and reproduced patterns of deprivation and inequality through the creation of segregated and low‐status Mizrahi ethnic spaces. In the longer term, this spawned continuing grievances and protest, fluctuating political orientation and the emergence of a low‐status Mizrahi ethno‐class. The case in hand casts doubt over the notion of planning solely as a progressive force, and highlights its potential to act as an instrument of control and domination in the hands of societal elites. In Israel, promotion of the ‘national imperative’ of settling the frontiers, the advent of ‘modern urban planning’, and later ‘corrective’ policies to close the centre‐periphery gap, all worked to obscure the regressive stratifying processes caused by the development town project. La planification urbaine est généralement vue comme une force sociale bégnine et progressive. Cette interprétation est examinée de facon critique avec une évaluation du projet de développement de la ville en Israël. Suivant les ‘meilleurs’ concepts de planification des années cinquante, Israël a construit 28 villes nouvelles, principalement sur les ‘frontières’ périphériques du pays. Les nouveaux immigrants, avant tout des juifs Mizrahi qui avaient des revenus bas, furent logés dans les villes, qui étaient au centre du projet national israélien de rendre le pays plus judaïque. L'évidence montre que la planification des villes a eu de nombreuses conséquences régressives: elle a renforcé et reproduit les modèles de privation et d'inégalité par la création d'espaces ethniques Mizrahi de bas standing et isolés. À long terme, cela a donné lieu à des protestations et des doléances continuelles, à une orientation politique changeante et à la naissance d'une ethno‐classe Mizrahi de statut peu élevé. Ce cas d'étude met en doute le fait que la notion de planification soit uniquement une force progressive, et illumine le fait qu'elle peut servir d'instrument de contröle et de domination pour les élites sociales. En Israël, la promotion de ‘l'impératif national’ de stabilisation des frontières, l'arrivée de la ‘planification moderne urbaine’ et la récente politique ‘corrective’ pour réduire la distance entre le centre et la périphérie, ont toutes contribuéà obscurcir les processus régressifs de stratification dus au projet de développement des villes.     

‘Down with Big Brother!’ The End of ‘Corporate Culturalism’?

Hugh Willmott's classic 1993 JMS article, ‘Strength is Ignorance; Freedom is Slavery’, has greatly influenced how we understand culture management. It draws parallel's with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty‐Four to reveal the totalitarian aspirations of ‘corporate culturalism’. While it is sometimes said that employee resistance is missing in Willmott's account, I argue that it is implicitly pervasive, prefiguring subsequent investigations of ‘micro‐emancipation’ in management studies. The recent waning of scholarly interest in this type of resistance, however, also points to the contemporary relevance of Willmott's analysis. Emergent forms of corporate regulation utilize ‘biopower’ rather than just cultural conformity, rendering micro‐emancipation inadequate, but inspiring other types of dissent.     

Epilogue—from ‘Gray Space' to Equal ‘Metrozenship'? Reflections On Urban Citizenship

This epilogue provides an overview and critique of the articles in this symposium, and an invitation to rethink, conceptually and empirically, our urban future. Using examples from cities in Israel/Palestine, it links the articles to the main currents in the literature on urban citizenship and ‘right to the city'. It draws attention to several voids in current debates, particularly around the rapid growth of urban informality and the changing nature of globalizing urban regimes. The epilogue introduces the notions of ‘gray spacing' to account for recent transformations in these regimes and the rise of ‘defensive urban citizenship' under conditions of neoliberal economy and persisting nationalism. It argues for the rethinking of the struggle for urban democracy in terms of ‘metrozenship' as a foundation for renewed critical research and political transformation.     

Post‐Childe,Post‐Wirth: Response to Smith,Ur and Feinman

This is a reply to a critique of Jane Jacobs' ‘cities first' thesis with respect to agricultural origins. The critique's basic premise is that the archaeological record regarding the development of agriculture precedes the earliest cities and therefore the thesis is empirically refuted. Accepting this archaeological record for agriculture, the dispute centres on the archaeological record for city origins. Substituting a process definition of cities—city‐ness—for a ‘thing' definition (e.g. monumentality), this reply opens up pre‐Mesopotamian possibilities for city networks while conceding the difficulty in empirically obtaining evidence in earlier periods. Thus Jacobs' thesis cannot be absolutely refuted, and an exciting agenda for urban research emerges for archaeologists and social scientists.     

Beyond the Urban–Suburban Divide: Urbanization and the Production of the Urban in Zurich North

Starting from current debates on ‘global suburbanism' and ‘postsuburbia', this article explores the changes that the former ‘urban periphery' of Zurich North has experienced in the last three decades. It mobilizes Henri Lefebvre's triadic concept of conceived, perceived and lived space in aid of an analysis of the profound urban transformations that can be observed. The construction of a new tramline serves as a guideline for an analysis of the implementation of new governance arrangements strengthening cross‐border cooperation between individual municipalities and new strategies of cooptation and expertise. This resulted in the production of new urban structures which led to a more densely woven and connected urban fabric primarily providing spaces for the headquarter economy and middle‐class housing. Concomitantly, great efforts have been made to create new public spaces, an urban image and even an urban atmosphere. These have proved at least partially successful, thus promoting a symbolic redefinition of the former urban periphery as a distinctively ‘urban' space. Conventional definitions and concepts no longer suffice to adequately understand such novel urban forms, leading to the conclusion that division into an ‘urban' and a ‘suburban' world is no longer a useful tool for urban analysis.     

‘Social Mixing' or ‘Gentrification'? Contradictory Perspectives on Urban Change in the Berlin District of Neukölln

In the past two decades, the Berlin district of Neukölln has received considerable attention from politicians, planners, urban scholars and the media. This article discusses the role that the academic concepts of ‘social mixing' and ‘gentrification' play in the overlapping and partly contradictory narratives that have been employed to interpret transformations in one particular part of the district, Nord‐Neukölln. While the area is still characterized as a place of poverty and decline, it has more recently come to be known as a ‘hip place to be' among young (creative) urbanites, students and artists. Various urban players such as politicians, planners, urban sociologists, activists, interest groups and the media participate in the construction of these narratives and, in the process, adopt the concepts of social mixing and gentrification according to their respective rationales and preferences. Both concepts play a pivotal role in justifying contradictory claims and interventions. As a consequence, ‘social mixing' and ‘gentrification' are more than just analytical concepts for interpreting urban transformations; they have themselves become part of these transformations and have an impact on local developments. We conclude that urban scholarship must reflect more on its own role and positioning in the arena of urban transformation.     

How Portugal Became an ‘Unplanned Country’: A Critique of Scholarship on Portuguese Urban Development and Planning

In this article, I seek to expose how scholars came to construct the idea that Portugal is an ‘unplanned country’— a product of disorderly growth. While urban scholarship has now challenged the hegemonic view of spatial order as a proxy for modernity, development and progress, Portuguese scholarship has remained largely impervious to these debates as it consistently offers a view of the Portuguese city as ‘not quite yet’ modern and civilized. Based on a review of accounts by key authors recognized for their prominence and contribution to contemporary Portuguese scholarship, I argue that rather than being a constitutive fact of or truth about the Portuguese urban condition, the ‘unplanned country’ operates as an intellectual and discursive construct that organizes the experience of modernity, urban growth and social transformation throughout the twentieth century. The article discusses how Portuguese scholarship constructs the ‘unplanned country’ idea through insufficient engagement with relevant research and debates in urban studies and is based on several empirical shortcomings. The article concludes by offering a preliminary research agenda to address these imbalances. I suggest that such efforts could enhance the relevance and contribution of the Portuguese urban experience to recent calls for epistemological renewal in urban theory production. Cet article explique comment les chercheurs ont bâti l'idée que le Portugal est un ‘pays sans planification’, le résultat d'une croissance confuse. La recherche urbaine a désormais bousculé la vision hégémonique de l'ordre spatial comme indicateur de modernité, de développement et de progrès, mais la plupart des auteurs portugais sont restés hermétiques à ces débats, puisqu'ils dépeignent systématiquement la ville portugaise comme ‘pas encore tout à fait’ moderne et civilisée. En analysant les travaux d'auteurs déterminants, reconnus pour leur importance et leur contribution à la recherche portugaise contemporaine, cette étude préconise que, loin d'être un fait constitutif ou une vérité pour la situation urbaine portugaise, le ‘pays sans planification’ agit comme une notion intellectuelle et rhétorique qui structure l'expérience de modernité, de croissance et de transformation sociale au cours du XX^e siècle. L'idée de ‘pays sans planification’ est née d'un manque d'implication dans la recherche et dans les débats pertinents en sciences urbaines, ainsi que de plusieurs erreurs empiriques à la base de certaines démonstrations. La conclusion propose un programme d'études préliminaires pour remédier à ces anomalies. Ces travaux pourraient renforcer l'intérêt et l'apport de l'expérience urbaine portugaise dans le cadre de récents appels à un renouveau épistémologique dans la production de théories urbaines.     

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.     

Regionalization as ‘experimental regionalism’: the rescaling of territorial policy‐making in Germany

The federal system of intergovernmental relationships in Germany was greatly affected in the 1990s by the increased importance of transnational rationales and by strong orientations to competitiveness in domestic political discourse. New territorial imperatives have given rise to a variety of innovative institutional approaches to policy‐making, the main focus of which is the need to jointly identify new political arenas and new territorial domains for development policies. The result has been a plurality of highly differentiated experimental approaches to regionalization, challenging nested systems of territorial jurisdictions and consolidated policy styles. German initiatives in ‘experimental regionalism’ are addressed in a perspective that highlights their dimension of institutional coevolution in the framework of emerging multi‐level governance practices at a European level: they are hence not only seen as responses to exogenous factors, but also as outcomes of endogenous factors of innovation and change, related to the need for new forms of political regulation in dealing with intergovernmental policy‐making deadlocks and new ‘local’ claims for representation and mobilization. Building on interpretations of regional governance based on a regulationist‐ and state‐theoretical perspective, elaborated in economic and political geography, recent German approaches to ‘experimental regionalism’ are interpreted as new modes of policy‐making that redefine the state's role in political‐economic regulation through a dual process involving a reframing of state‐local relationships and a rescaling of territorial policy arenas. En Allemagne, le système fédéral de relations inter‐gouvernements a énormément changé dans les années 1990 du fait de l'importance croissante de logiques transnationales et de tendances marquées pour la compétitivité dans le discours politique intérieur. De nouveaux impératifs territoriaux ont suscité un éventail d'approches institutionnelles novatrices du pouvoir politique, leur centre d'intérêt étant d'identifier parallèlement de nouvelles arènes politiques et d'autres domaines territoriaux pour les politiques de développement. Il en a résulté de multiples et très distinctes démarches expérimentales à l'égard de la régionalisation, venant défier systèmes imbriqués de prérogatives territoriales et styles de politique publique homogènes. Les initiatives allemandes de ‘régionalisme expérimental‘ sont abordées dans une perspective qui souligne leur co‐évolution institutionnelle au sein de pratiques naissantes de gouvernance à plusieurs niveaux au plan européen: elles sont donc considérées à la fois comme des réponses à des facteurs exogènes et le produit de facteurs endogènes d'innovation et de changement, liés à la nécessité de nouvelles formes de régulation politique pour résoudre les impasses de l'élaboration des politiques intergouvernementales et les nouvelles revendications ‘locales‘ en matière de représentation et mobilisation. Partant d'interprétations de la gouvernance régionale d'un point de vue théorique régulationiste et étatique, dans une géographie économique et politique, ces récentes approches du ‘régionalisme expérimental‘ sont présentées comme de nouveaux modes d'élaboration des politiques, redéfinissant le rôle de l'État dans une régulation politico‐économique via un double processus de recadrage des relations État‐région et de redimensionnement des arènes politiques territoriales.     

Dubai in the ‘Middle’

In the early 2000s, Dubai seemed the apotheosis of the global city model. Lauded as an embodiment of globalist ideals, or harshly criticized as a representation of the dangers of contemporary urbanism, it was clearly under the spotlight. Then, like the concept of the ‘global city’ itself, it disappeared from the headlines, to be subject only to sporadic and cynical attention. Today some are heralding a ‘return’ of Dubai from the anonymity of the middle ground of global city hierarchies and rankings. What is often forgotten, however, is that urbanism in Dubai did not stop. On the contrary, Dubai's continuous ‘worlding’ offers a productive opportunity for the encounter of ‘global’ and ‘ordinary’ modes of urban analysis. By unpacking the construction of a global Dubai, this article advocates greater sensitivity to the multiscalar politics that shape its continuity. Stepping beyond rumours of crisis and decline, it aims to connect the global fortunes and everyday processes that jointly characterize the development of global cities. ‘Global’ and ‘ordinary’ urbanism, it argues, are but two registers of how we could, in Warren Magnusson's words, ‘see like a city’.     

(Re)Reading the ‘Loft Living’Habitus in Montréal's Inner City

Over the past two decades, converted loft spaces have emerged as an important element of the North American inner-city landscape. Originating within the specific social and economic conditions of Manhattan's SoHo (South of Houston) District in the 1970s, lofts have come to exemplify a conjunction between culture and economy in the restructuring of the contemporary city. In the gentrification literature, however, the idea of ‘culture’ and its role in urban change remains weakly conceptualized as ‘arts-related investment’ and ‘heritage preservation’. In this paper I untangle this relationship and realign the cultural with socio-spatial practice to examine the production of a loft landscape in inner-city Montréal. This case study illustrates the weak role played by capital accumulation strategies in the production of this landscape in Montréal and highlights the importance of a North-America-wide cultural construction of the SoHo loft and its reproduction in other cities. I argue that the media serves as a site and agent in the re-coding of inner city industrial landscapes by repeatedly representing lofts as the ‘authentic’ domain of the avant-garde. In the case of Montréal, the reconstruction of a loft landscape further depends on local cultural forms that map and translate the loft lifestyle and aesthetic in the local material environment and build relationships between local conditions and identities, and SoHo. Finally, drawing on interviews with Montréal loft tenants, I illustrate how inner-city identities are constructed through socio-spatial practices. Durant les deux dernières décennies, les espaces de lofts aménagés sont devenus un élément important du paysage des centres-villes d'Amérique du Nord. Ayant leur origine dans les conditions économiques et sociales spécifiques au district de SoHo à Manhattan (au Sud de Houston) dans les années 1970, les lofts en sont venus à exemplifier une conjonction entre la culture et l'économie dans la restructuration de la ville contemporaine. Cependant, dans la littérature sur l'embourgeoisement, l'idée de ‘culture’ et son rôle dans le changement urbain ne sont que peu théorisés en tant que ‘investissement qui se rapporte aux arts’ et ‘préservation du patrimoine’. Dans cet article, j'éclaircis ce rapport et réaligne le cultural à la pratique socio-spatiale afin d'examiner la production d'un paysage de lofts dans le centre de la ville de Montréal. Ce cas d'étude illustre le rôle minime des stratégies d'accumulation du capital dans la production de ce paysage à Montréal et souligne l'importance d'une construction culturelle du loft de SoHo, connue dans toute l'Amérique du Nord, et de sa reproduction dans d'autres villes. Je soutiens que les médias servent de lieu et d'agent de recodification des paysages industriels des centres-villes en représentant régulièrement les lofts comme le domaine ‘authentique’ de l'avant-garde. Dans le cas de Montréal, la reconstruction d'un paysage de lofts dépend aussi des formes culturelles locales qui tracent et traduisent le mode de vie et l'esthétique du loft dans l'environnement matériel local et qui construisent des rapports entre les conditions et identités locales et SoHo. Finalement, me basant sur des entrevues avec des occupants de loft à Montréal, je montre comment les identités du centre-ville sont construites par les pratiques socio-spatiales.     

Beyond the Global City Concept and the Myth of ‘Command and Control’

The article argues that the lack of convincing empirical evidence for the global economy as being subject to ‘command and control’ results from that contention being a neo‐Marxist myth. First, imagining the global economy as being subject to ‘highly concentrated command’ through the function of some major cities as ‘strategic sites’ for the production of ‘command and control’ is traced back through several neo‐Marxist authors to narrate its genesis, and to argue that the lack of evidence for that proposition is a consequence of those antecedents envisioning capitalism as a totalizing structure, thus making the assumption that it is subject to control and coordination from a distance. Second, Taylor's interlocking world city network model is forensically examined to explain that it is fallacious because it is a structuralism that, bedevilled by a sorites paradox, contains the further problem of containing no credible evidence for the existence of ‘command centres’. Finally, the article moves beyond neo‐Marxism's key concepts by juxtaposing their assumptions with ethnographic results from social studies of finance, a manoeuvre which forges an understanding of cities as socio‐technical assemblages and eventful multiplicities, beyond, inter alia, the baseless assumption that the global economy is subject to ‘command and control’.     

Avoiding the ‘SoHo Effect’ in Baltimore: Neighborhood Revitalization and Arts and Entertainment Districts

This article investigates how state‐sponsored ‘arts and cultural districts' and ‘creative placemaking' revitalization strategies affect urban neighborhoods, using the Station North Arts & Entertainment (A&E) District in Baltimore, Maryland (USA) as a case study. Through ethnographic participatory methods and 39 qualitative interviews, we studied the activities and attitudes of various stakeholders within Station North. Since its designation as an arts and entertainment district in 2002, a number of public–private partnerships have helped increase home values in Station North, suggesting that the ‘branding' of Station North has been successful. While the institutions involved in the district, including community development corporations and local universities, are careful to insist that they do not want to displace low‐income residents, many interviewees expressed concerns that these institutions exert influence outweighing that of longtime residents. While a certain level of gentrification has occurred with the arrival of new residents, we argue that the people who are most likely to be displaced from the arts and entertainment district in the future are, paradoxically, artists, especially those who wish to buy homes and settle in the district. After discussing the case of Station North, we consider broader implications of the use of arts for urban revitalization.     

City of talents? Berlin's regional economy,socio‐spatial fabric and ‘worst practice’ urban governance

Berlin's reinstatement as the capital of Germany has raised great expectations of its transformation into a major economic centre of the European urban system. However, the city has not been able to fulfil these expectations. Today, Berlin is being hit by a financial crisis with dramatic consequences for the city's future development prospects. This article outlines the main outcomes of Berlin's socio‐economic restructuring in the 1990s: a tremendous loss of jobs in traditional industries has contributed to rising unemployment and the spread of urban poverty. The city has been a prime playground for speculative real estate investment, which has left behind a huge amount of unoccupied office space. On the other hand, new islands of economic growth have been developing in Berlin, particularly in knowledge‐intensive economic activities and the media industry. This development is related to the city's functioning as a highly attractive living place for the ‘creative class’ in Germany. At the same time, the city is an outstanding example of ‘worst practice’ urban governance, which has led to a financial crisis with truly catastrophic effects. The current financial consolidation policy may damage the prospects of Berlin's few growth sectors in the field of knowledge‐intensive economic activities. Le rétablissement de Berlin en capitale de l'Allemagne a suscité d'énormes attentes quant à sa transformation en centre économique majeur du réseau urbain européen, espoirs qui se sont révélés vains. Aujourd'hui, Berlin est frappée par une crise financière aux conséquences dramatiques pour les perspectives de développement de la ville. Cet article présente les principaux aboutissements de la restructuration socio‐économique de la capitale dans les années 1990: une terrible déperdition d'emplois dans les industries traditionnelles a nourri une progression du chômage et de la pauvreté urbaine; devenue terrain de jeu privilégié des spéculateurs immobiliers, la ville compte désormais une multitude d'espaces de bureaux inoccupés. En revanche, ont éclos des îlots de croissance économique, notamment dans les médias et les domaines où le savoir est important. Cette évolution tient au fonctionnement de la capitale comme lieu de vie particulièrement attrayant pour les ‘créatifs’ en Allemagne. Parallèlement, la ville constitue un remarquable cas de ‘pire pratique’ de gouvernance urbaine ayant amené une crise financière aux effets réellement catastrophiques; pour finir, la politique de consolidation financière actuelle va peut‐être entraver l'avenir des rares secteurs berlinois en expansion dans les sphères d'activités économiques demandeuses de savoir.