Coastal Urban Planning in The ‘Green Republic’: Tourism Development and the Nature–Infrastructure Paradox in Costa Rica

This article examines coastal urban planning in Costa Rica vis‐à‐vis the country's values in the areas of sustainable tourism and community development, focusing on the city of Jacó. I argue that an anti‐urban tourism development strategy, swift coastal urban development and weak planning have nurtured a nature–infrastructure paradox: when people are brought closer to nature without proper urban and governmental infrastructure, this causes social and environmental damage. To assess this paradox and understand local perceptions of development, I analyzed lengthy semi‐structured interviews and survey responses in San José and Jacó in this study. Research methods also encompassed analysis of current tourism planning institutions and regulations, tourism media coverage and reports, real estate data, participant observation of planning and community meetings and activities, and observations of the built and natural environmental conditions in Jacó and its surroundings. The findings show jurisdictional fragmentation, regulatory weaknesses, complexity, poor coordination, slow action, and incoherent planning and development, leading to environmental degradation and socio‐spatial inequities. A more balanced approach to planning and development would seek to improve environmental health and socio‐spatial equity in tandem, by nurturing and advancing both nature and infrastructure development. Lessons from Jacó have global resonance, given the expansion of the worldwide tourism and second‐home/retirement‐housing industries, their recent concentration in urban coastal destinations of developing countries, and the fragility of these socio‐ecological systems.     

‘Stop Being a Tourist!’ New Dynamics of Urban Tourism in Berlin‐Kreuzberg

Berlin is witnessing a massive tourism boom, and parts of it can be described as ‘new urban tourism’, which shows a preference for off the beaten track areas and ‘authentic’ experiences of the city. This form of tourism seems especially salient in Kreuzberg. It is here that an openly articulated critique of tourism attracted national attention in 2011 and has not ceased to do so since. This article aims to better understand the conflictive potential of (new urban) tourism in Kreuzberg. We argue that the readily expressed negative attitudes against tourists and the easily accepted link between tourism and gentrification have to be explained against the backdrop of certain housing‐market dynamics. Rising rents and a diminution in the number of flats available for rent are fuelling fears of gentrification in Kreuzberg, while the interest shown in new urban tourism and the comparatively low‐priced real‐estate market in Berlin result in a growing number of holiday flats. Although adding only slightly to the tightening of the housing market, holiday flats render complex processes of neighborhood change visible and further sustain an already prevalent tourism critique.     

Understanding Urban Processes in Flint,Michigan: Approaching ‘Subaltern Urbanism’ Inductively

Ananya Roy introduces the concept ‘subaltern urbanism’ in her 2011 article ‘Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism’. She challenges researchers to move beyond existing epistemological and methodological limits, and offers four concepts which, taken together, serve as a useful starting point for understanding and representing subaltern urban space. In this article I argue that instead of a deductive approach that begins with an a priori identification of slums as subaltern urban space, an inductive approach of identifying subaltern urban space would expand the concept and show that subaltern urbanism exists in the global North. I present original research to show that Flint, Michigan, can be considered subaltern urban space. In the final section of the article I argue that this inductive approach to subaltern urbanism can foster comparative research across the North‐South divide, and generate the transfer of knowledge from South to North.     

Residents’ Responses to ‘Territorial Stigmatization’: Visual Research in Berlin

This article deals with the symbolic dimension of the transformation process in a post‐socialist large‐scale housing estate in Berlin after reunification. This reflection is based on the concept of ‘territorial stigmatization’ and I use a photographic method to analyse the representational strategies employed by residents to manage territorial stigma: identifying with depoliticized images of the past, exiting the estate and questioning the very principle of representation. The first two strategies seem to be different ways of internalizing dominant representations of place. The latter differs from the first two in its use of iconic means to challenge the current spatial order and its opening up of possibilities for emancipation. The article thus also shows how photography as a research method can reflect on existing power relations.     

Urban shrinkage in Germany and the USA: a comparison of transformation patterns and local strategies

Many American and European cities have to deal with demographic and economic trajectories leading to urban shrinkage. According to official data, 13% of urban regions in the US and 54% of those in the EU have lost population in recent years. However, the extent and spatial distribution of declining populations differ significantly between Europe and the US. In Germany, the situation is driven by falling birth rates and the effects of German reunification. In the US, shrinkage is basically related to long-term industrial transformation. But the challenges of shrinking cities seldom appeared on the agendas of politicians and urban planners until recently. This article provides a critical overview of the development paths and local strategies of four shrinking cities: Schwedt and Dresden in eastern Germany; Youngstown and Pittsburgh in the US. A typology of urban growth and shrinkage, from economic and demographic perspectives, enables four types of city to be differentiated and the differences between the US and eastern Germany to be discussed. The article suggests that a new transatlantic debate on policy and planning strategies for restructuring shrinking cities is needed to overcome the dominant growth orientation that in most cases intensifies the negative consequences of shrinkage.     

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.     

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

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

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.     

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

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

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

In the urban studies literature, urban politics is usually considered in two distinct locations: the city (often understood in quite conventional centralist ways) and the suburb (understood as spatially peripheral and politically at odds with the central city). At the metropolitan scale, the two types of urban politics are discussed in relation to one another. More recently, the metropolitan scale of urban politics has been expanded to regional dimensions. We pose the question of location of urban politics from a specific deficit in the geography of centre, suburb and metropolis. We argue that in today's regional political socio‐spatiality, politics will have to be found ‘in‐between’ the old lines of demarcation. Following Tom Sieverts' (2003) advice to look at the ‘in‐between’ cities that are neither old downtown nor new suburb but complex urban landscapes of mixed density, use and urbanity, we reveal the political vacuum that is at the heart of the urban region today. Using the politics of infrastructure in Toronto as our empirical example, we will show that vulnerabilities and risks for urban populations in that Canadian metropolis' in‐between city are co‐generated by the failure of conventional political spaces and processes to capture the connectivities threaded through those places that are in‐between the centre and exurbia.     

‘We Live on Estimates': Everyday Practices of Prepaid Electricity and the Urban Condition in Maputo,Mozambique

This article examines the transition to prepaid electricity happening in Maputo, Mozambique, in order to reflect on the contemporary geographies of urban energy infrastructure and urbanization in sub‐Saharan Africa and other cities of the South. The article draws on fieldwork and archival research conducted in 2013 and 2014, arguing that prepayment constitutes a productive juncture in the urban experience of electricity infrastructure in Maputo's postcolonial moment, not merely a neutral technology or a disciplining technique of government (as argued by some scholarship). The article examines the multiple rationalities implicated in the use of the electricity infrastructure via prepayment and the organization of urban life it engenders (and of which it is also a product) by focusing on the everyday practices surrounding prepaid electricity of urban dwellers in neighbourhoods where the ‘modern infrastructural ideal' may never be fully realized. As a result, it contributes to an understanding of the experience of urban energy in cities where ‘slum urbanism', uncertainty and provisionality are dominant aspects of the urban condition.     

‘Ruins of Modernity’: The Critical Implications of Unfinished Public Works in Italy

Since the 1950s, the construction of public works has been a significant element of Italy's focus on modernization. Numerous instances of malpractice have resulted in frequent failures of this form of development, with the result that many projects have remained unfinished for decades. In 2007, a group of artists called Alterazioni Video declared these ‘ruins of modernity’ to be a romanticized architectural style; in doing so, their aim is to imbue the sites with new value and dignity. This article uses the artists’ argument as a point of departure to theorize about unfinished public works within the framework of interdisciplinary literatures on modern ruins. In addition, since modern ruins by definition hold a critical meaning––which the artists deliberately excluded from their narrative––the article takes into account the obscure political and economic circumstances causing this phenomenon. After remarking upon specificities and similarities to unfinished neoliberal topographies generated by the 2008 financial crisis, it is concluded that unfinished public works in Italy represent an interesting case serving to enrich debates on incompletion.