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College notes City Matters
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City Matters (lectures)Lecture 1- what is urban inequality?
Planning= a distributional issue: political economy and justice matter
Normative understanding of inequality= you have an understanding of justice
Just institutions vs. just outcomes (distributions) different perspectives on what
makes a city just
Core ideas:
- Political economy:
o Economy & markets are created and embedded by institutions
o Study of productions + trade and their resolutions with law, custom and
government; and with the distributions of national income and wealth
o It is useful to think of the bargaining over urban development as involving
three parties: the state, capital and citizens
Roots: who governs? – pluralists accounts
- Pluralistic model of urban community power (Dahl)
o Local political power is fragmented
o Leadership is pluralistic, involving many voices
o National control is far less straightforward than expected
- Long term stable urban regimes (elitist accounts)
o Continuity developed out of pluralist settings
o States only force expressing authority over own territories
o Governance capacity is produced through exclusive coalition-building
o Not politics, who runs the city, governance is largely influenced by
business (city as a growth machine)
- Marxists/structuralists accounts
o Global capitalism limits/determines options for cities
Dependent on structural forces outside of the city
o Interrelations between fundamental elements (structure and agency)
o Late capitalism: urban governance transforms from managerialism to
entrepreneurialism
o Cities as places of resistance
Planners provide a window into the practical dynamics of urban change: the way the
state both uses and is used by organized capital, and the power of landlords and
developers at every level of government. They also possess some of the powers we must
deploy if we ever wish to reclaim our cities form real estate capital.
Understanding planners is an important way to understand the capitalist state- how it is
built, and what it would take to dismantle it.
JUSTICE
,Why justice thinking?
- Scarcity distribution
o Of resources, land, opportunity…
- Benchmark for decision-making
o Benefits/burdens
- Outcomes of distribution of material + immaterial goods
o Egalitarian/libertarian: what helps the strongest?
o Utilitarian: what helps the greatest number?
o Social: what helps the weakest?
Distributive justice
- Institutions that produce inequality= state, market, family
- Are regulations of these institutions justified?
- Core concepts:
o What is distributed? (object)
o Between whom? (subject)
o By whom? (power to decide)
o Following which logic? (principles of justice)
Basic question: who deserves what?
- Rights are balanced with duties!
- Should the lazy get their share?
- Dworkin: brute luck vs. option luck
o Insurances
- Sen: capability approach
o Schooling
- Rawls: social primary goods/decisions behind the ‘veil of ignorance’
o Social assistance
- Justice in planning justice for all is impossible; all planning inevitability
produces winners and losers Marshall: social citizenship: managing acceptable
injustices.
o Structural forces (political economy) produce injustices
- 4 viewpoints:
o Utilitarianism
Maximize the total welfare of an entire society (everybody’s
welfare has equal weight)
Critique:
Distribution?/Minorities?
o Egalitarianism
Equal fundamental worth and moral status for every human being
Compensate for inequalities that result from ‘natural lotteries’ (e.g.
health, family, intelligence)
Critique:
, How much inequality is fair? What should be equal? (e.g.
opportunities, rights, income?)
o Sufficientarianism
Fulfilling their basic needs and to guarantee ‘sufficient’ wellbeing
Inequalities above the minimum threshold are less important or
relevant
Critique:
Threshold? Voluntary choices? Extremes to the top?
o Prioritariansim
Overlaps with sufficientarianism
The worse-off someone is, the more benefits will benefit to that
person
‘’objective well-being’’
Critique:
Voluntary choice? Tresholds? Different moral values?
Lecture 2- who is to blame for urban inequality?
Planning winners and losers
- Planning is part of, and embedded in, power relations between interests groups
- Understanding spatial inequalities and polarizations as core task for planners
Different stakeholders (communicative approach) power relations/different interests
POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH
- Characteristics:
o World characterized by inequality
o Not understood by dominant neo-classical economics
o There’s more to it than economy
o Economy is embedded into politics
o Power relations/collective action institutions
o Institutions determine how markets function
- Neo-classical economics
o Supply and demand would erase inequality if:
Maximization of utility consumers
Profit maximalization of producers
Rational behaviour
Full transparency
o But: doesn’t work in reality
E.g. power relations distort this relations (landlord-house seeker
example)
- Political economy adds (critique on neo-liberal politics):
o Rational behaviour
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