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Summary & notes lectures The City Reader final exam - Urbanism & plannig
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Urbanism & Planning Final exam“Reflections on regime politics: from governing coalition to urban
political order” Urban affairs review (2015)
Clarence N. Stone
As the civil rights movement began to unfold in the 1960s, political scientists and other social
scientists sought to understand the dynamics of local government by closely studying power in
different American cities. Polar opposite narratives emerged depending on the methods used and
the researchers’ ideology.
Was a political scientist, not a planner
Regime Politics – Governing Atlanta (1989) Studied Atlanta to try and understand how cities
were governed. Collaborating political and economic elite as part of a regime to work on a
redevelopment agenda.
The question is: what are the common agendas between different groups and actors.
Understanding this common agenda is supposed to provide the glue holding the regime
together which mutually support each other.
Period he studied -> redevelopment period: in which the overriding priority of cities
throughout the US was saving the city core because of economic and technological changes.
Faced the challenge of coping with the decline of the industrial city and responding to
massive suburban growth. Redevelopment became the priority agenda promoted by a
business–city hall alliance and heavily funded by federal grants.
Stone’s regime analysis focuses on how the internal features of a governing arrangement fit
together to pursue an agenda. He pays special attention to the internal dynamics of political
regimes.
The reason Stone now argues for studies of urban political order is because the large federal
redevelopment, highway construction, and anti-poverty programs have almost disappeared.
Today governing arrangements have to be built around less sharply defined, more localized
agendas.
The post-industrial city has moved human capital into prominence
Description of the inner core of the urban remine approach -> Iron law -> any government
arrangement must have the resources to sustain itself. To achieve this, a stable coalition
involving civil society actors is needed. When a particular goal is met, the arrangement ends
unless it's part of a larger plan with multiple goals that a group works on together,
maintaining communication and coordination throughout the process.
Atlanta changed its way of living together as a community. It moved away from its old
practice of separating and excluding people based on race. Instead, it started to connect
people from different backgrounds through business and civic activities -> bi-racial coalition
(of governmental and non-governmental actors) -> came together to support a common
agenda that benefited both of the major partners federally funded.
-> “the city too busy to hate” was a city whose governing politics combined economic growth
through redevelopment with a modest pace of racial change.
It's crucial to look at how a regime operates in a broader context, understand its historical
perspective & then analyze its operations in detail within a specific time frame.
Stone agrees with Castells, Sassen and Taylor regarding the American urban regimes being
shaped by knowledge-based services and information processing in a global economy.
However, he disagrees when they say that these outside (exogenous) forces completely
, control local politics, to the point that local politics is only a result of neo-liberal capitalism.
He believes there's more to it than just those global economic forces.
Stone’s new concept of an urban political order retains the idea of a political whole and
focuses on the way it holds together and how its tensions are manifested. An urban political
order is helpful for understanding city governance as a multi-layered process. Multitiered ->
means there are many different levels of activity happening at the same time when
governing a city. As a concept, urban political order is intended to include comparisons over
time and across cities. He argues that at the local level three tiers of activity affect on one
another:
1. Elite actors with substantial resources setting a priority agenda
2. A city’s broad middle strata making minor adjustments
3. Marginal populations with only meager resources confronting pronounced
disadvantages -> make this less unremittingly
Atlanta macro context: Atlanta has had essentially a “good government” style of politics
along with a weak union presence. White flight and inducement to move to privileged
suburbia & how people vote -> The behavior of everyday people plays a role in how cities are
governed. Atlanta in the context of the city’s move from being rail-centered to becoming
automotive-centered. States and localities became battlegrounds over the meaning and
implementation of federal policies.
Two main challenges in the discussions about the regime approach:
o One is about how independent local politics is and how to describe it accurately ->
regime analysis provides a way of relating local and extra-local forces. Processing
that is going on currently: mediating and reshaping
o The other is about how to explain the structure of these politics.
The criticism of focusing on local issues seems to be linked to a strong interest in capitalist
development.
The great inversion -> the gravitation of a younger and more affluent population to the city.
Businesses used to plan for the long term together, but that's not happening much anymore.
Instead, they're mostly focused on making quick profits in smaller steps.
Compared to the past, city governance is more flexible today local action faces challenges
like structural inequality and limited resources. Expecting a strong, unified governing group
to pursue major plans isn't realistic anymore. Current leaders lack the motivation and
funding for big projects.
,Lecture 11: 02/10/23 by Sara Özogul
Urban Governance
Temporary urban challenges
Few white guys telling what to do -> more engaged planning
Urban challenges: Global hierarchy of cities, placemaking, liveability, Interurban competition,
housing, citizen participation, mobility and accessibility, sustainability & neighbourhoods.
The rise of governance perspectives
1950s
Rational
Scientifically based
Technocratic -> planner is seen as a technical expert
1960s + 1970
Dominant understanding of governance: top-down state intervention
BUT: start of controversial debates on the relationship between planning and politics
(planning is political), values and legitimacy. How was the right to plan cities, expertise?
Who governs?
Stone -> political scientist: regime theory
o Segregation in Atlanta socially and planning. Different rases
elites have joined agenda.
Economic elite -> mainly white & Political elite -> mainly black
Make regime together to govern
1980s + 1990s
Administrative-technical planning -> addressing societal challenges
Scientific search for optimal solutions -> collective learning
Technocratic planner -> politically acting planners
Jane Jacobs -> trying to change her environment (focus on street level) focussing on the
knowledge of communities. Community-driven planning is key. “Ordinary people are capable
of doing wonderful things”
Planning changed to a collective learning process
What is happening today is not the decision of one person many stakeholders, planner is in between.
Governance
Definition: the process of coordinating actors (people keep going in and out), social groups, and
institutions to attain particular goals discussed and defined
collectively in fragmented, uncertain environments
Empirical meaning -> the shift from government to
governance. The government was more of a hierarchical
form of decision making, it the role of the state changed it
became less hierarchal and more of an open discussion. The state was not the main decision
maker anymore.
, Government: Hierarchical steering, top-down led planning Shifts to Governance: Network
steering
Analytical meaning -> relating to or using analysis or logical reasoning
Analytical -> a way of looking at the space to understand who is part of it, and understand what
institutions are part of it.
Empirical government: from government to governance
Government decides
Changed the relationship between market and state
Neoliberalism: a theory of political economics that reduces power of the state and lets the
market you what it want -> best for human well-being
Classical liberalism (18th & 19th century)
Reaching society’s best interest through:
o Individual freedom
o Unrestrained market
o Non-interventionist state. Exception: protect individual rights, liberty and property.
Invisible hand: invisible force led by demand of supply let the market loose -> competition
each product cheapest as possible
Ronal Ragan: government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem
and Magret Thatcher: There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty
Private compagnies started taking over (healthcare, education).
Neoliberalism as a process mobilized urban space into a place of market-oriented economic growth.
Planning should supportthe market.
Outcome neoliberalism:
Public-private partnerships -> Finance urban development with little public money and a lot
of private money
Large-scale redevelopment of inner cities
Flagship projects -> attracts tourism and good image city; more money
Mega events -> demolishing whole neighborhoods for events still money because attracts a
lot of people
Letting the market solve all issues without political interference. The only thing the state
does is make sure that the market can function sufficiently. Returning to some of the classical
liberality -> policies are necessary to make a non-intervening government work.
The government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem”.
Privatization of social services (social free health services of education as such) makes
everything more efficient is the idea.
State and civil society: state took care of basic needs (not with neoliberalism).
Civil society: all different needs, big; who are you planning for
Self-responsibilization neoliberal ideology
The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. Individual citizens are seen as
active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well-being. Shouldn’t be states problem
for equal opportunities
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