The New Political Economy of Cities

1
The New Political Economy of Cities

• Sociology 205Y Urban Sociology
• Nov 7, 2007

2
Today

• The New Political Economy, Chapter 11 (Urban
  Canada)
• Illustration of the Distillery District (an
  example of an "Urban Entertainment District")
• Mommaas, Hans 2004. Culture clusters and the
  post-industrial city towards the remapping of
  urban cultural policy, Urban Studies
• Review for test
• Practice test questions

3
Lecture Objectives

• to understand what the new urban political
  economy paradigm is and why it arose.
• To identify the contributions of the major
  theorists of political economy
• To learn how cities have shifted to
  entrepreneurial governance as a strategy of
  inter-urban competition and economic development

4
The Political Economy Paradigm

• What is it?
• Emphasize investment shifts by banks, insurance
  companies, and international corporations that
  shaped cities by transferring the ownership and
  the uses of land from one social class to
  another.
• Focus on how conflicts between different elements
  of the urban population, notably social classes
  and racial and ethnic populations, determined the
  physical and social character of the metropolis
• Explains changes related to urban marketing and
  the growth of symbolic economy organized around
  tourism, sports, entertainment, and the arts
  rather than manufacturing

5
Factors contributing to the New Political Economy

• From Perception of Order to urban crisis
• Policy Changes influencing suburbanization
• Race, Class, and Lifestyle Issues
• Urban Renewal (slum clearance, National Housing
  act, segregation through redlining and
  exclusionary practices)

6
From Order to Crisis

• 1920-30s perception of breakdown of the moral
  order was studied by charting the physical form
  of the city and demonstrating how this influenced
  urban organization and experience
• 1960s shift in paradigm to explain urban
  crisis explaining the growing incidence of
  civil disorders arising out of racial segregation
  and conflict, inequality, and poverty (i.e.
  eruption of riots in late 1960s in Detroit, LA,
  New market, New Jersey, etc).

7
Policy Changes and Suburbanization

• After WWII sharp increase in suburban
  communities why?
• Major housing shortage faced by return of war
  veterans and post-war baby-boom. ? financial
  and government policies were changed in order to
  encourage suburb housing boom
• Availability of loans and tax incentives to
  developers and low-interest mortgages requiring
  small or no down payments to purchasers.

8
Race, Class, and Lifestyle Issues

• Lifestyle issues
• people were moving to suburbs to actively seek a
  distinct lifestyle characterized by a
  child-centered orientation
• escape from the city thesis shift of large
  proportion of white, middle-class Americans to
  the suburbs (in US) as a means of escaping the
  waves of southern blacks and Hispanics that were
  flooding into the cities of the Northeast in the
  1950s and 1960s. ? increasing racial polarization
  and segregation (i.e. Chicago) ? after white
  neighbourhoods disappeared? oversupply of
  available housing ?collapse in real estate
  values cases of arson escalated and riots ensued
  (p.248)
• - In Canada, this thesis is less relevant since
  racial and ethnic makeup was more homogenous at
  that time.

9
Urban renewal

• 1944-1964, original intention to replace slums
  with higher quality affordable housing (via the
  National Housing Acts of 1949 and 1956)
• but many municipalities instead encouraged
  nonresidential developments reaping higher taxes
• renewal funds became redirected to clear inner
  cities for large-scale projects such as office
  buildings and shopping centres.
• Housing for lower-income groups was not a
  priority
• Low-income groups increasingly moved to outskirts
  (e.g. Africville).
• In US after WWII, racial segregation in American
  cities was intensifying and minority group
  members found themselves confined to racially
  segregated ghettos different pattern of spatial
  assimilation compared to previous European
  immigrant groups (Irish, Italians, Polish).
  REASON?
• Redlining
• Racially exclusionary housing practices

10
Africville, Halifax

• Extreme case of urban renewal
• case study of how governmental and policy
  decisions affected an entire community.
• On Periphery of Halifax black community since
  the late 1850s
• The municipality of Halifax County, and the
  neighbouring City of Halifax, refused to extend
  basic utilities such as sanitary water and sewage
  or street lighting. As the City of Halifax
  expanded, Africville became a preferred site for
  all types of undesirable industries and
  facilities -- prisons, slaughterhouses, even a
  depository for fecal waste.
• In 1950s, Halifax City Council formally approved
  designation of Africville as industrial land
  (shifting of Africville residents to city-owned
  property to the southwest
• Community was completely re-located and destroyed
  between 1964-1969 at present, the site is a
  park.
• from CBC Archives, you can check out video clips
  on Africville

11
New Political Economy of Third World Cities

• Third World Urbanization cities in 3rd world
  countries (Asia, Africa, Latin America) faced
  different type of urbanization than cities in
  Western Europe and North America how so?
• Over-urbanization (whereby the rate of urban
  population growth far outstrips the pace of
  industrialization)? consequence such as,
• Widespread unemployment, informal economy,
  residency in shantytowns without having basic
  urban services such as sewage and water)
• World Systems theory new analytical approach
  developed by Wallerstein (1976) that
  distinguishes between different categories of
  nations
• CORE nations US, Britain and France perform
  functions of capital investment, economic
  management and innovation
• PERIPHERAL nations export agricultural products
  and raw materials such as minerals and supply
  cheap labour
• Foreign investment from core countries centrally
  influenced urbanization in the Third World both
  by relegating it to a lesser role in global
  division of labour and by accelerating urban
  growth, pushing rural peasants off their land by
  imposing large-scale, capital-intensive, and
  export-oriented agriculture also hire cheap
  labour for world markets while bridging low wages
  and appealing working conditions to workers in
  Third World cities

12
Three Key Theories of New Political Economy
Paradigm

• The Crisis of Consumption (Castells)
• Marxist approach argued that exploitation and
  alienation of the factory had now spilled over
  and been reproduced beyond the workplace ? Cities
  were increasingly losing their central place as
  the locus of production units and becoming
  instead the site of consumption activities
• identified 3 main structural issues underlying
  urban mobilizations
• The preservation and improvement of residential
  neighbourhoods
• Poverty
• Social and cultural discrimination
• The Crisis of Accumulation (David Harvey)
• urban crisis (i.e. eroding income, physical
  deterioration of housing, rising crime rate)
  occurs when real estate financiers over-invest in
  a particular urban sector, flooding the market
  and depressing profits. When this occurs,
  investors collectively shift to another location,
  leaving the original to decline
• he distinguished between 3 types of investment
  capital each of which follows its own circuit
  1) primary circuit, secondary circuit, and
  tertiary circuits
• Elite Coalitions and Urban Growth Machine
  (Molotch and Logan)
• focus specifically on the structure of political
  power in the urban community rather than dwell on
  the mode of production (capitalism)
• urban growth machine depiction of the city as a
  machine controlled by business, political and
  professional elites.

13
The Entrepreneurial City

• Early 1970s, fiscal crisisproductivity not
  increasing fast enough to cover promised wages
  and benefits to labour
• Influenced shift from Fordist system to
  flexism
• City governments embraced entrepreneurial
  governance (where local government joins forces
  with private interests to undertake major
  projects or mega-events
• E.g. race-car industry, international sporting
  competitions, (see Box 11.3) in the hope of
  reviving the flagging economic fortunes of the
  city)
• fantasy cities(Las Vegas or Orlando)
• Hope for Bilbao effect
• Critics of fantasy cities argue that cities
  become increasingly undemocratic, key decisions
  made are not accountable to the public,
• BIDS (business improvement districts privately
  controlled administrative bodies with the
  responsibility for public functions formerly
  carried out by municipal government departments
• Research suggests that economic benefit reaches
  primarily those who are powerful (i.e. out of
  town tourists, suburbanites, middle class
  residents).

14
Examples New Urban Social Movements

• Various groups, non-profit and voluntary sector
  groups fight to city issues such as creation of
  affordable housing, anti-poverty activist groups
  and social service training programs
• Justice for Janitors (J4J) response to flow of
  immigrant workers to major international cities
  (i.e. New York, London).
• Asian-American Women Advocates (AIWA)
  organization of about 1,000 Asian American
  immigrant workers in San Francisco, focus on the
  working conditions and survival needs of often
  invisible and precarious segments of the Bay area
  workforce
• Nolympia Campaign (Berlin) or the Bread Not
  Circuses Coalition in Toronto coalition formed
  to oppose their cities Olympic bids
• Toronto Public Spaces Committee visual order of
  public spaces, access to public spaces,
  environmental advocacy
• Lots of othersfocusing on one could be a good
  paper topic.

15
New Political Economy Emphasizes Symbols

• Shift to cultural economy from primary industrial
  function
• using culture to market cities (i.e. cities being
  ranked under Bohemian Index (Box 11.5, page
  261).
• Other examples, factory space being converted to
  lofts (i.e. Downtown Toronto, SoHo district in
  NY) to gear to artists or urban professionals
  seeking a cool lifestyle.
• In short, cultural representations (i.e. museums,
  art galleries, cathedrals) have now become an
  integral part of the economic structure of the
  city (also known as process of hard-branding the
  contemporary city)
• Yet, it is paradoxical that urban renaissance
  promotes cultural diversity at the same time as
  promoting forms of conspicuous consumption and
  social control that limit diversity (page 262).

16
Gooderham and Worts/Distillery Historic District,
Toronto
17
(No Transcript)
18
About

• Founded in 1832 by Brother-in-law William
  Gooderham and James Worts, the Gooderham and
  Worts Distillery eventually became the largest
  distillery in the British Empire.
• Set on 13 acres in downtown Toronto, the forty
  plus buildings constitute the largest and best
  preserved collection of Victorian Industrial
  Architecture in North America.

19
About, 2

• The Distillery is now a pedestrian-only village
  entirely dedicated to arts, culture and
  entertainment. Internationally acclaimed
  galleries, artists' studios and workshops,
  restaurants, bars and cafes, as well as live
  music, all form part of this new landmark
  cultural centre.
• Most popular film location in Canada.
• Numerous festivals and special events attract
  tens of thousand of people each month.
• The Distillery District is quickly becoming one
  of Canada's top destinations.

20
DD is a Good Example of New Political Economy

• Entrepreneurial Governance combining private and
  public cooperation, extensive use of subsidies
  for historical preservation
• Urban entertainment district
• Focuses on perceived historical authenticity
  combined with state of the art entertainment
  facilities
• Cultural economy is primary function
• Feeds into new political economy industries
  tourism, film, entertainment, big corporate
  sponsorship
• Some surrounding residential developments and
  efforts at greater transit linkages to downtown,
  but most visitors dont live there.

21
More about the field exercise
22
Visual Economy of Signs

• Signage is a central feature of our public spaces
• Signage is an essential form of communication
  allowing actors on all levels of society to
  express their voice
• Reflects and influences the social health of
  communities
• Reflects who we are and our priorities

23
Torontos Proposed Anti-Postering By-Law

• Controversy currently surrounds the city
  councils attempt to pass a by-law that would
  severely restrict postering in downtown spaces.
• The legislation restricts
• Genre of posters
• Size and location
• Duration of posting

24
(No Transcript)
25
Urban Vs. Suburban
26
Branding
27

• How many brand logos do you notice in 2 seconds?

28
Practice Questions

• Will be reviewed in class and then posted on the
  web