- Email: [email protected]
Re-visioning the City
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
131
Reference Hendry, J. (1993). Wrapping culture: Politeness, presentation and power in Japan and other societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press. PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 8 - 2
Re-visioning the City I read City Visions during a 10-month stay in England as part of my doctoral research on inner city regeneration. Having read the academic literature, government studies and professional reports on the topic in England, one of my first questions was what does this book add to the existing literature? I also approached the book with an unease about visionary projects wrested from specific practices and struggles and the group interests, both political and material, that underpin such idealizations and get buried in exhortations about equity, inclusion, participation, and consensus in both big and small plans. The book consists principally of a collection of public addresses on “City Visioning” commissioned by the Belfast City Partnership Board, established in 1996 to formulate and implement a 25-year strategic vision for the city. The lectures were to provide an opportunity to hear from prominent practitioners in the field of urban regeneration about ideas and experiences of other cities on issues such as governance, sustainability, cultural development, economics, and social exclusion. They outline ideas and trends and in most cases make some general comments on possible implications for Belfast, but are not based on studies of Belfast. This is left to the editors who in intervening chapters take these broader theories and ideas and provide more detailed data and background on Belfast. It is in this regard that the book makes a useful contribution in that it takes general ideas and theories and connects them to the particular case of Belfast. The book starts by justifying vision planning as a holistic outlook unfettered by feasibilities and practicalities, beginning on a blank canvas to “scratch the shape of tomorrow’s society.” It then sketches out the main ideas in the Vision Plan developed by the Belfast City Partnership Board based on its two year consultation process which I presume included the public lectures. The blank canvas is first filled by a chapter written by the editors summarizing the main theoretical approaches to understanding urban change—the different framings of economic change as postKeynesian, welfarism, Fordism, industrialism and modernism to that of disorganised capitalism and globalisation and the spatial reconfigurations associated with these
132
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
changes. It is a rather bleak description of the global forces at work transforming cities. However, after outlining these trends, they invoke the argument that we need to understand the interaction between these global trends and local processes. Here they espouse a more optimistic prognosis, that globalization is not making the local irrelevant, that localities are not passive recipients of exogenous change. They argue that it is against this background of global generalities and place specificities that the urban visions outlined in the book should be addressed, to the commonalties and uniqueness of places. Herein lies my main difficulty with the book: it argues for the specificity of place, yet the discussion stays at a broad and general level, about processes, forces, ideas, and visions rather than about the specific practices, interests and groups involved in working these out at the local level. Surely Belfast is a unique case study in that not only has the city experienced universal processes of economic restructuring and decline but also the particular stresses of its deep political conflict and sectarian and cultural divisions. While the particularities of place in the case of Belfast are noted they are developed in a very limited way. In fact, it could be said that what the essays by the invited practitioners do is recommend a programme for Belfast that echoes that advocated and undertaken by localities around the globe and which in turn it is argued will enable Belfast to compete with these other localities on the same terms. This and the previous point— that the particularities about Belfast are muted in the book—lead one to ask whether these general recommendations are relevant to the particularities of Belfast or simply reflect the latest general theories, prescriptions and the associated groups and interests that they serve. Ironically, what the book accomplishes well is to provide a good summary of the dominant ideas underpinning urban regeneration policies and programs. Chapter 3 by Peter Hall describes the debates surrounding the origins of the “city region principle” in 1960s England, an understanding based on functional relationships which has never been embodied in policies or governing structures. He argues that disjointed policy efforts such as urban regeneration have not been able to stem the outdrift of people and employment: the city region has continued to expand into a much more complex polycentric and nodal pattern of living and working. The answer for him is not to resist these trends but to seek to “manipulate them so as to achieve a future that works better, and achieves a more agreeable pattern of living, for everyone” (73). That, he says, requires elected regional authorities that can provide for an orderly process of decentralization and subtly bend “the natural forces of change” (74). While Hall sees the answers in regional governing and planning structures, Wim Wievel and Joseph Persky focus on policies to contain regional sprawl. Based on their study of the US experience, particularly that of Chicago, they outline the consequences of urban sprawl onto greenfields for the economy, efficiency and equity and recommend policies to counteract sprawl. The editors follow this with a chapter on sustainability. Contrary to Hall, they argue for a regional approach overseen by a partnership body rather than governance structure, arguing that this would be more
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
133
inclusive of social organizations and a more active multi-agency and cross-sectoral form of citizenship. Michael Parkinson summarizes recent urban policy in the UK and Europe in chapter 6 highlighting the rise of the entrepreneurial city and the promotion of the competitive city. This is no better reflected than in his description of urban policy in late 1990s Britain which has embraced the entrepreneurial city as the best way to position cities in the current environment of change. The editors follow this account with a more detailed and comprehensive review of British, American and European Union urban regeneration policies. This chapter provides a detailed background and data on programmes, the lessons that can be drawn from these urban interventions and the current changes that the urban policy agenda is undergoing now and possible changes in the future. Charles Landry turns attention to the cultural dimension and argues that creativity will be central to remaking industrial cities. Commenting on the work of Comedia, an urban and cultural policy consultancy which he founded in 1978, he places the future of cities in the ability to nurture a “creative innovative milieu, so cities can reinvent themselves” (152). This must start with the creation of a vision of the future and he provides five models of visioning and ideas on how to start such a process. The editors follow with an assessment of the inequities of regeneration programmes focused on the service sector, flagship projects and downtowns without attention to the deep social and sectarian divisions across neighbourhoods in the city. More optimistically, they point to the potential contribution of the cultural industries to ameliorate cultural conflict and bring together different groups in neutral, transcendent and shared cultural spaces. With Patsy Healey’s chapter the book returns to governance issues and the need to integrate what she argues are widely shared policy objectives of economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability and social cohesion. She argues that the current model of governance based on initiatives undertaken by multiple arrangements including agencies, trusts and partnerships leads to problems of accountability, segments governance and groups leading to competition for subsidy and a confused ‘market’ of governance initiatives. Instead she advocates a model based on “strategic capacity-building” which encourages the diverse kinds of initiatives but which work within a strategic framework rooted in representative urban government and embedded in a network of key stakeholders. She provides three examples from North East England of initiatives to outline problems with the current model and possibilities of that which she advocates. Brian Hanna follows with a note on the growing role of partnerships in Belfast to achieve a more inclusive form of urban decision-making. He provides a useful history of the broader government and political context of Northern Ireland, a background which would have been useful at the beginning of the book. In the end, despite discussion of Belfast, the particularities of this place do not emerge and rather the broad processes, changes, trends, ideas and policy prescriptions dominate. Faith is placed in Belfast to recreate itself based on a vision that echoes that adopted by so many other cities—be entrepreneurial, collaborative, competitive, regional, creative, inclusive. The book begs the question whose “city visions” do
134
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
these represent and how do these correspond to particular group interests in Belfast? What happens to such normative visions when ideas meet reality in practice? Evelyn S. Ruppert Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 9 - 4
131
Reference Hendry, J. (1993). Wrapping culture: Politeness, presentation and power in Japan and other societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press. PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 8 - 2
Re-visioning the City I read City Visions during a 10-month stay in England as part of my doctoral research on inner city regeneration. Having read the academic literature, government studies and professional reports on the topic in England, one of my first questions was what does this book add to the existing literature? I also approached the book with an unease about visionary projects wrested from specific practices and struggles and the group interests, both political and material, that underpin such idealizations and get buried in exhortations about equity, inclusion, participation, and consensus in both big and small plans. The book consists principally of a collection of public addresses on “City Visioning” commissioned by the Belfast City Partnership Board, established in 1996 to formulate and implement a 25-year strategic vision for the city. The lectures were to provide an opportunity to hear from prominent practitioners in the field of urban regeneration about ideas and experiences of other cities on issues such as governance, sustainability, cultural development, economics, and social exclusion. They outline ideas and trends and in most cases make some general comments on possible implications for Belfast, but are not based on studies of Belfast. This is left to the editors who in intervening chapters take these broader theories and ideas and provide more detailed data and background on Belfast. It is in this regard that the book makes a useful contribution in that it takes general ideas and theories and connects them to the particular case of Belfast. The book starts by justifying vision planning as a holistic outlook unfettered by feasibilities and practicalities, beginning on a blank canvas to “scratch the shape of tomorrow’s society.” It then sketches out the main ideas in the Vision Plan developed by the Belfast City Partnership Board based on its two year consultation process which I presume included the public lectures. The blank canvas is first filled by a chapter written by the editors summarizing the main theoretical approaches to understanding urban change—the different framings of economic change as postKeynesian, welfarism, Fordism, industrialism and modernism to that of disorganised capitalism and globalisation and the spatial reconfigurations associated with these
132
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
changes. It is a rather bleak description of the global forces at work transforming cities. However, after outlining these trends, they invoke the argument that we need to understand the interaction between these global trends and local processes. Here they espouse a more optimistic prognosis, that globalization is not making the local irrelevant, that localities are not passive recipients of exogenous change. They argue that it is against this background of global generalities and place specificities that the urban visions outlined in the book should be addressed, to the commonalties and uniqueness of places. Herein lies my main difficulty with the book: it argues for the specificity of place, yet the discussion stays at a broad and general level, about processes, forces, ideas, and visions rather than about the specific practices, interests and groups involved in working these out at the local level. Surely Belfast is a unique case study in that not only has the city experienced universal processes of economic restructuring and decline but also the particular stresses of its deep political conflict and sectarian and cultural divisions. While the particularities of place in the case of Belfast are noted they are developed in a very limited way. In fact, it could be said that what the essays by the invited practitioners do is recommend a programme for Belfast that echoes that advocated and undertaken by localities around the globe and which in turn it is argued will enable Belfast to compete with these other localities on the same terms. This and the previous point— that the particularities about Belfast are muted in the book—lead one to ask whether these general recommendations are relevant to the particularities of Belfast or simply reflect the latest general theories, prescriptions and the associated groups and interests that they serve. Ironically, what the book accomplishes well is to provide a good summary of the dominant ideas underpinning urban regeneration policies and programs. Chapter 3 by Peter Hall describes the debates surrounding the origins of the “city region principle” in 1960s England, an understanding based on functional relationships which has never been embodied in policies or governing structures. He argues that disjointed policy efforts such as urban regeneration have not been able to stem the outdrift of people and employment: the city region has continued to expand into a much more complex polycentric and nodal pattern of living and working. The answer for him is not to resist these trends but to seek to “manipulate them so as to achieve a future that works better, and achieves a more agreeable pattern of living, for everyone” (73). That, he says, requires elected regional authorities that can provide for an orderly process of decentralization and subtly bend “the natural forces of change” (74). While Hall sees the answers in regional governing and planning structures, Wim Wievel and Joseph Persky focus on policies to contain regional sprawl. Based on their study of the US experience, particularly that of Chicago, they outline the consequences of urban sprawl onto greenfields for the economy, efficiency and equity and recommend policies to counteract sprawl. The editors follow this with a chapter on sustainability. Contrary to Hall, they argue for a regional approach overseen by a partnership body rather than governance structure, arguing that this would be more
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
133
inclusive of social organizations and a more active multi-agency and cross-sectoral form of citizenship. Michael Parkinson summarizes recent urban policy in the UK and Europe in chapter 6 highlighting the rise of the entrepreneurial city and the promotion of the competitive city. This is no better reflected than in his description of urban policy in late 1990s Britain which has embraced the entrepreneurial city as the best way to position cities in the current environment of change. The editors follow this account with a more detailed and comprehensive review of British, American and European Union urban regeneration policies. This chapter provides a detailed background and data on programmes, the lessons that can be drawn from these urban interventions and the current changes that the urban policy agenda is undergoing now and possible changes in the future. Charles Landry turns attention to the cultural dimension and argues that creativity will be central to remaking industrial cities. Commenting on the work of Comedia, an urban and cultural policy consultancy which he founded in 1978, he places the future of cities in the ability to nurture a “creative innovative milieu, so cities can reinvent themselves” (152). This must start with the creation of a vision of the future and he provides five models of visioning and ideas on how to start such a process. The editors follow with an assessment of the inequities of regeneration programmes focused on the service sector, flagship projects and downtowns without attention to the deep social and sectarian divisions across neighbourhoods in the city. More optimistically, they point to the potential contribution of the cultural industries to ameliorate cultural conflict and bring together different groups in neutral, transcendent and shared cultural spaces. With Patsy Healey’s chapter the book returns to governance issues and the need to integrate what she argues are widely shared policy objectives of economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability and social cohesion. She argues that the current model of governance based on initiatives undertaken by multiple arrangements including agencies, trusts and partnerships leads to problems of accountability, segments governance and groups leading to competition for subsidy and a confused ‘market’ of governance initiatives. Instead she advocates a model based on “strategic capacity-building” which encourages the diverse kinds of initiatives but which work within a strategic framework rooted in representative urban government and embedded in a network of key stakeholders. She provides three examples from North East England of initiatives to outline problems with the current model and possibilities of that which she advocates. Brian Hanna follows with a note on the growing role of partnerships in Belfast to achieve a more inclusive form of urban decision-making. He provides a useful history of the broader government and political context of Northern Ireland, a background which would have been useful at the beginning of the book. In the end, despite discussion of Belfast, the particularities of this place do not emerge and rather the broad processes, changes, trends, ideas and policy prescriptions dominate. Faith is placed in Belfast to recreate itself based on a vision that echoes that adopted by so many other cities—be entrepreneurial, collaborative, competitive, regional, creative, inclusive. The book begs the question whose “city visions” do
134
Book reviews / Political Geography 20 (2001) 113–134
these represent and how do these correspond to particular group interests in Belfast? What happens to such normative visions when ideas meet reality in practice? Evelyn S. Ruppert Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 9 - 4