World cities in a world-system

Book reviews compact city extends to any policy for the discouragement of ever larger land use units for shops, hospitals etc, and whether Dutch planners will be able to resist the pressures of retailers operating internationally, and whose cost advantages rely upon economies of scale. Interestingly, the EC communication entitled the future of the Common Transport Policy (1992) defines its role as taking actions which cannot adequately be realized by member states individually, and which hence must be achieved by the community. Sadly, the CTP action programme, summarized as an appendix to Harman's book, includes no measures reflecting this real problem for local development control planners. If the Common Transport policy is to meet its stated objective of sustainable mobility, then surely it must have a role here, in relation to the activities of international businesses, particularly retailers, whose actions will do a lot to contribute to the success or failure of local transport policies aimed at the continuation of the compact city with all its advantages for sustainable mobility. Inevitably, the short length of the manual is such that the treatment of many topics is superficial. Two paragraphs on setting prices for car use are not going to give readers much impression of the complexity of the issues involved. However, the value of the manual is in the breadth of its coverage, and in the linkages the reader is led to infer between EC, national and local policies. Moreover, despite the brevity, the manual gives leads for the general reader who wishes to pursue the examples described. What is somewhat surprising, given that the manual reviews national practice in transport planning, is that the author gives little emphasis to the absence of any national transport plan for the UK, and the isolation of trunk road planning, from other aspects of environmental policy, or indeed from public transport policy. It is surely significant that most examples of best practice in the manual are drawn from the Netherlands and from Germany, countries that both have a national transport plan approved by the national parliament.

Before selecting his examples of best practice, Harman briefly lists his criteria for 'best practice'. These criteria broadly reflect the objectives of Transport 2000, and the author does not elaborate on reasons for their selection. While the criteria could be criticized as motherhood statements, they prove adequate to highlight some interesting examples, and the criteria reflect aims that are certainly no more general than the aspirations cited in the examples of national and local plans. Even without progress on plans for sustainable mobility at the national level, it is clear from the Dutch and German examples that there is much scope in the UK for improvements at a local level in meeting the needs of travellers on foot and on cycle. It is also clear from examples such as that of planning in the Ile de France region that the integration of transport and land use planning does not necessarily result in plans favouring sustainability. There may be substantial investment in public transport; but motorway investment continues unabated with the aim of improving car based mobility.

Paul Truelove Department o f Civil Engineering Aston University, Gosta Green Birmingham B4 7ET, UK

Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, AD 1000 to 1800 edited by Charles Tilly and Wim P Blockmans

Westview Press Boulder CO (1994) 290 pp £48.50 hardback £14.95 paperback World Cities in a World-System edited by Paul L Knox and Peter J Taylor

Cambridge University Press Cambridge 335 pp £40.00 hardback £16.95 paperback Both these books are symposia; both deal with systems of cities in historical time and geographical space; but there the resemblance pretty well ends. Cities and the Rise o f States in Europe is a book by historians for historians; readers will get maximum benefit from it if they know something of

recent historical disputations in this area. The subject is the way in which systems of cities related to the development of nation states in Europe; essentially the authors conclude that because the system of cities varied across Europe - cities were thick on the ground in areas like Italy and Flanders, very thin in much of eastern and northern Europe - that fact profoundly affected the speed and nature of nation state formation. Nor for nothing, then, did Italy and Germany unify late: the Italian city states and the Hanseatic cities were just too strong a force. Inevitably, the essays get deep into the historical woodwork; this is not a book for the general reader. But even he, or she, will profit from Tilly's comprehensive introduction and Blockmans's summing up. The essence of Tilly's argument is that 'major trading cities and city-states mounted more effective resistance to the penetration of consolidated states than did cities in mainly agrarian regions': they slowed down state formation, and they managed to get more independence for themselves than did smaller cities. (He might have mentioned Hamburg and Bremen, which resisted incorporation into Germany until 1887, and still have a remarkably privileged position in the Federal Republic of the 1990s). What determined the outcome, Tilly shows, is 'various combinations of capital and coercion'; but capital was needed to pay the armies that supplied the coercion. None the less, around the periphery of Europe, states like Sweden and Russia managed to form because they had no real resistance; they were all coercion, no capital. The absolute opposite happened in the heartland of Europe, from Northern Italy to Flanders (though France seems anomalous). Later, the combination of capital and coercion - as in the 17th-century Netherlands - proved irresistible. There are probably lessons for the late 20th century here, as a book like Paul Kennedy's will show. World Cities in a World System clearly had similar origins as a communal product, but the result is rather rum. It comes from a seminar to discuss John Friedmann's world city

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Book reviews hypothesis, one of the seminal notions of academic urbanism of the 1980s and 1990s. The result is that most of the authors seem to have written the same essay about a dozen times over (and this reviewer, unable to attend, is relieved that he was not responsible for a baker's dozen). They mostly remain at an extraordinary level of theoretical abstraction, seldom deigning to descend to the world of base empiricism; and many are written in the kind of impenetrable, modish left-wing academic jargon that causes Tory politicians to try to abolish funding for social science. With threats of 'viable counter-hegemonic projects', they sometimes begin to sound like a Malcolm Bradbury parody; and they surely succeed in making Friedmann more of a political figure than he can ever have intended to be. But there are some good bits in the middle, with real-life analysis from Donald Lyons and Scott Salmon, David Keeling and David Simon, for which much thanks; and the original Friedmann contribution gets reprinted, which is useful. But how much better, surely, if we had one solid book that took the concept forward in the empirical richness it deserves.

Peter Hall University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT, UK

Not in My Back Yard: The Handbook Jane A n n e Morris Silver Cat Publications CA (1994) . This is a handbook for citizens who want to fight (in the author's words) the thing that they want to bring into town. The thing you read about may be a hazardous waste dump, a new highway loop, - a pesticide plant, a missile practice range, a strip mine, - or any of the other projects that someone somewhere is always planning. - Any number of experts will then be cited to the effect that this thing will cause fewer deaths annually than pet hamsters and that there is only one chance in twentythree zillion of a catastrophic accident. You and your neighbour, both opposing the project, don't believe the rosy picture being painted. - If you want to stop the project, read on' (p 2)

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The author, who first became involved in citizen action in opposition to a proposed lignite-burning power station in Texas gives a racy, but very well informed, account of the Machiavellian strategies that they pursue, and of the ways in which local citizens can most effectively organize themselves to fight back. The references are A m e r i c a n , and the background is a tradition of 'grass roots democracy' and 'open g o v e r n m e n t ' which has survived rather better in the U S A than in, for example, the U K . Nevertheless, the basic principles which are brought out in this book are universally applicable. The chapters cover such topics as the organization of a N I M B Y group, the strengths and weakness of 'the Entity' (them), how to find information and organize hearings, how to combat intimidation, and jobs vs evironment. N I M B Y , which the author proudly accepts, has been made a pejorative term in Britain. It is argued that we need pesticide plants etc and that they have to go somewhere. The author recognizes this argument: This book makes no judgements on the merits of individual projects -. The tactics and strategies used against you will be the same whether the Project is an outstanding one or a horrendous one. The author also argues that 'public N I M B Y s ' are simply one half of the m o v e m e n t , the other half being 'stealth N I M B Y s ' : Stealth NIMBYs are people who don't work at dangerous, unhealthy jobs and don't live near toxic waste dumps, nuclear weapons factories, or other undesirable facilities. - They have never had to raise their voices to keep such facilities away, because anyone seeking to site such facilities knows enough not to do so in affluent white suburbs. Stealth NIMBYs include people such as government officials, corporate managers and professionals and experts (who take decisions on the siting of unwanted local landuses). This is very true, and 'stealth NIMBYs' are even m o r e powerful in the U K than in the U S A . In the 1980s, a certain Secretary of State for the Environment undermined the British town planning system by giving approval to large numbers of developments which contravened local plans, and publicly ridiculed N I M B Y s , intro-

ducing the word to the U K and giving it an unacceptable connotation. A t the same time, he privately fought like a tiger to prevent a d e v e l o p m e n t near his London penthouse and the opening of a public footpath near his country estate. The author not only provides a ' c o o k b o o k ' for protest m o v e m e n t s , but also makes a good case for regarding them as an essential element in a democratic system. 'Public N I M B Y s are doing no more than demanding that the privileges and responsibilities of the democratic process be extended to them too.' This is a powerful argument, but it does not altogether answer the criticism that 'public N I M B Y s ' have sometimes acted as defenders of privilege. A section on red herrings criticizes an article by a Republican politician entitled 'Free housing from environmental snobs', arguing that attacks on 'environmentalism' ignore the benefits of environmental controls and distract attention from the many other US policies which create problems of housing affordability. True enough. Nevertheless, many economists who were not Reaganites argued that the 'growth control' m o v e m e n t s of the 1970s often did exacerbate the problems of housing affordability, because they were 'exclusionary zoning' dressed up as enviornmental protection. E v e n if some questions are left in the air, this is an admirable book. It is primarily a handbook for local groups in the U S A , but it also makes a contribution to the political theory of urban development. It would be useful if equally readable counterparts could be written for other countries.

Graham Hallett Centre for Housing Management and Development UWCC, Cardiff, UK

Industrial Location: Principles, Practice and Policy J W Harrington and Barney W a f t Routledge London (1995) 236 pp I S B N 0-415-11951-0 (pbk) This new text is timely. A n d the further I read into it, the more I was impressed