Britain's Cities

Geographies of Division in Urban Britain

Michael Pacione

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415137744
• eBook ISBN: 9781134774869
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze fisiche
• Subtopic: Geografia

Uneven distribution of life is a dominant feature of the city. Major social, economic and spatial divisions are apparent in terms of income and wealth, health, crime, housing, and employment. This text offers an introduction to current processes of urban restructuring, geographies of division and contemporary conditions within the city. The geography of Britain's cities is the outcome of interaction between a host of public and private economic, social and political forces operating at a variety of spatial scales from the global to the local. A deeper understanding of the nature of urban division and of the problems of and prospects for local people and places in urban Britain must be grounded in an appreciation of the structural forces, processes and contextual factors which condition local urban geographies. This book combines structural and local level perspectives to illuminate the complex geography of socio-spatial division within urban Britain. It combines conceptual and empirical analyses from researchers in the field.

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URBAN RESTRUCTURING AND THE REPRODUCTION OF INEQUALITY IN BRITAIN’S CITIES
An overview

Michael Pacione

INTRODUCTION

Many of the world’s cities are currently experiencing social, economic, political and environmental changes of unprecedented magnitude. These changes are the outcome of the interplay of a host of private and public interests operating at a variety of geographic scales. In seeking to understand the process of urban restructuring, theorists from both Left and Right have attached particular importance to the workings of the capitalist mode of production and the rise of a global economic system. Within this context, geographers have focused particular attention on the socio-spatial variations in levels in living or human well-being that arise as a result of the operation of the capitalist global economic system.

Central to this analysis is recognition of the fact that uneven development is an inherent characteristic of capitalism which stems from the propensity of capital to flow to locations that offer the greatest potential return. The differential use of space by capital in pursuit of profit creates a mosaic of inequality at all geographic levels from global to local. Consequently, at any one time certain countries, regions, cities and localities will be in the throes of decline, as a result of the retreat of capital investment, while others will be experiencing the impact of capital inflows. At the metropolitan scale, the outcome of the uneven development process is manifested in the poverty, powerlessness and polarization of disadvantaged residents. Britain’s older industrial cities have suffered most from the restructuring process.

The existence of socio-spatial divisions within British cities is not a new phenomenon. Cities have always represented a mixed blessing. For some the city is the acme of civilization; for others urban life reflects the pit of human despair. Nowhere was this contrast in life quality more starkly illustrated than in the burgeoning urban-industrial agglomerations of nineteenth-century Britain. The gulf between rich and poor in cities such as Manchester and Glasgow provided ample testimony to the fact that the process of urban development in capitalist societies is inherently problematic, being accompanied by socio-spatial division and conflict. More than one hundred years later, despite the social legislation of the twentieth century, Britain’s cities are still characterized by extreme variations in levels of living between different population groups and areas. Marked divisions exist between rich and poor, privileged and deprived, skilled and unskilled, employed and unemployed, healthy and ill, old and young, male and female, resident and immigrant, included and excluded, and inner city and outer city. The nature and extent of these contemporary planes of division in the British city have lent support to the concept of the ‘dual city’, ‘polarized city’ or ‘two-speed city’. The existence and overlapping nature of these diverse planes of division creates complex socio-spatial patterns of advantage and disadvantage which reflect the position occupied by people and places in the hierarchy of power in which ‘some decide and others are decided for’. For many observers, the scale of social division and the extent and intensity of the problems experienced by the disadvantaged residents of Britain’s cities represent a contemporary urban crisis.

UNDERSTANDING URBAN RESTRUCTURING

Over the past half century, four main types of theory have been advanced to explain the structure and internal dynamics of urban areas. According to the classical ecological perspective, under free market conditions natural areas distinguished by homogeneous social characteristics arise as zones of the city are occupied by land uses that maximize the use of a particular site. Through a process of invasion and succession of land uses distinctive sub-areas, such as a central business district or ghetto, emerge as the city develops. A second main body of theory proposed to explain urban structure and change is based on neo-classical economics. In this a key role is assigned to relative location and the differing needs of activities for accessibility in determining land use patterns. Despite some success in predicting general patterns of urban land use within particular socio-historical contexts (most strikingly in the Chicago of the 1930s), the limited ability of the ecological and neo-classical economic theories to explain observed socio-spatial patterns led researchers to examine the place of the city in relation to the process of capital accumulation.

Within this political economy framework the work of Harvey (1985), Smith (1984) and Dear and Scott (1981) afforded valuable insight into the key processes and agents responsible for the production of the built environment of the capitalist city. This approach has exposed the roles of and relationships among various fractions of capital (such as property speculators, estate agents, financial institutions) as well as those between capital and the state (in the shape of the ideology, policies and planning practices of central and local government) in influencing urban change. A further advantage of the political economy approach is that it highlights the impact that economic, social and political processes located outside the territory of any particular city have on its internal structure and development.

The resurgence of humanism and the advent of post-modernist/post-structuralist interpretations in human geography represents the fourth main body of theory that has contributed to our understanding of urban change. This approach aids interpretation of the city by revoking Marxian reification of the market and demystifying the role and actions of the agents involved in the production and reproduction of urban environments. Post-modern critique of meta-theory and emphasis on human difference provides a useful corrective to macro-level structural analyses. By adding another level of explanation, a post-structuralist perspective augments the exigetical value of a political economy view of urban change.

Each of the four theoretical perspectives can claim to illuminate some part of the complex dynamics and structure of the city. But no single approach provides a comprehensive explanation of urban restructuring. The question of whether an accommodation is possible among the different approaches has tended to be polarized between those who accept a pluralist stance— ‘agreeing to differ’, on the grounds that there is no single way to gain knowledge (Couclelis 1982)—and those who insist on the need to make a unitary choice of theoretical framework due to the perceived superiority of a particular epistemology (Hudson 1983). Others have sought to combine approaches in different ways (Johnston 1980). The latter route, which incorporates a search for a middle ground between the generalization of positivism and the exceptionalism of post-modern theory, is the approach favoured in this book. The restructuring of Britain’s cities is best seen as a manifestation of structural forces within a particular context. A full understanding of urban restructuring in Britain requires examination of both the general processes of the capitalist mode of production (by means of a political economy perspective) and an (empirically informed) appreciation of the particular social formations that emerge from the interaction of structural forces and local context. In this book the study of the particular—geographies of social division in the British city—is set within a structural framework comprising national and international economic and political parameters.

The importance of employing a combined perspective that encompasses global and local scales, structure and agency, and theory and empiricism in seeking to understand the process of urban restructuring in Britain is illustrated most graphically by the fact that economic and political forces operating at the global level can reach down to influence the quality of life of individuals and local communities. For cities, the impact of the emergence of a world economic system is encapsulated in the distinction between the city as an autonomous self-governing polity (which existed in medieval Europe prior to the development of an economy based on the trade of marketed commodities) and present circumstances under which city development is influenced to a significant degree by forces beyond its control. Today, investment decisions taken by managers in a transnational corporation with headquarters in one of the ‘command cities’ of the global economic system can have a direct effect on the well-being of a family living on a council estate in Britain. In order to confront such forces, cities in the modern world must seek to position themselves and, increasingly, compete in global society. The fact that cities vary greatly in their capacity to meet the challenge posed by globalization is reflected in the extent to which each can shape or simply react to global forces. This challenge is particularly acute for cities in advanced industrial states like the UK which have been destabilized by a process of industrial restructuring that has accelerated since the early 1970s as part of the transition to advanced capitalism.

It is important to recognize, however, that although the power of global forces to influence urban growth or decline is profound it is not omnipotent. Economic and political action undertaken at a national level or by regional groupings of nation states can modify the effects of the global economic system. Regulatory and tax policies shape the environments that attract or repel investors; decisions about public investment determine whether infrastructure will be rebuilt or allowed to deteriorate; government procurement policy stimulates the private economy, and intergovernmental transfer payments can prevent the collapse of a local economy. Furthermore, the impacts of global processes are manifested in particular local contexts, the nature of which varies between places. Thus while the UK as a whole may be influenced by the shockwaves of the global economy, the response of cities in different parts of the country, as well as of different areas within individual cities, varies according to local conditions. As we have indicated, to achieve a full understanding of the process of urban restructuring in Britain requires knowledge of both national and international structural forces as well as of local mediating factors underlying the process of urban change.

Accordingly, the five chapters that comprise Part I of this book examine the principal structural forces acting on Britain’s cities and establish a contextual framework for the detailed consideration of local conditions presented in Part II. In this introductory chapter I provide an overview of the major factors relating to the process of urban restructuring in the United Kingdom. The chapter is organized into five main parts. In the first part the discussion establishes the economic context of urban restructuring by describing the nature of the capitalist system and examining the post-war restructuring of the UK space economy. In part two attention is focused on the policy context, with particular consideration directed to the nature of urban policy. In the third section the planning context of urban restructuring is explained, while in section four the social context with particular reference to the changing role of the welfare state, is discussed. Finally, section five examines the geography of the current urban crisis, focusing on the nature and incidence of poverty and related disadvantages, and the growth of social polarization and exclusion in urban Britain. In combination this set of contextual analyses provides a foundation and framework for the remainder of the book.

THE ECONOMIC CONTEXT

The nature of capitalism

Capitalism, as defined by Marx, is a specific mode of production: a set of institutionalized practices by which societies organize their productive activities, provide for their material needs and reproduce their socio-economic structure. Capitalism refers not only to economic mechanisms of resource allocation but views economic activity as a social enterprise governed by political and legal regulations that embody a particular set of cultural values. (The rise of the new conservatism in the UK and USA during the 1980s provides clear evidence of the effect of political change on economic organization and, through policies such as privatization, de-regulation and public spending restraint, on the spatial structure of society.) Capitalism attaches particular importance to individual freedom as a cultural value and capitalist societies are marked by a strong commitment to private property ownership and preference for limited government intervention in the decisions of individuals to allocate resources on the basis of the values set by the market. Capitalism is one of five major modes of production—the others being subsistence, slavery, feudalism and socialism. Capitalism is distinguished from other modes of production by its expansionary dynamic encapsulated in the profit-maximizing goals of the actors within the capitalist mode of production (and enshrined in Marx’s dictum: production for productions sake, accumulation for accumulations sake). The other distinguishing feature of capitalism is its uneven results.

The unevenness of capitalism

The unevenness of capitalist economic development is evident both temporally and geographically. The temporal unevenness of capitalist development is revealed in the growth cycles identified by economic historians. Of particular significance in interpreting the recent evolution of the global economic system are the Kondratieff ‘long waves’ that have appeared since the Industrial Revolution. These alternate phases of growth and stagnation show a high correlation with technological change, and the regenerative effects of technological innovation underlies the major non-Marxist explanations of long waves (Freeman 1987). The first Kondratieff expansion phase (c.1790– 1815) was associated with the period of the original Industrial Revolution (with the introduction of mechanized textile production and improved iron production). Subsequent periods also appear to fit the pattern with steam engines, railways and Bessemer steel in the second growth phase (c.1844– 74); chemicals, electricity and automobiles in the third phase (c.1890–1920); and aerospace, electronics and nuclear technology in the fourth phase (c.1940– 73). The fifth Kondratieff identified by Hall (1985) highlights the role of micro-electronics (in, for example, computing, industrial process control and telecommunications) and biotechnologies in transforming the economy.

In Marxist interpretations these regular fifty-year cycles of growth and recession in the modern world economy are linked to the inherent dynamics of capitalist economies (Mandel 1980). According to this analysis, over-investment by competing firms each seeking to captur...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PLATES
• FIGURES
• TABLES
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: URBAN RESTRUCTURING AND THE REPRODUCTION OF INEQUALITY IN BRITAIN’S CITIES
• PART I: THE STRUCTURAL CONTEXT OF URBAN DIVISION
• PART II: PLANES OF DIVISION
• PART III: PROSPECTIVE