Urban Politics

Critical Approaches

Mark Davidson, Deborah Martin, Mark Davidson, Deborah Martin, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780857023988, 9780857023971
• eBook ISBN: 9781446293034
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Offers a much needed update on urban politics in a globalized world... Davidson and Martin, as well as contributors, chart new territory and produce thought-provoking research that move the field in a more critical direction"
- Setha M. Low, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

"A critical analysis of power and politics is essential to an understanding of contemporary urbanism.  Informative and challenging, clear and sophisticated, Urban Politics: Critical Approaches encourages readers to grapple with the great diversity of analytical lenses that frame urban political research through detailed, engaging case studies"
- Eugene McCann, Simon Fraser University

This critical, thought provoking discussion of contemporary urban politics places key issues in a geographical context. Divided into three sections:

• The urban as political setting
• The urban as political medium
• The urban as political community

The text provides a thorough theoretical grounding with an extensive thematic overview. This unique approach links classical, institutional urban politics with a broader set of urban politics and practices.

With case study material integrated throughout, and consideration given to the discussion of different urban politics from multiple theoretical perspectives, this is a completely up to date overview for students of urban geography, urban studies, urban sociology, and of course, urban politics.

1

THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT URBAN POLITICS

Mark Davidson and Deborah Martin

It is now trite to call into question what we mean by the terms ‘urban’ or ‘politics’. The urban politics literature is full of attempts to develop more cohesive and/or distinctive takes on the conjunction. Theorizing urban politics is, of course, a useful exercise that mediates those countless passing deployments of the term. Indeed this mediation is a crucial political task itself. As the chapters in this collection demonstrate, there are important stakes involved in how we understand urban politics. For example, if we understand urban politics as something that happens within cities and across all contestations then we will arrive at different conclusions with regards to things such as the vibrancy of political life and democratic process.

The task of defining ‘urban politics’ is not only analytical, but deeply political. When we set out a definition of urban politics we identify our object of analysis. Critical theorist Slavoj Žižek (2006) refers to this general process of identification as an act of bracketing: ‘the bracketing itself produces it objects’ (56; emphasis in original). Urban politics does not simply appear to us when we decide to investigate it. Rather we have to actively construct an image of urban politics to start interrogating them. We do this by abstracting from the indeterminate set of processes that constitute the city and urban life. Without accepting this task we would be faced with a vast collection of phenomena that, if we did not select a few to focus upon, would certainly leave us paralysed, unable to start the process of making sense.

So bracketing is a necessary task in order to gain knowledge. But as Žižek (2006) explains, this task is not one that can claim to be neutral: ‘This bracketing is not only epistemological, it concerns what Marx called “real abstraction”’ (56). What this means is that when we define our object of study, we have the concomitant task of deciding what to include and what to leave out. If we focus on city hall as the venue for urban politics, we might be leaving out important parts of any city’s political fabric. Or if we concentrate explicitly on the economic drivers of urban politics, we might omit other types of social struggles. The conundrum here is the fact we must necessarily bracket. We cannot wish to capture the complete complexities of any social arrangement. So what to do?

One response might be to say that all perspectives on urban politics – or anything else for that matter – are equally valid. Or one might say that contrary perspectives must be brought into agreement; perhaps using something akin to Hegel’s dialectical method. Or, as Žižek’s (2006) theory of parallax view suggests, we might sometimes accept the incongruity of two perceptions and attempt to keep both in mind at the same time. Žižek equates this to the famous optical trick of ‘two faces or a vase’ where you either see two faces or a vase but never both. You know both exist, but nevertheless you must choose to view only one. This is how Žižek (2006) describes the parallax in philosophical terms: ‘... subject and object are inherently “mediated”, so that an “epistemological” shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an “ontological” shift in the object itself’ (17). What this means is that different perspectives – what Žižek calls ‘bracketing’ – on urban politics are related, even if they remain incompatible. ‘Urban politics’ (the object) appears as it does because we (the subject) theorize it in certain ways.

There are many consequences to this philosophical position. Here we want to develop just one, that of the necessity to see the implications of a shift in perspective. The notion of parallax perspectives makes us think about what happens in that non-space between one viewpoint and another. For example, we might decide to approach urban politics via its official state institutions; there are good reasons to do so, since this perspective can illuminate a great deal of social struggle and order. Alternatively we might examine urban politics through the idea that everyone in the city is a political actor and, consequently, urban politics is about the entirety of social relations running through the metropolis. Again there might be very good reasons for doing this. The point, however, is that we must think about what this shift in perspective means: What changes? What gets lost when we rethink the object? What types of politics and social changes can be justified from certain viewpoints? The various approaches to urban politics in this book open some political possibilities and close others. So which possibilities should remain open and what others can, perhaps, become closed? The way we theorize the city itself has a lot to do with answering these questions.

Urban Politics and the Geographies of the City

In the past decade there has been a significant rethinking of the geography of the city, and, by extension, urban politics. At risk of oversimplification, this rethinking has involved a shift from reading the city as a discrete space with its own internal politics to a more relational view of urbanism. A good example of the former is provided by John (2009: 17): ‘At its most straightforward, urban politics is about authoritative decision-making at a smaller scale than national units … the focus of interest is at the sub-national level with particular reference to the political actors and institutions operating there.’ Within this framing, urban politics is contained within cities. These internal politics can then be related to smaller (i.e. neighbourhood) and larger (i.e. national) scales. The nature of this containment has been conceptualized differently. Some have suggested the collective consumption issues (i.e. schooling, transit) necessarily generate localized political communities (Castells, 1977; Saunders, 1981). Others, particularly those interested in urban history, have pointed towards the political consciousness that arose when people started living within cities (Nash, 1979).

Within the urban politics literature, jurisdictional boundaries of cities and municipalities have often served as a foundation for those who theorize the urban as a bounded space (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Taylor, 2004). This perspective has often motivated studies that look for the particular combination of factors within an urban environment, such as city-size and demographics, which help explain variables such as citizen participation (Oliver, 2000). Those interested in multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2003) have also adopted this approach to conceptualize the city, viewing it as one part of a set of nested scales (i.e. neighbourhood, city, region, nation, global); the focus of analysis being the identification of the particular nature of governance and development within the city and how this relates to other scales. This tradition of urban studies continues, particularly in the context of what many see as a reworking of scale relations (Swyngedouw, 1997; Brenner, 2001).

A bounded city perspective has become increasingly problematized with a growing recognition that socio-spatial relations have transformed as a consequence of globalization processes (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000). Indeed, in the context of entrepreneurial governance, mobile capital and communication technologies, scholarly views of the urban system have transformed significantly, in part as a result of thinking about the production of space as being multi-faceted and simultaneous, irrespective of national and municipal boundaries (Harvey, 1989; Lefèbvre 1991). A major consequence is that proximity and nation-state relations are now less relevant to urban governance (Swyngedouw, 1997). This means that if we are to understand the processes occurring within particular city spaces, we need to be cognizant of the varied set of relations they maintain as opposed to taking for granted that, for example, neighbouring municipalities and national governments will be the most significant.

The shift away from a bounded conceptualization of urban politics has been part of a more general critique of scalar perspectives. For Marston et al. (2005), a move away from scalar perspectives should be total, preferring instead to understand relations as networked; or to use Leitner’s (2004) theorization, to move from a concern from vertical relations to horizontal relations. No longer, it is argued, can we therefore see the world in a three-scale structure (see Taylor, 1982): micro (urban), meso (nation) and macro (global). Whilst the view that scale is now redundant as a theoretical tool is not held here, the emphasis on horizontal geographies (networks; non-distanced relations; flows) is recognized as important to understanding the constitution of the city. We therefore require an understanding of the city that avoids the search for some essential spatiality. Rather we need an approach that captures the multiplicity of socio-spatialities and engages in a dialogue about the relative epistemologies developed using different perspectives on the urban (Massey, 2007).

As part of a wider attempt to rethink the geographies of the city, many now stress the relational nature of urbanism, building on foundational ideas of urbanization as a process, but incorporating more explicitly relations of agents (individuals and institutions) as well as capital (Pierce et al., 2011). Within the context of globalization processes, the idea of a discretely bounded and/or scalar political community has been either abandoned or supplemented by reading cities as inter-connected and inter-constituted.

BOX 1.1 GEOGRAPHY AND POLITICS

Debates about how to understand the relationship between space and politics have been developing quickly in recent years. Often-used references to ‘cities’ or ‘nations’ as scalar entities have been widely critiqued as scholars working in various fields have attempted to shift away from purely scalar-based theories. As a result you will now see much discussion of networks, topology and assemblages in the geographical literature. An example of influential work in this area is John Allen and Allan Cochrane’s (2010) retheorizing of state power, where they see it as ‘multiple, overlapping, tangled, interpenetrating, as well as relational’ (1087). The city or nation-state is therefore seen not as a discrete domain of power, but rather as a set of topological arrangements that exert influence in a variety of diverse spaces. Studying urban or national politics therefore becomes concerned with tracing out the contours of power that political actors create over time and space. Put simply, we cannot rely on the city or nation scale as a guide to know where politics happen.

Suggested further reading

Critiquing scale-based approaches

Marston, S.A., Jones, III, J.P. and Woodward, K. 2005. ‘Human geography without scale’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(4): 416–432.

Commentary: Leitner, H. and Miller, B. (2007) ‘Scale and the limitations of ontological debate: a commentary on Marston, Jones and Woodward’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(1): 116–125.

Thinking space relationally

Allen, John (2003) Lost Geographies of Power. Blackwell: Oxford.

Featherstone, David (2008) Resistance, Space and Political Identities: The Making of Counter-Global Networks. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Jacobs, J. (2011) ‘Urban geographies I: still thinking cities relationally’, Progress in Human Geography, 38(3): 412–422.

City as an assemblage

McFarlane, C. (2011) ‘Assemblage and critical urbanism’, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action, 15(2): 204–224.

Commentary: Brenner, N., Madden, D. and Wachsmuth, D. (2011) ‘Assemblage urbanism and the challenges of critical urban theory’, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action, 15(2): 225–240.

Some have rejected the idea of the bounded urban political community because they view it as politically regressive, closing off a recognition of the linkages among different oppressions, be they racial, gendered, or spatially based marginalization. A notable example of this line of thinking came from David Harvey (1996) when he wrote against the ‘militant particularism’ that he saw characterizing localized political movements. He argued that ‘[T]he potentiality for militant particularism embedded in place runs the risk of sliding back into a parochialist politics’ (324). Harvey’s rejection comes from seeing the now globally coordinated production and consumption of commodities creating geographically complex social relations. The idea that a localized, place-based political movement might transcend its own particular interests and politicize these relations just seems impossible for Harvey.

Others have taken a different position. Doreen Massey (1991, 2007) has written extensively on the politics of place in an era of economic globalization. In her work she has rejected the dualistic framing of the local and global that Harvey (1987) uses: ‘The global is just as concrete as is the local place. If space is really to be thought relationally then it is no more than the sum of our relations and interconnections, and the lack of them’ (Massey, 2005: 184). Fitting the world into the categories of local and global are rejected because the division obfuscates their mutual constitution. This argument has led many scholars to look towards those connections and relations that local places constitute between themselves (e.g. Featherstone, 2008).

One response to this spatially extensive relational approach might be: What about the government? Whilst different places might have become more connected in recent times, city governments still exist! Many scholars adopting the relational view of urban politics have attempted to respond to this type of question. For some this effort has involved a rethinking of state relations and the role that city governments play in constituting economic relations and enacting policy (e.g. Brenner, 2004). Others have attempted to conceptualize the changing form and operation of state power. John Allen (2004) has argued that state power does not operate within scales. He rejects the idea that a city’s political authority is wielded purely within certain jurisdictional boundaries. Instead Allen chooses to understand state power as a topological arrangement: ‘as a relational effect of social interaction where there are no pre-defined distances or simple proximities to speak of’ (2004: 19; emphasis in original). Politics is therefore to be found across the multiplicity of networked relations that (re)make the city: ‘the mediated relationships of power multiply the possibilities for political intervention at different moments and within a number of institutional settings’ (ibid.: 29). We cannot predict, therefore, where power will connect various decision-makers, and it may be that far-flung relations define or circumscribe the choices of seemingly ‘local’ actors.

A topological account of the city therefore transcends the local/global by viewing state power as ‘multiple, overlapping, tangled, interpenetrating, as well as relational’ (Allen and Cochrane, 2010: 1087). An important consequence of taking this viewpoint is that we often have to look for state power in places that we would not associate with ‘government’ – a point made (and much debated) when Floyd Hunter (1953) and Clarence Stone (1989) demonstrated the wide-ranging, socially powerful politics operating through corporate and community elites in Atlanta, Georgia. Given that a city can have various forms of networked relations it may exercise its power in a potentially endless list of places that may be nested, overlapping and disparate. If we then think about urban politics in terms of contestation and struggle, our venues for such activities might need to be sorted out. We might have to reject the idea that political power within cities resides in city hall and, instead, look towards those points in time and space where state power is wielded.

Recently these relational approaches have been used to rethink urban policies. In particular, the idea that cities have their own policy-making procedures and resultant policies has been challenged, with attention being directed to the international networks of policy generation and exchange. Rather than see a city like London or New York as generating its own approaches to policy, such governing is complicated by the fact that the constitution of a city’s policies occurs as a dialogue both within and outside the city and its officials. Recognizing the mobility of policy-making transforms conceptualizations of the geography of policies: ‘it moves beyond the limits of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Thinking critically about urban politics
• SECTION 1: CITY AS SETTING
• Introduction to City as Setting
• 2 The neighbourhood as a place for (urban) politics
• 3 Splintered governance: urban politics in the twenty-first century
• 4 Ruthless: the foreclosure of American urban politics
• SECTION 2: CITY AS MEDIUM
• Introduction to City as Medium
• 5 Policing the city
• 6 Mayors and the representation of urban politics
• 7 Making urban politics go away: the role of legally mandated planning processes in occluding city power
• SECTION 3: CITY AS COMMUNITY
• Introduction to City as Community
• 8 Queering the city: sexual citizenship in creative city Singapore
• 9 Making space in the multicultural city: immigrant settlement, neighbourhoods and urban politics
• 10 The embedded politics of entrepreneurs
• 11 Is class relevant to urban politics?
• 12 The urban imaginary of nature: cities in American environmental politics
• 13 Urban politics as parallax
• Index