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Territorial competitiveness:
Towards a new urban politics?
MAURO CASIONI
University of Milan
ESRC seminar series on 'Changing Cultures of Competitiveness‘ 2016
Lancaster University
Acknowledgments: British Academy
Overview
• Cultures of urban competitiveness and the New Urban
Politics
• Urban competitiveness as hegemonic project
• Climate change and carbon control: implications for
cultures of urban competitiveness
• A new culture of urban governance based on New Urban
Environment Politics (NUEP)
• Infrastructure and politics of mobility
• The challenge of constructing cross-class and sector
alliances
• The role of the (territorial structure of the) state
• Chicago and Seattle examples
Cultures of urban competitiveness
The New Urban Politics
• Crisis of Fordism and the mobility
of industrial and finance capital
• Urban growth coalitions and
inter-territorial competition
• The role of the state, grant
regimes and ‘rules of the game’
• Place promotion
• Emphasis on capital mobility but
at the expense of knowledge of
local-global dependence and
environmental interests
• The search for an ‘urban
sustainability fix’ in the 1990s
(e.g. Manchester and Leeds)
Ecostate restructuring, climate change
and carbon control regimes
Source: Figure 5 from Chicago Climate Action Plan, 2008, page 9.
Urban infrastructure
Research shows that there is a compelling
economic advantage to pursuing activities
that lower [fossil fuel] emissions... For
Chicago’s city government alone, the
projected infrastructure costs of climate
change are nearly four times higher under
the higher emissions scenario than they
are under the lower emissions scenario
(Chicago Climate Action Plan, Climate
Change and Chicago: Projections and
Potential Impacts (Summary of Final
Report)
http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org/
accessed 1/12/08, page 30).
New Urban Environmental Politics
New eco-culture of urban
competition
• Inter-urban competition
• Carbon-offsetting the urban
growth machine
• Grant regimes, Obama and cap
and trade
• Urban place promotion (Look
– no more emissions!!)
• Low-carbon urban political
alternatives – transition towns
• An urban politics of mobility
Seattle:
MetroNatural
or
S(outh) L(ake) U(nion) T(rolley)?
Andy Jonas: This is a very leading question but do you think that there is a
... new politics of mobility that is driven by quite interesting tensions around
competitiveness and sustainability...
Puget Sound Regional Transportation Activist: So really - that’s a great
question. It really depends on what level of government you are talking
about. The level of support for better choices and increased mobility, which
I really take to mean better sidewalks, better bike lanes, better transit
service, not just a local bus service but also a kind of regional high capacity
transit service, is more strongly supported at local level than it is at state
level, and the interesting thing about that fact is that if you talk to folks at
state level they are very interested in sustainability and they are very
interested in the environment and they want to do all those things. [But]
there’s disconnect there between those decisions and desires and the on the
ground -- decisions being made about our transportation and infrastructure.
So there’s a pressure there on how do we maintain our competitiveness in
the economic sense, how do we move freight, how do we move people, how
do we not inform our constituents everyday that the traffic is our number
one problem here in the state (Personal interview, September, 2007).
Final thoughts
• NUEP seems to ‘fit’ comfortably alongside NUP and cultures of
urban competitiveness
• Urban growth elites want to join “race to the top” and demonstrate
climate change leadership (e.g. London and the Olympics)
• Role of the state crucial (e.g. Obama urban policy and “cap and
trade” emissions regulation)
• But beware of liberal reformist views (Walker and Large, 1975)
• The global and local geographies of the city do matter – spatial
variations in oil-dependence and energy-extensive urban forms
• Opportunities to reconnect the politics of urban development and
the living place
• New counter-cultural low-carbon urban alliances and coalitions are
possible
References
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Dudensing, R. M. (2008). Benchmarking Regional Competitiveness: the Role of a Region’s Economic
Legacy in Determining Competitiveness. Clemson: Clemson University.
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Esqueda, W. R. (2010). Análisis espacial de la competitividad a nivel municipal: una aplicación del
análisis exploratorio de datos espaciales, In Nuevos Paradigmas, Mejores Gobiernos Locales. BUAP.
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Esqueda, R. (2015). “La polarización del desarrollo en los municipios tamaulipecos”, en el libro;
Economía, desarrollo y territorio. Los desafíos y propuestas para el segundo milenio. pp. 259-277.
Salvador Pérez-Mendoza, Bueno, Luis E., y Fabiola Aguilar (Coords.). Benemérita Univ. Autón. de
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