Download URBANISM WITHOUT CITIES? Political economy of changing urban

URBANISM WITHOUT CITIES?
Political economy of changing urban
landscapes: from cities to cityregions?
Kevin Morgan
School of City and Regional Planning
Cardiff University
Kevin Morgan Cardiff University,Wales, UK
Introduction
•
Spatial focus of political economy has undergone big shifts:
– From regions to cities
– From cities to city-regions
– Does this reflect policy, politics, new evidence or fashion?
•
Theoretical Issues: the causality conundrum
•
Governance Issues: flows, boundaries and powers
•
Political Issues: decentred spaces of development?
•
Tentative conclusions
Kevin Morgan Cardiff University,Wales, UK
Theoretical Issues: the causality
conundrum
•
Theoretical explanations of the ‘urban renaissance’ tend to draw on two perspectives
•
The first is knowledge-based:
– (physical) proximity is deemed to be essential for knowledge transfer in the ‘new
economy’ (Porter, Storper et al)
– the new economic geography is predicated on the positive relationship between
proximity and productivity (Krugman, Venables et al)
•
The second is the cultural-turn:
– cities as meeting places, consumption centres, aesthetic sites, places of flows,
mosaics and cosmopolitanism (Jacobs, Glaeser et al)
•
There are also hybrid perspectives:
– the amenity-conscious, latte-loving creatives who are drawn to cool, tolerant cities
(Florida et al)
•
But the causality of the above is unclear and contested
Kevin Morgan Cardiff University,Wales, UK
Governance Issues: flows, boundaries
and powers
•
The socio-economic dynamics of the ‘urban renaissance’ are not bounded by the
boundaries of the city
•
In terms of people flows the city-region is being seen as a more appropriate unit of
analysis:
– London: population growth fuelled by natural increase & immigration in the GLA
area, but the city-region could be the Greater South East
– Cardiff: one of the most commuter-dependent cities in the UK, but the city-region is
an ‘interdependent but unplanned urban network’
•
Political boundaries don’t ‘fit’ these economic flows, hence the calls for re-scaling the
city
•
Local and central government in the UK is the most asymmetrical in the OECD, with
UK cities the least autonomous as regards powers and resources
Kevin Morgan Cardiff University,Wales, UK
Political Issues – decentred spaces of
development?
•
Three decentred spaces being promoted in the UK today – regional, city-regional and
new localism
•
City-region narratives being scripted by:
– Central government (ODPM/DCLG)
– Local government (Core Cities Group)
– Think Tanks (NLGN, IPPR)
•
The London city-region being promoted by central government as part of a UK growth
strategy – but how sustainable is this?
•
Provincial city-regions enjoined to boost regional and national economic growth – but
how realistic is this?
•
New city-region narrative echoes the old regional narrative – that devolution carries an
economic dividend
Kevin Morgan Cardiff University,Wales, UK
Tentative conclusions
•
Existing theories promise more than they deliver - we know less than we think we
know about new urban ecologies
•
The ‘urban renaissance’ is far more partial than the narrative would suggest – socially
within the city, spatially around the UK
•
Economic flows will never ‘fit’ political boundaries, so the city-region scale is no
panacea
•
City-regionalists have yet to learn the ‘dirty little secret’ about devolution – there’s no
necessary economic dividend
•
The city-region narrative is being oversold as an economic strategy – within the
region and beyond, where it does nothing to redress the North/South divide
•
But, city-regionalism does create space for more polycentric planning, hence
sustainable urbanism (rather than boosterism) would be a better rationale for it
Kevin Morgan Cardiff University,Wales, UK