Pacifying Babel's Tower: Lessons for comparative urbanism

 

Michiel van Meeteren  (Ghent University)

 

Ate Poorthuis (University of Kentucky)

Ben Derudder (Ghent University)

Frank Witlox (Ghent University)

In our paper 'Pacifying Babel's Tower: A scientometric analysis of polycentricity in urban research', we analyze the origins of the fuzziness of the concept of polycentricity in urban studies. While seemingly little more than an adjective to describe the multi-cored character of settlements, the term 'polycentricity' disguises the much thornier and fundamental question of defining the notion of ‘city’ itself. This masking of a different debate suggests that, as a community of urban scholars, we have been talking past each other for a long time – hence our reference to Babel's Tower. We assume that we are discussing the same object, but are in fact often not. The paper extensively draws on the work of political scientist Giovanni Sartori (and his interlocutors) from which the notions of 'conceptual stretching', and 'Babel's Tower' are derived[1]. While conducting this research, we increasingly became convinced that Sartori's oeuvre might be able to provide important resolutions to some of the methodological issues plaguing (comparative) urban studies and human geography more widely (an insight that has proven productive elsewhere). In this post, as an extension of our paper, we explore the broader implications of Babylonian confusions caused by conceptual stretching for comparative research in urban studies.

 

 

The Tower of Babel (1563) by Pieter Breugel the Elder, Illustration used for the cover of Collier and Gerring's (2009) appreciation of the oeuvre of Giovanni Sartori. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg Accessed 23/03/2015)

 

Polycentricity is a concept that fits comfortably in the methodological toolbox of comparative urbanism. It provides a seemingly coherent yardstick to compare urban regions. Of course, in a strict ontological sense, every city in the world is unique. However, finding similarities and differences between places allows us to abstract from these unique and concrete realities. Based on these abstractions, we then define wider 'urban processes' that serve to structure the debates in our field of research. The crucial point in these abstractions is to avoid what Sartori calls 'miscomparing': drawing undue conclusions regarding similarity or difference.

 

Miscomparing can either take the form of a wrong 'case definition' (the answer to the question 'what is this a case of?', which leads to the proverbial comparing of apples and oranges, or a wrong 'case scoring' (assessing how this case compares to others, a kind of measurement error). When a specific miscomparison is routinely made (as has happened in the debate on urban polycentricity), it is solidified in the literature and may consequently become 'paradigmatic'. In this way, reminiscent of Kuhn's description of scientific revolutions, communities of researchers may collectively and unknowingly hold on to a theoretical proposition that ought to be revised given the available empirical evidence.

 

By way of example, let us consider an 'institutionalized miscomparison' identified in our paper that can potentially influence comparative urban studies in a detrimental way. In the polycentricity debate, differences between American and European contexts have commonly been overstated, despite the fact that the processes behind polycentricity are very similar across contexts. Because the processes behind polycentricity overlay distinct historical trajectories, incorrect assessments of difference between Europe and the United States have been made when studying the concrete situation 'on the ground'. At the correct level of abstraction (in this instance this involves comparing changing agglomeration-economy regimes across contexts), these cases should have been labeled as the 'same', whereas an empiricist assessment has led to a conclusion of 'difference'.

 

In general terms, this example highlights once again how the adopted theoretical and methodological perspective determines the results of comparative research. Miscomparing can result in accepting 'wrong' theory as 'valid', similar to type II errors in statistics, a concern that is at the heart of postcolonial critiques in urban studies, for example in the interventions of Jennifer Robinson or Ananya Roy. But it can similarly lead to type I errors: rejecting 'right' theory as 'invalid'. The polycentricity debate is one such example; another possibly arises if one takes too literally Roy’s sweeping suggestion that 'EuroAmerican theories' of the city cannot be used to say something useful about cities in Asia.

 

Therefore the most important conclusion of our study, which transcends the more narrow confines of the polycentricity debate, is that (as Sartori would phrase it) the proper application of the ‘ladder of abstraction’ is of paramount importance. We should always ask: are we comparing the same thing across contexts? If not, then we end up comparing apples to oranges, leading to erroneous conclusions about similarity and difference. This is remedied by abstraction, which results in the equally fascinating activity of comparing fruits.

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[1] A wonderful introduction to Sartori's work on comparitivism is Collier & Gerring's 2009 edited volume Concepts and Method in Social Science.

 

The Effects of Urban Greenways on the Geography of Office Sectors and Employment Density in Seoul, Korea

Myungjun Jang¹

Chang-Deok Kang²

¹ Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Daegu University, Kyungsan, Korea

² Department of Urban Planning and Real Estate, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea

Creativity is a core value of the contemporary urban economy. Thus, the creative class in such diverse fields as science and engineering, architecture and design, education, the arts, and music and entertainment is the main driver of new ideas and technologies, and is the vehicle for urban economic prosperity. It is logical that city leaders should prioritize policies that solicit and retain the creative class in particular urban settings. We postulate that amenities are influential in attracting highly skilled and creative workers. Therefore, we hypothesize that the presence of an urban greenway influences the location decisions of businesses, because workers prefer to be in a clean and neat environment.

We test whether Seoul’s urban greenway attracts and retains office sectors. In order to define office sectors, we integrate the typical office sector categories with Florida’s creative class concept after a critical review of related literature. Next, we isolate the effects of the greenway on the spatial distribution of office sectors and on employment density by reviewing background theories and empirical research. Here, we utilize multilevel modeling to fit the data structure, discuss the main findings, and provide our conclusions and policy implications.

Our multilevel models confirm that Seoul’s urban greenway tends to attract and retain firms in office sectors within a kilometer, while the freeway provides a favorable infrastructure for the geography of service industries. In addition, employment density increased within wide bands surrounding the urban greenway, in contrast to the freeway, which only had a similar effect within narrow bands.

 

This study shows that the urban greenway is a favorable factor for the location choice for the advanced and general office sectors, while the previous freeway infrastructure offered mobility benefits for the services category. The presence of public amenities has influenced the knowledge-based sectors’ pooling near the CGC corridor. Businesses are more likely to locate in close proximity to the CGC corridor in order to attract better workers. In addition, the co-location of retail shops and restaurants near the corridor has attracted office sectors that tend to rely on aspects of the urbanization economy, such as social networking and the exchange of knowledge. By contrast, the freeway was important for businesses in the services sector because customers relied on access to the transportation network.

This study raises questions concerning constructed amenities in an age of climate change. These questions should be addressed by further research. Many city leaders invest public finance in designing and building amenities to convert auto-oriented urban settings into people- and environment-oriented sites. Further and more detailed evaluation of similar projects would provide better references for constructed amenities. We believe that the spatiotemporal frame of this study could provide a cornerstone for identifying local variables that generate the spatial differences affecting business location decisions and employment density.

Assessing residential satisfaction among low income households in multi-habited dwellings in selected low income communities in Accra

Dr. Irene Appeaning Addo

Urban low income housing units in Ghana are often described as inadequate, lacking the basic amenities and found in poor neighbourhoods. Some of these neighbourhoods are overcrowded and characterised with rundown facilities, poor quality buildings, poor environmental facilities and poor sanitation. Although these neighbourhood characteristics are not contested, residents’ perception and use of these neighbourhoods may be contrary to what the policy maker thinks. Moreover, research has shown that households’ staying in multi-habited houses in the low income communities in Ghana exhibit very little residential mobility. Apart from lack of funds, what other factors could account for this observation? Could it be some form of residential satisfaction that they derive from living in their communities? Could it be the existence of social networks that help them to get by in life? Research in Ghana has looked at the physical characteristics of housing and the existing social dynamics as a composite measure of residential satisfaction in these neighbourhoods. The contribution of neighbourhood characteristics on residential satisfaction was not actually studied. However, it plays a significant role in residential satisfaction and household mobility patterns.

In my paper I explore dwelling characteristics, social networks and neighbourhood characteristics as a composite measure of residential satisfaction of multi-habited low income households in some communities in Accra. This was achieved by presenting the nature of multihabitation, measuring the level of residential satisfaction among low income households and identifying the specific variables that influence residential satisfaction.

The results show that there is a direct correlation between the shared facilities such as electricity supply and bathroom available in the house and the level of residential satisfaction. Where the households had enough facilities to share with less associated conflict, they expressed greater residential satisfaction. Dissatisfaction is high among households living in overcrowded family houses in some indigenous communities in Accra.

Overall, the study indicates that residents living in compound houses were moderately satisfied with their dwelling characteristics, neighbourhood characteristics and existing social networks. Surprisingly, many more residents were moderately satisfied with their neighbourhood characteristics as compared to the physical characteristics and access to informal social networks. Proximity to recreational areas also played a key role in residents’ satisfaction and these should be included in plans for urban low income housing. Policy makers often think about only housing for the poor and leave out the ancillary community facilities.  

Urban housing development in Ghana should be matched with infrastructure development and pioneered by private developers instead of state institutions.  At best, public-private partnership should be promoted. State institution-led projects in Ghana have not been very efficient and muddled with corrupt practices. Local development banks could be encouraged to invest in sanitation and other infrastructure development in urban low income communities. Moreover, there should be rigorous policies to drive urban infrastructure expansion, enforcement of local government by-laws to ensure that each low income house has adequate amenities and utilities such as bathrooms, toilets, electricity and water supply.

SPECIAL ISSUE - FEBRUARY 2015 (VOL 52/3)

Geographies of the Urban Night

Ilse van Liempt (Utrecht University)

Irina van Aalst (Utrecht University)     

Tim Schwanen (University of Oxford)

 

What happens at night in the city?

 

A major part of research within Human Geography, Sociology, Criminology and Planning suffers from nyctalopia: night blindness. Most studies focus on urban daily life activities and overlook night-time activities. This special issue addresses the challenges of 21st century place-making after dark and aims to deepen our understanding of ongoing and current transformations in how the space-times of the urban night are produced, used, experienced and regulated in different geographical contexts.

 

 

Phil Hadfield in his commentary on this special issue refers to the collection of papers as part of the ‘third wave’ of research on the ‘evening and night-time economy (ENTE)’. In the ‘first wave’ cultural planners vaunted redevelopment strategies to extent the vitality of city centers after 5 pm. The 24-hour city concept emerged in this period and the night-time economy (NTE) was approached with much optimism. A ‘second wave’ of NTE research later showed the unanticipated consequences of neoliberal deregulation, resulting in material degradation of social and cultural opportunities after dark and moral panic around the NTE’s unplanned growth. Previous naivety within urban governance policy and research was highlighted and much emphasis placed on public risk, safety and surveillance. A ‘third wave’ of research is now emphasizing the exclusionary outcomes that can result from a strong emphasis on securitization. The first two waves of research focused heavily on the English and Australian experience. In the third wave, other NTE geographical contexts are being explored and analyzed, as well as the expansion of temporal boundaries: hence the emergence of reference to the ENTE and the social analyses of how nights merge into days.

 

The collection of articles presented in this special issue is united in a focus on the complexity, messiness and local specificity of the formation of urban nights and is structured around four important focal points for researching for the night:

 

1)    Changing meanings and experiences of darkness and nights

2)    The evolution of the night-time economy

3)    The intensification of regulation

4)    Dynamics in practices of ‘going out’

 

Contributions to the collection show how the night has important social strengths. Night allows forms of sociality and conviviality to emerge that are not normally encountered during daylight hours. At the same time, nightlife areas are contested and experienced differently. Darkness creates a feeling of liberation, which can be uplifting; but it also creates a sense of surrender that can be unsettling. The enticing possibilities of intensive mixed-use urban spaces, as outlined by Jane Jacobs, remain a seductive vision for social liberals. Yet there remains a social tension concerning the uses and functions of urban night space, wherein one person’s ‘expression’, may be another person’s ‘disturbance’. Furthermore, we still have few case studies of the more hidden space-times and how they, for example, may allow limited access to the city at night for marginalized groups. An important reason for this is that most ethnographers, except the most committed ones, have retired to their beds at night.

 

DETROIT AFTER BANKRUPTCY: A CASE OF DEGROWTH MACHINE POLITICS

Seth Schindler

Department of Geography, University of Sheffield

My recent article entitled Detroit after bankruptcy: A case of degrowth machine politics focuses on urban governance in the context of the city’s longstanding crisis. It examines a coalition among some of the city’s civic and political leaders that emerged after the city declared bankruptcy in 2013. The main argument is that this coalition envisions a future for the city whose emphasis is on making the city liveable rather than rejuvenating its manufacturing base. This has fostered a freedom to imagine the future and experiment with policy not seen in Detroit for years, and it demonstrates that crises do not necessarily result in the intensification of neoliberalism.

As a native Detroiter I have watched with interest the growing scholarly and media attention paid to the city. Hardly a week passes in which a major news outlet does not publish a collection of photos documenting the city’s crumbling built environment. I wrote this article in an effort to counter some commonly held assumptions about Detroit’s relationship with ‘cause and effect’ neoliberalism. Indeed, it is commonly assumed that the city was plunged into crisis by neoliberalism, and that the crisis has resulted in the intensification of neoliberalism. Instead, Detroit’s crisis dates back to the 1960s and I argue that its bankruptcy represents a failure of neoliberalism. The city’s longstanding crisis has shaped the lives of Detroiters for decades. It determined their occupations and life courses, depending on their skin colour and class. People have responded in ways that produced the sprawling metropolitan area with deep divisions (i.e. moving to suburbs in successive waves). The border separating city from suburb is marked by 8 Mile, a wound that is etched into the geography of the city and is emblematic of the decline of the great American city. It demarcates the city, as both a frontier and threat that must be contained. This narrative of containment looms large in the imagination of suburbanites. For as long as I can remember, there was a perception among suburbanites that Detroit was in terminal decline, and that this decline threatened to spread like a cancer and engulf the inner suburbs. The answer for working-class whites was to stay one step ahead and move farther north.

Many European-Americans who began their lives as factory workers in the heyday of Fordist manufacturing moved to northern suburbs in the 1960s. Their children followed suit and moved farther north and their own children now work in the tertiary sector. Many Metro Detroiters have a love-hate relationship with Detroit. Indeed, the word ‘Detroit’ conjures up feelings of nostalgia, reverence, fear, hope, guilt and resignation. These complex feelings are a result of the city’s decades-long decline, of which the 2008 crisis was only the latest chapter. The municipal government was already faced with a shrinking tax base and ballooning debt when the financial crisis began. It was clear to everyone that borrowing money to simply keep the traffic lights on and the city’s ambulances limping along was untenable. The question was who would take the financial loss when the city finally declared bankruptcy? Common wisdom among urban scholars is that neoliberalism is intensified during times of crisis, and in a neoliberal regime the public sector assumes risk while the private sector reaps rewards. Ultimately extra-local bondholders failed to recoup the lion’s share of their investment, and this is why Detroit’s bankruptcy represents the failure of neoliberalism. By declaring bankruptcy the city was able to shed some of its crippling debt, and this has allowed local civic and political leaders to re-envision the city’s future.

 

Urban transformation interrupted in the wake of the financial crisis

 

I hope that this article makes us think critically about neoliberalism and cities in crisis. In the case of Detroit local leaders have recognized that further degrowth is likely. They have articulated a plan that acknowledges the end of Fordist manufacturing in the city, and instead focuses on quality of life issues. It also aims to construct ‘blue’ and ‘green’ infrastructure and make the Detroit one of America’s greenest cities. This transition is scheduled to take five decades, and indeed, it necessitates difficult choices and trade-offs. It would be illogical not to recognize the very real fiscal constraints faced by the municipal government and to simply dismiss any and all budget cuts as evidence of intensified neoliberalism. Ultimately this article demonstrates that we need a more nuanced understanding of how crises unfold in cities that have been in decline for decades. It is unclear why policy makers in these cities would turn to out-of-the-box neoliberal policies since no amount of fiscal austerity is likely to jumpstart economic growth. This explains why these cities may be fertile ground for the emergence of degrowth machine politics. Depending on what happens in Detroit, local political and civic leaders in other cities may view bankruptcy as a viable way to escape unrealistic financial burdens imposed by extra-local bondholders. Bankruptcy is just one option that is related to a more fundamental question in Detroit and a host of other cities whose degrowth seems inevitable: how can degrowth be managed equitably in ways that make cities liveable?

Adaptive Behaviour in Urban Space;

Residential Mobility in Response to Social Distance

Sako Musterd¹, Wouter P.C. van Gent¹, Marjolijn Das² and Jan J. Latten^1,2

¹ Urban Geography, Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam

² Statistics Netherlands

Urban populations often show a high diversity in wealth or income. This is reflected in contrasts between affluent and poor neighbourhoods. Such contrasts feed policy and academic debates on housing market regulation and welfare arrangements. Generally, it is supposed that more liberal policy regimes give greater freedom for people to choose their residential location, which can lead to higher levels of segregation and homogenous neighbourhoods. This notion also often surfaces when differences in urban inequality between Northern American and Western European cities are discussed. The assumption is that European cities have a welfare state legacy of housing market regulation which assuages social segregation. Furthermore, social mixing policies try to bring a mix of different social strata into neighbourhoods in order to prevent unwanted patterns of segregation and accumulation of problems in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. So, rather than just choice, mobility is also structured by institutional arrangements like social housing waiting lists. Also, because income inequality is less pronounced and residential environments tend to be more mixed, people may not find it necessary to take the social composition of their neighbourhood into account.

Yet, despite regulation and interventions and lower inequality, Western European cities do exhibit patterns of social segregation with conspicuous concentrations of wealth and poverty. While acknowledging that segregation patterns within a city are produced and reproduced by a range of factors, we were interested in the role of individual residential moves in the continuous existing reality of contrasting affluent and poorer neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. Do we see that ‘birds of a feather flock together’? In other words, do people show a preference for living among ‘equals’ in their mobility behaviour? Even weak signals of this selectivity behaviour may help to understand why segregation at neighbourhood level survives, even if policy measures try to counteract it.

This article focuses on ‘socio-economic distance’: the discrepancy between households’socio-economic positions and the socio-economic profile of their neighbourhood. We analysed large-scale longitudinal register data for all residents of the four largest cities of the Netherlands that were available at Statistics Netherlands.

We found that, despite government regulation, the socio-economic distance to the neighbourhood is an important driver of socio-economic segregation. Both households that are more affluent than the neighbourhood average and households that are poorer more often move out of that neighbourhood. Moreover, movers tend to select destination neighbourhoods in which the residents resemble their own socio-economic position more closely. So, notwithstanding household change such as moving in together or separation, households who move tend to adapt to, and thereby sustain, the socio-economic status of neighbourhoods.

Our findings offer new input for debates and policies relating to segregation and social mixing, and pose challenges for policy makers and politicians who believe that segregated neighbourhoods will eventually have negative effects on the whole society. Our findings suggest that economic segregation in neighbourhoods cannot be counteracted by housing market rules and regulations alone. Individual choices of residents lead to more homogeneous neighbourhoods, either low income neighbourhoods or high income neighbourhoods. However, residential mobility is not always a matter of individual choice alone. There are many limitations related to access and affordability when there is scarcity on the housing market. Also, regulations may produce several constraints. The economically stronger households will more easily find a place that fits their position. The economically weaker may be more or less forced to move, for instance when the character of a neighbourhood changes significantly, as some of the gentrification literature claims.

Our research may trigger new investigations into the ‘functioning’of neighbourhoods. Not every neighbourhood will function in the same way. Some neighbourhoods with substantial social mix may stay attractive to a wide range of households. It might be worth investigating under what circumstances socially mixed neighbourhoods are sustainable, what the main characteristics of such neighbourhoods are in terms of location, tenure, housing type, demographic, cultural and other compositions, and why people decide to stay in such environments.

From Fan Parks to Live Sites: Mega Events and the Territorialisation of Urban Space

Professor David McGillivray and Dr Matt Frew

Our Urban Studies article is concerned with the relationship between major sporting events (particularly mega events), urban space and the extension of corporate brandscaping, with a focus on the (relatively) new phenomenon of World Cup Fan Fests and Olympic Live Sites (Frew and McGillivray, 2008; McGillivray, 2011).  The provision of specially designed, temporary venues located within prime urban civic space has been enshrined in host city contractual obligations since the Germany 2006 World Cup, designed to accentuate the vibrancy of the host cities, for residents and visitors, providing opportunities for those without tickets for matches or events to participate in a collective viewing experience.

 

In this short video we discuss how Olympic Live Sites are inseparable from the corporate-media nexus that increasingly defines the mega sports event phenomenon. We argue that instead of free-flowing festive spaces, Live Sites have themselves become carefully planned and orchestrated venues, which though free, are subject to extensive commodification processes. They are attractive to global corporate brands and the mass media industries because they provide these corporate actors with unfettered access to large audiences, facilitated by the resources of the host city in the form of security and promotional support. They now operate as part of the valuable real estate that the sponsor family gains access to as a feature of their sponsorship investment. Host cities are required to subsidise financially the hosting of Live Sites, in the process ceding sovereignty over urban civic spaces to external organisations for the purpose of brand extension. As parks, squares and buildings are opened up as commodities hosts are also required to introduce legislation to protect the rights (commercial and legal) of sponsors, whereby third party advertising and trading practices are tightly controlled across these zones during the mega event (and often beyond).

 

In this article we draw on the work of Deleuze and Guattari and liken Olympic Live Sites to striated spaces which, like any spatial structure, possess what appear to be objective boundaries. Risk and security narratives are amplified to provide justification for search procedures, security and the segregation of space to organise activities within bounded walls and fences. Live Sites represent yet another institutionalised commercial sphere during mega sports events. Event zones (including, but not restricted to, Live Sites) see public squares, parks, roads, pavements and airspace cocooned, controlled and commodified under a gaze of governance afforded by exceptional legislation.

Professor David McGillivray holds a Chair in Event and Digital Cultures in the Creative Futures Institute, University of the West of Scotland. His research interests focus on the contemporary significance of events and festivals (sporting and cultural) as markers of identity and mechanisms for the achievements of wider economic, social and cultural externalities.

 

Dr Matt Frew is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Tourism at Bournemouth University. He came to academia with 15 years of industrial experience. His penchant for post structuralist theory takes him into the terrains of mega events, music festivity and the embodied impact of digital, social and transformational technologies.