Go East,Young Cadre: Experiments in Inter‐Provincial Training of Party and State Managers in China

This article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban–rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978–1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public–private sector mobility among party officials. County and township‐level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private‐sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter‐provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra‐institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra‐institutional policy innovations in transitioning states.     

Fast Activism: Resisting Mobile Policies

“Fast” urban policy is increasingly common as city leaders draw on globally mobile policy models to accelerate the policymaking process. Critics have responded with new types of “fast activism” strategies. Fast activists plan temporary and strategically timed campaigns, use relationally local messaging that jumps between global and local political critiques, and organise ideologically diverse coalitions to mobilise quickly against policy proposals. This was observed in protest campaigns against Olympic bids in Boston (USA) and Hamburg (Germany). Protesters successfully opposed mega‐event planning in both cities by combining all three tactics within a short period of time. The paper presents a comparative study of the Boston and Hamburg protests, drawing from qualitative fieldwork on the campaigns in both cities. The paper contributes by conceptualising an emerging mode of urban opposition, and by evaluating how this type of resistance changes local receptions of fast and mobile urban policy.     

Western Australia's Royalties for Regions program: a policy response to growth,regional neglect,and perceived disempowerment

Under the right conditions, compounding socio‐political and economic change can dramatically alter government policy. From 2000, Western Australia, a resource‐rich jurisdiction, experienced significant change owing to a once‐in‐a‐generation resources boom, which forced a break with earlier development approaches. In 2008, regional interventionism returned to the State via the State Government's Royalties for Regions program. Departing from the neo‐liberal tradition, the program allocated 25 per cent of the State's royalty income to non‐metropolitan regions, over and above existing regional allocations, and its success remains disputed. While it is easy to question the program retrospectively, the socio‐economic and political circumstances from 2000 to 2008 reveal a “perfect storm” of conditions enabling the transition from neo‐liberalism to interventionism in regional development. This paper sets out to understand the multi‐faceted conditions that enabled the dramatic paradigm shift embodied by the program. To this end, it examines the State's rural–urban settlement dichotomy, its staples economy, and the policy context leading up to the program. Following that, the paper proposes a causal framework mapping out the factors driving and rationalising the program. These factors are then examined in detail and include perceived rural voter disenchantment, ineffectual regional development policy, the State's mining boom, inadequate regional development funding, the contrasting fortunes of two regions (illustrative of the impact of growth, and the lack thereof), and the political manoeuvring during the 2008 election. Finally, the paper concludes by considering how the conversion of these conditions resulted in the State's most significant regional policy redirection in decades.     

The Making(s) of an Alternative Urban Policy: What Happens When Free Fares Come to Town?

While many urban policies and practices claim to offer an “alternative” to the “mainstream” of urban entrepreneurialism, they remain under-theorised and prone to alignment with entrepreneurial agendas. In this paper I examine fare-free public transport (FFPT) as a salient example of an alternative urban policy. Looking at Aubagne (France) and Tallinn (Estonia), I explore what happens when an alternative policy “comes to town”. I detect how FFPT enters local urban regimes, and study the (non-)participation of public transport passengers and workers in the decision-making process about whether and how to abolish public transport fares. My analysis reveals that albeit alternative policies such as FFPT seem to oppose entrepreneurialism, they may hinge on urban regimes that span across institutions, leave the local configurations of power unchallenged, and strenghten local elites. The adaptability of alternatives to diverse political and intellectual positions explains their resilience. Consequently, their radical character cannot be taken for granted and remains an object of political struggle.     

Locating creative city policy in East Asia: neoliberalism,developmental state and assemblage of East Asian cities

This paper attempts to map how creative city policy emerged as a new form of urban politics in East Asia. It locates the emergence of creative city policy within the East Asian context, where the current political economic movement of neoliberalism intersects with the developmental state’s historical legacy. By investigating institutional and economic practices and consequences of creative city policy in Seoul and Yokohama, this study focuses on how the urban place become carefully rearranged settings through certain procedural, institutional, and technical mechanisms implemented by various discursive and material practices of policy actors. Through this analysis, this research critically reexamines the key rationales of creative economy driven-development and considers the social costs and tensions between the state, capital and citizens that are embedded within the new creative city policy discourse.     

中国城市地理研究的若干问题:海外学者的观点

海外学者是中国城市地理研究的一支重要力量,取得了许多重要的研究成果,提高了中国城市地理在国际学术界的地位。本文就海外学者对中国城市地理研究的主要问题:经济发展与城市化、全球化与城市发展、体制改革与城市转型及城市地理的理论与方法等方面进行归纳总结,期望加强了解,取长补短,相互学习,共同促进中国地理学的发展。     

Territorial development,planning reform and urban governance: the case of Ireland’s second-tier cities

The increased emphasis within Europe on the role of second-tier cities has implications for the ways in which these urban centres are considered within national spatial planning strategies. In centralized, monocentric states such as Ireland, there has been a general ambivalence towards urban policy for cities outside the capital city, and historically, this has prevented the development of a strong, diversified urban hierarchy undermining prospects for balanced regional development. This paper examines the extent to which a new found emphasis on Ireland’s second-tier cities which emerged in the ‘Gateways’ policy of the National Spatial Strategy was matched by subsequent political and administrative commitment to facilitate the development of these urban centres. Following a discussion of the position of second-tier cities in an international context and a brief overview of recent demographic and economic trends, the paper assesses the relative performance of Ireland’s second-tier cities in influencing development trends, highlighting a comprehensive failure to deliver compact urban growth. In this context, the paper then discusses the implications of current development plans for the second-tier cities and proposals for Irish local government reform for securing compact urban development.     

快速城市化时期城市形态及其动力机制研究

1990年代以后,我国进入了城市化快速发展和城市社会结构转型的重要时期。文章在对快速城市化时期进行界定并分析其动力机制的基础上,从城市的外延扩展以及城市内部结构重组两个方面对我国快速城市化时期的城市形态演变特征进行了分析,并从城市产业结构调整、旧城改造、开发区建设、制度创新、行政区划调整与城市规划管理等6个角度对城市形态演变的动力机制进行了探讨,以期对当前的城市规划与建设有所裨益。     

Environmentalism and Chinese urban order: The ecological control line policy in Shenzhen,China

There has been growing research interest in processes of selective ‘ecological gentrification’ and ‘environmental enclosure’ in cities where environmental controls are used to attract and retain more affluent residents and attract higher value economic development. This dimension of urban policy might be increasingly relevant to major Chinese cities, which are facing increasing competitive pressures to reorient modes of growth and development around ecological security and quality of life in social and environmental domains. In that context, we examine the development and implementation of the ‘basic ecological control line’ policy (BECL) in the fast-growing city of Shenzhen. In essence the BECL marks a rezoning of the city to enhance ecology and reverse previous environmental degradation, but in doing so it also does political work in reordering space in line with changing economic and social priorities. The question we ask is how the BECL might be read in the context of ecological gentrification and the wider political context of Chinese urban policy. Through detailed empirical investigation, we trace the political economy of the BECL and draw out the insights it offers on transitional urban economy-ecology relations in China and theories of urban environmentalism more generally.     

Globalising Economic Governance,Political Projects,and Spatial Imaginaries: Insights from Four Australasian1 Cities

This paper explores how territorial economic governance is discursively constituted in a globalising and neoliberalising world. It acknowledges both the increasingly recognised formative role of spatial imaginaries in economic interventions and the workings of co‐constitutive political projects that link particular imaginaries with political ambitions and policy strategies. Embracing recent calls for comparative ethnographic urban research at the local‐global interface, it explores currently dominant spatial imaginaries across the four Australasian cities of Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. Based on multiple qualitative methods, this study claims that a considerable number of actor's spatial associations and reference points can be related to particular city‐specific governmental projects; Auckland's Super‐City, Sydney's Global and Green City, Melbourne's Liveable City, and Perth's Vibrant City. It is demonstrated how discursive governance techniques such as ‘story‐telling’, benchmarking, and policy transfer have been pivotal in the activation, circulation, and performance of those spatial imaginaries and their transformation into temporarily dominant visions for strategic urban interventions aimed at repositioning urban actors, spaces, and activities. While spatial imaginaries can be related to differently framed global aspirations, the effects of spatial political projects on urban governance and investment trajectories differ significantly across space. Theoretically, the paper stresses the importance of particular conceptions of territorial relations and time‐ and place‐specific institutional mediation in shaping context‐dependent discursive material governance alignments.     

The Role of Pilot Projects in Urban Climate Change Policy Innovation

Cities are taking a leadership role in addressing global climate change and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but policy innovations are needed to help cities move from goals to outcomes. Pilot projects are one means by which cities are experimenting with new ways of governing and financing climate change mitigation. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the role of pilot projects in urban policy innovation: their emergence and rationale, and the means by which they ultimately scale up and out to reduce GHG emissions. We use this framework to evaluate a pilot project for retrofitting social housing buildings in Toronto. We find the initial pilot project helped address the challenges of pursuing deep retrofits of social housing. Scaling these lessons up to the city level required overcoming challenges to financing and coordinating a larger project; scaling out to the provincial level revealed institutional and political obstacles to pursuing the co-benefits of deep building retrofits in social housing. Bridging agents play an important role in both scaling processes. The analysis reveals the additive nature of urban policy innovation and the dynamic interplay of change agents and institutional and political context in innovation processes.     

Evaluating social sustainability in historic urban environments

Government policies aimed at the alleviation of poverty and social exclusion have been moving toward a multi-faceted approach that includes community capacity building and collaborative partnerships. This implies greater community consultation and the involvement of public and private institutions and the voluntary sector in the democratic management of local affairs. While these are established theoretical concepts, implementing localised social policy and measuring the outcomes are notoriously difficult, particularly in historic urban areas where democratic decision making has the potential to conflict with the management of heritage value. Drawing on recent policy and academic literature, this paper explores the concept of social sustainability and the characteristics of its evaluation. The paper illustrates how social sustainability indicators favour multi-dimensional themes that support national political agendas. The tension between this and the rise of participatory governance is highlighted. The paper concludes with a suggested approach to the evaluation of social sustainability in historic urban environments.     

Feminism from the Margin: Challenging the Paris/Banlieues Divide

This paper aims to cast light on specifically French constructions of gender, citizenship and nationhood and articulate two bodies of work, one dealing with political mobilizations of racialized minorities in the French context, and the other dealing with gender concerns in urban policy. Emerging social movements in the urban area of Paris are having to take position in a context in which a normative “state feminism” is being used to stigmatize working‐class neighbourhoods in the banlieues as well as their male inhabitants. This paper considers the “double bind” in which feminist activists, and women more generally, find themselves as a result. It argues that some formerly silenced groups are being granted space for expression by the current foregrounding of “women” in urban policy. Drawing on bell hooks' insights on the margin/centre tension in feminist theory as a useful way of thinking about the spatial dimension of these issues, the paper looks at one group in particular that defines itself and its strategies in spatial terms.     

地方政府企业化主导下的城市空间发展与演化研究

在经济全球化、市场化、分权化的不断作用下,中国的经济与社会发展正在经历着深刻而全面的转型,其中政府角色与作用的变迁是一个值得关注的重要领域。与西方国家政府进行的"企业化管治"所不同的是,中国地方政府更倾向于将行政资源直接移植到新的城市竞争体系之中,即表现为强烈的"政府企业化"特征。在全球竞争时代,城市空间资源是地方政府通过行政权力可以直接干预、有效组织的重要竞争元素,也是"政府企业化"的重要载体,城市空间的发展因而也表现出政府强烈主导、逐利色彩浓厚的特征。本文将从政府企业化这个角度审视中国当前城市空间发展演化的深刻机制,并且对其相应的衍生效应给予客观的评价。     

Wandering identities in energy transition discourses: Political leaders’ use of the “we” pronoun in Ontario, 2009–2019

This paper explores the use of universalizing language as a discursive strategy to promote shifts in energy policy. Building on scholarship that seeks to understand the political nature of energy transitions, including resistance to transitions, the role of the state, and implications for justice, we examine three phases of energy transition in Ontario in the period 2009–2019, focusing on the ways that three successive ruling coalitions used the first plural pronoun “we” to promote contrasting energy policy orientations. Our analysis of policy documents and government news releases confirms that all three coalitions used the “we” form as a strategic device to define priorities, prescribe courses of action, and broadcast achievements. However, they also used the ambiguity of the “we” form to obscure alternative perspectives, claim credit for rivals’ accomplishments, and gloss over harmful and differentiated impacts of policy choices. The paper concludes by reflecting on broader questions about power and justice relevant to energy transition scholars.     

A ‘Europe of the regions’? A view from Liverpool on the Atlantic Arc periphery

The paper attempts to address recent debates surrounding the supposed emergence of a ‘Europe of the Regions'—from the perspective of a city situated at the core of a lagging region’ on the European periphery, Liverpool. After briefly exploring whether the social and economic regeneration of Liverpool makes sense in this European context, the paper attempts to explain why the city's political participation in Europe has hitherto been relatively limited, drawing upon a combination of economic, social, political and cultural factors. Some of the constraints and choices that the city is facing in its attempts at urban regeneration are used to throw light on broader issues surrounding local and regional development in the European context and political and policy lessons are suggested.     

Assessing the local embeddedness dynamics of the Baumwollspinnerei cultural quarter in Leipzig: introducing the POSES Star Framework

This paper argues that it is important for urban scholars and practitioners to comparatively appraise the differential forms of local embeddedness of cultural quarters. Such appraisals can help to realize more sustainable practices of cultural quarter anchoring within neighbourhoods. The case study of Leipzig, Germany – a city that deploys both ‘creative city’ and ‘cultural industries’ models of urban development within a context of post-industrial, post-socialist transformation – is used to examine the adaptive re-use of a former cotton-spinning mill, the Baumwollspinnerei, into an internationally renowned cultural quarter. The POSES Star Framework is developed as an analytical tool to systematically outline multiple local embeddedness dynamics (political, organizational, social, ephemeral, and spatial) of a cultural quarter within a neighbourhood and within a specific urban planning and policy context. The application of the POSES Star Framework to the Baumwollspinnerei reveals that internal organizational concerns for site development and marketing are prioritized over external engagements with Leipzig's urban planning and cultural policy discourses.     

新国家空间理论视角下城市群的国家空间选择性研究

基于新国家空间理论,将城市群置于社会经济转型宏观背景下,分析其空间选择的国家空间项目与国家空间策略,并初步探讨了其空间效应。城市群作为目前国家空间选择性的具体形式,其产生背景、依据以及生产策略体现了国家空间选择性内涵与演变路径,是国家应对城市企业主义危机采取的一种新型城市与区域治理形式。在国家空间项目及其策略的支持下,城市群享有优先于其它地区发展的特权并实现经济快速发展,从而培育地方增长极并推动区域协调发展。然而,城市群的空间选择并未改变城市企业主义的逻辑而是将其转移到了区域尺度,并且存在城市间竞争激烈等一系列问题,亟待与其它空间项目与策略的配套实施以实现区域崛起并提高国家竞争力。     

Rent control measures of immediate post‐war period (1944–1952) and their impact on urban development in Greater Athens

The purpose of this paper is first to highlight the importance of the immediate post‐war period in influencing development trends and spatial policy in post‐war urban Greece and Athens in particular. Second in this respect, to stress on the critical impact of rent control measures adopted in response to specific social economic and political issues which emerged at the time. Rent control—together with other exceptional reconstruction measures—contributed above all to the reinforcement of the post‐war development pattern, founded on owner occupation and self‐financed Property development. This in the short run acted against a planned policy rationale and to the various planned attempts formulated during reconstruction. In the long run, it has also acted as a determinant for the consolidation of an ‘non‐planning policy’ situation persistent in Athens and in most urban areas in Greece.