Strategic claims making on ‘the city’ (new paper)

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A new paper is out in Urban Geography, on ‘The city’ as developmental justification: claimsmaking on the urban through strategic planning. In it I ask why Olympic bidders seek to make claims on ‘their’ cities. It is very common for Olympic bids to brand themselves as representing the potential host city, even though Olympics are usually managed by non-governmental entities and involve both urban and suburban stakeholders Many bid organizations simply refer to themselves by City Name, Year (e.g. “Doha 2020” or “NYC 2012, Inc”) and often make sweeping claims about the supposed motivations of that city. The paper draws on a comparative analysis of 43 Summer Olympic bids, and case studies of bidding politics in New York and Doha, Qatar. I argue that this type of claims making defines ‘the city’ with reference to particular places within it—pilot projects, particularly successful or troubled neighborhoods, zones subject to special legal or fiscal interventions—effectively allocating the right to define the city to the stakeholders who control those places.

Abstract: Municipal governments produce a seemingly endless supply of urban strategic plans, which purport to define the city by making claims on its future development trajectories. Critics note that this claimsmaking on “the city” renders it conceptually vacuous and overextended. Yet it is essential to question the degree to which speculative policymaking is merely rhetorical. Discursive claimsmaking on the city through strategic planning documents is an important technique in urban politics—a form of targeted simplification that benefits particular stakeholders by defining the city around sites in which they are invested. Bids to host sporting “mega-events” like the Olympic Games are a case in point: event planning corporations routinely make claims on the city, which strategically simplify its forms and processes, often by defining the city in ways that mediate between particular land investment projects and broad visions for citywide development. The implication is that claimsmaking on the city through urban strategic planning is intentionally simplistic and acts as an ideological practice for justifying urban development projects.

The paper is behind a paywall, please feel free to email me for an authors’ copy.

Urban development through failed Olympic bids? (new paper)

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A new paper is out in Urban Studies on “Temporary projects, durable outcomes: urban development through failed Olympic bids?” This draws on a sample of land investment projects proposed in 65 Olympic bids (1991-2013), and on case studies of failed Olympic bids in New York City (a failed bid to host the 2012 Games) and Doha, Qatar (bids to host the 2016 and 2020 Games). I argue that ‘temporary’ planning initiatives like Olympic bids need to be conceptualized in a more holistic manner: as embedded within local development agendas and within other Olympic and non-Olympic event management project (through what I term ‘high frequency bidding’).

The paper is behind a paywall, but please feel free to email me for an authors’ copy.

Abstract: However it may be defined, urban ‘development’ typically implies the production of durable legacies. Yet these legacies are often planned through contingent, temporary projects. The role of temporary projects in implementing urban development is often interpreted in linear fashion: projects are viewed as isolated events which incrementally work toward already-existing development agendas. I argue instead that temporary projects play a recursive role in development planning: interpreted as a series of interlinked projects, they not only support but also redefine agendas for durable development. I focus on one type of temporary project: (failed) bids to host the Olympics, which I assess through a comparative 20-year sample of bids and through case studies of failed bids in Doha (Qatar) and New York (USA). I show that event-led development planning leverages project contingency and policy failure to construct long-term development agendas, as cities bid multiple times and recycle plans across projects. The paper contributes to debates over the long-term impacts of speculation and experimentation in urban governance, by assessing the role of contingency in urban politics. Temporariness is an asset in urban politics which can be used to mitigate risk in speculative development planning: since Olympic bids often fail to secure hosting rights, references to the possibility of failure can insulate project planners from critique.

AAG 2015 Conference

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Many thanks are due to the outstanding group of authors who contributed to a series of sessions that I organized with Mark Davidson, and a panel I organized with Sarah Moser and Diganta Das.

The paper sessions were focused on Revisiting Entrepreneurialism: The Logics of Urban Governance in Systemic Crisis. Authors offered theoretical commentaries on the entrepreneurial city thesis, the idea (originally advanced by David Harvey) that municipal governments respond to national state decentralization and austerity by proactively investing in revenue-generating opportunities (e.g. public-private real estate ventures). Other authors offered analyses of contemporary urban entrepreneurial ventures, exploring the ways in which the entrepreneurial city has diversified into social entrepreneurship, sustainability initiatives, and progressive forms of entrepreneurial governance.

The panel session on The Entrepreneurial City Reconsidered: New Agendas and Diverse Geographies. brought these into conversation with a parallel set of sessions on entrepreneurial cities in the Global South. Panelist explored South-North, and North-South transfers of entrepreneurial policy, the role of entrepreneurial governance in post-neoliberal cities, and the question of whether progressive politics can emerge through entrepreneurial governance (e.g. through social innovation initiatives).

 

Conference talk – Upscaling development?

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I recently presented a paper at a conference on Transformative Possibilities in the Global South, a sociology of development conference hosted by Brown University’s Department of Sociology and Watson Institute for International Studies. My paper on Upscaling Development? Urban Governance as Developmental Politics argued that urban is increasingly adopting the practices of ‘developmental states‘. I show a qualitative distinction in how policy stakeholders understand the scalar relationships at play in urban development planning. A rich scholarship has explored how policy is ‘downscaled’ from (inter)national institutions into the city by ‘rescaling the state’ through ‘state spatial strategies’. However, I argue that urban development planning also – and increasingly – involves processes of ‘upscaling’ development policy from urban places for use in other cities, in national debates, or in partnership with international institutions. I use urban enclave planning in Doha, Qatar as an example: Like other peers in the Gulf, the Qatari state’s initiatives are often managed through state-owned real estate ventures. I demonstrate how these state-owned enclaves are used as policymaking ‘laboratories’ for experimenting with urban development (technology and design, policy templates, best practice guidelines, etc).

all venues

State-owned or parastatal master planned enclave initiatives, compared with mega-event investment plans.

 

The laboratories aim to export lessons learned in the enclaves to (inter)national policy projects. For example, the former site of the 2006 Asian Games has evolved into a key site for sports science research and elite sport training; institutions based there play a leading role in designing policy and providing training for Qatar’s various ‘sport for development’ foreign aid programs.

The 'Sport City' enclave, recently renamed the Aspire Zone, hosted most of the 2006 Asian Games events and now plays a prominent international role in sports science and training.

The ‘Sport City’ enclave, recently renamed the Aspire Zone, hosted most of the 2006 Asian Games events and now plays a prominent international role in sports science and training.

Please feel free to email me for a copy of the working paper.

Title: Upscaling Development? Urban Governance as Developmental Politics

Abstract: Urban governance is becoming increasingly ‘developmental’, as urban planning practices are viewed as a means for actively defining and intervening in development using state-led models. That is, there has been a shift in the role of ‘the city’ as a space for development intervention and in the role of states as urban developmental agents. This is evidenced by a proliferation of city-to-city policy networks, by partnerships between municipal states and international development institutions, and by increasingly prevalent narratives which signal to the need for global-urban development planning. These shifts signal to increasingly proactive municipal governments which experiment with urban planning tools in order to pursue a diverse set of development agendas, and have prompted debates over the opportunities and challenges of democratic governance in urban state-led development planning. I argue that these shifts also mark a qualitative distinction in how policy stakeholders understand the scalar relationships at play in urban development governance. A rich scholarship has explored how policy is ‘downscaled’ from (inter)national institutions into the city. However, I argue that urban development planning also – and increasingly – involves processes of ‘upscaling’ development policy from the city for use in other cities, in national debates, and in partnership with international institutions. I demonstrate this upscaling with a case study of developmental real estate planning in Doha, Qatar. I demonstrate how the Qatari state’s real estate ventures are used as policymaking laboratories for experimenting with development policy. The laboratories aim to export lessons learned in the enclaves to international policy projects, especially though Qatar’s foreign aid programs. This study contributes to broader debates over the role of urban governance in international development policymaking, and the agency of urban-scale governments in the process.

Workshop on Olympic bid activism

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I was recently invited to participate in a workshop on Protest and Resistance in the Tourist City. The workshop was enerously hosted by Berlin Technical University’s Center for Metropolitan Studies, and funded by the German Research Foundation. The event brought togeter an international group of scholars who are contributing to an eponymous book project (Routledge, expected publication in 2016).

My paper on Politics as early as possible: democratising Olympics by contesting Olympic bids explores the politics of urban social movements which protest Olympic bids. Others have presented excellent research on activist movements in Olympic host cities and movements that lobby for reform in the international Olympic movement, but relatively less is known about political contestation over Olympic planning at the earliest stages of bidding. My argument is that (1) anti-bid movements are becoming increasingly common and effective (e.g. contributing to the demise of bids in five European bidders for the 2022 Winter Games) and (2) they engage in a different type of politics by asking ‘big picture’ questions about why a city should host an Olympics in the first place (rather than how to reform the planning process, as movements do after a bid has been awarded).

Meeting between workshop contributors and municipal officials; Kreuzberg, Berlin

Meeting between workshop contributors and municipal officials; Kreuzberg, Berlin

The conference paper is a working draft of the book chapter. I will periodically update the attached file as the chapter is revised.

Bid protest chapter – working version