Cities in Transition: Growth, Change and Governance in Six Metropolitan Areas [1 ed.] 0415329019, 9780415329019, 9780203391150

Table of contents :
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
Contents......Page 8
Illustrations......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 12
1 Changing cities......Page 14
2 London: The modernising metropolis......Page 27
3 Tokyo: The mobile megalopolis......Page 56
4 Toronto: A penchant for Metro reform......Page 77
5 Berlin: Candidate world city?......Page 106
6 Hyderabad: Hi-tech hub of a rural State......Page 130
7 Atlanta: The sprawling metropolis......Page 155
8 Conclusion: Cities in transition......Page 180
Bibliography......Page 187
Index......Page 198

Citation preview

Cities in Transition

Cities in Transition is an up-to-date and topical treatment of how six major cities in Europe, North America and Asia are coping with the new demands on urban government. Population expansion, the migration of new peoples and disparities between cities and suburbs are longstanding features of the urban crisis. Today, city governments also face demands for popular participation and better public services while they struggle to position themselves in the new world economy. While each of the cities is located in its unique historical setting, the emphasis of the book is upon the common dilemmas raised by major planning problems and the search for more suitable approaches to governance and citizen involvement. A principal theme is the re-engineering of institutional structures designed to foster local responsiveness and popular participation. The discussion is set in the context of the globalising forces that have impacted to different degrees, at different times, upon London, Tokyo, Toronto, Berlin, Hyderabad and Atlanta. This book is a major and original addition to the comparative literature on urban governance and will be of interest to students of urban studies, governance, globalisation and politics. Nirmala Rao is Pro-Warden (Academic) and Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.

Cities in Transition Growth, change and governance in six metropolitan areas

Nirmala Rao

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Nirmala Rao All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-39115-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0–415–32901–9 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–32902–7 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0–203–39115–2 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–32901–9 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–32902–6 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–203–39115–0 (ebk)

To the memory of my father Marty Udaya Bhaskara Murty, 1927–2006

Contents

1

List of illustrations Acknowledgements

ix xi

Changing cities

1

Cities in the global context 1 Urban change and the challenge to government 4 Patterns of change: the six cities 8 2

London: the modernising metropolis

14

Growth and change 15 Planning and the challenge of growth 19 Governing ‘Greater’ London 23 A new authority for Greater London 29 Modernising London 33 Retaining London as a world city 35 Thames Gateway and the Olympics 38 A new approach to metropolitan governance? 39 3

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis

43

Growth and change 46 The planning framework 49 Transport and traffic 54 Protest and public participation 56 Governing Tokyo 58 4

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform The challenge of growth 66 The coming of ‘Metro’ government 72

64

viii Contents Metropolitan government evolves 75 Responding to fiscal crisis 77 Creating the Megacity 79 Megacity Toronto today 84 Greater freedom for Toronto 87 Toronto as a global city 90 5

Berlin: candidate world city?

93

Berlin’s uneven development 94 Growth, change and regional planning 100 Planning Berlin-Brandenburg 103 The new Berlin: a world city? 107 Governing Berlin 111 6

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State

117

The challenges of urban growth 118 The planning response 124 Implementing the master plan 127 Traffic and transport 129 Governing the metropolitan area 131 Reforming the public services 133 Positioning Hyderabad in the global economy 137 7

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

142

Governing Atlanta: the politics of racial segregation 144 Growth and change 146 Planning Atlanta 151 The (im)mobile metropolis 155 The future urban structure 163 8

Conclusion: cities in transition

167

Bibliography Index

174 185

Illustrations

Figure 8.1

Changing cities and strategic responses

168

Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2

Population of London, and population density 1939–2001 Housing costs, and proportions living in poverty London boroughs: population, area and density Trends in the industrial structure: employment change, 1960–1990 Population growth in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (intercensal percentage increase) Urban railways in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area: 1970–1990 Growth and change in transport mode use (billion passenger km) Japan Expenditure pattern of the 23 special wards, 1989 TMG General Account revenues, 1989 Population and density by sub-area, 1996 The growth of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Foreign born as a proportion of total population, 2005 Distribution and projections of population within the Toronto region Foreign population and migration, 2005 Area, population, density and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 2005 Borough populations, 2005 Trends in urbanisation in Andhra Pradesh: 1901–2001 Sectoral contributions to GDP (State) Andhra Pradesh: 1993–2001 Modal shifts in Hyderabad transport: 1986–1998 Atlanta and regional unemployment rates: 1980 and 1990 Changes in population growth, urban area and density, 1990–2000

16 17 24 48 49 55 55 61 62 67 67 67 72 100 101 113 119 120 123 146 147

x 7.3 7.4 7.5

Illustrations Population growth in the Atlanta Regional Commission area Components of population change and predictions to 2030 Current transportation funding ($ millions), 2005

147 148 159

Maps 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1 6.1 7.1

Greater London and the London boroughs The Tokyo Metropolitan Area Greater Toronto and the ‘Golden Horseshoe’ Berlin Hyderabad planning zones Atlanta

16 44 71 113 126 152

Acknowledgements

I have incurred many debts while working on this project. I am grateful to all those city planners and officials who allowed me to interview them or willingly gave access, on an entirely private basis, to papers in their possession. There are too many to name here, but I would like to thank, in particular, Dan Reuter, Dr Rajeev Dhawan, Dr Enid Slack, Lynn Morrow, Dr P.K. Mohanty, S.P. Shorey and Professor Shibata for their invaluable guidance and support. It would not have been possible to visit and come to understand so many cities without the co-operation, warmth and hospitality of my colleagues and friends, and I am especially indebted to Professors Shibata and Hanawa, Dr Ramana and Rosy Dhara for their generosity in hosting me. Professor Ron Vogel helped me to identify and establish key contacts in various cities, as did Lionel Feldman, who also planned my most productive visit to Toronto. Lionel Feldman and Professor Hanawa read the chapters on Toronto and Tokyo respectively and saved me from errors of both fact and judgement. My special thanks to all of them. I am especially grateful to Professor Ken Young, both for his encouragement and for his superbly pedantic reading of the whole book in draft. To him, my warmest thanks for having done so with patience, and he tells me, with pleasure.

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Changing cities

The latter decades of the twentieth century posed major challenges to metropolitan governments. Expanding population, the migration of new peoples, urbanisation and counter-urbanisation, disparities between cities and suburbs, demands for popular participation and better public services were some of the common problems faced by metropolitan governments worldwide. Although their experiences were similar in these respects, responses to the common problems of governance were highly varied. A number of distinctive approaches emerged, ranging from strong and unified governmental control to pluralistic or even fragmented systems. Attempts to co-ordinate policy and urban development in some areas stressed the need for elected metropolitan councils – and in some cases high-visibility Mayors – to achieve the goals of strategic planning and development, while elsewhere the contrasting experience was one of shifting away from area-wide government to reliance upon collaboration between a multitude of bodies, central and local. This book is about how six cities are coping with these pressures of growth and change, adapting their structures and processes and endeavouring to position themselves in the league tables of world cities. This opening chapter, then, begins by exploring the problems associated with rapid metropolitan growth and considers the extent to which responses of metropolitan governments have varied between regions in different parts of the world. It argues the importance of understanding the social and political context within which systems of metropolitan governance emerge, each of which reveals a distinctive approach to the problem of structure. It advances the rationale for choosing the six cities in terms of their particular histories, social and economic problems, governmental experiences, and their aspirations to feature on the world city scene, and, as a preliminary, it examines the contentious question of defining a ‘world city’ on a range of indicators.

Cities in the global context For a century now, writers have been inclined to select out cities of great size and wealth for special attention. For William Robson these were the great cities of the world, whose government politics and planning merited a close and comparative analysis. The planner, Patrick Geddes, introduced the concept of the ‘world city’

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in 1915, a concept that was taken up and extended by Peter Hall in his 1966 book The World Cities. Hall distinguished these world cities from other places of great population and wealth because of their importance as centres of political power, as seats of national and international governments, professional bodies and corporate concerns (Hall, 1966). Another pioneer urban analyst, Jean Gottman, portrayed world cities as a gathering together of inter-dependent services, building a huge market of information and general knowledge. ‘In an era of expanding horizons’ he wrote, ‘every large city wants to develop a world role’ (Gottman, 1995: 62). Other analysts notably drew attention to the importance of command and control in the international economy, identifying a smaller number of key cities on the basis of their status as centres of global, political and economic power (Clark, 1996: 138–142). Thus emerged the concept of the ‘global city’. According to John Friedmann World cities can be arranged hierarchically, roughly in accord with the economic power they command . . . The city’s ability to attract global investments ultimately determines its rank in the order of world cities. However, its fortunes in this regard, as well as its ability to absorb external shocks from technological innovations and political change, are variable. Cities may rise into the rank of world cities, they may drop from the order, and they may rise or fall in rank. (Friedman, 1995: 25–26) Much recent urban analysis has centred on this concept of the ‘global city’, postulating an international hierarchy of cities, in which a few – New York, London and Tokyo are oft-cited examples – enjoy an unrivalled and commanding position in the world economy. Among them 10 cities accommodate the headquarters of nearly half of the world’s 500 largest manufacturing companies. The top 4 account for as many as 156 of these. New York predominates, with London and Tokyo ranking jointly second. These cities are themselves concentrated in a handful of countries that between them control the greater part of the world’s economic activity: the United States, UK, Japan, France and Germany. The key factor here is not city size in itself, but the concentration of corporate control, something that Tokyo has been gaining at the expense of the second cities in Japan and which New York has been gradually losing it (Sassen, 2000). This debate has emphasised the role of cities as controllers of production and financial centres. By integrating a range of financial and producer services, leading cities provide sites for innovation (Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 1991; Smith and Timberlake, 2002). They are cosmopolitan, attracting international organisations, visitors and migrants. Their urban and social order reflects polarising changes in labour markets, for they are not only cities of the rich and successful but are also of the poor and dispossessed (Buck and Fainstein, 1992; Fainstein and Campbell, 1996). While the experiences of major cities are not identical, they respond to a common dynamic which influences the nature and extent of their integration into the world economy. In essence, social, political and economic activities are spilling

Changing cities 3 across frontiers so that events, decisions and activities in one region of the world come to acquire significance for individuals and communities in distant regions. This internationalisation of the world economy fosters economic competition and the rise of multinational firms, which operate with impunity across national borders, precipitating a new wave of urban change (Bourguignon et al., 2002). The combination of spatial dispersal and global integration has created a new strategic role for major cities. However, more recently, a broader view has emerged of what constitutes the market conditions that attract mobile capital. These may include a geographic characteristic (Singapore as a gateway to Asia) or a political location (Brussels as the seat of the European Union), a geo-strategic position (Berlin as one time transit point between Western and Eastern Europe) or religious or cultural factors (Jerusalem as a sacrosanct city) (Savitch and Kantor, 2002: 43). The conventional model of the cities as would be shaped by powerful homogenising forces has been challenged. A number of views have emerged about how the ‘global city’ status and the process of globalisation is to be understood (Held et al., 2000). In particular, charting the supposed defining characteristics of global cities, in terms locating of key functions, has produced little consensus about which cities are more ‘global’ than others: there is no agreement on the precise membership of this exclusive club. Nor, except at the most general level, is there consensus about how global status is to be defined, for change is neither so consistent across cities nor so distinctively different from the past as to merit the attribution of ‘global city’ status. Variety has been re-discovered. Even cities of unchallenged ‘world’ status – New York and Tokyo – differ from one another in their spatial configurations and there is no single model of the global city to be adopted (McNeill, 1999). Finally, the place-specific impact of globalisation is often overstated as delocalisation, dis-placement or de-territorialisation; in fact, despite predictions of the ‘tele-mediated city’, in which distance is no longer a constraint on human interaction, place remains important and the city continues to thrive as a site of transactions (Tomlinson, 1999; Sennett, 2000). Indeed the recognition that locality remains important in the face of powerful international forces has given rise to what has been termed as the globalisation paradox, whereby international linkages are balanced by an upsurge of interest in more locally based initiatives: multi-level governance, decentralisation and initiatives to enhance the competitiveness of cities. It is far from clear that common economic forces have produced a convergence around a common set of urban policies and the debate remains inconclusive (Savitch and Kantor, 2002: 268–271). While in some respects functions have moved upwards to supranational levels of government – as in the case of the European Union – in others they have decentralised to a city or a regional level. This multi-layered system of governance is thought by some to be well-adapted to interact and engage with the multi-faceted processes of economic globalisation (Harding, 1997). Likewise, in some cities a shift of emphasis from urban management to urban entrepreneurship has produced an approach that focuses on the city as a location to be marketed. Thus the struggle to gain comparative advantage leads such cities as London, Sydney and Singapore to compete for the inward investment and the relocation of major corporate headquarters or regional branches.

4

Changing cities

Even if the arguments about global convergence and inter-dependence are accepted, it remains the case that something of the essence of city life has been lost in this debate. Perhaps commentators have lost sight of world cities qua cities, overlooking their uniqueness, and so preventing the ‘voice’ of each city to be heard (Ward, 1995: 299). Rather than generalise about the urban condition, it is important to consider each city in its own terms, paying due regard to its history and distinctiveness. Generalisation can be vacuous if it is not rooted in the detailed analysis of specific conditions of individual cities. Hence this book, while giving due consideration to the specific political and administrative structures through which cities are governed and managed, views them through the prism of the common themes of urban change and governability which all cities, in their different ways, must confront. As Ward rightly observes, ‘in our rush to examine their economic base and international role, we have failed to ask fundamental questions about their governmental structures . . . and almost never have we examined these in a comparative perspective’ (Ward, 1995: 300). This book seeks to right the balance.

Urban change and the challenge to government The starting point must surely be that urban growth poses the most profound challenge to government. Industrialised countries are already largely urban with cities undergoing considerable strains of further agglomeration. The most rapid and dramatic changes are of course in the developing countries (Clark, 1996: 21–25). There, around 40 per cent of the population already lives in cities, a figure that will have risen to more than 50 per cent by 2020. These bald figures conceal dramatic variations. Around three quarters of the Latin American and Caribbean populations live in cities, as against only one-third of those of Africa and Asia. Explosive demographic change will transform this situation. By 2015, there will be more than 50 ‘million cities’ in Asia and, more significantly, of the 27 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, 15 will be Asian (Habitat, 2001: 1). The economic benefits of this urbanisation have been uneven. The World Bank estimated that by the end of the twentieth century 90 per cent of Latin America’s poor would be living in cities as would 40 per cent of the poorest in Africa and about 45 per cent of those in Asia. Thus, as countries have urbanised, poverty has urbanised as well (Schep et al., 1995: 2). The stresses which rapid growth engenders are familiar enough. Essentially, the problem is one of urban infrastructure being unable to develop to keep pace with urban growth. For a century now, cities have struggled to find ways of controlling and managing growth to ensure that the strains on the infrastructure and public services do not overwhelm them. Formal planning machinery to both map out broad strategies and take immediate control of the development process has been the principal tool by which national and city governments have endeavoured to steer and channel the pressures of growth. In some cases, this has required new governmental machinery, often designed to provide a dedicated instrument for addressing, for example, the roads network, public transportation, water supply

Changing cities 5 and sewerage, and large-scale housing development. Elsewhere, special purpose agencies have been supplanted by multi-purpose metropolitan governments. Problems of traffic and transport pose the most severe challenge to the ability of urban governments to provide a liveable environment and a workable economy. Although the age of mass vehicle ownership and the urban congestion and pollution that it brings in its train are associated particularly with modernity and the crisis of the city in the developing world, all major cities experience a transportation crisis at some point in their life cycle. Newly industrialising cities, dominated by their traffic problems, tend to resort to large-scale road development in an attempt to solve them. However, building their way out of congestion is not an option, as new roads are quickly overwhelmed by rising private vehicle use. Here lies the principal difference between the early urbanising cities of the West and those of Asia today: the former were generally able to develop a public transport network in an age of readily available resources, while the latter are trapped in a crisis of affordability. There is a third, anomalous, case: cities that have grown up with the motor car and with sufficient resource for road building have produced a new urban form, as in Atlanta, Georgia, with a pattern of dispersal so vast that the public transport is no longer a feasible option. Put simply, the challenge of urban growth and sprawl undermines the ability of governments to plan for, direct and control the development process. A quarter of a century ago the assumption was that a rational master planning could solve the problems of the metropolitan areas on the basis that the urban region or the metropolitan area were the right spatial scales on which to tackle urban problems. To do so required strong authoritative governments with planning abilities and legal resources to enforce their plans. This style of interventionist governance in time experienced the crisis of confidence that brought free market perspectives to the fore. Planning went out of vogue for decades and only now is coming to be seen as the prerequisite of a well-ordered urban life. Planning requires government, and to that extent the problems of managing urban change go directly to the question of governmental structure (Heywood, 1997). The need for area-wide structures, which enjoy legal capacity and greater authority, was well recognised in the past. Between 1960 and the late 1980s attempts were made in a number of countries to achieve better land-use and transportation, planning, and improved co-ordination, through the creation of area-wide metropolitan governments. Such structures were thought to offer economies of scale and bring about a closer alignment of administrative territory with the ‘functional’ metropolis. In most instances, however, that correspondence proved difficult to achieve and success was limited (Gottman, 1995: 1–9). Nor was there consensus on the nature and extent of change required. In some countries, strong overarching metropolitan authority was favoured, while in others this was rejected in favour of a more decentralised and collaborative system that respected the sensitivities of the local authorities. Where the central city, its suburbs and hinterland were treated as a single urban system, the policy emphasis was upon the upper, area-wide, tier as a strategic planning authority. Elsewhere two-tier government was created, as for Rotterdam, Brussels, London, Toronto and Tokyo (Sharpe, 1995).

6

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This answer to the problem of metropolitan government came gradually into currency over a period of 30 years. In 1938, William Robson had published The Government and Mis-government of London, a vehement attack on the failure of the governmental system to cope with metropolitan growth and change. In 1967, Robson was invited to review the administration of Tokyo where he applied much of his thinking on London. Many of the problems Tokyo faced could be seen in inter-war London, encouraging Robson to offer the same nostrums of metropolitan integration and strong area-wide government. The inescapable metropolitan problems of urban sprawl, ribbon development, change and redundancy, the need for renewal programmes and, above all, the need for a unified metropolitan transport network were as evident in Tokyo as in London, and indeed in the other great cities of the world (Robson, 1967; 1969). In practice, however, the fate of such experiments and the choice of approach to urban governance are conditioned by specific historical and cultural traditions of societies that necessarily differ. For example, the movement for metropolitan consolidation in the United States had run out of steam by the late 1950s, defeated by a system of values that held suburban lifestyles – necessarily threatened by metropolitan integration – to be inviolate. That experience indicated that the politics of metropolitan consolidation would be fraught with difficulty. And so it proved. Although there was a surge of interest in metropolitan governance in the 1990s, it has taken the form not of powerful metropolitan authorities (anathema in the United States), but a movement for ‘smart growth’, supporting better area-wide strategic planning through co-operation and joint planning, in a renewed recognition that city residents, whether urbanites or suburbanites, share a common interest in their quality of life. Metropolitan reform was part, but not the whole, of the answer to the question of how a good city could be brought into being. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) argues that effective systems of governance ‘are essential for promoting economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental sustainability’ as well as for ‘strengthening pluralist democracy, ensuring equal opportunity for the full participation of all individuals in the economy and society and for maintaining confidence and trust in public institutions’. This prescription matches well the contemporary transformation of urban politics, for decentralisation and privatisation are forcing a reassessment of the roles of government at the national, regional and local levels. More inclusive and participatory forms of governance are replacing traditional ‘top-down’ systems. To facilitate change and improve their policy framework many cities are trying to enhance political legitimacy and administrative accountability through modernised voting procedures, new forms of popular participation and more transparent decision-making. In many cities, local government is being overhauled to improve the level and quality of services, replacing hierarchical structures with more horizontal frameworks. Local authorities are encouraged to take the initiative in developing economic development strategies and to work in partnership with the business community and other stakeholders. Urban governments are gradually becoming more ‘people-centred’ and transparent, sometimes – as in

Changing cities 7 Hyderabad – using new technologies to reconfigure the ways of how they communicate with residents. In another apparent paradox, the trend to local initiative and people-centred policies is matched by a trend towards stronger and more effective urban leadership. The late 1990s witnessed the adoption, in many of these cities, of entirely new types of political structures calculated to enhance visibility and propel them onto the world stage. New elected Mayors in London, Mexico City, Berlin and Milan focus attention by personifying their cities, speaking for them internationally and leading their efforts to succeed in an increasingly competitive world. Elsewhere, modernising city governments such as those of Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tokyo have focused on mobilising popular support and involvement. Countries develop styles of governance that reflect these differences. But underlying their nationally distinct approaches is a deeper commonality: the need to develop more demand-driven strategic policies and win public confidence and trust in their institutions in today’s increasingly critical popular culture. However well conceived these urban governments may appear, with new metropolitan authorities or high-profile Mayors – or with both – the success with which they can be expected to operate depends upon the degree of independence and freedom of manoeuvre granted by higher levels of government. There have been considerable variations in the degree to which national governments have exercised control over the actions of city government, their ability to shape urban policy and their ability to finance their own policy choices. For example, New York city has considerable independence, relying heavily on its own local tax resources to finance expenditure with little intervention from the higher-level governments. While Tokyo enjoys considerably less independence, around three quarters of its resources are nonetheless raised from its local taxation to fund the extensive range of public services that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) provides. In this case, the close links between the metropolitan authority and the national government enhance the city’s leverage over national decisions and finances. London provides yet another example of a capital city under close central government control, but here the local services are heavily grant aided. The overused term ‘urban crisis’ is all too readily applied to this complex of issues. So too is the idea that all cities are driven by the need to enhance competitiveness and maintain social cohesion through a new, internationally validated style of governance, a view encapsulated in the term the ‘new conventional wisdom’ (Buck, Gordon, Harding and Turok, 2005). Indeed, an exclusive policy emphasis on enhancing competitiveness can seriously disadvantage those secondorder cities that lack a strong, modern economic base with which to compete (Stren, 2001). Individual cities have to find their own salvation through political, governmental and planning reforms. To understand how this broad urban challenge is responded to by city governments and the other public authorities that support (or sometimes impede) them, it is necessary to consider each in the context of its own immediate circumstances, its growth pressures and its governmental capacity. The six cities presented here – London, Tokyo, Atlanta, Hyderabad, Berlin and Toronto – are (of course) sui generis, yet they have, in some cases, a deep

8

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inter-connectedness too. The cities speak for themselves here, and each has a different story to tell. They do encounter a range of common problems, as do other large cities worldwide, yet no attempt is made here to impose a treatment that forces them into a rigid single framework of analysis.

Patterns of change: the six cities Two of the six chosen cities – London and Tokyo – have uncontested status as ‘world’ or global cities, characterised by the presence of elaborate financial, service and information networks targeted to a global clientele. The remaining four – Atlanta, Berlin, Toronto and Hyderabad – do not compete at the same level, yet each in its own way represents a distinctive aspect of the governmental response to urban change for which it has achieved international prominence. All have experienced the stresses of urban growth and change. London was the first world city, surpassing a population million of one in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It grew steadily, expanding outwards until the imposition of the green belt shortly before the Second World War, by which time it had reached a population of eight million. After the war, London’s manufacturing base continued its relative decline, which soon turned into absolute decline and collapse. The stresses of rapid industrial change were enormous, though London’s economy proved remarkably adaptable as service industries steadily displaced manufacturing. The most severe problems were locational. Growth was dispersed across outer London with a strong westward bias and it was the inner areas of Victorian London that lost all economic value for a period of decades. Nowhere was this more striking than in the case of the London docks, where technological change and containerisation led to the abandonment of the huge dock complex and a social crisis for the families who had for generations made their lives there. Fuelled by migration from other parts of Britain and the world, London’s desperate overcrowding was relieved only by rapid outward expansion to new suburbs. With a predominantly radial pattern of roads, metropolitan London suffered massive traffic problems which engaged the urgent attention of the government as early as 1905. Being both a massive metropolis and (as all Londoners claim) ‘a London of villages’ its politics oscillated between expressing the common London-wide interest and protecting the localities from trespass. This was, and continues to be, an unstable situation producing violent swings in London’s governmental arrangements. The all-powerful London County Council (LCC) established in 1889 operated all municipal services in an inner area of around three million people, totally eclipsing the local authorities. Overtaken and rendered irrelevant by suburban expansion, and undermined by political hostility of the more ambitious boroughs, the LCC was swept away in Britain’s first metropolitan reform of 1965, to be replaced by the Greater London Council (GLC) for the entire metropolitan area and 32 powerful boroughs. This, in turn, proved a short-lived solution, with the GLC surviving only 21 years before it was abolished, dispersing its authority downwards to the boroughs and upwards to the central government.

Changing cities 9 It was not to be a lasting arrangement. Seen as no more than an interregnum, a campaign to restore metropolitan government for London began as soon as the GLC passed into history. The new government for London – inspired in part by the examples of New York, Paris and Tokyo – came into effect in July 2000 with the election of a Mayor and Assembly. The new Greater London Authority (GLA) absorbed most of the former London-wide organisations. Others separate from the GLA, but accountable to it, include Transport for London (TfL), the London Development Agency (LDA) and the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). While the Mayor has significant planning powers as regards both overall strategy and development control, the Mayor and Assembly together have the overall responsibility for strategic planning, transport, economic development and regeneration, police, and civil defence. Judged a success in its first term, the Mayor has been granted significant new powers as a mark of the willingness to see an effective metropolitan government develop. Even so, more than any other major city, London is subject to the direction of central government ministers. Tokyo shares many of the problems of rapid urbanisation in the third world: surging population growth with infrastructure provision lagging far behind. The immediate city of Tokyo that of the TMG, has a population of around twelve million. Beyond this lies the vast agglomeration of Greater Tokyo, with a population variously defined at 20 or 35 million. Post-war development was mainly regulated under the 1956 National Capital Region Development Law which promulgated a plan, inspired by Abercrombie’s Greater London. By 1965, it was clear that the plan had failed to manage the development of Tokyo and a process of rethinking the city’s future began. Tokyo’s economic dominance posed a problem of national balance, and in the early 1980s the ‘technopolis’ programme was devised to reduce the disparities, decentralise high-tech manufacturing enterprises and involve the prefectures and municipalities in developing new infrastructure. Tokyo had faced soaring land prices, deteriorating housing situation, falling population in the central area and the inability of the road system to cope with increases in traffic. National policy sought to divert population and industry away from the Tokyo metropolitan area to ease the pressures on infrastructure there and to take the heat off land values in the central business districts. At the same time, land prices were tackled by increasing supply through encouraging higher-density office blocks. Plans for metropolitan Tokyo were prepared by central government, with redevelopment zones, new towns and green belt. The more recent plans emphasise restructuring around several sub-centres or cores. The TMG itself specifically aims to promote Tokyo as a world city of international standing comparable with New York, London and Paris. The TMG that governs the city is overseen by an elected governor who provides an executive arm of the Tokyo metropolis and is in effect the Mayor for the central area. In recent years, issues of governance in Tokyo have centred upon measures to enhance citizen participation, overcome the tradition of passivity in the face of authority and engage popular interest in planning the future of the city. Based on the key concepts of ‘respect for humanity’ and ‘ideas born of local communities’,

10

Changing cities

the participation and involvement of metropolitan residents have long been seen as essential to achieving a consensus-based plan for reconstructing the city. Toronto presents us with a long history of adapting its institutional and financial structures and modernising its administration in order to deal with rapid economic, social and environmental change. As far back as 1953, Metro Toronto, comprising the old city of Toronto and five other municipalities, was created to provide a better framework for planning infrastructure and service provision. Though hailed as ‘the only true metropolitan government in North America’, it did not cover the whole of the built-up area, and the surrounding areas were incorporated as four Regional Municipalities in the 1970s. Until 1988, Metro was an indirectly elected body, but in that year a council composed of directly elected representatives was created, with the Mayors of the lower-tier authorities sitting ex officio. Overall, the provincially created Office of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) provided co-ordination. This proved no more than an interim solution, and the Ontario provincial government acted to replace Metropolitan Toronto and its six local municipal governments with a single unified City of Toronto covering about half the population of the GTA – some 2.5 million people. This reorganisation did not enjoy much public support and was contested politically. Brought into being in January 1998, the reorganisation was justified in terms of the need to achieve cost savings and greater consistency in public services, remove duplication and bureaucracy, improve governance and speed up decision-making by reducing the number of elected officials in the face of an eroding business base. However, the creation of a unified city raised concerns about the ability of the new governance structures to respond appropriately to local needs and strike an acceptable balance between city-wide and local issues. While provincial government remains an important player in the affairs of Greater Toronto, the new city is formally led by a high-profile, directly elected Mayor, who operates within a non-partisan environment. The Mayor, however, does not have executive powers, and some office holders have resisted calls to vest in their office the powers of a US-style strong mayor. Past Mayors have sought to overcome their executive weakness by building coalitions to tackle the problems of growth and under-investment. In terms of engagement with the global economy, however, Toronto remains at a competitive disadvantage relative to the US border cities of Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. With a population of 3.5 million, Berlin is Germany’s biggest city. The population of Berlin’s urban core declined during the first part of the 1990s, with migration to Brandenburg steadily increasing to 10,000 in 1994. The City’s master plan estimates Berlin’s population to grow by 300,000 between 1994 and 2010, and that of the hinterland to grow by a comparable amount. A consequence of unification has, then, been pressure to develop sites outside the city to accommodate the out-migration of Berliners. The city government of Berlin reflects the broader post-unification trend in all Länder towards the direct election of an executive mayor. The election of left-wing Mayor Klaus Wowereit in 2001 (since re-elected for a second term) promised the creation of new jobs, a boost to education to

Changing cities 11 make Berlin a place for learning, science, research and culture, and promoting public involvement. The politics of Berlin’s development has been shaped by its tense relationship with the neighbouring State (Länd) of Brandenberg. Berlin is a striking example of a city seeking to reposition itself in the global arena and, at the local level, to recreate itself as a united city. The latter has proven to be especially problematic for the city that, since 1945, has been divided not simply by local jurisdictional boundaries but also by fundamental political cleavages. As a capital of Nazi Europe, Berlin became the symbol of a divided world during the Cold War; and in 1989 took on a new significance with the collapse of communism. Yet no single dominant image of a new Berlin has emerged. Attempts have been made to develop a growth coalition around a vision of Berlin as a European world city, while others have been more concerned to position Berlin as a national capital to provide expression for the renewed German identity. Alongside these visions of international and national identity, Berlin faces the need to develop as a ‘normal’ city with suburban growth, without a strong military presence, and without a need to make or renew claims to greatness. However, current strategies for Berlin, derived from its ‘world city’ aspiration and its status as a symbol of the triumph of capitalism over communism, emphasise a different path, one that stresses prestige developments, private spaces and a ‘showcase’ for the future. The normalisation of Berlin’s economy amounts to a massive structural adjustment to the West German and European metropolitan regions and its transformation to a service metropolis. Economic and fiscal issues dominate the policy agenda. Reunification meant loss of subsidies, and economic adjustment proved painful, with employment in manufacturing industry falling by over 57 per cent overall and by over 80 per cent in East Berlin. The subsequent ‘gold rush’ of the 1990s saw attempts to create Berlin as a world city potentially rivalling Paris or London, focusing on promoting public–private partnerships, fostering the growth of the business sector and redevelopment programmes to exploit Berlin’s commercial potential as an office location. Politically, the re-opening of the Reichstag in 1999 to serve as the Parliament of a unified and democratic Germany signifies Berlin’s status as the ‘workshop of German unity’. Located in the State of Andhra Pradesh in Southern India, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Region is managed by 11 municipal authorities spread over an area of 168 square kilometres with a population of 5.7 million. The core city, with a population of 3.4 million, is administered by the Hyderabad Corporation. A directly elected Mayor heads the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, which is governed by an elected municipal council comprising 100 corporators. Administration is in the hands of a Commissioner (chief executive), a civil servant seconded to the city. Since the 1990s the State of Andhra Pradesh has been actively promoting itself as a world-class location for communications and technology. Hyderabad has itself succeeded in attracting investment from such companies as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, while over 150 companies have registered with Hyderabad Software Technology Park. The aim of this elaborate promotional programme is to attract

12

Changing cities

international companies to create sufficient critical mass to allow Hyderabad to develop into a high-tech city. Recognising the scale of other world leaders such as Silicon Valley and Malaysia’s Multi-media Super Corridor, land has been allocated on the outskirts for a large-scale expansion of the present Cyber city. Having established Hyderabad as a location for the development of world-class Information Technology (IT) facilities, the State has set out to become a world leader in electronic government. In common with other cities, Hyderabad faces rapid and continuing population growth. In order to alleviate the problems of urban congestion, plans are under way to develop satellite towns with the provision of basic infrastructure and employment opportunities. Development of other major centres as counter-magnets is designed to avoid imbalance in the State’s urban structure. For the city, a comprehensive urban development plan has been prepared, covering public services, the upgrading of infrastructure and institutional and financial arrangements for service provision and partnerships with the private sector. A new planning framework is established based on committees composed mainly of elected representatives. Public service reform is mandated by constitutional amendment, which also provides for the institution of ward-level committees for public involvement. Governmental reform is intended to move municipalities towards greater self-sufficiency, with State control replaced by local management with vigorous public participation and public services provided through autonomous regulated corporations. Atlanta is a striking example of the consequences of unregulated urban growth. The capital of the State of Georgia in the southern United States, Atlanta represents the economic resurgence of the south. During the 1980s and the 1990s Atlanta’s population increased by 60 per cent and its physical growth exceeded that of any other urbanised area of the United States. Atlanta’s employment growth has been equally striking and the surge in people and jobs shows little sign of abating, with a low cost of living, good climate and quality of life also serving to attract waves of migrants. Despite its history of racial conflict, which gave birth to the civil rights movement, Atlanta subsequently cultivated an image of a city ‘too busy to hate’. The benign image of contemporary Atlanta has helped to sustain a remarkable record of business growth. Now rated among the top business environments worldwide, Atlanta hosts the offices of more than 1,600 international corporations, with a comparative advantage in bio-technology where scientists in these new industries benefit from their co-location with the United States’ Centers for Disease Control. Atlanta’s distinctiveness lies in the sheer scale of its urban sprawl and the ultra low densities with which it was developed. Almost uniquely, the recent development of Atlanta has been associated with falling rather than rising population density. The consequence has been to create a city almost wholly dependent on the motor car, giving rise to further paradox of one of the world’s least dense metropolitan areas being plagued by traffic congestion. Here more than anywhere else, proposals for a modern public transit system gained little traction among Atlantans who plainly enjoy the flexibility and freedom that the automobile gives the residents

Changing cities 13 of this low-slung, far-flung metropolis. Strict control of land use enjoys little public support in the United States, presenting Atlanta with an intractable planning challenge. As a result, plan making has to be largely exhortatory and rhetorical by seeking to shape the urban future by persuasion rather than coercion. The chapters which follow deal with each of these six metropolitan areas in turn. They bring out the uniqueness and specific characteristics of these cities, paying due regard to the common problems that the world’s great cities face – to best manage the pressures of growth and develop forms of governance that are effective, accountable and transparent.

2

London The modernising metropolis

London was the world’s first modern metropolis. The first to reach a million population in the early nineteenth century, London has since then functioned as a laboratory in which a succession of models of metropolitan government have been tried, assessed and superseded. London’s new mayoral structure, headed by the high profile Ken Livingstone, has attracted keen international attention. At the same time, the Capital’s social and economic fortunes appear to have revived. Great cities are generally associated with a process of outward movement and population decline, a process captured in the graphic term counter-urbanisation. London appears now to be charting a new course. After decades of decline from a peak of 8.6 million in 1939, the population of Greater London is once again rising. The population in 2002 had reached 7.4 million after bottoming out at 6.8 million in 1983 and is set to continue rising to 8.1 million by 2016. This change is driven by natural growth, itself a reflection of London’s young population, and by in-migration from elsewhere in the UK and abroad. Migrants tend to be younger, while those moving out are often retiring to other places in the country. As a result, London’s labour force is growing more rapidly than the population itself. Remarkable, too is London’s employment growth, with a projected increase in jobs of well over half a million by 2016. In employment terms, London is also the densest area in the UK, with employment density reaching 117,000 jobs per square kilometre in the city of London. London today is the archetype of a post-industrial city. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s London underperformed against the national economy. Although no longer a manufacturing city, London employment recovered notably from the manufacturing decline of the 1970s. While three quarters of a million manufacturing jobs were lost between 1973 and 1999, the service sector grew rapidly to fill the gap. Economic restructuring brought about a dominant service sector, with finance and business services in particular benefiting from the rise of knowledge based industries. And despite the recession of the 1990s in financial services, London’s economy bounced back and has matched or exceeded national rates of growth in the last five years. It is too facile to attribute this recovery to the increasing importance of global city functions as drivers of London’s economy. Rather, it is these distinctive aspects of London’s employment sectors that underpin growth and establish London’s significance in the national rather than the international economy (Gordon et al., 2004: 81).

London: the modernising metropolis 15 London is also the centre of a huge metropolitan region of more than eighteen million people. It is a city in which the long term has been paramount. The city’s political and governmental history has been driven by long-term trends, particularly those reshaping the urban structure. The reversal of many of these trends has, on the other hand, been brought about by often unexpected changes in labour markets, while London’s physical fabric – from roads and sewers to the rail and underground network – has proved remarkably durable. Similarly, the debate over policy for London has tended to long-time horizons. Today, under the new Mayor and the GLA, this is especially the case. Major developments to reshape the metropolitan region are seen as taking decades to complete, as will the renewal of public transport infrastructure. The current London Plan looks far ahead to 2016 in recognising the need for sustained improvements to London’s infrastructure. The need for long-term vision is more acute as London struggles to maintain its place in the global hierarchy of cities. Ken Livingstone, Mayor since 2000, has brought a distinctive style and thrust to London politics by embracing wholeheartedly the concept of the global city, by accepting the implications of London’s future lying in the command and control functions of financial services and corporate headquarters, and by linking London’s fate to that of its great global rivals, New York and Tokyo.

Growth and change London’s population reached the million mark in the first decade of the nineteenth century. By the time the LCC was created in 1889, four million Londoners were already beginning to spill over beyond the metropolitan boundaries into new suburbs in the Home-Counties area. The population of inner London roughly stabilised through the 1920s and 1930s, only to fall dramatically with the impact of the war and planned decentralisation. The expansion of what were to become London’s outer suburbs proceeded apace with outward movement and migration from elsewhere, and by the outbreak of war in 1939 more ‘Londoners’ lived outside the county boundary than lived within it. By 1971, inner London’s population had fallen below three million for the first time in the century and the population of the whole – now ‘Greater London’ – had also peaked and was falling. With the wider London region – the engine of growth of the British economy – population and employment continued to boom, but increasingly at a distance from London itself. The 1963 London Government Act established boundaries for Greater London and for its component parts, boundaries that remain unchallenged to this day, despite a sense that governmental London is a poor approximation of the economic region. Official discourse usually relates to Greater London and its inner (previously London County) boroughs (Map 2.1) and the outer boroughs which were drawn in reluctantly, and cut off from their surrounding counties, in 1965. As Table 2.1 below shows, these historic patterns of growth and change gave rise to huge disparities in population density, with the crowded inner area showing the sharpest contrast to the more spacious outer suburbs.

16

London: the modernising metropolis

Enfield Barnet Harrow

Haringey

Hillingdon

Havering Camden

Ealing

Richmond upon Thames

2

Hackney

Tower Newham 4 Hamlets

3 1

Hounslow

ton ing Isl

Brent

Greenwich Bexley Lewisham

Merton

Sutton

Hammersmith & Fulham Kensington & Chelsea City of Westminster City of London

Barking & Dagenham

Southwark

Lambeth Wandsworth

Kingston upon Thames

1 2 3 4

Waltham Redbridge Forest

Croydon

Bromley

Inner London boroughs Outer London boroughs

Map 2.1 Greater London and the inner and outer London boroughs. Table 2.1 Population of London, and population density 1939–2001 Year

2001 1991 1981 1971 1961 1951 1939

Population

7,172,036 6,679,699 6,696,008 8,119,246 8,171,902 8,348,023 8,615,050

Pop./Sq. Inner London (former Mi. London county)

11,536 10,744 10,770 13,060 13,144 13,428 13,857

Outer boroughs

Population

Pop./Sq. Mi.

Population

Pop./Sq. Mi.

2,765,975 2,504,451 2,497,978 3,045,436 3,195,114 3,347,982 4,013,400

23,460 21,242 21,187 25,831 27,100 28,397 34,041

4,406,061 4,175,248 4,198,030 5,073,810 4,976,788 5,000,041 4,601,650

8,746 8,288 8,333 10,071 9,878 9,925 9,134

Source: Population Census, various years; estimate for 1939.

For decades, these inequalities in residential density attracted intense political criticism. Today, while the stark contrasts of density remain, other aspects of inequality resonate more. Nearly a third of Londoners are from black and ethnic minorities, and their numbers are growing at a faster rate than the overall population.

London: the modernising metropolis 17 London has a high rate of unemployment relative to the rest of the country and it is ethnic minorities who are far more likely to be unemployed than white people. Indeed, the differential between the white and the minority unemployment rates has been rising and, when coupled with lower rates of economic activity among some minority populations, lead to a marked polarisation in income and life chances between white and non-white Londoners. Despite London’s cornucopia of opportunities, many people – notably women with young children, the low skilled, and many in the minority ethnic communities – fail to access the full benefits that London can offer. Alone among the regions of the UK, London contains concentrations of both high and low income households, leading to acute social and economic polarisation. There is a pronounced spatial pattern of deprivation, with inner London registering the highest rates of income poverty for children, working-age adults and pensioners. Regional household income data, published systematically for the first time by the Department of Social Security in 2000, show that London has the highest rate of child poverty for any region of the UK, at 43 per cent after housing costs are taken into account. Poverty is said to occur where household incomes amount to 60 per cent or less of the national average (median) income. As Table 2.2 shows, there are very marked differences between inner and outer London, with 36 per cent of children in inner London living in poverty and 19 per cent in outer London before housing costs are taken into account: the table also shows the powerful effect of London’s housing costs upon disposable income for children, pensioners and working-age adults. Londoners face the most acute traffic and transport congestion. Private road trips by car or motorcycle amount to around 11 million daily, and drivers encounter serious congestion (Mayor of London, 2004). But more than 85 per cent of Londoners ending their journey to work in central London do so by public transport, and in the morning peak hours. Public transport passenger trips have increased in London over the last decade, while they have fallen markedly in the north and the midland regions. Three million passengers use the crowded underground each day, while the buses carry around six million passengers daily, Table 2.2 Housing costs, and proportions living in poverty Children

Inner London Outer London Greater London Great Britain

Pensioners

Working-age adults

Before housing costs %

After housing costs %

Before housing costs %

After housing costs %

Before housing costs %

After housing costs %

36 19 25 21

53 33 41 31

18 17 17 22

36 21 26 25

18 12 15 14

30 19 23 19

Source: Mayor of London, 2002.

18

London: the modernising metropolis

amounting to about a third of all bus passengers in England and Wales. London and the south-east also account for almost half of all overland rail passenger kilometres and two thirds of all passenger journeys. Since 1992, bus and light rail passenger trips have increased by more than 36 per cent compared with just 8 per cent in Great Britain as a whole. Yet London has added only about 38 kilometres to its rail and metro network since 1970, mainly through the Docklands Light Railway and the more recent Jubilee line extension. These transport and traffic problems are long-standing. The Transport Select Committee of the House of Commons concluded in 1982 that the state of the transport system in the capital was ‘a scandal of international and national significance’. By 1988, despite improvements in the organisation and financing of London’s transport, problems remained on the roads, rail, and underground: The congestion of morning and evening peak ‘rush hours’ is now encroaching into the off-peak periods particularly in Central and Inner London. Despite a limited number of new roads, rail and underground lines, bridges and tunnels over the last 15 years, London becomes ever more congested and overcrowded and its parking and other problems ever more intractable. Those in Central London, town centres and a wide range of suburban locations near railway or underground stations are now particularly intense. (LPAC, 1988: para 2.41) In that year, the London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC) argued that the scale of London’s transport problems was having an adverse effect on economic and employment growth in the region: It is already clear that transportation problems have cost jobs in the capital itself, by making the city a less hospitable and efficient place in which to hold a job. They are directly damaging the tourism and entertainment industries, and poor transportation could be affecting the level of international business undertaken in London. Inefficient transportation systems are adding to the costs of goods and services, reducing the operating efficiency of many businesses through access and parking problems and reducing labour mobility. (LPAC, 1988: para 2.46) More than half a million people commute into central London each day from outside the metropolitan area. The projected growth of employment has raised serious concerns about the capacity of the transport network and is estimated to increase commuting by 120,000 return journeys. Moreover, like many metropolitan regions elsewhere in the world, oversight of London’s wider linkages rests with no single authority, accentuating the difficulties of dealing with London in isolation from its region. The four growth corridors that run out of London to the north, south, east and west exemplify this inseparability. The Lee Valley corridor runs from Hackney out through north London through the M11 corridor to Stansted airport and beyond to Cambridge.

London: the modernising metropolis 19 The western wedge extends from Hammersmith in inner London through Park Royal and Heathrow at the Greater London boundary past the M25 as far as Reading, Newbury and Basingstoke. The southern corridor runs from Wandsworth out through Croydon to Gatwick and the Crawley-Horsham area. To the east, the Thames Gateway, first identified as a priority in the 1980s, extends from Docklands through to Thurrock, north of the river, and the Kent Thameside to the south. In each case their definition of these corridors challenges the logic of the Greater London boundary. The latest draft revision of the statutory planning guidance introduces a number of operational changes, placing greater responsibility on new regional bodies to take forward regional development.

Planning and the challenge of growth Throughout the twentieth century, the question of how London should be governed was treated in isolation from that of the larger region within which it was located. For centuries, London and its region had been the ‘engine of growth’ of the British economy, with the result that London and a vast area around it experienced intense pressures for industrial, residential and office development. The weight of these pressures was felt in different places at different times, but the challenge it posed to policy makers seemed almost too great to be squarely faced. Instead, it was politically easier and administratively convenient to regard London as a separate entity defined by official boundaries, however artificial. This, however, posed a problem of regional co-ordination and throughout the twentieth century an uneasy relationship persisted between the local government of London, that of the surrounding counties, and the responsible Ministry in Whitehall which struggled to hold in check the competing interests in this expanding metropolitan area. The capital’s structure and population continued to undergo changes. By midtwentieth century, the form and extent of London, and the balance of forces that held it together, began to shift in unexpected directions (Young, 2001). London’s growth was driven by a combination of population migration from other parts of the country, accommodated by the housing and employment opportunities in the outer suburbs and the outer metropolitan area; by similar movement from the innermost areas to the outer, driven again by people seeking opportunities; and by a high rate of natural increase in the population. The consequential developments were not, however, evenly distributed. To the west of London, competition for land was intense, and from the 1930s to the present day, the west London economy has been considered ‘overheated’, while to the east sites remained undeveloped, and job opportunities far fewer. These imbalances exercised national policy makers; from the 1980s the problems and promise of developing east London – in the guise of the ‘Thames Gateway’ – have become a priority. Lately, the Thames Gateway area has attracted the most intense governmental concern and has become the largest regeneration area in Europe. The London section of the Gateway area alone is planned to accommodate close to 140,000 homes and 240,000 additional jobs by 2016. Related developments have already gone some way towards rectifying the historic east–west imbalance in London’s

20 London: the modernising metropolis growth patterns. The regeneration of the London Docklands, centred on Canary Wharf, the opening of the city airport at the Royal Docks, the international passenger station at Stratford and developments such as the Docklands Light Railway have shifted London’s economic centre of gravity towards the east. The announcement that London had won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics has brought intense political and economic pressure to bear on east London. If the east–west imbalance exercised national policy makers, those responsible for local government were far more concerned about the disparities between the inner and outer areas and the conflicts that arose from them. When, immediately following the 1914–1918 war, the extent and pace of suburban development called into question the viability of the LCC, a Royal Commission under Viscount Ullswater was appointed to consider the case for a new area-wide metropolitan authority. The outer suburbs, backed by their county councils, stood firm against any proposal to extend the boundaries of the LCC, and the intensity of their opposition effectively put paid to any chance of a positive report. When the Ullswater Commission eventually reported in 1923, it split three ways. The majority report recommended against change, partly on the ground that the intensity and extent of the opposition to any extension of the LCC area was such as to render any such proposal futile. The idea of a metropolitan government for London was effectively killed for the next 40 years. Metropolitan growth continued unchecked and Greater London and the south-east came increasingly to be recognised as a source of benefit for the national economy. The development of outer London, and of Middlesex in particular, provided unparalleled housing opportunities, creating a strong, stable and, for the most part, property owning, middle class. Yet it was at a cost. The sprawling development of dormitory suburbs, the tawdriness of ribbon development, the wasteful consumption of land by suburban speculation and the development of vast industrial estates brought about such a separation of homes and jobs that London’s growing population was forced to accept a tiring journey to work as a price of their prosperity. The transport undertakings – the London Passenger Transport Board in particular – actively promoted suburbanisation, linking speculative residential development to the extension of the public transport network (Jackson, 1973). Road improvements had similar effect and were essentially self-defeating, encouraging greater decentralisation, a further separation of home and work, and the generation of a still greater volume of traffic. The need for a master plan to guide and control development came gradually to be accepted. Official reports called attention to the need to link housing and industrial development, transport, water supply and main drainage. The social and economic costs of London’s over-development necessitated some kind of response. Central government intervened to bring about the establishment of the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1927, in the hope it would bring together all the responsible bodies and forge agreement on a more rational approach to London’s continuing development. The conflicts of interest were, however, too intense. Both this body and its successor, the Standing Conference on London Regional Planning set up 10 years later, encountered

London: the modernising metropolis 21 political obstacles in their attempts to secure co-ordinated action for the region came to nothing (Young and Garside, 1982). In particular, the large and powerful authority governing the inner-urban core, the LCC, had little interest in seeing its own authority diluted by compromises with the outlying authorities. They in turn were eager to block the outward expansion of London. A Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population under the chairmanship of Sir Montague Barlow was appointed in 1937 but war had already broken out when Barlow reported in 1940. Nevertheless, Barlow’s principles – redeveloping congested urban areas, decentralising and dispersing both industry and its workers, and balancing and diversifying industrial development – had gained ascendancy and were to colour post-war development. Three major master plans, for the county of London (by Forshaw and Abercrombie, in 1943) for Greater London (Abercrombie himself, in 1944) and for the city of London were produced (by Holden and Holford, in 1951). Abercrombie’s Greater London plan covering 2,600 square miles, extending from beyond Luton in the north to the Surrey/Sussex borders in the south became the master plan and the key text for public decision-making for the next three decades. The plan was to restrict further population growth within the region and bar new industrial development in London and the Home Counties. A million people would be decentralised from inner London, with a ring of planned New Towns to provide self-contained nodes of industrial growth (Hall et al., 1973). With the acceptance of Abercrombie’s proposals in 1946, and the passage of legislation to create the New Towns, the statutory framework for planning was completed by the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. The major impediments to London regional planning were removed by vesting new and substantial planning powers only in a handful of counties and county boroughs, rather than in all the 131 minor district authorities of the region. These were charged with producing development plans, in line with Abercrombie, for ministerial approval. Abercrombie had divided the London region into four concentric rings: the innerurban, the suburban, the green-belt and the outer-country rings. There would be no new industrial development in the inner-urban and suburban rings, but only in the New Towns of the outer-country ring where it should be geared to housing provision to produce balanced communities. Offices, both commercial and governmental, were be dispersed elsewhere in England. Abercrombie’s central assumption, that the post-war population would fall, was dramatically falsified by events. The post-war trend towards younger marriage and childbearing confounded not only these estimates, but also Abercrombie’s aim to redistribute a static population. Decentralising the metropolitan region might have been possible had the population fallen as envisaged from the 1938 total of 10.3 million to 10 million in 1961. Instead, it grew to 10.6 million and continued to grow to a figure of around 12 million by the end of the century. By 1955, when most of the development plans had been approved by the government, it was clear that both the suburban and the outermost parts of the region were growing faster than expected, due largely to natural increase and to the continued attraction of the south-east’s opportunities and

22

London: the modernising metropolis

prosperity to potential migrants (Buck, Gordon and Young, 1986: 21–30). Strong pressures for growth in the towns and villages of Hertfordshire and in the green-belt ring itself led the Town Planning Institute (TPI) to warn that ‘the basic planning policy for the London region is in jeopardy’ (TPI, 1956: 18). In contrast, the population of the LCC area was expected to fall faster than in the earlier prediction. Whereas the dominant problem post-1920 had been industrial growth, its place as a hot topic for planners was taken in the 1950s by the growth of offices. An increase in office floor space of 12 per cent would have sufficed to replace wartime losses; in fact, central London office space grew by 82 per cent between 1945 and 1966. Less recognised was the huge change in land use patterns in the outer suburbs, most notably in west London, where factories were being steadily turned into offices and warehouses. Demand for labour was rippling outwards from London to the outer metropolitan area to drive growth there and encourage further decentralisation, first of homes, later, of employment. Abercrombie’s ideal of decentralisation was being achieved, not by policy but by market forces. Meanwhile, the London region was expanding in ways that blurred the distinction between itself and the south-east. Today the region stretches from Thanet in the east to the New Forest in the west and from Brighton in the south to Milton Keynes in the north. Outside London, it includes 55 districts and 19 major authorities including the counties of Kent, Surrey, east and west Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Its transport infrastructure includes the two major international airports at Heathrow and Gatwick, the Channel Tunnel and the south coast ports of Dover, Southampton and Portsmouth. With an estimated GDP of £140 billion, the economy of the south-east ‘doughnut’ is second only to London in the UK and is larger than Denmark, Norway, Greece or Portugal. Indeed, London and the south-east taken together are the most dynamic and fastest growing parts of the UK, the export value of the combined areas dwarfing that of the rest of the UK at around 50 billion in 2000. Although separately measurable, the economy of the south-east is in practice intertwined with London through commuting patterns, business and sectoral links and cross boundary transport corridors. As early as 1960, the central government recognised that this was to be the case. The economic projections of the Barlow report, the Abercrombie Plan and the Development Plans were things of the past and planning based on them outdated. A revised Regional Plan – in effect a new Abercrombie – was urgently required to bring the plans into line with ‘the continued economic expansion of south-east England as a whole, for this was a basic economic fact which must underlie all realistic planning for the future’ (Powell, 1960: 85–86). In 1961, the Ministry launched the South-East Study with a view to promoting the redevelopment and modernisation of the region to sustain population and economic growth. Civil servants were deeply concerned to find a framework for planning decisions that would leave some role for local authorities rather than centralise all regional planning decisions for the metropolitan area. This would require a new metropolitan government structure. The problem of determining which it should be was passed

London: the modernising metropolis 23 on to a Royal Commission which was appointed in 1957 under the chairmanship of Sir Edwin Herbert.

Governing ‘Greater’ London While accepting that the problems of Greater London were inextricably concerned with the problems of south-east England as a whole, the Commission thought it was for the central government to hold the balance between Greater London and the rest of the region (Herbert, 1960: para 720). But many of the surrounding local authorities disagreed. Herbert’s recommendation that a Greater London Council (GLC) should be established for something less than the continuous built-up area – for just the inner core and the suburbs – seemed inadequate to the problem. Surrounding counties called instead for a Joint Advisory Committee for London, which unlike the GLC, would cover the entire Abercrombie area. They argued that a plan for a larger region would still need to be formulated, for without such a plan embracing the green belt and beyond, the proper planning for the inner area could not take place. There were then two potentially conflicting views: that of the Ministry, and that which might yet emerge from the local authorities of the region. Two very different administrative machines were also being considered: for Greater London a metropolitan council which was to become the GLC; for the Abercrombie authorities, a resuscitated Standing Conference on London Regional Planning. Both came into being, but the possibility of the new Standing Conference formulating a new plan for the Abercrombie region was precluded when, in 1965, the regional policies of the new Labour government obliged the Standing Conference to extend its boundaries to the entire south-east. As the South-East Regional Planning Conference (SERPLAN), it provided advice on major transport and planning issues affecting the region and sought to co-ordinate policies on waste disposal, regional shopping centres, maintenance of open land in the green belt and the allocation of building land for housing. SERPLAN could not avoid coming into conflict with the government’s own appointed regional planning council and board. Both would have to take into account the south-east study published at that time, but both took radically different views of the future development of the region. The Greater London Council For most of the built-up area up to the edge of the green belt – Abercrombie’s suburban ring – Herbert had proposed a council for Greater London and 52 London borough councils. The GLC, as it became, was to be a new type of authority, focusing on strategic planning and infrastructure. Its area-wide responsibilities would cover planning policy, major roads and traffic, refuse disposal, fire and ambulance services. The GLC would also share some powers with the boroughs, including parks and open spaces, main sewerage and land drainage, and aspects of environmental health and housing. The boroughs for their part were to be the ‘primary units of local government’, exercising those services that were by their

24

London: the modernising metropolis

nature close to the people. These included housing, personal health, welfare and children services, environmental health, local roads, libraries, planning applications of local import and the day-to-day administration of education. The GLC tended to treat the London boroughs – reduced to 32 in number (Table 2.3) and with greatly enhanced powers – in a patrician spirit. Although the Table 2.3 London boroughs: population, area and density Borough Barking and Dagenham Barnet Bexley Brent Bromley Camden City of London Croydon Ealing Enfield Greenwich Hackney Hammersmith and Fulham Haringey Harrow Havering Hillingdon Hounslow Islington Kensington and Chelsea Kingston upon Thames Lambeth Lewisham Merton Newham Redbridge Richmond upon Thames Southwark Sutton Tower Hamlets Waltham Forest Wandsworth Westminster Greater London

Population (estimate 2004)

Area sq. km.

Density per sq. km.

164,600

36.09

4,560

326,700 219,500 267,700 299,100 217,100 8,600 340,200 303,200 280,000 225,700 207,000 176,800

86.74 60.56 43.24 150.14 21.80 2.90 86.52 55.52 82.20 47.34 19.06 16.40

3,767 3,624 6,192 1,992 9,961 2,966 3,932 5,461 3,406 4,767 10,858 10,778

224,300 211,200 225,000 248,700 212,300 179,900 184,100

29.59 50.47 112.36 115.70 55.99 14.86 12.13

7,581 4,185 2,002 2,150 3,792 12,106 15,178

151,800

37.25

4,076

268,100 247,000 192,300 247,700 247,300 182,700

26.82 35.15 37.61 36.21 56.42 57.41

9,995 7,026 5,113 6,841 4,383 3,182

254,700 177,600 209,300 221,800 276,500 230,000 7,428,600

28.85 43.85 19.77 38.82 34.26 21.48 153,73.53

8,827 4,050 10,588 5,714 8,070 10,709 4,721

Source: GLA, Borough and Sub-Regional Democratic Profiles, 2006, DMAG Briefing, 2006/11.

London: the modernising metropolis 25 boroughs were defined as the primary units of local government, this ascription of authority was nothing if not ambiguous. The GLC for its part assumed the mantle of a strategic authority which naturally brought it into conflict with the boroughs. The outer London boroughs, many of which had enjoyed the respect and co-operation of their former county councils, and some of which had formerly enjoyed county borough status, demanded to be treated with respect. Many of the conflicts arose not from GLC’s major strategic responsibilities but rather from the concurrent powers that recognised both the boroughs’ and the GLC’s interests. Some 560 miles of ‘metropolitan’ roads were initially vested in the GLC, with a further 390 miles a few years later. Responsibility for most of the remainder (some 6,900 miles of ‘local’ roads) lay with the borough councils. An important area for conflict arose in relation to the handling of planning proposals, where the GLC had the power to call in for its own decision a wide range of applications which borough councillors and officers would have regarded as properly within their own sphere. The GLC’s rationale was the co-ordination of land-use planning and transport. Arguably, in order to perform that role effectively, it needed the authority to override the boroughs and give binding directions on the boroughs’ own plans and on the planning applications they considered. But even the limited powers the GLC actually possessed led it into corrosive disputes with the boroughs. More extensive powers would have simply deepened the conflicts. As one commentator remarked, ‘the GLC was too powerful to be acceptable and too weak to be effective’ (Young, 1986: 44). In a bid to diffuse the conflicts, both major parties considered devolving GLC powers to the boroughs. This happened most effectively in the housing sphere where under a Conservative government, the GLC gradually relinquished its strategic housing powers, lifting the threat they posed to borough autonomy. For their part, the Labour party offered devolution to the boroughs wherever it could ‘be clearly established that the GLC has no strategic role to play’. It was a half-hearted offer, for few in the party thought there were any such areas, warning that ‘it is foolish to believe that the problems of one of the major Capitals of the world can be solved by 33 individual authorities with conflicting interests.’ The GLC must have a strategic role in housing, employment and industrial development and act as ‘a body directing resources to the areas of greatest deprivation’. It was ‘sheer nonsense’ to suppose that the London transport system could exist independently of the democratically accountable strategic body. Overall, ‘the devolution of GLC powers to the boroughs would be a retrogressive step which ignored the need to maintain the cohesiveness of Greater London as a political and economic unit’ (Labour Party, 1977: 1.3.2). In attempting to maintain its housing role, the Labour GLC clung to the tradition of the former LCC, membership of which had been a formative experience for many Labour politicians. The LCC had been the UK’s largest and most powerful housing authority. Following its abolition and the creation of the new system of metropolitan government most housing powers resided with the boroughs, the GLC being assigned a more limited and temporary role. However, the creation of the new system of London government coincided with a series of scandals and

26

London: the modernising metropolis

a major investigation of the London housing problem. Under Labour there was to be a new housing drive and a Minister for London housing was appointed. Working in partnership with major developers, the full weight of government was put behind large-scale ‘system building’ which produced prefabricated flats in large numbers on vast sites. The GLC played an important role in this housing drive, but at the same time also sought to test its powers over the boroughs by acquiring suburban land on which to build for the benefit of inner Londoners. The GLC’s strategy failed in this respect, producing intense conflict with the outer boroughs but few dwellings into which the inner-city poor could be decanted. Nevertheless, Labour policy continued to favour a strong strategic housing authority while Conservatives were more anxious to placate the boroughs which provided their main vote bank (Young and Kramer, 1978). Behind the creation of the GLC lay a long-standing commitment to bring the urban motorway proposals of Abercrombie’s plan to fruition. The London Government Act 1963 required the GLC to produce a development plan – the Greater London Development Plan (GLDP) – in the form of a written statement accompanied by two maps, one setting out the proposed urban structure in schematic form and the other the road proposals to be embodied in the plan. These were no more than Abercrombie’s so called A, B and C ring roads, appearing here as ‘Ringways’ 1, 2 and 3, the D ring – the ‘Ringway 4’ – eventually being built by the central government as the M25 (Hart, 1976). Published with a fanfare and with the support of a cross-party consensus, the roads plan seemed to vindicate the GLC’s creation. Very quickly, however, the scheme came under heavy criticism, and the so-called motorway box was eventually abandoned. Of the 23,000 objections eventually lodged against the GLDP, no fewer than 18,000 related to the roads proposals. By the mid-1970s neither party at the GLC dared propose the demolition of 35,000 houses and the incurring of hundreds of millions of pounds of expenditure to set Abercrombie’s map in concrete. A gulf developed between County Hall and Whitehall, where ministers and officials continued to seek major road improvements either through the agency of the GLC or, as seemed increasingly likely, without it. With the highways proposals drastically watered down, the GLDP was finally approved by the Secretary of State, after years of preparation and inquiry, in 1976. Meanwhile, a simplified planning system had been introduced under which the boroughs would produce unitary development plans for approval by ministers, not the GLC. With the roads scheme largely rejected at public inquiry, and with both major political parties eager to distance themselves from this massively expensive and hugely unpopular project, London’s planning was left in a kind of vacuum. Moreover, by the late 1960s, the formal planning system was already seen to be as irrelevant to the urgent policy problems facing London. Foremost among the latter was the newly discovered ‘inner-city problem’. Decentralisation had been assisted by promotional policies to disperse activity and people from inner London in accordance with the Abercrombie plan, but these policies reinforced, rather than restrained, market forces. While population in the region as a whole soared, it fell sharply in the inner-urban area, and employment fell even faster.

London: the modernising metropolis 27 At the same time, a process of social decline occurred as younger, more mobile, and more skilled workers followed the jobs available out of London. The Labour government of 1974 moved quickly to channel funds back to sustain regeneration in Lambeth, Islington and Hackney. At the same time, new-town growth at Milton Keynes, Northampton, Peterborough, Harlow, Stevenage and Bracknell was constrained as ‘saving London’ became a prime political concern. The GLC’s responsibility for highways was not matched by corresponding influence over public transport. The 1969 Transport (London) Act had placed the London Transport Board with its Bus and Tube services under the control of the GLC. In opposition after 1977, London Labour prepared a new transport strategy, which found expression in the ‘Fares Fair’ policy introduced when they returned to power in 1981. The basis of Fares Fair was a 25 per cent reduction in Bus and Tube fares, the cost of which (£100 million) would be borne by ratepayers across London. Delayed by political backlash and legal challenge, it was not until 1983 that London Transport fares were reduced and restructured. In the meantime, however, GLC spending on transport almost doubled. If the Labour GLC’s transport policies were costly and innovative, its policies for industry and employment were of even greater political significance. ‘Save the inner city’ had become an effective rallying cry for Labour both nationally and at the London level where a radical left Labour group led by Ken Livingstone took control at County Hall after the 1981 election. Their response was to produce a socialist approach to the urban crisis. An Industry and Employment Committee was set up and an economic policy group established. The GLC’s new strategy was to be implemented through two bodies: the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB), an arms-length company set up to implement the policies defined in the London Industrial Strategy, and the Greater London Training Board (GLTB), a regular committee of the GLC. The GLEB was founded to provide financial support for new and existing firms, and, importantly, for new forms of municipal enterprise including co-operatives. In 1983–1984 the Board spent £31 million in support of job creation; expenditure which central government opposed as harmful that served to divert resources to uneconomic activities in failing industries. Labour GLC’s revision of the GLDP rejected the past approaches to allocating land use in London. They rewrote the GLDP in a way that was consonant with their overall socialist vision. Titled Planning for the Future of London, it condemned the existing plan on the grounds that it took no account of population trends nor of economic and employment change. Furthermore, it overlooked public concern with environmental and ecological matters and ignored changes in energy prices and the effects of the new technology. Finally, it failed to respond to the new emphasis on community needs or the recognised need to tackle discrimination and disadvantage experienced by ethnic minorities, women and people with disabilities. The GLC proposed maintaining and regenerating London’s economy by creating employment opportunities and improving the skills of the workforce through direct intervention. None of this was acceptable to the Conservative government, whose ministers had other plans for London, plans which turned not on reform, but on the abolition of the GLC.

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London: the modernising metropolis

On 9 June 1983, the Conservatives won the General Election with a decisive majority and a manifesto commitment to abolish the GLC. In the government’s eyes, the GLC and the metropolitan counties had been profligate, consistently exceeding government expenditure targets and placing a heavy burden on ratepayers. Published in October 1983, the White Paper Streamlining the Cities portrayed the two-tier system in London and other metropolitan areas as a ‘recipe for conflict and uncertainty’. The GLC had been created during ‘the heyday of a certain fashion for strategic planning, the confidence in which now appears exaggerated’. Expected to behave ‘strategically’, it engaged in ‘a natural search for a “strategic” role which may have no basis in real needs’ (DoE, 1983: 3). This search, argued the government, underlay the conflicts which the GLC had generated. The political White Paper maintained that a strict interpretation of the upper tier role, as envisaged in the [1963] legislation, would leave members of these authorities with too few functions. The search for a wider role brings them into conflict with the lower tier authorities. It may also lead them to promote policies which conflict with national policies which were the responsibility of central government. (DoE, 1983: paras 111–112) Under the White Paper proposals, a wide range of functions would be transferred to the boroughs, including planning, highways, traffic management, waste regulation and disposal, housing, trading standards, and support for the arts, sport and historic buildings. Responsibility for public transport in London would be transferred to a new authority under ministerial control. Land drainage and f lood protection would move to the Thames Water Authority and joint boards of borough representatives would take control of remaining area-wide functions. The interregnum period Following the abolition of the GLC in 1986, decision-making became highly fragmented, with power drifting to Whitehall. The limitations of partnership soon became clear. The extent of London’s over-dependence on elaborate structures of co-operative joint action was much criticised. After 1986, the capital suffered from a lack of any overall responsibility for formulating and giving effect to a vision for London. Despite these limitations, the government of London functioned far more effectively than many had predicted (Hebbert, 1998). This was particularly the case in respect of land-use planning. The LPAC was established as a joint committee of London boroughs to advise ministers on strategic planning guidance for London. Once approved, the guidance provided a framework of general policy within which boroughs prepared their own Unitary Development Plans. LPAC became an important player within SERPLAN as well as advising, on behalf of the London boroughs, on the major development proposals that came before local planning committees, and defining criteria for distinguishing major from minor developments.

London: the modernising metropolis 29 From 1986 to their electoral defeat in 1997, Conservative ministers stressed the virtues of co-ordination directed by the central government itself. A Cabinet sub-committee was established to link up separate Whitehall departments, and the Secretary of State for Environment designated Minister for London. In 1995, a Government Office for London (GOL) was set up to bring together the regional offices of the Departments of Environment, Transport, Trade and Industry, and Education and Employment, along with representatives of the private sector (Travers and Jones, 1997). An increased leadership role for the private sector was also congenial to a Conservative government keen to promote ‘partnership’ between government and business. A new organisation, ‘London First’, brought together leading private sector interests with London borough leaders and the voluntary sector, taking the lead role in shaping the debate on the future of London government (Newman and Thornley, 1997). London First launched the London Pride initiative to promote the locational advantages of London as a world city and business centre and to demonstrate that ‘the abolition of the GLC and the lack of a firm planning and investment framework created the space for business and the City to promote their priorities’ (Newman, 1995: 118). Partnership did not imply a unity of view, however. In all these arrangements, the private-sector partners were keen to concentrate on London’s commercial central area, while the borough politicians focused on taking a broader view and including the suburbs. The Labour party, while playing a minor role in these partnerships, would not let the governmental issue rest. Its 1994 manifesto Working Together for London made the point that London was the only capital city in Western Europe that lacked city-wide government and an overall strategy. ‘London needs a voice’ the manifesto declared, ‘a body that speaks for all of London to carry weight in Whitehall. Only a directly elected body can have this legitimacy.’ As party leader, Tony Blair committed himself to reforming London government, but by emulating the US mayoral system. A directly elected Mayor ‘could provide vision and a direction for London’s future, someone to drive the development of the city, to pull together the partnerships needed to make things happen’ (Carvel, 1999: 255). What followed was to be far removed from the experience of the earlier GLC.

A new authority for Greater London Following consultations, the White Paper A Mayor and Assembly for London proposed a new structure centred on a directly elected Mayor to provide democratic leadership, to continue to promote London as a world city and to bridge the gap between community-led and national government. ‘Elsewhere in the world’, it proclaimed, executive mayors ‘have made a positive difference to the lives of their citizens and the communities they serve’. Here in Britain ‘the capital needs leadership’ as well as ‘someone who will work with the grain of London, bringing the people, the boroughs, the private and voluntary sectors together to tackle the real issues’ (DETR, 1998: 2).

30

London: the modernising metropolis

Together, the Greater London Assembly and the Mayor were to constitute the GLA. At the elections of 4 May 2000, Ken Livingstone, running as an independent, secured a convincing victory on a turnout of 34 per cent. Two months later, on 3 July 2000, the Mayor and Assembly assumed their powers. The new system was based on a clear distinction between executive action and the scrutiny of that action, with the Mayor taking decisions on behalf of the new authority and the Assembly charged with the responsibility of scrutinising his decisions and holding the Mayor to account. In one vital respect the new government for London was indeed radically different from its predecessors. The GLC had been created without any clear conception of what a strategic authority might do. Despite the common view of the 1960s as a time when strategic planning was fashionable, little was actually done then to achieve a clear conception of what it might mean in a London context. Nick Raynsford, the Labour Minister charged with overall responsibility for London, after the party won the 1977 General Election, argued that the government was proposing not another GLC but a new form of city-wide government, streamlined and strategic. The GLA became responsible for strategic planning, transport, economic development and regeneration, environmental protection and culture, media and leisure, the metropolitan police and fire and civil defence. Although the ultimate responsibility of the GLA, not all of these functions were to come under its direct day-to-day control. Some would be run through arms-length agencies. Thus, only four of the existing pan-London organisations – the London Research Centre (LRC), the LPAC, the London Ecology Unit (LEU), and the London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) – were absorbed into the new authority. Other bodies providing the key metropolitan functions were kept separate from the GLA, but were to be accountable to it through the Mayor appointing their Board members. Tf L was to absorb London Transport and the functions of the Traffic Director for London, together with some of the functions of the highways agencies and the GOL. Tf L was to be given overall responsibility for roads, buses, trains and the underground, managing the traffic-light system and regulating taxis and mini-cabs. The Mayor would not only appoint the members of the TfL Board but also have the right to chair their meetings. His overriding responsibility would be to draw these several modes of transport together through the preparation of an integrated transport strategy for London. The London Development Agency (LDA) was to become a major instrument of economic growth policies, taking over from central government funds for inward investment and regeneration – including the Single Regeneration Budget – and the land-acquisition and development powers of English Partnerships. Its creation would parallel that of the Regional Development Agencies elsewhere in England. Two new bodies responsible for public safety were to enjoy a rather different relationship with the GLA and the Mayor. The new Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) was the first such locally accountable body in London’s history, funded by the Mayor, who was to appoint Assembly members to 11, later 12, places on the

London: the modernising metropolis 31 23-strong Board. The London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) was to be similarly structured. A number of other bodies, including the London Boroughs Grants – formerly the London Boroughs Grants Committee – the London Ambulance Service and the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority remained outside. The first of these was eventually taken under the umbrella of the Association of London Governments (ALG). For their part, the London boroughs and the city of London, with some minor exceptions, would continue to be responsible for the delivery of local services. Although the relationships established by the Greater London Authority Act 1999 were complex, the new plan amounted to a substantial streamlining of the government of London. The Mayor was given significant planning powers as regards both overall strategy and development control. He would be responsible for preparing a Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) for the improvement of London’s physical fabric, housing, culture, recreation, economic regeneration, social inclusion and London’s role as a world financial centre: in effect, a London plan. The boroughs would remain local planning authorities, but where the Mayor considered that an application for a large-scale development contravened the London-wide strategy he could direct the borough to reject the application. On the other hand he would not be able to direct approval, while any rejected applicant could still appeal to the Secretary of State. Alongside the spatial development strategies, specific strategies were required for environmental improvement. Here again, day-to-day responsibility remained with the boroughs but the Mayor was to be given some powers to compel them to act in accordance with the strategies. One of the GLA’s inheritances from the interregnum was the then existing Regional Planning Guidance which would remain in force until such time as the Mayor’s SDS had been formulated and approved. The planning guidance made the point that existing policies for the central area boroughs were ‘disjointed’ and in October 1999 the boroughs, LPAC and GOL agreed on guidelines for co-ordinating the central area. Another key issue was east–west ‘balance’. Differences between inner and outer London and between east and west, and growth in the development corridors critical to London’s economic regeneration and prosperity, would also have to be addressed. Under the GLA Act, the responsibility for strategic planning ostensibly shifted from the boroughs and the Secretary of State to the Mayor. It was specifically intended that the SDS would not be a revival of the GLDP but an entirely new kind of plan that set out the spatial implications of the other statutory strategies that the Mayor needed to publish, along with his other policies. It was described as ‘a broad statement of ambition, focused on key development and infrastructural requirements’ (PEMB, 2000: 59). Ministers had resisted pressure to have the SDS declare a development plan, insisting that it was instead to be a new-style planning instrument, taking an integrated approach, embracing all aspects of physical planning, infrastructure development and other policies affecting or affected by the

32

London: the modernising metropolis distribution of activities. By doing so, it should help to secure the effective co-ordination and targeting of activities and resources, and a consistent, holistic approach to the delivery of policy objectives. It should contribute to the achievement within London of sustainable development, a healthy economy and a more inclusive society. (LPAC, 2000: 3)

The SDS was required to deal only with matters which are of strategic importance to Greater London, but the Secretary of State was given power to intervene where it appeared to him that the SDS departed from the current national or regional policies or was detrimental to the interest of an area outside Greater London. Thus, despite all the rhetoric of devolution and novelty, the SDS framework was in practice closely controlled by the central government. The Secretary of State took reserve powers to require the SDS to be made, reviewed and altered. He can make regulations with respect to form and content and procedures to be followed in preparing, publishing, reviewing or withdrawing it and these regulations closely follow those relating to structure plans. Additionally, in formulating the SDS, the Mayor is required to have regard to a wide range of matters, some of which were matters of judgement by the Secretary of State: for example, the effects of the strategy on international obligations and its implications for the environmental protection. Most importantly, the Secretary of State retains the power to issue regional planning guidance for London and the adjoining areas, which the Mayor is obliged to take into account. At a more local level, the power to control development through the processing of planning applications largely remains with the boroughs, subject to the overriding powers of the Secretary of State. There is, though, no specific requirement that applications should be determined by the boroughs in accordance with the SDS itself, or even that they should take it into account. This was an anomaly, and London’s new planning system came to be regarded as in a state of continuing development in which the SDS was likely, in time, to become an increasingly powerful instrument. The Mayor was given some powers to control developments considered to be of particular importance to London, where he can block planning applications relating to large-scale developments, major infrastructure developments, developments which might affect key strategic policies and those which might affect key strategic sites or views. Mayor Livingstone adopted an all-inclusive approach to ensure that a wide range of stakeholders were able to make their voices heard on planning issues. Paradoxically, far from simplifying the planning process by bringing everything together in a streamlined regional strategic authority, this approach complicated and slowed down the decision process and led to confusion by bringing new people and organisations into the debates about planning issues. Developers found themselves dealing with the boroughs, English Heritage, voluntary organisations, community groups and the LDA, which had inherited its land and property section from English Partnerships.

London: the modernising metropolis 33

Modernising London London is the hub of the UK’s international and national transport networks and the core of a wider region. Seventy per cent of all journeys on the national rail network start or finish in London. Freight moving by rail between the Channel ports and the rest of the UK has to pass through London’s crowded rail network. To cope with the growth in population and employment predicated in the draft plan, public transport capacity will need to be increased by 40 per cent by 2016. Mayor Livingstone’s first Transport Strategy set out his vision to develop London as ‘an exemplary sustainable world city’. The key strategic priorities are to reduce traffic congestion, reduce central London traffic by 15 per cent, achieve zero growth in the rest of inner London and reduce the rate of growth in outer London. Crucial to the achievements of these aims are the improvements in public transport with increased capacity on the underground and bus services, and better integration of London’s public transport network with the national rail system. Given the long lead times for rail and underground improvements, buses offer the quickest way of improving public transport in London. The Mayor invested heavily in increasing services and paying for operators to provide new buses, but increased frequency and reliability depend on enabling buses to get through the traffic. TfL designates the London Bus Priority Network (LBPN) and sets the programme for improving services through the London Bus Initiative (LBI) (GLA, 2001). Mayor Livingstone’s popularity and widespread support derives in part from recognition of his commitment and capabilities as a moderniser. It is beyond argument that London has languished for many years not just through the interregnum that followed the abolition of the GLC, but also through the two decades of largely ineffective metropolitan government that preceded it. Livingstone played a major role in the last days of the GLC when it struggled to define a radical new approach to using planning powers for the economic benefit of Londoners. Some of that history is discernible in his iconoclastic approach to London’s policy logjam. Foremost among his policy innovations and a world first has been the introduction of a congestion charge. Ken Livingstone had bravely urged congestion charging during his election campaign while the Labour manifesto for the Assembly, while not opposed to charges in principle, had promised they would not be brought in until there were proper public transport alternatives in place. The new Mayor, though, was a man in a hurry. Road pricing – or, in urban areas, congestion charging – had been favoured for some years as the solution to overcrowded city streets. The technical possibilities had gradually clarified, although a government-commissioned study published in 1995 concluded that electronic road pricing would not be available before 2010. The principal objection remained one of public acceptability. The political difficulty in road pricing was bound to be the resistance of the driving public. For most people who have access to a car, it has long been the mode of choice for almost all journeys except where the inconvenience and cost of congestion and of parking make public transport preferable. By the late 1990s it appeared that congestion charges were becoming more attractive to politicians but were still a long way from being sufficiently acceptable

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London: the modernising metropolis

to support their introduction (Moran, 1999). What brought congestion charging finally onto London’s political agenda was the movement toward an ‘integrated’ transport policy. In 1996, LPAC had put forward what it described an’objective led approach’ to the production of ‘a single all-inclusive transport programme’ funded by a single transport budget for London (LPAC, 1996). Following this study and the publication of the London Pride Partnership’s London’s Action Programme for Transport 1995–2010, the GOL and the Department of Transport jointly published a Transport Strategy for London. This document formed the basis of the transport policy environment that the GLA inherited. Its key features were the promotion of walking, cycling and public transport as alternatives to car use. Measures for car restraint were to be coupled with major investment in the public transport infrastructure and in the region’s strategic road network, along with comprehensive traffic management and limited new road construction. The planning system was to be used to reduce the overall need to travel and an air quality strategy would be developed under the Environment Act 1995. A government White Paper on transport, published in July 1998, promised a ‘new dawn’ for all forms of transport. Local authorities would be required to produce five-year transport plans after consulting local residents and businesses, and powers would be given to enable them to levy charges on workplace parking, although earlier proposals to levy a parking-place charge on supermarket and leisure centres were dropped. Councils would also be given powers to levy anti-congestion charges to reduce congestion and exhaust emissions. The money raised thereby would be used exclusively for transport improvements. The proposal to recycle congestion-charging revenues into transport improvements represented a victory over the Treasury’s antipathy towards hypothecated taxes. The government had originally intended to give all local authorities the power to set and collect the charges but was nervous of the possible electoral backlash. Ministers were fearful of the public reaction and of giving the opposition an opportunity to capitalise on dissent by presenting themselves as the ‘party of the motorist’. The transport bill accordingly provided for no more than localised pilots and experiments other than in London, where the GLA could be expected to pursue congestion charging as it would be its sole source of revenue. A congestion charge was expected to raise £400 million a year in London and a tax on workplace car parking a further £100 million, sums which were planned for investment in public transport. The revenue from the GLA charges was to be hypothecated for a 10-year period. Thereafter, it was anticipated that the Treasury would make a bid to seize it. The congestion charge scheme was immediately adopted by Ken Livingstone after his surprise election victory. His proposals put out for consultation involved the cordoning of a large central area bounded by Marylebone to the north, Old Street and Tower Bridge to the east, Elephant and Castle and Kennington to the south and Victoria and Marble Arch to the west, from 7 AM to 7 PM on weekdays. The boroughs most affected by the proposed charging zone – Westminster, Wandsworth, Kensington and Chelsea – joined together to campaign against the congestion charge, representing it as an additional tax on residence and businesses, adding to congestion with drivers using peripheral roads and parking on the edge of the zone.

London: the modernising metropolis 35 Despite the opposition, the Mayor, staking his political career on this one big policy initiative , pressed ahead with just minor concessions as to the hours of the operation of the scheme and the eligibility for discounts and waivers. Having successfully introduced the scheme in February 2002, with surprisingly fewer teething problems, Mayor Livingstone capitalised on its apparent effectiveness in limiting traffic and in raising revenue – albeit far less than originally predicted. Londoners soon accustomed themselves to the principle of charging and to the practice of paying for entering the zone. Soon after the Mayor’s re-election in 2004, he launched a consultation process for a major westward extension of the congestion zone. While anticipating a reduction of traffic of between 15 and 22 per cent, the Mayor had to accept that the costs and benefits of the extension were far more evenly balanced than those of the original scheme. Indeed, less than a quarter of the public responses to the consultation on the extension supported it. The opposition to the extension was more intense than that which the original scheme had encountered, and one particular issue for the objectors was that the Mayor should invoke his power to hold a public enquiry on this scheme. However, the Mayor claimed to have carefully weighed all the objections, citing legal advice that he was not duty bound to hold an enquiry which, whatever is its form, would lead to further delay in the implementation of the scheme. In late 2006, he confirmed his decision to implement, in February 2007, the westward extension with minor changes. The Mayor defended his final decision less in financial terms than those of the ‘strategic fit of the proposal’, which was expected to make a significant contribution towards meeting key objectives such as reducing congestion, encouraging greater use of public transport and improving reliability of bus services.

Retaining London as a world city In 1990, LPAC had launched a world-city study, the purpose of which was to assess London’s competitive performance as measured against other world cities – New York, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin – and identify the factors which underpinned it. Changes in the international competitive climate, including the extension of the European community, tariff reductions, deregulation and the establishment of the EEC’s single market were seen as posing a potential threat to London’s international position. The pre-eminence of the city in the field of commodity and financial futures, was threatened by competition from Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam (LPAC, 1990). The LPAC study focused on the strength and effectiveness of world cities’ land-use planning. In the case of Frankfurt and Tokyo, the national, State or regional governments were closely involved in planning policies and their decisions were highly integrated. In Paris, and in London after the GLC abolition, the different levels of government were poorly integrated. In New York, in common with other US cities, there was no role for federal government in land-use planning. The effectiveness of these controls also varied, with land-use controls

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London: the modernising metropolis

in Germany identified as highly effective (Ellis, 1992). The point of these contrasts was to show up the planning vacuum at the regional level in London. Land-use planning and control needed to ensure that London could hold its competitive position among the world cities. The London business community emphasised the importance of a central location and a plentiful stock of quality modern office accommodation to London’s vitality. They favoured a future for London that focused upon continuous renewal and the development of high buildings in the central area. So when the new planning regime came into being in July 2000, business expectations were high. The LDA’s task was to define an agreed economic policy and promote London as a sustainable world city by improving business competitiveness and encouraging economic diversity. The ‘world-city’ idea has a natural appeal in the Mayor’s office: ‘London’s content is stupendous’, he argued, and was something on a scale to challenge one’s imagination. It is far from being a question of historic sites and ceremonials . . . It plays the role of the great city throughout the ages – to being together in one place a critical mass of economic, scientific, cultural and intellectual possibilities . . . The melting pot feature of the capital – diversity coupled with the most modern forms of communications – is integral to London character. (Independent, 15 August 2000) He warmly supported the notion of the capital as ‘a command post of the global economy’ in which the central area was ‘the material/urban manifestation of international control over finance and commerce in a global environment’ (Ellis, 1992: 3). At the same time, there was an opportunity to link the socially progressive aspects of his policies with ‘pro-business’ support for the single European currency and for the building of tall office blocks. As Livingstone put it a few months after taking office, London is a world city because most of the world’s nationalities are represented here and the city is recognised as a major centre of culture, innovation and the global economy. The Mayor’s vision focused on the established central business district (CBD) and new office centres adjacent to it, where demand for global business activities was concentrated. London competes with cities around the world. In some cases different sectors compete with different locations. The financial services and banking industry competes with New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Manufacturers compete with a range of locations, both in other regions of the UK and Europe and low-cost manufacturing sectors in South East Asia. New knowledge and internet based industries compete directly with Amsterdam, San Francisco and Bangalore. Its fashion and creative industry stand head to head with New York, Paris and Milan. Tourism competes globally. Overall, London’s key competitors include New York (for certain of the biggest companies), Paris and Frankfurt. (GLA 2000: 3)

London: the modernising metropolis 37 The stress was on development opportunities in and around central London – an emphasis reflected in the LDA’s argument that London’s growth was increasingly being driven by high-value activity for which the central area was the necessary location. While the draft economic development strategy gave prominence to the idea of London as a world city, drawing its strength from the CBD, Assembly members highlighted the need for a policy to meet the needs of London’s suburbs and local employment centres and not just the central area. This criticism also reflected expert opinion on the need to achieve a broader base of office development in London. Twelve months before the GLA came into being, the London office review panel, an advisory group, had stressed the need to reserve space in key central London locations for office development, placing high priority on the GLA ‘re-establish[ing] the concept of office centres in outer London as viable locations for the customer’. These would be in the few locations with the level of infrastructure, labour market and development capacity necessary to support critical masses of office-related activity which individually are of strategic, regional significance. In outer London, office policy had spread itself too thinly in promoting development. The Mayor was thus open to the charge that he was stressing global economic functions to the detriment of outer London’s town centres, placing London’s business future in jeopardy. The Mayor’s espousal of a world city concept, featuring international economic functions, was exemplified by his attitude to tall buildings in the central area. When an application was submitted for a controversial Norman Foster design for a 41-storey tower for the Swiss Re bank, to be the third tallest building in London, it was condemned as opening the floodgates for a wave of high-rise proposals. The Mayor took a different view. The proposal would be for the type and quantity of high-quality office-floor space that the city needed in order to maintain and enhance its position as a world city, and to enable its international role in the business and financial sectors to flourish. English Heritage and the influential Royal Institute of British Architects denied that London needed tall buildings. Building high could have negative impacts on the city’s historical environment, while high densities could be achieved without building upwards. LPAC had earlier acknowledged that while ‘experience in Singapore and Chicago might lead to a view that it is “a shame” that London does not have a very high building’, the fact that a high building can be an icon for a city ‘should be a consequence and not a purpose for building it’. The Economist supported the Mayor, claiming that the city had run out of office space, with vacancy rates at a historic low and the price of office space higher than any comparable location in the world. Others were more sceptical, arguing there was no evidence that London would lose jobs to other world cities if high buildings were not developed. The Mayor’s vision for London has been criticised for over-emphasising centrality and the concentration of development in the commercial complex of Westminster, the city of London and Docklands. A scrutiny by the London Assembly was launched following concerns that the draft London Plan had not properly considered

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London: the modernising metropolis

London’s regional context. The Mayor, in presenting the outline plan in 2001 maintained that London has a close and complex relationship with its surrounding regions. A fifth of the Capital’s employees live outside London. The London Plan will be set in a regional context, which recognises the labour market and other linkages between London and its neighbours, including those on continental Europe. Policies to enhance the attractiveness to business of a range of locations, especially in existing town centres and larger sites in regeneration areas and regional corridors, will help reduce the pressures of longer distance commuting on its transport systems. (Mayor of London, 2001) The Assembly’s scrutiny report reflected an underlying concern that London’s suburban centres and outlying areas did not receive the prominence they merited, putting their local prosperity at risk, and ignoring the opportunities that, for example, reverse commuting could offer to alleviate transport problems.

Thames Gateway and the Olympics To the East, the Thames Gateway is significant not just for its size or for the fact that it extends beyond the Greater London boundary. Ranging along both banks of the Thames estuary it highlights the fact that development in one region cannot be considered in isolation from another. A comprehensive plan for the Thames Gateway is still some way off, with further research being undertaken into the economic linkages between East London and the outer part of the Thames Gateway. The Thames estuary divides the region to the east, and the regional assemblies of both the east of England (EERA) and the south east (SEERA)share with London responsibility for the future development of the Gateway area. Accordingly special arrangements have been made to link up the government offices for London, for the south-east and for eastern England to provide for the co-ordination of planning in what has come to be known as the ‘Greater SouthEast’. Working to their respective regional assemblies, the South-East and the East of England Development Agencies (SEEDA and EEDA) have already produced their Regional Economic Strategies. The SEEDA commits the agency to the preparation and implementation of a strategy for the Gateway as a whole, in recognition of the vital significance of this huge regeneration and development opportunity, while the EEDA document makes a comparable commitment. Joint working to maximise the potential of inter-regional linkages and to address such cross-boundary issues as commuting, car-parking standards, freight movement, the green belt, waste and retailing pose a particular challenge, one to which central government struggles to respond to effectively. Within the Thames Gateway, action lies with a wide range of partners and stakeholders who are simply exhorted to agree strategic direction, to re-examine cross border flows, to align their own activities to it, to develop complementary planning frameworks

London: the modernising metropolis 39 and to strive to improve co-ordination of their actions. This ambitious initiative has spawned further institutional complexity. The Thames Gateway Strategic Partnership (TGSP) was to provide the overarching strategic framework for the whole of the Thames Gateway. A London Gateway Partnership Board was established to agree sub-regional strategy and priorities, in the context of the TGSP framework, the London Plan, Regional Housing Strategy and the LDA’s economic development strategy. At the executive level, an east London Urban Development Corporation (UDC) was accorded responsibility for the delivery of the programmes. This last exemplifies the competition of interests within London. The LDA has major land-holdings in the area but cannot function as the lead agency. While it is proposed that initially the UDC designation will be for three zones of activity – Barking/Dagenham/Havering (the ‘London Riverside’); Lower Lea and Woolwich/ Belvedere/Erith, all six east London boroughs demanded representation on the UDC Board. The Thames Gateway development itself poses many problems in integrating housing and transport within the overall planning framework. Moreover, it is unclear how the delivery of transport investment by the operators – TfL, Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) – can be matched with housing and industrial development. Making a success of the Thames Gateway will also require co-operation and co-ordination with many other agencies, including the Housing Corporation, Environment Agency, National Grid, NHS and Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The lack of a single implementation agency for the Gateway has been criticised and some of those active in the regeneration industry believed the current arrangements were insufficient to achieve the ambitious goals set for the area even before the decision on the 2012 Olympics – to be held in the Thames Gateway area – was announced.

A new approach to metropolitan governance? According to the thinking that underlay the Greater London Authority Act, 1999, London was naturally a diffused and deconcentrated city that was best governed, not by a single authority, but by orchestrated action between many different centres of power. This conception had gained credibility from the success of the ‘interregnum’ period when joint action and negotiated agreements provided the basis for policy development. At the same time, no one had clear responsibility for leading this process and ensuring that negotiation was carried through. London needed the leadership and ‘voice’ which only a directly elected body could provide. An elected Mayor would negotiate with the key players providing a vision of and a direction for London’s future, and drive the development of the city, pulling together the partnerships needed to make things happen. A division, rather than a concentration of power, would ensure that each of the players had something to bargain with and to exercise functions through. This fear of a toodominant Mayor was reflected also in the decision to place few of the key strategic functions directly under the GLA’s day-to-day control, but to run them instead through arms-length agencies with the Mayor appointing their board members.

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Among the key functions, those relating to planning, housing and waste have proved the most contentious and open to challenge. Under the Act, the Mayor is responsible for the overall planning framework while the boroughs operate development control. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act replaces the former Unitary Development Plans (UDP), prepared by the boroughs, with Local Development Schemes (LDS). Approved by the Secretary of State, these are required to be brought into conformity to the London Plan and will be subject to public inquiry. It would be some years before these borough schemes conformed to the London Plan. In the meantime, should conflict between the London Plan and a LDS arise in any appeal it would be for an appointed inspector to decide which should have precedence. The provision of affordable housing is crucial to the recruitment and retention of key workers in London’s economy and public services. During his first term, Mayor Livingstone set a strategic target to increase the provision of affordable housing in London which, if met, would have resulted in about 10,000 additional affordable homes per year. His target was for 50 per cent of all new dwellings to be affordable and within this, he sought to achieve 35 per cent social rented housing and 15 per cent intermediate housing. Some boroughs had already adopted the 50 per cent target; others wanted to see a greater increase in private housing or were more pragmatic. But the diffusion of responsibility under the Act is such that the Mayor can only lead by persuasion. The GLA has no housing powers, and the Mayor’s targets rely for their achievement on developers proposing, and boroughs agreeing, affordable housing schemes. The Mayor’s only means of enforcing the affordability quota is to refuse consent for major development, as he has no powers to provide or fund the provision of housing, which rests with the Housing Corporation. The organisation of waste was highly decentralised, with the boroughs having retained primary responsibility for waste collection and waste planning. The City Corporation and 11 of the boroughs were individually responsible for waste disposal while the remainder were organised into 4 statutory joint (sub-regional) waste-disposal authorities to act on their behalf. The Mayor has a statutory obligation to produce a regional framework for waste planning as part of the London Plan, but lacked powers to secure its implementation. Since his first election, Mayor Livingstone periodically sought to extend his remit and, re-elected for a second term, proved to be in a stronger position to win increased powers from the government. A comprehensive package of proposals was put by the Mayor’s office to ministers. The government responded in 2005 with a consultation paper The Greater London Authority: The Government’s Proposals for Additional Powers and Responsibilities for the Mayor and Assembly, declaring that The Mayor and Assembly have a pivotal role to play in ensuring London’s continued success, and that it is crucial to have in place the right governance arrangements to meet the Capital’s strategic challenges over the longer term.

London: the modernising metropolis 41 Additional powers and responsibilities for the GLA in key strategic services would help meet those challenges and underpin the Mayor’s strategic leadership of London. (ODPM, 2005, para 2.21) For the most part, the changes envisaged involve further delegation from central government in the fields of housing, planning, waste disposal and further education. Some of these proposals have been supported, and some not, by the Commission on London Governance, a body made up of GLA members and representatives of the borough leaders (Commission on London Governance, 2006). In housing the proposal was to transfer from the Government office for London (GoL) to the Mayor the responsibility of the London Housing Board to write the London Housing Strategy, and make recommendations to the Minister on the distribution of housing-capital allocations. Additionally, the government was prepared to consider allowing the Mayor to decide the allocation of affordable housing investment in London. In planning, two options were offered. The Mayor could be granted considerable additional powers enabling him to direct the boroughs to amend their LDSs and sign off these schemes on completion; to direct their Development Plan Documents (DPD) to ensure consistency with London plan; and to become the development control authority for certain classes of applications in relation to defined strategic sites. Under more limited proposals, the Mayor would be allowed only to give directions on LDSs and DPDs in relation to strategic issues to direct refusal or approval of defined categories of strategic planning applications. As regards waste management and waste planning, one of the proposals was to create a single waste authority for London accountable to the Mayor, while the other options include a single London-wide authority controlled by the boroughs or an extension of joint arrangements to create a sub-regional pattern for waste disposal. There was also a further option to leave the existing arrangements. Under the first of these, the Mayor would be responsible for planning all waste streams in London with powers to identify sites and compulsorily purchase lands. Alternatively, a single borough-led waste authority would assume these powers. Learning and skills issues cover post-16 education and much of 14–19 education. Responsibility rested with the government appointed Learning and Skills Council (LSC) which has an important role in funding further-education colleges and sixth-form provision. London had five local LSCs which together corresponded to the geographical area of the GLA. The Mayor’s responsibility for the LDA, his concern for opportunity and London labour markets, and the fact that travel to work areas (TTWA) do not map onto any local administrative boundary led him to bid for a merger of the five LSCs into one regional organisation accountable to himself. The government included the Mayor’s proposals in their consultation options but with a strong steer towards a more limited change to strengthen the existing LSC arrangements. Many other detailed proposals for change were put out for consultation, including a broadening of the Mayor’s involvement in local

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and sub-regional issues and establishing a clearer line of responsibility for the GLA group of agencies. The most significant of these concerned responsibility for the police where the government proposed that the Mayor should become chair of the MPA. The ALG, Labour-controlled at the time, supported much of the enhancement plan, with the exception of the planning proposals, although the views of individual boroughs ranged widely (ALG, 2006). However, the 2006 local elections changed the balance of power on the ALG markedly, with Labour losing overall control. The Conservatives gained power in 14 boroughs, the Liberal Democrats 3, while Labour retained 8. The other seven were hung, with no party in overall control. Meanwhile, the government had come to its own conclusions on the enhancement of the Mayor’s powers, endorsing all the proposals originally made by the Mayor with the exception of those for waste management. London’s new political alignments had moved decisively against the Mayor and doubtless will bear directly upon his ability to overcome borough resistance when the new powers come into effect, and thus on the long-term stability of London government itself. Meanwhile, the government embodied the package in a new bill only to find the Conservative party opposing it at second reading in December 2006. The political landscape in London is already changing and in ways that promise a re-run of past conflicts. ***** London has provided the world’s leading test bed for approaches to metropolitan governance. A succession of experiments sought to address the metropolitan problems ranging from loose confederation, through weak and strong metropolitan authorities, through an orchestrated fragmentation of the interregnum and finally a new approach centred on an executive Mayor with a London-wide constituency. In many respects, London’s new government has an easier remit than many of its comparators. The boundaries are fixed to roughly the inner edge of the green belt, ensuring that the continuing expansionary pressures that all metropolitan areas encounter are experienced far beyond its boundary. Rather, the challenge is to reconstruct the London that lies within the GLA area, a process in which the new planning regime, recently reinforced, can call upon the support of the central government. It is difficult to disentangle London’s policies and national interest, and the 2012 Olympics, which provide the most daunting of development projects, exemplify the interdependence of the two. None of this would be possible, and the Olympic bid would surely not have succeeded, had the new government of London not been in place. Its initial achievements have been more positive than otherwise, and the larger vision, of retaining London’s place as one of the pre-eminent world cities, has a better chance of realisation under the leadership of Mayor Livingstone and his successors.

3

Tokyo The mobile megalopolis

Although the capital of the world’s most advanced economy, Tokyo shares many of the problems of rapid urbanisation in the third world – problems of rapid population growth, with infrastructure provision lagging far behind. Located at the centre of the Japanese archipelago, the Tokyo metropolis lies in the Southern Kanto area and is a city of extreme density. As many as one-tenth of the nation’s population live there on less than 1 per cent of its land area. The city is highly monocentric, with an unusually high concentration of employment in the central area: of the 8.3 million jobs in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) area in 1990, 6.7 million were situated there (Map 3.1). With this concentration comes a huge dependence on commuting into an area which houses the great majority of Japan’s largest company headquarters and a huge majority of foreign company offices. The immediate city of Tokyo, commonly referred to as the central wards, or Tokyo 23 ward, has a population of around eight million, equivalent to that of Greater London. Beyond the central ward, the TMG area has a population of around 12 million. Beyond this lies the vast agglomeration of Greater Tokyo, some 15,000 square kms with a population around 35 million (constituting more than a quarter of Japan’s population), an area which includes the surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa (in which is located Yokohama city) and part of Ibaraki. The officially defined national capital region includes the Tokyo metropolis and four additional prefectures – Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Yamanashi. Running through Tokyo’s post-war urban history is an acute concern to limit the city’s vulnerability to natural disasters. The great Kanto earthquake of 1923 destroyed much of the urban fabric, including 300,000 houses, while 140,000 people were left dead or missing. However, the opportunity to build a new city to modern and robust standards was missed. Then, during the Second World War, three-quarters of a million homes were destroyed by fire-bombing. Post-war development was mainly regulated under the 1956 National Capital Region Development Law which promulgated a plan, directly inspired by the Abercrombie plan for Greater London. By 1965, it was clear that this plan had failed to manage the development of Tokyo and a process of rethinking the city’s future began. In 1967, Professor William Robson, Britain’s leading expert on

Map 3.1 The Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

Hinohara-mura

Okutama-machi

Akiruno-shi

Higashiyamato-shi

Itabashi-ku Nerima-ku

23-ku area

2

4

Kita-ku

6

8

Arakawa-ku

Katsushika-ku

Adachi-ku

10 km

Machida-shi

Komae-shi

Ota-ku

Shinagawa-ku

Toshima-ku Taito-ku Bunkyo-ku Nakano-ku Sumida-ku Musashino-shi Shinjuku-ku Akishima-shi Kokubunji-shi Edogawa-ku Koganei-shi Chiyoda-ku Suginami-ku Koto-ku Mitaka-shi Kunitachi-shi Chuo-ku Shibuya-ku Fuchu-shi Minato-ku Hino-shi Chofu-shi Setagaya-ku Tama-shi Meguro-ku Inagi-shi

Higashikurume-shi Kiyose-shi Mizuhomachi Higashi HamuraMusashishi murayama-shi murayama-shi Hoya-shi FussaTanashi-shi shi Tachikawa-shi Kodaira-shi

Hachioji-shi

Hinode-machi

Ome-shi

Tama area

0

N

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 45 metropolitan government, was invited to report to Governor Minobe on the administration of Tokyo and advise on its deficiencies. Robson’s report was hard-hitting and put forward a wide range of criticisms of a city region which, on his analysis, was not planned in a comprehensible unified manner, which failed to limit urban sprawl and which was hamstrung by divided citizen loyalties. These administrative failings prevented the city from addressing pressing problems of housing, environmental health and other public services (Robson, 1967). Even today many of Robson’s criticisms still stand. Tokyo has many areas of the most vulnerable type of old wooden structure, often in run-down and depopulated areas in which protective social controls against, for example, careless fires, are at their weakest. For the last quarter century, Tokyo has faced many of the common urban problems of soaring land prices, deteriorating housing situation, falling population in the central area and the inability of the road system to cope with increases in traffic. The director of the TMG’s Bureau of City Planning summed up the challenge that he faced in 1980: More and more business functions, particularly leading functions, have been absorbed toward the city centre in search of the merits of concentration. During this process, privately owned housing sites have been transformed into space for business use, and together with deteriorating residential conditions this has resulted in driving inner-city dwellers out to the suburbs and creating a demographic vacuum at the centre. Much of the stock of social infrastructure accumulated in the central area of the city has come to be redundant and therefore of poor efficiency. Neighbourhood communities of bygone days have disappeared and the very basis of urban autonomy is being jeopardised. On the city outskirts, on the other hand, residential districts have mushroomed without sufficient infrastructure, amenities or public facilities. Public projects are never able to catch up with these shortages, and in fact the resulting economic and social costs arising, as typified by the problem of rush hour commuting over increasingly long distances. (Tagami, 1980: 39) Neither are these areas especially attractive for redevelopment as developers seek more profitable opportunities than can be found there. Indeed, Tokyo’s emergence as a transnational city owed much to entrepreneurial property development schemes which played a key role in assembling land into packages large enough to attract corporate investment as well as promoting ambitious land reclamation schemes in and around Tokyo Bay. Central Tokyo witnessed steadily climbing land values as corporations competed for advantageous locations in what was becoming a world city. During the 1980s, demand for office space was such that commercial values doubled, then trebled, reaching levels 10 times that of New York City. Government policy was to enhance Tokyo’s appeal to multinational corporations, sustaining further increases in land values (Child Hill and Fujita, 1993: 9–10). The huge concentration of corporate headquarters in the city centre was counter-balanced by the agglomeration of research, design and development

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Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis

along radial corridors stretching hundreds of kilometres from Tokyo. Due to the peculiar nature of the Japanese R&D in which there is a high degree of integration of research, development, production and corporate decision-making, these functions coalesced in and around Tokyo where corporate headquarters also benefit from global communications and can draw their research and development operations along with them. In this age of urban and technological modernisation, Greater Tokyo has been described as Japan’s version of the city of London, Silicon Valley and the Third Italy all wrapped up into one dynamic region (Child Hill and Fujita, 1993: 9). In the 1980s, the plans and policies of the TMG aimed to build on success in achieving a ‘glorious’ world city: In approaching the 21st century, Tokyo will continue to develop as a mega city with a population of 12 million, as a liveable city with communication and mutual support among generations, as a comfortable city with affluent green areas and beautiful waterfronts, and as a harmonious city with a national and international node of information flow, and a world business centre. This future form of Tokyo as a world city or as an international city will afford it a leading role in the world community. (quoted in translation, Machimura, 1998) Structural reorganisation of the city of Tokyo was designed to bring about a multi-nuclear city with several core areas developed within the national capital region. This multi core city would solve the problem of long-distance commuting by enabling home and work to be brought closer together, dispersing industry to the sub-centres and eliminating mixed residential/industrial areas. Urgent housing problems were also tackled, particularly on the periphery through renewal and redevelopment. Apart from these local issues, Tokyo’s economic dominance posed a problem of national balance, and in the early 1980s, the technopolis programme was devised to reduce the disparities, decentralise high-tech manufacturing enterprises and involve the prefectures and municipalities in developing new infrastructure.

Growth and change The urbanisation of Japan occurred in a succession of waves; the first, in the late nineteenth century being associated with early phases of industrialisation, when migration to the cities doubled the population of the larger urban settlements. During the 1930s, Japan’s industrialisation accelerated under the modernising pressures of a military-dominated government. By the time Japan entered the war against the Allies in 1941, almost a third of the population lived in cities, with Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya each having more than a million people. These concentrations of populations proved highly vulnerable to aerial bombardment during the Second World War and Tokyo and Osaka each lost more than a million residents through death, injury and flight. After 1950, urbanisation restarted and,

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 47 by 1970, almost three-quarters of Japan’s population lived in urban areas. A Japanese megalopolis rapidly developed along the Tokyo–Kobe access route where 63 per cent of the population now live in just 3 per cent of the country’s land area (Karan, 1997). With the rise of the industrial belt running from Tokyo to Kitakyushu, village life in Japan contracted, and by the mid-1970s less than 1 per cent of the population lived in settlements of less than 5,000 people. Thereafter, Tokyo’s dominance has steadily increased (Douglass, 1993: 86). The consequences of these growth pressures have been a matter of eloquent lament: The rapid growth that began in the last half of the 1950s brought about an excessive concentration of population and industry along the pacific coast, transforming Japan into a unique society of high population density. While the big cities suffer from the pains and irritations of overcrowding rural areas suffer from the exodus of youth and the resultant loss of vital energy for growth. Rapid urbanisation has bred increasing numbers of people who have never known the joys of rural life, chasing rabbits in mountains, fishing for crucians in streams, whose only home is a tiny apartment in some huge city. (Tanaka, 1972: iii) In the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese economic growth was extremely rapid with GDP per capita increasing 10-fold over a 20-year period. Traditional industries declined in the face of regulation and competition, while there were increases in Japanese investment elsewhere in the world. These patterns underpinned the rise of Tokyo as a financial capital with its financial services industry linked to international investment. In the early 1980s about half of all Japan’s new service sector jobs were created in Tokyo. The industrial structure of Tokyo proved more adaptable than the other industrial areas, with a large number of small firms that proved themselves to be enthusiastic adopters of new technology. By the end of the century, Tokyo had established an unchallenged dominance in Japanese public and economic life. Yet, between 1983 and 1987, there were marked changes in land use in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. The area of land in industrial use fell by around 2 per cent while commercial and residential uses increased by more than 2.5 per cent. Agricultural land fell by more than 7 per cent and forest and wasteland by 4 per cent. As Table 3.1 shows, employment change followed a similar pattern. Japan’s drive to introduce technology into all sectors of the economy in the interest of accelerating economic growth was reflected in the Technopolis programme. Inspired by visits by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to Silicon Valley, to Cambridge UK and to the British new towns in the UK, the Ministry declared a Vision for the 80s and followed it through with legislation. Under the Technopolis Act 26, peripheral sites were developed as centres of rapid high-technology growth, mainly in areas that were economically backward but had sound infrastructure. The programme operated via the foundation or relocation of research institutes, the establishment of high-tech industries and the provision

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Table 3.1 Trends in the industrial structure: employment change, 1960–1990 Tokyo

Primary industries Secondary industries Tertiary industries Unclassified

Japan

1960 %

1970 %

1980 %

1990 %

1990 %

2.2 42.9 54.8 –

1.0 38.8 58.9 0.2

0.7 31.8 67.3 0.2

0.5 28.4 69.8 1.3

7.1 33.3 59.0 0.5

Source: Bureau of Statistics, Management and Co-ordination Agency Census Reports.

of attractive living conditions for science-sector workers. The programme precluded any technopolis being placed close to Tokyo, as the scheme was conceived in part to provide counter magnets to Tokyo’s massive economic attractiveness. However, the success of the Technopolis developments has been found to be closely related to the connection of enterprises to Tokyo itself and to the immediacy of rail access to the capital. This should be unsurprising as the technopolis concept owes much to the logic of an economy dominated by major corporations and a spatial division of labour which works well with R&D located separately from, but accessible to, corporate headquarters (Sternberg, 1995). The Tokyo metropolitan area consists of Tokyo and the seven prefectures that lie within 150 kms of the central city. Patterns of growth in Tokyo show the familiar Western stages of urbanisation followed by suburbanisation, but have yet to enter the phase of overall de-concentration or counter-urbanisation. The rapid growth of the suburbs outside the Tokyo ward area during the period 1970–1990 (Table 3.2) was driven in part by migration of residents displaced from the central area by new office development and, to a much greater extent, by in-migration, with the suburban population rising from around 13 million to around 21 million during that period. With only moderate growth of suburban employment these changing patterns of residence became associated with huge commuting flows to the central city with the number of workers travelling to the Tokyo Ward area doubling from 1.6 million in 1970 to 3.1 million in 1990 (Okamoto, 1997: 83). Since 1985, the overall population of the TMG area has been more or less steady at around 12 million. Within this stability, however, there has been considerable inward and outward migration. In 1995 around 430,000 people moved into the city and a slightly larger number moved out. Much of this exchange of population appears to have been with the surrounding prefectures, while natural increase of the population has been quite small. Like other ‘global’ cities, the attraction of foreign immigrant populations has been a feature of Tokyo’s recent history. The number of foreign residents in metropolitan Tokyo doubled between 1980 and 1992 and more than trebled in its neighbouring prefectures. The half-million strong cadre of registered foreign residents was amplified by a substantial number of undocumented workers. The Tokyo city government specifically sought to internationalise its labour and took

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 49 Table 3.2 Population growth in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (intercensal percentage increase)

Tokyo Met Area Central City Surrounding area Japan

1955/60

1960/65

1965/70

1970/75

1975/80

1980/85

1985/90

19.2

20.3

15.9

12.8

6.4

5.6

4.9

19.2 19.2

7.0 35.2

⫺0.6 30.5

⫺2.2 22.9

⫺3.4 11.6

0 8.2

⫺2.3 8.0

4.7

5.2

5.5

7.0

4.6

3.4

2.1

Source: Okamoto, 1997: 83.

measures to overcome the tendency of foreigners – whatever their position in the labour market – ‘to find life in Tokyo inconvenient and uncomfortable in many ways, due to differences in culture, customs, and the social system, as well as the language barrier . . .’. The TMG argued for a more open society in which ‘those with different values and customs can all live together, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, as fellow residents.’ Such efforts would ‘help smooth the way for the internationalisation of the community and make Tokyo a more people-friendly and attractive city’ (quoted in Machimura 1998; italics in original). Arguably, though, the explicit policy of internationalisation testifies to real difficulties and resistance to its realisation. Observers deny that the city is becoming more international ‘in the sense of openness to a diversity of peoples or to deep cultural exchanges’ (Douglass, 1993: 111). Strong social and cultural forces conspire to make foreigners invisible. Foreign migrant workers were attracted as a cheap and more flexible alternative to the shrinking pool of young Japanese, but they work largely without protection. Japanese culture continues to celebrate Japan as a single nation country in spite of a large Korean minority and while the changing labour market and immigration, legal and illegal, has considerably undermined the ideal of a homogenous Tokyo, there are few signs of genuine adaptation to ethnic diversity. Rather, ethnic tensions have lately begun to manifest themselves (Machimura, 1998).

The planning framework Japan, a country which has one of the best-provided and efficient public transport systems, also demonstrates some of the worst excesses of unplanned urban sprawl. Paradoxically, the Japanese land-use planning process has a long and sustained history. Tokyo led Japan with an introduction of city-ward improvement regulations in 1888. The national Japanese planning system followed soon after, and echoes in some respect, the early British town-planning movement. The principal architect of the planning system was the Head of Home Ministry Roads Bureau, Ikeda Hiroshi, a young official who studied planning developments in Europe and America and applied what he considered best international practice to Japan. This system was based on land-use zoning to separate urban functions, prohibiting

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industrial uses and offensive trades in residential zones, with rather fewer restrictions in commercial zones and none in industrial zones. A building code regulated building heights and distances, while growth on the urban fringe was restricted. Prior to the passage of the 1919 City Planning Law, Tokyo’s suburban growth was rapid and uncontrolled, the suburban population increasing from 420,000 to 1.2 million between 1905 and 1920 (Sorensen, 2002: 124). Any impact which the new planning system might have had was dwarfed by the consequences of the great earthquake which wrecked Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923. The extent of the damage created was such that it was seen as an opportunity for the central government to reconstruct Tokyo as both a modern city and imperial capital. The more grandiose aspects of the plan which followed were however soon watered down, although vast resources were put into reconstruction. Its success in transforming central Tokyo boosted the image of city planning and encouraged an entire generation of young planners who were to staff the planning agencies throughout Japan over the next decades. One other distinctively modern aspect of the inter-war Japanese planning system was the emergence of a garden-city vision, in direct emulation of Ebenezer Howard’s garden-city movement in the UK. Another way in which the European experience influenced Japanese planning practice was to be seen in proposals for metropolitan green belts to restrict urban growth and provide green spaces for urban dwellers although, as in Britain, considerations of defence against air attack lent political weight to the green belt movement. Despite the drive to modernity that encouraged the rise of a sophisticated and highly qualified planning profession in Japan, the actual achievements in terms of the liveability of cities were modest. The wartime destruction of many of the Japanese cities and Tokyo in particular, where 750,000 houses were destroyed by fire-bombing, created a wholly new situation for reconstructive urban planning after 1945. Once again, disaster gave rise to opportunity. Central to the reconstruction of the Japanese cities was the creation of a system of local government as part of the new constitution adopted in 1947. This provided for prefectural governors to be directly elected and to be given far more extensive authority over education, police and public finance. It also established more robust municipal assemblies. Initially, at least, the tradition of imperial authoritarianism worked to temper this more popular system by retaining power with the central ministries, the prefectural Governor being required to act as the agent of central government in respect of urban planning. Even so, the reconstruction period provided an opportunity for comprehensive urban renewal that was eagerly seized, building upon the experience of the aftermath of the 1923 earthquake. The plans for rebuilding Tokyo were the most ambitious of all Japan’s post-war reconstruction. One-third of the total Japanese urban rebuilding was planned to take place there. Led by the TMG, the plan drew upon the metropolitan green space planning of the pre-war period, with green belts and corridors and wide boulevards, together with the rebuilding of the city at a greatly reduced population density. The 1946 plan that expressed these aims took Tokyo as a clean slate onto

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 51 which any new urban form could be mapped. Its ambitions captured the idealism of the now well-established urban planning movement. The plan turned out to be both the most idealistic and the least fully achieved of all the reconstruction plans. As in other cities, visionary plans committed to paper proved hard to realise in practice. The sheer size and expense of the task was such that many specific projects were cancelled, with priority going to transportation. In any event, rapid economic growth overtook all such aspirations. With the national government pressing for GDP growth at all costs, Tokyo planning was overwhelmed by rapid urban and industrial expansion. So rapid was this growth that the share of the national population resident in cities soared from 65 per cent in 1960 to 78 per cent in 1995, much of it in the most densely inhabited districts (Sorensen, 2002: 172). Central government’s intervention supported this burgeoning urbanisation with preferential treatment for new industries and initiatives to promote large-scale land assembly for industrial expansion. Encouraging industrial concentration fed the extreme over-development of the principal cities and of Tokyo in particular, while curtailing the potential of the peripheral new industrial settlements. These growth pressures ran counter to the continuing calls for an effective urban strategy and, in 1958, the central government’s National Capital Region Development Plan was approved, encircling the built-up area of Tokyo with a green belt beyond which satellite towns would accommodate growth. A conscious emulation of Abercrombie’s Greater London plan, the NCRDP totally failed to control burgeoning growth. Opportunism triumphed over plan-making when Tokyo was chosen to host the Olympics in 1962. The imperatives of providing access in a hugely congested city dictated massive investment in urban road building and subway construction, including the world’s fastest railway system – the bullet train – connecting Tokyo to Osaka. These expressway developments transformed Tokyo, overwhelming the traditional urban structure and much of the potential waterfront amenities. The social and environmental crisis that followed in turn prompted the development of a new planning system. The planning system introduced in 1968 – the first major change in planning law since 1919 – represented a far more vigorous attempt to control rapid urban sprawl. Its intention was to achieve better management of development on the urban fringe by ensuring that roads and sewers, parks and schools were built in parallel with the conversion of land from rural to urban use. The new planning system also introduced a more fine-grained zoning system, within which mixed development was generally possible in all but those designated as exclusive residential zones and exclusive industrial districts. At the same time, responsibility for planning and implementation was delegated from central government to prefectural and municipal government. At the heart of the new system was the designation of areas in which new development could be encouraged or restricted. As a strategic planning tool, this Senbiki system was applied first to the metropolitan areas, the larger cities and the growth areas designated as new industrial cities. As growth problems are no respecters of boundaries, responsibility was given to the prefectural governments, with municipal authorities taking the lead role in

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implementation. Within this system, planners were able to require that appropriate infrastructure provision was made as a condition of planning permission. This novel system of development control marked a sea change in Japanese urban history. However, provision for exemption from the need to seek development permission was also built in, with the result that large numbers of very small developments were still permitted, thus continuing to encourage sprawl (Sorensen, 2002: 213–219). Continuing concern about pollution, coupled with the recognition that urban sprawl was continuing apace, led to further legislative developments to gain stronger control over urban change. Over and above the formal planning system came a raft of laws to control environmental pollution, and in the 1970s the National Land Agency (NLA) was established to co-ordinate planning and land-use in metropolitan areas. The TMG established its own division of urban pollution control as far back as 1960 in response to rising concern about air quality. Pollution continued to worsen and in 1970 Tokyo’s environmental crisis was recognised with the establishment of a new Bureau of Environmental Protection. By 1978, Sulphur dioxide pollution had been reduced by more than two-thirds from its 1966 peak level, largely due to a combination of tighter regulation of industrial emissions and the setting of new emission standards for cars. Air quality, as measured by the Tokyo Meteorological Observatory, improved dramatically and while car use trebled over this period, the application of the world’s strictest emission standards limited car emissions, although it did little at that time to constrain the solid particulates emitted by the diesel engines of buses and trucks (Ihara, 1980: 71–72). More recently, continuing popular concerns about the pollution from diesel vehicles led to the Tokyo Governor, Ishihara, to challenge the government’s refusal to tighten emission regulations by passing a by-law to stop diesel engined cars entering the city (Naiki, 2005: 19). Rapid urbanisation and rising land prices prompted Prime Minister Tanaka’s national plan for Building a New Japan. The aim was to redistribute and disperse industry throughout the country through a massive programme of transportation development with new railway lines, expressways and bridges to ease the pressures on the cities and bring employment opportunities to the depopulating rural areas. The plan fed a frenzy of land speculation in those parts of the country that were expected to benefit from improved access, and the response was to create the NLA in an attempt to regulate land transactions and curb price inflation. The system introduced was based on a series of interlocking plans from the national to the local level. The third comprehensive environment plan of 1977 marked a move away from the policy of shrinking distance through transportation investment towards the improvement of social infrastructure and service provision to provide better quality of life outside the metropolitan areas. However, the plan did not have binding status and the central and local authorities alike pursued their own projects that ran counter to it. By the 1980s, urban planning in Japan had moved away from regulation of land development and environmental pollution towards a less regulatory regime, based on fiscal restraint and an acceptance of the forces of globalisation and the opening of the Japanese economy to international

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 53 pressures. Under this new regime Tokyo rose to even greater dominance in the Japanese urban system. The fourth comprehensive national development plan of 1987 sought not to constrain Tokyo as such but to support the development of global functions in the other metropolitan areas. National economic circumstances drove the next stage of development. In 2001, Governor Ishihara put forward a major plan for the regeneration of Tokyo on the grounds that such an investment would stimulate recovery and revive the national economy. The national government responded by establishing the urban renaissance headquarters under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Koizumi. The basis of the urban regeneration plan was a series of staged decisions, the first of which was to upgrade disaster prevention measures in Tokyo Bay. This was followed by major ring road improvements and the upgrading of environmental infrastructure, while a number of top-priority areas for redevelopment were designated in the expectation that they would enhance the city’s attractiveness and, thereby, its international competitiveness. Given Tokyo’s location, land reclamation has long been integral to the history of its development. A major reclamation project amounting to 679 hectares was begun in 1972 as Yasio Park Town. In the 1980s, new land schemes focused on reclamation in Tokyo Bay. Many of the schemes were linked to new office development including plans for island relocation of the central business district and the central government complex. One of the more dramatic initiatives – the Cosmopolis Plan – would have involved the construction of huge artificial islands operating as a free zone with a relaxation of labour and building regulations. This plan was, however, abandoned in the face of environmental protests. Nevertheless, a total of 18,800 hectares have been reclaimed in Tokyo bay since 1960. The current Tokyo plan 2025 covers an area equal to about half the size of the city, where 6 million new residents are to be accommodated over a period of 40 years. These grandiose plans have been made feasible by continuously rising land values, although it is widely held that the benefits will accrue to corporations involved in large office developments, to their higher-paid executives and to wealthy individuals. Two-thirds of the Tokyo bay area is committed to port facilities but there are also significant concentrations of commercial and cultural usages, parks and open spaces and housing. While pressures on industrial land are often cited as explanations for Japan’s vigorous reclamation policy, the drive to create modern port facilities appears to have been paramount. Redevelopment of the harbour was earlier constrained by a Harbour Act that blocked residential or commercial development. Now, the port facilities are closely integrated with commercial development, although the resident population predominantly commutes to the main land for employment (Shiozaki and Malone, 1996?). While the 1970s had seen considerable attention paid to the greening of the city, in part in response to pressures from community groups, in the following decade minimum targets for the creation of green space were effectively abandoned and policy steered away from recreational and towards commercial development. A policy of deregulation commenced, expressed in the Nakasone government’s

54

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis

Private Sector Revitalisation Act of 1988. The new legislative framework created the context for public–private partnerships that drew capital into projects that were designed with an eye to global economic advantage. Predictions of rising demand for office space in Tokyo underpinned these ambitious projects, and private interests and the TMG alike sought large-scale internationally oriented commercial development in waterfront settings (Seguchi and Malone, 1996). As a result of this redirection of policy, Tokyo remains a city drastically short of green spaces, with housing, commercial and highway development progressively reducing the green areas that formerly existed. New park development has been scarcely possible. Even so, the TMG attempts to give some priority to developing Tokyo ‘as a city rich in water and greenery’ with a long-term Green Tokyo Plan that envisages Tokyo in the mid-twenty-first century as ‘a dignified city with a network of water and green areas to be realised through environmental protection, green space development and the revitalisation of agriculture and forestry’ (TMG, 2002).

Transport and traffic Roads define the framework of Tokyo’s basic urban structure. The so-called five highways are ancient in origin, with the National Highway No. 4 dating back to the designation of Edo as the capital in 1590. The five radial roads are complemented by a series of loop roads with major metropolitan ring roads being developed at distances of 8, 15 and 40 to 50 kms from the city centre. In many respects Tokyo appears an archetypal metropolitan area, with waves of dispersal from a densely populated core to a sprawling outer region. Its overall density has led some commentators to praise Tokyo as an exemplar of the sustainable city, with high rail use, low gasoline consumption and highly efficient public transportation. Others challenge this favourable judgement, pointing to the unplanned nature of metropolitan sprawl, rapidly rising car use and mounting congestion. Development in the outer metropolitan ring is rapid and unregulated, as Tokyo’s famous expressways disperse population growth in ways that undermine the public transportation system and increase road dependence. Chronic traffic congestion in Tokyo has forced a new roads scheme and intersection improvements to be devised, while the TMG is promoting a ‘Transportation Demand Management’ (TDM) scheme to achieve more efficient use of road space. Tokyo’s public transport network developed rapidly between 1915 and 1935, when 580 kms of track were laid. By the end of the twentieth century, the city boasted more than 2,000 km of transit line. Prior to the age of the motor car, this development was the principal driver of urban expansion, with new settlements springing up around the suburban railway stations. Around half of the railway system is privately provided. Tokyo’s public transit system is now the most elaborate in the world and continues to undergo extensive change and improvement. Most notably, the street-car system has given way to subway extension in the last three decades or so. The result is a complex network of rail-based transportation, where the core is encircled by the Yamanote line which encompasses a maze of public, private and

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 55 newly privatised lines. Private lines are not allowed to pass through central Tokyo but terminate where they meet the Yamanote loop and commuters interchange. This network is intensively used with intervals of around 2 minutes between trains in central Tokyo and 6 to 8 minutes in the suburban peak hours (Cervero, 1998: 186). Such is the efficiency of this network that as many as 3.5 million commuters use public transportation to reach central Tokyo, a number vastly greater than any comparable city (Table 3.3). The sheer scale of what Cervero calls the Tokyo Megalopolis, however, means that a substantial minority of Tokyo workers spend more than three hours a day on their commute to and from work. As in inter-war London, the railway companies were a major force for suburban development and the majority of suburban railway lines were built between 1925 and 1940. As early as 1910 (predating developments in London by only a few years), the Hankyu railway company concluded that passenger services were only profitable when housing development could be geared to that of the transport infrastructure. The practice of building first housing, then offices, hotels and shopping facilities close to railway stations quickly spread, and in the post-war period railway companies were highly active in urban development, acquiring land cheaply and benefiting from the gains in value occasioned by the transport improvements (Table 3.4). The result is that land values show a very steep gradient Table 3.3 Urban railways in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area: 1970–1990 System

1970 km

1990 km

Increase (decrease) %

Japan railway Private suburban railway Subway Street car/light rail Monorail/other rail Total

713.6 805.7 131.4 171.3 13.0 1835.0

876.4 902.9 241.0 17.3 49.8 2087.4

23 12 83 (990) 383 14

Source: Cervero, 1998, p. 186.

Table 3.4 Growth and change in transport mode use (billion passenger km) Japan Year

Car

Bus

Rail

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998

181 251 321 384 576 665 723

103 110 110 105 110 97 90

289 324 314 330 388 400 389

Source: Japan Statistical yearbook, reproduced in Sorensen, 2004: 210.

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Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis

with distance from railway stations, to a greater degree than is commonly found in other cities (Cervero, 1998: 193–195). Nationally, this car-building nation is making greater provision to accommodate the motor car than its European counterparts. Over a period of less than 30 years, automobile distances travelled in Japan increased from 181 billion passenger kms to 723 billion, while bus usage remains static and rail use rose in the 1970s and 1980s, only to taper off (Table 3.4). Although the rise in car use reflects great increases in the mobility of the Japanese population as a whole, the effects are felt in similar proportion in Tokyo. Car use doubled in the metropolitan region between 1971 and 1985 and even the congested central area saw a 20 per cent increase in that period, although at 275 per 1,000 inhabitants, car ownership rates in Metropolitan Tokyo were very much lower than in US cities or even London. With the road network feeding population dispersal to a greater degree than rail, the likelihood is that car use, particularly in the suburbs, will continue to climb. Yet drivers face considerable difficulties with on-street parking in Tokyo, where there were just 43 spaces per 1,000 jobs in 1990, and they have to endure an onerous taxation of car acquisition, registration and ownership as well as a requirement to demonstrate off-street parking provision as a pre-condition of car registration. The growth of road traffic in central Tokyo, then, has occurred despite the practical restrictions on car use, but one result has been that traffic speeds fell from over 22 kph to less than 16 kph between the 1980s and 1990s (Cervero, 1998: 184). Tokyo’s traffic problems are unlikely to decrease in the future as the predictions of the daytime – that is employed – population are of steady continued growth to 2010 in the TMG area in the 23 wards and, most notably, in the cities and counties within the metropolitan area.

Protest and public participation Public involvement in urban life in Japan was initially driven by protest. Severe industrial pollution problems mobilised popular protests and defensive legal challenges. By the early 1970s, a large number of complaints were being received by local authorities, who also had to deal with protests against the environmental impact of development proposals. A wide variety of local movements sprang up to oppose boundary changes and road building and demand protection of the environment and the provision of public facilities. The City Planning Act 1968 made some provision for public participation though Japanese officials were slow to respond to the demands for meaningful involvement. By the 1970s, 27 prefectures had entered into 226 agreements, and 70 municipalities into 238, while there were cases in which residential groups, with or without the involvement of prefectures or municipalities, reached agreements with firms. In Tokyo, Governor Minobe elaborated an approach which embraced democratic participation as ‘time consuming but necessary’. Continuing environmental disasters and, in particular, serious smog episodes in Tokyo, led to a dramatic tightening of controls and the establishment in the 1970s

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 57 of an environment agency in the Prime Minister’s office. Penalties were imposed on polluters and the courts found for the plaintiffs in four major pollution lawsuits, awarding significant damages. The scandal of health damage caused by industrial pollution and the Japanese government’s firm responses led in time to dramatic falls in emissions, demonstrating that high rates of economic growth could be achieved without serious environmental damage. Prior to the 1970s, municipal governments negotiated major public works with prefectural and national officials but with little attention to local opinion. The 1969 reforms of city-planning law brought about a degree of decentralisation and made some provision for local consultation. Neither, however, were a sufficient response to rising public anger about environmental deterioration and demands for local residents’ voices to be heard. Tokyo’s ‘garbage war’ saw residents blocking roads to prevent the movement of garbage trucks. This in turn led to a more responsive style of handling public works issues. It would no longer be possible to impose environmental hazards on poorer communities, and Tokyo instead moved to develop waste management policies that dealt with waste where it was generated rather than ship it out for landfill on the urban fringe. In recent years, issues of governance in Tokyo have centred upon measures to enhance citizen participation and overcome the tradition of passivity in the face of authority and engage popular interest in planning the future of the city. Orienting the city’s long-term plans around the slogan ‘My Town Tokyo’ was one attempt, soon abandoned, to create a wider sense of public involvement. Based on two concepts of ‘respect for humanity’ and ‘ideas born of local communities’, the participation and involvement of metropolitan residents was seen as essential to achieving a consensus-based plan for reconstructing the city. The other side of the coin of protest politics is the heightened interest in popular involvement in public affairs, particularly with regard to the planning process. The current system of urban planning in Japan, established by the 1992 City Planning Act, provides for extensive ministerial control over municipal activity, not least because urban planning measures apply only within city-planning areas (CPA) which are designated by central government. Outside those areas, local planners have very restricted powers although it is here that urban sprawl is driven by the more intense development pressures. In some areas, a locally originated system of citizen participation developed to engage with this system of central direction, and the 1992 Act mandated citizen participation in creating master plans. Thereafter, participatory master planning developed rapidly with some citizen groups withdrawing from municipal processes to develop their own master plans which they submitted for public approval. More recently, some municipalities have capitalised upon this burgeoning public involvement by inviting citizen groups to propose their own master plans at the start of the process (Koizumi, 2004: 217–219). At the metropolitan level, a plan to produce a ‘civilised’ administration led to new initiatives in public participation. In 1996, a citizen’s consultation and grievance office was established and a programme of enhanced disclosure of information introduced, under which the administration is required to provide information on demand,

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including the disclosure and correction of personal information. A citizen’s forum has now been set up at which the Governor appears regularly to submit himself to be questioned.

Governing Tokyo While Japanese local government has traditionally been regarded as highly centralised, politics – both partisan and bureaucratic – play a major role in the competition between localities and in the negotiations between central and local government. Competition, bargaining and negotiation also colours the relations between the central ministries. The over-riding characteristic of Japanese government, though, is prolonged and thorough discussion of proposals for change, leading eventually to more or less consensual decisions. The local government system is based upon prefectures closely analogous to counties, which provide the major services, and municipalities which provide more basic local services. The larger municipalities may be designated as cities, but there is no constitutional distinction between cities, towns and villages. All of them are regarded as having equal status in formal terms and for the most part communications between the central government and the municipalities pass through the prefectures. By international standards, variations between localities in per capita income, high school enrolment and access to health care are limited, testifying to the equalising effect of Japan’s system of inter-governmental resource allocation. More generally, for the smaller localities it became important to be able to enlist the support of the central government: The centre had resources to share, but local communities had to undertake a range of initiatives if they were to benefit from those resources. If a community sat passively by, it withered. If, on the other hand, it was responsive to central inducements and energetic in bargaining for them, the community flourished. The responsiveness of a town to its dependent status thus determines its progress in integrating itself with the nation-state. (Allinson, 1975: 34 cited in Kitayama, 2001: 227) Constitutionally, the Japanese governmental system embodies a high degree of administrative decentralisation resulting from the post-war occupation government, which sought to avoid undue concentrations of power and promote democratic participation. Local government was intended to provide bulwarks against excessive central control and so provide for citizenship and the development of grassroots leadership, and local authority functions are quite extensive. However, these US inspired constitutional reforms ran up against Japan’s strong bureaucratic tradition and political conservatism. So, while governors and mayors emerged through popular election, they have been subject to a firm hand on the part of central ministries, while local authorities have limited independent financial resources (Vogel, n.d.). Local authorities, then, are at one and the same time

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 59 essentially subordinate bodies preoccupied with service provision and local political systems originating important local initiatives. In practice, the Japanese pre-disposition towards consensual decision-making failed to cope with quite intense political conflicts in the 1960s and 1970s, when national policies were challenged by municipalities. During this time, Japanese local governments developed rapidly as policy-making institutions for planning, environmental and social programme purposes (Muramatsu and Iqbal, 2001: 2–7). This was most especially the case with respect to pollution control, where policy development was often driven by local popular protest. In cities across the country innovative approaches to pollution control were introduced, including the signing of agreements between city officials and local companies or firms with the strong support of residents. The case of pollution control illustrates the tendency for Japanese municipalities to innovate in response to grassroots citizen-protestmovements. In other areas of policy, local authorities energetically promoted their own local industries, often collaborating with neighbouring local governments to achieve greater integration with national development plans, as in the case of the new industrial cities (Kitayama, 2001: 225–226). In 1995 a ‘decentralisation promotion law’ required the Prime Minister’s office to produce a decentralisation plan. The following year the Prime Minister received recommendations for a sweeping enhancement of local autonomy for both prefectures and municipalities. The coming into force of the Legal Amendments for Decentralisation in 1998 called for the abolition of the agency status of local authorities under which functions are delegated to them, and their replacement with powers that they would exercise in their own right. Under the old system, the Governor and other executive organs of local government undertook administrative work for the national government, essentially as subcontractors without the right to enact their own ordinances. This system was abolished, and the activities of government reclassified into four categories, including specially commissioned duties, local governance duties, duties to be directly performed by the national government, and duties to be eliminated. In order to enable local government to implement their own measures they were required to perform local governance duties as well as specially commissioned duties. Again, under the old system, the national government could direct and supervise local governors and mayors. The reform created new general legal principles limiting government’s involvement and gave local authorities the ability to request audits where they felt they were experiencing undue interference by the national government. Commentators have been sceptical about the decentralisation plan largely because it is widely seen as an attempt to ease the financial pressures on central government. Japan’s larger cities, led by Tokyo, have a long history of pressing for greater autonomy. In the late 1960s, Tokyo, led by Governor Minobe with the support of a reformed Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, pursued anti-pollution measures in the face of opposition from the central government. These initiatives were widely copied by other municipalities, and in the course of time adopted by the central ministries as national standards. Tokyo has also been successful in developing local policy initiatives including path-breaking support for small and medium

60

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis

sized enterprises and public testing in research centres to provide technical assistance to high-technology business. There has long been a tradition of local governments regarding their developments as more than a local issue and the promotion of the idea of ‘Greater Tokyo’ in 1955 by the TMG involved regular consultations with neighbouring prefectures and national government. The Tokyo prefecture encompasses the 23 special wards from which derives the common designation of the city as the 23 ward area, together with the western suburbs which contain 26 cities, 5 towns, 1 village and a number of islands. The special ward is a type of authority found only in Tokyo and the group of 23 operate under a system designed to meet the needs of a metropolitan area, in which for certain functions they operate as a single unit. The special wards were established in 1878 and in 1889 were grouped together into the city of Tokyo. Local government was first consolidated in 1932 when 5 surrounding counties and 82 towns and villages were brought into the city. The city and the Tokyo prefecture were then themselves consolidated in 1943 to form the TMG and a Governor was appointed to take overall charge as a centralising measure in response to the wartime emergency. Outside the 23 special wards, the TMG’s relations with the 39 municipalities are essentially similar to those between a prefecture and a municipality elsewhere in Japan. At the same time, certain services are reserved to the metropolitan level in recognition of the need for area wide planning, in particular, fire fighting, water supply, sewerage and the port. Today, the TMG area is bordered by the surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa and part of Ibaraki. Within the TMG area, 127 members are directly elected from 40 constituencies for a 4-year term to form the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly. The Governor oversees the TMG and is elected city-wide, also for a four-year term and serves as the chief executive. The Governor takes overall control of metropolitan affairs and maintains the collective integrity of the administration. He has the exclusive right to prepare the budget, implement expenditure decisions, submit draft decrees to the Assembly and levy taxes. While the powers and functions of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and the Governor are formally separate, they collaborate as equals and are regarded as interdependent. The Assembly may amend bills submitted by the Governor who may in turn object and resubmit his measures. The Assembly has the power to pass by a two-thirds majority a vote of no confidence in the Governor who may dissolve the Assembly or risk himself being deposed. What might be expected to be a highly unusual occurrence has actually taken place in the Nagano and Kochi prefectures, where votes of no confidence against the Governor led in both cases to their resignation without dissolution of the council. Instead both governors offered themselves again for election and were re-elected, perpetuating the stand-off between the Governor and council that arises from their separate electoral mandate (Naiki, 2005: 18). As well as being the executive arm of the Tokyo metropolis and, in effect, the mayor for the ward area, the Governor has important functions delegated to him by the central government. The TMG takes on some of the roles normally assigned to a municipality, so creating a relationship between itself and the

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 61 special wards that has no parallel elsewhere in Japan. The TMG’s financial relations are so constructed as to bring about a financial equalisation between the 23 special wards whose own fiscal resources and needs vary considerably; the TMG disperses some of the share of its revenue in such a way as to balance these disparities. Not surprisingly, this configuration of powers obscures the political accountabilities of the several bodies providing neither clear local accountability nor metropolitan level executive authority (TMG, 2004). Indeed, whatever the formal constitutional arrangement, the financial power of the TMG became particularly important during the recession years of the 1990s which followed the collapse of the bubble economy. With municipalities facing considerable fiscal stress as a result of the contraction in their tax base, the TMG finds itself drawn into providing financial assistance and support. Doubts have been expressed about the reality of this decentralisation within Metropolitan Tokyo given that there are no proposals to strengthen the financial independence of the wards and the need to provide for an equitable distribution of transferred funds between the richer and poorer wards (Vogel, n.d.). As the Table 3.5 below shows, the principal expenditures of the wards are in the social welfare and education areas. The huge concentration of corporations in Tokyo that resulted from TMG’s boosterist policies brought with it an unexpected vulnerability to global forces. The collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s and the extended period of stringency that followed directly impacted upon TMG’s finances. As the Table 3.6 below shows, the greater part of TMG’s revenues is derived from taxes raised at the metropolitan level. Of these, corporation tax is a major contributor, with the enterprise and inhabitant taxes levied on corporations accounting for more than 56 per cent of the metropolitan tax base in 1989 (Shibata, 1993: 185). In that year – when economic growth peaked – corporation taxes generated 2680.1 billion yen, which had dropped just 7 years later to 1627.7 billion yen. This near collapse of the tax base was accompanied by rising needs occasioned by the recession in which unemployment and bankruptcies rose (Shibata, 1999: 265). In attempting Table 3.5 Expenditure pattern of the 23 special wards, 1989 Yen (Billion) General service Social welfare Education Public works Public health Economic affairs Local loan charges Other Total Source: Shibata (1993), table 11.11.

455.2 658.2 448.7 426.5 103.4 51.2 99.3 37.7 2,280.1

62

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis Table 3.6 TMG General Account revenues, 1989 Yen (billion) Metropolitan taxes Local transfer taxes Fees and charges National government disbursements Metropolitan debt Other Total

Per cent

4,774.3 102.9 144.0 370.3

77.8 1.7 2.3 6.0

115.9 625.8 6,133.1

1.9 10.2 100

Source: Shibata (1993), table 11.6.

to cope with this fiscal crisis, the TMG has largely built up the reserves which accrued during years of buoyancy. It has attempted to recover the situation through large-scale borrowing and now faces calls for a radical restructuring of metropolitan finance. In 1974, modest reforms to the ward level – each in terms of population size the broad equivalent of London’s boroughs or the arrondissments of Paris – were introduced to provide for the direct election of ward mayors. In 1990 a study of further reforms to metropolitan government was launched, and after a lengthy period of discussion and consultation at national, metropolitan and ward level, decentralising measures to shift functions down to ward level were introduced by partial reform of the local autonomy law of 1998, and came into effect in 2000. These functions include planning, education, waste management and some regulatory activities. The rationale of this change was in part to stimulate the least powerful units of local government, transforming the wards into fully autonomous municipalities or ‘basic local public bodies’. It appears the wards face a considerable challenge in developing the organisational capacity to perform these services, much as did the inner London boroughs initially when education powers were transferred to them in the early 1990s. Unlike the London boroughs, however, there has been no very large increase in the funding transferred to them to match the augmented functions, while simultaneous reforms to the system of public management emphasised privatisation and deregulation. A second aim of the 1998 reform was to allow the TMG to re-orient itself as a genuine regional government by shedding responsibility for local level services. This has not proved easy to achieve. The regional perspective has been weakly expressed through an annual regional summit meeting between the governors of Tokyo and the neighbouring three prefectures. The only issue that has so far drawn together the leaders of this larger metropolitan region has been the proposal to relocate the national capital away from Tokyo. That issue apart, the TMG and neighbouring prefectures have few of the powers that need to be exercised on a regional basis, while the central ministries in contrast maintain their own regional bureaux. Despite this imbalance between the local and central

Tokyo: the mobile megalopolis 63 powers, the TMG has sought to pursue wider regional planning aims and the ‘Tokyo megalopolis concept’, set out in April 2001, anticipated the direction of future development for the TMG area and surrounding prefectures and established a framework for closer regional collaboration. The megalopolis concept is underpinned by a strategy which reflects Tokyo’s status as the world’s largest metropolis and the world’s leading city. In physical terms, it proposes the creation of a circular megalopolis structure defined primarily by the roads network and based on the attribution of particular urban functions to different zones within the circular boundary. Within the loop, transportation improvement will have particular priority as a means of achieving TMG’s aspirations to environmental improvement. Other aspects of the proposed collaborative strategy for the realisation of megalopolis include rapid transit, airport improvements, the improvement of Tokyo Bay area and information network, disaster prevention schemes and a battery of environmental improvements. In concert with the neighbouring prefectures, the TMG vigorously opposed the transfer of the national capital which the government proposed in order to reduce the concentration of administration in Tokyo and enhance the capacity to respond to natural disasters, as well as create an opportunity for thoroughgoing administrative reform. The proposal originated with a resolution as early as November 1990 to transfer the national Diet away from Tokyo. This was followed two years later by legislation to facilitate the move. The position of the TMG has been that these proposals threaten to drastically undermine the vitality of the city’s economy, put at risk the country’s economic strength, misdirect capital resources for the required new building and drive a wedge between the political and economic centres where much business is done by personal contact. The TMG’s 2001 megalopolis concept is offered as an alternative, avoiding these pitfalls and retaining Tokyo as the national capital within the national capital regional development plans. ***** Despite its standing in the world economic hierarchy of cities, and its status as the capital of one of the world’s richest nations, Tokyo has nevertheless fallen far short in solving the problems of metropolitan governance. Paradoxically, the Tokyo experience combines almost unrestrained urban sprawl with a well-designed and highly effective transportation system. This car-making nation has declined to accommodate the motor car in its major cities by making scant provision for parking and operating punitive levels of taxation on car ownership and use. Priority has instead been given to public transportation with the continuing modernisation and extension of the urban subway network. Nevertheless, the sheer scale of the Tokyo megalopolis is such that millions of its inhabitants face an extraordinarily long daily commute, raising questions of the future planning of work and residence. The framework within which these problems can be addressed is found in a powerful metropolitan authority, led by the Governor, able to exert leverage on the national government to resource the major schemes that are widely seen as the solution to Tokyo’s urban crisis.

4

Toronto A penchant for Metro reform

Toronto provides a unique example of the ways in which a provincial government responded to urban change, fiscal concerns and political uncertainty by focusing on metropolitan reform. It is a city where economic development has often been accompanied by a lively debate on governance and the quality of life, in which the media, experts and a large number of independent bodies have been involved alongside administrators and planners. Public involvement has mushroomed in recent years and is most readily apparent in decisions relating to urban renewal, the redevelopment of the city centre, the expansion of expressways and the protection of neighbourhoods and the environment. From the late nineteenth century, urbanisation and the growth of government in Canada led to considerable problems of financing and managing urban services. The response was to delegate functions to local government, with the central authority withdrawing from local affairs. By 1900, municipal bodies in what is now Ontario enjoyed a modest degree of autonomy, the institutional memory of which has come to play an important role in the present day. The twentieth century, however, saw the re-emergence of a more supervisory approach expressed in large part through the creation of boards with substantial powers over local affairs. In the immediate post-war period, population growth and a rapidly growing demand for municipal services presented new challenges for Toronto and its municipalities. Demographic and social changes generated unwarranted variations, duplication and lack of co-ordination in service delivery, and an unequal distribution of resources. Proposals for annexation and amalgamation to unite the city and suburbs were considered, but rejected due to lack of consensus on the ideal form of restructuring. Continuing urban expansion, together with a host of problems that it brought in its wake, necessitated a rethink. Fragmented government impeded improvements across the whole range of public services, with suburban water, waste and education being particular problems. Annexation of the suburbs would no longer suffice, and the growth of inter-municipal co-operation pointed to the need for a strategic co-ordinating body for the Metropolis as a whole. Indeed, the very fact of the complex of co-operative agreements underlined the inter-dependence of the metropolitan area, constituting a prima facie case for such a body.

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 65 The history of municipal reform in Toronto, Ontario’s largest Metropolis, is one of continuous succession of variants of the metropolitan reform nostrums. It has been described as ‘the combination of relatively short periods of frantic, politically contentious activity punctuated by lengthy periods of quietude and incremental change. There never seems to be complete satisfaction with the system of local government . . .’ (Siegel, 2005: 127). Today, politicians, administrators, interest groups and the public themselves are perhaps feeling a sense of ‘reform fatigue’ (LeSage and Garcea, 2005: 331). In the event, Toronto went further than any big city in following the prescriptions of the US metropolitan reformers, with detailed reports from the Civic Advisory Council of Toronto advocating the creation of a metropolitan government. The rapid and unplanned growth of the post-war period generated an increasing demand for provincial and Government of Canada expenditure on infrastructure that led, in the interest of rationalisation and efficiency, to the creation of a succession of city regional governments. Metropolitan Toronto – the original Metro – was created in 1953, comprising the old city of Toronto and 12 other municipalities, to provide a better framework for planning infrastructure and service provision. Though hailed as ‘the only true metropolitan government in North America’, it did not cover the whole of the built-up area and in 1967 the surrounding areas were consolidated and amalgamated into six municipalities. Thereafter, as now, Metro Toronto’s relationship with its region remained an intractable problem for government. Until 1988 Metro was an indirectly elected body, but in that year a council composed of directly elected representatives was created, with the mayors of the lower-tier authorities sitting ex officio, and with overall co-ordination provided by the Province of Ontario’s Office of the Greater Toronto Area (OGTA). This too proved only an interim solution, as OGTA exercised no real authority and lacked the power to achieve much real co-ordination. In January 1998 came a further change, when Metropolitan Toronto and its six local municipal governments were replaced with a single unified city of Toronto covering about half the population of the GTA (2.4 million). This latest reorganisation – which attracted much public opposition – was justified at the time in terms of the need to achieve cost savings in the face of an eroding business base, to obtain greater consistency in public services, remove duplication and bureaucracy, improve governance and speed up decision-making by reducing the number of elected officials. Once dubbed ‘Toronto the Good’, reflecting its reputation as a safe, clean, peaceful city, the image of the city has shifted over time with changing public concerns. The sharp contrast with its American neighbours led, in the 1970s, to Toronto being characterised as a ‘city that works’, while in the 1980s it aspired to be a ‘world class’ city, cosmopolitan and multi-cultural. In the following decade these versions of Toronto collided with a new vision of a competitive ‘global city’ promoted by the Ontario provincial government (Milroy, et al., 1999). The manipulation of such images can never capture the reality of city life as it is lived by the inhabitants: despite rapid urbanisation and the sharp rise in the proportion born outside Canada, poverty rates have fallen with the proportion of Toronto

66 Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform residents living on low incomes falling from 21.1 per cent in 1995 to 16.7 per cent over the next 5 years (Statistics Canada, 2006). Today, the new amalgamated city of Toronto is led by a high-profile directly elected Mayor, who continues to operate within a non-partisan environment. The Mayor who, since 2004, has been from the ‘old’ city of Toronto, however, has limited executive powers, and the present incumbent has resisted calls to vest in his office the powers of a US-style strong mayor, arguing that ‘what Toronto needs is a strong mayor not a strong mayor system.’ Instead the priorities of the current Mayor, David Miller, are to build coalitions to tackle the problems of growth and under-investment. Yet any Toronto mayor has to reckon with the provincial government, which remains an important player in the affairs of Greater Toronto. Under Canada’s constitution the Provinces are accorded exclusive control over municipalities, which are dependent on the powers that the province is prepared to grant, generally through statute (City of Toronto, 2001b). The exceptions are the Charter cities of Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal and Saint John. Although subject to some provincial over-ride, these cities enjoy some powers in their own right and, during the wave of opposition to Toronto’s latest reforms, served as exemplars, encouraging support for a similar Charter status for Toronto. On the other hand, the powers of the federal government are extremely limited. Despite being the largest city in the country and Canada’s economic hub, Toronto has up to now remained entirely subordinate to the province of Ontario. Current ambitions to achieve world city status for Toronto would require a loosening of the provincial strings to give Canada’s first city real autonomy.

The challenge of growth Ontario has been the most rapidly urbanising of Canada’s provinces, bringing about a range of social and economic problems and, in turn, a more elaborate structure of government. Burgeoning growth and the responses it evoked gave shape to Toronto politics and city governance. The initial assumption that massive growth of the Toronto urban community was both unavoidable and highly desirable came to be questioned, for while metropolitan growth bequeathed Toronto a more prosperous economy, a more diverse population and a more rich and cosmopolitan culture, rapid urban development ‘stimulated demands that can be satisfied for some only by frustrating demand by others’ (Colton, 1980: 179). From these demands arose political conflicts that were to shape the development of the governmental structure over many decades (Table 4.1). Until 1926 Toronto grew rapidly by annexing its neighbouring communities. These additions trebled the size of the city and, by the time of the Great War, had incited resistance on the part of the outer suburbs. By this time the city’s population had passed 400,000 and in the 1920s annexation was abandoned as no longer politically practicable. By 1930, the city’s population had reached more than 620,000, while the surrounding municipalities accommodated a further 162,000. Thereafter, the city’s population grew more slowly to a peak in 1945 and declined marginally thereafter, while the suburban population continued to grow rapidly (Tables 4.2 and 4.3).

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 67 Table 4.1 Population and density by sub-area, 1996 City/borough

Population

Area (sq km)

Population per sq. km.

East York Etobikote North York Scarborough Toronto York Municipality of Metro Toronto Balance of urbanised area Toronto urbanised area

108,000 329,000 590,000 559,000 654,000 147,000 2,387,000

21.3 123.9 176.9 187.7 97.2 23.2 630.1

5,080 2,655 3,336 2,978 6,732 6,342 3,788

1,453,000

821.4

1,769

3,840,000

1,451.5

2,646

Source: Statistics Canada, 1996 census.

Table 4.2 The growth of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)

Greater Toronto area Inner core Outer areas

1971 (million)

1981 (million)

1991 (million)

1996 (million)

% change 1971–1996

2.92

3.42

4.24

4.63

⫹46

2.09 0.83

2.14 1.28

2.27 1.96

2.38 2.24

⫹12 ⫹113

Source: Williams, 1999, p. 174.

Table 4.3 Foreign born as a proportion of total population, 2005 Metropolitan area

Foreign born %

Toronto Miami Vancouver Sydney Los Angeles New York City Montreal

43.7 40.2 37.5 30.9 30.9 24.4 18.4

Source: Statistics Canada, http://www.greatertoronto.org/ investing_demo_03.htm

These decades of growth and change brought about a complex of problems that would need sooner or later to be tackled by government. Inequalities in resources and service provision, the decaying urban fabric and the lack of an adequate financial base prompted the first proposals to establish a unified metropolitan authority.

68

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform

None of these came to fruition and a further unsuccessful attempt was made to consolidate local government on a metropolitan basis just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Toronto’s growth accelerated after the war, exceeding that of almost all other large North American cities. Between 1951 and 1996, the population of the census metropolitan area (the official definition of metropolitan region, which goes beyond the boundaries of metropolitan Toronto) rose by 281.6 per cent to reach nearly 4.3 million (Filion, 2000: 165). Such sustained expansion clearly outstripped the capabilities of local government to deal with the problems that followed. The city has been the favoured destination for migrants to Canada, with a third of those entering the country since 1971 heading there and, by the end of the century, almost half. Toronto’s growth was fuelled by immigration, first from Europe and latterly from Asia. The percentage of the population born outside the country increased between 1971 and 1991 from 34.04 to 37.74 per cent. By 2001 41.4 per cent of the Greater Toronto population was born outside Canada (Frisken and Wallace, 2003: 162). The current prediction from Statistics Canada is that the ‘visible minorities’ will constitute the majority of the population of Toronto Metropolitan Census Area by 2017. Initially, the immigrant population was largely located in the inner area, but during the 1990s was more evenly distributed across the whole metropolitan region, into what is known as the GTA, to both newer and older suburbs (Walks, 2001: 424–426). As a result, the Toronto region is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world (Table 4.3). The provincial government had adopted a multi-cultural policy celebrating diversity, and recognising the rights and responsibilities of a multi-ethnic society. Until 1995, a range of programmes had been developed to promote equity, improve access and support communities. In that year the provincial Progressive Conservative Government terminated most of the immigrant support programmes in its drive to reduce taxes and costs. With the creation of the new Megacity in 1998 the initiative on questions of ethnic diversity and equality passed to the local level. The new city – its corporate motto Diversity Our Strength – adopted a range of programmes and developed new structures to reflect more closely its highly diverse population. A task force on access and equity was established together with a race and ethnic relations advisory committee. In 2001, an immigration and settlement policy framework followed, with the aim of attracting migrants and enabling them ‘to develop a sense of identity and belonging and fully participate in the social, economic, cultural and political life in the city’. The following year the city adopted an action plan to eliminate racism and discrimination. Unlike the responses of some other Canadian municipalities, Toronto’s outgoing and proactive stance recognised that immigrant and refugee communities had high expectations of the government, expectations that the new city set out to meet (Good, 2005). Migration to Toronto has not only been facilitated by the open door policy but also drawn in by the city’s economic buoyancy. Three distinct eras of economic development can be identified for the period since 1945, the first of which saw

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 69 the conversion of war industry to peacetime applications, the emergence of branch plant manufacturing and the beginnings of the aerospace, telecommunications and auto industries. The second period, beginning in 1965, witnessed dramatic growth in the auto industry as well as a relocation of corporate headquarters and financial services from Montreal. Toronto became the financial centre of Canada with substantial growth in financial institutions, legal and accounting firms and the rise to dominance of the Toronto stock exchange. Moreover, the fear of the rise of separatism resulted in a mass exodus of Anglophones from Quebec to Toronto. During this period, Toronto became a significant tourist destination. The third era followed the signing of the Free Trade Agreement in 1988 when there was a growing polarisation between high growth and low growth industries with marked effects on employment inequality (GTA, 1996). In the 1980s Toronto had around 30 per cent of the entire Canadian market within a 100 mile radius of city hall. Within the metropolitan area nearly a quarter of the country’s GNP was generated, and a third within an hour’s drive of the city’s Pearson International Airport. Today, the GTA has more than 40 per cent of the province’s population and produces half its GDP and almost one-fifth of that of the nation. The city of Toronto itself is the engine of the regional economy, producing 30 per cent of its output with just 15 per cent of the city region’s population. Although manufacturing remains an important source of employment, its stability is threatened by being largely a branch plant economy for US multi-national corporations. The GTA has seen spectacular growth in retail and office services, and is now the third largest retail area in North America as well as one of the largest office space concentrations in the world. Financial services are becoming increasingly important, with the Toronto stock exchange the third largest by value in North America, while 16 of the top 20 foreign banks in Canada have their headquarters in the GTA together with 6 of the largest life insurance firms. General Motors is still the largest employer in the GTA, although the relative decline of manufacturing continues. Competition from North American cities increased through the 1990s, with several US states establishing offices in the GTA from which to encourage business relocation south of the border. Targeting auto parts, plastics, food processing and bio-technology firms, the State of Michigan succeeded in encouraging 150 GTA businesses to expand there while Ohio, New York, Georgia and Florida have equally sought to draw away investment from Toronto. With the shift from manufacturing to the service sector, Toronto ‘appeared to be on the road to becoming a “no industry” town’ losing 75,000 manufacturing jobs between 1950 and 1971’. Until the 1970s, the net effect of employment change was moderated by the City Council policy of concentrating on high-rise office development and the promotion of tourism: the loss of industry went ‘almost un-noticed by the general public’. The erosion of manufacturing employment was not compensated for by new jobs in the service sector, however leading to rising unemployment in the older urban areas. By 1976, concern about

70

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform

these effects led to the appointment of an industrial development officer and the creation of industrial co-ordinating committees, and two years later the city of Toronto Planning Board published an industrial policy aimed at retaining manufacturing firms with ties to the city economy (Goldrick and Holmes, 1981: 21). Nevertheless, the GTA continued to lag behind other North American cities in terms of its rate of employment growth and when the economy recovered in the early 1990s, the changing industrial structure precipitated a period of ‘jobless growth’. Such industrial buoyancy as Toronto possessed was in large measure derived from its status as a branch plant economy. Being so close to the US border provided an incentive for American owned firms to open plants in the GTA, as the access they gained to fast-growing Canadian markets enabled them to avoid customs and tariffs. With this dependence on corporate decisions taken elsewhere, however, came a considerable vulnerability, exposing Toronto’s workforce to the threat of rapid job losses in times of economic downturn. Industrial change also had long-term spatial impacts. A good proportion of the manufacturing base relocated in the rapidly growing suburbs, having been displaced by development in the government, finance and insurance sectors which freed up industrial land, and drawn by suburban business-tax rates lower than those in Toronto. The most dramatic area of redevelopment in the post-war period was the Toronto waterfront, transformed by opportunistic development schemes. This development was driven principally by market forces, and weakly regulated by a multiplicity of public agencies. The efforts of municipal planners to manage change through land-use planning programmes were largely ineffectual: The existence of several levels of government, together with a cluster of assorted agencies, boards and commissions, all with some stake in one or more facets of the waterfront created a jurisdictional jungle that stymied most major planning initiatives. At the same time, the public agencies that owned large under-utilised areas replaced or modified their early corporate goals (which included developing port, airport and railway facilities) in order to rescue their eroding financial positions by initiating water front development projects with private entrepreneurs. (Goldrick and Merrens, 1996: 220–221) Beyond Toronto and the wider GTA the potential for growth recently identified by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal (PIR) lies in the surrounding area, now known as the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) stretching from Lake Ontario in the south to Sudbury in the north and from Niagara in the west to Oshawa in the east. Here almost 90 per cent of Ontario’s growth is concentrated and in the space of 10 years an area the size of the city of Toronto has been developed. The population in this region is expected to grow by more than 4 million over the next 30 years (Table 4.4). In October 2004 the Ontario

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 71 government introduced the Places to Grow Act, 2004, and in the spring 2005 published a draft growth plan for the GGH (Map 4.1). The plan’s approach complemented that introduced in Toronto with a policy of intensification of development to achieve efficient landuse and curb urban sprawl. Within the GGH more than 350,000 acres were designated for development and the policy of more intensive landuse was directed to controlling this development using growth corridors to encourage high densities, regenerating urban areas to get the best value from existing infrastructure.

TORONTO

Lake Ontario

CITY OF HAMILTON

NIAGARA

Key:

Greater Toronto area

Map 4.1 Greater Toronto and the ‘Golden Horseshoe’.

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Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform

Table 4.4 Distribution and projections of population within the Toronto region Actual 2001 City of Toronto Region of Peel Region of York Region of Durham Region of Halton GTA total Canada

Actual 2004

Projected 2011

Projected 2021

2,481,505

2,557,400

2,734,200

2,791,900

988,915

1,080,000

1,217,002

1,388,051

729,065

810,304

977,517

1,164,681

506,940

543,800

643,813

829,839

375,210

407,800

476,101

580,326

5,081,635 31,110,565

5,399,304 31,956,600

6,048,633 33,927,200

6,754,797 37,023,700

Source: www.greatertoronto.org/investing_demo_03.htm

The coming of ‘Metro’ government Toronto’s patterns of growth, inequality and under-capacity were not too different from the experience of other cities. Nor were the accompanying problems of servicing the population with water, sewerage, drainage, housing, education, highways and transport. As a 1965 Royal Commission concluded: The lack of [Toronto’s] proper sewerage facilities became a menace to public health and serious water shortages forced occasional curtailment of the use of water in the suburbs. Arterial road development was grossly inadequate to handle the rapidly increasing volume of traffic. Public transportation and the existing highway network were poorly integrated. The need for new school facilities was staggering. Other services had to be expanded to meet the requirements of phenomenal post-war growth. (Quoted in Barlow, 1991: 194) Thereafter the province funded significant trunk, sewer and water supply developments to the east and west of the city to sustain industrial and commercial development. Toronto’s first official planning board was appointed in June 1942. Its master plan, drawn up the following year and endorsed by the Council in 1944, was the first in the city’s history to address the larger and more serious issues of housing, land use and transportation through a vast programme of undertakings for slum clearance, superhighways, rapid transit and improved amenities. Even prior to the consideration of the plan, in 1943, the City Council approved the construction of Canada’s first urban subway and, a year later, the first big public housing project in the country, Regent Park. That Toronto was the first major city in the world to adopt a metropolitan form of government owed much to a stream of analysis, reports and permissive legislation.

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 73 A 1946 Act allowed municipalities to apply to the Ontario Municipal Board for amalgamation or the creation of joint authorities. The city of Toronto tested the water by proposing amalgamations with the surrounding 12 municipalities. Proposals of this sort appealed only to the central city and the decaying inner suburbs, while the more spacious outer suburbs bitterly resisted them. Hearings before the OMB intensified these differences and fed the anti-city sentiment. The OMB, in rejecting the amalgamation proposal, judged that it would produce a ‘substantial increase in taxation’ through demands for increased levels of suburban services which would be difficult, if not impossible, to resist, as well as through diseconomies of scale (Sancton, 1996: 269). In spite of the opposition, the foundations were laid for a new debate that reflected more closely the inherently federal nature of Toronto’s political life. The issue surfaced again in 1949 with a report from the Toronto and York Planning Board, and with a series of reports over the next two years from the Civic Advisory Council of Toronto. These provided the first fully detailed analyses of the problems of the area and – by now predictably – recommended metropolitan government as the solution. The municipalities varied greatly in size, population, and wealth, and were complemented by a large number of special-purpose bodies such as the school board, utility and sewerage authorities (Tindal and Tindal, 1995). In 1950, the Ontario Municipal Board considered the various proposals for reorganisation and recommended the creation of a two-tier system of government with shared responsibility for service delivery. Its 1953 report set out a compromise solution in the form of a federal structure based on the recognition that, while some services had to be provided area-wide if they were to be effective, others of a more personal nature had to be provided locally if they were to be acceptable. This Toronto version of metropolitan federalism is indelibly associated with the name of Lorne Cumming who presided, as chairman, over the Board’s deliberations. As would prove to be the case time and again in the following decades, Canada’s legislative flexibility permitted rapid action. Within weeks of the Cumming report, a bill was introduced in the Ontario Parliament to create the new metropolitan system. By the middle of that year the Metropolitan Council came into being and in the following January assumed its powers. The Conservative Party in Ontario had little difficulty in pushing these proposals through at such speed, given the strong personal support of the Premier. The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act of 1953 established Metro Toronto, a federated system of government comprising the city of Toronto and its 12 surrounding municipalities. The central authority was to be a Metropolitan Council, made up of the representatives of the 12 local bodies and the city of Toronto, which held half of the 24 seats. Metro Toronto was given responsibility for major works in water supply, for sewage disposal, major highways and public transport, metropolitan planning, parks, waste disposal, assessment of property taxes and the co-ordination of education. For their part, the municipalities retained control over local planning, streets, parks and water distribution, waste and sewage collection, schools, fire protection and police. Even so, metropolitan planning in the fullest sense of the term demanded a far wider area. Like London’s metropolitan governments and

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their relationships with the wider conferences on regional planning, Toronto had to relate to the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board (MTTB), which covered three times its area, and diluted the impact of Metro with its far wider representation. Despite the balance of power being heavily in favour of the municipalities, the tensions that had surfaced in the post-war years remained, and erupted from time to time in the form of suburban opposition to Metro’s activities. The absence of direct elections and the defensive posture of the municipalities led Metro to be likened to an international conference rather than a governmental entity: ‘a federation of independent municipalities, not a new municipal government’ (Kaplan, 1967: 52). Nevertheless Metro’s achievements – and they were real – were achieved by negotiations rather than executive action under the leadership of the first chairman of Metro, Frederick (Big Daddy) Gardiner. Metro’s uppermost policy commitment under Gardiner was to provide the physical infrastructure for private housing development in the suburbs. More than 141,000 dwellings were completed in Metropolitan Toronto between 1954 and 1961, more than twice the rate in the period 1948–1953 (Colton, 1980; Rose, 1972). Public housing in the suburbs proved far more problematic. When Gardiner proposed large-scale public housing development for the suburban townships of Scarborough and Etobioke, he encountered fierce resistance. The overall metropolitan housing programme with its target of 1,500 dwellings per year for 5 years fell dismally short in the face of local opposition and economic downturn. By 1962, the programme had been curtailed and the radical action to ‘open up the suburbs’ was abandoned (Rose, 1972: 75–78). Such successes as Metro enjoyed were attributable in large part to the dominance of Gardiner and the lack of active opposition to the programmes he promoted. By the time he left office in 1961, many of the original programmes had been completed. There were now few broadly supported ideas as to what needed to be done, as well as a dawning sense that some of the major and more controversial issues remained to be faced. Gardiner himself acknowledged the need for further reform, foreseeing the need for unified city government. The subway system was developed between 1954 and 1966 by the Toronto Transit Commission, first to the north and later in stages to the east and west of the downtown area. This had a profound impact on the shape of the Metropolitan area. Planning aside, the presence of the subway influenced the land market to refashion the city with, it is claimed, one half of the high-rise apartment buildings and 90 per cent of office development occurring within a 5-minute walk of a subway station. Development of vacant land and redevelopment of obsolete sites were spurred by the opening up of transit facilities that were hailed in their time as an example of good metropolitan planning (Cervero, 1998: 83–90). To that extent, the development policy formulated by Metro Toronto was a marked success, creating a multi-centered urban structure and accommodating a substantial share of the region’s population growth within the Metro boundaries, in accordance with its strategic planning goals. Further extensions were completed in 2003, by which time high-rise condominium development was already booming.

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 75

Metropolitan government evolves The 1953 Act was just one stage in the evolution of metropolitan government. There were further modifications in 1957, when the 13 police departments were amalgamated and the police function moved to metropolitan level. A public inquiry into the working of the governmental system was held that same year in response to rising opposition to Metro from two quarters. The first of these was from the defenders of suburban autonomy, who considered Metro to be a threat, and the second was from those who sought stronger metropolitan government through amalgamation into a single authority. When a commission of inquiry reported in 1958 that it found the experiment in metropolitan federalism to have worked well, which despite the fact that the commission was chaired by Lorne Cumming, the architect of the 1953 Act, diluted the credibility of this judgement. It was clear that the pace of suburban growth had undermined the basis of representation on the Metropolitan Council, with the fastest growing suburbs demanding more representation than the smaller municipalities and population decline in the central city subverting its claim for half the seats on the council. Failures in tackling social problems and the housing system, in particular, were to exacerbate the conflicts. There arose a state of impasse in metropolitan government in which ‘the anomalies in representation made the system unworkable and the inability to deal with social problems threatened to render Metro inconsequential’ (Barlow, 1991: 205). Any further development of the two-tier system was likely to weaken the city’s position relative to its suburbs. In a move to avert such a proposal, the city of Toronto in 1963 proposed the amalgamation of the 13 municipalities to compensate for its falling population and tax base (Magnusson, 1983: 111). It had given up the control of the police to Metro in 1957 and supported a number of other measures for the unification of services. In response to the pressures from the city, the provincial government established a Commission which reported in 1965 its findings providing the basis for the reorganisation of Metropolitan Toronto in 1967. The options facing the Goldenberg Commission were first to make adjustments within the existing structure; second, to create a unitary authority through amalgamations; and third, to consolidate the municipalities into a number of smaller authorities, maintaining the federal principle and the existing outer boundaries of the metropolitan authority. Goldenberg approached these options in a highly pragmatic manner, arguing that neat and tidy solutions to complex problems of government are not necessarily applicable and practical. To Toronto’s disappointment, the Commission opposed complete amalgamation and recommended measures to strengthen the suburban municipalities. In recommending that the 13 units be consolidated into 4, Goldenberg explained My recommendations for a consolidation of area municipalities are not based on theories as to the ‘optimum’ size of a municipality in terms of population. Much has been written on this subject and the briefs to the Commission made many references to such writings, but there is no agreement as to the

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Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform ‘optimum’ and the figures vary very widely with the criteria applied. I agree with the Royal Commission on Greater London that ‘there is no special value in any one figure’ . . . What may be the appropriate size of constituent units of one metropolitan area will not necessarily be appropriate to another with different characteristics derived from its own history, geography, population, composition, and economic development. (Quoted in Sancton, 2000: 47)

The Commission’s basic approach was accepted and the legislation that came into force in 1967 amalgamated the 13 municipalities into 4 of more equal size and strength (Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and the city of Toronto), and 2 smaller (York and East York) with increased capacity to deliver services and with greater parity of representation. While the city of Toronto predictably found its allocation of seats on the metropolitan council reduced in number from 50 to 40 per cent, there was some compensation in the city being given half of the seats on Metro’s executive committee. The governing principle was that services common to the entire metropolitan area would be provided by the Metropolitan Council, while local services would be the responsibility of individual area municipalities, with a directly elected metropolitan council. Seven standing committees were established to facilitate the governance process, operating on a highly decentralised basis with fourteen departments and twelve agencies, boards and commissions being given considerable autonomy (Reddy, 2002: 71). Local interests were placated, but the new system did little to provide unified leadership for the city region. Thus, Goldenberg’s reforms did little to revive Metro Toronto, which had become ‘a relatively complacent, suburban-dominated service-delivery agent’ (Kaplan, 1982: 683–739). Toronto has not been short of governmental reviews. In 1974 the province appointed a one-man Royal Commission under John Robarts who, as Provincial Premier, had implemented the 1967 reorganisation. After sitting for three years Robarts produced a voluminous study of the working of the metropolitan system, warning that it was failing to contain population growth, that the tax base was insufficiently elastic and that the cultural change was leading to an upsurge of citizen’s demands to have a say in decision-making. In June 1975 Gardiner made a well-advertised appearance at the public hearing of the Robarts Commission, arguing that the unified government would allow the Metropolis to continue to grow, and urging Robarts to ‘look forward to the future and develop it in accordance with the tremendous assets that are here’. Only centralisation could surmount the shovings and pullings of self-interested localities and communities. ‘We have too much of a fractured system . . . nobody to look after the general benefit and the general interest of the community at large’ (Colton, 1980: 185). But Robarts rejected the idea of amalgamation on the grounds that a single government would be too large and impersonal, although as the former Premier, he may well have been reluctant to see a powerful metropolitan authority in a position to challenge the provincial government. He recommended instead that Metro should be strengthened by the devolution of functions from the provincial

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 77 government, that it should assume the responsibility of the Ontario Housing Corporation in Metropolitan Toronto and that a Toronto Region co-ordinating agency should be created in preference to extending Metro’s boundaries. This line of development for Toronto’s government had little chance of being realised. Any reinforcement of the metropolitan authority evoked opposition from the municipalities and the city of Toronto itself. At the same time, devolution from the provincial level was never likely to be accepted at a time when the drift of opinion was towards a strengthening of provincial government. As Barlow concludes, ‘in the context of local politics the Commission’s recommendations were unacceptably centralist, while in the context of Ontario’s they were unacceptably decentralist’ (Barlow, 1991: 217). Until the late 1970s, Metro was able to sustain Toronto as the region’s main commercial and cultural centre, and further develop secondary centres of commercial activity. It was also able to provide for high-density housing with good links to transportation, while equally making it possible for people to live closer to their place of work by locating employment sites throughout the Metro area (Rothblatt, 1994: 503). Most significant of its achievements were metropolitan-wide development co-ordination, service standard and tax-equity improvements (Filion, 2001: 91). By the end of the 1980s, however, politicians had become convinced that unrestrained growth and inadequate infrastructure were likely to threaten Toronto’s ability to function effectively and efficiently: ‘Metro’s usefulness as a regional body was beginning to wane’ (Donald, 2002: 2141). An advisory Greater Toronto Co-ordinating Committee (GTCC) was formed to discuss infrastructure and service-delivery issues, much as Robarts had suggested, whilst the OGTA was established to provide a secretariat for the GTCC to co-ordinate action on service delivery and to bring about a consensual approach to strategic planning.

Responding to fiscal crisis Lip service had been paid to co-ordination and the looming fiscal crisis had still to be confronted. From the late 1980s fiscal stress dominated Toronto’s politics due to continuous cuts in the grants from federal and provincial governments to the local authorities. Throughout Canada, property taxes in the post-war urbanisation boom fell drastically from 80 per cent of municipal revenue in 1930 to just over half (53 per cent) by 1953, to 47 per cent by 1964 and to below 40 per cent by the mid-1970s. In the Toronto area, as elsewhere, individual municipalities sought capital funds on their own credit, a difficult and inefficient course of action leading to a rapidly diminishing relationship between the taxes paid to any one level of government and the services rendered by it (Tindal and Tindal, 1995). Prior to 1970, assessment of property for local tax purposes was undertaken by each individual municipality, creating marked inequities between areas, while municipalities themselves varied in their approach to updating assessments, making fair market value impossible to establish. In 1970, assessment was transferred to the provincial level, and in 1998, the province of Ontario created an

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independent Corporation to undertake assessments. Any rationalisation of assessment was bound to lead to sharp increases for some tax payers and, in turn, to government intervention to limit the political consequences. In particular, downtown businesses faced sharp increases with the Province’s response being to impose tax increase ceilings to protect them (Siegel, 2005: 138). The increasing local dependence on revenue provided by higher levels of government created a new set of problems in urban governance, particularly in relation to responsibility and accountability as ‘the public never knows who is responsible for what or how much the services provided really cost’ (Ontario Economic Council, 1969). In 1976 the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities (now the Federation of Canadian Muncipalities (FCM)) produced its response to a tri-level task force on public finance in Canada. Its title, Puppets on a Shoestring: The Effects on Municipal Government of Canada’s System of Public Finance, summed up the pessimism of local governments at the time. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities continued to lament the funding crisis and the lack of attention given to municipal expertise (Smith, 1995), although the Federation was ignored through the late 1980s and early 1990s when discussions of constitutional development further highlighted the plight of the municipalities. Realignment of responsibilities between province and municipalities forced the fiscal crisis into a new prominence. Clearly, an over-dependence on local property taxes placed heavy burden on Toronto’s residences and businesses. Toronto needed a mix of taxes to provide the buoyancy that comes with revenues that grow with economic activity, the flexibility to respond to changing local conditions and a more equitable spread of the fiscal burden (Slack, 2005). Although property taxes were a sensitive issue for voters in Toronto (as they are elsewhere), the urban/suburban middle-class split has a long history that goes beyond the tax issue. It is perhaps best illustrated by the Spadina Expressway battle in the 1970s. A coalition of conservative-leaning and left-radical ‘reformists’ won the 1972 municipal elections in a context where ideas of city planning were shifting towards more sensitivity to community needs. It was a context in which young middle-class people adopted non-conformist lifestyles, while middle-class homeowners began to move out of suburbia to resettle downtown (Caulfield, 1994: 64–74). After the victorious struggle against the Spadina Expressway, which would have gone through Toronto’s central and ‘bohemian’ neighbourhoods, the reformist coalition had a clear mandate to preserve a dense urban fabric against suburban infrastructure and developers’ interests. This was a first step towards the politicisation of planning in the urban core of Toronto, towards the city’s mixed and safe spaces, and towards the rise of progressive middle-class urbanism. The changing political culture had wider implications too. Until the 1980s, fiscal crisis was generally discussed in terms of tax bases and funding regimes. Thereafter, adoption of the principles of what came to be known as ‘new public management’ (NPM) offered a different approach. This shift in emphasis laid new stress upon the ‘customer-service revolution’ and the experimentation by municipalities with a wide variety of alternative ways of delivering public services.

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 79 Focus groups, one-stop shops, citizen surveys and a range of other mechanisms came to be used to elicit public input into the decision-making process. For local governments, the new approach included partnerships with voluntary organisations, contracting out services and the creation of integrated service-delivery teams. This coincided with a surge of citizen assertiveness which questioned the established institutions and policies which it championed or having ‘a tendency to see government as a reactive rather than an active force in society, an animosity toward concentrated power and bureaucracy, a partiality toward small units for participation and administration, a suspicion of large private corporations’ (Colton, 1980: 178). As Robarts noted in his 1977 report, ‘the most significant change in the politics of Metropolitan Toronto during the past ten years is the general acceptance of the right of individuals and groups of private citizens to participate in the process of government decision-making,’ a development that was most readily apparent in disputes over urban renewal, private redevelopment and highway projects (Colton, 1980: 177–178).

Creating the Megacity A major study of Metro Toronto was launched in the mid-1980s, whose report, published in 1986, recommended changes to the governance structure and the adoption of direct elections. It proposed that the 6 municipal mayors should hold Metro Council seats while providing for direct election of 28 councillors in a slightly expanded Metropolitan council. By this time, however, the problems confronting the Toronto Metropolitan region had extended beyond its geographic and institutional limits. Metro’s capacity to govern was not keeping pace with the substantial growth in the counties and regions surrounding the original Metro Toronto. In 1988 the provincial government established the OGTA to provide for more efficient handling of cross-border issues in Metro Toronto, York, Peel, Halton and Durham and to co-ordinate provincial programming and policies in the same region. Directly electing the Metro Council in 1988 for the first time had the effect of establishing a legitimate Metro perspective which was quite distinct from that of the constituent municipalities. A new strategic plan was needed to express that metropolitan interest. At the same time, it became clear that Toronto had been living on past infrastructure investment and could no longer sustain further de-concentration, as a more devolved urban structure was presenting insuperable difficulties of road congestion. It was becoming increasingly clear that Metro was competing with its regional neighbours for population, economic investment and provincial funds for infrastructure (Rothblatt, 1994: 503). A strategic planning review by consultants Ernst & Young was launched with the aim of accommodating more growth through intensified mixed-use development along corridors into the central city – the Metro main streets programme. A new draft plan emanated, based on a re-urbanisation strategy to accommodate an additional 300,000 people by 2011 within a ‘liveable Metropolis’. The 1994 Metropolitan Plan proposed a process of urban restructuring to create areas of relative density, well-served by

80 Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform public transport, with well-defined identity, cut across by pedestrian main streets, and where, so far as possible, the workplace would not be too far away from home. The provincial government’s priority was to focus exclusively on urban development, and the resulting Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1994 reflected the need to contain urban sprawl and promote compact urban settlements. The government argued that planning should be ‘policy rather than deal-making’ with the province’s role being primarily one of co-ordinating land use. It also urged municipalities to have an official plan that would be consistent with provincial policies. An exemplary exercise in planning, the new proposals nevertheless required major investment in infrastructure and provoked local protests at intensified development in existing residential areas (Goldrick and Merrens: 1996). The term ‘intensification’ was coming to acquire the same negative connotations as had ‘urban renewal’ in the 1960s, prompting planners to favour instead ‘re-urbanisation’ as implying a more balanced, integrated and community-sensitive approach (Tomalty, 1997: 101–102). To some extent the ensuing conflict was channelled through the local planning process. While the city of Toronto’s priority supported more intense development with mixed land use, the other municipalities were more inclined to favour fringe development, low residential growth and stable employment. Municipalities were notably reluctant to surrender control over the development process to a higher level of government. There are also marked differences in the approach to planning between the more urban, southern municipalities and the more rural, northern ones. The return of the Progressive Conservative Government at the provincial level in 1995 gave impetus to proposals by the Commission on Planning and Development Reform which, under John Sewell’s chairmanship, had argued for a shift from detailed provincial control of planning decisions to a delegated, policy-focused system (Tomalty, 1997: 91–95). Further amendments to planning legislation were introduced, allowing municipalities greater freedom in planning and locating development. They were required to produce their own strategic plans, which were subject to provincial approval, while the role of the OGTA was also reduced to that of provincial broker (Williams, 1999: 80). Another review in 1995, this time by the Greater Toronto Area Task Force, was established under Ann Golden to study the impact of shifts in the growth pattern from the metropolitan core to the outer and newer suburbs; the Task Force was strongly against creating a single authority. It argued that the cost savings were often overstated, while diseconomies of scale and the upward drift of wages and service standards could easily offset the savings that would accrue from eliminating duplication. Another factor in the Task Force’s reasoning was that amalgamation would reduce competition between municipalities, removing the benchmark of relative performance. At root, the Task Force saw GTA’s problems as being essentially those that faced Metro in 1953. Metro Toronto’s submission to the Task Force proposed a larger version of itself with extended boundaries, a stronger Greater Toronto Council and the replacement of the 5 municipalities by 15 (Williams, 1999: 73; Sancton, 2000: 115–177).

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 81 The Task Force recommended the establishment of an indirectly elected Greater Toronto Council, service districts for the delivery of individual functions and a reallocation of municipal-regional responsibilities. It called for a strengthening of municipal government, a revised property tax regime and the setting up of a single regional economic development board that would be responsible for regional planning, infrastructure investment and the management of urban growth. While these arguments helped focus the debate about the future governance of the city, there were deep concerns about establishing a unified regional council that would marginalise suburban municipalities. At the same time, the proposal for setting up service districts was attacked on the grounds that this would result in fragmented decision-making and poor co-ordination. Ontario’s response to the Task Force’s inconvenient recommendation was to set up a review board to assess public reaction to the proposals. The review concluded that while there was support for equity in property taxes, the notion of a Greater Toronto Council was strongly rejected. There was, however, support for establishing a co-ordinating body to handle inter-regional and inter-urban issues and for a two-tier government outside Metro. The Task Force had been appointed by the NDP government, which was soon superseded by the neo-conservative administration of Mike Harris. Promising streamlined bureaucracy, less government and lower taxes the ‘common sense revolutionaries’ had few ideas as to how to treat local government, although there were indications that sweeping change in provincial–municipal relations would follow (Siegel, 2005: 128). The new government was unsure whether or not to close down the Golden Task Force, and instead opted to demand an early report. The Progressive Conservative Government had owed its allegiance to the small towns outside Metro Toronto and had little affinity with the metropolitan centre’s diverse and active population. The combination of the Golden Task Force report and Harris’s own election promises compelled the government to do something, although it clearly would not accept the big government approach (Sancton, 2000: 121). Turning its back on the Task Force, the new government made its first commitment the reduction of debt, income tax levels and public bureaucracy, undertaking a challenging ‘who does what’ exercise, chaired by the former Toronto Mayor David Crombie. The panel was established to streamline the provincial–municipal relationship by clearly allocating responsibility for each service to a single level of government and eliminating the complication and blurred accountability that accompanied shared functions. The new government thus took a stand on reducing duplication and overlapping service delivery to promote a less costly and simplified government (Siegel, 2005: 135). We must rationalize the regional and municipal levels to avoid the overlap and duplication that now exists . . . we will sit down with the municipalities to discuss ways of reducing government entanglement and bureaucracy with an eye to eliminating waste and duplication as well as unfair downloading by the province. (Quoted in Sancton, 1996: 278)

82 Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform The Progressive Conservatives maintained that the education system was too fragmented and that school boards and teachers’ unions were working together to keep educational spending high, while this investment was not necessarily reflected in student performance levels. School boards in Ontario received half of their funding from the local property tax – imposed by the local board, but collected on its behalf by the municipality – and half in the form of provincial transfers. In its drive to reform education funding, the incoming government first sought to reduce the number of school boards in the province from 129 to 66, limit their access to local property taxes and instead channel most funding through provincial transfers (Siegel, 2005: 128). In exchange for this relief, municipalities were to take on responsibility for 50 per cent of welfare costs as well as their full administration, a transfer immediately dubbed ‘downloading’ (although more officially christened Local Services Realignment). Additionally, the municipal proportion of day care costs were to rise from 20 to 50 per cent, while housing, public transit and public health programmes were transferred in totality to municipalities. Grants for community policing and libraries were abolished and the provincial share of long-term healthcare services was reduced from 80 to 50 per cent. Furthermore, a province-wide property tax reform based on actual value assessment was also announced. Provincial government presented these changes as ‘revenue neutral’, although municipalities lamented the loss of control of education whilst anticipating year on year rises in welfare costs. All this brought a new turbulence to the relations between the city and the province. The most dramatic initiative of the new government was, however, to sweep away the existing structure of government in Metro Toronto by amalgamating the municipalities into a single unified city. It called for the amalgamation of the core of the GTA, the old city of Toronto and its older suburbs of North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, East York and York. This was intended to save money by eliminating duplication of services in the former two-tiered municipal structure; it would eliminate competition between existing municipalities; while disentangling the complex two-tiered structure, and would enhance accountability and transparency to taxpayers (Boudreau: 1999). Although the Minister of Municipal Affairs first claimed that amalgamation would save approximately $300 million annually, 18 months later the city was showing savings far short of this, with approximately $120.7 million in 1998/99 and $29.3 million in 2000 (Sancton, 2000: 14). The public debate on amalgamation which then began focused on the four key principles of effectiveness, efficiency, accountability and accessibility, reflecting a national mood in favour of improving governmental capacity and the relations between the different levels of government and the municipalities and their residents (LeSage and Garcea, 2005: 289). The size and complexity of the governance structures proposed for the new city posed particular challenges, while the decision-making processes had to cope with an ambitious agenda. The debate raised difficult issues of equity, representativeness and cultural relations, reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of Toronto with its diverse interests and pressure groups. Clearly, the city’s governing structures would have to be flexible

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 83 if they were to respond sensitively and creatively to the diverse needs of local communities. Inevitably there was hostility from Metro Toronto’s neighbours, who feared the loss of identity and accountability. Yet opposition to amalgamation was not confined to the suburbs. One of the most vociferous opponents of amalgamation was the Citizens for Local Democracy (C4LD), a movement initiated by Toronto’s former radical mayor, John Sewell, who chaired the Province’s public housing authority, and subsequently, the Commission to Reform the Planning Act of Ontario. The group also enjoyed the support of other long-term public figures and liberal activists who were able to attract considerable media attention, as well as the support of most local politicians including the then Mayor of the city of Toronto, Barbara Hall. Two main arguments opposing the amalgamation bill were at the heart of the C4LD campaign. First, that such a move would pose a threat to local democracy and, second, that despite the province’s constitutional power to impose municipal restructuring, it had lost its legitimacy on the grounds that the proposals were rushed through the legislature without prior public consultations (Boudreau, 1999: 774). Public opinion research commissioned by the mayors of the 6 municipalities, but conducted as individual surveys, revealed that 52 per cent were opposed to the idea of amalgamation and approximately 42 per cent supported the proposal at that stage. More strikingly, 75 per cent of residents wanted to have a say in changes to their local government by being able to vote in a referendum on the issue of amalgamation (Reddy, 2002: 72). Ontario had little experience of conducting and organising referendums, and it was understandably reluctant to expose a key policy to popular judgement. But the opposition to the provincial government’s amalgamation and downloading plan was so strong that it convinced the former municipalities to organise their own single referendum, although the results of this could not bind the province. The referendum was held on 3 March 1997 in which 76 per cent of the voters, on a turnout of approximately 30 per cent, voted against the idea of amalgamation (Boudreau, 1999: 776). Despite this wave of opposition, in December 1996, the government officially stated its plan to amalgamate the city of Toronto with its six lower-tier municipalities: Toronto, Scarborough, York, East York, North York and Etobicoke. This new megacity, together with York, Peel, Halton and Durham constitutes the GTA, which emerged in the 1980s to designate the socio-economic boundaries of the region. With a budget of approximately $5.6 billion and a total staff complement of 45,000 employees, the new unified city was to become larger than most provincial governments in Canada (Reddy, 2002: 70). At the same time, a Greater Toronto Service Board (GTSB) was to be established, a special-purpose body combining the new megacity and its outer most suburbs. The purpose of the GTSB was to co-ordinate social, transportation and infrastructure policy in the GTA which included operating GO-Transit and the commuter-rail service (GTSB, 1999). The impulse for amalgamation stemmed from something wider than rationalisation and a search for economy. In his attempts to promote Ontario

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internationally as a location for investment, Premier Harris discovered that the name of Ontario evinced little recognition in the wider world. Toronto, on the other hand, was well known. But in order to equip Toronto for international competition it needed to be ‘bigger, stronger, bolder . . . And so the plan to amalgamate the cities of metropolitan Toronto was born’ (Ibbitson, 1997: 242). Other explanations have been offered including the classic one that metropolitan amalgamation was required in order to tame a left-wing central city by swamping it with representatives from the suburbs (Sancton, 2003). Certainly, political support for Harris was broadly located in the outlying area – the 905 area telephone belt, historically opposed in popular representations to those with the 416 Toronto area code (Vogel, 2007). In the event, this pattern of support determined the election with Mel Lastman, Mayor of York, defeating Barbara Hall, Mayor of the city of Toronto, for the new post of Megacity Mayor.

Megacity Toronto today There are parallels to be found in the mechanisms established to bring the new system into being in both Toronto and London. In both cities a transition team was appointed, in Toronto by the Province under the City of Toronto Act, 1997, to facilitate the organisational transition into the new city and hire necessary staff to assure continuity in municipal services. The transition team had the specific task to consider what further legislation would be required, establishing the key elements of the new city’s organisational structure. It would take soundings from the outgoing councils and submit to the new council a proposed operating and capital budget for 1998 that would provide for property tax stability and continuity of service delivery. Led by Alan Tonk, Metro Council chairman, the team sought to consult the public through town hall meetings and through research conducted to determine their priorities and concerns in terms of services and quality of life. They also sought the contributions of municipal councils and staff, and set about learning from the experience of other countries. Working to tight deadlines the transition team began by eliciting proposals from officials of the seven municipalities. Acknowledging that this was unlikely to produce a scheme that was capable of being implemented, Tonk commissioned a team of experts to produce a recommended political and administrative structure within the month. This was then largely adopted by the transition team, although the proposed decision-making process did not survive long coming into force. The transition team was dissolved on 31 January 1998 when the new Council officially came into existence. The new city of Toronto was incorporated on 1 January 1998, after the first megacity municipal elections of November 1997. The first Council consisted of the Mayor as chairperson and 56 other members, 2 of whom were elected for each ward. Almost all those elected were members of the first Council and had long experience. In accordance with the Fewer Municipal Politicians Act, 1999, the Council has since been reduced to 45 members (representing 44 wards plus the Mayor). A primary goal of the City Council during its first and second terms of

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 85 office was to build the new integrated authority, including establishing council committees and setting in motion the political processes that would enable it to engage with the community in making policies and taking decisions (City of Toronto, 1998). Amalgamation was intended to create opportunities for improvements in service delivery, and ensured that the city was effectively positioned to meet new challenges. Traditionally, departments and programmes within municipalities were set up to operate independently, with this silo effect denying staff the opportunities to benefit from the knowledge, experience and expertise of people in other areas. Several principles served as guidelines for developing the management structure for the new city. First, traditional barriers would be broken down to build capacity; second, efficiency would be encouraged through streamlining, consolidation and innovation; and third, accountability to elected representatives would be enhanced though greater public participation (City of Toronto, 1997a: 116–119). The governance structure for the megacity consists of a Council, 7 standing committees and 6 community councils. The Mayor has a key role to play in terms of providing leadership to the Council, and building public confidence in the new local authority. As the only elected representative chosen at large, the Mayor was also expected to represent the city’s interest in the GTSB, although Mayor Lastman declined to attend its meetings. In this, Mayor Lastman’s working relationship with the provincial government, based on no more than tacit understandings, would prove a considerable asset: Lastman would ensure good publicity for megacity, while in turn the Harris government would help him contain tax rises (Sancton, 2000: 127). With the new structure, the standing committees are responsible for providing political direction and ensuring co-ordination, facilitating public participation in the decision-making process and making policy recommendations to the Council. The strategic policies and priorities committee provided leadership during the transition period and was given the specific responsibility of overseeing the transition, integration and implementation of the overall transition plan for the new city. The committee is also responsible for the development of a mission statement, corporate strategic plan and for monitoring the implementation of a Toronto Strategy for the GTA. The budget committee is responsible for co-ordinating the drafting of the initial budget and the inputs received from the standing committees, community councils and the public. It is required to identify and make recommendations on the key revenue and expenditure decisions. In 1999 a review of the council–committee structure was undertaken which identified several weaknesses, including overlap, duplication and delays arising from the large number of committees and task forces. The new system had produced a fragmented, rather than co-ordinated, approach to committee work. As with concerns about the new mayoral and leader/cabinet models in British local authorities, here too deep reservations were expressed about the executive system which ‘vested too much power and control in the hands of a small number of people’. The review recommended a flatter committee structure that would enable maximum councillors involvement and participation and provide for

86 Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform greater decentralisation (City of Toronto, 1999). Alongside these developments, the City Council also considered proposals for streamlining decision-making involving greater delegation to community councils (committees of City Council dealing with local matters) in the context of the council–committee structure, to enable the Council to engage in a continuous dialogue with the community (City of Toronto, 1999a). The subsequent mid-term review carried out in 2002 proposed the establishment of an intergovernmental affairs committee to work with other governments to enhance the city’s governance capacity and set up sustainable financial mechanisms. A third review of the City Council’s governance structures in April 2003 proposed further options for change and ways to improve co-ordination of Council’s policy priorities. The review reaffirmed on-going concerns about assigning greater degree of power and control to a small group of councillors and the impact this would have on the ability of each member of the Council to play a meaningful role in decision-making (City of Toronto, 2003). Alongside reviewing the political decision-making structures, Mayor David Miller called in 2004 for a review of the city’s administrative arrangements that had been put in place in 1998, and established a three-member Toronto advisory panel. ‘We have now turned the page on amalgamation,’ he said, and ‘shifted our focus to city-building’. With the support of external consultants, the Mayor put forward reforms of the administrative structure to embody four key principles: citizen-focused services; an effective balance of administrative governance, compliance and delegation; strategic leadership; and adaptable, flexible and innovative operation. Embodying these principles in the new structure was intended to provide the strongest administrative support to the Council’s priorities while the post of chief administrative officer was redefined as city manager. The existing commissioner positions were abolished, and deputy city managers created with freedom from day-to-day operations. One issue that no administrative realignment could resolve was the role of individual councillors. The consultants warned of a natural tendency for interested councillors and division heads to develop close relationships, often drawing the attention of senior management away from strategic concerns into matters of detail. The Joint Ontario–City of Toronto Task Force was launched in September 2004 by the Provincial Premier and the Mayor to review the City of Toronto Acts and other relevant legislation. The aim was to frame a modernised City of Toronto Act based on jointly agreed principles of accountability, responsiveness and citizen engagement with city autonomy within its own jurisdiction being balanced by the need to be ‘respectful of broader provincial interest and the “public good” of the province as a whole’ (City of Toronto, 2005). The Task Force’s report Building a Twenty First Century City appeared a year later presenting a brief but pointed set of proposals for new legislation which would provide ‘an opportunity for Toronto and Ontario to model a fresh way for different orders of government to work together in the interest of citizens and tax payers, and to honour the principle of local democracy’ (Ontario/Toronto, 2005). The legislation would be underpinned by an ability of the city to make equal partner agreements with the province and other governments including the Government of Canada. In parallel with the Task

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 87 Force the Governing Toronto Advisory Panel was established to define a possible future for the City’s own governance structure in anticipation of gaining the power to shape under the anticipated new legislation (City of Toronto, 2005a). Introducing the bill to give effect to these proposals Premier McGuinty proclaimed ‘the city of Toronto grew up a long time ago. Today, [its] legislation will catch up.’ All these attempts were designed to make amalgamation work in the context of widespread opposition and increasing doubts as to its appropriateness. The transition to the city of Toronto was painful, according to one leading academic commentator. Not only was it costly in financial terms, but also given the subsequent staff resignations, and in human terms too, the city has lost much of its former responsiveness. The creation of community councils without significant budgets or staff support, and without the ability to voice local concerns insulated the new administration, with its vast size and workload, from local dissent. As Vogel comments ‘the former participatory local political culture of the old city of Toronto has been lost and there is much concern that citizens feel little connection to the new city’ (Vogel, 2007: 13). Other critics argued that amalgamation has not served the city of Toronto well with regard to service levels, residential taxes, access to political representation and the working environment of the staff (Feldman, 2001). Some of Mayor Lastman’s previous supporters raised questions about the true cost of amalgamation and downloading. The promise not to raise taxes in the first term was difficult to sustain in the face of unexpected costs, with short-term salvation being provided by a one-off $125 million deal with the province to contain a threatened increase of 18.9 per cent in property taxes. Old arguments – aired throughout the post-war period – that there were serious diseconomies as well as economies accruing to the increasing scale of government, echoed in the city’s political life.

Greater freedom for Toronto The 1997–1998 amalgamations in Toronto, coupled with ‘downloading’ of public transit and housing costs to the cities in return for relief from education costs, sparked debate. For example, with full capital and operating costs of Toronto Transit Commission downloaded to the city, fares amounted to 80 per cent of operating costs – probably the highest in the world. The only revenue sources now were property tax, user fees and transfers from provincial government, mainly for transit infrastructure. The result was a new fiscal crisis, with large budget deficit predicted for 2001–2002. Resentment boiled over and led to the foundation of a broad-based movement to seek greater freedom for Toronto. The seeds had been sown earlier, at an October 1997 conference in honour of Jane Jacobs, where the view had been put forward that Toronto was falling behind its US neighbours in terms of infrastructure and facilities. US cities had more extensive local rights and more generous federal funding. There thus arose a proposal that Toronto should become a Charter city with powers in its own right. Provincial policies and programmes designed to be applied across Ontario often seemed inappropriate or limiting in the context of

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Toronto, while the city was subject to a large volume of special provincial legislation which a Charter would enable to be consolidated. Toronto was unable to provide financial incentives to business locations nor profit from the disposal of assets in the context of public–private partnerships. More importantly, the city had no power to form corporations in order to enter into partnerships with the private sector. The idea of a Charter sprang up as a way of establishing a greater degree of self-government, while it was also argued that Toronto needed to invest in infrastructure to compete in the global economy. Toronto was unique among the Canadian cities in that it sought to compete with its American neighbours but lacked the means to do so. In 1999 Mayor Lastman floated the idea to the press, the related idea that Toronto should have provincial status, putting it on a par with such cities as Ottawa or Berlin. Alan Broadbent, philanthropist and chairman of Avana capital, set up an expert group which produced a short Charter document setting out a plan for self-government for Toronto, with fiscal authority and citizen accessibility. It argued that devolving responsibility without the powers to raise funds or set policy ran counter to ‘the principles of subsidiarity and fiscal accountability’. After a follow-up study – Toronto: Considering Self-Government – Broadbent took the issue to the other big cities and fostered discussion between the mayors, pressing federal and provincial governments for more resources, power and autonomy to enable Toronto ‘to compete with world cities’. With support from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the mayors called for direct federal funding for the cities, by-passing the provinces. In 2000, the City of Toronto published Towards a new relationship with Ontario and Canada, arguing for Charter City status, reiterating the need for fiscal autonomy and calling upon the province of Ontario to enshrine the principles of local autonomy and local self-government in law (City of Toronto, 2000). Former Mayor Sewell joined the campaign for self-government. The argument was that a self-governing Toronto would maintain high-quality services, be better financed, have state of the art infrastructure, attract investment, provide its residents with a high quality of life, and encourage more citizens to participate in local politics. Charter status or some other form of self-governance is seen as the key that will lead to solutions for problems as diverse as those of public education, homelessness, transportation, waste disposal and the redevelopment of brownfield sites. There was a shared sense that the restructuring of the municipal governance regime in Toronto, be it through a charter or otherwise, is a necessary reaction to the pressures brought on by globalisation in general and Toronto’s position in the global competition among cities in particular. (Keil and Young, 2003: 95) The Provincial government remained unresponsive to the arguments, and informed observers judged that the prospect of ‘home rule’ for Toronto being achieved ‘is very remote unless, of course, it could be demonstrated that

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 89 such an arrangement is indisputably beneficial for the “city interest”, the “provincial interest”, and possibly even the “national interest” ’ (LeSage and Garcea, 2005: 334). When the GTSB argued for a larger regional government role, the Board, which was suffering from internal stresses, was put under review by the Ontario government, which abolished it in 2000 in favour of a less powerful Central Ontario Smart Growth Council. The GTSB had been unable in so short a space of time to establish itself as a significant player for the GTA, its abolition leaving Toronto without any overall machinery. On the other hand, the GTSB could hardly emerge as a ‘government of governments’, still less as an eventual Greater Toronto Council, insulated as it was from direct contact with the public. It was not easy for 52 municipalities to speak with one voice, nor convenient to the provincial government that they should do so. Ontario also passed a new Municipal Act in 2001, but this was seen as falling far short of conferring the autonomy sought by the cities, not least because it provided a framework for all Ontario municipalities and takes a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Nevertheless, the new Act took a small step forward in requiring the province to consult with municipal bodies and in December 2001 the government and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO – from which the city of Toronto had withdrawn) signed a memorandum of understanding on consultative principles and practices. Aside from the merits of the issue, the Charter movement was essentially a response to the upsurge of public engagement provoked by the unpopular amalgamation. As such, its roots lay in Toronto’s culture of participation. The transition team itself had noted that This is a city where people get involved. There are thousands of people who participate in one way or another in maintaining and improving the liveability of their neighbourhoods, their communities and their cities. [there is] a tradition of citizen involvement which must not be lost in the transition to the new City. What we have now should become the foundation on which to expand and enhance citizen participation. (Toronto Transition Team, 1996: 97) There is indeed a strong tradition of citizen participation in Toronto. As early as the 1960s, Canadian municipal governments were encouraged to make public participation a component of their decision-making processes due to the growing demand for citizen involvement in the municipal land-use planning process and community development (Graham and Philips, 1998). Public input in land-use planning was seen by the province of Ontario as an important source of information that would result in better plans and decisions. The province eventually mandated municipalities to include public participation as a pre-requisite to the development of official plans. Ontario’s initiatives to involve people were paralleled at the city level by community activists’ efforts to involve the public. As in many cities, however, official efforts to promote involvement were overtaken by spontaneous popular protest. Anti-growth sentiment in Toronto had reached its peak on issues of

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traffic and freeway construction, a turning point being the campaign to stop construction of the Spadina Expressway (Colton, 1980: 179). Today, Toronto’s politics are being built on this vibrant tradition. A civic engagement initiative was launched in 1999, founded on four principles of collaborative decision-making, accessibility, continuous improvement in citizen participation through the adoption of innovative schemes and community capacity building. Launching a discussion series on civic engagement in the new city brought to the surface a range of new and, sometimes uncomfortable, notions. These included a demand that residents be seen as citizens instead of consumers or clients; claims that the city has a responsibility to empower marginalised groups; and the need to overcome citizen distrust by demonstrating that their representations contribute to the decision-making process. To achieve these aims the city would have to reach out ‘beyond the elites who were already engaged’, promote civic education and ensure far more open access to information. Most important, the avenues provided for civic participation must be seen to be genuine. Public meetings should not be used to present preconceived solutions to the residents but rather seek out their solutions and enable them to engage with the values underlying policy choices. An ambitious framework for civic participation would be ‘a singular opportunity to craft a policy development process that is citizen centred and inclusive’ (City of Toronto, 2000a). A new City of Toronto Act that came into force soon after is to reflect these core democratic values of public participation and accountability (City of Toronto, 2003a).

Toronto as a global city The Charter campaign was inseparable from wider arguments about Toronto as a world city. Toronto’s strategy has been to seize the high ground in the debate about urban development, working in alliance with other major cities to campaign for federal, provincial and municipal government to work together to enable Canadian cities to compete in the global economy. These arguments served to mobilise widespread business support. In stressing the important role played by Canada’s cities, the Conference Board of Canada highlighted in 2000 the growing responsibilities of Toronto, including its greater share in the funding and delivery of social assistance programmes, in social housing programmes and responsibility for full funding for transportation and transit. The Board argued that Toronto was in competition with other cities in the United States and around the world for investment and quality jobs and that the city’s competitive advantage lay in its quality of life, which had been built upon past investment in the social and economic infrastructure. It warned, however, that Toronto’s future competitiveness was threatened by traffic gridlock, urban sprawl, homelessness, economic and social polarisation, pollution and deteriorating infrastructure. A business group, the Toronto Board of Trade, called for governance and fiscal reform and infrastructure investment, arguing that cities were vital to economic well-being, and that being ‘tied to the apron-strings of the Province’ was detrimental to prosperity. In 2001, the Board of Trade convened a CEO forum on

Toronto: a penchant for Metro reform 91 urban competitiveness, the resulting report – Strong City, Strong Nation – providing an analysis of the financial flows between Toronto and the provincial and federal government. Pointing to the substantial net outflow of finance from Toronto to other levels of government, the Board of Trade called for reinvestment to renew the infrastructure to support what it described as ‘the sixth largest government in Canada’. This was followed by papers from the Toronto Dominion Bank, whose characterisation of Toronto as ‘Canada’s primary economic locomotive in need of repair’, argued for growth policies that would link the strength of Canada’s cities to the strength of the national economy (City of Toronto, 2002). A report by city officers also stressed the need to enhance global competitiveness, recognising that Toronto was now in direct competition with other city regions in North America and around the world. Whilst enjoying the comparative advantage of an enviable quality of life, the city was nonetheless handicapped by its physical infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure was built before the 1970s and required renewal, whilst huge investments would be needed to provide the new additional infrastructure to make the city competitive. The transit system, a major determinant of economic vitality, was subsidised entirely by local property taxes between 1998 and September 2001. The inelasticity of property taxes meant that there was little potential to increase municipal revenue and expenditure in contrast to provincial and federal government whose revenues were highly buoyant. The downloading of responsibility after 1995 had transferred a substantial burden to Toronto at the very point in time when the city needed to modernise and promote itself as a global competitor (City of Toronto, 2001a). Analysis undertaken for the Greater Toronto Task Force provided firm foundations for these concerns. Meanwhile, the issues were moving up the federal government’s agenda. In 2002, the Prime Minister set up a task force on urban issues, headed by Judy Sgro, a Toronto MP, which recommended a stronger role for the federal government in leading a national strategy. All of these developments began to attract strong media interest with the Toronto Star running a year-long campaign for new deal for cities, while the Globe and Mail appointed a national urban-affairs correspondent to follow the progress of the debate. In February 2005, the Ontario Premier, Dalton McGuinty, announced that he would become personally involved in addressing Toronto’s problems and building better working relationships between city and province, an announcement that was welcomed by Mayor David Miller. Toronto’s budgetary problems were at the forefront of negotiations, with the province willing to devolve taxing powers to the city as part of the new deal and handover to Toronto a share of the provincial revenue that reflected the buoyancy of the economy – income or sales tax. ***** Toronto’s special claim to attention from urban analysts is found in its persistent search for more effective forms of metropolitan governance. The creation of Metro Toronto in 1953 provided a prototype for those cities that sought to reconcile area wide planning with local distinctiveness. As the precursor of other later metropolitan experiments, Toronto threw light upon the ways in which social

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divisions between comfortable suburbs and troubled inner-city areas could shape the patterns of urban conflict, and, at times, paralyse decision-making. Nor could any fixed and final resolution be achieved and the Toronto story is one of successive attempts to define an instrument of government for an ever-larger metropolitan area. Its problems and politics have not been unique in this regard, but the presence of a strong provincial government in a federal system has had profound effects – both positive and negative – on the city and on its ability to resolve its urban problems. Frustration over control from the provincial capital has fuelled a demand for much greater autonomy which Toronto’s political leaders consistently argue is a sine qua non of growth and prosperity in a global market place.

5

Berlin Candidate world city?

More than any other city considered in this book, Berlin is the prisoner of its past. A city divided between two mutually antagonistic regimes, Berlin’s development was restricted by the artificiality of the political and economic conditions which it inherited, and which in turn perpetuated it as the site of great power conflict. Berlin was the flash point in the tensions between East and West, while West Berlin showcased free enterprise and the Western way of life. Following reunification, Berlin achieved a degree of economic integration with its hinterland. It gained, too, an opening to market forces which produced an initial real-estate boom followed by near collapse. With the euphoria of reunification long since dissipated, Berlin is coming to terms with the more limited aspirations of its age of new realism. Today, less is heard of the rhetoric of Berlin the world city and, while land values soared, the boom in development faltered. Berlin, it is said, has become a victim of its own high expectations. Following the formal division of the city in 1948, the economic linkages between West Berlin and the East were severed, leaving the city wholly dependent on the West for both trade and aid. An enclave of Western capitalism within the Soviet bloc with fragile communications, yet isolated from the growing markets of West Germany and Western Europe, West Berlin suffered the economic consequences of political division. While Bonn benefited from being the capital of the new Federal Republic, attracting corporate headquarters and a good deal of modern industry, no foreign firms chose West Berlin as their base. Business incentives were introduced to overcome this locational disadvantage, but despite this the city’s economy remained backward and starved of inward investment. An island of capitalism, trade between West Berlin and its surrounding area accounted for only 2 per cent of the city’s GDP. With business struggling to survive, there were severe structural imbalances within the West Berlin economy. In employment terms, stagnant growth in the subsidised private sector was compensated for by employment in the inflated public sector. For reasons of political strategy, West Berlin had been given preferential treatment within the Federal Republic, with federal agencies and research institutes established there as well as State aid lavishly provided to science and culture. In the 1980s West Berlin prospered, and by 1990 employment growth and gross domestic product per head was almost twice as high as the rest of the Federal Republic.

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The Eastern sector of Berlin, including the historic central city, was situated in the Soviet zone. In 1949 East Berlin became the capital of the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its economic and cultural centre as well as the seat of its government. Although not a significant manufacturer, the GDR’s production, research and development were largely controlled from East Berlin through a centralised political and economic system. The central organs of government and party were located there, along with the headquarters of virtually every significant organisation, including the huge industrial conglomerates into which all German industry was organised. Having a substantial share of the GDR’s limited industrial production enabled the East German government to present Berlin as a showcase of socialism. With little peripheral or suburban development, East Berliners were mostly accommodated in high-density, high-rise apartment buildings, many of them in the city centre and along the border with West Berlin. With its wide boulevards and vast plazas, East Berlin also provided the ceremonial functions of a State that relied on displays of mass mobilisation to present to the world a picture of socialist unity. It was not always forthcoming: large parts of Freidrichstadt were abandoned following the June 1953 demonstrations against the regime, due to their ‘dangerous’ proximity to West Berlin. Shortly thereafter the quarter around Leipziger Strasse was torn down (Gorning and Häussermann, 2002: 334). With reunification, Berlin’s normalisation – its entry into the club of major capitalist cities – brought new social strains and divisions. These to a large extent arose from the shake-out of employment, for this one-time industrial city suffered massive job losses. As a result, and despite high expectations of economic growth following reunification, Berlin’s performance has been very much below the national average. Between 1991 and 1998 the GDP of united Berlin grew at little over half the rate of Germany’s, while on almost all other indicators the city’s economy lagged well behind the national trends (OECD, 2003: 17–26). Berlin’s story, then, is one of a divided city whose two sectors sought to exhibit and promote rival systems of free market capitalism and Soviet-style communism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies, Europe was swept by new expectations and aspirations. Nowhere more than in Berlin were these expectations brought into sharper focus as the one-time heart of two German empires became once again a capital city. The boom in private development, the magnetism that Berlin exerted on investors and promoters, together with the massive scale of privatisation of former State enterprises created a sense – a fragile sense, it must be said – of Berlin regaining its imagined former place as a great power capital at the heart of the new Europe.

Berlin’s uneven development West Berlin, with a population of nearly two million, enjoyed symbolic status in the Federal Republic of Germany, and indeed among the Western powers. It became increasingly apparent that West Berlin could not survive without substantial financial aid. The city received elaborate subsidies including a federal

Berlin: candidate world city? 95 payment to each employee as a ‘hardship bonus’ of 8 per cent, together with generous locational incentives for industry. These benefits were so arranged as to incentivise the mass production of goods in West Berlin for sale elsewhere in the Federal Republic, making Berlin the ‘workbench’ of German industry. Scarcely any economic activity took place in West Berlin without the support of such subsidies, with the inescapable effect of perpetuating outmoded processes in the production of uncompetitive goods. In West Berlin fiscal problems and social conflicts were taken as prompts for vigorous lobbying of the federal government for additional financial assistance. Here, remarked two prominent commentators, ‘was a city in which the best things in life were indeed free, or at least heavily subsidised’ (Häussermann and Strom, 1994: 3). West Berlin’s industrial enterprises never found their operations easy and they became all the more difficult after the erection of the wall. Materials supplied to West Berlin industries came by expensive and unreliable routes, never free from the risk of intervention and hold-ups by the East German authorities. High-tech manufacturing was hindered by the prohibition on the production of any goods of possible military significance. It was an unreal economy, dependent on generous incentives and credits to attract and retain businesses in West Berlin. In a gesture of defiance of the facts of political geography, the federal government insisted that much of its procurement should be from West Berlin factories that were probably otherwise nonviable. In addition, more than 40 per cent of the city budget was met by the federal government and some 50,000 people were employed in the city on federal government business, building in a labour inefficiency that would one day have to be tackled. West Berlin’s industrial weakness prompted a search for a new role for this beleaguered city, one that would establish it on the world map as something more positive than the potential flashpoint for a Third World War. Berlin’s precarious position was such that investing in the ‘city of culture’ was seen to be its only hope of survival (Richie, 1998: 1050). It was a matter of policy to maintain West Berlin as an international centre and as one of Europe’s principal cultural, musical and artistic locations. To become a world city of culture offered the prospect of placing Berlin once again on the international map, reviving the status that Germany had enjoyed – particularly among the avant garde – in the heyday of the Weimar Republic. The next three decades saw continued investment in the arts designed to recapture that prominence. A third university was founded, together with a film and television academy and specialist centres for art and music. Exchange schemes were established to give Berlin artists international exposure. The Berlin Philharmonic became Europe’s premier orchestra. The overnight building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 created a true ‘island city’, shocking the world. Thereafter, the edge went off West Berlin’s glitter. People – many of them the brightest and best educated – left for other, more normal locations, declining the offer of grants to retain them in the city. The population began to age and numbers fell. Population decline was ‘hastened by “wall fever” – the claustrophobia which struck after people had been locked in the city for too long, heightened by the ever present fear that they might after all

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become trapped behind the iron curtain’ (Richie, 1998: 777). This fear abated only with the signing of the Four Power agreement of 1971. Even then, the wall remained a grim, impassable barrier, claiming the lives of would-be escapees and calling forth extreme ingenuity from those who hoped to cross to the West. Cut off from its hinterland, West Berlin was, in the words of the composer, Ligeti, a ‘surrealist cage’, a bizarre prison in which only those locked up inside were free (Richie, 1998: 770). More prosaically, the city became within the space of a few years a quiet backwater, the normal traffic between East and West reduced to congested queues at check-points. The building of the wall also transformed the labour market of West Berlin. Typically a branch-plant economy with low productivity, surviving on generous subsidy, a third of West Berliners worked in manufacturing, compared with 23 per cent in other West German cities. Only 11 per cent were employed in hightechnology sectors, a substantially smaller proportion than elsewhere in West Germany. Relatively few of those employed in manufacturing had a higher education or a vocational training qualification. East Germans were the more highly skilled. Many possessed vocational qualifications, and large numbers were accustomed to cross the border for work in the West. Closing off West Berlin had stopped 50,000 East German workers from earning a living. Faced with a severe labour shortage, the Federal Republic instigated recruitment ‘treaties’ with a number of countries – predominantly in the Mediterranean – that could supply cheap labour. Some 500 recruitment centres were opened in these countries after the wall went up. By 1975, 10 per cent of West Berlin residents were foreign workers; by 1982 1 in 8, more than half of them Turks. Despite being viewed by the city and national governments as temporary workers, the guest workers increasingly sent for their families and settled in West Berlin. Ironically, of all West Berlin’s industries, it was tourism that flourished after the political divisions were made concrete by the wall. The Western side of the barrier became an impromptu art exhibition, with colourful murals, testifying to West Berliners’ freedom of expression, in contrast to the repressive regime beyond. Tourist guides hurried eager visitors to view the grimmest, if the most famous, of all West Berlin’s monuments. ‘Ich Bin Ein Berliner’ declared John F. Kennedy, gazing upon the wall in 1961, and millions in the West appeared to share the sentiment. But in the 1980s, with the lessening of international tensions, the wall was no more than a testament to past, more anxious, times: The continent’s political permafrost settled deeper, creeping over that open wound which West Berlin had represented . . . . By the time the Berlin Wall finally came down, twenty-eight years after it was built, and in the fifth decade of Churchill’s Iron Curtain, it had become an institution and a standing art gallery. The grassy zones between barbed wire and concrete wall had become an unintended nature reserve, undisturbed and filled with rabbits. (Walker, 1993: 159) Its fall in 1989 marked the end of more than four decades of division. But the reunified city would face new challenges.

Berlin: candidate world city? 97 Immediately after the reunification of Germany and of Berlin, the economic prospects for the city seemed bright. There were almost euphoric expectations of growth and opportunities for new money to be made from large-scale expansion of the service sector in Berlin. Yet, while unification was an event of monumental political importance, it failed to realise the promise of unity. The divisions between East and West, brought about by decades of Cold-War suspicion, remained deep. More than 10 years after reunification, the local politics of the Eastern and Western sectors of the city continued to reflect that Cold-War heritage. Although a grand coalition led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) governed Berlin, its primary base lay in the West. In the East, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the direct descendant of the East German Communist Party, continued to make a strong showing, polling well in the 1995 and 1999 Länd elections (McKay, 1996; 2000b). The high levels of support the party enjoyed reflected the widespread disenchantment of East Berliners with life after reunification. But its strength also lay in local roots, and its tactic of capitalising on local issues, while its electoral base drew strength from loyalty and discipline of the former communist party which ensured high levels of support among its supporters. But in so far as the PDS capitalised upon long-standing divisions, it arguably perpetuated what has been termed ‘the wall in the mind’. So, in the view of one commentator, Berlin, a microcosm of the divided Germany during the Cold War, remains a microcosm of a semi-united Germany (McKay, 2000a: 136). The two parts of the city were – and remain – quite different in physical character. The built environment of the West was diverse and innovative, reflecting modernist principles of functionalism and clean lines. That of East Berlin was monotonous and conformist, with Soviet-style neo-classical buildings, wide boulevards and monumental ‘workers’ palaces’ (Smith, 2002: 19). Thus, on the Western side of the wall, the area around the Tiergarten was densely developed, while the East was characterised by large open areas between Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstadt. Capital city buildings were absent from West Berlin, now a mere client statelet, while East Berlin’s imposing ministries and embassies signalled its status as the capital of the GDR (Schwedler, 2001: 27). These differences reflected in part the different demonstrative impulses of East and West. In the East, the substantial tenements of workers’ housing, signalled a commitment to welfare, while in the West, a showcase of business, leisure and culture. The architecture of the East symbolised power, that of the West, wealth. These divisions were overlaid, and in some respects exacerbated, by economic integration after 1990. Reunification marked a shift in the tectonic plates of world politics, but forcing the Eastern Länder into convergence with the prosperous West led to considerable economic disruption and social tensions. The opening up of Berlin and of the former East Germany led to rapid de-industrialisation and sharp rises in unemployment. The economic impact was cataclysmic. Employment fell drastically, and manufacturing employment by three-quarters in the space of just four years between 1989 and 1993. While business services and cultural industries expanded, it was the traditional industries that experienced catastrophic losses. In the West, the feather bedding of outmoded showcase industries came to an end. Exposed to world markets, protectionism abandoned, the bottom fell out of West Berlin’s

98 Berlin: candidate world city? industry. Adaptation to so rapidly changing a labour market inevitably lags. By July 1997 the unemployment rate in the Western districts stood at 17.2 per cent, higher even than the 15.5 per cent recorded in the Eastern districts (Krätke, 2000: 8). The structural weaknesses in the industries of the West were no longer protected from view. The subsidy regime had been geared to the manufacture of basic products for the Western German market; cigarettes, coffee and cocoa. Similarly, such enterprises as the electrical engineering giant Siemens manufactured in West Berlin to reap the benefits of generous subsidies. Yet here too, its operations were limited to the mass production of basic products. The abolition of the Berlin subsidies after 1990 had the entirely predictable consequence of closing operations. Many firms now chose to relocate outside the city, and sometimes outside Germany itself, demonstrating that West Berlin manufacturing had survived until then only on the largesse of the State (Schlusche, 1997; Krätke, 1999: 335). Nor could East Berliners escape the rapid and painful modernisation of the rest of the former GDR. A federal privatisation agency, the Treuhandanstalt, was established to break up, restructure and sell off 126 giant industrial combinations employing more than three million workers. Founded in a last-ditch attempt to modernise the East German economy in the final years of the GDR, it became after reunification a trust company of the Federal Ministry of Finance with a budget of nearly 40 million DM, charged with the responsibility of enduring an orderly transition, discouraging short-term speculative acquisitions and vetting and ranking acquisition bids. By 1992, the Treuhand held more than 11,000 enterprises, had sold more than 3,000 and had closed around 1,200 (Wild and Jones, 1994). The fate of industry in both West and East was remarkably similar. The industrial showcases of the West could not survive the now-open market once subsidies were withdrawn; those of the East suffered the fate of post-communist industries elsewhere – the acquisition, at knock-down prices, of industrial assets that could be put to better, more profitable uses. Inescapably, exposing the State-run industrial sector to world markets led to the closure of production sites in the Eastern part of the city. Many undertakings were incapable of being run profitably. Some were privatised, others collapsed. Large industrial units were broken up and acquired by Western corporations. And so Berlin’s economy – East and West – became dependent on head offices located elsewhere in West Germany. Economics, not politics, would determine Berlin’s future. When Berlin became the capital of the new Germany, with the federal parliament and government moving East from Bonn, many hoped that industrial decline would be compensated for by rapid service growth and modernisation in support of capital city functions. Multinational corporations opened branch offices in Berlin, generating a need for substantial office space. As in the relocation of other capitals – Florence to Rome, for example – a boom in building construction, much of it in the suburban parts of Berlin, arose to accommodate the increase in service sector jobs, with apartment houses for public officials and hotels for visitors. Some corporate headquarters were attracted to Berlin, including the headquarters of DEBIS, the service company operated by Daimler-Benz AG and the marketing headquarters of Daimler-Benz; the headquarters of Siemens transport engineering

Berlin: candidate world city? 99 and Adtranz; the European headquarters of Sony and the German headquarters of Coca Cola, Britannia Airways, Deutsche Bahn AG and Allianz (for north-east Germany). Many business associations and organisations also planned to transfer their head offices to the seat of political power in Germany and, by the end of 1997, 39 business organisations, including the leading associations in the industrial and financial sectors, had announced their intention of moving to Berlin. An increase in bureaucratic employment had knock-on effects on other sectors. The major television companies needed a strong presence in the nation’s new capital and employment in the media industries grew rapidly with gains in film production and print, with around 2,000 publishing houses, newspapers and journals located there. For the most part, the new employment opportunities opened up by Berlin’s spurt of growth primarily benefited Westerners drawn to the new Berlin. Residents found life hard. In the East, privatisation sparked labour unrest as workers discovered they were losing the extensive protection and welfare provision they had enjoyed under the former socialist government. More fundamentally, reunification actually perpetuated many of the divisions. The labour market in particular remained sharply divided between those with prestigious and those with modest jobs. These divisions, however, themselves had a marked geographical pattern. In 1991, average hourly wages of industrial workers in the East were around 50 per cent of those in the West, although the migration of East German workers, with their lower expectations of reward, would work over time to produce a new equilibrium (Krätke, 1992: 218). Berliners also experienced new residential divisions between the prosperous West and the deprived East. Berlin’s traffic problems intensified with the introduction of the Deutschmark, enabling the better-off to buy cars and achieve a degree of mobility in a city scarcely able to accommodate traffic growth. The black economy of informal activity became a significant sub-sector. As Krätke comments, the collapse of the former communist governments in eastern Europe has helped a shadow economy flourish within a very short time in Berlin. Dice and three-card tricksters, street vendors, beggars and black market dealers have now become a part of life on the streets of Berlin. (Krätke, 1992: 220) In all, the reunification failed to produce a single harmonised quality of life for Berliners. The euphoria evaporated, and the failure of the promised opportunities to materialise had a sobering, even depressing, effect on East Berliners who, as with the rest of the former GDR, reportedly felt like ‘second-class citizens’ (Münter and Sturm, 2003: 191). Recent survey research shows that those East Germans who had not profited from economic change display high levels of distrust, and indeed that there appears to be ‘a persistent culture of social distrust surviving among East Germans in spite of fundamental democratic transformations’ and that ‘East Germans who suffered economically from reunification are still as distrusting as they were just after the end of Communism’ (Rainer and Siedler, 2006).

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Objectively, they are not worse-off materially; subjectively, they are yet to be fully accepted socially in a united Germany, where the Westerners strut and the Easterners simmer. That said, in some aspects at least, standards in the East have been transformed. East Germans had highly restricted access to consumer durables under the GDR, while a telephone was the privileged possession of less than 1 in 5 of the population. In 1998 almost all East German households had a telephone, around half a personal computer, while dishwashers, almost non-existent in 1991, were possessed by more than 2 in 5 households in the former GDR just 7 years later (Münter and Strum, 2003: 190). Thus, Berlin has been transformed both economically and socially (Table 5.1). Crime increased in this more anarchic and diverse city, with Berlin now the most heavily policed of any German city. But these tensions between the gainers and losers produced new polarisations in what was already a deeply divided city. These changes were painful enough to not only native Germans, but also to Turkish and other Mediterranean immigrants, employed in low-skilled jobs, found themselves particularly hard hit by the economic strains of reunification. Turkish residents, in particular, suffered rising rates of unemployment and faced a boom in illegal working by migrants from Poland. The opening up of the East wiped out the comparative advantage of low-paid, adaptable, migrant workers in a high-wage economy.

Growth, change and regional planning Before the fall of the Wall, West Berlin was a self-contained city, its boundaries and its unique political status insulating it from the development pressures that the city would otherwise have experienced. With reunification, the unique characteristics of island Berlin disappeared. The West now had a vast and underdeveloped hinterland into which development could spill over, as well as a vibrant property market to drive future development. The East’s shabby border areas lay at the heart of a booming city and the vast tenement housing blocks came to be viewed as prime real estate. Rents and prices rose dramatically, commercial rents more than doubling between 1989 and 1992 (Table 5.2). The combination of vast spaces ripe for redevelopment and rising capital inflows guaranteed that the face of the city would be transformed. But how, and for whose benefit?

Table 5.1 Foreign population and migration, 2005

Berlin Brandenburg Germany

Foreign population

% foreign population

Net arrivals from outside Germany

466,518 67,029 7,289,149

13.7 2.6 8.8

14,529 386 78,953

Source: Federal Statistical Office and Statistical Offices of the Länder (http://statistik.badenwuerttemberg.de/Statistik-portal-).

Berlin: candidate world city? 101 Table 5.2 Area, population, density and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 2005

Berlin Brandenburg Germany

Area (sq km)

Population

Density per sq. km.

GDP per capita

891.85 29,478.61 357,092.9

3,395,000 2,559,000 82,438,000

3,807 87 231

$28,176 $22,459 $32,596

Source: Federal Statistical Office and Statistical Offices of the Länder (http://statistik.badenwuerttemberg.de/Statistik-portal-).

Prior to unification, two distinct land-use planning frameworks existed in West and East Berlin. A West Berlin land-use plan owing a great deal to the West German legal norms was developed for West Berlin in 1998 but did not go far beyond setting out some basic criteria. In the East, a general development plan dated back to 1980, but had done little to shape the pattern of development. In anticipation of reunification, the GDR adopted much of the Federal Republic’s planning law, and West German law came into effect there in 1990, although the provisions regarding planning left much undefined. The need for an effective land-use planning framework was acutely felt but a unified planning regime was slow to emerge, not least because the principal administrative departments were, until 1999, under the control of ministers from different parties. These political divisions in the new Berlin tended to produce either indecision or low-grade consensus. In some cases these political conflicts were institutionalised by the governmental structure, in which some planning processes were shared between the districts and the Berlin Ministries, bringing conflicts between city-wide and specific local interests to the surface (Schwedler, 2001). This, then, was the unpromising politico-legal framework within which the new city of Berlin had to cope with pressures for suburban growth which in other Western cities had worked themselves out over several decades. Berliners would have only years in which to restructure their urban fabric. Migration and population growth accelerated, with greater freedom of movement leading to rural–urban migration and sub-urbanisation. While the growth of government service stimulated demand for new housing in the city’s suburbs, Berlin’s urban policy focused on containing what might yet become a sprawling city region by developing housing for owner occupation within the city itself. Likewise, deregulation released the pent-up demand for land, bringing about widespread relocation of industry and burgeoning new industrial developments on the outskirts of Berlin. The process, long familiar in the West, of firms modernising by relinquishing old and unsuitable premises in favour of greenfield sites on the periphery contributed to rapid decentralisation, taking jobs to the periphery. So too did a new demand for retail and leisure development on out-of-town sites, driven in this case by rapid rises in car ownership. This outward explosion, together with the movement of urbanites to the peripheral areas in search of better housing and leisure property, threatened to overload the already crumbling transport infrastructure. Designated development centres were established to channel change by providing attractive locations for business and residential growth. Rail improvements

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assisted in this, reducing travel time dramatically and taking the pressures away from the metropolitan area. Fare levels were set to attract traffic, and passenger numbers doubled between 1994 and 2000, with the areas surrounding the more important stations acting as magnets for retail services and residential development. Berlin’s outer motorway ring also proved a powerful driver of development, drawing in new industrial development (including a joint venture between BMW and Rolls Royce) as well as retail centres, especially in the area close to the Schönefeld airport. Beyond the suburbs, development pressures in the Brandenburg region have been intense and in 1994 there were more planning applications for industrial development in Brandenburg than for the whole of North Rhine Westphalia, a region whose population of 17 million is equivalent to that of the whole of the former GDR. Prior to reunification, West Germany experienced marked uneven development, with urban locations preferred over rural, locations with access to the Rhine preferred to peripheral regions and the dynamic south to the northern rustbelt regions. The Federal Republic established a joint task force to improve the regional economic structure, with the participation of both federal and Länd tiers of administration. This step was soon overtaken by the new challenges of a unified Germany. A prime objective in the early 1990s was to overcome the inheritance of the ‘two Germanies’ and achieve some kind of regional balance, through a ‘single Germany’ programme of regional government aid and new policy directions. There was little chance of this succeeding, given the very different economic, spatial and industrial milieux of the two formerly separate States. Indeed, the former East and West Germany have diverged rather than converged in respect of employment, migration and economic output. Commentators have shown how the economic geography of the new Germany came to be dominated by a massive and increasing East–West imbalance (Wild and Jones, 1994: 12). Without doubt, the benefits of reunification had been oversold to the German people, and the costs underestimated. Chancellor Kohl’s vision of ‘blooming landscapes within a few years’ was not to be realised. A federal unity fund was created in 1990 for the reconstruction of the East German economy, but only limited sums were committed, reflecting a political nervousness about how far the West German tax payer would be prepared to pay for a single German State to come into being. Popular willingness to finance East German’s reconstruction has been eroding fast (Münter and Strum, 2003: 182–183). Funding increased later, as when between 1991 and 1999 the federal government transferred more than DM 1200 billion to the East, but much of this was spent on compensatory social benefits. The under-development of the East remains a long-term problem. Opening up Berlin to international investment brought to the city a wide range of interests in urban planning and development. Corporations, national and international, private investors and business associations and foreign governments, as well as the federal institutions, sought to engage with Berlin’s unique needs and opportunities. Professionally, architects, planners and their professional associations have always taken the closest interest in Berlin, and it was now open season for

Berlin: candidate world city? 103 projects and schemes. At the same time, Berlin’s own population took a vocal interest in the tide of planned change, often through newly established citizen and neighbourhood initiatives. Discussions among the many stakeholders were initially both facilitated and impeded by the absence of a formal, legal basis for planning in the early years following reunification. The Federal Republic’s 1988 land-use plan developed for West Berlin defined spatial-planning criteria, but these were already irrelevant by 1990. The GDR People’s Congress adopted substantial aspects of the Federal Republic’s legal codes regarding planning and construction just months before unification, ostensibly easing the transition to a single planning regime. Making that transition happen through the promulgation of the development of new planning instruments and codes was complicated by the fact that the new Berlin was governed by a coalition of parties. The two Länd departments dealing with urban planning – Building, Housing and Traffic, and Urban Development and Environmental Protection – were initially headed by ministers of different political parties. While the need for political compromise ensured that a wide range of interests was taken into consideration, the outcomes often failed to convince any of the parties involved. An important instance was the Planwerk Innenstadt adopted in 1999, only to be widely criticised as the child of consensus democracy, toothless and merely adding to the overflowing archives of Berlin’s development plans (Schwedler, 2001: 31).

Planning Berlin-Brandenburg The key issue in Berlin’s metropolitan development is the growing economic integration between the two Länder. Berlin and its hinterland together constitute the metropolitan area of Berlin-Brandenburg, which is managed through a co-operative arrangement between the Berlin Urban Development Authority and the Brandenberg Spatial Planning Ministry. This arrangement is unique in the German system, bringing together as it does two separate federal Länder. The joint planning area is characterised by striking disparities between the dense urban area and its sparsely populated hinterland. Almost three-quarters of the metropolitan population of around six million live in Berlin itself and its immediate suburbs. Population density in the city is close to 4,000 people per square km, compared with 87 in Brandenberg. And, while Berlin accounts for only about one-fifth of the joint planning area, its potential to dominate the region colours its fragile political relations. A regional planning committee was established in 1989 and the 2 federal Länder collaborated in the production of a common development programme 3 years later. This did little to ease the problems of managing competition, as Berlin and Brandenberg had different approaches and interests. So too did the local authorities within each Länd. Conflict and competition between the local authorities made it impossible for the first plan for the entire city of Berlin, produced in 1994, to address the disparities in investment, infrastructure provision and industrial development that the city inherited from the past.

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The sheer extent of these problems forced the pace of change in the planning processes of the Länder of Berlin and Brandenberg during the 1990s. The responsibility for spatial planning in the immediate post-unification period rested with individual local authorities. Within Brandenberg the local authorities soon began to compete with one another to attract development, seeking to exploit their control of land use as the vital lever for doing so. The newly elected mayors had yet to grasp their powers and duties, and Western developers had little difficulty in obtaining from them wide-ranging planning permissions for retail and housing development. The result was a spate of virtually uncontrolled speculative development (Häussermann, 2003: 114). The Länd government of Brandenberg had neither the power nor the incentive to intervene in this free-for-all, and development there was scarcely regulated during the crucial post-reunification boom. The conclusion was reasonably drawn that achieving effective planning of the Berlin region would have to wait upon a merger between the two Länder. Just such a proposal was decisively defeated in a referendum in 1996, and has not resurfaced since. A majority of Berliners voted for merger, seemingly moved by the prospect of prosperity in a larger and more powerful global city region. These arguments failed to attract the voters of Brandenberg, who would have been a minority population in a new merged Länd, and who reportedly feared a take-over by the West. The traditionally dominant role of Berlin as capital of the GDR and former national capital also provoked some resentment in the region, and the new local authorities in Brandenberg were also keen to assert their recently obtained political independence from higher level government. This was a factor which re-emerged with a vengeance when the federal capital was transferred from Bonn back to Berlin. Having failed to gain public support for their plan of a formal merger in 1996, the leading politicians declared their intention to at least strengthen collaboration between the two Länder. Annual joint cabinet meetings, and a joint session of the two Parliaments were established, and a policy co-ordination council set up to deal with matters that concern the two State governments and to recommend appropriate policy responses. Although a step forward in formalising co-ordination, results have been limited. According to one detailed study, reported ‘co-operation successes’ are effectively little more than formulaic declarations of intentions (e.g. ‘we progressed on the work which is intended to lead to future joint projects.’) or possibilities (‘we could achieve progress on several issues that are relevant for the future economic development of the region.’). In practice, the achievements fell far short of these aspirations (Hauswirth, Herrschel and Newman, 2003). Following the referendum in which the proposed merger between Brandenberg and Berlin was rejected, the governmental leaders in both Länder closed ranks to warn of the dangers of intensified competition between Berlin and Brandenberg. Brandenberg’s First Minister called for renewed co-operation with Berlin, warning that the city and its hinterland were competing more than what was in either’s interest for investors as well as for tax-paying residents. The Lord Mayor of Berlin confirmed the diagnosis, but announced that henceforth the priority would be to maximise the city’s tax yield and economic power. Berlin and

Berlin: candidate world city? 105 Brandenberg repeatedly accused each other of non-co-operation while at the same time continuously announcing their ‘goodwill’ and co-operative successes. Berlin lost several hundred firms to Brandenberg’s incentives schemes while Brandenberg accused Berlin of bribing firms with attractive packages to encourage them to remain. Certainly it appears that up to 1995, Berlin paid more in subsidies to firms locating in East Berlin than Brandenburg did in the hinterland areas (Hauswirth, Herrschel and Newman, 2003). In February 2000, a renewed attempt was made to enhance the city region’s competitive standing by building co-operation between the two Länder. The elected politician holding the economic affairs portfolio of each State was given a seat on the key economic agency, a decision which dated back to 1995, but had not been implemented at that time. Below the political level, a Joint Spatial Planning Department (JSPD) was established to work on metropolitan regional planning in anticipation of the eventual unification of the two Länder (Häussermann, 2003). The JSPD which began work in 1996 transcends the responsibilities of individual ministries, and brings together the spatial- and regional-planning powers with those of the Brandenburg Ministry for Agriculture, Environmental Protection and Spatial Planning. The JSPD works to identify suitable locations for planning projects which have importance for the region as a whole and co-ordinates them with other development initiatives. As an executive agency, it reviews and co-ordinates the individual plans of Berlin and its districts, and the municipalities, districts and regional planning communities of Brandenburg. The JSPD came into effect in March 1998 after endorsement by both State parliaments. Although effective at the operational level the new agency – much like its counterparts in some of the other cities covered in this book – is limited by the need to secure intergovernmental agreement on fundamental issues. When required, a joint regional government planning conference can be called to resolve conflicts and establish an overarching framework for regional development. In its initial sessions, the Berlin–Brandenberg joint planning conference moved to establish guidelines for regional development. These guidelines emphasised the need to achieve a balance of development between Berlin, the outermost parts of the metropolitan area located in Brandenberg and the remaining parts of Brandenberg. The aim was to bring about a degree of convergence in living conditions and use limited public resources to best effect. Accordingly, some 37 urban areas have been designated as development centres, while special planning arrangements have been made for the control of residential development in Berlin and its suburbs. The development centres are intended to provide counter-magnets to the city, while the plan for the city of Berlin itself aims to concentrate residential development in suitable designated areas and to protect open space and the natural environment. The plan for the development of Berlin-Brandenberg international airport anticipates up to 30 million passengers a year by 2010 with Berlin outstripping the capacity of Frankfurt/Main. The improvement of public transport is also key to the planning guidelines formulated by the joint conference, which emphasise railways with high-speed radial links between the metropolitan area and the development centres, channelling

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development away from Berlin to produce a more balanced regional economy. This is a major challenge, due to the scale of investment needed to modernise the former GDR’s outdated and notoriously inefficient railway system. A crucial priority was to re-establish the East–West railway links that had been dismantled by the GDR during the Cold-War years, and whose legacy in terms of poor communications across Berlin remain today. Not until December 1993 were the East and West subway systems connected up, while the rail networks remained largely separate. To a large extent the future of the development process in Berlin-Brandenberg depends on close collaborative working relationships across municipal boundaries. Yet despite having a well-conceived planning structure and a clear aim to produce a decentralised and integrated regional economy, implementation has proved difficult. German local authorities have a considerable degree of autonomy in local matters and may choose to ignore the joint development plan if it suits local interests to do so. Making the strategy work involves a considerable persuasive effort as some policies have generated political conflict. Although at a general level there is support for the notion of joint planning, the specifics of development and change can run into considerable opposition. At the Länd scale there are signs of changing political attitudes. Experiences in the Berlin-Brandenburg region since the failed merger attempt in 1996 have changed political and, eventually, public mind-sets. The PDS (the reconstructed former Communists of East Germany), vigorously opposed the merger of the two States in its attempt to cast itself as the true representative of Eastern German interests, but later favoured it on the grounds that it would help promote social and economic development in the region. Such development was necessary to strengthen the region’s position in the light of the eastward expansion of the EU and see off the threat of competition from other city regions. Within a few years of the failed referendum, just over three-quarters of the Berlin population (East and West) supported the merger (half would support an immediate merger), while in Brandenberg support was less clear. These concerns were reflected among the Brandenberg population in a roughly even split between proponents of ‘joining now’, ‘merging in 2010’, and ‘staying separate’. Berliners showed less financial concern, with just over half happy with an immediate merger, and the other half split between ‘merge later until 2010’ and ‘stay separate’ (Krätke, 2000). What future, then, for Berlin? A commission on this question had reported in 1992, setting out the options for the city. Among them was for Berlin to be a capital city with an industrial structure to match, and this was the commission’s recommendation. This popular aspiration, which has driven the boosterism and the opening up of development opportunities, may have been over-ambitious. Berlin has grown more slowly than other German regions with the continuing need for restructuring and rationalisation of the economy. Much of the new commercial development, the result of the post-reunification property boom, remained unlet for an extended period. There has been renewed questioning of this vision of Berlin’s future as unrealisable and increased criticism of the emphasis on prestige projects and large-scale redevelopment. Rather than imitation,

Berlin: candidate world city? 107 the critics argue, Berlin’s future development might be more firmly based on its unique position as the capital of central Europe, a bridge between old Europe and the new EU states.

The new Berlin: a world city? Following reunification, Berlin faced an opportunity unique among great cities: to construct for itself a new position in the global economy, one in which political symbolism would loom large. In response to what was seen as global competition the city’s politicians and administrators and business managers adopted a flamboyant boosterism reminiscent of the era of rapid urban growth in the United States. Marketing the city as a leading location for business was put at the forefront of the strategy in which Berlin was presented as being back at the heart of Europe, reclaiming its imagined past as a world city. Urban specialists presented Berlin as a centre of culture and science, as a technology centre and as a ‘city at the heart of Europe’. On this view, Berlin – just 70 miles from the Polish border – offered a bridgehead for penetrating the markets of Eastern Europe, with the Berlin metropolitan region providing an interface with the Eastern and Central European economic area, a ‘hub’ between Western and Eastern Europe (Krätke, 2000: 7–8). From this perspective, the Second World War and the devastation of the city with which it was concluded was seen somehow as an aberration, an interruption of the city’s glorious history as a rival to Paris and London. Yet this past was largely mythic. Germany was a young nation-state, unified only in 1870, its amalgam of territories and principalities giving it an inherently federal, decentralised nature. So Berlin was never the core national metropolis of Germany in the same way that London was of Britain or Paris of France (Knox, 1993; Cochrane and Jonas, 2000). Nevertheless, global imagery was manipulated ‘to place Berlin in the emerging pantheon of world cities, or, perhaps more accurately, world city wannabees’ (Cochrane and Jonas, 2000: 149). In 1949 the Bundestag had resolved that Berlin should resume its place as the national capital whenever unification was achieved and ‘general, free, fair, secret and direct elections . . . implemented in Berlin and in the Soviet occupation zone’ (Häussermann and Strom, 1994: 335). The question of Berlin as the national capital arose again the moment the wall was breached. It was now clear that reunification would follow, although the issue was regarded as too controversial for the reunification negotiations, and was set aside for the Bundestag to determine at a later date. The issue divided Germans, not least because in resolving it they would be making a statement about how best to reconcile themselves with their past. They were uncertain whether the capital of the united Germany should be a metropolis or a modest city – what sort of capital would be more appropriate for German politics and for representing the German nation. Both sides, those who favoured Berlin and those who favoured Bonn, entertained a vision of a new city of Berlin, able to grow freely after having cast off its fetters, rising like a Phoenix to become the dominant east-west

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Berlin: candidate world city? metropolis in central Europe. The city was seen as the hub around which the expected economic boom of the east European countries, no longer hampered by the iron Curtain, could revolve. Strong impulse for growth would result, opening a new future for Berlin as the metropolitan nucleus of Central Europe. (Brunn, 1993: 96)

Groups rallied round the claims of the rival cities: Berlin, the former Imperial capital, and Bonn, the capital of a stable and successful post-Nazi Germany. Berlin’s claims were not just to tradition but also played up the diversity and richness of the city as an appropriate setting for a modern capital, arguing that it would bring the country’s political elite into touch with the realities of everyday life. If the federal government were to move en bloc, something like a 100,000 jobs would be generated in Berlin, a factor which the supporters of that city cited as a desirable restructuring investment for the deprived Eastern part of Germany. There was more at stake in this decision than the relocation of the German ministries or their retention in Bonn, more even than the future of the old Reichstag building. As Richie posed the question, ‘should Germany adopt the western liberal democratic values represented by Bonn and continue to live in the safety of the post-war era, or should it risk confronting the ghosts of pre-1945 history which lingered in Berlin?’ (Richie, 1998: 851). Most Berliners assumed that the capital would return, and in March 1990, the slogan ‘we are the future capital of united Germany’ was being used in their campaign. On 20 June 1991 the Bundestag voted narrowly in favour of Berlin. By the year 2000 the federal government would re-establish itself there. However, such was the expense of the move – an estimated cost of 20 billion DM – and the intensity of the opposition of federal civil servants and their trade unions that a compromise had to be reached. Just 10,000 high-level jobs relocated to Berlin and about the same number of low-level administrative jobs moved from Berlin to Bonn. At the same time, the opponents manoeuvred to delay the implementation of the move, hoping that the Bundestag might rescind its 1991 vote in 1995. These uncertainties were ill-received by the investors who expected to inject cash into a rapidly growing capital city, with Sony postponing the relocation of its European headquarters to Potsdamer Platz, complaining that without capital city status Berlin ‘was just a provincial town’ (Häussermann and Strom, 1994: 337). The need to accommodate the new seat of government and the civil servants it would bring has been a major factor in planning the renewal of the city. Three development areas of governmental importance have been designated together with their adjacent neighbourhoods, and here the public authorities exercise enhanced powers over property sales and values. The first is the area around the Reichstag building. The second adjoins the rapidly developing business district along the Friedrichstrasse, in the former Eastern sector, where several federal ministries have been located. The third, also in the Eastern sector, is in the Spree Island area where foreign and other ministries took over and expanded the former heart of the GDR. Elsewhere, Berlin became a city of building sites. With few indigenous developers, the city was highly dependent on attracting outside

Berlin: candidate world city? 109 investors, marketing the opportunities for redevelopment in which corporations such as Daimler-Benz acquired large swathes of land in prime sites. Leading international architects were commissioned to design prestige office buildings on a par with those of the indisputable world cities. The Potsdamer Platz became a major tourist site, celebrated as the largest building site in Europe. With the decision to relocate the capital, and special depreciation allowances for building projects in Eastern Germany, Berlin experienced a massive real estate boom. The new office space requirement for the period up to the year 2010 was put at between 11.0 and 15.2 million square metres. More recent forecasts have calculated an additional requirement of between 5.3 and 7.5 million square metres for the period 1995–2005, something like the volume already built between 1991 and 1998. Berlin’s city centre and inner urban office blocks have in some cases displaced production facilities, aiding the movement of industrial companies into real estate. West German and West European companies owning industrial premises in West and East Berlin have closed or relocated existing industrial premises in order to release land for the construction of (often state-subsidised) office blocks (Krätke, 2000: 25; Strom, 2001). An example of this process was seen in the demolition of the Narva light-bulb factory in Berlin-Mitte, and the sale of the site to Munich real estate dealer, Härtl, who built a new office park there. The boom predictably led to over-supply, and more recently the conversion of production sites to office parks has considerably slowed down owing to the surplus of empty office space (Krätke, 2000: 25). Meanwhile, an ‘industrial site preservation strategy’ was adopted by the Berlin Senate in 1993, aiming to maintain 21 selected industrial sites in the urban area by preventing speculative land sales. Early in 1997, the Senate Department of Urban Development made a further attempt to arrest the trend by listing industrial sites with special sectoral characteristics deemed worth preserving (Krätke, 2000: 26). Not all the changes in Berlin’s urban fabric take the form of large-scale redevelopment by eager property developers. The process of bringing land into the development process in Berlin, as elsewhere in the former GDR, was impeded by a restitution scheme which aims to restore to former owners land appropriated by the Nazi or communist regimes. Although this constraint slowed the initial frenetic pace of redevelopment, new ways were soon found to circumvent it. First, investors were able to proceed with land development where they could show significant job creation, while others sought to go into partnership with claimants for prime sites, thereby speeding up acquisition and development once the claim had been adjudicated. There has also been a major drive to rehabilitate the East’s mass housing projects, in some cases by handing over ownership to housing associations. The task is daunting. East Berlin’s prefabricated housing estates were constructed on a vast scale; the Marzahn estate built in the 1970s and 1980s was Europe’s largest estate with 60,000 flats housing 165,000 people. The housing association managing this estate has embarked on an extensive refurbishment programme, personalising flats and buildings bringing colour, landscaping and play facilities to what were once grey, monolithic neighbourhoods.

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Berlin: candidate world city?

At the other end of the scale lie Berlin’s public buildings and spaces. The development politics of Berlin became, and remained, centered on symbolic developments in a kind of battle over the identity and future fortunes of the city. In part, this reflected continuing historical tensions between the capitalist West and the socialist East with undertones of the claimed authentic identity of Berlin, of the old Prussia and of the new Germany itself. These tensions had surfaced just before unification with competition between East and West Berlin. Each had sought to define itself as more ‘real’ in the celebrations commemorating the 750th anniversary of the city’s foundation. They surfaced again in Berlin’s designation as the new national capital. The post-unification agenda was not just to redefine Berlin as a competitive world city, but to project it as an embodiment of the new Germany – the workshop of German unity – in which German people would rediscover themselves. The reconstruction of the Reichstag was the most powerful symbol of a regained capital status, shot through, as that great building is, with some of the defining moments of German history. Almost as important as the construction of a new government quarter centered on the Reichstag was the investment in public culture, with primary focus on rehabilitation and expansion of the great museums and the creation of a new German historical museum. In the world city stakes this was more symbol than substance. Many planners and architects articulated a different vision, seeking continuity with the City’s Prussian past and hostile to any attempts to ‘Manhattanise’ Berlin. Tensions arose between local professionals and the visiting international figures who were contemptuous of what they saw as a backward-looking localism. In actuality, pre-unification Berlin had witnessed a remarkable resurgence of urban design at the 1984–1987 International Building Exhibition (IBA). The two traditions that emerged there both sought, in different ways, to reconcile the future with the past. The ‘old’ IBA focused on rehabilitation and conservation, combined with selective demolition to create new space. It promoted a ‘bottom up’ approach ‘based on very close working with local communities’. The rival ‘new’ IBA addressed areas already largely cleared, with a building programme ‘that remembered the essential physical, social and economic characteristics of the 19th century block’ (Ward, 1995: 321). These projects were intended to create a genuinely European alternative to the rampant Americanisation which, in shaping West German cities in the 1980s, promoted fierce reaction. The rhetoric of the new capital played on the image of ‘a city becoming something greater’. The economic indicators told a different story. Berlin’s economic weight within Germany has further declined in relation to the situation prevailing prior to reunification. Berlin’s share of total employment fell from 5.0 per cent in 1989 to 4.6 per cent in 1992 and further to 4.3 per cent in 1997 (Gorning and Häussermann, 2002: 335–336). As Gerhard Brunn judges, Berlin will not be the financial centre of Germany because by law Frankfurt will remain the seat of the federal bank (Bundesbank) and therefore all of the important banks which have their headquarters in Frankfurt today. Even if there is remarkable economic progress in East Germany it is doubtful whether

Berlin: candidate world city? 111 Berlin will really join up with the huge agglomerations or even larger dynamic regions in western Europe – the ‘golden triangle’ of London, Paris and Brussels, the ‘blue banana’ from London to Milan or the sunbelt from Milan to Barcelona. Berlin will be the most important city in Germany . . . but it will not become a real megalopolis. (Brunn, 1993: 112) Indeed, no large company from the financial sector came to Berlin after reunification. The stock market also remained a small regional trading affair, and plans for a large trade floor in a new chamber of commerce building failed to materialise. Berlin’s share of public employment is also on the decline. This is due in part to the ‘liquidation’ of the party and State apparatus of the GDR, but also to the financial problems of Berlin, which today has to fund the greater part of its own budget. The Western part of the city is no longer the showplace of the Federal Republic, and so fewer funds flow from Bonn to Berlin now than before 1990. In the fiscal crisis that ensued, Berlin’s governors turned, like their counterparts in many other cities, to the doctrines and practices of administrative reform and the new public management.

Governing Berlin Following the unification of Germany in 1871, Berlin, the Prussian capital and putative capital of the new Germany, was reorganised as an administrative district. Initially, Berlin was subordinate to the province of Brandenburg. Later, power was largely transferred to the chief of police, effectively a prefect answerable to the Prussian Minister of the Interior. This arrangement was consonant with the Austro-German constitutional tradition in which local authorities exercised wide powers, not in their own right, but on behalf of the State. With rapid urbanisation and the growth of mobility in the early twentieth century, the problem of governing Berlin became acute. However, the institutional structures and the fragmentation of local government impeded effective approaches to the management of urban problems. In 1920 the Prussian State Assembly passed an Act giving effect to a new pattern of territorial government that engulfed the rural communities and small towns to produce a Greater Berlin. Thereafter, tensions between Berlin’s Mayor as the central authority and the ambitious districts – not themselves fully fledged local authorities – coloured the city’s politics until democratic institutions were suspended by the Nazis after 1933. At the end of the Second World War, Berlin fell under the control of the Soviet, American, British and French victors, and it was not until 1950 that the city’s government was put on a proper footing. The constitution of Berlin dates from then although, due to the partition of the city, it could not be applied to the Eastern sector until 1989, when the Eastern districts simply adopted the structure and processes and regulatory framework of their Western counterparts to create a single integrated city. Under the constitution, Berlin was reorganised with a two-tier structure in which the upper tier – the Senate – predominated. Its role was to be

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responsible for those matters which were important to the city as a whole or which urgently required uniform treatment. The special status of Berlin as both a city and federal State government facilitated a high degree of centralisation, leaving the districts with essentially local functions. This dual role as a directly elected municipality and a Länd in the federal system gives the city representation in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. Under this system, Berliners elect a Länd parliament for a four-year term. In recent reforms, the parliament itself was slimmed down from 200 members in 1991 to 130 and the Senate reduced in size to its present 9 members from 18. Elected by the parliament, the Senate is headed by the Lord Mayor and comprises up to eight ministers (Senators), whose names the Mayor submits to parliament for approval. Each Senator heads a ministry or department (finance; interior; justice; urban development, housing and transport; economics, labour and gender; science, research and culture; school, youth and sport; social welfare and health) to which are subordinated a number of single-purpose agencies. A process of parliamentary approval sets policy and the Lord Mayor has little authority to establish it himself, sharing responsibility with a range of other bodies. A semi-independent Stadtforum advises the Senate on urban policy and hosts conferences on current concerns in urban development. Tourism development and promotion is the principal responsibility of Berlin Marketing GmbH, which brings together the city of Berlin, private companies and other public agencies (Aaronovitch et al., 1996). At the second-tier level, the city’s district authorities have populations of up to 200,000, compared with London boroughs, or the arrondissements of Paris (Table 5.3). Nevertheless, despite their size and administrative capacity, these authorities lack real autonomy, do not enjoy their own legal capacity and are formally the subordinate to the Länd. Borough administration is conducted by a borough mayor assisted by five heads of department elected by the assembly. The assembly is served by a borough office whose membership it selects and whose activities it monitors. The assembly determines borough-wide policy and holds the Mayor and heads of departments to account. Assembly members have a role to play in drafting the budget and determining the local development plan, although the final authority rests with the House of Representatives of the city-state of Berlin (Map 5.1). The borough assemblies are highly partisan, appointing heads of department and establishing the membership of committees on party lines. The break-up of the Social Democrat/Christian Democrat coalition which had formed an administration upon unification was followed by an interim SDP government in alliance with the Greens and with support from the socialist PDS. The CDU was then heavily defeated in the premature election of 2001 and, following prolonged negotiations, a ‘red-red’ coalition was formed between the SDP and their former communist opponents. The new government sought to distance itself from the past by promoting decentralisation as a counterforce to bureaucratic inertia. A wide range of functions is being hived off or delegated to the boroughs under a 1998 law to bring about administrative reform in Berlin. It was in order to undertake these new duties effectively that the borough structure itself was reformed, reducing their number, redrawing boundaries and increasing their

Reinickendorf

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Mitte

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Marzah

f

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Lich

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Map 5.1 Berlin.

Table 5.3 Borough populations, 2005 Borough CharlottenburgWilmersdorf Freidrichshain-Kreuzberg Lichtenberg Marzahn-Hellersdorf Mitte Neukölln Pankow Reinickendorf Spandau Steglitz-Zehlendorf Tempelhof-Schöneberg Treptow-Köpenick Berlin

Population

Area sq. km.

315,473

64.72

261,734 258,926 250,547 323,187 305,940 354,053 244,430 225,097 288,862 333,330 235,411 3,396,990

20.16 52.29 61.74 39.47 44.93 103.01 89.46 91.91 102.50 53.09 168.42 891.82

Source: Berlin State Statistical Office (http://staistik/berlin.de/).

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Berlin: candidate world city?

financial autonomy and powers over land use. The streamlining produced a greater uniformity of borough government, and was intended to facilitate co-ordination and reduce costs. The overall effect was modest, but the changes in district powers promoted a greater degree of politicisation, with the district mayors becoming more visible and significant figures. Nevertheless, the dominance of the city of Berlin is unchallenged, as its power derives in part from its status in the federal system and in part from the symbolism of a renascent national capital. Berlin’s unique histories – both East and West – bequeathed to the present day city an over-expanded public sector. In the East, the communist regime sustained a vast government machine, while in the West public service was used as an instrument of job creation to keep unemployment low. Even as late as 2001 Berlin’s total workforce included a quarter of a million public servants, their number having been hugely reduced from its former level by the transfer of functions to private companies and the privatisation of gas and electricity supply. The great majority of the remaining officials are employed in the State administration itself, with 50,000 in the boroughs and smaller numbers employed in universities, health care and public transport. Duplication, remoteness, lack of co-ordination and under-investment in information technology meant that government was ill-equipped to assist the adaptation of the city’s economy. A long-term modernisation strategy was required to reframe both the structure of the administration and the role of its staff, shifting the focus from a traditional inward-looking bureaucracy to modern governance, oriented to service users. Core functions will be retained, while other public tasks may be carried out by other bodies with the city government ensuring that they are fulfilled. This shift towards an enabling model with a greater service orientation has been difficult to achieve in Berlin, not least due to the weight of the German administrative tradition. Particularly influential has been a major consultancy agency (KGSt) operated on behalf of the larger local authorities in Germany. KGSt advocated a much clearer division of politics and management, greater use of contracts and greater administrative integration. Their proposals are radical and intended to bring about a wholesale increase in the accountability of public bodies through management accounting, organisation redesign and the reform of personnel practices (Röber, 2002). During the 1980s, the administrative reform movement gathered momentum throughout West Germany. Most West German Länder had already carried out sweeping reforms of local authority boundaries in pursuit of greater administrative efficiency (Wollmann 2000a). The most pronounced changes came in East Germany in the latter days of the GDR. A new Municipal Charter of 1990 provided for the extensive democratisation of local councils. Although the new charters endorsed the principle of representative democracy they also embodied elements of direct democracy and provisions for recall by referendum. Once the new Länder were established and their Parliaments elected they adopted these charters. Following unification, the fashion for New Public Management (NPM) swept the new Germany, its promotion sceptically described as a ‘media miracle’.

Berlin: candidate world city? 115 By the early 1990s, privatisation and deregulation measures were being applied to telecommunications and the postal system. Yet unlike many other countries, NPM in Germany appears to have been a grassroots movement, pushed from below rather than imposed centrally. It was energised by a political culture that stressed the value of localism and decentralisation favoured by practitioners, rather than as a political strategy for rolling back the frontiers of the State. Democracy and accountability were as central to the programme as the more common concerns with efficiency and the fiscal crisis. Accordingly, the movement challenged the traditional German administrative culture, dominated as it was by legal controls and rigid hierarchies and characterised by fragmented authority and a lack of policy coherence. By promising ‘the best of both worlds to both sides’, the German variant of NPM won a remarkable consensus across the spectrum (Jann, 1998). The introduction of direct election of mayors, with provisions for recall by local referendum led to 1 in 10 of the mayors in Brandenberg losing their positions as a result of recall initiatives. Beyond mayoral recall, East and West German Länder also introduced binding local referenda with a two-stage process, in which a successful initiative can trigger the referendum itself. There are provisions for referenda primarily aimed at legislative change, while petitions on budgetary matters, taxation, public enterprise charges or staffing matters are off limits, as are petitions for constitutional change. The signatures of 1 per cent of eligible voters are required for an initiative, the admissibility of which is scrutinised by the Senate department of the interior. The final decision is taken by the Senate and, if rejected, can be subjected to an appeal to the constitutional court of the city-state of Berlin. For referendum proposal to succeed, at least 50 per cent of the eligible voters must participate or, where there is a less than 50 per cent turnout, one-third of the eligible voters must support the proposition. At the borough level a process of citizens’ initiatives has been introduced which, while less than a referendum, serves as a request to the borough assembly to take a particular action. Such an initiative requires the support of 2 per cent of eligible voters. In practice, the record of this scheme, first introduced in West Berlin before unification, has not been impressive. There has been an on-going debate about turning citizen initiatives into a full referendum-procedure, following the reforms of borough government which produced larger and more remote units (Röber, 2004). Greater citizen responsiveness has also been sought through one-stop shops, to obviate the need for the citizen to contact a wide range of agencies, and the city government requires each borough to establish five such contact points. At first sight the centrally driven reconstruction of Berlin offers little scope for public participation. The Stadtforum, established in early 1991 to enable the strategic planning issues for the city to be publicly discussed by elected representatives, local associations and independent experts makes issues of urban design more accessible to the public, but does not notably democratise the planning process. For example, in respect of Potsdamer Platz the Stadtforum is able to discuss issues of urban design, traffic schemes and open space but not

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Berlin: candidate world city?

the central directives that stipulate that Daimler-Benz should use its quarter million square metre site for a service complex. Critics argue that the Stadtforum functions as no more than ‘a safety valve to allow the active community of urban planning experts to let off steam’ (Krätke, 1992: 232). Similarly, the redevelopment of entire districts for federal government purposes admits little discussion and input from local residents, even where their homes may be under threat. Nevertheless, the planning commission charged with managing the transition has sought to work on consensual lines, regularly soliciting the views of district representatives. The city’s building department has worked with a coalition of citizen groups to ensure extensive consultation with local residents and to facilitate their participation in the decision-making process. The Berlin Urban-Development Administration also responded to criticisms of inadequate public involvement by creating the StadtProjekte (City Projects), a series of events at which the more specific problem-based questions that fall between the classical field of urban planning and other disciplines can be addressed. Meanwhile, Planungsweerkstätten (Planning Workshops) involve relevant experts and take on and analyse concrete planning out in the field. Beyond this, a form of Quartiersmanagement has been developed to work with neighbourhoods characterised as being ‘under-developed’, seeking to upgrade these areas both socially and physically. There are few large cities where there has been a greater amount of public discussion over questions of urban development. At the same time, it must be said that all this discussion has irritated some Berlin planners, and that some politicians have expressed deep reservations about public participation in urban planning (Schwedler, 2001: 36). ***** Berlin today stands for an aspiration that many cities have come to share, but which has fallen some way short of achievement. In terms of urban change, Berlin’s growth has paid little heed to the administrative divisions in the new Germany, and the merger of the two Länder will do little more than remove impediments to a development process which, while it falls short of creating the world city of corporate headquarters, nevertheless is intense and fast-paced. Berlin’s significance in world affairs has always been political, rather than economic, and in the process of German reunification the city came to stand for a national, rather than an urban, ambition. In that sense, then, Berlin was a symbol of a nation reunited, and seeking to regain its prominence on the world stage. As such, Berlin remains the imagined city par excellence.

6

Hyderabad Hi-tech hub of a rural State

Located in the State of Andhra Pradesh in southern India, Hyderabad was founded in 1591 by Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah whose family ruled the Deccan plateau for more than 150 years. The city grew within the heyday of the Mughal Empire and the Nizams of the Asif Jahi dynasty ruled the Deccan until 1948. Under the Nizams, Hyderabad was the largest Princely State in India with an area as large as Great Britain. Following independence, the State of Hyderabad merged with the Union of India and when, in 1956, India was reconstituted into a federation of linguistic States, it became the Telugu-speaking State of Andhra Pradesh with the city of Hyderabad as its capital. The population of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Area today is around six million. Spread over an area of nearly 1,900 sq kms, the metropolitan area accounts for almost a third of the State’s urban population, and includes the city of Hyderabad (173 square kms), its 10 surrounding municipalities (419 square kms) and 125 rural bodies. Hyderabad ranks fifth in population among the major metropolitan areas in India. In common with other Indian cities, it has experienced high and continuing rates of population growth in which it now ranks second among the major cities. The city is well provided with educational institutions, industries, research and training institutions. Since the 1990s the State of Andhra Pradesh has been actively promoting itself as a world-class Information Technology (IT) location, and Hyderabad has succeeded in attracting investment from such companies as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, and over 150 companies have registered with Hyderabad Software Technology Park. The aim of this elaborate promotional programme is to attract companies to create sufficient critical mass to allow Hyderabad to develop as a high-tech city. Recognising the scale of such other world’s leading sites as Silicon Valley and Malaysia’s Multi-media Super Corridor, the city of Hyderabad has developed land on the outskirts for a large-scale expansion of the existing Cybercity. And having established itself as a location for the development of world-class IT facilities, Hyderabad has set out to become a world leader in e-Government. The development of Hyderabad cannot be separated from the wider economic development goals of the State of Andhra Pradesh. Drawing upon the best practices within and outside the country, Andhra Pradesh Vision 2020 outlines the development goals of the State in the first two decades of the twenty-first Century.

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Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State

It enumerates the potential resources of the State and recognises the opportunities opened up by the liberalisation and globalisation processes and the information revolution. It also identifies select growth engines to ‘leverage’ the strengths and advantages in various sectors and regions. It advocates a strategy of leapfrogging growth while maintaining equity and realising sustainable improvements in the living standards of all sections of the population. The growth engines are selected based on an evaluation of regional and sectoral potential to build on accumulated strength, to make significant impact and to exploit opportunities created by global trends (GoAP, 1999). While recognising that the growth engines will be developed mainly by private sector investment, Vision 2020 emphasises the need for the State Government to adopt a new role, from being primarily a controller of the economy to a facilitator and catalyst of economic growth. The orientation of the government towards economic growth includes providing specialised infrastructure; deregulation to encourage investment and facilitate business decisions; accelerating the development of skills and conducting focused and effective promotion to market the opportunities the State offers to investors. A specialist section of the State’s document – Urban Vision 2020 – calls for a strategy for urban growth that will achieve clean, green, comfortable, safe and liveable cities. This is to be achieved through an integrated approach that blends urban development and infrastructure planning, sound fiscal policy and systems to manage and deliver urban services effectively. Predicting that the city would have established itself as a leading information-based society, a leading businessman commented that this has become possible only because the city’s ‘first priority was building world-class infrastructure, laying the foundation for broadband networks, implementing e-governance initiatives aimed at streamlining India’s notorious bureaucracy and amending existing legislation to make it easier for newcomer companies to set up shops’ (India Today, 2004: 38). If exploiting the information revolution is Hyderabad’s first claim to distinctiveness, the second is its far-reaching programme of institutional reforms, designed to strengthen municipal self-sufficiency, with State control replaced by local management with vigorous public participation. The goal is to have public services provided through autonomous regulated corporations instead of government departments and municipalities. Hyderabad, then, brings together the two otherwise distinct global processes of economic transformation and public management revolution in a city undergoing one of the world’s most rapid rates of change. These ambitious plans notwithstanding, Hyderabad struggles, like any other city, to cope with the challenges of urbanisation, the key issues for the future of the metropolitan area arising from the intersection of intractable land-use planning, traffic and transport problems.

The challenges of urban growth Still predominantly rural today, in 1901 a larger proportion of the population of what is now the State of Andhra Pradesh lived in villages than was the case for India

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 119 as a whole. At the census of that year, 9.65 per cent of the total population lived in cities and towns as against 10.84 per cent for India. Over the next century, the pace of urbanisation in the State more or less followed the pattern for the country as a whole. At the 2001 census the proportion of population living in urban areas in the State stood at 27.08 per cent compared to 27.78 per cent for the country. Table 6.1 shows the trends in urbanisation in Andhra Pradesh for the period 1901–2001, with rapid urbanisation gradually outstripping the overall population increase. The urbanisation process intersects with a changing economic structure, in which the service sector is emerging as the most important growth sector. The share of agriculture and allied activities in the State’s GDP is decreasing, while that for the tertiary sector shows a rising trend (Table 6.2). These changes in economic structure will drive the urbanisation process still further. First, with the concentration of services in the urban areas, sectoral shifts are expected to accelerate the movement of population from rural areas to Hyderabad and other towns. Second, the modernisation of agriculture sustains a high proportionate contribution to GSDP, masking the extent to which agricultural employment is falling, displacing large numbers of people from the land. Third, India’s economic reform and liberalisation policies are likely to sustain further urbanisation, as with the opening of the Indian economy since 1991, cities and towns are becoming the centres of foreign and domestic investment. Fourth, the IT revolution, so significant in India, has concentrated on cities as the chosen centres for locating knowledge-based industries. The urbanisation process The Hyderabad Metropolitan Area developed at relatively low densities, encompassing peripheral areas, with residential and industrial development often Table 6.1 Trends in urbanisation in Andhra Pradesh: 1901–2001 Census year

Total population

Total urban population

Proportion of population in urban areas %

Decennial increase in urban population %

1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001

19065921 21447412 21420448 24203573 27289340 31115259 35983447 43502708 53549673 66508008 75727541

1839750 2165095 2187317 2694147 3665928 5420325 6274508 8402527 12487576 17887126 20503597

9.65 10.09 10.21 11.13 13.43 17.42 17.44 19.31 23.32 26.89 27.08

– 17.68 1.03 23.17 36.07 47.86 15.76 33.92 48.62 43.24 14.63

Source: Census of India, Series-29 Andhra Pradesh – Provisional Population Totals, Paper-2 of 2001.

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Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State

Table 6.2 Sectoral contributions to GDP (State) Andhra Pradesh: 1993–2001 Industry classification Primary sector Agriculture Livestock Forestry & logging Fishing Mining & quarrying Sub Total: primary Secondary sector Manufacturing Registered Un-registered Electricity, gas & water Supply Construction Sub Total: secondary Tertiary sector Trade, hotels & restaurants Transport, storage & communications Railways Transport by other means & storage Communications Financing, insurance, real estate & business service Banking & insurance Real estate, ownership of dwellings & business service Community, social & personal services Public administration Other services Sub Total: tertiary

1993–94 %

1995–96 %

1997–98 %

1999–00 %

2001–02 %

24.62 5.49 1.16 2.03 2.44 35.73

21.97 6.04 1.07 1.97 2.26 33.32

17.16 5.94 0.98 2.08 2.52 28.68

17.79 6.27 0.93 2.32 2.62 29.94

17.15 7.09 0.87 2.47 2.79 30.37

9.82

10.36

11.00

9.85

8.93

4.65 2.49

5.33 2.69

5.52 2.84

5.00 2.92

4.93 2.67

4.96 21.92

5.17 23.55

5.66 25.02

5.71 23.48

5.96 22.49

13.07

13.59

13.59

13.42

12.98

1.55 3.88

1.58 3.93

1.74 4.05

1.58 3.84

1.58 3.85

1.08

1.23

1.73

2.07

2.53

3.53 6.61

3.89 6.41

4.84 6.75

5.06 6.65

4.82 6.81

4.32 8.30 42.35

4.32 8.19 43.14

4.63 8.97 46.30

4.83 9.13 46.58

5.05 9.51 47.14

Source: State Domestic Product of Andhra Pradesh (From 1993–1994 to 2001–2002), Directorate of Economics & Statistics, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 2003.

running well ahead of the provision of basic infrastructure. Rapid residential growth has led to demands for infrastructure development while driving land prices to the point where industrial expansion has been discouraged, and is now largely concentrated in one municipality and in a growth corridor to the north-west. Commercial growth has been concentrated in the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) area while all parts of the metropolis experienced residential growth pressures.

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 121 Proximity to the employment opportunities offered in the central area has been the principal driver of growth, giving rise to massive increases in commuting and placing increasing burdens on an inadequate roads network. The lack of planned development has also meant there is no relationship between housing and urban infrastructure for the workforce, leading to long commutes to the new areas of employment growth and consequent extreme pressures on the transportation system. One indication of the imbalance between residential development and infrastructure provision is that the municipality of Hyderabad claims as much as 63 per cent of all the water supply in the metropolitan area, while only 53 per cent of the population live there. Well over 80 per cent of the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad area enjoys water supply, whereas in the surrounding 10 municipalities this figure is much lower with 3 of them at 40 per cent or less. Water supply also holds back industrial development, with the 2 areas of the metropolis with high industrial growth rates having the least extensive supply of water. What is true of water supply is also true of sewage and solid waste. Again, the MCH area has the most extensive provision, while in the surrounding areas as little as a third is covered by the system. During the 1980s and 1990s, the population of Hyderabad itself grew rapidly, due in part to the movement of people from rural areas of Andhra Pradesh to the city and its suburbs. In part, growth was a mere statistical artefact, with the redrawing of the city boundaries encompassing the suburbs, so drawing their hitherto excluded population into the city. Nevertheless, as with other large cities in India, Hyderabad faces all the problems of rapid expansion, resulting in largescale urban sprawl and dramatic changes in the patterns of land use. Residential, commercial, industrial and transportation uses have increased substantially in the urban area with reductions in agricultural uses in the non-urban hinterland indicating continuing development pressures (Madhavi Lata et al., 2001). This is most apparent in the rapidly growing suburbs and peripheral areas, where developers have capitalised upon the space available to channel the growth displaced from the congested urban core in the expectation that facilities would follow construction. The State of Andhra Pradesh is now urbanising faster than the rest of India and its urban population is expected to more than double by 2020; with the expected rapid economic growth, Hyderabad may treble in size. At least 10 other cities will be required to develop as counter magnets to Hyderabad, and satellite towns have been proposed to accommodate migration from the rural areas. Within the city itself, the immediate consequence of movement from rural areas is the growth of dense slum settlements. Under the Andhra Pradesh Slum Improvement (Acquisition of Lands) Act, 1956 a slum is defined as a settlement which is ‘a source of danger to public health and sanitation’, reflecting the conception of a slum as a source of nuisance to non-slum residents. The State government can declare such an area to be a statutory slum area, enabling extensive powers of acquisition, clearance and compensation to be used. Around 800 identified slums have been listed, covering around a population of 1.2 million (about 20 per cent of the total population). The 2001 census identified three types of slum area: those

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notified as slums under the act; areas recognised as slums but not notified as such; and sizeable areas of poorly built congested tenements in an unhygienic environment with inadequate infrastructure and no proper sanitary or drinking water facilities. Despite the recent waves of migration, the great majority of these slums are more than 20 years old, are well established and have traditionally served as a point of entry to the metropolis. Although rural poverty is also extensive, urbanisation and the rise of slum settlements on the periphery brings its own problems. The Andhra Pradesh Urban Services for the Poor (APUSP) programme aims to support sustained reductions in the vulnerability and poverty levels of the urban poor in 32 cities. The focus of the programme is on improving the performance of municipalities in the planning and management of their resources, while at the same time assisting them to acquire systems and working methods that enable them to better identify poor people’s needs and link needs assessments to the delivery of services. Municipal efficiency and effectiveness is seen as a way of enabling poverty reduction by getting municipalities to work with the urban poor and target services on their needs. The APUSP places a strong emphasis on participation and partnership to secure local ownership of programmes and on building municipal capacity as a means to sustain improvements. One of the principal outcomes of APUSP is the Municipal Action Plan for Poverty Reduction (MAPP) a vehicle to provide the urban poor with an effective way to express their needs and for municipalities to incorporate these needs into planning and budgeting. MAPP’s purpose is to reduce the vulnerability of the urban poor through integrative and participatory approaches to municipal development. It aims to improve responsive systems of municipal management, and for the first time, enables communities to play an equal and active part in prioritising their own urban service needs (GHK Group, 2000). Hyderabad’s traffic crisis Poverty and housing conditions apart, the foremost problem of urban growth that Hyderabad faces is that of road and traffic congestion, arising from rapid growth in vehicle ownership coupled with an inadequate public transport system. The number of vehicles doubled between 1991 and 2001 to more than 1.5 million. During this period the average compounded annual rate of growth for two-wheelers was just under 14 per cent and of four wheelers just under 12, while between 1995 and 2002 the number of passengers carried by bus remained static. Whereas in 1996 just 18 per cent of the traffic flows comprised scooters and motor cycles and as much as 42 per cent, bicycles, these proportion had more than reversed by 1998 with half of the traffic comprising scooters and motor cycles and a mere 10 per cent bicycles (Chari and Reddy, 2002). There are currently around five times as many vehicles per square kilometre in Hyderabad than in any other Indian metropolitan area. Average journey speeds in the city are very low and in some places as low as 10 kph. Poor road design, with a narrow and irregular network and, in particular, intersections that are not designed for heavy vehicular traffic contribute to the very considerable delays for local inhabitants. These problems

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 123 are compounded by severe parking difficulties and a shortage of designated parking spaces. The parking problem is aggravated by excessive population densities, the large number of pavement hawkers, excessive sidewalk encroachments, the heterogeneous nature of traffic with a high percentage of non-motorised vehicles and narrow streets. The traffic and transport problems of Hyderabad arise in part from the city’s monocentric structure, with an overcrowded core area serving the wider metropolis through a network of radial roads. The municipal corporation area is less than 10 per cent of the entire metropolitan area, but accommodates more than half of the population, and accounts for more than half of the employment generation. The typical pattern of movement is thus from the outer areas, with their adequate modern highway system, into Hyderabad itself with its ancient narrow roads and lanes. Being heavily built up, the city provides little scope for widening roads and easing movement. Private road transport is the predominant mode, imposing great strain upon the road system. Public transport is at present largely limited to the buses but only 44 per cent of journeys are made by bus against a calculated 70 per cent needed to relieve the traffic problem. More than three quarters of private vehicles running through Hyderabad are motor cycles and scooters – the highest proportion of any Indian city. While this form of transport makes an efficient use of road space, the predominance of two-stroke engines contributes substantially to air pollution. In some respects measured air pollution has declined over the past 10 years in Hyderabad, although suspended particulate matter – the characteristic pollutant of road traffic, and especially of diesel engines – remains at very high levels, and well above the established norms for the city. As Table 6.3 below shows, the composition of Hyderabad traffic has been transformed by the growth in prosperity that has enabled workers to shift from pedal cycles to motor cycles and scooters. Vehicle numbers are predicted to double within the next three years and, more importantly, further shifts from two wheelers to four are expected as wealth spreads. While this may relieve the growth of air pollution to some extent, the demand for road space will be vastly increased. This complex of problems – rapid growth, overloaded systems and a lack of any relationship between infrastructure facilities and development – is not untypical Table 6.3 Modal shifts in Hyderabad transport: 1986–1998 Mode

Average composition 1986 %

Average composition 1998 %

Per cent change, 1986–1998

Motorised 2 wheeler Auto (3-wheeler) Bus/truck Car Bicycle Other

18 6 2 4 42 28

50 18 3 14 10 5

⫹32 ⫹12 ⫹1 ⫹10 ⫺32 ⫺23

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of cities in the developing world. Unlike many other cities, however, Hyderabad has the benefit of an elaborate system of urban government with strong and often effective agencies addressing themselves to these problems. In doing so, they encounter the classic problem of modern metropolitan government – conflict and lack of co-ordination between separate agencies. While the several municipalities and the MCH itself are restricted to their own limits, many of the key players – the Housing Board, the Road Development Corporation, the Road Transport Authority, the Industrial Development Corporation – operate State-wide. The Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) covers a designated urban development area, and the metropolitan water authority the entire metropolitan area. Functions overlap in a number of important areas but nowhere more than in roads, traffic and transport where there are no mechanisms for co-ordinating a multiplicity of agencies. In particular, maintenance of Hyderabad roads involves the MCH, HUDA and the State Roads Agency. Other bodies, including water and telecom providers, will often dig up roads for their own maintenance purposes, while MCH lacks the enforcement powers to ensure that this is done in the way that has the least impact on traffic flows. Traffic management itself requires co-ordination between the MCH, which is the primary agency for construction and maintenance of roads in its area, the traffic police who co-ordinate traffic flows and enforce traffic laws and the State Road and Transport Corporation, which has the power to close roads and change routes on special occasions and provide public transport on congested routes. Finally, while the MCH and the other municipalities are directly accountable to their electorates, the Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board is only indirectly accountable and all the other powerful players are accountable only to the State government.

The planning response Hyderabad originated as a planned city under the Mughals in 1591 and has remained at the forefront of urban planning in India. Catastrophic floods in 1908 awakened the British residency-led government to the need for planned development and a City Improvement Board was established in 1912. In 1930, a major planning report on city improvement was prepared by the eminent engineer Visvesvaraya, setting out a road network and land-use plan for the city, while shortly before the end of the Second World War a further plan was prepared to cover both city and suburbs. Following independence, the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Act, 1955 empowered the city to prepare a development plan for its area. By 1971, Hyderabad’s rapid and haphazard growth was posing serious challenges to planning. In 1972, the State Director of Town Planning presented a report on the delineation of a ‘Hyderabad Metropolitan District’ of some 990 square miles and 1.5 million population covering the urban bodies and 446 villages. The report was based on an assessment of Hyderabad’s zone of influence in terms of commuting, retailing and public services. Three years later the government of Andhra Pradesh declared a

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 125 much smaller area of 600 square miles as the basis of a ‘Hyderabad Development Area’. This area closely corresponded with the ‘Greater Hyderabad’ identified in 1944 by the then town planner of the former Hyderabad State, and broadly equates to the present metropolitan area. Currently, the concept of a State capital region is under discussion to recognise the special status of Hyderabad within the State of Andhra Pradesh. In 1975 the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) was established under the Andhra Pradesh Urban Areas (Development) Act of that year (Map 6.1). The aim of the authority is to prepare a master plan and associated zonal plans and regulations, and to secure the development of the designated Hyderabad development area according to this plan, and for that purpose it has the authority to acquire, hold, manage, plan, develop and dispose of land and other property, and to carry out works to provide the supply of water and electricity, disposal of sewage and control of pollution. Its land acquisition activities extend as far as securing redevelopment, relocating commercial activities, originating new commercial centres, satellite towns and industrial complexes. It not only plans and develops but also regulates land use by operating development control, issuing permissions and prohibiting or demolishing unauthorised constructions. HUDA also supervises and co-ordinates with the local bodies and with government agencies for the provision and maintenance of civic and other amenities. Some development control powers have been delegated to local bodies, in particular the power to take action against unauthorised construction. In 1975 a development plan promulgated by the Municipal Corporation set out a proposed urban structure based on ring towns to which development would be directed. Five years later, the first master plan for the Hyderabad Development Area was prepared, in this case by the newly constituted HUDA. While the 1975 plan related only to the Hyderabad city area – around 10 per cent of the conurbation – the 1980 plan covered the entire metropolitan area. The master plan set out broad land-use policies for the entire area, providing a framework for the preparation of a series of zonal development plans. It looked forward to 2001 in line with the master plan already adopted for Hyderabad city, and addressed issues of population distribution, traffic generators, major circulation system and the system for open spaces and conservation areas, and provided the overarching framework to which 18 zonal development plans had to conform. The aim of the 1980 master plan was to achieve balanced development by taking a single overview of development for the metropolitan area and its rural hinterland. The ring town concept was taken further with a proposed green belt to cover the area between the municipal boundary and the ring towns themselves. The green belt of 320 square miles was intended to act as a buffer to contain further peripheral development. Within the green belt the only permitted development would be for agriculture, horticulture, dairy and poultry farms, farm housing, cottage industries, regional parks, recreational facilities and the provision of amenities for existing residential settlements. Four areas were designated for self-sufficient development, some 15–20 kms from the urban centre with

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Medchal

Yamjal

Shambhupur

Shamirpet

Keesara Kukatpally RC Puram

Kollur

Moulali

Poppalguda

Himayatnagar

Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad and Cantonment

Budvel

Ghatkesar Chengicherla

Hayathnagar

Kothapet Shamshabad

Nadergul

Map 6.1 Hyderabad planning zones.

housing and all other urban facilities planned together with industrial development. In all, some 650,000 people would be accommodated within these ring towns. Apart from a series of inner and outer ring roads it was intended to connect the ring towns by an orbital rail system. Within the development area, categories of permitted land use were defined and zoning regulations introduced to restrict development and prohibit certain uses. Development corridors were defined along the major radial transport arteries where extensive development was already taking place. In 1994 HUDA revised the master plan, rolling it forward to 2011 and engaging in wide-ranging consultations on its content. The input of local groups, stakeholders and members of the public, together with the need to take account of constitutional changes that sought to empower local government, led to a radical rethink of the plan. Meanwhile, Hyderabad city and the State of Andhra Pradesh were undergoing rapid change in their economic base. The promulgation of the State’s Vision 2020 reflected the new importance accorded to IT and hi-tech industries. An area of 52 square kms was removed from HUDA’s jurisdiction and 15 villages incorporated

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 127 as the new high-technology municipality of Cyberabad. A Cyberabad Development Authority (CBA) was established, with its own separate master plan. At the same time, a Hyderabad Airport Development Authority (HADA) was created in recognition of the crucial importance of linking the city into the global air traffic network by means of new international airport development. In 2003, HUDA published a revised and more comprehensive master plan, replacing the 1980 master plan and the 10 zonal developmental plans. The mapping for this revised master plan for the Hyderabad municipality was developed in co-operation with the Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) to provide satellite derived images to express the pattern of land use in GIS form. Satellite images confirmed the sporadic pattern of development in the metropolitan area, and the potential for substantial development in all but the core area to considerably higher densities. Looking forward to 2020/21, the new plan envisages a population of 13.6 million. A new network of ring, radial and express roads with land safeguarded for substantial road widening was declared. Extensive provision was made for software industries, hotels and tourism as well as considerable incentives for the development of low-income housing and conservation of natural and man-made heritage. This new focus of the plan reflected the then Chief Minister’s vision to develop the city as a prime location for attracting international business and inward investment.

Implementing the master plan The limits to planning in Hyderabad are readily apparent. The metropolitan area will continue to grow and new – if scarcely adequate – infrastructure will be laid down even in the absence of any plan. Most Indian urban master plans have been used only as a framework for development control, but the intentions of the Hyderabad plan are more comprehensive and programmatic. ‘Mere development control’ it states, ‘can only lead to fragmented creation of housing, commercial activities, industries and other activities in an isolated manner unless the trunk road network and services are progressively put in place by specific agencies’. Elsewhere, Some roads are widened, some parks are built and a few flyovers are constructed. The infrastructure agencies receive loan assistance from international funding sources and augment the water supply and drainage systems. These inputs are of [an] occasional nature. There is no regular system to generate funds for augmenting infrastructure on a sustainable basis. The civic bodies do generate property taxes that are barely enough for garbage disposal and for day to day maintenance of the already existing infrastructure. (HUDA, 2003: 151) As with its predecessors, this latest plan acknowledges a host of impediments to successful implementation. First among these is the pattern of land ownership which is highly fragmented and almost entirely in the hands of hundreds of

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thousands of small owners. Substantial areas of land are occupied by the impoverished inhabitants of unauthorised slum settlements. Hyderabad also suffers the common problem of high rates of unauthorised construction which subvert any land-use zoning declared by the planners. Even so, the developable land in the metropolitan area is assessed as considerably more than adequate to accommodate the anticipated 2020 population. Second, the financial implications of implementing the master plan are daunting, particularly with regard to infrastructure investments. The pattern of income distribution is so skewed towards the well-to-do middle classes as to inhibit large-scale expenditure funded from municipal taxation. Finally, any indicative plan is vulnerable to changes in the international and national environment as well as to State and local policies and priorities. ‘In this globalised world’, comments the master plan document, ‘Hyderabad is no longer only the capital of Andhra Pradesh. It is an international city’ and as such open to exogenous influences beyond any planner’s control (HUDA, 2003: 147). Despite these obstacles, an implementation plan identifies the key actions required, the agencies involved and the possible sources of funds. These include not only a wide range of levies and user charges but also – for the development of the city’s public transport system – substantial financial assistance from the State and the government of India. A master-plan implementation fund is envisaged, with regulations providing for the imposition of betterment charges and change of land-use charges. While sensibly agnostic on the likely costs of major development for the entire developable area, the master plan suggests that the implementation costs will exceed the equivalent of £375 million over a 20-year period. The other principal resource for implementing any plan is an adequate legislative framework. Once notified under the Andhra Pradesh Urban Areas Development Act 1975, the master plan becomes law and is binding upon government departments as well as private bodies and individuals. The widespread problem of unauthorised encroachment, which can be an impediment to road-widening plans carries insufficient penalties as does the sale of plots for development without amenities. HUDA has argued that both offences should be imprisonable. Other minor changes in law and administration have been proposed by HUDA which envisages a series of sectoral five-year execution plans linked to the series of national and State five-year plans overseen by a standing cabinet sub-committee. The authority argues that ‘while some legal improvements are needed, it is the overall importance given to planned development by the society at large that needs to be addressed. If there is a consensus among the people living in the HUDA area in favour of the plan, legal support will follow’ (HUDA, 2003: 150). Though ambitious, statutory master plans of this type are inescapably limited in scope, the adoption of the City Development Strategy (CDS), with the support from the Cities Alliance Initiative of the World Bank, has enabled Hyderabad to range beyond the limits of the master plan and move towards a more comprehensive urban reform. The Hyderabad CDS is presented as ‘more than a master plan’ and aims to provide an effective and implementable programme of change that embodies the economic objectives absent from statutory plan. Specifically, the

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 129 CDS aims to enhance liveability for all citizens, especially the poor; improve economic competitiveness to ensure buoyant broad-based growth of employment, incomes and investment; and pursue good governance, ensuring the representation of all stakeholders as well as enhancing the accountability, integrity, financial soundness and transparency of local governments. The CDS experience of 2003 clearly established the inter-dependence of these several components of planned change the achievement of which could only be realised by more effective joint working between the many stakeholders. Thus, the planning challenge is at root essentially one of more effective governance, something which neither Hyderabad nor any other city has found easy to achieve.

Traffic and transport Throughout the State, the provision of transport infrastructure has lagged far behind the requirements of an efficient economy. Despite the huge growth in traffic, less than 0.5 per cent of the State’s Gross Domestic Product has been spent on roads, about half the proportion spent in other States. From the 1970s, the number of vehicles increased by about 11 per cent annually while the road mileage grew by only 1 per cent. Budget allocations for operation and maintenance were, in the late 1990s, running at a level of about 60 per cent of the Government of India’s required norms. The poor physical condition of the road network led to dramatic increases in congestion and in transport costs (World Bank, 1997: i). These problems are even more acute in the city of Hyderabad. Air pollution from motor vehicles increased rapidly and the concentrations of harmful air pollutants – sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) and total suspended particulate matter (TSPM) – at key measurement points in the city exceed Central Pollution Control Board and WHO air-quality standards (Rao and Bangi, n.d.). The need for a co-ordinated strategy with a mix of road network development plans, development of alternative public transportation plans and proactive measures involving land-use integration with transportation network has long been recognised. In 1983, a study – the Hyderabad Area Transportation Study (HATS) – was undertaken as the first major initiative in the field of transportation planning with a final report produced in 1999. Employing sophisticated survey and planning tools, the study produced a Land Use Planning and Regional Development Strategy for the next two decades. It showed that only 6 per cent of the metropolitan area is served by roads, one of the lowest proportions among Indian cities, although Hyderabad has been the most successful among them in securing road widening. The report’s recommendations included plans for further additions to the road network and their integration with regional network. The HATS study had major implications for the future of urban structure with integrated consideration of the interactions between the urban area and its wider region leading to planned spatial dispersal. Within this regional framework, the study proposed a ‘system of cities’ strategy. Major investments proposed included Track Guided Mass Transit System, more effective management of goods

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transport, a major new airport development to serve Hyderabad’s growing international links and improvements in public transport matched by better traffic management on the roads system. A series of consultants’ reports followed, culminating in 2004. All pointed to the alarming rate of growth of personal vehicles and the need to develop the public transport system. A recent (2002) World Bank study of India’s urban-transport problems recommended a series of short-term measures including reform of bus provision, the adoption of alternative fuels to minimise pollution and enforcement of pollution control. For the medium term, unified metropolitan transport authorities should be created and a new financial regime established to fund urban transport. Similar proposals for bus transport – the preferred urban mode – had been made by National Transport Policy Committee in 1978 along with planning for decentralisation and according traffic management priority to pedestrian, cyclists and public transport. The State government’s recent initiatives include a major programme of road widening and other improvements with flyovers and new bridges and the development of a major arterial network. The strategy for the metropolitan area acknowledged that road-widening and road capacity improvement can provide only a temporary solution, with an improved road network likely to clog up under the impact of projected traffic growth. Accordingly, the State’s strategy is to develop a co-ordinated Metropolitan Rail Transit System (MRTS) to promote the use of clean fuels, including LPG as an alternative to petrol, and to develop a new international airport. Current plans, then, are to integrate the various transport modes, and develop a multi-modal system. Based on the traffic volumes, trip lengths and origin–destination of the travellers, 11 corridors have been identified in the city. In order to improve mobility on these corridors suggested improvements include dividing private vehicles from public-transport vehicles so that the stopping operations are separated from continuous movements. A designated ‘knowledge corridor’ is planned, to be achieved by making large continuous extensions to the Hi-Tech City. Apart from establishing an extensive new network of orbital and radial roads to integrate the entire metropolitan area, the greatest challenge will be to create a metropolitan rapid-transport system. The major new development area’s zone for medical sciences, bio-technology, industrial technology and IT requires an expressway-type facility connecting Hi-Tech city towards the proposed international airport in the south. For this, a joint venture company has been formed by the Government of India, the State government and a private developer. Development of a 5,000-acre site is planned to take place in phases, with the new airport capacity rising from 5 to 10 million passengers annually. Other plans are to develop several activity centres around Hyderabad city including Apparel Park, Hardware Park and tourist zones, all of which require a good transportation system. An eight-lane outer and inner expressway system with provision for exclusive mass-transit way is under consideration, as are more localised measures to improve safety by physically separating pedestrians and vehicular traffic on the major arterial roads.

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 131 Yet it is evident that in Hyderabad, the ability to generate good strategic proposals outruns the ability to give them effect, and the same proposals tend to recur in successive planning documents over the years. Implementation remains the weak link. In this, Hyderabad is no exception to the general problems of metropolitan government in India. The multiplicity of public agencies, all of which are given the responsibility of managing civic and urban affairs, bedevils metropolitan planning in this city, giving rise to a serious problem of co-ordination and use of the overriding powers of the State government. Overlapping functions, together with varying geographic jurisdictions, create confusion and competition between the local bodies and the functional agencies. The recent period of rapid urban growth has required an area-wide view to be taken of the management of land-use planning, housing and infrastructure development and environmental protection.

Governing the metropolitan area Indian local government has traditionally been weak. Under the British Raj, advocacy of the virtues of local self-government was persistently eclipsed by the nationalist sentiment that drove the struggle for independence, and which continues to provide a powerful counter-weight to the increasing fissiparous politics of India’s loosening federalism. Recently, however, there has been a greater, if grudging, recognition of the value of local democracy and the Constitutional Amendment of 1992 empowered urban local self-government by giving it a constitutional status as the third tier in the federal system (Pinto, 2000). The Amendment sought to enhance the powers and responsibilities of municipal authorities and created three types of body: those specifically for village panchayats in transition from rural to urban status; municipal councils in smaller urban settlements and municipal corporations in larger urban areas. It also provided for delegation to these bodies of key functions including urban and town planning; regulation of land use and construction of buildings; planning for economic and social development; roads and bridges; water supply for domestic, industrial and commercial purposes; public health, sanitation, conservancy and solid waste management. The Amendment enables States to create municipal corporations through legislation, with property taxes generally providing their main sources of revenue. Within the metropolitan area, the administration and provision of services is managed by 10 municipal authorities and 125 rural panchayats, while the core part of the city with a population of around four million is under the administration of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. This consists of the directly elected Mayor, and an elected Municipal Council of l00 Corporators, each of whom represents 1 of the 10 wards of the city. The city has a permanent staff strength of more than 9000 providing the municipal services. The administrative head of the corporation – the Commissioner – is invariably a Senior Civil Servant of the State government on posting to the city corporation. The larger municipal authorities have a complex membership, reflecting the different levels of interest engaged by their activities. They include

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the representatives elected from the electoral wards; those members of the House of the People and the State Legislative Assembly who represent constituencies, wholly or partly within the municipal area; members of the Council of States and the State Legislative Council who are registered as electors within the municipal area; chairpersons of committees of the municipal authorities and people having special knowledge or experience in municipal administration but without the right to vote in Council meetings. In metropolitan areas, municipal corporations are the highest and most autonomous forms of city governance. The corporation is so structured as to separate the deliberative from the executive functions with a statutory division of powers between the three co-ordinate authorities: the Council, the commissioner and the Standing Committee with the Mayor as the ceremonial head of the corporation. The Mayor, while directly elected, exercises little more than a ceremonial role. Insofar as power resides with any locally elected body, it is in the hands of the Standing Committee – in effect a policy and resources committee – made up of members from each of the 10 wards of the city. This composition incidentally ensures broad party representation on the Standing Committee, as Hyderabad is a multiparty system. The deliberative wing is the elected Council, presided over by the Mayor, and the Municipal Commissioner leads the executive. Furthermore, the executive system is highly fragmented as it is based on the separation of executive powers and functions. Whereas the executive powers are vested in the Council and the executive committees, the executive functions are performed on their behalf by the Municipal Commissioner as chief executive. In practice, this strict dichotomy tended to generate contradictions, frictions and deadlock. A powerful, appointed executive has also meant a bureaucratic rather than a democratic form of city management. The tradition of strong States and weak municipalities has given rise to a tendency to set up special purpose and developmental agencies with the capacity to address the most intractable problems. This tendency has been justified in terms of municipal authorities not having the administrative and financial capabilities. The solution, however, tends to perpetuate the problem by ensuring that the civic bodies are not generally equipped to cope with the demands of urbanisation. Despite the recent reforms, State governments remain powerful players in urban management. Not only are local government bodies the creatures of State legislation, but land, the most vital resource in urban planning and development, is a State-listed subject and is therefore the focus of much State–local government interaction. The Constitutional Amendment also provides for the formation of District Planning Committees to consolidate the plans prepared by the municipalities and the panchayats within the district and prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole to be submitted to the State government. Metropolitan Planning Committees, on which municipalities are represented, were established to prepare plans for the metropolitan areas. State departments of urban development are specialised organisations entrusted with urban planning, and metropolitan planning authorities work to a large extent under their guidance. While metropolitan authorities prepare and

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 133 enforce the master plan, it is the State government that approves it. Moreover, the State government exercises extensive administrative control over all municipal bodies through inspection, calling for records and giving directions for performing civic functions. Moreover, as the resources of local bodies themselves have failed to expand to keep pace with the demands on local services, their ability to address problems is drastically limited, enabling the State government to predominate. And when a State government takes over an area of local taxation, or grants exemptions from municipal taxes, municipal corporations are poorly compensated, if at all, for their loss. In Hyderabad, the Municipal Corporation has introduced property tax reforms, including a self-assessment scheme as well as trade-licensing fees, and the adoption of ‘users and polluters pay’ principle (Mohanty, 2002). The corporation is currently identifying direct and indirect users and beneficiaries of the services it provides in order to levy user charges and benefit taxes. Strikingly, Hyderabad is the only city in India to earmark as much as 20 per cent of the property tax collections for the implementation of community-based urban poverty alleviation programmes in an attempt to break the syndrome of ‘rich city, poor city government’. In this, Hyderabad is working with the grain of dramatic changes in State government, instituted after 1999.

Reforming the public services Reforming and modernising government was a particular pre-occupation of Chandrababu Naidu, leader of the regional Telegu Desam Party, who became Chief Minister in 1999. Naidu came to office with an agenda to streamline and clean up governmental structures and processes in accordance with the precepts of New Public Management. Exploitation of IT was seen as the key to both economic growth and the reform of governmental institutions. The reform of public services was to be Naidu’s first target. There were widespread public complaints about harassment by officials, inefficiencies and delays through repeated visits to offices and institutionalised systems of informal payments leading to extensive corruption. Naidu set out to establish transparency in government systems and procedures, in order to ensure equitable delivery of services and to fight corruption. Such problems could only be eliminated in the long run through minimising person-to-person citizen interface with government agencies through e-governance. This novel use of technology designed to meet citizen demands more efficiently, saving both time and money, also enables easier access to public information and services, leading to greater transparency and increased public confidence in government (World Bank, 2000: 28). To this end, Naidu sought to computerise all aspects of the State government beginning with the Commercial Taxes Department where computerisation could save time and limit tax evasion. The accounting systems of the State’s electricity board, the municipal corporation of Hyderabad and the Hyderabad Metro (the Water Supply and Sewerage Board) followed. The computerisation of land

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registration was a major reform, replacing a lengthy manual process involving the assembly of extensive documentation leading to the production of a handwritten final deed, with an entirely computer-based system. The State’s entire property database was transferred to computer files, copying and filing systems replaced with imaging, and back-office functions automated. Processing the registration of a property transaction was reduced from 10 days to 1 hour. The e-Seva centres were introduced across the city in 2002 and were later extended to the rest of the State. These centres became the primary point of contact between the government and the people enabling payments to a wide range of agencies to be readily made through a single agency. One-stop citizen services, giving access to a range of local, State and central departments initially through 21 centres in Hyderabad, were rolled out to 117 municipalities in 2003. In the first phase electricity bills, water bills, telephone bills and property taxes were payable through e-Seva and also births and deaths registration. A further phase of development integrated banking services, airline ticketing, tour and travel services together with the provision of a range of information on government activity and services. E-Seva proved immediately popular and was readily taken up by users. The aim was to use e-governance not just as a computerisation of manual processes but also as a way of transforming the relationship between government and the people, breaking the monopoly of departments and functionaries in dispensing public services. Naidu, then, had a wider agenda to make good governance and IT-enabled services the central planks of his new regime with gains in employment generation, employability training and the attraction of foreign direct investment. The State government was ‘confident that it would be able to exploit this opportunity and transform AP into a hub for IT-enabled services (ITES) by making the State the preferred destination for leading ITES companies not only in India but also world-wide’ (GoAP, 2002). This was to ensure that the spotlight of international attention would remain on Andhra, not just for its economic transformation in Hyderabad, but also for its far-reaching reforms of the governmental process. Before long, the good governance issues originating in Andhra Pradesh were being taken up nationally, with the leaders of the national BJP government praising Naidu’s initiatives and seeking to generalise them across India. The reforms had begun in 1999 with the setting up of a task force on good governance which concluded that there was widespread disenchantment with the functioning of State Governments as also the Central Government in India. In the perception of a common man, the government is seen to be an exploitative arm of the State. From the viewpoint of the citizens, government epitomises corruption, inordinate delays, long-winded procedures, lack of transparency, and extreme rudeness and insensitivity, often bordering on callousness. As the experience shows, it is not easy to tame this wild animal. For any perceptible results to be achieved, the exercise will call for political and administrative will of the highest order, apart from all ingenuity, innovativeness and persistence. (CGG, 2002: 28)

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 135 The response was to outline a far-reaching programme of governmental reform: The GoAP is committed to transforming governance: this is a key objective within its ‘Vision 2020’ policy document for the state. There is widespread recognition that government is under-performing at all levels and that this is seriously undermining Andhra Pradesh’s long-term development prospects. Basic services are not being delivered, citizens are being denied their social rights and public confidence in the government is low. The poor and vulnerable suffer disproportionately under this scenario. (CGG, 2002: 50) Among the proposals made by the Task Force was to set up statutory autonomous regulatory commissions to fix the prices of all goods and services in the governmental sector. Such commissions would not only take into account the capacity of various consumer groups to pay the proposed tariff, but may also provide for some cross-subsidisation between consumer groups. The commission would assess the reasonableness of the provider’s proposed prices, and set the standards of service to be provided by departments and agencies concerned. The Task Force proposed three such statutory commissions: a Water Regulatory Commission (WRC) for all matters relating to distribution and pricing of water for irrigation, and drinking, industrial and commercial purposes; a Transport Regulatory Commission (TRC) for the transport services provided in the urban, rural and other areas of the State by the State government agencies and private operators; and an Other Services Regulatory Commission (OSRC) which may be entrusted with the responsibility of deciding the prices of all other services provided by the State Government. Other reforms include the promotion of partnerships with the independent sector, modernisation of the civil service, greater decentralisation and delegation, and deregulation to promote economic efficiency. The Naidu philosophy was that ordinary people have an equal right to take part in those decisions which affect them directly or indirectly, and to seek to influence them in a direction which improves their condition and quality of life. Explicit steps were taken to ensure that the people have a strong voice in the governance of the State, through embedding participatory mechanisms into planning and monitoring of service delivery, enhancing decentralisation and ensuring the inclusion of the poor and disadvantaged. Studies were set up to identify and codify good practice in wider participatory processes in Andhra Pradesh and to identify areas for improvement of procedures, systems and structures: a number of pilot projects have been taken forward to establish agreed approaches to effective participation. Support has been provided to the State government to enable decisions on decentralisation to be embedded and to operate effectively. The current focus of participatory mechanisms is – in general – on planning and resource allocation. Participatory approaches were to be developed in other areas to include monitoring and evaluation, and policy development, and in order to take any of these wider-ranging approaches forward significant additional capacity building will be required. The participatory processes used elsewhere in

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government – for example those being developed as a part of Andhra Pradesh Urban Services for the Poor (APUSP) – are seen as offering prototypes for identifying areas of good practice. Pilot schemes are planned to identify effective means of increasing the effective use of participatory mechanisms in policy making, planning, resource allocation and monitoring. While many of the reforms to increase governmental accountability began in Andhra Pradesh, they converged with national developments. A Citizen’s Charter movement began in India in 1996 with a national Conference of Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories on ‘Effective and Responsive Administration’. This Conference gave high priority to Citizen’s Charters and was followed by the development of an ‘Action Plan for Effective and Responsive Government’ at the follow-up Conference in 1997. One of the major decisions of this Conference was to introduce Citizen’s Charters in the departments of the Central and State Governments starting with those with a large public interface, and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (AR&PG) initiated the task of co-ordinating, formulating and operationalising Citizen’s Charters. Sixty-eight Citizen’s Charters have been formulated by the central government in Delhi, relating to ministries, departments and other organisations. There are also 333 Charters in various agencies of the State governments and Union Territories. A further rationale for the Charters is to help change the mindset of the public official from someone with power over the public to someone with a care of duty in spending the public’s taxes and in providing them with necessary services. Charters, then, provide a tool kit of initiatives and ideas to raise the level of standards and service delivery and increase public participation, and can ideally provide a tool to ensure transparency and accountability and help deliver good governance. The Citizen’s Charter programme was pursued energetically in Andhra Pradesh, although in the beginning it met with limited success. A common perception of the departments operating Citizen’s Charters was that this was just another routine activity, and the initiative was therefore treated with a degree of scepticism by bureaucrats as well as citizens. Service delivery standards were either too vague or too liberal. There was little internal or external monitoring of the implementation of the Charters by departments and, as citizen-satisfaction data was not available, no proper feedback systems operated (CGG, 2003: 9). Nevertheless, public participation continues to have momentum in the Andhra Pradesh reform programme. The city of Hyderabad has prepared its own Charter to create a local administration ‘that is always alive to public expectations’, providing ‘a lasting partnership between the citizens and civic administration’ (MCH, 2001). All these initiatives have been encompassed in Vision 2020 – a document that defines the future governance for the city and the State. Vision 2020 envisages that by that year, the State will have well-planned, economically productive, socially just, environmentally sustainable, culturally vibrant, friendly and safe cities and towns. The role of the State would be to ensure balanced urban development by promoting alternative urban centres as counter magnets; anticipate

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 137 and provide for urban infrastructure requirements through comprehensive, integrated planning; operate municipal services on a competitive basis to provide adequate, high-quality services at affordable costs; develop urban services and infrastructure by involving the private sector and fostering public–private partnerships; ensure that local services are managed through local management and control; and mitigate urban problems by providing shelter and basic services for all. As a broad agenda for growth-centred and people-centred governance in the city and the State, Vision 2020 envisages refocusing government priorities and shifting spending from unproductive areas towards achieving high priority developmental goals and decentralising governance to enhance participation and popular involvement. A ‘simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent’ (SMART) government, achieved by improving transparency and accountability at all levels and ensuring effective and responsive services is the ultimate objective of the reform movement. The Good Governance Task Force of 1999 had been bold in its analysis of the State government’s performance failings. It made a series of wide-ranging recommendations including the establishment of a Centre for Good Governance (CGG), closely linked to the Chief Minister’s office, to take forward the reform agenda. The UK Department for International Development (Df ID) and other donors have been supporting these developments, including the CGG concept. In June 2000 Df ID provided consultancy advice to enable the government to assess the various institutional options for the establishment of the new centre. The consultancy also recommended an outline reform plan and a corresponding project design for consideration for Df ID support. A series of large-scale consultancy studies followed, establishing new financial processes and structures and an ambitious scheme to greatly increase the accountability of public bodies.

Positioning Hyderabad in the global economy In the mid-1990s Andhra Pradesh was one of India’s poorest regions, with a per capita income of around half that of the six most rapidly developing States. The annual rate of growth lagged behind the national average, and State finances were in growing deficit (World Bank, 1997: i). The World Bank has been a crucial player in shaping the future of Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad in particular. In the case of India, the Bank defined a strategy of selective attention to a number of States. In particular, the strategy focused on those States that were willing to embark upon a comprehensive programme of economic reform, including fiscal and governance reforms and reforms of key sectors such as power. The ‘focus State’ strategy was contrived to enable the Bank to deploy its comprehensive development framework, and Andhra Pradesh became the Bank’s first ‘focus State’ in 1998 (World Bank, 2001: paras 51–54). Thereafter, the Bank became a major – albeit controversial – presence in State politics. On becoming Chief Minister, Naidu had sought substantial World Bank aid for structural adjustment and the modernisation of the power sector. Working with

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the Bank’s support and seeking a broad consensus, Naidu imposed sharp rises in power tariffs while drawing together academics, professionals and the NGOs in a broad debate on accelerated development. These were politically risky policies, exposing Naidu to the charge that he was a ‘puppet’ of the World Bank, a charge which gained force from the pre-scrutiny by Bank experts of the 1997 budget statement before it was presented in the Assembly (Prasad, 2004). The Bank’s report Andhra Pradesh: Agenda for Economic Reforms was made widely available as part of a strategy of building public awareness and contesting the rising, and occasionally violent, political agitation of the opposition parties against the policies of economic reform. Naidu won a majority in the 1999 Assembly elections despite having embarked on a range of unpopular measures, earning him favourable comment in the Western press and the ‘Star of Asia’ accolade from Business Week. Administrative reform and the development of radical e-governance strategies characterised Naidu’s first term of office, and catalysed the IT sector revolution on which the modernisation of the State’s economy, and that of Hyderabad in particular, were founded. The internal reforms of the government machine and the launch of the single-window e-Seva system services heralded a push to reinvent the State as a ‘knowledge and learning society.’ While the beneficiaries of this strategy were the urban middle class, the sheer rate of change and the aggressive pursuit of inward investment from the high-technology sectors with large-scale land-assembly and locational incentives visibly transformed the city in the space of a few years. The overall effect was to give Hyderabad comparative advantage within south Asia as a location for knowledge-intensive industries such as bio-technology, pharmaceuticals and IT. The State’s 8 universities, 28 specialised training institutes and such research and development centres as the National Remote Sensing Agency, conferred considerable advantages upon Hyderabad as a site for these industries. The strategy chosen to capitalise upon this situation was to develop new technology park sites for them, and the State government offered considerable locational incentives for developers. These include a subsidy to land costs at a rate of $ 400 per job created; a rebate on stamp duty on the sale or lease of land; a 25 per cent concession in power tariff; streamlined procedures including self-certification and special additional incentives for very-large investment projects exceeding $10 million. Major growth centres were identified within the city for financial services and IT. A collaboration between the State government and the ICICI Bank created India’s first Knowledge Park as a not-for-profit company configured around a knowledge network of the nation’s academic scientific and industrial research. Four companies – Medicorp Technologies, Pulsar Electro Optics, Bijam Bioscience and Med Gene Biotech – took modules on this 200-acre site, as the project offered researchers the opportunity to undertake work in a strong research environment with full connectivity and sterile laboratory equipment. The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Co-operation (APICC) acquired a 5,000-acre site on the outskirts of the metropolitan area and adjacent to the

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 139 proposed new international airport for development as a Hardware Park. Hi-Tech city – the Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City – was created by the APIIC as the land-assembly agency in a joint venture with L&T Infocity Ltd and inaugurated by Prime Minister Vajpayee in November 1998. The financial district is developing adjacent to Hi-Tech city with specific provision for the insurance sector, financial research institutions, financial markets and a commodities exchange, together with banking, law and consultancy operations. Hi-Tech city is now the largest IT park in Asia, with more than 5 million square feet of office space. The third and fourth phases of the development are designed to house up to 5,000 professionals in software design and IT-enabled services while a series of privately developed IT parks and independent plots have come on stream. The State has also promoted India’s first bio-technology cluster at Hyderabad, the so called ‘Genome Valley’ bringing together a series of centres in bio-technology responsible for cellular and molecular biology, DNA finger printing and diagnostics with the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and national and international centres dealing with nutrition, crop research, and agricultural research management. Hyderabad’s designated ‘knowledge corridor’ runs from Hi-Tech city to the south, connecting with the Knowledge Park. A 108 km outer ring road is being constructed by HUDA specifically to connect these knowledge-related developments to the State highway system, and facilitate the development of satellite townships. The separate municipality of Cyberabad was incorporated to draw together these knowledge-based industries with centres of research and higher learning, including the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) which was set up in 1998 in partnership with the State government, IBM and other major international IT companies, and managed and funded by industry. Microsoft, Oracle and Silicon Graphics have located their schools on the campus, and a 100-acre international exhibition centre has also been developed in Cyberabad. An Indian School of Business has also been developed there in partnership with the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Manufacturing was boosted by the development of Apparel Export Park in association with an Institute of Fashion Technology, reflecting the rapidly growing importance of the fashion garment industry in Indian economy. In the development of tourism the State won 6 awards for excellence out of the 14 categories in the national assessment of tourism promotion, with Hyderabad as the best city. Tourist arrivals in Hyderabad rose from 4.2 million in 1999 to 6.3 million arrivals in 2002, with international arrivals up from 86,000 to 210,000, making Andhra Pradesh by far the fastest-growing tourist venue in India. Software exports rose from £750,000 in 1995/96 to more than £36 million in 2001/02, a higher rate of growth than any Indian city, placing Hyderabad third in volume to Bangalore and Pune. The IT industry in Hyderabad now employs more than 64,000 professionals and the State aims to capture half of the two-million IT-enabled services jobs estimated to be created by 2008. The New York Times of 27 December 2003 commented that Andhra Pradesh had been transformed from one of the poorest

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States in India into a high-tech region with Hyderabad transformed from a quiet administrative centre of an agricultural State into a computer programming and pharmaceutical hub. Nevertheless, as with its rival city of Bangalore, Hyderabad too has found it next to impossible to develop the infrastructure rapidly and extensively enough to keep pace with the development pressures of the hi-tech revolution. As early as 1997, the very problems that were driving companies out of Bangalore, such as unplanned expansion and a squeeze on basic amenities like power or water, appeared as stumbling blocks in Hyderabad. In pursuing his policies, Naidu adopted the classic techniques to boost development, using income from the State’s successful bid for the National Games in 2002 and the Afro-Asian Games in 2003 to create a world-class sports infrastructure in Hyderabad, while a strong bid was made to have Hyderabad designated as the site of a future Formula 1 grand prix circuit. Although lavishly praised by his allies in the BJP national government as an exemplar of Indian modernisation, Naidu’s policies were novel in Indian politics, in which issues of poverty and rural development continue to loom large, not least in rural Andhra Pradesh. The transformation of Hyderabad, and the foundation of the IIIT and the Indian School of Business drew vehement criticism as being excessively influenced by large corporations, with Naidu branded as ‘pro-Tata’ (the largest Indian multi-national) and obsessed with metropolitan politics. In April 2004 Naidu faced the electorate in the national round of elections. The defeat of the national BNP-led coalition government by a resurgent Congress party confounded all predictions, but the Congress defeat of the TDP in Andhra Pradesh was not unexpected. Naidu had brought about huge improvements in the economic base and physical environment of Hyderabad and set an agenda for reform that was gaining traction nationally. Yet Andhra Pradesh remains a largely rural State, and the political concessions Naidu made to the angry rural communities came too late to save his regime. It remains to be seen whether the economy of the hi-tech hub that is Hyderabad will sustain its growth rate or, like its rival Bangalore, slide back in the league table of favoured locations. ***** During the 1990s Hyderabad gambled on a high-tech future to rival Bangalore as a Silicon city. The successes have been striking with the development of a cyber city and the active engagement of Microsoft and other major international IT companies. That part of the city fringe being developed and incorporated as Cyberabad expresses the distinctiveness and confidence of Hyderabad’s push for a place as an IT hub in an age of electronic communications. Politically, this strategy may have seemed to be ill-judged. Andhra Pradesh remains a largely rural State and well-paid, well-educated urbanites are only a minority constituency in State elections. Hyderabad’s hi-tech development has faltered under the Congress-led State government, but it has progressed too far to come to a halt. Less well-publicised, but no less remarkable, has been the attraction to the State of World Bank and UK government support for the good governance initiative. The Centre for Good Governance became a pace-setter for administrative reform,

Hyderabad: hi-tech hub of a rural State 141 prompting the re-shaping of traditional bureaucratic cultures and processes beyond Hyderabad, and beyond the State itself. These transformations have been accompanied by a startling rise in expenditure on public works in the city which, having grown only gradually from 1994–1995, trebled between 2000–2001 and 2001–2002 to reach close to 2 billion rupees. However, it remains the case that Hyderabad still faces some of the classic problems of urban infrastructure, roads and traffic. The present roads network is scarcely capable of handling loads; the foreseeable shift from two-wheelers to motor cars, itself the inescapable consequence of rising prosperity, will sooner or later overwhelm it. A thoroughgoing restructuring of the spatial organisation of Hyderabad’s economy, with the development of satellite towns, the peripheral international airport and associated transport links, holds out the prospect of a future as one of India’s most attractive and liveable cities. Yet Hyderabad’s planners have no illusions about the challenges they face in accomplishing it.

7

Atlanta The sprawling metropolis

Nineteenth-century Atlanta was a small town, growing rapidly only in the reconstruction period after the Civil War, in which it was largely destroyed by Sherman’s troops. By 1895 it had grown to a population of 75,000 and by the 1920s was the principal city in Georgia, and the centre of the country’s cotton and textile industry. Continuing growth thereafter was driven by an active campaign to draw northern investment to the city and although Atlanta’s growth stalled in the depression years, it resumed with the Second World War and the disarmament boom that followed the end of the war. There then began the first stage of the suburban expansion that, on an increasing scale, continues today. Between the two census points of 1990 and 2000 only Phoenix, Arizona, grew at a faster rate than Atlanta and only Los Angeles added more people to its metropolitan area. During this period the population of Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) grew from 2.9 to 4.1 million, an increase of almost 40 per cent. In June 2003 the US Census Bureau extended the Atlanta’s MSA from 20 to 28 counties, reflecting metropolitan Atlanta’s remarkable appetite for consuming land. In the 1990s each succeeding increase in the population consumed more space than hitherto as the city expanded outward at ever-reducing densities. During the period 1982 to 1997, Atlanta’s population increased by 60 per cent and the urbanised land area by 80 per cent. The physical growth of the city has exceeded that of any urbanised area in the United States, taking in close to an additional 900 square miles. Meanwhile, the central city continued to lose population (Henderson, 2004: 196). In 1980, downtown Atlanta was the core of the region’s office employment, but within a few years the rise of suburban sub-centres had relegated the downtown to ‘just another one of the region’s urban-village cores’ (Duffy, 1995: 41). Atlanta’s rapid rate of population growth has largely come about through migration, with an annual rate of growth of 3.14 per cent in the period 1990–2000 making it one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the USA. Despite acting as a magnet for mobile workers, Atlanta enjoyed a high employment rate well above the national average, ranking 6 among the 28 larger US metropolitan areas and, for per capita income, ranking 11 among the 46 largest metropolitan areas. The region added more than 350,000 jobs during the 1990s and its diverse economic base includes fast-growing white-collar industries that are contributing

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 143 to increasing per capita wealth. Even in this period of growth Atlanta sustained a very low cost of living, the Economist Intelligence Unit showing the city in 2002 to have the lowest cost of living of all the major US cities. Population and job growth show no sign of abating in Atlanta; the region is expected to see at least 2 million more residents in the next 25 years. It provides economic opportunities for both whites and African Americans, and is a magnet for new immigrants from Latin America and Asia (Brookings Institution, 2000: 4). Despite the extent of its sprawling development, housing and labour markets have worked well. But while it is possible to interpret urban sprawl as an orderly outcome, reflecting efficient market operation, the social costs which it has brought in its wake now dominate the policy debates of this metropolitan area. The business centre of south-east United States, Atlanta is frequently ranked in the top 5 cities worldwide for business expansion, relocation and entrepreneurial growth, and with more than 1,600 international corporations ranks third in the United States for Fortune 500 headquarters. Large national corporations flocked to the Atlanta region, to locate and expand in predominantly suburban rather than central city sites (Hartshorn and Ihlanfeldt, 2000). The home of Delta Airlines, Hartsfield Atlanta international airport is the world’s second busiest airport, with 36 million flights annually. Indeed, there is an old Southern saying that ‘when you die, whether you go to heaven or hell you have to change planes in Atlanta’. In 1962, when it optimistically adopted the ‘international’ label, its sole international route was to Mexico. Now Delta is Atlanta’s largest single employer with 28,000 workers while the airport complex is the largest source of jobs in the State and the most powerful driver of change. The airport is a vital regional distribution location with the Bellsouth Corporation (with 23,500 employees, the second largest in the region), Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service Inc and CNN headquartered in the area. Atlanta’s burgeoning business growth appears in sharp contrast to its history of racial conflict. This apparent contradiction gives rise to what has been described as ‘the Atlanta Paradox’ of a city with a powerful African-American middle class and a reputation for good race relations – ‘the city too busy to hate’ – yet with marked racial segregation leading to the marginalisation of much of the black population. In actuality, ‘too busy hate’ was a convenient slogan for the civilrights era and exaggerated the actual extent of racial harmony. The corollary of the city’s massive sprawl has been the segregation of Atlanta’s ethnic groups into different neighbourhoods. Atlanta’s self-congratulatory image is increasingly challenged by social problems and by crime figures that are commonly assumed to arise from this social and ethnic polarisation. These residential divisions between white and blacks particularly necessarily isolate the poorer elements of the population from access to job opportunities, casting the spotlight upon transportation as a key policy to ensure not just a more efficient city but one that can achieve greater equity in employment (Bullard et al., 2000). The State’s creation of a Regional Transportation Authority is seen as one major line of attack on the consequences of sprawl and segregation. Another is the attempt to create a regional dimension to local government that can outweigh the suburban impulse

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to erect barriers against intruders, and the 10-county Atlanta region is overseen by the Atlanta Regional Council (ARC).

Governing Atlanta: the politics of racial segregation Atlanta is an extremely diverse metropolitan area, with a cosmopolitan make-up more characteristic of the cities of the North East. A wide range of ethnic groups lives in the area, and there are marked variations between the different counties. Taking the school population as an indicator of future trends amplifies these differences and provides a pointer to where Atlanta is going. For example, within the Atlanta city district 90 per cent of children enrolled in the public schools in 1996/97 were black and only 6.3 per cent white. The Cherokee district provides the sharpest contrast where 95 per cent of the children are white and 2.3 per cent black. The largest concentration of Hispanics was to be found in Fulton, which was then still ( just) a white-majority area, and the largest Asian enrolment (6.7 per cent) in Gwinnett. Overall, 53 per cent of the registered public school enrolment in Atlanta as a whole in 1996/97 was white against 39 per cent black and approximately equal representation of Asians and Hispanics at less than 4 per cent each. For most of the post-war period until the early 1980s, Atlanta politics were dominated by the city’s downtown business elite. The governance of the city was dependent on a bi-racial coalition, with white business leaders making an informal political alliance with the city’s middle-class African-American political leadership. Mayor William Hartsfield in the immediate post-war period, and Mayor Ivan Allen Jr in the 1960s, were both known for the political tactic of developing and maintaining close links with the city’s black leaders. The white leadership supported aspects of de-segregation and the civil-rights struggle and housing opportunities for middle-class blacks, while the latter, in turn, delivered the African-American vote needed to keep them in power. Mayor Hartsfield put an end to segregation in transportation, downtown hotels, restaurants and department stores and began the integration of the city’s police department, while Mayor Allen Jr desegregated city hall and schools, and promoted the development of public facilities to the downtown area and metro-region rapid rail system. However, the election in the early 1970s of Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor, stalled the bi-racial coalition, which had to be eventually restored in the interest of effective governance of the city. It became clear that much depended on the strength of the alliances between different racial groups, and throughout the 1970s, black-controlled city government was a major ally of business interests. However, this regime promoted projects that were seen to be detrimental to the broader community. The coalition did little to improve the lives of low-income African Americans; neither did the black-controlled city government itself, which continued to ignore the needs of the working-class black community. Urban renewal programmes displaced lower-class white and black residents from neighbouring areas surrounding the core city without providing for adequate replacement housing or relocation costs. The newly built stadiums, civic centres, universities and office developments were inaccessible to the former residents

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 145 and benefited only a minority of the public. Urban governance in Atlanta clearly failed to serve the larger public interest, with its narrowly focused public policy programmes achieving little in terms of community development and social justice. That this powerful bi-racial coalition endured for so many years led it to being aptly characterised as a ‘regime’ (Stone, 1997). Stone’s analysis of political decisions shows just how important was the role played by the business elite in mobilising political and fiscal resources for specific projects. Although the regime’s capacity to shape public policies and subsidies continued to be strong, the residents of the surrounding suburbs – more than 80 per cent of the region’s population – began to enjoy new economic development opportunities and better-funded local governments. But growing prosperity exacerbated race and class divisions and income inequalities. New forms of edge-city suburban developments, exclusionary suburban land-use regulations and institutionally separated real estate brokerage systems steered the black population to the southern side of the central business districts, further away from the growth in jobs and commercial opportunities to the north. During the 1980s the downtown area was experiencing decline as a business centre, the suburban growth and northern expansion eroding the power of downtown business elites. With the diffusion of corporate and business influence and new developments beyond the city boundaries, Atlanta-based corporations could no longer hold on to the power they once had. The residual connection between local government and local community was further eroded as the city became more closely integrated into the global economy, with the locus of decisions moving elsewhere. As a result, ‘Atlanta had become too complex and too externally focused to allow any one group to govern as effectively as the coalition once had’ (Keating, 2001: 84). The type of work Atlantans do today is still largely determined by race and gender, with inequality weighing more heavily on African-American communities. White men are to be found predominantly in the best-paying, more prestigious jobs, although there has been a growing trend of white women entering these professions. Among the new entrants to white-collar jobs are also to be found some black women, although their share relative to their overall numbers in the workforce is very small. In 1980, 58.7 per cent of all white men in the labour force in the Atlanta metro area held white-collar jobs; by 1990 the figure had risen to 64.5 per cent. Although the percentage of white men holding these kinds of jobs was growing with the changes in the job market, their overall share of such jobs was actually shrinking. In 1980, white men held 42.4 per cent of all jobs in the top 4 categories of white-collar employment; by 1990 they held 38.2 per cent of these jobs. In executive, managerial and administrative jobs white women performed well, increasing their representation from 25.4 per cent in 1980 to 34.4 per cent in 1990. During this period, moderate progress was made by black women in the job market, with their share increasing from 10.4 per cent to 13.9 per cent (Keating, 2001: 26–31). Overall, a striking feature of black participation in white-collar jobs was that black women held a higher proportion of these jobs than black men did.

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Table 7.1 Atlanta and regional unemployment rates: 1980 and 1990 Race by sex

1980 City of Atlanta %

1980 Atlanta MSA %

1990 City of Atlanta %

1990 Atlanta MSA %

City of Atlanta % change

Atlanta MSA % change

Black men White men Black women White women

10.9 4.2 10.2 3.9

9.5 3.2 9.3 3.9

13.4 3.6 12.0 3.8

11.1 3.4 9.3 3.9

22.9 ⫺14.2 17.6 ⫺2.6

16.8 6.3 0.0 0.0

Source: Keating, 2001: 34.

The different fortunes of racial and gender groups in the labour market is reflected even more dramatically in the pattern of unemployment. As Table 7.1 above shows, the unemployment rates of white men and (to a lesser extent) white women have fallen just as that of blacks has risen.

Growth and change Counting the Atlanta region as a whole, more than 3.7 million people live in its 4,000 square miles, making Atlanta the third largest urbanised area in the United States, but with by far the lowest density of the top 10 metropolitan regions. Uniquely, between 1990 and 2000 Metropolitan Atlanta’s density actually fell as a result of urban expansion outstripping its very high rate of population growth. The region – which was expanded from 5 into 19 counties over the 30 years to 2000 – is one of the fastest-growing areas in the United States, growing 3 times faster than the nation as a whole. Six of Georgia’s fastestgrowing counties in the 1990s were in the Atlanta region and three of the ten fastest growing in the United States; Forsyth county ranks second in the United States, Henry county fourth and Paulding county seventh (Tables 7.2 and 7.3). Much of the recent growth of the Atlanta region has come about by migration from other parts of the United States and abroad, with nearly half a million people moving from other areas between 1985 and 1990 (Hartshorn and Ihlanfeldt, 2000: 17–25). Rural migration has been relatively low, most movement being from other metropolitan areas. The city lost population largely to the surrounding counties in this period, DeKalb receiving many of these while the newer suburban counties accommodated substantial amount of movement from their neighbours. The population of the region as a whole is growing older, and it is growing more diverse. The 60-plus age group is expected to double its share of the region’s population by 2030, with the 85 and older group representing the fastest-growing age segment. The median age of the region’s population has been predicted to increase from 32.2 years in 2000 to 36.5 years in 2030. However, it is anticipated that the inward movement of a young, job-seeking population may well keep the average age lower than this (ARC, 2004a).

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 147 Table 7.2 Changes in population growth, urban area and density, 1990–2000 Atlanta and peer regions

Population growth %

Urbanised land growth %

Population density change %

Atlanta Dallas Houston Phoenix Washington DC

62.2 29.6 31.7 42.7 16.9

73 ⫺2 10 8 22

⫺6 32.9 19.7 32.4 ⫺4.5

Source: Transportation Planning Briefing Book, table 7.

Table 7.3 Population growth in the Atlanta Regional Commission area County

Cherokee Clayton Cobb DeKalb Douglas Fayette Fulton Gwinnett Henry Rockdale City of Atlanta Region

1970

1980

1990

1999

% Change 1970– 1999

31,059 98,126 196,793 415,387 28,659 11,364 605,210 72,349 23,724 18,152 495,039

51,699 150,357 287,718 483,024 54,573 29,043 589,904 166,808 36,309 36,747 424,922

91,000 184,100 453,400 553,800 71,700 62,800 670,800 356,500 59,200 54,500 415,200

135,400 218,600 567,800 610,000 93,500 90,900 786,100 523,900 110,700 68,000 427,500

335.9 122.8 188.5 46.9 226.3 699.9 29.9 624.1 366.6 274.6 ⫺13.6

1,500,823

1,896,182

2,557,800

3,204,900

113.5

Source: Atlanta Regional Commission, Atlanta Regional Outlook, December 1999.

Table 7.4 shows the predicted rate of growth to continue to be extremely high, with an expectation that population will increase by 2.3 million between 2000 and 2030 to reach a total of around six million. In that same period, employment is expected to increase by 1.2 million to reach 4 million. It is anticipated that many of the new residents will be attracted by employment opportunities created by Atlanta’s expanding economy and net migration is expected to account for 57 per cent of the population increase between 2020 and 2030. Associated with this rapid migrant-driven growth is Atlanta’s foremost problem of burgeoning physical development leading to high rates of land consumption which, combined with low-density development, feeds the region’s physical sprawl. These problems are compounded by strains on the transportation infrastructure with future policies being directed at how land is used, with what intensity and how its development is linked to transportation improvements.

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

Table 7.4 Components of population change and predictions to 2030

Population change Net natural increase Births Deaths Net Migration Employment related Retirement related Share of Change % Net natural increase % Net migration %

1990–2000

2000–2010

2010–2020

2020–2030

1,045,520 306,370 488,324 181,954 739,150 724,495 14,655 100.0 29.3 70.7

524,700 320,813 561,076 240,263 203,889 208,857 ⫺4,968 100.0 61.1 38.9

850,114 340,409 642,608 302,199 509,706 512,554 ⫺2,848 100.0 40.0 60.0

931,826 397,345 799,131 401,786 534,480 515,132 19,348 100.0 42.6 57.4

Source: ARC Forecasts for Population and Employment, 2004.

Apart from new development and continuing outward expansion, Atlanta is also experiencing rapid redevelopment of its existing neighbourhoods. The city’s historic districts are to some extent protected by design requirements intended to ensure that new build is harmonious with existing physical structure, but many other older residential neighbourhoods have come under threat. At the same time, the need to produce more efficient use of land leads the Atlanta Regional Commission to promote in-fill policies which may themselves evoke a defensive reaction from the local residents. Suburban development regimes based on exclusionary zoning, minimum lot sizes, and restrictions on multi-family developments brought about low-density sprawl and its associated mismatch between residents and employment. They are now being challenged by ARC policies. But restrictive regimes are not the sole drivers of suburban sprawl, and the trade-off between home prices and commuting distance is one that many Atlantans choose to make. One of the negative consequences of the region’s rapid suburban growth has been the stark divide between the northern, rich parts of the Atlanta region and the slow-growing, poorer parts of the south. Affluent white and new migrants to the city moved northward to live at a distance from the city’s blacks. Consequently, new employment opportunities and new wealth came to be concentrated in the northern side of the city, while the south side saw disproportionate levels of poverty, economic decline and loss of population. Almost 70 per cent of the region’s population growth between 1990 and 1998 took place north of the core in areas with exceptionally low poverty rates and scarcely any concentrations of poverty. In the 1970s and 1980s, six large shopping malls were built in this region, followed by a boom in office-tower construction, condominium and apartment complexes, commercial and retail development and business parks. The huge mall of the Georgia shopping centre, opened in 1999 in Gwinnett county, covers 100 acres and provides parking for 8,600 cars. This north–south division between prosperity and poverty corresponds closely with the historic residential racial segregation patterns. Inescapably, the uneven

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 149 patterns of growth and development have put enormous pressure on the region’s infrastructure and continue to pose particular challenges to the governance of metropolitan Atlanta: A disproportionate number of the region’s jobs are in one half of the region, so roads in the northside become more clogged with traffic. High housing prices on the job-rich northside and a desire to avoid economically declining neighbourhoods on the southside cause new residents to ‘leapfrog’ further out into the metropolitan fringe. The northward tilt of job growth also means that jobs move farther away from the inner neighbourhoods of south Atlanta and the close-in southern suburbs, keeping the region’s low-income and minority workers spatially isolated from economic opportunities. Overcrowding in the northern parts of the region and stagnation in the southern parts of the city and its neighbouring suburbs also create a twopronged environmental crisis: on the north side, extensive development and traffic congestion threaten air and water quality and eat up green space; on the near southside, an aging infrastructure and a concentration of ‘dirty’ industry increase the chances of environmental degradation and could present a troubling health problem. (Brookings Institution, 2000: 6) Another important consequence of the dispersal of employment and jobs has been the extent to which the central business district’s position in the regional office economy declined. In 1966, more than two-thirds of private office space was located in the CBD; in 1997 that figure declined to one-sixth (Keating, 2001: 8). During the 20-year period between early 1970s and 1990s, a number of banks, law firms, stockbrokers, accounting firms and retail stores left the downtown area; the city’s share of retail sales declined by more than a third between 1982 and 1992, from 20.2 per cent to 12.3 per cent (Keating, 2001: 15). The government continues to have a strong presence in the downtown area occupying 10 million square feet of space, although while the central business district is no longer the principal market for high quality, privately brokered office leases, it still retains a role in the economic life of the city. Total employment in the 10-county area increased during the 1990s by 43 per cent, pulling in more migrants, with some counties more than doubling and Forsyth county trebling employment during this period. Although some of the larger counties experienced a lower rate of growth, they still added very considerable numbers of additional jobs – more than 160,000 in Fulton county. More recent forecast by the ARC, however, shows that although throughout the 1980s and 1990s more than 70 per cent of the growth was in the northern sectors of the region, since 2000 growth has picked up in the southern parts, with 41 per cent of all growth occurring in this part of the metropolitan region. Atlanta continues to be the dominant wholesale and retail trade centre of the south-east, and will account for nearly two-thirds of the increase in jobs during the next 30 years. The service sector provides the greater share of jobs; in 1998 it

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

accounted for nearly 3 in 10 jobs (29.4 per cent). In the period between 1980 and 1998 it recorded both the largest absolute increase in jobs of any sector (283,425), and the second largest proportional increase of 112 per cent (Keating, 2001: 11). Retail employment grew almost at the same pace as service employment, accounting for 18 per cent of the total in 1998. The transportation and publicutilities sectors also showed substantial increases, followed by relatively slow growth of finance, insurance and real-estate sector. Manufacturing in Atlanta has always been small and declined rapidly, from accounting for 14.5 per cent of the jobs in 1980 to 9.4 per cent in 1998. During this period, the largest growth rate experienced was by government, its share of employment doubling from 6 per cent to 12.4 per cent (Keating, 2001: 13). Reductions in the city’s retail and manufacturing jobs intensified race and class divisions, perpetuating a white-employing north Atlanta and a black south region. By 2030 the number of jobs in the Atlanta region is expected to grow by some 65 per cent. While all sectors of employment – construction, wholesale, retail, financial services, real estate and government employment – are estimated to see increases, the retail and services sectors are to see the biggest boom in the number of jobs, each sector growing by more than 80 per cent. Technology is yet another sector that continues to expand, and basic computer skills are expected to be required for most entry-level jobs. The ARC’s study of Information Technology (IT) employment in the region confirmed that IT requirements are now to be found in all industry sectors, not just those characterised as high-tech businesses (ARC, 2004a). In terms of industrial structure, Atlanta is a major international bio-technology centre. Ernst and Young’s 2004 bio-technology report placed Georgia eighth in the United States for the size of its bio-technology presence. The Centres for Disease Control (CDC) is one of several world-league bio-technology institutions located there along with the American Cancer Society, the Arthritis Foundation, the Carter Centre and the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre. Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce maintains a bio-science council which co-organises with CDC an annual partnering event, providing scientists with the opportunity to meet the CDC scientists one to one. The State’s Advance Technology Development Centre (ATDC) provides advice and resources to start-up firms as well as business coaches for the university faculty with potential commercial innovations, and manages the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Bio-Science incubator. The GIT (ranked second for bio-medical and bio-engineering research in the United States) in partnership with Emory University set up the EmTech Bio-Technology Centre. A Georgia Bio-Science Joint Development Authority is working to create a linear research park along the highway corridor connecting Atlanta and Athens, complementing new research park developments in East and North Atlanta. Collaboration between the metro level and the State government has focused on bio-science, with the Metro Atlanta Bioscience Council, the Georgia Bio-Medical Partnership, the Georgia Research Alliance and the State’s Department of Economic Development working on a strategic plan to expand the bio-science industry in the region. In 2004, $100 million of venture capital flowed

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 151 into the region’s biotech industry. Recently, the State governor announced a bio-science facilities finance programme. Already, the industry employs 20,000 researchers, scientists and support staff (Allen, 2005: 237–239). Despite recent downturns in the Atlanta economy – with the metro area’s over-developed hotel industry being especially hard-hit after 9/11 – the pace of growth remains at a high level. Recovery from the recession that bottomed out in 2003 has however been slow. Even as the city climbed out of a marked property recession, employment growth was expected to drive the revival in office, retail and industrial property markets, with some 50,000 new jobs in 2004. The region has been succeeding in reversing the trends of the 1980s and 1990s, with substantial reinvestment in existing towns and employment centres. According to ARC, developers are looking for redevelopment and in-fill opportunities in existing communities in the 10-county region, rather than building farther out, and local governments are changing the rules to allow more innovative and liveable community designs.

Planning Atlanta The machinery of regional planning Atlanta’s local government is distinctive in that public services are mainly delivered by county-level service providers rather than incorporated municipalities (although there are 63 of these) with joint action addressing regional problems on an inter-county basis. Such co-operative metropolitan planning began in Atlanta in 1947 with the creation of the Metropolitan Planning Commission (MPC) covering the city of Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb counties – the first publicly supported multi-county planning agency in the country. Its first metropolitan plan entitled Up Ahead was published in 1952 and led to a major expansion of the northern boundary of the city, trebling its size and increasing its population by 100,000. The Atlanta region today has a number of alternative definitions based on different conglomerates of counties. In 1947 it comprised the three that jointly established the MPC. In 1960 it consisted of the city of Atlanta and five counties: the original members being joined by Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton. In 1971 the Georgia General Assembly passed legislation to enable local governments to create the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC). In 1989 ARC’s boundaries were expanded to include eight counties of Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale. In 1991 Fayett County was added and in 1994 Cherokee County was added bringing the total to 10 counties within the ARC jurisdiction (ARC, 2004: 4). The larger Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area includes the 10 counties and a further 11 largely urban fringe counties designated on the basis of the 1990 census. The Atlanta MSA is made up of more counties than any other metropolitan area in the United States, further testimony to the extent of its urban sprawl. When the ARC was set up, it assumed the functions and responsibilities of the former Metropolitan Planning Commission as well as the Metropolitan Atlanta

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

HALL CHEROKEE

FORSYTH

BARTOW

FULTON BARROW GW INN ETT

COBB

PAULDING

DEKALD WALTON DOUGLAS FULTON

CLAYTON

NEWTON NEWTON

FAYETTE

HENRY

COWETA

SPALDING

ARC's previous 10 country planning area, plus newly urbanized areas based on the census. Additional eight countries (three complete, five partial) that were included in the Mobility 2030 planning process as a result of the region's growth.

Map 7.1 Atlanta.

Council of Local Governments, the Metropolitan Atlanta Council for Health and the Atlanta Area Transportation Study, and became the official area planning and development commission for the expanded region. The Board of the Commission has a complex constitution and includes the chairman of each county commission in the region; one mayor from each county with the exception of Fulton, which returns mayors separately from the northern and southern parts of the county; the mayor and 1 member of Atlanta city council; 15 private citizens, 1 from each of the 15 multi-jurisdictional districts of roughly equal population; and 1 person appointed by the State Department of Community Affairs. The Commission takes the lead in environmental planning and the promotion of sustainable growth and development. It monitors the impact of development on infrastructure services within affected communities and provides local governments with the information necessary to make decisions about community-shaping projects. During the mid-1970s, ARC adopted a Regional Development Plan (RDP) with specified goals, objectives, growth forecasts, development policies and an

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 153 implementation strategy. It forecast a year 2000 population of more than three and a half million for the seven-county region – which turned out to be a considerable underestimate. In the later revised 1984 RDP ARC continued to place strong emphasis on the protection of environmentally sensitive areas and enhanced public transportation services. This was followed by the appointment of a Growth Strategies Commission with responsibility for formulating state-wide planning strategy, the work of which led to the passage of the Georgia Planning Act, 1989. The Act provided the legislative framework for local and regional planning, and required local authorities to develop plans in accordance with minimum planning standards to be prepared by the State Department of Community Affairs (DCA). These local plans were reviewed by the ARC to ensure consistency, and by the DCA to ensure compliance with the minimum planning standards. In 1990 the ARC launched a consultation – the Vision 2020 project – to create a clearer strategy for the future of the region, which emerged in the 1997 Regional Development Plan (RDP) which was in turn revised in 1999. A regional expert team was established to provide continuing updates and revisions to the plan for a full revision in 2004. The RDP provides guidance in areas of growth and development designed to strengthen and enhance town centres, provide stable neighbourhoods and encourage mixed-use, traditional neighbourhood and transit-oriented developments. Planning by persuasion Local governments are the primary land-use authorities in Georgia, framing zoning regulations and development policies and taking decisions on the infrastructure. Accordingly, the ARC’s development plan has only a limited application and does not impinge upon local autonomy in planning decisions. Instead, the Commission attempts to guide future development largely by persuasion, encouraging the local authorities as well as school boards, water and sewer authorities to use the development plan as a framework for their decisions. The better management of growth has been a persistent concern for Atlanta’s policy communities. In 1998 the State’s Department of Community Affairs created a growth management reassessment task force. The Task Force reviewed the 1989 Georgia Planning Act with a view to improving growth management in the State. It concluded that ‘scattered and unco-ordinated land use patterns (“urban sprawl”) have become the norm for Georgia’ and argued that State incentives should be offered to encourage good growth management practices by local governments and other entities. The Task Force recommended that mechanisms be established to ensure that local governments were following their comprehensive plans and that key players who have a significant impact on local land-use and development patterns participated in the local planning process (Georgia Department of Community Affairs, 1998). In 2001, the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia and the Georgia Municipal Association recommended that there should be a clear State policy on growth management, a better co-ordinating mechanism to ensure that State, local and regional bodies act in

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

accordance with it, and legislative and technical assistance changes to equip local government to manage growth. In 2002, these two bodies agreed ‘quality growth’ goals to underpin changes in the regulatory regime. Given the diffusion of decision-making power within the region, the ARC’s development plan has to aim primarily to forge a consensus. It is necessarily an exhortatory document, written so as to inform and educate. For example, anticipated growth ‘will require local governments to consider more efficient development patterns in the future . . . managing the limited land remaining in the ten-county region in a more sustainable way . . . In the absence of careful planning, cohesive development policies and targeted public investments, growth can lead to inefficient use of infrastructure and land, unco-ordinated development patterns and, ultimately, higher cost to the public.’ The tone of ARC publications reflects the Commission’s lack of real authority. Public bodies, it advises, ‘should be familiar with the RDP policies and carefully consider the region’s growth guidelines in their associated plans’ while employers, developers and realtors ‘can also benefit from awareness of the RDP in their strategic planning activities’. Co-ordination around a comprehensive plan for localities aims to promote closer alignment between local decisions and RDP policies, particularly in order to link transportation, land-use and liveability issues, with the ARC striving to create synergy around its key policies. These are accordingly not overly ambitious: to encourage a more clustered new development where new transit opportunities exist; to encourage traditional neighbourhood developments; to encourage in-filling and redevelopment where acceptable and to support the preservation of stable, single family neighbourhoods. Critics have described these as ‘timid’ objectives. Far from timid was Atlanta’s bid, successful against the odds, to host the 1996 Olympics. Only two other American cities had ever hosted the summer Olympics and Mayor Jackson had seen the possibility of using the Olympics as a springboard for twenty-first-century development. Appearing before the international Olympic committee in Barcelona in 1992, Mayor Jackson announced that ‘the vision of Atlanta is rooted in the understanding that the Olympics represents a means and a catalyst for realising the city of tomorrow’ (Adams, 1998). Atlanta’s winning bid was expected to bring considerable short- and long-term benefits to the city. The short-term benefits were to flow from the event itself, and the influx of sporting, media and cultural activities, together with visitors to the State, were expected to generate $1.3 billion dollars, with a further £1.2 billion of direct investment. The longer-term benefits were expected to accrue from the creation of world-class facilities and greater national and international recognition of the State. The combined impact of all direct, indirect and induced expenditures was estimated at $5.1 billion, generating more than 70,000 new jobs (Humphreys and Plummer, 1994). Commentators elsewhere cautioned against overestimating the benefits in settings where economic gains are pursued without regard to other impacts, generating risks that the costs may exceed the economic returns. In the event, the Atlanta games were not smooth running, with widespread international criticism of poor organisation and security culminating in a

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 155 small-scale terrorist bombing, killing two and wounding many. There have been few rigorous post hoc analyses of actual economic impact of any of the games, although it is clear that the balance sheet may show huge losses (as in Montreal 1976) or substantial profits (as in Los Angeles 1974 or Seoul 1988). In Atlanta, the financial costs and benefits were more nearly balanced although one of the common effects – a significant post-games slow down in economic activity in which the economy returns to the pre-Olympic equilibrium – seems to have been quite sharp (Barton, 2004).

The (im)mobile metropolis Atlanta’s unparalleled urban sprawl has left the population crucially dependent on the private automobile to meet their transportation needs. Between 1990 and 2000, the vehicle miles travelled by Atlantans increased by 66 per cent, a change unparalleled amongst comparable metropolitan areas. Vehicle miles travelled per capita increased in this same decade from 29 to 34 miles a day, far exceeding the per capita averages in such other cities of the American Sunbelt as Denver, Charlotte and Houston. The vast majority of this travel – around 80 per cent – now takes place in congested periods, which was not the case 10 years ago. The time lost in Atlanta’s traffic jams was exceeded only by Los Angeles, and congestion has been estimated to cost the average Atlantan $915 a year in lost time (Henderson, 2004: 196). ‘Is traffic-clogged Atlanta the New Los Angeles?’ asked the Wall Street Journal rhetorically. It certainly seemed so. A survey by the Texas Transportation Institute estimated that the average driver in Atlanta experienced 68 hours delay in 1997 with 3 Atlanta road intersections being rated 11th, 12th and 18th among the worst bottlenecks in the United States (Bertaud, 2003: 380). The traditional response of road improvement was no longer within reach, and traffic management has replaced construction as the new panacea. As part of the federal requirement for a transportation-planning process Atlanta has developed a congestion management system which seeks to identify the most congested points in the road system, analyse their causes and develop mitigation strategies including improved public transport, ride sharing and car pooling and improved systems for traffic surveillance, traveller information and incident management. It is perhaps a second, minor, ‘Atlanta paradox’ that this far-flung, low-slung metropolis, covering about 4,000 square miles, should have some of the worst traffic congestion in the United States. That urban sprawl in itself produces long commutes is seemingly self-evident, but it is by no means a necessary connection. The form of the urban structure itself, and the degree of separation between residence and work, exercises a powerful effect. The spatial mismatch of employment and residence is increasingly cited as the main driver of traffic congestion, especially where housing development is concentrated in new outlying suburbs. Atlanta is not unique in this regard: the measured relationship between the location of jobs and housing deteriorated in 35 of 39 US metropolitan areas between 1980 and 1990, leading to increased commuting times (Sultana, 2002: 728–749).

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

Time spent travelling is a major feature of Atlantan life. In one study just 4 per cent of workers travelled less than 20 minutes to work, 69 per cent 20–30 minutes, and a further 27 per cent between 30 minutes and 1 hour. Despite Atlanta’s segregated residential patterns and new job creation being predominantly in the more advantaged locations, employed black residents experience shorter commuting times due to their tendency to be restricted to lowerpaid, lower-quality, local jobs (Sultana, 2002). The ARC’s new Liveable Centres Initiative (LCI), based on the concept of connecting homes, shops and offices aims to address this imbalance and promote greater liveability in town and employment centres. The LCI plan aims not only to increase mobility for all transportation modes but also to explore ways to provide more housing for those who work in the area. Sidewalk connectivity, intersection improvements and a shuttle circulator are among its other projects designed to create a 24-hour environment for long-term liveability. Commuting times apart, Atlanta’s automobile use, coupled with the presence of the nation’s busiest airport and natural climatological factors, has produced some of the worst air quality in the United States. In 1996 The US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) gave Atlanta 18 months to produce a less polluting regional transportation plan or face suspension of federal transportation funds, blocking allocations for highway investment from 1998 to 2000. The loss of funds that actually followed in 1999 – seen as a shot across Atlanta’s bow – prompted a crisis of business and political confidence, with traffic and pollution problems now being portrayed as obstacles to Atlanta’s future growth in an age when quality of life has become an important labour-force consideration. The reaction to this crisis was shaped by Atlanta’s large corporations and real estate interests, led by the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and coalesced around a demand to restructure transportation planning so as to reduce dependence upon the private automobile. Air quality has been improving since 1999 when Atlanta had 21 days in violation of the federal 1-hour ozone standard and appears to have reversed this long-term deterioration caused by traffic congestion. However, the continuous tightening of federal air-quality standards poses-an on-going challenge to Atlanta’s transportation planners. Planning for improvement The ARC’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) has gone some way to provide diverse solutions for improving mobility and air quality. Proposals include bus systems in all regional counties, new light, heavy and commuter rail; bicycle and pedestrian projects; a region-wide network of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes; clean fuel and commuter-efficiency programmes. To implement its long-term policies, ARC has developed a short-range Transportation Improvement Programme (TIP) that allocates federal funds for the highest priority transportation projects including bridges, bicycle paths, sidewalks, transit services, road upgrades, safety improvements and emission reduction strategies. A major theme in the recent plan is the improvement of transportation and the creation of a better

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 157 relationship between new development and transit opportunities. As the ARC concedes, the existing sprawling metropolis ‘largely dictates the use of an automobile’ (ARC, 2003a). New development and redevelopment, however, create opportunities for alternative transportation. The principal alternative to private transport is that provided by the Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transport Authority (MARTA). MARTA has been operating bus services since 1972 and rail services since 1980. The Authority is well regarded for the design of its facilities, its innovative schemes to attract riders, and for its safety record, having won the safest transit system in America award 17 times. Nevertheless, MARTA’s provision not only does less than what might be expected to shape urban development, but has, for some years, found the tide of change working against it. Growth in passenger trips has been very small even during a period when the population of the metropolitan area increased by 45 per cent. During the 1990s the proportion of this population living within half a mile of a metro station or bus route decreased dramatically; 85 per cent of the 690,000 new comers to Atlanta during that decade settled beyond the reach of public transportation (Bertaud, 2003: 390). The ARC has attempted to confront this trend by promoting the concept of transit-oriented development (TOD). TOD is intended to encourage mixed landuse development within walking distance of the rail, bus or transfer facilities, providing a mix of office, retail and mixed-income residences to promote movement by public transport, bicycle or foot as an alternative to the car. ARC argues that implemented properly, TOD can help achieve fundamental principles of quality growth by maximising ridership, increasing property values, providing retail opportunities and a stimulus for the revitalisation of urban centres and existing neighbourhoods. The Commission cites as a prime example of TOD the Bellsouth consolidation of a scattered facilities into three major sites located along the MARTA Rail System, with the actual location chosen by reference to the current residences of the company’s employees. ‘Smart growth’ and ‘the new urbanism’ are among the terms used to capture this attempt to concentrate development and bring about a concurrent shift from the private car to public transport, cycling and walking. Two of Metro Atlanta’s northern-fringe municipalities have now introduced new tax regimes to fund landscaping and the building of sidewalks, and have introduced shuttle buses and taken measures to promote cycling. The expansion of Atlanta’s rail-transit system and the building of new commuterrail stations has not been an unmixed blessing. In many American cities, neighbourhood groups, especially in areas where the majority use their private cars to make their journeys, have sometimes opposed new stations on the ground that they impart a new and unwelcome mobility to criminal elements. Crime and the fear of crime is a powerful driver of residential relocation in the United States, so any development that brings the criminal into easier contact with the suburbanite is likely to be viewed negatively. There has arisen in some communities a fear that ‘station induced crime’ may be increased by new station openings, providing an incentive to further relocation. Such expectations have led to

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis

proposals to accompany new station development with measures to contain criminal behaviour. These questions arise with some force in the case of Atlanta where proposals for transport extension encounter a highly decentralised residential pattern, and where an apparently typical resident was quoted as saying ‘having MARTA increases the chance of crime. The criminals can get off the train and break into your home and get back on to the train.’ However, a rare empirical study undertaken in Atlanta itself suggests that while improved rail access increases crime in some neighbourhoods, especially in the central city, rail access actually reduces it in white suburban neighbourhoods. Despite this conclusion, fear of crime and the presumption among suburbanites that it may be brought to their homes by rail expansion remains a potent source of opposition to MARTA’s plans (Ihlanfeldt, 2003: 273–294). New investment The suspension of federal transportation funding in 1999 prompted the Chamber of Commerce to promote a bus rapid transit (BRT) scheme aimed to expand services, build bus lanes and priority signalling systems and provide new streetcars in the central city. At the same time came a move to greatly expand commuter-rail transport across the State of Georgia. Opinion had shifted dramatically away from road building and airport expansion and a business-led metropolitan Atlanta transportation initiative was established to swing public opinion and influence the State legislature. The most tangible result was the creation in 1999 of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA). GRTA was given jurisdiction over those counties deemed to have unacceptable air quality (13 of the 28 in 2003). These counties’ transportation plans required approval by GRTA which, if withheld, could lead to large-scale developments capable of causing congestion or worsening air quality being vetoed. GRTA also had the power to approve large developments if adjacent to major transit facilities or considered to be smart growth projects. This was a radical new departure in the politics of transportation with GRTA, established by the Georgia legislature, effectively working against the State’s long-established Department of Transportation (GDOT) whose roadtransport orientation had been dominant for decades. GDOT, despite its title, has been described as essentially a highways department, and highway improvement continues to take the largest single share of federal and State funding to the region. Locally, the largest investment is in MARTA, which in turn generates substantial fare income and public transport taken together represents about half of the total transportation investment. Table 7.5 shows the relative importance of the several sources of funding for the various transportation modes. During the late 1960s GDOT’s programmes of road building and improvement were notably responsive to the demands of the suburban municipalities that ringed the city. The outer suburban counties operated collectively through the Atlanta Regional Commission which at that time was ‘stacked with suburban interests [which] complemented the power of GDOT in shaping Atlanta in the interests of suburban white counties.’ The State governor in the 1990s was

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 159 Table 7.5 Current transportation funding ($ millions), 2005 Project type Highway High occupancy vehicle lanes MARTA Other transit Cycle/pedestrian Other projects Total

Federal

State

Local

4,840 2,450

3,396 1,191

2,350

3,240 3,175 100 883 14,689

4 2,574 7 67 7,239

7,250 987 333 102 11,022

Fares

Tolls

Total

3,531

14,117 3,641

2682 588

3270

3,531

13,176 7,324 440 1,052 39,751

Source: Transportation Planning Briefing Book, table 11.

strongly tied to pro-road developers and under his leadership a group of real estate developers and their political allies were said to have gained control over GDOT to create an ‘auto-industrial complex’. GDOT, in alliance with ARC, proposed an orbital outer-perimeter highway which was eventually largely abandoned following an intense controversy. The 59-mile northern arc which remained came to symbolise the debate over how Atlanta’s future should be shaped with what kind of mobility. The election of Governor Roy Barnes in 1998 gave fresh impetus to public transportation and smart growth. With support from the governor, the business coalition favouring smart growth worked to steer projects towards the northern ‘favoured quarter’ of white affluent families, while he also continued to promote northern arc development and ensuring it was included in GRTA’s 25-year regional transportation plan. Governor Barnes’ support for the northern arc became a key issue in his election campaign in 2002 when he faced a coalition of opponents and a Republican candidate committed to cancelling the road. Despite Barnes reversing his position on the road at the last minute, he lost the election to his Republican opponent. Since then, low-visibility steps to secure the road route continue to be taken, ensuring that the northern arc remains a lodestone for the debate over transportation and the metropolitan future (Henderson, 2004: 203–208). The focus of this debate was the need to create an Atlanta that could compete internationally and nationally for highly qualified workers seeking the kind of urbanity associated with New York, Chicago or San Francisco. This could only be achieved by revitalisation of the urban centre which itself required public transit improvements and which was threatened by the magnetic effect of the northern arc development. At first glance it would seem that Atlanta’s business community had undergone a strange epiphany and transformed into a group of radical anti-sprawl, regional thinking environmentalists. Many of the new transportation policies embraced by the reawakened business coalitions were shared by environmentalists and inner-city urban advocates who had for years argued that more

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Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis transit and urban revitalisation were needed, coupled with more regional thinking about transportation. Ironically, environmentalists, neighbourhood advocates, and civil rights activists in Atlanta had frequently battled the same business interests over how downtown Atlanta and adjacent areas would be redeveloped and for whom. Now, with a mobility crisis threatening the entire Atlanta region, the interests of the business elite seemed more in line with their traditional opponents than with the pro-expansionist ideology that dominated Atlanta’s previous 50 years of growth. (Henderson, 2004: 201)

The ARC’s 2000 strategy, Transportation Planning in the Atlanta Region, is geared to reducing pollution and congestion by investment in public transport and the reform of land use to promote smart development. Yet the new consensus this strategy reflects has itself been challenged by analysts. In December 2003 new goals were defined as the basis of a more ambitious transport plan to 2030. These reflect the recent federal concerns that metropolitan plans should put increased emphasis on safety and security, provide for effective freight planning and improve the management and operation of the transport system. This plan provides for greater accessibility and mobility, improved system performance, environmental protection and improved safety and security. Each of these goals is decomposed into a set of specific objectives and associated performance measures. The plan is essentially aspirational and depends for its success on adaptations to the urban structure itself. For example, by 2025 it is hoped that 40 per cent of the Metropolitan Atlanta population will have a transit facility within 0.4 miles of their home; that 55 per cent of all jobs would be accessible by transit; that 30 per cent of jobs would be within reach of a 60-minute journey via transit for people living in low-income areas and that the average travel time for middle-income groups would fall to 35 minutes. These aspirations for greater transit use are also reflected in desired changes to Atlanta’s road traffic. Here, the hope is to reduce vehicle miles travelled per capita/per day to 33, and hours spent in the vehicle to 1.3, with just 45 per cent of travel being in congested conditions. In order to carry the plan forward, 10 planning teams, comprising government officials, experts, public and other stakeholders are engaged in developing specific strategies for each of the key areas, including regional development, air quality, pedestrianisation, public involvement and road, transit and environmental issues. The work of the planning team set up to address land-use practices is central to the entire exercise. The team produced the updated policies to guide future development decisions, the aim being to achieve a better integration of land-use decisions with transportation, environment and other public investment decisions. The team has focused on small-area population and employment forecast to identify the impact of future policies, visiting local jurisdictions to talk through the growth issues and establish their views on the location and magnitude of future development at the small area level. Given that the air-quality crisis provided the catalyst for bringing about change in Atlanta’s transportation-planning process, the air-quality planning team is of

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 161 central importance. As the Commission confesses ‘of all the challenges ARC faces in developing a [regional transportation plan] that meets federal requirements, none has surpassed the air quality issue in its complexity.’ Failure to meet air-quality objectives could lead to drastic consequences, including limits on the construction of new roads and rail lines. The work of this team centres on the prioritisation, implementation and monitoring of the plan’s air-quality related projects, which cover supporting fleet conversion to cleaner vehicles, encouraging alternatives to solo driving, including employer commuting programmes for car pools and shuttle services and supporting public education. An environmental justice planning team focuses attention on the extent to which opportunities in areas populated by minorities and poor people – especially areas with low levels of car ownership – can be enhanced by improved bus routing and by developing ‘reverse commute’ options to link central city residential neighbourhoods with suburban employment. More recently, the Atlanta Regional Commission developed its Mobility 2030 transportation plan to meet federal transportation-planning requirements and satisfy federal air-quality requirements. Developed in consultation with the public, the main goals of Mobility 2030 are to improve accessibility and mobility options for people and goods, to protect and improve the region’s environment and quality of life and enhance the safety and security of the transportation system. Five major transportation systems provide a focus for the plan, including a freeway and cross-regional arterial road system that addresses the problems of congestion, safety and freight mobility and a managed line/High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) system. In order to address the regional transit needs Mobility 2030 committed $5 billion in strategies such as Fixed Guideway Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), heavy rail, express bus, commuter rail and local bus. A system of smart corridors and a bicycle and pedestrian facility system aim to make the region’s centres and travel corridors walkable. Transit ridership is expected to more than double by 2030 – a rate of growth higher than the rate of growth in population and vehicle trips, while other strategies comprising Mobility 2030 are expected to provide walking access to transit for almost 50,000 additional lower-income households. Mobility 2030 claims that savings of more than $700 in annual per capita congestion costs are possible (ARC, 2004). Public involvement The ARC, concerned about the lack of public involvement in, or awareness of, the planning issues facing the region established a community-planning academy to provide classes for local officials and citizens to train them, inform them and enhance participation in issues concerning the region’s future. Public involvement in transportation planning is a specific federal requirement and obliges the relevant bodies to establish a pro-active public involvement process with full and timely information, access to decision-making and early and continuing engagement in transportation planning. Under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century State governments are required to designate a Metropolitan Planning Organisation (MPO) for transportation planning and project selection in every urbanised area of more than 50,000 population. The ARC is the

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Metropolitan Planning Organisation for the 10-county Atlanta Region and is responsible for developing plans and policies to enhance mobility, reduce congestion and meet air-quality standards in the region. As with other MPOs Atlanta’s public outreach process has to adhere to standards laid down by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). The FHWA’s environmental policy statement calls on MPOs to Ensure that those historically underserved by the transportation system, including minority and low-income populations, are included in our outreach. Actively involve our partners and all affected parties in an open, co-operative, and collaborative process, beginning at the earliest planning stages and continuing through project development, construction and operation. (ARC, 2003: 62) Both FHWA and FTA require MPOs to actively promote public involvement at all stages of transportation planning, defining goals jointly with citizen groups. To this end, the ARC maintains an environmental justice planning team, an ageing-services task force and an ethnic advisory council to support input to transportation planning. An important example of the extent to which public input is considered important is reflected in a major transportation study carried out to address travel needs and opportunities across the northern metropolitan Atlanta area. The Marietta–Lawrenceville Transportation Study (MLTS) of January 2000, initiated by the ARC, was a response to the rapid growth and development that had forced transportation, air-quality and quality-of-life issues to the top of the region’s political agenda. A range of stakeholders including local and regional agencies, transit operators, civic groups and the general public were invited for discussions on the feasibility and appropriateness of transit improvements. Providing workshops, surveys and travelling exhibits, the study was driven by a steering committee and a citizen’s advisory committee which reviewed the goals, alternatives and findings (ARC, 2002). Such is the importance given to public engagement with traffic and transport issues, that in 2001 the ARC developed a framework for public involvement, acknowledging citizen insights, and working with community groups, with extensive outreach especially to those low-income and ethnic communities less likely to participate in the regional planning process. The official ARC policy proclaimed that ARC welcomes advice, suggestions and ideas related to regional issues from interested persons from the Atlanta Regional Community. There are many opportunities and levels of involvement for citizens related to public policy development. ARC encourages citizens to be involved throughout the decision-making process. In certain instances, ARC will host official public review and comment periods to solicit input on draft plans and programmes. This particular policy relates specifically to the process for citizens to directly address ARC board committees or the full ARC board.

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 163 The Commission also encourages interested citizens to become involved at the local government levels to effect public policy in the earlier stages of its formation. (ARC, 2002a: 8–9) Given that public involvement can take place at local, regional, State and federal levels and at different stages in the policy process, measures to promote co-ordination have become an urgent necessity. A public involvement advisory group (PIAG) was established to bring together community activists and transportation professionals in the Atlanta region with government agencies, regional organisations and interested non-profit groups. PIAG is charged with co-ordinating outreach, sponsoring public meetings and events and developing resource materials about transportation issues, and has also published a citizen’s guide to transportation planning. There is public involvement in the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), the policy plan that guides transportation planning over a 20-year time-span focusing on longer-term more conceptual and visionary issues, and in the Transportation Improvement Programme (TIP) which provides for a shorter and more intense public involvement in the annual updating process. The ARC’s public briefings on the RTP invite local residents to ‘learn about other important congestion and mobility studies currently underway’ and ‘discover how you can help improve mobility and air quality, as well as participate more fully in the planning process.’ The measures adopted in the 2002 Transportation Public Involvement Plan (TPIP) are the basis for the 2030 regional transportplanning process. Over this longer period specific goals are to increase the number of people involved in transportation planning; increase the opportunities for involvement; increase public understanding of transport-planning issues; improve co-ordination of public outreach between local jurisdictions and transportation agencies in the region and enhance the impact of this involvement.

The future urban structure The plans for Atlanta’s future depend crucially on reversing dependence on the automobile, redirecting future development to minimise trips and creating a public transport system that is sufficiently frequent, cheap and accessible as to provide a more attractive option. It has been argued, however, that the sprawling spatial structure of Atlanta – in this respect the most American of cities – will subvert such good intentions. Whether we look at average densities, density profiles or job dispersions, American cities are markedly different from other cities of the world. In addition, Atlanta is an outlier even within the restricted universe of American cities, making it even more unfit for transit than some other denser American cities. (Bertaud, 2003: 381–382)

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Even New York – among the most dense of American cities – is spatially diffuse when compared with European cities, and even more so by world standards. In a comparison of 46 metropolitan areas worldwide, Atlanta, with a density of 6 persons per hectare has the lowest density (with Mumbai at the other extreme close to 400 persons per hectare). Sprawling Los Angeles is three times more dense than Atlanta. And while the density differences between city centre and suburbs are generally very great in almost all cities in the world, Atlanta provides an exception. The density profile is also unusually flat; that is to say, even the city centre area has a low density with 25 persons per hectare within the 1-km ring compared with nearly 300 for a comparable area in Paris. This unusual structure is a reflection of the limited role of central Atlanta as an attractor of jobs and residents. In 1990 only 2 per cent of the region’s jobs were in the CBD and only 8 per cent within 5 kilometres of the centre. And while the ARC’s strategy is based on the promotion of smart growth, the fact remains that within the existing structure only a small proportion of the population presently have easy access to public transport: just 4 per cent live within half a mile of a metro station. An economist who has made a particular study of density makes a telling comparison between Atlanta and Barcelona – both recent Olympic cities of similar population size. Barcelona is 28 times as dense as Atlanta and 60 per cent of the population live within 600 metres of a metro station. Thirty per cent of all trips in Barcelona are made by public transport as against only 4.5 per cent in Atlanta. To achieve a degree of transport access comparable with this exemplary European city, Atlanta would have to build around 2,800 new metro stations and 3,400 kms of metro track (against a present extent of 74 kms). Rail investment is, of course, hugely expensive and inflexible, whereas bus services using existing roads can be conjured into existence more readily – consider Mayor Livingstone’s initial strategy in London. A similar comparison can be made with regard to Atlanta’s bus provision to show that a huge increase in the number of vehicles and bus routes will be required to provide transport at a level comparable with that of Barcelona. The comparison is made again purely in order to make the point that the expectations of access to transport in a city of 162 square kms cannot be transposed to another – albeit of similar population size – of 4,280 square kms. On this analysis Atlanta lies well below the threshold at which public transport becomes technically feasible and economically viable (Bertaud, 2003). Population density is not the sole factor posing a challenge to policies for Atlanta’s future. Of equal importance is the city’s spatial structure. The classic structure of cities is monocentric with a strong attractive centre. Such a structure aids transport provision by making it possible to establish routes with multiple origins and a single destination in the city centre. In what Cervero terms a Transit Metropolis most trips to the centre are made by public transport with rail, metro- and light-rail systems operating effectively in a monocentric context. But road transport, whether private or public, is the only feasible means of transport in a polycentric city with trips having multiple origins and multiple destinations. Bertaud argues, with forgivable levity, that as bus capacity must be tailored to the multiplicity of routes, with greater dispersion arguing for smaller bus capacity, in the case of extreme high dispersion – the Atlanta case – the optimum ‘bus’ size carries only one person – the driver.

Atlanta: the sprawling metropolis 165 Radical proposals have been made to reshape Atlanta’s future urban structure on the grounds that the city will only be capable of shifting towards becoming a Transit Metropolis by achieving a huge increase in densities, restricting further greenfield development and reconcentrating employment in the urban centre. Increasing the supply of public transportation by extending the network would not in itself solve the problem without a corresponding increase in demand which, in the absence of swingeing constraints on private transport, is likely to be limited. Reforming the urban structure is probably beyond the capabilities of a consensual co-ordinating body such as the ARC; more draconian measures would be required. It would require the establishment of a London-style green belt or Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) to restrict further outward development and force higher densities within the existing built-up area. However, this effect is likely to be limited even on optimistic assumptions. If, for example, Atlanta continues to grow at its historic annual rate of 3.14 per cent and if the increase in land prices occasioned by restrictions on development does not affect the growth rate, then, in a period of 20 years, Atlanta would reach a density of 11 people per hectare or less than half of that of Los Angeles today. To reach the target density of 30 persons per hectare calculated by Bertaud to be necessary to sustain the public transit system, the built-up area of the metropolis would have to shrink by 64 per cent. The second proposition is clearly unthinkable while the first, difficult to achieve in itself, would fall far short of creating a potential for a transit city. Indeed, Bertaud argues that the entire transit debate in Atlanta is a ‘conceit’ and a distraction from the real issues which can only be approached through road-pricing and strict emission standards. Others disagree. There are signs that the debate on transportation in Atlanta is changing with growing demands for better quality of life. Pollution, poor access to opportunities and threats to the viability of communities are sustaining a growth in public understanding and support for action. Issues of air pollution, traffic congestion and the disadvantages of unplanned, sprawled development have not enjoyed public visibility and open discussion until now. So ‘the time is ripe,’ Chapman argues, ‘for positive change’ in Atlanta (Chapman, 2000: 85). Whether or not this optimism is justified, only time will show. Certainly, analysts are impressed by the downside of urban sprawl in terms of the deterioration of infrastructure, the abandonment of downtown, racial polarisation, pollution and threats to public health and safety, as well as uneconomic use of land. It may be true that the region has no alternative but to get off the ‘automobile dependent-treadmill’ if the problem of air quality is to be addressed (Bullard, 2000: 210). Until then, Atlanta’s residential pattern and the automobile culture that sustains it will continue to express the desires and aspirations of the more affluent residents of this rapidly growing metropolis. ***** Atlanta’s growth and development challenges all the assumptions held dear by planners and urban analysts. Despite its gargantuan sprawl and generous patterns of land-use, the city has so far functioned well as a place to live and work. This is due in part to the relatively recent nature of Atlanta’s development.

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Atlanta lacks the concentration of urban employment in central and old industrial areas that impeded the adaptation of other cities with more typical histories. The ideal pattern of work and residence stands a good chance of being carried forward in new neighbourhood developments – the LCI – favoured by the ARC’s lighttouch planning regime. Nevertheless, not all Atlantans will benefit from such highurbanity developments. At present, the transit network can do only so much to improve connectivity, and so provide poorer residents with improved mobility and the access to employment that it brings. Atlanta’s future is unlikely to replicate the past. The very success of the city in attracting business growth will continue to attract migrants from elsewhere, which in turn may possibly generate demand for, and even make feasible, the public transportation that Atlanta will then need.

8

Conclusion Cities in transition

For some years now, the debate on the urban predicament has centred on the notion of the global city, defined as the crucial node where capital, human resources, information and commodities are produced, exchanged and consumed. A small number of predominant cities function as the spatial articulation of the global flows that constitute the world economy. A great deal of inconclusive debate followed as analysts attempted to define the key characteristics of the global city, to identify the members of this exclusive club, and to rank them in some kind of hierarchy. It is perhaps more important to understand the processes of change than to create an inventory, and for that reason the term ‘globalising city’ has a broader appeal and a greater utility. Almost all cities are influenced by the process of globalisation, but their importance is less a matter of their placement in the hierarchy than of the nature and extent of global influences on the way cities are shaped and developed. Those influences do not go unmediated. Cities differ not only in their experience of global forces, but also in the national policies and local decisions that shape the outcome of that experience. The original formulations of the global city understated the importance of politics, disregarding the role of the State whereas, in actuality, the results of globalising processes are subject to political control (White, 1998: 457; Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000: 4). Today, the literature on globalisation is re-focusing on the political control of the processes and their consequences, no longer accepting them as an inevitable fait accompli (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000: 274). This shift of perspective provides a starting point for the investigation of patterns of metropolitan politics and policy in those great cities that engage – in their very different ways – with the globalising process, recognising that globalisation is only one of the forces acting to reshape them. Governments, central and local, constantly confront the powerful international economic trends that impact upon their cities. Urban transition is a perpetual state. But growing interdependence and the spread of free market policies open up the urban economy, while rapid technological changes dramatically transform the competitive position of those cities that were founded on a narrow industrial base. Governments encounter pressures to respond to global political trends to decentralisation and devolution, to localising popular power, and to new ideas about governance and the ‘new public management’. But the extent to which they

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are able to do so depends on international interdependence and economic openness. In this regard, the global economy has the potential not only to constrain but also to enable governments to pursue their policy objectives (Weiss, 2003: 4). Equally, governments have come to recognise just how much depends upon the well-being of their urban areas. Cities are places in which the most rapid demographic growth tends to occur, highlighting the potential political importance of the urban population. They have long been, or are fast becoming, numerically dominant. Cities are also generally the places where the most rapid economic growth occurs, giving them importance in the national economic fortunes that cannot be ignored by policy makers. Accordingly, cities are under persistent pressure to maintain and enhance their competitiveness, despite there being no obvious and unambiguous means of measuring that quality and the complexity of the factors that may shape how well a city’s economy functions (Begg, 2002: 312–318). One apparently spontaneous response seen in cities across the world is the rise of new and more assertive styles of urban political leadership. In short, this complex of factors drives towards the adoption of new urban strategies for city development. The Figure 8.1 below encapsulates these relationships.

Urban population and economic changes Rapid urban population increase Urban populations soon numerically dominant Urban economic activity driving national economies

Global economic trends Globalisation Market liberalisation Rapid technological change Localisation, a new competitive factor

Increasing economic and political importance of cities

Global political trends Decentralisation Devolution Rise of Governance-moving beyond Government Rise of municipal civic leadership

Strategic responses to the increasing importance of cities

Figure 8.1 Changing cities and strategic responses. Source: Centre for Good Governance, City Development Strategy Guidelines, from World Bank 1999.

Conclusion: cities in transition 169 In a series of reports, the World Bank Cities Alliance Initiative has advocated the adoption of formal city development strategies which focus on cities as contributors to national welfare, and forming an integral part of the national economy. Effective strategies are those that originate with, and are wholly owned by, local leaders and articulate stakeholders’ vision for the city. They identify priorities for economic development, city productivity, management and financing. At the same time they address issues of local concern for livability (World Bank, 1999). These ambitious strategies go beyond traditional land-use master planning and are intended to enable an on-going participation by the critical mass of stakeholders, optimising city resources for growth and development, rather than merely manage investments and physical layout. The City Development Strategy (CDS) is an aspiration encouraged by the World Bank to provide a comprehensive and all-inclusive response to urban change. Such aspirations may be mirrored at the urban level where, as we have seen, local factors and historic legacies drive the approach to managing urban change. In practice, the initiatives taken under the World Bank’s CDS programme are more limited and targeted than this rhetoric would suggest. In such cities as Johannesburg and Peshawar CDS programmes aim to tackle poverty and improve the social and physical infrastructure of these cities. In Sofia the CDS aims to develop institutional capacity in the context of democratisation. A complex programme covering four cities in China where, unusually, the World Bank is the sole sponsor, is piloting a metropolitan-level CDS to develop regional strategies and plans on the basis of wide participation. Of the cities covered in this book, only Hyderabad has embarked on a CDS programme with World Bank support. It was the first city in India to engage in such an ambitious strategic project. Here, the CDS is developed from, and built upon, a programme of support from international agencies which has been running for some years. In this case, the particular circumstances that were crucial to developing such an approach were the national programme of economic liberalisation and the entrepreneurial thrust of the Chief Minister at the State level. Together they enabled the World Bank to find a point of entry into India’s complex urban fabric. Elsewhere, initiatives have been more distinctively home grown, ranging from targeted regeneration strategies to area-wide planning, to creating a machinery for metropolitan governance. In many cities, regeneration strategies have aimed to create a revitalised urban core or tackle the need to renew such specific facilities as unused dockland and waterfront sites (Judd and Parkinson, 1990; Frieden and Sagalyn, 1989). Where they have succeeded, employment, tourism and residence have increased with revived stores, hotels, concert halls and restaurants and shopping districts renovated. London, Toronto and Tokyo are examples where huge investments have been made to the redevelopment of waterfront dock or freighthandling areas, while the landlocked Berlin has seen the largest comprehensive redevelopment projects of all. The strains and costs of metropolitan growth have proved a powerful argument for area-wide planning, and all the cities considered here subsist within a more or less ambitious framework for shaping future development. Half a century of

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regional planning in London has culminated in the Mayor’s Spatial Development Strategy (SDS), quickly popularised as the London Plan. Tokyo’s megalopolis project attempts to define a structure for the TMG area and its hinterland using the roads network to allocate urban functions to different locations. Hyderabad’s master plan, a more limited and place-specific instrument than the City Development Strategy, represents HUDA’s attempt to overcome the daunting challenges of pattern of land ownership and unauthorised settlements. In Atlanta, the Regional Commission presides over the metropolis as a benign guide, seeking to plan by persuasion, urging consensus while addressing the challenge of Atlantans’ preferred patterns of low-density housing and separation from their neighbours. Toronto’s plan, which complements the provincial plan, is designed to achieve efficient land use and curb urban sprawl by means of intensive development in growth corridors. All of these are fraught with the tensions of multiple levels of government. In the case of Berlin, the struggle to achieve effective planning across two separate States is bedevilled by the administrative separation of the two parts of the metropolitan region and the political antagonisms which have arisen between the city and its hinterland in Brandenberg. Planning cities is of course about more than just the regulation and control of development. Metropolitan planning is also a matter of concept and vision, of setting out the basis on which major developments are to take place and their locations and lines of communications. But beyond the plans themselves lie issues of the ability of governments to bring about the large, strategic developments they envisage. The Berlin example points up the extent to which an effective governmental framework is a pre-requisite for metropolitan planning. Whether that framework has to be – can be – rooted in local government is by no means self-evident. In each of the cities considered here, the development of metropolitan strategy is something in which higher levels of government have been closely involved, particularly in national capital cities like London and Tokyo. Neither can possibly be considered off-limits for national government. Nor, in a federal system, can State governments leave cities like Atlanta and Toronto, still less Hyderabad, to their own devices. Even so, metropolitan experiments within a single federal system show just how diverse the origins of urban reform and the supervisory role of higher-level governments can be. In Canada, the creation of a single government for the Montreal Urban Community was driven by considerations quite different from those that obtained in Toronto. Whereas Toronto’s provincial government was prepared to countenance a strong metro authority, that of Quebec insisted on a fragmented structure, caught between vigorous suburban municipalities and a centralising provincial government. Decentralisation to city governments is a more ambiguous move, despite which it has become something of a mantra for the good governance and new public management movements. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that such a perspective overlooks the importance of the linkages between national policy objectives and local political priorities, especially in countries going through rapid economic and political transition. On this view, a high degree of local autonomy might act to impede wider reform measures. The World Bank has

Conclusion: cities in transition 171 highlighted the importance of these linkages, sometimes achieved through political party mechanisms. In China in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, central control over provincial policy making was affected through the process of appointment to senior provincial-level posts, with central control over officials being strengthened even as economic power was increasingly delegated. In contrast, the disintegration of the Soviet Union produced a surge in local and regional political autonomy that defied any attempt to steer a new path for Russia (World Bank, 2002). In respect of the cities considered in this book, the ways in which local initiatives engage with national priorities can be seen in the relationship between local political leaders and national decision-making: the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and his pre-2005 political allies at the centre; Mayor Livingstone’s eventually successful transactions with the new Labour Government; and the on-going Mayoral–provincial relations in Ontario. Understanding the politics and governance of any of these cities must, then, encompass the ties that bind urban decision-making to national priorities to produce outcomes that reconcile the well-being of urban residents with the larger projects of modernising governments. Where do these top-down approaches to urban reform sit in relation to the almost universal impetus to subsidiarity and decentralisation? By the end of the 1980s, as Rondinelli observes decentralisation was widely perceived as an instrument for promoting democratisation, market development, and administrative and fiscal efficiency, although often little attention was paid to the capacities of local administrative units or local governments to take on new responsibilities. Advocates argued that when applied appropriately decentralisation can help break through the bottlenecks of decision-making which are often caused by central government planning and control. Decentralisation can be a means of cutting through complex central bureaucratic procedures in getting revisions made and implemented. It can also increase government officials’ sensitivity to local conditions and needs . . . Clearly defined and relatively uncomplicated planning and management procedures for eliciting participation of local leaders and citizens and for obtaining the co-operation or consent of beneficiaries are also needed. (Rondinelli, 1998: 8–9) Much of the rhetoric conflates decentralisation of power to cities and decentralisation within them. That distinction underlies the British government’s proposal of January 2006 for ‘double devolution’ to both levels. Certainly, the international experience suggests that decentralisation to neighbourhoods and citizen groups can energise and engage the interests of ordinary people, and draw them into involving themselves in the management of urban problems at the grass-roots level (Hall and Pfeiffer, 2002). All these factors come together in the idea of good governance. Good governance can be seen as a joint effort on the part of central and local government, local

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residents, civil society and the commercial sector to pursue sustainable urban development. It seeks to improve the prospects and incomes of urban residents, the coherence and solidarity of their society, and provide a liveable and affordable environment for them without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. The good governance agenda is a broad one, and the need for change configures differently in each of the cities examined in this book. The city of Hyderabad, where the good governance initiative is pursued more self-consciously than anywhere else, exemplifies the broadest-based programme to tackle corruption and poverty, improve urban services, enhance citizen participation and advance the quality of life of its residents. By way of contrast, it took Toronto’s fiscal crisis to provide the impetus to find new ways of governing shifting responsibility downwards and outwards to civil society and resident groups. There reform was driven by the need to achieve cost savings and greater consistency in public services, remove duplication and bureaucracy, improve governance and speed up decision-making. There are parallels to be found in Berlin. The transfer of the democratic mechanisms and administrative systems of the West to East Berlin was rapid and effective. Unified Berlin faced a liberated and demanding citizen body, caustic about the inflated bureaucracy and critical of the standards of public services. Democratic reforms in Berlin have sought to localise responsibility and empower Berliners through the creation of citizen-action groups. The underlying rationale for a comprehensive programme to streamline institutions, decentralise and engage citizens in decision-making is to achieve more effective governance and more workable structures. Originally promoted by the World Bank and other multi-lateral institutions as a way of achieving stability and accountability in transitional economies, the concept of good governance does not resonate with such force in Atlanta, London or Tokyo. In Atlanta, stretched to the very limits of unregulated urban sprawl, the public agenda has to address the issues of liveability through a weak planning regime that plays to the desires of the new young middle class to enjoy the advantages of urban proximity and sociability. Tokyo and London have undoubted by the institutional capacity for tackling the urban problems but have traditionally done so in a top-down fashion. Here, elements of the good governance agenda can be seen reflected in institutional reform and the drive to close the gap between politics and people by tackling the democratic deficit. So, city governments worldwide are facing in their very different ways the challenges of re-engineering institutional structures to create new forms of governance designed to foster local responsiveness, popular participation and a more vigorous civil society. Forms of leadership are central to this project and London’s special distinctiveness at the beginning of the twenty-first century was in the adoption of a directly elected executive mayor for the entire urban area, signifying the extent to which urban leadership has moved to the top of the urban governance agenda. Elsewhere, legitimate and accountable governments are emerging through the creation of elected mayors and councils, through developing leadership skills

Conclusion: cities in transition 173 among local elites, through modernising voting procedures, through encouraging new forms of participation and through introducing more transparent decision-making. We have seen in this book how city policy, politics and planning reflect the pressures of local conditions and global forces. But they are not brought about by blind force of circumstance. On the contrary, civic leaders are proving quick to seize the opportunities to shape their cities’ future. As a result, new styles of political operation and new kinds of urban regimes are springing up. If there is a single lesson to be drawn, it is that entrepreneurial urban leaders have become the key players on the international stage, competing for recognition and resources, travelling far and wide, selling their cities to potential investors. Looking beyond these six cities, we see that in Chicago, Richard Daley, son of the infamous ‘Boss’ Daley, shook off the stigma of the family name to build a broad base of political support as a liberal, dynamic and hugely energetic civic leader. For New York the image that comes to mind is one of Rudi Giuliani whose dynamic approach to crime reduction coupled with a florid personal life kept him on the front pages even before the cataclysm of 9/11 propelled him onto the world stage. It would be too easy and too dangerously tempting to imagine that the true heroes of the urban renaissance are the city salesmen promoting their cities as a favoured location for investment – as a tinsel-wrapped world city. And while to critics it might seem that there is more than one sense in which these mayors are selling their cities, the reality is that to attain and hold a position in a competitive world, entrepreneurial leaders have to face the challenge of transforming their cities to better manage those patterns of growth and change.

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Index

Aaronovitch, S. 112 Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan 9, 21–23, 26, 51 Adams, B. 154 Advance Technology Development Centre, Atlanta 150 Advisory Committee for London 23 African/American middle class communities 143–145 Allen, C.R. 151 Allen, Ivan, Jr., 144 amalgamations, in Toronto 64, 73, 75, 80, 87; see also Citizens for Local Democracy (C4LD); Goldenberg Commission; Royal Commission Andhra Pradesh 11, 117, 118–119, 135, 136, 137, 139–140; Citizen’s Charter programme 136; urbanisation 119, 121, 125 Andhra Pradesh: Agenda for Economic Reforms 138 Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Co-operation (APICC) 138–139 Andhra Pradesh Slum Improvement (Acquisition of Land) Act (1956) 121 Andhra Pradesh Urban Areas (development) Act 125, 128 Andhra Pradesh Urban Services for the Poor (APUSP) 122, 136 Andhra Pradesh Vision 2020 117–118 Apparel Export Park, Hyderabad 139 Arthritis Foundation, Atlanta 150 Asians: enrolment in Atlanta’s public schools 144 Association of County Commissioners of Georgia 153 Association of London Government (ALG) 31, 42 Atlanta 5, 7, 8, 12–13, 142–144, 170, 172; air quality crisis 156, 160–161;

Atlanta games 154; bio-tech industry 150–151; bi-racial coalition 144–145; business centre 143; bus rapid transit (BRT) scheme 158, 161; central business district (CBD) 145, 149, 164; cotton and textile industry 142; counties 151; Delta Airlines 143; Department of Transportation (GDOT) 158–159; downtown 142, 145, 149; employment rate 142, 143, 146, 149; fear of crime 157, 158; future urban structure 163–165; Georgia Planning Act (1989) 153; Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) 158–159; governance 144–146, 149; growth 146–151, management 153; Growth Strategies Commission 153; hotel industry 151; industrial structure 150; job market 145–146, 149–150; Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transport Authority (MARTA) 157–158; Metropolitan Planning Organisation 191–192, adherence to FHWA and FTA 162; Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) 142, 151; middle class 143; migration 146–147, 149; planning 151–152, by persuasion 153–155, public involvement 161–163; pollution control 156, 160; population 142, 143, 146–147, 148; public transport 155–161, 163–164; racial segregation 144–146, 148; rail transit system 157; Regional Development Plan 152, 153; Regional Transport Authority 143, 157–158; retail employment 150; road route 159; service sector 149–150; State Department of Community Affairs 152–153; suburban development 148; transportation and traffic 12, 147, 155–163

186

Index

Atlanta Paradox 143, 155 Atlanta Regional Commission 147–148, 151, 158, 161 Atlanta Regional Council (ARC) 144, 148, 149–150; Liveable Centres Initiative (LCI) 156; Mobility 2030 transportation plan 160–161; public involvement advisory group 163; Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) 156, 163; transit-oriented development (TOD) 157; Transportation Improvement Programme (TIP) 156, 163; Transportation Planning in the Atlanta Region 160; Transportation Public Involvement Plan (TPIP) 163 Barlow, I.M. 21–22, 72, 75, 77 Barnes, Roy 159 Barton, L. 155 Begg, I. 168 Berlin 7, 8, 11, 93–94, 97–98, 102–105, 107–112, 114, 170; borough 112–114; Bundestag 107–108; capital city 107; city’s district authorities 112; cold war 97; crime 100; decentralisation 101, 112, 115; democratisation 114, 115; differences between east and west 97; economy 93, 97, 98; employment 97–99; governance 111–116; growth 100; International Building Exhibition 110; Joint Spatial Planning Department (JSPD) 105; migration 100, 101; modernisation 114; new public management (NPM) 114–115; normalisation 94; planning 103–106; Planungsweerkstätten 116; Planwerk Innenstadt 103; political division 101; population 103; privatisation 99; protectionism 97; public transport 105, 114, Quartiersmanagement 116; rail system 101–102; real estate 109; Reichstage reconstruction 110; reunification 93, 94, 97, 99, 102; Senate 111–112; Stadtforum 112, 115–116; StadtProjekte 116; traffic and transport 96, 99; unemployment 97–98, 100, 114; uneven development 94–100; urban policy 101; world city 107–111; see also East Berlin; West Berlin Berlin-Brandenberg, planning 103–107; see also Joint Spatial Planning department (JSPD) Berlin Philharmonic orchestra 95

Berlin Wall 95–96 Bertaud, A. 155, 157, 163, 165 bi-racial coalition, in Atlanta 144–145 black and ethnic minorities, in London 16 Blair, Tony 29 Bonn 93, 98, 107–108 Boudreau, J.-A. 82–83 Bourguignon, F. 83 Brandenberg 102 Broadbent, Alan 88 Brown, B. 7, 14, 22 Brunn, G. 108, 110–111 Buck, N. 2, 7, 22 Bullard, R.D. 143, 165 Bureau of Environmental Protection, Tokyo 52 business incentives, in West Berlin 93 bus rapid transit (BRT) scheme, in Atlanta 158, 161 Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities 78 Carter Centre, Atlanta 150 Carvel, J. 29 Caulfield, J. 78 Centre for Good Governance (CGG), Hyderabad 134, 136–137, 140, 168 Centres for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta 150 Cervero, R. 55, 56, 74, 164 CGG see Centre for Good Governance Chapman, J. 165 Chari, S.R. 122 Charter 78, 87–90, 114, 136 Cherokee county 144 Child Hill, R. 45, 46 Citizen’s Charter programme, in India 136 Citizens for Local Democracy (C4LD), Toronto 83 City Development Strategy (CDS) 169; in Hyderabad 128–129 City of Toronto 66, 69, 75; amalgamation 75, 87; transition to 87; see also Toronto City of Toronto Act (1997) 84 civil rights movement, in Atlanta 12 Clark, D. 2, 4 Cochrane, A. 107 Cold War 11, 97, 106 Colton, T.J. 66, 74, 76 Commission on London Governance 41 communications and technology 11 communism 11, 94, 99 Conference Board of Canada 90

Index 187 congestion charging, in London 33–34 Conservative Party 27–28, 29, 42, 73; see also White Paper proposals Cosmopolis Plan, Tokyo 53 councils 1, 172; in London 20, 23, 25, 34, 41; in Toronto 84–87; in Berlin 114, 131 counter-urbanisation 1; in London 14; in Tokyo 48 crime 173; in Atlanta 143, 157–158; in Berlin 100 Crombie, David 81 Cumming, Lorne 73, 75 Cyberabad Development Authority (CDA), Hyderabad 127 Daimler-Benz AG, Berlin 98, 109, 116 David, Miller 66, 86–88, 91, 103 decentralisation 3, 6, 15, 167, 170–171; in Berlin 101, 112, 115; in Hyderabad 130, 135; in London 20, 22, 26; in Tokyo 57–59, 61; in Toronto 86 decentralisation promotion law, Tokyo 59; see also Legal Amendments for Decentralisation (1998) Delta Airlines 143 Department of Transportation (GDOT), Georgia 158 DETR 30 Docklands Light Railway 18 DoE 28 Donald, B. 77 Douglass, N. 47, 49 Duffy, H. 142 East Berlin 11, 94, 97, 101, 105, 109, 172; industries 97; labour market 99; land use planning 101; see also Berlin; West Berlin East German Communist Party 97 East London Urban Development Corporation (UDC) 39 East of England Development Agency (EEDA) 38 economic: activities 2, 17, 78, 155; adjustment 11; base 4, 7, 126, 140, 142; benefits 4, 33; competition 3; development 6, 9, 37, 39, 64, 68, 76, 81, 104, 117, 145, 150, 169; dominance 9, 46; and fiscal issues 11; forces 3; policy 36; power 2, 104, 171; problems 1, 66; prosperity 6; reform 138; restructuring 14; resurgence 12; value 8

electronic road pricing, in London 33 Ellis, R. 36 English Heritage 32, 37 executive mayors 29–30 Fainstein, N. 2 Fainstein, S. 2 ‘Fares Fair’ policy 27 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Atlanta 162 Federal Republic of Germany 93 Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Atlanta 162 Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) 78 Feldman, L. 87 Fewer Municipal Politicians Act (1999), Toronto 84 Filion, P. 68, 77 foreign migrant workers, in Tokyo 49 Freidrichstadt 94 Friedmann, J. 2 Frisken, F. 68 Fujita, K. 45, 46 Garcea, J. 65, 82, 89 Gardiner, Frederick (Big Daddy) 74, 76 Geddes, Patrick 1 General Motors 69 Georgia Bio-Science Joint Development Authority 150 Georgia Department of Community Affairs 153 Georgia Institute of Technology 150 Georgia Municipal Association 153 Georgia Planning Act (1989) 153 Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) 158, 159 German Democratic Republic (GDR) 94; modernisation 98 Giuliani, Rudi 173 GLA see Greater London Authority global: arena 11; clientele 8; communications 46; context 1; convergence 4; economy 10, 36, 55, 88, 90, 107, 137, 145, 168–169; environment 36; forces 61, 167, 173; functions 53; integration 3; investments 2; market 92; political and economic power 2; political trends 167–168; status 3 ‘global city’, 2–3, 8, 14–15, 36, 48, 65, 90, 104, 167; see also ‘world city’ globalisation 3, 52, 88, 118, 167–168

188

Index

globalisation paradox 3 GoAP 118, 134–135 Golden, Ann 80 Goldenberg Commission 75–76 Golden Task Force, Toronto 81 Goldrick, M.D. 70, 80 Good, K. 68 Gordon, I. 7, 14, 22 Gorning, M. 94, 110 Gottman, J. 2, 5 governance 1, 3, 6–10, 13, 167, 169–172; in Atlanta 144–146, 149; in Berlin 114; in Hyderabad 118, 129, 132–138, 140; in London 39–42; in Tokyo 57, 59, 63; in Toronto 64–66, 76, 78–79, 81–82, 85–88, 90–91 Government Office for London (GOL) 29 Graham, K.A. 89 Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) 70, 71; see also Toronto Greater London 15; Abercrombie’s plan 21; governance 23–29; Standing Conference on London Regional Planning 20–21, 23; see also London Greater London Authority (GLA) 9, 30–31, 33–34, 36–37, 40–42 Greater London Authority Act 31 Greater London Council (GLC) 8, 23–28; boroughs 23–25; housing drive 25–26; planning proposals conflicts 25; road schemes 26 Greater London Development Plan (GLDP) 26 Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) 27 Greater London Regional Planning Committee 20–21 Greater London Training Board (GLTB) 27 Greater Toronto Area (GTA) 10, 65, 68–70, 72, 77, 79–80, 82–83, 85, 89 Greater Toronto Area Task Force 80–81 Greater Toronto Co-ordinating Committee (GTCC) 77 Greater Toronto Council 81 Greater Toronto Services Board (GTSB) 83, 85, 89 Green Tokyo Plan 54 GTA see Greater Toronto Area GTSB see Greater Toronto Services Board Hall, Barbara 83–84 Hall, P. 2, 171

Hankyu Railway Company 55 Harding, A. 3, 7 Harris, Mike 81, 84 Hart, D.A. 26 Hartsfield, William 144 Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport 143 Hartshorn, T.A. 143, 146 Häussermann, H. 94, 95, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110 Hauswirth, I. 104–105 Hebbert, M. 28 Held, D. 3 Henderson, J. 142, 155, 159–160 Herbert, Sir Edwin 23 Heywood, P. 5 Hiroshi, Ikeda 49 Hispanics 144 HUDA see Hyderabad Urban Development Authority Humphreys, J.M. 154 Hyderabad: Apparel Export Park 139; Centre for Good Governance (CGG) 134, 136–137, 140, 168; Charter 136; City Development Strategy (CDS) 128–129; Cyberabad Development Authority (CDA) 127; Cybercity 117; decentralisation 130, 135; District Planning Committee 132; economic structure 119; e-governance 133–134; employment 121; e-Seva centres 134; in global economy 137–140; Good Governance Task Force 137; governance 131–133; Hi-Tech City 130; Hyderabad Development Area 124, 125; as a ‘international city’, 128; ITES 134; IT industry 117; land use 129, planning 118; mayor 132; Metropolitan Rail Transit System (MRTS) 130; modernisation of agriculture 119; Municipal Action Plan for Poverty Reduction (MAPP) 122; Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad 121; municipalities 117–118; New Public Management (NPM) 133; Other Services Regulatory Commission (OSRC) 135; planning 124–127, master plan implementation 127–129; pollution 129; population 117, 121; public services, reforming 133–137; public transport 122–124, 128, 130; residential development 119, 121; satellite towns 121, 125, 141;

Index 189 slum area 121–122; tourism 127, 139; traffic and transport 118, 122–124, 129–131; Transport Regulatory Commission (TRC) 135; unauthorised constructions 128; urban growth 118–124, urbanisation process 119–122; village panchayats 131; Water Regulatory Commission (WRC) 135; water supply 121; World Bank aid 137–138 Hyderabad Airport Development Authority 127 Hyderabad Area Transportation Study (HATS) 129–130 Hyderabad Metropolitan Area 119–120 Hyderabad Municipal Corporation 11, 124, 131 Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Act (1955) 124 Hyderabad Software Technology Park 11, 117 Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) 124–128, 139 Ibbitson, J. 84 Ihara, H. 52 Ihlanfeldt, K.R. 143, 146, 158 India Today 118 India’s economic reform and liberalisation 119 integrated transport policy, in London 34; see also congestion charges International Building Exhibition (IBA), in Berlin 110 Ishihara, Governor 52, 53 IT-enabled services (ITES), in Hyderabad 134 IT revolution, in India 119 Jackson, A.A. 20 Jackson, Maynard 144, 154 Jann, W. 115 Japan 2, 46–50; Building a New Japan 52; car building nation 56; decentralisation 59; economy 47; government system 58–60; local and central power imbalance 62–63; local authorities 58–59; public transport systems 49, 52, 56–57, 60–61; Technopolis programme 47–48; urbanisation 46–47, 51; war against Allies 46 Japanese economic growth 47

Joint Ontario-City of Toronto Task Force 86 Jubilee line extension 18 Kanto earthquake 43 Kaplan, H. 74, 76, 78 Karan, P.P. 47 Keating, L. 145, 146, 149–150 Keil, R. 88 Kennedy, John F. 96 KGSt 114 Kityama, T. 58–59 Kohl, Chancellor G. 102 Koizumi, H. 53, 57 Krätke, S. 98, 99, 106, 107, 109, 116 labour markets 2, 15; in London 41; in Atlanta 143 Labour Party 25–26, 29; see also ‘Fares Fair’ policy land acquisition: in London 30; in Hyderabad 125 Länder 10, 97, 103–105, 114, 115 land reclamation project, in Tokyo 53; see also Cosmopolis Plan land-use planning and control, in London 35–36 Lastman, Mel 84–85, 87–88 Legal Amendments for Decentralisation (1998), Tokyo 59 LeSage, E.C. Jr 65, 82, 89 Liveable Centres Initiative (LCI), Atlanta 156 Livingstone, Ken 14, 15, 27, 30–36, 40, 42 London 2–3, 5–6, 8–9, 11, 14–15, 22–29, 42–43, 46, 51, 55–56, 62, 76, 84, 107, 111–112, 164–165, 169–170, 172; Association of London Government 42; black and ethnic minorities 16; buses 33; central area 36–37; central business district (CBD) 36, 37; congestion charging 33–34; corridors 18–19; councils 20, 23, 25, 34, 41; counter-urbanisation 14; decentralisation 21, 22, 26; Development Plan Documents (DPD) 41; east-west imbalance 19–20, 31; economy 14, 27; electronic road pricing 33; employment growth 14; ethnic minorities 17; governance 19, new approach 39–42; Government Office for London (GOL) 29; government–private sector partnership 29; growth 15–19,

190

Index

London (Continued) challenge of 19–23; industrial growth 22; integrated transport policy 34; labour market 41; land acquisition 30; land-use planning 35–36; Learning and Skills Council (LSC) 41; Local Development Schemes (LDS) 41; London Assembly’s scrutiny report on London plan 37–38; mayor 30–32, 36, 37, 39–40; Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) 30–31; migration 14, 19; modernisation 33–35; office development 36, 37; outer region 21, 22; planning 19–23; Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 40; population 14, 15, 20; poverty 17; public transport 17, 20, 27–28, 33–35; rail system 33; Regional Plan 22; retaining as a world city 35–38; road pricing 33; Secretary of State 31, 32; and the South East England 21, 22; Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) 31–32; tall/high buildings 37; Thames Gateway and the Olympics 19, 20, 38–39; tourism 18, 36; Town and Country Planning Act (1947) 21; Transport (London) Act 27; transport and traffic 8, 17–18, 20, 22, 27, 33; Transport for London (TfL) 30; Transport Select Committee of House of Commons 18; unemployment rate 17; waste disposal 40, 41; see also Greater London London boroughs 23, 24–25, 31, 62 London County Council (LCC) 8, 15, 20, 21 London Development Agency (LDA) 9, 30, 32, 36 London Docks 8 London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) 31 London First 29 London Gateway Partnership Board 39 London Government Act 15, 26 London housing problem 26, 40–41 London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC) 18, 28–29, 30–32, 34–35, 37 London Pride 29 London Transport System 25 LPAC see London Planning Advisory Committee Machimura, T. 46, 49 Madhavi Lata 121 Magnusson, W. 75

Malone, P. 53, 54 Marcuse, P. 167 A Mayor and Assembly for London, White Paper 29 Mayor of London 17, 38 mayors 1, 7, 9–11, 15; of Berlin 104, 114–115; of London 17, 29–32, 35, 37–42; of Tokyo 58–60, 62; of Toronto 65–66, 78–79, 83, 85, 88 McGuinty, Dalton 87, 91 McKay, J. 97 McNeill, D. 3 Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce 150 Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce 156 Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transport Authority (MARTA) 157–158 Metropolitan Planning Commission (MPC) 151 Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) 9, 30–31 Metropolitan Rail Transit System (MRTS) 130 Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board (MTTB) 74 Metro Toronto 10, 73–74, 76, 79, 81–82, 91; Commission on Planning and Development Reform 80; Goldenberg Commission 75–76; governance 76; reorganisation 75; Royal Commission 76; strategic plan 79–80; subway system 74; see also Toronto migrants 2, 12, 14, 22, 68, 100, 148–149, 166 migration 1, 8, 10, 14–15, 19, 46, 48, 99, 101–102, 121–122, 142, 146–147 Milroy, B.M. 65 Minobe, Governor 45, 56 Mobility 2030 transportation plan 160–161 Mohanty, P.K. 133 Moran, M. 34 Mughal Empire 117, 124 multinational corporations 3, 98 Municipal Action Plan for Poverty Reduction (MAPP) 122 Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) 120–121, 124, 136 municipalities 9–10, 12; in Atlanta 151, 157–158; in Berlin 105; in Hyderabad 117–118, 121–122, 124, 132, 134; in Tokyo 46, 56–62; in Toronto 64–66, 68, 73–85, 88–89

Index 191 Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act (1953) 73, 75 Munter, M. 99 Muramatsu, M. 59 Naidu, Chandrababu 133–135, 137–138, 140 Naiki, S. 52, 60 Nakasone 53–54 Nakasone government’s Private Sector Revitalisation Act (1988) 53 National Land Agency (NLA), Tokyo 52 Nazis 11, 108–109, 111 Newman, P. 29, 104–105 New Public Management (NPM) 78, 111, 114, 133, 167 New York 2–3, 7, 9, 15, 35–36, 45, 67, 69, 139, 159, 164 ODPM 41 OECD 6, 94 Office for the Greater Toronto Area (OGTA) 77, 79 Okamoto, K. 48–49 Olympics: 1962 51, 1996 154; 2012 20, 38–39, 42 Ontario 10, 64–66, 70–71, 73, 77–78, 80, 82–84, 86–89, 91, 171; education system 82; Municipal Act (2001) 89; Place to Grow Act 71; property taxes 78, 82; see also Toronto Ontario Housing Corporation 77 Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) 73; see also amalgamations Ontario Planning and Development Act (1994) 80 Ontario’s Office of the Greater Toronto Area (OGTA) 10, 65, 77, 79 Osaka 46, 51 panchayats 131–132 Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) 97, 106, 112; see also East German Communist Party PEMB 31 Pinto, M. 131 Places to Grow Act, Toronto 71 Planwerk Innenstadt 103 pollution 5; in Atlanta 156, 160, 165; in Hyderabad 123, 125, 129–130; in Tokyo 56–57, 59; in Toronto 90; see also Bureau of Environmental Protection

population 1–2, 4, 8–12, 14–16, 168; of Atlanta 142–148, 155, 157, 160–162, 164; of Berlin 94–95, 100–104, 106; of Hyderabad 117–119, 121, 123–125, 127–128, 131; of London 19–22, 26–27, 33; of Tokyo 43, 45–48, 51, 53–54, 56, 62; of Toronto 64–66, 68–70, 73–76, 79, 81 port facilities in Tokyo 53 Potsdamer Platz 109 Powell, A.G. 22 Prasad, R.J.R. 138 privatisation 6, 62, 94, 98–99, 114 Progressive Conservative Government 68, 80–82 provinces 66, 78, 88 provincial government: adopted a multi-cultural policy 10, 64–66, 68, 75–77, 79–80, 82, 85, 87–89, 92, 170 Public Involvement Advisory Group (PIAG) 163 public transport 5, 15; in Atlanta 155–161, 163–164; in Berlin 105, 114; in Hyderabad 122–124, 128, 130; in London 17, 20, 27–28, 33–35; in Tokyo 49, 54; in Toronto 73, 80 racial conflict 12; see also civil rights movement rail and underground 15, 18, 33 Rainer, H. 99 Rao, N. 129 Raynsford, Nick 30 Reddy, P.S. 76, 83, 122 referendum 83, 104, 106, 114–115 Reichstag 11, 108, 110; reconstruction 110 re-unification, of Berlin 93, 97, 99, 107, 111 Richie, A. 95–96, 108 Robarts, John 76–77, 79 Röber, M. 114, 115 Robson, W. 6, 43–44, 45 Rondinelli, D.A. 171 Rose, A. 74 Rothblatt, D.N. 77, 79 Royal Commission 76; under Robarts, John 76 Royal Institute of British Architects 37 Sancton, A. 73, 76, 80–82, 84–85 Sassen, S. 2 satellite towns 12; in Hyderabad 121, 125, 141; in Tokyo 51

192

Index

Savitch, H.V. 3 Schep, G.J. 4 Schlusche, G. 98 Schwedler, H.-U. 97, 101, 103, 116 Seguschi, T. 54 Senbiki system 51–52 Sennett, R. 3 Sewell, John 83, 88 Sgro, Judy 91 Shah, Muhammad Quli Autub 117 Sharpe, L.J. 5 Shibata, T. 61–62 Shiozaki, Y. 53 Siegel, D. 65, 78, 81–82 Siemens 98 Slack, E. 78 Smith, D. 2 Smith, P.J. 78 Smith, R. 97 Sony 99, 108 Sorensen, A. 50–52 South East England 21, 22, 23 South-East of England Development Agency (SEEDA), London 38 South East Regional Planning Conference (SERPLAN), London 23, 28 South East Study 22, 23 Soviet Union 94, 171 Spadina Expressway 78, 90 spatial: configurations 3; dispersal 3, 129; pattern of deprivation 17 Spatial Development Strategy (SDS), in London 31–32 Stadtforum 112, 115–116 Standing Conference on London Regional Planning 20–21, 23 Statistics Canada 66–68 Sternberg, R. 48 Stone, C. 145 Streamlining the Cities, White Paper 28 Stren, R. 7 Strom, E.A. 95, 107–109 Tagami, H. 45 Tanaka, K. 47, 52 technopolis: Act 26, 47; concept 48; development 48; programme 9, 46–48 ‘tele-mediated city’, 3 Thames Gateway 19–20, 38–39 Thames Gateway Partnership Board 39 Thames Water Authority 28 Timberlake, M. 2 Tindal, C.R. 73, 77 TMG see Tokyo Metropolitan Government

Tokyo 2–3, 5–9, 15, 35–36, 43, 45–53, 55, 57, 60–63, 169–170, 172; agricultural area 47; air quality 52; Bureau of Environmental Protection 52; car use 56; central government’s intervention 51; central ward 43, 48, 60; City Planning Act (CPA) 56–57; City Planning Law (1919) 50; Cosmopolis Plan 53; counter-urbanisation 48; decentralisation 57–59, 61; European influence on planning 49, 50; foreign migrant workers 48–49; ‘garbage war’, 57; garden city 50; governance 57, 58–63; green areas 53, 54; growth 46–49; harbour 53; industrialisation 51; industrial structure 47; internationalisation 48–49; labour market 48; mayors 58–60, 62; migration 48–49; modernisation 50; municipalities 46, 56–62; National Capital Region Development Law (1956) 43; National Capital Region Development Plan 51; National Land Agency (NLA) 52; office space 45, 54; planning 49–54; pollution 52, 57, 59; population 43, 46–47, 50; port facilities 53; post-war development 43; protest and public participation 56; public involvement in urban life 56–58; public transport 49, 54; R&D 45–46; rail system 54, 55; reconstruction 49, 50, 57; roads 54, 56; satellite towns 51; Senbiki system 51–52; street-car system 54; TMG area 43, 44, 48; Tokyo Bay 53; Tokyo Plan 2025 53; trans-national city 45; transport and traffic 9, 45, 49, 54–56; world city 46; Yasio Park Town 53 Tokyo-Kobe access route 47 Tokyo Meteorological Observatory 52 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly 59–63 Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) 9, 43, 54, 59–63; local taxation 7; 2001 megalopolis concept 63 Tomalty, R. 80 Tomlinson, J. 3 Tonk, Alan 84 Toronto 5, 7–8, 10, 64–67, 71–92, 169–170; advisory panel 86; amalgamation 73, 75, 82, 85, 87, public debate 82–83; council election 79; Citizens for Local Democracy (C4LD) 83; City of Toronto 66, 69, 75, 87; City of Toronto Act (1997) 84;

Index 193 decentralisation 86; economic development 68–69; employment 69, 70; equity 68; Fewer Municipal Politicians Act (1999) 84; financial centre of Canada 69; fiscal crisis 77–79, 87–88; global city 65, 90–91; Golden Task Force, Toronto 81; governance 82; Governing Toronto Advisory Panel 87; growth 66–72; housing 74; immigration population 68; immigration support programmes 68; industrial buoyancy 70; industrial policy 70; land-use planning programmes 70; manufacturing 69–70; master plan 72; mayor 66, 85; megacity 84–87, creation 79–84, transition to 84; metropolitan government 65, 72–74, evolution of 75–77; migration 68–69; municipal reform 65; municipalities 74; new public management 78; population 66, 67, 68, 72; property taxes 78, 87; public involvement in decision making 78, 79; public transport 73, 80; self-government 88–89; shift to service sectors, effect of 69; Spadina Expressway battle 78; tourism 69; unemployment 61, 69; waterfront 70; see also Greater Toronto entries; Metro Toronto Toronto Board of Trade 90–91 Toronto Region Co-ordinating Agency 77 Toronto Stock Exchange 69 Toronto Transit Commission 74 Toronto Transition Team 89 tourism, 169; in Berlin 96, 112; in Hyderabad 127, 139; in London 18, 36; in Toronto 69 Town and Country Planning Act (1947), London 21 traffic problems 5, 8; in Berlin 99; in London 18; in Tokyo 56 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, Atlanta 161 Transport for London (TfL) 9, 30, 33, 39 Transport Regulatory Commission (TRC), Hyderabad 135 Transport Strategy for London 34 Travers, T. 29 Treuhandanstalt 98 Turok, I. 7 two-tier government; as for Rotterdam, Brussels, London, Toronto and Tokyo 5, 28

Ullswater Commission 20 underground networks, in 15, 17–18, 30, 33 unemployment: in Atlanta 146; in Berlin 97–98, 100, 114; in London 17; in Toronto 61, 69 United States’ Centers for Disease Control 12 urban: analysis 2; change 4; challenge to government 4; condition, congestion 5; crisis 7; development, 1; entrepreneurship 3; expansion 64; government 6; growth and change 4–5, 8; infrastructure 4; management 3; planning movement 51; and social order 2 urbanisation 1, 4, 9, 14, 43–44, 46–48, 51–52, 64–65, 77, 79, 101, 111, 118, 122, 132 village panchayats 131 Visvesvaraya 124 Vogel, R.K. 58, 61, 87 Walker, M. 97 Walks, R.A. 68 Ward, P. 4, 110 Water Regulatory Commission (WRC), Hyderabad 135 Weiss, L. 168 West Berlin 93–98, 100–101, 103, 110, 115; economy 93, 94; employment 93; industries 97; labour market 96; land use planning 101; population 94, 95; subsidies 94–95, 98; tourism 96; world city of culture 95; see also Berlin; East Berlin White Paper proposals 28–29, 34 Wild, T. 98, 102, 134 Williams, G. 80 Wollman, H. 115 Working Together for London 29 World Bank 4, 128–130, 133, 137–138, 140, 169–172 World Bank study 130 ‘world city’ concept 1, 11, 36–37, 65; see also ‘global city’ World War II 8, 46, 142 Wowereit, Klaus 10 Yasio Park Town, Tokyo 53 Yerkes National Primate Research Centre, Atlanta 150 Young, K. 19, 21–22, 25–26, 88