Old Europe, New Suburbanization?: Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization 9781442616479

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OLD EUROPE, NEW SUBURBANIZATION? Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization Edited by Nicholas A. Phelps

Scholars and other commentators generally look to North America for the latest trends in urbanization. The U.S. perspective in particular has often assumed a dominant position in urban theory, especially as it pertains to suburbs and suburbanization. It is from this vantage point that a large vocabulary has proliferated to encapsulate aspects of the sprawling suburban landscape of metropolitan regions. Yet, much of this terminology does not travel well due to the specificity of the U.S. context. This collection of essays shows that “old Europe” is home to forms of suburbanization that are every bit as new and radical as those found elsewhere. Europe, with its great variety of patterns and processes of urbanization, is a fruitful ground for further elaborating a sense of diversity of global suburbanisms that is now gradually coming to the fore. Focusing on themes of governance, land, and infrastructure, Old Europe, New Suburbanization? takes us on a journey of rediscovery into some of Europe’s oldest metropolises, including Athens, London, Madrid, Montpellier, and Sofia. Each chapter develops its own distinctive theoretical take on processes of suburbanization, drawing on examples from particular suburbs. Together the essays situate an understanding of novel aspects of European suburbanisms within an appreciation of the greater history of urbanization and the territoriality of government in Europe. (Global Suburbanisms) nicholas a. phelps is a professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London.

GLOBAL SUBURBANISMS Series Editor: Roger Keil, York University Urbanization is at the core of the global economy today. Yet, crucially, suburbanization now dominates twenty-first-century urban development. This series is the first to systematically take stock of worldwide developments in suburbanization and suburbanisms today. Drawing on methodological and analytical approaches from political economy, urban political ecology, and social and cultural geography, the series seeks to situate the complex processes of suburbanization as they pose challenges to policymakers, planners, and academics alike. Published to date: Suburban Governance: A Global View / Edited by Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil (2015) What’s in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries / Edited by Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms (2017) Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization / Edited by Nicholas A. Phelps (2017)

Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization

EDITED BY NICHOLAS A. PHELPS

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2017 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-4826-5 (cloth)  ISBN 978-1-4426-2601-0 (paper)

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Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Old Europe, new suburbanization?: governance, land, and infrastructure in European suburbanization / edited by Nicholas A. Phelps. (Global Suburbanisms) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4826-5 (cloth).–ISBN 978-1-4426-2601-0 (paper) 1. Suburbs–Europe–Case studies.  2.  Urbanization–Europe–Case studies. I.  Phelps, N.A. (Nicholas A.), editor  II.  Series: Global suburbanisms HT352.E85O43 2017  307.76094  C2017-902485-X

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada

Contents

List of Figures and Tables  vii Preface  ix Author Biographies 

xiii

1 Introduction: Old Europe, New Suburbanization?  3 nicholas a. phelps 2 Madrid: The Making of a Global City Region and the Role of the Suburbs  18 amparo tarazona vento 3 The Failure of Planning in a Fragmented Property Market: Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  41 wojciech wagner 4 O Sofia, Where Art Thou? Suburbs as Stories of Time and Space  66 sonia a. hirt 5 Ideology, Planning, and Meaning in Suburbia: Investigating the Case of Row House Areas  85 per gunnar røe 6 The Changing Face of Athens: Development Pressures in the Maroussi and Kifissia Suburbs  110 ioannis chorianopoulos, alexandros karvounis, dimitris ballas, and nicholas a. phelps

vi Contents

 7 Old Wine in New Bottles: Land, Population Growth, and Montpellier’s Suburban Face-off  133 ute lehrer and roza tchoukaleyska  8 “In-betweens” in Time and Space: The Governance of Suburbanisms in the Ruhr  158 ludger basten  9 City of Villages? Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  183 nicholas a. phelps, alan mace, and roya jodieri 10 Between Farming Villages and Hedge-Fund Centres: The Politics of Urbanization in the Border Zone of the Metropolitan Region of Zurich  207 rahel nüssli 11 Conclusion: Old Europe, New Research Themes  237 nicholas a. phelps Author Index  249 Subject Index  257

Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1 Map of the Madrid region. 19 2.2 UVA Hortaleza in 2011. 23 2.3 Valdebernardo. 32 2.4 View of Central Avenue in Las Rozas Business Park. 35 3.1 Map of Lesznowola and Piaseczno municipalities in the Warsaw region. 45 3.2 The suburban development of Warsaw (Wawer city district) fits into existing farming plots. 52 3.3 The municipality of Jeżów Sudecki near the city of Jelenia Góra: an example of Poland’s dispersed suburban development without infrastructure. 54 3.4 Julianów, part of the municipality of Piaseczno near Warsaw, at the beginning of the 1980s (a) and today (b). Hardly any planning input is visible. 56 4.1 Map of Sofia and surrounding region. 68 5.1 Map of Oslo region. 87 5.2 The three row house exemplars. 94 6.1 Map of Athens region. 111 6.2 Urban growth rates in Greece, 1950–2005. 113 6.3 Population growth in Maroussi (1836–2011). 119 6.4 A city divided into four. 123 7.1 Map of Montpellier region. 136 7.2 The La Mosson neighbourhood. 145 7.3 Juvignac’s streets of single-family houses. 148 8.1 The Ruhr region. 159 8.2 Welheim Garden City – local spatial context circa 1930. 172

viii  Figures and Tables

 8.3 Welheim Garden City today. 173  8.4 Phoenix East – northern and south-eastern portions. 176  8.5 Detached single-family housing overlooking Phoenix Lake. 177  9.1 Map of London and south-east England. 184  9.2 Inter-census percentage change in population in inner and outer London. 186  9.3 London County Council housing developments. 192  9.4 A central Croydon block towers over suburban housing in Croydon. 195 10.1 Mixed rural and urban signs in Ausserschwyz. 208 10.2 The former Wollerau village square. 209 10.3 Changes at the border between Ausserschwyz and the canton of Zurich. 210 10.4 Map of Ausserschwyz and Lake Zurich. 216 Tables  2.1 Evolution of urban land occupation and population in the Madrid municipality and the Madrid region 21  2.2 Madrid’s underground system historical data 29  3.1 Macroeconomic conditions in the CEE countries in 1989 44  9.1 Simpson’s Diversity Index (SDI) – most ethnically diverse boroughs 197  9.2 Proportions of residents by ethnicity: ten inner and outer London boroughs with the highest and lowest proportions of white British/Irish residents 199

Preface

This book arose out of the “Europe cluster” of researchers established under the “Global Suburbanisms” international network. This is a major collaborative research initiative (MCRI) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2010–17) led by Roger Keil at York University.1 As a group of researchers we are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing funding for our research and networking activities under this scheme. This has provided all of us with a wonderful platform from which to read, research, think, and discuss all things suburban.1 The original cluster involved a series of specified case studies as part of the work program of this overarching network. These were the cases of: the Ruhr, to be examined by Ludger Basten; Sofia, to be examined by Sonia Hirt; Montpellier, to be researched by Ute Lehrer and Roza Tchoukaleyska; London, to be considered by Nicholas Phelps; Oslo, to be recounted by Per Gunnar Røe; and Zurich, to be studied by Rahel Nüssli. In the case of London, Alan Mace and Roya Jodieri became involved as co-authors of chapter 9. To this core team we invited several other participants and added three additional country/city cases. Two of these were solicited in order to ensure a proper coverage of southern-European nations and their often distinctive suburbanization processes. Thus, Ioannis Chorianopoulos, Alexandros Karvounis, Dimitris Ballas, and Nicholas Phelps focused on the cases of the Kifissia and Maroussi suburbs of Athens. Amparo Tarazona Vento was invited to discuss the case of suburbanization in Madrid, Spain, based on new research commissioned as part of the MCRI project itself. Given the diversity of “transition” economies, an additional case was sought from among the former

x Preface

Soviet-bloc countries of central and eastern Europe. Drawing upon examples from his doctoral research, Wojciech Wagner recounts some of the key features of the suburbanization process in Poland. Specifically, the contributions collected here date back to an initial discussion at the opening meeting of the international network in Montreal (in April 2010) with papers also being presented at a mid-term conference in Toronto in September 2013. An additional one-day workshop was held at University College London (UCL) in May 2012, and was funded under the UCL Sustainable Cities Grand Challenge initiative. In this latter meeting, we as a team began to outline each of our cases and refine ideas on the thematic structure of our work. The theme that we alighted on – of Old Europe, New Suburbanization – reflected a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, and in light of a wish to pay greater attention to the many world cities (and suburbs) of the Global South, taking our cue from the likes of Jennifer Robinson and Ananya Roy, we wanted to avoid returning to Europe in a way that overly privileged the continent as a source of ideas regarding contemporary suburbanization more generally. Yet we were also tasked with saying something distinctive and new about a part of the world already well covered in the extant literature on suburbanization. In our discussions we were drawn to the fact that, despite the urban transition that had already occurred in each of our country cases and also despite comparatively slow population growth, “old” Europe yet contained examples of suburbanization every bit as “new” and surprising as might be found elsewhere. Although Amparo Tarazona Vento and I have written in our contribution to an initial volume in the series that Europe represents a microcosm of different suburbanization processes in itself, nevertheless our intention – which extends to this volume – is not to make claims for the universality of the European experience. Instead, as a contribution to the University of Toronto Press’s new series on Global Suburbanisms, our intention has been to reinvigorate discussion of European suburbs and processes of suburbanization in such a way that “old” Europe would not be forgotten as a source of inspiration on the subject and indeed could still offer up fresh avenues for research, both in Europe and elsewhere. I wish to extend my own personal thanks to each of the contributors for making my life as editor relatively easy, to the reviewers for their helpful and supportive comments, to Jenny Lugar and Amparo Tarazona Vento for their fantastic work in preparing and formatting draft manuscripts, and to Miles Irving for producing a set of maps for

Preface xi

the different chapters. I would like to thank David Price for agreeing to fund a meeting under UCL’s Sustainable Cities Grand Challenge initiative. Thanks are also due to Douglas Hildebrand at the University of Toronto Press for his championing of the series and for his support and patience in the production of this particular volume. Nicholas A. Phelps Portsmouth

NOTE 1 See http://www.yorku.ca/suburbs/.

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Author Biographies

Dimitris Ballas is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of the Aegean. He was previously a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield and has also held visiting research scholar positions at Harvard University and at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria) and a visiting professor position at Ritsumeikan University (Japan). He is co-author of The Human Atlas of Europe (2017, Policy Press), The Social Atlas of Europe (2014, Policy Press); Poverty, Wealth and Place in Britain, 1968 to 2005 (Policy Press, 2007); Post-Suburban Europe: Planning and Politics at the Margins of Europe’s Capital Cities (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006); and Geography Matters: Simulating the Impacts of National Social Policies (2005, Joseph Rowntree Foundation); and co-editor of Spatial Microsimulation for Rural Policy Analysis (Springer, 2012). He is an economist by training (1996, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece) and also has an MA (with distinction) in geographical information systems (1997, University of Leeds, U.K.) and a PhD in geography (2001, University of Leeds, U.K.). Ludger Basten is professor of economic and social geography in the Department of Integrative Didactics (IDIF) at Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany. His work focuses on cities and urban and metropolitan development with a regional emphasis on Germany and North America. His three main current research interests are (i) the planning and governance of urban/metropolitan regions, (ii) processes of metropolitan restructuring, and (iii) suburban spaces and the processes of suburbanization. He has published books, several book chapters, and journal articles on urban development, planning, and urban

xiv  Author Biographies

design in suburbia, and on developments in Canadian metropolises, as well as editing books on current trends in urban and metropolitan development. Ioannis Chorianopoulos is an associate professor in the Department of Geography, University of the Aegean. Previously, he taught at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the Department of Geography and researched at the European Institute (LSE). Also, as a Fulbright scholar, he conducted research at University of California at Berkeley on urban governance and sprawl in the United States and Greece. His interest in urban form underscores the book on Human Geographies that he recently co-edited (Kritiki Publishers). He has worked and published on the themes of European integration, urban competitiveness, residential segregation, and social exclusion. He is a member of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (De Montfort University), and is currently participating in the research project “Collaborative Governance under Austerity: An Eight-case Comparative Study.” Sonia Hirt is currently professor and dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She was previously professor and associate dean at the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech. She has served as visiting associate professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Hirt’s research focuses on the relationship between social values and the built environment. She has also published extensively on urbanism in the United States and postsocialist Eurasia. She is the author of Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land Use Regulation (Cornell Press, 2015), Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space in the Post-Socialist City (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and Twenty Years of Transition: The Evolution of Urban Planning in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, 1989–2009 (UN Habitat, 2009; with K. Stanilov). She is also the editor of The Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs (Routledge, 2012; with D. Zahm). Her research has been funded by organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Studies. Roya Jodieri is a senior planner at ARUP in Dubai. She has an MSc in spatial planning, city/urban, community, and regional planning from University College London and a BA in geography with first-class honours from the University of Leeds.

Author Biographies  xv

Alexandros Karvounis is a policy analyst in DG Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission. He is an urban and regional planner by training and holds an MPhil degree in planning from the University of Cambridge. His PhD research in South East Europe Research Centre/University of Sheffield (SEERC) focuses on the contribution of EU Structural Funds in the performance of manufacturing firms in less developed regions using econometric modelling. His professional experience is mainly in strategic urban and regional programs and in providing advice on public administration and local governance. Ute Lehrer is an associate professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University. Lehrer received a PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in urban planning, and a lic.phil from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in art and architectural history, sociology, and economic and social history. She has published widely on architecture, urban design, and planning. Her research interests include cities and globalization, economic restructuring and urban form, the political economy of the built environment, the theory and history of planning, urban design and architecture, built environment, ethnicity and immigration to urban areas, and global suburbanisms. Her earlier work includes the analysis of mega-projects, the relationship between urban form and economic restructuring, and historical preservation. Her work is carried out in cities such as Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Zurich, Frankfurt, and Toronto. Alan Mace lectures in urban planning in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has joint training as both a planner and a geographer. His research interest is the interface of planning practice and urban theory viewed through the lens of culture. His 2013 book CitySuburbs, Placing Suburbs in a Post-Suburban World (Routledge) looks at how residents create and adapt to change in outer London. This theme is explored with reference to memory and the built form in “The Future Has Come and Gone: Managing Change in the Ageing Suburbs,” in M. Dines and T. Vermeulen (eds), New Suburban Stories (Continuum, 2013). More recently he has employed Bourdieu’s field theory to look at how anti-suburb debates are created and sustained, in “The Suburbs as Sites of ‘Within-Planning’ Power Relations” (Planning Theory, 2015).

xvi  Author Biographies

Rahel Nüssli (MSc in geography) has been working as a PhD student and scientific assistant in the Faculty of Architecture of ETH Zurich since 2010. Her dissertation takes place in the context of the research project “Urban Potentials and Strategies in Metropolitan Territories – Explored in the Metropolitan Area of Zurich” (which is part of the national research program NFP 65 “new urban quality”) and focuses on urban transformations and urban governance in the metropolitan area of Zurich. Rahel Nüssli studied geography (with a focus on human, political, and economic geography) and political science at the University of Zurich. Nicholas A. Phelps is professor of urban and regional development at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. He has been visiting scholar at AmIDST at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Geography at University Science Malaysia, the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, and the Department of Applied Economics, Universidad Catolica del Norte, Chile. Nick’s research interests focus on the contributions of urban planning and politics to processes of suburbanization. He has published on these topics in the journals Cities, Environment & Planning A, Urban Affairs Review, and Urban Studies. He is author of An Anatomy of Sprawl: Planning and Politics in Britain (Routledge, 2012) and Sequel to Suburbia: Glimpses of America’s Post-Suburban Future (MIT Press, 2016). He is co-author of Post-Suburban Europe (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006) and co-editor (with Fulong Wu) of International Perspectives on Suburbanization (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011). Per Gunnar Røe is professor of human geography at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, the University of Oslo. His research interests are urban planning, design, and architecture; urban and suburban place making; residential mobility and neighbourhood change; and the social implications of smart and compact city strategies. He has published his research in journals such as International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Journal of Transport Geography, Built Environment, and Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. He is co-editor (together with Mark Luccarelli) of Green Oslo. Visions, Planning and Discourse (Ashgate, 2012). Røe has conducted several research projects funded by the Norwegian Research Council and other public bodies, and is currently heading a larger project on social and mobility practices in the evolving micro-cities in suburban Oslo, as well as leading a subproject investigating the social context and multi-level politics of large-scale urban architecture.

Author Biographies  xvii

Amparo Tarazona Vento is Urban Studies Foundation research associate at the University of Glasgow. Amparo qualified as an architect and spatial planner following her studies at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. She also holds an MA in urban design from Oxford Brookes University and a diploma in advanced studies from the Department of Urban and Territorial Planning of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Prior to receiving her PhD from University College London, she practised as an architect and urban designer in Valencia and Madrid. Her publications cover the practices of power involved in urban policy mobility and the politics and implications of entrepreneurial urban regeneration, and include single-authored journal articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Urban Studies. She is also co-author of “Suburban Governance in Western Europe” in P. Hamel and R. Keil, eds, Suburban Governance: A Global View (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and “The Suburban Question: Grass Roots Politics and Place Making in Spanish Suburbs – the Cases of Badalona and Getafe” in Environment & Planning C. Roza Tchoukaleyska is an assistant professor at Memorial University, Newfoundland. Her research interests include public space, urban redevelopment, suburban spaces, and cultural geography. She received her PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2013. Her dissertation research considers the links between urban redevelopment, public space, and neighbourhood identity in France, with particular attention to the ways in which contestations over public space – who should use the space, and how – are articulated by a diversity of community and state actors. Roza’s postdoctoral research examined the meaning and function of public space in suburban high-rise districts in France and Canada, with a focus on the impact of high-rise refurbishment programs on community cohesion and suburban public spaces. Wojciech Wagner is head of the Public Space Department at the Architecture and Spatial Planning Bureau of the City of Warsaw, Poland. He has been working on his doctoral thesis at the Warsaw University of Technology, focusing on the specific phenomena of suburbanization in Poland as compared to other European countries. His research interests cover, especially, analysis of urban form and its dependence on historical, legal, cultural, or economic factors. He has published several articles on Poland’s architecture, urban planning system, and heritage protection, as well as the books Silesia: Land of Dying Country Houses

xviii  Author Biographies

(London, 2009) (together with M. Binney and K. Martin) and Grenz- und Zufluchtskirchen Schlesiens (Dresden, 2013) (together with M. Donath and L.A. Dannenberg). He has degrees in European urban studies (Bauhaus University, Weimar), international relations (University of Łódź), and graphic design (Strzemiński Academy of Art Łódź).

OLD EUROPE, NEW SUBURBANIZATION? Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization

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1 Introduction: Old Europe, New Suburbanization? n ic h ol as a. p h e l p s

This volume forms part of the work of a Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, involving a network of scholars and research activities covering different continents and also different thematic pieces of research.1 The approach in this network has been to concentrate not on the suburb, per se, but on processes of suburbanization. A suburb has been defined as a settlement (1) in a peripheral location relative to an existing dominant urban centre; (2) that is partly or wholly residential in character; (3) with a low density of development; (4) with a distinctive culture or way of life; and (5) with a separate community identity, often embodied in a local government (Harris and Larkham 1999, 8). This is a composite definition drawn from a modest though by now rapidly expanding literature (Harris 2010). Nevertheless, the term “suburb” is one that has been said to suffer from “epistemological fragility” (Vaughan et al. 2009) – though this has long been recognized in much of the extant literature. In particular, the composite definition given above is one exposed by the urbanization process itself, whereby what was once peripheral and suburban becomes central or urban (Phelps et al. 2006). In terms of the appearance of the built environment at least, if not in other respects, the suburb is an evolving thing (Bourne 1996, 165). Moreover, this is a definition that is to an extent exposed by the very diversity in existing suburbs and new processes of suburbanization in old Europe, including ideologies associated with suburban development. Perhaps partly as a result, the international research network – of which this book forms an initial summation of one specific set of activities – works with the concept of suburbanization defined as “the

4  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion” (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012, 407). This international network has concentrated on examining suburbanization by way of the themes of governance, land, and infrastructure. These are also the themes that the chapters in this volume on suburbanization in Europe have worked with. In addition, however, we explore how the geohistory of Europe is refracted in processes of suburbanization across the continent. In particular, the chapters collected here emphasize some of the specifics of geography and history with a view to emphasizing the relevance of old Europe to an understanding of contemporary suburbanization. Governance, Land, and Infrastructure The core focal themes of the network’s research on processes of suburbanization have been governance, land, and infrastructure. These three broad themes are those adopted in the “global suburbanisms” MCRI project as a whole, and there are important intersections between them. Ekers and colleagues have outlined in more detail aspects of the governance theme in relation to the work of the network. They note how a concern with the governance of suburbanization processes centres on the “institutions, practices, discourses, ideologies and representations that affect how different spaces and processes are produced, contested and experienced” (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012, 408). In particular, they distinguish between processes of suburbanization under three modes of governance: state-led, capital accumulation, and private authoritarianism. Each of these modes is visible across the cases considered in this volume. Indeed, the “hybridization” of these modes of governance is revealed in several individual cases – notably in the cases of Poland and Bulgaria, described by Wagner and Hirt, respectively, in chapters 3 and 4 – as a result of an important rupture in governance represented by the transition from state socialism to greater marketization. However, the “geo” of the geohistory of Europe is particularly apparent in connection with this governance theme. There has been considerable variety despite the firmness of the extant territoriality of government that exists across Europe, not least in the particular scale of government and associated regulation – local, regional, and national – that has existed. There is also a measure of state rescaling (Brenner 2003) that has affected stiff old Europe in this respect – including the planning systems and cultures that so often condense both the potential for and the meanings

Introduction 5

attached to suburbanization (Reimer, Getimis, and Blotevogel 2014). As a result, we have asked the authors to contextualize their topical suburban stories in relation to relevant scales of administration and institutional formations with a bearing upon suburbanization. Processes of suburbanization are critically dependent upon the availability of land for development, which, in turn, is critically dependent upon how the release of land for development is regulated through sales and leases and planning restrictions, which, in turn, one might argue, is closely related to the meanings or ideologies attached to land and its development – including suburban development. In the celebrated containment of urban England, one planning policy – green belts – arguably has been captured by powerful interests in society to play a major role in a significant structural shortage of housing. This is an important background ingredient in the story of London’s suburbanization, as Phelps, Mace, and Jodieri outline in chapter 9. Elsewhere, powerful societal interests have been concerned to loosen restrictions and allocate land at the urban periphery for development. (Sub)urbanization in the developed and developing worlds has often been rather different, the latter being notably characterized by informal development. However, one thing our contributions highlight here is the persistence of informality in both the former socialist countries (such as Poland, reported on by Wagner in chapter 3) and the southern Mediterranean countries (such as Greece, reported on by Chorianopoloulos and colleagues in chapter 6). The informally developed coastal bungalows – the “arcadia for all” sought in Britain until the advent of greater planning regulation before and after the Second World War – is a reminder that such informality in suburban development most likely remains latent in many developed nations with their formal regulation of land development processes. Finally, infrastructure networks of all sorts – such as water, mass transportation, and energy supply – have set the context for processes of suburbanization and suburbanism as a way of life. Indeed, in many respects the “suburban question” has been one – more so than the urban question – of making good shortfalls in infrastructure and service provision. The “metabolism” of suburbia – represented in such infrastructure networks – has often been different from that in cities, though the metabolisms of both are now exposed to a fragmentation of infrastructure provision and planning captured in the notion of “splintering urbanism” (Graham and Marvin 2000). The much-lamented ecological and social unsustainability of suburbs can also hardly be

6  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

understood without reference to the questions of infrastructure provision and coordination. To Old Europe, Again? There are multiple senses in which European (sub)urbanization might be thought of as “old,” and these provide a counterpoint to what the authors in this volume emphasize as elements of novelty that make Europe as relevant to understanding contemporary suburbanization as anywhere else in the world. First, processes of urbanization have proceeded earlier and farther in many parts of Europe than elsewhere. Indeed, Europe provides an origin point for the word “suburb” and its meaning in relation to ancient processes of urbanization and the urban cores it produces. While a sizeable pre-modern, pre-capitalist world system was not centred on Europe (Abu-Lughod 1991), European nations were the old centres of the modern capitalist world system (Wallerstein 1974). Thus, second, Europe possesses the oldest nation states of this modern world system and the most established frameworks of state territoriality within which the process of suburbanization takes place. Finally, of course, European nations were surpassed by the United States during the course of the last century as the centre of the modern world system. It is hardly surprising, then, that the novel processes of sub(urbanization) in the United States are often presented in contrast to those prevailing in Europe. The meaning that is invested in the term “suburb” varies considerably. The term itself is one that does not always have an exact equivalent in many languages (Harris 2010). In Europe, in particular, the ancient and medieval character of the suburb as literally a place less than urban, outside the city walls, and a location for marginalized populations and unwanted land uses has been overtaken by the more familiar contemporary view – at least emanating from Britain and the United States – of the suburb as bourgeois utopian escape from the city (Bruegmann 2005; Fishman 1987). Here the suburb is anything but marginal. It is instead, for the most part, a reflector of wealth and privilege. Elsewhere, however, the suburb takes on diverse and sometimes diametrically opposite meanings. In contexts as diverse as Scandinavia, France, and Greece, an element of this meaning is hardly visible in form, given that it is composed of the weekend, summer, and former family house retreats of rural or exurban rather than suburban areas per se. Elsewhere in old Europe, the suburb as peripheral urbanization

Introduction 7

clearly retains, in many instances, something of its ancient meaning as an approach to the city rather than an escape from it. In Mediterranean cities, processes of suburbanization embody, in significant part, a desire to be part of the opportunities offered by the city – what Leontidou and colleagues (2007) term “astaphylia” – and are reflected in the sorts of agency in the suburban land development processes described later in this volume by Chorianopoulos and colleagues (chapter 6). In all of this, then, a historical perspective alerts us to the fact that the ideologies associated with suburbs and the suburban way of life have always been more diverse than what has often been simplified in the most dominant strands of popular and academic discourse (Harris and Larkham 1999). A clear example of this is provided by Røe’s uncovering (in chapter 5) of the moment in which a unique Nordic suburban ideology and associated built form emerged. Røe reveals this Nordic suburban ideology as unique in its after-modern complexity and ahead of its time in its retention of many welfare principles in a rejection of earlier modern planned suburban extensions. While the suburb is a residual concept in its origin (Bourne 1996, 164) it is anything but residual within contemporary “planetary urbanization” (Brenner 2012). Indeed, the urban question under conditions of planetary urbanization may well be more accurately characterized as a suburban question (Phelps, Tarazona Vento, and Roitman 2015). Perhaps it should be no surprise that, as societies continue to evolve, processes of suburban differentiation and even the formation of new types of suburbs are also apparent. Europe is a good place to observe these processes of suburbanization. If the suburb is defined in terms of some of its ties to established historic city centres, the relative affluence of European countries has produced yet more particular variations on suburban themes. Suburbs in Europe continue to take on and shed particular class and ethnic complexions as elsewhere. Just as in North America, where metropolitan areas become ever more complex arrangements of specialized trading places (Bogart 2006), new suburbs that are extremely central not only within their respective metropolitan and national spheres but also in the international sphere are just as visible in Europe. The contemporary suburban question in Europe – the meanings attached to suburbs and the process of suburbanization – can therefore be explored with reference to the themes of governance, land, and infrastructure. However, beyond these three themes common to the MCRI project, we are interested, in this volume, in analysing the

8  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

newness of processes of suburbanization in relation to the seeming geographical fixity of settlement patterns and their administration and the slow-changing tempo of urbanization in old Europe.

Geography Without doubt a weight of history bears down upon processes of suburbanization and the suburban experience across Europe. Indeed, one important part of this history concerns where Europe is – where it begins and ends (Eder 2006). Even in the contemporary time horizon of the last century and the early decades of this century, with the birth of the Soviet bloc and its relationship to the youthful European Union, a Europe of “old” planning systems has been contrasted to a new Europe of central and east-central European states (Maier 2012). All of this raises quite significant questions over how to define the scope of contributions to any book on suburbanization in Europe. However, this is not an aspect of the geohistory of Europe we had the luxury of dwelling on, as is explained in the preface. Yet, in respect to the governance theme in particular, the “geo” of Europe’s geohistory does provide an important cue for this book on suburbanization. The geography of old Europe is one in which the territoriality of government could be thought to exert a strong inertial effect on processes of suburbanization, including on any countervailing tendencies for inter-urban and inter-national policy exchange. Thus, on the one hand, the weight of Europe’s history bears down upon processes of suburbanization. As the birthplace of the modern nation state, old Europe has a geohistory that very much has been and continues to be defined and divided along distinctly territorial lines. Perhaps the defining characteristic of Europe’s suburbanization processes is that they take place in a context where governmental boundaries and institutional jurisdictions have often ceased to change in any significant way and in which identities continue to cohere around particular territorial scales within nations. This is an inadvertent product of the time frame over which the formation and elaboration of nationstate administrations has taken place and into which other scales of territorial organization of human affairs have been folded in “old” Europe – the birthplace of the modern nation state. The process of state ordering and demarcating of national space has simply proceeded that much further and more completely to the point that there is now little change and often little possibility of change. Compare, for example,

Introduction 9

the annexation or amalgamation of competing city jurisdictions along the Yangtze River delta in China that has occurred recently in order to reduce inter-urban competition and provide a more rational basis for the planning of functional urban areas (Zhang and Wu 2006) with the inertia that inheres in the territoriality of government in Europe. The stasis in state territoriality in old Europe seems likely to be a powerful contributor to the thought that there is little of interest regarding contemporary suburbanization in Europe. For instance, (sub)urban sprawl is an issue common across Europe in a context in which there continues to be great inertia in local government organizations (including their territoriality) that are responsible for spatial planning (Reimer, Getimis, and Blotevogel 2014). Yet there remains considerable variety in the rescaling of state territoriality across Europe as it affects processes of suburbanization. This is a variety that the authors have been charged to think about in terms of the geography of the administrative context in which new suburbanization is produced – whether this be the regional scale of Spain and the south-east of England in terms of which the suburbs of Madrid (discussed by Tarazona Vento in chapter 2) and London (discussed by Phelps, Mace, and Jodieri in chapter 9) must be understood or the “in-between” pattern of regional urbanization in the Ruhr (discussed by Basten in chapter 8). Indeed, in old Europe, processes of suburbanization are so novel and so radical that the territoriality of governance arrangements may not be useful as a starting point at all (as discussed by Nüssli in chapter 10). On the other hand, Europe’s cities and nations have been sufficiently permeable as “containers” delimited by states to be interpretable in terms of urban policy and practice mobility. Processes of suburbanization have been and continue to be refracted very differently through what is a great variety of capitalisms; welfare, planning, and housing systems; suburban ideologies; land ownership; industry structures; and colonial connections that exist in Europe (Phelps and Tarazona Vento 2015). These in turn are surely part of the picture in terms of the import and export of novel elements, including in relation to suburban form and function. European cities and nations have long acted as arenas or nodal points in national and international urban networks of “inter-referencing,” policy mobility, and exchange. This role as a relay has existed with respect to ingredients and processes of suburbanization. For example, the origins of the modern residential suburb as a bourgeois utopia are often traced to Britain (Fishman 1987; see also Phelps, Mace, and

10  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Jodieri, in this volume). In this regard, European nations can be seen as important progenitor sites for the diffusion of urban planning and development models (Ward 2010), including those associated strongly with processes of suburbanization in a wide array of colonial territories. Yet it is also clear that, early on, key ingredients of the modern suburb – such as the bungalow – were imported from India and reexported to the United States (King 1984). For much of the twentieth century, the Atlantic represented a key axis of urban policy exchange (Rodgers 1998), including of ideas – such as the garden city – that can hardly be separated from processes of suburbanization. After a long period in which the balance of forces acting upon European nations and their cities was in the direction of the mutual exchange of ideas across the Atlantic and/or their export to far-flung colonial territories, the balance of forces would now appear to be one in which the importation of urban policies predominates. Thus, more recently, elements of the suburban matrix such as the corporate office park have been key imports to Europe from the United States (Mozingo 2011). To be sure, then, as colonial ties have weakened and reversed, new flows of migrant suburban populations raise a whole set of new issues regarding the content of suburban built environments – some of which have changed very little (as in the case of London, reported by Phelps, Mace, and Jodieri in chapter 9 of this volume), and some of which have had to change to accommodate the influx of population (as described in chapter 7 of this book by Ute Lehrer and Roza Tchoukaleyska, in the case of Montpellier).

History The “history” of Europe’s geohistory provides a second important cue for this book and also provoked its title. Old Europe is often characterized as a Europe of stasis. The sense of stasis that often pervades discussion of processes of suburbanization in Europe to an extent reflects the slow population growth as a result of early urbanization within the modern capitalist world system. Thus, the age of European urbanization and nation states is sometimes contrasted to the youth and vigour of North American settlement. The novelty and vitality of urbanization in North America has meant that the U.S. perspective in particular has often assumed a dominant position in urban theory, including that on suburbs and processes of suburbanization. Not least because, as Beauregard (2006, 180) explains,

Introduction 11

“For centuries US cities had never quite been able to overcome the history, urbanity, and civilizing image of European cities … What the postwar suburbs gave up in cosmopolitanism and intellectual and cultural depth, they more than made up in prosperity, freedom of choice, and opportunity. Living well was the American revenge on its European origins.” Despite long-standing claims of the inadequacy of such a dominant U.S. perspective (Sjoberg 1960), it is this perspective that continues to inform much contemporary debate regarding urbanization. It is from this vantage point, for example, that most of the more than forty terms that have proliferated to try to encapsulate aspects of the essentially sprawling suburban landscape of metropolitan regions (Lang 2002) have originated. It is also from this vantage point that calls for a new lexicon have emerged, in light of the argument that the terms “suburb” and “city” are no longer relevant (Lang and Knox 2009). Yet, many of the new terms invented to depict patterns of urbanization in the United States do not travel well, because of the specificity of the context, and have been overtaken by the novelty, speed, and scale of urbanization in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries. Indeed, the novelty, pace, and scale of urbanization in the BRIC countries seem likely to ensure that old Europe is further marginalized in discussions and theoretical developments regarding contemporary suburbanization. Without wanting to deny the value of looking well beyond Europe and, indeed, North America in urban studies, in this volume we attempt the difficult task of reasserting how Europe, with its great variety of patterns and processes of urbanization, may be a fruitful ground for further elaborating a sense of the diversity of global suburbanisms now gradually coming into view in the urban studies literature. A closer inspection of old Europe reveals not only variety but also genuine novelty. Some of Europe’s suburban forms are every bit as startling as those celebrated in postmodern urban theory from North America (Soja 2000; Dear and Dahmann 2008), reflecting important changes in population and employment. In some cases, as Sonia Hirt elaborates in the case of Sofia, pent-up residential demand from existing populations has meant that suburban residential developments are every bit as massive and abrupt in their appearance as developments in those BRIC countries urbanizing at massive scale in absolute terms – and at great speed relative to the urban transitions of Europe and North America. Some post-socialist cities have experienced

12  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

overall population decline, yet they are still suburbanizing (Nuissl and Rink 2005). In others – notably capital cities – new suburbanization concentrates national population and economic growth. There are suburban juxtapositions to be found in Europe that are every bit as curious and bizarre as those occurring elsewhere. In chapter 10, Rahel Nüssli describes how large, globally connected financial-industry blocks have come to nestle next to suburban detached residences in Zurich’s suburbs. There are distinctly challenging problems related to governing the fragmented settlement patterns associated with population and economic stasis and decline and rapid changes in the ethnic and class composition that already are (Sorensen 2011; Hanlon, Vicino, and Short 2006), and will undoubtedly be, the future of many more suburbs globally. Ludger Basten and Rahel Nüssli’s chapters (8 and 10) are timely reminders that the terms “suburb” and “suburbanization” are unlikely to provide an adequate description at all for patterns and processes of settlement in some parts of Europe. In the case of the Ruhr area described by Basten, a polycentric pattern of settlement has to some extent been frozen in place from the industrial era and is typified by population decline and aging. At the edge of the Zurich metropolitan area, rural and urban elements intertwine such that categories of the rural, suburban, and urban are, as Nüssli argues, often inadequate for capturing some of the complexity of “new urban configurations.” Moreover, the age of European urbanization may also be taken to suggest stasis in the process of suburbanization as one of steady, incremental change. In fact, to a greater or lesser degree, all chapters presented here highlight the variable rhythm of suburbanization across Europe. The tempo of suburbanization in Europe is one that has been altered by radical ruptures created by the post-socialist “transition,” as in Poland and Bulgaria (discussed by Wagner in chapter 3 and by Hirt in chapter 4). The appearance of incremental change in the process of suburbanization can mask important discontinuities both in the physical form and in the underlying social and ethnic complexion of particular suburbs (as discussed by Phelps, Mace, and Jodieri in chapter 9). Elsewhere, suburbs can be hard to discern at all in an urban region characterized by dispersed population and economic shrinkage (as discussed by Basten in chapter 8). All of the contributors were asked particularly, as the title of the volume suggests, to consider anew the geographical and temporal basis of the governance, land, and infrastructural aspects of suburbanization in this volume.

Introduction 13

The Structure of the Book This volume does not return to Europe to produce a Eurocentric view of the world or of suburbs and suburbanization. After all, one of the tasks of the global suburbanisms network is to remedy the relative dearth of literature on suburbs in the Global South when compared to Europe and North America. Instead it returns to old Europe as an excellent laboratory in which to examine a diversity of novel processes and forms of suburbanization in a world where it is increasingly difficult to identify suburban lineages and antecedents. Indeed, the variety and history of Europe itself are great distorters of any lineage in the character of and meanings attached to suburbs; Europe’s history and geography encompass an ancient notion of the suburb as well as what the chapters here depict as altogether more modern or even postmodern suburbs. This is a Europe of curious juxtapositions within and between suburbs and of erasures and reinventions of the meaning of suburbia. To be sure, then, old Europe is today a changed Europe in many respects and, arguably, in terms of thought regarding urban development, planning, and management. It is this changed and changing old Europe as a net importer and transmitter of urban models, policies, and practices that offers an interesting and a new – but also worldly – research agenda on suburbanization, to which this volume is an initial contribution. This volume, then, attempts to situate an understanding of novel aspects of European suburbanisms within an appreciation of the greater history of urbanization and the territoriality of government in Europe. Potentially it can help us reflect on the pasts and futures of suburbanization and the relationship between the two. Aside from this introduction and the conclusion, the original chapter contributions in this book are organized into three main sections that reflect the overarching themes of governance, land, and infrastructure. The chapters in this book have been organized in terms of how they deal with different aspects of these three broad themes, with each chapter emphasizing a different aspect of a single theme. Thus, while each chapter sets the scene with regard to governance, land, and infrastructure, they also go on to emphasize one specific aspect of one of these themes that is appropriate to both the national and the city or urbanregional case (or cases) being considered. The emphasis is just that and no more. These themes of governance, land, and infrastructure are a convenient way of presenting chapters, though it should be recognized that each of the chapters has potentially more than one story to tell in this regard.

14  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Each chapter actually speaks powerfully to new research themes relating to suburbanization that emerge from old Europe. In particular, all have something to say about the temporal and geographical dimensions of suburbanization, and I return to these as ingredients of a future agenda on the study of suburbs and suburbanization in the conclusion. Three chapters have an emphasis on the governance of suburbanization. In chapter 2, Amparo Tarazona Vento focuses on the unique regional geography within which the governance of suburbanization in Spain must be understood, concentrating on examples from Madrid. Madrid is, in important respects, a relatively new centre within the Spanish urban system, and the suburbs of this now important city region are diverse. In chapter 3, Wojciech Wagner examines the distinctive governance failures of planning in preventing suburban sprawl in the cities of Warsaw and Lodz in Poland. If the city was a “machine for living” in Soviet planning (see French 1995), Sonia Hirt charts how, in the case of Sofia (in chapter 4), a massive scale of suburbanization has been unleashed outside this city machine in the new suburbs being thrown up rapidly in the post-socialist transition economy of Bulgaria. Both chapter 3 and chapter 4 tend to underline the important discontinuities in the urbanization process in transition economies, leading to striking but contrasting forms of suburbanization. A further three chapters emphasize the role of land in processes of suburbanization. In chapter 5, Per Gunnar Røe examines the peculiar relationship between nature and the built environment within the contemporary Norwegian suburban ideology through which suburban land development has been regulated and some of the suburbs of Oslo have been produced and consumed. The instances he discusses actually represent a particular historical moment in this regard. Ioannis Chorianopoulos, Alexandros Karvounis, Dimitris Ballas, and Nicholas Phelps highlight the contrasting ways in which land is at the centre of both informality in housing development and large-scale commercial development in the neighbouring suburban municipalities of Kifissia and Maroussi at the periphery of Athens (chapter 6). Ute Lehrer and Roza Tchoukaleyska highlight the extension of infrastructure under metropolitan reorganization to two rather different vintages of suburbanization in Montpellier in chapter 7. A final group of three chapters makes a stronger connection between infrastructure and processes of suburbanization. In chapter 8, Ludger Basten recounts the relatively organized and planned decline of a polycentric urban region of the Ruhr/Rhine in which it is actually rather hard to discern suburbs. London has one of the highest densities of

Introduction 15

mass-transit rail provision internationally (Niedzielski and Malecki 2012). Since Victorian times it has provided the fine-grained trellis around which seemingly gradual and piecemeal processes of suburbanization are entwined, though this is only part of the story, as Nicholas Phelps, Alan Mace, and Roya Jodieri explain in chapter 9. Finally, in chapter 10, Rahel Nüssli recounts the story of the superimposition of new global elements of the suburban matrix – office campuses – onto the old pastoral exurbia of Zurich, which owes much of its existence to major developments in road and air connectivity. In a concluding chapter (chapter 11), I draw together what might be seen as some of the new research themes to emerge from this consideration of some of the diversity of suburbanization in old Europe. These relate to the temporal aspects of suburbanization as a process and to different geographical understandings of that process. In a final section of this concluding chapter, I also raise the prospect of how the growing academic theoretical and empirical interest in suburbs and suburbanization will contribute to the method of comparative urbanism. NOTE 1 See http://www.yorku.ca/suburbs/.

REFERENCES Abu-Lughod, J. 1991. Before European hegemony: The world system A.D.1 250–1350. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beauregard, R. 2006. When America became suburban. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bogart, W.T. 2006. Don’t call it sprawl: Metropolitan structure in the 21st century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511607332. Bourne, L.S. 1996. Reinventing the suburbs: Old myths and new realities. Progress in Planning 46 (3):163–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0305-9006(96)88868-4. Brenner, N. 2003. Metropolitan institutional reform and the rescaling of state space in contemporary western Europe. European Urban and Regional Studies 10 (4):297–324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09697764030104002. Brenner, N. 2012. What is critical urban theory? In Cities for people, not for profit: Critical urban theory and the right to the city, ed. N. Brenner, P. Marcuse, and M. Mayer, 11–23. London: Routledge.

16  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Bruegmann, R. 2005. Sprawl: A compact history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226076973.001.0001. Dear, M., and N. Dahmann. 2008. Urban politics and the Los Angeles School of Urbanism. Urban Affairs Review 44 (2):266–79. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1078087408320240. Eder, K. 2006. Europe’s borders: The narrative construction of the boundaries of Europe. European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2):255–71. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1368431006063345. Ekers, M., P. Hamel, and R. Keil. 2012. Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies 46 (3):405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Fishman, R. 1987. Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. New York: Basic Books. French, T. 1995. Plans, pragmatism and people: The legacy of Soviet planning for today’s cities. London: University College London Press. Graham, S., and S. Marvin. 2000. Splintering urbanism. London: Routledge. Hanlon, B., T. Vicino, and J.R. Short. 2006. The new metropolitan reality in the US: Rethinking the traditional model. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 43 (12):2129–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980600936525. Harris, R. 2010. Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. In Suburbanisation in global society, ed. M. Clapson and R. Hutchison, 15–47. Bingley: Emerald Group publishing. Harris, R., and P. Larkham. 1999. Suburban foundation, form and function. In Changing suburbs: Foundation, form and function, ed. R. Harris and P. Larkham, 1–31. London: Routledge. King, A.D. 1984. The bungalow: The production of a global culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lang, R. 2002. Edgeless cities: Exploring the elusive metropolis. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Lang, R., and P. Knox. 2009. The new metropolis: Rethinking megalopolis. Regional Studies 43 (6):789–802. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/00343400701654251. Leontidou, L., A. Afouxenidis, E. Kourliouros, and E. Marmaras. 2007. Infrastructure related urban sprawl: Mega- events and hybrid peri-urban landscapes in southern Europe. In Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscapes, land-use change and policy, ed. C. Couch, L. Leontidou, and G. Petcshel-Held, 71–101. Oxford: Blackwell. Maier, K. 2012. Europeanisation and changing planning in east-central Europe: An easterner’s view. Planning Practice and Research 27 (1):137–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2012.661596.

Introduction 17 Mozingo, L. 2011. Pastoral capitalism: A history of suburban corporate landscapes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Niedzielski, M.A., and E.J. Malecki. 2012. Making tracks: Rail networks in world cities. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102 (6):1409–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.601212. Nuissl, H., and D. Rink. 2005. The “production” of urban sprawl in eastern Germany as a phenomenon of post-socialist transformation. Cities 22 (2):123–34. Phelps, N.A., N. Parsons, D. Ballas, and A. Dowling. 2006. Post-suburban Europe: Politics and planning at the margins of Europe’s capital cities. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230625389. Phelps, N.A., and A. Tarazona Vento. 2015. Suburban governance in western Europe. In Suburban governance: A global view, ed. P. Hamel and R. Keil, 155–76. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Phelps, N.A., A. Tarazona Vento, and S. Roitman. 2015. The suburban question: Grassroots politics and place making in Spanish suburbs. Environment and Planning C 33 (3): 512–32 Reimer, M., P. Getimis, and H. Blotevogel, eds. 2014. Spatial planning systems and practices in Europe: A comparative perspective on continuity and changes. London: Routledge. Rodgers, D.T. 1998. Atlantic crossings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sjoberg, G. 1960. The preindustrial city: Past and present. New York: Free Press. Soja, E. 2000. Postmetropolis. Oxford: Blackwell. Sorensen, A. 2011. Post-suburban Tokyo? Urbanization, suburbanization, reurbanization. In International perspectives on suburbanisation: A postsuburban world?, ed. N.A. Phelps and F. Wu, 210–24. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230308626_12. Vaughan, L., S. Griffiths, M. Haklay, and C.E. Jones. 2009. Do the suburbs exist? Discovering complexity and specificity in suburban built form. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (4):475–88. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00358.x. Wallerstein, I. 1974. The modern world system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. Cambridge: Academic Press. Ward, S.V. 2010. Transnational planners in a postcolonial world. In Crossing borders: International exchange and planning practices, ed. P. Healey and R. Upton, 47–72. London: Routledge. Zhang, J., and F. Wu. 2006. China’s changing economic governance: Administrative annexation and the reorganization of local governments in the Yangtze River delta. Regional Studies 40 (1):3–21. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/00343400500449085.

2 Madrid: The Making of a Global City Region and the Role of the Suburbs amparo taraz ona ve n t o

Introduction The study of the evolution of Madrid’s suburbanization brings to light a variety of processes – such as the springing up of unplanned industrial facilities and housing estates, the state-led construction of subsidized housing, and, later, residential decentralization through the construction of large-scale strategic developments or the market-led construction of new suburbs of single-family homes – that have generated morphologically diverse suburban spaces. These spaces represent a mixture of old Europe’s suburban tradition and completely new patterns of suburbanization; they must be understood not in isolation but as part of the creation of a hybridized city region. In reality, Madrid, situated in the geographical centre of the Iberian Peninsula, is at the same time capital of Spain, the Autonomous Community of Madrid (CAM), and Madrid province (see figure 2.1). Its region includes the city of Madrid – whose 3.2 million inhabitants (in 2012) represent 50 per cent of the regional population – and 178 surrounding municipalities of around 200,000 inhabitants (Instituto de Estadística CAM website, www.madrid.org/iestadis/). The regional space must therefore be analysed as a whole, if the individual processes are to be explained. Similarly, the different suburbanization processes and the changes they have effected on the territoriality of government need to be examined individually in order to understand the complexities of governing a city region with myriad private and public actors and superimposed administrations. While the continuities over time in processes of suburbanization are evident, changes in the state’s objectives regarding urban and regional

Madrid 19

Figure 2.1.  Map of the Madrid region.

planning have produced discontinuities too. Actually, from the mid1980s the state’s primary focus turned from the urgent need to provide housing for rural migrants and a politics of collective consumption to an emphasis on the use of the whole Madrid territory for real-estate accumulation and the attraction of global investment. Thus, the role of the state – particularly in its regional tier – in the governance of suburbanization must be highlighted as facilitator and driver of real-estate accumulation. Governance of suburbanization involves state, market, and civil society and entails “gather[ing] together and identify[ing] the varying

20  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

institutions, practices, discourses, ideologies and representations that affect how different spaces and processes are produced, contested and experienced” (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012, 408). As the case of Madrid shows, the state can govern suburbanization processes by developing infrastructure, giving incentives for land development, making landuse decisions, and directly developing land. However, since regulation, land-use planning, tax incentives, and infrastructure provision can facilitate (or hinder) capital accumulation, capital and state are intimately related in influencing and governing (sub)urbanization (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012). This chapter’s structure stresses the two themes that characterize Madrid’s evolution in the last decades: the exceptional growth of the transportation network, and land occupation. It first discusses land development – whether through private or state initiatives, in partnerships or incentivized by tax or land-use decisions. Second, it examines the provision of transportation infrastructure and urban and regional planning. Finally, it focuses on the multi-level governance of a complex city region, paying particular attention to the emergence of the regional government and its role as a generator of territorial strategy. Suburbanization and Land Occupation Madrid has been characterized by a rapid growth in land occupation, particularly from the last decades of the twentieth century. As shown in table 2.1, between 1956 and 2005 the Madrid region underwent an increase in land occupation of 609 per cent (from 11,850 hectares to 83,982 hectares). In the same period, the regional population increased by163 per cent. In other words, land occupation growth was almost four times higher than population growth. However, it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that regional land occupation increased at a much higher rate than did population. This turning point marks two periods in the suburbanization process, one linked to massive ruralurban migration and the other to a real-estate bubble. In the suburbanization period linked to rural-urban migration, population growth was mainly accommodated in densely populated neighbourhoods that formed Madrid’s inner and metropolitan suburbs; from the mid-1970s, however, it was mostly the metropolitan ring that absorbed population and land-occupation increases. Thus, between 1956 and 1975, population growth in the municipality of Madrid and in the metropolitan ring represented 66 per cent and 40 per cent of the

Madrid 21 Table 2.1. Evolution of urban land occupation and population in the Madrid municipality and the Madrid region* 1956

1975

1980

1991

1996

2001

2005

Total land Madrid   7,344 13,304 14,470 17,515 19,403 21,977 23,156 occupation (Ha) municipality Madrid region 11,850 26,684 42,509 59,117 67,493 76,559 83,982 Percentage of land occupied of the total regional land

Madrid 0.91 municipality

1.66

1.80

2.18

2.42

2.74

2.88

Madrid region 1.48

3.32

5.30

7.37

8.41

9.54

10.46

81

97

138

164

199

215

125

259

399

470

546

609

Percentage land Madrid – occupation municipality increase on the Madrid region – year 1956 Total population (in thousands)

Madrid municipality

1,957 3,228 3,170 3,010 2,867 2,957 3,095

Madrid region

2,235 4,172 4,625 4,947 4,973 5,373 5,894

Percentage Madrid – population municipality increase on the Madrid region – year 1956

65

62

54

46

51

58

87

107

121

122

140

163

*Author’s elaboration of data from Subdirección General de Planiἀcación Regional CAM and Instituto Estadística CAM (Population data for the years 1956, 1980, and 2005 are an extrapolation)

regional increase in population, respectively. Between 1975 and 1991, however, the municipality of Madrid lost population while the metropolitan ring more than doubled its population, and between 1991 and 2005 the increase of land occupation outside the municipality of Madrid represented 77 per cent of the total regional increase in land occupation (Instituto Estadística CAM). In reality, Madrid’s suburbanization can be considered to have started after the civil war, when a massive migration from the countryside to the urban areas took place. In the 1940s, with a total national population of less than 26 million, around 800,000 people left rural areas and migrated to the cities (López 2002). The migratory trend continued during the following three decades, in the 1960s and 1970s being fuelled by the partial industrialization of the country. Reconstruction after the civil war and the need to accommodate a migrant population were the priorities of Spanish housing policy, and

22  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

the central state provided housing for sizable segments of the urban population who lived in insalubrious dwellings. This profoundly marked Madrid’s urban structure since, in 1956, the number of insalubrious dwellings in its metropolitan area was estimated at more than 50,000 (Franco Alonso 2005). At first, the favoured formula of provision was public sector development of housing units, which the state rented out to tenants, giving them a final right to buy; however, as the construction sector became stronger and the economic power of the buyers increased, this formula was substituted by direct state subsidies to private developers (Beltrán 2002; López 2002). During the 1950s and 1960s, the state – through different governmental organizations – carried out a series of social housing programs in Madrid’s periphery with the aim of removing the shanty towns, solving the lower classes’ problem of access to housing, and facilitating the expansion of the city (Esteban 1999). The procedure was to build poblados (villages) or unidades vecinales (neighbourhood units). These were typically organized around a main street from which pedestrian paths provided access to homes (of between 36 and 60 square metres) that included a mixture of row houses situated in the core and peripheral housing blocks of four to five storeys (L. Moya 1997; Esteban 1999). In these developments, young Madrilenian architects experimented with new typologies of housing and incorporated international modernist architectural ideas (L. Moya 1997); but they also used traditional elements – such as the courtyard or workshop – because the new neighbourhoods were meant to help rural migrants adjust to urban living (Esteban 1999). From 1955 some 10,000 dwellings were built under the poblados de absorción (absorption villages) program, which intended to accommodate the residents of dwellings in poor condition from different locations. The next stage was to use the land that had been freed up through the removal of shanty towns during the poblados de absorción operation to develop poblados dirigidos (Esteban 1999). These were similar to the former but incorporated the idea of involving the residents in the construction of their own dwellings as partial payment for their dwellings, avoiding also in this way the widespread practice of self-constructing on inadequate land (Esteban 1999). Thus, the state provided on-site technical offices where self-constructors could arrange the purchase of land in instalments, interest-free loans, and financial aid, and get professional help from teams of architects and engineers (Esteban 1999). Between 1959 and 1966, Madrid’s periphery saw the construction of 20,729 dwellings through the poblados dirigidos program (Franco Alonso 2005).

Madrid 23

Figure 2.2. UVA Hortaleza in 2011. Photo courtesy of Amparo Tarazona Vento.

In the 1960s, several Unidades Vecinales de Absorción or UVA (Neighbourhood Absorption Units) were developed. These developments were typically built on rural land on the periphery and conceived to be temporary accommodation for shanty town dwellers until they could afford a permanent home, leaving the units to other residents in need of temporary accommodation (Beltrán 2002). UVA Hortaleza (see figure 2.2), built in 1963, is considered a fine example of the social housing built during that period. It was actually designed to be in use for a period of five years, but was only recently partially demolished and replaced with tower blocks of housing. The neighbourhood occupied an area of 107,168 square metres and included 1,100 dwellings, as well as community spaces such as a central square, a school, and a church (Fundación Docomomo Ibérico 2013). Although in modernist style, UVA Hortaleza also bears witness to old Europe, since it took inspiration from the traditional villages and vernacular architecture of southern Spain, where most rural migrants came from (Ballester 2005). The residential buildings, made of traditional construction

24  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

materials and covered by dual-pitched roofs, were two-storey blocks accessed through covered galleries arranged around central courtyards where residents could sit to chat and children could play (Fundación arquitectura COAM 2014). However, despite the great effort, the government’s housing programs could not prevent Madrid from ending up surrounded by a ring of shanty towns and service-deficient suburbs (Franco Alonso 2005). The rapid urban growth had put public planning, technical, and economic resources under stress, while the private sector was relatively free to get involved in speculative construction. Thus, in 1979, the first democratically elected local government – responding to the demands of the grassroots movements – took on the mission of correcting the huge infrastructural and amenity deficits accumulated during four decades of rural migration (Roch 2002). The “Programa de Remodelación de Barrios” (Neighbourhood Remodelling Program) was put into place. It consisted of the development and redevelopment of dwellings, commercial units, and urban public amenities in thirty districts, mainly on the periphery of Madrid, covering a total of 800 hectares (López de Lucio 2000; Vinuesa, Sánchez-Fallos, and Oliete 1986). In 1984, with the work still in progress, an act to regulate the program was passed at the request of the recently created regional government, which wanted the central government to recognize its financial responsibility to the program before the regional government accepted the transfer of housing policy competencies (Vinuesa, Sánchez-Fallos, and Oliete 1986). Whereas during the dictatorship the thousands of migrants arriving in Madrid came from the countryside and were housed mainly in peripheral developments, in the early 2000s a new wave of migration arrived, mainly from Latin America. Between 1996 and 2005, the regional population increased by nearly one million inhabitants (an 18.8 per cent increase). In 2004 alone, more than 700,000 overseas migrants were registered (De Santiago 2007). Throughout the period of rural migration there was a lack of housing, and the state attempted to keep up with the pace of housing production; but during the overseas migration wave there was an oversupply of relatively expensive housing, as a result of the real-estate bubble coupled with problems arising from a lack of affordable and social housing. With minimal public intervention, the migrants of the second wave fundamentally resorted to the rental market, looking for niches of cheap housing in dilapidated central areas and the southern metropolitan periphery (De Santiago 2007).

Madrid 25

Also, although the central government continued to be a relevant actor – responsible for general economic planning and credit policy, crucial for the financing of subsidized housing – a new important actor, the regional government, which was now responsible for housing policy, had appeared. The regional government continued the policy – established during the 1950s by the Francoist government – that focused on publicly subsidized housing and reduced investment in and development of social rental housing to a minimum, in this way encouraging investment in real estate (Naredo 2003). Thus, despite the transfer of competencies to a lower tier of government, there was a continuity regarding housing policy. The second suburbanization period was characterized by a realestate boom, affecting not only Madrid but the whole of Spain, which, between 1991 and 2007, held the European record for construction of new dwellings and percentage of unoccupied dwellings (Naredo 2003). Madrid’s spectacular growth during that period has been analysed and considered a growth machine, which indeed is responsible for much of the development (Roch 2002; De Santiago 2007). Thus, the number of finished new dwellings as well as the number of vacant and unoccupied dwellings increased rapidly. The average increase in housing prices during the first real-estate boom of 1987–97 was 400 per cent (Roch 2002). Between 1997 and 2006, prices continued increasing at rates as high as, for instance, 26.9 per cent in 2003 (De Santiago 2007). Housing investment value dominated over use value and became the physical support of a new regime of accumulation, which converted families’ savings into bricks and mortar. As the price of housing property increased, the production of housing – and consequently land consumption – increased too, generating a real-estate bubble. The accumulation in real estate was also encouraged by the liberalization of mortgages and the fiscal incentives given to the purchase of a primary and a secondary dwelling in the mid-1980s, the existence of undeclared income, and the profitability of the stock market (Roch 2002; Naredo 2003; De Santiago 2007). All these factors plus the decline in construction of social housing turned every small saver into an investor. Moreover, the accumulation regime based on the construction of housing and infrastructure produced a speculative increase in housing prices, which expelled population to the more affordable peripheral areas. In this way, property prices were used as a mechanism of

26  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

social segregation, a process that reorganized the social structure of the metropolitan area according to real-estate accumulation capacity (De Santiago 2007). In sum, a new hegemony, formed by a tight group of financial agents, developers, and contractors – in alliance with logistic and commercial sectors – replaced the old Fordist industrial hegemony. The new hegemony, as Roch (2002) has indicated, had no civic interests but was involved in the disproportionate deployment of infrastructures and urbanization of Madrid region in a socially segregated manner, making the metropolis a privileged centre of consumption and capital accumulation (Roch 2002). The Making of a Global City Region as the Objective of Suburbanization Until the 1990s, the style of Madrid’s suburbanization was a mix of self-led and state-led suburbanization, although the main actor of governance was the state through housing policy. However, the state progressively opened the door to private sector participation in the provision of affordable housing. From the 1990s, capital accumulation was the first governing force of suburbanization, while the state took the role of facilitating it through fiscal incentives and the liberalization of mortgages. However, capital accumulation and real-estate speculation are just part of the story, which would be incomplete without analysis of the restructuring of the city with the aim of becoming “the Spanish global node of connection” – a “global capital.” As regional economies have become less dependent on local investment in productive activity and more open to foreign investment, as a result of the liberalization of economic markets, they have striven to position themselves favourably in global economic networks. This is the case in Madrid, where, from the mid-1980s, local and regional governments worked to provide the necessary conditions – airports, motorways, suitably located land, a skilled workforce – to attract new globalized economic activities. In a short time, the city went from a city where the demands of grassroots movements were being met, and where debates focused on the role of the social economies or the relative importance of the inner city, to become one of the great European metropolises with direct influence over 8,000 square kilometres and connection to global economic networks (Estébanez, Molina, and Pérez 1993; Roch 2002). In fact, the 1985

Madrid 27

General Urban Plan was criticized by some commentators – interestingly by Manuel Castells – for being too short-sighted and for not prioritizing knowledge and information technologies that would integrate Madrid into the new globalized space (Roch 2002). The spatial restructuring of the Madrid region to become a “global city region” has been a strong motive behind suburbanization. The state in its different tiers (although mainly with the strategic vision of the regional government) led this restructuring through the use of two instruments: transportation infrastructure – which provided physical support – and urban and regional planning – which provided a legal framework. As Madrid restructured its territory to become a nerve centre of global capitalism, it also became the service capital of the country and the Spanish node of connection with the global economic network, outstripping Barcelona, which had traditionally been in a similar hierarchical position within the Spanish system of cities (Estébanez, Molina, and Pérez 1993; De Santiago 2007; Rozenblat and Cicille 2003). As Neuman (2010, 59) has noted, “From 1970 to 1985 the share of banks headquartered in Madrid rose from 29 to 50 percent (68 percent including banks held by other entities whose headquarters were in Madrid). 31 of 32 foreign banks that opened nationwide from 1978 to 1987 chose Madrid for their headquarters. 67 percent of investment funds, 63 percent of investment corporations, 73 percent of the capital of financial institutions, 82 percent of money market brokerage houses, and 92 percent of individual brokers were in Madrid.” The economic restructuring had a physical impact, too, as the traditional industrial areas created during the 1950s and 1960s – Arganzuela, Villaverde, San Blas, Getafe, and Torrejón de Ardoz – were dismantled and new technologies and service industries were created (Estébanez, Molina, and Pérez 1993). Physical Support: Transportation Infrastructure Madrid’s restructuring was physically supported by a huge expansion of transportation infrastructure as, at the end of the 1980s, the priority of the city’s urban policies turned from accommodating a migrant rural population to providing an infrastructure network that would allow it to attract foreign investment and get connected to the new globalizing economy (Roch 2002). At the beginning of the 1970s, construction of the road network planned in the 1963 General Metropolitan Area Plan had barely started,

28  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

and the 1985 General Urban Plan, which was an “austerity plan,” reduced the extension of the planned network (López de Lucio 2003). It was an agreement between the local government, the regional government, and the Ministry of Public Works in 1996 and the “Plan para el transporte en las grandes ciudades 1990–1993” (known as “Plan Felipe”) that set the new priorities which aimed to launch Madrid into the new global hierarchy of cities (López de Lucio 2003). The “Plan Felipe,” signed in 1989, and the “Plan Felipe II,” which extended until 2001, contained the main transportation strategies necessary to meet such objectives. According to Joaquín Leguina, the then regional president, investment in transportation influenced all the other economic sectors and, from a leftist perspective, amounted to an indirect subsidy. For him, Madrid – being Spain’s capital city – was a matter of state concern and needed special action, as was reflected in the Felipe Plans (Casqueiro 1993). Both plans made use of substantial European structural funds. The first Plan Felipe represented an investment of 121,000 million pesetas (727 million Euros) in roads and 50,000 million pesetas (300 million Euros) in the underground rail network. The second Plan Felipe was signed by the local, regional, and central governments and included funding for roads, underground rail, commuter railways, and public transportation, with a budget of around one billion pesetas (6,010 million Euros) (Casqueiro 1993). Thus, in 1991 there were already 405 kilometres of highways within Madrid’s urban region, a network that supported the residential and job decentralization that occurred during the 1990s (López de Lucio 2003). Between 1991 and 1995, 120 kilometres of new highways were built, collectively establishing a concentric radial network. By 2003, the high-capacity road network had 584 kilometres, with 360 kilometres under construction, and about 50 more planned (López de Lucio 2003). At the same time that private mobility was being encouraged with the configuration of a highly reticulated road network, the regional government was heavily investing in the public transportation network – particularly the underground system. When, in 1979, the underground system was nationalized and became the property of the local and provincial governments, the network, which had been expanding slowly, already served the central core of the city and most of the suburbs within the municipal boundary. But in 1986, the recently created regional government took charge of the underground system and gave a new boost

Madrid 29 Table 2.2.  Madrid’s underground system historical data Years 1980

Kilometres 82

Stations 120

Interchanges 2

1995

121

164

9

2006

227

237

10

2010

293

300

26

Source: Metro de Madrid website, www.metromadrid.es

to the projects of expansion. In fact the expansion plan of 1993 had as its main objective to ensure that every Madrid resident lived no farther than 600 metres from a metro station, which at that moment held true for only 70 per cent of residents (A. Moya 2009). From the mid-1990s, with the conservatives controlling the regional government, the network expanded outside the municipal territory and reached the outer suburbs. The network underwent a spectacular expansion, which included the Metrosur operation, an ambitious project of the regional government to link the main population centres of the metropolitan south-west – Alcorcón, Leganés, Getafe, Móstoles, and Fuenlabrada – with the existing underground network and therefore with Madrid’s city centre (López de Lucio 2003). Its construction – which consisted of forty-two kilometres of network and twenty-eight new stations – started in June 2000, and the new network opened in April 2003. From 2003, further extensions reaching well into the metropolitan area consolidated Madrid’s underground as one of the biggest and fastest-growing networks in the world (A. Moya 2009), as shown by the data in table 2.2. Thus, the conservative regional government’s pet infrastructure project was the expansion of the underground network, while the local authority focused on maintaining the core of the metropolitan area as a centre of residential and cultural prestige and exclusivity (Roch 2002). The Legal Framework: Planning If infrastructure development was the physical support of Madrid’s spatial restructuring, urban planning provided the legal framework. Analysis of the different urban plans reveals how Madrid’s planning went from a focus on establishing a common civic project – as reflected in the

30  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

1985 plan – to a surrender to real-estate interests and urban marketing – as reflected in the 1997 plan. Soon after the return to democracy the plan that was in force and that provided the framework for the creation of the old Madrid suburbs was the General Metropolitan Area Plan of 1963. This plan was characterized, on the one hand, by a focus on encouraging the construction of owner-occupied dwellings and, on the other, by a failure to anticipate extensive industrial development, and thus an inability to prevent the springing up of unplanned industrial facilities (Roch 2002). The first urban plan elaborated during the democratic period was the General Urban Plan of 1985, which has been considered the first and last attempt to restrain growth and retrofit the consolidated city with amenities before the neo-liberal policies of the first socialist central government took over (Alguacil and Denche 2003). In fact, soon after the approval of the 1985 plan, the civic project represented by the plan was hindered by the passing of the Boyer Act of 30 April 1985, which introduced substantial fiscal incentives for the purchase of residential property and allowed the replacement of dwellings by offices in urban centres, a process expressly banned in the 1985 plan to prevent tertiarization (Roch 2002). The 1985 plan envisaged the construction of new peripheral developments – nuevos ensanches (new expansion districts) – aimed at finishing the consolidated city boundaries and obtaining land for amenities and public services. These developments covered an area of twelve square kilometres, included 63,500 new dwellings (López de Lucio 2003), and had the intention of restoring the “urban character” lost to modernist urbanism in the suburbs of the working and middle classes. For that purpose, the model of reference was found in the classical urban expansions of Cerdà in Barcelona and Castro in Madrid, considered the embodiment of urbanity (López de Lucio and Hernández-Aja 1995). Thus, the new neighbourhoods recovered the use of the grid and the perimeter block. However, as López de Lucio and Hernández-Aja (1995) have argued, the morphological differences between the new neighbourhoods and the model have important implications for their urbanity. On the one hand, they tend to be isolated small urban pieces surrounded by highways, which, together with a residential density (very rarely higher than 65 units per hectare) typically three to five times lower than that of classical examples, and the proliferation of malls, makes the new neighbourhoods prone to becoming car-dependent residential monocultures.

Madrid 31

On the other hand, their perimeter blocks are smaller than the traditional ones and, instead of being formed by different attached buildings, they are designed and developed as one single building, where the block courtyard is privatized and used as recreational common space that in turn competes with public streets and squares and empties them of activity. An early example of these new expansion districts and one that has been used as a model for others is Valdebernardo (see figure 2.3), a neighbourhood of eighty-nine hectares and 5,000 dwellings. Valdebernardo’s urban grid is formed by rectangular blocks of sixty by ninety metres organized around two wide avenues intersecting at right angles with recreational areas in the median strip. Along the avenues, for every two multi-family residential blocks of five to six storeys there is one block with public facilities – schools, a swimming pool, sports grounds, a medical centre – while along the highway at the boundary of the neighbourhood are located office and retail buildings. In the middle, where the two avenues intersect, two of the blocks are smaller in size than the rest in order to create a functional and symbolic centre of the neighbourhood. In fact, Valdebernardo’s avenues – with their wellproportioned height-to-width ratios and well-designed public realm – are paradigmatic of this very characteristic type of avenue, which acts as the centre of these new expansion districts’ social life (López de Lucio and Hernández-Aja 1995). In 1997, a new General Urban Plan with the slogan “finishing the city” was approved. The first objective of the plan was to solve Madrid’s housing crisis by increasing the supply of housing, in particular of affordable housing. Therefore, based on the assumption that the lack of affordable housing was due to limited land supply, the plan classified all the available land within the municipal territory – excepting the protected forests – as urban or building land (De Santiago and González 2013). In doing so, it aimed to reverse the city’s loss of population in favour of the metropolitan suburbs and to correct the existing urban model in which the capital city remained as an administrative centre while the metropolitan suburbs were mainly residential (Dirección General de Revisión del Plan General 2012). The urban model the plan proposed was to create a polynucleated metropolis through the introduction of emblematic projects, which would create new centralities (Rodríguez Avial 1997). The aim was to structure Madrid to prepare it for the attraction of global investment (Alguacil and Denche 2003).

32  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Figure 2.3.  Valdebernardo. Photo courtesy of Mario Calvo.

At a regional level, although there were no territorial plans, the strategic regional plans established the strategic guidelines for the territorial development of the Madrid region. The regional strategic vision was mainly focused on the making of an important European capital and the integration of the region into the globalized economy. The Regional Plan of Territorial Strategy, approved in 1995 by the socialist regional government, focused on turning Madrid into a globalized metropolis and emphasized the importance of strategic mega-projects related to the new economy, although it left space for industrial productive activity, mainly in the metropolitan south (Roch 2002; Neuman 1996). In 1996, the new regional conservative government devised the new regional Strategic Plan, which clearly encouraged residential development. It established a reticulated territorial grid of five-by-five kilometres, described as the block of the twenty-first century, in which each quadrant – called a Unit of Balanced Development – could take a “multiplicity of functional and formal solutions” (Ortiz 1997,129).

Madrid 33

The aim was to make the whole territory competitive. In the words of Pedro Ortiz (1997, 128), director of the plan: Madrid, by its very nature, is a chessboard, where the squares on the axis described are all equally accessible and where there are different alternative routes to spread out traffic and free up congestion. Homogeneity and equivalence make this system more efficient, with a fairer, more productive distribution of site value and also help avoid the risks of collapse.

For the metropolitan south, the plan envisaged what Roch (2002) has called a typically Madrid version of the American edge city: residential developments around a leisure and shopping centre linked by Metrosur. To summarize: planning became a more entrepreneurial endeavour, and both local and regional governments directed their energies to the development of large-scale strategic projects, which, apart from the extension and improvement of the transportation infrastructure, included logistic centres, science parks, leisure and shopping centres, and financial command centres. The Governance of a Complex City Region The different state tiers played an important role in the project of transforming Madrid into a global city region. The central government funded important transportation infrastructure projects through the Felipe Plans and provided regulatory national frameworks; the regional government was responsible for the construction of the underground system, regional territorial strategy, and housing policy; and the local governments (of Madrid and the other municipalities) were responsible for urban planning. Nevertheless, the importance of the regional level as the object of planning, the generator of strategy, and the site of governance of suburbanization must be highlighted. Although both local and regional planning in Spain are subject to the national Land Use and City Planning Law (Ley del Suelo), the regional governments have competencies over spatial planning, transportation and regional infrastructure, and housing. It is, therefore, Madrid’s regional government’s job to develop the Regional Plan of Territorial Strategy and to develop public housing. The main regional state agencies responsible for carrying out the policies are the Madrid Housing Institute (IVIMA), responsible for regional

34  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

housing policy, and Arpegio, responsible for territorial planning and strategic projects. The IVIMA was created with the remit of preparing housing policy and developing subsidized and social housing in 1984, when housing competencies were transferred from the central government (IVIMA’s website, www.madrid.org/cs/). It also took up responsibility for the Neighbourhood Remodelling Program. In 2009, the institute was still working in eleven neighbourhoods, while in 2011, only Canillas and UVA Hortaleza remained unfinished (Madridiario 2009). Arpegio was created in 1988 as a regional public development corporation with the purpose of carrying out the public development projects of the Madrid Metropolitan Region strategy. During the late 1980s, Arpegio’s activities reflected the territorial policy of retrofitting the dense metropolitan south with amenities, through projects such as Getafe’s Sector III neighbourhood, Parque Sur shopping mall in Leganés, and Carlos III University (García Uyarra 2005). The strategic projects defined in the 1995 Regional Plan of Territorial Strategy were developments with economic activities – fundamentally, industrial and business parks. However, the difficult viability of such projects – in particular, in the metropolitan south, in competition with more centrally or better located business parks (for instance, near the airport) – which had left them incomplete, made the new conservative government of 1996 extend Arpegio’s functions to the development of residential and public facilities uses. Therefore, the strategic projects became more residential, although often including leisure and shopping malls. The Las Rozas Business Park is an example of the business parks planned by Arpegio that had to be redesigned to include residential uses, with the objective of making them economically viable. While it had been initially planned in 1988 as a 226-hectare business park with a golf course and a natural park, in 1995 it was turned into a secondary suburban centre by incorporating 2,290 dwellings, together with public facilities and amenities such as a complex of cinemas and a mall. The final plan kept the office blocks facing the highway on the boundary of the development – which had already been built – and added a central core formed by multi-family housing blocks, shops, and public facilities organized along two intersecting central avenues, with recreational areas in the median strip (see figure 2.4). The idea of the golf course was abandoned and replaced by a bigger park located near an area with 181 single-family homes (García Uyarra 2005). However, although the influence of Valdebernardo can be seen in the urban morphology of

Madrid 35

Figure 2.4.  View of Central Avenue in Las Rozas Business Park. Photo courtesy of Amparo Tarazona Vento.

Las Rozas Business Park – particularly in the use of an avenue with recreational areas in the middle as an organizing spine – both the heightto-width ratios of the avenues, the floor area ratio (0.75 m2/m2 and 0.23 m2/m2, respectively), and the residential density (56 units per hectare and 14 units per hectare, respectively) are much lower – less “urban” – in Las Rozas (Arpegio website; López de Lucio and Hernández-Aja 1995). Despite the predominance of the regional tier, Madrid’s growth into a sprawling metropolis has meant that the number of public and private actors involved in its governance has increased significantly, with a corresponding need for coordination. Although, according to Salet and Thornley (2007), Madrid is an example of unitary metropolitan governance where the functional urban region and the administrative region practically coincide and where the existing local governments are very weak, the reality is that Madrid’s functional region has expanded outside the administrative limits of the region to the adjoining provinces of Ávila, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Segovia, Soria, and Toledo. In addition, it overlaps with the functional areas of other cities outside the region, creating a combined macro-region of 38,000 square kilometres and more than 7 million inhabitants (in 2007) (Burns et al. 2009). Furthermore, the different municipalities within the region are not such weak actors as has been previously supposed and have competed

36  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

with each other for development – not least because it is a way of swelling the purse of economically drained local authorities – and, as Phelps, Tarazona Vento, and Roitman (2015) have shown in the case of Getafe, have looked to establish a distinct community identity and to become relevant within the regional political and institutional setting. Also, although the Madrid region has had its own planning law since 1984, it lacks instruments for regional and metropolitan spatial planning. Thus, there has never been a territorial plan that could subject the different municipalities to a common territorial policy. In addition, the introduction of the regional planning law of 2001 deregulated land production, depriving local authorities of the ability to control how much land needs to be incorporated into the development process and when that land needs to be incorporated into the development process (Sánchez Casas 2003). To summarize: the complexities of governing a city region that spans several administrative regions and levels of government has posed coordination and governance difficulties that have not yet been resolved. Conclusions: The Old and New Peripheries The described processes have left a landscape of functionally and morphologically diverse peripheries in different stages of evolution. De Santiago (2007) has described the social configuration of Madrid’s residential suburbs, dividing the population into what he calls the elite, the medium, and the small winners of the new economic model. While the elite has settled in the exclusive low-density suburbs created in the 1960s and 1970s to the west of the metropolitan area, the medium winners have located in new developments – of semi-detached housing or condominium buildings with communal premium spaces – close to the upper-class suburbs but segregated from them. The medium-to-small winners have been typically accommodated in the most characteristic of the Madrid suburbs, the new expansion districts of the 1985 urban plan, more typically urban in form if not in character and located mainly in the north and southeast. They have also located in low-density suburbs in outer peripheral localities, mainly to the west of the region, where housing prices are lower (De Santiago 2007). On the other hand, suburbanization of employment and economic activity was encouraged from the end of the 1980s by the regional

Madrid 37

strategic plans and by public economic development agencies such as Arpegio. Within the metropolitan area, the decentralization of business headquarters favoured the northern and western peripheries close to the airport, where 60 per cent of the office licences given in Madrid city between 1997 and 2003 were located (De Santiago 2007). A significant example of this tendency is seen in the new suburban business campuses to which the two biggest Spanish corporations – BSCH’s Financial City and Telefónica’s City of Telecommunications – have moved all their Madrid offices, which were formerly in urban locations (De Santiago 2007). Ezquiaga (2006) has argued that Madrid’s evolution has not ended with the consolidation of the metropolis but has continued moving towards a post-metropolis configuration. In his words: The post-metropolitan territory means an extraordinary increase in functional complexity and diversity, but unlike traditional, mixed, dense urban networks characterized by highly intense small-scale interactions, the new territory is organized on the basis of intermediate-scale pieces that tend to reproduce the logic of the overall territory, similar to the way that the theme parks try to reproduce an urban universe on a micro-scale. Therefore, we can affirm that the simple functional divisions in the early stages of metropolitan creation are replaced by a more complex “fractal” structure. In the same way, social polarization in the metropolitan geography takes on the shape of a mosaic of self-absorbed entities. The conventional dual city becomes a fragmentary tapestry of low-visibility spatial micro-segregations (from immigrant ghettoes in the interstices of consolidated grids to the most exclusive closed-off suburbs). (Ezquiaga 2006, 238)

In a superficial reading, Ezquiaga could seem to be describing Los Angeles or any other North American city. On closer inspection, Madrid’s unique mix of old and new and the distinctiveness of its history-laden but genuinely novel patterns of suburbanization and urban forms make the Spanish capital city a good laboratory to advance urban theory – including theorization of suburbanization. Furthermore, Madrid is a good place not only to look for new patterns and processes of suburbanization but also to study the novel (albeit pathdependent – given the particularity of the national and regional planning systems, variety of capitalism, and political structure) solutions to the governance of a post-metropolitan territory.

38  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Without the state-led restructuring of the Madrid territory – which has been a main driver of suburbanization processes – and without the job decentralization and dynamism shown by the suburbs – in short, without putting all the territory to work – it is probable that Madrid (despite being Spain’s political capital) would not have consolidated as the country’s financial centre of command. Therefore, the whole Madrid region, including the suburbs, is part of the conversion of Madrid into an important centre of the globalized economy. At the same time, the economic and political dynamism of the suburbs in Madrid (Phelps et al. 2015) seems to confirm that they are likely to become more diverse and inter-related and to evolve into more important and economically independent actors within the metropolitan arena, becoming a more clear expression of “a postsuburban economy caught between forces of centrality and dispersal” (MacLeod and Jones 2011). REFERENCES Alguacil, J., and C. Denche. 2003. El modelo urbano madrileño: una máquina devastadora. In Club de debates urbanos, ed. J. Echenagusia, 104–9. Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera. Ballester, J. 2005. La UVA de Hortaleza, patrimonio cultural y de vivienda social. El País, 1 April. Beltrán, R. 2002. De aquellos barros, estos lodos. La política de vivienda en la españa franquista y postfranquista. Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales 16:25–67. Burns, M.C., J.R. Cladera, M.M. Bergadà, and M.U. Seguí. 2009. El sistema metropolitano de la macrorregión de Madrid. Urban 14:72–9. Casqueiro, J. 1993. La comunidad corrige el II Plan Felipe y elimina la línea de cercanías Barajas-Campamento. El País, 26 June. http://elpais.com/ diario/1993/06/26/madrid/741093868_850215.html. De Santiago, E. 2007. Madrid, “ciudad única.” Pautas y lógicas espaciales recientes en la región madrileña. Urban 12:8–33. De Santiago, E., and I. González. 2013. Análisis del mercado inmobiliario residencial de Madrid: Un repaso al ciclo inmobiliario 1997–2013 y al desarrollo del plan general de 1997. Barómetro de economía de la ciudad de Madrid 37 (3):87–118. Dirección General de Revisión del Plan General. 2012. Evaluación del Plan General de 1997. Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid.

Madrid 39 Ekers, M., P. Hamel, and R. Keil. 2012. Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies 46 (3):405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Esteban, A. 1999. La vivienda social española en la década de los 50: Un paseo por los poblados dirigidos de Madrid. Cuaderno de Notas 7:55–80. Estébanez, J., M. Molina, and C. Pérez. 1993. Madrid, configuración de una ciudad global. Geographicalia 30:177–90. Ezquiaga, J.M. 2006. Geografía mutante. Arquitectura Viva 107–108:36–41. Franco Alonso, O. 2005. Evolución reciente del fenómeno chabolista: El nuevo chabolismo madrileño. In La ciudad y el miedo, ed. V.I.I. Coloquio de Geografía Urbana and O. Gutiérrez, 61–9. Girona: Universitat de Girona. Fundación arquitectura COAM. 2014. Arquitectura de Madrid: Conjunto de 1.100 albergues provisionales. Accessed 19 April 2015 from: http://212.145.146.10/biblioteca/fondos/ingra2014/index.htm#inm. F3.155A. Fundación Docomomo Ibérico. 2013. Unidad Vecinal de Absorción de Hortaleza. Accessed 19 April 2015 from: www.docomomoiberico.com/ index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=422:unidad-vecinal-deabsorcion-de-hortaleza&lang=es. García Uyarra, A. 2005. Las actuaciones residenciales de Arpegio: Entre la centralidad y la suburbanización. Urban 10:130–50. Instituto de Estadística CAM website. 2013. www.madrid.org/iestadis/. Accessed 15 June 2013. IVIMA’s website. 2013. www.madrid.org/cs/. Accessed 15 June 2013. López, J. 2002. La vivienda social en Madrid, 1939–1959. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma VII (15):297–338. López de Lucio, R. 2000. Madrid 1979–1999. Perfiles de una transformación urbana desconocida. Urban 4:106–23. López de Lucio, R. 2003. Transformaciones territoriales recientes en la región urbana de Madrid. Urban 8:124–61. López de Lucio, R., and A. Hernández-Aja. 1995. Los nuevos ensanches de Madrid: La morfología residencial de la periferia reciente, 1985–1993. Madrid: Gerencia Municipal de Urbanismo. MacLeod, G., and M. Jones. 2011. Renewing urban politics. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 48 (12):2443–72. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/0042098011415717. Madridiario. 2009. La UVA de Hortaleza clama por su rehabilitación urgente. Madridiario, 25 May. http://madridiario.es/noticia/151744. Metro de Madrid website. 2013. www.metromadrid.es. Accessed 15 June 2013.

40  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Moya, A. 2009. Metro de Madrid 1919–2009: 90 años de historia. Madrid: Metro de Madrid. Moya, L. 1997. La realidad de la vivienda obrera. Poblados de absorción, mínimos y dirigidos, y unidades vecinales de absorción (U.V.A.s). In La vivienda experimental: Concurso de viviendas experimentales de 1956, ed. J.R. Espiga, 81–91. Madrid: Fundación COAM. Naredo, J.M. 2003. Anatomía y fisiología de la conurbación madrileña: Gigantismo e ineficiencia crecientes. In Club de debates urbanos, ed. J. Echenagusia, 79–91. Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera. Neuman, M. 1996. Images as institution builders: Metropolitan planning in Madrid. European Planning Studies 4 (3):293–312 Neuman, M. 2010. The imaginative institution: Planning and governance in Madrid. Farnham: Ashgate. Ortiz, P. 1997. La ordenación reticulada del territorio (O.R.T.). Urban 1:124–33. Phelps, N.A., A. Tarazona Vento, and S. Roitman. 2015. The suburban question: Grassroots politics and place making in Spanish suburbs. Environment and Planning. C, Government & Policy 33 (3):512–32. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1068/c13136. Roch, F. 2002. Agentes sociales y tendencias urbanísticas: Hegemonía inmobiliaria y pérdida de urbanidad. Boletín CF+S. http://habitat.aq.upm. es/boletin/n29/afroc1.html. Rodríguez Avial, L. 1997. El nuevo plan general de Madrid. Urban 1:110–23. Rozenblat, C., and P. Cicille. 2003. Le villes européen. Analyse comparative. Paris: La Documentation Française. Salet, W., and A. Thornley. 2007. Institutional influences on the integration of multilevel governance and spatial policy in European city-regions. Journal of Planning Education and Research 27 (2):188–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 0739456X07307207. Sánchez Casas, C. 2003. El declive del planeamiento. In Club de debates urbanos, ed. J. Echenagusia, 100–3. Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera. Subdirección general de planificación regional, CAM. 2009. Evolución de la ocupación del suelo en la Comunidad de Madrid. 1956-2005. http:// www.madrid.org/cartografia/planea/planeamiento/html/web/ indexEstudioOcupacionSuelo.htm. Vinuesa, J., T. Sánchez-Fallos, and A. Oliete. 1986. La operación de remodelación de barrios en Madrid. Revista Ciudad y Territorio 1986 (2):71–87.

3 The Failure of Planning in a Fragmented Property Market: Poland’s Model of Suburbanization woj c i e ch wagn e r

Introduction Urban planners have long observed the phenomenon of suburbanization with anxiety and concern, as it clearly poses a critical danger to the traditional qualities of urban centres. Nevertheless, the process possesses such strong economic, technological, social, and cultural foundations that, in most cases, attempts to halt it would doubtless be considered oppressive and would prove extremely unpopular. In particular, the process of suburban land development in Poland is highly individualistic in character and, although rampant, appears not to be quite so organized by big business interests as the classic American growth machine (Molotch 1976). Although suburbanization has been facilitated by the actions of municipal governments and their planning, the weakness of available legal instruments of control means that business interests barely need to engage with government machinery in order to produce development opportunities. This may be further evidence of a less inhibited post-socialist growth machine (Kulcsar and Domokos 2005). The extent to which big, oligarchic political interests have been involved in the suburbanization process, as they have elsewhere in the former socialist economies (e.g., see Golubchikov and Phelps 2011), is less clear. A more realistic challenge, then, is to find a way to manage this development by minimizing the damage it inflicts and maximizing the benefits it might offer in some areas of urban life. This chapter tries to analyse the way Poland has been confronted with the problem and argues that it can serve as an unfortunate example of a large European country that has not yet managed to produce any conscious policy in

42  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

this regard. The chapter explains the critical failures of the legal system that bear the responsibility for the negative development that has taken place in Poland so far, seeing their background in cultural rather than economic factors. Suburban Sprawl across Four Phases Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012) reasonably point out that locally specific forms of suburbanization should not be compared to internationally well-known models of sprawl that are considered to be “classic” or “standard.” Instead, they suggest a more neutral systematization based on some objective feature, such as the leading actor of the process (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012). In this perspective, Poland’s suburbanization in its contemporary form has been decisively individual (or “self-built”) and fuelled from the bottom, a fact that also produces development of a disorderly spatial and architectural character. It has not always been this way. Poland shares its path of historical development throughout the twentieth century with other central eastern-European states and, in this regard, presents only a variation of a distinctive suburbanization model in the region. One could identify three, or actually four, phases of the process, almost all of them beginning and ending abruptly. The first one would include the pre-war period with a substantial development pressure around suburban railway stations, showing a fair mix of individual, municipal, and private initiatives, often being more or less successful adaptations of the “garden city” idea. The Second World War not only halted all these phenomena, but also destroyed the previous social, political, and economic order completely. After 1945, a new system of full state control was imposed, introducing rigidly planned, high-rise, city expansion projects. Finally, the phenomenon of the contemporary, market-led, unrestrained, and ubiquitous small-scale urban sprawl suddenly emerged here after 1989, gradually changing the previous urban landscape. Many countries of the former zone of Soviet influence display at least most of the phenomena described above; however, Poland’s case might be especially noteworthy as a result of several factors. First, Poland often serves as an example for the whole region, being its largest nation, with relatively strong economic growth in recent decades and membership in the European Union. Second, Polish suburbanization – both currently and historically – seems to match the more general, individualistic, if not anarchical, features of the national planning system or

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  43

maybe even the social culture. This specific characteristic of Poland’s sprawl is visible when compared not only to post-1989 spatial phenomena in the former GDR, which has now adjusted to the standards of the West German planning system, but also to other central-European neighbours that are on a par in economic development, such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Hungary. The phenomenon has deeper historical roots, reaching back to the tradition of weak central government in the First Republic (from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century), the non-cooperative social model of one privileged noble class, and the repeating pattern of foreign oppressive power, disobedience to which could be interpreted as a moral virtue (in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). Moreover, the geopolitical situation throughout the nineteenth century produced a very diverse contemporary urban and spatial landscape in Poland, formed through different administrative systems (those of Germany, Austria, and Russia) and leaving geographically no clearly dominating model, although the Russian system has encompassed indeed the biggest part of the society by far. In addition, post-war border changes and population transfers deprived a large part of the population of its emotional attachment towards the territory it had to inhabit. It is important to realize that, even within the common model of the post-socialist transition of central eastern Europe, Poland has experienced a unique development path (Kowalski 2009). Unlike its regional neighbours – with the possible exception of Romania – Poland found itself in a position of virtual economic collapse under the socialist governments of the 1980s. This not only deprived the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) of any significant support within the society but also effected a general questioning of a regulative economic model – at the precise historical moment when very liberal economic strategies were proving to be successful worldwide. In other words, there was a large social potential for radical transformation measures, and no feature of the previous system was perceived to be indispensable unless economically justified (Grosse 2012). At the same time, the relatively liberal nature of Polish socialism had not only preserved individual farming and private ownership of small farming plots of land but had also boosted the always-tolerated small entrepreneurs in futile efforts to save the system and its economy in the 1980s. In this way, Polish society – having little to lose – was more careless about the possible risks of the transformation than the populations of economically much more stable nations like Czechoslovakia or Hungary. At the same time,

44  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Poland was culturally better prepared for market solutions and individual activity than many of its neighbours, especially the post-Soviet ones; private ownership had become culturally sanctioned as the best solution against irrational and wasteful public management, and public officers had been lastingly classified as incompetent and idle (see table 3.1). As a result, contemporary suburbanization in Poland has been facilitated not only by the inability of Poland’s re-born democratic public institutions to confront the problem but also by a lack of public understanding of the need for management of space. The moral and functional collapse of the socialist economy left a deep popular mistrust of the state’s regulatory authority; its interventions were seen, by default, to be harmful and oppressive. The devastation of aesthetic standards, caused by a continuous deterioration of quality norms in architectural and planning practice before 1989, resulted in a popular, widespread rejection of spatial planning as a socialist relic in the first two decades of the democratic Polish state. At the same time, the rapid liberalization of the economy, GDP growth, and the gradual removal of the technological backlog (involving a dynamic increase in automobile ownership, now often surpassing that in western Europe)1 created a strong and sudden impetus for suburbanization, the results of which could be observed around the biggest cities as early as the first half of the 1990s. In comparison to the western-European countries, Poland’s suburbanization process was much quicker but at the same time accompanied by the passivity of the planning authorities, extremely inadequate technical and social infrastructure, as well as a very limited participation of larger-scale developers. As already stated, Poland’s urban Table 3.1. Macroeconomic conditions in the CEE countries in 1989 (1990 for Lithuania and Ukraine) – (Kowalski 2009) Poland

Hungary

Czech Rep. Slovakia

Lithuania Ukraine

InḀation rate (% annually)

251.1

17.0

1.4

2.3

8.4

4.2

GDP (PPP) in USD

8,038

12,399

16,211

12,536

12,537

8,063

Agriculture as part of GDP (%)

11.8

15.6

6.3

9.4

27.8

25.6

Private sector as part of GDP (%)

30.0

5.0

5.0

5.0

10.0

10.0

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  45

Figure 3.1.  Map of Lesznowola and Piaseczno municipalities in the Warsaw region.

sprawl has had a decisively individualistic and fine-grained character, although this has been changing around the biggest metropolises such as Warsaw in recent years, where more and larger private-led projects have appeared2 (see figure 3.1). As a result of its position as a magnet for migrants, the metropolis of Warsaw has always been at the forefront of the nation’s suburbanization process, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Although the socialist authorities were eager to keep individual development under control, they also gave complete primacy to economic over environmental

46  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

needs, completing a great number of industrial, residential, or even recreational developments that entirely ignored their respective landscape and ecological contexts.3 A convenient pole position for the subsequent urban sprawl process was created long before 1989 through the dismantling of large- and midscale land ownership and the adoption of a very liberal policy towards the construction of small individual farms (Chmielewski 2005). The absence of market mechanisms allowed the socialist state to manage land in an unconstrained manner, which resulted in ever more extensive developments and gradual abandonment of the dense pre-war development of the inner cities. In fact, the spatial structure of Warsaw, shaped predominantly in the period of socialism, had become so extensive that by 1987 it necessitated a level of mobility from its inhabitants that was four times that of the inhabitants of Vienna (Kurowski 1987). These processes were crucial in the creation of a purely instrumental approach towards space in Polish society – a feature that has become a long-lasting cultural characteristic, continuing after the disruption of the socialist system.4 The main catalyst of the suburbanization process in Poland was, however, the deep systemic changes that began in 1989. There are several levels at which they can be analysed, including their impact on the governance, infrastructure, and physical form of the phenomenon. Governance, Land, and Infrastructure The key moment came with the introduction of self-governance to the Polish municipalities (gmina), an initiative that included the transfer of legislative power in the area of spatial planning – all through the so-called self-governance reform (reforma samorządowa) of 1990.5 In an unprecedented change, the municipalities suddenly received complete planning authority within their respective territories (except for strictly protected natural areas). With the municipalities’ widespread lack of experience and competence in spatial analysis and formulation of relevant long-term strategies, it soon appeared that the main pattern of their spatial policies was nothing more than unconstrained development. It obviously applied to the municipalities that were experiencing the necessary land demand, specifically those around the biggest cities, with Warsaw in first place. The idea of planning subsidiarity is widely accepted, as it allows important decisions to be made as close to those affected as possible.

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  47

The Polish municipalities, though, were unprepared for their planning responsibilities – a situation compounded by the high level of governmental fragmentation involved, with 2,479 self-governing municipalities of which the smallest was just 3.3 square kilometres (Górowo Iławieckie) with a population of only 1,400 citizens (Krynica Morska) (Karzyński 2005). The system became even more unbalanced as a result of the lack of power of administrative bodies at higher levels (metropolitan area, county, region). A virtually anarchical structure has emerged, where municipalities’ decisions can be challenged not on their lack of merit but only on legal grounds. This soon began to produce conflicts between cities and their surrounding municipalities, as the latter started to function as “parasites” on the cities’ infrastructure: they encouraged the cities’ inhabitants to settle down on their own territories, profiting from the increased tax income, but not participating in the costs of maintaining the city infrastructure. At the same time, the natural landscape of the suburban areas was being irreversibly turned into development land without any hindrance, destroying opportunities for easy access to the countryside by the inhabitants of the cities. For example, the planning concept of Warsaw’s “aerating wedges,” dating to the 1930s, has been virtually destroyed, and similar developments can be observed around other Polish cities (Przewoźniak 2005). The attempts by plot owners to change their holdings into building land have been unchecked, as no rationalizing factor in the form of a cadastral tax or any other burden offsetting the rapid increase of land value has been introduced. As a result of the lack of any instruments enforcing coordination of planning policies between neighbouring municipalities – within metropolitan areas especially – big cities have been to a large extent helpless when confronted with the exploitation of adjacent land by their much smaller neighbours. A black-and-white image of “bad” suburban municipalities and “good” cities would be unjustified, though. Urban sprawl structures appear in both types of municipalities, as both have often been equally neglectful of functional and visual concerns (Kochanowska 2005). The lack of a proper and enforced planning hierarchy was addressed neither by the administrative reform of 1999, which introduced two previously absent upper tiers of self-government (powiat and województwo), nor by the new Spatial Planning and Management Act of 2003. Even though the latter obliged regions to create spatial development plans covering regions and metropolitan areas, it has had no practical

48  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

importance, as no specific compliance requirements were imposed on local development plans, which are adopted by municipalities and remain the only spatial document that is legally binding. Therefore, there is virtually no instrument for metropolitan planning, a key issue for the question of suburbanization. Many scholars bring up the significant technical shortcomings of the Polish planning law, which offers only very imprecise requirements for drawing up maps to accompany and illustrate local plans and does not require planners to follow any quantitative standards (in the area of social and technical infrastructure especially). This creates a paradoxical inertia, as municipalities, endowed with almost exclusive planning authority, are not able to implement any coherent policy – not only because of a lack of competence but also because of the legal constraints of the system itself (instruments that are too general, lack of authority to adopt local design guidelines, legal practices that prioritize private over public interests). A critical weakness of the system is regulations concerning the financial consequences of adopting local development plans, which are very unfavourable for municipalities.6 Instead of becoming a good source of income from the likes of developer contributions and an instrument of rational development, the creation of binding plans has proved to be very risky and expensive for municipalities, which, in many cases, prefer to leave their areas to chaotic development or adopt very passive solutions rather than go bankrupt. A good example of what might happen otherwise is the municipalities of Piaseczno and Lesznowola from the Warsaw metropolitan area, discussed further below. Most of the profit from the increase of land value goes to speculators instead of the various municipalities. Most destructive, however, is the fact that even an aware and determined municipal council in Poland would not be able to stop suburbanization processes on its soil – simply because building on land not covered by development plans is permitted. In such a case, a more or less “automatic” administrative procedure of an individual planning permission (decyzja o warunkach zabudowy i zagospodarowania terenu) is required by law, ignoring the municipal spatial strategy and enhancing typical symptoms of ribbon development. With this instrument contradicting local development plans and producing yearly around 200,000 new buildings (Kowalewski et al. 2013), the Polish planning system clearly is in a process of attempting to deny its own internal logic.

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  49

Despite decades of petitions and the laments of planning and architectural groups, the system has defied any attempts to reform it significantly. Especially interesting in this regard is the weak voice of local governments, which are unable to identify the long-term risks of the current regulations and combat successive central governments’ ostensible indifference towards – and/or reluctance to undertake – any intervention in spatial policy. One can only speculate whether this Gordian knot of deliberate inability is the result primarily of voters’ ignorance, over-liberal legal theories, or the determination of plot owners, developers, and speculators to become the real beneficiaries – rather than the municipalities – of the post-1989 great construction boom. There is no doubt that Poland’s suburbanization process presents – as everywhere else – a great business opportunity for numerous market actors. The main reason behind the process has been the striking difference in the square-metre price between urban and suburban areas, outweighing the resulting transportation costs and other inconveniences caused by a remote location (given that the latter is a subjective measure and remains difficult to express in monetary units). The disparity has only been exacerbated by the massive oversupply of building land resulting from the faults of the legal system. The profit made through a legal transformation of suburban farming land into development land has exceeded by far its financial potential as agricultural land. The creation of autonomous municipalities produced a natural competition between them in the quest for investors; this was an intended purpose of the reform, desired on the ground of management effectiveness. This is a phenomenon described in Tiebout’s (1956) famous public choice description of competition among suburban communities in the supply of services to resident consumers. It is a significant issue in the United States and, to a much lesser extent, in western Europe. In Poland, particularly, it has had negative effects for the protection of natural resources and the public interest, since neither has a calculable economic value or a sufficient legal defence. Municipalities have been competing with each other in providing development land to investors as fast as possible and in the most attractive locations. A characteristic feature of Poland’s re-born real-estate market is the advanced fragmentation of ownership of residential buildings. Aiming at creation of an egalitarian structure for the market where everyone holds his/her own property, the government facilitated a popular idea of privatization of public or cooperative property into single apartments.

50  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

From the point of view of urban planners, heritage conservators, or investors, this has proved to be fatal: it has significantly exacerbated the legal and financial inertia of the older residential districts, creating a large number of property owners with no financial capabilities and limiting the possible impact of urban regeneration processes. The problem of the so-called renovation gap has not been solved.7 The future of the socialist residential areas, inhabited by as much as 40 per cent of Poland’s population (2006 data, published by CBOS;8 cited in Kajdanek 2012), remains an open question – they are still in a decent technical condition and enjoy large popularity as a cheaper form of urban dwelling, but their spatial and architectural concepts do not match the new forms of individual ownership structurally. Finally, special attention should be devoted to the uncritical social perception of the suburbanization process. One could say that the society has been to a large extent “pushed” into the processes of urban sprawl by the malfunction of the socialist model of a socially egalitarian city. The political and architectural efforts made by the socialist authorities towards that goal were not followed by respective cultural transformations of the society. The attractiveness of the newly produced building environment of social “fraternization” was low and sought the lowest common denominator; common spaces (staircases, yards, green spaces) were typically poorly kept and vandalized. Therefore, the return of market mechanisms allowed the winners of the transformation to leave such areas of unwanted social diversity, imposed from above and failing to form a true common, cultural basis for different social classes. A certain tendency among the middle class to perceive the suburban way of life as offering social status and a preference for specific architectural forms following (or unwillingly parodying) conservative Polish or foreign country-life traditions should not be surprising in this context.9 In the earlier phases of the suburbanization process it presented the only alternative to the neglected urban environment; in many smaller cities that is still the case. The tradition of dispersed development is, nevertheless, much older than the recent period and has its roots in the large-scale regulatory measures taken in the so-called Congress of Poland in the first half of the nineteenth century that disrupted the traditional compact village form on a massive scale.10 Therefore, loose settlements are perceived to be a natural form of rural development, and the issue of compactness has never been mentioned in the planning act and is clearly not recognized as a valuable goal. It is not just a formality, as such a mention could become an important factor co-shaping the spirit of the law

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  51

and its interpretation in the courts. Instead, while the concept of “sustainable development” sometimes appears in planning documents at the municipal level, even there it remains exclusively declarative, with no visible relation to the proposed design, which may suggest that its importance, or even meaning, is not properly understood (Gzell 2005). The problem with the interpretation of the law is related to a more general question of the balance between public and private interests, an issue crucial for spatial planning. The current Spatial Planning and Management Act of 2003 does not stipulate any kind of superiority of the common good over the unconstrained liberty of property use, an omission that results in the courts’ practice of preferring the latter over the former – in accordance with Article 64 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland.11 This obviously stems from the low importance – in comparison to western-European societies – accorded in Polish society to issues of spatial and architectural order. It results in a virtual lack of any active spatial planning policy on the part of the central government (despite the respective obligation imposed in the Article 4 of the act), which considers planning law to be an instrument regulating the free competition of various interest groups rather than a tool for optimizing functions of the society or a way to defend public interests against profit-seeking entities. In contrast to many European states, Poland has no single, strong, autonomous state agency responsible for continuous monitoring of spatial development by the state and for formulating its strategy in this regard.12 No attempts are made to raise the awareness of society and municipal leaders with regard to the most important aspects of spatial management; repeated alerts from planning theoreticians and practitioners about the failed legal system are ignored. The low level of social awareness also makes it especially hard to apply the rules of social participation in planning. It is hard to describe Poland’s suburbanization in quantitative terms, as no reliable and complete data are available to date. Precise statistical instruments are missing, although a picture can be built up by inference from indirect evidence about population growth, construction permits, or personal registration. The latter remains a deceptive indicator, as many migrants do not register in their new place of residence for years, especially if they rent their apartments. Nevertheless, it is estimated that around one-fifth of Poland’s population currently lives in suburban areas. While the number of immigrants into the biggest cities between 1989 and 2002 was between 5 and 10 per cent of their respective total populations, in the suburban areas this indicator amounted to between

52  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

10 and 20 per cent (in some cases, especially around Warsaw, even 30 to 40 per cent) (National census of 2002; Lisowski and Grochowski 2009). These numbers would now be significantly higher. The organizational model of suburbanization has also been evolving, a result, to some extent, of the ever wider social extension of the process. Starting from the early 1990s, the average plot size and residential floor area have been decreasing, while the participation of developers in the process – offering both individual and multi-unit buildings – has been rising (Gruszecka, 2005). The characteristic formal feature of Polish suburbanization is its emergence along the existing road network, accompanied by a minimal level of design and investment assistance from the municipalities. This has resulted in inefficient use and uncoordinated subdivision of land from elongated, narrow farming plots, requiring long private access roads of minimal width (as seen in the case of Warsaw in figure 3.2). Such

Figure 3.2.  The suburban development of Warsaw (Wawer city district) fits into existing farming plots. Photo courtesy of Maciej Pieńkowski, 2013.

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  53

structures require an irrational extension of technical infrastructure; they are unattractive both functionally and aesthetically (Chmielewski 2005). The notorious, crude, green field industrial or residential development projects implemented by the socialist authorities have been fairly ridiculed since 1989, but they have found their clear continuation in a much less perceivable and controllable form, based exclusively on car transportation. Instead of huge industrial complexes, production, service, or residential units are built massively along the main roads, the latter, especially, in naturally attractive areas. This process has been facilitated by municipalities’ right to object to the establishment of any new nature protection areas – a right that has prevented the creation of several proposed national and landscape parks. In the current legal situation, these two types of nature protection areas present the only effective way to avoid urbanization in a given area (Kozłowski 2006). New development has also emerged on flood plains on a large scale, which, with the increased intensity of floods in the recent years, gave the first acute indications of the planning system’s dysfunction. The problem in this respect is that there is still little understanding of the problems caused by development, as the most popular solution is seen as massive expansion of infrastructure in the form of levees and storage reservoirs. Poland’s suburban developments seem to be indifferent to the existing old urban or rural settlements between which they are located. These structures often provide a certain spatial and architectural potential that distinguishes them from the formless sprawl and could serve as local concentration nuclei. Despite the relative wealth of the suburbanizing municipalities, their authorities rarely recognize these opportunities. At the same time, there is usually no social and commercial infrastructure planned for the developed areas (see, for example, figure 3.3), leaving it all to be solved by free market mechanisms. In the most obvious manner, suburbanization has appeared first and most intensively in the municipalities that were most agile and dynamic in the preparation of development land for investors. Therefore, the tax “winners” of the initial transformation period have become the biggest “losers” in terms of both their spatial potential and their financial stability. A good example of such a municipality is Piaseczno, south of Warsaw, whose government was among the first to recognize and respond to the emerging suburbanization pressures on the capital city. Until 1994, the municipality had adopted local development plans for

54  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Figure 3.3.  The municipality of Jeżów Sudecki near the city of Jelenia Góra: an example of Poland’s dispersed suburban development without infrastructure. Photo courtesy of Andrzej Fydrych, 2013.

nearly its entire territory, allotting land for mostly residential housing. However, this alacrity in detecting investors’ demands was not accompanied by a long-term analysis of the municipality’s fiscal position and its citizens’ needs. An even more aggressive stance towards facilitating development was implemented by the neighbouring municipality of Lesznowola, which designated complete corridors of its main road network for commerce and service development, earmarking its highgrade arable land for residential development. The municipality won several awards – among them Fair Play Municipality, Golden Business Location, and Golden List of Local Governments (Gruszecka 2005). These two municipalities now face gigantic liabilities as a result of their policy of massive allocation of building land, amounting to €140 and €142 million, respectively, and translating into 980 per cent and 311 per cent of their yearly budgets (Kowalewski 2012; Wybieralski 2013). Paradoxically, however, the spatial manifestation of such deliberate

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  55

planning activities is still chaotic and dysfunctional because of the permissive character of the plans. A more logical regulatory regime would surely inflict even bigger burdens on the municipalities’ budgets. It is not surprising, then, that such a massive but disorganized process of suburbanization works against its own success, creating spaces that eventually lose their original attractiveness and turn into a trap for their new inhabitants. The newcomer citizens of the Piaseczno municipality had been motivated mostly by price and natural surroundings when making decisions about moving there. While they still positively evaluate their housing conditions, they have become very critical of the inadequate infrastructure – which is characterized by deficiencies such as an ineffective sewage system, lack of public space, a meagre local job market, and poor access to the central city (Warsaw). This discontent is prevalent within the younger generation, more than half of whom already want to move away, mostly to the centre of Warsaw (Mantey 2013). The neighbouring municipalities of Piaseczno and Lesznowola were among around 2,300 municipalities created during a course of extensive nationwide administrative reorganization in the early 1970s and granted self-governance in the crucial reform of 1990. They are located southwest of Warsaw, along the main transportation corridors leading to the south (Radom, Kielce, Cracow). As a result of this convenient location (adjacent to the City of Warsaw) and spatial structure (open farming land, while Warsaw is to a large extent surrounded by forests), they have since become some of the most intensively developed municipalities in the whole country. The municipality of Piaseczno (figure 3.4) was formed around a traditional town of the same name with a large electronic factory, but consisted also of several smaller settlements of a few thousand inhabitants, being products of traditional mid-twentieth-century suburbanization processes around normal and narrow-gauge railway stations such as Zalesie Dolne, Zalesie Górne, Gołków, Głosków, and Złotokłos, as well as standard rural villages of around a few hundred inhabitants. There were almost 42,500 inhabitants in the Piaseczno municipality in 1994, 64 per cent of whom lived within the borders of the town of Piaseczno (which since the 1950s has included the settlements of Zalesie Dolne and Gołków). In 2015, there were 74,500 people in the municipality (58 per cent in the town) – an increase of over 74 per cent (Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Gminy Piaseczno, n.d.). According to the municipal land-use study, the population should reach 95,000 in 2035 (Zmiana 2014, 10).

56  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Figure 3.4(a).  Julianów, part of the municipality of Piaseczno near Warsaw, at the beginning of the 1980s (a) and today (b). Hardly any planning input is visible. Source: Centralny Ośrodek Dokumentacji Geodezyjnej i Kartograficznej (CODGiK), Warsaw.

In contrast to Piaseczno, the municipality of Lesznowola was almost exclusively rural with a very decentralized structure and just a single suburban-type settlement of Magdalenka, attractive for its forested location. A specific advantage of the municipality was its control over an eight-kilometre-long fragment of national road number 7, connecting Warsaw with Cracow, making it extremely attractive to small- and mid-scale investors interested in new production and storage facilities. There were fewer than 9,600 people living in Lesznowola municipality in 1995; in 2013, there were 22,550 (Główny Urząd Statystyczny / Central Statistical Office 2013, 74), which translates into a growth of 135 per cent. The 2011 development strategy

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  57

Figure 3.4(b).  (Continued)

of the municipality envisaged 43,000 residents in 2023 and 60,000 in 2038 (Strategia 2011 23–4). In the course of twenty-five years under the new system, the suburbanization process has managed to involve all municipalities of metropolitan areas, even those not actively promoting it or making efforts to limit its impact (Radeberg-Skorzysko 2005). The wave of suburbanization around the biggest cities has long reached the second or even third circle of municipalities (in the case of Warsaw), which translates into a radius of approximately fifty kilometres (Chmielewski 2005). Conclusion The long-term effects of Polish suburbanization are serious. First, except for the typical, universal costs of the process, there are some specifically

58  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

local factors – among them a truly absurd oversupply of development land, greatly exceeding real needs and leading to a further dispersion of settlements and elimination of natural landscape. For example, the total area allocated for development by municipalities in the Warsaw metropolitan area as it is defined by the regional planning office (Mazowieckie Biuro Planowania Regionalnego – 6,200 square kilometres, 3 million people, 72 municipalities) amounted in 2008 to 134,000 hectares, which exceeded the existing developed areas by 70 per cent. The population capacity of these areas is estimated as being 2.7 to 3.8 million people, which – together with Warsaw – adds up to a total capacity of up to 8 million people. As the demographic prognoses by the Central Statistical Office (Główny Urząd Statystyczny / Central Statistical Office 2012) envisage around 3.4 million people for the Warsaw metropolitan area in 2030, this means that the municipalities have already provided the market with more than ten times as much development land as is likely to be needed. On the national scale, the data (2012) are even more astonishing – total new building land as allotted in local development plans amounts to 1,215,000 hectares and has a population capacity of between 62 million and 77million people (i.e., 3.8 per cent of Poland’s territory and around 200 per cent of its current population). A hypothetical, complete development of these areas at the current pace would take at least several hundred years (Strzelecki and Holcel 2008; Strzelecki and Kucińska 2006; Kowalewski 2012; Kowalewski et al. 2013). While Poland’s post-socialist urban periphery has been characterized by a significant element of small-scale informal development in a way not seen in many post-socialist countries, the extensive release of land for residential development highlights how in this instance old Europe has a suburban aspect every bit as overgrown as that in some of the most rapidly urbanizing nations. Second, the unbalanced financial framework behind the system of local development plans has already put great burdens on the municipalities, with their total liabilities towards property owners amounting to as much as €30 billion (Kowalewski 2012). This liability discourages local governments from planning activities in general, not to mention ambitious projects that require significant changes to existing ownership structures. Apart from this, the cities suffer from the typical effect of suburbanization that removes social activity from the centre to the suburban municipalities on the periphery, further weakening city centres that had already experienced significant structural damage dating back to the Second World War as well as continuing deterioration in the

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  59

period of socialist urban planning and often in the post-1989 years as well. The financial aspect is obvious – the disappearing tax base leaves cities especially vulnerable, as they need to cope with significant debt incurred in order to face expensive infrastructure challenges. One might reflect that it has proved to be unlucky for several European states that the European Union has developed only a limited interest in including spatial planning in its acquis communautaire. Therefore, a huge opportunity for the introduction of widely recognized and proven planning standards to the legal systems of the candidate states, a method so successfully applied in other areas of law, has not been used in the accession process. Therefore, the problems of suburbanization, along with several other planning problems in Poland, will need to be solved internally. Until now, this has appeared to be too difficult, as the demands from planning advocates are effectively outweighed by pressures from business interests and the lack of any wider political and social support. However, public discussion about urban management and the quality of life in cities has noticeably intensified in recent years, fuelled by younger urban residents, left-wing grassroots movements, and emerging nonprofit foundations or societies devoted to the improvement of urban space. The previous president of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, has also displayed a personal interest in the area of landscape protection and architecture; in June 2013, the Presidential Office proposed partial amendments to the current planning system (in the areas of landscape protection and advertisement regulation), producing the first reformist legislative initiative in the area for decades. The amendments were accepted by the parliament – not without problems and with significant concessions – in early 2015, but address the issue of urban sprawl in only a marginal way. Probably more important, though, is the fact that the issues of suburbanization and the general dysfunction of the planning system have become permanent parts of the political discourse, even if limited to expert circles only. The national Spatial Order Concept 2030 (Koncepcja zagospodarowania przestrzennego kraju 2030), accepted in 2013, has been the first governmental paper openly admitting the catastrophic implications of the current spatial development model (Kowalewski et al. 2013). However, a new, more coherent building and planning act (named Building Code / Kodeks budowlany) has been under preparation by the ministry for a few years, while the idea of more palatable “temporary” changes in the planning act has been dropped. Proposing several profound, if not revolutionary, curbs on

60  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

the current green field development liberties, the new act presents a huge challenge to the current right-wing government, as it would alienate many of its rural supporters. Although the presentation of a draft version of the document in autumn 2016 clearly showed the work was still incomplete, the future remains unclear, as the new government has already shown that it does not shy away from introducing dramatic changes to the legal system in a sudden and arbitrary manner. The growth of Poland’s metropolitan areas can be described as a chaotic development of extensive and amorphous settlement patterns, characterized by low efficiency. This process has been enabled by a legal system that has discouraged municipal intervention and by the absence of national policies. The internal structures of the metropolis are characterized by numerous spatial conflicts and inter-municipal competition, leading to a strong measure of spatial disintegration (Baranowski 2005). For the last twenty years, Poland has been building highly impractical and ugly urban structures, which will prove to be very costly in the long term. Most experts agree that prospects for a prompt, fundamental change in the planning system are not encouraging – too many political forces and business groups do not recognize its necessity. Such a change will need to come sooner or later, though, either through a shift in public opinion or with a looming massive destabilization of municipal finance. Despite its anarchical planning system, Poland’s suburbanization remains far from the most extreme manifestation of the process worldwide. Its character is significantly mitigated by the relatively egalitarian structure of its society, low rate of population growth, passable technological standards, and adequate level of economic development. Nevertheless, it may serve as an interesting example of how much time a comparatively well-educated society requires to realize its own apparently obvious organizational failures. NOTES 1 As given for 2014 by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), Poland ranks fifth on the continent (599 cars/1,000 citizens) before France (594) or Switzerland (588). The Polish statistics are heavily contested, though, because of the significant number of unused or no longer existing cars it might include (Kublik 2015) 2 Developers’ projects are usually up to mid-scale only. A notable exception to this rule is the “Miasteczko Wilanów” project in southern Warsaw,

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  61 developed since 2002 on land acquired, subdivided, and resold by a single investor to other developers, according to a master plan coordinated with the city. Despite its significant flaws, including the lack of proper public transportation, the project remains the only spatially coherent urban extension on this scale (with a target population of 20,000–30,000) initiated in Poland after 1989. 3 These included large-scale industrial complexes with disastrous environmental effects, such as open-cast mines near Tarnobrzeg, Lubin, Konin, Bełchatów, Łęczna, and Bogatynia, or monumental metalworks in Cracow, Głogów, and Dąbrowa Górnicza. 4 This issue is visible in the common practice of local governments when choosing design solutions for a planned development. The choice is usually made through a tender, with price being the only selection criterion. There seems to be little understanding of the fact that design is a creative activity with an unlimited number of solutions and long-term, multidimensional effects. Instead, architecture and planning are perceived to be merely engineering or surveying services that can be qualified as “performed correctly” as long as they ensure minimal functionality and fulfil minimal expectations. 5 The still valid Spatial Planning Act (Ustawa o planowaniu przestrzennym) from 1984 was significantly amended in 1990 and 1991, until it was eventually replaced with a new Spatial Management Act (Ustawa o zagospodarowaniu przestrzennym) in 1994. Nevertheless, the 1984 act is believed to have facilitated the suburbanization process significantly, as the new plans of the early 1990s had to follow the so-called “plan guidelines” (założenia do planów) that were mostly conceived in the late 1970s or 1980s and followed socialist planning practices (characterized by unrealistic demographic assumptions, monofunctionalism, and extensivity). The “old plans” were only invalidated by the next Spatial Planning and Management Act (Ustawa o planowaniu i zagospodarowaniu przestrzennym) of 2003 (Bańkowska, 2005). 6 Municipalities are obliged to refund 100 per cent of the possible loss of private property value, while they can demand from a property owner contributions of up to only 30 per cent of its possible increase in value. The payment obligation applies if a property is sold within five years, so whether the municipality receives its compensation depends exclusively on the property owner. Apart from this, municipalities are obliged to purchase private land that has been allotted to public use in a local plan within six months after a respective demand made by the owner (Karzyński 2005).

62  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? 7 The name refers to the neglect of older urban districts by the socialist government, which focused on the development of new, cheap, residential areas. This created a massive, decades-long backlog in the technical and technological maintenance of the former, which cannot be now reduced without massive public subsidies. 8 CBOS: Centrum Badań Opinii Społecznej (Centre for Public Opinion Research, a polling institute based in Warsaw). 9 In 2006, 42 per cent of the population expressed a wish to live “in the country” (as compared to 30 per cent in 1998), while “urban” life was desired by 55 per cent (1998: 67 per cent) (data published by CBOS; Kajdanek 2012). 10 Congress Poland – the autonomous Kingdom of Poland, created in 1815 as a part of the Russian Empire. The re-creation of Poland after the Second World War from territories reclaimed from Russia, Germany, and Austria as well as the massive territorial exchange imposed on Poland after the Second World War resulted in a combination of very diverse historical architectural and settlement patterns. Although as much as 54 per cent of today’s Polish territory possesses a significant heritage of the compact planning traditions of Prussia and Germany, it has had no visible influence on local planning practices and paradigms. 11 This refers to its Paragraph 3, especially: “The right of ownership may only be limited by means of a statute and only to the extent that it does not violate the substance of such right”: http://www.sejm.gov.pl/prawo/ konst/angielski/kon1.htm. 12 The ministry (under repeatedly changing names – as of 2015 the Ministry of Infrastructure and Development; until 2013 the Ministry of Transport, Construction and Maritime Economy) for many years used to complete only occasional analyses of the nation’s spatial development – with no consistency of approach. A separate department devoted to spatial planning was formed as late as 2013, which shows the extent to which the problem used to be ignored; until then, the ministry’s active and programmatic approach was visible only in the areas of transportation infrastructure or, to a much lesser extent, housing.

REFERENCES Bańkowska, B. 2005. Problem suburbanizacji a systemy wartości w projektowaniu urbanistycznym. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 45. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista.

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  63 Baranowski, A. 2005. Urban-rural partnership. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 231. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Gminy Piaseczno. N.d. http://piaseczno.eu/ index.php?mnu=481. Chmielewski, J.M. 2005. Problemy rozpraszania się zabudowy na obszarze metropolitalny Warszawy. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 152. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Ekers, M., P. Hamel, and R. Keil. 2012. Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies 46 (3):405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Główny Urząd Statystyczny / Central Statistical Office, Warsaw. 2012. Rocznik demograficzny / Demographic yearbook of Poland. http://stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/ xbcr/gus/rs_rocznik_demograficzny_2012.pdf. Główny Urząd Statystyczny / Central Statistical Office, Warsaw. 2013. Ludność. Stan i struktura w przekroju terytorialnym. Stan w dniu 30 VI 2013 / Population in Poland. Size and structure by territorial division as of June 30, 2013. http:// stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/L_ludnosc_stan_struktura_30-06-2013.pdf. Golubchikov, O., and N.A. Phelps. 2011. The political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery: Governing growth on the edge of Moscow. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (3):425–40. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00427.x. Grosse, T.G. 2012. Egzogeniczna gospodarka w Polsce. Model kapitalizmu wynikający z przemian gospodarczych. In Nierówności Społeczne a Wzrost Gospodarczy (24). http://www.ur.edu.pl/nauka/czasopisma-uniwersyteturzeszowskiego-punktowane-przez-ministerstwo/nierownosci-spoleczne-awzrost-gospodarczy/zeszyt-nr-24. Gruszecka, K. 2005. Południowy obszar metropolitalny Warszawy. Ocena skutków trendów suburbanizacyjnych w latach 1991–2005. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 157–62. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Gzell, S. 2005 Suburbanizacja a projektowe strategie urbanistyczne. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 15. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Kajdanek, K. 2012. Suburbanizacja po polsku. Kraków: Nomos. Karzyński, M. 2005. Suburbanizacja i rozpraszanie zabudowy. Możliwości przeciwdziałania na przykładzie Gdyni. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 244–6 . Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Kochanowska, D. 2005. Suburbanizacja jako strukturalne zagrożenie metropolii polskich. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 139. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista.

64  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Kowalewski, A. 2012. Koszty chaosu urbanizacyjnego. 9 June. www. kongresbudownictwa.pl/pliki/nowelizacja%20prawa%20budowlanego/ koszty%20chaosu%20urbanizacyjnego%20nbp.doc. Kowalewski, A., J. Mordasewicz, J. Osiatyński, J. Regulski, J. Stępień, and P. Śleszyński. 2013. Raport o ekonomicznych stratach i społecznych kosztach niekontrolowanej urbanizacji w Polsce. Open letter, 29 October 2013. Warsaw. Kowalski, T. 2009. Polska transformacja gospodarcza na tle wybranych krajów Europy Środkowej. In Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny. Zeszyt (2):253–78. Kozłowski, S. 2006. Propozycje zielonych pierścieni w obszarze metropolitalnym Warszawy. In Żywiołowe rozprzestrzenianie się miast. Narastający problem aglomeracji miejskiej w Polsce, ed. S. Kozłowski, 173–200. Studia nad zrównoważonym rozwojem, t. II, KUL Katedra Ochrony Środowiska, Komitet “Człowiek i Środowisko.” Białystok – Lublin – Warsaw: przy Prezydium PAN. Kublik, A. 2015. W Polsce mamy rekordowo dużo aut. Ale to głównie stare rzęchy. Gazeta Wyborcza, 18 June. http://wyborcza.pl/1,155287,18140732,W_ Polsce_mamy_rekordowo_duzo_aut__Ale_to_glownie_stare.html. Kulcsar, L.J., and T. Domokos. 2005. The post-socialist growth machine: The case of Hungary. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 (3):550–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00605.x. Kurowski, S. 1987. Warszawa na tle stolic europejskich. Lublin: KUL. Lisowski, A., and M. Grochowski. 2009. Procesy suburbanizacji: Uwarunkowania, formy, konsekwencje. Warsaw: Ekspertyzy do Koncepcji Zagospodarowania Przestrzennego Kraju, Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego. Mantey, D. 2013. Pułapka suburbanizacji, czyli o planach migracyjnych młodych piaseczan. Przegląd Geograficzny (2). Molotch, H. 1976. The city as a growth machine: Toward a political economy of place. American Journal of Sociology 82 (2):309–32. http://dx.doi. org/10.1086/226311. Przewoźniak, M. 2005. Ekologiczne aspekty suburbanizacji – teoria i realia. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 131. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Radeberg-Skorzysko, M. 2005. Przyczyny zjawiska suburbanizacji na przykładzie okolic Piły. In Problem suburbanizacji, ed. P. Lorens, 81–8. Biblioteka urbanisty, 7. Warsaw: Urbanista. Strategia rozwoju gminy Lesznowola do 2021 roku (aktualizacja). 2011. Wójt i Rada Gminy Lesznowola, Lesznowola. https://www.lesznowola.pl/ assets/lesznowola/media/files/11f96f5d-5a8c-4537-bce5-093a4e41fda1/ strategia-rozwoju-gminy-lesznowola-do-2021r.doc.

Poland’s Model of Suburbanization  65 Strzelecki, Z., and A. Holcel. 2008. Tereny wiejskie obszaru metropolitalnego miasta Warszawy. In Obszary urbanizacji i semiurbanizacji wsi polskiej a możliwości ich rozwoju w ramach PROW 2007-2013, ed. T. Markowski and Z. Strzelecki, 43–55. Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk, Komitet Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania Kraju. Strzelecki, Z., and M. Kucińska. 2006. Żywiołowe rozprzestrzenianie się metropolii warszawskiej. In Żywiołowe rozprzestrzenianie się miast. Narastający problem aglomeracji miejskiej w Polsce, ed. S. Kozłowski, 125–49. Studia nad zrównoważonym rozwojem, t. II, KUL Katedra Ochrony Środowiska, Komitet “Człowiek i Środowisko.” Białystok – Lublin – Warsaw: przy Prezydium PAN. Tiebout, C.M. 1956. A pure theory of local expenditures. Journal of Political Economy 64 (5):416–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/257839. Wybieralski, M. 2013. Chaos w miastach. Uchwalać plany zagospodarowania i się rozwijać, czy żyć bez planów, ale zaoszczędzić? Gazeta Wyborcza, 31 August. http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,14524251,Chaos_w_miastach_Uch walac_plany_zagospodarowania.html. Zmiana studium uwarunkowań i kierunków zagospodarowania przestrzennego Miasta i Gminy Piaseczno. Tom II – Kierunki zagospodarowania przestrzennego. 2014. Burmistrz Miasta i gminy Piaseczno, Biuro Planowania Rozwoju Warszawy SA, Piaseczno / Warszawa.

4 O Sofia, Where Art Thou? Suburbs as Stories of Time and Space son ia a. h irt

Introduction It is problematic to consider the pattern of human settlements as an easily readable story (Duncan 1990). As Spiro Kostof (1991) and others have noted, there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between society and culture on one side and built forms on the other. For example, there are many built forms (say, the street grid or, for that matter, the suburb) that have served a remarkable range of societies, and to “read” these forms one must first understand these societies and cultures, rather than the other way around. The uncritical reading of built forms comprises a sort of a simplistic physical fetishism that may lead the selfproclaimed readers of built patterns to serious misunderstandings. Yet there is undoubtedly a relationship between societies and the spaces they create; as Michael Conzen has put it, few social processes and cultural norms are so abstract as not to find a way into built forms (cited in Kostof 1991, 25). Particularly intriguing are the spatial “stories” of societies that have undergone radical regime change: let’s call them spaces of discontinuity or rupture. This is because, in times of regime change, societies often dramatically transform, even erase, the built legacies of their predecessors, replacing them with something new. They demolish, ignore, or abandon old landscapes and build new ones to tell idealized stories about themselves, to themselves, and to others: stories about who they think they are (in contrast to their predecessors) and who they should be. As a result, spaces of rupture may present an opportunity to interpret built landscapes with greater ease: the contrast between new and old forms (and the stories people try to tell through them) makes them

O Sofia, Where Art Thou?  67

easier to grasp, perhaps in the same way that contrasting colours are easier to distinguish from each other than subtle half-tones. In the contemporary world, a suitable region in which to study such contrasting landscapes is that which incorporates the countries of central and eastern Europe. In the quarter of a century following the collapse of state socialism – likely the most epochal geopolitical event of the late twentieth century – these countries underwent dramatic social, economic, and ideological changes. Their cities became sites of major spatial transformations that have already been the subject of a vast literature (see, e.g., Tsenkova and Nedović-Budić 2006; Stanilov 2007; Hirt and Stanilov 2009). One of the most obvious places to look for landscapes where people, especially people in power, tell stories about themselves, to themselves, and to others (Geertz 1993 [1973]) are the major urban public sites – monuments, government offices, plazas, and so on. The construction of Potsdamer Platz, dominated by the Sony Center, over the area that was once bisected by the pulverized Berlin Wall and the reconstruction of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour upon the ruins of what was once the world’s largest public swimming pool (itself built upon the ruins of the old cathedral) are paramount examples. Clearly, in these cases, the people in power wanted to tell a different story about who they and the ones they govern are and should be, in contrast to the stories they thought the spaces of the previous, socialist regimes conveyed. This retelling by building and unbuilding is especially intense in places where ethnic and national identities are contested (e.g., in the Baltics and other post-Soviet states and in the former Yugoslav republics) (Czaplicka, Gelazis, and Ruble 2008; Humphrey and Skvirskaja 2012). In this essay, I will use the Bulgarian capital of Sofia (see figure 4.1) to explore two contrasting urban – or, more precisely, suburban – landscapes. These landscapes are not obvious places of power display, like Potsdamer Platz or Moscow’s cathedral. But they are, I argue, the most paradigmatic residential landscapes that two successive socio-economic orders, socialism and post-socialism, have produced. The first is a mass-housing residential district built during the height of state socialism, from the 1960s to the 1980s: in Sofia’s case, I will be looking at one of the largest such districts, Mladost, on the south side of the city. The second is a suburban built fabric developed over the last two decades: in Sofia’s case, Mladost’s southern neighbour, Residential Park Sofia, will serve as the example. The Residential Park is the largest single residential development in Sofia built during the post-socialist years. Both

68  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

projects are paramount exercises in modern-day peripheral build-up in a city with a 2,500-year-long history – exercises that are, arguably, representative of socialist and post-socialist suburbanisms in cities across central and eastern Europe. Both mark a radical shift in land and infrastructure patterns, and in governance modes, by comparison with what preceded them. My assumption is that these kinds of residential landscapes located on the outskirts of central and eastern European cities – not just Sofia, but every large urban node in the region – are as important as witnesses to their contemporaneous society and culture as any high-profile

Figure 4.1.  Map of Sofia and surrounding region.

O Sofia, Where Art Thou?  69

downtown public monument or government building. To paraphrase Robert Fishman (1987), if every civilization builds the monuments that it deserves and if, as he says, residential landscapes are a key monument or material testimony to modern civilizations, then the mass-housing estates of the 1960s to 1980s and the new suburban fabric play exactly this role in socialist and post-socialist societies, respectively. There were no standardized, mass-housing districts before socialism in central and eastern Europe; they were a product of their time. There were no (or very few) sprawling luxurious suburban single-family housing areas in central and eastern Europe prior to 1990: they are a product of our time. My primary claim is that, by analysing these residential landscapes located at the city periphery, one can tentatively extract what their builders thought would be the proper lifestyle to be followed by the capital city’s residents: specifically, what a modern lifestyle would be like (as opposed to a retrograde, old-fashioned one) and what a civilized lifestyle would be like (in the sense of belonging to the “right” world civilization). For example, the socialist districts reflect the idea that “modern” implies living in an egalitarian society, which takes advantage of mass industrialization and looks up to the Soviet Union as its chief role model. In contrast, the post-socialist suburbs reflect the idea that “modern” implies living in a globalizing but individualistic society that bets on controlled variety, consumption, and the accumulation of luxury, and looks up to the United States and western Europe as sources of inspiration. Through these residential landscapes at the edge of the city, builders have expressed and continue to express the time and space they think they live in and should live in and the type of city Sofia should be (including what type of country it should be the capital of). In this sense, these landscapes imply stories of time and space, stories of desirable histories and geographies, stories of imagined whens and wheres. They manifest where their creators thought Sofia should be (geographically, in relation to other cities) and when it should be (temporally, in relation to past and future). Observing these landscapes, we could then consider two questions: “What time is this place?” (to cite Kevin Lynch 1972) and “What world is this place?” I first provide background on the building of each of the two residential landscapes within the context of the socio-economic rules and the ideological and planning doctrines characteristic of the two historical periods, socialism and post-socialism. Then, I juxtapose four physical aspects of the two residential landscapes (scale, streets, land uses, and

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buildings) and attempt to detect what stories they could tell about the time and space their builders wished to position them in. The Mass-Housing Projects Bulgaria became a communist country after the Soviet victory in the Second World War. In the late 1940s, the new regime fundamentally altered the rules of the political economy (and, therefore, those of city building) by nationalizing the majority of urban land, major real estate, and means of production. The state crushed the private sector and became a near-monopolist in the production of urban land and infrastructure. Still, urban morphological patterns did not change abruptly, primarily because the war-torn economy was cash-poor and investment was directed into the reconstruction of existing but bombed-out areas, which left few opportunities for a serious rethinking of urban patterns. Residential blocks in pre-socialist, late-nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury Sofia were typically arranged around a grid of streets and boulevards. Following national liberation in 1878, these streets and boulevards were laid over the old irregular street pattern inherited from Ottoman times – a process that was perceived as integral to the modernization and Westernization of the city and the country (JelevaMartins 1994, 2000). The early-twentieth-century urban middle class lived in flats located in medium-scale, few-stories-tall residential buildings whose first floors often held shops. These buildings framed the city streets, often without any setback, leaving the interior space of city blocks for shared space – a type of urban form typical of European cities at the time. Here and there, early- to mid-twentieth-century elites owned luxurious single-family homes, built in fashionable European styles, mostly in central urban areas. The periphery, the “end neighborhoods” – a term that then had negative undertones – was dominated by poor huts. It lacked infrastructure and was not deemed suitable for upperclass living. On the contrary, the majority of the “suburban” areas could easily be described as slums (Hirt 2007). The first post-war master plan of Sofia, like other major policy documents from the post-war era, aspired towards a vision of society in which basic needs, including housing, were to be provided to all citizens by the state. Private commerce was severely restricted, and services, from shops to schools, became public. Rebuilding and upgrading housing, including housing in the end neighbourhoods, was a major

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priority. Individualistic, single-family housing was deemed contrary to communist ideals, whereas collectivist living was supposed to build the values of the “socialist man” (e.g., see Frolic 1964; Fisher 1962). Many of the existing large, single-family homes were nationalized and subdivided for new uses, including as a residence shared by several families. In the view of the main author of Sofia’s first communist-era master plan, a classless society and single-family housing were incompatible: “It is the [private] yard that makes the bourgeois” (L. Tonev cited in J. Tangurov 2000, 47). During the first dozen years after the communist victory, despite the ideological rupture, city architects and planners still generally followed the traditional type of city-block physical arrangement: medium-scale buildings framing the street and surrounding a central common courtyard. This arrangement was applied both to areas in need of reconstruction and to the few new neighbourhoods. Soviet influence was present in representative buildings in the city centre, which were erected in the style of “socialist realism” – the neo-classic architecture favoured by Stalin. Radical discontinuity in the scale and style of housing, the layout of residential areas, and the overall city structure was introduced in the early 1960s when the socialist economy peaked and significant resources could be invested into making Sofia a “socialist city.” At the time, the urban population was growing steadily, and new solutions were needed. These solutions had to avoid the creation and perpetuation of slum suburbs, since those would be intolerable signs of the type of inequality that the communist regime sought to overcome. Providing equal living conditions between city centres and their traditionally poorer peripheries was a major goal, according to both policy documents and planning textbooks from that time (e.g., Neikov and Samodumov 1952). This sort of thinking followed Soviet theory on the “socialist city” dating back to the 1920s. The idea was that a new “socialist man” – an individual uninterested in private gain and dedicated to the promotion of a collective good in a classless society – could be produced through the means of architecture and urbanism. According to Soviet classics such as El Lissitzky, the primary built forms that were to enable the development of this “man” with a new morale were collectivist living arrangements and public cultural, recreational, educational, and service centres. In Lissitzky’s terms, since “architecture was the material synthesis of culture” and the “structure of our culture must be based on

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collectivist ideals,” the new architecture had to reflect and shape these ideals explicitly (cited in Baladin 1968). These aspirations for social and individual transformation were embodied in a particular urban design form: the microrayon (literally, micro-region), which included large collective residential buildings, generous public spaces, and various social, cultural, and recreational clubs. The microrayon was supposed to function as a multi-functional, if not fully self-sustainable, neighbourhood unit, which was part of a larger urban entity, the rayon (region). The concepts were first applied in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but their scale of application became much grander after the introduction and mass utilization of industrialized building methods – another sign of Soviet modernity and progress – in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Over time, the new districts, dominated by prefabricated buildings, surrounded the cores of large cities not only throughout the Soviet Union but also throughout the entire Eastern bloc (e.g., see Lizon 1996; Maxim 2012). In some cases, they came to house a significant majority of the population of large cities: 56 per cent in Warsaw, 60 per cent in Sofia, 77 per cent in Bratislava, 82 per cent in Bucharest, and so on (Hirt and Stanilov 2009, 46). In Sofia, the Soviet experience with microrayoni was introduced by the 1961 Master Plan (Hirt 2007). The plan showed massive urban expansion onto the agricultural lands surrounding the national capital. One very large new jilishten komplex was envisaged for each side of the city. (Literally, jilishten komplex – the word adopted in Bulgaria for the Russian mikrorayon – means a housing complex: a large neighbourhood fully equipped with public services.) The amount of land to be urbanized was huge by Sofia’s standards: some 1,600 hectares on each side (now comprising about 20 per cent of the total city territory), each intended to absorb some 100,000 people (in 1960, the total urban population was three-quarters of a million; today it is a million and a half). The southern expansion was called Mladost (which means “youth” in several Slavic languages). The project was built between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s in five parts, each section being equivalent to one microrayon (Mladost 1, 1A, 2, 3, and 4). It is debatable whether districts like Mladost (or any other Soviet-era microrayon) can be labelled “suburbs” (Tammaru 2001). The appropriateness of the label usually depends on how the word is defined, and in the case of suburbs, definitions are rarely precise (Phelps and Wu 2011). If a low-density pattern of development is considered an integral

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part of the definition of suburban built forms, as is common (see Jackson 1985; Fishman 1987; Bruegmann 2005; and the introductory chapter of this volume), then the socialist mass-housing districts are not suburban. Suburbs of this type, especially those dominated by detached single-family homes, were scorned by socialist city builders in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Eastern bloc as individualistic, bourgeois, and retrograde (e.g., Neikov and Samodumov 1952). In contrast to such bourgeois suburbs, the socialist mass-housing districts were the product of comprehensive and highly centralized planning, and they mandated high-density, collectivist living. However, if we use a broader definition of suburbs (e.g., Harris 2010) as examples of de-centralized residential growth, marked by their location (the urban periphery) and their age (new, modern settlements), then Eastern-bloc mass-housing areas could be called the socialist answer or alternative to mid-twentieth-century capitalist suburbia. In their physical layout, the mass-housing districts were not entirely an Eastern-bloc phenomenon. They were obviously inspired by the concept of the “neighbourhood unit,” by the Athens Charter (CIAM 1973 [1934]), and by the west-European modernists, especially Le Corbusier. Similar districts were erected in many large west-European cities after the Second World War (e.g., the Parisian Grands Ensembles) and, during urban renewal, in cities in the United States. But socialist theorists made a distinction between their plans and those of their capitalist colleagues. Back in the 1920s, Lissitzky, otherwise an admirer of Le Corbusier as an artist and architect, called Corbu’s plans “cities of nowhere,” “neither capitalist, nor proletarian, nor socialist” (cited by Baladin 1968). In Lissitzky’s view, Le Corbusier and others like him who were operating in capitalist settings failed to recognize the role of design in creating a “new man” and an egalitarian society. In Bulgaria, mass-housing developments like that in Mladost, which was later followed by similar projects enveloping the core of the country’s capital on all sides, were built precisely with the intent of developing such a modern, egalitarian society. An obvious difference between the socialist housing districts and their look-alike capitalist cousins was a sheer matter of magnitude: the share of pre-fabricated mass housing in east-European cities such as Sofia, Bratislava, and Bucharest was much higher than in large west-European and North American cities. They were truly meant to transform cities rather than just amplify them in select locations.

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The New Suburban Developments The collapse of communist regimes in 1989–90 transformed the economy and society in central and eastern Europe in ways as radical as had the earlier shock that followed the Second World War. This time, changes in the political economy were in the opposite direction: urban land, real estate, and means of production in most countries were quickly returned to their original owners or privatized. Throughout the region, the economy entered a crisis period: in the early to mid-1990s, GDP decreased by about 30 per cent in most countries and unemployment rates rose sharply. Bulgaria was one of the hardest-hit countries, but it was spared from ethnic strife (unlike its Yugoslav neighbour). Still, instability continues to mark the political landscape, even after Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union in 2007. Economic recovery started at different times and rates in the region – in Bulgaria, by about 1997. It was followed by a decade-long period of growth that lasted until the onset of the latest global recession (Hirt and Stanilov 2009). Inevitably, the rules of city building in Bulgaria, as elsewhere in central and eastern Europe, were dramatically altered. A pluralist private sector replaced its nearly bankrupt public counterpart as the chief city builder. In the early 1990s, public institutions withdrew not only from centralized national economic planning but even from basic city planning, as if it were a socialist relic (Nedović-Budić 2001). Not until the year 2000 or so did urban policy and planning enter the mainstream political dialogue, likely because the chaotic development of the 1990s brought massive urban and environmental problems (e.g., pollution, congestion, loss of public space) that could no longer be ignored. After 1990, in Bulgaria as elsewhere, the state withdrew permanently from the production and distribution of housing (only some small social housing programs exist). Mass-housing districts were no longer erected: the state lacked both the resources and the political will to build dwellings for millions of people. The very idea of massive state intervention in housing became ideologically unacceptable. Initially, the private homebuilding sector was too poor and fragmented to match the type of housing production that was common from the 1960s to the 1980s. The annual supply of new dwellings dramatically declined (Stanilov 2007). At the same time, state-owned residential properties, including those in the mass-housing districts, were privatized (in Bulgaria, unlike in most other Eastern-bloc countries, many of the units in the

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mass-housing projects were already privately owned during socialism). But as poverty rose, many homeowners could no longer afford to maintain their apartments, not to mention the buildings’ shared spaces (elevators, entry halls, roofs, etc.). This, coupled with the lack of public investment in the common infrastructure, led to appalling living conditions in mass-housing districts in many Bulgarian cities, including in parts of Sofia’s Mladost. As the economy rebounded in the late 1990s, the private homebuilding sector gained resources, sometimes with the help of large multinational firms. As land at the periphery of cities was privatized and made available for development, a new housing alternative emerged. For the first time in Bulgaria’s history, urban elites, especially those in the capital city, began to settle permanently outside the city’s core, in Westernstyle suburbs dominated by single-family homes. The process has been occurring region-wide: urban decentralization or suburbanization may well be the most paradigmatic aspect of spatial change in central and eastern Europe after 1990 and has been documented in many large cities in the region (see, e.g., Dingsdale 1999; Kok and Kovacs 1999 on Budapest; Sýkora 1999 on Prague; Rudolph and Brade 2005 on Moscow; Ruoppila 1998 on Tallinn). In Sofia, the idea of suburbanization was endorsed in the Master Plan first drafted in 2001 and approved five years later. The plan touted the benefits of “dispersed living amid nature, since it is an expression of new forms of spatial organization that correspond to an information society” (Stolichna Obshtina 2001; cited in Hirt 2007, 156) – language serving as a great example of how projected landscapes (suburban in our case) are used to tell a story about a society’s status, in time and in space. The language was softened later in the amended plan of 2009, but only after several years of intense suburban development. Still, one of the housing goals listed in the 2009 plan was “Decentralization of habitation for achievement of balance in urbanization and utilization of the reserves of the areas outside of the compact city and the adjacent surrounding areas” (Sofia Municipality 2009, 22). These statements reflected the popular view that Western metropolises already have developed suburban areas – apparently a sign of their modernity – while Sofia is lagging behind. So, if Sofia were to modernize and Westernize (rather than remain a socialist-style, backward, high-density city), it should follow the same path. For example, on the pages of one of Bulgaria’s most widely read newspapers, this view was articulated as follows: “The trend toward migration to the

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city surroundings can finally be seen in Bulgaria. In the developed countries, the trend toward urban escape has been clearly pronounced for a long time, but is only now catching up in Bulgaria … Why suburban? Because it’s super” (Gyorgiev 2009). In an interview, a city planner expressed a similar vision for a future Sofia – one that would follow the correct civilizational model of a Western market economy: “We want to encourage new types of dwellings, in a new type of environment of a totally different character, and encourage a lifestyle that is closer to nature … In socialist times, the government had an interest in cramping people into high-density housing estates because this would save money. But in a market economy, in an information-type society, in a democracy, the compact city is no longer the right choice” (cited in Hirt 2007, 157). Sofia’s new low-density suburbs are forming a ring surrounding the last towers of the high-density socialist districts. The process is strongest on the south side of the city, in the scenic foothills of Mount Vitosha, including directly south of Mladost. The population of these southern districts has nearly doubled during the last couple of decades – a rate unparalleled in the rest of the city (Slaev and Nikiforov 2013). During the 1990s, much of this growth consisted of individual suburban homes or small groups of homes. Since about the year 2000, however, following the economic recovery, the consolidation of the real-estate industry, and the entry of foreign capital, suburban development has increasingly come in the form of larger subdivisions comprising up to two thousand dwelling units (Hirt 2012). Their builders have signalled their fascination with west-European, and especially Anglo-American, culture by giving most of these subdivisions foreign, primarily English names: Bright Light, Cherry Gardens, Crystal Bell, Green Village, Mountain View Village, Panorama Life, Sofia Gardens, Sofia Sky, and so on (in sharp contrast to the typical Slavic names that were given to residential areas built in socialist times, such as Mladost). The best known of the new subdivisions is Residential Park Sofia, a development that will include some 1,000 residences when completed, and that acquired the status of a new neighbourhood in 2009. It is located at the south edge of Mladost, near another major new node in Sofia, Business Park Sofia, a project touted as the largest office park in south-eastern Europe with 300,000 square metres of office and retail space. Both the residential park and the business park were developed by the German group Lindner and designed under the leadership of the Munich firm Steidle Architekten.

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That Residential Park Sofia reflects the mainstream views of Bulgaria’s new elites on what a good, model development should be – and, by extension, what a good, modern, civilized city should be – is not too hard to prove. From 2003 to 2006, the general manager of the project was the successful Bulgarian businessmen Rossen Plevneliev, who represented Lindner in Bulgaria and envisioned both the residential and the business park. In 2009, he became Bulgaria’s minister of regional development and public works; his career as developer and manager of both “parks” was counted as strong evidence of his talent and expertise. In 2011, the accomplished Mr Plevneliev – the mastermind behind Residential Park Sofia – was elected president of the Republic of Bulgaria, a post he held until 2017, with a fairly high approval rating. Physical Contrasts In this section, I contrast four aspects of the physical layout of Mladost and its neighbour, Residential Park Sofia: scale, streets and borders, land uses, and building typologies. My purpose is to extract, tentatively, what ideas they embody about what makes for a good residential landscape and what messages they could be sending about the temporal and civilizational identity of the city. Scale is the first striking contrast between Mladost and Residential Park Sofia. Mladost, which contains five parts, each with some 20,000 people, and spreads over about 300 hectares, dwarfs its new neighbour to the south. The latter with its projected couple of thousand residents remains just a dot on the city-scale map. The difference in scale is an obvious reflection of the difference in the financial and institutional capacity of their builders. The planning of Mladost was part of a comprehensive planning vision; its implementation was backed by an almighty state, with nearly full control over land, labour, and resources. Residential Park Sofia was built on recently privatized land by a private firm. Though the company is large, employing 4,800 people and having offices in thirty countries (according to the company’s website), it is still small by comparison to the state. The difference in scale underlies the extent to which socialist housing districts (and socialist urbanism generally) pursued the total transformation of landscape and society. Socialist districts like Mladost surrounded cities on all sides. At the time of their construction, these districts, with their huge populations, were a systematic means of pursuing the creation of an alternative new city, beyond the borders of the traditional one

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(which was perceived as old-fashioned and bourgeois, and thus left to decay). In these districts, a new “socialist man” was expected to emerge. New developments like Residential Park Sofia do not and cannot aspire to such Soviet-style, mega-socio-spatial metamorphoses. Although their builders and developers may also perceive the traditional city as old-fashioned (its socialist districts especially), their aim is just to serve (not transform) a limited residential demand – the demand for luxurious residential properties at the edge of the city – which exists among only a segment of the population: the upper and upper-middle classes fascinated by Western formulae for upscale family living. The second eye-catching difference between the two residential landscapes is the street system. In Mladost, in the modernist urban design tradition, the large streets flow along the periphery of each microrayon. The interior is pierced by smaller streets and pedestrian alleys, which are immersed in vast fields of common greenery where the “socialist man” and his family were to learn the values of collectivity. The large, straight vistas clearly marked the exterior of each microrayon, thus suggesting that it had a degree of autonomy from the rest of the urban fabric. However, these were dotted with mass-transit stops and linked seamlessly with boulevards built during the previous historic eras. Thus, easy connectivity between and among each microrayon, the other microrayons, and the rest of the city was one of the main functions of the peripheral vistas. They made the microrayon part of a larger urban whole. Residential Park Sofia, in contrast, has curvilinear, “picturesque” streets (as the website describes them) (Residential Park Sofia n.d.). These streets resemble those typical of an American residential subdivision and are advertised as a key part of the development’s park-like design. True, there are no cul-de-sacs framed by single-family homes (another typical feature of an American subdivision), and the residential buildings are positioned along the streets, as is traditional, but with a larger setback than is ordinarily found in old Sofia. But note that the borders of the development are not all streets, which by definition imply flow, movement, and connectivity. On the contrary, parts of the periphery feature fences that cannot be crossed (unless you are really adventurous); they were specifically designed to be disconnected from the rest of the city. Residential Park Sofia is a gated community, with a few strictly controlled entry points. A guard asks guests for the reason of their visit and for their identification (ID), which is photocopied. Residents have security IDs, which, when scanned, lift the barriers. The

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security that is guaranteed by gating is heavily advertised on the website and in all real-estate ads. The development is separated from the closest built fabric by green fields and is not easily accessible via mass transit. Car ownership is assumed for residents and guests. The development is advertised as “a city within the city” (Residential Park Sofia n.d.) – another sign of the designers’ intended emphasis on separateness and self-containment instead of connectivity and integration into a larger urban whole. The difference in land use between Mladost and Residential Park Sofia is also obvious. It is also partially predetermined by their difference in scale. All of Mladost’s five parts were planned to include a comprehensive list of services – cultural, educational, medical, retail, and so on. In this category were included one or more schools, kindergartens, polyclinics, sports centres, grocery stores, department stores, and libraries. These were located no more than 500 metres from the residential buildings (or at least no more than 500 metres from the nearest mass-transit stop, from which residents could get to these destinations with ease). Hence, the Bulgarian word for microrayon: jilishten kompleks (i.e., a residential area with a full complex of services). In theory, one could live, work, shop, socialize, and play without leaving the complex. In practice, self-sufficiency was not always achieved. The residential buildings were almost always built first. Plans for the notso-vital services were sometimes quietly abandoned. But the most vital services – schools, polyclinics, and grocery stores – were generally built in a timely fashion. Residential Park Sofia could make no claims to providing comprehensive services. The residential part, which is about halfway completed, does not provide room for population numbers that would support a complex of services. The development does have a small commercial area for everyday necessities, including a very small supermarket, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a bank branch, a dry cleaner, and a kindergarten. These are accessible to residents and visitors who pass through the controlled entry points. Residents and guests also have access to some luxurious leisure and personal amenities and services such as a fancy swimming pool and a high-end massage salon, fitness centre, sauna, and beauty parlour that socialist planners could never have imagined. But it is inconceivable for people to spend extended periods of time without leaving the gated community: kids must go to school and adults to work; people get sick. And since these services – schools, offices, and hospitals – are not accessible on foot or by bike or

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mass transit, the inevitable everyday connection between the development and the outside world happens via automobile travel. Paradoxically, then, whereas Residential Park Sofia is heavily advertised as a “city within a city,” it is only such in terms of being physically detached from the rest of the urban fabric, securitized, and closed to outsiders. Its land-use profile is much less heterogeneous than that of any Mladost microrayon, where one could live without necessarily commuting elsewhere all the time. If land-use heterogeneity is a hallmark of urbanity, as Kostof (1991) argues, then Mladost is more urban than suburban. Mladost comes closer to being a “city within a city,” albeit without explicit borders. And if lack of land-use heterogeneity is a hallmark of suburbia, as Fishman (1987) says, then labelling Residential Park Sofia as a “city within a city” comes across as a false advertisement. The development resembles an American-style residential suburb much more than it resembles any kind of city. Finally, the last physical aspect discussed here is building typology. Here, the contrast is glaring. Mladost is primarily composed of prefabricated multi-family residential buildings. There is some variation in building size, footprint, and form over time because architectural paradigms changed between the 1960s and the 1980s. For instance, older buildings are typically located amid vast stretches of open land. They are flat-roofed and box-like and of mammoth size, with many storeys and public entrances and with many dozens of dwelling units. Even dedicated modernists would likely find them oppressively bland. Newer buildings, such as those in Mladost 4, the latest part of the rayon, from the 1980s, are more boutique-like, each comprising a dozen or so dwelling units, with semi-private yards and red roofs reminiscent of old Bulgarian architecture, thus showing some recognition of a need for privacy and individuality. But overall, the message of a city open to all, where collectivism, uniformity, and egalitarianism were meant to thrive, is hard to miss in Mladost, as it is in most other socialist-era mass-housing districts (see also Lizon 1996; Maxim 2012). In contrast, Residential Park Sofia is designed with controlled diversity in mind. There are three types of residential buildings: single-family homes, row housing, and medium-sized apartment blocks. The building heights and footprints are much smaller than those of the typical socialist housing mammoth. But the private spaces inside – the dwellings themselves – are much more generous: up to 450 square metres (as opposed to the 50–100 square metres per dwelling typical of socialist-era dwellings), as they obviously serve an upper-class clientele. Colour and

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neo-traditional architecture dominate the facades, and there is a mixture of Bulgarian and American accents. Still, facades as well as interior design options come from a short menu made available to interested residents by the developer. It is only in the furnishing of their homes that residents can unleash whatever individual preferences they may have. Conclusion This chapter compared two residential landscapes constructed at the edge of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia in two consecutive historical periods – socialist and post-socialist. These landscapes were built on land whose status changed sharply (from private before socialism, to public during socialism, and back to private in its aftermath) and under government regimes whose goals and means also contrasted sharply (i.e., building a top-down, ostensibly classless socialist society versus building a “free”-market-based society of choice and competition). Yet, despite their obvious differences, both government regimes sought to “modernize” the small country by placing it into the “correct” world sphere: first Soviet, then Western. Suburban forms in the capital city played some part in the grand scheme. The contrasting forms at the urban rim were heavily ideologically loaded. Although less glamorous than the well-studied central-city megaprojects erected in recent times in more famous cities, the seemingly ordinary suburban residential landscapes of Sofia well represented what were perceived as the cutting-edge ideologies of urbanism (or suburbanism) of their times. Envisioned as exemplary communities at the rim of the city, they were linked to the oscillating civilizational allegiance of the city and the country. They expressed and continue to express the views of their builders as to what a good, modern city should be and, by extension, what a good, modern society should be, as well as where this society should be (i.e., to which civilization it belongs). In this sense, Sofia’s residential landscapes provide examples of how particular city forms – in this case, forms at the city’s rim – were used as elements of a grander project of temporal and civilizational footings and transformations. Peripheral to the city but central to its transformation, they were consciously built to conform to perceived “best” foreign practices. In both cases, suburbs were vehicles to endow an old city with a new identity. This may be a common story in small countries, both in central and eastern Europe and in other parts of the world that are located at the crossroads of more powerful world civilizations.

82  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? REFERENCES Baladin, S. 1968. Arhitekturnaia teoria El Lisickogo [The architectural theory of El Lissitzky]. Accessed on 8 July 2013 at: http://web.archive.org/ web/20080510054907/http://novosibdom.ru/content/view/607/32/ [in Russian]. Bruegmann, R. 2005. Sprawl: A compact history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226076973.001.0001. CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture). 1973 [1934]. Athens Charter. New York: Grossman Publishers. Czaplicka, J., N. Gelazis, and B. Ruble, eds. 2008. Cities after the fall of communism: Reshaping cultural landscapes and European identity. Baltimore, MD, and Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Dingsdale, A. 1999. Budapest’s built environment in transition. GeoJournal 49 (1):63–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1007080111774. Duncan, J. 1990. The city as text: The politics of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, J. 1962. Planning the city of socialist man. Journal of the American Institute of Planners 28 (4):251–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 01944366208979451. Fishman, R. 1987. Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. New York: Basic Books. Frolic, B. 1964. The Soviet city. Town Planning Review 34:285–31. Geertz, C. 1993. [1973]). Religion as cultural system. In The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays by Clifford Geertz, 87–127. Waukegan: Fontana Press. Gyorgiev, K. 2009. Jivotut sled Okolovrustnoto [Life beyond the ring road]. Trud, 1February 2009. Accessed 9 July 2013 at http://www.trud.bg/Article. asp?ArticleId=1211569. Harris, R. 2010. Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. Research in Urban Sociology 10:15–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/S1047-0042(2010)0000010004. Hirt, S. 2007. The compact vs. the dispersed city: History of planning debates on Sofia’s urban form. Journal of Planning History 6 (2):138–65. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1538513206301327. Hirt, S. 2012. Iron curtains: Gates, suburbs and privatization of space in the post-socialist city. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi. org/10.1002/9781118295922. Hirt, S., and K. Stanilov. 2009. Twenty years of transition: The evolution of urban planning in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, 1989–2009. Nairobi: UN- HABITAT.

O Sofia, Where Art Thou?  83 Humphrey, C., and V. Skvirskaja, eds. 2012. Post-cosmopolitan cities: Explorations of urban co-existence. Oxford: Bergham Books. Jackson, K. 1985. Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Jeleva-Martins, D. 1994, Bulgarskoto gradoustrojstvo po putya na modernizma. Arhitektura [Architecture] 2:36–9 [in Bulgarian]. Jeleva-Martins, D. 2000. Bulgarskoto gradoustrojstwo kato krustoput na Iztochnia i Zapadnia Avangard. Arhitektura [Architecture] 2:21–4 [in Bulgarian]. Kok, H., and Z. Kovacs. 1999. The process of suburbanization in the agglomeration of Budapest. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 14 (2):119–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02496818. Kostof, S. 1991. The city shaped: Urban patterns and meanings through history. Boston: Bulfinch. Lizon, P. 1996. East central Europe: The unhappy heritage of communist mass housing. Journal of Architectural Education 50 (2):104–14. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/10464883.1996.10734709. Lynch, K. 1972. What time is this place? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maxim, J. 2012. The microrayon: The organization of mass housing ensembles, Bucharest, 1956–1967. Accessed on 5 July 2013 at: http://scholar.google.bg/ scholar?hl=en&q=soviet+microrayon&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp. Nedović-Budić, Z. 2001. Adjustment of planning practice to the new eastern and central European context. Journal of the American Planning Association 67 (1):38–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01944360108976354. Neikov, L., and B. Samodumov. 1952. Uchebnik po Gradoustrojstvo [Urban planning textbook]. Sofia: Narodna Prosveta [in Bulgarian]. Phelps, N., and F. Wu, eds. 2011. International perspectives on suburbanization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230308626. Residential Park Sofia. N.d. Masterplan-Generalen Plan. Accessed on 11 July 2013 at: http://www.residentialpark-sofia.com/bg/pages/masterplan. html. Rudolph, R., and I. Brade. 2005. Moscow: Processes of restructuring in the post-Soviet metropolitan periphery. Cities (London, England) 22 (2):135–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2005.01.005. Ruoppila, S. 1998. The changing urban landscape of Tallinn. Finnish Journal of Urban Studies 35 (3):36–43. Slaev, A., and I. Nikiforov. 2013. Factors of urban sprawl in Bulgaria. Spatium (Belgrade) 29 (29):22–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/SPAT1329022S. Sofia Municipality. 2009. Master plan of Sofia municipality: Synthesis report. Sofia: Author.

84  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Stanilov, K., ed. 2007. The post-socialist city: Urban form and space transformations in central and eastern Europe after socialism. New York: Springer. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6053-3. Stolichna Obshtina [Municipality of the Capital City]. 2001. Obsht ustrojstven plan na grad Sofia i stolichnata obshtina: Faza predvaritelen proekt, etap 2, scenarii za socialno- ikonomichesko i teritorialno razvitie na grad Sofia za perioda do 2020 g. Sofia: Author [in Bulgarian]. Sýkora, L. 1999. Changes in the internal spatial structure of postcommunist Prague. GeoJournal 49 (1):79–89. http://dx.doi. org/10.1023/A:1007076000411. Tammaru, T. 2001. Suburban growth and suburbanization under central planning: The case of Soviet Estonia. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 38 (8):1341–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980120061061. Tangurov, J. 2000. Modernata arhitektura 1944–1990. Arhitektura [Architecture] 2 (2000):46–8 [in Bulgarian]. Tsenkova, S., and Z. Nedović-Budić, eds. 2006. The urban mosaic of post-socialist Europe: Space, institutions and policy. Heidelberg: Springer. http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/3-7908-1727-9.

5 Ideology, Planning, and Meaning in Suburbia: Investigating the Case of Row House Areas per g u n nar røe

Introduction A substantial part of the suburbanization of Oslo, Norway’s capital and largest city, has been planned in detail by public authorities, framed by the politics of a post-war welfare state. This has produced a variety of suburban landscapes, architectural forms, material structures, structurepractice relations, suburban images, and representations of social life, happiness, and social disorder, as portrayed for example in film (Bern 2012). A significant part of the planned suburban development has been the building of large-scale estates (including social housing) during the 1960s and 1970s, which was made possible by the extensive conversion and expropriation of land as well as by policies for land use. The social problems prevalent in some of these estates led to criticism and a search for other suburban models, as has been the case in other European countries (Hall 2002). However, architects and planners also wanted to keep a distance from the dominating image of the North American suburbs or “suburbia,” represented by mass produced Levittowns (see Hayden 2003) or upper-middle-class suburbs with mansion-like housing (see Baumgartner 1988; Knox 2008). Much effort has been put into the wish to create a third way, in contrast to modernist high-rise estates and single-family housing on large plots, with its accompanying sprawl. This has led to the development of a planning discourse and practice, and the production of an ideal type of Norwegian, or rather Nordic, suburbanism – the row house estate. This is a low-scale but not sprawling and a dense but not high-rise suburban form that was developed alongside other suburban forms (mainly high-rise estates and single-family housing). The rise and domination of this discourse also coincided with

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the anti-modernist promotion, among socially progressive architects, of the “village” as an ideal architectural and social form (Gehl 1971), despite the fact that the nostalgic representation of village living didn’t resemble the everyday practices of the modern project and the scientific base of modernist planning. While this planning discourse gained support during the 1970s, its sources may be traced back to Ebenezer Howard’s garden city of the 1920s, and especially the German interpretation by architects like Ernst May, as well as to structuralism within architecture (Frampton 1992). In this chapter I wish to investigate the relations between ideology, discourse, meaning, and practice in suburban landscapes, focusing on the row house estate and its representations. This ideal type of housing differs from, on the one hand, the comprehensively planned new towns or satellite suburbs, where the underlying rationale is explicitly theorized and critiqued, and, on the other, the privatized and privately planned suburban landscape, whose connotations are heavily influenced by the representation of suburbia in literature and mass media (see Silverstone 1999). In addition this conceptualization is arguably a European or, more specifically, a Nordic ideal type, in contrast to the detached housing of North American and Australian suburbs (see Harris and Larkham 1999), and the terraced town houses of Great Britain. What ideas and theory laid the ground for the production of such areas? How were they planned, and what architectural forms were produced? How do people construct these estates as suburban spaces and places of their life worlds? And do people living there relate to the planning and architectural discourse in their everyday practices and the construction of meaning? These generalized suburban places frame – materially, socially, and culturally – the life worlds of people. And this framing may be studied through the lens of architecture, design, and planning, both as discourse and professional practices, focusing on the political economy and the cultural economy, as has been done by Jones (2009), Faulconbridge (2009), and Andersen and Røe (2016) in an urban context. However, people’s reception of the planned built environment and the making of social practices are not necessarily in tune with the ideas that inspired the creation of these places (see Lees 2001). In addition, the suburb is constituted culturally through production, representation, and the social practices taking place. Focusing on the relation between ideas, materiality, meaning, and practice in these denser pieces of the suburban landscape allows for investigations into suburban change and

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thereby suburban policy. These relations, and the implications of different planning ideologies and design principles for social life and meaning in such places, are important to planners seeking more socially just and sustainable suburban solutions, where dense developments are in the forefront, and will contribute to the taxonomies of suburbanization highlighted by Keil (2013). The questions I have formulated here will be discussed based on an investigation of three suburban row house areas; Skjettenbyen, Bleikeråsen, and Giskehagen, all located within the Greater Oslo area (see figure 5.1), with nearly 1 million inhabitants (the municipality of Oslo has approximately 650,000 inhabitants). Background – the Suburbanisms of Greater Oslo As in other western-European cities, the first waves of suburbanization following industrialization in the latter part of the nineteenth century were mainly of two kinds. On the one hand, there were poor settlements, outside the city limits and exempt from public regulations, that were inhabited by the growing class of factory workers in the emerging industrial city. On the other hand, the upper classes moved out to newly established suburbs west of Oslo, first adjacent to the urban structure and later along the newly built tramlines (Røe 2012). However, the

Figure 5.1.  Map of Oslo region.

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mass suburbanization that emerged as a result of mass car ownership and use began later in European cities, particularly in Norway, compared to in the United States, where a post-Second World War baby boom, housing shortage, and subsidized loans (Hall 2002) contributed to “urban sprawl” based on extensive construction of single-family houses. Moreover, in the Nordic countries, a large proportion of the suburban dwellings being built in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were multi-family housing – that is apartment blocks, row houses, and semidetached dwellings. As a result, suburbanization and suburban development in Oslo differ greatly from North American examples, which have dominated the discourse on suburbia, both in the popular media and the academic literature. In Oslo, with the exception of Olav Selvaag, there have been few large private suburban developers comparable to the Levitts (the developers of Levittown) (Guttu 2003). Selvaag, although a private developer, was nevertheless also part of the development of a discourse on suburban development and the political economy of the post-war welfare state, led by public, municipal, and cooperative institutions (Hansen and Guttu 2000). Selvaag’s projects were mainly blocks of flats and row houses. Even though private developers had a large share of the post-war suburbanization and development process, the projects were regulated by overall planning, were mainly small scale, and continued to be so even through the deregulation of the housing market in the 1980s (Hansen and Guttu 2000). The development of privately master planned communities and the accompanying new urbanist design found in North America have no counterpart in Oslo. The “parasitic urbanization” described by Beauregard (2006), leading to the decline of city centres in the United States in the post-Second World War period, is also less marked in Oslo, for reasons that include differences in the development of suburbanization, the process of automobilization (see Sheller and Urry 2000), and the financing of public infrastructure. As well, the later post-suburban (Phelps et al. 2006) and exurban (Nelson and Sánchez 1997) developments that are a marked feature of North American and other European cities have also been slower to emerge in the Oslo region (see Røe 2014 for a study of a “post-suburban” process of making a suburban centre a town). The main features of the “Nordic model” of suburbanization are the involvement of public authorities and institutions and the role of the welfare-state discourse in framing the planning and development of

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suburbs. The influence of state public authorities can be divided into the following three fields of policy: Housing policies: Social housing, providing loans through the state housing bank and engaging cooperative builders (cooperating with the municipal governments) Land use policies: Protection of recreational lands and (later) agricultural areas, and transit-oriented planning Transportation policies: Rationed car sales until 1960, and investments in public transportation The state and lower-level public authorities laid the groundwork for suburbanization indirectly through institutions (on all levels of governance), education (in schools and university departments), and discourse (developing concepts and knowledge). But at the municipal level they were also directly involved in planning, as in the largescale “experimentation,” planning, and construction of functionalistic satellite towns, resembling what Hall (2002) has termed the “Stockholm Alternative.” In Oslo, twenty-two such satellite towns (or “drabantbyer”) were built, holding 25 per cent of all housing (Brattbakk and Hansen 2004). This was in accordance with the master plan of 1950 for the controlled growth of the urban region, mainly in the eastern parts of Oslo. In a similar fashion to Clarence Stein’s neighbourhood units (Hall 2002), these satellite towns were organized around community functions such as public services, schools, sports arenas, and shops and were connected to a radial public transportation system (Lorange and Myhre 1991). An important premise for the large-scale conversion of primarily agricultural land outside the city into such satellite towns in Oslo was the incorporation of the neighbouring Aker municipality in 1948. This allowed for the expropriation of large areas that in turn could be developed as large-scale projects as part of the overall housing and planning policy of the welfare state. The public acquisition of land and subsequent land use policies were thus important elements in the postwar suburbanization of Oslo. In between these large-scale projects in the suburban landscape are areas of self-building and smaller municipal planning projects of detached and semi-detached housing. Public authorities at the state and municipal levels also conducted infrastructure development, at first of public transit systems (trams, subways, and buses), and then of highways (during the 1970s and 1980s).

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In this ideal type of suburbanization that shaped the landscape of Oslo in the post-war period, the state and municipal authorities played crucial roles in the governance of the emerging suburban landscape, in overall planning and design based on the social goals of the welfare state, and in the details of land use planning and housing design – for example, with regard to the expropriation of land. Together with the dominating architectural and planning discourse of the time, this framed the development of the suburban landscape around Oslo. However, the land – crucially, the form of housing projects and the arrangements of green and public areas between the houses – was developed and moulded differently based on the mix of actors and municipal engagement influencing the process of governance (resulting in differences between the western mainly affluent and the eastern mainly working-class suburbs). Probably the most important role of public authorities was in the shaping of the infrastructure to connect the suburbs to the city’s workplaces and services and provide its inhabitants with the things necessary for the modern life of the welfare state, resembling the “modern infrastructural ideal” (Graham and Marvin 2001). According to Thomassen (1997), the ideological and political change came around 1970, when planning ambitions turned from changing society to correcting society. During the following decade, Norway experienced a deregulation of the housing and loan market, and the local municipalities’ role as suppliers of building lots weakened, while the state housing bank pulled out of house building for the “masses.” In the wake of this, private actors would take the risks in house building (Barlindhaug 2005), making planning proposals, and supplying basic infrastructure. After the market turn of urban and suburban development, the roles of public authorities increasingly have been focused on providing guidelines and regulations to restrict external effects of privatization (e.g., social exclusion), densification policy and aesthetic control, land use control to restrict and contain urban sprawl, infrastructure development (but also here privatization has been going on), and provision for participation and democratic input. Low-rise but dense row house estates gained status in the late modernist phase after the critique of the high-rise estates in the late 1960s, and while the welfare-state ideology still framed the planning discourse and practice (see Hansen and Guttu 2000). The row house estates began as an alternative to the high-rise estates and “drabantbyer,” and in many cases in combination with them, their services, land characteristics,

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and infrastructure. However, they were further developed – and presented a powerful argument in their own favour – when the critique of high-rise developments peaked. Skjettenbyen is the most prominent exemplar of this discourse (see Røe 2015). Later, the goals of social engineering and participatory design became less ambitious, and the projects became smaller and more varied in form and architecture, of which Giskehagen is an example. The row house estate remained an important part of the suburban landscape that lately has gained status because of sustainability issues and rising housing prices, making it difficult for young families to afford single-family homes (e.g., in the surroundings of Bleikeråsen as well as apartments in the central city). The Suburban Row House Discourse and Its Scientific Foundation As mentioned, the large-scale high-rise estates built as part of a strategy to meet the post-war housing shortage and as part of a welfare-state engagement in housing were heavily criticized for their architectural form and negative social consequences (Hall 2002; Lorange and Myhre 1991). In Oslo, especially, the estates built in the 1960s and early 1970s, and dominated by high-rise prefabricated housing, were considered not suitable as environments for families with children. This criticism halted the further construction of these high-rise housing estates (­Brattbakk and Hansen 2004). Because of this and the emerging political counter-movements of the late 1960s (Ley 2003), architects and planners were looking for new ways to organize suburban housing. Some of the alternatives were anarchistic and experimental, while others were part of the welfare state apparatus and planning system, which aimed at producing small-scale building structures with flexible solutions through participatory planning processes and still meeting the social goals of the national housing policy. In Denmark the environmental psychologist Ingrid Gehl (1971) had written an influential book based on an analysis of different types of housing areas and dwellings. The study was intended to provide a better basis for the planning and evaluation of living environments by giving an account of important psychological needs that should be satisfied, to contribute to an intensified discussion of living environments, and to give a survey and evaluation of knowledge with regard to attitudes and behaviour in living environments (Gehl 1971, 166). In addition to physiological needs and safety needs, Gehl pointed out, the following psychological needs should be satisfied in living environments: contact

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(to look at, listen to, speak with, and do something together with other people); privacy (to withdraw from other people and external stimulation); experience (to see, hear, and experience); activity (to be active, to create and accomplish something); play (regarding motor activity and sensory perception); structure (to be capable of orientation and to place objects in the surrounding in relation to oneself); identification (to identify oneself with something in one’s environment and project oneself into it); and aesthetics (to receive stimuli that are considered beautiful by the recipient). These needs were to be considered in relation to four components of the environment: dimensions (such as height, length, and width); arrangement (such as benches, trees, and play facilities); location in relation to other objects (for instance dwellings in relation to play areas); and sensory stimuli from the environment (Gehl 1971, 167–8). This “scientific way” of treating the social life of housing areas inspired Danish architects, who created a housing area design termed “tæt-lav,” or dense and low. Developed in the late 1960s, this concept denoted a design that could include different types of housing and, because of increased density, lower the cost of infrastructure and service provision. These housing areas differed from British garden cities (developed by Ebenezer Howard) because of their higher densities, and from the German “siedlungen” (the German functional equivalent to the British garden city) because of their supposed lack of blocks of flats (Guttu 2003, 279). The ideal was the Danish small town or village, with individually built houses. All dwellings should have private outdoor areas on the ground level and have urban qualities such as closeness, contact, common facilities, and so on. But there were some problems related to such a dense and town-like building structure, among them the need for access to transportation and parking, insight (i.e., lack of privacy), noise, and danger of fire (SBI 1977). However, this ideal of a small town or village development, consisting of individually constructed homes, was modified. The advantages of industrial housing production were considered to increase the physical standard of the dwellings, within reasonable prices, and thus the “tæt-lav” design principles were adjusted accordingly. But the dwellings and their housing areas should be built so as to give the “user” freedom to choose between the secure privacy of the dwelling and the societal community, as Gehl (1971) found important. Besides, the “user” should be given the possibility to shape her/his own environment, and the urban community should be able to shape the physical context for

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living (SBI 1971). According to Guttu, most people (probably mainly architects and planners) would regard both “tæt” (dense) and “lav” (low-rise) as positive attributes for a housing area. “Density” guaranteed a reasonable use of resources, and “low rise” buildings promised good housing qualities and a human scale (Guttu 2003, 279). The developing “tæt-lav” discourse informed architects and planners, influenced their education, and also framed the design and building of row house areas in Norway. In addition to its social and psychological advantages, the dense and low row house design was favoured by many architects because it combined structuralism with variation, collective solutions with individualism, and community with privacy. It also provided affordable housing for families with young children. In sum, these aspects gave the row house area a welfare state aura that was cherished within the planning discourse of the early 1970s. Recently these row house areas have gained social status both among young people seeking affordable housing in the city region and among those who do not wish to live in detached housing. And, as previously mentioned, this housing design is perceived as more sustainable because of having higher densities and, in many cases, being more transit oriented. The Investigation of Three Row House Areas I have chosen to investigate three row house areas (see figure 5.2), all of which were built in the wake of the “tæt-lav” movement and its discursive implications. Skjettenbyen (finished in 1973), is a large project (1,050 units, organized as a cooperative with the inhabitants as shareholders) that is clearly part of the “tæt-lav” movement and was viewed as experimental because of its modernist cubes and its flexibility, which allowed for the addition of new cubes, inspired by structuralism, functionalist zoning, and traffic separation. The project was the result of an architectural competition won by a team headed by a Danish architect. This was the first time in Norway that industrialized building had been combined with user participation in such a large project (Nilsen 2006). Bleikeråsen (finished in 1976) is a smaller project (316 units) that was also clearly influenced by the discourse of architectural modernism but in a less marked form. This project did not use the flexible building structures typical of Skjettenbyen but has approximately ten different housing designs or layouts.

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Figure 5.2.  The three row house exemplars: (a) Skjettenbyen, photo courtesy of Sindre Lundvold/Inviso; (b) Bleikeråsen, photo courtesy of Arne Schram/ Inviso, and; (c) Giskehagen, photo courtesy of Niels Torp Architects.

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Figure 5.2.  (Continued)

Giskehagen (finished in 1983) is a small project (53 units) that was also influenced by the row house planning discourse, because of its “tæt-lav” design, and traffic separation. But it is also an answer to the critique of large-scale projects with few contextual adjustments. This project is located within a wealthy area of large villas and has a playful architectural design (inspired by national symbols), in contrast to the modernist homogeneity of Skjettenbyen. The project has been featured in the architectural press and has won architectural prizes. In general, the architects of such projects envisage them through drawings and formal descriptions, with few words concerning their social context or ambitions. However, because Skjettenbyen was considered ground-breaking, and because of its size, the project has been described in several articles and books, even though very little empirical research has been done on it. Bleikeråsen does not stand out as exceptional and has not been described as much. On the other hand, Giskehagen is mentioned in several texts as outstanding with respect to its architectural design but without the social goals that influenced Skjettenbyen or the analytical feel of the “tæt-lav” movement.

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The documents of importance to this study are architects’ and planners’ descriptions of the projects, in reports and handbooks, and of how they were to be organized, spatially and socially. Then there are articles in journals of architecture and planning. Finally, there are articles, books, and research reports mentioning the housing projects. However, as narratives of use stand largely outside architectural concerns (Leach 2005), to my knowledge there have been no empirical investigations focusing on the residents in these three areas prior to the study presented here.Figure 5.2 a, b and c hereSuch documents and publications, if they are to be found, may provide important insights into the “thinking about” a housing project, the ideology it was based on, and the discourse surrounding it. In this study, reports and guidelines made by architects and researchers belonging to the influential “tæt-lav” movement are part of the data. This movement was especially important for the design of Skjettenbyen, because the Danish architect who won the competition was clearly influenced by this discursive turn. But it also influenced young Norwegian architects designing row house estates as well as newly educated (in the 1970s) architects in general. The Bleikeråsen design is clearly framed by this discourse. Because the aim was to reveal not just how the row house estates were produced through the planning discourse of the 1970s but also how these estates were constructed as lived space, interviews were conducted with residents of these projects. Some of those interviewed are so-called pioneer residents, who moved in when the area was built. Others moved in much later, and others again have moved out, or are planning to do so. The interviews were done by research assistants between 2007 and 2009, mainly “on site,” in the respondents’ dwellings. Place Construction through Planning and the Life World Meaning of Place These suburban row house estates were constructed through the discourse within planning and architecture where the important elements were the texts providing a professional foundation for the row house concept; the discursive practices among architects and planners; and the descriptions, reviews, and debates surrounding the projects. Practices such as architecture and planning are discursive (formed through talking and writing), and in addition are discursively represented (being spoken and written about), as is pointed out by Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999, 37).

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Second, these places have also been constructed through the lived practices and experiences of their inhabitants, who interpret the dwellings and the area layout differently depending on their social and cultural background and context. The ways in which the row house estates are represented within the architectural profession or its texts are rarely known or part of everyday life among the estates’ inhabitants, unless there is a confrontation publicized in the media (e.g., between architects critiquing the estate and people who identify with it), or if the residents’ cultural capital (e.g., education) is attuned to the architectural discourse. The worlds of professional discourse and everyday discursive practices may be far apart, and this is arguably particularly difficult for architects constructing places for living (house) and life world (home). Skjettenbyen was clearly a significant project within the architectural discipline and its discourse, and the architects who designed the project explained how thoughtful the layout was. It was described as “socially good” because of its low-cost, low-rise apartments and its diverse population, which was effectively provided with schools, kindergartens, green areas, parking spaces, and shops (Lund 1973, 186). It was based on a hierarchical road system, partly inspired by the famous Radburn plan. Roads enter from two sides and run through the housing area, with plenty of parking spaces. But the houses themselves are designed to be accessible by foot, and are laid out to allow people to establish contact across the pedestrian footpaths (Lund 1973, 187). As part of the implementation of the project, a handbook was written for the residents (see Dobloug et al. 1972). This may be seen as an expression of a “will to control” not only the detailed planning of Skjettenbyen but also how its residents were to inhabit and modify the houses and their surroundings. The handbook not only presented the project, the plan, and the technical specifications but gave the inhabitants guidelines for how the dwellings could be altered (in terms of refurnishing, moving of both interior and exterior walls, etc.), how private gardens should be developed (with detailed descriptions of plant types, etc.), and how the development, maintenance, and use of outdoor areas should be organized (including the role of the caretaker and the “service office”). The intention and content of this handbook may be interpreted as a product of both the modernist planning discourse and the participatory and “bottom up” progressive movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The buildings were constructed to be “flexible,” giving the inhabitants the option of changing their dwelling

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environment, adding “cubes” measuring three metres by three metres; at the same time, the architects suggested in detail how this should be done in practice. Besides, as stated in a report (probably printed in 1971) made by a “committee for flexible dwellings,” the objectives were to make it possible to change the dwellings when children grew into teenagers, and when the children moved out, to ensure privacy, and as a result of this, to develop a “natural” mix of generations within the housing area. The Bleikeråsen project fits into the same discourse without being a featured project in the architectural field in the same way as Skjettenbyen. However, one of main architects involved in designing Skjettenbyen was the main architect in the Bleikeråsen project. He also published texts on and participated in the construction and refining of the row house discourse internationally, in an article titled “Adaptable Row House Housing in Norway” (Hultberg 1974), which was published in Architectural Design. He was also one of the authors of the handbook for Skjettenbyen (Dobloug et al. 1972), and in 1979 published the article “Skjettenbyen Revisited” (Hultberg 1979). Giskehagen has the typical row house features of traffic separation and a dense but low-rise building structure. However, it is contrasted with Skjettenbyen and Bleikeråsen because of its size and design. It also stands out as something different, given its location within a wealthy neighbourhood of large single-family houses, and because of its organic sense of place. The Giskehagen project is also part of a (postmodern) reaction against large-scale projects with a high number of dwellings representative of the era of mass production. The row houses have a special layout, with three floors, a spatially effective design, and large windows that admit plenty of light into the homes. The project has received several prizes for high-quality architecture – for example, in 1984 (“Sundts premie for god arkitektur”) and 1988 (“Hauens fond”). Giskehagen is featured in several architectural design magazines. A well-known Norwegian architect also made this housing area an example on national television. On maps, Giskehagen is pinpointed as a place of cultural significance. Real-estate ads and published articles gave Giskehage a high profile, placing it within the architectural discourse as an exceptional example of architectural form. The question is if the ideological legacy, the row house discourse, and representations (through texts and pictures) within the field of architecture and planning do resonate with the residents’ stories, constructions of meaning, and attachment to place. In short, does the architectural

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legacy mean anything to today’s residents when they buy, move into, and inhabit these estates? And how are these places made “liveable” within the frames of the architectural projects? Because Skjettebyen was considered ground breaking and experimental, both as a planning process and in architectural form and layout, young architects wanted to live there. As one of them stated, “This was an exciting and radical project, and young architects liked it.” In contrast to observers who state that architects wouldn’t live in the houses they designed for ordinary people (Hall 2002), this architect meant that “Architects should live in the type of houses they design.” The attraction of the architecture can also be found among the inhabitants of Giskehagen: We thought these houses were so fine, so when they appeared in Byggekunst ’84 [an architectural review] … we looked at the plan, the setting … Another resident stated that “Giskehagen is known as a small pearl.” While Giskehagen was appealing because of its attractive architectural design and layout, the architect who moved into Skjettebyen also did it for political reasons, as a radical statement, a symbol of the “new times,” and because of a desire to live in accordance with ideology. However, the match between meaning constructed by architects and planners and the identification found among residents relies on their cultural capital (understanding of the architectural discourse) and taste (for its style), and is not expected to be found among all occupants. In Skjettenbyen, the opposite was expressed: I haven’t chosen this because of the architecture. I don’t believe anybody living here has done that.

In the interviews at Skjettenbyen, a strong critique of the architecture was also revealed, as if people living there could not see the “structural beauty” and social goals expressed by contemporary architects: I cannot imagine what those people [the architects who designed Skjettenbyen] were thinking. It’s hasn’t got a pretty exterior at all. It looks like bird cages.

Differences in how the design of Skjettenbyen was viewed also appeared in discussions concerning the rebuilding of and extensions to the existing houses; for example, not all residents approved of the strict “rules” concerning the roofs of dwellings and garages, which all

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must be flat to conform to the architectural style of the project. Even if Skjettenbyen was supposed to be a response to the critique of largescale and modernist housing estates, people reacted negatively to the modernist design principles here as well. However, the general layout of the row house areas is cherished by residents in all three places. The mixture of private, semi-private, and public spaces; the abundant green areas and playgrounds; and the dense development allowing for formal and informal social gatherings are features that families with small children see as positive. One of the respondents living in the Bleikeråsen estate listed positive activities for children in the area: Here you have a soccer field, a seesaw, a boat to play in, a large lawn, where the kids can play safely […] if it hadn’t been for the kids, we probably wouldn’t have moved here.

For those without children, such estates are not likely to be as attractive. And when children get older, many families move out of the estate, looking for a nearby detached or semi-detached house, preferably within the same school catchment area, or within close distance, making it easier to maintain social relations. Social networking and social gatherings are an expected part of the row house discourse, but also something that people moving in expect to happen. However, when the settling phase of a newly built area (with lots of newcomers) is over, and many people move on, the form and intensity of social relations may change, and the sociability of row house areas may experience a decline: We don’t use the common spaces that much now [...] there is nobody setting up long tables, lighting the barbeque, right.

Architectural design and dwelling size, as well as location within the urban region, also have an influence on who moves into the estates, their demographic composition, and the social and socio-economic status of the inhabitants. Issues concerning demography and social composition are prevalent in the interviews, where informants implicitly raise questions about social class and cultural capital, as well as about social homogeneity and the presence of antagonism between groups. This is not only a question of what life is like in these row house estates in reality but also of which representations dominate and, in the worst

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case, stigmatize the estate. It is a paradox that Skjettenbyen, even if it was designed as an alternative to the problem-ridden high-rise estates, initially experienced some of the same social problems. This is revealed in the ways that informants who lived there during its early years described the degree of social unrest and negative representations circulating among people living in this part of Greater Oslo. One informant didn’t want to move there in the first place: I was determined to never move to Skjetten. […] This was because of the reputation Skjetten had then, when I grew up. There were only gangs here.

Others made the connection between social problems such as drug abuse and social housing, which normally has a share of dwellings in both high-rise estates and some row house areas: There were many council flats, and quite a lot of drugs. It was a bit scary. Skjetten was scary.

As Savage, Bagnall, and Longhurst (2005) found in their study of housing areas in Greater Manchester, social composition and cultural practices and lifestyles, or the representations of such, are increasingly important when people consider moving into or out of a housing area. Physical amenities, layout, and design are of course important, in addition to housing price and the question of whether buying a house is an economically sound investment. However, according to Savage, Bagnall, and Longhurst (2005), people who have a greater range of housing areas to choose among, especially those in the middle and upper classes, make decisions based on location and what kind of place they want to be attached to. Houses and housing areas are also increasingly sold as lifestyle products. This process of elective belonging especially fits the people we interviewed in Giskehagen, which is an infill project located within a wealthy inner suburb of Oslo. One of the informants downplayed the material status of the area compared to its surroundings, while the level of institutionalized cultural capital (education) is high: This is a place which outwardly does not seem impressive, but which has a high level of education.

Giskehagen is clearly not a poor area, and the housing prices are high relative to dwelling size, but it differs from the many large villas

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in the district. Some informants emphasized that Giskehagen stands out, or is very different, from its surroundings both socially and materially: “This is an enclave within an area with another social profile,” and “it is more relaxed … not such a glam factor.” This “separatism” is also evident in social amenities and activities in Giskehagen, which are expected to increase social cohesion, as in a village: these include local gatherings and events, a local “newspaper,” reading circles, and a gym. These institutionalized activities, reflecting the cultural capital of the area, may create a feeling of belonging, based on common practices, cultural commonalities, and a feeling of sameness, in contrast to the described antagonism in Skjettenbyen, at least in its early years, between groups with different social status and differing practices. One could also argue that the feeling of belonging and sameness stems from the limited size of the project, compared to the immense estate of Skjettenbyen. This is how an informant living in Giskehagen expressed this feeling of sameness and (elective) belonging: inside here, we get along with the people who live here, they are our type [of people].

Similar stories are found among the informants living in Bleikeråsen, representing the community spirit of the row house area, especially in its early years. Now a change resembling gentrification has altered the demographics of the row house estate over the years. The people living there from the start are described as “ordinary people, closer to the working class …” The shift in social composition is described in relation to cultural capital or education: The new generation of in-movers are in general well-educated, architects, psychologists, directors, economists, project leaders …

In an anthropological investigation of neighbourhoods and social groups in Oslo, Andersen (2014) found that individuals’ desire for “sameness” in large part explains the (re)production of socio-spatial separations, which is manifested in what we study as segregation. This study of three row house estates demonstrates how architecture and planning may and may not have a role in creating feelings of sameness and belonging or of fear and antagonism. When comparing the three row house areas, we see some important differences with regard to their ideological foundation and position

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within the architectural and planning discourse. Skjettenbyen is framed explicitly as part of the “dense and low” discourse, and may, as a planning project, be considered as shaped in accordance with “theory.” The scientific way of dealing with the social aspects of a housing area is evident – especially in the handbook and the way the inhabitants are given the option of adding structures and modifying their homes in accordance with changes in life phase, family structures, and preferences but also in the discussions of the projects in articles and books on architecture and planning. Skjettenbyen may be seen as a forceful representation of the “turn” to low-rise, bottom-up housing projects, as well as a manifestation of new practice-structure relations (Pred 1981). It was a turn from the critiqued monumentality of the high-rise satellite town towards a presumably human-scale, friendly, and micro-oriented interactional space. It was a turn from top-down planning and rigid master plans towards user participation and flexible solutions, so that housing areas could adjust to social and cultural changes and diversity among the inhabitants. However, it prolonged the mass production of housing and housing elements introduced in the construction of the satellite towns. The village ideal was therefore transformed into a homogeneous small town of identical dwellings, lacking variety (despite the flexibility of structuralism) in design and form. Combined with strict aesthetic control and discourse (represented by the handbook and rules for home owners), this signalled a structuration not only of the physical design but also of practices. The Bleikeråsen estate is framed by the same discursive turn, and is clearly constituted as part of the same discourse, not only through its texts and architectural practices but also because one of the main architects in the Skjettenbyen project headed the project at Bleikeråsen. However, the architecture in Bleikeråsen is more varied, and the strict modernist design in Skjettenbyen is left behind, both of which seem to cause less antagonism regarding taste in architecture. If Skjettenbyen resembles the ambition of Ebenezer Howard’s garden city, Bleikeråsen resembles the reduced ambitions and transformation of its ideal in the same way as Hampstead Garden Suburb did. As the case was for the garden suburb (Hall 2002), Bleikeråsen represents a large number of row house estates, while Skjettebyen may be considered a discursively dense and thoroughly planned exception. Giskehagen differs from the two other projects in being constituted through a “reformed” row house discourse. The dense and low frame of reference is kept, but the large-scale and prefabricated material

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structures are left behind, and the expectations for creating social life and practices, resembling social engineering, are reduced. The project signifies both a sense of progressiveness and a post-modern playfulness in architectural form. This fits well with the highly educated informants living in this estate, who wished to be viewed as different from the residents in the surrounding suburban, upper-middle class area dominated by large and older villas that signified conservatism and nostalgia. The respondents explained that this provided them with a feeling of being different but at the same time a feeling of sameness and belonging towards the dwellers in Giskehagen. The disconnects among the ideology, representations, and practices of inhabitants are clearly an issue for the residents interviewed in Skjettenbyen. The residents interviewed expressed distaste and did not “understand” the architecture and what it signifies. Thereby a distance was created between ideas and intentions on the one hand and the social practices and understandings of inhabitants on the other. This may be because of the great ambitions of the dense and low movement, the size of the project, and the background of people moving in. Such disconnects – which were less marked among the informants in Bleikeråsen, and even less marked in Giskehagen – are of importance for larger projects with explicit social goals – for example, regarding sustainable practices and social cohesion. But they also feed into the discussion of how the suburban landscape in general is developing. Conclusions In Norway, and to some extent the other Nordic countries, research on post-war suburbs has been sparse. While British, American, and Australian suburbs and suburban landscapes have been scrutinized by social scientists for decades, there has been a lack of explicit suburban research in Norway (and the other Nordic countries), with the exception of the investigations into high-rise satellite towns and so-called problem estates. Because of this, the discourse and politics regarding suburbs and suburbia have been insufficient in order to develop governance procedures and policies for suburbs and for the urban region as a whole (Røe 2009). This lack of analysis highlights the need for comparisons and comparative research to explain differences between suburban (ideal) types and between countries and regions with differing urban and suburban trajectories and policies, a need that the present book is designed to address.

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In this chapter I have focused on suburban place making that is informed by a predominantly Nordic discourse on row house design. The aim has been to investigate the ideological and theoretical foundations of this approach and “ideal type” – how they have been transformed into specific projects, and how they have framed architectural and planning practices. In addition I have tried to relate these ideas, physical forms, representations, and demonstrated relations between practices and structures to the experience and understanding of some of the inhabitants of three row house areas, built in different ways and at different times, but all framed by the overall row house ideal type. Tracing its history is important as a way of understanding why it was conceived and how it has been interpreted. According to Kerns (2009), the attempt to understand why houses are designed and built in a particular way reveals much about normative social values. However, to feed into the ongoing international suburban research, this understanding must be related to the general discourse and issues of governance. This is arguably of importance not only because the row house concept provides us with a medium-density form that may combine sustainability policies with the desire for suburban living but also because it seems to represent a middle ground spatially as well as socially that may mediate between the discredited places of sprawling low-density suburbia and concentrated high-rise estates. It is also important, as Kelly (2009) points out, to challenge the prevalent use of the positive qualities of the city as standards against which to evaluate the suburbs. The suburbs need to be evaluated as suburbs within an urban system of land and infrastructure, as livable places that are also part of a just city, and as hubs of signs and symbols within a cultural context. The goal should be to make not generalizations but useful categories and comparisons – to elicit knowledge useful for further suburban research and governance as a way of dealing with the apparent social and environmental problems of the suburbs. At the same time, suburbs should not be studied apart from cities. Keil (2013) states the importance of re-evaluating suburbanization and suburbs as an important part of the materiality of the urban. Jones (2009) has formulated an agenda for social research on urban architecture that may fit well with the ambition to understand the implications of suburban architecture, and that may be of use when comparing the suburban landscapes of old and new Europe. He encourages researchers to explain how cultural forms such as the values attached to architecture become laden with political-economic meaning. He also

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highlights the role of architecture in providing material symbols that in my view can be coupled with political ideologies (like the Nordic welfare model). In addition, research on urban design has increasingly focused on how architecture is designed and is given meaning through practices that involve both production and living/inhabiting/using (see, for example, Lees 2001). In the same way that the satellite towns were a materialized expression of the will of the social democrats to change society and a symbol of the housing policies of the emerging post-war welfare state, the row house ideal type may be seen as a material symbol of the political reformulation and structural transformation of housing policies after the first wave of critique. Skjettenbyen epitomized this attempt to create a middle ground, with less monumentality and without the brutal aesthetics of a discredited modernism. Its architects struggled to give meaning (focusing on its small scale, participatory practices, and everyday life) to the new concept and provide it with representations (like the “village” and “the handbook”). The project of Bleikeråsen is also laden with the politics and meanings of progressive architects and planners in the wake of the “student revolution” of 1968. However, because it is more distant from the discursively saturated Skjettenbyen project and the dense and low movement initiated by Danish architects, it became a moderate but, among its inhabitants, popular version. The later Giskehagen project may figure in the row house discourse as an expression of a wish to revitalize the row house typology, focusing on architectural variation in a small-scale project resembling the “village” (with common activities, local organizations, and supposedly close-knit relations). The differences in how these projects are understood and the extent to which inhabitants identify with their ideas are based not only on the projects themselves and their materiality and aesthetics but also on the cultural capital of those living there. In order to understand the suburban landscape and find new pathways to redesign and transform suburbs and the city as a whole, we need to scrutinize the dialectics between ideas, spatiality, practices, and meaning. The ideological foundations and discourse of certain suburban forms and their social reception may serve to explain the differences between cities, countries, and regions, as in the case of suburbanization “within” the post-war Nordic welfare-state regime. The understanding of this trilogy may feed into the process of developing new suburbanisms that could contribute to a more just and sustainable city.

Ideology, Planning, and Meaning in Suburbia  107 REFERENCES Andersen, B. 2014. Westbound and eastbound. Managing sameness and the making of separations in Oslo. Ph.D. diss. Oslo: Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo. Andersen, B., and Røe, P.G. 2016. The social context and politics of large scale urban architecture: Investigating the design of Barcode, Oslo. European Urban and Regional Studies. (April). DOI: 10.1177/0969776416643751. Barlindhaug, R. 2005. Byutviklingsprogrammet og storbyens boligmarked (The urban research program and the housing market of cities). In Storbyens boligmarked – drivkrefter, rammebetuingelser og handlingsvalg (The housing market of the city – driving forces, conditions and choices of action), ed. R. Barlindhaug, 11–32. Oslo: Spartacus forlag. Baumgartner, M.P. 1988. The moral order of a suburb. New York: Oxford University Press. Beauregard, R. 2006. When America became suburban. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bern, A. 2012. Drabantbyen i norsk film (The satellite town in the Norwegian movie). Masteroppgave ved Institutt for sosiologi og samfunnsgeografi. Oslo: Universitetet I Oslo. Brattbakk, I., and T. Hansen. 2004. Post-war large housing estates in Norway – Well-kept residential areas still stigmatised? Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 19 (3):311–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10901-004-0697-9. Chouliaraki, L., and Fairclough, N. 1999. Discourse in late modernity. Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dobloug, M., G. Eiesland, E. Hultberg, and U.D. Grue. 1972. Håndbok. 2 etg rekkehus og hage. Til og for folk i Skjettenbyen (Handbook. Two-storey row houses and gardens. To and for people in Skjettenbyen). Oslo: I/S Skjettenprosjektering. Faulconbridge, J.R. 2009. The regulation of design in global architecture firms: Embedding and emplacing buildings. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 46 (12):2537–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098009344227. Frampton, K. 1992. Modern architecture. A critical history. London: Thames and Hudson. Gehl, I. 1971. Bo-miljø (Dwelling environment). SBI-rapport 71. Copenhagen: Statens byggeforskningsinstitut. Graham, S., and S. Marvin. 2001. Splintering urbanism. Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203452202.

108  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Guttu, J. 2003. Den gode boligen.Fagfolks oppfatning av bokvalitet gjennom 50 år (The good dwelling. Professional views on dwelling quality during 50 years). Avhandling 11 (PhD thesis). Oslo: Oslo School of Architecture. Hall, P. 2002. Cities of tomorrow. Oxford: Blackwell. Hansen, T., and J. Guttu. 2000. Oslo kommunes boligpolitikk 1960–1989. Fra storskalabygging til frislepp (The housing policy of the municipality of Oslo 1960–1989. From large-scale building to release). Oslo: Samarbeidsrapport NIBR/NBI. Harris, R., and P.J. Larkham. 1999. Suburban foundation, form and function. In Changing suburbs – foundation, form and function, ed. R. Harris and P.J. Larkham, 1–31. London: E and FN Spon. Hayden, D. 2003. Building suburbia: Green fields and urban growth, 1820–2000. New York: Vintage. Hultberg, E. 1974. Adaptable row house housing in Norway. Architectural Design, 44 (10): 655–9. Hultberg, E. 1979. Skjetten revisited. Byggekunst (6): 404–5. Jones, P. 2009. Putting architecture in its social place: A cultural political economy of architecture. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 46 (12):2519–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098009344230. Keil, R. 2013. Welcome to the suburban revolution. In Suburban constellations, ed. R. Keil, 6–15. Berlin: Jovis verlag GmbH. Kelly, B. 2009. Introduction. In Redefining suburban studies: Searching for new paradigms, ed. D. Rubey, 1–5. Hempstead, NY: The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. http://dx.doi.org/10.3318/ BIOE.2009.109.3.127. Kerns, J. 2009. (Re)Constructing working-class motherhood in the suburban public housing project of Greenbelt, Maryland, 1935–1954. In Redefining suburban studies: Searching for new paradigms, ed. D. Rubey, 133–46. Hempstead, NY: The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. Knox, P. 2008. Metroburbia, USA. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Leach, N. 2005. Belonging: Towards a theory of identification with space. In Habitus: A sense of place, ed. J. Hillier and E. Rooksby, 297–311. Aldershot: Ashgate. Lees, L. 2001. Towards a critical geography of architecture: The case of an ersatz colosseum. Ecumene 8 (1):51–86. http://dx.doi. org/10.1191/096746001701556904. Ley, D. 2003. Forgetting postmodernism? Recuperating a social history of local knowledge. Progress in Human Geography 27 (5):537–60. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1191/0309132503ph448oa.

Ideology, Planning, and Meaning in Suburbia  109 Lorange, E., and E. Myhre. 1991. Urban planning in Norway. In Planning and urban growth in the Nordic countries, ed. T. Hall, 116–66. London: E and FN Spon. Lund, N. 1973. Skjettenbyen. Arkitekten 75 (10/11):185–95. Nelson, A.C., and T.W. Sánchez. 1997. Exurban and suburban households: A departure from traditional location theory? Journal of Housing Research 8 (2):249–76. Nilsen, K.A. 2006. Skjettenbyen. Bo 3 (September). Phelps, N.A., N. Parsons, D. Ballas, and A. Dowling, eds. 2006. Postsuburban Europe: Planning and politics at the margins of Europe’s capital cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Pred, A. 1981. Social reproduction and the time-geography of everyday life. Geografiska Annaler 63B (1):5–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/490994. Røe, P.G. 2009. Forstaden som sted (The suburb as place). In Mennesker og steder i samspill (People and places in relation), ed. N.G. Berg, S. Jørgensen, A. Karlsen, and A. Aase, 43–60. Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag. Røe, P.G. 2012. Green suburbanisms: Differentiating the greenness of suburbs. In Green Oslo. Visions, planning and discourse, ed. M. Luccarelli and P.G. Røe, 159–76. Farnham: Ashgate. Røe, P.G. 2014. Analysing place and place-making: Urbanization in suburban Oslo. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 38(2):498–515. Røe, P.G. 2015. The construction of a suburb: Ideology, architecture and everyday culture in Skjettenbyen. Built Environment 41 (4):538–-49. Savage, M., G. Bagnall, and B. Longhurst. 2005. Globalisation and belonging. London: Sage. SBI. 1971. Tæt lav – en boligform. Eksempelsamling (Dense-low – a type of dwelling. Collection of examples). SBI-rapport 75. Copenhagen: Statens byggeforskningsinstitut. SBI. 1977. Parcelhuset som tæt-lav (The single family dwelling as dense-low). SBI- Byplanlægning 32. Hørsholm: Statens byggeforskningsinstitut. Sheller, M., and Urry, J. 2000. The city and the car. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 24 (4):737–57. Silverstone, R. 1999. Introduction. In Visions of suburbia, ed. R. Silverstone, 1–25. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14614449922225528. Thomassen, Ø. 1997. Herlige tider. Norsk fysisk planlegging ca. 1930– 1965 (Glorious days. Norwegian physical planning circa 1930–1965). Doktoravhandling (PhD thesis). Rapport nr. 31. Trondheim: Senter for teknologi og samfunn.

6 The Changing Face of Athens: Development Pressures in the Maroussi and Kifissia Suburbs ioanni s c h orian op oul os , a l e x a n d ro s k arv oun is , dimit ris b al l a s , a n d n ic h olas a. p h e l p s Introduction In visiting a Greek city, one finds that first impressions challenge preformed expectations. Well-known places with historically weighty names such as Athens, Piraeus, Argos, or Corinth, to name but a few, come across as primarily modern and relatively featureless. The farther away one moves from the historical centres, the stronger these images get. Greek suburbs appear as a collage of haphazardly assembled buildings, erected in areas where street layouts and land uses show little evidence of planning. Yet suburban neighbourhoods and public spaces are particularly lively, possessing a social buzz that compensates, for some, for their otherwise unappealing traits. In this chapter we look at the Greek suburbs, discussing the processes that enabled and facilitated their spontaneous and informal make-up. We focus on Athens, the main carrier of urban growth in Greece. In this setting, we explore the development of two seminal and adjacent municipalities of the Athenian metropolis, namely Maroussi and Kifissia. Since the post-war era, both municipalities have been gradually transformed from quiet backwaters into suburbs and, more recently, into fragments of the all-encompassing Athenian conurbation, losing bit by bit their distinguishing qualities and traits. It is this transformation that we portray, underscoring the role of agency in urban space-making in light of the absence of a regulatory planning framework guiding the growth of cities. The chapter is organized as follows. To start with we comment on the particularities of Greek urbanization, framing the discussion thematically and chronologically. In this section, emphasis is placed on “land,” and on the socio-political context that underlined and enabled

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Figure 6.1.  Map of Athens region.

the popular colonization of peri-urban areas. The path-dependent traits of urban growth management, in turn, have mitigated recent planning attempts aimed at guiding urban expansion. The process and the consequences of an urban expansion mode based on unhindered and unregulated private initiative are then looked at in detail in the two case study municipalities of Maroussi and Kifissia (see figure 6.1). Governance, Land, and Infrastructure Greek cities are a seminal part of the Mediterranean urbanization thesis. While the distinctiveness of urban trajectories in Spain, Portugal, and

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Greece has been recognized, functional and morphological similarities differentiate the mode of urban evolution in southern Europe from the ideal-typical northern-European urbanization example (Leontidou 1994). Corresponding features include the comparatively belated occurrence of southern-European urbanization, the particularity of urban pull factors, and the unplanned nature of urban expansion (Chorianopoulos 2002; Munoz 2003). Centring on Greece, urban in-migration took place primarily in the post-war period. During that time, Greek cities exhibited annual population increases of more than 3 per cent on average, while the urban population increased from 37.3 per cent of the total in 1950 to 55.3 per cent in 1975 (CEC 1992; UN 2007). This considerable urbanization wave was part of a wider transformative process, characterized by the shifting economic orientation from a prevailing agrarian sector towards urban-industrial economies. However, by contrast with the northern-European urbanization paradigm (Hall and Hay 1980; Van der Berg et al. 1982), industrialization was not the key reason driving urban concentration (Leontidou 1990). When the explosion of urban population and employment occurred in post-war Greece, the workers engaged in service activities exceeded those in industry (World Bank 1984, 221). The limited manifestation of internal economies of scale in industrial firms and the few signs of economies of localization affecting the spatial pattern of industrial development point to the weight of urbanization as the major factor in industrialization (Chorianopoulos 2008). Urban economic structures in Greece, therefore, differ substantially from the ideal-typical manifestations of urban industrial restructuring. Accordingly, the deindustrialization and disurbanization trend noted in northern-European cities in the 1970s was not manifested in the Greek urban system (Cheshire 1995). As is shown in figure 6.2, the majority of cities in Greece continued uninterruptedly to exhibit population gains, albeit at lower rates during the last decades (Petrakos, Mardakis, and Caraveli 2000; Turok and Mykhnenko 2007). This trend serves as a critical basis for approaching the study of Greek suburbanization. By itself, however, it does not shed light on the reasons behind the unregulated qualities of urban expansion noted in the country. In accounting for this, the relevant literature draws attention to the authoritarian forms of rule of the post-war era.

Planning, Politics, and Policy Post-war political realities in Greece were particularly fierce. In the period between the Civil War (1945–9) and the military dictatorship

The Changing Face of Athens  113 Figure 6.2.  Urban* growth rates in Greece 1950–2005 (*“Urban areas” are deἀned as population centres with at least 10,000 inhabitants, plus 18 urban agglomerations). 65

60.4

58.8

60 55

52.5

50 45 40

37.3

35

Urban Growth Rates (%)

30

Urban as % of total

25 20 15 10 5

2,4

1,6

0 1950

1970

1.1 1990

0,5 2005

Source: UN 2007, 19, and 2008.

(1967–74), a series of politically unaccountable administrations blurred goal-setting processes, whereas political legitimacy was claimed primarily on the basis of the short-term benefits of rapid economic growth. Urbanization served this goal adequately. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, investment in housing accounted for 40 per cent of the gross total of private investment in the country, while informal economic activities in urban areas were estimated at 25 per cent of GDP at factor cost (Ioakimidis 1984, 42–3). In response, the mode of spatial intervention that was adopted promoted unhindered urban expansion as a shortcut to economic growth. The spatial planning regime of the era reflects this preoccupation, dividing the country’s territory into two distinct zones. The first includes already-built-up urban areas in which development was regulated via a formally approved and territorially bounded plan. The second refers to the remaining territory, in which land uses were not defined. Development in the latter areas – including peri-urban spaces – was generally permitted, allowing for a limited set of restrictions concerning the size of the new structures (Christofilopoulos 2007). A national spatial planning

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framework providing strategic guidelines in accordance with key social or environmental objectives was not endorsed. Instead, successive administrations formulated and implemented a series of five-year development plans, consisting mainly of an attempt to support the growth of the manufacturing sector in particular regions (Papadaskalopoulos and Christofakis 2003). Under this broad rubric, uneven development trends were expected to be tackled through growth-related spillover diffusion (Andrikopoulou and Kafkalas 2004). In the absence of a strategic spatial plan for the physical organization of the country’s territory or of local plans defining land uses in peri-urban areas, cities could only expand in areas unprepared to accommodate any new activities and uses. Counter-arguments calling attention to the long-term costs of unordered urban expansion did exist. Political repression, however, was combined in Greece with a mode of administrative centralization aimed at suppressing opposing political voices, so that participatory processes engaging stakeholders or interest groups in policy-making platforms were virtually absent during this period. In point of fact, even collective negotiations and agreements were effectively non-existent, as tradeunion representation was either restricted or utterly prohibited (1967–74). Authoritarian rule was also reflected locally. Municipal income was collected on behalf of the respective local authorities by the Ministry of Finance, which placed, in return, strict controls on local spending. More characteristically, the national authorities appointed mayors and publicsector officials at the local level, impeding the articulation of local interests (Chlepas 1997). As a result of the regulatory void left deliberately in place by the national authorities, urban growth was shaped by private and informal initiatives. “Housing” stands as a prime example of this.

“Housing” and the Infrastructural Dimension of Suburban Development Intense urbanization made the need for housing acute. The share of housing directly built by the public sector, however, remained at low levels throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, estimated at approximately 1.6 per cent of the total (Gaspar 1984, 227). This, together with the incapacity of the private sector to meet the expanding demand, created an acute shortage of houses. Under these circumstances, a number of controversial policies from the interwar period were sustained throughout the post-war era, paving the way for a construction boom in peri-urban land through the relaxation of planning regulations and controls. Key

The Changing Face of Athens  115

among them was the aforementioned permission to build in areas with undefined land uses, a regulation aiming originally to facilitate refugee resettlement (GGN 1923). Other examples included an interwar act on joint land ownership in condominiums (GGN 1929). This enabled freeholders to exchange their property rights for a negotiable number of flats in a future building to be built on their land. The practice of selling property in exchange for flats, the so-called antiparochi system, proliferated rapidly in the post-war years (Phelps et al. 2006). Negotiations between landowners and developers were unregulated and hence flexible, well suited to the traits of a construction industry dominated by small-scale entrepreneurs. In addition, flats could be sold before their construction, minimizing the entrepreneurial risk of the whole operation (Wassenhoven 1984). Politically, the promotion of owner-occupied dwellings was aimed at controlling pressure from rising wages deriving from the high accommodation costs that resulted from housing shortages. In order to reduce further the cost of land value per apartment, the unofficial parcelling of periurban land into housing plots, while formally prohibited, was tacitly accepted and taxed by the state. As a result, a turn to apartment blocks and owner-occupation has been detected in post-war Greek cities. Not all, however, could afford to participate in the formal housing market. For the lower financial strata of the population, the search for a realistic way out of the housing crisis took the form of self-built unauthorized constructions. The so-called authéreta houses created distinct settlements on the urban outskirts. Regarding illegal housing, however, it has to be noted that this was predominantly a question of unauthorized construction and not of land property rights, which were in most cases legally owned by the settlers (Garcia-Ramon and Hadjimichalis 1987; Leontidou 1994). In this context, tolerance by the respective national and local authorities of unplanned or unauthorized housing provided a temporary solution to the urgent housing requirements of the inmigrants, while it allowed consequent political exploitation of the issue. Such tolerance features in popular discourse. The legal recognition of informal or squatter settlements and their integration into town plans prior to national elections were common in post-war Greece, part of an attempt by the authorities to establish political consent via dependence on governing parties’ planning decisions (Leontidou 1990). The popular “colonization” of the urban hinterland, whether in the form of apartment blocks or unauthorized constructions, was assisted by the provision of technical infrastructure. In areas lacking a land-use

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plan, however, the opening up of new roads reflected ad-hoc planning interventions that decisively shaped the way the city was growing. The resulting enhanced mobility and availability of public transportation lightened concerns about proximity to workplaces, thereby facilitating urban expansion. The provision of other types of energy and of water and telecommunications infrastructure succeeded the establishment of peri-urban communities, shaped by the in-migrants’ settling options and choices. Up until 1985, for example, public utility companies were obliged to make their services available to all houses, including those that were constructed without planning permission (Getimis 1989). The provision of social infrastructure suggests an equally loose and disjointed approach. As was mentioned earlier, public, subsidized, or affordable housing schemes were particularly scarce throughout the post-war era, having minimal influence on the pace and direction of urban growth. Likewise, infrastructure for public health, emergency management, and education was virtually non-existent in peri-urban areas during colonization. Area variations regarding their post-hoc provision reflected the degree of local authority influence on the national political scene, contributing to urban inequalities. The spatial implications of this fragmented and unregulated attitude towards urban growth were soon noted. At the national level, the lack of a strategic spatial planning perspective to guide growth was demonstrated by the concentration of 57 per cent of the country’s urban population in just one city, Athens, by the late 1970s (CEC 1992). Focusing on Athens, spontaneous urbanization driven by self-promoted housing strategies had a strong effect upon the physical and functional features of the urban environment. In central areas, the city is struggling with high densities and insufficient public spaces. On the outskirts, suboptimal land uses and the distortion of cultural and natural topography are evident (Economou, Petrakos, and Psycharis 2007; Leontidou et al. 2007). The re-establishment of democracy in 1974 initiated significant changes in the way spatial processes were apprehended and handled in Greece, marked by the establishment, in 1980, of a Ministry of Spatial Planning and the Environment. The conceptualization of the ensuing urban sprawl as an unsustainable trend occurred some years later, triggering a belated reaction to unfettered development.

Different Governance Modes and Path-Dependent Constraints The decade of the1980s is seen in planning literature as a “transition point,” one in which the state emerged as a key suburban governance

The Changing Face of Athens  117

actor (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012). The new approach to spatial regulation did not involve the launch of a strategic planning framework set at the national level. The continuous growth of cities (Petrakos, Mardakis, and Caraveli 2000) and its accompanying urban environmental degradation rendered intervention in urban agglomerations an urgent priority. The new policy, announced in 1983, focused on the introduction of detailed land-use plans in informally built-up peri-urban settlements (Karidis 2006). Urban expansion, in turn, was to be held back through mapped zones, aptly termed Settlement Control Zones (SCZs), defining the permitted land uses in the urban hinterland (GGN 1983). In addition, in the country’s two major cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, a Master Plan was drafted (in 1985) stating the medium-to-long-term objectives of land-use planning in the respective regions. This move was followed by the establishment of two national government advisory agencies, one in each city, to oversee and direct the actions of their respective local authorities (GGN 1985). The acknowledgment of the necessity of urban intervention marks a turn in Greek spatial planning. The challenges involved in controlling urban expansion, however, were underestimated. Decades of speculative enterprise and popular inventiveness had shaped a pro-growth dynamic capable of contesting change. To start with, land ownership has been strongly associated with the unhampered prospect of future development opportunities, whether entrepreneurial or in the form of self-built accommodation. As a result, when the firstever urban agglomeration limits were presented by the national authorities (in 1983), the move was fiercely opposed. Citizens, interest groups, and local authorities alike acted in concert, calling for a looser framework of urban planning restrictions. Consequently, countrywide projections for 16,000 hectares of peri-urban space to be incorporated into the respective statutory urban plans (in 1983) had increased to approximately 45,000 hectares by 1985, expanding the urban limits accordingly (Getimis 1989, 85). Even so, the respective authorities were ill-equipped to perform their new regulatory duties. Basic land-management tools, such as the national cadastre, or mechanisms that monitor land-use change were absent. More importantly, the particularities of state spatial organization effectively hampered the implementation of urban planning reforms (Phelps, Wood, and Valler 2010). Up until the mid-1990s, the only directly elected tier of local administration in Greece comprised approximately 6,000 municipalities and communes, a number suggesting a high degree of territorial fragmentation. Moreover, fifty-four prefectures and thirteen regions, both levels

118  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

directly accountable to national authorities, completed the picture of this strongly centralized state spatial contour. The limited range of urban planning powers assigned to local authorities and the absence of a higher tier of local political administration coordinating their actions hampered the local articulation and implementation of spatial planning goals. A series of state spatial restructuring attempts have been launched in the last two decades aimed at addressing this deficiency. In the process, communes were abolished and municipalities were amalgamated twice, most recently (in 2010) reaching a total of 325 units. The coordination of municipal actions was originally assumed by the prefectures (in 1994) and more recently, in 2010, by regions, which were transformed into political authorities with a directly elected chair and council (Chorianopoulos 2012). The decades’-long search for a scalar contour capable of facilitating local administration, however, led to a confused division of spatial and urban planning responsibilities among government tiers. It created a regulatory limbo that prolonged the post-war conditions of informal urban dispersal. Nowhere was this trait more apparent than in Athens (Chorianopoulos et al. 2010). It is in this context of unguided urbanization that the growth of the Athenian suburbs of Maroussi and Kifissia will be explored. Our examination starts with Maroussi, a rural area transformed gradually into an economic hub of Athens. Maroussi: The End of a Small City Maroussi appears on the map in the early nineteenth century as a small and tightly knit community, situated eleven kilometres north of the city of Athens. Two separate creeks on its northern and eastern sides outlined its boundaries, creating a distinct sense of place. The relatively flat surface of Maroussi and the fine-grained quality of its soil shaped local activities, which were oriented towards farming and clay artisanship. In the following decades, the area’s socio-economic traits and urban form were by and large retained. Up until the late 1960s, Maroussi had a small-scale centre of shops and stores catering for the daily needs of its residents. For all other purposes, businesses, and services, Maroussi residents had to travel to the Athens city centre. Farther from the town’s shopping centre, a series of low-density neighbourhoods were to be found, consisting of single- and two-storey dwellings. Houses were built on relatively small plots of land (from 150 to 800 square metres) surrounded by gardens. Green spaces, farms, and woodlands completed the picture of

The Changing Face of Athens  119 Figure 6.3. Population growth in Maroussi (1836–2011).

populaon 80000 70000 60000 50000 40000 populaon 30000 20000 10000 0 1836

1920

1928

1940

1943

1951

1961

1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

years

Source: Municipality of Maroussi 2015, 23.

Maroussi’s features, adding to its relaxed atmosphere (Politopoulos 1995; Tsagaratos 2001). From the time Maroussi was established as a municipality (in 1925) up until the late post-war era, the city kept on growing. In the post-war decades, in particular, the population of Maroussi increased twofold, reaching approximately 30,000 people in 1971 (see figure 6.3). Maroussi’s proximity to central Athens, adjacency to prestigious suburban areas such as Kifissia, and relatively low land prices explain its residential appeal. The transformation of the area from a tranquil settlement into a suburb, however, took place without a comprehensive spatial or town plan to define land uses and prepare the area for the influx of new inhabitants.

Planning Maroussi in the Post-War Era The first spatial intervention in Maroussi took place in 1878 and focused solely on redrawing the street layout of the city centre (Municipality of Maroussi 2001). Subsequently, urban expansion was guided by the interwar act on “town planning” (GGN 1923), which, as was mentioned

120  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

earlier, facilitated growth in peri-urban areas by minimizing development-related restrictions. For more than fifty years after this, new neighbourhoods sprang up informally in various parts of Maroussi. It was only after actual structures had been built that the planning apparatus would intervene, incorporating in an ad-hoc manner the newly built areas into the town plan (Interview M1). Post-hoc intervention did not leave much space for improvements; the town grew in a disorderly manner. Services were haphazardly allocated, and transportation and utilities infrastructure did not meet local needs. More characteristically, in the absence of a strategic spatial planning vision for the area and lacking tangible urban planning means and goals, Maroussi stood defenceless against a number of decisions made by the national planning authorities that altered its fate. Key among them was the opening up of a new arterial road linking the centre of Athens with the northern suburbs of the city. “Kifissias Avenue” was completed in the late 1960s, passing right through Maroussi. Real properties along the sides of “Kifissias” were relatively large, enabling the location of major functions (Interview M2). Space availability, limited planning restrictions, and proximity to central Athens created a potent development combination, readily available to be exploited. A 1968 decision by the military dictatorship (1967–74) to alter the “building coefficient” in Maroussi expedited the process, as it allowed for larger and higher buildings to be constructed in the area (GGN 1968). Almost immediately, a number of national government organizations and private-sector businesses transferred their activities to border “Kifissias” in an attempt to upgrade their services and avoid the already congested centre of Athens. The Greek Telecommunications Corporation (GTC) initiated the move, relocating its headquarters there in the early 1970s. Major public and private hospitals and retailers soon followed, endowing the area with supra-local and national functions. Medical facilities are a good case in point. The establishment in Maroussi of the country’s largest maternity hospital (Mitera), for example, attracted similar functions. Another major maternity hospital (Iaso), and two general ones (Hygeia and Iatriko), were eventually located next to Mitera, creating a cluster known locally as the “medical city.” “In 2009 alone there were 35,000 births in Maroussi, a figure corresponding roughly to 35 per cent of all deliveries in the country. And it doesn’t end there. As all newborns are registered to the place of birth, the council registrar has to cope with more than 600,000 applications every year for all sorts of related certificates” (Interview, M3)

The Changing Face of Athens  121

Subsequent developments in the urban planning realm enhanced the supra-local role of Maroussi, hypothecating the city’s suburban prospects.

1980s: Transformation Continues Apace In an attempt to safeguard environmentally sensitive areas and listed buildings from uncontrolled development pressures, a planning law was instituted in 1979: the “transfer of development rights” (TDR). According to this, the right to construct a building on a piece of land could be moved from a location where development is restricted to a site where development is encouraged (GGN 1979). The law, however, did not specify or define the “receiving” zones of these “transferable rights.” As a result, developers purchased building rights from landholders with properties in protected areas and transferred them to potentially profitable locations. In the “receiving” sites, the newly acquired building rights were simply added to the existing ones, maximizing the size of buildings and reducing the overall costs per unit (office or apartment) constructed (Triantafilopoulos and Alexandropoulou 2010). Developers employed this regulation to the greatest possible advantage. One developer, in particular, Babis Vovos, used both TDR and antiparochi provisions, triggering a chain reaction that was to transform Kifissias Avenue into a major new economic centre of Athens. “What did Mr Vovos do? He would approach landholders and, in exchange for the freehold, he would offer them a reasonable amount of money, plus full property rights for 80 to 90 per cent of the floor space that was going to be constructed on their land. Naturally, they would agree, left wondering where his return would come from. Vovos would then transfer development rights from other areas and double the size of the building, securing his profits” (Interview, M4). During the 1980s, extensive parts of “Kifissias” were built or converted by this developer into office blocks (e.g., the Atrina Center, completed in 1980) and shopping malls (e.g., the Agora, completed in 1987), with Maroussi acquiring the nickname of Vovopolis. It was not only private developers, however, who stretched urban planning regulations to the limits. In the following years, the Ministry of Health and the national organization for trade fairs and exhibitions (HELEXPO) were relocated in Maroussi, also using the TDR scheme (Interview, M3). Simultaneously, the Olympic Stadium of Athens was constructed in the area, in time to host the 1982 European Championships in Athletics.

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While the “Transfer of Development Rights” was deemed by the Supreme Administrative Court of Greece as problematic enough to be suspended (in 1994), the presence of the Olympic Stadium in Maroussi initiated a new series of events that further altered Maroussi’s character.

Maroussi in the Global Spotlight: The 2004 Olympic Games The 1990s started promisingly on the urban planning front. In 1991, eight years after the national authorities had called on municipalities to present a comprehensive town plan for their area of jurisdiction and six years after the 1985 establishment of the Athenian Master Plan, Maroussi introduced a blueprint aiming to control land use and (re)design the urban environment. The story of the city, therefore, would have been different had Greece not won the bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games. Maroussi appears in the Olympics’ bid portfolio as the central location of the games. The presence of the Olympic Stadium in the area and the pivotal transportation role of Kifissias Avenue were key to this choice. Building on this existing infrastructure, the Olympic Games bid promised the creation of new sports grounds in the area and a series of major transportation networks. The projected Athens ring road, in particular, was to intersect Kifissias Avenue in Maroussi, creating a hub capable of channelling trains, buses, and automobiles to all parts of the region, including the airport. “Kifissias” in the 1990s was turned into something that resembles a highway, slicing Maroussi in two. Then along came the other highway, Attiki Odos (the Athens ring road). “Maroussi isn’t one municipality anymore. There are four different areas there that don’t even connect properly with each other” (Interview, M4; see figure 6.4). The locational, construction, and co-financing particularities of Olympics-related venues and physical infrastructure projects were laid down in two independent acts that took precedence over all other planning regulations applicable to the areas in question (GGN 1991; GGN 1999). These acts also applied to the city’s Master Plan. As a result, the city’s urban plan was blatantly ignored. The socio-economic impact of these decisions was severe. Enhanced accessibility lured private investment. The number of companies operating in Maroussi has more than doubled in the last twenty years, reaching 3,500 in 2011. A total of 85 per cent of them are engaged in tertiary-sector activities (finance, insurance, and real estate), employing an equal percentage of the total workforce employed in the area. Out of the 46,000 people working in Maroussi today, however, only a third also reside in the area (Municipality of Maroussi 2008,

The Changing Face of Athens  123

Figure 6.4.  A city divided into four. Source: Tsagaratos 2001.

128–9). Moreover, there has been major investment in large shopping complexes, the most prominent of which (The Mall) attracts 15 million visitors per year alone. “Almost half of the people you see in the streets don’t live here [in Maroussi]. They don’t have a say in what’s happening in the area, and I doubt if they care to know. But what I think is even more important is that with all this coming and going, the sense of place is lost” (Interview, M5).

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Managing Change Maroussi was a village that within a few decades turned into the capital city’s emerging economic centre. The role of the local political administration in influencing the direction the city was headed resembles the ambivalent role of town planning in the country. Throughout the post-war years of rapid urbanization, Maroussi municipality was rubber-stamping the transformation that was taking place in the area. The political authority to frame development goals and the institutional capacity to guide urban growth were both absent. In recent years, attempts by the municipality to engage more actively in urban space making have come into conflict with the overarching national goal of enhancing the economic competitiveness of Athens. The 2004 Olympic Games suspended local visions and plans, creating a post-suburban reality that is impossible to ignore. Municipal goals have been adjusted accordingly. The fact that Maroussi is now the business centre of Athens cannot be overlooked. Instead, it should be acknowledged as such to prevent sprawl in other areas. “We cannot go back to the ‘suburb’ years; it’s just naive …” (Interview, M5). “We try to sustain the entrepreneurial role of Maroussi and, with the financial benefits that we get from this, we focus on improving the daily lives of our citizens. Lest we forget, seventy-five per cent of local land uses are ‘residential’” (Interview, M3). The municipality is active on both fronts. It recently introduced tax cuts for all businesses deciding to relocate to the area. Funds coming from the private sector, in turn, amounting to a total of 75 per cent of municipal income, are used to finance a number of innovative sociocultural services and infrastructure projects. The municipality has also looked farther afield. It participates as an observer in major European networks such as “Eurocities” in an attempt to gain experience in urban entrepreneurialism. It has also headed the Quality Cities network (Q-Cities), aimed at ameliorating service provision and urban amenities. Balancing such theoretically incompatible goals is a challenging task that the municipality seems willing to undertake. In the past, similar opportunities to influence local prospects were only too rare. Kifissia: From a Village to a Summer Resort and an Exclusive Suburb Kifissia is a neighbouring suburb to the north of Maroussi, located at the end of one of the lines of the Attica metropolitan rail transport

The Changing Face of Athens  125

system, fifteen kilometres north of Athens. It is arguably one of the most prestigious and affluent areas in Greece and has been considered a very attractive area since ancient times because of its natural environment and geographical location, near the foot of mount Pendeli and the source of the river Kifissos. As was the case with Maroussi, Kifissia had a very small population (less than 1,000) in the nineteenth century (Municipality of Kifissia 2014) and was strongly rural in character. However, its physical beauty, natural environment, and cooler (compared to central Athens) temperatures in the summer were very attractive to wealthy Greeks and contributed to the transformation of Kifissia from a village to a summer resort by the beginning of the twentieth century: “The natural beauty, abundant waters and mild climate all contributed to the perception that Kifissia was one of the most beautiful resorts” (Simoni-Lioliou 2002, 12). This period also saw garden city-style developments and parks as well as the appearance of luxurious houses and estates, the design of which was influenced by European architectural styles of the time. A considerable number of these properties remain in Kifissia with the status of listed buildings (Simoni-Lioliou 2002; Karavia 1988). In addition to villas that served as summer residences for wealthy Athenians, a number of prestigious hotels were built in Kifissia, establishing it as a resort for wealthy Athenians and international visitors as well as an exclusive suburb. The next section draws on previous field work (Phelps et al. 2006) and provides an overview regarding the changing character of this suburb in the post-war era.

The Changing Character of Kifissia in the Post-War Era The sheltering cool of Mount Pendeli and the river Kifissos made the resort settlement of Kifissia. They have also saved Athenians from drought from ancient times to the present – the waters slaking the near unquenchable thirst of the expanding parched concrete mass of nearby Athens. However, the river Kifissos now lies buried beneath the concrete and tarmac of a major arterial route way out of Athens, the base of Mount Pendeli clawed at by sporadic housing development. (Phelps et al. 2006, 70)

As was also the case in Maroussi, Kifissia experienced major changes to its demography and building stock in the second half of the twentieth century as a result of the relaxation of building regulations introduced by the military dictatorship between 1967 and 1974 as well as the development of Kifissias Avenue and the construction, through

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the western part of the suburb, of a national motorway linking Athens to northern Greece. In particular, the period after the 1960s has been characterized by an intensification of residential building development, resulting to a great extent in the demolition of lower-rise buildings (including villas and mansions built in the 1800s) to be replaced by apartment complexes, in response to a demand for permanent residences outside central Athens (Phelps et al. 2006). This process has resulted in a considerable increase in building density, with apartment blocks of five storeys developed next to the old two-storey villas and listed buildings. Another key development since the 1970s has been the gradual change of character of the area from a residential suburb to a more mixed area with a considerable increase of retail and nightlife entertainment businesses, transforming the area into what Phelps and colleagues (2006) term “the playground of the Athenians.” This process began with the construction of the first big shopping centre in the 1980s followed by many more retail and leisure developments, including several bars and restaurants. A key feature of these new developments that changed the character of the area is that a number of them were built without the appropriate permits, calling to mind the issues discussed earlier arising from the informal urban dispersal patterns typical in Greece; it would also appear that law enforcement and the imposing of fines in relation to such infractions has often been seen as inadequate. It is also worth noting that a key feature of these changes has been the lack of any collectively organized business interests at the local municipal level, as well as the use of “personal connections,” often channelled along party-political lines, as a way of “getting things done” (Phelps et al. 2006, 90–3). In addition to the retail and entertainment developments, another factor that contributed to the changing character of the area was the development, beginning in the early 1980s, of considerable office space for shipping companies and banks, developments that in many cases involved the conversion and renovation of old landmark buildings and listed villas (Phelps et al. 2006). Parallel to the above developments in the centre, there was also significant development of industrial activity on the edge of the municipal border. This was triggered to some extent by the enhanced accessibility brought by the aforementioned motorway – perhaps the most important motorway in Greece, linking Athens to the northern part of the country – that runs through the western part of Kifissia. Throughout the post-war era and especially since the early 1970s

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there was also considerable development of manufacturing and other industrial activity, including regional headquarters and branches or subsidiaries of multinational companies such as Alstom, Coca-Cola, Hoya Lens, and Metaxa. However, the lack of coherent zone planning is apparent in this part of the suburb, which is in stark contrast to the residential and commercial centre. As Phelps and colleagues (2006, 81) put it, “The scene along the national highway in Kifissia’s territory is thus rather chaotic. These major firms huddle together along either side of the highway to create a linear industrial zone rarely more than one factory deep. Behind, poorly surfaced roads weave unevenly among fields to houses and, in some cases, are the only major access to factories.” The considerable changes to Kifissia’s character described above were mostly the result of highly fragmented and individualized actions; there have been no major “Vovopolis”-style developments of the scale seen in Maroussi. In particular, there has been strong resistance to this type of large-scale development from both the municipality and business and conservation groups, mostly on pro-conservation rather than pro-development grounds and due to concerns about further and irreversible changes to the character of Kifissia as an exclusive and attractive suburb. Similarly, there has been resistance to plans for largescale public-sector developments such as a proposal by the mayor of Maroussi for a theme park in the forest area of Vrilissia at the border between Kifissia and Maroussi; and, again by contrast with Maroussi, there was little interest in attracting any of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games developments (Phelps et al. 2006). Overall, the earlier work of Phelps and colleagues (2006), upon which this section has been based, highlighted that the development and urban expansion of Kifissia over the past sixty years has been characterized to a great extent by informal processes ranging from individual actions of residents to “micro-planned” discrete developments as well as informal “subterranean politics,” underpinned in many cases by personal connections channelled along party-political lines. Conclusions This chapter has explored the sprawling tendencies of Greek cities, starting in the post-war period and focusing on the Athenian suburbs of Maroussi and Kifissia. At first glance, it seemed that both suburbs were produced by private development in a self-organized

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and privately financed manner. Non-state and “informal” forms of suburban governance, however, were made possible through the “withdrawal” of the formal planning apparatus from peri-urban area regulation. It was this act that enabled the emergence of an unregulated land market based on small plots. Even unauthorized buildings were tolerated on a semi-permanent basis, based on a belief in the value of land as a readily available and thoroughly exploitable asset. In this light, “informality” comes across as a mode of suburban governance aimed at facilitating the unhindered growth of cities. It reflects the technical and financial difficulty faced by the state as a regulator and agent of development in attempting to influence and direct urban expansion. Governance is primarily shaped, however, by the prioritization of rapid economic development, the benefits of which are reaped in the short term, legitimizing economically, socially, and politically the respective standpoints. In both our case studies, local property owners adapted swiftly to a growth scenario in which unfettered market forces pushed up land values and fostered redevelopment at even higher densities. The provision by the planning authorities of technical infrastructure, primarily in the area of transportation, set this process in motion and mediated resource flows. The socio-economic dynamics and the path-dependent qualities of this suburban governance type mitigated the effectiveness of subsequent efforts to guide suburban expansion. While the results of previous planning choices and regulatory settings may be seen in these neighbourhoods, a new set of forces and political preoccupations is currently influencing the character of suburban space in Maroussi and Kifissia. As discussed, the two adjacent suburbs are at the heart of wider pressures that escape the territoriality of local government. This trend is more noticeable in Maroussi. From the 1980s onwards, the tranquil suburb has not only evolved into the economic centre of Athens; it was also chosen by the national authorities as the place to host the 2004 Olympic Games, embodying a national development effort directed towards the global economy. Kifissia has also been touched by change, acquiring translocal economic functions that have altered its image. In both cases, the national authorities licensed and facilitated the expansion of the respective suburban economies in order to enhance the economic competitiveness of the Athens region. Politically, this shift in goals has been underscored by the establishment, in 2010, of the Athens Metropolitan Authority, a new tier of governance with distinct land-use planning and development duties. Exploring

The Changing Face of Athens  129

Maroussi and Kifissia, therefore, and their evolving spatial form and their rapidly changing governance traits, sheds light on state rescaling processes currently taking place in Greece that redefine the meaning of urbanism. LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

M-1 Director of Urban Planning Directorate, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change M-2 Technical director, Unification of the Archaeological Sites of Athens S.A. (31/01/2013) M-3 General secretary, Municipality of Amaroussion (10/09/2012) M-4 Consultant urban planner (24/01/2013) M-5 Consultant architect planner (21/01/2013) REFERENCES Andrikopoulou, E., and G. Kafkalas. 2004. Greek regional policy and the process of Europeanization, 1961–2000. In Greece in the European Union, ed. D.G. Dimitrakopoulos and A.G. Passas, 35–47. London: Routledge. CEC. 1992. Urbanisation and the functions of cities in the European Community. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Cheshire, P.C. 1995. A new phase of urban development in western Europe? The evidence for the 1980s. Urban Studies 32(7):1045–63 Chlepas, N. 1997. Local government in Greece. Athens: Sakkoulas. Chorianopoulos, I. 2002. Urban restructuring and governance: North-south differences in Europe and the EU URBAN initiative. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 39 (4):705–26. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/00420980220119534. Chorianopoulos, I. 2008. Institutional responses to EU challenges: Attempting to articulate a local regulatory scale in Greece. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (2):324–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.14682427.2008.00788.x. Chorianopoulos, I. 2012. State spatial restructuring in Greece: Forced rescaling, unresponsive localities. European Urban and Regional Studies 19 (4):331–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0969776411430351. Chorianopoulos, I., T. Pagonis, S. Koukoulas, and S. Drymoniti. 2010. Planning, competitiveness and sprawl in the Mediterranean city: The case of

130  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Athens. Cities (London, England) 27 (4):249–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. cities.2009.12.011. Christofilopoulos, D. 2007. The institutional and organizational framework of urban planning in Greece. In Urban planning: Towards a sustainable development of the built environment, ed. A. Aravantinos, 97–118. Athens: Symmetria. Economou, D., G. Petrakos, and Y. Psycharis. 2007. Urban policy in Greece. In National policy responses to urban challenges in Europe, ed., L. Van den Berg, E. Braun, and J. Van der Meer, 193–216. Aldershot: Ashgate. Ekers, M., P. Hamel, and R. Keil. 2012. Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies 46 (3):405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Garcia-Ramon, M.D., and C. Hadjimichalis. 1987. Southern Europe: An introduction (2). Antipode 19 (2):95–8. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1987.tb00153.x. Gaspar, J. 1984. Urbanisation: Growth, problems and policies. In Southern Europe transformed: Political and economic change in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, ed. A. Williams, 208–35. London: Harper and Row Publishers. Getimis, P. 1989. Housing policy in Greece: The limits of reform. Athens: Odysseas. GGN. 1923. On town plans, villages and settlements and their development. Greek Government Newspaper, 228-A. GGN. 1929. On storey property ownership. Greek Government Newspaper, 4-A. GGN. 1968. On the height of buildings and the system of unregulated constructions. Greek Government Newspaper, 95-A. GGN. 1979. Defining the upper building coefficient and other building regulations. Greek Government Newspaper, 58-A. GGN. 1983. Expansion of urban plans, residential development and associated regulations. Greek Government Newspaper, 33-A. GGN. 1985. Regulatory plan and environmental protection programme for the greater area of Athens. Greek Government Newspaper, 168-A. GGN. 1991. Instituting “Attiko Metro” Company and related regulation. Greek Government Newspaper, 112-A. GGN. 1999. Planning, integrated development and the implementation of Olympic infrastructures and related regulations. Greek Government Newspaper, 130-A. Hall, P., and D. Hay. 1980. Growth centres in the European urban system. London: Heinemann. Ioakimidis, P.C. 1984. Greece: From military dictatorship to socialism. In Southern Europe transformed: Political and economic change in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, ed. A. Williams, 33–60. London: Harper and Row Publishers.

The Changing Face of Athens  131 Karavia, M. 1988. Kifissia: Aspects of its beauty and its past. Kifissia: Association for the Protection of Kifissia. Karidis, D. 2006. The seven books of urban planning. Athens: Papasotiriou. Leontidou, L. 1990. The Mediterranean city in transition: Social change and urban development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511522208. Leontidou, L. 1994. Mediterranean cities: Divergent trends in a united Europe. In The European challenge: Geography and development in the European community, ed. M. Blacksell and A.M. Williams, 127–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leontidou, L., A. Afouxenidis, E. Kourliouros, and E. Marmaras. 2007. Infrastructure-related urban sprawl: Mega-events and hybrid peri-urban landscapes in southern Europe. In Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscapes, landuse change and policy, ed., C. Couch, L. Leontidou, and G. Petschel-Held, 71–101. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470692066.ch3. Municipality of Kifissia official web-site. 2014. History. Available from: http:// www.kifissia.gr/main/content/istoria/istoria2.html;jsessionid=1176CCF1D CBA58C770C528F789B631A1. Accessed 12 January 2014. Municipality of Maroussi. 2001. Urban planning review. Maroussi: Municipality of Maroussi. Municipality of Maroussi. 2008. The operational programme of Maroussi municipality 2007–2010. Maroussi: Municipality of Maroussi. Municipality of Maroussi. 2015. The operational programme of Maroussi municipality 2007–2010. Maroussi: Municipality of Maroussi. Munoz, F. 2003. Lock living: Urban sprawl in Mediterranean cities. Cities (London, England) 20 (6):381–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. cities.2003.08.003. Papadaskalopoulos, A., and M. Christofakis. 2003. The framework and the implementation process of regional planning in Greece. Agora without Frontiers 9 (1):49–71. Petrakos, G., P. Mardakis, and H. Caraveli. 2000. Recent developments in the Greek system of urban centres. Environment & Planning B 27 (2):169–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/b2529. Phelps, N.A., N. Parsons, D. Ballas, and A. Dowling. 2006. Postsuburban Europe: Planning and politics at the margins of Europe’s capital cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi. org/10.1057/9780230625389. Phelps, N., A. Wood, and D. Valler. 2010. A post-suburban world? An outline of a research agenda. Environment & Planning A 42 (2):366–83. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1068/a427.

132  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Politopoulos, T.E. 1995. Marousiotika: Athmonon-Amarission–Maroussi. Maroussi. UN (2006) world urbanization prospects: The 2005 revision. New York: United Nations. Simoni-Lioliou, M. 2002. Archontisa Kifissia: The romantic history of the past, up to 1950. Kifissia: Ioannis Grigorakos (in Greek). Triantafilopoulos, N., and I. Alexandropoulou. 2010. Transfer of building rights: The urban planning tool and the real estate market. University of Thessaly, Department of Planning and Regional Development. Research Papers Series 16(7):157–82. Tsagaratos, S. 2001. Urban planning notebooks. Athens: Nefeli. Turok, I., and V. Mykhnenko. 2007. The trajectories of European cities, 1960–2005. Cities (London, England) 24 (3):165–82. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.cities.2007.01.007. UN (United Nations). 2007. World population prospects: The 2006 revision. New York: United Nations. UN (United Nations). 2008. World urbanisation prospects: The 2007 revision. New York: United Nations. Van der Berg, L., R. Drewett, L.K. Klaasen, A. Rossi, and C.H.T. Vijverberg. 1982. Urban Europe: A study of growth and decline. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Wassenhoven, L. 1984. Greece. In Planning and urban growth in southern Europe, ed. M. Wynn, 5–36. Oxford: Alexander Press. World Bank. 1984. World development report: 1984. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7 Old Wine in New Bottles: Land, Population Growth, and Montpellier’s Suburban Face-Off ute le h re r an d roz a t c h o u k a l e y s k a

Introduction When observing growth in the peripheral areas of European cities, we are confronted with a variety of spatial articulations. Suburban growth in France has a tradition of developing high-rise public housing at the periphery of the city while also investing in single-family structures leaching into the countryside, often located adjacent to globally ubiquitous forms of commercial and light industrial zones. The contrast between these two suburban forms – high-rise social housing and single-family homes – is encapsulated in the suburban developments surrounding the southern French city of Montpellier, France’s eighthlargest and fastest-growing urban area. Montpellier will form the case study for this chapter. Montpellier dates back to only 985 A.D., making it, by European standards, a relatively young settlement compared to other nearby places with Greek and Roman roots. Historically, it was a city whose wealth was based on both trade and agriculture and whose medical and law schools were recognized internationally as universities as early as 1289 (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008, 11). From the late 1970s onwards, the political leadership of Montpellier has adopted a pro-growth agenda with a strong link between land development and economic development. The city of Montpellier has also functioned as an important reception area for migrants – both international migration from North Africa and migration from other parts of France – and has witnessed a spectacular population boom from the 1960s onwards. With this population influx, Montpellier’s municipal government has seen the need to invest in new housing, improve infrastructure, and create new economic

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opportunities, and in the process has redefined the city’s urban landscape and its relation to the surrounding countryside. With Montpellier’s municipal council’s socialist agenda now in its fourth decade, a number of policies have come into play that are stimulating and guiding the city’s future growth – and in the process producing a face-off between different forms of suburban development and the equally distinctive communities that have historically been associated with each. The first section of the chapter situates the Montpellier case study within French urban planning and peri-urban development policy more broadly, with particular attention to Montpellier’s current status as a laboratory for pro-growth urban development. The chapter then considers the specific policies and mechanisms deployed by Montpellier’s municipal government in their peri-urban land-management approach; these include measures for dealing with rapid population growth, the use of public transit as a tool for urban cohesion, and the deployment of complex land-coding systems to negotiate the conflict between a pro-growth strategy and the need to protect viticultural land. In the final section, the chapter examines the specifics of the two case studies: La Mosson and Juvignac neighbourhoods, facing each other at the urban periphery. Built in the 1960s, La Mosson is a large, high-rise social housing district that has been the subject of ongoing urban renovation projects, while Juvignac is one of Montpellier’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, made up of quiet streets of villas, many with backyard pools. Situated on opposite sides of a river valley, and separated by a golf course, these neighbourhoods encapsulate two very different suburban growth forms and speak to the divergent policies and urban planning practices that form Montpellier’s long-term land-development strategy. We discuss the historical trajectory by which the two cases of very different articulations of growth came about and how they are linked to a policy regime that has been developed over the past three decades into what it is today: a land-management strategy that does not hinder further sprawl and encroachment into the agricultural landscape. In the conclusion, we draw together these findings and consider how the interplay between urban planning, land-development strategy, and socio-economic policy can produce such divergent suburban forms. Setting the Context In the second half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first century, the planning regime of Montpellier has been guided by three intertwined

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key factors: (1) declining agricultural profits, (2) rapid population growth, and (3) a significant change in municipal powers following the introduction of a regional government structure, the Montpellier Agglomeration (also known as the greater Montpellier area). The combination of these factors, and the overlapping of public and private processes (see Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012) in the formation of Montpellier’s suburbs have resulted – as outlined below in our discussion of land, governance, and infrastructure in the French context – in the disparate suburban developments in Juvignac and La Mosson. Before we can discuss the current planning regime we need to take into account the specific ecologies and land-use patterns as well as the historical trajectory of the Montpellier region (see figure 7.1). In close proximity to the Mediterranean Sea and on the foothills of the Cévennes, Montpellier’s landscape has two distinct ecologies and a particular history. Situated next to the river Lez and on two hills only fifty-seven metres above sea level, Montpellier’s region is divided into plains and salt-water marshes to the south-east of the city and into scrubland and hills to the north-west. Over centuries these lands have gradually been appropriated for agricultural purposes (see Le Roy Ladurie 1962 [2000]). With its relatively thin layer of soil, the scrubland became home to vineyards, olive plantations, and pastures, while the plains were used for fields and later also became sites for wine production, mainly owned by the noble class. The marshes provided sites for seafood production and fisheries. During the medieval period, Montpellier reached its prominence in the twelfth century when it developed as a centre for medicine, followed by the study of law, making it one of the country’s oldest university towns. At the same time it was a centre for trade between south and north, particularly for spices, followed by wine and linen. Both religious institutions and the local nobility invested in agricultural production, and the nobles in particular built several grand villas in the countryside. With the arrival of the railway in 1839, the agricultural lands around Montpellier became focused on the mass production of wine, and the viticulture industry expanded, becoming one of the main economic forces within the region (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008). The newfound wealth manifested itself in a new Haussmannian aesthetics that laid an axial planning scheme on top of the medieval structure of Montpellier, including a new urban transit centre, a grandiose public plaza, theatres, and the first department store, located between the train station and the historic city centre. A number of investments in

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Figure 7.1.  Map of Montpellier region.

public facilities and infrastructure were made in the early part of the twentieth century: a tax exemptions law led to a number of low-cost housing estates in the western part of the city; a new fresh-water distribution system was introduced; and the university was strengthened by student housing, new faculty buildings, and a new hospital that was linked to the medical faculty. When Montpellier became the capital of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in 1956, two major shifts followed: first, major public and private investment led to road construction and the expansion of housing complexes, mainly at the fringe of the builtup areas; and second, the repatriation of the Pieds-Noirs to France after

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Algeria declared independence in 1962 resulted in a massive growth of Montpellier’s population to 120,000 (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008). These two aspects – a designation as the political centre of the region and enormous population gains through migration – are the basis for Montpellier’s present-day position. With the opening of the airport in the 1960s and the highway in 1967, and the successful attraction of a multinational high-tech corporation (IBM) in 1965, Montpellier started to develop a pro-growth strategy that led to a massive spread of suburbs into the countryside (Valette 2006). Today, the wealth production of the city is based on three sectors: high-tech industry, education, and tourism. Its early focus in medicine and law and then as a university centre was a fertile ground for its expansion into a high-tech centre throughout the growth-pole period of France. Montpellier specializes in several high-tech sectors and, after Paris, has the second-fastest growth in digital enterprises (Bakis and Schon 2012). It is also rapidly expanding in the game-development industry (Bonnet 2010). This, combined with its role as a major university town, may account for the fact that the average age of its population is one of the lowest in France. Besides its growth in the high-tech and education sectors, Montpellier is also increasing its profile as a tourist destination; this is reflected in the four-to-one ratio of tourists to inhabitants recorded in 2010 (Montpellier Office de Tourisme 2011), as well as in a massive investment in the arts sector (Négrier and Préau 2010). At the same time, the city struggles with a high rate of unemployment, particularly among youth. We now come to the three factors that guide the current planning regime in Montpellier: declining agricultural profits, rapid population growth, and a significant change in government structure. As shown above, agriculture (and in particular viticulture) has had a key economic function in the region throughout the industrial period. With globalization, viticulture came under pressure and by the mid-1970s had started to lose its position as a leader in the mass production of wine and with it, also, its importance as a source of income for landowners, shareholders, and workers. At the same time as the industry came under economic pressure, a demand for urban expansion was creating a market situation where it became more profitable to sell agricultural land than to cultivate the land for food production. The diversity of opinion among farmers on how to deal with this issue and their role as landowners made them key stakeholders in the urban expansion of Montpellier (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008). Fallow land around

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Montpellier experienced competing pressures – from the demand to re-plant vines on the one hand and from the pressure to open it up for urban development on the other. Agrarian lands were reduced by 20 per cent between 1979 and 2000, mainly as a result of population growth (Jarrige, Thinon, and Nougaredes 2006, 396), and with the demand for housing, illegal settlements were built into protected coastal wetlands as well as on agricultural land (Crozat 2009). The result has been a case of old wine being poured into new bottles – with a set of long-standing issues surrounding agricultural development, land use, and economic growth being funnelled and morphed to match the new pro-growth, pro-development strategies. While population growth during the first half of the twentieth century was minimal, after the 1960s the numbers increased tremendously: from the twenty-fifth-largest French city in the 1960s, Montpellier had catapulted itself into eighth position by the late 1990s (Montpellier, 2012). In 2012, the city had a population of just over 258,000 and the region was home to 420,000 inhabitants (Montpellier 2012). As was mentioned earlier, the wave of immigration started in 1962 with the arrival in Montpellier of 60,000 French citizens repatriated from Algeria; these were followed by political migrants from Spain and Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s and by migrants from Morocco in the 1980s. The rural-urban migration that has been ongoing from the early years of the twentieth century continued, while at the same time a new class of migrants arrived from other parts of France, attracted by the high-tech sector that was starting to develop with the arrival of IBM in 1965, followed by Dell and other high-tech businesses. Growth was also encouraged by investments in the medical and bio-tech sectors in the following years and by the decision in 1956 to make Montpellier the administrative centre for the Languedoc-Roussillon region. At the same time, Montpellier expanded its universities, attracting a large number of students from around France, and, as a regional centre, also developed its service sector (Eberlein 1996). The city was in need of housing for all these different groups of people. For the large wave of immigrants in the 1960s, the city planned and built the modernist development La Paillade (or La Mosson as it was renamed in the early 2000s), a dense housing complex that was at the periphery of the city and stood in the tradition of other housing projects in France that have become known as banlieues (Dikeç 2007; Wacquant 2008). Following a period of disinvestment and mismanagement, the development became physically degraded, and it continued to be spatially isolated at the edge of the city until the introduction of a

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tramline in the early 2000s. Montpellier’s student body also grew exponentially from less than 10,000 in 1960 to almost 40,000 in 1980 (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008, 16). While in the case of La Paillade, the state was the driving force, housing for other newcomers (with the exception of student housing) was built mainly by the private sector, which led to its spread into the countryside. In recent years, Montpellier has become attractive as a retirement place, as well as a destination for “sun immigration” (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008), creating a demand for alternatives to compact apartment buildings. Juvignac is an excellent example of such a case, where most of the newcomers relocated to Montpellier specifically because they wanted to leave the colder and rainier regions of France for jobs in the sunny part of France. Montpellier’s rapid growth in population, jobs, and infrastructure throughout the 1960s and 1970s pushed urban settlements farther and farther into the countryside and demanded a government structure that would provide an administrative mechanism for a political leadership that had the capacity to guide future growth. This occurred at the same time that political restructuring was taking place on a national level. In 1981–2, the government structure in France saw the introduction of twenty-six regions, in addition to the already existing 36,782 local municipalities and the 100 departments. With the devolution of administrative competencies, the three territorial collectives received more power for governance, as well as their own budget and fiscal resources (Buyck, Chery, and Jarrige 2008, 23). Prior to this restructuring, in 1977, Montpellier had undergone a significant political shift, and had elected as mayor Georges Frêche, a socialist who, as it would become clear over the next thirty years, had not only a strong personality but also a clear agenda aimed at turning Montpellier into a metropolis (Viala 2010; Parker 1993). A resilient control of land development, through the introduction of land banking, was part of Frêche’s strategy to guide the rampant development in suburban Montpellier following the city’s growth into a high-tech and service industry hub. Part of this aggressive agenda to fashion Montpellier not only into a regional centre but also into a place for national and international exchanges was to entice high-tech industries with urban planning proposals for future technology parks (which have since been built) and develop a marketing strategy based on expanding culture, and with it tourism. Under Frêche’s political leadership, and prompted by a new law requiring greater cooperation among urban areas, thirty-eight municipalities came together in 2001 and formed Montpellier Agglomération.

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In 2005, however, seven municipalities left the Agglomération because of political disagreements with Frêche’s brand of mayoral leadership. The remaining thirty-one municipalities have had their ups and downs as a result of what Emmanuel Négrier describes as entrepreneurial leadership – a form of mayoral governance in which, as Borraz and John (2004) further note, political leaders rely on personal connections as much as political strategy to achieve their goals. This type of leadership is characterized as “less directed towards center-periphery relations than towards the complexities of the territorial balance between political forces” and can be identified as a model “of extended interdependence, within a polycentric political territory” (Négrier 2003, 185–6). Even so, Montpellier Agglomération has transformational leadership, and, as Négrier argues, “the leader has not only the possibility to assume long-term transactions between political actors but also the capacity to introduce new spaces and new fields of transaction” (Négrier 2003, 184). This is exactly what we have seen in the more recent development of Montpellier’s suburban areas – particularly in the planning and construction of new residential and commercial neighbourhoods to the south-east of the city. The changing political landscape in the city, Frêche’s form of political leadership, and the focus on a multimodal model of urban and economic growth have meant that Montpellier’s suburban development policies have not always been compatible with the expansion of surrounding villages, producing a sometimes fragmented landscape (Négrier 2003). A regional governance structure was meant to actively address the conflict between usages in adjacent areas as well as the core contradictions between growth and protection of valuable arable land: once agricultural use has given way to land development in the form of housing, industries, and infrastructure, there is no turning back to the previous use in the short or medium term, based on both the economic logic of capitalism and ecological principles. With the introduction of a regional government structure, politicians and planners alike hoped that the new planning regime would be an effective instrument for curtailing sprawl, which is spurred by the relationship between falling agricultural profits and a rising population. Land-Development Strategies for Population Growth and Economic Development Montpellier’s rapid population growth and equally rapid development of expansive suburbs and decline of agricultural profits created

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a particular set of challenges for the municipal government and for the Agglomération – and resulted in a series of management policies designed to limit sprawl, encourage economic development, and cope with the legacies of previous suburban development schemes. Three specific policies with regard to land use and growth, together with the expansion of the tram network into the region, have guided development over the last decade. First among these is the use of special administrative zones that have allowed Montpellier’s municipal government to designate certain parts of the city as economic activity zones or new urban growth zones. The use of the ZAC – zone d’aménagement concerté, or special planning district – allows the municipality to designate a certain district as “under development,” and thereby have the legal authority to build and coordinate infrastructure (water, electricity, transportation) and to plan the built environment (residential, commercial) and public amenities (schools, parks, the shape of streets) in that space. The establishment of a ZAC allows the city of Montpellier to produce a fully designed neighbourhood with the urban aesthetics, types of amenities, and public spaces deemed appropriate for the city’s growing ambitions and real needs (Viala and Volle 2010). It also permits the municipality to pre-empt and expropriate land and properties within the boundaries of an established ZAC – to purchase viticultural land and farmland, for instance, or to acquire disused military sites – making the ZAC a landmanagement technique frequently deployed to halt suburban sprawl on Montpellier’s periphery. The ZUS designation – zone urbaine sensible, a coding for zones with perceived social problems – is also used by the municipality to designate portions of Montpellier’s aging high-rise social housing districts as needing particular attention. Through a ZUS designation, a district would qualify for additional state and local funding for renovations and building refurbishment, as well as increased funding for education, social programs, and also an increased police presence. The La Mosson neighbourhood is designated as a ZUS, and a series of ZACs on the northern and south-eastern periphery of Montpellier indicate that these zoning measures are frequently used to coordinate municipal and state oversight of suburban housing, economic development, and interventions on socio-economic issues. Second, Montpellier’s rapid urban growth in the latter part of the twentieth century also created challenges in terms of transportation, and as a result the municipality has made transportation planning a keystone of its urban policy. The creation of a new Montpellier tram network has been especially important: the tramlines have been used

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by the city as a development tool, deployed alongside the ZAC designation to open up new parts of the city surroundings to high-density residential developments and new economic ventures. The construction of the ZAC Port Marianne, a neighbourhood to the south-east of the city centre, has run in tandem with the creation of two new tramlines that efficiently link these more distant areas with the historic centre. In this sense, tramway planning is both a transportation issue and also a landmanagement strategy – with the municipality determining the direction and extent of the tramway network and designating viticultural and residential areas surrounding the tramway as ZACs, the city of Montpellier has effectively guided city growth – and suburban growth – along carefully determined axes of development (Bernié-Boissard and Volle 2010). Third, the creation of a long-range urban-tenure and land-planning system – known as SCOT (schéma de cohérence territoriale) – is a further tool used by the municipality of Montpellier to manage urban growth. Based on extensive SIG/GIS and statistical analysis, SCOT provides a comprehensive overview of current land use (agrarian, protected natural, urban, industrial, etc.), and identifies areas within the existing urban boundary where housing can be densified, areas in need of more green space, zones that are prone to flooding, and potential new axes for tramway, train, and transportation infrastructure development. The mandate of SCOT is to ensure a good quality of life for all Montpellier residents, protect natural areas, ensure that ZUS areas are integrated into urban networks, and try to limit urban sprawl by enforcing a high-density residential growth model for the periphery. An ambitious project – both politically and in terms of its capacity to enact such broad social and urban changes – SCOT has suffered from some teething problems, not least because many smaller Agglomération communities have viewed it as a way for Montpellier’s city centre to impose its policies and economic strategies on its neighbours (Chevalier and Sibertin-Blanc 2005; Jarrige, Thinon, and Nougaredes 2006). Fourth, the use of ZACs as an urban development tool along with SCOT and transportation planning have become hallmarks of Montpellier’s urban planning approach and suggest two important points in terms of the study of suburban issues. First, the conflict between population growth (and urban growth) and the need to protect important agrarian lands in Montpellier’s surroundings has resulted in a growth strategy that uses a combination of state-funded programs (ZACs) and local land management tools (SCOT) to create a coherent long-range

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strategy for the area. Montpellier has certainly not abandoned its progrowth approach, but has rather sought to extend its political and economic reach beyond the boundaries of the city of Montpellier and to the scale of the Agglomération. Second, as will be noted below, this progrowth approach, with its reliance on land-management and zoning tools, has not fully dealt with some of the legacies of previous suburban development policies: the large high-rise district of La Mosson and the continually sprawling community of Juvignac both pose continual challenges. A Suburban Face-off: Juvignac and La Mosson Situated at the north-western edge of Montpellier Agglomération, the neighbourhoods of Juvignac and La Paillade – the latter rebranded as La Mosson during its redevelopment over the past ten years – stand directly on opposite sides of the Mosson River valley. In their urban form, their population base, and their relationship with the rest of the city, these two neighbourhoods could not be more different: one is a high-density, modernist, and predominantly public housing estate; the other is a farmers’ village that has morphed into an individualistic bedroom community of private residences. The two neighbourhoods represent disparate challenges for suburban planning in Montpellier. They illustrate the two waves of suburban development that were identified by Steinmetz (2013) – the first period, lasting for about three decades to the early 1970s, being a clear demonstration of the French state’s interest in not only guiding but producing high-density neighbourhoods at the outskirts of cities. This of course, was not very different from the approach of other continental European states that embraced an ideology of modernity and that recognized a need for reinvestment in the built environment following the physical destruction caused by the Second World War and the arrival of the mass automobile age. The two neighbourhoods are also good examples of suburbanization trends that have been described for other parts of France (Rousseau, 2015).

La Mosson Built in the 1960s to provide housing for Montpellier ’s growing population – in particular, expatriate Algerian migrants – La Mosson is a district of high-rise tower blocks that sits on the north-western edge of the city. In many respects, La Mosson follows the mould of other 1960s

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French suburban developments: originally designed as a self-contained neighbourhood, not unlike suburban developments in Paris, Marseille, and Lyon (Plouin 2007), La Mosson is made up of a series of beige and light-pink high-rise towers (of at least twenty stories) surrounded by a mix of low- and mid-rise apartment blocks and several clusters of detached houses (see figure 7.2). The neighbourhood has one large covered marketplace, two supermarkets, a series of smaller shops and convenience stores along the main thoroughfare, a number of schools and daycares, a bank, pharmacies, a post office, and various community and social facilities. La Mosson’s main thoroughfare is now taken up by Montpellier’s tramline 1, with vehicle traffic pushed to a road at the eastern and southern edges of the neighbourhood and pedestrian traffic removed to what is known as Le Grand Mail, an elevated walkway that links many high-rise buildings and spans several roads and streets. The effect of this tripartite division of traffic – with cars, tramways, and pedestrians each assigned their own zone – has had a disjunctive effect on the neighbourhood, given that there are few spaces where different modes of travel and movement overlap. Walking along Le Grand Mail means avoiding the tram stops and surrounding amenities, all the while being several blocks away from parking and car traffic, and, while La Mosson has several squares, small parks, and designated public spaces, few of these are intensively used. With Montpellier’s football stadium located in La Mosson, the area draws an impressive crowd of fans on game days and also pulls in many visitors when the popular Sunday morning flea market is in session; yet outside of these times, the neighbourhood attracts few incomers. Now home to around 16,200 residents (SIG Chiffre Clés 2009), the area that is today known as La Mosson was originally called La Paillade and built on former viticultural land. Situated several kilometres outside of the historic city centre, the neighbourhood was constructed in the early 1960s, welcomed its first high-rise residents in 1967, and saw new apartment blocks added up until the early 1970s. The development was originally intended to meet the pressing need to house Algerian migrants arriving in France following the 1962 war of independence, but by the mid-1970s the role of La Mosson had begun to evolve: the arrival of labour migrants from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and other former French colonies as part of a national immigration framework in support of France’s economic boom from the 1950s to the 1970s saw a growing diversity of residents and increasing numbers of families with children in La Mosson. These dynamics continue to be represented in

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Figure 7.2.  The La Mosson neighbourhood. Photo courtesy of Roza Tchoukaleyska.

La Mosson today, where nearly 30 per cent of the population is classed as “foreigners” (INSEE 2006b),1 compared to 11.2 per cent for Montpellier and 8.3 per cent for the Agglomération (INSEE 2006b). Of the nearly 5,560 individual housing units in the neighbourhood today, almost 94 per cent were constructed before 1989 (INSEE 2006b), with 83.7 per cent of residents renting their units (SIG Chiffre Clés 2009) and 44.6 per cent of households categorized as low-income (SIG Chiffre Clés 2009). When opened to the first residents in the 1960s, La Mosson boasted modern living facilities and new-built apartments – yet by the 1990s, these same buildings and units were physically degrading, with both exterior and interior spaces in need of maintenance and refurbishment. With unemployment increasing in Montpellier – particularly among La Mosson residents, where 27.7 per cent of households receive

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unemployment insurance (SIG Chiffre Clés 2009) – the district has gained a reputation as a particularly difficult and unattractive neighbourhood to live in. In the last two decades, La Mosson has also become the object of extensive urban renovation programs that have seen the outside of high-rise buildings refinished, some interior spaces upgraded, the covered market renovated and modernized, a series of buildings demolished, and a number of social intervention programs rolled out. These have included renovations to building facades and, in particular, to the outdoor stairs and entries to low-rise apartment blocks, as a way of creating a more visually appealing environment, in addition to establishing links between residents and urban planners through public consultancy work. As Barbéris (2005) notes, many La Mosson residents do not consider themselves to be part of the city of Montpellier: the sense of physical distance, the inward-looking design of the neighbourhood, and the notable differences in socio-economic status between this area and the wealthy city centre mark out La Mosson as a space apart. The introduction of Montpellier’s tramline 1 to La Mosson in 2000 was one approach to addressing these concerns, more closely integrating this neighbourhood with the rest of the city (Bernié-Boissard and Volle 2010). During the 2005 suburban revolts that shook several large cities in France (Kipfer 2009), La Mosson witnessed an increased police presence, confrontations between residents and riot police, some limited damage to buildings and cars, and road closures that – while not on the scale seen in the cités of Paris (Silverstein and Tetreault 2006) – still functioned as reaffirming popular negative connotations associated with this neighbourhood. Although Montpellier residents and newspapers rarely refer to La Mosson as a banlieue – in the sense that this term is deployed with respect to high-rise social-housing suburbs in Paris and Lyon (Dikeç 2007; Wacquant 2008) – by the mid-1990s, the district was labelled as “troublesome” and in need of increased state and municipal intervention (Chédiac and Bernié-Boissard 2010).

Juvignac Spread over the western edge of the Mosson River valley the neighbourhood of Juvignac seems, at least on the surface, to have little in common with its high-rise neighbour. Made up of single-family detached houses with large yards that often include swimming pools, Juvignac is a lowrise, low-density community structured around a main road, from which

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branch a network of cul-de-sacs and crescents (see figure 7.3). Juvignac’s town centre – set at the point where the main roads fork out into two thoroughfares – includes a shopping mall (with a larger supermarket, two cafés, a bistro, a pharmacy, a newsagent, and an optometrist), a series of big-box stores (two organic produce shops, a large pharmacy, a sportswear store), a gas station, a post office, a series of restaurants with their own parking lots, and Juvignac’s recently constructed city hall. Montpellier tramway line 3 does reach Juvignac at its north-eastern edge, though in a limited way: the tram crosses the Mosson River from the direction of the La Mosson neighbourhood, and has its final stop almost immediately. This zone, until recently largely undeveloped, has since the arrival of the tramway seen the rapid and ongoing construction of more than a dozen four- to five-storey apartment buildings and retirement condominiums. The result is a divided Juvignac, with the new lowrise apartment buildings and planned stores and cafés tucked around the tramway stop, and, a short walk away, the older sections of Juvignac, with single-family homes, gardens, and a shopping mall. If for La Mosson the tramway was intended as a point of integration and an important link with the city centre, in Juvignac the tramway has sometimes been an unwelcome intruder into a neighbourhood that has rarely embraced the urban-planning policies and political directives of Montpellier. Until 2001 Juvignac was in fact an independent village, with only informal affiliations to the city of Montpellier. At the centre of Juvignac still stands the Mairie de Juvignac – Juvignac’s city hall – and while Juvignac is now one of the thirty-one communes that make up the Montpellier Agglomération, it plays this part with well-publicized trepidation and considerable resistance to some Agglomération policies (Chevalier and Sibertin-Blanc 2005). Today, Juvignac is effectively in the commuter belt of Montpellier, with only 20 per cent of its residents working within their own community (INSEE 2011). In 2011 Juvignac had a population of 7,668 people and more than 3,300 individual residential units (INSEE 2011) – and this is quite a significant increase from the 2006 number of 2,500 units. However this was not always the case: in the 1960s Juvignac counted only 180 residents and 75 houses (INSEE 2006a) and was effectively an agrarian village on the distant outskirts of the quickly growing city of Montpellier. Juvignac’s most rapid population growth occurred in the 1970s when the village burgeoned from 400 residents to nearly 2,600 within less than ten years (INSEE 2006a) and was due in large part to the growth of the service, technology, and university sectors in Montpellier and the arrival of employees to fill

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Figure 7.3.  Juvignac’s streets of single-family houses. Photo courtesy of Roza Tchoukaleyska.

these positions – a trend that was still seen in 2011 when almost 56 per cent of Juvignac’s workforce consisted of middle-management personnel (INSEE 2011). Juvignac’s rapid growth has produced an equally rapid housing boom, with construction of residential units – single-family homes and, more recently, low-rise apartment buildings – expanding from the original village centre into the surrounding agricultural lands. Its population density almost doubled between 1990 and 2011 to 708 people per square kilometre (INSEE 2011), while car ownership per household slightly declined. As well, single-family homes dropped from 93 per cent of total housing structures in 2006 to 78 per cent in 2011, with small apartments being the main beneficiary of recent construction activities. With this, the face of Juvignac is changing not only in terms of its

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residents’ professions and socio-economic status but also in the form of its built environment. It is not surprising, therefore, that the resulting conflict between agrarian and urban interests has become a key point of tension between Juvignac and Montpellier Agglomération, and the cause of some heated debates within Juvignac itself. While Montpellier Agglomération has attempted to curtail expansion into agricultural and viticultural lands through the use of SCOT – as noted earlier in the chapter – this has produced limited effects in Juvignac, which continues to grow and test the boundaries set by the Agglomération. As Chevalier and Sibertin-Blanc (2005) note, Juvignac council has consistently argued that providing affordable housing and ensuring that young families in Juvignac can afford to stay in their village means using up surrounding land to build more single-family homes. Encroachments into the countryside are thus central to Juvignac council’s approach to urban planning – and suggest that “affordability” is tied to the ability to purchase a house rather than meaning access to affordable rental apartments (Chevalier and Sibertin-Blanc 2005). This has, in turn, created a specific political reaction within Juvignac to Montpellier Agglomération’s urban housing and social housing policies. While all French urban communities are required by law to ensure that 20 per cent of residential units within their boundaries meet the requirements for social housing (Chédiac and Bernié-Boissard 2010), Juvignac has staunchly refused to cooperate (Chevalier and Sibertin-Blanc 2005). As a result, only 5 per cent of housing in Juvignac is defined as social housing / HLM (Habitation à Loyer Modéré) (INSEE 2011), in comparison to an average of 12 per cent for Montpellier Agglomération (INSEE 2011) and a full 70 per cent of all housing in La Mosson (SIG Chiffre Clés 2009). Since a monetary fine is levelled on communities that refuse to build new social housing units, Juvignac council has consistently elected to pay an annual fine rather than provide the legally required number of affordable rental units within its administrative boundary (Chevalier and Sibertin-Blanc 2005).

Suburban Comparisons: Juvignac and La Mosson A comparison between Juvignac and La Mosson provides an interesting avenue for considering disparate approaches to suburban planning, land management, and pro-growth policies in Montpellier. In many respects Juvignac and La Mosson stand out as contrasting suburban forms, with different housing types, demographics, and connections to

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the rest of the city. Yet there are also several points on which the two neighbourhoods are similar, and which in turn provide an opportunity to examine the impact of urban planning and political responses to suburban development. First, both Juvignac and La Mosson are products of the spectacular population growth that touched Montpellier in the 1960s and 1970s. The development and expansion of La Mosson is linked, as noted above, to the arrival of Algerian expatriates and labour migrants in the 1960s and 1970s. The shortage of housing in Montpellier during this period necessitated the rapid construction of new units, and resulted in state intervention in terms of the funding, guiding, and organization of these new developments. The current state of building disrepair is very much a product of this process: constructed using low-quality materials and assembled in the space of a few years, the towers and low-rise buildings of La Mosson were, by the 1990s, in need of extensive repairs (Chédiac and Bernié-Boissard 2010). While the rapid growth of Juvignac in the 1970s and 1980s is also due to migration, this took a different form: the use of private capital and an idealized vision of suburban life that included detached houses with gardens reflect the arrival in Juvignac of higher-income earners who worked in Montpellier’s emerging tertiary sector. That Juvignac was an independent village meant that the local council could – at least in some respects, as noted above in terms of the provision of social housing – set an urban growth policy that differed from Montpellier’s. The differences in the form and landscape of suburban developments in Montpellier are thus the product of different policies – and different forms of capital – employed in response to the same problem, namely population growth. The nuanced association between low-quality, high-rise housing with the arrival of international migrants and low-density single family homes with the arrival of higher-income French in-migration is replicated in other French cities and, as Nasiali (2012) argues, speaks to a particular vision of how international migration should be managed. That Juvignac and La Mosson peer out at each other across a river valley underscores the different political and urban planning responses to population growth, and the very noticeable impact of private capital (or lack thereof) on suburban developments. Second, the construction of Juvignac and La Mosson was dependent on the conversion of agricultural land to urban land. La Mosson is built on a former viticultural estate that was purchased by the state in the early 1960s expressly for the construction of the neighbourhood. At the

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time, wine production in the Montpellier area was declining and viticultural land was losing value, making the purchase of the La Paillade estate a viable option for a new neighbourhood. Similarly, the growth of Juvignac from small village to town has required the conversion of surrounding viticultural lands to low-density housing. Since La Mosson has not continued to expand – the last high-rise buildings were constructed in the 1970s,2 with the focus now on refurbishing existing buildings – its intrusion into the surrounding agricultural zones has not continued far beyond the boundaries of the original viticultural estate. However, since the growth of Juvignac was based on the construction of individual family homes rather than the purchase of a single, large estate and a complete neighbourhood plan, Juvignac has continued to nudge into the surrounding countryside, leading to increasing tensions between agrarian land use and residential land use. As is outlined by Jarrige, Thinon, and Nougaredes (2006), vineyards between Juvignac and the nearby village of St-Georges are under increasing pressure to urbanize, putting at risk the local wine cooperative. Particularly since the 2000s, when wine production once more became an important component of Montpellier’s economic structure – not least as a tourist attraction, and one frequently marketed by the Agglomération – the expansion of Juvignac has become a hotly contested political issue. In part, the ongoing conflict between agricultural and urban land in Juvignac has been addressed by SCOT, which has tried to limit the growth of Juvignac through a push to densification (such as the lowrise apartments surrounding the tramway) while also aiming to protect the agricultural and recreational spaces at the north-western fringe of Montpellier. This has had mixed results for the La Mosson and Juvignac neighbourhoods: although nominally limited in its growth, Juvignac has continued to expand through the private purchase of viticultural land (Jarrige, Thinon, and Nougaredes 2006) for conversion into singlefamily homes. And while some agrarian lands have been converted to recreation spaces – and thus protected from urbanization – these have in several instances functioned to further highlight the divisions between Juvignac and La Mosson. The Mosson River valley separating the two neighbourhoods has been designed as protected green space by SCOT – yet has also been converted into an exclusive golf course with high membership fees well outside the remit of many La Mosson residents. While the construction of Juvignac and La Mosson depended on the conversion of viticultural land to urban land, and although SCOT and other planning tools used by the Agglomération have in theory

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halted this expansion into the countryside, the conversion of green spaces such as the Mosson River valley into exclusive recreational land means that the surrounding agricultural land is still being used to meet selective urban interests. And finally, both Juvignac and La Mosson were, in different ways, communities that stood apart from the rest of the city – which has created particular difficulties in terms of governance, urban management, and transportation policy. As in the case of many other grands ensembles built in 1960s France (Roberts 2000), La Mosson was intended to provide most amenities within the neighbourhood: housing, schools, recreational spaces, shopping, and some employment. Built several kilometres from Montpellier’s city centre at a time when public transportation was sparse, La Mosson offered limited opportunities to link to the city centre and seemingly encouraged residents to stay in the neighbourhood – until the arrival of tramline 1 in 2000 permitted faster and more frequent travel to the city (Mills 2001). As an independent village being amalgamated into Montpellier Agglomération, Juvignac also stood apart from the rest of the city until the early 2000s, with limited public transportation options until the arrival of the tramway. As a separate political entity – while also a commuter town to Montpellier – Juvignac was not, until more recently, fully integrated with the city centre. The self-contained design of La Mosson and Juvignac’s history as an independent village have presented ongoing challenges in terms of these neighbourhoods’ integration within the wider urban area. As well as the introduction of the tramway as a means of improving suburbanurban transportation links, Montpellier Agglomération has deployed several other tools: the use of municipally funded arts events and sporting events to draw visitors to La Mosson and Juvignac from other parts of Montpellier (Négrier and Préau 2010); the devolving of community funding to Juvignac and La Mosson as a way of equalizing access to resources between these suburban locations and more central neighbourhoods (Négrier and Préau 2010); and, in the case of La Mosson, the use of municipal and state funds to redevelop public spaces and amenities in the neighbourhood (Chédiac and Bernié-Boissard 2010). The high-rise social housing towers of La Mosson and the detached family homes of Juvignac thus have two points in common: as a suburban community each has a history as a space apart from the urban; and as a result each has, in turn, been the object of renewed municipal policies aimed at re-integrating suburban spaces within the broader urban network of Montpellier.

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Conclusion Over the past decades, the dialectical relationship between the demand for space in order to accommodate Montpellier’s ever-growing population and the imperative to keep agricultural land intact has not only transformed the city’s urban landscape but has also redefined the planning system. The political context in the Montpellier region underwent two significant restructuring processes related to urban development processes: the French state decentralized some of its decision-making powers to local and regional levels; and, at the same time, a strong local political leadership emerged that worked towards establishing a regional perspective on how to deal with scattered and impromptu urban development within the territory. The rapid growth of Montpellier, and the expansion of the city are now being managed through the introduction of an administrative structure (Agglomération) to guide this development – but also through a visionary sense of how the city should grow, drawing on boosterish marketing techniques to present Montpellier as a metropolis and as a city growing towards the sea. Since the Montpellier region has little industrial but an extensive agricultural heritage, the moment the city starts to grow, it puts pressure on agrarian activities. Rather than intervene in agricultural issues, the municipality is trying to manage this by controlling land sales and land speculation within its political boundary through a range of policy regulations. However, the continuous move to the outskirts of cities has been described as a “predatory use of agricultural land” (Estèbe 2004). The developments of Juvignac and La Mosson are expressions of suburban forms from two distinct periods of growth at the periphery in French cities. Both have in common that they turned agricultural land into urban areas. The older one, La Mosson, was built as a compact apartment complex at the periphery of the city, following the modernist approach of a top-down and centralized planning system of the French state. Juvignac, on the other hand, is the result of the private development industry, providing single-family homes for mainly newcomers who are attracted to Montpellier because of job demands in the hightech industry, the medical complex, and advanced services. Equally, both are the product of changing population levels and suggest that twentieth-century suburbanization processes in France are, at least in part, driven by shifting immigration flows that have required new solutions to housing, transportation, and economic development.

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They are, as Max Rousseau (2015) describes in his analysis of two suburban neighbourhoods in Lyon, a clear expression of the same discourse, yet packaged in two different forms. While the state played a strong and active role for turning agricultural land into built-up areas for the period when La Mosson was built, the state now takes on a managerial and entrepreneurial role by setting rules for a planning system that is believed to have established the right balance between urban growth and protection of agricultural land. At first sight, the two approaches seem to be very different – one within the modernist tradition, with a belief in equity and right to housing for middle-class and less privileged people, the other articulating a competitive and individualized society where the right to a single-family home is an expression of upper-middle-class status. However, both approaches are not addressing the real issue of sprawl: the encroachment on agricultural land by urban forms that provide a limited and, while not entirely monofunctional, at least a relatively homogeneous use of space. In other words: the demand for housing continues to be in direct conflict with the goal of keeping a well-functioning agricultural landscape. And that is precisely the reason why it is like putting old wine in new bottles. NOTES 1 The data presented here are based on the ZUS designation for La Paillade/La Mosson. With the conclusion of the ZUS program in 2014, the parameters for statistical data on La Paillade have been changed to a much larger neighbourhood of 30,000 residents under the “Quartier Prioritaire” program. Therefore, we decided to stay with the more detailed, placespecific data from 2006. 2 The French urban planning policy of creating large-scale high-rise suburban developments ended in 1973, when financial and political support for grands ensembles-style neighbourhoods – such as La Mosson – was formally ended by the state.

REFERENCES Bakis, H., and A. Schon. 2012. Ville de la connaissance et terreau numerique: Le cas de Montpellier, France. Networks and Communication Studies, NETCOM 26 (3–4):275–306.

Land, Population Growth, and Montpellier’s Suburbs  155 Barbéris, J.-M. 2005. La ville et ses composantes: L’émergence des categories en interaction orale. Revue de l’Université de Moncton 36 (1):31–60. http:// dx.doi.org/10.7202/011988ar. Bernié-Boissard, C., and J.-P. Volle. 2010. Le réseau du tramway. In Montpellier: La ville inventée, ed. J.-P. Volle, L. Viala, E. Négrier, and C. Bernié-Boissard, 66–91. Marseille: Edition Parenthèse / Gip Epau. Bonnet, N. 2010. The functional resilience of an innovative cluster in the Montpellier urban area (south of France). European Planning Studies 18 (9):1345–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2010.492580. Borraz, O., and P. John. 2004. Symposium: The transformation of urban political leadership in western Europe. International Journal of Urban and Regional Planning 28 (1):107–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00505.x. Buyck, J., J.-P. Chery, and F. Jarrige. 2008. Analysis of regional spatial planning and decision making strategies and their impact on land use in the urban fringe: Montpellier case study. PLUREL Governance and Planning Scenarios (3):1–106. Chédiac, S., and C. Bernié-Boissard. 2010. La résidentialisation. In Montpellier: La ville inventée, ed. J.-P. Volle, L. Viala, E. Négrier, and C. Bernié-Boissard, 92–109. Marseille: Edition Parenthèse / Gip Epau. Chevalier, D., and M. Sibertin-Blanc. 2005. Entre grands projets et positionnement situés: Maîtrise de l’étalement urbain dans l’agglomération montpelliéraine et développement durable. Paper presented at: “Les villes au défi du développement durable: Quelle maîtrise de l’étalement urbain et des ségrégations associées?” held at l’Université de Sfax, Le Mans. Crozat, D. 2009. La production culturelle de la norme spatiale à travers l’habitat illégal dans l’Hérault. Géographie et Cultures 72, 43–62. Available at: http://gc.revues.org/2217?lang=en (last accessed 18 March 2014). http:// dx.doi.org/10.4000/gc.2217. Dikeç, M. 2007. Badlands of the republic: Space, politics, and urban policy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470712788. Eberlein, B. 1996. French centre-periphery relations and science park development: Local policy initiatives and intergovernmental policymaking. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions 9 (4):351–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00248.x. Ekers, M., P. Hamel, and R. Keil. 2012. Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies 46 (3):405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Estèbe, P. 2004. Quel avenir pour les périphéries urbaines? Esprit (Paris, France) 303:82–95. INSEE. 2006a. Juvignac – Les chiffres clés de Montpellier Agglomération. Available at: http://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques (last accessed 27 January 2014).

156  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? INSEE. 2006b. ZUS La Paillade. Available at: http://www.insee.fr/fr/accueil (last accessed 27 January 2014). INSEE. 2011. Commune de Juvignac (34123) – Dossier complet. Available at: http://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2011101?geo=COM-34123 (last accessed 19 June 2015). Jarrige, F., P. Thinon, and B. Nougaredes. 2006. La prise en compte de l’agriculture dans les nouveaux projects de territoires urbains. Exemple d’une recherché en partenariat avec la Communauté d’Agglomération de Montpellier. Revue d’Economie Regionale et Urbaine 3 (August):393–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.3917/reru.063.0393. Kipfer, S. 2009. Tackling urban apartheid: Report from the social forum of popular neighbourhoods in Paris. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33 (4):1058–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00929.x. Le Roy Ladurie, E. 1962 [2000]. Histoire du Languedoc. Paris: Presse Universitaire de France (this edition 2000). Mills, G. 2001. New tramways in France: The case of Montpellier. Transport Reviews: A Transnational Transdisciplinary Journal 21 (3):337–52. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/01441640117122. Montpellier. 2012. Recensement. http://www.montpellier.fr/189recensement.htm (last accessed 14 August 2013). Montpellier Office de Tourisme. 2011. Rapport d’activité. Available at: http:// www.montpellier-tourisme.fr/ (last accessed 14 August 2013). Nasiali, M. 2012. Ordering the disorderly slum: “Standardizing” quality of life in Marseille tenements and bidonvilles. Journal of Urban History 38 (6):1021– 35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0096144211435120. Négrier, E. 2003. A French urban powershift? The political construction of metropolization. French Politics 1 (2):175–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ palgrave.fp.8200027. Négrier, E., and J. Préau. 2010. Cultures urbaines, cultures métropolitaines. In Montpellier: La ville inventée, ed. J.-P. Volle, L. Viala, E. Négrier, and C. Bernié-Boissard, 162–81. Marseille: Edition Parenthèse / Gip Epau. Parker, G. 1993. Montpellier ou la maïeutique mercatique – from ideality to reality. The art of wishful thinking. Modern & Contemporary France 1 (4):385–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489308456140. Plouin, M.E. 2007. Chicken coops and machines of interminable errors: A history of the grands ensembles in Parisian suburbs. Berkeley Planning Journal 20 (1):43–60. Roberts, M. 2000. Banlieues 89: Urban design and the urban question. Journal of Urban Design 5 (1):19–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/135748000112963.

Land, Population Growth, and Montpellier’s Suburbs  157 Rousseau, M. 2015. “Many rivers to cross”: Suburban densification and the social status quo in Greater Lyon. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 39 (3):622–32. SIG (Système d’information géographique) Chiffre Clés. 2009. Available at: http://sig.ville.gouv.fr/Tableaux/9105040 (last accessed 27 January 2014). Silverstein, P.A., and C. Tetreault. 2006. Postcolonial urban apartheid. Riots in France. http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/Silverstein_Tetreault/ (last accessed 27 January 2014). Steinmetz, H. 2013. Les Chalandonnettes. La production par le haut d’une accession bas de gamme. Politix 101 (1):21–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.3917/ pox.101.0021. Valette, E. 2006. Avec et sans la ville: La complexité de l’organisation territoriale rurale périurbaine. L’exemple de l’arrière-pays nordmontpelliérain. In Ville Méditerranéennes d’Europe et leurs périphéries: Mutations territoriales, innovations sociales, ed. D. Crozat, J.-P. Volle, and L. Viala, 199–214. C.N.R.S. Mutatation des territoires en Europe – Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III. Viala, L. 2010. Espace public et centralité dans le projet métropolitain. In Montpellier: La ville inventée, ed. J.-P. Volle, L. Viala, E. Négrier, and C. Bernié-Boissard, 204–29. Marseille: Edition Parenthèse / Gip Epau. Viala, L., and J.-P. Volle. 2010. De Polygone à Odysseum, un dessin / dessein de ville. In Montpellier: La ville inventée, ed. J.-P. Volle, L. Viala, E. Négrier, and C. Bernié-Boissard, 32–65. Marseille: Edition Parenthèse / Gip Epau. Wacquant, L. 2008. Urban outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press.

8 “In-Betweens” In Time and Space: The Governance of Suburbanisms in the Ruhr ludg er bas t e n

Introduction The Ruhr is a polynucleated urban region in western Germany. As shown in figure 8.1, it stretches, roughly, from Duisburg on the lower Rhine River in the west to Hamm, some eighty kilometres to the east, and between the Ruhr and Lippe Rivers, some thirty-five kilometres in a north-south direction. Using its most common spatial delineation, the administrative territory of the so-called Regionalverband Ruhr (Ruhr Regional Association), it is home to just over 5 million people (as of the end of 2011). Arguably, this delineation seems a little arbitrary when one considers the physical space of built-up settlement areas: the Ruhr’s western end at Duisburg also forms the northern end of an axis of urban development along the lower Rhine that includes Düsseldorf, Leverkusen, Cologne, and Bonn to the south. Economic linkages and current commuting patterns reveal rather complex geographic patterns and provide some justification for the view that a combined Rhine-Ruhr area should really be considered one metropolis (Danielzyk, Knapp, and Schulze 2008) – at least within the context of global analyses of patterns and processes of metropolitan development and suburbanization. However, different contexts of analysis provide a similarly compelling rationale for still identifying the Ruhr as a separate urban region in its own right. These are largely related to time and to culture rather than to physical settlement space, for the historical experiences of the Ruhr are distinctly different from those of neighbouring urban regions. Historically, the Ruhr is a child of the industrial age, emerging as the industrial heartland of Germany – and as an urban region – during the nineteenth

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Figure 8.1.  The Ruhr region.

century. After the Second World War, it was the Ruhr that drove the West German economic recovery (the so-called Wirtschaftswunder), but, like many so-called “old industrial areas” in Europe, it has since undergone major processes of industrial and general economic restructuring. Sluggish economic growth and, more recently, demographic decline now characterize the Ruhr as a whole, even while both economic and demographic indicators show some considerable variation across the region. If one takes a more or less “classic” understanding of suburbanization as a frame of reference, the Ruhr is a somewhat unlikely urban region to study when investigating current processes and patterns of suburbanization in Europe. Such understandings or theories tend to describe suburbanization as a process of outward growth, being premised on the idea of a (single) urban core from which population (and jobs) move outwards (van den Berg et al. 1982). Sustained economic

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and population growth is thus implied as the driving force that fuels urban spatial expansion, largely at the cost of inner cities – as graphically expressed by Beauregard’s term “parasitic suburbanization” used to describe the experience of U.S. cities after the Second World War (Beauregard 2006). Yet the Ruhr does not conform to such a pattern of suburbanization, since it does not experience this kind of growth – and there will not be a revival of such growth in the foreseeable future. Development pressures on urban peripheral lands, while they certainly continue to exist in places, are arguably less intense than they have ever been in the Ruhr’s history. And accordingly, suburbanization as the breaking of new ground does not necessarily feature highly on most planners’ or politicians’ list of current problems. In terms of the timing and the magnitude of current pressures of suburbanization, then, the Ruhr appears quite different from those fast-growing and sprawling urban regions that tend to dominate the suburbanization debates in developed and developing countries alike. But apart from the timing, it is also the spatial characteristics of those processes of suburbanization that take on a slightly different form in the Ruhr. Even though there were some preindustrial towns and cities in the area, the Ruhr only came to be perceived as one urbanized region during the era of rapid industrialization, primarily in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Ruhr never was and to this day is not one city, based on a traditional understanding of the term. It never had one clear or dominant urban core from which growth spread outwards. Instead, growth occurred where coalmines were established and where industry emerged. Therefore the Ruhr always had and still has a constitutive polycentric or patchwork-like urban form, which makes it rather difficult to define inside and outside, core and fringe, or “sub” and “urbs.” Polivka and Roost (2011) have coined the term “inner fringe” to visualize a key characteristic of this spatial structure of settlement, which also formed a central element of Tom Sieverts’s thinking when developing the idea of the Zwischenstadt (“in-between city”) (Sieverts 1998). And even though there are obvious rural-urban fringe areas with many exurban development nodes in neighbouring counties and municipalities (in particular along the Ruhr’s northern reaches), the most basic notion of the term “suburban,” implying “the combination of noncentral population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion” (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012, 407), seems of only limited relevance to the Ruhr today. Instead, one could argue that some of the

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most interesting suburbanization processes in the Ruhr can actually be observed “in-between,” in the very heart of the region. This somewhat unusual spatial fabric, combined with the relative absence of “classic” suburbanization pressures at this point in time, largely explains how the Ruhr clearly differs from most of the case studies of suburban forms and processes presented in this book and, indeed, from most current processes of suburbanization around the globe. And this seems to be a compelling reason to include the Ruhr in a book on new forms of suburbanization in old Europe, since it strongly supports the notion that there isn’t one single model to describe or possibly explain patterns of urbanization and suburbanization in European cities. Following our common framework for a comparative analysis, I shall first reflect on the three general themes of land, infrastructure, and governance separately, as they pertain to the Ruhr. However, since these factors are strongly intertwined, possibly even more so in the Ruhr than elsewhere, the chapter will continue by developing a historical perspective of their interplay as a heuristic sketch of different layers of suburbanization, before focusing on the current governance of suburbanisms in this rather fragmented sub/urban region through two illustrative case studies. Configuring Suburban Development: Matching Land, Infrastructure, and Governance Suburbanization is a multidimensional process that requires land (if only as a material resource for development), infrastructure to valorize that land, and governance systems to facilitate the development process. These governance systems can shape relations between the actors of development, produce conducive regulatory structures, and provide ideological legitimacy to the material, socio-cultural, and economic changes the suburbanization process involves. How can we characterize the configuration of these three factors in the Ruhr?

Land At first sight, land for (suburban) development doesn’t seem in short supply in the Ruhr. Terrain hardly prevents further outward expansion, and transportation infrastructure, on the whole, imposes no grave limitations on accessibility. Furthermore, even within the central areas of

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the Ruhr, there are lands that could be used for further suburban-style development. This is the result, first, of the patchwork spatial structure of the Ruhr, and second, of the availability of brownfield lands (though ground contamination often is a constraining factor). Established administrative and judicial systems provide a reliable formal basis for the mobilization of privately owned land. However, the availability of land is also restricted by societal discourses. In the early twenty-first century in the Ruhr (and in Germany in general), notions of environmentalism and sustainability frame discourses on land development and (sub)urbanization, and statutory plans and policies control and restrict the actual availability of land for suburbanization – even if there are significant local differences, with some municipalities actively pursuing policies of further suburban development. Of course, development is also restricted by market demand. In the Ruhr this is strongly framed by real and discursively heightened doubts about the region’s economic dynamism, the prospect of further demographic decline, and fears of a long-term overall reduction of real estate values. Many cities in the Ruhr already have a rather “soft” rental housing market, and there are strong doubts about the future of some of the suburban single-family housing stock, especially that from the 1960s and 1970s, on account of rather poor energy standards that require costly upgrades. For Germany at large, structural demographic change and changing household types and consumption patterns have prompted some observers to extrapolate the end of suburbanization, with the country supposedly running out of the “personnel” driving suburbanization (young families with kids) (Häußermann, Läpple, and Siebel 2008, 370). Yet such claims, based on the idea of a newly dominant cultural consumption paradigm favouring urbane, central-city living, seem very much premature (Hesse 2008). At present, even in the Ruhr, new suburban-style single-family housing in various forms still tends to sell quickly, whether it is in small-scale infill developments, larger-scale redevelopment areas, or more peripheral “classic” suburban developments.

Infrastructure As mentioned, land needs infrastructure to become a valuable resource. Suburbanization thrives on accessibility, so suburban locations are “made” through transportation infrastructure. The Ruhr has a rather

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dense motorway network, with three major west-east motorways traversing the region, though north-south connections are less consistent. However, congestion is a serious problem, first, due to through traffic, since the Ruhr forms a crucial link within the European motorway network (and truck traffic in particular is forecast to increase further). Second, much intraregional traffic also uses the motorways even for short trips. Further increases in motorway capacity will be increasingly difficult to realize because of spatial constraints and local resistance to noise pollution, and so on. The structures and problems of rail infrastructure mirror those of the motorway network. Intraregional commuter rail service must compete for rail capacity with both interregional passenger as well as freight services (even while the significance of the railways for regional industrial development is a thing of the past). Commuter services have become more expensive yet remain often overcrowded and unreliable. Intraregional north-south connections are notoriously few and difficult, requiring many commuters to change their mode of public transit twice on the way to work. “Classic” peripheral suburbanization has therefore been strongly car-orientated, with the few north-south motorways in particular creating spurs of increased accessibility. Waterways never became a major factor for industrial location; for residential suburbanization they were – and largely remain – irrelevant, although there are some attempts to identify select waterway locations for new commercial and residential developments – sometimes rather suburban in character. Residential suburbanization, of course, is also premised on local roads and technical infrastructure such as water and sewage systems (and tight regional planning restrictions prevent off-the-grid suburbanization). Local governments are responsible for this infrastructure, even if property owners are charged (re)development fees. While, in the heyday of post-war suburbanization, few (if any) municipalities carried out cost-benefit analyses, they have become more cost-sensitive lately, as maintenance and replacement costs for existing infrastructure are mounting and research has demonstrated the full cost implications of suburban development (Danielzyk, Dittrich-Wesbuer, and Osterhage 2010). Furthermore, with the erosion of municipal finances and the introduction of more entrepreneurial government techniques since the 1980s, many municipalities have off-loaded financial responsibilities for new technical infrastructure onto developers while also favouring central infill developments, thus lessening peripheral suburbanization pressures.

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Governance The provision of infrastructure is a prime example of the role of the state in the process of suburbanization. During the twentieth century, and most notably after the Second World War, municipalities and upper levels of government took on an enabling as well as a proactive role (and significance), and the state (in various guises) remains one of the key players in suburban development in general. This is, for one, related to the system (and culture) of planning. Constitutionally, municipalities in Germany have sole (though not unrestricted) authority over local land-use planning, and this remains a key factor in a planning system with highly formalized processes and instruments. Furthermore, municipalities have long integrated development, land-use, and (social) infrastructure planning, developing regulatory and technical planning capabilities and expertise through which they have shaped the processes of suburbanization. In the Ruhr, where urban areas sometimes seamlessly merge into one another, local rights paired with intermunicipal rivalries have often led to a beggar-thyneighbour approach to local planning. Upper levels of government can limit local powers through their own plans and their financial clout. While the national state in Germany has virtually no rights regarding local land-use planning, it has – at times strongly – advanced its own agendas through joint funding programs (e.g., urban renewal during the 1970s and 1980s, energy-saving refurbishments or the support of disadvantaged city quarters later). The national state also develops major transportation infrastructure, and this clearly has an impact on local development – especially in a large conurbation like the Ruhr. In this way the national state has underwritten suburbanization through the expansion of roads, motorways, and regional rail networks into rural fringe areas. Furthermore, especially until the 1990s, it devised policies for more housing, effectively supporting spatially expansive suburbanization  – for example, through social housing initiatives, subsidies and tax breaks for first-time buyers, and by making commuting costs tax deductible. The influence of the national state thus extends well beyond planning powers and mirrors the changing ideological priorities of national urban policy. In Germany, regulatory control of local planning lies with the different federal states, and it is practised through statewide spatial development plans and intermediate-level regional plans. In the state of Northrhine Westphalia, such regional plans have been important in

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mediating between the Ruhr and the rest of the state, between different municipalities within the Ruhr, and between the central and more peripheral municipalities and counties. The search for appropriate systems of regional planning and governance has formed an ongoing storyline in the development of the Ruhr since the late nineteenth century. Finding solutions to the temporal and spatial inconsistencies of the urbanization/suburbanization experience is a recurring theme in that story, often involving a wide array of stakeholders and institutional arrangements beyond the formal agencies of the state. Historical Perspectives on Suburban Development and Governance To understand these inconsistencies in time and space and their challenges we require a historical perspective on the development of the Ruhr. Arguably, the region is still defined by structures of the past and the ongoing struggle to deal with these, rather than by a confident vision for the future. History thus weighs heavily on the Ruhr and on the interplay of land, infrastructure, and governance that has produced its urban and suburban spaces – resulting in a layering of different suburbanizations and suburbanisms in time and space. In the following sections, I sketch different historical layers of suburbanization in the Ruhr and the way they have been shaped by – and have shaped – the governance of suburban development.

Beginnings: Nineteenth-Century Industrialization When, in the 1830s, industrialization first took real root in the area that we now call the Ruhr, some sweeping political changes over the previous decades had laid the foundation for the unleashing of the dynamic forces of industry: occupation by Napoleonic France, Prussian judicial and administrative reforms, the abolition of serfdom, the establishment of free enterprise, and so on. This ushered in a period of a statesupported economic liberalization, with the state bureaucracy actively promoting economic development, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the development of transportation infrastructure. These common impulses, geology (the coal seams), and developing railway infrastructure formed the basis of an increasingly unifying spatial logic for the rapidly industrializing region. Territorial demarcations and rationales did not follow suit; the demarcation of the two Prussian

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provinces Rhineland and Westphalia, their administrative districts, and their local municipalities, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, remained in place during both the process of German unification and the period of rapid industrial and urban development over the decades following. The growing mismatches between territorial-administrative and economic spatial structures in the Ruhr did not lead to a reform of governance structures at large. What governance changes there were largely played out on the municipal level. In a rather piecemeal and hesitant fashion, the state sanctioned the annexation of newly built-up areas by towns and cities and new municipal incorporations.1 Almost exclusively, it was local governments that had to deal with the enormous challenges of fast-paced growth, but they rarely had the power, financial resources, or expertise to regulate development, let alone plan for it. Instead, in the effective absence of Ruhr-wide governance, industry became the true developer of the region, as its spatial reach and power tended to overshadow local politics.2 The captains of industry became the key decision makers and power brokers. They bought the land, decided whether and where to expand their operations, recruited workers (thus determining in-migration), built suburban-style company housing for them, and developed infrastructure (or lobbied governments to do so); as well, their monies allowed local municipalities to develop social and cultural institutions and facilities. This, indeed, was private-led, not state-led development (Ekers, Hamel, and Keil 2012, 407). The logic of mineral exploitation driven by private capital underpinned a form of decentralized, polynucleated development leading to the fragmented spatial structures still visible in the Ruhr today. In the process, and as a result, much of the Ruhr became suburban (not just in settlement form) before most of its towns and cities ever became truly urban.

Developing Regional Governance: The Early Twentieth Century This private-led development led to recurrent crises. Its speculative nature caused cyclical booms and busts; but, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the pure scale of industrialization and urbanization also began to overwhelm both administrative and natural systems, threatening further growth. It was in the technical areas of water and sewage that local governments and industry first cooperated, installing regional special-purpose boards (Kilper 1995, 79–81). These

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first regional institutions of governance – not government agencies – reflected the spatial and functional logic of one common industrial district. The Prussian state merely provided enabling legislation, yet in other areas, such as canal building, it became a more proactive player, trying to ensure and enhance the international competitiveness of the industrial district as a whole. Of course, the expansion paradigm itself was never questioned, the pressure on natural resources being accepted as normal. Problems were seen to require technical or engineering solutions and even planning, but the growing realization of many problems’ wider spatial reach informed a search for more regional governance structures. The preservation of green spaces and agriculture was another issue that brought together reform-minded local and regional politicians from below. Inspired by regional planning initiatives in Boston and Berlin, the idea of a national park for the Ruhr emerged around 1910 (von Petz 1995, 11f.). Hired by a privately organized and funded “green space commission,” Robert Schmidt, a planner from the City of Essen, came to draft the first integrated regional development plan for the whole Ruhr. He envisaged a polynucleated, predominantly suburban-style development, following the example of already existing low-rise suburban or village-like company housing projects (von Petz 1995, 13f.). The plan also included suggestions for new regional governance structures to facilitate the regional development conceptualized therein. At the same time, economic success led to a growing sense of national significance and calls for territorial reform to reflect the status of the Ruhr, possibly making the Ruhr an independent province or at least a unified administrative district. However, it was only after the First World War, when the obligation to pay war reparations led to a significant expansion of coal mining and thus substantial in-migration, that the Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlenbezirk (SVR) was created in 1920 as a regional association of municipalities and counties. Its name, “settlement association for the Ruhr coal mining district,” bears witness to its official brief, that is, to plan and provide for the necessary new housing. Very clearly, though, this was no unified government, no new administrative district, let alone a new province. Instead, it was a second tier of local government dependent on inter-municipal compromise – in other words, a collaborative regional governance system that assigned significant power to its member municipalities and counties. Even so, under Robert Schmidt as its founding director, the SVR became the central governance entity

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to shape regional development and planning. It carried forward the fragmented spatial structures and largely suburban logic established by private-led development, and it generated a rationale of green belts and containment even while allowing for the expansion of housing in predominantly suburban form and locations.

Following the Modernization Paradigm: Post-1945 Growth and Suburbanization Under the Nazis, decision making became undemocratic and highly centralized, while the twin focus on industrial growth and suburbanstyle development patterns was maintained. After 1945, under the newly democratic system of the Federal Republic, those two themes continued to dominate regional development policy. A Fordist phase of development brought economic and population growth, while the state developed its capabilities of integrated development planning – ironically, just as the earliest signs of economic restructuring revealed the first cracks in the Fordist model. From the 1960s onwards, a period of modernization and expansion of physical and social infrastructure led to spatially expansive modern suburbanization, thriving on a popular ideology of modern lifestyles and settlement forms. In the Ruhr, this layer of suburbanization took shape in two generalized forms. First, some integrated satellite town-centre projects were realized, their locations determined by a local-regional consensus embodied in the SVR’s regional development plans. Second, both regional and municipal plans provided for the development of more low-density, detached single-family suburbanization, on both the outer and the “inner fringe.” In the region’s periphery, this form of suburbanization became most spatially expansive and, in Beauregard’s words, parasitic. At the time, though, non-central suburban growth was rarely seen as problematic, as a suburbanist ideology and statutory plans supported state-led mass suburbanization. The initial reaction to the first signs of industrial crisis in the Ruhr was an increase in state-led planning, with the government reinforcing both existing content (modernizing infrastructures for new industrial development) and governance approaches (more centralized planning) (Kilper 1995, 87). Increasingly, the Ruhr’s municipalities came to rely on state-administered funds for urban and economic development, the hegemony of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) at the state and municipal level ensuring overall policy compliance. Territorial reform

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created fewer – and supposedly more efficient – local municipalities and counties, and the SVR was restructured as the Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet (KVR), being stripped of its regional planning powers in the process. As these were delegated to the state’s administrative districts, the Ruhr now no longer had a common regional development plan. Organized Shrinkage? The Emergence of “In-Between” Forms of Suburban Governance Eventually, though, the “more-of-the-same” approach seemed increasingly ineffective. Since the mid-1980s, even the SPD-led state of Northrhine Westphalia has adopted more neo-liberal governance approaches, gradually withdrawing from centrally planned modernization programs, decentralizing structural economic policy, and downloading program responsibilities to local and non-state actors. This again marks a more private-led phase of development. Indicative of these trends, and highly influential for the development of new post-modern governance systems for the Ruhr, was an experimental government initiative. From 1989 onwards, an International Building Exhibition (Internationale Bauausstellung [IBA]) was staged in the central stretch of the Ruhr, the Emscher River valley, this being the part of the Ruhr most ravaged by large-scale industrial exploitation and, in the 1980s, most heavily affected by ecological degradation and deindustrialization. Yet, the Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park was no traditional building exhibition. Rather, it was a ten-year regional development program, focusing on ecological recovery and landscape architecture as much as on new buildings and architecture. Though government-owned, IBA was incorporated as a small private company. There was no new funding program: IBA projects, selected by a panel of nominated experts (not by a government bureaucracy or parliament!), were simply guaranteed priority in existing funding programs. IBA also had no regional development master plan but only a number of themes and guiding principles. It developed a new planning paradigm called “perspectivist incrementalism,” stressing innovative exemplary projects rather than a spatially comprehensive development policy. As a development strategy, IBA focused on mobilizing local and regional actors, changing perceptions of landscape, heritage, innovativeness, and opportunity in the process. Of course, it also tackled material realities. Instigating an ecological restoration of the Emscher River, it started

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work on the development of a new type of landscape park along the valley. As a building exhibition, its architectural projects focused on the reuse of abandoned industrial buildings, on new office and industrial parks on brownfield sites, and on housing. Old company housing projects were renovated and supplemented, and new housing was built – primarily medium density, often using suburban housing typologies, and located as much in “inner fringe” locations as in the outer fringe areas of the Ruhr. IBA has therefore reinforced the earlier polycentric patterns of small-scale suburban development, providing examples of and opportunities for less parasitic and less peripheral suburbanization to take place – “in-between” not only in terms of location but also in terms of governance structures. Since the end of IBA in 1999, the state government has continued to experiment with other “in-between” forms of governance through similarly flexible, temporary, and event-based planning initiatives, even while their long-term success remains doubtful. Within the Ruhr, special purpose organizations have been set up, in particular to further the cultural and tourism initiatives generated by IBA. In a similar vein, in 2004 the KVR was restructured once more and renamed Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR), in an attempt to foster the development of a unified metropolis through intensified inter-municipal cooperation. In terms of urban development, the state reassigned the statutory powers of regional planning to the RVR in 2009, potentially reasserting a more strategic-planning rationale into a rather fluid and diverse planning and governance system for an increasingly heterogeneous urban region. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the process of drawing up a regional plan can perhaps best be described as instigating a longerterm multifaceted regional discourse rather than drafting an actual statutory regional development plan. At the local level, a deepening fiscal crisis makes municipalities search for new private partners for urban and suburban development, trying hard to attract at least some of the new housing construction that continues even in times of general demographic decline. Since mobile (international) real-estate capital is rarely attracted to the Ruhr, partnerships are sought with regionally based developers or with housing companies that still own sizable proportions of the housing stock in the Ruhr; some are the successors of former company housing divisions, while others are the successors of community-owned non-profit housing corporations that have now been privatized. Overall, some municipalities continue to develop suburban-style detached housing projects, trying to attract traditional

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middle-class suburbanites, while others primarily have to deal with an aging rental housing stock and aging infrastructure. So, though problems for municipal and regional actors are generally similar, approaches and initiatives may differ markedly depending on local perceptions of specific opportunities. This has increased the heterogeneity of suburban spaces, their development trajectories, and the relevant governance systems in the Ruhr. Suburbia on the Ground

Welheim Garden City in Bottrop As outlined above, much of the Ruhr is suburban in character – not just on its fringe, but in its more central areas as well. This is largely the result, first, of the dispersed development of coal mines and adjacent company housing, and second, of the predominance of suburban forms of urban design used for such developments from early on. In the northwestern stretches of the Ruhr, north of the Emscher River and some two kilometres east of the later city of Bottrop, lay the village of Boy, where in 1910 the “Vereinigte Welheim” colliery was founded (see figure 8.2). By this time, coal mining had moved north from its beginnings in the southern stretches of the Ruhr region, and the new collieries turned the rural stretches along the Emscher into a patchwork landscape of rapidly growing industrial villages, mines, and open countryside. In this landscape, just to the south-east of the new mine, construction of a housing complex for the Welheim mineworkers was begun in 1913. Its architecture and urban design followed the German adaptation of the garden city ideal, which also influenced the design of many housing projects in the Ruhr at the time. Welheim had an overall urban design plan, with tree-lined streets and squares providing spatial differentiation. In spite of forty different house designs, all of the 580 two-storey houses with their roughly 1,200 units conformed to a consistent architectural style, giving the ensemble a common visual character. It was common at the time for gardens to be assigned to each housing unit to allow for the growing of vegetables to supplement meagre incomes; these further underlined the suburban character of the complex – next to the mine, but otherwise surrounded by open fields (Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park 1993, 179) (see figure 8.3). After coal mining stopped at “Vereinigte Welheim” in 1931, a hydration plant converting coal into liquid fuels occupied the site, and with

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Figure 8.2.  Welheim Garden City – local spatial context, circa 1930, revealing Welheim’s suburban/exurban location and character. Source: Ludger Basten.

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Figure 8.3.  Welheim Garden City today – architectural style and urban design underline its suburban character. Photo courtesy of Ludger Basten.

it ownership of the garden city changed. Bomb damage during the Second World War was substantial, leading to the replacement of many of the original buildings while maintaining the garden city urban design. Numerous ownership changes led to changing occupancy rights and thus also changes in the social and demographic structures; yet through it all, Welheim remained a company-owned rental housing project. However, as upkeep became sketchy and no comprehensive modernization program was carried out by later owners, it gradually fell into decline, as infrastructure and the quality of housing no longer conformed to modern standards – even by the mid-1980s, a third of all housing units still had no regular bathroom, and stand-alone coal furnaces were in common use. As a social housing project, with residency premised on either company affiliation or very low income, progressively more units were allocated to disadvantaged households, thus increasing social problems and tensions (Stadt Bottrop n.d.). Then, in 1989, because it was a textbook example of garden city-style company

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housing, the previously mentioned International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park selected Welheim as one of its flagship projects. It initiated a thorough renovation and modernization process by the then owners – the housing division of a large chemicals group – and the City of Bottrop, involving residents in a participatory planning process. The particular arrangements around the IBA thus opened up an opportunity to bring together a variety of state actors (state ministries, the office for heritage protection, the KVR regional association, the local municipality), private capital (the owners), and public interests. Floor plans were remodelled, smaller units were combined into larger apartments, modern bathrooms and gas-fired heating systems were installed, roofs and windows were replaced, and facades were renovated, as the city invested in a modernization of streets, infrastructure, and public amenities. Over thirteen years of renovations, 72.6 million Euros were spent on the garden city and its (eventually) 1,135 housing units. Welheim thus represents two layers of suburban development in the Ruhr. First, its origins derive from the rationale of private-led development and its logic of decentralized industrial exploitation in the Emscher region, just before a slightly more concerted governance and planning regime was established with the SVR. Its rather suburban design and exurban living arrangements – as well as its particular garden city design – were typical for the time and the location, even in housing complexes built by private companies. Second, during the 1990s it became a model project in that phase of late-twentieth-century suburban governance characterized by indirect state involvement, publicprivate partnerships, and new, more experimental and incrementalist approaches to regional development, during which many older suburban settlements were reinvigorated in new forms and circumstances. Since then, neo-liberal governance of urban and suburban development – and of housing – has been heightened, as many industrial parent companies have divested themselves of their housing portfolios and their housing subsidiaries, thus shedding the social investments and obligations that formed an integral part of former governance arrangements. Accordingly, specialized and often international real estate investment companies have entered the rental housing market in the Ruhr. Welheim is now owned by Deutsche Annington – currently the biggest housing company in Germany – a limited stock company owned by a British private equity company. It follows a program of small-scale privatization, selling individual units to interested renters or external buyers, thus potentially changing the hitherto existing social set-up

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even further, even while heritage protection measures largely ensure the visual survival of Welheim and similar early suburban projects in the Ruhr.

The Phoenix East Development in Dortmund Some five kilometres south-east of Dortmund city centre lies the district of Dortmund-Hörde. On either side of its medieval core, the Phoenix steel plant once stood. The plant ceased operations between 1998 and 2001, leaving two large parcels of land – of about a hundred hectares each – free for redevelopment. While agencies of the state government, in cooperation with the municipality, have led development of the Phoenix West parcel, set aside for high-tech industrial development, the local state – in various guises – has assumed responsibility for development of Phoenix East into a residential and commercial project surrounding a newly created lake (see figure 8.4). On the western portions of Phoenix East, close to the old town centre of Hörde, some eleven hectares are being developed for commercial uses (offices, medical suppliers and services, and restaurants, but only limited and very specific retail uses), but planners have also included apartment housing above ground-floor level. More importantly, twenty-six hectares on the northern and southern shores of the lake are reserved purely for housing, and most of this is planned for detached or semi-detached singlefamily houses, with some medium-density row and multi-unit housing situated on properties more set back from the lake shore and along the southern perimeter road. Following architectural workshops and competitions, detailed zoning plans and design guidelines were drawn up, ensuring a relatively consistent modern architectural style, protection of sight lines to the lake, and new residential quarters of an overall rather high-quality appearance (see figure 8.5). Properties have been and are being sold to individuals as well as to small-scale developers, ensuring some variety, but especially allowing individual households/families to construct their own “dream home.” Accordingly, sales started with properties on the terraced slopes of the north shore, which were deemed most attractive on account of their southern exposure and superb views, and these are clearly targeted at the high end of the market. The south shore will have more semi-detached and row housing as well as multi-unit apartment housing, but demand for single-family housing sites seems especially high. In total, the city calculates up to 2,000 housing units would be constructed during the ongoing build-out.

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Figure 8.4.  Phoenix East – northern and south-eastern portions showing the suburban character of urban design. Source: Ludger Basten.

For the City of Dortmund, Phoenix East is an emblematic project, highlighting its political will to actively resist demographic and economic decline. This has been a long-standing theme in Dortmund politics, ever since the ThyssenKrupp steel conglomerate closed down its Phoenix plants in the late 1990s. Back then ThyssenKrupp financed a McKinsey consulting team to conceive the so-called Dortmund Project, an initiative (and operational unit) to devise a new neo-industrial economic development strategy to replace some 80,000 industrial jobs lost over the previous decades. Phoenix West, with its focus on high-tech (e.g., nanotechnology) industrial development is one outcome of this.

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Figure 8.5.  Detached single-family housing overlooking Phoenix Lake – showing modern architectural styles and suburban typologies. Photo courtesy of Ludger Basten.

The Dortmund Project as a whole can be seen as a new and experimental form of governance in the field of urban economic development, as its finances, staffing, engagement with other non-state actors, reporting arrangements, and parliamentary control (or lack thereof, as the case may be) all point to a blurring of the dividing lines between state, private capital, and “public” actors. However, the city has also been persistent in stressing the importance of new housing for future economic development, both to counter general losses of suburban neighbourhoods to more peripheral municipalities and to be able to offer attractive options for those highly trained (“creative class”) employees needed to fuel technology-driven neo-industrialization. Thus, the City of Dortmund has been the central actor behind Phoenix East, and directly or indirectly it bears the main financial risks, in spite of some 70 million Euros contributed through European Union and state government funds (Frank and Greiwe 2012). Governance of the

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development project has been highly complex, involving many different partners, funding sources, and modes of operation. The key operational driver has been a new special-purpose development company, which has been responsible for clearing the site, developing the lake and its surrounding infrastructure, and managing marketing and property sales. It is a subsidiary of the city-owned public utility company, so its mode of operation is highly market-oriented, and political (i.e., local council) control is very indirect. Furthermore, a variety of municipal departments (planning, engineering, economic development, parks and green spaces, and so on) have had to provide expertise, prepare statutory plans for legislation by council, and provide linkages to state ministerial bureaucracies. The City of Dortmund therefore installed a Phoenix project office to manage inter-departmental as well as overall coordination and communication between project partners, and to control for compliance with overall project goals. The municipal political process has necessitated the formal involvement of the district council of Dortmund-Hörde, a kind of “sub-parliament” of council tasked with bringing political decision making closer to the citizens and facilitating advance discussion of local development issues. This is important not just in terms of the formal political processes of council; it is also politically significant. Hörde, on account of its former heavy industrial base, is very much a traditional working-class part of the city, with above-average rates of unemployment and social support as well as sizable immigrant communities. It has been a traditional stronghold of the ruling Social Democratic Party, but is clearly a locale where the potential conflicts between its working-class roots and more neo-liberal urban development strategies become highly visible. Not surprisingly, issues of gentrification and displacement have figured strongly in political debates, requiring the city (and the Social Democrats) to include extensive information and communication sessions with political parties and local interest groups (residents and property and business owners); these are largely managed through a newly installed city district management office (Müller 2011). The Phoenix East project is therefore indicative of a highly flexible governance approach to local urban/suburban development, based not only on its sheer size but, most importantly, on the perceived importance of the project for the city’s future development. At the same time – and in spite of the project’s rather central location, housing typologies, probable household arrangements, and the financial potency of the inhabitants – these residential portions of the Phoenix East development seem to conform more to a “classic” suburbanist ideal than to the

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“messy urbanity” of high-density central city quarters. Or they symbolize a new “happy marriage” of socio-economic homogeneity and suburban-style living in rather central locations for the wealthy middleclasses (Frank 2012). Conclusion The Ruhr of today is an ambiguous and contradictory space. It is a polynucleated, densely urbanized region, but it contains lots of green spaces and suburban developments in its very core. It is a region strongly bound together by a common history and cultural memory, yet uncertain of its future. It is proud of its highly successful industrial past, its working-class culture, and its melting-pot population, but it has long suffered from an inferiority complex regarding bourgeois refinement and culture, liveability, and, more recently, creativity and economic dynamism. With further demographic decline inevitable, some external planners have suggested a strategy of focusing on some select core cities while accepting a kind of planned “de-urbanization” elsewhere (AS&P – Albert Speer and Partner 2009) – while others deplore this as a cynical approach, instead regarding the differentiated, polynucleated spatial structure as one of the key assets for future development (Deutscher Werkbund Nordrhein-Westfalen 2010). These current contradictions are grounded in a variety of mismatches or states of “in-betweenness” in time and space, as some radical crises and restructurings and some rather gradual shifts in political and socio-cultural practices have at various times produced new layers of economic and urban development – and specific configurations of suburbia in the Ruhr. As for urban and suburban development, few urban regions in Germany have a similarly long-running history of struggle and experimentation concerning both the actual machinery of government by state institutions and the variegated processes of stakeholder and interest-group involvement, as implied by the term “governance.” Thus, the Ruhr has often been described as a laboratory, in view of the necessity for governance to develop responses adequate to the development challenges at hand. Suburbanization in the Ruhr, both historical and contemporary, cannot be understood through “classic” or traditional understandings of the concept, implying outward and parasitic growth. As a space or landscape, the Ruhr became very suburban in character early on during industrialization, but the term “industrial villages” – usually

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employed to refer to the political-administrative status of these settlements – can also be taken to reflect socio-cultural practices, as the majority of the region’s inhabitants did not really develop truly urban lifestyles or outlooks. Over time, political and military crises and catastrophes produced some radical changes in governance, but the underlying economic rationale – and the corresponding spatial logic – of development shifted far more gradually. From the 1960s onwards, as upper levels of government enacted or even imposed upon the Ruhr a variety of catch-up modernization programs – creating modernage urban cities, including modern, parasitic suburbias – the forces of economic restructuring were already shaping very different, postindustrial spatial realities. The following gradual shift from (state-led) government to more flexible forms of regional governance has coincided with (and partly produced or reinforced) a time of municipal fiscal crisis – just as socio-economic and socio-cultural differentiation in the post-industrial Ruhr has also led to a more differentiated space of opportunity and neglect, gentrification and disinvestment, wealth and disadvantage. Accordingly, suburbia in the Ruhr now takes many forms. Garden city-type company housing projects on the former rural fringe, which now find themselves on the “inner fringe” and thus more central within the larger region, still offer rental housing for lower-income inhabitants, and a variety of governance mechanisms ensures their maintenance during times of demographic decline. New (upper-)middleclass enclaves are being built in attractive locations, often rather close to urban centres, replacing or complementing other new suburban-style developments that conform to the more peripheral, parasitic model or layer of post-1945 suburbanisms. There is no question that such “classic” suburbanisms are also still being developed wherever local municipalities are trying to “cash in” on their land resources and still existing demand. In other places, municipalities, housing companies (especially in the higher-density suburban town centres), individual owners of single-family housing, and some social service providers are trying to develop new ideas and mechanisms to revamp and thus qualify these existing areas of patchwork suburbia for a foreseeable future characterized by accelerating demographic shrinkage and a thinning out of public infrastructures. The new and hefty challenges that the Ruhr’s suburbanisms face today mean that the region will yet again need to live up to its reputation as a laboratory of change. With its experiments with sub/urban forms, its solutions for meeting

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the need for social and technical infrastructure, and its attempts to develop mechanisms, institutions, and modes of governance appropriate to the increasingly heterogeneous forms of post-industrial suburbia, the Ruhr, as a quintessential part of old Europe, may indeed provide impulses for new suburbanisms elsewhere. Yet its people will need to draw on their tacit knowledge and experience (and on substantial financial resources from various levels of government) to find the right answers, both in terms of content (urban and suburban form) and process (governance). NOTES 1 For example, when Hamborn, now a part of the City of Duisburg, finally became an urban municipality in 1911, it already had more than 100,000 inhabitants. 2 As a result of the separation of the electorate into three classes according to tax payments, wealthy industrialists dominated formal local politics as well as wielding significant personal influence with upper levels of government. In the City of Essen, Alfred Krupp could thus single-handedly elect onethird of all municipal councillors.

REFERENCES AS&P – Albert Speer & Partner. 2009. Ruhrplan 21: Wandel - Vielfalt - Fairness. Projektskizze zu einem Strategieatlas für die Zukunft des Ruhrgebiets. Frankfurt/ Main: AS&P. Beauregard, R.A. 2006. When America became suburban. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Danielzyk, R., A. Dittrich-Wesbuer, and F. Osterhage, eds. 2010. Die finanzielle Seite der Raumentwicklung. Auf dem Weg zu effizienten Siedlungsstrukturen? (= ILS-Schriftenreihe 1). Essen: Klartext. Danielzyk, R., W. Knapp, and K. Schulze. 2008. “Metropoleruhr” oder “TripelMetropolis Rhein-Ruhr”? Informationen zur Raumentwicklung 9/10:549–62. Deutscher Werkbund Nordrhein-Westfalen. 2010. Stellungnahme zum SpeerPlan für die Metropole Ruhr. http://www.deutscherwerkbund-nw.de/ index.php?id=44&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=41&cHash=16008bf47ab71a0c4afff62 1ae8d78a4. Retrieved 12 November 2013.

182  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Ekers, M., P. Hamel, and R. Keil. 2012. Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies 46 (3):405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Frank, S. 2012. Reurbanisierung als innere Suburbanisierung. In Metropolis und Region. Aktuelle Herausforderungen für Stadtforschung und Raumplanung, ed. A. Hill and A. Prossek, 69–80. (= Metropolis und Region 8). Detmold: Rohn. Frank, S., and U. Greiwe. 2012. Phoenix aus der Asche. Das “neue Dortmund” baut sich seine “erste Adresse.” Informationen zur Raumentwicklung 11/12:575–87. Häußermann, H., D. Läpple, and W. Siebel. 2008. Stadtpolitik (= edition suhrkamp 2512). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Hesse, M. 2008. Reurbanisierung? Urbane Diskurse, Deutungskonkurrenzen, konzeptuelle Konfusion. Raumforschung und Raumordnung 66 (5):415–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03183185. Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park. 1993. Katalog zum Stand der Projekte. Frühjahr 1993 Gelsenkirchen: Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park. Kilper, H. 1995. Von regionaler Selbstregulierung zu interregionaler Konkurrenz. Wandel kommunaler Zusammenarbeit im Ruhrgebiet. In Kommunalverband – Ruhrgebiet. Wege, Spuren. Festschrift zum 75-jährigen Bestehen des Kommunalverbandes Ruhrgebiet, ed. Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet, 69–103. Essen: Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet. Müller, C. 2011. Projekt Phoenix. Integrierte Stadtteilentwicklung in Dortmund. Unpublished Diplom-thesis, Fakultät Raumplanung. Dortmund: TU Dortmund. Polivka, J., and F. Roost. 2011. Kerne, Adern und Ränder. In Schichten einer Region. Kartenstücke zur räumlichen Struktur des Ruhrgebietes, ed. C. Reicher, K.R. Kunzmann, J. Polivka, F. Roost, Y. Utku, and M. Wegener, 38–79. Berlin: Jovis. Sieverts, T. 1998. Zwischenstadt. Zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land (= Bauwelt Fundamente 118). Braunschweig, Wiesbaden: Vieweg. Stadt Bottrop. n.d. Welheim. Von der Arbeitersiedlung zum Vorzeigeprojekt – intakte Nachbarschaft fängt soziale Probleme in Welheim auf. http:// www.bottrop.de/tourismus/stadtportrait/stadtteile/060831_welheim.php. Retrieved 12 November 2013. van den Berg, L., R. Drewett, L.H. Klaassen, A. Rossi, and C.H.T. Vijverberg. 1982. Urban Europe. A study of growth and decline. Oxford: Pergamon Press. von Petz, U. 1995. Vom Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlenbezirk zum Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet: 75 Jahre Landesplanung und Regionalpolitik im Revier. In Kommunalverband – Ruhrgebiet. Wege, Spuren. Festschrift zum 75-jährigen Bestehen des Kommunalverbandes Ruhrgebiet, ed. Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet, 7–67. Essen: Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet.

9 City of Villages? Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs n ic h ol as a. p h e l p s , al a n m ac e , an d roya jodie ri

Introduction “Great cities have an air of inevitability about them. They are so vast and so solid that it is impossible to imagine an alternative history in which they failed to thrive …” (Barratt 2012, 3). Part of the seeming inevitability of London appears to centre on its character as a unique city in which a looser and more piecemeal pattern of development (Rasmussen 1937), or a “city of villages” prevailed (Greater London Authority 2002), as one recent policy publication declares. This is a history of there “always having been a there, there,” such that patterns of accessibility and interaction are quite evenly distributed across London, including in its suburbs (Griffiths et al. 2010). It is a history of London as incrementally produced over hundreds of years in which suburbs of all sorts take their place. Certainly, much of London’s suburban fabric looks as if it was produced incrementally. Academic histories of British suburbs have also contributed to the impression of very gradual and piecemeal change (Whitehand and Carr 2001). Moreover, the British planning system put in place only after the Second World War has also contributed to this sense of the incremental development of London. On the one hand, the discretion at the heart of the planning system is better suited to piecemeal developments than grand and extensive (re)developments (Phelps 2012). On the other hand, very effective containment of London with a green belt has ensured the preservation of its existing suburbs, presenting an urban landscape shorn of the most recent vintages of development. That is, London’s contemporary suburbanization – since the Second World War – has had to take place at some distance from it and scattered across the rest of the south-east of England (see figure 9.1).

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Figure 9.1.  Map of London and south-east England.

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Yet, notwithstanding these broadly appropriate generalizations, in some important respects this familiar storyline conceals the fact that the growth of London’s suburbs has, at times and in its function, form, and social composition, been the subject of some quite sudden changes and reversals in fortune. The story of the London suburbs we want to present here is one that, while accepting a slow incremental pattern of suburban development and change in one key city of “old Europe,” also recognizes some important discontinuities in development. In particular, we highlight the following anomalies: that much of the suburban development of London actually occurred in two relatively short bursts; that to some extent a suburban era in London’s recent history may have already receded (at least for now), with the repopulation and gentrification of the city centre; that London and local governments have contributed to important disjunctures in the suburban scene in the form of public housing estates and town centre redevelopments; and that significant bursts of migration have seen the social and ethnic complexion of some suburbs change quite markedly in short periods of time. We begin in the next section by outlining contrasting interpretations of the historic growth of London’s suburbs and their connection to the themes of land, infrastructure, and governance. We then pass on to consider the role of government – national, London-wide, and local – in shaping some important instances in which the suburban land development process and associated population growth in Greater London in recent times have been far from incremental. Quite rapid social and ethnic change has also been apparent across London suburbs – forming part and parcel of differentiated suburban communities and sense of belonging in the capital. We close with conclusions regarding the implications of our discussion for understanding suburbs old and new. The History of London’s Suburbs: A Tale of Two Cities If, as the title of this volume suggests, old Europe still has something to offer in the understanding of contemporary suburbanization, then the London suburbs in particular are worth examining, since the idea of the modern suburb was an Anglo-American invention that began life in London. The elusive relationship between London and its suburbs set off a revolution that still resonates the world over. This helps explain the assurance and authority palpable in many London suburbs.

186  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? For here the positive conception of the suburbs first saw the light of day. (Saint 1999, 9)

It is this conception that underlies modern definitions of the suburb as outlined in the introduction. Moreover, the fortunes of the modern suburb are intimately related not only to the availability, cost, and suitability of land for development but also to governance arrangements and infrastructure provision – although the picture in the case of the London suburbs is one in which suburban residential and other development has led and lagged in no especially consistent or systematic way. Figure 9.2 graphs rates of population change of inner and outer London from the early 1800s and provides an indication of the changing fortunes of suburban London as represented by the outer London boroughs. Rates of population growth in inner London had already declined, though its population continued to grow until the 1911 census but then went through an eighty-year period of population Figure 9.2.  Inter-census percentage change in population in inner and outer London

. Source: Greater London Authority Data Store.

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  187

declines before growth resumed by 1991. National and London governments were pivotal in this respect, as they were concerned to decant overspill to outer London and beyond. By the 1960s the first signs of gentrification were apparent (Glass 1964). However, gentrification did not effect a reversal of inner London fortunes until government instigated the more systematic gentrification of inner London first through the likes of the London Docklands Development Corporation and more recently by prioritizing the re-use of brownfield sites and putting an emphasis on greater building density under the guise of an “urban renaissance” (Punter 2009). Moreover, it is doubtful that such a population turnaround and gentrification of inner London could have happened without important migration from elsewhere in Europe and significant flows of investment into real estate from around the world. Although the population of outer London continued to grow through the first half of this period of inner London decline, it also began to decline by the 1951 census. In the recent period in which Greater London’s population has started to grow again, it is noticeable that renewed population growth has been somewhat slower in outer London than in inner London. Thus, the ascendancy of the suburbs has come to something of a halt in recent decades as inner London has once again begun to experience increases in population from processes of gentrification and higher densities of residential development – suggesting indeed that gentrification and suburbanization are inextricably linked in some long-term cyclical movement of disinvestment and reinvestment in the city (Smith 1982). It is against this backdrop that former London mayor Boris Johnson launched his Outer London Commission.1 As a potentially countervailing policy to those of catering for population overspill, the London green belt (put in place in 1947), for the first four decades or so of its existence, actually served to exacerbate trends towards the suburbanization of London across the rest of the south-east of England in the form of leapfrog development scattered across numerous existing and new towns in the region. The effect whereby the green belt was meant to displace some measure of development pressure to within London has only manifested itself more recently. Nevertheless, one could suggest that the urban containment produced by the green belt has been one ingredient in helping to ensure that mass transportation infrastructure has managed to catch up with development, since the difficulties of providing such infrastructure over an exponentially increasing hinterland area have been avoided. Hence, Greater London has the highest public transport infrastructure density of all world city

188  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

regions (Niedzielski and Malecki 2012) – an important feature of its suburbs. If some of the authority and assurance of London’s suburbs alluded to earlier has waned, nevertheless we believe there continues to be a value in looking to London’s suburbs for insights that will be relevant farther afield. Rather than presenting a simple story, the process of suburbanization in London has undulated over time, given the unity of a process of urbanization that binds city centres and suburbs. Paradoxically, it is a story that contains the appearance of gradual change within two major surges of suburbanization associated with private-sector mass residential development, as well as genuinely more radical breaks produced from modern state interventions in the built environment. In respect of the latter, [s]o tenacious has been the belief that the London suburbs are just a concatenation of old villages that we have almost forgotten how numerous, how powerful and often how architectural these extra-mural institutions were – and are … Today it is often assumed that architectural scale and grandeur in cities are confined to the centre, whereas suburbs are ordinary … Up to at least 1750 you could turn this around. The city core, with few exceptions (principally churches), was a repository of banal domestic buildings; the suburbs were the location for the great architectural projects. (Saint 1999, 11)

Indeed, we can suggest that the building height limits – which had ensured until recently that little intruded into a skyline in which St Paul’s Cathedral dominated – led to a scarcity of development sites in inner London, in contrast to the availability of land in outer London boroughs that enabled the government-orchestrated development of quite striking and significant ensembles of suburban office and residential estates. These parallel stories of London’s suburbanization in recent times are inflected within modern governments’ understanding and management of the process itself. As Barratt suggests at the outset of his recent history of London, “The awareness of two Londons – a patchworkvillage London and a unified Greater London – that shaped the set-up of the capital’s government in 1889 is still deeply embedded in the capital’s psyche” (Barratt 2012, xi). For Dennis, drawing significantly on examples from London, there is a strong sense in which “[e]arly modern suburbia was a ‘collective creation,’ but it was ‘improvised not designed,’ not planned by powerful

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  189

ground landlords or estate developers but a spontaneous coalescence among groups of like-minded families” (Dennis 2008, 184). Taking their cue from the preferences of royalty of the time, by the first half of the seventeenth century, the west end had become a favoured spot for some of the first suburbs in the form of rather grand developments of new squares or miniature towns. Moreover, a broader-based collective response to the plague of 1665 (Saint 1999) and the fire of London in 1666 (Barratt 2012) had the effect of demonstrating some of the virtues of suburban living and drove the development of London farther westwards in the form of equally grand developments of more such squares and towns by the first half of the seventeenth century. These grand and distinct suburban developments represented something of a pattern of change that was to take place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “This pattern of change – a combination of planned and unplanned – was repeated across the entire region as unconnected manors and parishes were converted into mini-towns” (Barratt 2012, 177). However, “much of the grander building of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was to be short-lived; a substantial house built in the 1800s, with spacious gardens and perhaps some out buildings, was more than likely to fall prey to a developer a few decades later, who would erect an entire terrace of houses on a site once thought appropriate for one” (Barratt 2012, 177). Something of this pattern of coalescence and absorption of discrete developments into a seamless urban form continued into subsequent decades: The new growth was not evenly distributed around the edge of 1914 London, nor was the attack maintained in full strength in all directions at the same time. Many factors influenced the patterns and pace: the price and availability of suitable building land; the existence of good radial transport services, or the promise of them; the appearance of new factories or main roads; even fashions for certain districts among the more favoured potential purchasers. Deliberate planning rarely intervened to spoil the variety and unpredictability of the processes. (Jackson 1991, 78)

Concerted planning interventions, though weak and sporadic, were not entirely absent, and they gradually – over the 1900s – exerted their own distinct and rupturous effects on the suburbanization process as we describe it below. Nevertheless, as Jackson notes of the last major period of suburban development within the Greater London

190  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

boundaries, “Almost without exception, the low-density estates provided by the building firms between 1923 and 1939 coalesced uncomfortably into new communities which were little more than haphazard accretions of residential roads around a railway station or thoroughfare” (Jackson 1991, 73). “In the half-century between 1889 and the outbreak of the Second World War the suburbs came to dominate London” (Barratt 2012, 343), and by the 1900s London “was a city where a new outer core was starting to draw people from the centre” (Barratt 2012, 212). Moreover, “the great surge in suburb-building occurred in two waves. The first reached a peak towards the end of Queen Victoria’s reign before subsiding, to be brutally cut off short by the outbreak of the First World War. The second wave started in the mid-1920s and was again curtailed by global conflict” (Barratt 2012, 349). These two surges can be seen in figure 9.2, punctuated by the dip between 1911 and 1921. In this way, “the housing stock, especially in the suburbs, grew through a series of imbalances with property sometimes running ahead of the population growth and sometimes falling behind it” (Inward 2006, 184–5). Yet, paradoxically, the very rapidity of this suburbanization resulting from a highly fragmented building industry helped to produce – from a contemporary standpoint – a feel and appearance of incremental development. While Metroland has been immortalized and forms something of a distinct swathe of suburban residential development to the north-west of London, it is also worth remembering that this was unique within London, since only this one railway company (the Metropolitan Railway) was granted powers that enabled the systematic development of lands adjacent to its lines. Inward (2006, 198) cites figures from the 1890s to suggest that London’s new suburban houses were built by around 2,000 architects and 8,000 companies. Between 1878 and 1880 in Camberwell in south London alone, 416 companies erected 5,670 houses – an average of just 4.5 houses per builder, giving some measure of the likely variation on a limited number of architectural themes and building techniques that composed London’s rapidly expanding suburbs (Dennis 2008, 190). In this process of rapid development of suburban communities, then, “All these new suburbs created their own life and momentum. They might have sprawled into one another, but they retained a certain village atmosphere, with their shops, small businesses, churches, chapels, libraries and places of entertainment” (Barratt 2012, 235).

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  191

Moreover, not only did some suburban communities grow incredibly rapidly, but from the outset they might also not have been considered residential suburbs at all. East London suburbs in particular housed significant industrial employment along with housing, so that they might be distinguished as industrial suburbs (Harris and Larkham 1999). In little over fifty years, West Ham grew from virtually no population to something more akin to a self-contained industrial and port town, rather than an industrial suburb. Although state interventions have tended to produce rather distinct suburban developments, in some instances they also contributed to the village-centred urban sprawl that is said to typify London. In the post-war era, for example, “The Heathrow area was transformed. Villages became service centres and sprawled into one another” (Barratt 2012, 416). Thus, from early on, the pattern of suburban development across London embodied two types of change, grand and often quite distinct and abrupt development – yet development that nonetheless was quickly absorbed or transformed incrementally. Seeing Like a State: Government, Modernity, and Change in Suburbia If “to many of their residents, suburbs were imagined as the antithesis of modernity, sites of refuge from modern business and cosmopolitan diversity, places where ‘family values’ and ‘traditional’ architectural styles were celebrated” (Dennis 2008, 183), echoing the grand scale of previous developments in suburbia, aspects of modernity made themselves felt comparatively early in the London suburbs and have continued to do so in sometimes quite spectacular style. This modernity can be seen in the development of public housing estates and the comprehensive redevelopment of some former market town centres in the outer London boroughs, as well as the new towns in the south-east of England that not only accommodated overspill but presumably a measure of London’s erstwhile suburban population growth.

The Welfare State and the Governance of Social Housing As the first incarnation of London government, the London County Council (LCC) had a jurisdiction limited to inner London boroughs, and a mandate mainly to provide for infrastructure. Yet, early in the

192  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

1900s, faced with significant issues of population overcrowding in central London – which at the time retained significant areas of smokestack Victorian-era manufacturing industries – the LCC made significant forays into the development of public suburban housing estates. The largest of these were, of necessity, developed on cheaper land found in relatively inaccessible locations in the outer London boroughs. Thus, as figure 9.3 shows, the LCC’s public housing developments – and to a lesser extent those of the GLC later – made their own distinctive, rather abrupt contributions to the processes of suburban development in the outer London boroughs. In some instances – such as Becontree – these developments were very sizeable. “As a coloniser, the LCC encountered many difficulties, brushing constantly against the insularity of the numerous outer London authorities responsible for the schools, clinics, libraries, street services and other amenities and utilities needed on the new estates” (Jackson 1991, 133). The political antagonism between London-wide government

Figure 9.3.  London County Council housing developments. Map courtesy of Richard Dennis.

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  193

and local governments of the outer London boroughs has continued to reflect some of these redistributive politics (Gyford 1994). The LCC had no powers to plan for public transportation outside of its inner London jurisdiction, so that some of these estates remained isolated and disconnected from the extant development in outer London boroughs. However, those public housing estates developed by the local governments of outer London boroughs hardly fared much better. The New Addington estate sponsored by Croydon Corporation came to be known as “little Siberia” as a result of its lack of local amenities and services and its isolation from the rest of the borough, and the town centre in particular (Gent 1979) – a situation that was only to an extent remedied as recently as the 1990s with the development of the South London Tramlink.

Comprehensive Redevelopment in the Suburbs Somewhat later, outer London boroughs that had by now been fully absorbed into the contiguous urban fabric of London began to experiment themselves with comprehensive redevelopment of their town centres – a modernist legacy that continues to have lasting effects in some of these places. The comprehensive redevelopment of Croydon town centre during the 1960s is the largest and most conspicuous of a number of other partial “makeovers” of outer London suburbs involving the likes of single high-rise office blocks or out-of-town retail centres. Here government again played a significant role in promoting the suburbanization of the “Fordist” (mass production) service economy. Demand for new commercial space of all sorts across London had been stoked up in the immediate post-war period, partly as a result of regional policy restrictions on development in the capital. Moreover, when restrictions were lifted, the Location of Offices Bureau took a keen interest in steering office relocations. Croydon had existed as a county market town quite separate from London until the late 1800s and early 1900s, when it began to transform to a dormitory residential community for London. Yet, its credentials as a residential suburb of London have always been in question, since shortly after this it began to gain significant collections of “new” manufacturing industries that sprang up near to what was London’s first commercial airport. The transformation of Croydon into an employment centre in its own right happened very rapidly and very visibly in a little over two decades, from the very end of the 1950s when a first

194  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

office block was erected to the early 1980s. During this time, millions of square feet of office space were added (Phelps 1998). By 1969 Croydon Official Guide boasted that “Vast office blocks have made a new skyline, their towering elevations dwarfing older buildings which other multistoreyed blocks will, in due course replace. But enough has already been accomplished here to show that this is truly becoming a city of the present and also of the future” (London Borough of Croydon 1969, 43). The process by which the centre of Croydon was so thoroughly transformed was, as Saunders (1981) has famously described, the direct result of very deliberate local government politics and planning, and it set in train a suburban politics very different from that associated with traditional residential suburbs in general and indeed outer suburban politics in London in particular. It is a politics that might be considered “post-suburban” in that it represents an amalgam of traditional suburban ideology of a retreat from the city and big government and a desire for economic growth to pay for local services and amenities (Phelps et al. 2006). It is a politics that has seen Croydon attempt to obtain city status for itself, although it is a pattern that can only just be glimpsed in the politics of some other outer London boroughs. Local government initiatives in Croydon fashioned an important city-scale suburban economic pole from a market town. It is a curious suburban landscape in which towering office blocks of the central area loom over the surrounding suburban detached housing (see figure 9.4). Yet it happened so quickly that the particular high modernist vintage of the built environment produced presents a severe legacy regarding the economic and environmental sustainability of Croydon. There have been repeated attempts recently to re-vision the central area of Croydon (Phelps et al. 2006), the most recent of which appears to have given up on the idea of trying to retain office blocks and central area land for economic uses and instead envisages significant growth in the population of central Croydon – signalling a further evolution in the employmentresidential complexion of this “suburban” outer London borough. Some of the impetus for fashioning a suburban city centre is being faced elsewhere, more recently across the outer London suburbs. Brent Cross in Barnet to the north-west of central London is perhaps best known for the Brent Cross shopping centre, developed in the 1960s. Though rubbing up against tracts of suburban housing, as in Croydon, this shopping centre, unlike that in Croydon, has existed as London’s oldest – and is something of a stand-alone, out-of-town or regional retail destination for north-west London. However, recent

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  195

Figure 9.4.  A central Croydon block towers over suburban housing in Croydon. Photo courtesy of Nicholas Phelps.

plans to regenerate the area in light of the dwindling appeal of Brent Cross shopping would project the area into a more substantial multifunctional urban centre. The £4 billion plans surfaced around 2002 and were given outline planning permission in 2010 but have since been delayed in coming forward by the financial crisis (Lydall 2013). The proposed development involved a doubling of the size of the shopping centre and the creation of a new 370,000-square-metre office and commercial quarter, which together would produce an estimated 27,000 new jobs in this suburban location. Just as significantly, the creation of 7,500 new residential dwelling units at high density is part of the proposal, in order to drive a series of needed improvements to amenities, services, and transportation infrastructure. The London Borough of Barnet had not attempted to orchestrate a reworking of its essentially suburban space on this scale before, but through this scheme was clearly ambitious to recast itself as a “city-suburb” (Jodieri 2010, 27).

196  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

London’s New Town Suburbs It is impossible to speak of the suburbanization of London in the postwar era without reference to the new towns that were developed to accommodate “overspill.” The green belt that contained the further contiguous physical development of Greater London was so effective that it promoted the scattering of population growth in a noncontiguous pattern of sprawl (Clawson and Hall 1973), rather in the manner predicted by Boal (1970), across the south-east of England, including as far afield as the south coast.2 Neither the existing cities nor the new towns represent the sort of discrete centres of gravity in terms of population, economic importance, and political impact that are found in the Midlands and the north of England, and as such they offer little in the way of a counterweight to London. Since the provision of amenities and services in new towns lagged behind development, it was assumed and accepted that they would act as semi-dormitory settlements. Their employment structure also partially contributed to this lack of self-containment. Thus, the new towns were not very self-contained to begin with, and became, if anything, less so over time (Aldridge 1979, 115). As a result, the south-east acts in large measure as an extensive, low-density, and scattered residential suburb for London (Cochrane 2011), with London’s erstwhile suburban population registered in smaller numbers of houses tacked on to rural villages and suburban extensions to market towns across the region. The de facto London-oriented nature of the new towns is clearly implied in the horror felt at the emergence of a “London Borough of Crawsham,” as the most recent of a number of expansions of the market town of Horsham sees it grow ever closer to the nearby new town of Crawley (West Sussex County Times 2013). Indeed, the major new town Milton Keynes was planned not to be self-contained but to facilitate the forging of relationships of all sorts that were not based on propinquity (Clapson 2003, 159). As a result, “Milton Keynes can be understood as a much bigger – state sponsored – version of the way in which urban expansion has been spread across the edges of the South East and development has been tacked on to villages and small towns …” (Charlesworth and Cochrane 1997, 226). Social and Ethnic Change in London’s Suburbs The story of ethnic change in outer London allows us to reflect further on the themes raised so far and in particular the idea that sometimes

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  197

large-scale change has come to be rapidly accommodated in the suburbs. The 2011 census revealed the acceleration of a change that has been underway in outer London for some years as the suburbs have become increasingly more ethnically diverse. Across all of England’s local authorities, nine of the top ten most diverse are within London. Given that London is a world city, this is unsurprising. A traditional view of ethnic diversity within a city suggests that the suburbs would trail the inner city in reflecting the increasing ethnic mix of London’s population, with concentrations of ethnic minority groups traditionally being associated with the inner city; however, this is not the case, given that, of the ten most diverse authorities in England, seven are in outer London (see table 9.1). Outer London is ahead of inner London in terms of those boroughs with the greatest extent of ethnic mixing. In many cases this is a mature suburban population; rather than representing an inner-to-outer city migration, many of these residents have moved from one suburb to another, or, where they are first-generation immigrants, have moved straight to the suburbs (Mace 2013a). This is an emerging characteristic of suburbanization that we see also in the United States (Li 2009).

Table 9.1. Simpson’s Diversity Index (SDI) – most ethnically diverse boroughs* SDI score   1  Newham

9.27

  2  Brent

8.68

  3  Ealing

6.44

  4  Redbridge

5.69

  5  Waltham Forest

5.61

  6  Hackney [inner London]

5.44

  7  Harrow

5.27

  8  Slough UA [outside London]

5.21

  9  Haringey

5.19

10  Westminster [inner London]

5.06

*The table scores measure diversity not the proportion of the ethnic minority population. Were a borough to comprise a single “minority” ethnic group it would not appear diverse. Source: Greater London Authority Intelligence Unit (2012)

198  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

In some respects this suburban diversity represents a long-term trend. As we have seen, outer London has never been exclusively middle class, as there is a long-standing tradition of building social housing in the suburbs; but neither has it ever been ethnically exclusive. From the time of their initial development, some of the outer London suburbs were home to a substantial Jewish population (Krausz 1973, 1969), which still remains. The early Jewish population was concentrated in particular suburbs, including Ilford (Redbridge) and Edgware (Harrow), and more recently ethnic groups such as the Indian-British have similarly tended to focus on particular parts of outer London; where there is overlap between Jewish and Indian populations there is some evidence that the two communities have been mutually supportive (The Economist 2013). However, as with other social characteristics, it is not possible to talk of outer London as a single entity; quite the opposite. The variable distribution of the ethnic-minority population in outer London is notable, with some suburbs showing a level of “white British” residents close to the English average and well above the allLondon average, while others are more ethnically diverse than many of their inner London counterparts, and several are now majority-minority boroughs (see table 9.2). There is a marked geography to this split, with north-east and north-west London having a considerably higher proportion of ethnic-minority residents and east and south-east London retaining an overwhelmingly white British/Irish presence. In those parts of outer London most engaged with this social transformation, the built form embodies the temporal and social complexities of outer London. As Saint (1999) has noted, although the suburbs are primarily thought of as sites of domestic residence, they have long provided the spaces for the large-scale infrastructure of society and the city – in the past represented by barracks and seminaries, in contemporary times by airports, warehousing, and sports stadia. In an early case of place marketing in the suburbs, one developer, Watkins in the 1930s, started to build a larger-than-full-scale reproduction of the Eiffel Tower in north-west London. While it was never completed, because of problems with the foundations in the clay soil and financial difficulties, the site became home, instead, to the iconic twin towers of the original Wembley football stadium. While Watkins’s tower was to have been a platform for a view across London, in an architectural reversal the central roof arc of the recently redeveloped stadium is

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  199 Table 9.2. Proportions of residents by ethnicity: ten inner and outer London boroughs with the highest and lowest proportions of white British/Irish residents White Black, British African/ and Irish White: other Mixed white/ Asian/Asian Caribbean/ Other Ethnic Travellers white Asian Black British Black British group/Arab England 80.9

  4.6

2.2

  7.7

  3.4

1.0

London

12.6

5

18.4

13.3

3.4

47.2

OUTER LONDON Newham

17.6

11.4

4.6

43.5

19.6

3.4

Brent

22.1

14.3

5.1

34.0

18.8

5.8

Ealing

33.6

15.4

4.5

29.6

10.9

6.0

Harrow

34.1

8.2

3.9

42.7

8.2

3.0

Redbridge

36.0

6.6

4.1

41.7

8.8

2.7

Sutton

72.7

5.9

3.7

11.6

4.8

1.3

Richmond

74.0

11.9

3.6

7.3

1.5

1.6

Bexley

78.7

3.2

2.3

6.5

8.5

0.7

Bromley

79.0

5.3

3.6

5.2

6.0

0.9

Havering

84.7

3.0

2.1

4.8

4.8

0.5

32.8

12.4

4.1

41.2

7.3

2.3

INNER LONDON Tower Hamlets Westminster

37.5

24.1

5.2

14.6

7.5

11.1

Hackney

38.5

16.2

6.4

10.5

23.1

5.3

Lambeth

41.6

15.5

7.6

6.8

25.9

2.5

Kensington

41.7

28.9

5.7

10.0

6.6

7.2

Lewisham

43.5

10.1

7.4

9.3

27.2

2.6

Camden

47.3

19.0

5.6

16.1

8.2

3.9

Hammersmith

48.5

19.6

5.5

9.1

11.8

5.6

Islington

51.7

16.4

6.5

9.3

12.8

3.3

Greenwich

54.2

8.3

4.9

11.7

19.1

1.8

Source: National Statistics/2011 Census key statistics table KS201EW (Ethnic Group)

200  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

now visible from the London Eye viewing platform beside the Thames in the city centre. Yet the past constantly seeps through into the suburban present (Mace 2013b). If Wembley, the home of English football, speaks to historic memories of a World Cup victory and even more distant British Empire,3 some of London’s suburbs are home to a range of striking, yet largely unremarked, buildings. Just down the road from Wembley Stadium, past the ubiquitous IKEA warehouse, one crosses over the North Circular Road – an orbital trunk road that runs through the suburbs – into Brentfield Road. This is a perfectly unremarkable street of lower-quality interwar housing, until the road turns to reveal the Neasden Swaminarayan temple. This not-so-little bit of India in the suburbs is one of the most impressive of any number of bespoke religious buildings across outer London that service significant Hindu and Muslim populations. The construction of minority religious buildings in the suburbs has sometimes been controversial (Naylor and Ryan 2002), including the recent attempt by a Jewish community to erect an eruv in north-west London (Vincent and Warf 2002; Watson 2005).4 However, significant developments such as the Swaminarayan temple, as well as more mundane temples and mosques, have become part of the everyday fabric of the suburbs (Dwyer, Gilbert, and Shah 2013). The presence of an extensive “ethnic infrastructure” that includes places of worship, food shops, and other specialist services challenges a long-standing criticism of the suburbs – that they are either white middle-class spaces or, alternatively, that when working-class and ethnicminority groups move in they become subject to and weakened by the dominant white middle-class culture of the suburbs. Rather, what is happening in some parts of outer London is an iterative process of social change and adaptation as the suburbs and suburbanites are being recreated. As Dennis (2008, 2) wrote of the modern city more generally, “The development of specialized neighbourhoods did not simply accommodate existing classes, ‘races,’ and sexual identities, but provided spaces in which hybrid identities emerged.” As Gans (1967) noted in his study of the newly developed Levittown, while all the housing did initially look the same, at the human scale neighbours soon got to know each other, including their differences, which were reflected immediately in the interior and later in the exterior of the initially uniform box-like constructions.

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  201

Turning back to outer London: Queensbury in Harrow contains some of the most uniform suburban housing in outer London. While in many cases the pre-existing villages of outer London provided a varied template onto which the mass suburbs were grafted, Queensbury was open farmland. Nearly all the housing falls into a single property-tax band, reflecting the monotony of the architecture in the area. Nevertheless, in the eight decades since the suburb’s construction, generations of residents have made numerous changes – to windows, rooflines, and gardens (now largely paved over for parking). On the most intimate scale, just as generations of Jewish households have placed a mezuzah on the threshold of the house, numerous Hindu households in Queensbury now bless the home with mango leaves hung over the front door, while Ganesh and Laxmi stand guard in front porches. Again, these can be read as part of a complex interplay between old and new; while these symbols may be a relatively new insertion into the suburban fabric, they reinforce traditional criticism of the suburbs as private spaces, naive refuges from the outside world (Mumford 1968), as the religious symbolism separates the private/family/religious interior from the public/profane space. Suburban ethnic minorities bring both innovation and continuity to the suburbs; they represent both change and stasis. Much of what could be interpreted as radical change in the suburbs has passed almost unremarked. This rapid change has rapidly been accommodated, but we should not idealize the extent to which this change has been uncontested or unproblematic. In Havering, the London borough with the highest proportion of white British residents (table 9.2), the local MP has made great play with “white” national imagery, encouraging residents to fly the flag of St George on their property. In Havering, the imminence of ethnic in-migration is a very real concern for many of the majority white residents (Mace 2013a). More generally, one of the big stories coming out of the 2011 census was the extent of white out-migration from the suburbs to points outside London. In the 2001–11 inter-census period, the proportion of white British residents in inner London fell by 11.7 per cent, but in outer London the drop was 16 per cent – a statistic that at least hints at some degree of white flight from the “new” outer London. While some sections of outer London, such as Harrow and Redbridge, are continuing a long tradition of accommodating new minorities, others, including Havering and Bromley, still reflect an older suburban story. Although

202  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

patchy – incremental even – the process of demographic change and accommodation in outer London means that it is rapidly becoming a testing ground for the creation of a new London and eventually, perhaps, a new Britain. Conclusion London’s typically low-rise, piecemeal, and at times rather ramshackle outward development reached an abrupt halt at the green belt established immediately after the Second World War. It preserved a certain quaintness in the city and its suburbs. Thus, while lacking much of an ancient and even medieval core of buildings as compared to its mainland European counterparts, London appears very much part of the slow and contained patterns of urbanization that might be thought to characterize “old Europe.” The scattering of London’s erstwhile population and economic growth across the rest of the south-east of England has shorn it of the most recent vintages of large-scale suburbanization, and this only adds to the slow aging of the capital and its suburbs. Yet London’s experience of government involvement in the suburbanization of land use for housing and employment, and the associated retrofitting of transportation infrastructure, was a distinctly modern one. While cities and their suburbs might be said to increasingly display signs of post-modern urbanization (Soja 2000), as modernist state interventions more than ever drive suburbanization in the “developmental states” of East Asia, London’s experience will continue to testify to many of the dilemmas of the state’s view of the modern suburb and its making. Yet the less-told history of London’s suburbs is one of wealthy individuals, developers, and governments alike experimenting with building projects that were distinct and quite radical for their time. For the time being, such experimentation in the suburbs appears to have been overtaken by experimentation in the city’s core, as the skyline reaches upward. Yet, as we also saw, apparent stasis in the built form of London’s suburbs conceals significant and rapid social and ethnic change, which has happened in the course of just a few decades. At least in this last respect, the suburban dynamics of “old” London may appear alongside those in that accepted horizon of all that is new in urban trends and resultant theory – the United States. If, as was claimed in the quotation at the outset of this chapter, London could be considered the origin of the modern suburb, then, despite

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  203

the apparent modest scale and slow pace of suburban change, it may yet continue to offer a valuable window onto new suburbanization experiences elsewhere in the world. NOTES 1 See https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/organisations-we-work/outerlondon-commission-olc?source=vanityurl. Accessed 7 June 2014. 2 By the late 1960s, the GLC was purchasing land to house its overspill population, bringing it into conflict not only with outer London boroughs but local authorities some 75 miles distant from the capital (Phelps 2012). 3 The stadium is located just off Empire Way, the original stadium having been developed when Britain’s empire was still to be dismantled. 4 This was controversial, perhaps because the eruv, a suspended wire line that “encloses a space,” and so depicts a “virtual” building, would have encompassed the general population.

REFERENCES Aldridge, M. 1979. The British new towns: A programme without a policy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Barratt, N. 2012. Greater London: The story of the suburbs. London: Random House. Boal, F. 1970. Urban growth and land value patterns: Government influences. Professional Geographer 22 (2):79–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.00330124.1970.00079.x. Charlesworth, J., and A. Cochrane. 1997. Anglicising the American dream: Tragedy, farce and the postmodern city. In Imagining cities: Scripts, signs and memory, ed. S. Westwood and J. Williams, 219–32. London: Routledge. Clapson, M. 2003. Suburban century: Social change and urban growth in England and the USA. Oxford: Berg. Clawson, M., and P. Hall. 1973. Planning and urban growth: An Anglo-American comparison. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cochrane, A. 2011. Post-suburbia in the context of urban containment: The case of the south east of England. In International perspectives on suburbanization: A post-suburban world?, ed. N.A. Phelps and F. Wu, 163–76. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. http://dx.doi. org/10.1057/9780230308626_9.

204  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Dennis, R. 2008. Cities in modernity: Representations and productions of metropolitan space, 1840–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dwyer, C., D. Gilbert, and B. Shah. 2013. Faith and suburbia: Secularisation, modernity and the changing geographies of religion in London’s suburbs. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38 (3):403–19. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00521.x. Gans, H.J. 1967. The Levittowners: Ways of life and politics in a new suburban community. 1st ed. London: Random House. Gent, J. 1979. Croydon: The story of a hundred years. Croydon: Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society Ltd. Glass, R. 1964. London: Aspects of change. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Greater London Authority. 2002. A city of villages: Promoting a sustainable future for London’s suburbs. London: Author. Greater London Authority Intelligence Unit. 2012. 2011 Census Snapshot: Ethnic Diversity Indices. http://data.london.gov.uk/datastorefiles/ documents/2011-census-snapshot-ethnic-diversity-indices.pdf. Accessed 27 August 2013. Griffiths, S., C.E. Jones, L. Vaughan, and M. Haklay. 2010. The persistence of suburban centres in Greater London: Combining Conzenian and space syntax approaches. Urban Morphology 14:85–99. Gyford, J. 1994. Politics and planning in London. In Planning London, ed. J. Simmie, 71–89. London: University College London Press. Harris, R., and P. Larkham. 1999. Suburban foundation, form and function. In Changing suburbs: Foundation, form and function, ed. R. Harris and P. Larkham, 1–31. London: Routledge. Inward, S. 2006. City of cities: The birth of modern London. London: Pan Books. Jackson, A.A. 1991. Semi-detached London: Suburban development, life and transport, 1900–1939. Didcot: Wild Swan Publications. Jodieri, R. 2010. Retrofitting suburbia: The complexities and challenges of the Brent Cross-Cricklewood regeneration. Unpublished MSc spatial planning dissertation, University College London. Krausz, E. 1969. The Edgware survey: Factors in Jewish identification. Jewish Journal of Sociology 11:75–95. Krausz, E. 1973. Jews in Britain: The sociogeography of an old minority group. New Community 2:132–3. Li, W. 2009. Ethnoburb: The new ethnic community in urban America. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. London Borough of Croydon. 1969. Croydon Official Guide. Carshalton: Home Publishing Company. Lydall, R. 2013. Brent Cross has it covered to take on Westfield rivals. London Evening Standard 20 (June): 36.

Stasis and Change in London’s Suburbs  205 Mace, A. 2013a. City suburbs: Placing suburbia in a post-suburban world. London: Routledge. Mace, A. 2013b. The future has come and gone: Managing change in the aging suburbs. In New suburban stories, ed. M. Dines and T. Vermeulen, 85–96. London: Continuum Press. Mumford, L. 1968. The city in history: Its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. New York: Harcourt Brace International. Naylor, S., and J.R. Ryan. 2002. The mosque in the suburbs: Negotiating religion and ethnicity in South London. Social & Cultural Geography 3 (1):39–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649360120114134. Niedzielski, M.A., and E. Malecki. 2012. Making tracks: Rail networks in world cities. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102 (6):1409–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.601212. Phelps, N.A. 1998. On the edge of something big: Edge city economic development in Croydon. Town Planning Review 69 (4):441–65. http:// dx.doi.org/10.3828/tpr.69.4.dv1t387m20078jjp. Phelps, N.A. 2012. An anatomy of sprawl: Planning and politics in Britain. London: Routledge. Phelps, N.A., D. Ballas, N. Parsons, and A. Dowling. 2006. Postsuburban Europe: Politics and planning at the margins of Europe’s capital cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. http://dx.doi. org/10.1057/9780230625389. Punter, J., ed. 2009. Urban design and the British urban renaissance. London: Routledge. Rasmussen, S.E. 1937 [1982]. London: The unique city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Saint, A. 1999. Introduction: The quality of the London suburb. In English Heritage. London Suburbs, 1–30. London: Merrell Holberton. http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511511554.001. Saunders, P. 1981. Urban politics: A sociological interpretation. London: Hutchinson. Smith, N. 1982. Gentrification and uneven development. Economic Geography 58 (2):139–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/143793. Soja, E. 2000. Postmetropolis. Oxford: Blackwell. The Economist. 2013. Suburban dreams. Sometimes explicitly, Indians are following Jews out of London. http://www.economist.com/news/ britain/21578703-sometimes-explicitly-indians-are-following-jews-outlondon-suburban-dreams. Accessed 27 August 2013. Vincent, P., and B. Warf. 2002. Eruvim: Talmudic places in a postmodern world. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27 (1):30–51. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-5661.00040.

206  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Watson, S. 2005. Symbolic spaces of difference: Contesting the eruv in Barnet, London, and Tenafly, New Jersey. Environment and Planning. D, Society & Space 23 (4):597–613. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d429. West Sussex County Times. 2013. North of Horsham development will lead to “London Borough of Crawsham.” West Sussex County Times, 26 July 2013. Whitehand, J.W.R., and C.M.H. Carr. 2001. Twentieth-century suburbs: A morphological approach. London: Routledge.

10 Between Farming Villages and Hedge-Fund Centres: The Politics of Urbanization in the Border Zone of the Metropolitan Region of Zurich r ahel n üs s l i

Introduction Hillsides full of terraced houses, fenced cottages along the lakeside, every now and then chickens and cows in between: welcome to the skyline of one of Europe’s largest hedge-fund centres (see figure 10.1). Ausserschwyz is full of familiar and yet simultaneously strange elements, creating an urban configuration that breaks up well-established (European) urban models. Ausserschwyz is among Switzerland’s most tax-privileged regions. With the lowest tax rates in the nation (ESTV 2013), it attracts not only the financial sector but also wealthy people, including international sports stars and CEOs of leading global companies. In comparison to other European countries as well, the tax rate in Ausserschwyz is extremely low, since Switzerland as a whole has already one of the lowest rates of taxation – in 2011 only Ireland had a lower rate (EFD 2013, 1). In 2016, Switzerland had by far the lowest tax rates for corporations among the OECD countries (ESTV 2017, 3). However, the numbers must be interpreted with caution, since there are different taxation systems and different ways of comparing them. Nevertheless, these statistics show the locational advantage of the Swiss tax system as compared to the rest of Europe. Furthermore, the canton of Schwyz has extremely low tax rates (Quellensteuer) for rich foreigners. The low tax policies of the municipalities in Ausserschwyz are only possible because of Ausserschwyz’s geographical border position. It belongs to the rustic canton of Schwyz but lies directly along the border with the urban canton of Zurich. In highly federalist Switzerland, the cantons and the municipalities possess great freedom with regard to

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Figure 10.1.  Mixed rural and urban signs in Ausserschwyz. Photo courtesy of Thomas Hofer.

taxation. Therefore, tax rates are used as a tool in neo-liberal practices of locational competition. The cantonal border runs along a street between two municipalities, where middle-income households on the Zurich side of the street pay tax rates twice as high as those on the Schwyz side of the street. The difference is even greater for higher-income earners. It is evident that the urban configuration of Ausserschwyz largely profits from its proximity to the financial as well as the cultural centre of Zurich and its airport. While Ausserschwyz consumes the urban qualities and functions of the core city, with its low-tax policies it facilitates the settlement of strong taxpayers. Urban qualities such as public spaces characterized by accessibility, appropriation (used by a range of groups for varied purposes), and diversity (different social groups) can hardly be found in Ausserschwyz (Kretz and Küng 2016). Two telling examples are the former village square in Wollerau, which was transformed into

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Figure 10.2.  The former Wollerau village square. Photo courtesy of Thomas Hofer.

a roundabout (figure 10.2), and the path along the lake where, when you cross the border into the canton of Schwyz, you find that cycling is suddenly no longer allowed (figure 10.3). However, various problems in the current urbanization model of Ausserschwyz surface in all three themes of this publication (land, infrastructure, and governance). Today, housing prices in Ausserschwyz are so high that a household with an average income can barely afford to live there. Streets are severely overburdened; a solution remains out of reach today because there is minimal cooperation between the municipalities, and residents are unwilling to finance any improvement outside of their own municipality. The low-tax policies take their toll: the municipalities are short of money and their politicians do not want to raise tax rates. Though Ausserschwyz counts one of the highest rates of Porsche drivers in Switzerland (Gyr, 2013, 11) and is an important global financial centre, public investments to meet

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Figure 10.3.  Changes at the border between Ausserschwyz and the canton of Zurich. Photo courtesy of Daniel Kiss.

the increasing problems are not politically enforceable. Furthermore, in the municipality of Freienbach, the centre of Ausserschwyz, two semiprivate landowners own nearly all the remaining open building parcels. Both of these landowners date back to medieval times. Current urbanization projects are subject to their approval. Thus, the politics of urbanization in Ausserschwyz and its current production of space (Lefebvre [1974] 1991) can only be understood in the context of its history. Although Ausserschwyz has undergone major urban transformations and faces much spatial development pressure, it has hardly been discussed in urban studies to date.1 This chapter first critically discusses the concepts of “suburbs” and “suburban governance” using a framework that does not draw a line

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between “urban” and “suburban,” but rather views different “urban configurations” as closely intertwined. This perspective runs throughout the article. After the theoretical debate, Ausserschwyz is contextualized in terms of the medieval and rural origins and attributes that still influence the contemporary political landscape. This background is helpful for understanding both the urbanization processes that have shaped Ausserschwyz in the past and the stakeholders who continue to do so. The complex problems arising from this constellation are discussed in two further sections. It becomes apparent that the proposed mechanisms of so-called suburban governance discussed in the next section are insufficient to capture the current processes and politics of urbanization in Ausserschwyz. Furthermore, Lefebvre’s ([1965] 1975, 123) notion of the explosion of the centre also fails to describe the urbanization of Ausserschwyz, because the rural is constitutive of the urban configuration as well. Questioning Suburban Governance Despite its peculiarities, Ausserschwyz is one among many examples of “new urban configurations in the urban periphery” with which academic debate has been engaged since the 1980s. Fishman (1987, 17) was among the first who declared the end of suburbia and proclaimed a “postsuburban age” (Fishman 1991). Influenced by commentary on the eccentric urbanization of Los Angeles (Soja and Scott 1986), soon other cases of peripheral urbanization processes were discussed and labelled in North America, Europe, and later around the globe. Among others, formative concepts were “urban village” (Leinberger and Lockwood 1986) and “edge city” (Garreau 1991) or “100-mile city” (Sudjic and Sayer 1992) in North America; and “Zwischenstadt” (in-between city: Sieverts [1997] 2003) or “Netzstadt” (“networked city”: Oswald, Baccini, and Michaeli 2003) in central Europe. Hamel and Keil (2013, 6) explain the continuing research activities as a response to the still pivotal significance of such “ex-urban” urbanization processes: “Contributing actively and through diversity to metropolitanization, suburban processes are reaching a new qualitative stage.” Compared to the “traditional suburbs” their main characteristics – as an examination of current literature shows (Nüssli and Schmid 2016) – are relatively dense urban structures, diverse urban functions, and more qualified economic activities. One major difference between such configurations and “traditional suburbs” is the transformation in the symbolic meaning of these configurations, leading to a much

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more “urban” symbolic expression of those areas: they are no longer just peripheral spaces but exhibit “urban” aspirations. These areas have shown not only strong quantitative growth but also a qualitative change in the urban environment as a result of strong efforts to implement places that are more pedestrian-friendly, more publicly accessible, and more connected, features that also significantly enhance their competitive position in relation to other places (see Phelps and Wood 2011, 2605–7; Young and Keil 2010, 92; Spirou and Judd 2014). Such retrofitting strategies are even seen as “the big project for this century” (Dunham-Jones and Williamson 2009, v). However, this analysis is strongly informed by a “Western” perspective on suburbanization and focuses on upgrading processes. Audirac and colleagues (2012), for example, point to the intimate linkage between suburban shrinkage and regional economic growth processes, inviting comparison between suburban decline in Europe and Latin America. Besides such comparisons, a variety of urbanization processes are typically discussed among scholars outside “Western” academia. Debates in Latin American urban studies focus on such things as differences in the ethnic origins of new and previous residents in peripheral neighbourhoods (Caggiano and Segura 2013) as well as the often illegal character of such newer, low-income neighbourhoods (Aguilar 2008); the frontier between supposedly “non-existing neighbourhoods” and middle-class residential areas (Pereira Leite 2005; Freire-Mederios 2013); the urban imaginaries of fear and the subsequent, often suburban, development of closed neighbourhoods (Borsdorf, Hidalgo, and Sánchez 2006; López Lévi and Rodríguez 2006; Capron 2013); and the closely related “Western” imaginary of the paradisiac closeness to nature connected to peripheral settlements (Lindón 2005). In the urban peripheries of sub-Saharan Africa, the heavily used concept of peri-urbanization focusing on rural migration, poor residents, and informality can be contrasted with a much more nuanced picture of diverse urbanization processes such as that of Lagos’s elite axis developed by the government and Chinese investors (Sawyer 2014) or the much more common case of middle-class urban residents who are pushed out to the periphery by high housing costs (Sawyer 2014; Mbiba and Huchzermeyer 2002; Lawanson, Yadua, and Salako 2012). In East Asia, a dominant urbanization process in the urban peripheries is the rapid appearance of privately built satellite cities (Percival and Waley 2012; Webster, Cai, and Muller 2014). These newly built towns emphasize privacy and security, mostly by gating. While the majority

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of them are inhabited by middle- and upper-class residents – as, for example, in the periphery of New Delhi (Gururani 2013) – in a lot of Chinese metropolises these newly built neighbourhoods are home to relocated residents from city centres that have been repurposed for offices and high-end housing (Wu 2013). In the case of Indonesia, the lack of strong governance at the urban fringes allows the building of luxurious houses, a process that systematically displaces poor villagers (Hudalah, Winarso, and Woltjer 2016). Similar processes can be observed in Manila (Ortega 2012). In numerous Arab metropolises, a major issue in the urban “periphery” is the transformation of self-built (so-called informal) settlements into a commodity. The Gecekondus in Istanbul or the Ashwa’eyats in Cairo are brought under legal regulation and thereby commercialized (Özüekren 2005; El Mouelhi and Oguz 2013), leading to major displacement processes. The cases of the Gecekondu Sulukule (Uysal 2012) or Israel’s “development towns” (Yiftachel 2006) clearly exhibit the ethnic-cleansing strategy that often goes along with such “upgrades.” In Kabul, the attempts to regulate informal settlements and planned mega-projects threaten existing neighbourhoods and social structures (Gotsch 2006). In Tehran, the nationalization of land and the subsequent construction of huge residential buildings have further marginalized the urban poor (Bayat 2006; Dashti 2006). Today, the debate surrounding new urban configurations is still marked by an ongoing search for names and concepts that try to capture these developments outside of core cities. Some try to grasp this variety of processes and forms through broadening the concept of suburbanization into “global suburbanisms” (Keil 2013), others through the reintroduction of older terms such as “post-suburbs” (Phelps et al. 2006, Phelps, Wood, and Valler 2010). Beyond the critiques on the origin and meaning of the term “suburbia” (for a discussion of the concept in the European context, see Phelps 2013; in the Latin American context, see Hiernaux and Lindón 2004; for an overview on sub-Saharan African suburbanisms, see Mabin et al. 2013; for Asia, see Gross, Ye, and Legates 2014), I question the perspective of analysis offered by such concepts. Although both – “global suburbanisms” and “post-suburbs” – emanate from Lefebvre’s ([1970] 1972) early thesis of a fully urbanized world, they maintain the distinction between an urban and a suburban world, and thus fall back into a dichotomy they actually try to overcome. Therefore, I use the term “urban configuration” (see Schmid 2004) to describe different urban constellations, regardless of whether

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or not they are located within the city limits. Such a perspective enables a conceptualization of urbanization processes beyond the “old metropolitan model” (Soja 2013, 690). Besides the symbolic, architectural, functional, and economic differences between “urban configurations in the periphery” and “traditional suburbs,” scholars rooted in the “Western” discourse accentuate differences in the modes of governance. Because these “new urban configurations” are mostly politically fragmented and coordination of urban development is not established to the same degree as it is in “traditional cities,” some scholars describe new forms of governance in such areas, which produce different modes of growth regulation, gating, and exclusion. Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012) identify three modes of suburbanization – self-built, state-led, and private-led – and three modes of suburban governance – by the state, by capital accumulation, and by private authority. Phelps, Wood, and Valler (2010) identify three sources of political tension related to the governance of post-suburban growth – provision of collective consumption, environmental and residential amenities, and governmental amalgamation and secession (see also Peck 2011). From my point of view, the term “suburban governance” has the same negative connotations as “global suburbanisms” and “post-suburbs,” since it reproduces the division between an urban and a suburban world. I argue that none of these modalities and tensions is particularly relevant to a “suburban constellation”; rather, they are observable in different “urban conditions.” In a world where borders and boundaries between centres and peripheries are blurred and depend on the research perspective adopted, politics and processes of urbanization, too, can hardly be confined to specific types of territorialization. Different politics and processes of urbanization, rather than being confined to clearly definable categories, are closely intertwined and influence one another. In order to facilitate thinking about an urbanized world with polymorphic urban forms and processes, this essay analyses Ausserschwyz as one among many urban configurations that shape contemporary urbanization. Like other urban configurations in the former urban periphery, Ausserschwyz calls into question established categories in urban studies such as “rural-suburban-urban” or “private-public.” The analysis makes clear that this article does not subsume specific urbanization processes under an overarching category but stresses the variety of urban configurations once referred to as urban peripheries. The example of Ausserschwyz accentuates the dialectical contemporaneity of forces in constant tension that produce specific urban forms.

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Contextualizing Ausserschwyz: Topographical, Financial, Religious, and Ideological Boundaries As figure 10.4 shows, Ausserschwyz is part of the Metropolitan Region of Zurich, which is Switzerland’s largest urban area in terms of the number of inhabitants (2 million) as well as economic indicators (Kuster and Meier 2008, 7–9). The Metropolitan Region of Zurich is administratively divided into eight cantons and 240 municipalities. The unifying factor, however, is the area’s continually growing economy (see Nüssli 2015 for a political analysis of the metropolitan region). The city of Zurich, defined by its territorial border, is an established global centre for the financial sector (Schenker and Schwierz 2013, 7), especially the banking and insurance businesses, and is considered a “global city” (Sassen 1991). In spite of the financial crisis of 2008 that affected large parts of Europe, the Metropolitan Region of Zurich still shows relatively solid growth (Schenker and Schwierz 2013, 6). The whole territory is in a boom phase, which amplifies spatial pressure. When we consider Europe today, it becomes clear that uneven spatial development has increased, calling into question the feasibility of a territorial unity such as Europe. Apart from the fact that it has long remained unclear where Europe terminates to the east, there is no such thing as a homogeneous Europe. Instead it is a spatial entity where boom and decline, poor and rich, exist in close proximity. The ongoing boom in the Metropolitan Region of Zurich is enhanced by high ratings concerning its standard of living. Since the end of the 1990s, the city of Zurich has become an ever more popular place of residence, leading to increasing housing costs and a corresponding displacement of poorer social groups, especially elderly people (Statistik Stadt Zürich 2013, 242; Heye, Fuchs, and Blarer 2013, 6–8). The spatial pressure has long since extended beyond the city border. Starting in the northern “periphery” (Hitz, Schmid, and Wolff 1994), the accretion of demand for office and living space today covers large parts of the Metropolitan Region (StZH 2012). In this process of metropolitanization, defined as the conflicting connection and integration of various areas into an overarching polycentric region stretching far beyond the classic perimeter of an agglomeration, once-peripheral areas have been substantially transformed (Ascher 1995; Veltz 1996; de Mattos 2001; Hall and Pain 2006). Formerly ex-urban configurations no longer can be referred to as “peripheral.” Although these emerging new urban configurations do not resemble the “conventional European city,” they face

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Figure 10.4.  Map of Ausserschwyz and Lake Zurich.

similar spatial development pressure. One of the most extreme examples is Ausserschwyz, where the question of displacement becomes ever more urgent. The spatial definition of the urban configuration of Ausserschwyz – which is not an established spatial entity but a construction of my own – is based on topographical, territorial, political, and economic distinguishing factors. Ausserschwyz comprises around thirty-eight square kilometres, 28,000 residents, and 17, 000 jobs (BFS 2013).2 It consists of the three municipalities Feusisberg, Freienbach, and Wollerau in the canton of Schwyz. In the west, Ausserschwyz borders the

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canton of Zurich; in the north – over a lake dam – the canton of Sankt Gallen, with its regional centre and medieval town of Rapperswil. A range of hills separates Ausserschwyz from the heartland of the canton Schwyz morphologically. Lying on the outermost ridge, Ausserschwyz offers a panoramic view to Lake Zurich and the metropolitan centre. Topographically, Ausserschwyz clearly belongs to Lake Zurich and therefore to the inner part of the Metropolitan Region of Zurich and its urbanization processes. Ausserschwyz is also economically separated from the rest of the canton of Schwyz. Switzerland has different forms of provision for economic equalization, among them an inner-cantonal financial equalization arrangement to redistribute income tax. In comparison to the rest of the canton of Schwyz, the three municipalities of Ausserschwyz are so wealthy that only they are donors and all the remaining twenty-seven municipalities are recipients (Finanzdepartement Kanton Schwyz [SZ] 2013, 24–5). This financial divide did not exist at the end of the 1970s, when Ausserschwyz was comparatively poor. But today, the disparity is abundantly clear: while the inner alpine municipalities do not have a single resident millionaire, millionaires compose almost 25 per cent of Wollerau’s residents (Soukup 2013, 5). A political gap also exists between Ausserschwyz and the rest of the canton. While Ausserschwyz residents are predominantly right-wing but economically liberal in their voting behaviour, the heartland of the canton of Schwyz is characterized by a strongly conservative mindset and has a reputation as the “naysayer of the nation” (Hermann and Leuthold 2003, 90–1; Horat 1999). However, Ausserschwyz is also clearly different from adjacent parts of the canton of Zurich, where the inhabitants are much more leftliberal in their voting behaviour (Hermann and Leuthold 2003, 60–1). The ideological break also becomes apparent in national votes, showing a growing cleavage between cities and the surrounding as well as the peripheral areas (Spörri 2013, 13). The canton of Schwyz holds the record for including the two most conservative Swiss municipalities (of Unteriberg and Muotathal), as well as two of the ten most right-wing municipalities – Wollerau and Feusisberg in Ausserschwyz (Spörri 2013, 15). Another important ideological disparity between the canton of Schwyz and the canton of Zurich is its self-image. The canton of Schwyz is one of the three founding cantons of the Swiss Confederation, dating from the end of the thirteenth century. To this day the national founding myth remains a significant part of the cantonal identity. It serves as a powerful reference to a rural, medieval, self-governed identity. This

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self-conception clearly differs from that of the canton of Zurich, which is primarily perceived as urban. The fact that the southern parts of the canton of Schwyz belong to the alpine territories strengthens the image of a rural canton. In the eighteenth century a (semi-scientific) poem called Die Alpen (The Alps; von Haller 1732) by a Swiss scientist was instrumental in shaping Europe’s self-image, having influenced Rousseau and the ideals of the French Revolution (von Matt 2012, 17–26). In this poem, the author delineates an alpine society characterized by reason and freedom. While patricians and guilds ruled the Swiss cities and feudal lords the flat lands, the alpine valleys were described as politically free and equal. Thus, beyond the concepts of the city and the countryside, which are both dominated by power arrangements, a third and still significant concept exists in Switzerland: the alpine territories, where freedom reigns and nature rules over equal human beings. In the starkly idealized poem, the alpine territories stand for the entire Swiss Confederation – a distortion that has survived to this day in conservative narratives regarding the European Union and foreign intervention. Another world-famous Swiss literary work, Heidi (Spyri 1880, 1881), depicts a similar image of an idyllic alpine landscape, where Heidi's friend Clara from the city of Frankfurt soon grows well and is able to walk again. In the case of Ausserschwyz, this alpine identity most strongly contradicts the spatial and economic reality of today. The antagonism resulting from this disjuncture constitutively shapes current urbanization. To understand the production of space in Ausserschwyz, one must therefore look as far back as the Middle Ages. Two of today’s dominant landowners date back to that time. First, the configuration’s development is closely tied to the nearby monastery Einsiedeln, which is currently one of Switzerland’s primary Catholic centres. Ausserschwyz used to be a fief of the monastery until Napoleon’s conquest in 1798. In the course of the demand for freedom spurred by the French Revolution, Ausserschwyz, like several other subject territories, gained sovereignty (Hüsser 1926, 11–66). However, the monastery kept – and still owns – large portions of the land. Since medieval times, Ausserschwyz has been a place of battles between the Catholic canton of Schwyz and the Protestant canton of Zurich; its geographical border position was of great significance at a time when politics and religion were closely intertwined. The persisting ideological differences between Ausserschwyz and the adjacent municipalities of the canton of Zurich are substantially based on this religious boundary.

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Local associations (Korporationen) are the second important group of actors shaping contemporary and past use of land in Ausserschwyz. Before the government system was in place, these associations managed cooperative water, forest, and common land use. They usually consisted of male peasants of the resident families (Geschlechter) who owned communal property in a municipality. In the canton of Zurich, as in many other cantons, associations were replaced by governmental structures in the course of the formation of a national state (Henggeler 1955, 15–22). In the canton of Schwyz, the associations have survived to date and are now subject to public law (Hubli 1995). Most of them provide some public services, such as water supplies and forest maintenance (Meylan, Gottraux, and Dahinden 1972, 34). Because of their substantial land holdings they have had an important influence on urbanization, and some of them remain very powerful today. Some became very wealthy. The most extreme example is the association Pfäffikon, which today owns three-quarters of the land of the municipality of Freienbach (Schneider 2003, 41). Until the middle of the twentieth century, land in Ausserschwyz was predominantly used for agriculture. Apart from farming activity, the monastery was the primary driving actor behind economic development. Along the pilgrim’s way from the medieval town of Rapperswil over the lake dam to the monastery, which is a part of the Route of St James,3 several inns flourished. Although a railway was built by the end of the nineteenth century, Ausserschwyz remained a mainly agrarian area. Notwithstanding its geographical proximity to the canton of Zurich, economically Ausserschwyz clearly belonged to the rural canton of Schwyz, which was one of the few cantons that had seen little industrial development. This was in contrast to most of the rest of Switzerland at the time – a country that, in the eighteenth century, was the most heavily industrialized in continental Europe (Odermatt and Wachter 2004, 83). In Ausserschwyz, however, only a few isolated factories were built, and its economy has remained less diversified than that in adjacent areas of the canton of Zurich today (Gallati and Pütz 2010, 126–7). The Urbanization of Ausserschwyz

1945–1968: Rural Tourism Whereas large parts of Switzerland experienced a massive economic boom after the Second World War (Odermatt and Wachter 2004, 86),

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Ausserschwyz remained agrarian. Because of its lack of industrial activity, people were poor compared to the rest of the country, creating a situation where two completely different worlds existed next to one another: on one side the archaic, rural, everyday life of Ausserschwyz and on the other the nearby industrial activity of Zurich and its hinterlands. Thanks to the railway and the wealth of the surrounding areas, however, tourists started to “discover” Ausserschwyz as a recreational area. In the 1930s and 1940s, former common land of the association Pfäffikon on the lakeshore was developed with the building of weekend homes (Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 364–9). The privatization of the lakeshore – and thus of the commons – began. The houses were converted into villas in the 1970s, providing “natural” experiences for the urban upper class searching for a rural lifestyle in rapidly industrializing and urbanizing Switzerland.

1968–1984: Suburbanization, Neo-feudalization The predominantly rural character of Ausserschwyz changed dramatically with the opening of the motorway in 1968. With mass automobile use, came intense activity in the construction of houses and office buildings. This suburbanization process was contested, and required an immense investment in planning activities on the part of the municipalities. In Freienbach,4 large landowners such as the association and the monastery took part in this planning process. During the negotiations, the association successfully lobbied for as much land in the building zone as possible and for liberal building laws (Gennaio 2008, 199–200; Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 343). As a result, the association’s power to shape urbanization grew. Thanks to government payouts from ceded land, the association became rich and thus fundamentally changed its economic orientation. Instead of preserving the common farming land, the members now sought financial profit. They started to build houses and sold them to non-members, reducing the association’s holdings. Concurrently, this shift was reflected in new by-laws, with the grassroots democratic organization being replaced by a group of expert managers on the grounds that “the economy” required quicker, simpler, and more discreet decision-making procedures (Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 334–7). The positive outcome of negotiations for the association revealed a close though informal relationship between the association and the public authorities. In most years to date, at least one member of the

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association has simultaneously belonged to the municipal or the cantonal council. But the association’s power was also formally recognized: the original medieval tenure was transformed into modern legal right. As a result, the association’s patriarchal structure was also formalized, since it still only accepted men from the seven original families as members. Hence, through this process of neo- feudalization, a legacy of medieval times was legalized and remains highly influential in the urbanization process today. With the construction of a shopping mall, a museum, and an amusement park between 1974 and 1977, Freienbach was also transformed into a regional commercial centre. These developments, like many others, took place on association property.

1984–2005: Neo-liberalization A second essential change occurred in 1984. With a new financial councillor, the canton of Schwyz started to implement tax-reduction policies, based on the model of the neighbouring canton of Zug. The goal was to attract “well-funded incomes and attractive jobs” (Schneider 2003, 41), which was to be achieved through progressive tax rates to further benefit those with high incomes. The canton Schwyz was transformed from “Switzerland’s poorhouse into a tax haven” (Schneider 2003, 41). The municipalities of Ausserschwyz became the most tax-privileged in Switzerland. In 1995 an income of 1 million Swiss francs was taxed at 6 per cent in Freienbach, while the national average was 23 per cent (StadlerPlanzer and Stadler 2008, 334). Subsequently, the population and the demand for building land heavily increased. Initial opposition to the neo-liberal urbanization model arose from a nature conservation association.5 However, it narrowly lost its proposed political initiative of 1987 to protect a moor against the interests of the municipal administration and the Pfäffikon association. Subsequently, the Pfäffikon association built a hotel, with conference rooms and a casino, near the lake. In order to solve the conflicts between the nature conservation association and the Pfäffikon association, a compromise was found which depoliticized the nature conservation association (Rebsamen 2002, 167–9). This agreement facilitated further large-scale development by the Pfäffikon association because with the compromise the nature conservation association gave up its opponent position and no longer pushed for conservation of the moor in its entirety.

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2005–Present: Stagnation, Displacement Today, construction has plateaued in the outer part of Ausserschwyz. With its last housing development in 2005, the Pfäffikon association used up almost all of its land reserves. Only a small amount of land in the municipality of Freienbach is still available for development, most of which belongs to the monastery. In Wollerau, the land reserves have been almost completely developed. The street network in Ausserschwyz is severely overburdened because of the high growth rates of inhabitants and jobs. However, for more than ten years the municipalities have not been able to find a solution. The three municipalities in eastern Ausserschwyz are unwilling to finance any measure to improve the traffic problem, since they all face budget deficits. For the year 2013, the municipal council of Freienbach wanted to raise tax rates by 10 per cent. By that time the deficit was estimated at 8 million Swiss francs (Bernet 2012, 19), prompting the municipal council to contemplate sacrificing what had been a key ingredient of the urbanization model for the past thirty years. However, the proposal did not pass the legislative municipal assembly, creating a zero-money political program. Therefore, stagnation and blockage mainly mark the current politics of urbanization in Ausserschwyz. The Right to the City in the Urban Periphery The following two sections analyse the conflicting political interests that prevent measures to solve the most pressing problems. The empirical sources are mainly sixteen one- to two-hour interviews with experts, conducted between October 2011 and September 2013. “Experts” are defined as persons who substantially influence urbanization processes in Ausserschwyz as well as persons who act counter-hegemonically to the established power arrangement. The fully transcribed interviews were coded after the principles of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1996). Students in semester courses at the ETH Zurich produced additional interview material, mainly street interviews and participant observations. Today, the consequences of Ausserschwyz’s growth policy are revealing and have turned Ausserschwyz into a negative role model, as the expert and street interviews show. All the interviewed experts view the growth of the past decades as the major challenge for the current production of space. Different groups address different aspects

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of the question of the right to the city. The local section of the social democratic party acts mainly counter-hegemonically to the dominant urbanization policies, as its main concerns are the need for affordable living space and for more investment in public transit, bicycle routes, and pedestrian paths. However, people who are part of the hegemonic power constellation have also started to ask for an improved “quality of life.” Recently, in a local magazine (Reichmuth 2012), a cantonal councillor of the Christian conservative party and head of the planning administration publicly posed the question, “Do we really want this?” In his critique, he questioned the growth policy of the canton of Schwyz, even though he is part of its governing body. Instead of “special treatment for the wealthy foreigners and managers,” further housing construction, and rent increases, he called for changes to promote freedom of expression, job fulfilment, and an intact landscape. With this article, he seems to have captured the current zeitgeist; the article was widely discussed and provoked vehement opposition. One area in which the negative consequences of the growth policy are most evident is the housing market. Lured by the low tax rates, the wealthy classes are able to pay ever-rising rents and real estate prices, but average earners have to leave. Displacement has become a political issue, as the children of former peasants cannot afford the high rents and are forced to move away. The municipal administrations of both Freienbach and Wollerau are seeking ways to establish social housing (at least in the form of a housing cooperative). However, their hands are tied, since they possess hardly any land and are not able to afford the high prices for new land. Therefore, they are reliant on private landowners. In order to offer lower rents, Wollerau now facilitates land exchanges and can therefore exert some pressure on the local association to force it to build social housing. Meanwhile, Freienbach continues with its liberalization agenda. Although there is political pressure by the social democratic party via two submitted initiatives that demand social housing, there has been no solution found to date. Neither does it seem that the administration is willing or able to use its power vis-à-vis the landowners. This, too, testifies to the considerable power of the landowners. The high housing costs not only cause displacement but also create a new social constellation. Put simply, on the one hand there are the “local” citizens, who either became rich from property sales or live in homes they have inherited. On the other hand, there are recent settlers, who live there because of their job and/or the attractive tax rates and

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are capable of paying high rents. Most importantly, these “incomers” are rarely oriented towards Ausserschwyz in their leisure activities or political leanings. The wealthy, more globally oriented recent settlers do not seem to want a more urban environment. In addition to the aforementioned qualities of low taxes and good transport connections, they apparently appreciate an architecture that facilitates avoiding any social contacts. In particular, the terraced houses, as well as a car-dependent lifestyle, cater to this desire not to see one’s neighbours. This wish for anonymity manifests itself in the public space, which is not only largely neglected by planners but controlled as well: when students conducted street interviews in Schindellegi, the police were called. The new social constellation is also expressed in the political landscape of Ausserschwyz. In Freienbach, the social democratic party, which since 1989 has usually held at least one seat, lost its last council seat in 2012 (Gennaio 2008, 174), resulting in a uniformly conservative municipal council that largely advocates and facilitates a neo-liberal urbanization model, a position shared by the Pfäffikon association. Wollerau has seen Switzerland’s strongest shift to the right in the last twenty-five years (Spörri 2013, 15). This shift also facilitates the area’s ongoing demographic change. Within the current constellation, proposals for investment in public infrastructure are often voted down by an alliance of the established population, who are unwilling to incur the expense, and recent settlers, who are not interested in public amenities. Hence, though Ausserschwyz has an exceptionally high number of wealthy inhabitants and “high-value” jobs, there is no money for public expenditures (see Aschwanden 2014). Rural Symbols and Identities as Constitutive Urbanization Powers Today, as an urban space, Ausserschwyz is a strange amalgam of intertwined rural and urban characteristics. The strategy of tax reduction combined with the neo-liberal dogma of competition between localities generated a strong demand for housing. This caused extremely high land prices and thus displacement – urbanization processes that in “old Europe” are usually associated with inner-city neighbourhoods. At the same time, these processes occurred within an area shaped by forces dating from medieval times and with a rural, autarkic self-image. Hence, the example of Ausserschwyz calls into question the concept

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of “suburban governance” because one can observe various processes and elements that do not fit easily into a “suburban” mould (see, e.g., Soja 2011, 460). Moreover, not only is the urban configuration as such ambiguous, but so is the position of some dominant actors. Important actors who hark back to a rural past, along with other rural symbols and identities from earlier times, have shaped how Ausserschwyz is urbanized. The two most important landowners in Freienbach, the Pfäffikon association and the monastery, cannot be seen strictly as private landowners since they own historically public land, play a public role, and are subject to public law. These double identities also influence the urbanization process. Only because of these tensions between communal functions and the desire of a feudal clique to optimize its wealth was it possible to neo-liberalize the commons to such an extent. The neo-liberal frame of reference of the Pfäffikon association became apparent with the installation of a new president in 1991, who pushed for the financialization of the association (i.e., a greater emphasis on profit-oriented policy and on increasing the funds under its management) to such an extent that a rating agency for small and medium-sized enterprises rated the association Pfäffikon as a “premium company” in 2004 (Eberle 2004, 5). Under the new regime the annual payout (Bürgernutzen) constantly rises6 – even though the number of association members doubled in 1992, when the association became legally obliged to accept women from the original seven resident families (Geschlechter). Today, there are around 1,200 members. In 2000, the annual payout of the richest Swiss association amounted to nearly 8,000 Swiss francs. With 90,000 Swiss francs payable in taxes, the association is among the most important municipal taxpayers (Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 394). The financialization of the association gave the management power not only vis-à-vis the municipal administration but also vis-àvis the members, as the members were given incentives to raise the annual payout. The association’s management used the requirement to accept women as members and the financial intensification of its assets to revise its by-laws. The association’s objective now is “to control association property according to entrepreneurial principles” (Statutes, article 3). Any reductions of interest rates for building by members were abolished and the power of the association management was widely extended – the association was transformed into a business company (Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 392–3, 413). At the same time, the president – a member of the association’s planning group – owned a building enterprise that acquired a large number

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of building permits, resulting in an immense concentration of power. This increasing centralization of power was contrary to the original design of the association. The representatives of the association are quite aware of their double-edged role since the 1980s: “We must yet again signal a positive gesture towards the public to prove that we are not only materially-oriented” (cited in Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 318). With some frequency, the association donates originally common property to the public and thereby increases its influence as a partner in urban development. The monastery, as the other big landowner, has recently shown a similar tendency towards neo-liberalization. Under a new abbot in 2007, the monastery considerably professionalized its land ownership policies. It outsourced the management of its real estate holdings to a private company, with a view to making its properties more profitable. However, it handles the question of displacement and social housing differently than the Pfäffikon association. The monastery is aware of the social ideology it preaches and therefore makes an effort to build some social housing. But not only are there tensions between different policies regarding the governance of growth and its outcomes, there are also tensions of orientation. On the one hand, Ausserschwyz is substantially shaped by developments in the city of Zurich. Zurich is not only the centre for cultural and consumer leisure time but also the central and most dominant factor influencing urban development. Ausserschwyz’s extremely low taxes are only possible because of its geographical border position. The urbanization processes that shape Ausserschwyz are formed by the politics of the city and the canton of Zurich, but Ausserschwyz’s power to influence these politics is small. Thus Ausserschwyz is both substantially yet unwillingly dependent on Zurich’s politics of urbanization. This circumstance causes tensions of identification between “belonging to a global city” and “living in the countryside” that affect the urban configuration of Ausserschwyz. While many planning experts have ambitions to increase urban amenities, some powerful actors, as well as the majority of residents who are entitled to vote, regularly refuse the type of retrofitting projects through which suburbs are transformed into post-suburbs. Furthermore, cooperation between the municipalities in Ausserschwyz remains rare because of the persistent self-image of autonomy. Unlike in other “new” urban configurations, such as Zurich North – which is perhaps the most compelling example in the metropolitan region where cross-border planning is a daily occurrence and has

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resulted in a new tramline (Nüssli and Schmid 2016) – in Ausserschwyz supra-municipal organizations struggle to be recognized. Aggravating factors are the cantonal borders that meet in the region. Under these circumstances it is unsurprising that an agreement for any improvements to alleviate traffic congestion has not yet been found. Cooperative planning or retrofitting strategies from a higher state level are seen as a limitation on freedom by diverse actors, again because of the perception of autonomy, despite the influence of neighbouring Zurich. Territorial borders thus not only play an important role in regard to tax policies but are crucial for many urban constellations in Ausserschwyz. Ausserschwyz-Style Urbanization: The Intertwining of Central Functions and Rural Symbols Because of the conflicting goals and strategies of various actors, the further development of Ausserschwyz remains blocked. When one attempts to analyse the urban configuration of Ausserschwyz, it becomes obvious that a classification into the categories of “suburb” or “post-suburb” is not adequate. While it exhibits some characteristics of a so-called post-suburb, it still is a very specific urban configuration, where medieval structures are conserved and have a decisive influence on current urbanization plans. In Freienbach, the large expanses of land owned by the Pfäffikon association and the monastery give them substantial power, while both have transformed from communal institutions to become (partly) profit-oriented entities. At present, it is an urban configuration that shows processes usually associated with innercity neighbourhoods in economic-growth areas of Europe – processes such as rising land prices, the displacement of poorer residents, and the spatial consolidation of the financial sector. But at the same time, rural elements are crucial for the production of space in Ausserschwyz. On the one hand, the urbanization processes that have shaped Ausserschwyz illustrate its dependence on developments in the city of Zurich and the surrounding configurations. The geographical situation of Ausserschwyz is key to its urbanization: lying on the ridge along the lakeshore, offering scenic qualities in close proximity to the urban centre, consuming the centre’s urban amenities, and using such facilities as its airport. It seems to be a perfect example of “dissociation from the centrality of power and wealth into the urban periphery” (Lefebvre [1970] 1972, 180). In this respect, Ausserschwyz represents a paradigm of capitalist urbanization.

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On the other hand, the urban configuration of Ausserschwyz cannot solely be understood in terms of its dependence on the urban centre of Zurich. While it is an example of the explosion of the centre (Lefebvre [1970] 1972, 20), it is also a highly specific case – a unique case, where its rural character is instrumental is shaping the urbanization process. A comparable case in Europe might be the “peripheral” financial cluster in Frankfurt North (Keil and Ronneberger 1994). Another is Luxembourg, where the entire country is marked by rapid urbanization processes, in particular the concentration of international companies attracted by its low taxes and its emergence as a secondary European capital (Carr 2014; Hesse and Carr 2013). Similar developments can also be found on the south-western periphery of Mexico City, where the new financial centre of Santa Fe has led to the formation of gated communities in the surrounding areas (Streule 2016). None of them, however, claims Ausserschwyz’s status as a symbol of an earlier rural orientation. In Asia, it seems, urbanization processes discussed under the buzzword “periurbanization” might be closest to resembling the processes occurring in Ausserschwyz. Besides the above-mentioned gentrification processes in the urban peripheries of East Asia, Tang (2014) describes a similar urbanization process as occurring in Hong Kong, where the urban and the rural continue to coexist and to influence one another (see Ghertner 2015 for a critical discussion about gentrification in the so-called Global South). Shih and Chi (2012) depict the formation of a mixed urban-rural corridor in the metropolitan region of Taipei, with the resulting conflict between economic restructuring and environmental protection. The case of Ausserschwyz extends Lefebvre’s theory of urbanization in showing not only that industrialization and urbanization are related in a conflicting double process (Lefebvre, [1970] 1972, 34, 38; Schmid 2005, 189) but that the rural too can decisively influence urbanization. In the case of Ausserschwyz, not only is the rural not devoured by urbanization (Lefebvre, [1970] 1972, 9), but the inner city and the urban periphery do not intensely converge (Soja 2011, 460; Soja 2013, 693). Instead, medieval social and political relations as well as territorial structures have survived to the present day. In fact, they have not only survived but have influenced current urbanization processes, resulting in an amalgam of rural and urban forms and phenomena. This mixture incorporates powerful references to religion, the essence of “Swissness,” patriotism, patriarchy, and feudal institutions and symbolisms. These, together with financial, profit-oriented, and neo-liberal processes give Ausserschwyz a power structure that is difficult for counter-hegemonic efforts to destabilize. Currently, it seems that change can only emerge

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from within the power structure as a response to signs that the urbanization model is threatening to break down. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the interviewees for their collaboration, the participants of the course “Urbane Transformationen” (ETH Zurich, spring semester 2011) for their research, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, program “New Urban Quality”) for funding this research. I would also like to thank Christian Schmid for his substantial comments and critique and Lindsay Howe for her linguistic assistance. NOTES 1 Exceptions are the research projects “S5-Stadt. Agglomeration im Zentrum” (www.s5-stadt.ch) and “Urban potentials and strategies in metropolitan territories – as explored in the metropolitan area of Zurich” (NFP 65). 2 In 2011, the City of Zurich had 390,000 residents and 362,000 jobs, the statistically defined agglomeration had 1,204,000 residents and 734,000 jobs, and the whole metropolitan region counted – according to the definition – between 1.5 and 2 million people (calculations by the author; source: Statistik Stadt Zürich, 2013). 3 The Route of St James consists of various pilgrim paths, which lead to the supposed grave of the apostle James. 4 Since Freienbach is not only the centre, but also most paradigmatic for Ausserschwyz, I will mostly focus on this municipality for further analysis. The developments in the other municipalities of Ausserschwyz run in a similar direction. Everywhere, the associations became responsible for the bustling construction work (Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 337). 5 Verband zum Schutze des Landschaftsbildes am Zürichsee VSLZ, since 1998 Zürichsee Landschaftsschutz ZSL. 6 Between 1950 and 2000 the annual payout increased from 175 to 7,700 francs (Stadler-Planzer and Stadler 2008, 394). REFERENCES Aguilar, A. 2008. Peri-urbanization, illegal settlements and environmental impact in Mexico City. Cities, 25 (3):133-45. Ascher, F. 1995. Métapolis ou l’avenir des villes. Paris: Jacob.

230  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Aschwanden, E. 2014. Schwyz sagt weiterhin Nein, aber anders. Neue Zürcher Zeitung 46:11. Audirac, I., E. Cunningham-Sabot, S. Fol, and S.T. Moraes. 2012. Declining suburbs in Europe and Latin America. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36 (2):226–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.14682427.2011.01093.x. Bayat, A. 2006. Politik der Strasse: Armutsbevölkerung und städtisches Handeln. In Kabul / Teheran 1979ff, ed. S. Schäfer, J. Becker, and M. Bernstoff, 282–95. Berlin: b_books. Bernet, W. 2012. Freienbach bäckt kleinere Brötchen. Neue Zürcher Zeitung 266:19. BFS (Bundesamt für Statistik). 2013. Gemeindeporträts. http://www.bfs. admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/regionen/02/key.html. Accessed 11 November 2013. Borsdorf, A., R. Hidalgo, and R. Sánchez. 2006. Los megadiseños residenciales vallados en las periferias de las metropolitanas latinamericanas y el adventimiente de un nuevo concepto de ciudad. In Construyende la ciudad del siglo XXI: Retos y perspectivas urbanas en España y Chile, ed. H. Capel and R. Hidalgo, 323–36. Santiago: Universidad de Barcelona, Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile. Caggiano, S., and R. Segura. 2013. Grenzen, Flüsse, Alterität: Migrantische Stadtaneignung in Buenos Aires. In Stadtforschung als Lateinamerika, ed. A. Huffschmid and K. Wildner, 271–92. Bielefeld: transcript. http://dx.doi. org/10.14361/transcript.9783839423134.271. Capron, G. 2013. Gated communities im Norden und Süden Lateinamerikas. In Stadtforschung als Lateinamerika, ed. A. Huffschmid and K. Wildner, 353–75. Bielefeld: transcript. http://dx.doi.org/10.14361/ transcript.9783839423134.353. Carr, C. 2014. Discourse yes, implementation maybe: An immobility and paralysis of sustainable development policy. European Planning Studies 22 (9):1824–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2013.806433. Dashti, M. 2006. Die Europäisierung des Wohnungsbaus. Städtische Modernisierung in Teheran. In Kabul / Teheran 1979ff, ed. S. Schäfer, J. Becker, and M. Bernstoff, 268–81. Berlin: b_books. de Mattos, C.A. 2001 Movimientos del capital y expansión metropolitana en las economías emergentes latinoamericanas. Revista de estudios regionales 60:15–44. Dunham-Jones, E., and J. Williamson. 2009. Retrofitting suburbia. Urban design solutions for redesigning suburbs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Eberle, I. 2004. Korporation als KMU “topklassig.” March Höfe Zeitung, 5.

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234  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Nüssli, R., and C. Schmid. 2016. Beyond the urban-suburban divide: Urbanization and the production of the urban in Zurich north. International Journal for Urban and Regional Research 40 (3):679–700. Odermatt, A., and D. Wachter. 2004. Schweiz – eine moderne Geographie. Zürich: NZZ. Ortega, A.A.C. 2012. Desakota and beyond: Neoliberal production of suburban space in Manila’s fringe. Urban Geography 33 (8):1118–43. http:// dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.8.1118. Oswald, F., P. Baccini, and M. Michaeli. 2003. Netzstadt: Designing the urban. Basel: Birkhäuser. Özüekren. Ş. 2005. Verschwimmende Grenzen: Der informelle und der formelle Wohnungssektor. In Self- service city: Istanbul, ed. O. Esen and S. Lanz, 159–69. Berlin: b_books. Peck, J. 2011. Neoliberal suburbanism: Frontier space. Urban Geography 32 (6):884–919. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.32.6.884. Percival, T., and P. Waley. 2012. Articulating intra-Asian urbanism: The production of satellite cities in Phnom Penh. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 49 (13):2873–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098012452461. Phelps, N. 2013. Global suburbanisms: Navigating by the constellation of Europe. In Suburban constellations: Governance, land and infrastructure in the 21st century, ed. R. Keil, 176–81. Berlin: Jovis. Phelps, N., N. Parsons, D. Ballas, and A. Dowling. 2006. Post-suburban Europe: Planning and politics at the margins of Europe’s capital cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230625389. Phelps, N., and A. Wood. 2011. The new post-suburban politics? Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 48 (12):2591–610. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/0042098011411944. Phelps, N., A. Wood, and D. Valler. 2010. A postsuburban world? An outline of a research agenda. Environment & Planning A 42 (2):366–83. http://dx.doi. org/10.1068/a427. Rebsamen, H. 2002. Zürichsee Landschaftsschutz 1927–2002: 75 Jahre Verband zum Schutze des Landschaftsbildes am Zürichsee VSLZ, seit 1998 Zürichsee Landschaftsschutz ZSL. Stäfa: Gut. Reichmuth, O. 2012. Was wollen wir? H&I-Auslese 443:27. Sassen, S. 1991. The global city. New York, London. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sawyer, L. 2014. Piecemeal urbanisation at the peripheries of Lagos. African Studies 73 (2):271–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2014.925207. Schenker, R., and C. Schwierz. 2013. Analyse Arbeitsmarkt, 2004–2013. Zürich: Statistik Stadt Zürich.

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11 Conclusion: Old Europe, New Research Themes n ic h ol as a. p h e l p s

Introduction The themes of governance, land, and infrastructure were raised at the outset of this volume as those that the chapter contributions were organized to make reference to. However, consideration of old Europe and new suburbanization also is generative of further themes for future research on suburbs and suburbanization. A first theme relates to what consideration of old Europe’s suburbs suggests about how we interpret the geography of suburbanization. A second theme derives from the thought that the study of suburbs and suburbanization can take more seriously than hitherto the temporal dimension in understanding the evolution of individual suburbs and in understanding the process of suburbanization in different national settings. A third theme relates to what a consideration of suburbs and suburbanization can contribute to method in urban studies, including even comparative urban studies. Where Was and Is European Suburbanization? This volume focuses on suburbanization in Europe. For practical purposes it draws upon a range of country and city cases that most would comfortably place in Europe. Yet the continent of Europe itself has been one that has been contested and redrawn. In this regard, we have not been able to do justice to many of these complexities in this volume, though the variety of experiences recounted here delineates what is a large and differentiated continental setting. Nevertheless, in this volume we are also concerned with starting to rethink the geography of suburbanization in old Europe and perhaps farther afield. Each of the contributions in this volume speaks

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to different conceptions of suburban place and space. Here are new themes and questions that can be posed around the territoriality of suburbanization and its history within old Europe. However, there are also new questions to be posed that exceed the territoriality of suburbs, cities, regions, nations, and the continent of old Europe and point instead to the value of alternative spatial metaphors and different temporalities of urbanization, to many of which I cannot do full justice in the conclusion to this volume. To begin with, there is an argument to suggest that there are “dimensional disparities” in the appearance of suburbanization in different continental settings (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2003); that is, that some novel suburban developments in Europe that are functionally similar to those in North America (such as edge cities) and China (such as mass high-rise suburban residential developments) are simply smaller in scale. While in some European settings, such as the United Kingdom, the suburban scale and associated pattern of automobility are altogether more muted, in the post-socialist setting large-scale releases of land and the massive pent-up demand for housing, industrial warehousing, and retail space have produced suburban sprawl on a substantial scale. This has occurred even in cities that are experiencing strong population outmigration and decline in their historic cores (Nuissl and Rink 2005), as well as those, typically capital cities, with stronger growth. The residential developments at the periphery of Sofia are so new and large in scale and yet juxtaposed with equally substantial developments from the socialist era that they prompt Sonia Hirt in chapter 4 to ask, “Where exactly is suburban Sofia to be found?” It is quite apparent that, for some time now, some suburbs in the United States have been acquiring economic functions that place them as significant nodes within national private and public corporate hierarchies (see, e.g., Masotti 1973; Gottdiener 1977). In the United States, some suburban employment centres have acquired a global economic significance by virtue of the major public institutions and multinational headquarters located there. There, unincorporated suburban development in the form of edge cities (Garreau 1991) has emerged as an economic space or node independent of the local, regional, or national territoriality of government. In Europe, there are fewer examples in which the suburban economy escapes the territoriality of local and national government to play such a global economic role, though most national governments appear to have been willing to license the expansion of the suburban economy precisely in order to sustain city-region

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and national competitiveness. While Europe has its counterparts to the edge cities of the United States (Bontje and Burdack 2005), processes of suburbanization are very much conditioned and constrained by the territoriality of government at the local or regional scale, as with the containment of urban England (Clawson and Hall 1973). Nevertheless, as Ute Lehrer and Roza Tchoukaleyska describe in chapter 7, suburbs can emerge as the privileged locations for much of the high-tech labour force in some of Europe’s fastest-growing metropolitan regions. Elsewhere, as Rahel Nüssli reports in chapter 10, it is no exaggeration to say that the suburbs of Zurich have taken on a global connectedness and economic significance. The very geography of suburbs is one that is fundamentally inbetween (Clapson 2003, 2). And the same can be seen today, although it is more likely – given the stasis in local government reform across much of Europe – that suburbs will remain in-between jurisdictions and therefore represent distinct planning and policy challenges. Where suburbs have escaped some of the constraints of the territoriality of local government systems, suburbanization takes the form of Zwischenstadt – the city in-between (Sieverts 2003) – which Ludger Basten highlights as a more appropriate analytical lens through which to view (sub)urbanization in the Ruhr. The study of suburbs and processes of suburbanization has only begun to scratch the surface in the world of interpretive possibilities offered up elsewhere in human geography in the guise of a series of non-territorial metaphors of economic and social life. These have been summarized most succinctly and graphically by Thrift and Olds (1996), who distinguish the metaphor of the territoriality of bounded places from the metaphors of network topology, flows, and virtuality. One logical implication of the relevance of such non-territorial metaphors for an understanding of the urban is that suburbs – as settlement forms very much in the making – appear as the product of assemblages of resources, discourses, and powers mobilized by various actors. It could be suggested that the idea that planetary urbanization is ostensibly planetary suburbanization presses in the direction of analysing suburbs and processes of suburbanization in terms of these non-territorial metaphors – perhaps inadvertently underlining the growing importance of a non-place suburban realm, to corrupt Melvin Webber’s (1964) term. Kolb (2008) has argued that the complexity of the places of suburban sprawl needs to be recognized less in terms of physical propinquity than in terms of linkages and connections. These fresh perspectives are

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valuable and needed in order to bring the suburbs and suburbanization into sharper analytical focus. They will also be needed if viable and tractable planning interventions are to be found to address the many suburban contradictions that abound, as Wojciek Wagner’s exposé of the frailties of planning in Poland attests in chapter 3. Against this, however, there is ample evidence to attest to the placebased properties – real or imagined – of suburbs. This is true of the class and ethnic character and attachment to particular suburbs seen in slowchanging London that Phelps, Mace, and Jodieri describe in chapter 9. However, it is also as well to remember that new suburbanization represents an act of place making, not least in response to questions of the undersupply for collective consumption needs that is often a defining feature of suburbs when compared to cities. Thus, the distinctive ideology of row-house suburban residential developments in Oslo, Norway, is also connected very strongly to senses of place identity, as Per Gunnar Røe highlights in chapter 5. More than this, though, ongoing developments in transportation and communications technologies will only serve to underline the fundamental in-betweenness of suburbs that has existed from the very start. Sieverts’s descriptions of the in-between cities of Germany – a portrait of processes of suburbanization there – are reinforced by Ludger Basten’s account of the development and redevelopment of the Ruhr region in chapter 8. These are macro descriptions of metropolitan and regional urban systems that increasingly have a predominantly suburban rather than urban character, and although Sieverts draws parallels with megalopolitan regions elsewhere in the world, it could be argued that the German case is unique in this respect. However, aspects of an altered in-betweenness are to be found at the scale of individual suburbs. Some distinct elements of the most affluent residential suburbs take on a curious dual character, at once highly territorialized and yet also globally networked, as Atkinson (2008) highlights. The same might be argued with respect to employment enclaves such as science and office parks and corporate-research and head-office campuses (Mozingo 2011), which are an important part of the suburban economy. When Was European Suburbanization? The contributions in this book are concerned in particular with looking for and stressing the novelty of suburbanization in “old” Europe. The contributors were asked to contemplate how the thematic emphasis

Conclusion 241

in their “national” case studies of suburbanization also related to how suburbs have developed over time. That is, individually and taken as a whole, the chapters pose questions as to how one might read the history of suburbanization in different nations and across Europe. As the title of the book suggests, the authors were encouraged to situate their study of contemporary suburbanization in a longer time frame of (sub) urbanization. Despite the tendency to characterize old Europe in terms of stasis, many of the chapters provide good evidence of the different rhythms of suburbanization processes – including historical continuities and discontinuities – found across Europe. Our allusion to the novelty of suburbanization in old Europe points up what could regarded as a “temporal disparity” – a difference in the timing of particular phases of suburbanization in terms of their form, their governance, the dominant actors and land-uses involved, and so on – between different continental settings (Phelps et al. 2006). Such a temporal disparity perhaps lies behind what some have interpreted as periods of convergence and divergence in East Asian and North American urbanization (Dick and Rimmer 1998), including some of the key ingredients of the suburban matrix. It doubtless lies behind similar thoughts regarding convergence between Europe and North America, though it does at times raise the question of who is converging on whom. Where this theme of the temporality of suburbanization has been addressed in extant research on European suburbs, it has been covered in ways that may inadvertently have contributed to an exaggerated sense of the age and timelessness of suburbanization. Indeed, the rather suburb-less polycentric pattern of urbanization in the Ruhr described by Ludger Basten in chapter 8 appears to have been largely frozen at the moment of industrialization in the nineteenth century. The detailed work of urban morphologists in the United Kingdom, for example, tends to stress the slow, incremental nature of change in the built environment in residential suburbs (Whitehand and Carr 2001). Appearances can sometimes be deceptive. Some suburbs in Britain that have barely changed in physical terms have changed out of all recognition in terms of their ethnic and class composition (Mace 2013). Moreover, while this almost imperceptible process of change in the physical form of the built environment remains a feature of many older inner suburbs of British cities, for the most part it has nevertheless at moments been ruptured by radical and rapid new development in the form of comprehensive redevelopment schemes, as is highlighted by Phelps, Mace, and Jodieri in chapter 9.

242  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

Elsewhere in old Europe, novel and massive processes of suburbanization are more apparent. Development at the periphery of some postsocialist cities tends to illustrate radical discontinuities in not only the scale of suburbanization but also its underlying processes. Here the spectacle is one of the suburban growth of frequently fast-expanding capital cities occurring simultaneously with significant suburbanization at the periphery of shrinking cities such as Leipzig (Nuissl and Rink 2005). In some instances, such massive new residential development has been so organized by major developers as part of a post-socialist growth machine (Golubchikov and Phelps 2011; Kulcsar and Domokos 2005) that it often contrasts visibly with previous vintages of urban and suburban development, as Sonia Hirt has described in the case of Sofia in chapter 4. Elsewhere, while new and substantial, the as yet small-scale and fragmented structure of the development industry and individual enterprise has created a finer grained and less perceptible – though nonetheless very real – transformation at the periphery of the post-socialist cities of Poland, as Wojciech Wagner highlights in chapter 3. We are familiar with the thought that in some contexts suburbanization speaks powerfully to nostalgia on the part of residents and local governments for a rural or semi-rural past. Yet in some senses, this is a history that has obscured or overwritten a very different history of the suburbs and suburbanization as the moment and opening for societal change. It is clear that in many national contexts suburban development has – at least at important moments – more obviously been part of a purposeful embrace of the future, and especially the economic future, as European city regions have evolved their own distinctive equivalents of U.S. edge cities (Bontje and Burdack 2005). In yet other parts of old Europe, then, the contrasts offered up by new suburbanization are between a residential, ostensibly rural past and the arrival of internationally connected employment functions. In Montpellier, old and new vintages of suburbs jostle together in what is an economically booming metropolitan area whose expansion continues to make inroads on its ancient vineyards, as Ute Lehrer and Roza Tchoukaleyska recount in chapter 6. The suburbs of Zurich, described by Rahel Nüssli in chapter 10, have been inserted into the global economy in less than thirty years. Method and the Suburbs Very little of the literature on suburbs and suburbanization has focused in detail on the issue of change over time (McManus and Ethington

Conclusion 243

2007), and yet this has emerged strongly as one aspect of suburbanization in old Europe that could usefully be a focus for future theoretical and empirical analysis. Outside of work in the urban morphology tradition, this remains an enormously important but as yet largely unfulfilled research area (Bourne 1996), notwithstanding the anecdotal evidence of the changing economic, social, and ethnic basis of individual suburbs in many national settings. It is an analytical and empirical theme that also poses associated methodological problems regarding comparisons over time and between suburbs at one point in time. If there are good reasons why historical comparisons – including those related to the urban – should be seen over the long term (Tilly 1984), then it is also true that some of the peculiarity of suburbs and suburbanization evaporates over such time scales, as suburbs are absorbed into the totality of the urbanization process implied in the notion of planetary urbanization. Over more modest but intergenerational time frames, suburbs and suburbanization become very revealing of significant societal shifts. It is quite apparent that different rhythms of development and social and ethnic changes have been present over this timescale in the cases considered in this volume: for example, in the movement away from massive and visible high-rises to the less perceptible, fragmented, but substantial low-rise suburban developments born of systemic change in the transitional east-European settings of Bulgaria and Poland; or in the more gradual incremental physical changes to the established and largely slowly changing built environments of the Ruhr and London. Sellers (2005) has argued strongly for placing cities rather than nations at the centre of a multilevel comparative analysis in urban studies. It has long been understood that, to an extent, cities stand for nations. On the one hand, there is a case – as Rahel Nüssli argues – for retaining an appreciation of the fundamental unity and indivisibility of the urbanization process that produces not cities or suburbs but simply any number of “urban configurations.” On the other hand, and notwithstanding the fundamental unity in the urbanization process, there is the argument that, methodologically, the development of theory may rest on inductively generated classifications as an initial step in dialectical synthesis (Phelps and Wood 2011). If, then, as I suggested earlier, planetary urbanization might be recast as planetary suburbanization, then one implication is that suburbs may now stand for nations (Phelps 2010). This may be the case not merely in terms of their extant significance vis-à-vis economic activity and population but also in terms of what

244  Old Europe, New Suburbanization?

suburbs and processes of suburbanization can tell us about national patterns and processes of urbanization as a whole. There is a case, then, for arguing that suburbs and suburbanization should be at the heart of theory building within the sort of multilevel urban studies called for by Sellers. Suburbs as distinct elements in city regions, and the unified urbanization processes they represent, might be considered a separate submetropolitan scale in and of themselves. This at least is one aspect of an agenda that looks at different settlement trajectories (Phelps and Wood 2011). Such different settlement trajectories certainly also exist in Europe, though they are less pronounced than elsewhere, for any number of reasons. Having said that, some of the new forms of suburbanization documented in this volume seem to have added a new layer of complexity, not just to urban morphologies but also to urban politics, economics, and social and ethnic composition, as has been the case in the United States. However, perhaps just as importantly, suburbs and processes of suburbanization are important to such multi-scalar urban studies precisely because they raise questions about the territorial definition of such regions. The active nature of community building implied in processes of suburbanization places them at the heart of wider pressures for the likes of governmental amalgamation or consolidation at the metropolitan region scale. That is, suburbs and processes of suburbanization embody places and processes the study of which can shed light on the re-scaling of the state (Brenner 1998). While the elasticity of state territoriality in old Europe may be much less than in North America or East Asia, the various vested interests involved are likely to ensure that the latent framework for future development implied in suburban development will continue to “test” the extant territoriality of the state via any number of governmental, political, and planning challenges. The stream of calls for comparative research on the urban in the disciplines of geography, political science, and urban planning has been quite persistent over the past few decades. Many of these calls focus on the city or the urban as an undifferentiated whole for the focus of comparison. Notwithstanding that they are a continued source of fascination, established cities are, to all intents and purposes, the “old” of old Europe, and the comparative gesture in this regard amounts to comparing a rather fixed set of attributes (of total populations, areal extent, government structure, position in a national urban system, etc.). Doubtless it is this stability of cities that permits at least one strand of literature to argue with great purpose and validity for comparative

Conclusion 245

research that deploys relatively parsimonious strategies (see, e.g., Pierre 2005; Wolman 2008). Arguably, given the twin emphases of this volume on uncovering the history and geography of suburbanization in old Europe, the virtue of comparative research and method with an explicit focus on suburbs is that it would presumably emphasize the dynamic and less stable attributes of contemporary suburbanization. That is, research on suburbanization as a process begs for comparisons among settlements along dimensions such as the timing, duration, and rhythm of urbanization and the active production of space – as spatial practice, in the creation of representational spaces and in representations of urban space (Lefevbre [1974] 1991). Clearly, in the casual comparisons invited to such considerations across the chapters presented here, this book represents only an initial and informal contribution to such a comparative research agenda that would be focused more explicitly on the temporal and geographical dynamics of urbanization. Plenty of scope exists for future research to go further and present more formal comparisons in this regard. REFERENCES Atkinson R. 2008. The flow in enclave and the misanthropy of networked affluence. In Networked urbanism: Social capital in the city, ed. J. Blokland and M. Savage, 41–58. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bontje, M., and J. Burdack. 2005. Edge cities European-style: Examples from Paris and the Randstad. Cities (London, England) 22 (4):317–30. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2005.01.007. Bourne, L.S. 1996. Reinventing the suburbs: Old myths and new realities. Progress in Planning 46 (3):163–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/03059006(96)88868-4. Brenner, N. 1998. Between fixity and motion: Accumulation, territorial organization, and the historical geography of spatial scales. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16:459–81. Clapson, M. 2003. Suburban century: Social change and urban growth in England and the USA. Oxford: Berg. Clawson, M., and Hall, P. 1973. Planning and urban growth: An Anglo-American comparison. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Dick, H.W., and P.J. Rimmer. 1998. Beyond the third world city: The new urban geography of south-east Asia. Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 35 (12):2303–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0042098983890.

246  Old Europe, New Suburbanization? Garreau, J. 1991. Edge city: Life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday. Golubchikov, O., and N.A. Phelps. 2011. The political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery: Governing growth on the edge of Moscow. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (3):425–40. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00427.x. Gottdiener, M. 1977. Planned sprawl: Private and public interests in suburbia. London: Sage. Kolb, D. 2008. Sprawling places. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Kulcsar, L.J., and T. Domokos. 2005. The post-socialist growth machine: The case of Hungary. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 (3):550–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00605.x. Lefebvre, H. [1974] 1991. The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Mace, A. 2013. City suburbs: Placing suburbia in a post-suburban world. London: Routledge. Masotti, L.H. 1973. Prologue: Suburbia reconsidered: myth and counter-myth. In The Urbanization of the suburbs, ed. L.H Masotti and J.K. Hadden, 15–22. London: Sage. Mazierska, E., and L. Rascaroli. 2003. From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern cities, European cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. McManus, R., and P.J. Ethington. 2007. Suburbs in transition: New approaches to suburban history. Urban History 34 (02):317–37. http://dx.doi. org/10.1017/S096392680700466X. Mozingo, L. 2011. Pastoral capitalism: A history of suburban corporate landscapes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nuissl, H., and D. Rink. 2005. “The “production” of urban sprawl in eastern Germany as a phenomenon of post-socialist transition. Cities 22:123–34 and 317. Phelps, N.A. 2010. Suburbs for nations: Some interdisciplinary connections on the suburban economy. Cities (London, England) 27 (2): 68–76. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.cities.2009.11.005. Phelps, N.A., N. Parsons, D. Ballas, and A. Dowling. 2006. Postsuburban Europe: Planning and politics at the margins of Europe’s capital cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi. org/10.1057/9780230625389. Phelps, N.A., and A.M. Wood. 2011. The new post-suburban politics? Urban Studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) 48 (12):2591–610. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/0042098011411944. Pierre, J. 2005. Comparative urban governance: Uncovering complex causalities. Urban Affairs Review 40 (4):446–62. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1078087404273442.

Conclusion 247 Sellers, J.M. 2005. Re-placing the nation: An agenda for comparative urban politics. Urban Affairs Review 40 (4):419–45. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1078087404272673. Sieverts, T. 2003. Cities without cities: An interpretation of the Zwischenstadt. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203380581. Thrift, N.J., and K. Olds. 1996. Refiguring the economic in economic geography Progress in Human Geography 20 (3):311–37. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/030913259602000302. Tilly, C. 1984. Big structures, large processes, huge comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Webber, M.M. 1964. Urban place and the nonplace urban realm. In Explorations into urban structure, ed. M.M. Webber, 79–143. http://dx.doi. org/10.9783/9781512808063-005. Whitehand, J.W.R., and C.M.H. Carr. 2001. Twentieth century suburbs: A morphological approach. London: Spon Press. Wolman, H. 2008. Comparing local government systems across countries: Conceptual and methodological challenges to building a field of comparative local government studies. Environment and Planning. C, Government & Policy 26 (1):87–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/cav5.

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Author Index

Abu-Lughod, J., 6 Aguilar, A., 212 Aldridge, M., 196 Alexandropoulou, I., 121 Alguacil, J., 30, 31 Andersen, B., 86, 102 Andrikopoulou, E., 114 AS&P (Albert Speer & Partner), 179 Ascher, F., 215 Aschwanden, E., 224 Atkinson, R., 240 Audirac, I., 212 Baccini, P., 211 Bagnall, G., 101 Bakis, H., 137 Baladin, S., 72 – 3 Ballas, D., 14 Ballester, J., 23 Bańkowska, B., 61 Baranowski, A., 60 Barbéris, J.-M., 146 Barlindhaug, R., 90 Barratt, N., 183, 188 – 91 Baumgartner, M.P., 85 Bayat, A., 213 Beauregard, R., 10, 88, 160, 168

Beltrán, R., 22 – 3 Bern, A., 85 Bernet, W., 222 Bernié-Boissard, C., 142, 146, 149, 150, 152 BFS (Bundesamt fur Statistik), 216 Blarer, D., 215 Blotevogel, H., 5, 9 Boal, F., 196 Bogart, W.T., 7 Bonnet, N., 137 Bontje, M., 239, 242 Borraz, O., 140 Borsdorf, A., 212 Bourne, L.S., 3, 7, 243 Brade, I., 75 Brattbakk, I., 89, 91 Brenner, N., 4, 7, 244 Bruegmann, R., 6, 73 Burdack, J., 239, 242 Burns, M.C., 35 Buyck, J., 133, 135, 137, 139 Caggiano, S., 212 Cai, J., 212 Capron, G., 212 Caraveli, H., 112, 117

250  Author Index Carr, C., 228 Carr, C.M.H., 183, 206 Casqueiro, J., 28 CEC, 112, 116 Charlesworth, J., 196 Chédiac, S., 146, 149, 150, 152 Chery, J.-P., 133, 135, 137, 139 Cheshire, P.C., 112 Chevalier, D., 142, 147, 149 Chi, C.-L., 228 Chlepas, N., 114 Chmielewski, J.M., 46, 53, 57 Chorianopoulos, I., 7, 14, 112, 118 Chouliaraki, L., 96 Christofakis, M., 114 Christofilopoulos, D., 113 CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture), 73 Cicille, P., 27 Clapson, M., 196, 239 Clawson, M., 196, 239 Cochrane, A., 196 Corbin, J., 222 Crozat, D., 138 Czaplicka, J., 67 Dahinden, P., 219 Dahmann, N., 11 Danielzyk, R., 158, 163 Dashti, M., 213 De Santiago, E., 24 – 7, 31, 36 – 7 Dear, M., 11 Denche, C., 30 – 1 Dennis, R., 188 – 92, 200 Deutscher Werkbund NordrheinWestfalen, 179 Dick, H.W., 241 Dikeç, M., 138, 146, Dingsdale, A., 75 Dirección General de Revisión del Plan General, 31

Dittrich-Wesbuer, A., 158 – 63 Dobloug, M., 97 – 8 Domokos, T., 41, 242 Duncan, J., 66 Dunham-Jones, E., 212 Dwyer, C., 200 Eberle, I., 225 Eberlein, B., 138 Economist, The, 198 Economou, D., 116 Eder, K., 8 EFD (Eidgenossisches Finanzdepartement), 207 Ekers, M., 4, 20, 42, 117, 135, 160, 166, 214 El Mouelhi, H., 213 Esteban, A., 22 Estèbe, P., 153 Estébanez, J., 26 – 7 ESTV (Eidgenossische Steuerverwaltung), 207 Ethington, P., 242 Ezquiaga, J.M., 37 Fairclough, N., 96 Faulconbridge, J.R., 86 Finanzdepartement Kanton Schwyz (SZ), 217 Fisher, J., 71 Fishman, R., 6, 9, 69, 73, 80, 211 Frampton, K., 86 Franco Alonso, O., 22 – 4 Frank, S., 177, 179 Freire-Mederios, B., 212 French, T., 14 Frolic, B., 71 Fuchs, S., 215 Fundación arquitectura COAM, 24 Fundación Docomomo Ibérico, 23

Author Index  251 Gallati, D., 219 Gans, H.J., 200 Garcia-Ramon, M.D., 115 García Uyarra, A., 34 Garreau, J., 211, 238 Gaspar, J., 114 Geertz, C., 67 Gehl, I., 86, 91 – 2 Gelazis, N., 67 Gennaio, M.-P., 220, 224 Gent, J., 193 Getimis, P., 5, 9, 116 – 17 GGN, 115, 117, 119 – 22 Ghertner, D., 228 Gilbert, D., 200 Glass, R., 187 Główny Urząd Statystyczny, 56, 58 Golubchikov, O., 41, 242 González, I., 31 Gotsch, P., 213 Gottdiener, M., 238 Gottraux, M., 219 Graham, S., 5, 90 Greater London Authority Intelligence Unit, 197 Griffiths, S., 183 Grochowski, M., 52 Gross, J.S., 213 Grosse, T.G., 43 Gruszecka, K., 52, 54 Gururani, S., 213 Guttu, J., 88, 90, 92 – 3 Gyford, J., 193 Gyorgiev, K., 76 Gyr, M., 209 Gzell, S., 51 Hadjimichalis, C., 115 Hall, P., 85, 88 – 9, 91, 99, 103, 112, 196, 215, 239

Hamel, P., 4, 20, 42, 117, 135, 160, 166, 211, 214 Hanlon, B., 12 Hansen, T., 88 – 91 Harris, R., 3, 6, 7, 73, 86, 191 Häußermann, H., 162 Hay, D., 112 Hayden, D., 85 Henggeler, R., 219 Hermann, M., 217 Hernández-Aja, A., 30 – 1, 35 Hesse, M., 162, 228 Heye, C., 215 Hidalgo, R., 212 Hiernaux, D., 213 Hirt, S., 4, 11, 12, 14, 67, 70, 72, 74 – 6, 242 Hitz, H., 215 Holcel, A., 58 Horat, E., 217 Hubli, A., 219 Huchzermeyer, M., 212 Hudalah, D., 213 Hultberg, E., 98 Humphrey, C., 67 Hüsser, P., 218 INSEE, 145, 147, 148 – 9 Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park, 169, 171 Inward, S., 190 Ioakimidis, P.C., 113 IVIMA, 33 – 4 Jackson, A.A., 189, 190, 192 Jarrige, F., 133, 135, 137 – 9, 142, 151 Jeleva-Martins, D., 70 Jodieri, R., 5, 9, 10, 12, 15, 195, 240 – 1 John, P., 140 Jones, M., 38 Jones, P., 86, 105 Judd, D., 212

252  Author Index Kafkalas, G., 114 Kajdanek, K., 50, 62 Karavia, M., 125 Karidis, D., 117 Karzyński, M., 47, 61 Keil, R., 4, 20, 42, 87, 105, 117, 135, 160, 166, 211 – 14, 228 Kelly, B., 105 Kerns, J., 105 Kilper, H., 166, 168 King, A.D., 10 Kipfer, S., 146 Knox, P., 11, 85 Kochanowska, D., 47 Kok, H., 75 Kolb, D., 239 Kostof, S., 66, 80 Kovacs, Z., 75 Kowalewski, A., 48, 54, 58 – 9 Krausz, E., 198 Kretz, S., 208 Kublik, A., 60 Kucińska, M., 58 Kulcsar, L.J., 41, 242 Küng, L., 208 Kurowski, S., 46 Kuster, J., 215 Lang, R., 11 Läpple, D., 162 Larkham, P., 3, 7, 86, 191 Lawanson, T., 212 Leach, N., 96, 133 Lees, L., 86, 106 Lefebvre H., 201, 211, 213, 227 – 8 Legates, R., 213 Leinberger, C., 211 Leite, P.M., 212 Leontidou, L., 7, 112, 115 – 16 Le Roy Ladurie, E., 135

Leuthold, H., 217 Ley, D., 91 Li, W., 197 Lindón, A., 212 – 13 Lisowski, A., 52 Lizon, P., 72, 80 Lockwood, C., 211 London Borough of Croydon, 194 Longhurst, B., 101 López, J., 21 – 2 López de Lucio, R., 24, 28 – 30, 35 Lopez Levi, E.M.L., 212 Lorange, E., 89, 91 Lund, N., 97 Lydall, R., 195 Lynch, K., 69 Mabin, A., 213 Mace, A., 5, 9 – 10, 12, 15, 197, 200 – 1, 240, 241 MacLeod, G., 38 McManus, R., 242 Madridiario, 34 Maier, K., 8 Malecki, E.J., 15, 188 Mantey, D., 55 Maroussi, Municipality of, 119 – 22 Marvin, S., 5, 90 Masotti, L.H., 238 Maxim, J., 72, 80 Mazierska, E., 238 Mbiba, B., 212 Meier, H., 215 Metro de Madrid, 29 Meylan, J., 219 Michaeli, M., 211 Mills, G., 252 Molina, M., 26 – 7 Molotch, H., 41 Montpellier, 138

Author Index  253 Montpellier Office de Tourisme, 137 Moya, A., 29 Moya, L., 22 Mozingo, L., 10, 240 Müller, C., 178 Muller, L., 212 Mumford, L., 201 Munoz, F., 112 Myhre, E., 89, 91 Mykhnenko, V., 112 Naredo, J.M., 25 Nasiali, M., 150 Naylor, S., 200 Nedović-Budić, Z., 67, 74 Négrier, E., 137, 140, 152 Neikov, L., 71, 73 Nelson, A.C., 88 Neuman, M., 27, 32 Niedzielski, M.A., 15, 188 Nikiforov, I., 76 Nilsen, K.A., 93 Nougaredes, B., 138, 142,151 Nuissl, H., 12, 238, 242 Nussli, R., 9, 12, 15, 211, 215, 227, 239, 242 – 3 Odermatt, A., 219 Oguz, M., 213 Olds, K., 239 Oliete, A., 24 Ortega, A.A.C., 213 Ortiz, P., 32 – 3 Osterhage, F., 158, 163 Oswald, F., 211 Özuekren, Ş., 213 Pain, K., 215 Papadaskalopoulos, A., 114 Parker, G., 139

Peck, J., 214 Percival, T., 212 Pérez, C., 26 – 7 Petrakos, G., 112, 116 – 17 Phelps, N.A., 3, 5, 7, 9 – 10, 12, 14 – 15, 36, 38, 41, 72, 88, 115, 117, 125 – 7, 183, 194, 195, 203, 212 – 14, 240 – 4 Pierre, J., 245 Plouin, M.E., 144 Politopoulos, T.E., 119 Polivka, J., 160 Préau, J., 137, 152 Pred, A., 103 Przewoźniak, M., 47 Psycharis,Y., 116 Punter, J., 187 Pütz, M., 219 Radeberg-Skorzysko, M., 57 Rascaroli, L., 238 Rasmussen, S.E., 183 Rebsamen, H., 221 Reichmuth, O., 223 Reimer, M., 5, 9 Residential Park Sofia, 78 – 9 Rimmer, P.J., 241 Roberts, M., 152 Roch, F., 24 – 7, 29 – 30, 32 – 3 Rodgers, D.T., 10 Rodríguez Avial, L., 31 Rodriguez, I., 212 Røe, P.G., 7, 14, 86 – 8, 91, 104, 240 Roitman, S., 7, 36 Ronneberger, K., 228 Roost, F., 160 Rousseau, M., 143, 154 Rozenblat, C., 27 Ruble, B., 67 Rudolph, R., 75

254  Author Index Ruoppila, S., 75 Ryan, J.R., 200 Saint, A., 186, 188 – 9, 195 Salako, I.O., 212 Salet, W., 35 Samodumov, B., 71, 73 Sanchez, R., 212 Sánchez, T.W., 88 Sánchez Casas, C., 36 Sánchez-Fallos, T., 24 Sassen, S., 215 Saunders, P., 194 Savage, M., 101 Sawyer, L., 212 Sayer, P., 211 SBI, 92 – 3 Schenker, R., 215 Schmid, C., 213, 215, 217, 228, 229 Schneider, M., 219, 221 Schon, A., 137 Schwierz, C., 215 Scott, A., 211 Segura, R., 212 Sellers, J.M., 243 – 4 Shah, B., 200 Sheller, M., 88 Shih, C.S., 228 Short, J.R., 12 Sibertin-Blanc, M., 142, 147, 149 Siebel, W., 162 Sieverts, T., 160, 211, 239 – 40 SIG (Système d’information géographique), 142, 144 – 6, 149 Silverstone, R., 86 Simoni-Lioliou, M., 125 Sjoberg, G., 11 Skvirskaja, V., 69 Slaev, A., 76 Smith, N., 187

Sofia Municipality, 75 Soja, E., 11, 202, 211, 214, 225, 228 Sorensen, A., 12 Soukup, M., 217 Spirou, C., 212 Spörri, B., 217, 224 Spyri, J., 218 Stadler, P., 220 – 1, 225 – 6, 229 Stadler-Planzer, H., 220 – 1, 225 – 6, 229 Stanilov, K., 67, 72, 74 Steinmetz, H., 143 Strauss, A., 222 Streule, M., 228 Strzelecki, Z., 58 Sudjic, D., 211 Sýkora, L., 75 Tammaru, T., 72 Tang, W.-S., 228 Tangurov, J., 71 Tarazona Vento, A.A., 7, 9, 14, 23, 35, 36 Thinon, P., 138, 142, 151 Thomassen, Ø., 90 Thornley, A., 35 Thrift, N.J., 239 Tiebout, C.M., 49 Tilly, C., 243 Triantafilopoulos, N., 121 Tsagaratos, S., 119, 123 Tsenkova, S., 67 Turok, I., 112 UN (United Nations), 112 – 13 Urry, J., 88 Uysal, U.E., 213 Valette, E., 137 Valler, D., 117, 213, 214 van den Berg, L., 159

Author Index  255 Vaughan, L., 3 Veltz, P., 215 Viala, L., 139, 149 Vicino, T., 12 Vincent, P., 200 Vinuesa, J., 24 Volle, J.-P., 141, 142, 146 von Haller, A., 218 von Matt, P., 218 von Petz, U., 167 Wachter, D., 219 Wacquant, L., 138, 146 Waley, P., 212 Wallerstein, I., 6 Ward, S.V., 10 Warf, B., 200 Wassenhoven, L., 115 Watson, S., 200

Webster, D., 212 West Sussex County Times, 196 Whitehand, J.W.R., 183 Williamson, J., 212 Winarso, H., 213 Wolff, R., 215 Wolman, H., 245 Woltjer, J., 213 Wood, A., 117, 212 – 14, 243 – 4 World Bank, 112 Wu, F., 9, 72, 213 Wybieralski, M., 54 Yadua, O., 212 Ye, L., 213 Yiftachel, O., 213 Young, D., 212 Zhang, J., 9

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Subject Index

Athens, 14, 73, 110 – 32 automobility, 238 BRIC countries, 11 Bulgaria, 4, 12, 14, 66 – 84, 243 bungalow, 5, 10 central and eastern Europe (CEE), 44, 67 – 9, 74 – 5, 81 China, 9, 11, 238 colonial, 9, 10 comparative research/method, 15, 104, 161, 237, 243 – 5 conservation, 127, 221 containment (urban), 187 Crawley, 196 democracy, 30, 76, 116 dictatorship, 24, 112, 120, 125 edge city/cities, 33, 211, 238 – 9, 242 employment, 11, 36, 112, 152, 191, 193, 194, 196, 202, 238, 240, 242 ethnic(ity), 7, 12, 67, 174, 185, 196 – 8, 200, 243 – 4

financialization, 225 Fordism/Fordist, 26, 168, 193 France, 6, 60, 133 – 57, 165 garden city/suburb, 10, 42, 86, 92, 103, 125, 171 – 4, 180 gentrification, 102, 178, 180, 185, 187, 228 geohistory, 4, 8, 10 globalization, 137 governance, 4, 7 – 9, 12 – 14, 18 – 20, 26, 33, 35 – 7, 46, 55, 68, 89, 90, 104 – 5, 111, 116, 128 – 9, 135, 139 – 40, 152, 158, 161, 164 – 71, 174, 177 – 81, 185 – 6, 191, 209 – 11, 213 – 14, 225 – 6, 237, 241 grands ensembles/banlieues, 73, 138, 146, 152, 154 Greece, 5 – 6, 110 – 32 green belt(s), 5, 168, 183, 187, 196, 202 growth machine, 25, 41, 242 hinterland, 115, 117, 187, 220 Horsham, 196

258  Subject Index housing, 5, 9, 14, 18, 19, 21 – 6, 31, 33, 36, 54, 55, 62, 67, 69, 70 – 1, 73 – 5, 77, 80, 85, 86, 88, 90 – 3, 96, 98, 101, 103, 113 – 15, 125, 134, 136, 138 – 9, 143, 145, 148 – 52, 164, 166 – 71, 173 – 7, 180, 185, 191 – 5, 200 – 2, 212, 213, 215, 222 – 4, 238; market, 88, 115, 162, 174, 223; policy, 33 – 4, 89, 106; prices, 25, 36, 91,101, 209; public, 33, 133, 143, 185, 192 – 3; social, 22 – 5, 34, 74, 85, 89, 101, 133, 134, 141, 146, 149 – 50, 152, 164, 173, 191, 198, 223, 226 hybridity/hybridization, 4 ideology (suburban), 7, 14, 85 – 109, 168, 194, 240 Indonesia, 213 industry, 9, 12, 76, 112, 115, 135, 137, 139, 153, 160, 165 informal settlement/development, 5, 14, 128, 212 – 13 infrastructure, 4 – 7, 13 – 14, 20, 25 – 7, 29, 33, 44, 46 – 8, 53 – 5, 59, 62, 68, 70, 75, 88 – 92, 105, 111, 115 – 16, 120, 122, 124, 128, 133, 135 – 6, 139 – 42, 161 – 6, 168, 171, 173 – 4, 178, 180 – 1, 185 – 7, 191, 195, 198, 200, 202, 209, 224, 237 Israel, 213 Kabul, 213 land, 4 – 5, 12 – 14, 22, 22 – 3, 25 – 6, 30 – 1, 36, 43, 46 – 9, 52, 54 – 5, 58, 61, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80 – 1, 85, 89 – 90, 105, 110 – 11, 114 – 15, 118 – 19, 121, 134 – 5, 137 – 8, 140 – 2, 144, 148, 150 – 4, 160 – 2, 165 – 6, 175, 180, 185 – 6, 188 – 9, 190, 192, 194, 203, 209, 213,

218 – 23, 225, 237 – 8; development, 5, 7, 14, 20, 41, 133 – 4, 139 – 40, 162; management, 117, 134, 142 – 3, 149; occupation, 20 – 1; ownership, 9; price, 119, 224, 227; use, 6, 20, 33, 55, 69, 77, 79 – 80, 85, 89 – 90, 110, 113 – 17, 199, 122, 124, 128, 135, 138, 141 – 2, 151, 164, 202, 219, 241 landmark(s), 126 landscape(s), 11, 36, 42 – 3, 46 – 7, 53, 58 – 9, 66 – 9, 74 – 5, 77 – 8, 81, 85 – 6, 89 – 91, 104 – 6, 134 – 5, 140, 150, 153 – 4, 169 – 71, 179, 183, 194, 211, 218, 223, 224 Latin America, 24, 212, 213 London, 5, 9 – 10, 14, 183 – 206, 240, 243 Los Angeles, 37, 211 Madrid, 9, 14, 18 – 40 Manchester, 101 Mediterranean, 5, 7, 111, 135 Mexico city, 228 microrayon, 72, 78 – 80 migration/(im)migration, 75, 112, 133, 137 – 9, 144, 150, 153, 166 – 7, 185, 187, 197, 201, 212, 238 Milton Keynes, 196 modernity/modernist, 22 – 3, 30, 72, 73, 75, 78, 80, 85 – 6, 90, 93, 95, 97, 100, 103, 138, 143, 153 – 4, 191, 193 – 4, 202 Montpellier, 10, 14, 133 – 57, 242 morphology, 34, 243 multi-level governance, 20 new towns, 86, 187, 191, 196 Nordic, 7, 85, 86, 88, 104 – 6 offices/office blocks, 22, 30, 34, 37, 67, 77, 79, 121, 175, 193 – 4, 213

Subject Index  259 Olympic Games, 122, 124, 127 – 8 Oslo, 85 – 109, 240 parasitic (sub)urbanization, 88, 160, 168, 170, 179 – 80 planetary urbanization, 7, 239, 243 planning (urban/spatial), 4 – 5, 8 – 10, 13 – 14, 19 – 20, 24 – 5, 27, 29, 33 – 4, 36 – 7, 41 – 4, 46 – 51, 53, 55 – 6, 58 – 62, 69, 71, 73 – 4, 77, 85 – 91, 93, 95 – 9, 101 – 3, 105, 110 – 22, 127 – 9, 134 – 5, 137, 139 – 43, 147, 149 – 51, 153 – 4, 163 – 5, 167 – 70, 174, 178, 183, 189, 194 – 5, 220, 223, 225 – 7, 239 – 40, 244 Poland, 4 – 5, 12, 14, 41 – 65, 240, 242 – 3 policy mobility, 9 polycentric/polycentricity/ polynucleation, 12, 14, 31, 140, 158, 160, 166 – 7, 170, 179, 215, 241 population growth, 10, 20, 51, 60, 119, 133 – 5, 137 – 44, 147, 150, 160, 168, 185 – 7, 190 – 1, 196 postmodern/postmodernism, 11, 13, 98, 104, 169, 202 post-socialist/post-socialism, 11 – 12, 14, 41, 43, 58, 67 – 9, 81, 238, 242 property rights, 115, 121 race, 200 rescaling (of the state), 4, 9, 129 restructuring (industrial/economic), 26 – 7, 29, 38, 112, 118, 139, 153, 159, 168, 179 – 80, 228 retail(ers), 31, 76, 79, 120, 126, 175, 193 – 4, 238 Ruhr, 9, 12, 14, 158 – 82, 239 – 41, 243 Scandinavia, 6 social class, 7, 12, 22, 30, 36, 43, 50, 70, 78, 80, 85, 87, 90, 100 – 2, 104, 135,

138, 154, 171, 177, 178 – 81, 197, 200, 212 – 13, 220, 223, 240 – 1 social segregation, 26 socialist/socialism, 5, 30, 32, 43 – 6, 50, 53, 59, 61 – 2, 67 – 9, 71, 73 – 81, 134, 139, 238 Sofia, 11, 14, 66 – 84, 238, 242 south-east England, 184 speculative development, 24, 117, 166 splintering urbanism, 5 sprawl/sprawling, 9, 11, 14, 35, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 50, 53, 59, 69, 85, 88, 90, 105, 116, 124, 127, 134, 140 – 3, 154, 160, 190 –  1, 196, 238, 239 subsidy/subsidies, 22, 28, 164 Switzerland, 60, 207 – 36 Taipei, 228 Tehran, 213 temporalities, 238 territoriality, 4, 6, 8 – 9, 13, 18, 128, 238 – 9, 244 tower blocks, 23, 34, 143 unemployment, 74, 137, 145, 146, 178 United States (U.S.), 6, 10 – 11, 49, 69, 73, 88, 197, 202, 238, 239, 244 vintages of development, 14, 183, 202, 242 warehousing, 198, 238 Warsaw, 45 – 8, 52 – 3, 55 – 8, 60, 62 world system, 6, 10 Zurich, 207, 209 – 10, 215 – 23, 225 – 9, 239, 242 Zwischenstadt, 211, 239,160