Suburban Governance: A Global View 9781442663565

Table of contents :
Contents
Figures
Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Governance In A Suburban World
Section 1.Suburban Governance
1. Governing Suburbia: Modalities And Mechanisms Of Suburban Governance
2. A Note On Governance: More Intervening Variables, Please
Section 2. Suburban Governance In The Classical Anglo-Saxon Cases
3. The United States: Suburban Imaginaries And Metropolitan Realities
4. Modalities Of Suburban Governance In Canada
5. Governing Suburban Australia
6. Chicago-School Suburbanism
Section 3. The Existing Alternatives
7. Suburban Governance In Western Europe
8. Suburbia In Three Acts: The East European Story
9. Governing Shrinkage Of Large Housing Estates At The Fringe
10. Suburbanization In Latin America: Towards New Authoritarian Modes Of Governance At The Urban Margin
11. On The Relations Of Culture And Suburbia: How To Give Meaning To The Suburban Landscape?
Section 4.The Emerging Models
12. Africa’S New Suburbs
13. Shifting Terrain: Questions Of Governance In India’S Cities And Their Peripheries
14. Suburban Development And Governance In China
15. Deconstructing The Decentralized Urban Spaces Of The Mega-Urban Regions In The Global South
16. Governing The Postcolonial Suburbs
Conclusion Suburban Governance: Convergent And Divergent Dynamics
Author Biographies
Index

Citation preview

SUBURBAN GOVERNANCE A Global View Edited by Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

North American gated communities, African squatter settlements, European housing estates, and Chinese urban villages all share one thing in common: they represent types of suburban space. As suburban growth becomes the dominant urban process of the twenty-first century, its governance poses an increasingly pressing set of global challenges. In Suburban Governance: A Global View, editors Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil have assembled a groundbreaking set of essays by leading urban scholars that assess how governance regulates the creation of the world’s suburban spaces and everyday life within them. With contributors from ten countries on five continents, this collection covers the full breadth of contemporary developments in suburban governance. Examining the classic North American model of suburbia, contemporary alternatives in Europe and Latin America, and the emerging suburbanisms of Africa and Asia, Suburban Governance offers a strong analytical introduction to a vital topic in contemporary urban studies. (Global Suburbanisms) pierre hamel is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université de Montréal. roger keil is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and the principal investigator of the Global Suburbanisms research project.

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 book 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)

Suburban Governance A Global View

EDITED BY PIERRE HAMEL AND ROGER KEIL

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2015 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-4576-9 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1400-0 (paper)

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

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Suburban governance: a global view / edited by Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil. (Global suburbanisms) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4576-9 (bound). – ISBN 978-1-4426-1400-0 (pbk.) 1. Suburbs.  2. Urbanization.  I. Hamel, Pierre, 1947–, author, editor  II. Keil, Roger, 1957– author, editor  III. Series: Global Suburbanisms HT351.S92 2015   307.74   C2014-905650-8

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.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

List of Figures  ix List of Tables  xi Acknowledgments  xiii Introduction: Governance in a Suburban World  3 pierre hamel and roger keil Section 1: Suburban Governance  17 1 Governing Suburbia: Modalities and Mechanisms of Suburban Governance  19 michael ekers, pierre hamel, and roger keil 2 A Note on Governance: More Intervening Variables, Please  49 robert young Section 2: Suburban Governance in the Classical Anglo-Saxon Cases  55 3 The United States: Suburban Imaginaries and Metropolitan Realities  57 jan nijman and tom clery 4 Modalities of Suburban Governance in Canada  80 roger keil, pierre hamel, elena chou, and kieran williams

vi Contents

  5 Governing Suburban Australia  110 louise c. johnson   6 Chicago-School Suburbanism  130 jamie peck Section 3: The Existing Alternatives  153   7 Suburban Governance in Western Europe  155 nicholas a. phelps and amparo tarazona vento   8 Suburbia in Three Acts: The East European Story  177 sonia hirt and atanas kovachev   9 Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates at the Fringe  198 sigrun kabisch and dieter rink 10 Suburbanization in Latin America: Towards New Authoritarian Modes of Governance at the Urban Margin  216 dirk heinrichs and henning nuissl 11 On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia: How to Give Meaning to the Suburban Landscape?  239 thomas sieverts Section 4: The Emerging Models  251 12 Africa’s New Suburbs  253 robin bloch 13 Shifting Terrain: Questions of Governance in India’s Cities and Their Peripheries  278 shubhra gururani and burak kose 14 Suburban Development and Governance in China  303 fulong wu and jie shen 15 Deconstructing the Decentralized Urban Spaces of the Mega-Urban Regions in the Global South  325 terry mcgee

Contents vii

16 Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs  337 ananya roy Conclusion: Suburban Governance: Convergent and Divergent Dynamics  349 roger keil and pierre hamel Author Biographies 359 Index 371

This page intentionally left blank

Figures

3.1 Classical post-Second World War tract housing, Lakewood, California 64 3.2 Luxury suburbia, Palos Verdes peninsula, Los Angeles, California 65 3.3 Suburban land use mix, Los Angeles, California  71 4.1 New suburbanism, Richmond, British Columbia  86 4.2 New subdivision, Winnipeg, Manitoba  91 4.3 Square One, Mississauga, Ontario  91 4.4 Quartier Dix30 Suburban Lifestyle Centre, Brossard, Quebec 99 5.1 Beachfront suburbia, Ulladulla, New South Wales  116 5.2 Sydney suburb, New South Wales  121 6.1 Seasteading as offshore suburbanization: András Gyõrfi’s The Swimming City 148 7.1 Old and new housing in UVA Hortaleza, Madrid  171 8.1 The 1927 master plan of Serbia’s capital, Belgrade  179 8.2 Marshall Josip Tito comments on the model of New Belgrade 182 8.3 Belgrade’s new suburbia  188 9.1 Housing block with empty apartments in Leipzig-Grünau  203 9.2 Vacancy and deterioration of former infrastructure facility in Leipzig-Grünau  204 9.3 Vacant housing in East Germany from 1985 to 2011  207 9.4 Demolition of housing blocks in Leipzig-Grünau  208 9.5 Governance structure related to urban restructuring  210 10.1 A suburban social-housing project in Bogotá, Colombia  219 10.2 Thematic focus of reviewed articles  222

x  List of Figures

10.3 Advertising a new megaproject in the periphery of Bogotá, Colombia 227 11.1 Ruhr Emscher, in-between city  241 11.2 Phoenix Development, Dortmund, Germany  246 12.1 New suburban residences on Regent Road, Greater Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2013  259 12.2 New suburban mixed-use developments, Jabi, Abuja, Nigeria, 2014 263 12.3 New suburban residences on Regent Road, Greater Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2013  268 12.4 New suburban mixed-use developments, Jabi, Abuja, Nigeria, 2014 272 13.1 From rural to urban: villages in New Delhi's periphery undergoing significant changes  282 13.2 Housing for high-rise construction workers in Gurgaon  291 13.3 New Gurgaon  295 14.1 Suburban gated communities in Shanghai's Thames Town  314 14.2 Suburban office clusters in Yizhuang New Town of Beijing  315 14.3 Informal housing in peri-urban villages in Guangzhou  317 15.1 Model of decision processes in peripheral regions in the Global South 331

Tables

3.1 Estimated number of U.S. association-governed communities and individual housing units and residents within those communities 74 3.2 The present suburban condition in the United States  76 4.1 Suburban governance in Canada  88 5.1 Formal and informal development  126 7.1 Comparison of formal and informal development in Western European peri-urban areas and suburbs  156 8.1 Comparison of the contemporary suburban types. The role of governance  187 10.1 Conditions of contemporary suburban development – a summary of findings  233 13.1 Urban and peri-urban governance in India  296 14.1 Comparison of formal and informal development in the Chinese peri-urban areas and suburbs 318

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of a collective effort by a team of urban researchers from ten countries on five continents. The editors would like to thank them for their contribution and their enthusiasm in being part of this project. Work for this joined project, under the title “Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century,” has been generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through its Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) program. We are grateful to the council for its support. The chapter by Ekers, Hamel, and Keil builds on an earlier journal­­article by the same authors under the title “Governing Suburbia: Modalities and Mechanisms of Suburban Governance” in Regional Studies 46, no. 3, pp. 405–22. An earlier version of Jamie Peck’s chapter was published as “Neo­ liberal Suburbanism: Frontier Space” in Urban Geography 32, no. 6, pp.  884–919. We republish a newer version here and are grateful for permission from @Bellwether Publishing Ltd., all rights reserved. In 2011, the contributors to this book had the opportunity to meet in Leipzig at the Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ for a workshop on suburban governance, giving them the chance to comment on each other’s papers and to further develop the book project. We would like to thank Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink for welcoming the team in Leipzig. We also want to express our appreciation to Sara Macdonald, the coordinator of the MCRI, as well as Ute Lehrer and Douglas Young and their students who participated in the Leipzig workshop. Over the years, the coordination of the book relied on the help of research and editorial assistants. Anna Coté brought her quiet reliability,

xiv  Acknowledgments

good eyes for detail, and editorial skills to the project in the beginning. Heidi Honegger went through the manuscript patiently and thoroughly at the revision stage, and Claire Major provided editorial input and kept her cool amid a mad rush of queries and quibbles as the book neared completion. Without their help, the manuscript would not have been finalized with such rigour. We are greatly indebted to all three of them. Finally, we would like to thank our editor, Doug Hildebrand, the book’s copy editor, Margaret Allen, and the managing editor, Anne Laughlin, of the University of Toronto Press. Without their professionalism and their efficacy this volume would not stand in its current form. Montreal and Toronto, August 2014 Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

SUBURBAN GOVERNANCE A Global View

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction: Governance in a Suburban World pierre hamel and roger keil

The face of urbanization in the so-called urban century has been changing. It is no longer possible to understand cities and urban development without paying particular attention to suburban expansion. The magnitude of this expansion is changing the nature of the relationships between centre and periphery. This trend concerns not only suburbs themselves – their expansion, changing forms, and diversity; it also has a profoundly transformative effect on entire city-regions or urban-regions. The fact that landscapes of global suburban expansion and diversifying suburbanisms are challenging the usual reading of the urban in most theories of the city is one of the main starting points for this book. These expanding suburban spaces exhibit a diversity of spatial forms and social characteristics. Whether we consider the “classic” model of single-family-home tract housing; the high-rise-dominated “modernist” suburbs of Europe or Canada; the squatter settlements of Asia and Africa; the gated communities of California, Brazil, or South Africa; or the explosive extension in mega-urban India and China, they are all examples of suburban growth. In addition, the post-suburban environments of existing – even shrinking – metropolitan regions are home to many if not most of the “urban century’s” population. Few of us live “downtown”; most live, work, and play across the urban region in formerly or currently suburban neighbourhoods, sectors, or quartiers. There is no doubt that, from a political-economy perspective, the current trends supporting urban growth or the development of city-regions ­result primarily from peripheral urban growth. What was considered a specific post-Second World War phenomenon, primarily tied to the Keynesian-Fordist production of space, has now become a universal

4  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

process (Harris, 2010). Such a tendency has not been difficult to observe in Canada, where the concentration of population in city-regions over the past several decades has been particularly strong (Hiller, 2010). But that this observation can easily be applied on a global scale is one of the key hypotheses underlying this book. For us, urban growth and urbanization are materializing primarily through metropolitanization that can be defined, on the one hand, by the internal social and spatial structuring of metropolises and, on the other, by the building of a global system of metropolises (Bassand, 2007; see also Brantz, Disko, & Wagner-Kyora, 2012). And this is being achieved mainly through peripheral urban growth. Suburban expansion is certainly not a new phenomenon. Suburban­ ization has been part of urbanization and urban development ever since urbanism emerged as a mode of collective organization (VieillardBaron, 2011; Teaford, 2011). In addition, in the field of urban studies and, more specifically, urban history, suburbs and suburbanization have been widely researched (McManus & Ethington, 2007). Different aspects investigated by researchers have included both the conditions leading to the establishment of suburbs and the forces contributing to their transformation. In that respect, the various factors taken into account in urban studies – including ethnicity, race, economics, and social activities – have contributed to our understanding of the complexity and transforming character of these settlements (Nicolaides & Wiese, 2006). That said, these studies have predominantly focused on specific cases and historical contexts and have paid little attention to the universal and particular forces involved in suburbanization processes and their effect on “suburban ways of life” – which we refer to as suburbanism(s). These are defined jointly by structural factors and subjective cultural choices characterizing different situations that are influenced by national and regional contexts. Because of that omission and given our political-economy perspective, we see a need to pay greater attention to a diversity of geographical settings with a focus on how suburban expansion is transforming city-regions and how suburbanism(s) are part of social transformations. The multiple urban realities we see when considering suburbs and suburban growth from a global perspective highlight the importance of historical and geographical differences. Although these two entry points do not always converge, they nonetheless contribute complementary information that enhances our understanding of current (sub)urban issues.

Introduction 5

In exploring the evolution, diversity, and contradictions inscribed in the expansion of suburban spaces, we encountered an unpredictable landscape, especially when comparing the traditional representation of the suburban model generally associated with the European-American experience to the divergent forms and processes that characterize suburban development in the Global South. The image of a “planet of slums,” as suggested by Mike Davis (2006), does not automatically reveal the various processes and power relationships at play there. In addition, the classic picture of American suburbs as a middle-class haven is no longer valid. The account by Lisa McGirr (2012) of the climbing rates of poverty in the U.S. suburbs is indicative of the changes that are taking place in that country: “In many of America’s once pristine suburbs, harbingers of inner-city blight – overgrown lots, boarded up windows, abandoned residences – are the new eyesores.” Since 2008, U.S. suburbs have been increasingly populated by the poor. This development certainly puts some distance between the current situation and the historic vision of suburban development once traced by Kenneth T. Jackson (1985) in his famous account of the “crabgrass frontier.” A careful yet not uncontested consensus is emerging in the field of urban studies: contributing actively and through diversity to metropolitanization, suburban processes are reaching a new qualitative stage. This is what the notion of post-suburbia as coined by Jon C.Teaford (1996; see also Phelps & Wu, 2011) is trying to get at. Building on previous conceptual proposals – edge cities (Garreau, 1991), exopolis (Soja, 1989), and outer cities (Herrington, 1984) – Teaford underlines that metropolitan sprawl has fundamentally changed not only the pace and  structure of metropolitanization but also its political culture and management, introducing a growing divorce between urban and anti-­ urban values, including the culture of localism. Other researchers have also devoted attention to the expansion of suburbs and its diverse nature and agree on the importance of better describing and naming what is going on: outer cities (Herrington, 1984), cities without cities (Zwischenstadt) (Sieverts, 2003), metroburbia (Knox, 2008), boomburbs (Lang & LeFurgy, 2007), and several more terms have been suggested. All these contributions point in the same direction. It is no longer possible to ignore the social, cultural, economic, and political transformations produced by suburban expansion and its impact on city-regions. But what are the social consequences of these urban transformations? What forces and actors are responsible for the collective choices involved in suburbanization and metropolitanization processes? With

6  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

regard to political economy, what are the main driving forces? And finally, what are the resources and opportunities for political regulation? In other words, in what terms has suburban governance been defined and experienced in different regions of the world? These are some of the key questions we address in this book. So far, suburban governance has been largely overlooked by the literature in the field of urban studies. Researchers have emphasized the importance of political regulation in the development of city-regions (Savitch, 2007; Faure, 2008; Jouve, 2005; Lefèvre, 2009). They have lately paid increased attention to questions of distribution and justice across those regions and in the geopolitical context and the “urban politics beyond the urban” (Cochrane, 2011; Jonas, 2012, 2013). Yet, with exceptions such as the contributions in a recent collection on post-suburban developments (Phelps & Wu, 2011), there is little focus on the way suburbs, suburban elites, or the political class in charge of state initiatives regarding suburbs, suburban expansion, and suburbanism, were involved and took part in the governance of suburbs. It is this gap that we want to fill. For us governance remains a contested notion. We agree with Claus Offe (2009) when he describes it as an “empty signifier.” For that matter, governance does not tell us much about what interests shape the power relationships involved in negotiation and decision-making processes. Bringing together representatives of markets or private enterprises, state authority, and citizens, governance promotes cooperation between these actors, even though it is always possible that cooperation can be channelled or even manipulated to serve special interests. Beyond the ideological claims of a lessening of class interests under governance discourse, one has to be aware of class responses to public challenges in the context of neoliberal austerity (Davies, 2011). Institu­tional changes that have taken place in the political field since the 1980s are clearly a big concern. The emergence of the governance model in the urban literature has undoubtedly reflected a shift in “how we conceptualize urban governments as governments” (Andrew, Graham, & Phillips, 2002: 12). Processes of policy making are taking a new form: “Policy-making no longer separates neatly policy-makers from policy-takers, nor does it distinguish between public and private actors in all type of roles throughout the policy process. The polity structures addressed by political mobilization and that produce policy decisions are not solely those of the nation-state, but those of other polities […]” (Piattoni, 2010: 249).

Introduction 7

Taking into account the way reflexivity and professional specialization have transformed the political context, the reference to the notion of governance has been used by the contributors to this book in a critical way. Instead of looking at it as a fait accompli, they have referred to it as a working tool for exploring how policy making regarding suburban expansion and the suburban way of life has been institutionalized and/or initiated around the world. But does addressing how suburban governance has been implemented in both the Global North and the Global South solve all the theoretical issues suburban governance has to deal with? According to Dennis R. Judd (2011: 17) an “all-encompassing theory” of the city is “impossible to achieve.” And we can say the same for ­urban-regions where suburban expansion is taking place. This does not mean that theoretical concerns are useless. In fact, we think exactly the opposite is true. To gain a better understanding of the way suburban governance is taking shape and is managed in different parts of the world, it is important to raise conceptual concerns and to discuss the implications of the theoretical choices involved in defining suburban expansion and suburbanism(s) as specific objects of study. This book, then, presents a mixture of conceptual and empirical approaches to the study of suburban governance worldwide. The universalization of urbanization has to be taken seriously not only as an empirical object of inquiry but also as a challenging issue at a theoretical level. Our contributors approach this subject from a variety of perspectives, taking into account diverse examples of suburban governance in different countries and regions of the world. The Chapters of This Book This book is the product of a two-year coordinated comparative research process under the umbrella of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) on Global Suburbanisms. This major research effort pools the experience and expertise of fifty researchers from around the world in exploring the role of suburbanization in the “urban century.” Governance is one of the major themes of the project, together with land use and infrastructure development. The current book presents a collective effort to understand and explain the varieties of suburban governance in different jurisdictions and cultural environments around the world. A first brainstorming in April 2010 led to a foundational

8  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

paper (authored by Ekers, Hamel, and Keil and reproduced here in a revised version in section 1) on the universal yet particular modalities of suburban governance. This paper was circulated among the participants of a workshop in Leipzig, Germany, in June 2011. The papers given at that workshop provided the basis for the chapters in this collection. A thorough internal and mutual peer review followed, consisting of two rounds of revisions based on discussions among all contributors. All authors were asked to write their chapters on the basis of the existing literature on suburbs. Yet several authors went beyond that basic requirement (and agreement) and contributed original research to make their case. The result is, in the eyes of the editors, a remarkable collection of essays and studies that will serve as a launching pad for a set of sustained comparative empirical studies and further conceptual and theoretical exploration. The authors of this book speak to each other in different ways. From diverse perspectives, they all address the challenges – past and future – of suburban governance. The regions and countries studied (Africa, Australia, Canada, China, Eastern Europe, India, Latin America, Western Europe, the United States) reflect the structure of the Global Suburbanisms research project. No attempt has been made to be comprehensive; at the same time, we believe that geographical differences are sufficiently represented so as to yield a meaningful picture that is the first globally scaled examination of the topic of suburban governance. All regional research teams taking part in this project were asked to review the literature in and on their countries and regions in order to produce an up-to-date snapshot of what we know about suburban governance in those areas. These country and region case studies present entirely new ways of seeing suburban governance, breaking free from the traditional hegemony of North American thought on the subject and opening the debate to interventions from other geographical and intellectual traditions. It is our hope that these interventions add up to what contributing author Ananya Roy might call “a new geography of theory.” The book has four sections and a general conclusion. Section 1 provides a general overview focusing on the conceptual challenges and practical concerns raised by issues of suburban governance. In chapter 1, Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil take on an aspect of suburban governance that has received little attention in the literature on metropolitan or city-regions management. Looking at suburbanization as a global process, they point to the fact that the

Introduction 9

dynamic at play in it is producing distinctive “suburban ways of life.” By distancing themselves from the agreed normative discourse on governance and situating their analysis within a political-economy perspective, they highlight three modalities of suburban governance – the state, capital accumulation, and authoritarian privatism – that can be considered as three ideal types of how suburbanization is governed and regulated according to “different historical moments and spaces.” In chapter 2, Robert Young argues that a fair account of suburbanization and suburban governance should focus on “carefully tracing the political decisions” that have contributed to their structuring. Among the dimensions involved in suburban governance, the decision-making process – especially the role of the state apparatus in it – appears to be a crucial factor. But the state is only one influence among several. Local states and other key actors – including business communities, pressure groups, and “recalcitrant residents” – also play a role. The analytical issue here is primarily to better understand how the configuration and interaction of various actors influence and shape suburban development. Section 2 deals with suburban governance in the Anglo-Saxon world. Highlighting the basics of suburban governance, the authors explore how the planning and managing of urban development on the periphery of city centres converge with new urban values. Chapter 3 lays out what many consider the “classic” model of suburbanization as seen in the United States. Following a chronological account of the development of the American suburb, Jan Nijman and Tom Clery go on to discuss the specific challenges of more recent suburban governance in the United States. Issues related to land development, anti-urban attitudes, infrastructure development, and private ownership of land characterized the early decades. Then, in the years after the Second World War, American suburbanization entered a new phase in which the mass production and consumption of suburban space became the norm, and metropolitan-scale development began to redefine the dichotomy of urban and suburban settlement. In the ensuing new metropolitan realities, more diverse and splintered forms of suburban governance became the norm and called into question the assumed normative ideal of the white, middle-class suburb. The chapter concludes with a reminder that metropolitan governance is a complex process that has moved away from the assumption of a clear-cut city-versus-suburbs duality. One might think that Canadian suburbs would closely resemble their U.S. counterparts. However, as Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena

10  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

Chou, and Kieran Williams show in chapter 4, Canada’s tradition of suburban governance is quite different from the U.S. model. Influenced by both American and European ways of building cities (as well as by Québécois and English-Canadian approaches), Canada has developed a strong Anglo-Saxon model of suburbanization that also displays continental European influences. Unlike in the United States, the Canadian state has been active in providing collective consumption in and through suburban development. While the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC), like its U.S. counterparts, has promoted private home ownership, local and regional states have also been instrumental in building a large stock of rental apartment dwellings on the peripheries of cities, especially in Metropolitan Toronto. This feature makes the Canadian inner suburbs more similar to Euro­ pean examples than to the American prototype. Nevertheless, following the U.S. rather than a European model, suburban governance has also been driven by market forces, as large development corporations carved up land outside cities into sprawling subdivisions. Finally, private authoritarian governance in Canada has found its expression not primarily in gated communities as in other countries, but in more subtle types of privatized enclosures through which new forms of governmentality have been developed. In chapter 5, Louise Johnson presents the Australian case, which also shows the influence of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Together with the United Kingdom (a core case in the Western European cluster), the United States, and Canada, Australia has seen the hegemony of the private, single-family dwelling in suburban development. Australia shares with the United States and Canada the experience of a settler society in which homesteading is part of the overall mythology of land acquisition and development. Although Johnson sees the Australian case as related to British colonial history, she also maintains that there is enough of an endogenous development to be able to speak of a typically Aus­ tralian postcolonial heritage in suburban governance. The state has always had a distinct role to play in suburban governance from the ­colonial period onwards and throughout the vertical and horizontal federal architecture of the Australian state. The market was visible throughout through strong institutions of lending, building, and the provision of supporting infrastructure. Johnson also examines the specific role of privatized development corporations and other free market instruments as part of the pervasive authoritarianism that has characterized some of the larger suburban developments in that country.

Introduction 11

In chapter 6, Jamie Peck explores American suburbia through a critique of neoliberal ideology. Looking at suburbanization in the United States, Peck maps out how it has converged with “deregulatory experimentation” in line with privatized and market-oriented forms of governance. Relying on “self-rule,” at least in the imaginary of the Chicago school of economics’ neoliberal vision – but also in some suburbs as it was expressed over the last decades in the case of Loudoun County (Virginia) – American suburbia has been emerging at the junction of neoliberalization and suburbanization. Such an image of suburban development must be understood in its dialectical relation to metropolitan and suburban Keynesianism, which has introduced some regulatory principles without being able to contain the ideology of the “market-­ utopian vision of extraurban freedom.” In section 3, the book’s emphasis shifts towards the existing alternatives to the Anglo-Saxon model of suburban development and governance. Looking at what is going on in Europe as well as in Latin America, the chapters in this section explore the complexity generated by historical conditions and a multiplicity of other factors. In chapter 7, Nicholas Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento trace the forces shaping suburban expansion in Western Europe. Despite some overarching trends, there are important differences between the models of suburban expansion in southern Europe and those in northern Europe. The forms taken by suburban development and their regulation are the result of conflict and cooperation between the public and private sectors. Nevertheless, the situations and processes involved in the regulation of suburbs are diverse and complex. Involved as they are in global networks, local, regional, national, and EU actors exhibit diverse modes of governance: for example, self-build approaches work in concert with state intervention in Spain, and social housing goes handin-hand with authoritarian policies in Britain. More than elsewhere, in Western Europe suburban governance remains largely defined by internal national heterogeneity. In chapter 8, Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev contend that a “distinct East European suburban ‘story’ ” exists. Going back to the early twentieth century, they consider how mainly agricultural East European economies fuelled metropolitan expansion and suburban development through migration from rural areas. Although West European bourgeois aspirations and values regarding urbanism served as a model that East European households and states tried to replicate, the “triumph of communist regimes across the region changed the structural conditions” of

12  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

urban development. Among other things, the development of the city periphery was influenced by a focus on industrialization “as a means of pursuing geo-political superiority.” But during the post-socialist period, city building took a new direction in response to market forces, among other things. East European countries are catching up with the rest of Europe in rates of privatization of land and decentralization, raising questions about issues of economic and political restructuring. In chapter 9, Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink are concerned with a different and usually overlooked challenge, the governance of shrinkage. Referring to the East German case and taking into account the presence of shrinkage in different parts of the world, Kabisch and Rink consider this reality as an unusual issue, even though it has to be included in our general understanding of suburbanization. What are the choices offered in terms of public policies when development is replaced by shrinkage? Who is going to finance the urban restructuring processes necessarily involved in these situations? Finally, how can shrinkage be included in our definition of suburban governance when our main focus at the outset has been on expanding suburban spaces? The lessons from East Germany are challenging in different ways. Chapter 10 takes us to Latin America. As Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl explain, the region is among the most urbanized in the world. Suburbanization processes have been of major significance in the growth of cities on the continent, but scholarship has only recently begun to catch up with that development. The authors base their work on an extensive literature review of the international research on Latin American cities. Development on the urban fringe in South America has moved from sporadic informality to formal privatization. In terms of governance, the authors observe a limited and often hampered (local) state and an often overbearing private (yet increasingly supra-local) capital. Authoritarian forms of governance are rampant in the region and have begun to have a limiting influence on the democratization of societies in Latin America. Chapter 11 returns to the European tradition while to some extent breaking with it. Here, Thomas Sieverts explores the relationship between culture and suburbia. In considering the aesthetics of the suburban landscape of urban agglomerations, he underlines that their anarchic character makes them difficult to read and therefore unlikely to evoke a “sensual-emotional attachment” to place in the Zwischenstadt. Both the quality of design and the emotional-aesthetic responses of inhabitants are involved. Different kinds of cultural practices are linked

Introduction 13

to social and aesthetic relations to space. In reviewing diverse examples of socio-cultural strategies for improving such relations, the chapter raises the issue of what is a “meaningful urban landscape” for inhabitants and the role of aesthetic and cultural intervention in governing suburbanized regions. Section 4 deals with more recent emerging models. Addressing the past and future challenges of suburban governance, the authors consider various tensions between traditional models and emerging adaptive forms of fast urban development. Looking at the specific configuration taken by suburban governance in the context of the Global South and at the conflicting values arising from the confrontation between indigenous traditions and Western habits, these chapters add nuance and diversity to Anglo-Saxon and European examples. Heterogeneity and diversity are strong in Africa, as Robin Bloch underlines in chapter 12. Urban frontiers are redesigned through suburban expansion at the urban fringe in several African cities, even though older urban areas continue to attract people. The growth dynamic of urban development in Africa no longer meets the traditional image relating it to a “state of urban crisis.” For a better understanding of the processes involved in the changing patterns of governance in Africa’s new suburbs – which are the result of a mixture of investments in residential housing estates, housing projects by developers, and low- and high-rise commercial and industrial space – one has to look at the way different categories of actors are involved in urban land markets. Tradi­ tional land tenure tends to coexist with government regulation. While using mainly Ghana as a case study, the chapter also cites examples from other sub-Saharan African countries. The growth dynamic at play in the new suburbs is profoundly and uniquely transforming the face of African cities and towns. In chapter 13, Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose shift our attention to India, looking at the way suburban development and its governance are part of “complex processes of peri-urbanization” in several areas. In this country, urban peripheries are characterized first by an “ambiguous location” between the urban and the rural, and second by different types of land acquisition. As well, they exhibit complex modes of regulation involving the privatization of infrastructure services. For an understanding of how suburban governance is implemented, it is important to keep in mind the effects of increasing economic liberalization in the country. In addition, concerns for participatory mechanisms in the dominant ideological discourse are challenged by the reality of “inequality,

14  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil

dispossession, and displacement.” Informality remains strong, while on a daily basis state actors responsible for regulation have still to deal with brokers and land mafias. Chapter 14 introduces a model that is different again, not only from the “classic” U.S. model of suburbanization but also from the African and Indian experiments. Analysing suburban development and suburban governance in China, Fulong Wu and Jie Shen are struck by the heterogeneity of spatial development and the diversity of governance modalities. During the socialist era, the separation between urban and rural areas remained strong; but following the economic reforms at the end of the 1970s, the “establishment of a land market” has contributed to diversification in land use. The changing suburban landscape in China includes both intentionally developed new towns and informal migrant settlements. But a “coherent logic” underlies these forms. The commodification of land has changed the economic culture, while state entrepreneurialism has transformed the role of the state, increasing the power of local elites and local growth coalitions. “Heterogeneous suburban worlds” are emerging even as the old rural-urban divide remains strong. In chapter 15, Terry McGee analyses the changing nature of urban spaces in the mega-urban regions of the Global South. These spaces are not simply reproducing the “homogeneous imprint of global and national capital.” They are taking part in processes of complex interactions between different categories of actors (middle- and upper-class residents, businesses, state institutions). Distinguishing urban places – “any territorial area in which the majority of economic activity can be defined as non-agricultural” – from urban spaces, McGee relies on Henri Lefebvre’s analysis of urbanization as a process of “spatial­ ization.” Following that, the peripheries of the Global South have to face important challenges, especially when taking into account their ecosystems. In chapter 16, Ananya Roy introduces a critical postcolonial perspective. Looking first at cities of the Global South, where postcolonial suburbs are usually located, she contends that the experience of regulation in those cities may lead us to a “reconceptualization” of suburbanization in the Global North, as the modalities of regulation experimentally introduced in the South converge with distinction and informality as dimensions of governance. The task at hand is huge. (Sub)urban theory has to be decentred in order to include a critique of the agreed notions of “space, society, and state” coming from the southern urban experience.

Introduction 15

Finally, in the conclusion, Roger Keil and Pierre Hamel seek to summarize the main components of suburban governance in its global stage. Bringing to the fore the convergent and divergent dynamics of suburban expansion in widely different settings, the chapter highlights what can be learned about suburban governance in both expanding and shrinking suburbs in the current globalizing world. In addition, the authors return to the main forces at play in global suburban governance to identify some key questions about the future of cities and the most productive avenues for further research. REFERENCES Andrew, C., Graham, K.A., & Phillips, S.D. (Eds). (2002). Urban affairs back on the policy agenda. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Bassand, M. (2007). Métropoles et métropolisation. In M.K.V. Bassand & D. Joye (Eds), Enjeux de la sociologie urbaine (15–32). Lausanne: Presses Polytechniques Universitaires Romandes. Brantz, D., Disko, S., & Wagner-Kyora, G. (Eds). (2012). Thick space: Approaches to metropolitanism. Bielefeld: Transcript. Cochrane, A. (2011). Urban politics beyond the urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(4), 862–3. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. New York: Verso. Davies, J.S. (2011). Challenging governance theory. Bristol: The Policy Press. Faure, A. (2010). Gouvernements intercommunaux et ressources politiques: L’identité territoriale pour énoncer des priorités d’action publique? Paper presented at Colloque international conjoint de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques et de l’Association française de science politique, 26–7 novembre 2008. Published in D.C. Martin, L’identité en jeux: Pouvoirs, identifications, mobilisations (337–59).Paris: Editions Karthala (Recherches Internationales). Garreau, J. (1991). Edge city: Life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday. Harris, R. (2010). Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. Research in Urban Sociology. Suburbanization in Global Society, 10: 15–47. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1108/S1047-0042(2010)0000010004. Herrington, J. (1984). The outer city. London: Harper and Row. Hiller, H.H. (Ed.). (2010). Urban Canada (2nd ed.). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Jackson, K.T. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

16  Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil Jonas, A.E.G. (2012). City-regionalism: Questions of distribution and politics. Progress in Human Geography, 36(6), 822–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/​ 0309132511432062. Jonas, A.E.G. (2013). City-regionalism as a contingent “geopolitics of capitalism.” Geopolitics, 18(2), 284–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012​ .723290. Jouve, B. (2005). La démocratie en métropoles: Gouvernance, participation et citoyenneté. Revue francaise de science politique, 55(2), 317–37. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.3917/rfsp.552.0317. Judd, D.R. (2011). Theorizing the city. In D.R. Judd & D. Simpson (Eds), The city revisited (3–20). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Knox, P.L. (2008). Metroburbia, USA. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lang, R.E., & LeFurgy, J. (2007). Boomburbs: The rise of America’s accidental cities. New York: Brookings Institution Press. Lefèvre, C. (2009). Gouverner les métropoles. Paris: L.G.D.J. McGirr, L. (2012). The new suburban poverty. New York Times, 19 March. McManus, R., & Ethington, P.J. (2007). Suburbs in transition: New approaches to suburban history. Urban History, 34(2), 317–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/​ S096392680700466X. Nicolaides, B.M., & Wiese, A. (Eds). (2006). The suburb reader. London: Routledge. Offe, C. (2009). Governance: An “empty signifier.” Constellations, 16(4), 550–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2009.00570.x. Phelps, N.A., & Wu, F. (Eds). (2011). International perspectives on suburbanization: A post-suburban world? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx​.doi​ .org/10.1057/9780230308626. Piattoni, S. (2010). The theory of multi-level governance: Conceptual, empirical, and normative challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199562923.001.0001. Savitch, H.V. (2007). Globalisation et changement d’échelle dans le gouvernement urbain. Métropoles, 2, 133–66. Sieverts, T. (2003). Cities without cities: An interpretation of the Zwischenstadt. London: Spon Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203380581. Soja, E.W. (1989). Postmodern geographies. London: Verso. Teaford, J.C. (1996). Post-suburbia: Government and politics in the edge cities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Teaford, J.C. (2011). Suburbia and post-suburbia: A brief history. In N.A. Phelps & F.Wu (Eds), International perspectives on suburbanization: A postsuburban world? (15–34). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vieillard-Baron, H. (2011). Les banlieues: Des singularités françaises aux réalités mondiales. Paris: Hachette.

SECTION 1 Suburban Governance

This page intentionally left blank

1 Governing Suburbia: Modalities and Mechanisms of Suburban Governance michael ekers, pierre hamel, and roger keil

Introduction By whatever measure we use, our world is becoming increasingly urban. However, as this collection seeks to illustrate, it is perhaps more accurate to suggest that suburbanization will be the defining urban-­ regional process for at least a generation to come. The implications are vast and stretch across the domains of politics, economics, culture, and the environment (Harris, 2010; Keil, 2011). More important, perhaps, are the social and ecological consequences of an increasingly suburbanized world, involving questions about social segregation and justice, “sustainable” forms of land use, and uneven development. Coming to terms with the political importance of suburbanization requires a robust understanding of the diverse forces and institutional configurations that govern the current rapid development of urban peripheries. This chapter grapples with this issue and attempts to develop an understanding of suburban governance adequate to both the ubiquity and diversity of peripheral developments. A large literature explicitly investigates how urban-regions are governed. Immigration policies, housing, infrastructure, transportation, and development processes contribute to the process of governance. Whether by means of urban regime theory, growth coalitions, regulation theory, or accounts of urban social movements, we have many conceptual resources for understanding how urban-regions are planned, built, and struggled over. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of suburban governance – specifically, to the constel­ lation of public and private processes, actors, and institutions that ­determine and shape the planning, design, politics, and economics of suburban spaces and ways of life. While a range of scholars and (sub)

20  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

urban commentators have explored the regulation of suburban spaces and processes of suburbanization (see Robert Young’s “A Note on Governance”: chapter 2 in this volume), these discussions are seldom couched in the language of governance per se (for an exception see Phelps, Wood, & Valler, 2010; Phelps & Wood, 2011). As well, any survey of the existing literature would reveal that it is exceedingly difficult to pin down exactly what suburban governance means and how it is practised, in part because of the proliferation of terms used to describe suburban forms of urban decentralization. These range from “boomburbs” (Lang & LeFurgy, 2007a, 2007b), “peri-urban development” (Dupont, 2007; Hirt, 2007), “exopolis” (Soja, 1989), “edge cities” (Garreau, 1991), “slum and squatter settlements” (Davis, 2006), “post-suburbia” (Teaford, 1996; Phelps et al., 2010), “gated-communities” (Low, 2004, 2008), and “the in-between city” (Sieverts, 2003; Young et al., 2011). The array of descriptors makes the task of ascertaining similar and different modes of suburban governance difficult yet still a necessary project. This is the project we take up in this chapter. Our aim is to develop a framework and argument that can account for the universalization of suburbanization, while maintaining a focus on the particular manifestations of this global process. It is true that different descriptors of suburban life signify particular forms of decentralized urban space. Yet behind all of these forms of suburbs are the processes of urbanization and suburbanization, or what Lefebvre (1968, 2003 [1970]) has theorized as an “urban revolution.” At the time of writing, Lefebvre’s revolution was a provocative hypothesis. The globalization of neoliberal capitalism has furthered the decentralization and universalization of urban space on a global scale and, as Lefebvre postulated, is transforming many aspects of everyday life. Powerful processes of uneven development, capital accumulation, migration, and agricultural transformation have resulted in varied forms of peri-urban development that touch all urban-regional spaces. However, the universalism of this process should not occlude the particularities of how suburbs are produced and lived. Both the form and content of different suburban spaces are heavily path-dependent, reflecting different political, economic, cultural, and environmental histories. Moreover, the social and ecological histories affecting the permutations of suburbanization and suburban forms of everyday life are marked by relations of power, inequality, and marginalization that profoundly affect the trajectories of suburban growth and decline. Suburbanization has certainly taken the form of a global process (Harris, 2010; Keil, 2011); yet we lack a comprehensive assessment of

Governing Suburbia  21

the forces of governance that guide the proliferation of peripheral developments The problematic of governance involves accounting for the particular manifestations of the more general urban-regional process of decentralization. Understanding the governance of suburbanization and its attendant forms of everyday life is a matter of identifying the constitutive dynamics that shape and influence how suburbs are produced and experienced. Governance contains a politics of suburbanization that facilitates its process but also questions the effects of growth (and decline). It can be part of a more general politics of scale but can also entail a number of social and economic dynamics in which politics may be present but invisible. The question that follows is, “What are the universal and particular forces shaping suburbanization processes in different urban-regions?” Given that suburbanization continues to accelerate in urban-regions around the globe, it is necessary to explicate the processes through which our increasingly suburban world is constituted in different forms and spaces (Harris, 2010). Is it possible to delineate a specifically suburban mode of governance? What are the different modes of governance that facilitate or regulate development processes? What are the specific techniques, policies, practices, ideologies, and representations through which the governance of suburban spaces is achieved? The governance of suburbanization touches on issues of redistribution, sustainability, inclusiveness, and segregation, all of which are pressing political problems. It is the explicit political character of suburbanization that pushes us to consider the governance of suburbanization and its profoundly unequal geographies, environments, and social histories. The discussion is organized as follows. We begin with some defi­ nitional issues, including what we mean by the terms “suburban­ ization” and “governance.” We then discuss the landscapes of (sub) urban theory and interrogate the problematic analytical presump­ tions  associated with periodizing suburban developments. We suggest that it is more effective to understand the history of suburbanization through the lenses of self-built, state-led, and private sector-led development. Subsequently, we turn our attention to three different modalities of suburban governance, focusing in turn on the roles of the state, capital, and emergent forms of authoritarian governance. Throughout this discussion we focus on the specific mechanisms through which the governance of suburbanization is achieved, focusing on different policies, practices, ideologies, and coercive actions, as well as the role of aesthetics.

22  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

Setting the Terms: Suburbanization, Suburbanism, and Governance Suburbanization In light of the dizzying number of different descriptors that are deployed to identify forms of peripheral urban development, there is a surprising degree of consistency in the global expansion of suburban space. The universal character of suburbanization has been largely unrecognized till now. Often referred to as an “urban revolution” (Lefebvre, 2003 [1970]), most urban growth worldwide now takes the form of peripheral or suburban development. Urban planners and environmentalists oppose low-density sprawl for its negative environmental impact and find the “explosion” of squatter settlements problematic. Despite normative preferences in official planning and city building discourse for a dense and centralized urban form, and despite growing evidence that the kind of growth we have experienced in past decades is “perverse” (Blais, 2010), suburbanization remains the dominant mode in which cities are built (Filion, 2010). Whether by choice or by force, builders and inhabitants, rich and poor, construct and live in urban peripheries around the world. The processes of building residential enclaves, squatter settlements, commercial developments, business and industrial parks, and fragmented infrastructure on the peripheries of urban-regions collectively represent the varied processes of suburbanization (Harris & Lewis, 2001; Saunders, 2010). We define “suburbanization” as the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion. Although suburbanization is not uniformly applicable to all parts of the world, we carefully deploy this generic term to incorporate all manner of peripheral growth – from the wealthy, gated communities of southern California to the high-rise-dominated old suburbs of Europe and Canada, the faux Westernized outskirts of Indian and Chinese cities, and the slums and squatter settlements in Africa and Latin America. The key point, then, is that suburbanization is always differentiated and assumes many hybrid forms. Suburbanism Alongside processes of suburbanization, it is also possible to detect a growing prevalence of qualitatively distinct “suburban ways of life,” which we refer to as suburbanism(s). The unique land-use patterns of suburbs, as compared to those of the central city – although there are

Governing Suburbia  23

hybrid forms of mixed patterns (Sieverts, 2003) – engender differing social and cultural norms of suburban life. Among the causes of such variations and dynamics are: density as it relates to transportation ­(reliance on the automobile in some places, alternative forms of transportation – walking, cycling, jitneys – elsewhere); and socio-economic distinctions. For instance, there are important socio-economic distinctions between suburbs and the central city that may construct diametrically opposed value systems affecting democracy, justice, and sustainability (Sewell, 2009; Cowen, 2005). The distinctions between central cities and suburbs emerge, or not, in a variety of ways according to the continent in question and, in some cases, the metropolitan region. While there is often lower density in suburbs, this is by no means the case everywhere. Further, density is not just a feature in edge cities but also in European banlieues, Asian new towns, and Canadian suburbs. Governance Over the last twenty years, the term “governance” has become central to political, policy, and academic debates. The term is slippery and difficult to define, as policy actors, scholars, corporations, and politicians all project different meanings and political agendas onto the term. For enthusiasts – such as some policy-oriented individuals, non-­governmental organizations, and corporations – governance represents the possibility of renewed cooperation and consensus among a range of different private and public actors. Normative treatments of the term focus on how a particular civic, environmental, or private problem or issue can be resolved through engaging different stakeholders in a process of consensus building and problem solving (Jessop, 1998; Keil, 1998; Swyngedouw, 2005). Organizations such as the United Nations, among many others, have latched onto governance, and also the practice of governance, as a way to confront urban issues. In this vein UNHabitat defines urban governance as “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, plan and manage the common affairs of the city. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action can be taken. It includes formal institutions as well as informal arrangements and the social capital of citizens” (as quoted by Dupont, 2007). While this definition is nuanced and, as we will see, reflects a more critical literature on the question, it remains normative, focusing on “good governance” and in particular the conditions necessary for such practices of governance. Thus, both Erik Swyngedouw (2005,

24  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

2009) and Gordon MacLeod (2011) are right to question the political efficacy of “governance,” given its dominant neoliberal and “post-­ political” character. In more critical hands, the term “governance” represents a heuristic device angled towards understanding how different processes and issues are negotiated, regulated, and struggled over. There is a focus in this critical tradition on how and why different social and environmental outcomes are achieved, and on their ecological and social implications. The concept of governance is appealing insofar as it tries to gather together and identify the varying institutions, practices, discourses, ideologies, and representations that affect how different spaces and processes are produced, contested, and experienced. To be more specific, we view the overarching question of governance as a process involving the state, the market, and civil society that implies democratic deliberation and social conflict (Hamel, 2008) while being social, spatial, and political. Firms, markets, and the state are complementary and contested arenas of governance with fluid boundaries (Harris, 2003). Contestation through official politics or through the social and economic stratagems of everyday life is also relevant, especially in liberal societies (Blomley, 2003; Foucault, 2003; Leitner, Peck, & Sheppard, 2007; Logan & Molotch, 1987; Purcell, 2008). Here, effective de-democratization exists alongside stated goals of democratic governance (Swynge­douw, 2005). It is assumed, therefore, that the notion of governance exceeds normative definitions centred on “good governance.” It entails recognizing that authoritarian forms of rule are associated with suburban expansion through state action and market discipline. Planning, politics, and policy are central to governance. Contemporary states claim to manage suburban growth ostensibly for public ends or to avoid disadvantaging minorities. From a critical perspective, the capacity of states to achieve social and environmental objectives can certainly be called into question, yet the yardsticks for success within municipal governments and the development community are significantly different from our own. When made by private-sector agencies, the scope of governance is usually limited to specific areas/subdivisions or aspects of development. In the case of municipal governments or state agencies, the scope may extend over wide regions and multiple growth processes, such as Ontario’s recent greenbelt that regulates both natural and built spaces (Macdonald & Keil, 2012). Depending on the character of government agencies, and the pressures to which they are subject, the results may be more or less equitable.

Governing Suburbia  25

The spatiality and scalar character of governance processes are increasingly in flux. As Robert A. Beauregard (2006: 4) explains, historically “the dominance of the center … was replaced by a fragmentation of the periphery brought about by suburban development.” He adds that “urbanization had jumped to the metropolitan scale.” For example, classic urban renewal schemes may displace large numbers of urban dwellers from downtowns. Or, to take an example from a developmental state, in Turkey urban renewal was designed to drive former gecekondu dwellers (squatters on public land) from their homes, resettling them in high-rise apartment buildings, often on the periphery of the giant metropolis (Neuwirth, 2005). Any attempt to comprehend suburbanization must pay attention to the varied agents, methods, institutions, and scalar processes through which development is managed. Suburban Governance In broad terms there are two central aspects of suburban governance, the first of which concerns how processes of suburbanization and forms of suburbanism are differentiated historically and geographically. Yet at the same time, in an increasingly globalized urban world, suburbanization processes in different spaces are guided by similar practices whether it is, for example, annexation (Cox, 2010; Kennedy, 2007; Zhang & Wu, 2006) or the diffusion of ideologies that sanctify decentralization, public choice, and private home ownership (Langley, 2009; Marcuse, 2009). Thus the second aspect of suburban governance entails accounting for the points of convergence regarding how suburbanization proceeds, whether in Eastern Europe, the United States, South Asia, or a range of other spaces. Suburban governance entails accounting for both the converging and diverging patterns of peripheral development. Doing so requires paying attention to the varied agents, methods, relations, and institutions through which development is managed. Together, these can be viewed as the mechanisms of suburban governance. Processes of suburbanization are now subsumed within emerging megalopolis spaces. “Suburbs” are a “zombie category” at odds with the contemporary form of urban regions, while outer suburban and exurban spaces continue to rapidly expand and define the growth of “edgeless cities” (Lang & Knox, 2009). It is possible, therefore, to identify suburbs as one “moment” of development and life within growing megalopolis regions. One then has to keep in mind that mechanisms of suburban governance are also increasingly taking place on the scale

26  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

and within the space of city regions. In fact, the problems of political regulation that public authorities are facing are more and more inscribed within metropolitan areas where specific issues (socio-spatial segregation, security, environment, health, education, sustainability) are being discussed (Jouve, 2005). The metropolis is not only the main location where it is possible to observe the restructuring of relations between state and civil society but also the main sphere directly affected by social changes related to neoliberalism (Jouve, 2005). Thus, from a political-economy perspective, the new territorial frames associated with metropolises are becoming the spaces where a new form of capitalist regulation is implemented and to which capitalist contradictions are transferred, but also the arenas where new compromises have to be worked out (Baraize & Négrier, 2001). An important gap remains, however, between metropolitan institutions on the one hand and functional territories on the other (Lefèvre, 1998). As Phelps and colleagues (2010: 378) suggest, “suburbia had been, and post-suburbia continues to be, constructed within a thin institutional setting with communities being incorporated and acquiring formal government structures some time after their initial development, straddling existing government jurisdictions, and eventually being woven in a more complex set of intergovernmental relations at the urban regional scale.” While the endurance of institutional fragmentation is perhaps underplayed in these remarks, the authors elucidate one of the central tensions of governing suburbanization and post­surbubanization – that is, the misalignment between political institutions and the rapid growth of decentralized development, which continually transforms the territoriality of urban-regions (Boudreau, Hamel, Jouve, & Keil, 2006; Boudreau, Hamel, Jouve, & Keil, 2007; Le Galès, 2003; Phelps & Wood, 2011). Landscapes and Histories of Theory Ananya Roy (2009; see chapter 16 in this volume) has suggested that accounts of “global” urban regions have been heavily influenced by the European-American experience while other “worldly” spaces have been neglected. The issue for Roy is that European-American accounts of urbanization have become hegemonic and are projected on to other spaces as if the experiences of cities such as New York, London, and Paris are the universal against which other cities are examined. She argues that

Governing Suburbia  27

this false universalism makes it difficult to understand the multiple metropolitan realities throughout the Global South that are central to global-­ urban networks and represent the spaces in which urban theory must be generated. Roy’s critique is incisive and persuasive and goes to the heart of analyses of suburbanization even though she rarely speaks of suburbs. Often it is assumed that the U.S. experience represents the paradigmatic case of suburbanization that other cases are measured against. Suburban spaces such as Levittown, New York, are often held up as idealized versions of suburbanization. However, one of the key points of agreement in the blossoming literature on suburbs is that diversity is the norm rather than the exception, and that Levittown is but one form of suburbanization. This is even more evident when we consider the range of suburban development occurring in post-socialist states (Hirt, 2007; Hirt & Petrovic, 2011), China (Feng, Zhou, & Wu, 2008; Zhang & Wu, 2006), India (Dupont, 2007; Kennedy, 2007), Africa (Davis, 2006; Grant, 2005), and even within Europe and North America, where we see denser or non-conforming types of suburbanization (Fishman, 1987; Freund, 2007; Young, 2006). In terms of the governance of suburbanization, Roy pushes us to consider multiple worldly forms of governance, not as derivative of the U.S. experience but rather as central to the increasing suburbanization of urban-regions in all spaces including the United States. Much more, suburban forms classically associated with English and American suburbs, such as the bungalow, villa, and veranda, all have their roots in places such as India and the Mediterranean and were appropriated through colonial processes (King, 2004). In their own ways, both Roy and King illustrate the necessity of going beyond the North American and European suburban experience and push us to consider different worldly forms of suburbanization. At the same time, periodizing suburbanization processes risks falling into the Euro-Americanism that Roy warns against. There is the danger of taking one central case as the benchmark and measuring other experiences against it. Implicitly, measuring other cases against this periodization renders these spaces and histories derivative of the primary history. A recent article by Feng, Zhou, and Wu (2008) illustrates this issue. They suggest that the “differences between China and the US are related to the different stages of suburbanization rather than being caused by the dichotomy of market and planned economies” (Feng et al., 2008: 84). The authors go on to suggest that China’s market-led development and suburban diversity lag behind the emergence of these

28  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

trends in the United States, which first occurred there in the 1980s and are now appearing in China. Similarly, definitions of “post-suburbia” seem to rely on American residential suburbs from the Fordist era as the comparative basis for defining post-suburbia as diverse residential, commercial, and technical spaces. Even Fordist suburbs were more differentiated than is often assumed, a fact that perhaps speaks to the limits of using the U.S. residential experience as a central point of comparison (see Teaford, 1996; Phelps et al., 2010; Phelps & Wood, 2011). If periodization is risky, how else can we assess the history of suburbanization in different spaces? The three styles of development we identified are self-built, state-led, and private sector-led suburbanization. These three forms of suburban development do not unfold in a teleological manner from one stage to another; rather, each type of suburban expansion is evident in different historical moments and spaces. Self-led peri-urban growth is serendipitous and occurs without detailed planning. The scale of development ranges from individual, residential, and commercial developments to large tracts of informal housing. This type of development is thus fragmented and heterogeneous and is typified by low regulation. Infrastructure tends to be poorly developed and characterized by the type of disconnectivity that Graham and Marvin (2001) describe as “splintered urbanism.” In contrast, state-led suburbanization is centralized, planned, and directed by government agencies. This style of suburbanization is dependent on the conscious establishment of residential, industrial, and commercial developments, often through deliberate zoning and planning processes. Infrastructure connectivity tends to be used as a lever for guiding and regulating the development process. Market- and private sector-led development tends to involve decentralized control; yet the state plays a facilitative role in terms of land-use, labour, and environmental policy and judicial and legislative frameworks. This type of suburbanization takes commercial, residential, and industrial forms, although it is defined by political and social exclusion. Development is exclusively for profit and tends to be uneven as new spaces boom while others decline. These three different forms of suburbanization represent “ideal types” that nonetheless represent concrete forms and processes of suburban development – albeit affected by particularities of history and geography. In contrast to periodizing suburban expansion and decline, distinguishing between self-led, state-led, and market- or private sector-led development avoids taking the Euro-American case as fundamental and highlights divergent yet comparable processes in different spaces.

Governing Suburbia  29

The Governance of Suburbanization The tension between pursuing growth and provisions for collective consumption, the contradiction between the expansion of settlements and the conservation of environmental and residential amenities, and the contradictory forces favouring either amalgamation or secession are key political contradictions that animate post-suburban settlements (Phelps et al., 2010). In this section, we identify three different modalities of suburban governance. We use the word “modality” in order to denote the manner and mechanism through which the governance of suburban spaces and environments proceeds. In our discussion we consider the state, capital, and forms of authoritarian action as the modalities of suburban governance. In using the term “modality” we also want to signal the relationality of different social, political, economic, and environmental processes. While capital plays a constitutive role in shaping suburban development and life, its governing function can be channelled through the state or through non-democratic forms such as homeowners’ associations. Likewise the foreclosure of suburban mortgages, which reconcentrates wealth in the hands of banks, is not possible without the power of the state and, specifically, the judiciary. In identifying three modes of suburban governance it is important to appreciate how they “work through one another.” The State A “localist ontology” has perhaps blinded scholars to the role of the national state in politicizing urban spaces (MacLeod & Jones, 2011). However, the emphasis on localism may have shielded from view the ways in which scaled states have been a key conduit for suburban­ ization in a variety of different historical and geographical cases.1 This point is so commonsensical that it is worth remembering that peripheral urban development has occurred in the absence of state action. In nineteenth-century England, or in Canada prior to the SecondWorld War, residential decentralization was not centrally planned by different tiers of the state but rather was chaotic and more reflective of individual initiative (Harris, 2004; Hayden, 2003). The state has also played a minimal role in the emergence of informal housing developments on the fringes of metropolitan regions in the Global South (Kennedy, 2007). As Davis (2006: 62) suggests, in the Global South “the idea of an interventionist state strongly committed to social housing and job development

30  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

seems either a hallucination or a bad joke, because governments long ago abdicated any serious effort to combat slums and redress urban marginality.” While the state has not always played a key role in the growth of suburbs, it is possible to identify transition points in which the state emerged as a key actor in the governance of the suburbanization process. Sonia Hirt (2007) identifies three forms of states and suburbanization processes that affect the contours of suburban expansion. First is the developing capitalist state, which she argues takes a passive role, largely because of lack of resources. In this situation, migrants tend to settle on the periphery of urban centres in self-built housing. The second form is the developed capitalist state, which is active in promoting urban decentralization through planning, financial, and infrastructure policies. The third form is the socialist state, which reacted to low death rates and high birth rates and urban migration by building high-density housing on the edges of urban centres. In all of these different cases “governance,” as the broad regulation of social life, is hardly separated from “government” proper. In Europe, and especially in France, the role of the state in the suburbanization process was partly similar to and partly different from what occurred in North America. The emergence of industrial suburbs in the twentieth century – which happened at the same time as an urban demographic explosion – took place between the two world wars with the construction of poor-quality individual cottages for the working-class population. After the Second World War, at first the centrality of historic central city cores was not challenged by urban sprawl and suburbanization as happened on the other side of the Atlantic. But that does not mean that sprawl did not occur and suburbs did not expand. The lack of housing led Western European governments to opt for building huge mostly spatially peripheral complexes of affordable apartments (called grands ensembles in France) that increased the density of those suburbs. However, until the 1970s, the preferred location choice of the majority of households remained largely the central city. By the 1970s, public policies were reoriented towards the development of individual houses, with the consequence of encouraging urban sprawl (Boyer, 2000). If at the outset, the grands ensembles were thought of as a symbol of modernity with a positive image, it was not long before that representation was transformed into its opposite (Foucault, 2000). The social changes at play in these banlieues reflect a profound transformation of social relationships (Dubet, 1995).

Governing Suburbia  31

In North America, the state became actively involved in suburbanization in the postwar years. Historically, in this context, the state can be said to govern the suburbanization process in two key respects – first, through making available financing for home ownership and by providing various government programs and tax incentives. In Canada, the establishment of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) was a state policy aimed directly at providing housing for veterans but was quickly expanded to bolster suburban home ownership more generally (see Harris, 2003). The Canadian state’s securitization of long-term mortgages facilitated the demand necessary for the emergence of Fordist suburbs such as Don Mills in Toronto. In the United States, the Federal Housing Administration was developed in 1938 in order to securitize mortgages and thus increase the ability of the middle class to attain home ownership. In the postwar era, the GI Act provided veterans with, among other things, relatively low-cost loans in order to facilitate their entry into the middle class. State policies geared towards suburban boosterism were not directed at the social body as a whole but rather had a particular class, racial, and gendered character. In a careful study of housing policy in the United States, George Lipsitz (1995: 732) argues that the Federal Hous­ ing Act of 1934 had the effect of channelling “almost all of the loan money toward white communities and away from communities of colour.” This channelling of loans had a distinct spatial form, as money was withheld from older inner-city neighbourhoods and directed to white, segregated suburban spaces. At the same time, state involvement in the housing market was also heavily class-based. As Hanlon, Short, and Vicino (2010) argue, tax policies in the United States are such that mortgage-interest payments are tax deductible; also, since 1951 taxpayers have been able to sell their houses without paying capital gains tax. As the authors argue, these policies “are amongst the most regressive subsidies, aiding wealthy and middle-income households more than lower-income households” (Hanlon et al., 2010: 168). As has been widely noted, part of the governance of postwar North American suburbanism entailed regulating gender relations and enshrining hetero­normativity as a guiding principal of suburban life. The second manner in which the state has governed the suburbanization process is through the development of infrastructure and the promotion of mobility as a central value of modernity (Ascher, 1995). The North American case is fairly well known and was typified in the postwar era with massive investments in highway and parkway

32  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

development, as part of a broader Fordist accumulation strategy (Gandy, 2003). Infrastructure-led suburban development has also been occurring at a ferocious pace in cities in Southeast and East Asia. In the case of Hyderabad, India, Lorrain Kennedy (2007) underlines that infrastructure development has driven recent peri-urban development. While the provincial state has not necessarily directly financed and built infrastructure, it has spurred on development through a series of incentive schemes such as lax zoning and labour regulations and a series of rebates on registration fees, energy, and the cost of land. In return for these incentives, private actors are required to produce high-tech infrastructure, including satellite connections, fibre optics, security, parking, and so forth. These policies have resulted in the development of information technology parks such as Hyderabad Information Tech­ nology Engineering Consultancy City. The governance of this project is decidedly state-led and is clearly scaled, focusing on the urban-region as the key to economic success in a globalized world. While globalized political economic processes have bolstered the role of urban-regions in numerous cities around the world (Brenner, 2004a, 2004b; Keil, 2000), state-led suburban development has occurred historically in non-capitalist and emerging-capitalist states. The state’s involvement in suburbanization is also differentiated by scale and objectives. In a familiar narrative, the demise of nationally led state “command and control” centres has resulted in the emergence of urban-regions as the prime space of social, cultural, political, and economic life. As Kevin Cox (2010: 215) argues, it is “important to place local governments in the context of the state as a differentiated territorial form.” The restructuring and decentralization of the state have resulted in the emergence of a range of other actors such as non-­ governmental organizations, community-based organizations, welfare associations, grassroots organizations, and the private sector, all of which play an increasingly significant role in governing suburban affairs (Dupont, 2007; Low, 2008; Shaw, 2005). In this respect, the restructuring of the state has resulted in a blossoming of the forms of governance that guide development processes. At the same time, the governance of suburban life by different “scales” of the state is differentiated and is often a point of conflict. The response to the exotic and predatory mortgages in the United States is one example of this. Immergluck (2009) explains that several U.S. states developed bills to regulate high-risk loans, illustrating how the state is internally differentiated and scaled.

Governing Suburbia  33

At the same time, it is important to recognize that the state is a site of contestations and the institutional and political target of different social groups that critique outdated and narrow notions of “citizenship” (Gauchet, 1998). Governance necessarily goes hand in hand with an active citizenship and with the possibility of governing differently (Leresche, 2001). The territorial differentiation that is reinforced by governance raises important questions about the principles beneath the reality of a unitary state as traditionally assumed for republican states like France (Jouve, 2003). That being said, the state remains an actor and a dimension that can’t be ignored in the ongoing restructuring processes. What we have in mind here is the necessity to insist on the role the state is playing as “an actor and institution” in the process of governance. Even though governance always implies a profound questioning about the supremacy of the state through a consideration of civil society, this does not mean that political conflicts have disappeared. The redefinition of forms of political contestation continues to implicitly and explicitly reference the state, not only as a mediator but as a central institution of conflict. In this respect, governance does not proclaim the end of the state but rather is a prism through which to highlight, from a different angle, the emerging models of social and economic regulation in the making. Capital Accumulation as a Governing Force At a normative level, governance is generally discussed in terms of different actors who enter into processes of negotiation and dialogue regarding a discrete problem. More often than not, the large forces that shape the direction of discussion and the eventual course of events are occluded. Decisions around the allocation of resources, housing density, infrastructure, and zoning are not made in a political and economic vacuum, as if processes such as capital accumulation did not exist. Early research on suburbanization was quick to highlight the role of capital accumulation in affecting the geographical and social make-up of development on the urban periphery (Logan & Molotch, 1987). The influence of the development industry on the suburban landscape and the politics of development are central to our understanding of the role of capital in suburbanization processes (MacDermid, 2009). By now, the centrality of the development industry is well understood and has led to a large body of literature that examines the formation and effect of development regimes, growth machines, and growth

34  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

coalitions, especially in the context of suburbanization and metropolitanization (Beauregard, 2006; Fainstein 1994; Frug, 1999; Jonas & Wilson, 1999; Knox, 2008; Lauria, 1996; Stone & Sanders, 1987). In this section we focus on capital as a governing force that is always articulated with the other modalities of governance discussed in this introduction. Capital drives (sub)urban spatial forms in the pursuit of the expanded reproduction of capital. Cox (2010: 217) suggests that “central to an understanding of the question of urban governance is the accumulation process” and argues that capital and the social interests it represents are distinct from the market in that the former is granted a determining role, as opposed to the assumed passivity of the market, which supposedly benignly allocates resources and decisions. The constitutive effects of capital are tied to the dynamics of “overaccumulation, investment in the built environment, drag on fluidity and potential devalorization” (2010: 217). The question of governance for Cox (2010: 200) is about “turning capital’s inconstant geography to local advantage.” The forces of capital and the state work through one another insofar as the state can secure the interest of capital in the last instance, whether through lowering regulations or providing financial support, as has been seen in the recent subprime mortgage crisis and the economic downturn more broadly. One of the clearest examples of the governing role of capital in the suburban process is the relocation of industrial and technological firms to the suburban periphery of urban-regions. The economic crisis of the 1970s and the demise of Fordism fundamentally accelerated suburbanization processes. Although existing infrastructure in city cores proved to be a heavy drag on the fluidity of capital, industrial and commercial expansion proceeded rapidly on the peripheries of urban centres (Soja, 2000: 242). Suburbanization became a staple of a neoliberal, “vulgar” regime of capital accumulation which ultimately contributed to the financial crisis that has held the world in its grip since 2008 (Harvey, 2012; Knox, 2008; Peck, 2011). What has driven this process? Or, in other words, what does capital have to do with it? Capital always has an uneven geography; on different scales (the urban, regional, national, and global) certain regions experience rampant growth while others stagnate and decline (see Massey, 1984; Hudson, 2007; Smith, 1984). Companies always look for competitive advantage and seek to capitalize on spatial differences in an effort to increase the rate of accumulation. For instance, land rent and prices on suburban peripheries are substantially lower than in city cores. In addition, the cost of

Governing Suburbia  35

development on greenfield sites is drastically lower than the cost of redeveloping brownfield sites in the core of urban-regions and in the inner suburbs. Industrial development on the periphery also decreases what Harvey (1982) describes as the turnover-time of capital, allowing a more expeditious movement of parts and products from suppliers and distributors by avoiding the transportation snarl of city cores. At the same time, industrial and commercial transportation networks increasingly link suburban spaces rather than city centres. Jurisdictional fragmentation within urban-regions often means that lower property and corporate taxes can be used to draw companies out of the city centre. Early in the twentieth century, industrial suburbanization was a key feature of Canadian and American urban-regions. As with more recent currents of decentralization, lower rents, captive labour markets, and the availability of transportation networks spurred the relocation and development of factories and worker housing on the urban periph­ ery (Gad, 2004; Lewis, 2000). The unevenness of capital accumulation played a key role as manufacturers sought competitive advantage. The influence of capital on the suburban landscape was closely tied to the state, which provided tax and infrastructure incentives. Fragmented and shifting political boundaries meant that local boosterism was a key part of attracting growing industries. These dynamics continue to be witnessed. One of the central political-economic shifts of the last forty years has been the rise of financial capital, which has been an unwieldy force in most urban-regions (Sassen, 2001), although it should not be forgotten that the financial class has played a pivotal role in urban-regions even before the emergence of capitalism (Rodriguez & Feagin, 2006). Looking at the foreclosure signs that litter suburban landscapes in the United States, it would be difficult not to acknowledge finance capital’s governing if ultimately also destructive role in the shaping of suburban life (Marcuse, 2009). Immergluck (2009: 342) argues that as financialization “happened federal policy makers did little to adapt supervisory systems to the new market structure constituting a form of ‘passive’ deregulation.” Paradoxically, the governance of subprime mortgages occurred through the absence of state action. The rise of financial capital brought with it the deregulation of mortgage markets in the 1980s, a change that facilitated the securitization of property and loans. In the 1990s the lending industry was “disintegrated,” and there was a decline in “originate-to-hold” lenders and increased bundling and trading of loans as if they were a financial asset disconnected from the

36  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

use-value of the house, a trend that Harvey (1985) anticipated quite early when he argued that housing was increasingly a fictitious commodity disconnected from its use-value. The rhythms of capital accumulation, overaccumulation, and crisis tendencies have significantly impacted the dramatic events following the financial crisis of 2008. At a macro level, capital experienced a significant downturn in the 1970s and, many have argued, has not recovered since. Instead, economies all over the world have been beset by repeated speculative bubbles and crises (Brenner, 2002; Harvey, 2005; Klein, 2007). What is the significance of this broad analysis of capital for our understanding of suburbanization and suburbanism? The speculation in the housing market created a massive bubble, which, when it burst, was destined to create turmoil. In one of the few Foucauldian analyses of the subprime mortgage crisis, Paul Langley (2009) highlights the different techniques of power used in the governance of subprime mortgages. He uses the term “credit panopticon” to describe how “credit scoring enabled the sorting, targeting, pricing and governing of customers through the prism of socalled ‘risk-based pricing’ ” (Langley, 2009: 1408). In this respect, the broad political-economic trends discussed above are linked to specific practices that affect everyday life, or what we call suburbanism. Yet these practices are not imposed as if they are an outside force but rather resonate with the rise of the neoliberal entrepreneurial self. Suburban­ ism, as a way of life, is increasingly defined by new forms of financial self-discipline. In methodological terms this implies the need to address the specific technologies of power that represent the capillaries of broader political economic trends (Langley, 2009). Elvin Wyly and his colleagues (2006), in their examination of predatory lending, challenge the Foucauldian emphasis on the subject and look at the clearly delineated class relations that have shaped the mortgage market in the United States. Not accepting the notion that “bad loans” are the result of poor choices made by consumers, they suggest that “what matters is the collective interest of each class position – defined by systematic inequalities in access to land, finance capital and political power” (2006: 109). The authors argue that the multifaceted power of the capitalist class facilitated the extension of subprime mortgages with steep interest rates to marginalized social groups. Thus the subprime mortgage tragedy is not the result of unscrupulous lenders but rather represents a concerted effort to extract profits from vulnerable social groups. Predatory lending and the foreclosure crisis were

Governing Suburbia  37

most acute in inner-suburban lending areas, and selected inner suburbs and outer suburbs and exurbs were hard hit because of rampant speculation, which made homeowners in these spaces vulnerable to falling prices (Hanlon et al., 2010). In addition, a high proportion of subprime mortgages targeted marginalized spaces that had been largely ignored by mainstream lenders, specifically the inner suburbs and racialized communities (Wyly, Atia, Foxcroft, Hammel, & Phillips-Watts, 2006). Authoritarian Private Governance Erik Swyngedouw (2005) argues that the emergent discourse and practice of governance has entailed the devolution of responsibility from the state to private-sector actors and other parts of civil society. In contrast to the common perception that new forms of governance are more democratic and participatory than state forms, and contrary to normative expectations, some emergent forms of governance are increasingly authoritarian. Non-governmental organizations, public-private partnerships, development corporations, and various stakeholder-based associations are often autocratic and are producing questionable forms of political citizenship. Arguably, authoritarian forms of governance are proliferating most quickly in suburban spaces. The spatial form of urban-regions reflects broader social processes and relations (Harvey, 1982; Massey, 1994; Sennett, 1994; Zukin, 1991). The rise of gated communities, often on the urban periphery, is one example of a (sub)urban form that increasingly reflects the growing spatial and social inequalities tied to the rise and consolidation of neoliberalism. Gating initially was an important urban form in South Africa and Latin America, but since the 1990s it has risen in prominence throughout North America, Eastern and Western Europe, China, and South Asia. While gating is emerging as a global phenomenon, Setha Low (2003: 16; see also Chen & Webster, 2005; Low, 2008) points out that gated communities are “evolving from local architecture and socio-historical circumstances and [are] always embedded within specific cultural traditions.” With respect to gating, Low highlights the tension between universal trends and their particular manifestation in space and time. The proliferation of gated communities has been strongly associated with the rise of privatized authoritarian forms of governance. But these authoritarian forms are not only present and visible in the privatization of land and services. What is even more worrying are changing cultures of governance, which are being redefined through the recent forms of

38  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

space production. The city is no longer acting as a society; or, at the very least, it plays a less broad social role than in the past. The middle classes are no longer willing to share with and support the popular classes as they did when the welfare state was seen as the solution to solving and regulating social problems. The consequences are expressed in different ways: the banishment of the poor, the relocation of the middle classes at the periphery, and the exclusion of the poor from traditional working-­ class neighbourhoods through gentrification (Donzelot, 2004). Since the 1980s the spatial reach of gated communities has become increasingly global, and at the same time the number of enclosed communities has grown rapidly (Atkinson & Blandy, 2005; Davis, 1992; Low, 2008). Atkinson and Blandy (2005) suggest that the rise of gated “fortress cities” is reinforcing a trend of polarization, as the resources of the wealthy classes are being withdrawn from the public purse and redirected towards exclusively private developments. In their eyes, the social contract associated with the Keynesian welfare state is being attacked through new spatial forms of development. Setha Low (2008) explains that the transition from public government to private homeowners associations, achieved through incorporation, has further polarized wealth and state capacity. In what is a dubious practice, the incorporation of gated communities that include tracts of land and people outside of the community allows the government to draw on a larger tax base. However, the political power tends to reside within the gated community, and public funds are used for upkeep behind the gates while at the same time excluding the general public. In the case of Moscow, Blinnikov, Shanin, Sobolev, and Volkova (2006) argue that the growing wealth of a new elite class and the absence of central planning have given rise to the growth of privatized developments set against the backdrop of the planned and crowded historic city. The growth of gated communities and neoliberalism has been tied to a revolution in the governance of suburban spaces. Lang and LeFurgy (2007a, 2007b) argue that the uneven development of suburbs and the rise of gated and master-planned communities have led to a privatized and fractured form of governance. In many spaces, but not all, municipal, urban, provincial, and federal governments have been key actors in how suburbanization has proceeded and has been experienced, albeit in close connection to the interests of capital. Homeowners’ associations and private managerial firms have steadily displaced the local state in the governance of suburban space – forms of private authoritarian governance that are now found on a global scale.

Governing Suburbia  39

Homeowners’ associations and private management firms both aim to regulate social space, and as a result we have witnessed the rapid erasure of public space and the emergence of privately owned and controlled landscapes, many of which are suburban. As Low (2008: 90) notes, “gated communities restrict access not just to residents’ homes, but also to the use of public spaces and services – roads, parks, facilities, and open space – all contained within an enclosure.” Mike Davis illustrates how the growing disparities of the post-Fordist era have been materialized in suburban forms: The security-driven logic of contemporary urban design finds its major “grassroots” expression in the frenetic efforts of Los Angeles’s affluent neighbourhoods to physically insulate their real-estate values and lifestyles. Luxury developments outside the city limits have often been able to incorporate as “fortress cities,” complete with security walls, guarded entries, private police, and even private roadways. (1992: 172)

Low (2003; 2008) sees this type of gated landscape as a form of spatial governance. The building of walls and gates regulates behaviour and the movement of people through (sub)urban landscapes. The architecture itself functions to exclude and segregate different social groups. The growth of gated communities has been positively undemocratic and not just because of the erosion of public space. Developers, rather than elected governments, establish homeowners’ associations and, until the properties are sold, the developer tends to hold the balance of power on the association and thus can initially decide on the board of governors and a host of covenants and restrictions that regulate the development. The rise of gating can be associated with distinctly new styles of suburbanism that are typified by fear; an emphasis on prestige, segregation, and the loss of social integration; coupled with illusory attachment to community. These facets of everyday life in gated communities are mainstays of suburban culture more generally but have been amplified with the rise of gating. One of the major justifications for gating is fear of crime and of social groups that are represented as different and dangerous by comparison with those living behind the gates. Fear of urban social uprisings and the desire to avoid social and physical contagion have been powerful motives behind segregation. These discourses are often racialized, as is the case in Jakarta where Chinese residents have been subject to attacks from the indigenous population, leading to the development of gated

40  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil

and fenced-in compounds (Leisch, 2002). Often security concerns are overblown and justified by a culture of fear. This fear is often premised on spatial representations of inner cities as crime-ridden, congested, and polluted – a familiar narrative in the history of suburbanization. Against the backdrop of the pathologized inner city, the gated experience is one that emphasizes individual autonomy and prestige. Neoliberalism has placed a tremendous amount of emphasis on the entrepreneurial self (Larner, 2000; Lemke, 2001, 2002; Keil, 2002). Gating and private governance reflect a trend that challenges the idea that the state is responsible for a bundle of welfare provisions and for infrastructure more generally. The polarization of wealth associated with neoliberalism has found its spatial form in master-planned communities that map social distinctions spatially onto urban-regional landscapes. The development of suburban spaces has been deeply uneven: as gated spaces proliferate, inner suburban spaces are increasingly caught in a downward spiral characterized by a shrinking tax base, growing demands for social services, and crumbling infrastructure. Gating and social segregation blind residents of regions to the uneven character of development while furthering inequalities as fiscal resources are increasingly concentrated in private communities and newly incorporated spaces (Young, 2000; Hanlon et al., 2010). Conclusion We have made the argument in this chapter that suburban governance can be viewed through the distinct but complementary modalities of the state, capital accumulation, and private authoritarianism. To summarize the discussion of the state, it is possible to identify different state forms that have played a role in suburbanization processes. At the same time, it is important not to view the state as monolithic; rather, it is crucial to see the scaled nature of states and to consider the state as a site of social conflict crystallized, however momentarily, in an institutional form. Emphasizing the role of capital in the making of suburban life allows us to acknowledge how a range of practices, including industrial relocation and financialization, have defined the suburbanization process and suburbanism itself. The power of capital has been closely bound to that of the state; but it is impossible to understand the state without considering capital, and vice versa. If relations between state and capital are at the heart of suburbanization and the forms it has

Governing Suburbia  41

taken in different contexts, the recent financial and political crisis highlights how local economic development is currently challenged by two major problems: first, the pressures coming from external flows as the result of economic globalization; and second, the weakening of the state as an agent for social and economic redistribution (Mongin, 2008). Tendencies towards privatized authoritarian forms of governance have been very strongly linked with recent suburban development. Gated communities have been discussed here as the core of a range of governmentalities in which socio-spatial differentiation has morphed into a more coercive landscape of exclusion and segregation. We are proposing these three modalities here as a conceptual framework for a discussion on the governance of suburbanization and the increasingly diverse ways of suburban life. We suggest that tensions between these modalities will rise as a result of incompatible processes, goals, and outcomes. Most importantly, the dynamics of the various suburban ways of life that unfold in the emergent peripheries of our cities rebel against the governmentality (Foucault, 2003) of the suburbanization process that produced and conditioned them. In this sense, we are taking up a way of thinking that has been propagated by Warren Magnusson in his important new book, The Politics of Urbanism (2011), in which he urges us to see more “like a city,” that is, to embrace the complex, non-sovereign ways in which the governmentalities of the urban unfold and to eschew the containered view of governance that is common to our usual spatio-political ontology. In taking up this thought, we can conclude and perhaps predict that “seeing like a suburb” will be a very important part of this shift in perspective on the modalities of governance. NOTE 1 While we cannot give proper treatment to the subject in this chapter because of space limitations, we would like to state at the outset that we are using the concept “state” in a broad sense. It encompasses theoretical meanings (as in “state theory”) and refers to the nation state as the classical container of political action, but goes beyond this definition to refer to subnational states – local states in particular. We acknowledge fully recent work on the rescaling of states and political economies in this context (Brenner et al., 2003; Keil & Mahon, 2009; Magnusson, 1995).

42  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil REFERENCES Ascher, F. (1995). Métapolis ou l’avenir des villes. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob. Atkinson, R., & Blandy, S. (2005). Introduction: International perspectives on the new enclavism and the rise of gated communities. Housing Studies, 20(2), 177–186. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267303042000331718. Baraize, F., & Négrier, E. (2001). L’invention politique de l’agglomération, Paris: L’Harmattan. Beauregard, R.A. (2006). When America became suburban. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Blais, P. (2010). Perverse cities: Hidden subsidies, wonky policy, and urban sprawl. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Blinnikov, M., Shanin, A., Sobolev, N., & Volkova, L. (2006). Gated communities in the Moscow greenbelt: Newly segregated landscapes and the suburban Russian environment. GeoJournal, 66(1-2), 65–81. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1007/s10708-006-9017-0. Blomley, N. (2003). Unsettling the city: Urban land and the politics of property. New York: Routledge. Boudreau, J.-A., Hamel, P., Jouve, B., & Keil, R. (2006). Comparing metropolitan governance: The cases of Montreal and Toronto. Progress in Planning, 66(1), 7–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2006.07.005. Boudreau, J.-A., Hamel, P., Jouve, B., & Keil, R. (2007). New state spaces in Canada: Metropolitanisation in Montreal and Toronto compared. Urban Geography, 28(1), 30–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.28.1.30. Boyer, J.-C. (2000). Les banlieues en France, territoires et sociétés. Paris: Armand Colin. Brenner, N. (2004a). New state spaces: Urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780199270057.001.0001. Brenner, N. (2004b). Urban governance and the production of new state spaces in Western Europe, 1960–2000. Review of International Political Economy, 11(3), 447–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969229042000282864. Brenner, N., Jessop, B., Jones, M., & MacLeod, G. (Eds). (2003). State/space: A reader. Malden: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470755686. Brenner, R. (2002). The boom and the bubble: The US in the world economy. New York: Verso. Chen, S.Y., & Webster, C. (2005). Homeowners associations, collective action and the costs of private governance. Housing Studies, 20(2), 205–20. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/026730303042000331736.

Governing Suburbia  43 Cowen, D. (2005). Suburban citizenship? The rise of targeting and the eclipse of social rights in Toronto. Social & Cultural Geography, 6(3), 335–56. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649360500111212. Cox, K.R. (2010). The problem of metropolitan governance and the politics of scale. Regional Studies, 44(2), 215–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/​00343400903365128. Davis, M. (1992). Fortress Los Angeles: The militarization of urban space. In M. Sorkin (Ed.), Variations on a theme park (154–89). New York: Noonday. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. New York: Verso. Donzelot, J. (2004). La ville à trois vitesses: Relégation, périurbanisation, ­gentrification. Esprit, mars-avril (3–4), 14–39. Dubet, F. (1995). Les figures de la ville et de la banlieue. Sociologie du Travail, 37(2), 127–50. Dupont, V. (2007). Conflicting stakes and governance in the peripheries of large Indian metropolises – An introduction. Cities, 24(2), 89–94. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2006.11.002. Fainstein, S. (1994). The city builders. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Feng, J., Zhou, Y., & Wu, F. (2008). New trends of suburbanization in Beijing since 1990: From government-led to market-oriented. Regional Studies, 42(1), 83–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701654160. Filion, P. (2010). Reorienting urban development? Structural obstruction to new urban forms. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(1), 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00896.x. Fishman, R. (1987). Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. New York: Basic Books. Foucault, A. (2000). Pour en finir avec la banlieue / Ending the use of the term “suburb.” Géocarrefour, 75(2), 101–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/ geoca.2000.2518. Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended. Lectures at the College de France, 1975, 1976. New York: Picador. Freund, D.M.P. (2007). Colored property: State policy and white racial politics in suburban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.7208/chicago/9780226262772.001.0001. Frug, G.E. (1999). City making: Building communities without walls. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gad, G. (2004). The suburbanization of manufacturing in Toronto: 1881–1951. In R. Lewis (Ed.), Manufacturing suburbia (143–77). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gandy, M. (2003). Concrete and clay reworking in nature in New York City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

44  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil Garreau, J. (1991). Edge city: Life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday. Gauchet, M. (1998). La religion dans la démocratie: Parcours de la laïcité. Paris: Gallimard. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203452202. Grant, R. (2005). The emergence of gated communities in a West African context: Evidence from Greater Accra, Ghana. Urban Geography, 26(8), 661–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.26.8.661. Hamel, P. (2008). Ville et débat public: Agir en démocratie. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. Hanlon, B., Short, J.R., & Vicino, T. (2010). Cities and suburbs: New metropolitan realities in the US. London, New York: Routledge. Harris, R. (2003). The suburban worker in the history of labor. International Labor and Working Class History, 64, 8–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S0147547903000164. Harris, R. (2004). Creeping conformity: How Canada became suburban, 1900–1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Harris, R. (2010). Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. Research in Urban Sociology. Suburbanization in Global Society, 10, 15–47. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1108/S1047-0042(2010)0000010004. Harris, R., & Lewis, R. (2001). The geography of North American cities and suburbs, 1900–1950: A new synthesis. Journal of Urban History, 27, 262–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009614420102700302. Harvey, D. (1982). The limits to capital. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1985). The urbanization of capital. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2012). The urban roots of financial crises: Reclaiming the city for anti-capitalist struggle. Socialist Register, 1–35. Hayden, D. (2003). Building suburbia: Green fields and urban growth, 1820–2000. New York: Vintage Books. Hirt, S. (2007). Suburbanizing Sofia: Characteristics of post-socialist periurban change. Urban Geography, 28(8), 755–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/​ 0272-3638.28.8.755. Hirt, S., & Petrovic, M. (2011). The Belgrade wall: The proliferation of gated housing in the Serbian capital after socialism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(4), 753–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427​ .2011.01056.x. Hudson, R. (2007). Regions and regional uneven development forever? Some reflective comments on theory and practice. Regional Studies, 41(9), 1149–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701291617.

Governing Suburbia  45 Immergluck, D. (2009). Core of the crisis: Deregulation, the global savings glut, and financial innovation in the subprime debacle. City & Community, 8(3), 341–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6040.2009.01292_1.x. Jessop, B. (1998). The rise of governance and the risks of failure: The case of economic development. International Social Science Journal, 50(155), 29–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2451.00107. Jonas, A.E.G., & Wilson, D. (Eds). (1999). The urban growth machine: Critical perspectives two decades later. Buffalo: State University of New York Press. Jouve, B. (2003). La gouvernance urbaine en questions. Paris: Elsevier. Jouve, B. (2005). La démocratie en métropoles: Gouvernance, participation et citoyenneté. Revue francaise de science politique, 55(2), 317–37. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.3917/rfsp.552.0317. Keil, R. (1998). Globalization makes states: Perspectives of local governance in the age of the world city. Review of International Political Economy, 5(4), 616–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/096922998347408. Keil, R. (2000). Governance restructuring in Los Angeles and Toronto: Amalgamation or succession. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(4), 758–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00277. Keil, R. (2002). “Common-sense” neoliberalism: Progressive conservative urbanism in Toronto, Canada. Antipode, 34(3), 578–601. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1111/1467-8330.00255. Keil, R. (2011). Global suburbanization: The challenge of researching cities in the 21st century. Public, 43, 54–61. Keil, R., & Mahon, R. (Eds). (2009). Leviathan undone? Towards a political economy of scale. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Kennedy, L. (2007). Regional industrial policies driving peri-urban dynamics in Hyderabad, India. Cities, 24(2), 95–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/​ j.cities.2006.06.001. King, A. (2004). Spaces of global culture: Architecture, urbanism, identity. New York: Routledge. Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada. Knox, P.L. (2008). Metroburbia, USA. London: Rutgers University Press. Lang, R., & Knox, P. (2009). The new metropolis: Rethinking megalopolis. Regional Studies, 43(6), 789–802. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701654251. Lang, R.E., & LeFurgy, J. (2007a). Boomburb “buildout”: The future of development in large, fast-growing suburbs. Urban Affairs Review, 42(4), 533–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1078087406295893. Lang, R.E., & LeFurgy, J. (2007b). Boomburbs: The rise of America’s accidental cities. New York: Brookings Institution Press.

46  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil Langley, P. (2009). Debt, discipline, and government: Foreclosure and forbearance in the subprime mortgage crisis. Environment & Planning A, 41(6), 1404–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a41322. Larner, W. (2000). Neoliberalism: Policy, ideology, governmentality. Studies in Political Economy, 63(Fall), 5–25. Lauria, M. (Ed.). (1996). Reconstructing urban regime theory. Thousand Oaks: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483327808. Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Lefebvre, H. (2003 [1970]). The urban revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lefèvre, C. (1998). Gouvernements métropolitains et gouvernance dans les pays occidentaux. Politiques et management public, 16(1), 35–59. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.3406/pomap.1998.2173. Le Galès, P. (2003). Le retour des villes européennes: Sociétés urbaines, mondialisation, gouvernement, gouvernance. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Leisch, H. (2002). Gated communities in Indonesia. Cities, 19(5), 341–50. Leitner, H., Peck, J., & Sheppard, E. (Eds). (2007). Contesting neoliberalism: Urban frontiers. New York: Guilford. Lemke, T. (2001). The birth of biopolitics: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society, 30(2), 190–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085140120042271. Lemke, T. (2002). Foucault, govermentality, and critique. Rethinking Marxism, 14(3), 49–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/089356902101242288. Leresche, J.-P. (2001). Gouvernance et coordination des politiques publiques. In J.-P. Leresche (Ed.), Gouvernance locale, coopération et légitimité (31–65). Paris: Pédone. Lewis, R. (2000). Manufacturing Montreal: The making of an industrial landscape, 1850–1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipsitz, G. (1995). The possessive investment in whiteness. American Quarterly, 47(3), 369–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2713291. Logan, J., & Molotch, H. (1987). Urban futures: The political economy of place. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Low, S. (2003). Behind the gates: Life, security and the pursuit of happiness in fortress America. New York: Routledge. Low, S. (2008). Incorporation and gated communities in the Greater Metro-Los Angeles Region as a model of privatization of residential communities. Home Cultures, 5(1), 85–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/​ 174063108X287364. MacDermid, R. (2009). Funding city politics. The CSJ Foundation for Research and Education. Toronto: Centre for Social Justice and Vote Toronto.

Governing Suburbia  47 Macdonald, S., & Keil, R. (2012). The Ontario greenbelt: Shifting the scales of the sustainability fix? Professional Geographer, 64(2), 1–21. MacLeod, G. (2011). Urban politics reconsidered: Growth machine to postdemocratic city. Urban Studies, 48(12), 2629–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/​ 0042098011415715. MacLeod, G., & Jones, M. (2011). Renewing urban politics. Urban Studies, 48(12), 2443–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098011415717. Magnusson, W. (1995). The search for political space: Globalization, social movements, and the urban political experience. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Magnusson, W. (2011). The politics of urbanism: Seeing like a city. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Marcuse, P. (2009). A critical approach to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States: Rethinking the public sector in housing. City & Community, 8(3), 351–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6040.2009.01292_3.x. Massey, D.B. (1984). Spatial divisions of labor: Social structures and the geography of production. New York: Methuen. Massey, D.[B]. (1994). Space, place and gender. Oxford: Polity Press. Mongin, O. (2008). Le local, l’état et la politique urbaine. Esprit (février), 56–9. Neuwirth, R. (2005). Shadow cities: A billion squatters, a new urban world. New York: Routledge. Peck, J. (2011). Neoliberal suburbanism. Frontier space. Urban Geography, 32(6), 884–919. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.32.6.884. Phelps, N., & Wood, A. (2011). The new post-suburban politics? Urban Studies, 48(12), 2591–610. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098011411944. Phelps, N., Wood, A., & Valler, D. (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. Purcell, M. (2008). Recapturing democracy: Neoliberalization and the struggle for alternative urban futures. New York: Routledge. Rodriguez, N., & Feagin, J. (2006). Urban specialization in the world system: An investigation of historical cases. In N. Brenner & R. Keil (Eds), The global cities reader (32–41). London: Routledge. Roy, A. (2009). The 21st-century metropolis: New geographies of theory. Regional Studies, 43(6), 819–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701809665. Sassen, S. (2001). The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Saunders, D. (2010). Arrival city. The final migration and our next world. Toronto: Knopf. Sennett, R. (1994). Flesh and stone: The body and the city in Western civilization. New York: W.W. Norton.

48  Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil Sewell, J. (2009). The shape of the suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s sprawl. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Shaw, A. (2005). Peri-urban interface of Indian cities. Growth, governance and local initiatives. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(2), 129–36. Sieverts, T. (2003). Cities without cities. London: Routledge. Smith, N. (1984). Uneven development: Nature, capital, and the production of space. New York: Blackwell. Soja, E.W. (1989). Postmodern geographies. London: Verso. Soja, E.W. (2000). Postmetropolis: Critical studies of cities and regions. Oxford: Blackwell. Stone, C.N., & Sanders, H.T. (Eds). (1987). The politics of urban development. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Swyngedouw, E. (2005). Governance innovation and the citizen: The Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state. Urban Studies, 42(11), 1991–2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980500279869. Swyngedouw, E. (2009). The antinomies of the postpolitical city: In search of a democratic politics of environmental production. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(3), 601–20. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00859.x. Teaford, J.C. (1996). Post-suburbia: Government and politics in the edge cities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wyly, E., Atia, M., Foxcroft, H., Hammel, D., & Phillips-Watts, K. (2006). American home: Predatory mortgage capital and neighbourhood spaces of race and class exploitation in the United States. Geografiska Annaler B, 88(1), 105–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2006.00208.x. Young, D. (2006). Rebuilding the modern city after modernism (Doctoral Dissertation. York University, Toronto). Young, D., Wood, P.B., & Keil, R. (Eds). (2011). In-between infrastructure: Urban connectivity in an age of vulnerability. Kelowna, BC: Praxis(e) Press. Young, I. (2000). Inclusion and democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zhang, J., & Wu, F. (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. Zukin, S. (1991). Landscapes of power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2 A Note on Governance: More Intervening Variables, Please robert young

There are many definitions of governance, just as there are different ways of conceptualizing the relationship between the state and citizens, the nature and sources of political power, and the global and national pressures on local regions. In our current work, with a very broad focus on suburbs and suburbanization around the world, the authors setting our framework have taken a similarly broad view of suburban governance. This is appropriate. My plea here is that this breadth should not allow us to sweep easily past the precise mechanisms through which concrete outcomes are produced. That is, I want to argue that explanations of how the form of suburbs evolves and how costs and benefits are distributed within these spaces should centre on carefully tracing the political decisions that helped shape them. There are big forces in the world – economic, cultural, technological, and demographic – but these do not directly and necessarily create certain outcomes. There are intervening variables (to use a term that may irritate some) that are important, and these need analysis. Our framework includes a sweeping overview of suburbanism, governance, and suburban governance. Most generally, we find the statement that “the overarching question of governance is viewed as a process involving state, market and civil society, which implies democratic deliberation and social conflict while being social, spatial and ­political” (Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012: 408). More particularly, “any attempt to comprehend suburbanization must pay attention to the varied agents, methods, institutions and scalar processes through which development is managed. Together, these may be viewed as the mechanisms of suburban governance” (Ekers et al., 2012: 409). (See also chapter 1, by Ekers, Hamel, and Keil, in this volume.) There are

50  Robert Young

advantages in adopting such an inclusive definition. One is that it allows us to approach a great many disparate cases. Indeed, we are interested in the full range of types of suburbs, from the all-too-orderly gated compounds found in North American edge cities, to the sprawls and bidonvilles around cities in Spain and France, to the mushrooming, apparently anarchic, but informally structured slums of the Global South. Such a broad definition also allows us to consider the complexities of “governance,” a term that is designed to extend our research focus beyond the institutions of the state, even in advanced industrial societies (Rhodes, 1996). All of this is fine. But there are also disadvantages in such sweeping definitions. The first is that they can lead to a concentration on process. Without a specification of what is important in determining outcomes, we may find ourselves simply describing a very wide array of phenomena, or else focusing on a few with no principled rationale of selection. While such descriptive accounts can be informative and interesting, there is no obvious boundary to them: at the extreme, pure description can be infinite. Second, we may be led to vague causal assertions, linking abstract characterizations in a way that is pleasing at the theoretical level but that provides little purchase on concrete events and outcomes. I think, therefore, that it would be beneficial to have a common unit of analysis. I suggest that this should be decisions. A focus on the decisions that are made about suburbs leads analysts inevitably to investigate their causes, tracing why they came about. It also leads us to examine their effects, to show why they were important and how they affected the lives of the people who live in suburban spaces. This seems simple enough, but there are complicating factors. First, in whose decisions are we interested? Given the large array of suburbs with which we want to engage, the answer to this question is not obvious. It is tempting to argue that we should concentrate on those actors with real power, whoever they are. This would admit the study of gang leaders in South American barrios, rich developers and industrialists in South Asia, and religious leaders in the Middle East and elsewhere. We do have to take these forces into account, because they help shape the decisions that obtain in the suburbs; occasionally, they are the effective decision makers. Nevertheless, the world remains a place where sovereignty is the fundamental organizing principle of governance. Techni­ cally, state power prevails within the boundaries of sovereign states, and despite the existence of failed states, of weak states whose presence is minimal in some parts of the territory, including suburbs, and of

A Note on Governance  51

other power centres located beyond the state apparatus, this sovereign power prevails de facto in much of the world. So our first point of interest in studies of suburban governance should be the state. State decisions, though, are not the end of the story. We must also consider non-decisions, which have long been of interest to political scientists.1 Non-decisions are identified when state actors could reasonably be expected to take action about some matter, primarily because at least some citizens would prefer a different policy to be put in place, but the actors do not do so, because the status quo is satisfactory for some other interests or for themselves. When state actors hold power but do not exercise it as they might, we can analyse these non-decisions. Doing this is important because it provides leverage to criticize governments for inaction. It also opens up debates, ones that may have been suppressed, about what governments could and should do. To understand governance, and to explain what decisions have been made, it is essential to understand the complexities of the state apparatus. This means analysing it in its national, subnational, and local instances. Each level of government has different functions and undertakes different activities, and normally decisions taken by various levels are all operative at once in suburban space. Analysts often refer somewhat vaguely to how the state is “scaled,” but our understanding of the conditions prevailing in suburban regions, and of the state’s influence on them through decisions, is enriched by precise understandings of the different levels of government – of their formal powers, real resources, and motivations, and of the pressures upon them. A model of this kind of analysis is the chapter in this volume by Wu and Shen (chapter 14). The term “governance” draws our attention beyond the state. We are of course interested in state officials of all kinds, including the army and the police. But we are also interested in the many agents that interact with the state and that pressure it to make particular decisions – including trade unions, citizens’ associations, political parties, religious institutions, the media, and other organized interests of all kinds. We are particularly interested in business, which often has a preponderant role because development in suburbs requires capital. But capital is not autonomous. In theory, and often in practice, it is subject to regulation by sovereign states. Often the interests of capital are advanced by state action, in the form of favourable decisions about taxation, grants, land-use planning, land provision, and the use of force of various kinds against recalcitrant citizens. How these policy decisions

52  Robert Young

(and non-decisions) arise needs explanation if we are to understand the processes of suburban governance and suburban development. In doing this on a worldwide basis, we must guard against exporting assumptions about the state that are based on the paradigm of advanced industrial countries. In much of the world, states are terribly weak, and in some of the most interesting and important cases they are “failed” or collapsed states. Where states have limited capacity, the scope of non-decision making is large, for non-decisions are measured against the template of a state that has the power to make and enforce particular decisions in any field of intervention. Among the complex of states are one-party systems, thoroughly corrupt regimes (both democratic and non-democratic), and dictatorships of various kinds. For our purposes, it is important to understand the motivations of the state. Even apparently similar dictatorships have different intrinsic logics (Wintrobe, 1998). At the national level, these patterns have generally been explored by other analysts upon whom we can rely. But there is often a serious lacuna at the local level. So to understand suburban governance, we need to study the local state and what drives the key actors – economic growth, benefits for business, tax revenues, graft, the maintenance of power, and so on. And to complete the picture, we need to know about the interests of actors present in the local area, how they interact with the state and what is the range of their autonomous action. By concentrating on the decisions and non-decisions pertaining in the suburban space and on the processes through which they are made, and, critically, on why they come about, analysts can contribute most substantially to our knowledge about suburban development. I believe, in short, that governance and the conditions that prevail in suburbs can best be understood by specifying the causal mechanisms through which decisions and non-decisions come about. This short argument is basically a plea to analyse the proximate causes of what happens in suburbs. Everyone understands that powerful background forces – what the French would call tendences lourdes – are reshaping much of the world that has been taken for granted. These include globalization in all its manifestations, neoliberalism, rapid technological change (especially in communications), cultural shifts, and big demographic changes. We also have phenomena in the suburbs that are of great interest: the growth of gated communities, sprawl, the vast influx of people around the big cities of the Global South, bitter conflicts over land ownership and land use around the world, the formation of new movements and forms of political expression, and the deployment of

A Note on Governance  53

the repressive forces of the state. Often, however, the connections between the background forces and the suburban phenomena of interest are described in very vague terms. The phenomena “are linked to,” are “associated with,” are “connected to,” are “tied to,” or “arise from” or “express” the underlying forces. These are very indefinite connectors. In matters of suburban governance, where decisions and non-decisions can make differences, we want to know exactly how and why the phenomena of interest arise. What are the causal mechanisms that produce these decisions and these outcomes? We need an explanation of the concrete phenomena that interest us. These explanations are political. They involve governance structures and processes. The big background factors are not determinative of any particular outcome. Politics and governance intervene and shape the chain of causality that produces outcomes. So here is a guiding question: given the background conditions, how do state actors and other agents interact to produce the decisions and non-decisions that shape the suburbs and affect the lives of their residents? Essentially, I am making a plea for the study of this intervening variable. We advance intellectually and render a great service to suburbanites by analysing the actors who shape the decisions and non-decisions prevailing in the suburbs. We need to understand the incentive structures they operate in, their motives and interests, and their deployment of resources in decision making. They are the proximate factors that determine the outcomes. They fill in the causal gap between the “tendences lourdes” and the precise shape of the suburbs and the conditions prevailing there. These actors and their decisions deserve close and careful study. NOTE 1 For the original exposition, see Bachrach and Baratz (1962, 1963). For an extension, see Lukes (1974). For a path-breaking early study, see Crenson (1971). For typical recent studies, see Jacob (2012) and Bonal (2012).

REFERENCES Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M.S. (1962). The two faces of power. American Political Science Review, 56(04), 947–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1952796.

54  Robert Young Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M.S. (1963). Decisions and non-decisions: An analytical framework. American Political Science Review, 57(3), 632–42. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.2307/1952568. Bonal, X. (2012). Education policy and school segregation of migrant students in Catalonia: The politics of non-decision-making. Journal of Education Policy, 27(3), 401–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2011.645168. Crenson, M.A. (1971). The un-politics of air pollution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Jacob, R.I. (2012). Politics of power acquisition and decision-making implementations by manipulation: The paradigm of Nigeria leadership. Asian Social Science, 8(4), 285–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v8n4p285. Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A radical view. London: Macmillan. Rhodes, R.A.W. (1996). The new governance: Governing without government. Political Studies, 44(4), 652–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1996. tb01747.x. Wintrobe, R. (1998). The political economy of dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139174916.

SECTION 2 Suburban Governance in the Classical Anglo-Saxon Cases

This page intentionally left blank

3 The United States: Suburban Imaginaries and Metropolitan Realities jan nijman and tom clery

Introduction North America, and especially the United States, may be considered the “birthplace” of the prototypical twentieth-century suburb. It was in the wake of the Second World War that the process of suburbanization accelerated to such unprecedented levels that it fundamentally reordered the U.S. city. During this time, common usage of the terms “suburb” and “suburbanization” spread to the rest of the Western world, and then across the globe. Suburbanization in the United States was perhaps more forceful than anywhere in the world – for reasons discussed below – but that does not make the phenomenon any easier to grasp. The archetypal “sitcom” suburb of the 1950s – white, middle-class households with male breadwinners in single-family homes – assumed near-mythical proportions; in itself, good reason to question its veracity. While it is evident that the archetype did not last more than a couple of decades, it is not so clear what took its place. Moreover, its alleged ubiquity may have reflected a sort of (ideological) fixation on one particular feature in a much more varied and restless urban landscape. A reconsideration of the notions of suburb and suburbanization, of their validity at the present time, and of the general governance structures in which they unfolded, requires attention to historical evolution as well as geographical variation. In the short space of this chapter, we must do so succinctly, concentrating on the most salient turns in the development of U.S. suburbs from the late eighteenth century to the present. The fact that suburbanization predates the 1950s is often overlooked; it is important to track the origins and evolution of the

58  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery

process if we are to make sense of its meaning in the context of the city at large. Our focus is on the formation of suburbs (including their physical and social characteristics) but also on suburban governance: the “modalities and mechanisms” that are instrumental to the suburbs’ emergence and evolution (Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012). These modalities and mechanisms pertain to the realms of the state (and regulation), the market, and non-governmental authority structures such as homeowner associations and gated communities. Broadly speaking, it is through the concept of governance that we seek to understand the logic of suburbanization. To be sure, suburban governance varies across space and over time, and also within the United States. Elsewhere in this volume, Jamie Peck provides a lucid account of the strong neoliberal turn in governance that has left its mark across suburban landscapes in the United States. There is a considerable literature on suburbanization in the United States, and along the way we shall point to some of the key debates. First, it is important to distinguish between the suburban ideal versus its material expressions; second, we must acknowledge the distinction between suburban form and suburbanization process; third, the literature divides between voluntaristic (choice, agency) and structuralist conditions of suburbanization; and, finally, there is the question as to whether suburbanization has primarily been a residential phenomenon or has also involved, from the start, an industrial component. Our discussion will for the most part adhere to chronological order: beginning with the origins of the suburban ideal; leading to incipient suburbanization in early industrial times and accelerating in late industrial times; followed by the postwar suburban tide; and then entering the present era of polycentric or post-polycentric metropolitan regions. Most of the second half of the chapter focuses on recent trends and on the present state of U.S. suburbs and prevailing modes of governance. An interesting aspect of the notion of the suburb is that it connotes a settled, stable situation. Certainly this was important to the 1950s idea of the suburb where white, middle-class families had “arrived.” The suburb embodied the achievement of an ideal, the good life; it was harmonious, predictable, and secure, and change was not a part of that dreamy constellation. However, in reality the suburb as a spatial entity is a momentary piece of an urban puzzle that is always reconfigur­ ing,  spatially, economically, socially, and in terms of governance. In the United States, at least, urbanization (including suburbanization) is

The United States  59

an ongoing process, following, in large part, the coupled logics of investment and (re)development (Coe, Kelly, & Yeung, 2007). It implies a ceaseless construction of the new and reconstruction of the old. It appears that, in the United States at least, the traditional idea, or imaginary, of the suburb has proven a great deal more tenacious than its material counterpart. Escape from the Industrial City The term “suburb,” in the meaning of a place on the urban fringe, is of English origins and can be dated back as far as the fourteenth century, even if it did not really acquire currency until the eighteenth century – in England as well as in the United States. In preindustrial times, suburbs were viewed as undesirable and shady places on the edge of town; marginal neighbourhoods with a mix of the poor and people with licentious habits. The word “urbane,” by contrast, referred to sophistication, elegance, and upper-class status. The elites occupied the centre of these compact pre-industrial cities that mixed residential and economic functions (trade, services). This arrangement came to an end with the Industrial Revolution. Cities became sites of industrial production, often with detrimental environmental effects, and they grew much more dense. According to authors like Fishman (1987), Hayden (2003), and others, this resulted in a growing interest of the elites in new housing on the urban periphery: home as a refuge from work, as a source of happiness and goodness. Upper-class status became associated with mansions on large estates in a quiet, lush, suburban environment, while the city centre turned into a scene of congestion, pollution, crime, and crowded, working-class residential areas. If industrialization is commonly associated with urbanization, it should be added that it was associated, too, with the beginnings of suburbanization as we know it. The new suburbia of the mid-nineteenth century in places such as West Philadelphia, says Fishman (1987: 21), represented a “collective assertion of class, wealth and privilege.” It was based on exclusion and segregation. If bourgeois demand for grand suburban living drove the process, this cultural impetus was soon accompanied by economic motives: the transformation of agricultural lands just outside the city into residential building plots was by definition a lucrative business (see, e.g., West Philadelphia Community History Center, 2012). In some ­cities, the newly forming suburbs had a strong ethnic identity and

60  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery

involved recent (successful) immigrant communities, such as Germandominated northwest Milwaukee of the 1890s. At this time, suburbanization was by and large conditioned by the market and driven by choice for the few who had the luxury to afford it. Suburbanization proceeded faster in the United States than in England or elsewhere in Europe because industrialization was more vigorous and sustained, and as such fuelled a more significant response by way of suburbanization. By the late nineteenthth century, the United States had become the biggest industrial power in the world. But there was another, cultural reason that suburbanization became such a salient expression in the American landscape. The individualized, nuclear family was very much an American institution (closely related to the “American Dream”) and demanded a single-family home – which was easier to realize in the spacious suburbs than in the city centre. Hayden (2003: 5–6) observes that, “Unlike any other affluent civilization, Americans have idealized the house and yard rather than the model neighborhood or the ideal town.” The possible realization of this ideal in the green suburbs, at a time when existing cities had rapidly lost their appeal, was at times imbued with religion: in 1921 the National Real Estate Journal wrote that the “Garden of Eden” was the “first subdivision” (National Real Estate Journal, 1921: 22). The new suburb, in this ideology, was at once frontier and destiny. Towards Metropolis: Streetcars and Automobiles If the invention of the new suburb reflected bourgeois imaginaries of utopia, in reality the process of suburbanization quickly assumed broader significance and a more complicated spatiality. First of all, the elite’s flight from inner-city chaos applied not only to residential preferences but also to work. The (re)location of industrial activity to the edges of these still compact cities – even more so than the suburbanization of residential functions – often required newly built infrastructures (canals, roads, sewers, etc.) and relied on the ability of the ownership classes to garner local or state government funding. By the mid-19th century, a system of dense industrial districts were embedded throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan area, Boston contained a set of distinct industrial suburbs specializing in such products as shoes, machinery, and textiles, and a distinct set of manufacturing districts quickly

The United States  61 developed in cities such as Baltimore, Montreal, Toronto, and Los Angeles. If these districts were close enough to the centre to be confused for a single manufacturing core, by the turn of the century, urbanization had reached the metropolitan scale. Since at least 1850, the North American city has grown largely through the accretion of new industrial districts at the urban fringe, becoming multimodal in the process. (Walker & Lewis, 2001: 9–10; also see Taylor, 1915)

The number and kinds of residential suburbs increased, too (Douglass, 1925). From the 1890s forward, the introduction of the electric streetcar in cities across the United States, from Portland to Miami, pushed suburbanization along (Warner, 1962). Increasingly, it was the middle and lower middle classes who followed the elite out of the central city to form streetcar suburbs – continuous built-up corridors from the core to the edge of town. The suburb of West Philadelphia, probably one of the biggest of that era, doubled in population between 1890 and 1910 to reach 200,000 (West Philadelphia Community History Center, 2012). Thus, notwithstanding the powerful and more or less autonomous forces of the market, the state soon became indispensable: the suburbanization of factories demanded infrastructural projects, regulation of peripheral urban land markets, and zoning. And as residential suburbanization increased, the state came in to facilitate public services such as garbage collection and water provision. Gradually, suburbanization became embedded in a governance structure where market and state functioned in tandem – but with the market always leading. The land development and real estate industry became more organized and pro-active and began to target potential first-time homebuyers. “Why Pay Rent” campaigns from around the turn of the century promoted suburban living to middle- and working-class households. Not unlike the fate met by home buyers in the early twenty-first century (!), many were lured into home ownership they could barely afford, struggling “up a down escalator,” entranced with dreams of economic security, saddled with debt, and confused by a false sense of social mobility (Edel, Sclar, & Luria, 1984). Increasingly, it seems, demand for suburban living was being stimulated and fabricated on the supply side. Between 1870 and 1920, developers enlarged their area of operations, took a broader view of the urban, and began to promote urban peripheries, often working in partnership with transit owners, utility companies, and local government.

62  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery

The building boom of the “Roaring Twenties” accelerated the creation of suburbs, made possible by the rise of the powerful real estate and construction lobby in conjunction with new federal regulations that helped subsidize “private development of residential and commercial property on a national basis – largely through tax, banking, and insurance systems …” (Hayden, 2003: 4). It was also made possible, of course, by the introduction of the automobile, which rapidly increased spatial mobility and allowed access to a greater number of potential suburban designations. Prior to the Second World War, cars were luxury items out of reach for the bulk of the working class. In the 1910s and 1920s some new suburbs were designed specifically for the use of automobiles, and they were emphatically upscale, with big lots, winding roads, lush vegetation, and no sidewalks. Such suburbs were exclusive, to be sure, and very different in appearance and composition from a range of other suburbs that had already formed by this time. The exclusivity of the suburb, the former bourgeois utopia, was under pressure from the very beginning. Indeed, it has been argued that “prewar suburbs were as socially diverse as the cities that they surrounded, and it is doubtful whether the city-suburban dichotomy was very significant” (Harris & Lewis, 2001: 263). Indeed, some have suggested that, from the 1860s to the Second World War, “suburbs were generally of lower status than central cities in all but the most populous metropolitan areas” (Gardner, 2001: 311). In many big cities, suburbs had formed with a strong working-class identity, such as South Gate in southern Los Angeles (Nicolaides, 2004; Harris, 1992). Whilst exclusive upper-middle-class suburbs based around the automobile were booming in the 1920s, suburban enclaves of self-built informal communities were also spreading, especially in fast-growing industrial cities like Detroit or Cleveland. During the first half of the twentieth century, lower-income suburban settlers, despite often holding legal title to their property (Harris, 1992), sometimes inhabited unregulated, unplanned, and self-built residential areas. To these suburbanites (not infrequently congregations of recent foreign immigrants), being marginalized from public view was a means to escape societal denigration while procuring low and affordable property prices. At the same time, the “invisibility” of these informal settlements allowed traditional suburbs to maintain their pristine image while obscuring governmental responsibilities to implement infrastructure and facilities in such “irregular” areas.

The United States  63

In all, on the eve of the Second World War, a new urban form had emerged resulting from the decentralization of not just a broader part of the urban population but also of industries, services, and retail activities. The process was conditioned by changing technological, economic, and regulatory conditions. Thus far, it had been a relatively slow process (Gardner, 2001), and massive changes were still ahead. Runaway Suburbanization after 1945 Suburbanization after the Second World War took on such massive proportions that it fundamentally altered the urban order. In the words of Hayden (2003: 10), “Suburban trends in the mid-1920s became a suburban tide in the 1950s.” From 1950 to 1980, the suburban population of the United States tripled; by 1970, more people lived in suburbs than in either central cities or the countryside; by the year 2000, the suburban population exceeded that of central cities and rural areas combined. Suburbanization was not new, but sometimes enough of a quantitative change implies a qualitative transformation. The United States had become a “suburban nation” (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2000). Reacting to these landmark changes, the 1960 Census adopted the category of Metropolitan Statistical Area with a “central city” versus commuting hinterland or “suburbs” (United States Bureau of the Budget, 1964; Champion, 2001). It provided, for the first time, an official definition of the suburb, and it did so in opposition to the central city, thereby forging a dichotomy that corresponded to traditional imaginaries but that in reality had never before been so clear-cut. The dichotomy was reinforced as central cities in many parts of the United States declined, economically and socially, as a result of deindustrialization (loss of jobs) and selective outmigration (suburbanization) from the early 1960s onwards. Inner-city decay, thus, had the effect of reinforcing earlier idealistic visions of the suburb. The suburb was everything the city was not: clean, green, spacious, safe, quiet, harmonious, predictable, and homogeneous (see figures 3.1 and 3.2). The deeply American and ideologically inspired notion of the suburb was revitalized and readied for mass commodification. There is no doubt that the traditional imaginary of the exclusive suburb played an important role in increasing the desirability of suburbs following the war to many of those (working and middle classes) who had previously been excluded.

64  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery

Figure 3.1  Classical post-Second World War tract housing, Lakewood, California. Photo: R. Keil

Writing about suburbanization in the mid-twentieth century, Hanlon, Short, and Vicino (2010) observe that, far from a restricted, elitist, bourgeois ideal, the suburbs were now part of an American Dream for all: There are two mythic journeys in the US. The first … was the trek to the West, ending in California. The second, the archetypal journey of the mid20th century, was from the city to the suburbs … [I]t was a quest signifying acculturation, Americanization, and ultimately success. In this second mythic American journey, the family car replaced the covered wagon, and the single-family home displaced the family homestead as iconic representations. (6)

At a more mundane level, it was hardly a trivial coincidence that typical family cars marketed in the United States from the 1960s were wagons and (later) vans and SUVs, carrying such designations as Explorer, Journey, Odyssey, or Caravan. The new suburban imaginary was ingrained in the American psyche on television in a number of

The United States  65

Figure 3.2 Luxury suburbia, Palos Verdes peninsula, Los Angeles, California. Photo: R. Keil

wildly popular 1950s sitcoms that would be replicated in the following decades (Sharpe & Wallock, 1994). The typical suburb was portrayed as the peaceful and comfortable home of white middle-class families with traditional gender stereotypes. The renewed suburban imaginary very much articulated the desires and choices of American households, and at a time when demand for housing was significantly up (because of unfulfilled demand in the wake of the Great Depression followed by the Second World War and the baby boom). But there is no doubt that the process of suburbanization was, more than ever, driven and facilitated by corporate interests and government intervention. The construction of Levittown, the archetypal 1950s suburb, was the well-documented result of these new governance modalities. The Levitt family planned this Long Island subdivision on the scale of a town but did not include any of the necessary services such as garbage collection, schools, or roads – these responsibilities were passed on to government and were financed through tax dollars. It was a new kind of business, made possible through a shifting regulatory environment, and it served as a blueprint for developments across the country:

66  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery Postwar suburbs represented the deliberate intervention of the federal government into the financing of single-family housing across the nation. For the first time, the federal government provided massive aid directed to developers (whose loans were insured by the Federal Housing Admin­ istration, FHA) and white male homeowners (who could get Veterans’ Administration guarantees for mortgages at four percent, with little or nothing down, and then deduct their mortgage interest payments from their taxable income for 30 years). (Hayden, 2001: 1)

Suburbanization, one might say, had become the business of an extremely powerful industrial conglomerate that employed (and helped generate) the American suburban imaginary to full effect. It included huge corporations such as General Motors (which offered a helping hand in the demise of the electric streetcar) and General Electric (which had embarked on the mass production of household appliances for single-­family homes); local “growth machines” (Molotch, 1976) consisting of developers, builders, and banks; local governments that provided conducive zoning and building regulatory frameworks, and sometimes direct subsidies; and, last but not least, a federal government that was central to the financing of home ownership and the construction of highways, and that in various ways espoused suburban ideologies. In extreme form and with Cold War intonations, such ideologies were articulated by the likes of Joseph McCarthy, who “hated multifamily designs as well as public funding for shelter” and declared public housing “a breeding ground for communists” (Seal, 2003). Previously ignored informal residential areas on the urban fringe increasingly came within range of voracious developers and regulatory state agencies. Through the implementation of various housing regulations and redevelopment initiatives, many informal suburban settlements were disbanded and removed. The implementation of stricter building regulations, for example, meant that self-constructed housing was discouraged or destroyed rather than promoted and assisted. Some­ times, the construction of freeway systems through these informal areas caused further displacement. This postwar rise in regulation brought about the demise of many selfbuilt settlements; but it also ushered in another irregular housing trend in U.S. society – the rise of the mobile home. For some lower-income households, trailer ownership has been a cheap and flexible (movable) alternative to either renting or buying a regular home. By 1956, four million Americans had opted to make them their primary form of residence.

The United States  67

Predictably, trailer parks quickly became seen as another threat to permanent suburban communities (Field, 2005), and they have been effectively zoned out of the more upscale suburban landscapes. Besides the massive acceleration of population shifts to the suburbs (along with shopping malls, hospitals, schools, and other service and retail activities), there was a significant increase in the suburbanization of office work. It was another episode, one might say, of corporate “escapism from capitalist reality” (Walker, 1981: 396). Until the Second World War, offices tended to be located either in central business districts or near factories away from the centre. Neither of these locations was particularly attractive, and they became unnecessary with the introduction of more flexible and separated corporate functions and new management structures after the 1950s and 1960s (Mozingo, 2011). The suburbs were considered more representative, more easily traversed, more predictable and less risky, and better for business. It was a trend that gathered momentum over the decades and resulted in the proliferation of suburban office parks and corporate campuses. Once again, economic logic was entwined with aesthetic values: And while the restructuring of activities and transport made sense in the efficiency calculus of capitalism, the inclusion of green space reflected a more ineffable yet deeply ingrained value – the ideal of the pastoral in the American landscape. (Mozingo, 2011: 8)

The accelerated suburbanization of work, the formation in the suburbs of clusters of economic activity, and the apparent lessening of the interdependence between suburb and central city led some observers to declare the arrival of a new metropolitan era. Already in 1975, Birch spoke of a transition “from suburb to urban place” (Birch, 1975: 25). In 1981, Muller referred to suburbia as “the essence of the late-twentieth century American city,” and argued that the “burgeoning new centers” of the suburbs had transformed it into an “increasingly independent and dominant outer city.” It represented, he asserted, “a wholly new metropolitan reality” (Muller, 1981; also see Berry & Cohen, 1973). Suburbs of the Last Resort To some, the transformation of the United States into a suburban nation (Jackson, 1985; Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2001) actually signalled the end of the suburban ideal. In 1987, Fishman argued that:

68  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery the suburb since 1945 has lost its traditional meaning and function as a satellite of the central city. Where peripheral communities had once excluded industry and large-scale commerce, the suburb now becomes the heartland of the most rapidly expanding elements of the late 20th century economy … As both core and periphery are swallowed up in seemingly endless multi-centered regions, where can one find suburbia? (Fishman, 1987: 29)

In his view, the days of the classic suburb, the bourgeois utopia, were long gone and had made way for the “post-suburb” or “technoburb.” Since the 1960s, architectural critics had begun to depict suburbs as lowbrow, boring, and banal. The monotonous, mass-produced subdivisions of the postwar years certainly were a long way from the carefully designed elite suburban mansions of the early nineteenth century. More importantly, suburban culture as a whole came to be regarded as uninteresting, conservative, and spiritless. It is not hard to discern elitist undertones in such critiques, even if the critics themselves were very much socially engaged. Examples include “Jane Jacobs’s (1961) picture of her own idyllically bohemian Lower Manhattan neighborhood in The Death and Life of Great American Cities and the wild anger at suburban piggery that pervades James Howard Kunstler’s (1993) The Geography of Nowhere” (Seal, 2003). Perhaps we are now past such clichéd critiques of the suburbs; but it is important to note that the aesthetic devaluation of suburbs among critics coincided with increased access to suburbs by lower-income strata of the population – and a home in the suburbs was still sold as a privileged place in the sun along with all the traditional narratives of the past (Knox, 2008). In other words, there emerged a clear disparity of (changing) discourses about the suburb. If this could in some ways be reduced to a typical class-based urge for distinction (Bourdieu, 1984), it also reflected a real decline in the standard of living in many suburbs. Suburban living increasingly attracted lower-income strata and became increasingly standardized. And a number of negative qualities thus far associated with the decaying central city had gone suburban as well. Suburban poverty increased, as did fiscal stress, crime, and social problems such as housing deterioration, homelessness, and drug abuse (Sharpe & Wallock, 1994; Hanlon, 2010). By 2010, more people lived in poverty in the suburbs than in central cities, and there has also been a convergence in crime rates. Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the

The United States  69

country’s largest metropolitan areas saw their poor population grow by 25 per cent – almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan communities. At the same time, the last decade has witnessed the gentrification of the city – wealth moving back in (Brookings Institution, 2011). The suburban population continued to grow apace, but increasingly it wasn’t because Americans were passionately pursuing their dreams and seeing them fulfilled – it was because many people did not have anywhere else to go. As gentrification started to take shape in some parts of the central city, pushing prices up, while other parts of the centre continued to be problematic, many turned to the suburbs because of affordability. If home ownership was the goal, there was little apart from the suburbs, and at an ever-greater distance from the city. Increas­ ingly, then, suburban living was less a matter of choice and more a matter of financial constraints and necessity. Even then, home ownership (in the suburbs) proved a risky proposition. The mortgage crisis that began in 2008 and that still left (in 2012) about 22 per cent of homeowners “under water” with negative equity is particularly widespread in U.S. suburbs (Ellis, 2010). New Metropolitan Realities This new and increasingly complex metropolitan reality with regard to suburban form can be encapsulated in four points. First, there has been, at the aggregate level, a progressive blurring of the distinction between city centre and suburb in terms of social composition. This convergence is mostly due to the suburbanization of hitherto excluded lower-income strata and ethnic minorities (Brookings Institution, 2011). While suburbs are still less ethnically diverse than central cities, they are quickly gaining in diversity (more so than central cities), with the 2010 Census reporting that well over a third of the suburban population is now “non-white.” The proportion of foreign immigrants, too, is increasing faster in suburbs than in central cities. It is important to remember, though, that the suburbanization of the working classes and of ethnic minorities was often crowded out of the prevailing suburbanization narratives in the past. As Wiese (2009: 5) wryly observes, “historians have done a better job excluding African Americans from the suburbs than even white suburbanites.” And Kruse & Sugrue (2006: 4) refer to the “working-class world of modest houses,

70  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery

apartments, and trailer parks [which] was central to suburbia, but nonetheless remained on the periphery of suburban historiography.” In other words, this diversification of the suburbs is not quite as radical a change as it is sometimes portrayed. Second: while suburbs are becoming more diverse in the aggregate (on a larger scale), the variety of suburbs has also increased significantly, and this actually means that diversity within suburbs remains very limited. There are now many types of suburbs, but they are generally not very diverse in themselves. Indeed, as we will see in the next section, there is strong evidence of growing segregation and exclusion between suburbs. This, in turn, implies continued contrasts between central cities and most individual suburbs, also in terms of governance: Most suburban jurisdictions are small and have relatively homogeneous populations, which makes it easier to secure consensus on exclusionary policies than is commonly the case in larger and more heterogeneous cities. (Sharpe & Wallock, 1994: 12)

Third: the suburban landscape has witnessed the creation of relatively high-density clusters of economic activity and residential functions. In his book Edge City, Garreau (1991) argued that “density is back,” noting that edge cities – high-rise clusters of office space and apartment living along with urban amenities – had sprung up across suburbia, contributing in another way to the blurring of city-suburb distinctions. And this was not just a matter of form; it also eroded the city-suburb relationship. “By the mid-1990s, about twice as many people commuted to work within suburbs as commuted between them and cities” (Sharpe & Wallock, 1994: 2). The classical monocentric city belonged to the past; the polycentric metropolis had arrived. This view was given nuance by Lang (2003), who introduced the notion of “edgeless cities.” He does not so much argue against the existence of edge cities; rather, he points to what he considers a more widespread (and therefore more significant) phenomenon: free-form clusters of office space of various sizes and configurations that can be found across suburbia. Edgeless cities are not as conspicuous as edge cities (especially big edge cities like Tysons Corner, Virginia, or Coral Gables in South Florida) and do not have the density or cohesiveness of edge cities. They are made up of free-standing buildings, office parks, or small clusters of buildings of varying densities, strung along

The United States  71

Figure 3.3 Suburban land-use mix, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Roger Keil

suburban interstates and major arterial roads. They are not as big as edge cities and, more importantly, not as dense (see figure 3.3). Their distribution varies from one metropolitan area to another. Moreover, it is argued that such clusters have been there for some time, at least since the 1960s: “the longstanding presence of edgeless cities means … that sprawl never went away” (Lang, 2003: 1). As edge cities emerged, so did edgeless cities – but though the growth of edge cities slowed following the late 1980s, edgeless cities continued to proliferate. Lang’s research indicates that edgeless cities, in most metropolitan areas, now contain double the office space of edge cities. He emphasizes that edgeless cities are not “edge cities waiting to happen” but constitute a crucial dimension of the twenty-first-century metropolis: Suburbia’s economy reached an unprecedented diversity by the 1980s, as specialized service enterprises of every kind were established outside

72  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery central business districts …Yet even as they become more urban, suburbs maintain a distinct pattern. A new metropolitan form therefore has emerged in the past several decades: low density, automobile dependent, and dispersed. Not quite the traditional city, suburb, or exurb, but with elements of all three, it is the still-emergent America on the mall, the beltway, the subdivision, the multiplex movie theater, the drive-through fast-food outlet, the low-rise office cube, and the shopping strip. (Lang, 2003: 9)

The significance of edge cities and edgeless cities is illustrated in the fact that now nearly half (45.1 per cent) of the U.S. metropolitan population is working in locations more than ten miles from downtown and only about one-fifth has a workplace within three miles of downtown (Brookings Institution, 2011). Splintering Urban Governance One of the strongest indications of the growing diversity among suburbs, and of their exclusiveness, is found in the enormous proliferation of forms of sub-local government and governance in the past three or four decades (see also Peck’s discussion of “neoliberal suburbia” in chapter 6 of this volume). As metropolitan areas expanded, government became ever more fragmented, and this fragmentation was compounded by the rescaling of state functions in the neoliberal era. There are at present in the United States about 90,000 local governments, including municipalities, towns, townships, school districts, water management districts, and so on – these are all local government institutions. The combined number of municipalities and town(ships) is about 19,500, compared to 16,800 in 1952. The difference points to roughly 2,700 municipal incorporations in the past half-century, most of which entail secession from existing municipalities or new independence within a county. Incorpo­ration, in the United States, is almost always driven by consideration of fiscal independence and/or spatial exclusion. As Kruse and Sugrue note (2006: 6), “in postwar metropolitan America, where you lived has determined your access to goods and services and how much they cost in the form of your taxes.” Recent decades have also witnessed a rapid increase in the number of “Community Redevelopment Associations” or “Business Improvement Districts” (Nelson, 2009). The latter typically concern primarily business districts but often contain residential areas, while the former suggest a

The United States  73

primary focus on residential communities but often contain a business component. CRAs and BIDs are generally separate agencies created by local governments. At the sub-local residential level, the trends are simply astonishing, as shown in table 3.1 below. As the table shows, between 1970 and 2011, the number of association-governed residential communities rose from 10,000 to 314,200. Today, more than 62 million people in the United States reside in association-governed communities: homeowners’ associations, condominiums, cooperatives, and other planned communities (but not, for example, charter schools). Homeowners’ associations and other planned communities account for 50 to 53 per cent of the totals above, condominiums for 45 to 48 per cent, and cooperatives for 3 to 4 per cent. The patterns of local and sub-local government and governance vary considerably across the United States, especially between the older parts of the Northeast and the more recent Sunbelt cities. The gradual growth and expansion of older American cities has generally resulted in a steady increase in the number of local governments (municipalities, school districts, and other taxing authorities). The Chicago metropolitan area, for example, contains no less than 569 local governments. At the other extreme, the Las Vegas metro area has only 13 local governments. This does not mean, however, that Las Vegas is less fragmented and more centrally governed – in fact, the opposite is true. The difference, instead, lies in the relative importance of private sub-local governance. In more recent metropolitan areas such as Las Vegas, private sub-local governance is much more prevalent than in Chicago, and their territories tend to be smaller than the typical municipal suburb of Chicago (Nelson, 2009). The most salient design that has accompanied the rise of private governance is, of course, that of the gated community – which actually presents itself in a variety of forms (and makes the phenomenon very difficult to quantify). Gated communities, as we know them, originated with the advent of the master-planned retirement communities in the late sixties. From there the idea spread to resorts and country clubs, and then to middle-class suburban subdivisions: In the 1980s, upscale real estate speculation and the trend to conspicuous consumption saw the proliferation of gated communities around golf courses that were designed for exclusivity, prestige, and leisure. The

74  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery Table 3.1 E  stimated number of U.S. association-governed communities and individual housing units and residents within those communities. Year

Communities

Housing Units 701,000

Residents

1970

10,000

2.1 million

1990

130,000

11.6 million

29.6 million

2011

314,200

25.1 million

62.3 million

Source: Community Associations Institute, Falls Church, VA, 2012. See http://www .caionline.org/info/research/Pages/default.aspx

decade also marked the emergence of gated communities built primarily out of fear, as the public became increasingly preoccupied with violent crime. Gates became available in developments of suburban single-family tracts and high-density urban apartment complexes. Since the late 1980s, gates have become ubiquitous in many areas of the country; there are now entire incorporated cities that feature guarded entrances. Because gated communities in their contemporary form first began in resort and retirement areas, they are most common in the Sunbelt states of the Southeast and Southwest. (Blakely & Snyder, 1997: 4)

Gated communities, then, are a salient expression in the built environment of a process of fragmentation and exclusion that applies across the metropolitan landscape and to places where it is not quite so visible. The gated community is, in a sense, like the tip of the iceberg. Conclusion It is clear that the simple city-suburb dichotomy is obsolete in the present-day U.S. urban region. As was noted in the introduction, the static nature that is inherent in the notion of the suburb is fundamentally at odds with the dynamic forces that continually shape and reshape the urban environment. Many central cities, too, are subject to redevelopment, gentrification, and the construction of private residential associations. The population of older (inner) suburbs, sharply different from newly settled subdivisions on the urban fringe, is often also more established than that of redeveloped downtowns. It is hard to imagine an end to the continuing spatial fragmentation of the U.S. metropolis that accompanies the relentless logic of urban redevelopment and temptations of territorial “opportunity hoarding”

The United States  75

(Tilly, 1999). The bourgeois elite of the nineteenth century have made way for a more diversified upper middle class, and the suburban utopia of yesteryear has been replaced with a range of options across the metropolitan area, from downtown condos to resort-style gated communities. But that hardly means that they are confined to their residential spaces. The urban experience of the affluent seems to link small-scale residential exclusionary spaces with technology-aided access to and movement in larger circumscribed metropolitan networks of malls, office parks, resorts, airports, amenities, and other exclusionary spaces. The rapid advances in information and communication technology may well have contributed to the explosive growth of small-scale private governance, as they allow exclusion and a sense of security without feelings of isolation. At the same time, on the metropolitan scale, the “collapse of the coordinated public enterprise … and comprehensive ‘public’ city planning” is replaced with increased efforts at “making the poor and marginalized people less and less visible (and threatening) to its interlinked constellation of premium networked spaces” (Graham & Marvin 2001: 302). In the contemporary United States, a reference to “living in the suburbs” can have widely different connotations depending on the metropolitan area and on different geographies within the same metropolis. One “suburb” can still invoke all the positive and exclusive associations of the classic suburb of times past, while another represents the sprawling monotonous suburbs of last resort, meant for those lower-­ income households that can only afford a home on the remote urban fringe. The growing complexities of the U.S. metropolis (summarized in table 3.2) are in part a reflection of the changing interplay of governance modalities. Until the early twentieth century, residential (and ùwith a relatively modest regulatory role for governments. Then, starting in the 1920s, the influence of government policies increased, especially so in the first couple of decades after the Second World War. With the onset of neoliberalization in the early 1980s, private governance mushroomed, resulting in socio-economic differentiation on ever-finer scales. But neither the regulatory powers of the state nor the growing significance of non-governmental authority structures such as homeowners’ associations have in any way reduced the fundamental role of the market in U.S. suburbanization; they have merely enabled it.

76  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery Table 3.2 The present suburban condition in the United States Conditions of Contemporary Suburban Development Physical form and characteristics

– Single-family homes – Continued sprawl, with scattered edge cities and pockets of “new urbanism” – Prevalence of gated communities – Growing variety of suburbs in terms of pricing, social composition – Trailers/mobile homes as cheap housing for segments of lower-income classes – Continued exclusivity and relative homogeneity of suburbs – Strict zoning (housing/shopping/offices/civic institutions)

The main debates

– – – – –

The role of the state

– Federal government promoting homeownership/highways – State/local government promoting exclusionary zoning/ providing new infrastructure and public goods – Local government supporting urban growth machines, seeking to expand property tax base – Exclusion, displacement, or ignorance of informal or irregular settlements

The role of the market

– Traditionally, greenfield development a lucrative investment opportunity – Large corporate interests supply products ranging from single-family home appliances to automobiles to mortgages – Corporate interests dominate local/national growth coalitions: developers, builders, banks – Growing significance of commerce and office work in suburbs – Aggressive financing of suburbanization that contributed to recent mortgage/housing crisis – A very particular commodification of the suburb in terms of the “American Dream”

Modes of governance

– Fragmentation into differing (and often competing) scales (municipal, regional, state, federal) and functions (municipal, schools, water management, etc.) – Continued municipal incorporation as a means to secede, segregate, and protect tax base – Proliferation of sub-local government: gated communities, homeowner associations, community redevelopment associations, charter schools, etc.

The need for a larger-scale metropolitan approach Choice versus structural determinants of suburbanization Growing poverty in suburbs Convergence of central city and suburbs Polycentric versus edgeless metropolitan areas

The United States  77 REFERENCES Berry, B.J.L., & Cohen, Y.S. (1973). Decentralization of commerce and industry: The restructuring of metropolitan America. In L.H. Masotti & J.K. Hadden (Eds), The urbanization of the suburbs (431–55). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Birch, D.L. (1975). From suburb to urban place. Annals of the AAPSS, 422(1), 25–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000271627542200104. Blakely, E.J., & Snyder, M.G. (1997). Fortress America: Gated communities in the United States. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. New York: Routledge. Brookings Institution. (2011). The state of metropolitan America: Suburbs and the 2010 census. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Champion, T. (2001). Urbanization, suburbanization, counterurbanization and reurbanization. In R. Paddison (Ed.), Handbook of urban studies (143–61). London: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781848608375.n9. Coe, N., Kelly, P., & Yeung, H. (2007). Economic geography: A contemporary introduction. Malden: Blackwell. Douglass, H. (1925). The suburban trend. New York: Century. Duany, A., Plater-Zyberk, E., & Speck, J. (2000). Suburban nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream. New York: North Point Press. Edel, M., Sclar, E.D., & Luria, D. (1984). Shaky palaces: Homeownership and social mobility in Boston’s suburbanization. New York: Columbia University Press. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Ellis, L. (2010). The housing meltdown: Why did it happen in the United States? International Real Estate Review, 13(3), 351–94. Field, D. (2005). American cold war culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fishman, R. (1987/2002). Bourgeois utopias: Visions of suburbia. In S.S. Fainstein & S. Campbell (Eds), Readings in urban theory (2nd ed.: 21–31). Oxford: Blackwell. Gardner, T. (2001). The slow wave: The changing residential status of cities and suburbs in the United States, 1850–1949. Journal of Urban History, 27(3), 293–312. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009614420102700303. Garreau, J. (1991). Edge city: Life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism: Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities, and the urban condition. London: Routledge. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203452202.

78  Jan Nijman and Tom Clery Hanlon, B. (2010). Once the American dream: Inner ring suburbs of the metropolitan United States. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hanlon, B., Short, J.R., & Vicino, T.J. (2010). Cities and suburbs: New metropolitan realities in the United States. Oxford: Routledge. Harris, R. (1992). The unplanned blue-collar suburb in its heyday, 1900–1940. In D. Janelle (Ed.), Geographical snapshots of North America (94–9). New York: Guilford Press. Harris, R., & Lewis, R. (2001). The geography of North American cities and suburbs, 1900–1950. Journal of Urban History, 27(3), 262–92. http://dx.doi .org/10.1177/009614420102700302. Hayden, D. (2001). Revisiting the sitcom suburbs. Land Lines, 13(2), 1–3. Hayden, D. (2003). Building suburbia: Green fields and urban growth, 1820–2000. New York: Pantheon Books. Jackson, K. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. New York: Modern Library. Knox, P.L. (2008). Metroburbia, USA. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kruse, K.M., & Sugrue, T.J. (Eds). (2006). The new suburban history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kunstler, J.H. (1993). The geography of nowhere: The rise and decline of America’s man-made landscape. New York: Touchstone. Lang, R.E. (2003). Edgeless cities. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 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. Mozingo, L. (2011). Pastoral capitalism: A history of suburban corporate landscapes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Muller, P.O. (1981). Contemporary suburban America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. National Real Estate Journal. (1921). Editorial, 28 March: 22. Nelson, R.H. (2009). The rise of sublocal governance. Working Paper #09–45, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, Washington, DC. Nicolaides, B.M. (2004). The neighborhood politics of class in a working class suburb of Los Angeles, 1920–1940. Journal of American History, 91, 750–810. Peck, Jamie. 2014. Chicago-school suburbanism. In this volume. Seal, C. (2003). We built this suburb. The Yale Review of Books. New Haven. http://yalereviewofbooks.com/monograph-we-built-this-suburb-bycarey-seal/.

The United States  79 Sharpe, W., & Wallock, L. (1994). Bold new city or built-up ’burb? Redefining contemporary suburbia. American Quarterly, 46(1), 1–30. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.2307/2713349. Taylor, G. (1915). Satellite cities: A study of industrial suburbs. New York: Appleton. Tilly, C. (1999). Durable inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press. United States Bureau of the Budget. (1964). Standard metropolitan statistical areas. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Walker, R. (1981). A theory of suburbanization: Capitalism and the construction of urban space in the United States. In M. Dear & A.J. Scott (Eds), Urbanization and urban planning in capitalist society (383–429). New York: Methuen. Walker, R., & Lewis, R.D. (2001). Beyond the crabgrass frontier: Industry and the spread of North American cities, 1850–1950. Journal of Historical Geography, 27(1), 3–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhge.2000.0266. Warner, S.B., Jr. (1962). Streetcar suburbs: The process of growth in Boston, 1870–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. West Philadelphia Community History Center. (2012). University Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/​ features/wphila/index.html. Wiese, A. (2009). Places of their own: African American suburbanization in the twentieth century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

4 Modalities of Suburban Governance in Canada roger keil, pierre hamel, elena chou, and kieran williams

Introduction Canadian suburban governance is characterized by a territorially extensive, politically regionalized, and institutionally diversified and federated experience. Examining it through the modalities of state, capital, and authoritarian governance proves to be a challenge, both theoretically and empirically. We begin with some historical and definitional perspectives before looking at our topic through the complex lens of Canadian federalism in its regional diversity and institutional specificity. In Canada, suburbia is a strong component of urban life and urban form. But how did it happen? What are the main factors at play? When looking at the state defined as a collective actor, what can we say about the policies and strategies producing current conditions of suburban sprawl, spatial segregation, and social inequality (Graham, Phillips, & Maslove, 1998)? What makes Canada unique, or at least different from most other countries, when we consider suburban governance? From a historical perspective, Canadian urbanization aligned with the European tradition. At the outset, spatial organization and urban forms were clearly influenced by the model of centrality that defined the classical European city. However, this model was profoundly transformed during the nineteenth century by a North American liberal culture of individuality, freedom, and ownership. The priority given to consumer preferences was a direct consequence of that culture and has played an important role in shaping suburbia. In this sense, the Canadian case is very much in line with other examples of the classical Anglo-Saxon suburb. It reflects the governmentality of white settler

Suburban Governance in Canada  81

societies in a perceived environment of abundance, spatial limitlessness, and opportunities to break class and ethnic restraints and express individuality. Urban Canada is made up of regions (central Canada, the Atlantic provinces, the western provinces, and the northern territories). Histori­ cal, geographical, and cultural differences have contributed to support suburbanization processes as major components of metropolitanization. We recall that “as early as 1825, Canada was one of the most urbanized countries in the world” (Hiller, 2010b: xv), largely because colonizers tended to gravitate to and cluster in a few viable settlements. Since then, this trend has been constantly reinforced. According to the 2006 census, the Canadian population was strongly concentrated within the six major metropolitan areas: “nearly half of the Canadian population (45 per cent) reside within them” (Hiller 2010b: xviii). To grasp this reality and to understand how the urban growth taking place in all census metropolitan areas (CMAs) is shaped by economic, social, and political forces, it is necessary to focus in more detail on the specific nature of Canadian municipalities, both urban and suburban. The federalist context – as it was defined in 1867 by the Constitution and evolved as a result of a cultural, economic, and political compromise, and through a fundamental conflict between centralizing and decentralizing forces – has played a major role. In Canada, municipalities do not have an autonomous status as they have, for example, in U.S. federalism. Their autonomy is directly circumscribed by provincial legislation and authority. To accommodate regional differences and the presence of two distinct cultures at the root of the Canadian political compromise, a separation of powers has been established between the provincial and federal levels. As stipulated in the British North America (BNA) Act of 1867, local issues and responsibilities are exclusively a provincial matter. Thus, provinces are responsible for ensuring that local land management and planning meet the needs of Canadians. However, despite this separation of powers, grey areas of litigation soon emerged between the two tiers. Although we lack the space here to revisit the history of these conflicts, it is important to note that the spending power and specific prerogatives of the federal government have given Ottawa considerable influence over the development of municipalities and urban areas. The federal government has not hesitated to take the initiative in supporting the financing of home ownership through the creation of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)

82  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

and the construction of transportation infrastructure. We will look at these central avenues for suburban governance in detail below. Today Canadian suburbs are changing rapidly. The rather stereotypical view that saw the suburbs as categorically different from the inner city has been widely challenged. Canadian suburbanization has traditionally been influenced by the American and the European models. Although in Canada, as in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, “the suburban ideal was … luring residents to a detached house along the metropolitan fringe” (Teaford, 2011: 23), suburbs such as Toronto’s Don Mills also “included many townhouses and apartments” in addition to single-family homes (Teaford, 2011: 27). Histori­ cally, working-class suburbanization has been another distinctive feature of Canadian suburbanization (Harris, 1996; Fiedler & Addie, 2008: 6). Although more recently eclipsed by the “creeping conformity” (Harris, 2004) of mass-produced middle-class suburbanization, the self-built proletarian suburbs of Toronto were prototypes that changed the way suburbanization has been viewed in Canada. Notably, the state has had a visible role in structuring the suburban landscape and in ordering the space of the periphery (Keil & Young, 2011). As a result of the specific interaction of state, market, and authoritarian governance (public and private) in Canada, we find both the single-family-home subdivisions typical of the United States and the high-rise-dominated neighbourhoods associated with suburbanization in Europe. Uniquely, though, suburban Canada now embodies a remarkable new model of development that is largely defined by the immigrant experience and the diversity of new suburban populations. While Australian and American suburbs have also seen new immigration and increasing demographic diversity (including a tendency towards rising poverty levels in urban peripheries), the Canadian examples seem to have diverged most sharply from the classic AngloSaxon model of white middle-class suburbanization. Three things have changed in recent years in Canada. First: Suburbanization has become more diverse in every respect. For example, ethnic diversity in Toronto’s periphery is now unmatched anywhere. The white middle-class suburbs of the postwar years are largely gone, with the “old” or “inner” suburbs now having very diverse non-white and immigrant populations (Hulchanski, 2010). Terms like the “racialization of poverty” and “vertical poverty” are now strongly associated with extensive suburban tower neighbourhoods

Suburban Governance in Canada  83

where the combination of immigration, renter status, and visible minority membership (with gender as an added factor) has become a predictor of structural poverty (United Way Toronto, 2011). More significant, perhaps, are the concentrations of immigrant populations in some newer suburbs and exurbs such as Brampton, Mississauga, and Markham. The phenomenon of the diverse suburb needs to be understood in relation to the continued formation of the global city-­ region and the emergence of postcolonial and postmetropolitan forms of urbanization (Keil, 2011a, 2011b). Second: The neoliberalization (see Jamie Peck’s contribution in chapter 6 of this volume) and “splintering” (Graham & Marvin, 2001) of suburban development have led to a reorientation of metropolitan politics, and a redefinition of political imaginaries and institutional as well as geographic boundaries. It is impossible now to imagine the suburbs as neatly sequestered, spatially and socially, from a categorically different “inner city.” In fact, most suburban development now takes place in a newly defined in-between city that resembles neither the old inner city nor the glamorous cookie-cutter suburbs. Clearly, both these spaces still exist in their gentrified and often gated reality, attracting considerable attention and investment, particularly in an era that defines urban development as creative, young, and driven by the knowledge economy. Yet, many Canadians now live, work, and play in quite undefined and nondescript middle landscapes where everything seems to happen at once: large-scale infrastructure such as highways and airports next to residential quarters; all manner of service providers, including universities and high-tech industries, adjacent to low-rent apartments; parks and parking lots side by side; high-speed highways and transit deserts occupying the same space; religious mega-­structures and ethnic mini-malls facing each other across the street (Young, Burke Wood, & Keil, 2011). Third: The political balance between regionalization and redistribution has been upset as aggressive suburban regimes have come to power regionally or even federally in Canada, using their political base to fundamentally shift the meaning of metropolitan politics. At the same time, suburban regimes in communities around Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are developing a decidedly autonomous set of strategies to make their mark in an increasingly competitive global city environment. At first glance, this suburban resurgence in metropolitan politics seems to represent a throwback to earlier periods of regional regulation; however, closer inspection reveals a

84  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

new set of political circumstances that have to do with the maturing of a largely suburbanized Canadian urban region and new modes of multilevel governance. As suburban local administrations have gained more autonomy and influence on a metropolitan scale, some of them have also become hotbeds of political and fiscal impropriety, as has been seen recently in revelations about conflicts of interest, graft, and corruption in peripheral localities such as Laval (Quebec), Mississauga and Vaughan (Ontario), and Surrey (British Columbia). The causes are numerous, but the relatively limited media coverage of suburban politics may account for the apparent lack of accountability of some political leaders in suburban localities. Suburbanization: A Reality in Search of a Concept While suburbanization has exploded in Canada in recent decades, the conceptual development needed to explain the phenomenon has barely kept pace and has given a certain “epistemological fragility … [to] the term ‘suburb’” (Vaughan, Griffiths, Haklay, & Jones, 2009: 475). Although no one in Canada has claimed that “there is no longer such a thing as suburbanization” (Dear & Dahmann, 2011: 74; see also Soja, 2000), scholars have nevertheless noted that Canadian (sub)urban landscapes are changing (see, for example, Young et al., 2011). Larry Bourne has proposed rethinking the term altogether in order to “reinvent” the suburbs: while suburbs are characterized by “their relative newness, separateness and location,” they are also “evolutionary or transitional in character” (Bourne, 1996: 165; see also Harris & Larkham, 1999; Fiedler & Addie, 2008). Still, Canadian suburbs are normally viewed as distinct from, or peripheral to, the traditional urban core, and much of the research on and the theory and definitions of Canadian suburbs continue to be drawn from or are heavily influenced by the U.S. context (Leone & Carroll, 2010; Lightbody, 1999; Kern, 2005). Canadian suburbs are frequently described in terms of either spatial/geographical boundaries or qualitative differences in lifestyle and values between city/urban core and suburb. Bunting, Walks, and Filion (2004) and Filion, McSpurren, and Bunting (2004) also use CMA classifications that more explicitly identify the jurisdictional definitions of “core area,” “inner city,” “inner suburb,” and “outer suburb.” A “core area” in Canada is defined as “census tracts within two kilometers of the Central Business District (CBD)”; the “inner city” as “housing development before 1946”; the “inner

Suburban Governance in Canada  85

suburb” as “census tracts with housing development between 1946 and 1971”; and, finally, the “outer suburb” as “census tracts with housing development after 1971” (Bunting et al., 2004: 370; Filion et al., 2004: 46–7). Similarly, Walks’s analyses (2004, 2005, 2007, 2008) of the different voting patterns between urban and suburban areas use a jurisdictional or technical definition of the “city,” “inner suburb,” and “outer suburb” based on the CMA classifications used in the Canadian census. Going beyond the conventional definition, however, Walks argues that suburbanization must be understood as a “subset of the urbanization process,” where “[many] of the neighbourhoods that Canadians currently associate with the inner city began as remote residential suburbs that were eventually annexed by the largest and/or oldest municipalities” (Walks, 2007: 162). Further, a suburb is a “brand new form of city with its own internal logic” (Walks, 2007: 163). Suburban-specific strategies and policies such as those outlined by Charney (2005) and Filion (2001) were outnumbered in relation to the strategies or policies that relate to the governance of the urban core, or to the broader regional or metropolitan area. Both the urban core and the larger regional or metropolitan area have more detailed, defined, and distinct policies, especially with regard to regional economic development strategies (Bourne & Simmons, 2003; Shearmur & Doloreux, 2008). Various terms such as “metropolitan region” (Lightbody, 1999; Shearmur, Coffey, Dubé, & Barbonne, 2007), “intrametropolitan” (Shearmur et al., 2007), “urban region” (Bourne & Simmons, 2003), “municipal government” (Lightbody, 1999; Good, 2005; Rose, 2010), “polycentropolis” (Lightbody, 1999, in reference to the city of Edmonton), “urban hierarchy” (Shearmur & Doloreux, 2008), and “urban system” (Bourne & Simmons, 2003) are used in which it is suggested or assumed that the suburb is encapsulated or subsumed within a larger geographical space and/or administrative body of governance. This includes the growth and development of suburban nodes due to “deliberate regionwide planning policies of planned concentration” such as Metroplan in Metropolitan Toronto and the Livable Region Strategy in Greater Vancouver, both in 1976 (Millward, 2008: 622). Urban and Metropolitan Development and the Suburbanization of Canada Suburbanization in Canada has historically been viewed largely as an aspect of more comprehensive urban and metropolitan development

86  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

Figure 4.1: New suburbanism, Richmond, British Columbia. Photo: R. Keil

(Fiedler & Addie, 2008: 7). In the context of regional governance, the suburbs play a particular role in Canada as the real and imagined Other to the assumed normativity of centralized metropolitan development, compact urbanism, and rational distribution of resources across the urban region. In the past – for example, in the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto – suburbanization was considered an inevitable development that had to be financed by concerted metropolitan measures; more recently, however, it has become a problem for which regional solutions must be sought. Paradoxically, the political reining in of suburban sprawl for reasons mostly to do with environmental sustainability, technological efficiency (mobility), and social justice is happening at a time when suburban governmentalities are becoming more prominent in the governance of Canadian urban regions. Partly, this has been contextualized in a series of metropolitan amalgamations, mergers, and consolidations since the 1990s (Boudreau, Hamel, Jouve, & Keil, 2006, 2007; Sancton, 2000). Long-term regional or municipal strategic plans encompassing the greater areas around the cities of Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, and

Suburban Governance in Canada  87

Halifax have all tended to focus on several key elements: environmental conservation (through the designation of natural habitat, agricultural land, and other areas marked for preservation), sustainable development (through, for example, improved or increased transportation options that focus on reducing automobile use or on increasing higher-­ density development in designated areas), and more compact urban forms (through measures such as increasing mixed-used development and focusing on transit-oriented development) (Greater Vancouver Regional District, 1996; Tomalty, 2002; Capital Regional District, 2008; City of Winnipeg, 2010; Halifax Regional Municipality, 2010; Neptis Foundation, 2010; Taylor, 2010). Curbing or managing sprawl, particularly in suburban areas, is a priority in all of these plans, whether this is made explicit or not. The histories of long-term regional or municipal plans, as well as of regional or municipal governing bodies, has also been and continues to be marked by clashes between the interests of the city core and those of the suburbs, particularly in the cases of Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Halifax (see Millward, 2002; Agrell, 2011; Bousquet, 2011; Finhert, 2011; Lett, 2011). Similarly, the Communauté Métropolitaine de Montréal has recently moved towards an affirmative policy to curb sprawl with a plan produced in the spring of 2011 that “has the potential for slowing the march of housing subdivisions ever farther from the island” (Aubin, 2011). It needs to be remembered, though, that suburban expansion and suburban governance occur in an environment where “there is little correspondence between municipal boundaries and the geographic living spaces of urban residents, either as labour or housing markets” (Bourne, Hutton, Shearmur, & Simmons, 2011a: 12; Shearmur & Hutton, 2011). While “the momentum of growth in population, jobs and investments has in many cases shifted decisively from the urban core to the suburbs and beyond to include the ‘peri-urban’ world of the new exurbs” (Bourne et al., 2011a: 12), it is commonly assumed that in this jurisdictional mismatch, “the local government structure in the fringes was not capable of planning for and controlling growth” (Sewell, 2009: 130). The Key Modalities of Suburban Governance: State, Capital, and Private Authoritarian Governance In the following section, we review in more detail the key modalities of suburban governance as proposed by Ekers and colleagues in chapter 1. For an overview of the Canadian case please see table 4.1.

88  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams Table 4.1 Suburban governance in Canada The Canadian Suburb Physical form and characteristics

– – – – – –

– –

–

Single-family homes and tower neighbourhoods Continued sprawl including “new (sub)urbanism” Gated communities not prevalent Variety in built form, class composition, and ethnic diversity In-between cities important new development (Young et al., 2011) Little informality but growing concern about socio-economic segregation, hidden poverty, and weakly developed social service infrastructure Continued suburbanization of major infrastructure functions (road, rail, airports, energy) Commercial and industrial uses dominate large tracts of suburbs (e.g., mega-warehouses, high-tech manufacturing companies, and “lifestyle” malls) Some ecological modernization at the fringes (greenbelts; conservation)

The main debates

– – – – –

Automobile dependency and lack of public transit Urbanization of the suburbs Growing poverty in suburbs Regionalization of the urban-suburban divide Centralized versus polycentric urban imaginary in large regions (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary-Edmonton corridor)

The role of the state

– Federal government promotion of suburban home ownership through mortgage finance insurance (CMHC) – Support by all levels of government for infrastructure that facilitates and accelerates suburbanization and sprawl combined with recent crises of infrastructure financing for rapidly (sub)urbanizing regions – Provincial governments main players in municipal affairs and planning: decades of support for untrammelled growth recently somewhat tempered by growth-control policies – Local states traditionally strongly influenced by the development industry – Property taxes central to development policies and planning in municipalities

The role of the market

– Strong influence of development industry on local and provincial government – Strong continued bias towards (more profitable) sprawling development despite increased government incentives to encourage density – Preference of commercial capital for suburban locations – Immigration and immigrant investment as stimuli of suburbanization

Suburban Governance in Canada  89 Table 4.1 Suburban governance in Canada (cont.) The Canadian Suburb Private authoritarian – Minor role of gating as form of socio-spatial exclusion in modes of governance Canadian suburbs – Neoliberal governmentality based on market individualism widespread and important factor in resisting pressures for collective consumption and provision of other public services in suburbs – Self-selection, market segmentation, and consumer choice in new commerical developments obscure a carefully orchestrated authoritarian, camplike totality that contradicts all traditional notions of urbanity The Canadian way

– High rate of (sub)urbanization – Regional character – Internal differentiation (in a federalist context) but remarkable similarities across the nation’s (sub)urban reach – Suburbanization as a major influence on the rescaling and shifting of responsibilities across a multilevel governance structure

The State In Canada, the establishment of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) laid the institutional, infrastructural, and political-­ economic groundwork for an extensive suburbanization process that resulted in sprawling subdivisions of single-family homes built predominantly through the private sector. Some have even argued that the state, rather than centre-oriented development and real estate capital, was the prime force contributing to sprawl (Solomon, 2007). An influential new study based on neoclassical economics has argued that the collusion of state fiscal arrangements and private decisions in the marketplace has created a “perverse” situation in which the actual price of suburban sprawl is not reflected in the development process (Blais, 2010). Yet one also finds (local) state-initiated planning for dense high-rise housing on the peripheries of cities, most predominantly in metropolitan Toronto. The main source of revenue for Canadian municipalities is the property tax. To build infrastructure and manage public services, municipalities must necessarily rely on a local base of assessed properties. In  addition to measures dedicated to improving organizational effi­ ciencies, two main paths for raising revenues are available to elected

90  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

officials: raising property taxes (which is never popular) and/or promoting urban development to increase the tax base. Most of the time it is the second avenue that is preferred. An example of the resulting patterns of suburban development and pressure may be seen in Winnipeg, where a pro-business city council and mayor support the agendas of developers through policies such as freezing property taxes and favouring new-built sprawl over infill or densification (Milgrom, 2011). The consequences are multiple. In all Canadian regions – even though the federal state is not totally absent – the provincial tier has the jurisdiction to regulate the implementation and expansion of local public services. But going back to 1973 and the oil crisis – when Western economies experienced a severe recession – the upper tiers of Canadian governments started to cut their grants to municipalities for building infrastructure and managing public services. As well, while planned mixed-use centres in the Toronto region – such as North York, Scarborough, and Mississauga – were meant to reduce suburban reliance on the car and to intensify urban development in order to control suburban sprawl, local administrations have often been reluctant to push for suburban redesign, fearing loss of investment in a neoliberal fiscal environment and competition with the central city and other municipalities for investment dollars (Filion, 2001: 156; Filion, 2000). We now turn to a review of the impact of mortgage financing, state transportation policies, and taxation on the suburbanization of Canada. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) In the decades that followed the Second World War, the policies of the federal Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CHMC) played an important role in setting the foundation for suburban growth. To a great extent, the CMHC’s actions in these decades can be understood in the context of a severe housing shortage and the desire by all governments to construct as many dwelling units as possible. The CMHC acted as the fountainhead of federal government policies on the role of the private sector in providing and designing new housing. Although the CMHC’s role in housing policy is considerably reduced from what it was in the 1950s and 1960s, the legacy of its policies in this period is still seen in suburban subdivisions across Canada. Very much in line with policies in other countries in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of housing governance, the CMHC promoted mass home ownership by facilitating the emergence of institutional lenders, especially

Suburban Governance in Canada  91

Figure 4.2  New subdivision, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Photo: R. Keil

Figure 4.3  Square One, Mississauga, Ontario. Photo: R. Keil

92  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

chartered banks, in the mortgage market. This contributed to move a part of home construction away from piecemeal projects undertaken by small developers or owners to large-scale projects completed by big development firms. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, Canadians relied heavily on savings or loans from private individuals to finance home construction or purchases. The impact of the CMHC’s efforts to encourage the development of an institutionalized mortgage market can be observed in two ways. First, the insurance scheme first introduced in the Dominion Housing Act and continued in the National Housing Act applied only to newly constructed homes because it was easier to control standards of construction. Second, the CMHC promoted and even funded home construction in remote areas that had previously been ignored by developers (Harris and Ragonetti, 1998; Harris, 2003). This institutionalization of mortgage lending was accompanied by the rise of developers undertaking larger projects, capitalizing on the increasing demand for homes and the ability of Canadians to purchase them. In the 1950s, land development in many Canadian cities began to be concentrated in the hands of a few developers (Harris, 2004). A typical practice was to assemble massive plots of land in the rural areas surrounding a city and hold them for future development (Linteau, 1987). These large lots allowed developers to leverage their economies of scale – an option that was especially important given the strict construction standards set by the CMHC. The CMHC also influenced suburban growth through its implementation of design standards. In the days when Canadians were funding the construction of their own homes, they had the ability to build modest dwellings and expand them over time. Also, these small homes emerged because building code regulations were sparse, and not rigorously enforced (Harris, 1996). This would change after the war, when owner-­ constructed homes were held to national building standards. Overall, these standards favoured larger, detached homes (Doucet & Weaver, 1991). For municipal governments, there was a strong incentive to integrate these rules: subdivisions and houses not constructed to these standards would not qualify for CMHC mortgage insurance and therefore would not be considered by institutional lenders (Harris, 2004). Finally, the CMHC can be linked to suburban development via its promotion of zoning in land-use planning. The federal government had encouraged the use of zoning as early as 1944. The National Housing Act of 1944 contained provisions for joint lending from the federal government and financial institutions to homeowners or builders. The

Suburban Governance in Canada  93

amortization period for these loans was typically twenty years, but this could be extended to thirty years if the home was located in an area that had zoning (Oberlander & Fallick, 1992). When insurance companies were encouraged to return to the mortgage market after the Second World War, they brought with them demands that zoning be used to protect their investments. The CMHC worked closely with these private firms to pressure municipalities into adopting zoning, particularly in places that were unattractive to investment (Bacher, 1993). Conse­ quently, new subdivisions emphasized single-use, standardized suburban forms. Infrastructure The history of suburban governance in Canada has been defined by an ongoing battle between different levels of government – federal, provincial, and local or municipal – in terms of the responsibility and impetus for policy and planning initiatives and for the provision of infrastructure and public services, as well as by competition between public sector actors such as government and private sector actors such as property developers (Frisken, 2007; Sewell, 2009). Suburban expansion, metropolitan economies, and household choice were entangled in a complex narrative of modernization that was projected onto large infras­ tructure developments such as the Gardiner and Allen Expressways in Toronto or the Turcot Interchange, the Décarie Expressway, and the Eastern Townships Autoroute in Montreal (Poitras, 2011). Suburban growth in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), as well as dispersion and sprawl, could not have taken place without the development of infrastructure such as roads and expressways, public transit, sewage systems, and waterworks, in conjunction with the availability of cheap land and suburban land-use planning (Sewell, 2009; Filion, 2000). In particular, the so-called Big Pipe trunk sewer beyond the metropolitan boundaries of Toronto opened up huge areas north of the city to suburban tract development. Suburban development could not have occurred without investments in transportation infrastructure by the federal government. Normally responsible for seaports and airports, but also for highways and major bridges, the federal government also shared responsibilities with provinces and municipalities in urban infrastructure development. Both Ontario and British Columbia have built substantial commuter rail systems. Ontario has GO Transit, an extensive commuter rail

94  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

network serving mainly suburban Toronto; British Columbia also has invested heavily in commuter rail from the Vancouver suburbs to the city core (the West Coast Express), has expanded its existing light rapid transit, and has developed more flexible bus routes (Meligrana, 1999; Washbrook, Haider, & Jaccard, 2006). Despite these measures, however, transit use in these metropolitan areas has increased only slightly in the last ten years, leading to demands for road pricing and other measures to recover a greater proportion of transportation costs from users (Washbrook et al., 2006). The continuing decline in financial support from federal and provincial governments has forced local governments to scramble to find ways to pay for and manage the costs of public services. While this has been done primarily through taxation of the local base, municipal governments and residents have frequently objected to having local taxes used for regional purposes that do not serve their specific needs. In the face of the frequent failure of municipal governments to coordinate their plans, provincial governments have been the most effective actors in the delivery of infrastructure. In an increasingly neoliberal financial environment, however, provincial governments have become more focused on promoting growth through encouraging development and investment rather than on managing growth and sprawl. Moreover, federal and provincial governments are also increasingly less willing to spend money on infrastructure, shifting their focus to other priorities such as healthcare and security (Frisken, 2001, 2007; Sewell, 2009). Jurisdictional issues are a key reason why insufficient attention is paid to the building and maintenance of infrastructure. The municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was created in 1954 with a governance structure controlling land use, development, and infrastructure for the expanding region. By the 1970s, the City of Toronto had grown beyond its borders and had fractured into regional municipalities, ending coordinated planning and transportation governance (Kennedy, Miller, Shalaby, MacLean, & Coleman, 2005; Frisken, 2007; Sewell, 2009). The outer suburbs in the GTA were opposed to all forms of centralized metropolitan government, so four regional governments, or “suburban metros,” were set up instead (Filion, 2000). Municipalities located at the northern suburban end of Montreal were also unwilling to be included in a metropolitan planning agency (created by metropolitan reform in 2000) out of reluctance either to pay for infrastructure that did not meet the needs of their residents or to share the costs of maintaining or improving services in the central city (Hamel, 2001).

Suburban Governance in Canada  95

Many major cities in Canada have, at some point in their history, had a coordinated metropolitan or regional governance strategy that included responsibility for infrastructure both within the city core and on the suburban fringes. The former Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) – now Metro Vancouver – was a federation of twenty municipalities and two electoral districts in charge of water and sewage, regional hospital planning, and strategic land-use planning. Transpor­ tation, however, was not included in its mandate. In the case of the GTA, the fringe areas outside Toronto grew so rapidly that the province intervened directly to ensure the delivery of water and sewage services. The rationale was that local governments could provide more efficient governance through regionalized property tax development and financing, as well as having more local autonomy. However, while the provincial government assumed responsibility for regional transportation (GO Transit), highways, and water and sewage infrastructure, the local government’s main function was to process development applications for growth (Sewell, 2009). Capital Accumulation In many cases, entire city councils have facilitated the enrichment of particular speculative growth-machine entrepreneurs, as MacDermid (2009) has found, for example, in the case of Toronto. The continual downloading of both fiscal responsibility and service provision by both the federal and provincial governments has prompted local and municipal governments to turn increasingly to the private sector to help finance public services and infrastructure projects (Frisken, 2007; Sewell, 2009). Development charges collected by municipal governments have been used to help pay for capital costs, as a result of the increasing tendency of senior governments, not just in Ontario but across Canada, to offload service provision to the municipal level (Tomalty & Skaburskis, 2003: 158). Before 1989, Ontario municipalities negotiated with developers to produce site-specific levies, such as for subdivision growth and development; but since 1989, municipalities under the Development Charges Act (DCA) have adopted bylaws requiring property owners to pay for their own costs associated with growth. The DCA lays out areas – for example, “hard infrastructure” such as sewers and roads, and “soft infras­tructure” such as fire stations and extensions to municipal administrative buildings – in which developers can be charged because the

96  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

original site-specific charge system was seen by many municipalities to provide inadequate revenues to cover the residual costs associated with growth (Tomalty & Skaburskis, 2003: 46). Despite a growing web of regulations in various parts of Canada designed to rein in suburban sprawl by biasing capital cost towards higher-density mixed-use development, capital has continued to benefit from building sprawl. The underpricing of the actual costs of urban goods and services (such as energy) has led many developers to take advantage of cheap abundant land on the remoter outskirts, and homeowners to choose larger parcels of land to purchase, exacerbating the trend to low-density development in suburban areas (Vojnovic, 1999). Both municipal administrations and private developers have played a large part in determining the success of plans: a combination of willingness to cater to the needs of private capital investment by municipal administrations and a preference for traditional low-density suburban models on the part of private developers has ensured that, despite planning initiatives, widespread reliance on the car continues. Locational decisions by commercial capital play into the preference for suburban locations. Office space was concentrated in the central business district (CBD) in Toronto until the 1980s, when, facilitated by the construction of new highways and arterial roads, the construction of office space outside the CBD exceeded that within it (Charney 2005: 474). The creation of “office parks” and “suburban city centres” resulted from planning policies in which developers took advantage of the cheaper land and lower taxes outside Metropolitan Toronto, as well as the rapid population expansion in suburban Toronto municipalities (Charney, 2005: 476–7). Public-private partnerships play an increasingly significant role in the general planning and management of metropolitan regions and in the production and delivery of urban infrastructure services. Historical­ ly, infrastructure projects were defined, delineated, and tendered by the public sector. Private companies would then respond and produce the required infrastructure, which was then managed by public sector employees. During the 1980s, restrictions on public spending led governments to experiment with new forms of relationships with the private sector, which was increasingly given a greater role in conceptualizing, funding, and managing public infrastructures (Siemiatycki, 2006). Within the context of governance, the increased use of partnerships with the private sector to finance urban infrastructure has introduced a “financialisation” of the urban landscape (Torrance, 2008). In fact, the

Suburban Governance in Canada  97

infrastructure financed by international interests is often embedded in global networks (Torrance, 2008: 2). The ensuing governance consequences can be described in terms of deterritorializing practices. Local spaces are submitted to an economic and financial rationale that has nothing to do with community needs. Examples of this type of development are suburban toll highways on the outskirts of city-regions, such as Highway 407 in southern Ontario – projects that are seen as an effective means of managing transportation congestion while providing an injection of extra cash to alleviate the budget problems faced by city-regions (Torrance, 2008). Private Authoritarian Governance With every gated community or similar form of settlement (such as the condominium) (Lehrer & Wieditz, 2009), a new culture of governance is sanctioned in which affluent or culturally distinct groups sequester themselves from others, and from the state. There is no question that gating, which “always represents a spatial strategy for managing difference” (Rosen & Grant, 2011: 780), has been the most visible and analysed form of authoritarian governance in suburbanization processes around the world. In Canada, however, gated communities are perceived as a marker of difference rather than a security feature: “Residential environments are generally perceived as safe and open. In the Canadian context, where gated communities appear, they have limited security functions; rather, they represent lifestyle choices and mark social status” (Rosen & Grant, 2011: 780). Religion and social class are dominant markers of difference in urban and suburban communities, and their gated status is perceived as a means to “enhance property values and project attractiveness” (Rosen & Grant, 2011: 786). In gated communities in Canada (as opposed to other areas in the world), the cooperation is solely with private development capital. The state is not involved in building residential enclaves designed to separate people from one another. In the perception of the builders of spatially separated communities, the goal is privacy and lifestyle choice (often mediated through affordability, as in the case of remote retirement communities) rather than segregation (Rosen & Grant, 2011: 787). It is therefore not unusual to find gated communities in tourist areas and in regions that cater to a specific clientele such as pensioners. An important and growing role in producing privatized suburban environments is played by commercial capital, which claims an increasing

98  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

amount of space for often self-policed and entirely privatized corporate landscapes of shopping and entertainment. The Toronto-area-based company Smart Centres now controls huge developments – typically on the outskirts of major centres – into which specially created shopping environments are integrated (Lorinc, 2011). Similarly, “lifestyle” shopping malls such as Dix30 on the South Shore of Montreal combine professional sports and entertainment facilities with high-end shops, body culture emporia (spas and hot yoga studios), and upper-­middle-class housing in an almost seamless display of conspicuous consumption. All of this is offered as the product of self-selection and market segmentation where efficiencies of proximity and mobility and ideological markers of consumer choice hide a carefully orchestrated, authoritarian, camplike totality that contradicts all traditional notions of urbanity. The Legacy of the Past and the Challenges Ahead: Governing Post-Suburbia This is not to say that segregation is not a problem in suburban Canada. The site of expansion of the new economy and the residence of often newly immigrated middle-class populations involved in the enterprises of that economy (in close proximity with its counterpart in the increasingly gentrified and suburbanized inner city), the suburbs have also recently become a problematic space in terms of socio-economic development. Concerns about ghettoization, long-term impoverishment, and social polarization are focused particularly on the so-called old or inner suburbs, the mix of bungalows and high rises around the historical core of many Canadian cities. These areas are the literal “in-between cities” – situated between the glamour zones of the wealthy exurbs and the “creative” downtown (Young et al., 2011). For example, a “third city” has arisen in Toronto in which the majority of residents have experienced a drop in household income in absolute terms but particularly in relation to the sharp rise of wealth in other parts of the city. Not incidentally, this third city almost spatially overlaps with the swath of post-Second World War suburban development that rings the former inner city of Toronto (Hulchanski, 2010). A host of controversial new territorial and space-based policies have been put into place as communities struggle to react to the difficulties they encounter as new immigration, tenant status, and racialization combine to create a systemically and structurally excluded suburban population. Among these policies have been the designation of priority

Suburban Governance in Canada  99

Figure 4.4  Quartier Dix30 Suburban Lifetyle Centre, Brossard, Quebec. Photo: R. Keil

neighbourhoods and a program for Tower Renewal directed at the decaying large-scale housing stock in the older suburbs, as well as emerging transit schemes aimed at integrating these areas. These policies, whose aim is to counteract the ongoing decay of social infrastructure in the inner suburbs, are monitored and assisted by the concerted efforts of neighbourhood community organizations such as the Store­front in the Kingston-Galloway district of Scarborough in eastern Toronto (Cowen & Parlette, 2011). The new public policies and civic actions associated with suburban social exclusion in Canada have introduced an innovative style of governance that is at odds with the more typical development- and growth-oriented forms of governance in Canadian suburbs. As new forms of privatized self-sequestration are taking hold in condo-dominated Canadian downtowns and lifestyle-oriented suburban developments, the declining in-between suburbs are commanding more attention from policy makers, planners, and political activists. The suburban landscape of today is necessarily influenced by the suburban model of yesterday. In many ways, the new suburban trends

100  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

are affected by how metropolitan areas have been shaped by past cultural influences and needs. It is important to understand that the historical trajectory of suburban governance in Canada in the twentieth century moved from low levels of state regulation and high social diversity to high levels of state regulation and increased homogeneity – at  least until the recent emergence of a trend towards more mixed developments and high levels of social, economic, and cultural diversity in metropolitan suburbs on the periphery. As Richard Harris contends, while peri-urban neighbourhoods, homes, and lifestyles have been described by many observers as demographically homogeneous, such a view conceals the subtleties and diversity characterizing twentieth- and twenty-first-century suburbs and suburban life (Harris, 2004: 25). More precisely, suburbs should be considered as a source of heterogeneity (Harris, 2004: 119). Diversity is also expressed through the configuration of social classes. Suburbs were not and are not inhabited exclusively by middle-class households. Poorer workers and immigrants, attracted by the liberal representation of home ownership, do not hesitate to buy or build homes by themselves on the periphery of city centres, or to organize home-buying along ethnic lines, contributing to suburban expansion (Harris, 2004; Teixeira, 2006). We also know that the more uniform postwar suburbs did not always attract only buyers from similar backgrounds – a fact that has contributed to the diversity of the current suburban landscape. It is true that we can find suburbs that are affluent enclaves – such as Westmount in Montreal or other suburbs in the western part of the Island of Montreal. But this is not the prevailing model. The absence of regulations early on has clearly contributed to the production of a diversified suburban landscape. When affluent enclaves were built, the relative lack of regulation enabled local communities to create a model that reflected their values and aspirations. Conclusion: Is There a Canadian Way? The foregoing is a broad-brush picture of the landscape of suburban governance in Canada. Guided by Ekers and colleagues (see chapter 1 in this volume), we have described the modalities of the state, capital accumulation, and authoritarian governance in the light of recent Canadian trends (diversity, neoliberalization, and suburban hegemony). We have elaborated on the terminological diversity (or chaos) characterizing descriptions of the “suburbs” in Canada. We have explained

Suburban Governance in Canada  101

the governance of suburbanization in the context of metropolitan development and the federalist state architecture of Canada, and have highlighted the particular importance of property tax regimes. We have provided detailed discussions of housing and infrastructure as sectors of suburban governance, outlined the emerging socio-economic and ­socio-spatial polarizations shaping Canadian suburban landscapes, and speculated on how they might be governed in future. Canadian suburbs have been shaped by a multiplicity of factors. The absence of state regulation, the role of federal and provincial governments in supporting access to direct and indirect home ownership, the availability of inexpensive land for suburban expansion, and the irrepressible desire of workers for access to home ownership have all driven suburban expansion and contributed to its diversity. After the Second World War, with a new wave of suburbanization, suburban municipalities had to contribute to metropolitan governance. As urban issues were increasingly defined on a metropolitan scale, suburbs were involved in decisions regarding transportation, housing, and economic development that affected whole city-regions. Thus, the representation of conformity used to define suburbia is necessarily outdated. Within the new context of suburban governance, the priority given to economic and financial concerns raises new challenges for public authorities. What is distinctive about Canadian suburban governance may be its regional character and its increasing departure from both European and American models. It is important to keep in mind not only that Canada is now strongly urbanized but also that the concentration of population in metropolitan areas has become the rule. Data from the 2006 Census show not only that the majority of the Canadian popu­ lation lives in metropolitan areas but also that it is significantly con­ centrated in the largest city-regions (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa-Gatineau, and Calgary). In fact, as of 2006, “more than 40 per cent reside in the five largest city-regions” (Bourne, Hutton, Shearmur, & Simmons, 2011b: 7). In addition, if we compare the Windsor-Quebec City corridor – which includes “Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Kingston, Petersborough, Oshawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, St Catharines and London” (Hiller, 2010a: 28) – with Canada as a whole, the concentration of the population in this area is even more remarkable: “More than half of the population of Canada resides in this corridor, and seven out of 10 manufacturing jobs in the country are located there …” (Hiller, 2010a: 28). This population concentration and the rising power of metropolitan regions throughout the country are

102  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams

critically important features of the new urban landscape of Canada. There is now a truly Canadian story developing from coast to coast that is both internally differentiated (in a federalist context) and also remarkably similar across the nation. Cities, regions, and their suburbs are now recognized as central to the governance of the vast territory that is Canada. The current push in Canada for regional forms of regulation can be understood as a form of state rescaling (Boudreau et al., 2006, 2007). In the context of the neoliberalization and globalization of Canadian territorial government, local and regional modes of governance are assuming new responsibilities. This has to do with interurban and interregional competition for investment and labour (Florida, 2002), with infrastructure provision (Young et al., 2011), and with the need to establish an institutional framework to deal with post-welfare state issues of social, economic, cultural, and environmental regulation. While the debate on rescaling looks at broader dimensions of social institutions in a changing global geography (Keil & Mahon, 2009), the literature on multilevel governance (Piattoni, 2010) has specifically dealt with the ways in which government distributes responsibilities in federal states. Suburbanization plays a major part in the rescaling and shifting of responsibilities across a multilevel governance structure. The push into new, often sprawling, suburban peripheries, even in slow-growth cities like Winnipeg, is linked to the expansion of the so-called new economy. The suburban way of life has become the standard for the new metropolitan normal, with consequences for the overall course of policy in an environment of continued devolution, austerity, and state restraint. In this context, it is ever more questionable whether Canadian municipalities and regional institutions have the capacity to deal with the challenges of immigration, poverty, exclusion, and environmental sustainability that accompany the continued push for suburban expansion. REFERENCES Agrell, S. (2011). Winnipeg rethinks suburban sprawl with downtown reinvention Retrieved from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/timeto-lead/winnipeg-rethinks-suburban-sprawl-with-downtown-reinvention/ article4247832/#dashboard/follows/. Aubin, H. (2011). Finally, a serious proposal to limit sprawl around Montreal. The Gazette, 3 May. Retrieved from: http://www2.canada.com/

Suburban Governance in Canada  103 montrealgazette/columnists/story.html?id=0a3dcb2f-6f7e-​454d-9e1627325b981b16 Bacher, J. (1993). Keeping to the marketplace: The evolution of Canadian housing policy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Blais, P. (2010). Perverse cities: Hidden subsidies, wonky policy, and urban sprawl. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Boudreau, J.-A., Hamel, P., Jouve, B., & Keil, R. (2006). Comparing metropolitan governance: The cases of Montréal and Toronto. Progress in Planning, 66(1), 7–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2006.07.005. Boudreau, J.-A., Hamel, P., Jouve, B., & Keil, R. (2007). New state spaces in Canada: Metropolitanisation in Montreal and Toronto compared. Urban Geography, 28(1), 30–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.28.1.30. 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. Bourne, L.S., Hutton, T., Shearmur, R.G., & Simmons, J. (Eds.). (2011a). Canadian urban regions: Trajectories of growth and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourne, L.S., Hutton, T., Shearmur, R.G., & Simmons, J. (2011b). Introduction and overview: Growth and change in Canadian cities. In L.S. Bourne, T. Hutton, R.G. Shearmur, & J. Simmons (Eds), Canadian urban regions: Trajectories of growth and change (2–18). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourne, L.S., & Simmons, J. (2003). New fault lines? Recent trends in the Canadian urban systems and their implications for planning and public policy. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 12(1), 22. Bousquet, T. (2011). Business as usual: Subsidizing suburban sprawl. Retrieved from: http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/ archives/2011/01/17/business-as-usual-subsidizing-suburban-sprawl. Bunting, T., Walks, A., & Filion, P. (2004). The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas. Housing Studies, 19(3), 361–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267303042000204287. Capital Regional District (2008). State of the region report: 2008 regional growth strategy five-year monitoring review. Retrieved from: https://www​ .crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/regional-planning-pdf/RGS/2008-stateof-the-region-report.pdf?sfvrsn=0 Charney, I. (2005). Re-examining suburban dispersal: Evidence from suburban Toronto. Journal of Urban Affairs, 27(5), 467–84. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1111/j.0735-2166.2005.00248.x. City of Winnipeg. (2010). Our Winnipeg. It’s our city, our plan, our time. Retrieved from: http://www.winnipeg.ca/ppd/planning.stm.

104  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams Cowen, D., & Parlette, V. (2011). Toronto’s inner suburbs: Investing in social infrastructure. Toronto: Cities Centre, University of Toronto. Dear, M., & Dahmann, N. (2011). Urban politics and the Los Angeles school of urbanism. In D.R. Judd & D. Simpson (Eds), The city revisited: Urban theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York (65–78). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Doucet, M., & Weaver, J. (1991). Housing the North American city. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., and Keil, R. (2015). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. In this volume. Fiedler, R., & Addie, J.-P. (2008). Canadian cities on the edge: Reassessing the Canadian suburb. The City Institute at York University (CITY), Occasional Paper, accessed 30 January 2009. Available at: http://www.yorku.ca/city/ Publications/OccasionalPapers/index.html. Filion, P. (2000). Balancing concentration and dispersion? Public policy and urban structure in Toronto. Environment and Planning. C, Government & Policy, 18(2), 163–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/c2m. Filion, P. (2001). Suburban mixed-use centres and urban dispersion: What difference do they make? Environment & Planning A, 33(1), 141–60. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1068/a3375. Filion, P., Bunting, T., McSpurren, K., & Tse, A. (2004). Canada-US metropolitan density patterns: Zonal convergence and divergence. Urban Geography, 25(1), 42–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.25.1.42. Finhert, D. (2011). Halifax businesses to curb sprawl. Retrieved from: http:// city.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/file_Canadian_Cities_ on_the_Edge-.pdf. Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books. Frisken, F. (2001). The Toronto story: Sober reflections on fifty years of experiments with regional governance. Journal of Urban Affairs, 23(5), 513–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0735-2166.00104. Frisken, F. (2007). The public metropolis: The political dynamics of urban expansion in the Toronto region. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Good, K. (2005). Patterns of politics in Canada’s immigrant-receiving cities and suburbs: How immigrant settlement patterns shape the municipal role in multiculturalism policy. Policy Studies, 26(3-4), 3–4. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1080/01442870500198312. Graham, K.A., Phillips, S.A., & Maslove, M.A. (1998). Urban governance in Canada: Representation, resources and restructuring. Toronto: Harcourt Brace. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203452202.

Suburban Governance in Canada  105 Greater Vancouver Regional District. (1996). Livable region strategic plan. Retrieved from: http://www.metrovancouver.org/planning/development/ strategy/RGSDocs/RGSAdoptedbyGVRDBoardJuly292011.pdf. Halifax Regional Municipality. (2010). Regional municipal planning strategy. Retrieved from: http://www.halifax.ca/planning/documents/Halifax_ MPS.pdf. Hamel, P. (2001). Enjeux métropolitains: Les nouveaux défis. International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue Internationale d’Études Canadiennes, 24(Automne), 105–27. Harris, R. (1996). Unplanned suburbs: Toronto’s American tragedy, 1900 to 1950. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harris, R. (2003). From “black-balling” to “marking”: The suburban origin of redlining in Canada, 1930s–1950s. Canadian Geographer / Le géographe canadien, 47(3), 338–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1541-0064.0002. Harris, R. (2004). Creeping conformity: How Canada became suburban, 1900–1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Harris, R., & Larkham, P.J. (1999). Suburban foundation, form and function. In R. Harris & P.J. Larkham (Eds), Changing suburbs: Suburban foundation, form and function (1–31). London: E & FN Spon. Harris, R., & Ragonetti, D. (1998). Where credit is due: Residential mortgage finance in Canada, 1901 to 1954. Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 16(2), 223–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1007712002879. Hiller, H.H. (2010a). The dynamics of Canadian urbanization. In H.H. Hiller (Ed.), Urban Canada (2nd ed.: 19–39). Don Mills: Oxford University Press. Hiller, H.H. (2010b). Introduction: Urbanization and the city. In H.H. Hiller (Ed.), Urban Canada (2nd ed.: xii–xxi). Don Mills: Oxford University Press. Hulchanski, D. (2010). The three cities within Toronto. Income polarization among Toronto’s neighbourhoods, 1970–2005. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Keil, R. (2011a). Global suburbanization: The challenge of researching cities in the 21st century. Public, 43, 54–61. Keil, R. (2011b). Suburbanization and global cities. In B. Derudder, M. Hoyler, P.J. Taylor, & F. Witlox (Eds), International handbook of globalization and world cities (408–17). London: Edward Elgar. http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/​ 9781781001011.00050. Keil, R., & Mahon, R. (2009). Leviathan undone? Towards a political economy of scale. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Keil, R., & Young, D. (2011). Post-suburbia and city-region politics. In N.A. Phelps & F. Wu (Eds), International pespectives on suburbanization: A postsuburban world? (54–78). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi .org/10.1057/9780230308626.0011.

106  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams Kennedy, C.A., Miller, E., Shalaby, A., MacLean, H., & Coleman, J. (2005). The four pillars of sustainable urban transportation. Transport Reviews, 25(4), 393–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01441640500115835. Kern, L. (2005). In place and at home in the city: Connecting privilege, safety and belonging for women in Toronto. Gender, Place and Culture, 12(3), 357–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09663690500202590. Lehrer, U., and Wieditz, T. (2009). Condominium development and gentrification: The relationship between policies, building activities and socioeconomic development in Toronto. Canadian Planning and Policy – Aménagement et politique au Canada, 18(1), 140–61. Leone, R., & Carroll, B. (2010). Decentralization and devolution in Canadian social housing policy. Environment and Planning C, 28(3), 389–404. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1068/c09153. Lett, D. (2011). Council can stop suburban sprawl, but won’t. Retrieved from: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/council-can-stop-suburbansprawl-but-wont-122490733.html. Lightbody, J. (1999). Canada’s seraglio cities: Political barriers to regional governance. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 24(2), 175. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.2307/3341728. Linteau, P. (1987). Canadian suburbanization in a North American context: Does the border make a difference? Journal of Urban History, 13(3), 252–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009614428701300304. Lorinc, J. (2011). Mr. SmartCentres, Mitch Goldhar, gives Canadians what they want. The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine, 27 October. Available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/ mr-smartcentres-mitch-goldhar-gives-canadians-what-they-want/ article559464/?page=all. MacDermid, R. (2009). Funding city politics. The CSJ Foundation for Research and Education. Toronto: Centre for Social Justice and Vote Toronto. Meligrana, J.F. (1999). Toward regional transportation governance: A case study of Greater Vancouver. Transportation, 26(4), 359–98. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1023/A:1005231322989. Milgrom, R. (2011). Slow growth versus the sprawl machine: Winnipeg, Manitoba. In D. Young, P. Burke Wood, & R. Keil (Eds), In-between infrastructure: Urban connectivity in an age of vulnerability (138–63). Kelowna, BC: Praxis e-press. Millward, H. (2002). Peri-urban residential development in the Halifax region 1960–2000: Magnets, constraints, and planning policies. Canadian Geographer / Le géographe canadien, 46(1), 33–47. http://dx.doi.org/​10.1111/j.15410064.2002.tb00729.x.

Suburban Governance in Canada  107 Millward, H. (2008). Evolution of population densities: Five Canadian cities, 1971–2001. Urban Geography, 29(7), 616–38. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.2747/0272-3638.29.7.616. Neptis Foundation. (2010). Growing cities: Comparing urban growth patterns and regional growth policies in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto: The Neptis Foundation. Oberlander, P.H., & Fallick, A.L. (1992). Housing a nation: The evolution of Canadian housing policy. Vancouver, BC: Centre for Human Settlements for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Peck, J. (2015). Chicago-school suburbanism. In this volume. Piattoni, S. (2010). The theory of multi-level governance: Conceptual, empirical and normative challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199562923.001.0001. Poitras, C. (2011). A city on the move: The surprising consequences of highways. In S. Castonguay and M. Dagenais (Eds), Metropolitan natures: Environmental histories of Montreal (168–186). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Rose, D. (2010). Local state policy and “new-build gentrification” in Montreal: The role of the “population factor” in a fragmented governance context. Population Space and Place, 16(5): 413–28. Rosen, G., & Grant, J. (2011). Reproducing difference: Gated communities in Canada and Israel. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(4), 778–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00981.x. Sancton, A. (2000). Merger mania: The assault on local government. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Sewell, J. (2009). The shape of the suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s sprawl. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Shearmur, R., Coffey, W., Dubé, C., & Barbonne, R. (2007). Intrametropolitan employment structure: Polycentricity, scatteration, dispersal and chaos in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, 1996–2001. Urban Studies, 44(9), 1713–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980701426640. Shearmur, R., & Doloreux, D. (2008). Urban hierarchy or local buzz? Highorder producer service and (or) knowledge-intensive business service location in Canada, 1991–2001. Professional Geographer, 60(3), 333–55. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00330120801985661. Shearmur, R., & Hutton, T. (2011). Canada’s changing city-regions: The expanding metropolis. In L.S. Bourne, T. Hutton, R.G. Shearmur, & J. Simmons (Eds), Canadian urban regions: Trajectories of growth and change (99–124). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siemiatycki, M. (2006). Implications of private-public partnerships on the development of urban public transit infrastructure – The case of Vancouver,

108  Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Elena Chou, and Kieran Williams Canada. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 26(2), 137–51. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1177/0739456X06291390. Soja, E.W. (2000). Postmetropolis: Critical studies of cities and regions. Oxford: Blackwell. Solomon, L. (2007). Toronto sprawls. A history. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Taylor, Z. (2010). Review of regional governance and planning in the three regions. In Neptis Foundation (Ed.), Growing cities: Comparing urban growth patterns and regional growth polices in Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver (55–74). Toronto: Neptis Foundation. Teaford, J. (2011). Suburbia and post-suburbia: A brief history. In N.A. Phelps & F. Wu. (Eds), International pespectives on suburbanization: A post-suburban world? (15–34). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1057/9780230308626.0009. Teixeira, C. (2006). A comparative study of Portuguese homebuyers’ suburbanization in the Toronto and Montreal Areas. Retrieved from: http://eps​ .revues.org/1025. Tomalty, R. (2002). Growth management in the Vancouver region. Local Environment, 7(4), 431–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354983022000027536. Tomalty, R., & Skaburskis, A. (2003). Development charges and city planning objectives: The Ontario disconnect. Joint issue: Canadian Planning and Policy. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 12, 142–61. Torrance, M.I. (2008). Forging global governance? Urban infrastructures as networked financial products. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(1), 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00756.x. United Way Toronto. (2011). Vertical poverty. Poverty by postal code 2. Toronto: United Way. Vaughan, L., Griffiths, G., Haklay, M., & Jones, C.E. (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. Vojnovic, I. (1999). The environmental costs of modernism. An assessment of Canadian cities. Cities, 16(5), 301–313. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S02642751(99)00028-1. Walks, R.A. (2004). Place of residence, party preferences, and political attitudes in Canadian cities and suburbs. Journal of Urban Affairs, 26(3), 269–95. Walks, R.A. (2005). The city-suburban cleavage in Canadian federal policy. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 38(2), 383–413. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1017/S0008423905030842.

Suburban Governance in Canada  109 Walks, R.A. (2007). The boundaries of suburban discontent? Urban definitions and neighbourhood political effects. Canadian Geographer / Le géographe canadien, 51(2), 160–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.2007.00172.x. Walks, R.A. (2008). Urban form, everyday life, and ideology: Support for privatization in three Toronto neighbourhoods. Environment & Planning A, 40(2), 258–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a3948. Washbrook, K., Haider, W., & Jaccard, M. (2006). Estimating commuter mode choice: A discrete choice analysis of the impact of road pricing and parking charges. Transportation, 33(6), 621–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ s11116-005-5711-x. Young, D., Burke Wood, P., & Keil, R. (Eds). (2011). In-between infrastructure: Urban connectivity in an age of vulnerability. Kelowna, BC: Praxis(e). Press.

5  Governing Suburban Australia louise c. johnson

Introduction As a British colony, Australia was born urban and quickly became suburban (Davison, 1994). Australian cities were commercial from their inception, with industrialization following their creation. Their primary purpose was opening up new lands, handling exports, and servicing their hinterlands (McCarty, 1970). Within the global history of con­ temporary suburbs, those in Australia were some of the earliest, established in the first years of its colonial occupation by the British. To simplify a complex story of six colonies and later states, I focus here on the two largest and most important cities, Sydney in New South Wales and Melbourne in Victoria and, to a lesser extent, the South Australian capital, Adelaide. With a relatively hostile natural environment and an export economy, these port cities were crucial gateways and centres of administration, commerce, and culture, quickly becoming the focal points for one of the nineteenth century’s most urbanized countries (Frost, 1990). Within this urban society, the suburb was an ideal initially accessible only to the wealthy, although it soon became available to the skilled working classes, thanks to high wages, cheap land, self-building, public transport, and credit. The nineteenth-century Australian suburb was subsequently distinguished by its owner-occupied, low-density, single-family, detached housing. Though the colonial city was at first limited in aerial extent by walking and the horse-drawn carriage, the introduction of suburban tramways and railways in the latter half of the nineteenth century soon allowed its spatial expansion. Continued population inflow, growing wealth, and low density saw the provision of essential collective infrastructure – water, gas, roads, sewerage,

Governing Suburban Australia  111

and electricity – move from private provision to the colonial state and semi-autonomous authorities. When the democratically elected state took over control from local as well as private administration, the result was the relatively equal provision of physical and later social services, a distinctive element of Australia’s suburbs that persisted well into the twentieth century. Distinctive elements – colonial beginnings, low density, democratic access, and equitable service provision – sit alongside a number of elements common to the United States, Britain, and Canada: the timing of suburbanization; its association with single families and detached dwellings; the sequencing from walking to public transport and thence to car-based transportation and related areal spread; and the post-Second World War suburbanization of retail and industrial activities. There are also international parallels in governance, from relatively lax regulation to support for home and car ownership and more recent efforts to contain suburban sprawl. But twenty-first-century governance now celebrates individualism, user-pays, and markets over state and communal responsibilities (Gleeson, 2006), though the state continues as planner and overseer of service provision. The following account will elaborate on the governance modalities that have underpinned the form, ubiquity, and character of the Australian suburb, highlighting the shift from nineteenth-century imperial to colonial rule, the ongoing role of the self-builder, the rise of the public provision and then privatization of infrastructure, the relative power of the planner and land developer, and more recent debates over increasingly polarized and privatized suburbs. Colonial Beginnings The role of the state was vital from the inception of the Australian colonies in 1788. British rule was imposed on a set of initially curious but quickly resistant Indigenous owners. This was a military occupation, one that usurped 4 million square kilometres of land without any formal recognition of prior sovereignty – until the Mabo High Court judgment of 1992 recognized native title – or the right to monetary compensation (Russell, 2005). Land was therefore acquired at no direct cost and then disposed of as “Crown land” by the state, as either a grant or for payment. The resulting revenue stream was fundamental to the fledgling colony, while the resulting buoyant land market was both attractive to new migrants and a major source of wealth. This land market became a key driver of a dominant urban economy along with an

112  Louise C. Johnson

extensive and highly profitable export-oriented pastoralism (Butlin, 1994). By the 1840s, policies of frontier expansion without negotiation and the spatial containment in missions and reserves of Aborigines ensured the triumph of British over Indigenous settlement. The social and spatial marginalization of Indigenous Australians continued into the new century as Aborigines were ghettoized within cities and towns – such as Redfern in Sydney (Anderson, 1993) – confined to the increasingly affordable older middle suburbs, or forced to the edges of towns living in self-built, squalid housing. This situation was the result of low incomes, dependence on public housing, and discrimination (Forster, 1995: 109; Memmott, 2003). Colonization has therefore been an ongoing process for Indigenous Australians. In this exercise, the state did far more than ensure the acquisition and protection of private property; it also directed the form of its subdivision and character of its housing. Surveying the earliest European settlement, the urban historian Graeme Davison quotes the first British governor Arthur Phillip’s requirement for the layout of Sydney’s streets in 1798: this was to “afford the free circulation of air, and when the houses are built … the land will be granted with a clause that will prevent more than one being built on the allotment, which will be sixty feet in front and one hundred and fifty in depth” (Davison, 1994: 100). From this Davison concludes that Australia’s founders anticipated a city of houses with spacious gardens rather than a replication of London’s terraces and alleys. Initially, this was a compact city, with its limits determined by the distance workers could walk to work and the middle classes could comfortably travel by horse-drawn carriage. In this walking city – up until the spread of tram and railways in the 1880s – the rich lived close to the city centre and as country gentlemen in more remote retreats; the middle class lived in purely residential suburbs on the elevated edges of the city; and office and factory workers lived near their work, either in the city centre, around the port, or in industrial working-class suburbs closer to the city, with their dense mixture of factories, warehouses, hotels, and shops (McCarty, 1970). Until the 1850s, administration was directed by British-appointed governors who intervened to shape the emerging townships into an open, sub-urban form through the specification of block sizes, building materials, and house forms (Marsden, 2000: 33). Over the course of the nineteenth century, governance moved from direct oversight by Britain to being more locally determined. Local governments came into viable existence after self-government in 1856 and were charged with providing

Governing Suburban Australia  113

roads, water supply, sewerage, and hospitals from the proceeds of rates on land and central government subsidies (Fry, 1978: 39). However, who could then participate in this new political structure was limited by race, gender, and the ownership of property. White men had secured the vote in the mid-1850s, while voting in municipal councils and in the colonial upper houses was further limited by a property qualification. This system prevailed until the mid-twentieth century (Davison, 2000: 11). While engaged politically, landholders resented the imposition of charges and levies to deliver services, arguing that these limited their rents and profitability, and they moved farther out into unregulated territory in response. While local governments had been authorized from the mid-1850s, they had little effective control over subdivisions or building. Even when they secured this authority in a series of health and local government acts, they were reluctant to use their powers, so that subdividing landowners largely shaped the width of roads and the density and style of housing, or avoided such regulations altogether by subdividing farther out. The opening up of new suburbs – after initial sponsorship by the imperial state – thereby became the province of the private landholder and speculator. With local government subsequently starved of funds by the leapfrogging subdivisions, it fell to the colonial state to provide higher-order and city-wide physical infrastructure, despite the formal authority of municipalities to do so. In an underdeveloped land, the materials for building its towns and cities were close at hand and free, facilitating self-building by convicts around Sydney and by free settlers around Melbourne (Dingle, 2000: 58). The desire of authorities to impose order quickly checked the activities of the owner-builder in what were becoming central areas, but such unregulated activity continued where people could find cheap land or squat undisturbed in what would become self-built suburbs composed of detached cottages (Fry, 1978: 35). After the 1850 discovery of gold in New South Wales and Victoria, the number of immigrants expanded rapidly, along with their wealth, education levels, and suburban aspirations. These new migrants, often imbued with Chartist ideals of small proprietorship and lured by the prospect of rapid social mobility, gave the once-aristocratic suburban idea a radical democratic twist (Davison, 2000: 12). In 1873, one observer noted how a labourer, artisan, clerk, or shopman could be paying around 25 per cent of his wages to a building society and become his own landlord in ten years. This led to 33 per cent of Sydney’s homes being owner occupied in 1891 (Fry, 1978: 36). Some were owner-builders, while others were small-scale

114  Louise C. Johnson

developers using the expansion of the suburbs to secure their own enrichment and social mobility (Dingle, 2000: 63). Urban and suburban development became the leading sites of private investment in the latter part of the nineteenth century, made possible by the inflow of British capital, ongoing immigration, the investment of surplus gold rush monies, and the development of a local credit and land-title system. Finance for housing emerged with the development of building societies, which joined the banks in lending to home buyers in the second half of the nineteenth century. The number of trading banks rose between 1870 and 1890, as did the number of building societies, savings banks, and investment and mortgage companies, all of whom lent on mortgages, contributing to a property boom in the 1880s. Many of them were swept away in the 1890s crash, leaving the savings banks – especially those overseen by the states – to pick up the load (Merrett, 2000: 245–6). Investment occurred not only in housing but also in the provision of infrastructure, which in turn further spurred on suburbanization. Colonial governments borrowed heavily from Britain to develop ports and railways in order to facilitate the export of wool and agricultural products. These major trunk railways were supplemented by privately funded tramways and additional suburban railways. The 1880s therefore saw the creation of the public-transport city in Australia. Melbourne’s property boom of the 1880s (Cannon, 1975; Davison, 1978) paralleled the introduction of the tramcar and the suburban railway. Speculators borrowed from financial institutions and, by forming building societies, from the public. Politicians used their influence to have new tram and railways located near their own land holdings so that buyers would be attracted to their estates in outer suburban areas (Turner, 1978: 75). The building frenzy was such that by 1890 virtually the entire present-day public transport system was built, well before there were people to inhabit the areas now connected to the city (Neutze, 1978: 21). Such a system allowed the development of Melbourne at a lower density than Sydney, whose railways were more focused on servicing the rural hinterland than connecting city to suburb. Railway and tramway extension was also accompanied by the provision and extension of other critical urban infrastructure, first by private operators and then, as their scale, necessity, and expense grew, by the colonial state. Thus in Melbourne, municipalities were meant to provide water and refuse services, but this service was bedevilled by low investment and ultimately overwhelmed by the cost and scale of building major dams and sewerage systems. While the collection and disposal of

Governing Suburban Australia  115

night soil was not a problem when the city was relatively small, by the end of the nineteenth century Melbourne accommodated close to 500,000 people. The need for much more extensive services became apparent with obvious river pollution and the threat of disease. In response, the colonial government created the semi-autonomous Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) in 1897, which had local but also central government representation and a predominance of engineers in its administration. The MMBW proceeded to build dams and organize a city-wide water and underground sewerage reticulation system, the basic framework of which is still in place. It was this body which was to assume planning authority later in the twentieth century. Initially administered by trusts and funded by tolls, roadways were later taken over by local governments, with major arterials built by colonial and later state governments. Gas supplies had a history akin to the public transport, water, and road networks in that they were initially made available by private companies, often in excess of demand, but then were taken over by government authorities as they collapsed under their own mismanagement and the scale of provision (Davison, 1978; McCarty, 1970). During the 1880s most of the electricity generated was by private companies; subsequently, Melbourne City Council began to generate power in 1894 and Sydney City Council in 1904. By the 1920s the state governments were involved in either generating or distributing electricity (Neutze, 1978: 42) until the privatization wave of the 1990s. Nineteenth-century Sydney and Melbourne were therefore built by public authorities, which provided essential services, and by private enterprise – mainly small in scale – which provided the residential, commercial, and industrial buildings on blocks they laid out, often in an unregulated fashion, in suburban areas. Governments were responsible for peopling and developing the colonies; they owned the country’s greatest asset in the land, were large employers and borrowers of capital, and actively intervened in the economy, primarily through the provision of infrastructure, to create the conditions in which private enterprise could flourish. What therefore distinguished nineteenth-century­ Australian suburbanization was its foundation on “free” but ultimately stolen lands; relatively high levels of home ownership (close to 50 per cent at the end of the nineteenth century compared to 10 per cent in Britain [Forster, 1995: 11]); and the form of its housing: detached single-­ family dwellings on large areas of land serviced by publicly funded tram and rail lines, gas, water, power, and sewerage. Compared to cities in most other countries, those in Australia spread over large areas.

116  Louise C. Johnson

Figure 5.1 Beachfront suburbia, Ulladulla, New South Wales. Photo: R. Keil

Their growth occurred in the era of mechanized transport (Neutze, 1978: 30) with its house form driven by ideologies of sanitarianism (in being healthier than inner-city dwelling), a romantic connection to nature, an evangelicalism that celebrated the sexual division of labour, and a colonial capitalism that connected wealth to suburban investment (Davison, 1994). Postcolonial Suburbs The federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 brought with it a constitution that created a new level of centralized federal government and set out its powers relative to those of the states. The federal government has jurisdiction over external relations (with other nations but also over international finance), trade, migration, and communications; while the states have responsibility for education, health, criminal justice, and the regulation of land. The new nation was founded on what became known as the “Australian Settlement”: a high tariff wall to support the development of domestic industry; centralized wage fixing and dispute resolution to keep unemployment low, strikes minimal, and wages high; and a migration policy that explicitly favoured “whites”

Governing Suburban Australia  117

(Gleeson & Low, 2000). The place of local government in the new order was not codified and thereby existed at the behest of the states. Over the century, local government’s role was reduced to responsibility for local roads, refuse disposal, and neighbourhood services, including child and maternal health, public libraries, small parks, and community centres. Funded primarily through local property levies and fees, municipal government has become the poor cousin of the other levels of government in Australia, though at critical times it has also been the conduit for the policies and funding priorities of higher levels of government and is the level at which planning is enacted. Through its responsibility for international migration, ports, and communication, the federal government has indirectly shaped the urban fabric. Thus, one of the most dramatic changes in Australia’s demography occurred after the Second World War when a national commitment to increasing the population for defence and development purposes led to the dismantling of the White Australia Policy. Moves to boost the migrant intake from a war-torn Europe initially focused on refugees, but as the economy expanded, emphasis shifted to providing workers for manufacturing and major infrastructure projects in the 1950s and 60s. The British and those from northern Europe tended to settle in newer fringe suburbs – often building their own homes – while those from southern Europe tended to move into the older inner suburbs and then to shift outward in a wedge-like pattern as their wealth increased (Burnley, 1974; Forster, 1995). Such market-driven patterns of settlement were joined by suburbs built by state and federal governments for multinational corporations as part of an incentive package to set up their manufacturing plants behind the tariff wall. Thus, federal governments organized shiploads of migrants and built public housing, while state governments provided local infrastructure for car and whitegoods manufacturers in, for example, Elizabeth in Adelaide, CorioNorlane in Geelong, Victoria, and the suburbs of Fisherman’s Bend and Doveton in Melbourne (Bryson & Thompson, 1972; Johnson, 1990; Peel, 1995; Richards, 1990). What has subsequently been labelled the “long boom” – a period of uninterrupted and sustained economic expansion from 1950 through to 1974 – was based on this inflow of international migrants. They provided 56 per cent of the population increase in Sydney and Melbourne from 1947 to 1971. Coupled with the growth of manufacturing, the expansion of individual wealth, and growing car ownership, this fuelled the spatial explosion of Australian cities (Forster, 1995: 15–17).

118  Louise C. Johnson

In addition to its role in regulating population inflow and building major infrastructure, the federal government has also supported home ownership. Thus to explain the sustained growth in the rate of home ownership in Australia – from 50 per cent in 1911 (compared to 46 per cent in the United States and 45 per cent in Canada) to a globally unique high of 71 per cent in 1966 (Greig, 1995; Merrett, 2000: 249–50) – and the concomitant marginal public housing sector and weak rental market, it is necessary to acknowledge the many federal government policies that favour mortgage holders over other tenures. The conservative post-­ Second World War prime minister Robert Menzies specifically addressed his political appeal to what he described as “the forgotten people”; not the wealthy, whose resources meant they could look after themselves, or workers protected by their trade unions but the suburban middle class, comprising nuclear families where men were in paid work and women remained in the suburban home to raise children and build communities (Allport, 1986; Brett, 2007). Menzies was but one of a series of postwar federal politicians to actively support the ideals of detached home ownership and the nuclear family via low and controlled mortgage interest rates, capital grant schemes for first-time home owners, and favourable tax treatment. For example, there are no capital gains tax or death duties on the family home and it is not counted as an asset for welfare payments. While financial deregulation in the 1980s saw the abandonment of mortgage controls, the federal government still has in place an array of tax and welfare measures to ensure high levels of home ownership. In contrast, public housing in Australia has been constituted as a form of social welfare targeted to assist war veterans and the poor. Since the 1970s this form of housing has constituted less than 5 per cent of the housing stock and has been increasingly privatized and marginalized (Yates et al., 2010). Despite the small overall role of state authorities in the housing system, their activities have had significant spatial impacts in the creation of entire suburbs made up of public housing. Thus between 1945 and 1946 and 1968 and 1969, 90,000 of these dwellings were built and sold across Australia, mostly in large fringe suburban estates, such as Mt Druitt in outer Sydney, Elizabeth in Adelaide, and Heidelberg in Melbourne, creating low-­density public-housing enclaves that have led to the stigmatization of their occupants (see Grace, Hage, Johnson, Langsworth, & Symonds, 1997). The federal government has therefore played a significant role in the direct provision of some social housing, in controlling foreign

Governing Suburban Australia  119

migration levels, and in regulating the finance sector and taxation system to support home ownership. The finance sector’s lending policies have also determined who has had access to housing and the form it might take. In the postwar years, there was more money available for housing, but up until the 1960s most banks and building societies would lend only on detached housing, hence fuelling ongoing suburbanization (Forster, 1995: 24). They also tended to lend only to married couples, thereby reinforcing the belief that suburban home ownership is accessible only to certain households, with, for example, single women being excluded (Allport, 1986). While many savings banks and the War Services Division would not lend to those who wanted to build their own homes, self-building reached its all-time high in the aftermath of the Second World War. Returning soldiers wanted their own suburban homes in which to start or extend their families, while international migrants were lured by the prospect not only of safety and employment but also of home ownership. Postwar demand was therefore intense. But wartime shortages in materials meant there were continued material shortages as well as an overall backlog in house building. The 1930s Depression had seen a collapse in building – leading to a shortfall of 300,000 dwellings – a deficiency that was not rectified during the war. Depression rent controls meant that many landlords sold their houses; and, while the Commonwealth Housing Commission built 30,000 units per year, the shortfall continued and indeed worsened with high international migration. All of this led to a peak in owner-­building to over 40 per cent of the housing stock in 1953, a rate which then averaged 33 per cent over the course of the 1950s (Dingle 2000: 67). Self-building therefore had extended well beyond its nineteenth-century manifestation as a way to escape municipal regulation and continued as a means by which the poor and new migrants could acquire housing and avoid government controls. Regional variations in owner-building suggest that it was in those states where there was little prospect of public housing that the rates were highest: in New South Wales and Victoria rather than South Australia. Owner-building, while no longer as central to the national housing stock, does continue. One estimate put the level in the 1970s at up to 25 per cent of the housing stock, composed primarily of people who wanted to design the house of their dreams for an affordable price (Holland, 1988). The urban form that resulted from the support of home ownership, massive international migration, the growth of manufacturing, and high

120  Louise C. Johnson

levels of natural increase was that of the expansive suburb. Building on its nineteenth-century ideological foundation, new transport technologies, the suburban dream and planning worked together to create  the single-centred (up to the 1970s) and then multi-nucleated Australian city with its vast, sprawling suburbs. It was noted earlier that by the end of the nineteenth century, most Australian cities had a reasonable public transit system. In the early twentieth century, electrification led to a rapid growth in public-transit use, and the rise continued until 1947 when the private car took over (Neutze, 1978: 26). Suburban expansion in the interwar period had filled in much of the land around railway lines, so that when manufacturers, wholesalers, and shopping-­centre developers began looking for large new sites they were forced to locate at a distance from them, making it necessary for their workers and users to use road transport (Neutze, 1978: 45). The wide spread of suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s was accompanied by the decentralization of shopping, services and jobs and an increasing specialization of the city centres in finance, retail, and entertainment (Neutze, 1978: 32). It was in response to such changes that planning became a more important activity for state governments, a role confirmed by the withdrawal of the federal government from such activity under Menzies. It was therefore the state governments who master-planned their major cities after the Second World War, drawing particularly on Abercrombie’s plan for London. Its influence can be seen in the 1945 County of Cumberland Plan for Sydney and the 1954 MMBW plan for Melbourne. Both plans aimed to coordinate urban growth with the provision of infrastructure; guide the decentralization of retailing, manufacturing, and housing; create suburban regional centres; and restrict sprawl through the imposition of a green belt (Forster, 1995: 22; Hamnett & Freestone, 2000). This was the beginning of a long-term state-planning objective to limit suburban expansion and ensure the dominance of a single central business district, but also to support suburban centres of industry and retailing. Subsequent plans in the 1960s tended to focus on accommodating the car, with linear expansion corridors along freeways being their common element (Hamnett & Freestone, 2000). The history of these metropolitan plans tends to be one of failure, as green belts were quickly breached, activity centres – intended to be at the junction of public transport – were replaced by car-oriented shopping malls, and infrastructure lagged behind the opening up of lands for suburban housing. For the geographer Clive Forster, the result was a

Governing Suburban Australia  121

Figure 5.2 Sydney suburb, New South Wales. Photo: R. Keil

situation where the federal government was inactive, state governments were ineffective, and local governments were negative and parochial (Forster, 1995: 23). However, others disagree, pointing to state planning policies as providing support for the central business districts of Australian cities and the development of a limited number of suburban centres as crucial in the creation of a relatively well-served, multi-­ nucleated city, without the edge cities of the United States or the unrestrained outer-fringe retail developments common in Europe (Freestone & Murphy, 1993). While disengaged over most of the postwar period, the federal government resumed its interest in the planning of cities with the election in 1972 of a centralizing and reformist Labor government under Gough Whitlam. He was committed to addressing major backlogs in the provision of social and physical infrastructure in Australian suburbs. Thus, with the creation of a new federal Department of Urban and Regional Development, Whitlam moved to foster urban decentralization, to directly fund the extension of metropolitan sewerage and water systems,

122  Louise C. Johnson

and to bypass state governments by funding the provision of social services by local governments (Orchard, 1995). Whitlam thereby began a process of direct federal intervention in the planning and delivery of urban infrastructure – beyond the constitutionally requisite ports and airports – a process that has continued intermittently under the banner of nation building, with injections of federal funding into national roadways and railways but also into hospitals and schools. During this period of heightened state activity, the 1970s also saw the creation of public land authorities at state level, including Victoria’s VicUrban and NSW Landcom, which intervened in the urban housing market to stabilize prices, boost suburban supply, and thereby put downward pressure on prices. More recently, such organizations have initiated model developments and are developers in their own right within their more corporatized states. While much of Whitlam’s social agenda has remained, the economic crisis that ultimately claimed his reformist government also led to the adoption of a neoliberal alternative. Borrowing heavily from Margaret Thatcher’s England and Ronald Reagan’s United States, from the mid1980s onward, the Australian Settlement was formally dismantled, ending the White Australia immigration policy, removing trade barriers, and deregulating the financial system (McBride & Wiseman, 2000). In this new context, interest rates soared – up to 17 per cent for mortgages! – and suburban housing moved out of the reach of the average worker (Forster, 1995: 84). The costs of servicing what was now described as suburban sprawl also became a major political issue, along with the dangers associated with the hollowing out of the inner city, as large working-class and migrant families moved out to the suburbs and were replaced by smaller, gentrified households. Now actively involved in urban planning, state governments moved to contain their cities by drawing urban growth boundaries and supporting urban consolidation. From the mid-1980s, then, all metropolitan strategies planned for existing urban areas to absorb more than 50 per cent of projected housing needs. The previous icon of the low-density single-family suburban bungalow was increasingly demonized as medium-density town houses and inner-city apartments were systematically supported (Johnson, 2006). As a consequence, in Sydney – always a higher-density city than Melbourne – from 1981 until 2001 more higher-density dwellings were built than separate houses (Gleeson, 2006: 33). From the 1980s, state and federal governments also moved to cut, privatize, and corporatize

Governing Suburban Australia  123

many of their services. The cities of Sydney and Melbourne witnessed massive closures of schools, the merging of local governments, and the contracting out of their services, along with a scaling back in public health provision (Gleeson & Low, 2000). This approach was exemplified by Premier Jeff Kennett in Victoria who, from 1992 to 1999, reduced the public service by 60,000, closed 260 schools, and cut public hospital staffing and funds. He also sold off the electricity, gas, and public transport systems (Gleeson & Low, 2000: 95–6) and committed to build masses of new roadways as public-private tollways. The assumption of responsibility by state and local governments for the provision of social and physical services through borrowing or progressive taxation was therefore replaced by developer levies and user-pays. The opening of Australia to international finance and the dismantling of tariff protection led not only to higher interest rates but also to a rapid decline of manufacturing employment. This fall particularly affected those suburbs that had been constructed in the 1950s and 1960s to serve the major employers, especially in the northern suburbs of Adelaide and the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Badcock’s study of Adelaide’s northern suburbs shows an area of manufacturing decline, very high youth unemployment, and disappearing government services, all producing a pattern of social and spatial polarization (Badcock, 1995). While manufacturing continues to decline with a booming Australian dollar and mining sector, the financial, business, and community and social service sectors have all grown and suburbanized – mainly into more affluent suburbs – further exacerbating patterns of social and spatial polarization. Such patterns became more pronounced as the economy recovered in the 1990s, interest rates fell, and lending standards became more flexible. This led to larger loans and to draw-downs on housing equity to finance bigger and more luxurious housing and consumption. Thus, over the 1990s, the suburban house ceased being primarily a home and became an asset to be leveraged, bought, and sold in an unprecedented manner (Allon, 2006). Accompanying the enrichment and indebtedness of some groups of suburbanites is the growth in master-planned suburban estates catering to their wish to escape from often run-down, ethnically diverse middle suburbs into a realm of well-serviced social exclusivity (see Gwyther, 2005; Kenna, 2007; Dowling, Atkinson, & McGuirk, 2010). Taxation changes, especially the extension of tax concessions for second

124  Louise C. Johnson

homes and other investment properties, has also led to the proliferation of working- and middle-class households that own more than one dwelling (Allon, 2006). These taxation changes, the move to own more than one home, and the funding of infrastructure by developer levies have raised the cost of housing and further lowered home ownership rates (Yates et al., 2007). What has therefore occurred across the Australian suburban landscape in the era of financial deregulation has been a social and spatial polarization. Many low-income earners – Indigenous people, newly arrived migrants, the unemployed, and the working poor – have been hurt by the roll-back and privatization of public services and effectively priced out of the housing market. Most disadvantaged localities are concentrated in the now aging middle suburbs, in the postwar public housing estates, and on the metropolitan fringe (Atkinson, Dalton, Norman, & Wood, 2007: 44). But there are also many more newly enriched – or indebted – suburbanites, and they are actively courted by both sides of politics. Thus, by the mid-1990s those living in the suburbs were christened “the battlers,” and it was they who embraced the conservative politics of John Howard for ten years. It was he who promised and delivered a life of suburban comfort and security but also enrichment via easy credit, privatization, and consumption. In the early 2000s, these same groups became the “aspirationals” and “working families” courted by the new Labor government, which, like its conservative predecessor, is loath to change any of the regressive taxation or welfare measures that support this newly enriched suburban electorate. The inner cities have been taken over by the wealthy and well educated, who tend to vote Green, while the suburbs are the increasingly conservative battleground for both the Liberal and Labor parties. Many of these suburbanites are highly vulnerable to rises in interest rates or variations in the cost of fuel. In an innovative study, Dodson and Snipe (2008) constructed the Vampyre Index, an indicator of vulnerability to rises in mortgage and petrol costs across the cities of eastern Australia. They found that those areas that were most susceptible – highly leveraged but also in large houses – were those living on the urban fringe. It is in the outer and fringe areas where the many contradictions of suburban Australia are most pronounced. For here, despite the fall in household size (from 3.3 individuals in 1971 to 2.8 in 1995), homes have assumed gigantic proportions, becoming the biggest in the world at an average 252 square metres in 2011 (Freeman-Greene, 2011). It will be across these subdivisions – now better planned than ever – that

Governing Suburban Australia  125

future Australian politics and environmental solutions will be determined (Forster, 1995: 74). Conclusion From a wide-ranging literature review, McManus and Ethington have drawn out some key definitional elements that are common to suburbs in Australia, England, and North America: peripheral location; a relationship to the urban core of functional dependence; a positive relationship to the countryside; lower density relative to the urban core; a housing type of single-family dwellings with gardens; social segregation; commuting relationships to the core; and particular cultural formations comprising a utopian middle landscape and private romantic paradise (McManus & Ethington, 2007: 321). If these are the shared commonalities, Australian suburbs are also distinguished by their colonial foundation, ultimately on stolen lands, connection to a national “suburban dream,” and associated high levels of owner-occupation, ethnic diversity, and relatively equitable provisioning of social and physical services. In creating such a social and spatial geography, the role of various arms of the state has been critical, from direct imperial rule by Britain in the eighteenth century to the colonial regulation of lot sizes, and the more complex relationships between the three tiers of post-Federation governance. Such a pattern is summarized in table 5.1. While the federal government has little constitutional authority over cities and their planning, at various points it has intervened directly into their governance and also maintains a significant influence through power over migration levels, public housing, and the regulation of finance. In contrast, state governments have official power over land use, but in their various attempts at metropolitan planning they have been only marginally effective in containing urban sprawl and ensuring multi-nucleated cities with viable central business districts. Imbued with recent neoliberal fervour, governments have forced the rationalization and privatization of many social services and have constrained local government in their delivery of local public services to the point where the Australian suburb is increasingly polarized socially and spatially, a trend further exacerbated by the proliferation of master-planned estates. However, despite these recent developments, there is still a remarkable level of universality and equality; principles that still drive all levels of planning in Australia.

126  Louise C. Johnson Table 5.1 Formal and informal development. Formal Development

Informal Development

Typical environment

• Single-family detached dwellings in exclusively residential precincts • Owner occupied • Planned and serviced suburbs

• Self-build housing beyond the official boundaries • Non-serviced housing of variable quality • Built by the poor, the entrepreneurial, those avoiding state charges (19th century) and then by the migrant, Indigenous, and alternative lifestylers (late 20th century) • Home renovation carried out by all occupants – renovation nation

The state

• Imperial and colonial – land seizure and disposal • Federal government – migration, port infrastructure, public housing • State governments – social and physical services, city planning • Local governments – local services and planning

• Master-planned estate management committees

The market

• Financial institutions – banks, building societies • Development and building companies • Railway, tramway, power, water, and road companies

• Local builders, landowners, and speculators

Private and alternative governance

• Semi-autonomous planning organizations – MMBW, Docklands Authority, Sydney Olympic Committee • Semi-autonomous land development organizations – Urban Growth Authority (Melbourne) and VicUrban, LandCom (NSW)

• Strata title body corporates • Housing associations • Tenant associations

Governing Suburban Australia  127 REFERENCES Allon, F. (2006). Renovation nation: Our obsession with home. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Allport, C. (1986). Women and suburban housing: Post-war planning in Sydney, 1943–1961. In J.B. McLoughlan & M. Huxley (Eds), Urban planning in Australia: Critical readings (233–50). Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Anderson, K. (1993). Place narratives and the origins of inner Sydney’s Aboriginal settlement 1972–73. Journal of Historical Geography, 19(3), 314–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhge.1993.1020. Atkinson, R., Dalton, T., Norman, B., & Wood, G. (Eds). (2007). Urban – 45 new ideas for Australia’s cities. Melbourne: RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University. Badcock, B. (1995). Towards more equitable cities: A receding prospect? In P. Troy (Ed.), Australian cities. Issues, strategies and policies for urban Australia in the 1990s (196–217). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1017/CBO9780511597183.011. Brett, J. (2007). Robert Menzies’ forgotten people. Carlton, Vict.: Melbourne University Press. Bryson, L., & Thompson, F. (1972). An Australian Newtown: Life and leadership in a working class suburb. Malmsbury: Kibble. Burnley, I. (1974). International migration and metropolitan growth in Australia. In I.H. Burnley (Ed.), Urbanization in Australia: The post-war experience (99–117). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butlin, N. (1994). Forming a colonial economy, Australia 1810 – 1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552328. Cannon, M. (1975). Life in the cities: Australia in the Victorian age. Melbourne: Nelson. Davison, G. (1978). Public utilities and the expansion of Melbourne in the 1880s. In J.W. McCarty & C.B. Schedvin (Eds), Australian capital cities: Historical essays (82–101). Sydney: Sydney University Press. Davison, G. (1994). The past and future of the Australian suburb. In L.C. Johnson (Ed.), Suburban dreaming: An interdisciplinary approach to Australian cities (99–113). Geelong: Deakin University Press. Davison, G. (2000). Colonial origins of the Australian home. In P. Troy (Ed.), A history of European housing in Australia (6–25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dingle, T. (2000). Necessity the mother of invention, or do-it-yourself. In P.Troy (Ed.), A history of European housing in Australia (57–76). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

128  Louise C. Johnson Dodson, J., & Sipe, N. (2008). Unsettling suburbia: The new landscape of oil and mortgage vulnerability in Australian cities. Brisbane: Griffith University Urban Research Unit, Paper No 17. Dowling, R., Atkinson, R., & McGuirk, P. (2010). Privatism, privatisation and social distinction in master-planned residential estates. Urban Policy and Research, 28(4), 391–410. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2010.508870. Forster, C. (1995). Australian cities: Continuity and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Freeman-Greene, S. (2011). Days of the humble home at an end as Goliaths invade suburbia. The Saturday Age, 24 April: 22. Freestone, R., & Murphy, P. (1993). Review of a debate: Edge city. Urban Policy and Research, 11(3), 184–90. Frost, L. (1990). Australian cities in comparative view. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble. Fry, E.C. (1978). The growth of Sydney. In J.W. McCarty & C.B. Schedvin (Eds), Australian capital cities: Historical essays (26–47). Sydney: Sydney University Press. Gleeson, B. (2006). Australian heartlands: Making space for hope in the suburbs. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin. Gleeson, B., & Low, N. (2000). Australian urban planning: New challenge, new agendas. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Grace, H., Hage, G., Johnson, L., Langsworth, J., & Symonds, M. (1997). Home/ world: Space, community and marginality in Sydney’s west. Annandale: Pluto. Greig, A. (1995). The stuff dreams are made of: Housing provision in Australia 1945–60. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Gwyther, G. (2005). Paradise planned: Community formation and the master planned estate. Urban Policy and Research, 23(1), 57–72. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1080/0811114042000335304. Hamnett, S., & Freestone, R. (2000). The Australian metropolis: A planning history. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Holland, G. (1988). Emoh Ruo: Owner-building in Sydney. Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger. Johnson, L.C. (1990). New patriarchal economies in the Australian textile industry. Antipode, 22(1), 1–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1990. tb00195.x. Johnson, L. (2006). Style wars: Revolution in the suburbs? Australian Geographer, 37(2), 259–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049180600701935. Kenna, T. (2007). Consciously constructing exclusivity in the suburbs? Unpacking a master planned estate development in Western Sydney. Geographical Research, 45(3), 300–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871​ .2007.00462.x.

Governing Suburban Australia  129 Marsden, S. (2000). The introduction of order. In P. Troy (Ed.), A history of European housing in Australia (26–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McBride, S., & Wiseman, J. (Eds). (2000). Globalization and its discontents. New York: St Martin’s Press. McCarty, J.W. (1970). Australian capital cities in the nineteenth century. Australian Economic History Review, 10, 107–37. McManus, R., & Ethington, P.J. (2007). Suburbs in transition: New approaches to suburban history. Urban History, 34(2), 317–37. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1017/S096392680700466X. Memmott, P. (Ed.). (2003). Housing design in indigenous Australia. Canberra: Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Merrett, D. (2000). Paying for it all. In P. Troy (Ed.), A history of European housing in Australia (237–53). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neutze, M. (1978). Urban development in Australia: A descriptive analysis. [2nd impression: originally published 1977.] Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. Orchard, L. (1995). National urban policy in the 1990s. In P. Troy (Ed.), Australian cities: Issues, strategies and policies for urban Australia in the 1990s (65–86). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1017/CBO9780511597183.005. Peel, M. (1995). Good times. Hard times: The past and future in Elizabeth. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Richards, L. (1990). Nobody’s home: Dreams and realities in a new suburb. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Russell, P. (2005). Recognizing Aboriginal title: The Mabo case and indigenous resistance to English-settler colonialism. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Turner, I. (1978). The growth of Melbourne. In J.W. McCarty & C.B. Schedvin (Eds), Australian capital cities: Historical essays (62–81). Sydney: Sydney University Press. Yates, J., Atkinson, R., Beer, A., Berry, M., Burke, T., Dalton, T., et al. (2007). Affordable housing: The great Australian nightmare. In R. Atkinson, T. Dalton, B. Norman, & G. Wood (Eds), Urban – 45 new ideas for Australia’s cities (2–4). Melbourne: RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University.

6 Chicago-School Suburbanism jamie peck

The chapter develops the argument that suburbia has become a strategically significant nexus for open-ended, deregulatory experimentation, systematically favouring more decentralized, voluntaristic, privatized, and market-oriented approaches.1 Since the 1960s, American suburbia has been relationally defined, in ideological terms, as the dispersed other of metropolitan Keynesianism, and in social terms as a haven from both big cities and “big-city problems.” As such it has occupied a unique and privileged place within the evolving imaginaries of conservatives, libertarians, and neoliberals in the United States, especially since Milton Friedman’s (1962) Capitalism and Freedom. In its idealized form suburbanization is seen as a manifestation of the innate desire for self-rule, expressed through the rationalities of tax-induced residential migration and small government (Husock, 1998; Kotkin, 2005). So positioned, as a kind of deregulatory ebb tide against centralized municipal (over)regulation, metropolitan planning, and sociospatial redistribution, the suburbs have exerted an increasingly strong (but often almost silent) undertow on political life and regulatory capacities in the United States. With this contention as its point of departure, the chapter presents a preliminary exploration of the relationship between suburbanization and neoliberalization. It does so by way of a situated reflection on the distinctively American forms exhibited by both of these historical processes, which are taken neither as paradigmatic exemplars nor as prototypical instances but as particular (though possibly critical) cases (cf Brenner, 2003; Peck, 2004; Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012). The chapter contributes to evolving research programs on the spatialities of neoliberalization, complementing extant work on dialectical struggles around

Chicago-School Suburbanism  131

urban governance and the rise of new governmentalities (see Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Leitner, Peck, & Sheppard, 2007) that has made few stops in suburbia. It also seeks to make an intervention in the field of suburban studies, calling attention to the distinctive contribution of neoliberal ideologies in the reconstitution of suburban space in the United States. It should go without saying that processes of neoliberalization and suburbanization both exceed the reach of the conjuncture in question in here – historically, geographically, analytically – which instead should be understood as an exploration of their specific intersection. The chapter takes the form of a sort of commute between the suburbia of the neoliberal imaginary and some of its actually existing expressions in the contemporary United States. Its point of departure is Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the most storied new-economy suburbs of the past two decades. The next stop is Chicago, or, more precisely, the Chicago-school imaginary of Milton Friedman and his popular program for liberal restoration. This round trip from deregulation to regulation is completed with an assessment of the significance of those new styles of crabgrass governance that have sought to bridge, albeit imperfectly, the chasm between the market-utopian vision of extraurban freedom and the practical challenges of suburban rule. This selective tour of suburban frontiers, real and imagined, skirts around not only the edges of the city but also the edges of regulation. The chapter ends by gazing beyond “freedom’s final frontier,” in the form of the libertarian fantasy of offshore suburbanization. High Tech, Low Tax Loudoun County, located on the suburban fringe of Washington, D.C., failed to sustain any significant population growth in the first two hundred years of its existence, but lurched into life with alarming intensity in the Reagan era. This largely exurban county’s population leapt by 50 per cent during the 1980s, only to triple again, to more than a quarter-­ million, in the subsequent two decades. Permanently transforming the inherited “landscape of open fields to a series of expanding construction sites,” blistering economic growth “brought thriving new communities and jobs, as well as worsening traffic and the financial burden of building new schools and providing other services” (Laris & Fallis, 2007: A1). At the time of Joel Garreau’s (1991) exposé of life on the edgecity frontier, Loudoun was shaded grey as an “emerging” edge city

132  Jamie Peck

– the frontier of the frontier. Fatefully, though, it occupied prime real estate at the confluence of Washington’s residential sprawl and the exponential growth of the contracted-out, extraurban tech economy. Ashburn, Virginia, was selected as a hub for the MAE-East Internet exchange point in 1992, initiating Loudoun’s rapid ascent into one of the decade’s prototypical technoburbs (Ceruzzi, 2008). The relocation of tech giant AOL’s head office four years later (from the prototypical edge-city capital of nearby Tysons Corner) to what was at the time practically a greenfield site adjacent to Dulles Airport, drew national attention to an emergent generation of fast-growing “boomburbs.” Other information-technology companies followed suit, and before long Loudoun was being touted as “Silicon Valley East.” Today, Loudoun is the site of more than twenty data centres, encompassing over 3 million square feet of processing. Fifty per cent of global Internet traffic is reckoned to route through the county, which is now a significant digital node. In the process, the unassuming suburbia of New Deal Washington – a landscape previously shaped by commuting public-service workers and their preferred habitat, the two-story redbrick colonial – has been not so much displaced as exceeded by a privatized form of corporate sprawl (Abbott, 1999). This has been manifest in “supercharged” growth across Loudoun’s increasingly affluent residential economy (Knox, 2008: 185), formatting a new pattern of “edgeless city” development (Lang, 2003). Loudoun duly became a low-density capital for the new economies of government outsourcing, Internet commercialization, speculative property development, and the security-industrial complex. When journalist Thomas Frank (2008: 11, 21) ventured to Loudoun, “known for swollen suburban homes and white rail fences,” he was gripped by the questions, “Who are these people? … Who lives in these houses, these estate homes, these gated reserves and Grand Rembrandts?” The answer he found was that it’s everyone who grabbed as the government handed off its essential responsibilities to the private sector over the past few decades, including weapons designers, “systems integrators,” computer servicers, contract winners of every description, and, yes, the lobbyists who have greased the wheels […] This Washington is the developers’ city, the lobbyists’ city, the defense contractors’ city; a capital undone and remade by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and a thousand wild-eyed deregulators. (Frank, 2008: 22, 24)

Chicago-School Suburbanism  133

During the Bush years – a period of income stagnation, employment insecurity, and increasing indebtedness for much of the nation – Loudoun County regularly topped the lists of America’s richest and fastest-­ growing counties. This partly reflected the strength of the area’s increasingly diverse service economy, coupled with those daily wealth transfers effected by the elite of Washington’s commuter class, and manifest in the form of residential capital accumulation at the suburban fringe. As Forbes has observed in its annual celebration of the suburban rich list, this was because “wealth radiates from the capital,” reflecting a dynamic less like trickle down than overflow out: “Loudoun is emblematic of the counties where the highest incomes are found [now that the] country’s riches tend to trickle away from big cities … Six of the [nation’s] richest counties lie on the outskirts of Washington” (Levy, 2010: 1). Forbes griped, however, that all was not entirely well in the nation’s wealthiest county, where the median household income exceeded $110,000 in 2008, because Loudoun homeowners were subject to a confiscatory $4,844 in median property taxes (equivalent to 4.4 per cent of median household incomes). The magazine, eponymous organ of flat-tax advocate Steve Forbes, went on to note, in characteristically disapproving tone, that “[t]ax burdens are similarly high in a lot of well-off counties.” Eugene Delgaudio, the most maverick member of Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors, certainly agrees. This self-styled “anti-tax crusader” has been pioneering his own brand of suburban political spectacle. “A queer bird even by the standards of the American right” (Frank, 2008: 28), Delgaudio has for many years been a political gadfly and partisan advocate of conservative causes, most prominently the movement against gay rights. Having tirelessly pursued the causes of tax suppression, spending restraint, and deregulated growth on behalf of Loudon voters since 1999, he saw an opportunity, in December 2006, to engage in a cost-free show of symbolic politics. Supervisor Delgaudio successfully tabled a resolution that the county should, on 31 July 2007 and on all subsequent anniversaries thereafter, celebrate Milton Friedman Day, in honour of the birthday of the recently deceased free-market economist. “Loudoun County owes its success to the global economy that Friedman helped create,” the resolution’s sponsor disclosed to the Wall Street Journal: “Without Friedman’s lifelong advocacy of greater individual freedom we would never know the quality of life we enjoy in Loudoun County and the United States” (Wall Street Journal, 2006). Welcoming news of the designation, the Milton and Rose D.

134  Jamie Peck

Friedman Foundation noted that “Loudoun is the first U.S. jurisdiction to adopt Milton Friedman Day,” though they understood that the City of Chicago would soon follow (Washington Post, 2006). Milton’s Paradise Milton Friedman never found much to like about Washington, D.C., itself, but Loudoun might have been his kind of place. Later in life, he would often muse, for effect, on how close he must have come to contracting an incurable dose of “Potomac Fever” in the course of a stint at the U.S. Treasury in the early 1940s (M. Friedman, 2004: 72), when most of Loudoun remained open fields and the Kennedy-era opening of Dulles Airport was still decades away. In fact, much of Friedman’s subsequent career as a professional economist, policy advocate, and sometime political adviser was spent shuttling back and forth between Chicago and Washington, behaviour that reflected a residual belief in the potential of right-minded reform that set him somewhat apart from those anti-government cynics and libertarian nihilists with whom he so freely associated (Reder, 1982; Peck, 2010). For this principled advocate of small government, of course, a trip to Washington, D.C., meant venturing into enemy territory – the capital, quite literally, of regulation. As he and Rose recalled, “[w]henever we visit Washington, D.C., we are impressed all over again with how much power is concentrated in that city,” though hardly in a good way; their idealized image of good governance more closely resembled a “New England town meeting” (M. Friedman & R.D. Friedman, 1979: 290, 295). In the neoliberal scalar imaginary of small government, size really does make a difference, apparently: The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest … As the scope and role of government expands – whether by covering a larger area and population, or by performing a wider variety of functions – the connection between the people governed and the people governing becomes attenuated … Cur­ rently in the United States, anything like effective detailed control of government by the public is limited to villages, towns, smaller cities, and suburban areas … In large cities, states, Washington, we have government of the people not by the people but by a largely faceless group of bureaucrats. (M. Friedman & R.D. Friedman, 1979: 294–5)

Chicago-School Suburbanism  135

Locally exercised suburban self-government, in this sense, represented the antithesis to the distant rule of faceless urban bureaucrats most egregiously found in those cities, like Washington, that had appropriated the hierarchical capacity to project their regulatory powers across other jurisdictions. But if Friedman had a soft spot for the suburbs, this had nothing to do with the place-specific attributes, or locational resources, of this or that particular suburb. Rather, his was an ideological and ethical commitment to the abstract idea of extraurban space – as a fluidly competitive zone demarcated from pre-modern rurality on the one hand and ­advanced-Keynesian urbanism on the other. For Friedman, subur­ bia represented a transhistorical point of intersection between the recuperated nineteenth-century liberalism (a.k.a. Manchesterism) that he so admired and the twentieth-century corruption of liberalism (Keynesianwelfarist corporatism) that he worked so strenuously to transcend. It defined, in other words, a protean space of neoliberalism – where the neologism stood for a specifically post-Keynesian liberal restoration, based on the principle of maximally privatized individual freedom, combined (where absolutely necessary) with restrained forms of task-­ oriented small government. Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, first published in 1962, can be read, in these terms, as a paean to homo suburbius. Written for a popular audience, the book projected a (neo)classically liberal vision of political-­ economic freedom resting on the axiomatic principles of restrained government and dispersed administration and extending all the way down to atomic notions of self-determination and self-management on the scale of the family unit (or home), the firm, and the individual body. Positioned, as these arguments were, both after and against the historical moment of Keynesian urbanism, they effectively amounted to a charter for suburban deregulation. Friedman’s first axiom was that “the scope of government must be limited” – that is, restricted to the primary function of “protect[ing] our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens,” the minimalist objectives being to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets … By relying primarily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both economic and other activities, we can insure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector. (M. Friedman, 2002: 2–3)

136  Jamie Peck

Friedman’s first principle – that of systematically limited government – was conjoined to a second demand, “that government power must be dispersed”: If the government is to exercise power, better in the county than the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what my state does, I can move to another. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations. (M. Friedman, 2002: 3)

From this early invocation of neoliberal-scale politics, refracted through a conservative rereading of the American constitutional settlement, Friedman would go on to forge his trenchant critiques of the centralizing tendencies and redistributive logics of Keynesian-welfarism. In so doing, he would begin to articulate a purposeful and applied mode of decentralized suburban economics. Friedman’s invocation of an exurban protomarket for public services owes a largely unacknowledged debt to Charles Tiebout’s “pure theory of local expenditures,” which had been published in the University of Chicago’s legendary house periodical, the Journal of Political Economy, a few years earlier. The logic of Tiebout’s model has been succinctly summarized by Friedman’s son, David, who would later weave this argument into his manifesto for anarcho-capitalism: [U]nder certain conditions, local governments will provide local public goods as efficiently as the market provides private goods. This will happen, even though local governments have a jurisdictional monopoly, when the consumer/taxpayers are free to move about and select the jurisdiction they wish to reside in. This “voting with the feet” will reward efficient governments and penalize inefficient ones. These governments are competitive because residents are mobile. (D. Friedman & Kurth, 1981: 365–6)

Tiebout had cleverly discovered a way to reconcile neoclassical economics with the knotty problem of providing public goods such as policing and education by focusing on the domain of local expenditures and local government. In doing so, he was countering the Keynesian orthodoxy of the time, that “no ‘market type’ solution exists [for] public

Chicago-School Suburbanism  137

goods,” a position that had led Paul Samuelson and others to consolidate the case for the necessity of certain public interventions (Tiebout, 1956: 416; Samuelson, 1954). On the face of it, this may have made Tiebout and Friedman soulmates, but while both lived in Chicago at the time, they were separated by more than their respective locations in the northern and southern suburbs. The origins of Tiebout’s classic paper actually lay in a friendly dispute with one of his colleagues in Northwestern’s economics department, Chicago-trained Meyer Burstein. According to Charles Leven’s (2003) first-hand account, Tiebout had grown tired of Burstein’s constant “bitching about government,” which in the course of one lunchtime discussion took the form of a tirade against inflated property taxes, and therefore rents, in the surrounding neighbourhood of Evanston. Why, Burstein complained, should he be taxed for services that he did not personally use? Why should he pay for public schools when he had no children, or for the maintenance of lakefront amenities when he was disinclined to patronize the beach? Knowing that his free-market colleague – whom he chided as a “Friedmaniac” – would have no truck with woolly defences of the common good or the social benefits of redistributive taxation, Tiebout improvised a market-based solution, impishly asking, “Why don’t you just move to Rogers Park?” (as cited in Leven, 2003: 236). Burstein was persuaded, in as far as he later relocated to neighbouring Rogers Park, but Tiebout also realized that he was onto something. Within a few days, he had drafted a paper, prompted by the thought experiment of the “case of the city resident about to move to the suburbs” and the challenge of finding optimum solutions for an idealized population of mobile “consumer-voters” in an imagined “community with [a] 500-yard beach” (Tiebout, 1956: 418, 421). Pleased with what he had come up with, and as a private joke that he felt comfortable sharing with “a few trusted liberal friends” (but one unlikely to harm his tenure prospects), Tiebout cheekily submitted his article to the University of Chicago’s Journal of Political Economy, which he considered to be nothing less than the “bible of the ‘Philistines.’ ” As Leven (2003: 236) paraphrased Tiebout’s thinking at the time, “You know, my manuscript is a good example of how consumer sovereignty can be applied to a quasi-market in a way that hasn’t occurred to anyone. In fact, I don’t think those ‘fuckers’ know I’m a ‘liberal’ and they’ll feel compelled to publish it.” They did. Friedman’s more popular case for the decentralized, competitively disciplined governance of public services was honed during his

138  Jamie Peck

corporate-funded lecture tours of the United States in the mid-1950s. It sought to turbo-charge a version of the Tiebout model in the form of politically tractable arguments for deregulation, privatism, voluntary action, and “choice.” His campaign for school vouchers, which began at this time but which has an immaculate pedigree all the way back to Adam Smith, is a case in point. The near-permanent crisis in the U.S. public-education system, Friedman contended, was a proxy for a metastasizing urban crisis and, as such, another manifestation of the “sickness of an over-regulated society,” as diagnosed by Walter Lippmann: the malign consequences of bureaucratization and centralization were being visited on inner-city schools, while “[e]xcellent public schools tend to be concentrated in the wealthier suburbs of the large cities … where parental control [has] remained very real” (M. Friedman & R.D. Friedman, 1979: 151, 158). Whereas in suburbs and in other smaller jurisdictions, parent power acted as a “partial substitute for competition,” Tiebout-style, urban school systems had deteriorated in predictable lockstep with bureaucratization and the disempowerment of local communities under the stultifying supervision of “broader entities [like] the city, the county, the state, and … the federal government”: Expenditures on schooling per pupil are often as high in the inner cities as in even the wealthy suburbs, but the quality of schooling is vastly lower. In the suburbs almost all of the money goes for education; in the inner cities much of it must go to preserving discipline, preventing vandalism, or repairing its effects. The atmosphere in some inner city schools is more like that of a prison than a place of learning. The parents of the suburbs are getting far more value for their tax dollars than the parents in the inner cities. (M. Friedman & R.D. Friedman, 1979: 155, 158)

Friedman’s solution, framed in the language of parental choice and local control, was not (more) sociospatial redistribution, of course, but selective deregulation – effectively importing faux-suburban rationalities and market proxies onto inner-city public-school systems. As these arguments have played out, legal scholar James Ryan (1998: 465) has observed, through the long “history of urban and suburban relations” they have reinforced the “trend of suburban absolution and apartheid, wherein suburbanites have successfully managed to reduce their responsibility for and involvement in urban problems, particularly [but not only] with regard to schools.” Choice and local control thereby became the means for an effective balkanization of metropolitan school

Chicago-School Suburbanism  139

systems, enabling de facto forms of secession for suburban parents and taxpayers, while frustrating systemic reform efforts on the grounds of the “autonomy” of privileged neighbourhoods and successful schools (Lipman, 2011). Ryan calls this the “suburban veto.” In Friedman’s mind, the “preservation of freedom [represented] the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power” and the dead hand of municipal regulation, but there was also a “constructive reason,” stemming from the contribution of diversity, variety, and unevenness as stimuli for creativity and innovation. Standardization and statization had degenerated, in their Keynesian-welfarist forms, into a mutually destructive dynamics of suffocating regulation, the flat-footed others of localized invention. Here, Friedman instead placed his faith in the spontaneous dynamics of the deregulated frontier as a centrifugal space of competitively induced experimentation: Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action. At any moment in time, by imposing uniform standards in housing, or nutrition, or clothing, government could undoubtedly improve the level of living of many individuals; by imposing uniform standards in schooling, road construction, or sanitation, central government could undoubtedly improve the level of performance in many local areas and perhaps even on the average of all communities. But in the process, government would replace progress by stagnation, it would substitute uniform mediocrity for the variety essential for that experimentation which can bring tomorrow’s laggards above today’s mean. (M. Friedman, 2002: 3–4)

In such a way, neoliberals have sought to capture the creatively competitive upside of uneven spatial development. And conditions across the crabgrass frontier were seen to be most propitious for the roll-out of an array of small-government strategies, nudged towards low-tax equilibrium by a mobile class of suburban “homevoters.” It is in small communities, with their small governments, that “the rule of the median voter” truly prevails (Fischel, 2001: 220). Ironically, the suburbanization dynamics that had been entrenched during the postwar years of Keynesianism (see Keil, 1994) would establish the conditions of existence for the rise of a distinctly suburban-­ secessionist mode of neoliberal governance, both in terms of centrifugal fiscal logics and in terms of an expanding social base for homevoter politics. Much of this was prefigured by the gradual popularization of Chicago-school arguments during the 1950s and 1960s – the prehistory

140  Jamie Peck

of actually existing neoliberalism in the United States. A distinctively post-Keynesian and neoliberal vision of devolution, decentralization, and deregulation would be interdigitated, over the course of the subsequent decades, with an emergent politics of low-density development and low taxes, played out across the unevenly restructuring landscapes and splintering governance regimes of metropolitan America. The politics of everyday neoliberalism in the United States, which were never preordained, have been forged in these conjunctural circumstances. “American suburbs are not simply peripheral areas with larger lawns and more trees,” noted suburbanologist Jon Teaford (2008: x) explains; they are “governmentally independent political units that can employ the powers of the state to distinguish themselves from the city.” Having detached itself from financial and social responsibility for the costs of downtown-centric, redistributive urbanism, suburbia has distinguished itself from the city by forging its own form of crabgrass governance, both making and exploiting the centrifugal political economy of these neoliberalizing times. Crabgrass Governance William Schneider’s rather apprehensive vision of the coming “suburban century” was shaped by the experience of the Reagan years, a time when American politics began to fracture and dissipate, con­ gealing into a suburbanized form of “‘operational conservatism’ … sustained by both continued public resistance to tax increases and widespread cynicism about what government can do” (Schneider, 1992: 39). This suburban (govern)mentality was giving rise to a systematic form of deregulatory migration, reflecting a preference for choice over control, and the private over the public. Suburban voters buy “private” government – good schools and safe streets … They control their local government, including taxes, spending, schools, and police … Yes: suburban voters are predominantly property owners. And that makes them highly tax-sensitive. [They] move out to the suburbs … to buy their own government. These people resent it when politicians take their money and use it to solve other people’s problems. (Schneider, 1992: 37)

It is no coincidence, then, that the grassroots energies that fomented American conservatism’s road to dominion, from the 1960s onwards,

Chicago-School Suburbanism  141

took the shape of mobilizations among a new generation of “suburban warriors” in reactionary hotpots like Orange County, California (Davis, 1990). According to the classic treatment by Kevin Phillips (1969: 184) of the emerging Republican majority, this “new suburbia” was an expression of “new young America on the move.” The new, post-Keynesian suburbia was judged to be “essentially incompatible” with the Great Society programs of the 1960s; very much an “anti-urban phenomenon – an attempt to escape crime, slums and slum-dwellers,” the neoliberal variant of the suburban solution enabled mobile conservatives “to drop a crabgrass curtain between themselves and the increasingly Negro central cities” (Phillips, 1969: 180, 179). The racial politics of this process were not merely contingent but constitutive. After all, this was also the time that the Republican’s “southern strategy” began to morph into a suburban strategy, just as centre-right economic policy was ossifying around the rigidly low-tax, pro-corporate vision of “Southernomics” (Lind, 2002). In so far as suburbanization represented a kind of escape from the New Deal, it would come to blend with those Southern ideologies that had always spurned the welfarist settlement: “In the South, where the New Deal had made only a dent, the free-market revival [of the 1980s] merely confirmed the regional preference for free trade, laissez-faire, and minimal government regulation of employers and property owners” (Lind, 2002: 78). Hardly coincidentally, this strategy was consistent with a form of resegregation through market means, not least by way of differential access to outer-suburban housing and the adjacent “good schools.” Politically, this turned out to be a winning formula, both locally and nationally. As Mike Davis (2009: 5) explains, ever since Nixon’s victory of 1968, “the Republican Party has counted on Sunbelt suburbs … to generate winning margins in national elections. Reaganomics, of course, was incubated in the famous tax revolts that shook suburban California in the late 1970s, while Newt Gingrich’s 1994 ‘Contract with America’ was primarily a magna carta for affluent voters in Western exurbs and New South edge cities.” The Washington suburbs would define one of the eastern extremities of this non-contiguous Sunbelt region, marrying rapid growth with low taxes (Abbott, 1999; Ceruzzi, 2008). Closely watched by social commentators and political futurologists, Loudoun duly became the “it” county for psephologists of the post-Clinton era. Conventional wisdom subsequently took it that suburbia defined the penumbral locus of American politics (Giroux, 2005; Lang, Sanchez, Levy, & Sohmer, 2008).

142  Jamie Peck

Far from being homogeneous, suburbia as a whole had become surprisingly diverse in racial and class terms (Knox, 2008; Ekers et al., 2012). In the midst of this diversity, though, the fastest-growing outer suburbs, “the places that [seemed] to have it all” (Orfield, 2002: 46), were also “almost all overwhelmingly white, wealthier than the rest of the country and conservative-leaning” – a sociopolitical fact duly translated into Republican “dominance of their congressional districts” (Giroux, 2005: 1714). Among the staple findings of the new political science of American suburbia is that this dispersed electorate is consistently more conservative than its urban counterparts and “less likely to support federal government spending, particularly on redistribution,” a pattern that becomes even more pronounced in the wealthiest and whitest reaches of (outer) suburbia (Gainsborough, 2001: 136). An alternative political culture has been constructed across the American suburbs, together with the rollout of a new breed of (de)regulatory institutions. Secessionist sentiment and regulatory reaction are certainly constitutive components of this political culture, although so are purposive forms of privatist rule and exclusionary institution building, anchored in those primordial middle-class values of “the defense of household equity and residential privilege” (Davis, 1990: 159). It is in this context that new modalities of suburban politics have been shaped, based on localized models of “civic participation – involvement in schools, cooperation in community endeavors, a willingness to support and to pay for public services – within a smaller universe, separate and apart from the consuming failure, crime, welfarism, decay – and blackness – of the older cities” (Edsall & Edsall, 1992: 228). These orientations find a concrete expression in the gated community, a quintessentially “suburban solution” (Low, 2004) and today one of the preeminent sites for the reproduction of whiteness, cultural conformity, and class privilege. “Perhaps no other neighborhood form,” Walks (2006: 469) observes, “is more clearly associated with contemporary neoliberal times than gated communities.” By the end of the 2000s, more than 10 million U.S. families resided in these privatized enclosures – a voluntarily walled-in population that has tripled since the late 1990s and now accounts for more than one-tenth of all households and a much larger share of new construction (Siegel, 2009). Gating is the most visible manifestation of a much wider and deeper privatization of (sub)urban governance in the United States, yielding an expansive complex of homeowner associations, quasi-private community-management regimes, and “association-governed communities,”

Chicago-School Suburbanism  143

or AGCs. The phrase “small government” only partly captures what is happening here; (outer) suburbia is also a strategic site for the production of new forms of governance. Knox (2008: 116) concludes that this represents nothing less than a new “parapolitical structure” in metropolitan governance, and an increasingly dominant one. Controlled by boards of governors, elected by a strictly circumscribed electorate of “homevoters,” AGCs have the power to levy taxes; to regulate the physical environment through mechanisms like restrictive covenants; to enact development controls; to deliver both shared facilities and local services, such as garbage disposal, utilities, and security; and to outsource community management itself to private contractors. In most cases, the original authors of these covenants, conditions, and restrictions are the private developers of new communities, who in addition to exercising naming rights effectively write the constitutions for “sublocal governments” as key components of their “community marketing plans” (Nelson, 2009: 6). This has enabled distinctively neoliberal spatial practices, including the growth of what Evan McKenzie has called “privatopias,” which erect a “physical and institutional pomerium, or sanctified wall, around the affluent portions of an increasingly divided society” (McKenzie, 2005: 187–8). A target for progressive critics, these have been welcomed by the neoliberal and libertarian intelligentsia as a decentralized revision of the American constitutional settlement, fit for the conditions of the suburban century (Nelson, 2005). Perhaps the defining political battle, in this era of increasingly suburbanized metrogovernance, has been over the issue of “smart growth.” Aptly characterized by Knox (2008: 128–9) as a “third way” form of metropolitan politics, smart-growth policies seek to steer (sub)urban expansion in the direction of more planned, sustainable, compact, and adequately serviced development, as such to some extent operating as “a stealthy euphemism for old-fashioned regional planning and growth management of the sort that cannot be entertained in the lexicon of a neoliberal political economy.” Not stealthy enough, apparently. Conser­ vatives have savaged smart growth as a uniquely “coercive, moralistic, and nostalgic” project, pushed by an elitist cadre of downtown interventionists, who presume not only to lecture suburbanites on “how they should live and work” but also to insist that they must learn to live as the metro-cosmopolitans do, “in an urban townhouse off a busy street, with no yard but plenty of shops and restaurants within walking distance” (Postrel, 1999: 5). Rallying under the banner “Don’t regulate the suburbs,” conservative think tanks likewise indict smart-growth

144  Jamie Peck

policies for driving up taxes and both the costs and size of government (Butler, 2009; Cox & Utt, 2009). Smart-growth advocates, it is argued, have the causality reversed when they castigate suburbia for its role in inner-city disinvestment, poverty, and institutional failure: after all, according to the neoliberal world view, suburbanization represents the solution to the problems of big-city bureaucracy, unionized government, and confiscatory taxation. Bloated urban administrations are further accused of diluting voter power, while being chronically vulnerable to special-interest capture; these “older municipalities [having] been notably resistant to cost-­ effective management innovations such as privatization, competitive contracting, more flexible labor arrangements, … innovative management techniques” (Cox & Utt, 2004: 17), and other new technologies of suburban governance. As the defenders of neoliberal suburbanism delight in pointing out, to those smart-growth advocates located – literally and metaphorically – inside the beltway, like Smart Growth America, the Smart Growth Network, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s smartgrowth unit: “no city in the United States has been subjected to more urban planning [since the mid-1960s] than Washington, D.C.” (DiLorenzo, 2000: 13). Just witness, they observe, the hyperactive development of the capital’s suburbs. Against the centripetally minded interventionists of the smart-growth coalition, the neoliberal retort is that the rational decision making of individual citizens, voting with their feet in suburbanizing markets, quite rightly “imposes a degree of discipline on government”; while the role of suburbanization in driving land utilization “from lower-valued to higher-valued uses” is celebrated as “the very definition of economic efficiency” (DiLorenzo, 2000: 17). Far from being a flight from responsibility, Husock (1998: 71) counters, suburbanization consequently reflects an entirely rational desire to “form smaller, decentralized city governments that secede from a larger whole.” Conclusion: Freedom’s Final Frontier According to Witold Rybczynski, the American population is decentralizing faster than any other in human history (Brooks, 2004), a trend that has been accompanied, especially since the 1970s, by the splintering of metropolitan government and sociospatial regulation into mosaics of

Chicago-School Suburbanism  145

purposefully discordant “sublocal” governance. This centrifugal momentum has been driving a new political economy of metropolitan transformation in the United States, characterized by the evasion and subversion of pan-urban regulatory coordination and its secessionist eclipse through the prosaic medium of suburbanized “subgovernance.” Neoliberalization is conventionally associated, often paradigmatically, with globalization, the terrain on which some of its signature battles have been waged (Tickell & Peck, 2003; Sparke, 2006). More surreptitiously, though, it has also been prosecuted with quiet determination across the other side of the crabgrass curtain, in the American suburbs. What might be called urban subgovernance denotes not only a locally scaled modality of suburban (self) rule, but a purposive bundle of secessionist, exclusionary, and marketizing interventions, the rationale of which has been not only to secure islands of minimalist, purpose-made self-rule but also to erode and subvert the foundations of metroKeynesianism. As a stealthy carrier for these principles of “undergovernance,” suburbanization is not just a process located outside the city limits but one that effectively imposes new regulatory limits, city-wide. The fast-growing outer suburbs of the United States, in particular, represented a relatively pristine space, primed for experimentation with uncut forms of regulatory minimalism, with little in the way of extant institutional obstacles or entrenched special-interest power blocs. In the neoliberal imaginary, policies that cramp suburban development are invariably the work of a cabal of “metropolitanist” schemers, bent on “substitut[ing] the rule of experts for individual choice” (DiLorenzo, 2000). The unsung suburban “leaders of the new localism,” on the other hand, are portrayed as responding rationally and reasonably “to purely local conditions” (Husock, 1998: 75). The secessionist mentality that seems to have become an entrenched characteristic of North American suburbanization (Keil, 2000; Siegel, 2009) can be seen as a contemporary cultural and political recoding of that American frontier spirit, one that has long valorized movement on and out, into those wide-open spaces governed only by unimpeded property rights and individual freedoms (Brooks, 2004). In this respect, as Matt Sparke (2006: 363) has argued, the “planar world view” of neoliberalism has distinctive origins not only in the projected imperialist gaze of the Washington-consensus institutions but also in the “imaginative geography [of] the ever-expanding west.” The ever-expanding American suburbs have been enrolled into this same process.

146  Jamie Peck

Scornful of metroKeynesianism, the new suburban localism represents a counter to big-city government and its “redistributionist machinery,” favouring a decentralized regime reminiscent of Tiebout’s mid-1950s thought experiment, in which competition animates the system: There’s no shortage of theory to explain why this long-standing American preference for localism makes sense … Forty years ago, in a brief but classic essay, economist Charles Tiebout argued that local governments do more than coexist side by side. Instead, they compete with one another for residents by offering different packages of services. Of course, wealthier communities can provide more amenities than poorer ones; that’s part of the free-market incentive structure […] Given a large number of small jurisdictions, voters can sort themselves out according to what kind of place they want to live in, and they can pick the kind of representation they want. (Husock, 1998: 80, 83)

In this respect, neoliberalization, like the market itself, knows no limits in its advocacy of a centrifugal political economy of minimalist regulation. Of course, in reality, this borderless development vision encounters real limits all the time – including the spiralling costs of fragmented, privatized government, slow-growth politics, biting environmental constraints, and so on – so the battle for suburban liberation is never completely won. On the contrary, its unmanaged consequences and negative externalities continue to intensify. Paradoxically, though, such contradictions and limits have proven to be spurs to new rounds of neoliberal (re)invention (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2010). At some point, too, this process of improvised reregulation will surely hit its limits, a still-building double-­ movement reflex that may be social or ecological in origin, or both. On its own terms, though, neoliberal suburbanism has no internal brake; ­unable to stop itself, it must be stopped by something else. Neoliberal suburbanism is a politics of direction not destination. Rather like the pursuit of equilibrium, deregulatory flight is a never-­ ending process. As Milton and Rose Friedman would have put it, such is freedom’s quest. Such adventures of the starkly utopian mind led their anarcho-capitalist son, David, to yet more radical fantasies. Even though he would dutifully dedicate his 1973 book, The Machinery of Freedom, to Hayek and to his father, Milton, David observed that Friedman Senior’s Capitalism and Freedom had derived from a “slightly more moderate position” than his own (D. Friedman, 1973: 233). Long­ ing for a rarefied form of libertarianism that existed (only) beyond

Chicago-School Suburbanism  147

politics, David was prepared to countenance practical steps to get from here to there, like the formation of locally governed “minicities.” His goal of “sell[ing] the state in small pieces,” called for “decentralization of a more fundamental sort” than mere administrative localization, however: the formation of thousands of “subcities,” with populations of less than 100,000 and their own “mini-mayors,” could be relied upon to animate the deregulationist frontier, he believed, safely beyond the malign reach of municipal control (D. Friedman, 1973: 105). Despite the concerted shift in this direction in the various suburbanizations of American governance since the 1970s, this has not been enough to satisfy the Friedmans. The inheritor of the mantle, David’s son, Patri (the grandson to whom Milton and Rose’s Freedom to Choose was dedicated), has taken the search for a deregulated nirvana into extraterritorial space, a suburban imaginary completely detached from the city and from earthly, territorial government. Sometime professional poker player, Google executive, and libertarian blogger, Patri Friedman established the Seasteading Institute in 2008 – with the aid of a generous donation from Silicon-valley billionaire Peter Thiel – in order to realize a hyperliberalized future vision in which self-managing offshore communities would float on the oceans, detached from hierarchical governance, as havens for those wishing “to live outside the nation-state paradigm” (Madrigal, 2008: 1). “What we need is a new frontier, an open space for political experiments [and] the next frontier is the ocean,” the third-generation Friedman explained to an audience of would-be bankrollers at a Breakthrough Philanthropy, Inc., dinner in December 2010: “Let a thousand nations bloom on the high seas, trying diverse political systems [where only ocean law prevails, and where seasteads would represent] a start up sector for governance” (P. Friedman, 2010). Patri Friedman visualizes seasteading (see figure 6.1) – which seeks to exploit loopholes in ocean governance in order to establish the basis for an offshore ultraTieboutesqe order – as a means of “roadtest[ing] different political systems in a high-speed version of Darwinism,” in which the best “micronation” would ultimately win (Fingleton, 2010: 49). The goal is to transcend jurisdictional entanglements altogether, wallowing in the shifting currents of deregulatory competition and postmetropolitan individualism, with the aid only of a Silicon Valley fortune or two. This is what Patri Friedman likes to call “dynamic geography,” where regulatory capacities are degraded to the atomic scale. His profoundly improbable strategy entails the construction of

148  Jamie Peck

Figure 6.1 Seasteading as offshore suburbanization: András Gyõrfi’s The Swimming City. Source: Creative commons (courtesy of András Gyõrfi and the Seasteading Institute)

floating cities from detachable, modular units … If an individual structure can cheaply relocate to another jurisdiction, the cost of switching governments is low … If the state tries to impose a sales tax on Monday, the capitol building may be all that’s left of the city by Tuesday. When leaving is easy, exploitation is difficult … Dynamic geography moves power downwards towards the smallest separable unit … produc[ing] good government through competition. [This] will increase both private freedom and the efficiency of public efforts. (P. Friedman, n.d.)

If there is purpose in this closing encounter with the eccentric fringes of the libertarian imagination, it is to underscore the point that planar imaginaries of the boundless frontier have always been a vital

Chicago-School Suburbanism  149

component of neoliberal thinking – in their American form melding with Jeffersonian philosophies, with constitutional literalism, with the lore of the wildly unregulated West, and more recently with both prosaic forms of confiscatory deregulation and the fanciful flights of cyberlibertarian utopianism. In the centrifugal politics of the long-unwinding metro­Keynesian settlement, it has been argued in this chapter that suburbia’s fate was to become one of those “next frontiers,” a site of deregulatory leverage. There is no reason to believe, however, that it will stop there. NOTE 1 Abridged and reprinted with permission from Urban Geography, Vol. 32, No. 6: 884–919. © Bellwether Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Abbott, C. (1999). Political terrain. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Brenner, N. (2003). Stereotypes, archetypes and prototypes: Three uses of superlatives in contemporary urban studies. City & Community, 2(3), 205–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1540-6040.00051. Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated neoliberalization: Geographies, modalities, pathways. Global Networks, 10(2), 182–222. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2009.00277.x. Brenner, N. & Theodore, N. (Eds). (2002). Spaces of neoliberalism. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444397499. Brooks, D. (2004). On paradise drive. New York: Simon and Schuster. Butler, S. (2009). Wise up: Dump smart growth. Washington Times, 12 March, A4. Ceruzzi, P.E. (2008). Internet alley. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cox, W., & Utt, J. (2004). The costs of sprawl reconsidered: What the data really show. Backgrounder #1770, Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC. Cox, W., & Utt, R.D. (2009). Don’t regulate the suburbs: America needs a housing policy that works. Backgrounder #2247, Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC. Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz. London: Verso. Davis, M. (2009). Obama at Manassas. New Left Review, 56, 5–40. DiLorenzo, T.J. (2000). Suburban legends. National Review, 38, 11–18.

150  Jamie Peck Edsall, T.B., & Edsall, M. (1992). Chain reaction. New York: W.W. Norton. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Fingleton, E. (2010). The great escape. Prospect, 26 March, 46–9. Fischel, W.A. (2001). The homevoter hypothesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Frank, T. (2008). The wrecking crew. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Friedman, D. (1973). The machinery of freedom. New York: Arlington House. Friedman, D., & Kurth, M.M. (1981). Revenue sharing and monopoly government: A comment. Public Choice, 37(2), 365–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ BF00138257. Friedman, M. (2002). Capitalism and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (First published 1962). http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/​ 9780226264189.001.0001. Friedman, M. (2004). Milton Friedman. In W. Breit and B. T. Hirsch (Eds), Lives of the laureates: Eighteen Nobel economists (65–78). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Friedman, M., & Friedman, R.D. (1979). Free to choose: A personal statement. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Friedman, P. (2010). Patri Friedman speaks at Thiel Foundation’s “Breakthrough Philanthropy.” 14 December. Retrieved from: http:// www.seasteading.org/2010/12/patri-friedman-speaks-thiel-foundationsbreakthrough-philanthropy/. Friedman, P. (n.d.) Dynamic geography: A blueprint for efficient government. Retrieved from: http://patrifriedman.com/projects/socs/commented/ drawer/dynamic_geography.html. Gainsborough, J.F. (2001). Fenced off. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Garreau, J. (1991). Edge city. New York: Doubleday. Giroux, G.L. (2005). A line in the suburban sand. CQ Weekly, 63, 1714–19. Husock, H. (1998). Let’s break up the big cities. City Journal, 8, 71–87. Keil, R. (1994). Global sprawl: Urban form after Fordism? Society and Space, 12, 131–6. Keil, R. (2000). Governance restructuring in Los Angeles and Toronto: Amalgamation or secession. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(4), 758–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00277. Knox, P.L. (2008). Metroburbia, USA. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kotkin, J. (2005). The new suburbanism. Costa Mesa, CA: The Planning Center.

Chicago-School Suburbanism  151 Lang, R.E. (2003). Edgeless cities. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Lang, R.E., Sanchez, T.W., Levy, L., & Sohmer, R. (2008). The new suburban swingers: How America’s most contested suburban counties could decide the next president. 2008 Election Brief, Metropolitan Institute, Virginia Tech. Laris, M., & Fallis, D.S. (2007). Influence of developers, allies runs deep. Washington Post, 21 January: A1. Leitner, H., Peck, J., & Sheppard, E. (Eds). (2007). Contesting neoliberalism: Urban frontiers. New York: Guilford. Leven, C. (2003). Discovering “voting with your feet.” Annals of Regional Science, 37(2), 235–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s001680300148. Levy, F. (2010). America’s 25 richest counties. Forbes, 4 March. Lind, M. (2002). Made in Texas. New York: Basic Books. Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education. New York: Routledge. Low, S. (2004). Behind the gates. New York: Routledge. Madrigal, A. (2008). Peter Thiel makes down payment on libertarian ocean colonies. Wired, 19 May. Retrieved from: http://www.ummah.com/forum/ archive/index.php/t-171472.html. McKenzie, E. (2005). Constructing the pomerium in Las Vegas: A case study of emerging trends in American gated communities. Housing Studies, 20(2), 187–203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026730303042000331727. Nelson, R.H. (2005). Private neighborhoods and the transformation of local government. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Nelson, R.H. (2009). The rise of sublocal governance. Mercatus Center Working Paper #09–45, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, Washington, DC. Orfield, M. (2002). American metro politics: The new suburban reality. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Peck, J. (2004). Geography and public policy: Constructions of neoliberalism. Progress in Human Geography, 28(3), 392–405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/​ 0309132504ph492pr. Peck, J. (2010). Constructions of neoliberal reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580576.001.0001. Phillips, K.P. (1969). The emerging republican majority. New York: Arlington House. Postrel, V. (1999). The Pleasantville solution. Reason, 30, 4–5. Reder, M.W. (1982). Chicago economics: Permanence and change. Journal of Economic Literature, 20, 1–38. Ryan, J. (1998). School choice and the suburbs. Journal of Law & Politics, 14, 459–68. Samuelson, P.A. (1954). The pure theory of public expenditures. Review of Economics and Statistics, 36(4), 387–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1925895.

152  Jamie Peck Schneider, W. (1992). The suburban century begins. Atlantic Monthly (July), 33–44. Siegel, S. (2009). The public interest and private gated communities. Loyola Law Review, 55, 805–38. Sparke, M. (2006). Political geographies of globalization (2) – governance. Progress in Human Geography, 30(3), 357–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/​ 0309132506ph606pr. Teaford, J.C. (2008). The American suburb. New York: Routledge. Tickell, A., & Peck, J. (2003). Making global rules: Globalization or neo­ liberalization? In J. Peck & H. W-c. Yeung (Eds), Remaking the global economy (163–81). London: Sage. 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. Walks, R.A. (2006). Aestheticization and the cultural contradictions of neo­ liberal (sub)urbanism. Cultural Geographies, 13(3), 466–75. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1191/1474474006eu369oa. Wall Street Journal. (2006). Milton Friedman’s day. 15 December. Retrieved from: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2006/12/15/milton-friedman-day/. Washington Post. (2006). In Brief, 21 December. Loudoun Extra T2.

SECTION 3 The Existing Alternatives

This page intentionally left blank

7 Suburban Governance in Western Europe nicholas a. phelps and amparo tarazona vento

Introduction The suburbs of Western Europe present an immense challenge to synthesis because of the variety apparent in their form and modalities of governance and indeed the mixing of these forms and modes in individual national settings. Some of this variety-cum-“mixity,” as discussed in the remainder of the chapter, is summarized in table 7.1. We cannot do justice to all of the implications of these issues, the published research, or all nations, but we hope to arrive at some preliminary conclusions regarding the distinctiveness of Western European suburbs. Suburbs and Suburbanization in Western Europe For some, suburban sprawl is a global phenomenon (Bruegmann, 2005). However, sprawl can be described as “a pattern of land use in an urbanised area that exhibits low levels of some combination of eight distinct dimensions: density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity, mixed uses and proximity” (Galster et al., 2001: 685). The term “sprawl” is generally deployed to describe “significant population redistribution into the urban fringe” in growing cities (Chorianopoulos, Pagonis, Koukoulas, & Drymoniti, 2010: 249), but sprawl has also been observed in shrinking cities (Nuissl, Rink, Couch, & Karecha, 2007). Patterns of sprawl are sufficiently mixed in Europe that they are among the least distinctive when set against those evidenced in the United States and China (Schneider & Woodcock, 2008). European city-regions remain relatively compact, with central city areas dominant in terms of employment and service provision.

Table 7.1 Comparison of formal and informal development in Western European peri-urban areas and suburbs Formal Development

Informal Development

Typical environment

– Garden suburb style development (Northern Europe) – Urban villages: new urbanism (Northern Europe) – Postwar planned suburbs: Banlieue, New towns... (Northern and Southern Europe) – Pockets of mass public housing (Northern and Southern Europe) – Mature suburbs of hybrid types

– Unauthorized, spontaneous popular suburbs, for instance afthereta in Greece or borgate in Italy (Southern Europe) – Suburban sprawl (Southern Europe) – Low-density rural and ribbon development: “arcadia for all” (Northern Europe) – Hybrid in-between urban-suburban landscapes

Characteristics

– Range of appearances from manicured garden suburbs to seamless integration with nature to destruction of nature – New urbanism type of development: village vernacular or sentimentalized urbanity – Peripheral social housing isolated and badly served by local services estates – Peripheral social housing developments of monolithic proportions

– Unpaved roads, lack of basic services, lack of amenities. Retrofitting by state or demand for it (Southern Europe) – Dense sprawl of polykatokia – a simple multi-story blocklike structure (Southern Europe: Greece) – Small-scale and fragmented pattern of suburban sprawl (Southern Europe) – Self-built bungalow sprawl (Northern Europe)

The state

– Spatial and planning policies that tend to limit urban sprawl – Different types of welfare states grant different levels of provision of social housing – Generally mixed provision of suburban housing and mixed governance of suburbs – Strong promotion of social housing in countries such as Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, and France – Generally robust local states: dependence on higher tiers of government for funding

– Indirect spatial policies that have the effect of limiting urban sprawl

Table 7.1 Comparison of formal and informal development in Western European peri-urban areas and suburbs (cont.) Formal Development

Informal Development

Capital accumulation

– Liberal welfare regime (U.K.): dominated by volume builders whose profits are determined significantly by land speculation and speculative rises in the property market – Social democratic welfare states (Scandinavia): volume builders are supervised by non-profit developers into taking profits only from building activity – Corporatist welfare states (Austria, France, Germany): developers are typically smaller but are able to benefit from speculation in land and property markets – Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal): speculative gains are widespread among the generally smaller and more fragmented building industry

– Informality in land market and housing production in Southern Europe

Private governance

– Dual housing system resting on “command” policies (Britain) – Virtual “zones of deportation” for the working class: banlieu, peripheral social housing estates, suburban “sink estates” – Private housing developments (condominium buildings, terrace houses, or a mix) with private premium space (swimming pool, sports ground, social club …) – Philanthropic housing estates

– Increasing concern for security in suburbs: private home security systems and devices

158  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

Suburban residential development has also been accompanied by the decentralization of industry, warehousing, offices, and retail. With these developments a more polycentric pattern is emerging around major Western European cities, as testified by studies examining suburban employment nodes (Bontje & Burdack, 2005; Garcia-López & Muñiz, 2010). These nodes are often more specialized in particular activities than their counterparts in North America (Bontje & Burdack, 2005) and thus complementary to central business districts (Gaschet, 2002). They are also closer to the historic cores of cities, more compact than their North American counterparts, and more planned (Bontje & Burdack, 2005; Huriot, 2004). Despite the temptation to partition Britain off from Western Europe because of its important connections with North America, in one important respect Britain is European. Urban development in Britain does not follow the largely contiguous form of that in the United States but rather is non-contiguous, scattered, and piecemeal, involving urban extensions tacked onto towns and cities (Clawson & Hall, 1973). Suburbanization in Western Europe might be thought of as variations on this theme of discontinuous developments at the periphery promoting polycentricity alongside economically important historic cores (Pumain, 2004). Temporal and Dimensional Disparities As Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2010: 10) outline, “forms of suburban development do not unfold in a teleological manner from one stage to another but rather each type of suburban expansion is evident in different historical moments and spaces.” This perspective is all the more important as the European literature alerts us to “dimensional” and “temporal disparities” in patterns of suburbanization. Mazierska and Rascaroli (2003) identify the dimensional disparities that exist between Europe and North America – differences in the geographic scale of suburbanization – that may obscure valid points of comparison. To this Phelps, Parsons, Ballas, and Dowling (2006) add temporal disparities – differences in the timing and speed of suburbanization. Thus, while global forces are integral to understanding the growth of the Frankfurt periphery both in terms of housing and economic functions (Keil & Ronneberger, 1994) and the global significance of a distinctively French formation of peripheral public housing – the banlieues (Balibar, 2007: 49) – they are only part of the story.

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  159

Studies reveal that urban change on the fringes of Western European cities follows different paths to those in North America, as outlined in Huriot’s (2004: 160) consideration of urban change in the French cities of Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, and Dijon. In France, processes of employment decentralization have generally resulted in the creation of several peripheral activity poles that are functionally specialized and not completely autonomous. The new urban poles are usually relatively close and complementary to the city centre rather than competing with it. Therefore, the dominance of the centre –as the economic, cultural, decision, and control focus – is more resistant than in its North American counterpart. Suburbanization in Europe is path dependent and re-­ creates persistent difference (Pumain, 2004: 155). Temporal disparities may well be apparent within Western Europe, since the timing and characteristics of growth differ in the south compared to the north (Catalán, SaurÍ, & Serra, 2008) with little indication that cities in Southern Europe are developing towards northern models (Leontidou, Afouxenidis, Kourliouros, & Marmaras, 2007: 264). Forces of Global and Regional Integration There are “global” forces that refract differently in Western Europe. Some discussion of the technological determinants of suburbanization is unavoidable. The format of suburbanization has been a product of the distinctive ways in which public and private transportation, communication, and service infrastructure networks systematically distort locational accessibility and development potential across city regions. In Europe, mass transit networks have been the framework upon which unified city-suburb relations have emerged historically and remained largely intact. These mass transit corridors and associated developments have been added to by a more circumscribed catering to “automobility” (Sheller & Urry, 2000) in Western Europe as compared to North America. Nevertheless, new car-based peripheral urban nodes have sprung up to create something of a latent framework for future development. Europeans’ acquired love of automobiles has been fused into a more hybrid form of suburbanization involving a greater degree of multimodal travel than in the North American case and a more muted non-contiguous pattern of urban expansion. Some curious juxtapositions of suburban rail and automobility have been produced in Western Europe as a result (Phelps et al., 2006). Maroussi provides perhaps the closest approximation of an edge city office complex within the greater

160  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

Athens urban area, but it is adjacent to an old, exclusive, residential and tourism suburb that grew as a result of suburban railway links. The London suburb of Croydon owes its economic fortunes to its rail-based accessibility to central London but has a distinct feel because of having been partially planned for the car in the 1960s. The same can be said of Noisy-le-Grand in Paris. It is wise not to overstate the extent of genuinely multinational enterprise among these builders of suburbs, not least because of the persistently local orientation and organization of the commercial and residential property development industries (Buzzelli & Harris, 2006; Wood, 2004). There is growing evidence of international integration that extends beyond the companies to the government and political cadres involved (Sklair, 2005). While the extant literature on this subject is almost entirely urban in focus, there is enough evidence relating to European cases to suggest that suburban politicians and bureaucrats are every bit as integrated into such global networks as their central city counterparts (Phelps et al., 2006). There is a case for suggesting that Western Europe is a relay for the import and export of suburbanization. This has been the case historically regarding the export of architecture to colonies (Ward, 2005) and the import of the bungalow from India and its rapid re-exportation to the United States as the dominant suburban housing form (King, 1984). Similarly in the early 1900s, local government was the arena of significant transatlantic policy cross-fertilization, including garden city and new town discourse (Rodgers, 2000). Such a relay of influences on suburbs extends into ways of life as a result of patterns of migration. A significant element of the lived experience of life in the banlieues of Paris, for example, revolves around the migrant communities that have become concentrated there. There is now ample evidence that the “city of villages” (Greater London Authority, 2002) that is London is intertwined with its multicultural nature so that ethnic enclaves have become apparent in the suburbs with interesting recursive effects on the built environment and lifestyles (Mace, 2010). To these global forces we might add a specifically European dimension of political and economic integration institutionalized under the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, despite the greater significance of the European Union in social policy matters, there is little sight of a single European welfare model (Kleinman, 2002) as a result of convergence, nor are elements of welfare likely to be the subject of concerted EU-level legislation with the exception of labour law (Cochrane, Clark,

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  161

& Gewirtz, 2001: 271). Different “worlds of welfare” (Esping-Anderson, 1990) continue to exist across Western Europe. Minor convergence in housing systems through the organization and provision of mortgage financing for housing may be driven by commitments to economic integration (Doling, 2006). Instead, the main effects on suburbanization are likely to be highly indirect. The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), for instance, has provided the planning rhetoric of “balanced development” and “polycentricity” to justify the new employment nodes that have developed around many towns and cities. Planning Administrative and Legal Traditions Housing markets and the manner in which they operate can shape processes of suburbanization. Balchin (1996) identifies three groups of countries within Western Europe: those in which private-rented housing is promoted (Germany and Switzerland); those which have strongly promoted social housing (Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, and France); and those dominated by owner-occupation (the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, and Italy). According to Kemeny (1994), the underlying dynamics of these different housing systems fall into two broad categories: on the one hand, the dual housing market exemplified by Britain, and on the other, integrated or unified housing systems promoted in the likes of Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Such differences connect to differences in the structure of housing construction industries. Britain’s industry tends to be dominated by volume builders whose profits are determined significantly by land and property market speculation. In integrated housing systems, volume builders are effectively supervised by non-profit developers into taking profits only from building activity. Between the two, developers are typically smaller but are able to benefit from speculation in land and property markets, as in the Mediterranean countries (Matznetter, 2001). There are important differences between the United States and Western Europe in terms of government intervention in and replacement of markets (Couch, Pestcheld-Held, & Leontidou, 2007: 18). This includes the manner in which property and development rights are allocated and more of a presumption in favour of government intervention for the common interest. Local governments appear stronger in Europe than in the United States, but with greater dependence on higher tiers of government for funding. This gives central and regional governments in Europe more control over local authorities and brings

162  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

greater cohesion and direction to spatial planning and control of development. EU directives such as those relating to the environment also have a binding effect (Couch et al., 2007: 18). However, differences in planning cultures and local government administrative and legal systems (CEC, 1997; Newman & Thornley, 1997) may also have a bearing on suburbanization. As Couch and colleagues elaborate, “The differences among European suburbs have to do with the different planning traditions but also with ‘other contextual differences’ related to ‘policy and governance,’ ‘local government structure,’ [and] different concern for sustainable development” (Couch et al., 2007: 17–19). Planning systems have sought to regulate specific types of development, and this has had an effect in limiting sprawl. The legislation restricting large out-of-town (and entirely car-dependent) retail facilities in Norway, Finland, and now also most German Länder provides a good example of this kind of indirect spatial policy (Nuissl, Rink, Couch, & Karecha, 2007: 226). In Britain, after a period in which out-of-town development was permitted, planning policy now favours the redevelopment of urban brownfield land. In the Netherlands, there has been debate over the introduction of development taxes on the development of greenfield land (Altes, 2009). Finally, planning systems are important in shaping suburban housing markets through the way they allow for the release of land for development. Allocations of suburban land for housing development have been essential to the integrated housing systems of corporatist and social democratic welfare states, with their significant component of private rented and social housing. Equally, the failure of the planning system to release land for development is an important contributor to the dual housing system in Britain. The weaknesses of the planning system in Southern European nations coupled with shortages of land released through the formal planning system have led to informality in land markets and housing production, and the reproduction of the uneven, small-scale, and fragmented pattern of suburban sprawl (Arbaci, 2007). Suburban Ideology The nostalgic and romantic appeal to nature that imbues ideologies concerned with the consumption and production of suburbia in Western Europe has been important to what Bruegmann (2005) sees as the global appeal of suburban living. The insubstantial literature on this issue actually belies the importance of the topic, since there are important

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  163

distinctions that strike at the heart of how and why suburbs have emerged in their different forms internationally. We often take as our starting point the anti-urban sentiments that inhere within Anglo-American suburban sensibilities. This is the suburb as a bourgeois utopia (Fishman, 1987), but also as a curious amalgam of interests that have come to dominate popular and professional discourse on the relationship of national identity to landscape. In the British case, suburban sensibilities are intimately linked to the romanticized nature of the relationship between identity and landscape (Matless, 1998). This has produced a regard for nature tamed – in the form of landscaped aristocratic estates, private gardens, and manicured garden suburbs or orderly new towns – that contrasts with Scandinavian sensibilities where the production of suburban housing adapts to its natural surroundings. This has been apparent in, for example, the development of garden suburbs such as Tapiola in Espoo, Finland (Phelps et al., 2006). In the north of Europe this appeal to nature in the development of suburbia carries a strong degree of nostalgia for the imagined community of rural life lost. Although it has taken the form of the garden suburb, more recently it has involved different appeals to history. The new urbanism of Poundbury in Dorset is exactly the sort of market town/ rural village vernacular that most suburban dwellers in Britain identify with whether or not they live in such settlements. Similarly, the new urbanism of new Dutch housing developments seems to sentimentalize urbanity (Lörzing, 2006). Hence, new urbanism seems at once both urban and suburban (Grant, 2007). In Southern Europe, in contrast, Leontidou uses the term astaphylia to denote suburban expansion as an approach to the city – an expression among suburban populations in Southern European nations of the “preference for urban centrality and proximity” (Catalán et al., 2008). Here the relationship of suburban development to nature may be rather different. The organized destruction of nature – in the form of deliberately started fires – is part and parcel of the informal development and the weakness of local government in the suburban extension of Athens (Phelps et al., 2006). Some of the same sentiments are also applicable in France where, despite the deep attachment to the countryside, there is also an inherited Latin culture of urbanism. The evolution of real estate and property values and the very central location of work and of most services bear witness to this (Pumain, 2004). Therefore, urban sprawl in France is not a manifestation of an anti-urban ideology (Pumain, 2004).

164  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

Forms of Suburbanization Self-Built Suburbia “Autoconstruction” (or self-built housing) is something that sets South­ ern European suburbs apart from their counterparts in the north; but it is also something that connects this part of Europe to, for example, Latin America. Key to this specificity of Southern European suburbs has been the incapacity of planning in the south to control urban development at the urban fringe (Chorianopoulos et al., 2010). Instead, the state turned a blind eye, and the urban poor were tacitly allowed to create their unauthorized, spontaneous popular suburbs (Leontidou, 1990; Beja Horta, 2004). These popular suburbs were quite close to the centre, contrib­ uting to the compactness of cities (Marmaras, 1996). The afthereta (illegal houses) of Athens and the borgate (poor neighbourhoods) already mushrooming on the Roman urban fringe in the early 1900s were close to the inner city. In Rome, Barcelona, and Athens, semi-squatters predominated in the suburbs from the interwar period until at least the 1970s; in other southern cities such as Lisbon they remain numerous (Leontidou, 1990; Beja Horta, 2004). One celebrated form of autoconstruction can be found in the polykatokia found in Athens – a simple, multi-story, blocklike structure to which floors are added as desired – and built under the antiparochi system in which a plot owner builds and then sells or rents different apartments to help pay for its construction. Athens has sprawled in this quite dense way, often with little green space (Phelps et al., 2006). Southern European cities and their suburbs experienced urbanization without industrialization and informal job growth, under which there was a popular colonization of land at the urban fringe resulting in the expanded suburbs (Leontidou, 1990: 29). Much of the low-density rural and ribbon development of the inter-­ war years that prompted the urban containment and strong development control characteristic of the postwar British planning system was built on a small scale by the private sector or even self-built (Hardy & Ward, 1984). While its extent is now firmly limited, we might speculate that this latent demand persists and may even be displaced into other barely recognizable forms – such as the incremental and often idiosyncratic adaptation of British suburban residences (Whitehand & Carr, 2001).

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  165

Private-Sector–Built Suburbia Britain provides a classic example of privately built suburban housing. The best example of this is London’s “metroland,” the suburbs created by the extension of the Metropolitan railway line out of central London into the countryside and the associated acquisition of land, development, and marketing of this territory. The monotony of these large estates came to be something of their signature; however, it should be remembered that in London, as elsewhere in Europe, the suburbs were often formed around older rural centres that have become suburban. These suburbs have had their ups and downs; however, the quality of their housing stock and their amenity and accessibility mean that they have enjoyed enduring popularity where the creation of a dual housing market has placed a premium on such locations. Bungalow sprawl was, for a while in the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps the dominant form of private mass-­ produced suburban housing in Britain – re-imported as a diminutive version of the vast tracts of such housing pioneered in the United States. While private sector-developed mass suburban housing in Britain undoubtedly suffered from an undersupply of services and amenities, these problems paled in comparison to instances in the south of Europe where self-built housing and large-scale private sector development led to a stronger, more militant, and broader based distributional politics. In the era of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, speculatively built suburban housing in the industrializing suburbs to the south of Madrid and in Barcelona occurred in tandem with autoconstruction. These privately developed housing blocks became associated with an extreme version of the sort of undersupply of services that textbook planning practice has typically sought to address. While developers left these communities with unpaved roads and lacking in basic services such as running water, the state and the private sector between them also overlooked provision for schools and other welfare services. Demands for such services initiated by grassroots movements (typically, residents’ ­associations) continue to exert a dominant effect on representative politics in those suburbs. State-Led Suburbanization The planned suburbs of postwar Britain often took the form of urban extensions that lacked some of the centrality, accessibility, and services

166  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

of the likes of “metroland” and, partly as a result, suffered from an undersupply of services. Some of the malaise of these settlements in their early years reflected the social complexion of forced relocation of people alongside new non-local settlers. The location and form of this stateled suburbanization was also a product of inter-local authority conflict. During the 1960s the Labour-controlled Greater London Council (GLC) acquisitions of land in outer London boroughs brought it into direct conflict with conservative-controlled councils (Gyford, 1994). The result was estates that were often physically isolated and poorly served by local services. In Europe, there is a case for arguing that both these planned social housing and privately developed suburbs developed from a muted form of fiscal competition. Local authorities in France and Germany have been seen to encourage suburbanization when competing with one another and seeking to increase their tax base (Kraemer, 2005; Sallez & Burgi, 2004: 125–6; Sellers, 2002; Nuissl & Couch, 2007) as have the suburban jurisdictions to the south of Madrid (Neuman, 1997). This logic also finds expression in the competition among local governments in Britain, especially between cities and land-rich local governments, with new suburban housing and employment figuring as “social dumping” at the extremities of local government jurisdictions (Phelps, 2012). Local government boundaries have changed little to accommodate the suburban extension of cities. Cities have remained contained, while suburban development has rarely benefited from much inter-local government coordination. Blatter (2006) describes the rescaling of urban governance in Bremen and Hannover in Germany, noting a greater degree of cooperation between these regional tier cities and their surrounding suburban municipalities. As a result Hannover has been successful in reducing city-suburban disparities, pointing the way to “more integrated and institutionalized metropolitan governance” (Blatter, 2006: 145). In the Netherlands, cooperation between city and suburban municipalities has waxed and waned. Central government’s support for reform of local government in favour of urban provinces had foundered by the mid-1990s (Salet & Thornley, 2007). Since that time, informal intermunicipal cooperation at the urban agglomeration level has emerged, primarily reflecting an interest among local governments within city-regions to strengthen their external competitiveness (Salet & Thornley, 2007). The obstacles to local government coordination with a view to the integrated planning of cities and suburbs in France also appear significant and have prompted a stream of legislation (Sallez

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  167

& Burgi, 2004) which Sellers (2002) sees as having been broadly effective in limiting uncoordinated suburban development. Modes of Suburban Governance State Governance Questions of suburban governance can be set in the long-term evolution of nation states, which represent a significant force of administrative inertia as territorial jurisdictions have been folded into and adapted to the nation-state framework (Dodgshon, 1998). In particular, the regional tier and its relative strength in political and administrative terms – as a mediating tier between central and local government – has played a distinctive part in making the pattern of suburbanization in Western Europe more muted and managed than elsewhere. Moreover, suburbanization takes place in a context in which sub-national government boundaries – especially on the metropolitan scale – are relatively static when compared to the fragmentation apparent in the United States and the elements of annexation and amalgamation apparent in China. In the postwar era it is important to view the production of suburbs and their governance in terms of the centrality of the state as part and parcel of progressive ideals. Much has changed, but there is an important legacy across the periphery of large West European cities where significant pockets of public housing have been an integral part of remaking the city. In Britain, up to 100,000 houses were cleared in the peak years of the 1950s (Robson 1988: 18), and populations were decanted to new local-government-developed suburbs or new towns. What began as a welfare-state-governed process of partial suburbanization mutated into an authoritarian mode of governance bound up with a dual housing system. Some of the more significant and visible examples of concerted state governance of suburbs in Europe is provided by the banlieues of France. These peripheral housing developments of monolithic proportions began as a limited experimental program but became institutionalized and widespread (Dikec, 2006: 68–9). With their development, there is a sense in which “real life” has come to exist outside the “Disneyfied” centre of Paris (Maspero, 1994). Although suburban, some banlieues share some characteristics of inner-city ghettos, though they are notably different in the manner in which they have been produced (Waquant, 2007). This is a “periphery at the very center of the great metropolitan areas” (Balibar, 2007: 48).

168  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

Authoritarian Modes of Governance Swyngedouw (2005) has suggested that emerging forms of governance are increasingly authoritarian. This is signalled by the depoliticized nature of a variety of development projects, presumably including those in the suburbs. We should avoid making any direct correlation between authoritarian governance and neoliberal policies, as Dikec has described in the case of France, where the social contract of the republican state represents a generally infertile ground in which to seed neoliberalism. Nevertheless, the suburbs in the form of the banlieues could be highlighted as the territory of a partially limited engagement with neoliberalism, which Dikec describes as the site of French penal urban policy. Here, “The republican penal state still has an active ‘left hand,’ which, however, is increasingly accompanied by its ‘right hand,’ concerning, in particular, the deprived neighbourhoods in the peripheral areas (banlieues) of large cities” (Dikec 2006: 60). In contrast to area-based urban policy in Britain, which labelled communities from the top down, French urban policy initiated in the 1980s focused on the banlieues as a result of bottom-up processes. Nevertheless, as concerted urban policy failed to halt socio-economic decline in the face of significant deindustrialization (Waquant, 2007), the state filled these “voids of representation” (Balibar, 2007) with a meaning: they came to signify otherness, and hence policy from the 1990s onwards became one of the central state’s containment of certain problematic spaces and their populations in the name of maintaining the authority and integrity of the Republic (Dikec, 2006: 77). Germany may also provide examples of authoritarian governance as Keil and Ronneberger (1994: 161) highlight the virtual “zones of deportation” for the working-class poor that are the peripheral social housing projects in the Frankfurt agglomeration. In Britain, however, the picture is more mixed, with many of the “sink estates” of social housing being inner city or inner suburban. It is also important in the British case to be careful about the historical vantage point taken; some of the most conspicuous examples of “authoritarian” governance – the likes of comprehensive redevelopment schemes and new town corporations – could hardly be interpreted as the kind of development vehicles that Swyngedouw has in mind, as they are imbued with strong welfare principles. They are nevertheless now part of a more authoritarian policy as part of a dual housing system. The inner city and inner suburbs provide

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  169

the locations for social housing residualized in a dual housing system – the suburbs at once promoting the concept of owner-occupied housing while being unable to meet these housing needs. The curious thing is that this dual housing system rests on “command” policies that approximate to those seen in former communist states (Kemeny, 1994). Yet some of the same city-suburb contrasts in socio-economic status and housing tenure that are found in the United Kingdom also exist in Austria, despite important differences in the two countries’ respective housing systems. The polarization apparent within the city proper, where substandard working-class apartments and comprehensive public housing programs are confined, compares with the homogeneity of the suburbs. This is a consequence of the territorial fragmentation of social housing policies in Austria. While the city proper comprises 25 per cent public housing apartments, in the suburban region the proportion is less than 5 per cent (Hatz, 2009). Private Governance To date, the strength of local government has sheltered suburbs from some of most debilitating effects of the neoliberalization of welfare regimes and the rise of private governance. While the likes of gated residences may not always be enclosed, they may make extensive use of surveillance devices. Here, some of the irrepressible desire to autoconstruct (or self-build) may have been displaced into the realm of security. This is witnessed in the success of the industries involved in the manufacturing and installation of alarms and security devices, industries that, in many national settings, have a large suburban owner-occupied housing market to satisfy. In Spain, fully 90 per cent of the demand for these security systems and devices comes from private households located in detached and semi-detached neighbourhoods on the city outskirts (Muñoz, 2003). Although often not explicitly prohibited by planning law, gated residential communities are less prevalent and less tolerated in Europe than in North America as a result of planning regulation within European nations. For example, in Spain, planning law establishes that streets must be transferred (in ownership) to the relevant local authority after the development process, and therefore private streets (and club good space) are considered illegal. Nevertheless, upmarket gated communities exist on the new peripheries of Madrid and are tolerated as an exception – the tendency being for the design of private developments to create the effect of enclosure.

170  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

The philanthropic estates found in Britain throw an ambiguous case of private governance into this mix. Estates such as Bourneville, the early new towns, and garden suburbs in London, Cardiff, and Glasgow occupy a middle ground somewhere between the state and the private sector – at once privately developed and also the model for postwar state intervention. Inherent within these developments were notions of appropriate behaviour and particular types of “desirable” residents. They were developments in search of a community and in that respect little different from the common interest of residential developments today. Mixed Modes of Governance The huge legacy of self-led suburbanization in Southern Europe presents an example of the imposition of formal, state-led elements on selfbuilt suburbs. Here, legalized suburbanites started to demand their citizens’ rights to appropriate urban amenities. Thus, suburbs that accommodated rural migrants are still being remodelled. A paradigmatic case is the Programa de remodelación de barrios on the southeastern periphery of Madrid between 1979 and 1996, a program that consisted in the development and redevelopment of dwellings, commercial units, and urban public amenities in thirty districts that emerged during the massive rural migration of the 1950s and 1960s (Echenagusía, 1996). The role of the residents’ associations was crucial in the governance of the renewal process and remains so in recent cases of the renewal of suburbs on the northern periphery of Madrid, such as the neighbourhood of UVA Hortaleza (see figure 7.1). In another case, residents have led the process of suburban regeneration. The district of Trinitat Nova in Barcelona was built between the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate the waves of migrants arriving to work in industry. The district, which was built with poor-quality construction and lacked sufficient basic facilities, was significantly improved during the 1980s. Precarious socio-economic conditions persisted, however, and in 1996 the Residents’ Association initiated a process of community planning to regenerate the district. The City Council of Barcelona and the Social Welfare Department of the regional government gave financial support to the project. In 1999, when this Community Plan was already in process, construction problems led the residents to promote more significant renewal under a new 2002 urban renewal project (PERI).

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  171

Figure 7.1 Old and new housing in UVA Hortaleza, Madrid. Photo: Amparo Tarazona Vento.

Conclusion Many intriguing questions arise out of the preceding discussion. First, does the stronger tradition of local government and the powers exerted by a regional tier of government in Western Europe limit extremes in forms and modes of governance and produce a muted, non-contiguous pattern of suburban sprawl? Second, does the internal heterogeneity of Western Europe mean that suburbanization is more variable here than in other regions? Third, there is value in elaborating the meaning of the simple observation of the mixed nature of the Western European economies. Is there a case for saying that Western Europe more than anywhere else represents a region of greater mixed nature and hybridity of suburban forms and modes of governance? Fourth, and elaborating on the possible determinants of this mixity of Western European suburbia, does Western Europe act as a relay for suburban forms, modes of governance, and lifestyle aspirations in the modern era? The internal heterogeneity of Western European nations is amplified by the extra-regional import and export of ideas and practices, though Europe’s peculiarity may be lessening when set

172  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento

against the scale and reach of policy mobility centred on cities and suburbs of the Global South. Fifth, this survey highlights questions surrounding the evolution of individual suburbs (McManus & Ethington, 2007). There are instances of self-built suburbanization being folded into state modes of governance in Spain, while state-led social housing has become part of authoritarian policies sustaining a dual housing system in Britain. Sixth, is this the only world region in which both urban and anti-urban sentiments coexist? REFERENCES Altes, W.K.K. (2009). Taxing land for urban containment: Reflections on a Dutch debate. Land Use Policy, 26(2), 233–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/​ j.landusepol.2008.01.006. Arbaci, S. (2007). Ethnic segregation, housing systems and welfare regimes in Europe. European Journal of Housing Policy, 7(4), 401–33. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1080/14616710701650443. Balchin, P. (Ed.). (1996). Housing policy in Europe. London: Routledge. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203436417. Balibar, E. (2007). Uprisings in the banlieues. Constellations, 14(1), 47–71. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2007.00422.x. Beja Horta, A.P. (2004). Contested citizenship: Immigration politics and grassroots migrants’ organizations in post-colonial Portugal. New York: CMS-Center for Migration Studies. Blatter, J.K. (2006). Geographic scale and functional scope in metropolitan governance reform: Theory and evidence from Germany. Journal of Urban Affairs, 28(2), 121–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2166.2006.00264.x. Bontje, M., & Burdack, J. (2005). Edge cities, European-style: Examples from Paris and the Randstad. Cities, 22(4), 317–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/​ j.cities.2005.01.007. Bruegmann, R. (2005). Sprawl: A compact history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226076973.001.0001. Buzzelli, M., & Harris, R. (2006). Cities as the industrial districts of housebuilding. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30(4), 894–917. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00695.x. Catalán, B., Saurí, D., & Serra, P. (2008). Urban sprawl in the Mediterranean?: Patterns of growth and change in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region 1993–2000. Landscape and Urban Planning, 85(3), 174–84. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2007.11.004.

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  173 CEC. (1997). The compendium of planning systems in Europe. Brussels: Commission of European Communities. Chorianopoulos, I., Pagonis, T., Koukoulas, S., & Drymoniti, S. (2010). Planning, competitiveness and sprawl in the Mediterranean city: The case of Athens. Cities, 27(4), 249–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2009.12.011. Clawson, M., & Hall, P. (1973). Planning and urban growth: An Anglo-American comparison. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cochrane, A., Clark, T., & Gewirtz, S. (2001). Looking for a European welfare state. In A. Cochrane, T. Clarke, & S. Gewirtz (Eds), Comparing welfare states (2nd ed.: 261–90). London: Sage. Couch, C., Pestcheld-Held, G., & Leontidou, L. (Eds). (2007). Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscape, land-use change and policy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470692066. Dikec, M. (2006). Two decades of French urban policy: From social development of neighbourhoods to the Republican penal state. Antipode, 38(1), 59–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2006.00565.x. Dodgshon, R. (1998). Society in time and space: A geographical perspective on change. Cambridge: Cambridge Uuniversity Press. Doling, J. (2006). A European housing policy? European Journal of Housing Policy, 6(3), 335–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616710600973169. Echenagusía, J. (1996). Un ejemplo de participación y renovación urbana: la remodelación de barrios en Madrid. Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. http://www.eurosur.org/OLEIROS/coodes/maneras/onu/ bp258.html. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2010). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. MCRI Working Paper. Esping-Anderson, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fishman, R. (1987). Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. New York: Basic Books. Galster, G., Hanson, R., Ratcliffe, M.R., Wolman, H., Coleman, S., & Freihage, J. (2001). Wrestling sprawl to the ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept. Housing Policy Debate, 12(4), 681–717. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1080/10511482.2001.9521426. Garcia-López, M.A., & Muñiz, I. (2010). Employment decentralisation: Polycentricity or scatteration? The case of Barcelona. Urban Studies, 47(14), 3035–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098009360229. Gaschet, F. (2002). The new intra-urban dynamics: Suburbanisation and functional specialisation in French cities. Papers in Regional Science, 81(1), 63–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s101100100088.

174  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento Grant, J.L. (2007). Two sides of a coin? New urbanism and gated communities. Housing Policy Debate, 18(3), 481–501. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10511482​ .2007.9521608. Greater London Authority. (2002). A city of villages: Promoting a sustainable future for London’s suburbs. London: Greater London Authority. Gyford, J. (1994). Politics and planning in London. In J. Simmie (Ed.), Planning London (71–89). London: University College London Press. Hardy, D., & Ward, C. (1984). Arcadia for all: The legacy of a makeshift landscape. London: Mansell Publishing. Hatz, G. (2009). Features and dynamics of socio-spatial differentiation in Vienna and the Vienna Metropolitan Region. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 100(4), 485–501. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-​9663​ .2009.00554.x. Huriot, J.M. (2004). Concentration and dispersal of employment in French cities. In H.W. Richardson & C.-H.C. Bae (Eds), Urban sprawl in Western Europe and the United States (159–84). Aldershot: Ashgate. Keil, R., & Ronneberger, K. (1994). Going up the country: Internationalization and urbanization at Frankfurt’s northern fringe. Environment & Planning D, 12(2), 137–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d120137. Kemeny, J. (1994). Understanding European housing systems. SAUS Working Paper 120. Bristol: University of Bristol. King, A.D. (1984). The bungalow: The production of a global culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kleinman, M. (2002). The future of European Union social policy and its implications for housing. Urban Studies, 39(2), 341–52. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1080/00420980120103000. Kraemer, C. (2005). Commuter belt turbulence in a dynamic region: The case of the Munich city-region. In K. Hoggart (Ed.), The city’s hinterland: Dynamism and divergence in Europe’s peri-urban territories (41–68). Aldershot: Ashgate. Leontidou, L. (1990). The Mediterranean city. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511522208. Leontidou, L., Afouxenidis, A., Kourliouros, E., & Marmaras, E. (2007). Infrastructure-related urban sprawl: Mega-events and hybrid peri-urban landscapes in Southern Europe. In C. Couch, G. Pestcheld-Held, & L. Leontidou (Eds), Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscape, land-use change and policy (71–101. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1002/9780470692066.ch3. Lörzing, H. (2006). Reinventing suburbia in the Netherlands. Built Environment, 32(3), 298–310. http://dx.doi.org/10.2148/benv.32.3.298.

Suburban Governance in Western Europe  175 Mace, A. (2010). London’s inter-war suburbs: Belonging in a mega-city region. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, King’s College, London.) Marmaras, E. (1996). From the policy of town planning to that of urban compactness: Athens during the first half of the twentieth century. In International Planning History Society & ETIPOP (Eds), Proceedings on the planning of capital cities (459–74). Maspero, F. (1994). Roissy express: Journey through the Paris suburbs. London: Verso. Matless, D. (1998). Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion Books. Matznetter, W. (2002). Social housing policy in a conservative welfare state: Austria as an example. Urban Studies, 39(2), 265–82. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1080/00420980120102966. Mazierska, E., & Rascaroli, L. (2003). From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern cities, European cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. McManus, R., & Ethington, P.J. (2007). Suburbs in transition: New approaches to suburban history. Urban History, 34(02), 317–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S096392680700466X. Muñoz, F. (2003). Lock living: Urban sprawl in Mediterranean cities. Cities, 20(6), 381–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2003.08.003. Neuman, M. (1997). Images as institution builders: Metropolitan planning in Madrid. In P. Healey (Ed.), Making strategic spatial plans: Innovation in Europe (75–91). London: University College London Press. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.4324/9780203451502_chapter_FIVE. Newman, P., & Thornley, A. (1997). Urban planning in Europe. London: Routledge. Nuissl, H., & Couch, C. (2007). Lines of defense: Policies for the control of urban sprawl. In C. Couch, G. Pestcheld-Held, & L. Leontidou (Eds), Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscape, land-use change and policy (217–41). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470692066.ch8. Nuissl, H., Rink, D., Couch, C., & Karecha, J. (2007). Decline and sprawl: Urban sprawl is not confined to expanding city regions. In C. Couch, G. Pestcheld-Held, & L. Leontidou (Eds), Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscape, land-use change and policy (136-62). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1002/9780470692066.ch5. Phelps, N.A. (2012). An anatomy of sprawl: Planning and politics in Britain. London: Routledge. Phelps, N.A., Parsons, N., Ballas, D., & Dowling, A. (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. Pumain, D. (2004). Urban sprawl: Is there a French case? In H.W. Richardson and C.-H.C. Bae (Eds), Urban sprawl in Western Europe and the United States (137–58). Aldershot: Ashgate.

176  Nicholas A. Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento Robson, B. (1988). Those inner cities: Reconciling the social and economic aims of urban policy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rodgers, D.T. (2000). Atlantic crossings: Social politics in a progressive era. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Salet, W., & Thornley, A. (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. Sallez, A., & Burgi, J. (2004). Urban sprawl in France 1990–1999. In H.W. Richardson & C.-H.C. Bae (Eds), Urban sprawl in Western Europe and the United States (115–36). Aldershot: Ashgate. Schneider, A., & Woodcock, C.E. (2008). Compact, dispersed, fragmented, extensive? A comparison of urban growth in twenty-five global cities using remotely sensed data, pattern metrics and census information. Urban Studies, 45(3), 659–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098007087340. Sellers, J.M. (2002). Federalism and metropolitan governance in crossnational perspective: The case of urban sprawl. Environment and Planning. C, Government & Policy, 20(1), 95–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/c11w. Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2000). The city and the car. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(4), 737–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/​ 1468-2427.00276. Sklair, L. (2005). The transnational capitalist class and contemporary architecture in global cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(3), 485–500. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00601.x. Swyngedouw, E. (2005). Governance innovation and the citizen: The Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state. Urban Studies, 42(11), 1991–2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980500279869. Waquant, L. (2007). French working class banlieue and black American ghetto: From conflation to comparison. Qui Parle, 16, 1–34. Ward, S. (2005). A pioneer “global intelligence corps”? The internationalization of planning practice, 1890–1939. Town Planning Review, 76(2), 119–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/tpr.76.2.2. Whitehand, J.W.R., & Carr, C.M.H. (2001). Twentieth century suburbs: A morphological approach. London: Routledge. Wood, A. (2004). The scalar transformation of the US commercial property development industry: A cautionary note on the limits of globalization. Economic Geography, 80(2), 119–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/​j.19448287.2004.tb00304.x.

8 Suburbia in Three Acts: The East European Story sonia hirt and atanas kovachev

How does suburbanization1 in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Eastern Europe2 relate to suburbanization trends elsewhere in the world? Is there a specific East European suburbanization “story”? If so, how does governance3 contribute to this potential suburban specificity? We argue that East European suburbanization has developed in three distinct “acts” (i.e., time periods) because of the three contrasting types of governance that the subcontinent has embraced since the formation of independent nation-states in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although the three governance types did involve some subtle transitional periods, overall they entailed sharp ideological swings. This makes Eastern Europe sufficiently unique to warrant telling a distinct East European suburban “story.” We first discuss the early-twentieth-century suburban processes in Eastern Europe. Second, we review the East European experience during the period of state socialism, which, for most countries in the region (excluding parts of the former Soviet Union) began right after the Second World War and ended in 1989. Third, we analyse post-socialist suburbanization. As elsewhere in the world, suburbanization in Eastern Europe may be conceptualized as one of three types: self-built, state-led, and private-led (Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012). The three types have always coexisted to an extent. Yet, we would posit that in the East European case, perhaps more so than elsewhere, each type has been unusually dominant during each of the three stages. Suburbanization before Socialism In the early twentieth century, Eastern Europe comprised bourgeois-­ liberal nation-states that had recently seceded from the European

178  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

empires (e.g., the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, and the Russian). East European levels of economic development were notably lower than those of their West European counterparts. For nation-building purposes, most of the young states invested heavily in their national capitals and other large cities. Still, since the East European economies were largely agricultural, levels of urbanization across the region were lower than those found farther west. For example, in 1900 only 15 per cent of the population of Russia was classified as urban (Nefedova & Treivish, 2003). Driven by the West European numbers, the higher, continental European average in the same year was 33 per cent (Bairoch, 1988: 290). At the time, some significant differences did exist between the countries, much as they do today (for instance, the former provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire located closer to Europe’s wealthier nations had higher levels of industrialization and urbanization than Russia and the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire). The dominant trend of peri-urban development at the time was rural-to-urban migration, led by impoverished farmers looking for jobs in large cities. The growing peripheries of East European cities, including the national capitals, were largely chaotic. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were government efforts to reorganize these peripheries in line with the fashionable West European theories of the day: for example, by planning at the metropolitan level, by planning for “garden cities” (e.g., Machedon, Machedon, & Scoffham, 1999, on Bucharest; Hirt, 2007a on Sofia), and by building roads and tram lines from city centres to their peripheries. Around that time, Prague, for instance, expanded with a belt of trendy neighbourhoods and “garden towns” (Sýkora, 1999), as did Belgrade (Hirt, 2008a, 2008b) (see figure 8.1). Private developers took advantage of bourgeois aspirations to live in greener settings and constructed a limited number of “garden cities,” mostly around the wealthiest cities of Central Europe. Yet the movement towards large cities by rural migrants, aspiring proletarians, and, in some countries, war refugees continued unabated. Thus, the poor, self-built character of the early-twentieth-century East European “suburbs” generally persisted. Socialism and Suburbanization The triumph of communist regimes across the region changed the structural conditions under which urbanization and suburbanization proceeded. Specifically, most urban land, large real estate holdings, and

Figure 8.1 The 1927 master plan of Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. The plan envisioned the development of an urban periphery in the form of “garden cities.” Photo courtesy of the archives of the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade.

180  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

production means were nationalized by the end of the 1940s (in Russia, obviously, earlier). In the more liberal states like Poland and Yugoslavia, nationalization was “softer”: there, agricultural land and agricultural means of production were left in private hands. Still, nearly universally, public authorities acquired a near monopoly on city building. This unique aspect of the socialist political economy led some to conclude that between 1949 and 1989, Eastern Europe exhibited an autonomous urban model referred to as the “socialist city” – a model significantly different from the “capitalist city” (Szelenyi, 1996; Sheppard, 2000; Hirt, 2008b). With the advent of state socialism, suburban “garden towns” with single-family housing were no longer deemed desirable. Their construction became logistically impossible because land at the urban rim generally belonged to the public, and the private construction industry no longer existed; thus, there was no way to purchase peripheral land, subdivide it, and sell it to myriad private homeowners. (Individual families, however, could often obtain permission to build a home for themselves.) The construction of self-built, informal, low-cost dwellings for incoming workers at the urban rim also became ideologically unacceptable. Still, in some countries such as Yugoslavia the process went on unabated for decades, with authorities turning a “blind eye” (Zegarac, 1999), likely because housing for the quickly swelling urban populations remained a challenge, given limited resources. This is not to say that the peripheries of cities did not substantially grow – they did, but in a manner dramatically different from before. Even though urbanization rates remained lower than in Western Europe, substantial urban growth occurred because of changed demographic conditions (e.g., reduced death rates) as well as changed political priorities. The socialist regimes placed a heavy emphasis on industrialization as a means of pursuing geopolitical superiority. Vast chunks of urban land were designated for industrial facilities: in St Petersburg, for example, industrial zones made up 44 per cent of the total city area; in Moscow they were 32 per cent (as compared to, say, 5 per cent in Paris) (Hirt & Stanilov, 2009: 66). Urbanization in some countries like Romania was achieved in an especially brutal way, by forcing villagers into the urban centres (Abraham, 1992). As a result, between the late 1940s and the onset of the 1990s, the population of Romania’s capital, Bucharest, increased twofold (from about 1 million to 2 million people) – a figure not unusual across the region.

The East European Story  181

Urban population growth demanded a comprehensive state-led solution. This solution was found in industrialized building methods that dominated housing production from the 1960s onward (see also chapter 9 of this volume). Large cities across Eastern Europe were, in the span of about two decades, surrounded by massive pre-made-panel housing blocks with a grandiose but Spartan flavour (see figure 8.2). Of course, following the modernist dictum of housing as a “machine for living,” West European cities embraced a similar philosophy during the same era (see chapter 7 of this volume), as evidenced by developments such as the Parisian Grands Ensembles. There were, however, some notable differences between these types of developments in socialist and capitalist conditions, in terms of both processes and products. Perhaps most obviously, the standardized estates in East European cities constituted a much larger percentage of the housing stock than in West European cities.4 They were typically built on former agricultural land (now in state hands) by large, publicly owned construction firms that had the capacity to produce thousands of buildings per year. By West European standards, the apartments in these buildings were often small and of low quality.5 Still, in Eastern Europe they were, for three decades, perceived as “modern” and superior to the aging urban housing stock. Once built, the apartments were typically distributed to various state enterprises, which then distributed them to their employees based on quotas. Families applying for an apartment of this type sometimes waited for a dozen or so years, until their turn for a “modern” apartment would come. Home-ownership patterns varied widely across the region. The Bulgarian government, for example, sold the standardized dwellings upon their completion. This gave socialist Bulgaria a home-ownership rate of about 80 per cent – far exceeding the 67 per cent in the “nation of homeowners,” the United States. Most other East European governments had a smaller percentage of apartments under private ownership (about 30 or 40 per cent). In these cases, the new dwellings were rented to their residents at fairly affordable rates. The standardized residential buildings were located in carefully planned neighbourhoods or complexes (in Russian, micro-rajoni), which included the most vital services, including schools, parks, and hospitals. Still, retail and other “less vital” services (e.g., sports and entertainment venues) were often missing. The majority of the working residents of these estates ended up commuting, by mass transit, to the older parts of town or to new industrial facilities located elsewhere on the urban edge.

182  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

Figure 8.2 Marshall Josip Tito comments on the model of New Belgrade (Novi Beograd) – a large, modernist, standardized development in the outskirts of Belgrade. These types of developments made up the periphery of most large socialist cities and were constructed between 1960 and 1980. It is debatable whether they can be characterized as “socialist suburbs.” Photo courtesy of the archives of the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade.

The East European Story  183

It is debatable whether the socialist complexes can be called “suburbs.” Embracing a perhaps narrow but widely held definition of suburbanization as a process of urban decentralization driven by upper- and middle-class private actors searching to escape urban life in sprawling lower-density environments (e.g., Jackson, 1985; Fishman, 1987), some scholars argue that the socialist complexes were definitively not suburban: They did not encompass urban decentralization (rather, they were built to absorb population that was growing as a result of urbanization); they were examples of high-density, collectivist living; they marked a clear urban edge; and they were not the result of any actors’ aspirations to exit the city (e.g., Tammaru, 2001; Hirt, 2007b). But if we use the wider definition of suburbanization as decentred growth, the standardized estates could be regarded as the socialist version of suburbs. There are, however, other candidates for the same label. The first are the socialist-era “new towns,” which were also examples of central planning but were autonomous communities separated from the urban cores by greenbelts (e.g., Bernhardt, 2005). And the second are the recreational zones that included summer cottages like the Russian dacha, the Bulgarian villa, the Czech chata, and the Yugoslav weekendica. These typically included modest, privately constructed single-family cottages that provided urban residents not only with a place for the weekend but also with a vegetable garden. Another variation on the same theme was the larger, much fancier summer home that belonged to party apparatchiks and members of the pro-regime intelligentsia. These homes were the only socialist suburban form built with the intention of escaping urbanity, at least on a part-time basis. To summarize: the growth of urban peripheries during socialism was government led. Even though some individual, self-styled construction went on, the state took a dominant position. It became a near-monopolist in city building, not only of housing, but of all infrastructure, major retail outlets, and services. The fact that private automobile ownership was low and the overwhelming majority of people used public transit in itself guaranteed that growth could occur only in pre-designated locations. In another exercise of control, the regimes restricted the right of citizens to settle where they wished. Citizens could not freely move from place to place; a residency permit was required to live in a particular town or city. Residents of villages and provincial towns who wished to settle in large cities but had no permit (and therefore no state-provided apartment) sometimes used a back-door approach by obtaining modest homes on the urban periphery, where private building

184  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

permits were given with greater ease. In doing so, they hoped eventually to move to the urban cores. In this regard, Ioffe & Nefedova (1999) point out an obvious but often-ignored fundamental difference between, say, U.S. and Soviet suburbanization during the mid-twentieth century: Whereas middle-class Americans wished to settle in the suburbs to escape the city, their Soviet brethren wished to settle in the suburbs so that they could join the city (hence, using Soviet suburbs as “stepping stones” to urban life). Suburbanization in the Post-Socialist Period In 1989, Eastern Europe entered a period of systemic transformation. Instead of the promised quick pathway to prosperous capitalism, the transformation seems to have fulfilled Keynes’s (1933: 245) bleak prediction from the 1930s: “a transition will involve so much pure destruction of wealth that the new state of affairs will be, at first, far worse than the old.” In fact, the crisis of the 1990s that rocked the post-Soviet world turned out to be deeper than the Great Depression. In the early to mid1990s, GDP decreased by about 30 per cent in most countries. Unem­ ployment rates rose sharply and in some nations reached a quarter of the population; inflation approached or entered the triple digits; and inequality indexes increased significantly (Hamilton, 1999; Verhoven, 2007; Hirt & Stanilov, 2009). The economic downturn was severely aggravated by years of ethnic strife and the break-up of multinational federations. The current global economic crisis aside, however, the post2000 period has been marked by GDP growth and a return to stability, especially for the new European Union (EU) members in Central Europe, the Baltic region, and parts of Southeast Europe, as well as for the oil-rich Soviet successor states. The fundamental socio-economic and political transformation, inspired by a strong neoliberal ideological swing, inevitably altered the mechanisms of city building. The following features of the transformation were especially important for cities: a return of market mechanisms and re-commoditization of space, a change of ownership patterns, a shift of control from state to local levels, a sharp increase in the number of actors participating in city building, and a changed role for planning (e.g., Węcławowicz, 2002). All of them entailed some scaling back of public-sector assets, powers, and responsibilities, and their shift to private parties. Privatization – in Bodnar’s words (2001: 10) the leitmotif of

The East European Story  185

the post-socialist period – permeated all aspects of the urban realm. Existing housing became the target of particularly vehement privatization (Clapham, Hegedüs, Kintrea, Tosics, & Kay, 1996). As a result, East European states now have private home-ownership rates of about 90 per cent. Simultaneously, the public sector withdrew from the production and distribution of new housing. The initiative was passed on to the private sector. However, because of the initial severe economic downturn, fewer new buildings were constructed per year during the 1990s as compared to the 1970s and 1980s, older buildings suffered from serious disinvestment, and many large infrastructure projects were frozen. In this context, new structures became smaller in scale; they were also often self-built and informal (thus representing a partial return to the city-building patterns common in the early twentieth century). The post-2000 era was marked by a construction boom in those countries that managed to return to growth and stability. But in another historic twist, the 2008–12 recession slowed all growth, including that in suburbs. Logically, when compared to the socialist period, suburbanization has changed dramatically as a process and as a product. We first review the spatial forms of post-socialist suburbanization. Then we discuss the role of governance. Suburban Typologies The most obvious difference between the socialist and the post-socialist periods is that standardized housing complexes (the “socialist suburbs”) were no longer produced. The giant state-owned firms that used to construct them were dismantled. Dwellings in these complexes were privatized. In some of the wealthier countries, especially the former East Germany, but also Hungary and the Czech Republic, many socialist-era complexes have been renovated. In East German “shrinking cities,” demolition has been another solution (see chapter 9 in this volume), whereas in the poorer countries, like Ukraine and Moldova, some buildings are in a near-crisis condition (see European Academy of the Urban Environment, 2000). A new ring around the city is developing beyond the zone of the socialist complexes that can be called post-socialist suburbia. This ring has taken an increasingly sprawling shape. In fact, according to the European Environmental Agency, based on studies of land-cover change, cities in

186  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, and Slovakia include some of the most sprawling urban areas in Europe (European Environmental Agency, 2006). The new urban peripheries include several suburban types built by different actors through different mechanisms. Hirt & Stanilov (2009) identify four main types. Of those, the first is informal, the second is generally formal (although sometimes built without formal permits; e.g., in the Balkans), and the latter two are examples of formal development (see table 8.1). • Squatter settlements: This is the only type that does not involve urban decentralization. Rather, it encompasses makeshift housing built by relatively poor actors coming to large cities from rural areas and small towns. It occurs mostly in Southeast Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union and represents a partial continuation of early and mid-twentieth-century informal mechanisms of (sub) urban growth. The informal settlements are often appended to existing small towns and villages on the metropolitan periphery. In the Albanian capital of Tirana, for example, which absorbed an additional 10 per cent of the national population in less than a decade, the majority of “newcomers” reside in such low-cost, selfbuilt housing with limited access to public infrastructure (World Bank 2006). This is a continuation of Southeast European self-built suburban patterns, and also typical of other part of Europe’s south (see chapter 7 in the volume). • Upper-class individual housing: This includes relatively low-­ density housing, often built in the former recreational zones. These zones are now being transformed into bona-fide upper-class suburbs, although their social character remains mixed; for example, the new expensive homes are often nestled between modest homes from the previous period. Unlike the socialist estates (and the pre- and post-socialist squatter settlements), these areas are examples of decentralization. Scholars have referred to this type of decentralization as the landmark contribution of post-socialism to the city (Ladanyi & Szelenyi, 1998; Boren & Gentile, 2007), much as the standardized complexes were the key legacy of socialism (Hirt, 2012). Examples include the most scenic parts of metropolitan rims: the western edges of Moscow (Medvedkov & Medvedkov, 2007) and Budapest (Kovacs & Tosics, 2012), and the southeast edges of Prague (Stanilov & Sýkora, 2012, 2014) and Sofia (Hirt, 2007b, 2012).

The East European Story  187 Table 8.1 Comparison of the contemporary suburban types. The role of governance Formal development

Informal development

Building type

• Individual upscale homes • Planned communities • Large-scale non-residential development

• Squatter settlements and lower- and middle-class do-it-yourself individual housing

Building characteristics

• Intricate designs • Single- or multi-family, lowor high-density housing; often gated and with collective amenities • Malls, superstores, offices, business parks, entertainment venues • Auto-dependent layout • Often modelled after Western prototypes, with American names

• Mostly housing • High building coverage, unplanned patterns • Limited access to services and infrastructure

Role of the state

• Provides land and incentives

• Does not actively participate

Role of private capital

• Large-scale capital, including foreign

• Individual “sweat equity”

Private governance

• Homeowners’ associations • Property management companies

• Informal networks

• Planned communities: During the 1990s, the predominant suburban housing pattern was the individually built home, as described above. With post-2000 economic growth and with the aid of some institutional incentives (discussed later), residential decentralization accelerated, and the social profile of the residents leaving the urban core shifted from being entirely upper class to being upper and middle class (e.g., Timar & Varadi, 2001; Stanilov & Sýkora, 2012, 2014). The form and production process of suburban housing also changed. The consolidation of the local private home-building industry and the entry of big, multinational development firms enabled the construction of larger, master-planned, socially homogeneous subdivisions (see figure 8.3). Some have thousands of units and residents. In many cases, these communities are gated (this, again, is in contrast to the first post-socialist decade, when upper-scale homes tended to be individually gated [Hirt & Petrovic,

188  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

Figure 8.3 Belgrade’s new suburbia. Photo courtesy of the archives of the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade.

2010, 2011]). Certainly, some gated communities include high-density housing in urban infill areas (Bodnar & Molnar, 2010). However, since most new gated communities require large vacant areas, and their residents prefer to live outside the city, the general rule is that they are located along the urban rim and are dominated by lower-density housing (Blinnikov, Shanin, Sobolev, & Volkova, 2006). • Non-residential suburbanization: The 1989 regime changes in Eastern Europe are often fondly remembered as the “velvet revolutions.” A more pragmatic (and perhaps more accurate) label would be the “retail revolutions” (Garb & Dybicz, 2006). This term is easily understood if we keep in mind that one of the most fundamental differences between the “socialist city” and the “capitalist city” was that the former was severely deprived of commercial services (e.g., Hirt, 2006).6 The post-1989 “retail revolution” has by now erased this East-West European difference. Where detailed studies have been carried out, as for Belgrade and Sofia, the amount of retail space per person has been shown to have quadrupled in some fifteen years (Hirt, 2008b). Initially, the new retail spaces were small

The East European Story  189

private businesses scattered around town. Over the last few years, however, with the influx of the Western mega-retailers, there have been powerful trends towards retail consolidation and retail decentralization. All sorts of uses (malls, cinemas, warehouses, car dealerships, hypermarkets) now occupy elephantine chunks of suburban space, much of it devoted to parking. This is a novel trend for East European cities – one that has no parallel in recent history – and a trend that has led to the bankruptcy of the older, 1990s “mom and pop” shops, as well as to substantial changes in the daily habits of consumers. Office decentralization, especially of high-quality (Class A) space is another novel accompanying trend. What explains these dramatic changes in the form of the East European city? Clearly, a complex combination of economic, institutional, and cultural factors is at play. Let us focus on governance at different levels (i.e., supra-national, national, regional, and local) and of different types (i.e., public and private). We take governance to include not only the set of policies and actions that have been purposefully designed to impact urbanization (and, thus, suburbanization), but also the ones that have impacted (sub)urbanization without a discernible explicit intent. As stated earlier, the 1989 regime change entailed the abolition of the single-party political system, the end of the state’s monopoly on city building, and the rise of a myriad public and private actors with the ability to influence (sub)urbanization patterns. Of course, these changes in governance in the East European countries were to a large extent the product of global forces. It may be obvious, yet it is nonetheless important, to stress that the collapse of the Eastern Bloc was, after all, an exercise in the global spread of capitalism (Giddens, 2006: 57). The changes were nominally initiated by national governments, but they “mirrored” the complex of transformations linked with globalization (Sýkora, 1994): de-industrialization and post-Fordist restructuring (Amin,1994); post-Keynesian, post-welfare-state shrinkage of the public sector; the growing role of transnational capital and institutions (Bennet, 1990; Marcuse & Van Kempen, 2002); and the spread of Western (especially U.S.) cultural ideals, including those related to suburban living (Stanilov & Sýkora, 2012, 2014). Complementing the global forces are public policies at the national level. Of these, the most crucial ones are the restoration of private property rights over urban land, the privatization of the building industry, and the removal of strict planning rules applying to the urban periphery.

190  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev

As stated above, between the late 1940s and the early 1990s, most land located directly beyond the last ring of the socialist city – the standardized complexes – was public (green or agricultural). Beyond this ring, the land in recreational zones and in old towns and villages in metropolitan regions was often left in private hands. But planning rules prevented the private construction of anything but relatively small new homes, primary or secondary, in these areas. Over the last two decades, however, as peri-urban land was privatized, these rules were lifted and the conversion of green and agricultural land to urban uses became relatively easy (Hirt & Stanilov, 2009). Another important contributing factor has been the decentralization of power from central to local governments. After 1989, central planning activities were terminated and most budgetary and planning issues were shifted to the local level – a move generally seen as part of the process of democratization. Urban policy was no longer viewed as an appropriate area of activity for the central governments; in fact, as one astute observer noted, the lack of national urban policy became the policy (Stanilov, 2007). This trend paralleled suspicion of any planning – a view widely shared by East European citizens and politicians in the 1990s (some scholars have dubbed this phenomenon the ­“legitimacy crisis” of planning: [Nedović-Budić, 2001]). Decentralization of power entailed a significant increase in the number of local governments; in many countries, the number of municipal jurisdictions doubled or more than doubled (Tosics, 2005). Because national governments reduced local subsidies significantly, municipal authorities embraced various strategies to out-compete their neighbours and increase their cash flows. These strategies included the provision of incentives to the private sector for the conversion of large chunks of green land to urban uses, thus causing sprawl. Of course, countries entering the European Union were required to provide regional plans for the absorption of EU structural funds. Such plans nominally embraced the EU rhetoric about compact cities. However, it is yet to be determined whether these regional plans, which are in essence economic development strategies, have done much to contain sprawl. In a detailed study of residential decentralization, Stanilov and Sýkora (2012) found that whereas the City of Prague was able to contain sprawl within its own jurisdictional limits, neither the urban-level plan nor the regional-level plan that included the Czech capital had any impact on the intense suburban development that occurred in surrounding locales. These locales succeeded in pursuing their objectives of attracting single-family housing to green areas. Thus, between 1989 and 2008, the

The East European Story  191

share of single-family housing in the urbanized part of metropolitan Prague increased from 29 per cent to 54 per cent, and over 80 per cent of the new detached homes built during this period were located in independent locales around Prague (Stanilov & Sýkora, 2012). This trend occurred in the context of the stabilization of the Czech banking industry, the wider availability of mortgage financing, and the establishment of national policies promoting subsidized housing loans (Sýkora, 2003). Similar state subsidies for housing loans exist in several other countries, including Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia (e.g., Yasui, 2002). Even though these policies are not explicitly intended to promote suburbanization, it may be argued that they have de facto done so because the majority of new homes can be located only at the urban edge. Finally, we should not forget the cultural underpinnings of some of these policy and spatial changes. High-density mass housing carries a distinctively communist, totalitarian flavour in the eyes of many East Europeans. Beyond the spread of Western (American) ideals for single-family living, malls, and fast cars with which East European citizens are daily bombarded in movies, magazines, and advertisements, there is a local (or, more accurately, East European, region-wide) fascination with all the fruits that socialism forbade. As the East European countries enter or get closer to the European Union, their policy and planning documents produced at all levels of government have begun to increasingly incorporate West European slogans for the “compact city” and sustainable development (as in the case of Prague’s city and regional plans analysed in the above-cited study by Stanilov & Sýkora, 2012). At the same time, however, a national consensus that sprawling development may be a problem is yet to develop across Eastern Europe regardless of the growing strength of civil society and environmental organizations. State socialism limited housing and consumer choices severely; a common attitude now is “What is wrong with embracing the choices that ‘advanced’ capitalist countries have had for decades?” A good reflection of this sentiment can be found in one of the most famous citations of the 1990s, written by the Nobel Laureate and former Czech president Vaclav Havel. In 1992, in his Summer Meditations, Havel envisioned the future of his dear Prague in the following optimistic terms: Life in the towns and villages will have overcome the legacy of grayness, uniformity, anonymity, and ugliness inherited from the totalitarian era …

192  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev Every main street will have at least two bakeries, two sweet-shops, two pubs, and many other small shops, all privately owned and independent … People will once more begin to experience the phenomenon of home … Prefabricated high-rise apartment blocks and other gigantic public housing developments will no longer be built. Instead, there will be developments of family houses, villas, townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings.

Part of Havel’s vision certainly came true: pre-fabricated giant public housing developments are no longer built. There are plenty of family houses – perhaps the phenomenon of home? Except that, while all private, the new shops are neither small nor independent. As Gregory Andrusz (2006) put it: “From Wall to Mall.” Conclusion The East European experience in suburbanization happened in three distinct stages. In each, the role of governance shifted dramatically. Earlytwentieth-century suburbanization was mostly informal: the role of the state was relatively weak. During socialism, development was nearly monopolized by the state. The urban periphery comprised large rings of mass-housing complexes that surrounded cities like concrete walls. These complexes were perhaps the closest thing to “socialist suburbs.” Privatization of land, real estate, and means of production has been the dominant process since 1989. Because of the radical post-1989 shift in the political economy, the contrast between socialist and post-socialist suburbia is very sharp. New suburban typologies have emerged, and all urban functions have now decentralized to a degree. In the age of globalization and Europeanization, will the East European case come closer to the rest of Europe (when the “rest” of Europe is itself hardly monolithic)? The forces of EU-led integration are likely to cause some convergence between the two sides of Europe. The new East European suburban typologies already reflect direct importation of both capital and imagery. This has likely increased the speed with which East European suburbanization trends have proceeded – “accomplishing” in a few short years what in Western Europe has taken decades (Stanilov, 2007). Still, the materiality of the East European city will in the foreseeable future be marked by the legacy of the past: it is merely impossible to get rid of tens of thousands of ­socialist-era buildings. Adding another layer of complexity, we can ­argue that the squatter settlements on the periphery of some East

The East European Story  193

European cities give them a “developing-world” look today more than ever before. Perhaps we can end semi-poetically and note that one of the most interesting things about pagan East European religions (at least Slavic East European religions) is that they included an unusually high number of multi-headed deities: looking to past and to future, and to the four corners of the world. NOTES 1 Suburbanization is understood here as the formation of de-centred urban spaces – spaces at the periphery of cities. 2 For the purposes of this paper, Eastern Europe comprises the following sixteen countries, which were under state socialism for about forty-five years: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Russia and, to a lesser extent, some other successor states of the Soviet Union are also briefly discussed. 3 Governance here is understood as “the constellation of public and private processes, actors and institutions that determine and shape the planning, design, politics and economics of suburban spaces” (Ekers et al., 2012). 4 In most East European capitals and other large cities, socialist-era standardized complexes made up the majority of the housing stock: e.g., 52 per cent in Kaunas, 55 per cent in Tallinn, 56 per cent in Warsaw, 60 per cent in Sofia, 77 per cent in Bratislava, and 82 per cent in Bucharest. The Slovenian, Czech, and Hungarian capitals are exceptions with 24, 32, and 38 per cent, respectively (Hirt & Stanilov, 2009: 67). 5 Here, again, we find significant variation by country. Quality of building materials and design layout was much higher in the wealthier nations (e.g., Hungary, Yugoslavia, and East Germany). Thus, some of the socialist-era housing estates in these countries remain desirable places that were renovated after 1989 by a combination of public and private resources. An excellent example is Novi Beograd (New Belgrade). This socialist-era community is one of the fastest-growing nodes in the Serbian capital, even referred to as Belgrade’s Manhattan. 6 E.g., in the early 1990s, the amount of retail space per person was three times lower in Moscow than in Berlin (Tosics, 2005) – a fact that should not be too surprising since in 1989, 243 of the 276 officially designated basic consumer goods were severely under-produced across the Soviet Union (Roberts & LaFollette, 1990).

194  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev REFERENCES Abraham, D. (1992). Trends in the social and economic development of Romanian cities. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 7(4), 335–41. Amin, A. (Ed.). (1994). Post-Fordism: A reader. London: Blackwell. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1002/9780470712726. Andrusz, G. (2006). Wall and mall: A metaphor for metamorphosis. In S. Tsenkova & Z. Nedovic-Budic (Eds), The urban mosaic of post-socialist Europe: Space, institutions, policy (71–90). Heidelberg: Physica-Springer. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1007/3-7908-1727-9_4. Bairoch, P. (1988). Cities and economic development: From the dawn of history to the present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bennet, R. (1990). Decentralization, local governments and markets: Toward a post-welfare agenda. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bernhardt, C. (2005). Planning urbanization and urban growth in the socialist period: The case of East German new towns, 1945–1989. Journal of Urban History, 32(1), 104–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0096144205279201. Blinnikov, M., Shanin, A., Sobolev, N., & Volkova, L. (2006). Gated communities in the Moscow greenbelt: Newly segregated landscapes and the suburban Russian environment. GeoJournal, 66(1–2), 65–81. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1007/s10708-006-9017-0. Bodnar, J. (2001). Fin de millénaire Budapest: Metamorphoses of urban life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bodnar, J., & Molnar, V. (2010). Reconfiguring private and public: State, capital and new housing developments in Berlin and Budapest. Urban Studies, 47(4), 789–812. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098009351188. Boren, T., & Gentile, M. (2007). Metropolitan processes in post-communist states: An introduction. Geografska Annaler B, 89(2), 65–70. Clapham, D., Hegedüs, J., Kintrea, K., Tosics, I., & Kay, H. (Eds). (1996). Housing privatization in Eastern Europe. Westwood, CT: Greenwood Press. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. European Academy of the Urban Environment [EAUE]. (2000). A future for large housing estates: European strategies for prefabricated housing estates in Central and Eastern Europe. Berlin: Author in cooperation with the Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS), Erkner. European Environmental Agency (EEA). (2006). Urban sprawl in Europe: The ignored challenge. Copenhagen: European Environmental Agency. Fishman, R. (1987). Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. New York: Basic Books.

The East European Story  195 Garb, Y., & Dybicz, T. (2006). The retail revolution in post-socialist Central Europe and its lessons. In S. Tsenkova & Z. Nedovic-Budic (Eds), The urban mosaic of post-socialist Europe: Space, institutions, policy (231–52). Heidelberg: Physica-Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/3-7908-1727-9_12. Giddens, A. (2006). Sociology. New York, Malden: Polity Press. Hamilton, F. (1999). Transformation and space in Central and Eastern Europe. Geographical Journal, 165(2), 135–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3060411. Havel, V. (1992). Summer meditations (P. Wilson, Trans.). New York: Alfred Knopf. Hirt, S. (2006). Post-socialist urban forms: Notes from Sofia. Urban Geography, 27(5), 464–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.27.5.464. Hirt, S. (2007a). The compact versus 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. (2007b). Suburbanizing Sofia: Characteristics of post-socialist periurban change. Urban Geography, 28(8), 755–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/​ 0272-3638.28.8.755. Hirt, S. (2008a). City profile: Belgrade, Serbia. Cities, 26(5), 293–303. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2009.04.001. Hirt, S. (2008b). Landscapes of post-modernity: Changes in the built environment of Belgrade and Sofia since the end of socialism. Urban Geography, 29(8), 785–810. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.29.8.785. Hirt, S. (2012). Iron curtains: Gates, suburbs and privatization of space in the post-socialist city. Oxford, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1002/9781118295922. Hirt, S., & Petrovic, M. (2010). The gates of Belgrade: Safety, privacy and new housing patterns in the post-communist city. Problems of Post-Communism, 57(5), 3–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/PPC1075-8216570501. Hirt, S., & Petrovic, M. (2011). The Belgrade wall: The proliferation of gated housing in the Serbian capital after socialism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(4), 753–77. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01056.x. Hirt, S., & Stanilov, K. (2009). Twenty years of transition: The evolution of urban planning in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Nairobi: UN-HABITAT. Ioffe, G., & Nefedova, T. (1999). The environs of Russian cities. Lewistown: Edwin Mellen. Jackson, K. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Keynes, J. (1933). National self-sufficiency. In D. Moggeridge (Ed.), The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes (233–46). London: Cambridge University Press.

196  Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev Kovacs, Z., & Tosics, I. (2014). Urban sprawl on the Danube: The impacts of suburbanization on Budapest. In K. Stanilov & L. Sýkora (Eds), Confronting suburbanization: Urban decentralization in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe (pages not known). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Ladanyi, J., & Szelenyi, I. (1998). Class, ethnicity and urban restructuring in postcommunist Hungary. In G. Enyedi (Ed.), Social change and urban restructuring in Central Europe (67–86). Budapest: Akademiai Klado. Machedon, F., Machedon, L., & Scoffham, E. (1999). Inter-war Bucharest: City in a garden. Planning Perspectives, 14(3), 249–75. t Marcuse, P., & Van Kempen, R. (2002). Of states and cities: The partitioning of urban space. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Medvedkov, Y., & Medvedkov, O. (2007). Upscale housing in post-soviet Moscow and its environs. In K. Stanilov (Ed.), The post-socialist city: Urban form and space transformations in Central and Eastern Europe after socialism (24568). Dordrecht: Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6053-3_12. 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. Nefedova, T., & Treivish, A. (2003). Differential urbanization in Russia. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geographie, 94(1), 75–88. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1111/1467-9663.00238. Roberts, P., & LaFollette, K. (1990). Meltdown: Inside the Soviet economy. Washington, DC: CATO Institute. Sheppard, E. (2000). Socialist cities? Urban Geography, 21(8), 758–63. http:// dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.21.8.758. Stanilov, K. (Ed.). (2007). The post-socialist city: Urban form and space transformations in Central and Eastern Europe after socialism. Dordrecht: Springer. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6053-3. Stanilov, K., & Sýkora, L. (2012). Planning, markets and residential growth in post-socialist metropolitan Prague. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 29(4), 278–91. Stanilov, K., & Sýkora, L. (2014). Confronting suburbanization: Urban decentralization in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Sýkora, L. (1994). Local urban restructuring as a mirror of globalization processes: Prague in the 1990s. Urban Studies, 31(7), 1149–66. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1080/00420989420081001. Sýkora, L. (1999). Changes in the internal structure of post-communist Prague. GeoJournal, 49(1), 79–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1007076000411. Sýkora, L. (2003). Between the state and the market: Local government and housing in the Czech Republic. In M. Lux (Ed.), Housing policy: An end or a

The East European Story  197 new beginning? Budapest: Local government and public reform initiative (47–116). Budapest: Open Society Institute. Szelenyi, I. (1996). Cities under socialism—and after. In G. Andrusz, M. Harloe, & I. Szelenyi (Eds), Cities after socialism: Urban and regional change and conflict in post-socialist societies (286–317). Malden: Blackwell. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1002/9780470712733.ch10. Tammaru, T. (2001). Suburban growth and suburbanization under central planning: The case of Soviet Estonia. Urban Studies, 38(8), 1341–57. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980120061061. Timar, J., & Varadi, M. (2001). The uneven development of suburbanization during transition in Hungary. European Urban and Regional Studies, 8(4), 349–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/096977640100800407. Tosics, I. (2005). City development in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990: The impact of internal forces. In F.E.I. Hamilton, K.D. Andrews, & N. Pichler Milanovic (Eds), Transformation of cities in Central and Eastern Europe: Toward globalization (44–78). Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Verhoven, W. (2007). Income attainment in post-communist societies. Retrieved from: http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2007-0312-083351/ c1.pdf. Węcławowicz, G. (2002). From egalitarian cities in theory to non-egalitarian cities in practice: Changing socio-spatial patterns in Polish cities. In P. Marcuse & R. VanKempen (Eds), Of states and cities: The partitioning of urban space (75–81). Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Bank. (2006). Dimensions of poverty in Europe and Central Asia. Research Working Paper 3998. Retrieved from: http://elibrary.worldbank.org/ doi/book/10.1596/1813-9450-3998. Yasui, T. (2002).Housing finance in transition economies. Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Zegarac, Z. (1999). Illegal construction in Belgrade and the prospects for urban development planning. Cities, 16(5), 365–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0264-2751(99)00033-5.

9 Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates at the Fringe sigrun kabisch and dieter rink

Introduction Urban expansion on the fringes of cities occurs in various forms – high-density standardized estates, sprawling low-density housing areas with detached houses, or expanding informal settlements – and it is the dominant form of current suburban development. It is connected with a variety of governance problems in suburban areas, many of which are addressed by the contributions in this volume. In addition, a new challenge for governance has emerged at the end of the twentieth century: the governance of shrinkage. In our contribution, we investigate shrinkage on the urban fringe as a recent phenomenon that has emerged in several parts of the developed world. We analyse governance approaches as exemplified by the case of East Germany. From the governance perspective, we ask who the actors dealing with shrinkage and its consequences for the housing market are, and what interests they have. We also survey the resulting governance structures and their ability to respond to shrinkage. In terms of instruments, we focus on a state-financed restructuring program and discuss its conditions, the stakeholders involved, and the relevant governance networks. We concur with the editors of this volume who understand suburban governance as an integral part of the restructuring processes of urban forms that are at stake in the production of city regions today (see Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, in this volume). We agree that “suburbanization is defined as the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion. Although suburbanization is not uniformly applicable to all parts of the world, this generic term is carefully deployed here to incorporate all manner of peripheral growth”

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  199

(Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012: 407). Thus, the term incorporates large state-produced housing estates, which include high-rise buildings, as well as publicly funded developments and infrastructural facilities on the urban fringe. Using the East German case to analyse urban shrinkage as one pathway of urban development after expansion, we would like to offer expertise in dealing with an unfamiliar process. We will place special emphasis on its dimensions and pace and, in particular, its governance challenges. This chapter is structured as follows: We start with a brief survey of urban expansion in the form of large, state-produced housing estates on urban fringes. The next sections are dedicated to urban shrinkage as a global trend and to the exemplification of the specific case of East Germany. In the following section, the restructuring processes as a response to shrinkage steered by particular governance constellations will be analysed, again using the case of East Germany. We conclude with a summary, including lessons learned. Large Housing Estates as State-Led Suburbanization Residential suburbanization is characterized by distinctive processes that cause large segments of the population to relocate from the inner parts of cities to their peripheries. One type of suburban development on the outskirts of cities typically consists of large residential areas with detached single houses surrounded by a garden, few infrastructural facilities, and individual automobile transportation. This type of suburbanization, categorized as private-led suburbanization, started in the 1960s, as middle-class people started looking for better housing conditions, in tune with the appreciated family lifestyle of a two-generation family composed of parents and their children. This mode of urban ­expansion is typical of cities in the United States and Western Europe (Beauregard, 2006; Couch, Leontidu, & Petschel-Held, 2007). In contrast, mass housing construction of high-rise blocks of flats in extensive estates concentrated on the fringes of large cities represents another type of suburban development. In Europe after the Second World War, large housing estates were built with industrial con­ struction methods in order to remedy a housing shortage. This target also included the provision of good standard housing for the mass urban population, subsidized by state programs. This kind of housing construction on the urban fringe can be categorized as state-led suburbanization (Ekers et al., 2012: 407). The estates are referred to as

200  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink

“mass housing,” “high-rise housing,” or “social housing estates,” depending on the local and national context (for reviews, see Power, 1999; Turkington, van Kempen, & Wassenberg, 2004). Despite their design similarities and the common time of construction, the estates followed various development paths. First and foremost, differences arose as a result of specific political contexts, including the conditions of a divided Europe. Before 1989, in the state socialist countries, the construction of large housing estates was closely connected with the political propaganda of social progress. It was a major part of the “socialist city.” This kind of urban expansion dominated the urban landscape in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. One of the main objectives of the state socialist governments was the provision of apartments, as well as sufficient infrastructure and service facilities, for a large segment of the population from a variety of social strata. Until the present, the East European estates have remained more or less socially mixed areas because of the persistent housing shortage and the lack of alternatives. This is no longer the case, since, in some countries, units in these estates were privatized – sold to their inhabitants after 1989 (Knorr-Siedow & Droste, 2003; Liebmann, 2004). The subsequent consolidation efforts in social and technical terms have made these residential locations increasingly attractive (survey in Dekker & van Kempen, 2009; for Poland see Szafranska, 2009; for the Czech Republic see Temelová, Novák, Ouředníček, & Puldová, 2011; for Hungary, Bulgaria, and Lithuania see Neugebauer, Wiest, & Krupickaite, 2011; for Estonia see Kährik & Tammaru, 2010). Large, high-rise-dominated estates were also constructed in Western Europe (e.g., in Great Britain, Italy, and France) from the 1960s until the 1980s (Power, 1993, 1999). In their early stages, these estates were connected with the expectation of a new urban way of life in terms of “urbanity through density.” However, the disappointing implementation of the concept led to the rejection of this kind of housing. Younger and more affluent households left the estates, and lower-income house­holds moved in. The estates became increasingly socially stigmatized as housing areas for deprived groups and were considered to be “social housing.” In many cases, they suffered social decline, in particular if people with less choice in the housing market, such as immigrants from abroad, moved in (Wassenberg, 2006; Musterd & van Kempen, 2007). In Germany, large housing estates are an important segment of the housing market. Approximately 1.6 million apartments, which encompass

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  201

7.3 per cent of the entire housing stock, belong to this type of residential area. Besides smaller estates, thirty-three large housing estates with more than 10,000 apartments exist in Germany, mainly in the eastern – the former state-socialist – part of the country (Liebmann, 2004: 45–6). In East Germany, a serious lack of apartments still existed in the 1970s, leading to the political decision to concentrate all economic efforts on industrial housing construction (i.e., on building large housing estates). These state-produced and -managed estates were located in cities that were experiencing an industrial upswing and increasing administrative importance on a regional scale. Many young and well-educated individuals and families were encouraged to move to these locations, in order to find employment and (even more importantly, since this was often the only chance available) to rent their own apartment. The estates were equipped with basic standard infrastructure and services (shops, kindergartens, schools), allowing both men and women to work in nearby enterprises or institutions. During the 1980s, growing economic weakness affected the construction sector and led to a reduction in the quality of housing construction as well as to delays in the availability of service facilities. As a consequence, residential satisfaction decreased. But these estates were never labelled as “social housing,” with its stigmatizing connotation. With German unification and its resulting changes, the situation of the large housing estates on the fringes changed completely, and a discussion about their future use emerged. One of the main issues in this debate was shrinkage, particularly in terms of an immense loss of residents and a corresponding increase in vacant housing. Before analysing this phenomenon in more detail, using the example of large East German housing estates, we take a short excursion into the urban shrinkage debate to help frame and structure the ensuing argument. Urban Shrinkage: Causes and Consequences Urban shrinkage is not new; what is new is the number of affected cities, the pace of shrinkage, and the consequences for entire regions in terms of economic and social viability. We analyse cities in developed countries that did not experience natural disasters (such as earthquakes or tsunamis) that destroyed large parts of their urban backbone. Cur­ rently, there are three geographical focal points of urban shrinkage: the United States (in the “rust-belt”); eastern Asia (in Japan, parts of China, and Korea); and, in particular, Europe (Oswalt & Rieniets, 2006). In

202  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink

Europe, 40 per cent of all cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants shrank during the first decade of the twenty-first century (Turok & Mykhnenko, 2007). According to the United Nations background document for the Sixth World Urban Forum (UN World Urban Forum 6, 2012) it is predicted that: the developed nations will grow very little, or not at all; in fact, in the next 20 years, it is expected that more than half of the cities in Europe will experience declines in their populations. Without immigration, the urban population in these countries would likely decline or remain the same in the coming decades. However, despite these immigration trends, the populations of 46 countries, including Germany, Italy, Japan, most of the former Soviet States, and several small island states, are expected to be smaller in 2050 than they are now. (5)

Furthermore, it is stated that many diverse cities will experience demographic declines. This emerging trend will soon be a reality in the developing world. Over the next thirty years, some cities in Latin America and Asia will shrink, with segments of their populations leaving behind unoccupied houses, vacant commercial sites, idle infrastructure, and neighbourhoods in physical decay (UN World Urban Forum 6, 2012). Understanding which cities will be affected by economic and population decline will be relevant for maximizing gains, for locating or relocating investments and opportunities, as well as for planning more sustainable and balanced urban and regional development. Local urban governance, including effective city and regional planning, will require better mechanisms and more innovative strategies for steering urban development in shrinking environments to meet the needs of their inhabitants (UN World Urban Forum 6, 2012; Earthscan, UN-Habitat 2008). Thus urban shrinkage is a very real phenomenon resulting from the specific interplay of several macro processes involved in global (societal) development, with specific outcomes at the local scale. Such macro processes can be related to economic decline, demographic change, or settlement system changes in the form of suburbanization or urban sprawl (Couch et al., 2012), as well as to environmental hazards or changes in the political or administrative system (e.g., border changes, warfare, or in- or exclusion of territories) (Oswalt & Rieniets, 2006). Urban shrinkage occurs when this interplay leads to population decline (which we define as the main indicator for urban shrinkage) and to other direct or indirect consequences in various arenas of urban development (see figure 9.1).

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  203

Figure 9.1 Housing block with empty apartments in Leipzig-Grünau. Photo: Antje Stumpe 2012

Besides understanding the causes of urban shrinkage, we also need to realize that this process is spatially and temporally non-homogeneous and displays differentiated dynamics in terms of duration, scope, and pace. Whereas phases of massive and rapid shrinkage can be observed in some cities, others have undergone a long-term, more gradual process of contraction that is not dramatic but is nevertheless measurable and significant. In terms of consequences, population decline has an impact on business and employment, housing, social and technical infrastructure, municipal finances, social cohesion, and segregation, among others. Urban shrinkage results in mismatches of supply of and demand for space and infrastructure (Couch et al., 2012) (see figure 9.2). In this regard, urban shrinkage also leads to a reconfiguration or reshaping of urban land-use structures or patterns: on the one hand, it leads to vacancies and decreasing cohesion in the affected neighbourhoods; on the other, it permits a redistribution of households according to their current housing

204  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink

Figure 9.2 Vacancy and deterioration of former infrastructure facility in Leipzig-Grünau. Photo: Antje Stumpe, 2012

preferences, because more affordable housing is available in favoured locations (D. Haase et al., 2012). Shrinkage thus can greatly affect the quality of urban life (Fritsche, 2010) and can fuel both decline (and further out-migration) and resurgence (N. Kabisch & Haase, 2011). Urban shrinkage reshapes the social settings of the affected actors, including residents, planners, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and service suppliers. Thus, shrinkage challenges urban policy regarding a variety of issues and tasks that are intimately connected to urban development. Urban Shrinkage and Vacant Housing as Impacts of Post-Socialist Transformation: The Case of East Germany In the region we investigated, shrinkage was a result of the transformation from socialism to capitalism, as a societal macro process (Glock &

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  205

Haeussermann, 2004; Rink, 2011). During the transformation in the first decade after German reunification, shrinkage became a principal mode of development in East German cities. Two major causes of shrinkage were decisive: (i) out-migration, and (ii) decline of the birth rate. In the last few months of 1989 and until reunification in 1990, a wave of out-migration from East to West Germany, encompassing about half a million people, occurred due to the opening of the borders. Thereafter, the economic and monetary union in summer 1990 meant, for East Germany, a transition-free and immediate integration into the West German economy and, simultaneously, into the EU domestic market and the global market. The East German economy did not get an opportunity to prepare in advance to meet this challenge. The transformation resulted, finally, in a unique historic de-industrialization of East Germany, a process that – depending on the region, economic structure, and sector – affected up to 80 per cent of the previous industrial jobs (Busch, Kühn, & Steinitz, 2008). In the course of rapid de-­ industrialization and its concomitant unemployment for many citizens, out-­migration to prosperous regions in West Germany was the only way to find a job. In particular, young and well-trained people took the opportunity to discover new and unknown working areas and employment opportunities outside their hometowns. Besides this economically driven out-migration, many residents of rental apartments decided it was a good time to build a single-family house in suburbia. Thus, private-led suburbanization also played a substantial role in urban shrinkage (Brake, Dangschat, & Herfert, 2001). The decline in the birth rate was also linked to this transformation: as a reaction to the uncertainty of almost all living conditions and the transfer of West German institutions, the birth rate in East Germany sank to a historic low of 0.77 births per woman (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2012: 15). Although the number of births has recovered since the middle of the 1990s, and has almost reached the West German level, it is still far from the replacement level. The phenomenon of low birth rates, their causes and consequences, is well elaborated within the concept of “the second demographic transition” (van de Kaa, 2004). All in all, East Germany has lost about 2 million people since 1989. Along with the demographic trends mentioned above, long-term shrinkage processes are pre-programmed. Despite these shrinkage tendencies, German unification was linked with the vision of a catch-up modernization and with rather optimistic expectations regarding economic growth and population development

206  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink

in the eastern part of a united Germany (Rink, 2011). Thus, urban development policies were directed simultaneously at upgrading the ­existing housing stock and at promoting new housing construction through generous tax breaks and government subsidies. In total, approximately 800,000 new apartments were built between 1991 and 1999 (Glock & Haeussermann, 2004). But this boom ran completely contrary to the basic trends of economic and population development. Consequently, in a historically very short period of time, a huge imbalance occurred in the housing market between an increasing supply and a decreasing demand, leading to an immense number of vacant apartments in the mid-1990s. An official expert commission estimated that there were approximately 1.3 million empty apartments, one-sixth of the entire housing stock, in East Germany (Expert Commission, 2000) (see figure 9.3). In particular, the large housing estates on the urban fringes experienced a huge number of vacant apartments (Glock & Haeussermann, 2004). In some larger cities (e.g., Berlin, Leipzig, Halle), the proportion of empty apartments was upwards of 20 per cent. Governance of Urban Shrinkage: The Restructuring of Large Housing Estates on the Urban Fringes in Eastern Germany The growing vacancy rates increased the pressure on the housing market. Loss of rental income, devaluation of real estate property, lower prices, and a loss of mortgage value were only some of the consequences. In particular, the large municipal housing companies and the housing cooperatives were affected by the economic decline. A number of these housing enterprises faced serious financial problems, and some faced the risk of bankruptcy. Because of the dominant position of these actors in the housing market, as providers of rental apartments for middle- and low-income households, the German federal government decided to subsidize them with a strong state-financed program, known as “Urban Restructuring East” (Stadtumbau Ost), which ran from 2002 to 2009. The state governments of the five New Länder (federal states) supported the program, too. In addition, they created their own programs with similar aims. The federal program pursued two goals: on the one hand, it supported the consolidation of major housing mar­ket actors by prioritizing demolition activities; on the other, it ensured upgrading measures in the residential areas, to counter population decline. However, the program was not designed to deal with the economic decline that was the

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  207 Figure 9.3 Vacant housing in East Germany from 1985 to 2011

Source: Census 1995 and 2011; Expert Commission, 2000; www.stadtumbau-ost.info

principal cause of the shrinkage. About 260,000 apartments were demolished in the course of the program (BMVBS, 2010), substantially reducing the number of vacant apartments. Following a recent evaluation of the results of the program (BMVBS, 2012) and in light of ongoing population decline, the German government decided to extend the program until 2016. It is foreseen that an additional 200,000 to 250,000 apartments will be demolished (see figure 9.4). The most crucial argument for state intervention is the fact that the market alone cannot solve the problem of vacant housing. Though all owners would profit from reducing the housing supply, no one wants to be the first to start demolition. The owners who start would be left with the costs and the reduction of their stock of capital, while others would profit from their actions – a classic collective-action dilemma (Glock & Haeussermann, 2004; Bernt, 2009). In addition, vacant housing remains a serious problem for the fiscal capacities of eastern German cities, because more than one-third of the entire housing stock is municipal property. Thus, “high vacancy rates are treated as a political problem” (Glock & Haeussermann, 2004: 919). Although in theory all property owners could have participated in the program, in reality it was mainly used by large municipal housing

208  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink

Figure 9.4 Demolition of housing blocks in Leipzig-Grünau. Photo: Antje Stumpe, 2012

enterprises and cooperatives. Because of their extensive housing stock, they could cope with a loss of assets and, because they were released from existing debts for the apartments that were demolished, they were virtually the only ones who benefited from the demolition program (Bernt, 2009). Both types of housing companies concentrated a considerable share of their housing stock within the large housing estates. Thus, demolition occurred mostly at those locations. In addition, the concentration of demolition activities at the urban fringe was part of a municipal development strategy that prioritized inner-city refurbishment and renewal. As a consequence, demolition, as a manifestation of shrinkage in the housing sector, was particularly directed at the urban fringe and was a declared municipal development goal. In accordance with this goal, the municipality elaborated an “Integrated Urban Development Concept” as the main steering tool to allow property owners to participate in the program and to obtain financial support. To reach consensus on this concept, stakeholder interests had to be negotiated and the program arena

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  209

defined. The municipality, including the city council, the administrative offices, and the planning committee, shaped the core municipal network that then organized the urban restructuring. Further networks and stakeholder groups dealt with selected issues related to the complex process (e.g., adaptation of infrastructure facilities). Although the municipalities took over the role of steering the overall process of urban restructuring, the decision making (e.g., concerning the selection of blocks to be demolished) remained in the hands of the owners, the housing enterprises. Figure 9.5 shows the governance structure of the urban restructuring. The federal and state governments created the framework (laws, programs, public funds, and subsidies), but they have not been directly involved in the restructuring at the local level. This framework has enabled the municipalities to be forceful actors in the field of urban governance – in particular as the counterparts of the housing enterprises. These enterprises consist of three types: municipal, cooperative, and private. Their ownership positions give them differing interests and relations to the municipalities. Actors in civil society, such as community initiatives, play a marginal role. Because the municipalities and housing companies make the decisions, they react only if the demolition measures affect their housing settings (Fritsche, 2010). Banks are not part of the governance structure but are part of the framework, since they own existing debts or are needed for new credit. The crucial point of urban restructuring related to demolition is the balanced inclusion of the interests of the housing enterprises. If no further financial incentives are available from state-financed programs or if the situation on the housing market changes, then the various housing enterprises, including the private companies, could change their strategies. As a consequence, the goals of urban restructuring have to be either adapted or prolonged into the future. In addition, sales to private companies of blocks within the estates, in particular to global investors, make urban restructuring even more difficult. Since housing enterprises are primarily interested in revenues, it is very hard or sometimes impossible to engage them in the governance structure of urban restructuring. This governance structure can be seen in many cities in eastern Germany. Three major shifts can be distinguished: First, public funds have been cut and probably will be cut further in the course of the financial crisis; additionally, the federal government plans to conduct urban restructuring until 2016. Second, in a number of cities, the situation in the housing market has changed following large-scale demolition.

Figure 9.5 Governance structure related to urban restructuring. Line width represents the weight of the relationship.

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  211

Supply and demand are more balanced, and the housing market is no longer as depressed as at the beginning of the 2000s. The large housing estates on the fringe have gained a highly differentiated status. Third, as a consequence of privatization, global investors have recently become more important players in the housing market in eastern Germany (e.g., in Berlin, Dresden, Halle, and Leipzig). Thus, during recent years, the governance structure and its arrangements have become more differentiated, especially because of strong particularistic interests. As a consequence, local governance structures have become more conflictual and less stable, or have experienced a ­hollowing-out process (Rink, Bernt, Grossmann, & Haase, 2011). The governance networks described above might, in the future, be less able to steer urban restructuring as powerfully as they have done in the past. Lessons Learned and Conclusions Population decline is the major driver of shrinkage, which affects many spheres of urban functionality and liveability, including housing (S. Kabisch & Grossmann, 2013; S. Kabisch et al., 2008). Decreasing demand in the housing market may lead to a further but as yet unpredictable increase in vacancies. Because of the immense concentration of rental apartments in large housing estates on the urban fringe, these residential areas are particularly vulnerable to shrinkage, as demonstrated by the East German example. At the same time, the housing stock in the large estates is most flexible, in terms of restructuring and demolition, because of its ownership structure: almost exclusively municipal companies and cooperatives. Thus, these estates, as examples of state-led suburbanization, have to cope with the state-led withdrawal in response to urban shrinkage. The East German experience described above provides evidence of the need for state intervention to deal with this challenging situation on  the housing market. Only with support from state-financed programs, subsidies, and state regulations is it possible to create local governance structures that are able to steer restructuring in a planned manner. In eastern Germany, public actors such as municipalities play a decisive role because of the traditions of German urban policy and planning. By using state-funded resources – in particular of personnel, finances, and juridical and planning know-how – municipalities are able to extend their capacities as well as develop comprehensive development plans, strategies, and appropriate administrative instruments.

212  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink

Thus, they have to date been able to respond to housing vacancies relatively effectively. The shrinking cities in East Germany are in a “pioneer position,” because they have to deal with problems and tasks without any kind of blueprint. The phenomena of shrinkage and urban restructuring have created a laboratory environment for investigating urban transformations by trial and error, with almost all decisions having immediate practical relevance. An evaluation of governance experiences during a decade of shrinkage and urban restructuring has provided a model for West German and other European cities with similar challenges to follow. One of our major findings is that the inclusion of all important actors within the governance networks is often not entirely possible. The integration of private owners, in particular of global investors, is difficult because their targets often do not coincide with the local restructuring strategies. Our empirical results from case studies in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Hungary indicate that shrinking cities in these countries have to cope with similar problems (A. Haase et al., 2012). Nevertheless context-specific applications are always necessary (Couch et al., 2012). Preliminary findings related to the shrinkage of large housing estates and their governance are already under public discussion. Finding successful policies to deal with this challenge is a national or, probably, an EU-wide task. Shrinking cities cannot solve these problems on their own, as the East German case shows. REFERENCES Beauregard, R.A. (2006). When America became suburban. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bernt, M. (2009). Partnership for demolition: The governance of urban renewal in East Germany’s shrinking cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(3), 754–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00856.x. BMVBS (Bundesministerium für Verkehr Bau und Stadtentwicklung [Federal Ministry for Transport, Construction and Urban Development]. (2010). Statusbericht (4). Stadtumbau vor neuen Herausforderungen [Status Report (4). Urban restructuring in front of new challenges]. Berlin. BMVBS (Bundesministerium für Verkehr Bau und Stadtentwicklung [Federal Ministry for Transport, Construction and Urban Development]. (2012). Statusbericht (5). 10 Jahre Stadtumbau Ost – Berichte aus der Praxis [Status Report (5). 10 years of urban restructuring east – Practice reports]. Berlin.

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  213 Brake, K., Dangschat, J., & Herfert, G. (Eds). (2001). Suburbanisierung in Deutschland. [Suburbanization in Germany]. Opladen: Leske & Budrich. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-11566-3. Busch, U., Kühn, W., & Steinitz, K. (2008). Entwicklung und Schrumpfung in Ostdeutschland. [Development and shrinkage in East Germany] Hamburg: VSA Verlag. Couch, C., Cocks, M., Bernt, M., Grossmann, K., Haase, A., & Rink, D. (2012). The governance of urban shrinkage in Europe: Policy responses, governance and future directions. Town and Country Planning 81(6) (June): 264–70. Couch, C., Leontidu, L., & Petschel-Held, G. (Eds). (2007). Urban sprawl in Europe: Landscapes, land-use change, and policy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Dekker, K., & van Kempen, R. (2009). Resident satisfaction in post-WWII housing estates. In R. Rowlands, S. Musterd, & R. van Kempen (Eds), Mass housing in Europe: Multiple faces of development, change and response (53–76). New York: Houndmills. Earthscan, UN-Habitat (2008). State of the world’s cities 2008/2009: Harmonious cities. London: Earthscan. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Expert Commission. (2000). Abschlussbericht der Expertenkommission Wohnungswirtschaftlicher Strukturwandel in den neuen Ländern. Berlin: Final Report of the Expert Commission. Fritsche, M. (2010). Partizipation in der lokalen Umsetzung von „Stadtumbau Ost“. Weichenstellungen, Non-Decisions und absichtsvolle Ausgestaltung. [Participation in the local context of “Urban Restructuring East”]. In M. Bernt, M. Haus, & T. Robischon (Eds), Stadtumbau komplex: Governance, Planung, Prozess. [Urban restructuring complex: Governance, planning, process] (144–57). Darmstadt: Schader-Stiftung. Glock, B., & Haeussermann, H. (2004). New trends in urban development and public policy in Eastern Germany: Dealing with the vacant housing problem at the local level. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(4), 919–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00560.x. Haase, A., Hospers, G.-J., Pekelsma, S., & Rink, D. (2012). Shrinking areas. Front-runners in innovative citizen participation. The Hague: European Urban Knowledge Network. Haase, D., Haase, A., Kabisch, N., Kabisch, S., & Rink, D. (2012). Actors and factors in land-use simulation: The challenge of urban shrinkage. Environmental Modelling & Software, 35, 92–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. envsoft.2012.02.012.

214  Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink Kabisch, N., & Haase, D. (2011). Diversifying European agglomerations: Evidence of urban population trends for the 21st century. Population Space and Place, 17(3), 236–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/psp.600. Kabisch, S., & Grossmann, K. (2013). Challenges for large housing estates in light of population decline and ageing: Results of a long-term survey in East-Germany. Habitat International, 39, 232–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/​ j.habitatint.2012.12.003. Kabisch, S., Steinführer, A., Haase, A., Grossmann, K., Peter, A., & Maas, A. (2008). Demographic change and its impact on housing. Final report for the EUROCITIES network. Brussels and Leipzig. http://issuu.com/eurocities/ docs/demographic_change_housing. Kährik, A., & Tammaru, T. (2010). Soviet prefabricated panel housing estates: Areas of continued social mix or decline? The case of Tallinn. Housing Studies, 25(2), 201–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673030903561818. Knorr-Siedow, T., & Droste, J. (2003). Large housing estates in Germany: Overview of developments and problems in Berlin. RESTATE: Restructuring large-scale housing estates in European cities: Good practices and new visions for sustainable neighborhoods and cities. Utrecht. Report 2b: 122-31. Liebmann, H. (2004). Vom sozialistischen Wohnkomplex zum Problemgebiet? [From the socialist housing complex to the problem area?] Dortmund: Dortmunder Beiträge zur Raumplanung. Musterd, S., & van Kempen, R. (2007). Trapped or on the springboard? Housing careers in large housing estates in European cities. Journal of Urban Affairs, 29(3), 311–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2007.00345.x. Neugebauer, C.S., Wiest, K., & Krupickaite, D. (2011). Zukunftsperspektiven mittel- und osteuropäischer Großwohnsiedlungen zwischen Wohnungsmarkt, Bewohnerinitiative und Förderpolitik. [The perspectives of Central and Eastern European large scale housing estates in-between local housing markets: Dweller’s initiatives and public policy.] Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 69(1), 29–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13147-011-0077-3. Oswalt, P., & Rieniets, T. (2006). Atlas of shrinking cities. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz. Power, A. (1993). Hovels to highrise: State housing in Europe since 1850. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203420782. Power, A. (1999). Estates on the edge. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Rink, D. (2011). Urban shrinkage as a problem of post-socialist transformation: The case of Eastern Germany. Sociologie Romanesca, 10(3), 20–34. Rink, D., Bernt, M., Grossmann, K., & Haase, A. (2011). Urban governance in Leipzig and Halle, Germany. Research report of the EU-project Shrink Smart: Governance of shrinkage within a European context. Leipzig.

Governing Shrinkage of Large Housing Estates  215 Statistisches Bundesamt. (Ed.). (2012). Geburten in Deutschland. Ausgabe 2012. [Births in Germany, Edition 2012]. Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt. Szafranska, E. (2009). The attractiveness of residential blocks in the opinion of residents on the example of a residential shark north in Lodz. In Y. Jazdzewska (Ed.), Large and medium-sized Polish cities in transition (197–210). Lodz: Lodz University. Temelová, J., Novák, J., Ouředníček, M., & Puldová, P. (2011). Housing estates in the Czech Republic after socialism: Various trajectories and inner differentiation. Urban Studies, 48(9), 1811–34. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1177/0042098010379279. Turkington, R., van Kempen, R., & Wassenberg, F. (Eds). (2004). High rise housing in Europe: Current trends and future prospects. Delft: Delft University Press. Turok, I., & Mykhnenko, V. (2007). The trajectories of European cities, 1960– 2005. Cities, 24(3), 165–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2007.01.007. UN World Urban Forum 6. (2012). The urban future: Background document. New York. van de Kaa, D.J. (2004). Is the second demographic transition a useful research concept: Questions and answers. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, 1(2004), 4–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2004s4. Wassenberg, F. (2006). The integrated renewal of Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer highrise. Stadtumbau in Großsiedlungen [Urban restructuring in large housing estates], ed. BBR Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung. Informationen zur Raumentwicklung 3(4), 191–202.

10 Suburbanization in Latin America: Towards New Authoritarian Modes of Governance at the Urban Margin dirk heinrichs and henning nuissl

Introduction Latin America is one of the most urbanized regions worldwide. Urban expansion and suburbanization are well-established and common phenomena both in the large megacities and in the secondary (or even smaller) cities. Cities in Latin America display considerable growth rates in terms of land development on the urban periphery. While in cities like Lima, Bogota, or Rio de Janeiro this trend goes along with an increase in population numbers, more consolidated cities like Santiago de Chile or Buenos Aires experience simultaneous processes of central population decline, suburbanization, and, most recently, re-urbanization tendencies and thus face a situation comparable to that of many European cities (see the contribution by Kabisch & Rink in chapter 9 of this volume). Suburbanization, as we argue in this chapter, has played a central role in transforming the spatial and functional patterns of cities throughout the region for many decades. However, these trends, their driving forces, as well as their profound social, ecological, and economic implications have – when compared to Europe and North America – only recently begun to attract the interest of urban analysts and policy makers across the continent. This chapter seeks to understand the governance behind suburbanization. To ground this attempt, the next section traces the origins and evolution of the forms of suburbanization in Latin America. In defining suburbanization, we follow Ekers, Hamel, and Keil, who – in the first chapter to this volume – take it as “the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion” (see also Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012: 209). We then move on to explore the

Suburbanization in Latin America  217

issues and arguments that have evolved around suburbanization and suburban governance. This discussion is informed by a systematic literature review that was conducted in preparation for this chapter. The aim is to make explicit the thematic focus of this discussion and how it has evolved over time. Following this, we examine specific issues of governance related to three areas of interest outlined by Ekers, Hamel, and Keil in this volume: the role of the state, the role of capital, and emerging forms of authoritarian governance. In a concluding section, we summarize the main arguments and discuss whether and to what extent we can identify modes of urban governance that may be particular to Latin American suburbanization. Tracing Suburbanization in Latin America: From Self-Built to Private-Led Development of the Urban Fringe From their origins as colonial settlements, cities in Latin America have undergone significant transformation. As in other world regions (see, e.g., the contribution of Hirt & Kovachev on Eastern Europe in chapter 8 of this volume), suburbanization has been one of the most prominent attributes of this change over the past fifty to eighty years, although its character and physical appearance have changed significantly over time and in connection with economic and political transformations. In their model of Latin American urban structural development, and following earlier work (e.g., Bähr, 1976), Borsdorf and colleagues identify several phases of the spatial, functional, and social organization of cities in the region (Borsdorf, Bähr, & Janoschka, 2002; Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2010). In the early phase, the colonial time, the urban area was compact and the social status of residents decreased as the distance increased from the central square that accommodated political and social functions. Subsequent to the independence of many nations in the region and following a process of urbanization, the construction of linear structures such as railway lines altered urban uses and attracted industrial development. While these changes in sector patterns did not alter the traditional structure altogether, they gave rise to further transformations at the beginning of the twentieth century. By that time the urban elites were starting to abandon their locations in the centre of the cities and moving towards what could be termed the first suburbs. As a consequence of this first wave of suburbanization, the central municipalities in the larger cities in the region experienced a significant population exodus, followed by a decline in commercial functions. Some prime examples are the municipality of Santiago in Santiago de Chile,

218  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

where the population declined from more than half a million in 1950 to about 200,000 in 1980 (Rodriguez, 2008). During that period, the large cities likewise saw a dramatic increase in population. Mexico City grew from a population of about 2.5 million in 1950 to almost 11 million in 1975. Similarly, the city of Sao Paulo saw a rise from 2.3 to 10 million over the same period (United Nations Population Division, 2008). The cause of this extraordinary growth in urban population was massive rural-urban migration of peasants from the countryside. As the national and local governments were not effective in coping with this inflow of migrants, the cities saw the development of informal, self-built settlements on vacant land at the urban fringe. The sites of this second wave of suburbanization were characterized by makeshift buildings, narrow access roads, high levels of crowding, and an absence of service facilities such as water and electricity, as well as virtually no connections to the “formal” city and its centre. What followed over the subsequent decades can be described as the differentiation of these so-called “popular” informal settlements. Since then, a number of these settlements have undergone significant consolidation in terms of building structure and services as well as social structure and organization. Others have turned into areas of physical and social despair (Sabatini & Salcedo, 2007). A next and third wave of suburbanization in Latin America began in the 1970s in the form of state-led public and social housing. In many countries, national governments initiated programs to build low-­ income housing to reduce housing deficits as well as to replace informal buildings. In Chile, for example, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MINVU) created a basic housing program in early 1980. Between 1990 and 2005, about 2.3 million houses were built with some form of government support, which means that about 25 per cent of the total houses constructed in the country received support through the program (www.observatoriohabitacional.cl as cited in Brain, Mora, Rasse, & Sabatini, 2009). As land prices play a major role in the cost of housing construction, these housing programs tended to be located on the urban periphery where land is comparatively cheap. In consequence, social housing construction has made and continues to make a significant contribution to suburbanization in many cities in the region (see figure 10.1). Most recently, a new form of residential development at the urban margins is emerging, constituting what could be regarded as a fourth wave of suburbanization. Large-scale residential complexes are spreading

Suburbanization in Latin America  219

Figure 10.1 A suburban social-housing project in Bogotá, Colombia. Photo: Dirk Heinrichs

on the outskirts of cities, in combination with retail facilities and industrial and exurban office parks (Heinrichs, Lukas, & Nuissl, 2011). A main feature of this new form of suburban development is that these complexes are gated, which explains the term “Barrio Cerrado” as the main identifier for this type of development. This term serves to describe a complex of more than one dwelling unit with a common infrastructure, separated from the public by a gate, fence, or wall. The infrastructure may include, for example, recreational amenities and educational facilities. Suburban gated communities offer large-size, single-­ family, detached houses integrated into the surrounding landscape in response to demand from middle- and upper-income households. As such, they resemble the much earlier form of the country club (Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2010). In a less spacious form, these types of communities also exist for lower-middle-income groups. The size of such developments varies from a few to several thousand units. There appears to be a tendency towards a larger scale of development (e.g., Janoschka,

220  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

2002), mainly for two reasons. First, profitability for the developers rises with size. Second, larger compounds provide sufficient space to separate new complexes (as walled designs do) from the adjacent lower-­ class settlements dating from earlier phases of suburbanization. An ­important feature of this type of development is access to transportation infrastructure, mainly express highways that connect the new locations to the central areas of the cities (Sabatini & Salcedo, 2007). The temporal and spatial overlay of these different waves of suburbanization has created the socially and spatially fragmented urban structure of contemporary Latin American cities. The spatial dispersion of elites from the communities where they had been concentrated for most of the twentieth century towards different sections of the urban periphery where lower-income classes had tended to agglomerate is one of the most noticeable social-spatial implications. It appears that by “coincidence” differences in social class in Latin America are currently being played out in suburbia. As we see in the next section, this is a prominent topic in the contemporary debate about suburbanization. The Contemporary Debate on Suburbanization in Latin America This section examines the extent to which the scientific literature on cities in Latin America discusses issues of suburbia and suburban governance. It documents the results of a systematic literature review of journal articles.1 This review explores two questions. First, to what extent and degree does the topic “suburbanization” appear in the urban studies literature on Latin America and is there a focus on specific cities? Second, what particular issues and concerns are most prominent in discussions about suburbanization and what does this debate have to say about suburban governance? The review provides a few lessons and insights. First, it indicates that suburbanization is a relevant topic in Latin America, in particular with regard to larger metropolitan areas. However, the debate does not use the term “suburb” and its variants (“suburbanization,” etc.) but is couched in terms of the more general phenomena of urban expansion, urbanization, and growth. Second, suburbanization is discussed in relation to the larger cities in Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. Third, it is possible to identify some key topics in relation to suburbanization in Latin America. Finally, the quantitative literature review revealed that the academic perspective on suburbanization has changed considerably within the last thirty years. Whereas the problems

Suburbanization in Latin America  221

resulting from the urbanization processes driven by the rural-urban migration of predominantly poor people dominate the older literature, some historical themes of the North American debate on suburbanization – such as economic, environmental, and security aspects – do figure prominently in the contemporary literature on Latin American suburbanization as well. A closer look at the thematic focus of the reviewed literature reveals that some issues are discussed much more prominently than others, in particular social division, morphology, and, most of all, governance (see figure 10.2). We briefly discuss the first two issues before addressing the issue of governance in the remainder of this chapter. The concern about a social divide and segregation between groups with different socio-economic status is very visible in the reviewed literature. This comes as no surprise, given that Latin American cities exhibit a high degree of segregation (CEPAL, 2005). On the one hand, suburbanization is held to be responsible for increasing the already extremely significant levels of social polarization (Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2010), as higher- and middle-income households move to the periphery in search of security, exclusivity, individuality, and the realization of suburban lifestyles (Coy, 2006; Heinrichs, Nuissl, & Rodriguez Seeger, 2009). At the same time, however, suburbanization is found to produce social-spatial proximity in cases where new gated communities emerge next to “poor” peripheral neighbourhoods in what Sabatini and Salcedo (2007, 2010) call functional and symbolic integration in a context of aggressive capitalist colonization. They point out that, in contrast to the United States, this trend is not associated with the expulsion or replacement of poorer residents. Concerns with morphology (i.e., issues of structure, form, and functional and – to a somewhat lesser extent – architectural features of the suburban realm) are also present in the majority of texts. These concerns relate primarily to large-scale residential complexes and the huge flourishing retail facilities and industrial and exurban office parks on greenfield sites (Janoschka, 2002; Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2005) that are at best loosely connected to the existing urban fabric. For the past couple of decades, the region has experienced a significant increase in gated residential neighbourhoods in particular (e.g., Janoschka, 2002; Parnreiter, 2004; Coy, 2006; Libertun de Duren, 2006; Roitman & Phelps, 2011). Known as barrio cerrado (Chile), barrio privado (Argentina), or condominio fechado (Brazil), these spaces are privately developed and policed low-density housing complexes featuring enhanced security devices. In

222  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl Figure 10.2 Thematic focus of reviewed articles (n = 78)

some instances, this type of development reaches the scale of megaprojects (Coy & Pöhler, 2002; Heinrichs et al., 2009) for several thousand households, with integrated cultural and educational facilities. These new edge-urban developments go hand in hand with the development of access and supply infrastructure such as the construction of highway systems to accommodate increasing automobile use (Figueroa, 2005). In parallel to this new form of suburbanization, the existing peripheral poor or marginal neighbourhoods that have long characterized cities in Latin America are being functionally incorporated into the consolidated urban spaces (Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2010). Significant and apparently increasing attention is being given to different aspects of political and economic restructuring and governance, which more than three out of four of the analysed texts touch upon in one way or another. This theme focuses on the shift towards neoliberal economic models, the privatization of state-owned companies and public services, and policies favouring increased foreign direct investment, deregulation and the relaxation of planning laws, and a reduction of direct government influence. We explore these aspects in more detail in the subsequent section.

Suburbanization in Latin America  223

Modalities and Mechanisms of Suburban Governance in Latin America Any attempt to comprehend suburbanization must pay attention to the varied agents, methods, and institutions through which development is managed. Together, these elements may be viewed as the modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. There is a substantial body of literature on urban governance in Latin America. Although much of this literature does not explicitly refer to the process of suburbanization, it articulates challenges – such as providing sufficient and adequate housing and infrastructure or improving poor and marginalized neighbourhoods – that are highly relevant to suburbanization. In the following sections, we explore the modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance in relation to three specific questions: First, what is the role of the state in suburban governance? Second, how are capital and the underlying interests and motivations of capital-­ accumulating actors shaping the forms of suburban governance? Third, can we make out new forms of authoritarian governance? The “Restricted” Role of the State Throughout most of the twentieth century, Latin America experienced an immense rural-urban migration that led to the massive growth of squatter settlements on the urban periphery. Suburbanization traditionally was a “stateless” and often informal phenomenon in Latin America. The suburban realm developed largely outside public policies, with little or no spatial planning, and was neglected by the state or – even worse – subject to eradication policies (e.g., Costa & Hernández, 2010). Urban policy and planning, on the other hand, traditionally had a strong focus on maintaining and developing the densely built and multifunctional urban centres, reflecting the “compact city ideal” that is aspired to in other regions of the world (see, for example, the contributions by Phelps & Tarazona Vento and Hirt & Kovachev, in chapters 7 and 8 respectively in this volume). There are two principal explanations for this attitude: first, the strong urban tradition that prevails in Latin America (cf Davis, 2000); and second, the dominant interest of traditional urban elites and landowners in maintaining the high value of their urban property (cf Garza, 2009). With the ever-increasing arrival of rural migrants from the mid-­ twentieth century onwards, public policies and spatial planning could

224  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

not continue to focus exclusively on the fully equipped urbanized zones around the historic colonial city. No longer able to ignore the expansive suburban ring of often informally built housing around the big cities of Latin America, the authorities started to deploy urban policies that aimed at the formalization and consolidation of existing ­settlements. Often this also meant placing long-existing built-up areas on the urban fringes onto city maps and planning documents for the first time. At the same time, public housing schemes were deployed in many cities, most often on the urban fringes where land prices were considerably lower than in the inner urban areas – thus corroborating the image of large parts of suburbia as the home of poor people (cf Rodríguez & Sugranyes, 2004). More recently state attitudes in Latin America towards the suburban realm have changed again, particularly in the more economically developed countries. In many cities, suburbia now enjoys considerable attention from public authorities at different levels, mainly because it  has been discovered as a resource for development and economic growth. This shift occurred against a background of more profound trends. First, the dominating policy of import substitution of the mid-twentieth century was followed by a strong trend towards structural adjustment policies and a generally neoliberal development paradigm over roughly the last quarter of the century. This trend went hand in hand with a tendency to perceive urban growth, and in particular urban expansion, as an engine of economic growth and a means to attract international capital to the country (creating an urban policy environment that somehow resembles post-socialist Eastern Europe; see the contribution by Hirt & Kovachev in chapter 8 of this volume). Second, with Latin America becoming one of the most urbanized regions in the world, the pressure on suburban areas by poor rural-urban migrants simply faded away. Instead, the more affluent strata of the urban population began to focus their housing demands on the urban fringes, making the latter promising areas for real estate investments. Third, as a reaction to the most evident negative impacts of neoliberal economic policies (such as environmental pollution), an awareness of the intricate nature of urban development processes arose in the 1990s (cf Roberts, 2005). Against this background, the global debate on the sustainable city has excited concern about the potentially negative environmental impacts of edge-­ urban development. This in turn has supported the revitalization of the traditional orientation of urban policy and planning towards the urban centres and has led to attempts to reverse the trend of inner-urban population decline (Paquette Vasalli & Delauny, 2009). Exemplifying this

Suburbanization in Latin America  225

new direction is Brazil’s adoption of a “City Statute” in 2001, which, rooted in Henri Lefebvre’s claim of the collective “right to the city,” aims at providing a legal framework for urban governance and management that recognizes the needs of all urban citizens (cf Costa & Hernández, 2010: 127). The diagnosis of these macro-trends and the discussion of their impact on the development of Latin American cities have largely been carried out from the point of view of critical urban theory (e.g., De Mattos, 1999, 2007; Ducci, 2000): En Latinoamérica (…) las investigaciones sobre el desarrollo urbano y la rápida extensión horizontal de las ciudades han adoptado en su gran mayoría una perspective neoestructuralista, centrando la atención analítica en descifrar la relación entre la reestructuración capitalista neoliberal, implementada a partir de la década de los ochenta, y los cambios urbanos experimentados en las grandes aglomeraciones urbanas. (Hidalgo & ­Zunino, 2011: 81) [In Latin America (…), research on urban development and the rapid horizontal expansion of cities has in its great majority adopted a neostructuralist perspective, which centred its analytical attention on decoding the relation between neoliberal capitalist restructuration from the 1980s onwards and the urban changes in the large urban agglomerations. (Authors’ translation)]

Thus, urban expansion and suburbanization have been interpreted largely as the outcome of neoliberal urban policies where the state adopts the role of a facilitator of private (real estate) investments (Fuentes & Sierralta, 2004). The state’s main concern, in this view, is with providing the framework conditions that are conducive to economic growth. De Mattos (2007) identifies some crucial programmatic catchwords used by public officials and in policy documents in order to signal the redefined role of the state in the process of urban development, most notably, “governance,” “strategic planning,” and “decentralization.” To De Mattos (2010), the “governance” concept is basically a means to legitimize increased private involvement in “city building,” mainly through public-private partnerships. “Strategic planning” indicates the dismissal of the leading planning paradigm of the welfare state, that is, the idea of deploying rational plans that ideally safeguard the balance between private interests and social equity. The call for “decentralization,” although it is mainly used as a means to bring politics

226  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

and decision-making processes closer to the people, is also very much in line with neoliberal thinking. It facilitates coalition building between political and economic elites at the local level, thereby supporting the emergence of local development regimes that strongly resemble what in the United States has been described as the “growth machine” (Logan & Molotch, 1987). Looking at the recent developments around the big cities in Latin America, we find a multitude of examples that confirm De Mattos’s perspective on the role of the state in the process of urban development in general and suburbanization in particular. Massive suburban developments have occurred in a generally investment-friendly environment provided by national governments – most notably, the large-scale gated compounds and so-called megaprojects with several thousand units of housing that have become characteristic of the outskirts of Latin American metropolises (e.g., Janoschka, 2002; Coy, 2006) (see figure 10.3). These developments have often been backed by public infrastructure investments (Figueroa, 2005). While planning regulations that aim at the preservation of a compact urban form have been gradually relaxed in several countries and cities, suburban municipalities are usually happy to engage in the legal preparation for urban expansion because investment realized on their territory is often the only opportunity for an improvement in their revenue. As recent decentralization policies have transferred more planning powers to local authorities and enabled them to draw up effective plans and grant building permits, it has become a frequent strategy of suburban municipalities to legally enable new development projects in the – often phantasmal (cf Roitman & Phelps, 2011) – hope of planning gains in the form of expenditure for social infrastructure by private investors. The “Governing” Role of Capital Since Latin American state authorities tend to define their role in urban development as facilitator of investments and growth (and frequently abstain from playing out their regulatory powers), it is usually easy to organize political consensus for suburban developments. The downside of this situation, however, is the paramount influence of the private sector: The state, at the national as well as at the local level, reduced its direct interference in socioeconomic and spatial development according to the

Suburbanization in Latin America  227

Figure 10.3 Advertising a new megaproject in the periphery of Bogotá, Colombia. Photo: Dirk Heinrichs neo-liberal principles of deregulation, flexibility and privatization. At the same time these policies opened more and more space to private capital interests. These changes are the main reasons why certain urban actors, including real estate companies, big private investors or the wealthier urban dwellers, were able to increase their control over urban change and development. (Coy, 2006: 122)

In other words, capital is obviously a key issue for understanding urban development and suburbanization in Latin America. Its “governing” role manifests itself in various ways, four of which will be sketched below. Latin American cities have seen (i) the rise of a new and powerful type of urban development actor, and they have experienced (ii) a new mode of urban development propelled by these actors. However, the “governing” role of capital in the process of suburbanization not only becomes tangible by the actors who execute it and the physical results they produce; it is also (iii) a force that controls the activities of

228  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

state and local authorities and that likewise (iv) shapes the institutional framework which regulates urban developments. (i) Throughout Latin America, there is evidence that urban development is increasingly connected to the rising influence of international financial capital (e.g., De Mattos, 2007; Janoschka, 2002; Parnreiter, 2004; Heinrichs et al., 2011). The cities in the region have emerged as privileged locations for the operations of real estate investors who are in charge of rent-seeking capital from international sources and who look for opportunities to valorize land and to develop attractive products (Stockins, 2004; De Mattos, 2007). The case of Santiago de Chile illustrates the significant influence that this type of urban development actor has acquired in the recent past. In the Chilean capital, around twenty-five major players in the real estate business emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of liberalization policies, political economic restructuring processes, and relatively stable economic growth rates. Since then there has been a marked internationalization of the real estate market and increasing presence of international capital and joint ventures. International companies have appeared in addition to the established national enterprises, but the latter are also increasingly operating as agents of international investment capital. Furthermore, even when projects are in foreign hands, well-known local business people are hired as project managers to facilitate activities in the real estate and land markets. It is no secret that real estate and building investors in Chile traditionally have strong personal links to the country’s political elites (thereby endowing the relation between state and capital with a very personal component) (cf Heinrichs et al., 2011). (ii) The activities of international real estate companies prominently shape the suburban space around the big Latin American cities. In particular, the spread of so-called megaprojects testifies to the influence of these actors (Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2005). Their strategy basically subscribes to what Sabatini (2000) calls the social commodification of place. It consists of purchasing land in poor peripheral locations for low prices – either agricultural land or land used for the purposes of marginalized groups – which is then usually repackaged and promoted as a high-end living environment for the middle and upper classes. There is a major interest in realizing the gap potential between the value of undeveloped land and the maximum economic return from developing it for the most profitable urban use. A study by Arriagada and Simioni (2001) on the dynamics of land values in Santiago gives an indication of this potential. While land prices increased on average by 22.5 per cent

Suburbanization in Latin America  229

annually between 1992 and 1998, the increase amounted to more than 100 per cent in most peripheral municipalities. By and large the kind of real-estate-investor-driven development that characterizes current suburbanization processes in Latin America follows the well-established scenario described by Logan and Molotch, who contend that “human interests in wealth, power and affection (…) organize how markets will work, what prices will be, as well as the behavioural response to prices” (Logan & Molotch, 1987: 9). Thus, it is possible to assert that the traditionally strong orientation of Latin Americans towards the urban centres has been weakened by what might be called a submission of urban development towards the logic of capital (cf Pirez, 2002). (iii) It is evident that authorities frequently support real estate investments by providing the necessary access infrastructure. Writing on the case of gated communities in Brazilian cities, Coy (2006) points out the relative disadvantage of suburban housing estates in terms of distance from the city centres where most workplaces are located. Looking at several cities across the region (Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Ciudad de Panama), Oscar Figueroa (2005) demonstrates that a response to this disadvantage is the modernization and extension of the urban transport infrastructure (mainly highways) into the city region, either by direct public investments or by the transfer of construction and operation to the private sector through public-private partnership arrangements. Another example of the paramount influence of capital on authorities is the aforementioned tendency of municipalities to plead for investments on their territory. In particular, municipalities with a poor population (and a weak tax base) appear prone to concede almost everything to real estate investors, while more affluent municipalities often formulate detailed regulations and requirements. In her examination of the location patterns of gated communities around Buenos Aires, Nora Libertun de Duren (2006) reveals how the planning context shapes capital’s inconstant geography. She observes that the spectacular growth of gated communities after the upgrade of the northern highway was not distributed evenly across the local government units along the highway but clustered predominantly in less wealthy municipalities. She finds that decentralization of planning controls contributed to the distribution patterns. While the wealthier local governments preferred to exert tighter controls on land use, the poorer municipalities pursued the approach of modifying planning and landuse codes to attract development and real estate developers. The – counterintuitive – result is that it is often the poorest communities that

230  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

grow fastest due to the establishment of huge (upper-) middle-class residential developments (for the case of Buenos Aires see also: PrévôtSchapira & Cattaneo Pineda, 2008, Roitman & Phelps, 2011). (iv) Frequently, suburban development beyond the edges of the builtup area is not legally feasible because of restrictions in the building law or zoning plans. However, the underlying economic interest can easily become strong enough to initiate a change of planning and building regulations, particularly if the development takes the form of expansive residential or office parks. Again, Santiago de Chile provides some revealing examples. In recent decades, there has been a continuous struggle between the national Ministry for Housing and Urbanism and a coalition of other ministries and private lobby groups about the city’s urban growth boundary (limite urbano), which was put back in place (again) in 1985 after it had been lifted by the military dictatorship in the 1970s. However, the legal power of this planning instrument to contain development has since been watered down by several regulatory amendments. The latest of these changes, and perhaps the most far-reaching, was the relaxation of planning regulations to permit megaprojects along the fringes of Santiago. Enacted between 1997 and 2004, these new regulations – the Conditional Urbanisation Areas (ZODUC), Prior­ ity Areas for Urbanization (ADUP), and Conditional Urban Develop­ ment Projects (PDUC) – permitted residential development beyond the city limits (Hidalgo, 2005). There is mixed assessment of these instruments in the current debate both in the public media and the scientific community. While for some they represent a distinctively new and positive way of city building (Poduje, 2006), others see them as a manifestation of the excessive power of private capital. Emerging Forms of “Authoritarian” Governance In the academic debate, a few features of urban development are interpreted and labelled as key manifestations of “authoritarian” urban governance. They are, first of all, the proliferation of gated communities (cf Blakely & Snyder, 1997); second, the emergence of privately built and operated access and supply infrastructure (cf Graham & Marvin, 2001); and third, the rise of homeowners’ associations and private managerial firms that displace the local state in the governance of local affairs (McKenzie, 1994). These phenomena are clearly present in the current forms of suburbanization in Latin America. Thus, one could argue that Latin American suburbanization follows a global trend

Suburbanization in Latin America  231

towards authoritarian modes of governance. Similarly, one could argue that North American urban politics are simply transferred to Latin America after some delay. It is, however, very important to be cautious about such a conclusion, to avoid over-generalization. In fact, there are Latin American specificities to the way the aforementioned manifestations of “authoritarian suburbanization” impact on the urban space and society. For instance, the national governments in Latin America tend to have a much bigger say in the governance of at least the major urban centres than those in North America or Europe, and the issue of local community building or incorporation of wealthy suburban places is largely negligible. Another specificity in the way “authoritarian suburbanization” shapes the urban realm stems from the fact that it combines with an urban society where class segregation is already very pronounced (Sabatini & Salcedo, 2010) and where the closing off of building blocks has traditionally been an accepted social practice (Parnreiter, 2007). However, as previous sections have highlighted, urban development and land use are strongly driven by the interests of the real estate industry, which are often pursued by a close alliance of public and private sector actors. The major driving force of what is called “authoritarian” governance here is thus present also in Latin America – it is not the authoritarian state (as was the case in many Latin American states in the mid-twentieth century) but the “governing” role of capital. Does this trend entail a shift in responsibility from the state to both the private sector and society? This question calls for an examination of (civil) society as a third actor along with the state and the private sector. Looking at the tremendous investments undertaken at the fringes of many Latin American cities, it is noticeable that, by and large, these developments rarely meet strong opposition from local communities. There is usually no formation of the type of no-growth coalitions that are common in the United States and Europe (Zunino, 2006). Often, there is quite a simple reason for this lack of citizen concern: new development frequently occurs in a largely empty space and affects just a relatively small proportion of the existing population. However, there is also a more profound reason for the absence of civil society in the dynamics of suburbanization, and this is the strong association of the public and the private sector, an association that often leads to a po­litical framing of specific projects that discourages participation. In ­addition, it is not always easy for those most affected by a certain development project to access adequate information about the

232  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

development. With respect to Argentina, Roitman and Phelps (2011) contend that: the superimposition of gated communities upon outer suburban districts appears to have curtailed some of the possibilities for grass-roots political movements to shape a viable politics centred on issues of collective consumption and the “retrofit” of amenities and infrastructure which has been apparent in some prominent instances. (127)

In consequence, the emergent forms of “authoritarian” governance in Latin America appear to prevent society from getting involved in the process of shaping the suburban environment. Conclusion This chapter has explored three topics regarding suburbanization: the forms in which it manifests itself in Latin American cities and its “physical” characteristics; the discussion and debates that have emerged around it; and the modes by which it comes into existence, including the role that different interests take in planning, implementing, and managing contemporary suburbia. The findings are summarized in table 10.1 below. In conclusion, we argue that, first of all, suburbanization in Latin America has specific processes and forms and involves a set of distinct spatial, social, and functional patterns that differ from those in other regions. This is also true for the scientific debate on the topic. Much of the literature on urban growth and suburbanization in Latin America in general, and gated communities in particular, is concerned with the implications and new threats or opportunities of the current suburbanization round for social-spatial integration, image, urban form (which is mainly addressed from the point of view of sustainable land-use patterns), and community integration. With respect to suburban governance, we find a new mode of making suburbia. The self-led, informal, peri-urban growth of the mid-­ twentieth century has given way to contemporary private capital-led suburban development, which is supported by the state’s abstinence as regards the use of its power to regulate development. In this sense, the contemporary round of suburbanization in Latin America is by no means the only, inevitable result of individual household demand for suburban housing (supported by economic and social factors) but is

Suburbanization in Latin America  233 Table 10.1 Conditions of contemporary suburban development – a summary of findings Questions

Conditions of contemporary suburban development

Physical form and characteristics

– Low to medium density – Small- to medium-sized horizontal gated communities and (more recently) scaled up “gated cities” and megaprojects – Common infrastructure on site – Access infrastructure to connect suburban development to locations with centrality

The main debates

– Social-spatial fragmentation and new segregation trends, including social-spatial proximity – Transformation towards neoliberal economic models, privatization of state-owned companies and public services, policies to increase foreign direct investment, deregulation, and relaxation of planning laws

The role of the state

– Reduction of direct government influence – Enabling and authorization of private-sector influence (flexibilization of regulation, decentralization)

The role of private capital

– Influence on the institutional (regulatory) framework – Design and implementation of development itself as well as related infrastructure – Marketing, packaging, and management of suburban communities

Modes of governance

– “New” authoritarian modes in planning, implementing, and managing suburban locations

also “the product of government policies” (cf Jackson, 1985). The contemporary discourse regarding “governance” provides the theoretical (and rhetorical) substantiation for the changing role of the state towards authorizing and legitimizing a strong and emergent governing role for private capital. The observations on emerging and new authoritarian modes of governance, where private capital assumes a paramount role empowered by the state, are in line with modes of city making that have been observed elsewhere in the wake of globalization. Aside from gated suburban communities, the case of privately constructed and managed infrastructure is a strong case that supports this claim. However, one should be cautious with overgeneralizations that disregard geographical contexts. There certainly are some peculiarities to the Latin American context that shape and explain these general tendencies in decisive ways. Two examples are the important role attached to security, and the demographic transitions that influence preferences in residential

234  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl

location choice. Likewise, while the pronounced pro-growth orientation of authorities that boosts private investment in large residential development projects is also somewhat typical of most countries in Latin America, there are always other aspects that can be understood only in the specific context of a particular case. NOTE 1 We conducted a systematic review of literature on suburbanization in Latin America. Using established search engines, we first identified several hundred papers, which were then reduced to a sample and basis for review of 78 relevant journal articles (using several filtering steps). We are indebted to Emilio Berrios who carried out the search and assisted us with the review.

REFERENCES Arriagada, C., & Simioni, D. (2001). Dinámica de valorización des suelo en el área metropolitana del Gran Santiago y desafíos des financiamiento urbano. Serie Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC/CEPAL. Bähr, J. (1976). Neuere Entwicklungstendenzen lateinamerikanischer Großstädte. Geographische Rundschau, 28, 125–33. Blakely, E.J., & Snyder, M.G. (1997). Fortress America: Gated communities in the United States. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Borsdorf, A., Bähr, J., & Janoschka, M. (2002). Die Dynamik stadtstrukturellen Wandels in Lateinamerika im Modell der lateinamerikanischen Stadt. Geo­graphica Helvetica, 57(4), 300–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gh-57300-2002. Borsdorf, A., & Hidalgo, R. (2005). Städtebauliche Megaprojekte im Umland lateinamerikanischer Metropolen – eine Antithese zur Stadt? Geographische Rundschau, 57(10), 30–9. Borsdorf, A., & Hidalgo, R. (2010). From polarization to fragmentation: Recent changes in Latin American urbanization. In P. van Lindert & O. Verkoren (Eds), Decentralized development in Latin America: Experiences in local governance and local development (23–34). GeoJournal Library 97. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1007/978-90-481-3739-8_2. Brain, I., Mora, P., Rasse, A., & Sabatini, F. (2009). Report on social housing in Chile. Working Paper. 49pp.

Suburbanization in Latin America  235 CEPAL (Comisión Económica para América Latina). (2005). Social panorama of Latin America 2005. Santiago: CEPAL. Costa, A., & Hernández, A. (2010). Análisis de la situación actual de la regularización urbana en América Latina: La cuestión de la tenencia segura de los asentamientos informales en tres realidades distintas: Brasil, Colombia y Perú. Revista INVI, 25(68), 121–52. Coy, M. (2006). Gated communities and urban fragmentation in Latin America: The Brazilian experience. GeoJournal, 66(1-2), 121–32. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1007/s10708-006-9011-6. Coy, M., & Pöhler, M. (2002). Gated communities in Latin American mega­ cities: Case studies in Brazil and Argentina. Environment and Planning. B, Planning & Design, 29(3), 355–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/b2772. Davis, M. (2000). Magical urbanism: Latinos reinvent the U.S. city. London: Verso. De Mattos, C.A. (1999). Santiago de Chile, globalización y expansión metro­ politana: lo que existía sigue existiendo. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 25(76), 29–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/ S0250-71611999007600002. De Mattos, C.A. (2007). Globalización, negocios inmobiliarios y transformación urbana. Nueva Sociedad 212. Retrieved from: www.nuso.org/upload/ articulos/3481_1.pdf. De Mattos, C.A. (2010). Globalización y metamorfosis metropolitana en América Latina. De la ciudad a lo urbano generalizado. Revista de Geografía Norte Grande, 47, 81–104. Ducci, M.E. (2000). Santiago: territorios, anhelos y temores. Efectos sociales y espaciales de la expansión urbana. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 26(79), 5–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S025071612000007900001. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Figueroa, O. (2005). Transporte urbano y globalización. Políticas y efectos en América Latina. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 31(94), 41–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0250-71612005009400003. Fuentes, L., & Sierralta, C. (2004). Santiago de Chile, ¿ejemplo de una reestructuración capitalista global? EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 30(91), 7–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S025071612004009100002. Garza, N. (2009). Dilema económico – ambiental del urbanismo en ciudades latinoamericanas. Investigación y Desarrollo, 17(2), 289–327.

236  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism: Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. New York: Routledge. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203452202. Heinrichs, D., Lukas, M., & Nuissl, H. (2011). Privatisation of the fringes – a Latin American version of post-suburbia? The case of Santiago de Chile. In N. Phelps & F.Wu (Eds), International perspectives on suburbanization: A post-suburban world? (101-21). Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmilan. Heinrichs, D., Nuissl, H., & Rodriguez Seeger, C. (2009). Dispersión urbana y nuevos desafíos para la gobernanza (Metropolitana) en América Latina: el caso de Santiago de Chile. Revista EURE, 35(104), 29–46. Hidalgo, R. (2005). Post-suburbia ou post-urbia? Les mégaprojets résidentiels dans la périphérie de Santiago du Chili. Revue Geographique de l'Est, 45(3–4), 209–17. Hidalgo, R., & Zunino, H.M. (2011). La urbanización de las áreas periféricas en Santiago y Valparaíso: el papel de las relaciones de poder en el dibujo de la geografía socioresidencial. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 37(111), 79–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/ S0250-71612011000200004. Jackson, K.T. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Janoschka, M. (2002). Die flucht vor gewalt? Stereotype und motivationen beim andrang auf barrios privados in Buenos Aires. Geographica Helvetica, 57(4), 290–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gh-57-290-2002. Libertun de Duren, N. (2006). Planning à la carte: The location patterns of gated communities around Buenos Aires in a decentralized planning context. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30(2), 308–27. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00667.x. Logan, J., & Molotch, H. (1987). Urban futures: The political economy of place. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McKenzie, E. (1994). Privatopia: Homeowner associations and the rise of residential private government. New Haven: Yale University Press. Paquette Vasalli, C., & Delaunay, D. (2009). Movilidad residencial y política de redensificación: el área central de la Ciudad de México. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 35(105), 95–112. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.4067/S0250-71612009000200005. Parnreiter, C. (2004). Entwicklungstendenzen lateinamerikanischer metro­ polen im zeitalter der globalisierung. Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 146, 1–28. Parnreiter, C. (2007). Historische geographien, verräumlichte geschichte. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Suburbanization in Latin America  237 Pirez, P. (2002). Buenos Aires: Fragmentation and the privatization of the metropolitan city. Environment and Urbanization, 14(1), 145–58. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1177/095624780201400112. Poduje, I. (2006). El globo y el acordeón: planificación urbana en Santiago, 1960–2004. In A. Galetovic (Ed.), Santiago: Dónde estamos y hacia dónde vamos (231–76). Santiago: Centro de Estudios Públicos. Prévôt-Schapira, M.-F., & Cattaneo Pineda, R. (2008). Buenos Aires: la fragmentación en los intersticios de una sociedad polarizada. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 34(103), 73–92. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.4067/S0250-71612008000300004. Roberts, B.R. (2005). Globalization and Latin American cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(1), 110–23. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00573.x. Rodríguez, A., & Sugranyes, A. (2004). El problema de vivienda de los “con techo.” EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 30(91), 53–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0250-71612004009100004. Rodriguez, J. (2008). Dinámica sociodemográfica metropolitana y segregación residencial: ¿qué aporta la CASEN 2006? Revista de Geografia Norte Grande, 41, 81–102. Roitman, S., & Phelps, N. (2011). From country club to edge city? Gated residential communities and the transformation of Pilar, Argentina. In N. Phelps & F. Wu (Eds), International perspectives on suburbanization: A post-suburban world? (122–39). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230308626.0015. Sabatini, F. (2000). Reforma de los mercados de suelo en Santiago, Chile: efectos sobre los precios de la tierra y la segregación residencial. EURE. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales, 26(77), 49–80. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.4067/S0250-71612000007700003. Sabatini, F., & Salcedo, R. (2007). Gated communities and the poor in Santiago, Chile: Functional and symbolic integration in a context of aggressive capitalist colonization of lower-class areas. Housing Policy Debate, 18(3), 577–606. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2007.9521612. Sabatini, F., & Salcedo, R. (2010). Understanding deep urban change: Patterns of residential segregation in Latin American cities. In D.R. Judd & D. Simpson (Eds), The city, revisited: Urban theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York (332–55). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stockins, P. (2004). Oferta y demanda de vivienda en la periferia santiaguina: los nuevos desarrollos inmobiliarios. In G. Cáceres & F. Sabatini (Eds), Barrios cerrados en Santiago de Chile: Entre la exclusión y la integración residencial (83–112). Santiago: Ed. Lincoln Institute, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

238  Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl United Nations Population Division (2008). World urbanization prospects. The 2007 Revision. New York: United Nations Population Division. Zunino, H.M. (2006). Power relations in urban decision-making: Neoliberalism, “techno-politicians” and authoritarian redevelopment in Santiago, Chile. Urban Studies, 43(10), 1825–46. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1080/00420980600838184.

11 On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia: How to Give Meaning to the Suburban Landscape? thomas sieverts

Introduction Large parts of suburbia – especially those parts of the urban region built in the last half century – are generally regarded as “unsightly”: neither ugly nor beautiful – simply boring and unworthy of being remembered. Very few spaces in these suburban landscapes are suffused with cultural meaning; those that are are mainly landscape features or sites of historic significance. There is no “resonance” between the perceiving inhabitant or visitor and his or her environment. There might be some individual, personal relation, but a collective cultural dimension is lacking. This is regrettable and can even be considered a cultural disaster. Unsightliness is an infectious disease that seems to be spreading all over the world. It is a disease leading to a lethargic lack of interest in our built environment, destroying the very foundation required for improvement. There are several rather obvious reasons for this. Modernity, with its wealth and mobility, has freed us from being existentially dependent on the turf we live upon. The realm of our daily activities now embraces areas far beyond the “home-city,” encompassing the urban region, which is difficult to materialize in vivid images. And “space-jumping” digital media lead to a virtual world seemingly without any materiality. To give an example, the electronic navigator in our cars or on our cell phones enables us to orient ourselves without requiring a structural map of the environment, once a prerequisite for orientation. No doubt our relation to space, especially of the suburban type, has changed deeply, and the emotional relationship with our extended urban realm is of a more subtle, though nonetheless vital, character.

240  Thomas Sieverts

A Matter of Suburban Governance? Governance relating to cultural aesthetic qualities in administrative praxis seems to be very difficult on the scale of suburbia and the urban region. Regional planning is generally more or less blind to aesthetic qualities. This blindness belongs to its history, as regional planning has developed as a scientific antipode to the art of architecture. There exist only a few theoretical studies on aesthetics in regional planning; examples include Kevin Lynch’s Managing the Sense of a Region (1976) or Susanne Hauser’s and Christa Kamleithner’s Ästhetik der Agglomera­ tion (2006). There are even fewer successful practical experiences and realized examples of large-scale suburban designs with aesthetic ambitions, although a small number of exceptions may be found. One such exception is the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscherpark, the result of an aesthetic-cultural policy on the regional suburban scale of the Ruhr-region (see figure 11.1). This was formerly Europe’s largest coal-mining and steel-producing region with about 5 million inhabitants. It saw a steep decline in the decades after the Second World War, followed by a slow recovery through the transition to a postindustrial region – a recovery supported by a strategy of building on the region’s ecological, cultural, and aesthetic qualities and carried out by a special-purpose organization, the “International Building Exhibition Emscherpark” (IBA Emscherpark) (1989–99) (Sieverts 1992; 1996; www​ .metropoleruhr.de). The IBA Emscherpark provided the effective tools of governance and implementation – via its large-scale international building and landscape exhibitions with an extended time-horizon of planning and realization, an institution with a long tradition in Germany. These large-scale development agencies serve for ten years as quality-control agents, paying particular attention to ecological, cultural, and aesthetic qualities. The agencies are paid by the state but mobilize a lot of private capital, far beyond their own costs. The crucial problem today is not to design appropriate large-scale plans for suburbia with cultural ambitions but to make such large-scale designs a powerful tool to improve the cultural quality of suburban living. Both the scale and the time dimensions of suburban planning and suburban design are too far removed from the day-to-day decisions controlling the building activities that are responsible for the suburban reality. To achieve better outcomes, it is necessary to combine large-scale design with the control of building applications, as this is where the negotiation of different interests shapes the suburban reality.

On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia  241

Figure 11.1 Ruhr Emscher, in-between city. Photo: R. Keil

In most cases, considerations of suburbia as a planned and designed unit do not have sufficient impact on such practical negotiations (Kurath, 2011). Addressing aesthetics and culture in suburbia must be recognized as an important task of suburban governance. This aim can be furthered by establishing regional quality agencies in the form of special-purpose organizations (like the above-mentioned IBA Emscherpark) with a term limit of about ten years. Other means available include the “Regionale,” an initiative developed in Germany to improve a special regional landscape through cooperation among participating mu­ nicipalities supported by contributions from the private sector. As with the above-mentioned building exhibitions, the term limit is crucial. Cultural and aesthetic values change regularly, and therefore adequately addressing current values requires a continual influx of fresh people and ideas. A common feature of these new strategies for addressing ecological, cultural, and aesthetic concerns is to regard quality as a matter requiring special continuous care and attention during the production and lifetime of a building or landscape. One type of

242  Thomas Sieverts

tool to achieve this is a “quality contract”: if the “contract” is not fulfilled, the firm or municipality loses the attractive advertising advantage of being seen as an important member of the “Grand Exhibition.” Another tool is the limitation to build, making the building licence dependent on the quality of the design, which must be approved and certified by a jury. Some Theoretical Considerations Before reflecting on possible ways to achieve improvements, it is worth taking stock of some theoretical considerations. What we have called “unsightliness” we might also call “anaesthetics” (Sieverts, 2003), which may be defined as a kind of perception, generally disconnected from emotions, that is only instrumental and is oriented exclusively towards practical goals. “Anaesthetics” could in its most extreme form also mean a nearly “anaesthetized” state of perception. “Aesthetics” in this context does not refer to the philosophy of beauty; nor is it connected to theories of art. Rather, it is used in its original meaning of “Aisthesis,” meaning a special modality of perception that is primarily (beyond instrumental comprehension) sensual-emotional in character and serves as a tool for the communication of sensual-­ emotional characteristics, including metaphors and images (Welsch, 1987; Böhme, 2001). Whether an environment is anaesthetic or aesthetic in its perception is important, as an aesthetic perception as a form of sensual awareness is a prerequisite for an attitude of care and responsibility. If an environment is only perceived as a functional device without emotional value, it remains remote and disconnected from the perceiver, evoking little interest, care, or feeling of responsibility. Paying attention to aesthetic considerations is, therefore, not simply a luxury to be relegated to an afterthought after technical and functional problems have been dealt with. Rather, it should be an integral part of efforts to improve an environment. Aesthetic qualities will determine whether an environment will be accepted and perhaps loved by its inhabitants, or simply used functionally without evoking any sensual-­ emotional response. In this context, aesthetics is not merely a characteristic of the physical environment but is inseparable from the perceiver; the perceiver is an integral part of an aesthetic relation. Only if a perceiver reads and understands his or her environment beyond its practical function through

On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia  243

a sensual-emotional attachment will the environment’s aesthetic qualities “come to life” and its aesthetic potential be realized. To improve the aesthetic potential of an environment, therefore, it is necessary to work both on the physical environment itself and on the capabilities of the perceiving inhabitants. These actors must be able to experience the aesthetic potential and qualities of their environment and in so doing enrich their lives and develop feelings of interest in – and care and responsibility for – their surroundings. It is of great importance to keep this in mind. The need for an aesthetic orientation is especially evident when we look at the urban agglomeration in the form of the suburban landscape. As this environment came into being without any integrating urban-­ design conception, it demonstrates a paradoxical character (Sieverts, 2003). Taken individually, the various elements – whether an office complex, a campus, a shopping mall, a logistics centre, a subdivision of single-­family houses, or a hospital complex – have a certain logic. Taken together, however, they present an anarchic image, lacking a comprehensible order overall. The result is that reading and interpreting the agglomeration with sensual-emotional attachment is difficult. The perceiver needs support. Tools to help us read and interpret the suburban landscape beyond its practical functions are plentiful, and may include exhibitions, simplified maps highlighting the principal characteristics, guided tours,1 ­festivals in unconventional locations, regional marathons, and orienteering games through which one experiences the urban landscape. Without considerable aesthetic improvement in the physical environment itself, however, enhancing people’s aesthetic literacy through information and education simply “glosses over” the unsightliness of the agglomeration. There is a need for simultaneous efforts to educate the perceiver through experiences that enhance appreciation and to improve the physical environment itself. The relation between perceiver and environment will be – if fully developed – of a complex cultural nature. With Henri Lefebvre we have learnt that meaningful space in the sense of place is not just “given,” but must be “produced” by an interdependent relation between space and people (Lefebvre, 1991; Schmid, 2005). Public place is “produced” by regular use of a space for communication, collective play, and common activities: You only see something if you are aware of its existence or – better yet – if you experience it. This interdependence could perhaps be called “an aesthetic-cultural system.”

244  Thomas Sieverts

The term “sensual-emotional” includes not just visual experience, which can be geometrically defined, but also auditory, olfactory, and tactile experience – experience using all the senses. Studies prove that a situation will be best and most deeply ingrained, and hence remembered, if all the senses are involved. In Switzerland, a new research project involves the systematic observation over several years of both the visual and the auditory aesthetic changes in a fast-developing community in the Zurich-agglomeration (Görlich & Artega, 2012) – with the observers regularly taking photographs and auditory samples at fixed geographic points. The results of this systematic observation will be used to construct specific “PerceptionDispositifs” that will consolidate and “condense” the aesthetic experiences of a specific situation. This research project – if successful – might lead to a deeper understanding of the aesthetics/anaesthetics of the agglomeration.2 Examples of Aesthetic Strategies History provides numerous examples of the creation of aesthetic qualities on a regional scale, with the tradition being especially strong in the Baroque era. That period saw the creation of castle estates with large hunting parks – innovations that had an impact on the whole region. Long treed alleys served – beyond aesthetic purposes – as baselines for the trigonometric survey. (Some of the parks created by the Olmsteds in the United States are regional in scale.) There is an equally long history of cultural practices connected to these physical spaces, including religious processions, festivals, ritual celebrations of court activities (not excluding burnings and hangings), and the driving of decorated cattle in the autumn from the Alpine mountains to the valleys. Today’s world also offers a variety of types of aesthetic-cultural practices on a regional scale involving the cultural appropriation and adaptation of larger parts of the urban landscape. Through such activities as cultural festivals, ethnic gardening, and sports, among many others, socially meaningful places emerge in formerly unsightly locations; they are actually produced by these activities. A good example of loading a formerly industrial region with new cultural meaning is the awarding in 2010 to the city of Essen and the Ruhr in Germany of the title “Cultural Capital of Europe” in recognition of its many cultural events on a regional scale.

On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia  245

I myself gained practical experience with these types of efforts during my time as a director of the IBA Emscherpark. This very large project – still in progress in its third decade – tried from the very beginning to integrate the arts in their manifold manifestations as a constituent element of new parks: sculpture, architecture, theatre, opera, and dance, as well as classical and modern music. The role of culture varies by location. In the case of the Westpark Bochum, on the site of a formerly walled-off steel mill of historical significance, art and music set in motion the site’s “colonization” by the public and its gradual cultural transformation. Art attracted people early on: music, dance, and paintings – besides being appreciated as art and entertainment in their own right – served as door-openers to the still industrial, and rather uninviting, site. The increase in activity alone changed the image of this industrial area (which for more than a hundred years was inaccessible and had a bad reputation), prior to any building activity. In another case – the “renaturalization” process converting the artificial Emscher open-sewage system to a system of clear-water streams – sculptural art and open-air theatre gave this previously dirty and inaccessible area a new, magical aura. It became an attractive destination for individuals from beyond the immediate neighbourhood (see figure 11.2). In the case of transforming the Ruhr’s erstwhile coal-mine slag-heaps into part of the park system, culture again played a variety of roles in altering the industrial landscape. New gardens for and by Turkish ­immigrant workers were beautiful examples of the productive appropriation of a former industrial desert. A new steel pyramid used as a lookout (http://www.mai-nrw.de/Tetraeder-Bottrop.50.0.html?&L=1) on top of one of these large mining mountains turned out to be a magnet for young and old alike, altering the meaning and use of this industrial remnant. It became a favourite place for private parties, a popular playground, and an attractive point on the so-called “Grand Tour through the Ruhr” (echoing the “Grand Tour” of the eighteenth and nineteenthth centuries, when it was a cultural “must” for the young aristocrat to make a long educative journey through Italy). Some of the “naturally” grown forests on former industrial brown fields that had been out of use for many years were declared natural parks. They are now administered by a new kind of forest ranger who works with children and youth to teach them about the natural environment.

246  Thomas Sieverts

Figure 11.2 Phoenix Development, Dortmund, Germany. Photo: R. Keil

In this case of naturally grown vegetation (known in urban ecology as “ruderal vegetation”), cultural practices had an impact in several ways: • Declaring these left-over spaces a natural park gave them a new dignity. • The “ranger,” as a combination of traditional forester, boy scout, and conservationist, filled the role of a teacher. • The younger site users developed a new attitude to nature and the human environment. In all the cases mentioned, culture was from the very beginning an integral part of the design and of the implementation process. It worked in different roles and functions, including the following: • making the location inviting and laying the groundwork for its transformation; • bestowing meaning on locations regarded as “unsightly”; • embedding a functional environment into a new cultural context; • initiating a culture of remembrance by regularly organizing cultural events of different scales; and • creating points of attraction along a regional bicycle route.

On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia  247

In all of these cases, the various manifestations of art and culture had inherent value. If respected in its autonomy, art can give meaning to space, transform it into place, and in so doing provide each location with meaning (Sieverts, 1994, 1999). In each of the cases mentioned, the character of the place was produced through a combination of physical design and cultural input, and then established by regular cultural use and activity. Culture and Space in the Suburban Region Theory and experience demonstrate that the production of meaningful and life-enhancing space, both in the city and in suburbia, always involves material, technical, and functional manipulations together with cultural practices. One can distinguish seven different kinds of spatial-cultural relation: 1) Creating meaningful space through the day-to day-activities of citizens themselves This is the typical, unplanned, naturally emerging and changing cultural meaning of space without wilful planning interventions: Children give a collective meaning to a hill they use for sliding; adults give collective meaning to a space where they meet to play cards; and so on. Planning may help to defend such a place, but it cannot produce it. 2) Creating meaningful space by applying existing spatial and cultural traditions to other cultures The production of space is part of a larger transformation of an existing spatial context that is being modernized, renewed, or adapted. Here the new space can rely partly on the pre-existing cultural tradition; but partly it must also be based on an analysis of sociocultural changes and current trends in the area. In this case, which is the norm in suburban regional development, the task should be to employ a few common spatial denominators for the different cultures that will use the public space for what may be quite different cultural practices. 3) Creating public space of both great capacity and character without fixing its function and meaning Ideally, the public space should be a kind of stage where, at certain times of the year, different cultures can express cultural elements and celebrate their festivals, inviting the other cultures to participate. This requires a place of both great character and capacity (Janson & Wolfrum, 2006).

248  Thomas Sieverts

4) Creating meaningful public space by introducing and enforcing a new spatial-cultural code through radical transformation Pre-existing space, perhaps originally built for a completely different purpose, receives a new meaning and a new context by radical physical transformation and by new cultural practices. In this case, cultural practices can turn a nondescript or even unappealing space into an inviting, attractive location. This could also be called a radical “reset” of an urban situation. 5) Creating meaningful public space by fostering intermediate cultural activities The production of new space is prepared by cultural practices acting as an intermediate phase for a limited time before the final structures are built (i.e., the use of an old industrial hall for a musical event before the construction of an office building), or by cultural events in parts of structures still under construction but not yet used. In this case, the cultural practices give the still nondescript space an attractive new symbolic meaning – even if only for a limited time – allowing a space to change its image prior to the realization of its final form. 6) Endowing processes of construction and implementation with cultural meaning The production of space is an inseparable cultural-technical process from the very beginning. The process of place production is itself a cultural practice (i.e., the building of a playground together with the children, or the preparation of a piece of land for public gardening by the people intending to use it). In these cases, the space and its cultural meaning are produced directly by both functional and cultural action. 7) Opening traffic elements for cultural or sporting activities Those urban spaces that are usually exclusively reserved for technical and commercial functions (e.g., streets, motorways, parking areas) are, on certain days of the year, closed for their original purpose and opened for cultural or sporting activities: marathons, flea-markets, cycling and walking, skate-board championships, artificial beaches, and the like. In these cases, the city and urban landscape receive a new cultural dimension for a specified time, during which certain functionally respected urban elements receive a new, friendly cultural connotation. Another form of distinction in the spectrum of spatial-cultural r­ elations can be drawn along the line from “unplanned/spontaneous” to “planned for a certain time” to planned as a “fixed installation.” A third distinction could perhaps be made between “emerging,” “self-­ organized,” and “publicly planned” spatial-cultural relations.

On the Relations of Culture and Suburbia  249

A culturally rich city and its suburban landscape will have all these different forms, which may change and develop quickly in different directions. In suburbia, sociocultural conditions are typically no longer rooted in long, historically stabilized traditions. Populations are increasingly heterogeneous, relocate frequently, and often have little time to establish roots. The practical and conceptual organization of spatial-cultural relations concerns the “res publica,” and therefore ought to become a matter of public responsibility and suburban governance. I am certain that the organization of manifold spatial-cultural relations will become a significant professional field. Already, an important branch of the city planning and design professions specializes in the organization of communication, including conceptualizing, organizing, and moderating festivals and developing intermediate uses and workshops for residents in order to engage them and help them relearn how to relate emotionally to their urban environment, as a prerequisite for active participation in their communities. We might even need a suburban art director, managing the stages of suburbia! The profound change in the character of planning work in suburbia opens new possibilities for combining urban design in its physical dimension with cultural strategies. As the main task of our work has shifted – at least in Europe – from greenfield urban extension to a continuous transformation of the existing urban fabric, including public and private open space, we are working more and more with the living suburban tissue. To succeed, we need people to participate, to understand the reasons for change, and to support renewal and development. Working with the living urban tissue takes time, which could be better used to develop and activate cultural action, enhancing the public debate. This chapter envisions the development of a new and fascinating field of urban design involving sociocultural strategies that could lead to a meaningful suburban landscape. I am convinced that this creative and strategic work ought to become a critical part of suburban governance. NOTES 1 Such as Boris Sieverts’s Büro für Städtereisen: Expeditionen in Terra Incognita. Information available at http://www.neueraeume.de/; last accessed 31 August 2012. 2 For further information, please see www.beobachtung-schlieren.ch.

250  Thomas Sieverts REFERENCES Böhme, G. (2001). Aisthesis: Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Görlich, U., & Artega, A. (2012). Visuelle und auditive Wahrnehmungsdispositive: Zur Erweiterung der Evaluationsmethodik von Stadtentwicklung in der Agglomeration am Beispiel von Schlieren. Zürich/Berlin. (Title in English: Visual and auditory devices of perception: Extending urban-planning methods of evaluation in suburban areas based on the case study of Schlieren): (Available at: www.beobachtung-schlieren.ch). Hauser, S., & Kamleithner, C. (2006). Ästhetik der Agglomerationen. Wuppertal: Verlag Müller & Busmann. Janson, A., & Wolfrum, S. (2006). Kapazität und Prägnanz. Der Architekt, 5–6, 50–4. Kurath, S. (2011). Stadtlandschaften entwerfen? Grenzen und Chancen der Planung im Spiegel städtebaulicher Praxis. Bielefeld:. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Lynch, K. (1976). Managing the sense of a region. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schmid, C. (2005). Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft. Henry Lefebvre und die Theorie der Produktion des Raumes. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Sieverts, T. (1992). Städtebau und Architektur in der Emscher Park Bauausstellung in: Emscher Park Informationen, Heft 24/92 – Dokumentation. Sieverts, T. (1994). Kunst und Architektur: Schöne Zutat, Gesamtkunstwerk oder etwas Drittes? In R. Kreibich, A.S. Schmid, W. Siebel, T. Sieverts, & P. Zlonicky (Eds), Bauplatz Zukunft – Dispute über die Entwicklung von Industrieregion (232–42). Essen: Klartext Verlag. Sieverts, T. (1996). From the Task Force of Albert Speer for the Reconstruction of the Destroyed Cities to the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park: Cultures of planning in Germany 1943–1994. In R. Pommerin (Ed.), Culture in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1995 (93–108). Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg. Sieverts, T. (1999). Denkmal und künstlerische Verfremdung. In A. Höber & K. Ganser (Eds), IndustrieKultur: Mythos und Moderne im Ruhrgebiet (26–8). Essen: Klartext Verlag. Sieverts, T. (2003). Cities without cities. London: Routledge. Welsch, W. (1987). Aisthesis, Grundzüge und Perspektiven der aristotelischen Sinnlehre. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

SECTION 4 The Emerging Models

This page intentionally left blank

12  Africa’s New Suburbs robin bloch

Introduction1 Rapid physical and population change is occurring in contemporary Africa as the urbanizing frontier shifts outwards on metropolitan, city, and town peripheries – and as older urban areas or neighbourhoods simultaneously absorb new residents and new economic activities. A recently published comprehensive literature review on African suburbanization by Mabin, Butcher, and Bloch (2013) deployed the Global Suburbanisms Program’s (GSP) broad definition – “the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion” – as well as Richard Harris’s (2010) three defining suburban qualities: peripheral location, lower density, and physical and social newness – to define African suburbanization and its associated suburbanisms as a new research object, and to identify the various forms suburban settlements have been and are now taking. A number of provisional categories were discussed in the review: the moving (peri)-urban frontier; spaces that concentrate new economic activities; public housing estates; zones of middle- and upper-income residence; as well as changing older suburbs. In covering an entire peripheral universe, these categories encompassed the terms “peri-urban,” “periphery,” “urban fringe,” and “suburb.” The review, in common with many recent accounts of urban Africa (e.g., Myers, 2011), also emphasized the heterogeneity and diversity that characterize current African cities. Harris has noted that a key responsibility for researchers is to identify “the element of unity within the obvious and growing (suburban) diversity” (2010: 27). This paper builds on the work of Mabin, Butcher, and Bloch to begin to determine such a commonality, specifically for the African situation. It is argued that a new and recognizable form of

254  Robin Bloch

development on the expanding urban periphery or urban fringe area is now apparent.2 This form can be termed “Africa’s new suburbs”: a new, lower-density (as compared to central cities), peripheral suburban landscape that, depending on the regional, national, or individual city context, can fall within either or both the peri-urban (and move out further to take possession of what was once rural) and the urban (“central”), as these terms are usually defined. Urban researchers and actors in Africa now need to understand the causes, structure, workings, and governance and management of this new zone – and also how and where it now fits within wider city or regional structures, as what was once regarded as periphery is becoming more central for its residents. This new built ensemble, in other words, is being added to or fitted to the existing urban terrain/landscape, which it then extends, expands, and augments – and even supersedes in certain functionalities. The implications for the politics and governance of African cities, first in broad terms, and then more specifically for this new suburban zone itself, is a particularly vital but also under-explored research issue. Within the perspective of the GSP, governance is defined as a process that involves state, market, and civil society in social, spatial, and political relationships along a continuum from participatory to conflictive. Suburban governance, specifically, “is about accounting for both the converging and diverging patterns of peripheral development … paying attention to the varied agents, methods, relations and institutions through which development is managed” (Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012: 405) The present paper accordingly approaches suburban governance in the following fashion. First, the key economic, social, and urban dynamics that currently support urban peripheral expansion in Africa are identified and discussed. Then, the new African suburb is characterized and categorized, through a case study of Ghana and by reporting on new suburban development elsewhere in sub-Saharan African. Some initial propositions on the governance of this new terrain are developed, and an agenda for research into political and governance issues is put forward. Economic Growth, the Middle Class, Urbanization, and Urban Expansion The emergence of new suburbs is integral to current trends in economic growth, class emergence and differentiation, urbanization, and urban expansion in Africa. The essence is as follows.

Africa’s New Suburbs  255

In the past decade, significant economic growth has occurred in many of Africa’s fifty-four countries – and, within them, increasingly in the continent’s cities in which economic activities are concentrated and in which some 80 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is generated. In 2008, Africa’s collective GDP output accounted for $1.6 trillion, and combined consumer spending for $860 billion. By 2020, these are estimated to increase to $2.6 trillion and $1.4 trillion respectively. African economic growth rates averaged 4.9 per cent between 2000 and 2008, which was double the pace of the preceding two decades. Some twenty-­ seven out of the thirty largest African economies witnessed accelerated growth in the period. This economic growth withstood the effects of the  global contraction of the post-2008 period (continent-wide GDP dropped to 2.9 per cent at the time). Africa’s growth rate then recovered and was close to 6 per cent in 2011. A rate of the same order has been projected for the next five years. Growth has been catalysed and underpinned by the rapid integration of African economies into the global economy through hard and soft commodity value chains. This integration, in turn, has been driven by demand for these commodities, notably from China – oil, gas, and mineral exporters have been principal beneficiaries – and by growth in overall consumer demand. Overall (and to generalize), larger, coastal, exporting economies have tended to do better, while smaller, land-locked countries have seen lower growth. Wholesale and retail trade, transportation, telecommunications, and manufacturing have also played a significant role (McKinsey Global Institute, 2010), as have the revenue streams channelled via the remittance economies of the diaspora (AfDB, 2011). Foreign direct investment rose from $9 billion in 2000 to $62 billion in 2008. Labour productivity has also risen at an annual rate of 2.7 per cent this past decade. Put broadly, the growth trend has culminated in reduced poverty overall and real increases in income and consumption expenditure for many African households, although this has varied across regions and countries over time (AfDB, 2011; UN-Habitat, 2010). The domestic component of growth, signified by consumer spending, reflects current and future population increase in the continent, as the population stands to double over the next forty years to 2 billion, at which point one in five of the world’s inhabitants will be African. Much of this increase will thus be made up of younger people: by 2050, 1.2 billion Africans will be of working age, an amazing one in four of the world’s working population.

256  Robin Bloch

Growth and investment have also prompted the growth of a varied but highly visible – and largely urban – middle class across Africa, which coexists with some of the most striking income inequalities in the world. In 2008, some 85 million African households earned $5,000 per annum or more, the point at which food accounts for only half of spending, with the rest discretionary income. This number is expected to rise to 128 million by 2018 (McKinsey Global Institute, 2010). According to the African Development Bank (AfDB) in a recent and well-reported analysis, a middle class is emerging in Africa with a size of between 300 to 500 million, roughly as large as that of China or India. In absolute terms within this middle class, three categories can be defined: • Floating class: per capita consumption levels of between $2 and $4 per day and are vulnerable to exogenous shocks • Lower middle class: per capita consumption levels of $4 to $10 per day, living above the subsistence level, and are able to save and consume non-essential goods • Upper middle class: per capita consumption levels of $10 to $20 per day. The second and third combined are seen as a “true” middle class, given the vulnerability of the first, floating class, the income of which is only slightly above poverty level lines. It is estimated that around 150 million Africans have entered the middle class since 1990 and that a further 40 million households will become middle class by 2015. This growth is expected to continue, and by 2060 it is expected that 42 per cent (or 1.1 billion) of Africa’s population will be characterized as middle class. In the view of the AfDB, this middle class “may hold the key to a rebalancing of African economies towards more dependency on domestic demand, and away from reliance on exports, as well as to greater and more efficient poverty reduction and inclusive growth.” The emergence of an African middle class has, in fact, coincided with increased domestic consumption in many countries, signalling a more secure domestic demand for housing, goods, and services, particularly those provided by the private sector, such as household appliances, electronics, automobiles, and motorcycles (AfDB 2011: 15). Accompanying and amplifying economic growth and the rise of a middle class, the majority of African societies are also undergoing rapid and epochal urbanization. In 1980, roughly 28 per cent of Africans were

Africa’s New Suburbs  257

city and town residents; today the proportion is 40 per cent. At the current urban growth rate of 3.4 per cent, half of Africans will be urbanized by 2030, and some 60 per cent (1.23 billion people) twenty years later, by 2050. By then, it is estimated that today’s urban population, to double by 2025, will have tripled. The urban population is increasing in megacities (10 million plus) and large cities/metropolitan areas (1 million to 10 million), as well as in smaller intermediate and secondary cities of less than a million people, which will house roughly three-quarters of urban demographic growth in the next decade. Nonetheless, large cities – there are approximately fifty cities in Africa today with populations of more than 1 million – had a combined population of 126 million in 2010, or about 32 per cent of the total urban population. According to UN-Habitat, between 2010 and 2020 a further 40 million people will be added to these large cities: with the major exception of South Africa’s cities and Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, all million-plus African cities will thus increase their populations by approximately a third. Urban population growth in Africa is mainly the result of natural population increase, combined with the redrawing of municipal boundaries whereby small and medium-sized towns and villages become incorporated as expanding urban areas push outward into the peri-urban and rural periphery. In many countries, rural-to-urban migration appears to have declined in relative importance as compared to these factors. Urban population increase on the scale seen above, however, whatever its causes in particular circumstances, is of necessity being accompanied by large-scale urban spatial expansion as cities and towns extend and grow outwards to accommodate it – particularly (but not exclusively) in and around Africa’s larger cities. Much of this expansion is in the form of informal settlements. But as previous municipal boundaries are surpassed, and the distinction between “urban” and “rural” becomes blurred, new spatial forms are emerging: the new suburbs anatomized here, as well as wider urban (i.e., city) regions or megacity regions, which are increasingly connected to the global economy, and even wider and larger city corridors or city clusters. Of all world regions, sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to experience the most rapid change in urban land cover, with urban land cover possibly increasing no less than twelve-fold between 2000 and 2050, casting into serious doubt the viability of urban planning and governance approaches premised principally on constraint, containment, and compaction (Angel, Parent, Civco, & Blei, 2011).

258  Robin Bloch

The typically two-way, mutually beneficial and reinforcing interrelationships between economic growth and urbanization – underwritten by the rise of a consuming urban middle class and an increasing youth cohort – are not assured, particularly in the face of the prevalence of informal economic activity (some 70 per cent by some measures), and with over 60 per cent of African urban residents living in informal conditions. The inequality and urban poverty this informality is associated with is further compounded by limitations on urban governance: a lack of planning; large deficits in urban infrastructure, services, and finances; congestion; poor environmental conditions; and vulnerability to the impacts of a changing climate. African municipal governments, moreover, are marked by institutional weaknesses and a lack of resources and capacity. Far better urban governance, planning, and management will be required if Africa’s metropolitan areas, cities, and towns are to reap the potential gains from economic growth and urbanization. Growth, Urbanization, and Urban Expansion in Ghana, and the Emergence of New Suburbs3 Ghana, with a population of 24.7 million in 2010, provides a good illustration of the dynamics depicted above. After the economic difficulties of the 1970s and 1980s, the 1990s saw growth average 4.7 per cent, rising to between 5 and 6 per cent in the past decade (AfDB, 2010). As with the wider African trend, Ghana’s economy has been assisted by the worldwide commodities boom of the post-2001 period, pushed by demand for so-called “hard” mining and energy commodities (notably gold) and for “soft” agricultural commodities (cocoa). In addition, reflecting a greater level of global flows and transactions of goods and funds, transportation and business services showed extremely positive growth. The discovery and subsequent production of oil off the coast of the country’s Western Region has stimulated greater growth and promoted further optimism about the economic prospects of the country. The large population of Ghanaians living and working abroad, particularly professionals, has compensated for a relatively poor foreign direct investment (FDI) performance. One of the world’s highest levels of remittances from this diaspora is estimated to have reached over $500 million in 2003 and, on another account, up to $1.3 billion two years later, close to 12 per cent of GDP (AfDB, 2010; Buckley & Mathema, 2007). Much of the remittance flow is believed to go into real estate

Africa’s New Suburbs  259

Figure 12.1 New suburban residences on Regent Road, Greater Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2013. Photo: Robin Bloch

investment in Ghana, particularly into the development of housing in the Greater Accra Region (Grant, 2009). Economic growth after 2000 had a spatial expression, with the emergence of new areas in Greater Accra to service the inflow of new operations, most of them foreign (Grant, 2009). Three Central Business Districts (CBDs) were identifiable: the traditional, national CBD in Ussher Town; a local CBD in Central Accra; and a new, global CBD in the Osu/Cantonments and Airport area centred on the development of a headquarters-linked mining services and supplier cluster in the area, as Ghana’s gold mining industry expanded (Grant, 2009; Bloch & Owusu, 2012). The global CBD, which, crucially, is located in close proximity to Kotoka International Airport, has served to anchor and impel further new suburban development. According to successive population censuses, the proportion of the urbanized population has risen steadily, from 23 per cent in 1960, to 29 per cent in 1970, to 32 per cent in 1984, and to 44 per cent in 2000

260  Robin Bloch

(GSS, 2005a). Recently released results from the 2010 Population and Housing Census saw a national urbanization rate of 51 per cent – with Greater Accra at 91 per cent, followed by the Ashanti Region at 61 per cent (GSS, 2002). Urban population is growing faster than population as a whole, and faster than rural population. The number of urban localities has also grown, from 98 in 1960, to 135 in 1970, to 188 in 1984, and then roughly doubling to 364 in 2000 (Owusu, 2005: 2–4). By now, the number will have risen to well over 400. The rural population resides in a very large number of settlements of less than 5,000 people – over 88,000 in 2000 (GSS, 2005a). In Ghana’s case, natural population growth and reclassification are the dominant factors in urbanization: as was argued in a GSS report, “urbanization has continued to be rapid in Ghana, resulting from the upgrading of former rural localities into urban status and the growth in most of the existing urban localities through natural increase” (Owusu, 2005: 388). And while Ghana is becoming an increasingly metropolitan-­ focused urban society, rapid urban growth has also been seen in many smaller urban settlements (Owusu, 2005). Countrywide urbanization has been accompanied by large-scale spatial expansion. In line with the dynamics of urban expansion discussed above, the built-up area of urban settlements is spreading rapidly – and extending outwards into areas that were once unbuilt and have, until now, been considered either peri-urban or rural. This tendency is seen most clearly in metropolitan areas but is also visible in medium-sized and smaller settlements, which appear to mimic the spatial patterning and urban form seen at the upper level. According to Angel, Sheppard, and Civco (2005), the Accra Metropolitan Area’s built-up area increased from 133 square kilometres in 1985 to 344 square kilometres in 2000. The built-up area per person increased by 3.8 per cent a year, from 71 to 123 square metres, and density decreased by 3.7 per cent a year, from 14,120 to 8,103 persons per square kilometre. Accra is now much bigger in extent, but not as dense. The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area – and the Greater Accra Region as a whole – continues to expand outwards from its original centres, Accra and Tema, and is also rapidly dispersing away from the central areas or business districts within these centres. Areas that were formerly unpopulated were, by 2000, substantial small towns. Settlements that were already small towns in the 1980s – Madina in Ga District, Adenta East and Tema Newtown in Tema – grew to become sizeable medium-­ sized towns.

Africa’s New Suburbs  261

A similar pattern is emerging in Kumasi, with areas moving from rural to small-sized urban status in the last fifteen years. On a smaller scale, this is also occurring in the metropolitan areas of Tamale and Sekondi-Takoradi, where a wider-spread urban structure has developed in the original municipal or metropolitan districts, and is now also expanding fast into adjoining districts. In Tamale, for example, development is spreading northwards on the corridor leading to the airport, and in doing so is engulfing settlements in adjacent districts. Urban expansion is also occurring at the level of medium-sized and smaller settlements, a process that mimics the spatial patterning and urban form seen at the upper level. These spreading urbanizing settlements in Ghana, as elsewhere in Africa, are the overall terrain on which new suburbs are developing. Within the picture of overall spatial expansion, new suburban development appears in a fashion akin to that of a colour spreading through water, diffusing from and through the existing urban fabric into peri-­ urban and rural areas. The process, which can appear random, combines and arranges together areas of intensive development and increased density with areas of lower density. The densifying areas include newly built retail, commercial, and industrial space, sometimes mixed use; the replacement of earlier residential uses with commercial uses in older suburban areas; and the rampant building of high-end infill residential space. Simulta­ neously, residential development at lower densities – estates (some but by no means all gated) and owner-built individual houses – catering broadly for a segmented middle-class, as described above, rolls out horizontally into the far distance, colonizing urban fringe areas and/or previously agricultural land on the peri-urban frontier. Urban infrastructures, notably arterial roads as transportation corridors, serve as key structuring elements, fixing together particles (or, better, globules) of built development. These infrastructures – including those for telecommunications, water, sanitation, and electricity – create a network (or grid) of connections across suburbanizing space. At points of denser intersection, nodes (literally, knots) of more intensive and sometimes congested and often specialized land development arise (these can be formal and informal markets, shopping mall/office complexes, educational and other government facilities, and formal and informal industrial production zones). These nodes act as “anchors,” which can further thicken and develop into new centres of activity that create new central functions to serve the immediate vicinity,

262  Robin Bloch

wider areas of the new suburbs, and indeed the city as a whole. This process has started, again in the last decade or so, to create a truly polycentric urban form with multiple functional cores. Africa’s New Suburbs: Cases and Categories Africa’s new suburbs are constituted, then, of residential housing estates – self-built as well as those designed, constructed, and sold by property developers; retail facilities, both formal (larger malls and mini- or strip-malls) and informal (traders, vendors, markets); and lowand high-rise commercial and industrial space, again formal and informal, and both new and converted. This is a landscape of production, consumption, and reproduction that is interpenetrated by open spaces of various kinds (unused land, natural features, formal recreational areas) and often lies in close proximity to other, poorer, informal or slum residential areas, which are still preponderant and spatially concentrate the urban poverty that, as seen above, is still the principal social and economic attribute of African cities and towns. Such suburban forms have existed in South Africa for some time, but have now spread to other African countries – including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Malawi, among others – on an unprecedented scale. The common characteristics of peripheral location, lower densities, and physical and social newness are clearly manifested. These features define Africa’s new suburbs as a socio-economically distinctive form of peripheral development and living – a new African suburbanism. The cases presented below demonstrate the need to better understand the dynamics of these new suburbs. Three categories can be distinguished: new towns; large-scale developer-built estates; and small-scale, owner-­ financed, and owner-built housing and associated facilities. New Cities The new generation of African new towns emerging across the continent are commonly referred to as “new cities.” Like traditional new towns, these new cities are aimed at alleviating and providing an alternative to the epic congestion, infrastructure and services deficits, and poor environmental health conditions in capital/primary cities, while capitalizing on increased growth and FDI flows and a growing demand for middle- and upper-income housing and business facilities. As African cities continue to tap into the global economy, substantial

Africa’s New Suburbs  263

Figure 12.2 New suburban mixed-use developments, Jabi, Abuja, Nigeria, 2014. Photo: Nikolaos Papachristodoulou

investment in large-scale infrastructure projects aimed at enabling private sector investment in suburban land markets is occurring, and is attracting increasing international media coverage. For example, a recent article in the London Times (Fletcher, 2012) details the efforts of politicians and private developers to secure the future of Lagos, Nigeria, by harnessing the benefits of rapid economic growth. Against the backdrop of widespread poverty, slums, and corruption, the article paints a picture of a “New Lagos” on the cusp of becoming “Africa’s model megacity.” Leading the way forward is Lagos state governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, who was elected in 2007 and again in 2011. Governor Fashola’s vision is to turn Lagos – a city of about 18 to 20 million people – into a city of 40 million people through the development of a series of self-sufficient modern cities, or “new towns.” These projects will require an estimated $50 billion in infrastructure over the next decade.

264  Robin Bloch

The vision includes Eko Atlantic, a thousand-hectare land reclamation project under construction along the coastline of Bar Beach, Victoria Island (Lagos’s commercial centre). Eko Atlantic is equivalent in size to Manhattan; it aims to accommodate 250,000 residents and become the financial centre of Nigeria as well as West Africa. Eko Atlantic is being made possible by the development of a seven-metre seawall called the Great Wall of Lagos, which was begun in 2008. The seawall will protect Victoria Island and the Eko Atlantic project from coastal erosion caused by the encroaching Atlantic Ocean, and will guard against the worst storm surges. A second project is the development of more than 16,500 hectares of undeveloped land on the Lekki Peninsula, which is located on the eastern periphery of Lagos. This represents an extension to existing suburban development on Lekki. The development is financed by Chinese partners, and the developers expect Lekki to be covered with factories, housing, shopping malls, and leisure facilities within the next ten to twenty years. A state construction company is in the process of constructing a ten-lane highway through the city’s western suburbs to connect Lekki with the CBD. The government has also introduced the Lekki Free Trade Zone (LFTZ) in an effort to attract private development through a range of incentives, including land contributions by the Lagos State Government. As of August 2012, the LFTZ had attracted U.S. $1.1 billion in capital investment from forty-eight investors. Similar new town projects are emerging across the continent. Kenya Vision 2030 – the country’s long-range economic development plan – aims to transform Kenya into an industrializing, middle-income country by 2030 (Kenya Information Communication Technology Board, 2011). One of the plan’s “flagship” projects is Konza Technology City, which intends to become a new information technology and finan­cial services hub for Nairobi. The city is expected to accommodate 200,000  new jobs and 35,000 new residences on a 2,000-hectare greenfield site located approximately thirty-seven miles from Nairobi (Kenya Information Communication Technology Board, 2011). In Sudan, the Almogran new town is planned for development at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile Rivers in Khartoum. Phase one of the project, which began in 2004, involved the development of a 160-­ hectare CBD, which aims to become the hub for East Africa’s modern business markets. Phase two involves the development of a 1,500hectare residential district that includes an eighteen-hole golf course. When completed in 2014, Almogran will provide housing for 61,000 residents and provide 50,000 jobs (Winter, 2007).

Africa’s New Suburbs  265

Large-Scale Developer-Built Estates Many large-scale developer-built estates have already been completed or are in the development pipeline in African cities. Kampala’s suburbs, such as Ntinda, Naala, and Kabalagala, are attracting a growing number of middle-income households, prompting the development of a variety of new, privately owned, residential projects (Knight Frank, 2011). These include Springhill’s Apartments in Lubowa, Royal Palms in Butabika, Palm Villas, Castle Apartments, Kensington in Kyanja, Top Villas, Chartsworth, and various National Housing and Construction Company (NHCC) estates. For example, the Royal Palms Estate in Butabika is situated approximately nine kilometres from the CBD on 150 acres of former agricultural land. The development is planned to accommodate approximately 1,300 three- to five-bedroom detached and semi-detached homes ranging in price from U.S. $80,000 to U.S. $225,000 (Olanyo, 2011). In Zambia, the subdividing of large tracts of peripheral land is becoming the norm for new developments (Knight Frank, 2011). While sales of high-end single family homes remain slow, demand for housing in newer up-market areas on the periphery has increased, particularly in Lusaka (Knight Frank, 2011). Much of this demand is being driven by a growing middle-class populace who are attracted to areas such as Leopards Hill Road, which stretches into an emerging suburban landscape (Smith, 2011). The development of serviced estates south of Kafue Road is also expanding rapidly into former agricultural land (Citi Private Bank & Knight Frank, 2011). Roma Park in Lusaka, another example of a comprehensively planned large-scale estate, is being developed on a 118-hectare greenfield site located six kilometres from the CBD (Roma Park, 2009). The estate is among the largest mixed-use developments (residential, warehouse, industrial, retail office, educational, etc.) in the Southern Africa region and is planned to accommodate upwards of 1,000 residents. The project is backed by the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA), which is seeking to attract local and foreign investors. The development is the first property to be zoned as an Industrial Park under the 2006 ZDA Act, which is aimed at catalysing the manufacturing sector in an effort to diversify the country’s economy. The development provides standardized “modern” and “trendy” housing ranging in size from 1,000 to 4,000 square metres on serviced plots at “competitive prices.” The community will feature a CBD and a range of amenities, including a shopping centre and a big-box retail space.

266  Robin Bloch

Similarly, the Lilayi Housing Estate in Lusaka, a 250-hectare greenfield site located approximately ten kilometres south of Lusaka, offers 3,700 fully serviced plots with house prices ranging from U.S. $40,000 to $70,000 (Kelly, 2008). In addition, the Three Hills Eco-City, a 6,250unit eco-development, is being built in Mombasa, Kenya, with homes priced at between U.S. $45,000 and $60,000 (Kelly, 2008). Suburban development has been accompanied by speculative investment in large-scale suburban retail projects. In Kampala, new malls include Capital Shoppers (12,000m2), Naalya Shopping Mall (10,800m2), Kabalagala Mall (10,000–15,000m2), Forest Mall (25,000m2), and Hotel Equatorial Shopping Mall (15,000m2), among others (Knight Frank, 2011). These projects are a manifestation of a perceived consumer demand among the growing number of middle-income earners moving to Kampala’s suburbs. It is expected that increasing rents within the CBD will lead to a downward market adjustment as more modern malls develop closer to suburban markets (Knight Frank, 2011). Small-Scale Owner-Financed and Owner-Built Housing Globalization and economic growth across Africa have opened up land and housing markets to two main kinds of capital investment: FDI and international remittances from the diaspora (Grant, 2009). While FDI has targeted larger-scale real estate developments (as described above), international remittances have become a principal driver of housing growth in Africa. The best researched case is Ghana (see Grant, 2005). This form of investment is becoming increasingly popular as a growing number of African expatriates, particularly professionals, aspire to their own housing back home. These professionals are increasingly motivated by reasons of economic benefit, social status, familial recognition, and self-fulfilment (Grant, 2009). Investments in housing are typically incremental in order to avoid inflation, which has led to a qualitatively distinct form of development characterized by the slow growth of housing estates on the periphery, which take upwards of between six to fifteen years to complete (Obeng-Odoom, 2010). Many of these new estates are constructed without formal planning approval or proper building permits (Grant, 2009). Grant uses the term “transnational housing” to differentiate these new structures from traditional homes constructed using familial savings. “Transnational housing” construction is increasingly supported by the emergence of online marketing, including brochures and websites

Africa’s New Suburbs  267

that have increased the accessibility of African real estate markets to the diaspora. Notable websites include Knight Frank as one of the leading real estate investors in Africa (http://www.knightfrank.com/africa/). The website lists houses for sale across nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa under the heading “Internationally Known, Locally Loved.” The Knight Frank listings in Kenya feature homes ranging in price from U,S. $200,000 to above U.S. $5 million. Other examples include the newly created property.com (http://www.privateproperty.com.ng/), which lists homes for sale in thirty-seven Nigerian states. It is expected that international remittances from the diaspora will continue to be a significant factor fuelling the development of suburban real estate markets, as aspirations for suburban lifestyles among the African upper-middle classes continue to grow both at home and abroad. Governance in Africa’s New Suburbs The discussion above has preliminarily defined the new African suburb as an economic, social, and spatial/land-use entity and way of life that is amenable to investigation and research. This recent suburban form, an outcome of the last ten to fifteen years of sustained economic growth, middle-class emergence, urbanization, and urban spatial expansion, comprises a specific component of wider and ever-spreading metropolitan areas, cities, and even towns, and is now commonplace in many African countries. It is analytically distinguishable from its broader urban context and certainly a subject for further research. This distinctiveness is important, as the whole process of urban expansion in Africa is often simply described – and, equally simply, criticized or dismissed – as “urban sprawl.” This obscures the crucial and new phenomenon of the new suburb as identified here. Given the pace, range, and variability of urban spatial expansion, it is surely necessary for such definition and differentiation. The new suburb in Africa is also often analytically annexed to the category of the peri-urban. In much of the continent, the peri-urban is a space characterized primarily by the connective linkages between urban and rural networks and land-use planning and administration (Mabin et al., 2013). Traditional chiefs and leaders play a role in land management alongside municipal authorities, thus providing low-­ income households with at least a measure of inclusion, albeit mostly informally, in urban land markets. In Ghana for example, excellent academic research has been conducted on those processes of peri-urban

268  Robin Bloch

Figure 12.3 New suburban residences on Regent Road, Greater Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2013. Photo: Robin Bloch

development occurring in areas where customary land ownership and tenure practices coexist, sometimes uneasily, with government involvement in regulating the land market (Gough & Yankson, 2000). Custom­ ary land can be family-owned or take the form of stool land that belongs to (or, more accurately, is in the care or custodianship of) chiefs. As urbanization has accelerated, the demand for land has also grown, mainly for the purposes of residential development. In the face of an inelastic supply of land as manifested by shortages and high prices within builtup areas, this demand has grown most markedly on the periphery where land is cheaper and in greater supply. The result has been the rapid conversion of agricultural land to residential uses (Gough & Yankson, 2000). Such peri-urban research covers a vitally important part of the terrain that comprises spatially expanding metropolitan areas, cities, and towns. However, while it often includes, fittingly, aspects of the evolution of

Africa’s New Suburbs  269

the new suburbs, this process should not necessarily always be subsumed under it. This is not least because peri-urban analysis emphasizes only a particular set of “the varied agents, methods, relations and institutions through which development is managed,” to cite Ekers and colleagues’ (2012) words again. Understanding governance in Africa’s new suburbs will require attention to be paid to other or additional actors, agencies, and relationships as this new zone is constructed and managed. Ekers and colleagues further argue for the necessity of viewing the agents and institutions involved through the prism of the political and economic interests that cohere around the state (at its various levels), the private sector (capital) and its various branches (fractions), and civil society (in its multifarious forms). (Of course, these interests are not always mutually exclusive.) This politicized definition of (suburban) governance is broader than that usually used in Africa for urban governance by national governments and multilateral and bilateral donors (known together as the development partners). The AfDB, for example, in its Urban Development Strategy sees urban governance quite specifically and technically as: Support to municipal and local authorities in their efforts to build and strengthen good governance systems and practices … by strengthening fiduciary controls, enhancing financial transparency and accountability, and increasing fiscal self-sufficiency and sustainability of public investment in urban development. (2010: 13)

A broader definition of governance that also encompasses the contemporary politics of suburban development will permit a richer series of research questions. Indeed, the development and management of Africa’s new suburbs exhibits unique governance dynamics that involve new actors and institutions in new social, spatial, and political relationships. The political-economic context in which these actors and institutions are operating is also changing as Africa’s rapidly urbanizing settlements are integrated into the global economy. These transformations will have significant implications for urban politics, policy, and planning, particularly regarding the management of urban growth and expansion, and the provision of infrastructure and services. In conducting research into the governance of Africa’s new suburbs, investigation should be guided by a number of key themes that are of potential interest to the other emerging models in South Asia and East Asia discussed in this section.

270  Robin Bloch

Investment and Finance Included here is research into the sources and modes of private investment literally poured in concrete and steel, by real estate developers in particular, into the construction of the new suburban built environment, as well of the public finance used, notably, for the infrastructure (transportation, water, power, telecommunications, etc.) that, as seen above, is facilitating the rolling out of a variety of often interconnected – and profitable – suburban land uses. In addition, a better understanding of the condition and trajectory of economic actors and activities that are contained within new developments – formal and informal, commercial, retail, and industrial – is required, as well as consideration of the ways in which residents and speculative investors participate in burgeoning suburban housing markets. The synchronization of private financial and public political (and also, for that matter, financial) interests and imperatives is resulting in the emergence of interesting African variants on the suburban growth coalition, and/or on suburban regimes amalgamating government and business interests. As domestic demand for suburban real estate continues to mount, capital investment is increasingly international (notably Chinese and Russian), as the risk-reward scale continues to tip in favour of the latter. Growing investor confidence reflects the changing attitudes about investing in Africa, attitudes that are also shared by large-scale real estate developers. For example, the Renaissance Group – a Russian-based investment bank targeting emerging markets – is actively pursuing largescale new city real estate projects on greenfield sites in African cities in order to capitalize on economies of scale (Cocks, 2012). Rendeavour Ltd, the development arm of Renaissance Group, is involved in the development of more than 10,000 hectares of new residential and commercial satellite cities in Africa. Rendeavour’s development portfolio includes Tatu City in Nairobi, Kenya; King City and Appolonia, in Ghana; Kiswishi, in Lubumbashi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Roma Park, in Lusaka. The development of Africa’s new suburbs is actively supported by financial institutions on an international and national scale. The Inter­ national Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private investment arm, is playing a significant role in mobilizing sources of finance for development in real estate in sub-Saharan Africa in order to foster an investor-friendly environment. For example, the IFC Actis Africa Real Estate Fund 2 (AARE 2) was launched in 2010 as a $250 million,

Africa’s New Suburbs  271

ten-year, closed-end private equity fund dedicated to investments in real estate companies and projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The commoditization of land, the greater participation of the private sector in land markets, and the partial withdrawal of the state from housing provision signals a paradigmatic shift towards market-based solutions to shelter, infrastructure, and service deficits. The growing demand for middle-income housing has also triggered the development of mortgage markets, creating new business opportunities for financial institutions. In particular, Standard Bank Group, a South African bank in which the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has a 20 per cent stake, has been aggressively expanding its financial services, including mortgage lending, across the continent, with branches in eighteen countries outside South Africa (Kelly, 2008). In 2010, the number of mortgage applications received by Standard Bank South Africa increased by 71 per cent (Standard Bank Group, 2011). Democratization, Representation, and Decentralization We can expect local or municipal politics in the new African suburbs to be characterized by vigorous participation and contestation as older and more newly constructed political interests, in which class, gender, and ethnicity are fully implicated, meet or even collide with one another. Research is required into the representation of political interests through formal, and at least putatively democratic, party political electoral systems – and through more informal processes and mechanisms that lie outside, which can involve a set of civil society or community associations and institutions, as well as social movements. Such research will necessitate taking the formal political process seriously, in particular the mutual relationships between residents as constituents, their political representatives (e.g., councillors), and the typically severely resource-constrained and under-capacitated municipal administrations and civil servants tasked with planning and managing the new and often raw suburban environment. To address such resource and capacity constraints, decentralization usually aims at a restructuring and gradual devolution of public administration to achieve development, decision making, and participation at regional and local levels. There is, typically, an attempted shift, albeit gradual, of functions, powers, responsibilities, and resources from central government to municipal and local governments. Decentralization

272  Robin Bloch

Figure 12.4 New suburban mixed-use developments, Jabi, Abuja, Nigeria, 2014. Photo: Nikolaos Papachristodoulou

programs cannot simply be dismissed as, say, donor-driven (a term which is at best naive, and often simply patronizing if not insulting to the African politicians and civil servants involved, who are hardly supine in the face of “the donors”), as they can represent a considerable initiative towards local or regional-level financial strengthening and human resource development. The ways in which and the degree to which decentralization programs impact the creation and management of new suburban areas require assessment. Democratization and decentralization have also opened up new opportunities for citizen participation in decision-making processes and planning procedures at the local level (Matovu, 2006, cited in Mapuva, 2011). However, the representative structures that characterize liberal democratic societies are still relatively weak in many African cities (UN-Habitat, 2010). Decentralization has been slow where central authorities have maintained control, despite growing support for good

Africa’s New Suburbs  273

urban governance. As a result, civil society has provided a key platform for citizens to participate and exert their influence within resource-­ constrained environments. In recent times, residents’ associations have become increasingly popular institutions for demanding accountability and participatory spaces, as demonstrated in Zimbabwe (Mapuva, 2011). As such residents’ associations become stronger, middle-income groups are likely to become more influential in urban politics. Urban Planning and Management This very broad theme is perhaps best focused on the allocation and use of land. It ranges from the content and effect of national-level urbanization and/or urban policy (see Parnell & Simon, 2010, for a useful overview); to citywide strategic development plans; to strategic, higher-level spatial guidance in the form of development frameworks; and right through to lower-level, detailed, regulatory land-use plans at local area (neighbourhood) and site levels, and the operations of development control systems, notably building permits. Influencing these instruments is a variety of land administration, tenure, and management systems, as well as related plans and management procedures – for the urban environment or disaster risk reduction, for example. The unfolding of the new suburban settlements can be under-planned or under-­ regulated, but it is seldom wholly unplanned, as is often the caricature: detailed case-by-case investigation on various spatial scales is again indicated. That said, most land development in African cities is currently piecemeal, with limited guidance provided by urban/land-use plans, at either strategic or detailed levels, and with development controls functioning patchily. This situation has been exacerbated by the limited institutional capacity of municipal authorities, which have been largely unable to develop and maintain effective land-use planning and administration systems (UN-Habitat, 2010). What is distinctive about Africa’s new suburbs is that the role of improved planning is recognized, and, as in the case of Roma Park, that they have been promoted through specific strategies that are closely aligned with national economic development strategies (e.g., the Nairobi Metro 2030 Strategy). Africa’s new cities are based heavily on market enablement strategies, including public-private partnerships. This attribute has generally been associated with European and American cities, but is now beginning to arise in Africa, where competitive city strategies are beginning to take hold. The presence of

274  Robin Bloch

state-led planning is important, since much of the literature on middleand upper-income enclaves, notably gated communities, emphasizes that much of this development has happened unofficially rather than as a consequence of strategy. Infrastructure, Services, and Municipal Finance The planning, financing, delivery, and ongoing management of infrastructure services (water, sanitation, drainage, solid waste, power, etc.), community services (health, education, recreation), and transportation for the new suburbs are enterprises that consume significant resources. The provision of infrastructure services typically involves, depending on the national context, the development partners as defined above in an under-studied series of plan-making and investment activities. These activities and their outcomes – and the wealth of technical material that is produced to guide and justify the need for provision and financing – need to be considered and researched if a real understanding of the construction and management of Africa’s new suburbs is to emerge. Conclusion Economic growth, urbanization, and a burgeoning middle class, particularly in large African cities, are having a profound influence on the development of suburban land markets. These factors have contributed to a new form of peripheral development, identified here as Africa’s new suburbs. This paper has attempted preliminarily to identify and categorize Africa’s new suburbs, and their governance mechanisms, hitherto almost totally undocumented, as a new and separable research object within (sub)urban studies, and has proposed an initial research agenda designed to help us better understand how the new actors, institutions, and relationships involved in their development are (re) shaping suburban governance. Africa’s new suburbs tell a new story about African cities as places of growth and development, a story different from traditional developmentalist literature that commonly portrays African cities in a state of constant, ongoing, ineradicable urban crisis. As this new zone of development continues to expand outwards, it is of vital importance for researchers and policy makers to understand its growth dynamics and politics so that the potential to support progressive urban development and policy objectives can be harnessed.

Africa’s New Suburbs  275 NOTES 1 Nanette van Gend, at the time a Master’s student at Kings College London, provided helpful research assistance for a draft in 2011. Donald Brown, a Master’s student at the Development Planning Unit, University College London, contributed significantly to the structure and content of the final version. 2 The latter is the term Harris (2010) favours: as he puts it, the term suburb “is still routinely used by those who live at or near the urban fringe.” 3 This section draws on research conducted by the author under the auspices of the Land Use Planning and Management component of the Land Administration Project in Ghana between 2007 and 2009.

REFERENCES AfDB (African Development Bank). (2010). The bank group’s urban development strategy: Transforming Africa’s cities and towns into engines of economic growth and social development. Tunis: Operational Resources and Policy Department. AfDB (African Development Bank). (2011). The middle of the pyramid: Dynamics of the middle class in Africa. Retrieved from: http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/​ uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20 Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf. Angel, S., Parent, J., Civco, D.L., & Blei, A.M. (2011). Making room for a planet of cities. Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Angel, S., Sheppard, S., & Civco, D. (2005). The dynamics of global urban expansion. Washington, DC: Transport and Urban Development Department, The World Bank. Bloch, R., & Owusu, G. (2012). Linkages in Ghana’s gold mining industry: Challenging the enclave thesis. Resources Policy, 37(4), 434–42. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2012.06.004. Buckley, R.M., & Mathema, A.S. (2007). Is Accra a superstar city? Washington, DC.: World Bank. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/ handle/10986/7521 License: CC BY 3.0 Unported Citi Private Bank & Knight Frank. (2011). The wealth report: A global perspective on prime property and wealth. Cocks, T. (2012). Renaissance focuses on big African real estate. 1 June. http:// www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/ozabs-renaissance-africaidAFJOE85003K20120601.

276  Robin Bloch Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Fletcher, M. (2012). On the make. The Times, 2 May. Retrieved from: http:// www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/eureka/article3397591.ece. Gough, K.V., & Yankson, P.W.K. (2000). Land markets in African cities: The case of peri-urban Accra, Ghana. Urban Studies, 37(13), 2485-500. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980020080651. Grant, R. (2005). The emergence of gated communities in a West African context: Evidence from greater Accra, Ghana. Urban Geography, 26(8), 661–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.26.8.661. Grant, R. (2009). Globalizing city: The urban and economic transformation of Accra, Ghana. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. GSS (Ghana Statistical Service). (2002). 2000 population & housing census: Special report on 20 largest localities. Accra: Ghana Statistical Service. GSS (Ghana Statistical Service). (2005a). Ghana: Population data analysis report. Volume 1: Socio-economic and demographic trends. Accra: Ghana Statistical Service. GSS (Ghana Statistical Service). (2005b). Ghana: Population data analysis report. Volume 2: Policy implications of population trends. Accra: Ghana Statistical Service. Harris, R. (2010). Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. Hamilton: School of Geography and Earth Sciences. Kelly, V. (2008). Unlocking Africa’s housing market. Retrieved from: http://www​ .africainvestor.com/article.asp?id=4180. Kenya Information Communication Technology Board (Konza). (2011). Technology city Kenya. Retrieved from: http://www.konzacity.go.ke/. Knight Frank. (2011). Market research: Kampala. Retrieved from: http://www​ .afresnet.net/market/knight%20frank%20report%20-%20%20kampala.pdf. Mabin, A., Butcher, S., & Bloch, R. (2013). Peripheries, suburbanisms and change in sub-Saharan African cities. Social Dynamics, 39(2), 167–90. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2013.796124. Mapuva, J. (2011). Enhancing local governance through local initiatives: Residents’ associations in Zimbabwe. African Journal of History and Culture, 3(1), 1–12. Matovu, G. (Ed.). (2006). The design and management of poverty reduction programs and projects in anglophone Africa. Washington, DC: International Bank of Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. McKinsey Global Institute. (2010). Lions on the move: The progress and potential of African economies. New York: McKinsey and Company.

Africa’s New Suburbs  277 Myers, G. (2011). African cities: Alternative visions of urban theory and practice. London: Zed Books. Obeng-Odoom, F. (2010). Urban real estate in Ghana: A study of housingrelated remittances from Australia. Housing Studies, 25(3), 357–73. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673031003711568. Olanyo, J. (2011). Royal Palms estate sets high standards. East African Business Week. Retrieved from: http://www.busiweek.com/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=1080:royal-palms-estate-sets-high-standards&​ catid=104:uganda&Itemid=1364. Owusu, G. (2005). Small Towns in Ghana: Justifications for their promotion under Ghana’s decentralization programme. African Studies Quarterly, 8, 2. Parnell, S., & Simon, D. (2010). National urbanization and urban policies: Necessary but absent policy instruments in Africa. In E. Pieterse, S. Parnell, D. Simon, & A. Simone (Eds), Urbanization imperatives for Africa: Transcending policy inertia (n.p.). Cape Town: African Centre for Cities. Roma Park. (2009). Roma Park overview. Retrieved from: http://romapark​ .co.zm/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=​ blog&id=6&Itemid=86.> Smith, G. (2011). Zambia’s new middle-class – a Volvo, a BMW and a maid. The Guardian, 25 December. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/dec/25/zambias-middle-class-volvo-bmw . Standard Bank Group. (2011). Standard Bank Group helps sustain South Africa’s homeowners market. Media Release, 27 October. Retrieved from: http://www​ .standardbank.com/Article.aspx?id=-124&src=m2011_34385466/. UN-Habitat. (2010). The state of African cities. Nairobi: UN-Habitat. Winter, J. (2007). Khartoum booms as Darfur burns. BBC News, 24 April. Retrieved from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6573527.stm.

13 Shifting Terrain: Questions of Governance in India’s Cities and Their Peripheries shubhra gururani and burak kose

Introduction It is now commonplace to say that there are more people living in cities than ever before and that the urban population in India and China far exceeds that of Europe and North America combined. India alone will have an urban population of 800 million in 2045, and five of twenty-one megacities in the world are at present in South Asia. It is indeed true that the last fifty years have witnessed an “urban revolution” in which urban and urbanizing forms have come to mark the trajectory of our times and that there is a sizeable increase in the number of cities and city-dwellers. Not surprisingly, the rapidly changing urban landscape has posed a series of challenges. The challenges, however, are not only of numbers, but more importantly of how cities and the urban population will be governed: who will determine the terms of decision making, control, and authority; and what will be the role of new and old actors in shaping the material and symbolic contours of an emerging urban frontier. In essence, what will be the politics of governance and of the governed emergent urban spaces, especially in the Global South? In the last two decades in India, like everywhere else, the question of urban governance – governance of spaces, lands, infrastructure, resources, and populations – has gained critical centrality. Since economic liberalization, as cities of India have become desired destinations for the global finance, capital, and labour needs of multinational corporations, a wide range of actors have come to play a critical role in urban settings, giving rise to questions that can be accommodated under the broad rubric of “governance.” “Governance,” however, as Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012) rightly point out, is not only a slippery and a difficult term to

Governance in India’s Cities  279

define, it is also highly contested, having, over the years, acquired a range of meanings for policy advocates, community based organizations, politicians, and other stakeholders (see also Pieterse, 2008; Ekers et al., 2012). Lama-Rewal calls governance a “fuzzy concept” that is characterized by its ubiquity and intrinsic ambiguity (2009: 5). According to her, it is simultaneously prescriptive and descriptive and refers both to “a political project and to an empirical reality” (2009: 6). Despite its fuzziness, we would argue that recent shifts in governance have produced noteworthy outcomes and reconfigurations in relations of power, and that they demand critical attention. For instance, over the last two decades there have been several initiatives, including legislation, to decentralize governance and empower local governments in urban areas, while multinational corporations, private developers, international banks, and development agencies have also come to play a decisive role in decision making. As new sets of actors come to govern and “reform” urban and urbanizing spaces, we move beyond the normative definitions of governance associated with “good governance” and view governance as an overarching practice that involves state, market, and civil society in ways that are simultaneously social, spatial, and political (Ekers et al., 2012). In recognizing governance as a multi-scalar process engaged in the regulation of social life, as well as a project that is often entangled with “government” proper, we hope to draw attention to a blended dynamics of governance and government that is currently reshaping the dynamics of urban politics in India. To grasp these changes and to highlight the complex mechanisms through which urban spaces are governed, especially in the Global South, we ask the following: What are the macro and micropolitics of exclusion and inclusion? Who are the key actors, new and old, steering these changes? In what ways is the middle class increasingly playing a critical role in the urban context? And, above all, to what extent is governance a relevant concept for understanding urban dynamics in the Global South? Since urban peripheries are deeply intertwined with the political economy and governance of metropolises, we find it productive to focus on recent policy interventions in larger cities and their peripheries. Rather than offering a comprehensive map of the debates and issues of urban and peri-urban governance, we critically discuss some of the key policy interventions, such as the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA), that have been central to the reconfiguration of urban governance in India, and lay out the institutional terrain in which ideas of decentralization and participation are invoked. The 74th CAA reveals

280  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

the regional and political diversity of the urban landscape in India, yet its full implications for the governance of cities and peri-urban areas are still unfolding. We, however, do not limit ourselves to the sphere of policy but also attend to the contested politics of governance as it is played out at this conjuncture in India. To explore the ramifications of these policy shifts and how they are transforming the everyday practices of work, livelihood, and shelter, we focus first on national and state-level urban policy initiatives and then, in the second half of the chapter, turn our attention to the everyday practices of participation, access, and contestation that are central to redefining the contours of governance in urban and peri-urban spaces. To that effect, we examine: (i) the national urban renewal mission – JNNURM; (ii) Delhi’s participatory governance project – Bhagidari; and (iii) some other small-scale public service governance programs. We demonstrate how efforts to instil participatory governance through neighbourhood associations have in fact consolidated the position of the middle classes and exacerbated political inequalities. We argue that even though governance has gained significant ground in policy circles, in everyday practice it has only limited relevance for an understanding of how the politics of land, shelter, and access to basic services like water, electricity, and sewerage are actually played out on the ground. We find that urban dwellers, rich and poor alike, rely on a range of mechanisms and a wide network of informal alliances and collaborations to secure access to scarce resources and services such as land and infrastructure, thereby troubling the formal categories of governance. The situation is even more complicated in the urban peripheries, we argue. As vast tracts of agricultural land are rapidly incorporated into urban and urbanizing areas, a great deal of confusion prevails over administrative and municipal limits, so that residents – elite residents as well as large numbers of labour migrants residing in so called “illegal” settlements with little or no provision for basic infrastructure like road, water, and sewerage – are forced to devise strategies for accessing services that often exceed the domain of formal governance or infrastructure. Here, the practices of distinction and informality as identified by Ananya Roy (in chapter 16 in this volume) play a crucial role and draw our attention to the messy realities of class, caste, ethnicity, place, and gender as they inform the cultural politics of everyday life in urbanizing frontiers. Before we proceed, we would like to note that in the Indian context, the term and imagery of “suburb” are usually associated with North

Governance in India’s Cities  281

American forms and processes that are typically characterized by low-­ density sprawl, and are not commonly used to designate the peripheries of cities. In India, as Dupont has pointed out, peripheries are “complex structures resulting from a mix of planned operations and unplanned, uncontrolled processes and the flouting of regulations” (Dupont, 2007: 12). Located on the fringes of metropolitan cities, straddling the rural-urban interface, the emerging urban spaces are largely left unnamed or undefined, although the term “peri-urban” is gaining purchase in scholarly and journalistic debates. Characterized mostly by mixed land use, urban peripheries today are typically marked by high-density growth and often include “urban villages” comprising high-rise housing enclaves, shopping malls, golf clubs, biodiversity parks, IT and biotechnology sites, and factories. Given that India is largely rural and that more than half of its population is active in agriculture, peri-urbanization is as much a process of agrarian trans­ formation as it is of urbanization. It entails a highly volatile, even violent, process of land acquisition, displacement, and development and demonstrates “how varying agrarian structures can create drastically different trajectories of non-agricultural diversification” (A. Roy, 2003: 15). Following Dupont, we use the term “peri-urban” to capture the multiple, diverse, and complex processes that are shaping sub-­ urbanization in India. It is important to note here that while there has been a fair bit of discussion of urban or metropolitan governance in recent years in India,1 with a few exceptions (Denis, Mukhopadhyay, & Zérah, 2012; Kundu, 2006; I. Roy, 2006; Shaw, 2005) there has been very little that addresses the question of governance per se in India’s urban peripheries. Given that urban peripheries are ambiguously located between the rural and the urban, peri-urban areas in India are rich sites to explore the politics of governance. They are not only the crucial frontiers of urbanization but also important sites where the elite politics of exclusion, environmentalism, and citizenship are valiantly played out. In order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the unfolding politics of the urban revolution in India, it is important to move beyond its metropolitan fixation to map the complexity and heterogeneity of the processes of land acquisition, flows of capital, patterns of civic mobilization, and privatization of infrastructure services that are configuring the social, political, and economic dynamics in the urban peripheries of the Global South.

282  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

Figure 13.1 From rural to urban: villages in New Delhi’s periphery undergoing significant changes. Photo: S. Gururani

Critical Moment – The Constitutional Reform The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) of 1992 (Government of India, 1992) was aimed at decentralization through the devolution of powers and the downloading of responsibilities to urban local bodies (ULBs) and at enhancing citizenship representation in local decision-­ making processes. It was a landmark reform that has since shaped the debate on urban governance in India.2 The act legislated the formation of three types of municipalities: town councils (Nagar Panchayats) for “transitional areas”; “municipal councils for urban areas with a population of less than one million; and municipal corporations for urban areas with a population of over one million” (I. Roy, 2006: 4364). ULBs were made responsible for urban development and assigned the

Governance in India’s Cities  283

tasks of planning, improving infrastructure, providing urban services and public amenities, upgrading slums and alleviating poverty, and, importantly, “mobilizing the required financial resources through taxes, user levies, and by attracting private investment, both domestic and foreign” (Dupont, 2011: 536–7). In addition, ward committees were to be established to include civil society in decision-making processes to make them more participatory and democratic. As ULBs are subject to state legislatures under the Indian federal system, the implementation of the constitutional amendment required states to make legal changes in order to realize the goal of administrative and political decentralization. While the process of decentralization was initiated in several states, it has remained uneven at best across the country, with varying levels of decentralization achieved, different institutional architectures formed, and diverse programs implemented in the process. As the study sponsored by the United Nations Inter Agency Working Group on Decentralization3 notes, “the effort to move towards decentralized urban governance has been at best fragmented and uncoordinated, largely due to absence of a broad framework. Despite most of the states passing the laws … the process of empowering local bodies has been extremely uneven across states and cities” (National Institute of Urban Affairs, 2004: ix; see also Ghosh, Kennedy, Ruet, Tama LamaRewal, & Zérah, 2009). This process has also produced diverse outcomes for different social groups, classes, and castes. In Delhi, for instance, where governance reforms were politically motivated, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit played a major role in initiating and shaping those reforms. Endorsing the notion of “good governance,” she initiated the Bhagidari program in 1998 that has since restructured the city’s governance, resulting in shifts in power balances and giving rise to new urban actors. In Kolkata, the reforms initiated by the West Bengal government were mainly built on the policy of public-private partnerships (PPPs). The government also established a number of institutions “for the specific purpose of financing and building urban infrastructure and supporting industrial growth,” a step that marked a shift away from the previous agriculture-oriented development policy in Kolkata (Ghosh et al., 2009: 45). In Mumbai, the private sector was the initiator of ­major reforms through the highly criticized Vision Mumbai report that was prepared by McKinsey in 2003. The report envisaged a “world-class city” status for Mumbai that was to be achieved through citywide improvements, inclusive of safety, health care, education, and so on. It also identified six core areas for Mumbai to focus on: economic growth,

284  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

transportation, housing, infrastructure, financing, and governance (Bombay First-McKinsey, 2003: 6). Endorsing the report, the Maharashtra government planned to establish the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit to realize this vision (Ghosh et al., 2009: 44). Ward Committees were largely neglected across the country, with the notable exception of West Bengal, but even when they were formed, they were given only “limited powers” by state governments and have not produced the desired outcomes such as “autonomy and participatory democracy at the neighborhood level” (Kennedy, 2008; Baud & de Wit, 2008: 22). In general, despite the constitutional amendment, the reforms in urban governance are largely linked to economic liberalization rather than being aimed at administrative or political decentralization, suggesting that the implementation of the amendment has in many instances further entrenched political inequalities along class and regional lines (see also Batra, 2008; Ghosh et al., 2009; Dupont, 2011). The reform process also shows an uneven implementation of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act in peri-urban and rural areas and cities. Since there persists a city-centredness in both urban policy and planning, decentralization efforts have been complicated and highly contested in peri-urban areas. Indrajit Roy, taking the case of Ahmedabad, notes that most Indian states have not yet constituted the town councils that were foreseen for the transitional areas.4 As a result, some of these areas are still governed by village councils called Gram Panchayats (2006: 4363–4). Gram Panchayats are typically smaller bodies that are elected by villagers, and their authority is limited to village boundaries. These village-based bodies have only limited access to resources and do not have jurisdiction over newly urbanized areas that lie outside of villages. Subsequently, the virtual absence of any functional local bodies in transitional areas has created a great deal of confusion for allocating state grants, infrastructure provision, and in day-to-day affairs. As a result, urban infrastructure and basic services, which are beyond the jurisdiction of Gram Panchayats, are largely left unmanaged. The lack of necessary institutional arrangements is in fact one of the many reasons why peri-urban areas are lacking basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity, solid waste management, and so on (Shaw, 2005: 130). While the peri-urban middle classes are capable of formulating “exit strategies” for themselves through combinations of local initiatives and market solutions, the poor bear the burden of the administrative void and the resulting lack of infrastructural services. There are, however, good reasons why such transitional areas are left under village councils and not brought under locally elected municipal

Governance in India’s Cities  285

corporations. Even though these transitional areas have predominantly non-agricultural bases, because they are under the jurisdiction of Gram Panchayats they continue to “qualify for rural development funds from the Central Government” (Bhagat, 2005: 65). Unlike municipal towns, they do not need to generate their own financial resources, and the “electricity charges and tariffs are significantly lower in rural areas, while water supply, primary education and healthcare are invariably free” (Bhagat, 2005: 65). Equally importantly, land taxes are significantly lower than in urban areas, making it very lucrative for private developers and state governments to keep these dense peri-urban belts under Gram Panchayats instead of municipal corporations. The ambiguity in local governance structure does indeed create tensions among urban villagers and new residents, but it is precisely this ambiguity that makes the urban peripheries more desirable for commercial and industrial land acquisition and development. In such a scenario, powerful construction lobbies play a significant role and favour retaining village status over the formation of a municipal corporation that would necessarily entail stronger building regulations in addition to higher taxes and development costs. Given these gaps, it is uncertain how decentralization will unfold in urban India and shape peri-urban areas, and there is a growing acknowledgment that the 74th CAA has indeed failed to capture the complexity that constitutes urban agglomerations (Sivaramakrishnan, 2013). Moreover, there are significant differences in terms of economic, socio-demographic, and political structures across different cities, making it critical to carefully account for the shifts underway and map the changing role of different institutional and non-institutional actors and their resistance to such changes. However, it is equally important, if not more so, to pay close attention to peri-urban areas where local politicians and private developers have established a very strong nexus and where the forces of decentralization and liberalization are not only reproducing the existing class structure but have further concentrated power in elite pockets. The Politics of Participation, Empowerment, and Accountability In this section, we turn to national-, state-, and local-level initiatives that are seemingly aimed at ensuring participation, empowerment, and accountability amidst economic liberalization, and examine their underpinning rationalities and effects. We present three such measures: the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM);

286  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

the Delhi-based Bhagidari program; and the Resident Welfare Associa­ tions (RWAs). They are active at national, city, and neighbourhood levels, respectively. In these efforts, we demonstrate that in the context of an uneven and highly unequal dynamic of urban governance, the middle classes have emerged as prominent actors who, through political and judicial mechanisms, actively secure access to land, housing, and basic services. a. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) Covering the period from 2005 to 2012 and with a budget of $20 billion, the JNNURM is the largest of the national-level measures, designed to improve urban infrastructure and basic services in sixty-three cities. In its mission statement, JNNURM defines its aim as “to encourage reforms and fast track planned development of identified cities. Focus is to be on efficiency in urban infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms, community participation, and accountability of ULBs/Parastatal agencies towards citizens” (JNNURM Mission Statement, Government of India, n.d.: 5). Its mission consists of two subsidiaries: the first focuses on “infrastructure projects relating to water supply and sanitation, sewerage, solid waste management, road network, urban transport and redevelopment of old city areas”; and the second one on slum development “through projects for providing shelter, basic services and other related civic amenities with a view to providing utilities to the urban poor” (JNNURM Mission Statement, Government of India, n.d.: 5–6, 382). Among the many reforms, most of which are aimed at increasing efficiency in urban governance, infrastructure, and services, the repeal of the Urban Land Ceiling Act and Regulation (ULCRA) stands out. The ULCRA was crafted in 1976, in the heyday of socialist urban planning, with the aim of “preventing concentration of urban land in the hands of a few thereby checking speculation in and profiteering from land” (Batra, 2007). JNNURM actively pushed for the abolition of the ULCRA by requiring cities to repeal it in order to be eligible for financial assistance. Repealing the act basically allows private developers and construction companies to acquire urban land without being subjected to any imposed ceiling. Likewise, the reduction in stamp duty is apparently intended to create a working urban land market, making it cheaper for land speculators and large developers to acquire urban land.5 Indeed, as Batra, commenting on JNNURM, has rightly predicted, together with the promotion of foreign direct investment in the real estate

Governance in India’s Cities  287

sector, “it becomes clear that [through JNNURM] … we are going to see massive concentration of urban land in the hands of domestic and foreign real estate firms” (2007). Other land-related optional reforms include “introduction of computerized process of registration of land and property” (JNNURM Mission Statement, Government of India, n.d.: 13). This allows JNNURM implementing agencies to access information about urban land and facilitates less costly transactions, while making it even harder for the urban poor to hold onto their shelters (see Benjamin, Bhuvaneshwari, Rajan, & Manjunatha, 2007). The shifts in land acquisition policy not only explain how extensive swathes of land came to be acquired, especially in peri-urban areas, but also how such changes created room for creative interpretation and distortion of the legal machinery.6 Importantly, even though the mission envisages planned development of peri-urban areas, there is not a single mandatory or optional reform specifically pertaining to the governance of such areas. The emphasis remains on shifting industrial and commercial establishments from old city areas to conforming areas, facilitating the acquisition of agricultural lands for other purposes, and allocating economic sectors between central and peripheral areas in order to transform cities into world-class cities. Despite the articles on the provision of land tenure at affordable prices and improved housing to the urban poor, the JNNURM remains focused on attracting private investment and forming PPPs to support the emergence of large construction companies and real estate agencies in peri-urban areas rather than on providing affordable housing for the poor. b. Bhagidari and RWAs Bhagidari, which means “partnership” in Hindi, is a Delhi-based citizen-government partnership program that was initiated in 1998. It was designed to institutionalize the collaboration of the municipal corporations and parastatal agencies with citizens for the better provision of urban services and the implementation of various citywide projects. Its main objective is to encourage citizenship participation in urban governance in order to make it more responsive and participatory. It seeks to do so by establishing a governance model in which the stakeholders share the roles and responsibilities and work together to reach consensus on identified issues. Its main goals are to provide improved service delivery; to create a clean, green, and “hassle-free” Delhi; and to make Delhi a world-class city.

288  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

Within Bhagidari, workshops are designed to bring together the representatives of all stakeholders: citizen groups – namely Market Traders Associations (MTAs) and Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs); NGOs; the government; parastatal agencies such as Delhi Develop­ment Authority, Delhi Vidyut Board, Delhi Jal Board, and so on; and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (Bhagidari of Delhi Gov­ ernment). Despite its seemingly laudable aims and goals, since property ownership in planned parts of the city forms the basis of participation in Bhagidari, slum dwellers and the urban poor who are not property owners are inevitably excluded. As a result of this highly politically charged governance program, RWAs that are mainly, though not exclusively, middle-class bodies have emerged as critical actors in the contemporary landscape, making demands on urban space and resources. This, according to Chakrabarti’s study, has resulted in increased public spending in middle-class neighbourhoods; increased involvement of the middle class in municipal elections; increased mobilization of the middle class against the use of public spaces by the urban poor; and the removal of slum clusters in some neighbourhoods by means of public-­ interest litigations (2007: 100–1; see also Kundu, 2006; Dupont, 2007; Ghertner, 2008). Participatory governance programs in other metropolises, though not as comprehensive as Bhagidari, are in place to provide for urban services such as garbage collection, sanitation, and slum improvement. In Mumbai, the Advanced Locality Management (ALM) program, for instance, demonstrates similarities with the Bhagidari program, particularly in terms of its focus on middle-class neighbourhoods and the privileging of middle-class politics (Zérah, 2009). In Kolkata, Ghosh (2009) examines the participatory slum development program, namely the Community Development Society (CDS), and focuses on the municipal corporation and community-based organizations (CBOs) as two important actors in the scheme. She demonstrates that the CDS “doesn’t ensure participation in local matters as that of the grassroots-level political party units,” since they are “not voluntary and prescribed from above” and their efficiency is doubtful at best (Ghosh, 2009: 231). Harriss (2007), in his analysis of participatory governance in Chennai, also arrives at an equally dismal conclusion. In short, the discourses and practices of decentralization and participation remain discordant and operate through selective geographies of class, caste, patronage, and gender.

Governance in India’s Cities  289

c. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) While, on the one hand, schemes and projects aimed at decentralization are launched to empower citizens and local governing bodies, on the other, the setting of PPPs signals a contradictory impulse to consolidate power in the hands of corporations and state-level actors. Fostered by the rhetoric of participation, PPPs are increasingly promoted as an essential component of “good governance” and have come to be considered by many as a panacea for the enduring problems of efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of urban services, infrastructure, and housing. Given that PPPs are implemented by states in the context of economic liberalization, they should be studied in relation to the political goals and ambitions of states as well as the complex power relations and contestations in which they are embedded. According to Ghosh and colleagues, in Delhi “the privatization of electricity distribution” was presented as a proof of the government’s commitment to the economic dimension of the “good governance agenda,” but it was largely perceived as instrumental and was “strongly opposed by a coalition of NGOs and residents” (2009: 48). Likewise, in Mumbai the BMC’s effort to privatize “surplus land in hospital complexes” to be allocated largely to “commercial activities … has not received much political backing from the city’s corporators and has also faced opposition from several NGOs” (Ghosh et al., 2009: 48–9). In “the Slum and Sanitation Programme,” on the other hand, the CBOs and NGOs “have clearly defined tasks and financial responsibilities” (Ghosh et al., 2009: 48–9). In Kolkata, through its New Economic Policy, the Left Front Government sought to promote PPPs in the housing and infrastructure sectors, “thus marking a shift from prior policies of slum improvement to investments in the upper end of the housing market” (A. Roy, 2004: 152). It is important to note that it is the peri-urban areas rather than the city centre that have become the target of the Left Front, and it is mainly in these zones that slum dwellers have been evicted and new middle-class residential areas have been built through PPPs (A. Roy, 2004). Importantly, in the context of service provision, PPPs have further deepened the existing inequalities in access to urban infrastructure and basic services. The cases of water and sanitation, in major metropolises particularly, show that access to these services is becoming even more difficult for the urban poor. Once again, in the absence of clearly defined

290  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

roles for different administrative bodies and the prominent presence of foreign capital and private developers, in the transitional areas and urban peripheries PPPs have virtually come to dominate the provision of services, which are then doled out along selective, class-based, and patronage lines. RWAs and Middle-Class Activism Amid the shift towards participatory governance, several critics have noted that there is also a shift in urban politics. In this section, we turn to the everyday politics of governance and of the governed. Partha Chatterjee, in his account of how the politics of the governed has changed over the last few decades in urban India, suggests that since the nineties “there has been an apparent shift in the ruling attitude toward the big city in India” (2004: 139–42). On the one hand, there is a greater push to attract foreign capital and go global at state and municipal levels, creating room for middle-class participation and intervention. On the other, government policy has “turned away from the idea of helping the poor to subsist within the city and is instead paying the greatest attention to improving infrastructure in order to create conditions for the import of high technology and the new service industries” (Chatterjee, 2004: 144). In this paradoxical context, the middle classes have emerged as willing allies of “reforms” and have gained public recognition and legitimacy to be the key “voice” of the citizenry.7 Through the various projects and schemes floated by the Indian state and international organizations, the educated, professional, networked, and cosmopolitan middle class has successfully secured its position and increasingly influences policy at all levels, from the central government to local governments. Backed by the global circulation of a bourgeois urban imagination, actively promoted by media networks, the middle class exercises its desires for a clean, healthy, and orderly urban landscape, executed through what Ghertner (2008) has eloquently described as “rule by aesthetics.” The contemporary middle classes in India thus represent “consumer-citizens” who “submit to the disciplines of the market, as well as accepting the duties of citizenship, so that they are in an important sense essentially self-regulating” (Harriss, 2007: 2717). As a result, the middle class has emerged as a powerful force in the terrain of “new politics,” and, not unsurprisingly, it is the  middle-class interests and passions that have come to dominate. Such heightened middle-class participation and activism are clearly

Governance in India’s Cities  291

Figure 13.2 Housing for high-rise construction workers in Gurgaon. Photo: S. Gururani

exclusionary and go hand in hand with a distinct intolerance for the urban poor and slum dwellers. In the absence of any clear vision for peri-urban areas and a great deal of confusion about the role of new urban local bodies, the politics of governance in the peripheries seems even murkier than in the centre. We would like to mention here that “nature” has emerged as an active ally in fulfilling the dreams of the middle classes in general, but particularly of the peri-urban middle-class citizens who now reside in high-security gated enclaves. In a context where the agrarian-natural landscape in peri-urban areas stands transformed, the everyday discourses, images, and advertisements of housing, urban development, and leisure tap into environmentalist sensibilities and bourgeois desires. The urban environmentalist discourse, by deploying romantic images of nature, tends to depoliticize the highly charged questions of land acquisition, governance, and access that are at the heart of political contestations in the urban peripheries.

292  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

Intermediaries, Brokers, Mafias, and Unfolding Networks of Informal Governance In the context of these prevailing changes, there is a growing acknowledgment that with the arrival of new actors in the urban political landscape, the terrain of governance is increasingly complex, multilayered, and opaque. In alerting us to the messy world of negotiations, collusions, concessions, exemptions, flexibilities, and exceptions through which projects of governance and government are accomplished, a recent body of work describes the very subtle and carefully crafted act of accessing electricity and water connections, and obtaining hawking licences and identity or voter cards (Ghertner, 2008; Anand, 2009; Kumar & Landy, 2009; Anjaria, 2011; Gururani, 2013). The authors draw our attention to a range of negotiation, influence, or patronage strategies that often blur the boundaries between legal and illegal and manipulate the rule of law in the context of urban governance. Such acts of manipulation are by no means new. They have a long history and in fact are the very mechanisms through which the state – pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial – has historically devised strategies of rule and cemented its authority. However, such accounts illustrate the limitations of concepts like governance, which tend not only to simplify an otherwise charged political landscape but also fail to account for the complex strategies and dynamics of power that exceed the familiar domain of formal governance. For instance, it has been noted that connections of influence and power are essential to secure any kind of service in cities. A range of services – from connections to water, cooking gas, and telephone lines; to buying land; to gaining admission to a “good” (i.e., private) school – all require connections with local elites, bureaucrats, community and political leaders, and political party representatives. It is in the domain of land transactions especially that one witnesses an intensely complex, multilayered, and opaque set of deals that increasingly involve local, regional, national, and transnational actors. Although land deals have always been shady affairs, the spectacular rise in real estate prices in urban areas and especially in peri-urban areas in the last twenty years and the heightened speculation over land prices have made the already dense and fraught process of land transactions even murkier and more politicized – and often violent. Such practices have often been rendered illegal or informal. However, instead of relying on the formal-informal binary, it is important that we critically rethink how informal practices

Governance in India’s Cities  293

are not external to state and law. Rather, they are socially and politically sanctioned, often with the cognizance of the state, lending the state a considerable amount of flexibility in its dealings with capital as well as local politics (A. Roy, 2004). India’s cities have fragmented institutional landscapes that are shaped by a concentration of powers at the state level (Ghosh et al., 2009: 31). As Ghosh and colleagues argue, state governments, through metropolitan development authorities, have historically marginalized ULBs and controlled urban development, particularly in terms of urban planning and land-use decisions (Ghosh et al., 2009). But, since the 1990s, “informal” links between private sector actors, state governments, and parastatal agencies have come to influence the politics of land to a much greater degree. In the case of Bangalore, as Harriss notes, the corporate sector – especially the emerging IT sector – through close connections with both the state government and parastatal agencies such as the Development Authority, has been able to intervene in master planning and thus shape the urban space in its favour (2010; see also Goldman, 2010). In Mumbai, Liza Weinstein offers a rich account of how attempts to reform the politics of land acquisition and development have in fact resulted in further empowering the land mafia and criminalizing the politics of land. She demonstrates how urban development projects such as shopping centres are “built illegally … by the city’s largest and most notorious mafia organization, on land belonging to the state government’s public works department” (2008: 23). Similar­ly, Solly Benjamin and others have drawn our attention to the multiple relations of negotiation and illegality that cast their long shadow on the question of land, and with it on housing, public spaces, and infrastructure (Benjamin, 2000, 2008). Recently, the protests by rural farmers in the outskirts of Delhi over compensation point to a highly charged and tense terrain in which small and big land mafia, political leaders, private developers, community elites, and other influential members of the government and the bureaucracy are intimately linked. The processes and politics of land are a messy business, whether exemplified by the forcible land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur in West Bengal or by the recent displacement of thousands of slum dwellers in New Delhi to make room for the Commonwealth Games. The politics of land plays out in distinct and perhaps even messier ways in peri-urban areas. In the absence of any local representation in urban planning or development, private land developers, with the support of

294  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose

central and state governments, play an increasingly important role. Developers like the DLF, Ansals, and more recently Dubai-based Emaar in collaboration with MGF, are not only developing entire cities in which they provide many privatized infrastructure services but are entering into PPPs in major infrastructure services. Accounts of such meddling and collaboration abound and alert us to some of the ways through which the goals of the state and market come to overlap and even reinforce each other.8 In the name of decentralization and in the midst of economic liberalization, the state has actively provided public land to the corporate sector at concessional rates and made decisions that severely reduce the capability of the municipal corporations to effect decision-making processes regarding urban planning and development (Nair, 2005; Harriss, 2010; A. Roy, 2009b). Since peri-urban areas sit awkwardly in grey zones of governance, the complex sets of exemptions and oversights through which peri-­ urban regions are being created are examples of what Gururani (2013) has described as “flexible planning.” These machinations of flexible planning are not simply distortions of plans and planning principles; accounts of flexible planning suggest a more pervasive and widely accepted practice in which political leaders, private developers, and local elites, through accumulation by dispossession, execute their vision of the future. In other words, the growing influence of private actors, politicians, and civil society organizations in shaping the politics of land and infrastructure in the urban peripheries is not an instance of bad planning or of failure of the state to provide for its citizens; it suggests, rather, a sphere of coalition, collaboration, and coercion that cannot be easily be contained by the rubric of governance (see also A. Roy, 2003, 2009b; Anjaria, 2011). These narratives of land politics present a compelling account, however, not only of corruption (elements of which are at play) or of the failure of governments (which is precisely what those seeking ­“reforms” want to see/hear); they also compel us to ask: What are the relations of power and authority through which citizens make claims, ensure access, and secure public and private goods? Who is able to make deals and who is left out? What are the new and old networks of influence and authority that are shaping the emerging modalities of governance in urban India? And how do the politics of class and caste once again powerfully appear in a seemingly transparent and democratic domain of liberal power? In other words, the concept of governance is of limited relevance in the urbanizing Global South.

Governance in India’s Cities  295

Figure 13.3 New Gurgaon. Photo: S. Gururani

Conclusion In this chapter, we have highlighted some of the key motivations and actions aimed at decentralizing local governance in the context of economic liberalization in India. Given the endorsement of participatory governance, it can be argued that there has indeed been a shift in the ruling attitude (see table 13.1). However, we have argued that despite a gesture towards democratic governance, the reforms in local governance have mostly failed to address the central issues of inequality, dispossession, and displacement in the context of urbanization and peri-urbanization in India. The efforts to engineer “reforms” and introduce “good governance” have mostly been guided by international financial institutions and are aimed at accommodating the economic liberalization agenda. These efforts have not only overlapped with the cosmopolitan desires and aspirations of a rapidly growing middle

296  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose Table 13.1 Urban and peri-urban governance in India Urbanizing, rural-urban, andperi-urban form

– urbanizing peripheries encircling metropolitan cities – until recently agricultural land – agrarian transformation as much as peri-urbanization – preferred zones for development after economic liberalization – mixed land use and development – housing, Special Economic Zones, IT and bio-technology sites, biodiversity parks, etc. – mixed housing patterns – posh condominiums, gated enclaves, precarious housing, urban villages, etc. – minimal infrastructure for transport, sewerage, water, etc.

Critical shifts since economic liberalization

– constitutional Reform in 1992 – administrative, political, and fiscal decentralization, devolution of powers and downloading of responsibilities to ULBs – uneven decentralization, ULBs given responsibility but not autonomy, peri-urban areas administratively ambiguous – national Urban Renewal Mission – uneven outcomes, facilitated land acquisition through repealing of the ULCRA – participatory governance programs – largely limited to the urban middle classes, facilitated the consolidation of middle-class power in urban governance – public-private Partnerships (PPPs)

Changing role of the state and introduction of new actors

– enhanced role of private developers and construction companies – privatization and marketization of infrastructure and public services, introduction of PPPs – lack of clarity in distribution of roles among state governments, parastatal agencies, and local governing bodies – fairly strong state influence in urban governance – increasing role of the judiciary in urban governance – manipulation of the existing legal machinery – proliferation of informal processes, relations, and structures of urban governance amid economic liberalization and decentralization

Pressures and influences

– international organizations and foreign capital influencing the institutional framework and policies as well as programs of governance, infrastructure, and urban imageries through the allocation and distribution of funds and circulation of policy models and best practices – local conglomerates and private building/contracting companies

Governance in practice

– centralization-cum-decentralization – centralization of control and planning of land amid constitutional reform and mission aimed at decentralization in local governance – informal governance – increasing middle-class domination in urban governance – popular mobilization and organizing against the reform agenda

Governance in India’s Cities  297

class; they have also tended to support exclusionary and intolerant actions against the urban poor. In such a context, where cities and their peripheries are emerging as highly contested spaces, it is important to take note of the complexities of the politics of urban and peri-urban land, access to basic urban services, housing, livelihood, and mobility that confound the rubric of governance. As the social and economic fabric is changing in urban India, questions of belonging, citizenship, exclusion and inclusion, and access to resources, work, and mobility are of critical relevance and demand careful, grounded, and engaged research and analysis. In presenting an account of the multilayered practices of governance, recent writings on urban India have focused on “urban informality” and have effectively shifted attention from the discourse of malaise, chaos, and corruption that has become synonymous with the cities of the Global South. Given that economic liberalization and constitutional reform have unleashed a spate of decentralization measures and introduced a range of new actors in urban governance, there is also a proliferation of political and economic arrangements at different levels of governance that do not fit the formal-informal binary. This forces us to rethink relations of power – how they are created; who the new and old actors steering them are; how the formal and informal forms of governance feed into and sustain each other; and how the embedded, nuanced, and subtle politics of negotiations, concessions, and compromise complicate the normative frames of urban theory (A. Roy & AlSayyad, 2004; A. Roy, 2009b). Through critical attention to everyday practices, an attempt is made to move beyond the standard trilogy of state, civil society, and market and consider actors who straddle these domains and actively rework the urban space in innovative ways. Here, we have highlighted the role of the brokers, land mafias, and local elites who are part of the informal structures of governance. We suggest that such actors – usually regarded as extraneous elements that corrupt an otherwise well-functioning system – are important conduits and nodes in complex political and economic networks. Finally, with the extensive appropriation of land for urban development and infrastructure, whether for IT corridors, housing, or Special Economic Zones, there are a growing number of Public Interest Litigations and court cases related to land acquisition and displacement. They point to the enhanced role of the judiciary in urban governance and in reshaping urban and peri-urban spaces, a role that deserves attention if we are to understand the unfolding dimensions of urban and peri-urban governance in India.

298  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose NOTES 1 See Batra, 2007; Baud & de Wit, 2008; Benjamin, 2000; Benjamin et al., 2007; Chatterjee, 2004; Dupont, 2007; Ghertner, 2011; Ghosh et al., 2009; Harriss, 2010; Hust, 2005; Ruet & Lama-Rewal, 2008; Sivaramakrishnan, 2011; Zérah, 2009. 2 See Hust, 2005; Baud & de Wit, 2008; Ghosh et al., 2009; Dupont, 2011; Sivaramakrishnan, 2013. 3 National Institute of Urban Affairs, “Urban Governance Decentralization in India: A Review,” 2004. Research Study No. 95. Accessed June 14, 2011 http://niua.org/research_studies_2004.asp. 4 “Transitional areas are settlements with a population exceeding 5,000 persons, a population density of 450 persons per sq km with 75 per cent of the male workforce in non-agricultural activity, as delimited by the Census of India [Bhagat, 2003].” (Cited in I. Roy, 2006). 5 As stamp duty constitutes one of their major financial sources, the reform in stamp duty will make ULBs financially more vulnerable and dependent on loans from the market and thus less autonomous in their actions. 6 In 2005, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act was passed and several SEZs were set up. The acquisition of land for SEZs offers an instance of how extensive stretches of land, ranging from 10 to 5,000 hectares in size, were set aside for specialized economic activity. There are close to 600 such zones, many of which are embroiled in legal battles and confrontations, as the terms of control and authority are at best vague. A full exploration of SEZs is beyond the scope of this paper. See Levien (2011) for further discussion. 7 See Chatterjee, 2004; Nair, 2005; Batra 2007; Benjamin, 2008; Chakrabarti, 2007; Harriss, 2007, 2010; Baud & de Wit, 2008; Kennedy, 2008; A. Roy, 2009a; Weinstein, 2009; Zérah, 2009; Ghertner, 2011. 8 See the recent scandal over India’s leading Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra’s irregular land dealings with DLF in Gurgaon. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/behind-haryanaland-boom-the-midas-touch-of-hooda/article4048394.ece.

REFERENCES Anand, N. (2009). Leaky states: The politechnics of urban water supply in Mumbai. Paper presented at the Urban Aspiration in Global Cities workshop, held at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity.

Governance in India’s Cities  299 Anjaria, J. (2011). Ordinary states: Everyday corruption and the politics of space in Mumbai. American Ethnologist, 38(1), 58–72. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01292.x. Batra, L. (2007). JNNURM: The neo-liberal mission for Indian cities. Communist Party of India’s website. Retrieved from: http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/ year_2007/July/jnnurm_neo_liberal_mission.html. Batra, L. (2008). Deconstructing the world-class city. Paper presented at Special Economic Zones: A Symposium on the Recent Economic Policy Initiatives. Retrieved from: http://www.india-seminar.com/2008/582/582_lalit_batra​ .htm. Baud, I.S.A., & de Wit, J. (2008). Shifts in urban governance: Raising the questions. In I.S.A. Baud & J. De Wit (Eds), New forms of urban governance in India: Shifts, models, networks and contestations (1–33). New Delhi: SAGE. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9788132101390.n1. Benjamin, S. (2000). Governance, economic settings and poverty in Bangalore. Environment and Urbanization, 12(1), 35–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/​ 095624780001200104. Benjamin, S. (2008). Occupancy urbanism: Radicalizing politics and economy beyond policy and programs. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(3), 719–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008 .00809.x. Benjamin, S., Bhuvaneshwari, R., Rajan, P., & Manjunatha, B. (2007). Bhoomi: Egovernance or an anti-politics machine necessary to globalize Bangalore? Working paper, CASUMM. Retrieved from: http://casumm.files.wordpress​ .com/2008/09/bhoomi-e-governance.pdf. Bhagat, R.B. (2003). Challenges of rural-urban classification for decentralised governance. Economic and Political Weekly, 37(25), 2413-16. Bhagat, R.B. (2005). Rural-urban classification and municipal governance in India. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 26(1), 61–73. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1111/j.0129-7619.2005.00204.x. Bombay First-McKinsey. (2003). Vision Mumbai, transforming Mumbai into a world-class city, A summary of recommendations. Retrieved from: http://www​ .visionmumbai.org/aboutusdocs/McKinseyReport.pdf. Chakrabarti, P. (2007). Inclusion or exclusion? Emerging effects of middleclass citizen participation on Delhi’s urban poor. IDS Bulletin, 38(6), 96–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2007.tb00424.x. Chatterjee, P. (2004). The politics of the governed: Reflections on popular politics in most of the world. New York: Columbia University Press. Denis, E., Mukhopadhyay, P., & Zérah, M.-H. (2012). Subaltern urbanization in India. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVII(30), 52–62.

300  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose Dupont, V. (2007). Conflicting stakes and governance in the peripheries of large Indian metropolises: An introduction. Cities, 24(2), 89–94. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2006.11.002. Dupont, V. (2011). The dream of Delhi as a global city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(3), 533–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/​ j.1468-2427.2010.01027.x. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies: The Journal of the Regional Studies Association, 46(3), 405–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/​ 00343404.2012.658036. Ghertner, A. (2008). Analysis of new legal discourse behind Delhi’s slum demolitions. Economic and Political Weekly, 43, 57–66. Ghertner, A. (2011). Gentrifying the state, gentrifying participation: Elite governance programs in Delhi. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(3), 504–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011​ .01043.x. Ghosh, A. (2009). Participatory urban governance and slum development in Hyderabad and Kolkata. In J. Ruet & S. Tawa Lama-Rewal (Eds), Governing India’s metropolises (209–40). New Delhi: Routledge. Ghosh, A., Kennedy, L., Ruet, I., Tawa Lama-Rewal, S., & Zérah, M.-H. (2009). A comparative overview of urban governance in Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai. In J. Ruet & S. Tawa Lama-Rewal (Eds), Governing India’s metropolises (24–54). New Delhi: Routledge. Goldman, M. (2010). Speculative urbanism and the making of the next world city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(5), 555–81. Government of India. (1992). The Constitution (Seventy-Fourth Amendment) Act, (India Code). Retrieved from: http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/ amend74.htm. Gururani, S. (2013). Flexible planning: The making of India’s “Millennium City,” Gurgaon. In A. Rademacher & K. Sivaramakrishnan (Eds), Ecologies of urbanism in India: Metropolitan civility and sustainability (119–44). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.5790/hongkong/​ 9789888139767.003.0005. Harriss, J. (2007). Antinomies of empowerment: Observations on civil society, politics and urban governance in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 42(26), 2716–24. Harriss, J. (2010). “Participation” and contestation in the governance of Indian cities. Simon Papers in Security and Development, 3, 3–23. Retrieved from: http://jnnurm.nic.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/PMSpeechOverviewE​ .pdf.

Governance in India’s Cities  301 Hust, E. (2005). Introduction. In E. Hust & M. Mann (Eds), Urbanization and governance in India. New Delhi: Manohar. JNNURM Mission Statement, Government of India, Ministry of Urban Development. (n.d.). Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. Overview. Retrieved from: http://jnnurm.nic.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/​ 01/PMSpeechOverviewE.pdf. Kennedy, L. (2008). New patterns of participation shaping urban governance. In J. Ruet & S. Tawa Lama-Rewal (Eds), Governing India’s metropolises (55–80). New Delhi: Routledge. Kumar, G., & Landy, F. (with Francois, T., Ruby, D., & Sechsaria, P.). (2009). Vertical governance: Brokerage, patronage and corruption in Indian metropolises. In J. Ruet & S. Tawa Lama-Rewal (Eds), Governing India’s metropolises (105–33). New Delhi: Routledge. Kundu, D. (2006). Decentralized governance in metro-cities: The issue of elite capture with special reference to Delhi. Paper presented at the IDPAD Seminar in New Forms of Urban Governance in Indian Mega Cities, New Delhi. Lama-Rewal, S.T. (2009). Engaging with the concept of governance: Indian metropolises. In J. Ruet & S. Tawa Lama-Rewal (Eds), Governing India’s metropolises (3–23). New Delhi: Routledge. National Institute of Urban Affairs. (2004). Urban governance decentralization in India: A review. Research Study No. 95. National Institute of Urban Affairs. Accessed 14 June 2011: http://niua.org/research_studies_2004.asp. Pieterse, E.A. (2008). City futures: Confronting the crisis of urban development. New York: Zed Books. Roy, A. (2003). City requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the politics of poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Roy, A. (2004). The gentleman’s city: Urban informality in the Calcutta of new communism. In A. Roy & N. AlSayyad (Eds), Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia (147–70). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Roy, A. (2009a). The 21st-century metropolis: New geographies of theory. Regional Studies, 43(6), 819–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343400701809665. Roy, A. (2009b). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning Theory, 8(1), 76–87. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1177/1473095208099299. Roy, A., & AlSayyad, N. (Eds). (2004). Urban informality, Transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Roy, I. (2006). Representation and development in urban peripheries. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(41), 4363–8.

302  Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose Ruet, J., & Lama-Rewal, S.T. (Eds). (2008). Governing India’s metropolises. ​New Delhi: Routledge. Shaw, A. (2005). Peri-urban interface of Indian cities: Growth, governance and local initiatives. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(2), 129–36. Sivaramakrishnan, K.C. (2011). Re-visioning Indian cities: The urban renewal mission. New Delhi: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9788132107859. Sivaramakrishnan, K.C. (2013). Revisiting the 74th constitutional amendment for better metropolitan governance. Economic and Political Weekly, 48(13), 86–94. Weinstein, L. (2009). Democracy in the globalizing Indian city: Engagements of political society and the state in globalizing Mumbai. Politics & Society, 37(3), 397–427. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731509338926. Zérah, M.-H. (2009). Participatory governance in urban management and the shifting geometry of power in Mumbai. Development and Change, 40(5), 853–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2009.01586.x.

14 Suburban Development and Governance in China fulong wu and jie shen

Introduction Rather than seeing Chinese “suburbs” as following and replicating the process of middle-class suburbanization in the Western economies, in keeping with the focus of this section on ”emerging modalities” in the Global South, we adopt a historical perspective, viewing Chinese suburbs in terms of the various political-economic stages they have gone through. We begin this analysis by examining how the suburb exemplifies both the suburbanization of the central city and the urbanization of the rural areas that surround the mega-cities (see McGee’s chapter 15 in this volume). In the context of Western Europe and North America, the suburb is a type of settlement, while suburban governance exhibits distinctive forms of governance and political tensions. The traditional suburb is often depicted as a “middle-class residential enclave” (Harris & Larkham, 1999: 6), characterized by low-density but uniform residential developments. Postwar mass suburbanization was often associated with the classic growth-machine politics built around land interests (Logan & Molotch, 1987). Recently, however, the emergence of post-suburban developments has raised new issues related to governing suburban growth, including the tension between growth and provision for collective consumption; growth and conservation; and the pressures for governmental secession and amalgamation (Phelps, Wood, &Valler, 2010). The evolution of Chinese suburbs follows a different trajectory. In the pre-reform era, except for satellite towns built to accommodate industrial development, peri-urban developments were almost unknown. As market-oriented reform gave rise to rapid outward urban expansion

304  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

and radical changes on the urban edge (Zhou & Ma, 2000), this transition produced an emerging suburban morphology, economy, and governance that are quite different from Western examples. The heterogeneity of the Chinese suburbs has been widely noted. At the leading edge of contemporary urbanization, nearly all kinds of capital and people have come to congregate on the urban periphery. Because of a unique land system that divides urban and rural land, the suburbs have also experienced both formal and informal development (Deng & Huang, 2004). High-end gated communities, apartment developments for the middle class, and migrant villages all coexist in the suburbs (Zhou & Logan, 2008). This chapter investigates the question of governance in China’s suburbanization process. While applying the framework of modalities of suburban governance developed by Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012), we first highlight the heterogeneous character of Chinese suburban development and examine how different types of development are created by different governance modalities. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: first, we reflect on some key terms in order to stress that their meaning varies in different geographical contexts. Then we review the stages of suburban development. Third, we discuss various modalities of suburban governance. This discussion is followed by an analysis of different types of development – both formal and informal – and their respective spatial forms and governance issues. Finally, the conclusion suggests that while fragmented spatial forms in the suburbs represent different combinations of modalities, they are fundamentally rooted in a key component of the political economy of post-reform territorial development in China – the goal of generating land revenue for local governments. Conceptual Issues First, “suburb” here generally refers to the periphery of the city or builtup area proper. In this sense, the use is interchangeable with “peri-­ urban area,” a term widely used in development studies to examine land rights and slum settlements in developing countries. However, in China as in other densely populated East and Southeast Asian countries (McGee & Robinson, 1995), the population density of suburbs may be quite high, and may well exceed that of major cities in the West. Thus, the term itself does not connote low-density living or an alternative to urbanism. For example, Fleischer (2010) describes suburban Beijing as defined by high density and high-rises; it is problematic to

Suburban Development and Governance in China  305

imply that the suburb is in the continuum from urban to rural areas. In fact, as in other pre-urbanized developing countries, there is a profound rural and urban dualism. The suburb had to be placed in either the urban or the rural category in terms of institutional arrangements or social management. Seen in this way, under state socialism the suburb was for a long time a collection of rural villages outside the formal state system plus some state farms and state-owned enterprises within the formal state system. The suburbs thus did not connote a form of governance different from that of the city or the countryside. Indeed, it would be a challenge to identify a “typical” suburb as a candidate for future research on global suburbanism (Harris, 2010). Second, “suburbia” as a description of a lifestyle characterized by single-family detached living has been absent from the Chinese context until very recently. In China, there is no tradition of suburban single-family homes or an “organised local political voice” to maintain suburbia for middle-class living (Zhou & Logan, 2008: 157). In contrast to a deeply embedded Western tradition of anti-urbanism and rural nostalgia, modern China sees urban life as a forward-looking, civilized way of life, and rural life as backward and underdeveloped. The socialist system, which was heavily biased towards the urban-industrial complex, strengthened the privilege of the city through state welfare provision to urban dwellers. Although Chinese upper-market villa compounds have recently appeared in imitation of American “new urbanism,” in reality these places only serve to extend living space from the city to a more spacious periphery with a higher level of security and privacy – a model quite different from that of an open, middle-class suburbia (Wu, 2009). The mainstream suburban high-rises for the middle class seem like replicas of commodity housing estates inside the city, representing a lifestyle scarecely distinguishable from that of inner areas. Third, the term “governance” requires careful consideration of the relationship between the state, the market, and civil society. In the pre-­ reform era, the dominance of the state was apparent. Although reform has led to the establishment of markets in land, housing, capital, and labour, the state continues to play a significant role in organizing society. There are embryonic non-governmental organizations and self-­ governing bodies such as homeowners’ associations, a product of the emergence of gated communities in Chinese suburbs where residents play a greater role in managing their daily lives. However, the sphere of civil society is still underdeveloped. The term “governance” does not unequivocally refer to a mode of governance separate from the state. What is peculiar here is the contradictory combination of the state role

306  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

and the aggressive advancement of the market. The state is morphing into an entrepreneurial state, creating various investment arms and platforms to participate in economic development. Given the ambiguity, in the Chinese context, associated with the term “governance,” the notion of modalities of governance (Ekers et al., 2012) is useful because it can reveal more explicitly how the balance shifts among different components without suggesting that a new model has been created. Stages of Suburban Development The Suburbs as State-Invested Industrial Space (1949–1978) In the socialist era, Chinese cities were relatively compact. There was a significant rural and urban divide. Systems of investment, population management, and housing provision were designed to facilitate industrialization with a minimum of urbanization, thus preventing free rural-to-urban migration. Household registration (hukou) served as an invisible wall separating rural and urban areas (Chan, 2009). As for urban residents living in the city, housing was provided by workplaces as a welfare service. Although the central area became quite crowded owing to rising population density and a shortage of housing, outward residential mobility was quite low (Zhou & Logan, 2008) because residents could not buy housing outside the state system. The lack of public services and facilities made the urban periphery an undesirable place to live. In this context, the state adopted a strategy to facilitate industrial development and use suburbs as a space for production. Other activities such as the development of workers’ villages were subordinated to this major function. From the 1950s, self-contained industrial satellite towns were developed in order to provide places to invest and prevent overconcentration in large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. State-owned enterprises were allocated to these industrial areas. However, overspecialization and the emphasis on productive infrastructure resulted in a poor living environment and made these areas unattractive to residents. A large proportion of workers still commuted from the central city. Industrial Decentralization and Suburban Residential Development (1979–2000) Since economic reform, as a result of the establishment of a market in land and consequent changes in land use, Chinese cities have witnessed

Suburban Development and Governance in China  307

significant industrial relocation and population redistribution. Zhou and Ma (2000) suggest that suburbanization appeared for the first time in the history of China in the 1980s. A series of empirical studies identified the restructuring of land use and related population changes (Feng & Zhou, 2005; Feng, Wang, & Zhou, 2009). Residential projects were developed in the suburbs to improve living conditions and accommodate households relocated from redeveloped central areas (Wu, 2004). Rapid urban expansion also encroached on farmland (Lin & Yi, 2011). However, despite suburban growth, the central city did not show any sign of decline (Zhou & Logan, 2008). The change in population densities was partially a result of land-use restructuring after the establishment of the land market. Suburbanization was passive and dominated by government-sponsored residential and industrial relocation (Zhou & Ma, 2000). Suburban growth was also driven by industrial development in suburbs, with a large number of rural-to-urban migrants settling in peri-urban locations (Feng & Zhou, 2005; Wu, He, & Webster, 2010). Suburban development in this period was less planned, and usually mixed with residential projects, scattered industrial development zones, and migrant villages on the urban fringe (Deng & Huang, 2004). The spatial pattern was rampant outward expansion of fragmented ­single-function uses. Administrative Annexation and the Development of New Towns (2001 to Present) Since the late 1990s, a new round of suburban development has emerged that is distinctive not only because of its scale but also in its character. In order to expand their space and resources during fierce inter-city competition, municipal governments one after another began to adjust their administrative boundaries by annexing surrounding counties (Wu & Zhang, 2007). A mass urban transport system was developed to provide rapid access to the exurbs (Cervero & Day, 2008). The outer suburban areas were thus opened up for development. This recent strategy focuses on developing suburban growth nodes with comprehensive urban functions. Aiming at transforming labour-­ intensive and low-cost manufacturing industries into high-tech and producer services, many mature economic development zones have shifted from one-dimensional manufacturing and processing to a more diversified mixture that includes secondary and tertiary industries emphasizing high-quality amenities and services (Wong & Tang, 2005).

308  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

Residential development has become an important driving force in some well-planned new towns (Wang, Kundu, & Chen, 2010; Shen & Wu, 2012). As a result of various new packaging and marketing approaches, the image of the suburban district has shifted from industrial satellites towards liveable cities (Wu, 2010; Wu & Phelps, 2011). As suburban developments evolve to include a more mixed land-use pattern and a better balance between workplaces and residences, they develop into the regional growth nodes characteristic of post-suburbia (Wu & Phelps, 2008, 2011; Phelps & Wu, 2011). Modalities and Mechanisms of Suburban Governance State Entrepreneurialism and the Growth of the Suburban Economy As in the United States and other developed Western economies, where suburbanization was facilitated by the role of the state in stipulating housing policy, infrastructure investment, and tax policies (Harris, 2004), rampant suburban land development in China can be attributed to the state-controlled land system (Deng & Huang, 2004). While stateowned urban land is allowed to enter the land market, market transactions involving the sale of collectively owned farmland are strictly forbidden. Municipal governments, which have the right to expropriate farmland in the public interest, tend to acquire the land at a very low price but lease it out to developers based on its market value. Because urban redevelopment is costly and time consuming by comparison, the differentiated land values drive encroachment onto rural land. The collective land rights of rural areas are ambiguous and incomplete, resulting in claims from various actors who dispute rights to the land and try to develop it for their own benefit, creating a chaotic pattern of development (Zhu & Hu, 2009). As we outline later in this chapter, the suburbs experience both formal and informal land development. For example, farmers expand or build their houses to provide housing for rural migrants. Therefore, while state-led suburban developments present ordered and homogeneous landscapes to attract investment, semi-urbanized migrant villages with inferior living environments also spontaneously spread out across the peripheries. The development of the suburban economy is also driven by economic devolution and the rescaling of the state. In the U.S. model, suburban authorities prefer to break away from the municipality (Logan & Molotch, 1987). With governmental autonomy, local elites in the form of

Suburban Development and Governance in China  309

residents, business groups, and industrialists are able to frame policies that serve local business needs, forming a suburban growth machine. In China, the municipal government plays a significant role in the development of suburban areas. For example, the strategy of “one city and nine towns” in Shanghai was adopted by the municipality as a way to expand local economies. The development of Beijing’s new towns in the outer suburbs is “driven by extending entrepreneurial urban governance into the outer rural reaches of the metropolitan area” (Wu & Phelps, 2011: 427). Through administrative annexation, the municipality expands its power across the metropolitan area and gains control over the resources of counties in order to compete with other cities. Actual development is often directly organized or orchestrated by the municipal development corporation – and in this sense, we can see the development of the suburban economy as a process of territorialization of the municipal state in its city-region. This administrative annexation is often legitimized and implemented by the preparation of an “urban strategic plan,” which tends to propose massive expansion of the transport system and urban development into suburbs and exurbs (Wu & Zhang, 2007). Administrative annexation is often accompanied by the devolution of decision-making power to suburban districts. At the same time, the performance of suburban district officials is evaluated through their promotion of local growth. The relationship between the central city and suburban districts shifts from a topdown model to a growth regime coordinated through governance. In some cases, the municipal government lends significant support to suburban district governments. For example, the municipal government can co-fund key infrastructure projects such as a metro line to the suburbs, or co-invest in local development corporations. In others, however, there exist contradictions between local growth coalitions and the upper tier of the central city government. Because decentralization has given rise to urban entrepreneurialism at the local level, suburban local governments within the same city compete with one another for capital investment and economic growth. They tend to focus on their own interests at the risk of disrupting the municipality’s strategic plan. For instance, despite being rationally envisaged as specialized centres designed to contribute to the growth of the metropolitan region as a whole, all suburban districts compete for factories in similar industries and endeavour to stimulate local real estate markets. Under such circumstances, the municipality generally faces great challenges in coordinating development and implementing its overall plan.

310  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

Suburbs as a Space of Capital Accumulation Chinese suburbs are becoming the frontier of capital accumulation as China builds itself into a world factory (Wu, 2012). The development of suburbs is not just a consequence of economic growth but also a driving force expanding the sphere of capital accumulation. A number of institutional reforms – including decentralization, the adoption of a land-leasing system, and housing commodification – not only have ­established market institutions in land development but also have provided strong incentives to local governments to use land markets as instruments to capture investment and facilitate capital accumulation. While Haila (2007) cautions against exaggerating the role of market mechanisms in China’s urban development, there is evidence that land allocation has been largely phased out in favour of land sales at market rates (Xu, Yeh, & Wu, 2009). Income from land leasing contributes a great proportion of local revenues and is thus a vital resource to support local economic growth (Tao, Su, Liu, & Cao, 2010). Lin (2007) identifies this new wave of city-based and land-centred urbanization as the most important driving force behind the dramatic urban expansion that has taken place since the mid-1990s. It has also been pointed out with regard to the Chinese urbanization of capital that, while business groups play a major role in Western cities, Chinese governments are not just regulators but also indispensable market players themselves (Wu, Xu, & Yeh, 2007). Recent suburban new town development reflects a sophisticated strategy for developing the suburb as a space of capital accumulation. It is a response to two institutional changes: the introduction of a tax-sharing system, and the implementation of more stringent development controls. First, fiscal recentralization through tax-sharing systems has made income from land sales the most important resource local governments can use to initiate growth. In order to maximize land revenue, local governments have tactically adopted a mixture of land uses in recent suburban development by encouraging residential and commercial projects along with industrial development. On the one hand, local governments raise large amounts of capital by leasing out land for residential and commercial uses to the highest bidders in open auction. On the other hand, they continue to make low-priced land available for industrial investment, not primarily to gain a one-time profit but rather to enhance the return from the local tax base (Tao et al., 2010). Second, the development of new towns in the suburbs is also a response to an increasingly stringent control of land by the central

Suburban Development and Governance in China  311

government. Since the late 1990s, especially since 2003, the central government has begun to allocate land development quotas to local governments, restricting the extent of land leasing and making it more difficult to release massive amounts of rural land for urban uses. At the same time, place promotion and marketing have been used to build up the suburbs as a nice place to live and work in an effort to raise land prices. Local governments are now enthusiastic about building new towns to achieve a high-quality living environment. To sum up, the suburban growth machine operates on the basis of land development as a new means of capital accumulation. First, the local government sets up an investment platform such as an investment corporation that raises capital from the bank to acquire rural land through compulsory purchase at a low value. Then, the development corporation carries out primary land development that converts the acquired rural land into serviced land. Then, the serviced land is used to attract investment from manufacturing industries. Industrial development develops local GDP and in turn raises the land values of the city. Next, the development corporation leases the rest of the acquired land in commercial and residential markets through competitive bidding at a much higher price. The sale of land generates land revenue that funds infrastructure development. This land-centred dynamic drives local governments to pursue land development through the suburban growth machine. Private Governance and Gated Suburbia Gated residences are not entirely new in China. In the pre-reform era, many workplaces provided living quarters that were gated or surrounded by clear boundaries. However, the function of gating has changed. Staff living quarters used to be developed by individual workplaces and managed by estate departments. The use of gates was primarily for management convenience. Security in these workers’ villages was lax. This prototype has been succeeded by a variety of gated forms of residential areas, according to Webster, Wu, and Zhao (2006), including the “golden ghetto” (for the rich), the “brown ghetto” (the work-unit compound), the “green ghetto” (collectively developed village apartments), and the “red ghetto” (estates emphasizing collective management). In comparing China and the United States, Huang and Low (2008) have noted the long tradition of collectivism in Chinese neighbourhood governance. Wu (2005: 235) argues that the function of gating has changed from reinforcing the political control

312  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

of work-units and implementing collective consumption organized by the state to the demarcation of consumer clubs in response to the retreat of the state from the provision of public goods. In terms of private governance (Webster, 2002), gated communities are a new phenomenon in China. In the suburbs, gated living spaces are widespread. However, state control is still pervasive, and independent self-governance by civil ­society has been weak. What we see in Chinese gated suburbia is developer-­led property management to replace some functions of state provision. What is novel in Chinese gated suburbia is the role played by real estate developers in creating an alternative living experience for the upwardly mobile middle class. The tactics of place branding and marketing are extensively used, to such an extreme that a whole new town can be created as a replica of the Western good life, as seen in the Thames Town of Shanghai (Wu, 2010; Shen & Wu, 2012). Many buyers of upper-market single-family villas are the owners of second or even third homes, which they use as private holiday or weekend retreats (Pow, 2009). Meanwhile, however, the demand for such gated space is motivated not by the ecology of fear (Low, 2003) but by the rising value placed on high-quality living environments. The essence of gated suburbia in China is its packaged development, and gating is part of packaging and branding. The development of gated and packaged suburbia can thus be explained by two interrelated driving forces: first, the demand for housing as an aesthetic commodity; and second, the pressure on developers for products that offer more diversity, choice, and distinctiveness (Wu, 2010). In this sense, the perspective of “private governance” cannot entirely explain the rapid spread of gated suburbia in China. Chinese gated suburbia has a long way to go before reaching a space of self-governance. Suburban Typology: Heterogeneous Worlds Formal Land Development: Packaged Suburbia In contrast to spontaneously developed peri-urban villages, formal land development in the suburbs leads to carefully designed and packaged residential areas. The development of the commodity housing market produces greater diversity and the differentiation of properties, ranging from more exclusive low-density villas to modern high-rise apartment buildings. Many are “master-planned communities” (Shen

Suburban Development and Governance in China  313

& Wu, 2012). However, unlike the mass-produced apartment blocks in the planned “micro-districts” of the socialist period, these new suburban residences are heavily decorated, usually with a grand gate and architectural motifs borrowed from overseas (Wu, 2010). These newly developed residential areas have been intensively “enchanted” (Knox, 2008) to change the unattractive image of suburban industrial and rural areas and create suburbia as an ideal living environment. In terms of governance, new suburban residential areas are built into gated communities under “private governance” (Webster, 2002) – that is, they are managed by property management companies rather than the municipal department of utility services. Because these places are relatively new and have no pre-existing social networks (Tomba, 2005), the government initially encouraged new residents to set up homeowners’ associations to strengthen the development of communities. The intention was for home buyers to self-govern the affairs related to their communities, as a tactic to cope with rising social mobility and potential instability. In reality, based on a common interest in property values, homeowners’ associations have evolved into a force beyond formal state control. In some places, they play a vital role in the preservation of green space and environmental protection, against developers’ profit-making plans. Because of this trend to independence, the attitude of the government has begun to change. The role of the homeowners’ associations is being redefined strictly within the sphere of property management rather than overall self-governance. Meanwhile, the formal governance of communities known as shequi has been strengthened through the professionalization of cadres and social workers. The real estate market is a major force for formal land development in the suburbs. Recent suburban development shows a trend of emerging flagship or mega-projects. These developments are planned and coordinated by one super-large developer who takes responsibility for branding the place. The major developer, known as the “brand developer,” organizes promotional campaigns and subcontracts land plots to other smaller developers, who carry out construction. Such a development mode is often seen in new town development. For example, Shanghai Songjiang New Town Development Corporation, jointly funded by the municipal and district governments, is responsible for the development of Thames Town – a cluster of upper-market residential enclaves mimicking an English-style market town (see figure 14.1). This mode of development is designed for master planning and place marketing.

314  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

Figure 14.1 Suburban gated communities in Shanghai’s Thames Town. Photo: Fulong Wu

Although suburban residential development is driven by real estate developers, the state, especially at the local level, plays a significant role in securing the conditions for real estate development. State entre­ preneurialism created by fiscal and economic decentralization and the competitive promotion of cadres based on economic performance (Wu & Phelps, 2011) are behind the development of territorial governance and key infrastructure that stimulate urban residential sprawl. In the exurb of Beijing, a development branch of the municipal government was created and territorialized by assembling the land from four rural townships to form the Beijing Economic and Technology Development Zone (ETDZ). The zone quickly evolved into an employment subcentre, and the cluster of office buildings is transforming the suburban development zone into a business park (see figure 14.2). For a long time, the zone acted more like a corporation than a local government, because it left the provision of housing and services to the market. Just outside the

Suburban Development and Governance in China  315

Figure 14.2 Suburban office clusters in Yizhuang New Town of Beijing. Photo: Fulong Wu

jurisdiction of Shanghai, the county-level city of Kunshan self-funded a development zone – initially illegal but later recognized by the central government – and became a de facto edge city of Shanghai. The role of the Shanghai municipal government was pivotal in establishing the spatial framework of “one city and nine towns” that initiated an era of rapid suburban growth. In particular, the construction of metro lines into the exurbs by the entrepreneurial state was critical in opening up suburban space – an expansion further facilitated by interlinking land sales, residential development, and infrastructure funding. Seen from the point of view of capital accumulation, as mentioned earlier, the development of suburban space plays a critical role as a “spatial fix” during the transition from state-led industrialization in the socialist era to urban-based accumulation. Real estate has already become an important sector of the economy. Just prior to the global financial crisis, Chinese export manufacturing suffered a worsening of

316  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

production conditions, pressured by the appreciation of the Chinese currency, a more competitive export market, tougher labour laws and regulations, and declining profit margins. These challenges prompted some capital to abandon manufacturing industries and switch to the property and stock markets, creating a property boom. After a temporary tightening policy to cope with the global financial crisis, the Chinese government was forced to adopt a 4 trillion Yuan stimulus package, which significantly increased capital liquidity. As a result, property prices experienced dramatic inflation in 2009. Harvey (1978), Walker (1981), and more recently Cox (2010) have noted the role of spatial production and suburbanization in sustaining capital accumulation in the Western capitalist economy. In Chinese cities, too, the property boom is both a result of suburban economic growth and an outlet for absorbing capital into the new territory of growth. Informal Development: Peri-Urban Villages Informality is an essential feature of peri-urban areas in the Global South (see Roy in chapter 16 in this volume; and McGee in chapter 15 in this volume). The Chinese peri-urban area also presents a level of informality through villagers’ self-extension of rural housing (see figure 14.3). Table 14.1 compares the characteristics of formal and informal development in Chinese suburbs. The creation of informality is also due to the special practice of land requisition (Wu, Zhang, & Webster, 2013). To avoid the cost of land requisition in the earlier stage of suburbanization, suburban land development leapfrogged over rural villages and penetrated into agricultural fields. Now these “villages inside the city” are becoming the Chinese version of informal settlements. Because of the fundamental dualism of land ownership in China, village land is collectively owned and may not be used for real estate development, because properties developed on the land do not have formal deeds issued by the state. Rather, housing developed in urbanized villages is predominantly rental accommodation, sheltering millions of rural migrant workers. The housing market can be regarded as “informal” for two reasons: first, the development process occurs without the formal procedures of planning permission and development control; and second, in most cases there is no formal contract between the landlord and the migrant renter. The creation of these villages is thus the combined result of the absence of the state from housing provision and the inability of Chinese migrant workers to afford properties developed through the formal real estate market.

Suburban Development and Governance in China  317

Figure 14.3 Informal housing in peri-urban villages in Guangzhou. Photo: Fulong Wu

These peri-urban villages present a different version of the “private governance” seen in gated communities in more advanced market economies (Webster, 2002). Municipal governments do not usually provide and maintain public infrastructure in these villages; in fact, they do not have much of a role to play in regulating the built environment inside the villages, resulting in, for example, narrow, unpaved, and filthy streets. Cooperation among individual households in managing the common affairs of the villages is also missing in most cases. In order to gain as much space as possible, each household tries to build right up to the boundaries of its assigned land plot, resulting in extremely high building coverage. In southern China where there is a tradition of village self-governance, villages may be governed by village collectives or shareholding cooperatives (Po, 2008). Some village shareholding companies invest in basic village-level facilities.

318  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen Table 14.1 Comparison of formal and informal development in the Chinese peri-urban areas and suburbs Formal development

Informal development

Typical environment

– gated communities, commodity housing compounds of villas and high-rises – new towns as enlarged and scaled-up version of gated development

– urban villages

Characteristics

– overly designed and packaged – gated, with amenity and security features – under-used in upper-market housing

– high building coverage, narrow alleyways, spontaneous pattern, crowding – under-serviced public facilities – concentration of migrants

The state

– entrepreneurial local state – development coalition with capital

– absence of service provision – maintenance of social control

Capital accumulation

– suburban property market as an outlet for capital investment – land sales and land-driven economic growth

– providing accommodation to migrant workers – under demolition to make way for formal land development

Private governance – homeowners’ associations – property management companies

– informal rental housing market – village collective as control over village shareholding assets

While peri-urban villages are informally developed and the provision of services is largely outside the state system, the presence of the state in social control is apparent. Recently, under measures to “maintain social stability” (wei wen), control offices were established and surveillance video was installed inside villages. In 2010, Beijing adopted a drastic controversial measure to enclose rural villages with a migrant population, requiring the installation of walls and gates and the presentation of ID upon entry. Now in almost every city migrants are required to register when they start renting in a village. To identify the exact dwelling of individual migrants or their families, new addresses are created for subdivisions that used to share the same address.

Suburban Development and Governance in China  319

With regard to the role of capital accumulation in these urban villages, along with the redevelopment of existing villages, some collectively owned rural land is allocated for “small-property-right” housing. The property right is “small” (or ad hoc) because it is not formally recognized by the state. This monopolistic right allows the state to capture the rent differentials, while the development of small-property-right housing enables the rural village to share the benefit (Li, Xu, & Li, 2010). The existence of small-property-right housing exposes the contradiction in dualistic peri-urban governance. However, recent trends in village redevelopment favour demolition of whole villages to make way for real estate development. In-situ redevelopment is rare. Villagers are more generously compensated than in the past in order to reduce their resistance to village redevelopment. Along with suburban redevelopment and the retrofitting of peri-urban villages, informal space is being eliminated. Therefore, in Chinese suburbs we see two trends unfolding simultaneously: the absence of the state from the provision of services, with the resulting informalization of village housing construction; and the increased presence of the state in social control and formalization through village redevelopment. Conclusion Since economic reform, China’s suburbs no longer bear a subordinate status and are becoming the frontier of Chinese urbanization. The suburban world is heterogeneous and juxtaposed with separate yet interlinked spatial fragments and enclaves. The development of the suburbs epitomizes the development regime, compounded by multiple driving forces and modalities and mechanisms of governance, as seen in other places in the world (Ekers et al., 2012). Ranging from the formally developed new towns to informal migrant settlements in the peri-urban area, each type of suburban fragment represents a different combination of development modalities. Yet these fragments are produced within the same coherent logic of the political economy of Chinese urban development. At the core of the dynamic is territorial (land) development: suburbs open up a new space of capital accumulation, in the sense that “suburbanization is seen as a solution” (Walker, 1981). The suburbs absorb a vast amount of capital inflow – through the development of ­middle-class estates and key infrastructure projects leading to an expanded transport network, export-processing zones, science and university towns, new towns, and eco-cities. Territorial development has

320  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen

become an indispensable element of the growth machine, while state entrepreneurialism arising after economic devolution and globalization secures the conditions for suburban development (Wu & Phelps, 2011). China’s suburban development clearly reflects the change from government to governance: the commodification of land has transformed the way in which suburbs develop. While the role of the state is pivotal, especially at the local level, development is co-engineered by actors beyond the state itself. Developers have become an important force in shaping the suburban landscape. Rising consumerism has driven the upwardly mobile middle-class to seek alternative, more exclusive, and high-quality living spaces. In order both to stimulate and meet this demand, branding, packaging, imagery, and marketing have become necessary (Wu, 2010). In gated suburban communities, a new form of self-governance has been tried through homeowners’ associations, and is promoted by the state as a way of creating social order; however, it is ultimately confined to the role of property management because of the state’s concern over its governable capacity (Wu, 2011). On the other hand, in the village housing market, the dominant form is private governance, where villagers and their collectives operate as small-scale ­developers, building or renovating the buildings on their assigned housing plots to develop private rental housing for migrant workers. Some even attempt to sell these properties as “partial-property-rights housing” in the informal and irregular market. The profound urban-­ rural duality is not disappearing along with the process of urbanization and suburban development. Rather, the divide is being turned into a new informality. Chinese suburbs thus are a mixture of suburban bourgeois utopia – or what Knox (2008) called “vulgaria” – from the Global North, and peri-urban informality from the Global South. Finally, from the perspective of suburban governance, what is Chinese “suburbia”? Chinese suburbia is not homogeneous but a collection of heterogeneous suburban worlds. For this reason, we might call it “post-suburbia” in recognition of its spatial and temporal differences from the American stereotype of suburbia – which represents an exception rather than the norm. REFERENCES Cervero, R., & Day, J. (2008). Suburbanization and transit-oriented development in China. Transport Policy, 15(5), 315–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/​ j.tranpol.2008.12.011.

Suburban Development and Governance in China  321 Chan, K.W. (2009). The Chinese Hukou system at 50. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 50(2), 197–221. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/1539-7216.50.2.197. Cox, K.R. (2010). The problem of metropolitan governance and the politics of scale. Regional Studies, 44(2), 215–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/​ 00343400903365128. Deng, F.F., & Huang, Y. (2004). Uneven land reform and urban sprawl in China: The case of Beijing. Progress in Planning, 61(3), 211–36. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1016/j.progress.2003.10.004. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Feng, J., Wang, F., & Zhou, Y. (2009). The spatial restructuring of population in metropolitan Beijing: Towards polycentricity in the post-reform era. Urban Geography, 30(7), 779–802. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.30.7.779. Feng, J., & Zhou, Y. (2005). Suburbanization and the changes of urban internal spatial structure in Hangzhou, China. Urban Geography, 26(2), 107–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.26.2.107. Fleischer, F. (2010). Suburban Beijing: Housing and consumption in contemporary China. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Haila, A. (2007). The market as the new emperor. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(1), 3–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427​ .2007.00703.x. Harris, R. (2004). Creeping conformity: How Canada became suburban, 1900–1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Harris, R. (2010). Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. In M. Clapson & R. Hutchison (Eds), Suburbanization in global society. Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 10 (15–47). Bingley, W. Yorks.: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Harris, R., & Larkham, P. (1999). Suburban foundation, form and function. In R. Harris & P. Larkham (Eds), Changing suburbs: Foundation, form and function (1–31). London: Spon Press. Harvey, D. (1978). The urban process under capitalism: A framework for analysis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2(1-4), 101–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.1978.tb00738.x. Huang, Y., & Low, S.M. (2008). Is gating always exclusionary? A comparative analysis of gated communities in American and Chinese cities. In J.R. Logan (Ed.), Urban China in transition (182–202). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470712870.ch8. Knox, P.L. (2008). Metroburbia. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Li, X., Xu, X., & Li, Z. (2010). Land property rights and urbanization in China. China Review, 10(1), 11–37.

322  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen Lin, G.C.S. (2007). Reproducing spaces of Chinese urbanisation: New citybased and land-centred urban transformation. Urban Studies, 44(9), 1827–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00420980701426673. Lin, G.C.S., & Yi, F. (2011). Urbanization of capital or capitalization on urban land? Land development and local public finance in urbanizing China. Urban Geography, 32(1), 50–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.32.1.50. Logan, J.R., & Molotch, H.L. (1987). Urban fortunes: The political economy of place. Berkeley: University of California Press. Low, S. (2003). Behind the gates: Life, security, and the pursuit of happiness in fortress America. London: Routledge. McGee, T.G., & Robinson, I.M. (Eds). (1995). The mega-urban regions of Southeast Asia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Phelps, N.A., Wood, A.M., & Valler, D.C. (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. Phelps, N.A., & Wu, F. (Eds). (2011). International perspectives on suburbanization: A post-suburban world? Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230308626. Po, L. (2008). Redefining rural collectives in China: Land conversion and the emergence of rural shareholding co-operatives. Urban Studies, 45(8), 1603–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098008091493. Pow, C.P. (2009). Gated communities in China: Class, privilege and the moral politics of the good life. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Shen, J., & Wu, F. (2012). The development of master-planned communities in Chinese suburbs: A case study of Shanghai’s Thames Town. Urban Geography, 33(2), 183–203. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.2.183. Tao, R., Su, F., Liu, M., & Cao, G. (2010). Land leasing and local public finance in China’s regional development: Evidence from prefecture-level cities. Urban Studies, 47(10), 2217–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/​ 0042098009357961. Tomba, L. (2005). Residential space and collective interest formation in Beijing’s housing disputes. China Quarterly, 184(1), 934–51. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1017/S0305741005000573. Walker, R. (1981). A theory of suburbanization: Capitalism and the production of urban space in the United States. In M. Dear & A. J. Scott (Eds), Urbanization and urban planning in capitalist society (383–430). New York: Methuen. Wang, L., Kundu, R., & Chen, X. (2010). Building for what and whom? New town development as planned suburbanization in China and India. In M. Clapson & R. Hutchison (Eds), Suburbanisation in global society (319–45).

Suburban Development and Governance in China  323 Research in Urban Sociology, Vol.10 (319–45). Bingley, W.Yorks.: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/S1047-0042(2010)0000010016. Webster, C. (2002). Property rights and the public realm: Gates, green belts, and Gemeinschaft. Environment & Planning B, 29(3), 397–412. http://dx.doi​ .org/10.1068/b2755r. Webster, C., Wu, F., & Zhao, Y. (2006). China’s modern gated cities. In G. Glasze, C. Webster, & K. Frantz (Eds), Private cities: Global and local perspectives (153–69). London and New York: Routledge. Wong, S.W., & Tang, B.S. (2005). Challenges to the sustainability of “development zones”: A case study of Guangzhou Development District, China. Cities, 22(4), 303–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2005.05.008. Wu, F. (2004). Residential relocation under market-oriented redevelopment: The process and outcomes in urban China. Geoforum, 35(4), 453–70. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2003.10.001. Wu, F. (2005). Rediscovering the “gate” under market transition: From workunit compounds to commodity housing enclaves. Housing Studies, 20(2), 235–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026730303042000331754. Wu, F. (2009). Neo-urbanism in the making under China’s market transition. City, 13(4), 418–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604810903298474. Wu, F. (2010). Gated and packaged suburbia: Packaging and branding Chinese suburban residential development. Cities, 27(5), 385–96. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1016/j.cities.2010.06.003. Wu, F. (2011). Retreat from a totalitarian society: China’s urbanism in the making. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (Eds), The New Blackwell companion to the city (701–12). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Wu, F. (2012). Urbanization. In A. So & W. Tay (Eds), Handbook of contemporary China (237-62). Singapore: World Scientific. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/​ 9789814350099_0009. Wu, F., He, S., & Webster, C. (2010). Path dependency and the neighbourhood effect: Urban poverty in impoverished neighbourhoods in Chinese cities. Environment & Planning A, 42(1), 134–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a4264. Wu, F., & Phelps, N.A. (2008). From suburbia to post-suburbia in China? Aspects of the transformation of the Beijing and Shanghai global city regions. Built Environment, 34(4), 464–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.2148/benv​ .34.4.464. Wu, F., & Phelps, N.A. (2011). (Post) suburban development and state entrepreneurialism in Beijing’s outer suburbs. Environment & Planning A, 43(2), 410–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a43125. Wu, F., Xu, J., & Yeh, A.G.-O. (2007). Urban development in post-reform China: State, market and space. London: Routledge.

324  Fulong Wu and Jie Shen Wu, F., Zhang, F., & Webster, C. (2013). Informality and the development and demolition of urban villages in the Chinese peri-urban area. Urban Studies, 50(10), 1919–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098012466600 Wu, F., & Zhang, J. (2007). Planning the competitive city-region: The emergence of strategic development plan in China. Urban Affairs Review, 42(5), 714–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1078087406298119. Xu, J., Yeh, A.G.O., & Wu, F. (2009). Land commodification: New land development and politics in China since the late 1990s. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(4), 890–913. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/​ j.1468-2427.2009.00892.x. Zhou, Y., & Logan, J.R. (2008). Growth on the edge: The new Chinese metropolis. In J.R. Logan (Ed.), Urban China in transition (140–60). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470712870.ch6. Zhou, Y., & Ma, L.J.C. (2000). Economic restructuring and suburbanization in China. Urban Geography, 21(3), 205–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/​ 0272-3638.21.3.205. Zhu, J., & Hu, T. (2009). Disordered land-rent competition in China’s periurbanization: Case study of Beiqijia Township, Beijing. Environment & Planning A, 41(7), 1629–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a41147.

15 Deconstructing the Decentralized Urban Spaces of the Mega-Urban Regions in the Global South terry mcgee

In this Calcutta’s messy urban fringes … their historicized specificity is an indication of how urban politics is constitutive of inevitably different trajectories of urbanization … (Roy, 2003: 1)

Introduction Recently, Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012) have introduced the helpful concept of “decentralized urban spaces” to capture the process of the expansion of urban activity on the peripheries of urbanizing areas. Today this peripheral expansion continues to accelerate as urbanization has increased globally to reach a level of more than 50 per cent. They go on to define this expansion process generically as “suburbanization,” which is “a combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansions” (Ekers et al., 2012: 407) that is best understood “through the lenses of self-built, state-led and private-led development” (Ekers et al., 2012: 407). At the urban level, the way these three sets of actors drive “expansion” and the degree of their interaction are always set in the particular context of each urban area, creating “inevitably different trajectories of urbanization” that lead to a multiplicity of urban realities. Past theory has attempted to universalize these realities of urban spaces by creating zonal models, often drawn from the North American experience, of core cities, peripheral zones, and mixed rural-urban zones on the margins of urban places. But the latest phase of urbanization is dominated by the rapid growth of urbanization in the Global South, occurring in a “new phase of global capitalism” (Sassen,

326  Terry McGee

2010: 1) characterized by increased connectivity and interaction in urban space that make these older models outmoded. Sassen’s vision rests upon a recognition of the main components of globalization: the creation of new, more rapid forms of transport and communication and the development of more penetrative global circuits of capital that operate in the service, production, and consumption sectors to create “transcending networks” that reshape urban systems and urban space at the global, national, and subnational level. This process is buttressed by a neoliberal ideology that privileges the market system and seeks to deregulate the international and national regulatory environments (McGee, 2002). But in a contradictory manner, this “space of flows” that is integrating urban space is also creating intra-urban socio-economic disparities between the core cities and the peripheries of urban spaces that emerge as a major fracture zone posing challenges for improvements in the government and management of urban places. Often, the analysis of this process privileges city cores by emphasizing the role city cores play as “international gateways” that are major transport nodes, locations of higher-order services, and the locus of national political power. This means that the economic and social contribution of peripheries to the overall performance of mega-urban regions is undervalued. Too much emphasis is placed in public policy perceptions on the “difficulties” that the “messy urban fringes” present to the performance and image of the urban spaces as a modern symbol of progress in the global economy. This point of view undervalues the complex interaction set up by the expansion of urban activity into non-urban peripheries, where local politics exacerbate tensions between local development and resistance to change in the peripheries of urban places. Rather than simply reflecting the homogeneous imprint of global and national forces, these processes exhibit both articulation and disarticulation with global forces in certain urban spaces and disarticu­ lation in others. In this way, as the urban places of the Global South have grown, urban space has been reconfigured into articulated networks of interaction between middle- and upper-class dwellers, private companies, and the state, while excluding “much of the intervening or peripheral spaces from accessing networks, because the networks pass through the spaces without allowing local access” (Graham, 1997: 1120). This means that decentralized urban space, rather than being a homogeneous spatial zone, is fractured urban space that replaces the earlier  zonal models of urban space. Thus, suburban expansion at the  global  level is characterized by hybridity, social and economic

Decentralized Urban Spaces in the Global South  327

differentiation, and the splintering of urban space, particularly in the peripheries of urban places. As some writers have explained, this condition has being shaped by the division between “formal” regulated space such as the central business district and “informal” unregulated spaces where “squatter settlements” and illegal small enterprises are ubiquitous. But the splintering of urban space means that these informal and formal activities occur throughout urban areas. In this intervention, I want to explore the implications of this idea of “decentralized urban space” and the challenges of governance of urban places. I structure this discussion around three modalities. First, I clarify some of the terms that I use in this discussion. Second, I analyse the concepts of urban space and urban place in order to aid the understanding of the concept of “decentralized urban space.” And finally, I focus on the challenges created for urban spaces, particularly those of the largest urban agglomerations that I define as mega-urban regions, illustrated by examples from Asia. Clearing the Decks: Issues of Definition In this paper, the term “urban place” is used to capture the idea of any territorial area in which the majority of economic activity can be defined as non-agricultural. In most cases, this urban place is recognized jurisdictionally as urban, and such urban places form part of an urban system that in turn forms a hierarchy: mega-urban regions, city regions, and metropolitan regions. These urban agglomerations include many secondary cities, urban districts, and – in some cases – jurisdictional units that are still regarded as rural. One of the best examples of this complexity is Chongqing in western China. In 1997, it was elevated from the status of municipality to that of national city by the central government. This area included nineteen urban districts and nineteen counties. The population of 29 million (said to be the world’s largest urban agglomeration at that time) was divided between the urbanized districts, where 5 million lived, and rural counties where the remainder were located. Below these mega-urban regions in the urban hierarchy are secondary cities (often called “intermediate cities”) that are generally smaller in population size and spatial extent. On the lowest rung of the hierarchy are smaller towns and hamlets. It is important to emphasize that the process of “suburban expansion,” with different mixes of urban activity, characterizes all urban places in the urban hierarchy. For example, the capital of the state of Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia, the Municipality of

328  Terry McGee

Seremban, has increased its population from 383,000 in 2000 to 565,000 in 2010. Virtually all of the increase occurred in the areas outside the core city and was characterized by the absorption of existing populations through boundary extensions and the growth of residential, retailing, and industrial activity on the urban periphery. Thus, the intermedi­ ate  urban place of Seremban exhibits the same features of “decentralized urban space” as the wider metropolitan region of Kuala Lumpur (Shamsuddin, Samad, & Abdul, 2011). Given the fact that U.N. estimates suggest that some 60 per cent of Asia’s urban population live in intermediate and medium-sized urban places (Bharat, 2012: 2), it may certainly be argued that “decentralized urban space” is a common feature of the contemporary urbanization process. A second definitional challenge relates to concepts of government and governance. These are, of course, ideal types in which traditional definitions emphasize the distinction between “government” as a political system in which a government has the authority to make and enforce laws within a defined political space, and “governance,” which is what government does and how it consults with parts of society. However, in recent decades there has been a conceptual and practical merging of these two categories, particularly in the urban context, so that policy making is directed to encompass elements of civil society, including both the private sector and a focus on increased community consultation and participation (Healey, 1997; Vranken, de Decker, & Van Nieuwnhuyze, 2003). Policy spaces have increasingly opened up at the local level to allow consultation with civil society (McGee, 2010). Deconstructing Concepts of Urban Space and Place Finally, I want to clarify the distinction between “urban space” and “urban place.” In Lefebvre’s concept of urban space the main forces driving the production of space are the state, the market, and society. In contrast the concept of “urban place” refers to particular territorial sites that are modified by such processes as environmental change as well as human intervention. In The Production of Space (1991), Lefebvre argues that the history of human society has been centrally concerned with the production of space. This is a multi-tiered process that means much more than the physical process of converting the “natural environment” (e.g., land) to other purposes through human intervention. It is in fact a process of spatialization that is filtered through the prisms of geographical setting, historical experience, local culture, and particular mode(s) of production (e.g., non-market and market modes). Lefebvre

Decentralized Urban Spaces in the Global South  329

suggests that spaces are produced by what he refers to as a “conceptual triad.” First, there are the “spatial practices” that produce space: for example, the decision by private entrepreneurs to invest in mega-urban regions. Second there are “representations of space,” which refers to the way that urban space is conceived by the state, planners, engineers, bureaucrats, investors, and other groups. Their decisions to jurisdictionally change non-urban space to urban space, as in the case of Chonquing, is part of the process of the transformation of rural to urban space. Third, we can identify “representation spaces,” which are seen as arenas in which various actors are engaged in the decision making that influences the formation of the urban space, as well as in living their everyday lives. These actors interact to a varying degree with national and international actors. Increasing attention is being paid to the challenges that the growth of the economically driven mega-urban region creates for the everyday life of the inhabitants of these cities (see, for example, Kelly, 2000; Roy, 2003). This is a more humanistic view that perceives urban space as part of the fabric of history, culture, and memories of people’s everyday lives. Many of these actions are being carried out at the micro-level of individuals and households as they accommodate, adapt to, and resist the results of the powerful drivers of “mega-­ urban spatialization.” For example, many households adapt to the growth of employment opportunities in the “industrial estates” of the mega-urban region by using strategies that allocate part of their household labour to industrial work while continuing to farm. Of course, as Lefebvre recognizes, there is ongoing inequality in the power of each of the main drivers in the urbanization of space. Prevail­ ing theories of globalization give primacy to the role of the private sector, in cooperation with the state, as the major driver of the urbanization of space. Sassen (2010) calls this “a new imperial geography,” for many states in the Global South accept the premise that urbanization is a requirement for economic growth and encourage the process from the top down. But many studies suggest that the process is far more dialectical than top down, arguing that local populations play a more active role in contesting the “politics of accumulation and legitimation of place” (Hsing, 2010: 12). Governing Suburban Expansion: Policy Issues In the third modality, I discuss the challenges of the growth of “decentralized urban space,” as urban peripheries attempt to develop new systems of government, management, and governance. The ongoing

330  Terry McGee

growth of urbanization in the Global South, estimated to be 75 per cent of all global urban growth over the next thirty years, poses major challenges (UN Population Division, 2008), such as an ongoing fiscal imbalance between wealthy city cores and fiscally starved peripheries. The policy solutions for these peripheries are not easy. Unlike the urban cores, they are not generally governed by a single government: the margins are politically fragmented, and there are often subregional variations in the ecosystems that create great difficulty for policy makers. Growth in urban peripheries creates a complex policy environment in which a myriad of decisions at the local level come into conflict with the transformative elements of higher-level government, the private sector, and so on. The result is a decisional congestion of management in these decentralized urban spaces (see figure 15.1). This decisional congestion is compounded by the rapid growth of population and the “grey” character of the mega-urban peripheries, where regulations relating to environmental deterioration, land use, and the built environment are rarely implemented. The many challenges that result include the deterioration of ecosystems and increasing vulnerability to climate risk (De Sherbinen, Schiller, & Pulsipher, 2007) and issues related to the creation of livable urban spaces, the development of public services and systems of governance, and the implementation of the necessary policy responses (see Yiftachel, 2009). The final policy challenge is the most difficult, for it involves the “soft development” of embedded institutions that are often resistant to change. To make changes to the institutions, governance must be widened by the inclusion of civil society. There are three main challenges to creating these new urban governance structures for mega-urban regions. The first is the need to develop effective collaborative relationships between national, provincial, and urban governments on one side and local governments on the other. The second is the need to develop collaborative institutions within urban areas that often consist of diverse, fragmented municipalities and adjacent districts where uneven fiscal resources, different political parties, and contrasting policy goals complicate urbanizing activities, suggesting that an increase in local collaboration is critical to finding governance solutions for mega-urban regions (Zoomers & van Western, 2011). Third, more inclusive systems of governance that incorporate civil society must be developed in order to allow more local participation in policy formation and implementation. While there are many examples of different types of collaboration in the governance of mega-urban regions in Asia, I want to illustrate this

Figure 15.1 Model of decision processes in peripheral regions in the Global South

332  Terry McGee

by the case of the Jakarta Mega-Urban Region (JMUR). With 30 million people (as of 2010), it is now one of the largest mega-urban regions in the world (McGee, 2011). The JMUR, like the majority of Asian mega-urban regions, has only a very weak regional administrative agency, the Development Coordinating Agency (established in 1975). Its responsibilities involve monitoring, planning, and coordinating the development of the Jakarta Raya (Jabodetabek), an area that does not include all the rural margins where urbanization is presently occurring. It is co-chaired by the governors of Jakarta, Banten, and West Java provinces, with each serving for one year in rotation. A small staff looks after its daily administration. Fiscally, it relies on support from the cities of the three provinces. In 2007, a national law was passed setting up a framework for cooperation between the three provinces and some national ministries. Despite the efforts of former Governor Sutiyoso (2007) of Jakarta Raya and the president of Indonesia to encourage greater cooperation in the region, it has been slow to develop (Firman, 2010). Yet this region is part of the same ecosystem and has an economy that is increasingly functionally integrated. Spatially, the JMUR is characterized by a high degree of political fragmentation, unequally distributed resources, and considerable social and economic inequality between and within the many political units that form the region. Thus, in the JMUR, spatial restructuring is rapid in Jakarta city with some upgrading of city nodes in the periphery; however, urban activity such as residential settlement and industry that creates social and economic fragmentation, particularly in terms of access to services and public space, is leap-frogging the remainder of the periphery. While at present the major driver for development in the JMUR is the need for economic growth, in the longer term the management goal for these mega-urban regions must be to ensure livability and sustainability, as well as to increase the economic growth and competitive edge of the region. This goal is part of a strategy for enhancing the economic attractiveness of the region that can be carried out in a multilayered manner involving all levels of government. Central to this process will be the ability to develop systems of regional governance that are based upon the collaboration of existing political units and the development of more inclusive systems of governance. This, of course, requires the continuation of the regional visioning of mega-­ urban space that is slowly beginning to develop in the mega-urban regions of Southeast Asia. In this respect, Brenner’s carefully articulated

Decentralized Urban Spaces in the Global South  333

review of metropolitan regionalism in the United States and Europe has some relevance. He describes metropolitan regionalism as “including all strategies to establish institutions, policies or governance mechanisms at a geographical scale which approximates that of existing socio-economic interdependencies within an urban agglomeration” (Brenner, 1999). In 1995, McGee and Robinson (1995) argued that the central imperative for the large mega-urban regions of Southeast Asia was the need to create a response at a regional level, as discussed earlier in this section. But in the decade since this argument was presented, it has become increasingly obvious that it will be necessary to adopt policy solutions for these urban regions that combine regional vision with a focus on the preservation of ecosystems and a rapid response to environmental problems. This would involve subregional intervention that recognizes the spatial diversity of mega-urban regions and contingent solutions at the local level. Finally, as various policies are introduced for urban regions, it is important to respond to the issues of vulnerability that are being created by global environmental deterioration, and what seem likely to be long-term increases in the prices of fossil fuel and food. One policy response being advocated in developed countries is to plan for higher-density cores (compact cities) that would reduce the use of the automobile and develop public transport systems (see Marcotullio, 1991). In the Global South, there are already policies designed to create high-density compact cities – including polynucleated systems that are seen as a counter to the ongoing unsustainable expansion of the outer areas of cities. But the reality is that problems of financing and the ongoing commitment to motorized transportation encourage ongoing “suburban expansion” and the creation of “decentralized urban space.” Conclusion Finally, I want to turn to the future role that mega-urban regions will play in the economic, social, and political transformation of the Global South in the next forty years. At present it may be argued that there are two broad scenarios in play. One scenario assumes that the development transition will continue on its present trajectory in the Global South. This is based on assumptions that world GDP will almost triple by 2050 and that technological innovation will provide solutions to many of the challenges listed earlier. This will be facilitated by space-time collapse in

334  Terry McGee

communications that will create an increasingly integrated world. The end product will be a largely developed, urbanized world of an estimated 9 billion people, of which almost 2 billion will be over sixty years of age. Another scenario is that the last phase of the “great development transition,” of which the current urbanization trajectory of the Global South forms a part, will not be an easy one, for it will be battered by economic volatility, environmental degradation, and political tensions. Gladwin (2008) has produced estimates on the trajectory of this “late development transition model” that suggest energy consumption will increase by one-third by 2030. Despite efforts to increase alternative sources of energy, much of the energy mix will still involve fossil fuels in an era in which increasing global demand is depleting these resources. The extent of built-up urban areas will almost double by 2030, with much of the expansion occurring in the Global South. Economic and social inequality will persist, with “slum dwellers” making up almost one-third of urban dwellers by 2030. Finally, even if governments, the private sector, and individuals do make decisions that attempt to mediate the environmental challenges of the next thirty years, carbon gas emissions will grow by almost a quarter, and the proportion of the global population experiencing severe water scarcity will grow by almost 50 per cent. Even allowing for the fact that these global trends have a different rate of impact at the subglobal level, they raise questions concerning the validity of the “late development transition” as a model for the Global South in which almost 60 per cent of all ­urban growth will occur over the next forty years (UN Population Division, 2008). The implication is that the present trajectory of urban expansion will be radically changed in the short term. This is problematic, especially as cities in the Global South are already enthusiastically adopting the low-density “suburban expansion” periphery model of some developed countries, creating an ongoing policy dilemma. As Angel, Parent, Civco, Blei, and Potere (2010) conclude, there is no option – because of the higher urban densities of the cities of the Global South – but to increase public transport systems and public services in response to these challenges. In the short term it seems unlikely that these expansionary trends can be reversed. Of course it may well be that a vision will emerge in the Global South that could draw on the experience of Tokyo. In this case, the largest mega-urban region of the world has comparatively low densities even

Decentralized Urban Spaces in the Global South  335

in the city core but moves more than 60 per cent of its daily commuters by public transport and has developed a polynucleated set of city cores. The alternative could see the persistence for some time of the “fractured and splintered space” of the peripheries as a major component of decentralized urban space in the mega-urban regions in the rapidly ­urbanizing countries of the Global South. REFERENCES Angel, S., Parent, J., Civco, D., Blei, A., & Potere, D. (2010). A planet of cities: Urban land cover estimates and projections for all countries, 2000–2050. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper. Bharat, D. (2012). 21st century Asian cities: Unique transformation, unprecedented challenges. Global Asia, 7(1), 1–10. Brenner, N. (1999). Globalization as reterritorialism: The rescaling of urban governance in the European Union. Urban Studies, 36(3), 431–51. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1080/0042098993466. De Sherbinin, A., Schiller, A., & Pulsipher, A. (2007). The vulnerability of global cities to climate hazards. Environment and Urbanization, 19(1), 39–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956247807076725. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanism of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Firman, T. (2010). Governing Jakarta: Old problems, new challenges. Jakarta Post, 14 July. Gladwin, T.N. (2008). Doomsday alert: Megachallenges confronting urban modernity. Journal of the International Institute, 16(1). http://quod.lib.umich​ .edu/j/jii. Graham, S. (1997). Cities in a real time age: The paradigm challenge of telecommunications to the conceptions of planning urban space. Environment & Planning, 29(1), 105–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a290105. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies. Houndsmill and London: MacMillan Press. Hsing, Y.-T. (2010). The great urban transformation. Politics of land and property in China. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780199568048.001.0001. Kelly, P.F. (2000). Landscapes of globalization: Human geographies of economic change in the Philippines. London: Routledge. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.

336  Terry McGee Marcotullio, P.J. (1991). The compact city, environmental transition theory and Asia-Pacific sustainable development. Paper presented at the International Workshop New Approaches to Land Management for Sustainable Urban Regions, 29–30 October, Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo. McGee, T.G. (2002). Reconstructing the Southeast Asian city in an era of volatile globalization. In T. Bunnel, L.B.W Drummond, & K.C. Ho (Eds), Critical reflections on cities in Southeast Asia (31–53). Singapore: Times Academic Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685310260188718. McGee, T.G. (2010). Strengthening collaborative governance for metropolitan regions in Brazil and Canada. In T.G. McGee & E. de Castro (Eds), Inclusion, collaboration and urban governance: Challenges in the metropolitan regions of Brazil and Canada (23–49). Centre for Human Settlements, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. McGee, T.G. (2011). Deconstructing the mega-city. A case study of the Jakarta mega-urban region (JMUR) in the 21st century. Unpublished paper prepared for the Mega-Cities and the Global Environment Project, Research Institute of Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan. 44pp. McGee, T.G., & Robinson, I. (Eds). (1995). The mega-urban regions of Southeast Asia. Challenges and response. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Roy, A. (2003). City requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the politics of poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shamsuddin, I., Samad, H., & Abdul, H.F.M. (2011). Viewing urban expansion from below: The complexity of sustainable urban growth. Academica. Journal of Southeast Asia Social Sciences and Humanities, 81(2), 49–58. Sassen, S. (2010). Global inter-city networks and commodity chains: Any intersections? Global Networks, 10(1), 150–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/​ j.1471-0374.2010.00279.x. Sutiyoso. (2007). Megapolitan. Jakarta: Elix Media Kampuntindo. UN Population Division. (2008). World urbanization prospects: The 2007 revision. NewYork. United Nations. Vranken, J., de Decker, P., & Van Nieuwnhuyze, I. (2003). Social inclusion, urban Asia governance and urbanization project. Antwerp, Apeldoorn: Garant. Yiftachel, O. (2009). Theoretical notes on gray cities: The coming of urban apartheid. Planning Theory, 8(1), 88–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/​ 1473095208099300. Zoomers, A., & van Western, G. (2011). Introduction: Translocal development corridors and development chains. International Development Planning Review, 33(1), 377–88.

16  Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs ananya roy

Introduction Last month, on the edges of the Kolkata Metropolitan Region, several thousand squatters living in an informal settlement called Nonadanga were forcibly evicted from their homes. Displaced in 2009 from their villages by Cyclone Alia, these rural landless households had first squatted by the railway tracks at yet another peripheral site before being evicted and resettled at Nonadanga. Since then, their awkward shacks had hovered in the strip of land that separated a somewhat dilapidated middle-class housing cluster from the suburban highway. They were yet another cadre of construction labourers, domestic servants, and vegetable vendors. The eviction, a common routine in Indian cities, nevertheless came as a surprise. After all, these squatters were part of the massive body of rural-urban poor who had recently ousted the Left Front government and swept into power the populist Trinamul Congress party. The displacement and dispossession of the poor, especially on the rural peripheries of the city, was a decisive issue in this political shake-up, with the Trinamul Congress pledging an end to land grabs by the state. Less than a year after these elections, the Nonadanga eviction suggests a new regime of land grabs. The Nonadanga squatters were evicted by the very political functionaries who had facilitated their resettlement at this site, and by those who had regularly collected “taxes” and other paralegal payments. Having cleared the land, the metropolitan authorities are now considering a ninety-nine-year lease to a private developer for a luxury retail development. The eviction was speculative in that the bids for such a lease have yet to be initiated.

338  Ananya Roy

There is nothing spectacular or significant about Nonadanga. Yet this is precisely why it deserves notice, for it highlights the mundane logics through which metropolitan space is being produced and restructured in cities like Kolkata. Three provocations come to mind. First, Nonadanga is an instantiation of the variegated landscapes of slum and suburb that today characterize the metropolitan edges of Southern cities. Indeed, the rise of suburban poverty in America suggests that such variegation may also be present in the Global North, although perhaps not with the intimate proximities evident in the Global South. That these intimate proximities are increasingly managed through the creation of fortified enclaves is obvious. Indeed, Sidaway (2007) makes the case for the emergence of “enclave space” as a “new metageography of development.” However, the intricate contradictions of enclave space are crucial. It is thus that in her work on walling practices, Caldeira (2000: 255) draws attention to the difficult suturing of democratization and segregation, to how those who have earned political recognition as members of the demos are simultaneously subject to spatial separation and stigma. Second, the Nonadanga eviction is an example of what, following Brenner (2004), can be understood as state space. Part of an iterative temporality of eviction and resettlement, populism and modernization, such spatial strategies of regulation indicate the territorialized flexibility of the state (Roy, 2003). Of course, I use the term “state” expansively because I am interested in both specific arms of the state – for example, the role of the Egyptian military in the management and capitalization of suburban land – as well as in non-state actors that do the work of the state – for example, Hezbollah’s sovereign power in the southern suburbs of Beirut. It would be a mistake to read such processes through Harvey’s (2005) analytics of accumulation by dispossession. Surely dispossession is at work, but so are projects of political enlistment, territorial resettlement, and cultural hegemony. It is this complex field of social and spatial regulation – what Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012: 406) have called “suburban governance” – that must be analysed. Finally, Nonadanga marks the fragility of such assemblages of suburban governance. On the one hand, the state’s plans for development created the urgent impetus for sudden eviction. On the other hand, many such emptied plots of land dot the edges of the Kolkata metropolitan region. Attached to each is a development plan, abandoned before completion – water parks, business parks, technology parks,

Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs  339

ecological parks. And of course at Nonadanga, the evicted and displaced continue to organize and mobilize, with middle-class activists pledging solidarity with such struggles. Such mobilizations cannot be discounted, for they indicate the contentious character of metropolitan expansion. Indeed, in his work on the auto-constructed peripheries of Sao Paulo, Holston (2008) argues that it is in and from these marginal spaces that a new politics of urban citizenship – an insurgent citizenship – is possible. In this essay, I take up the question of suburban governance by more closely examining each of the three provocations presented by Nona­ danga. In particular, I seek to refine the analysis of governance by foregrounding specific modalities of regulation, namely distinction, informality, and political society. Implicated in this task is the difficult question of whether such modalities of regulation are unique to cities of the Global South, in other words, to postcolonial suburbs. This is the literal meaning of “postcolonial suburb.” But I also use the term to suggest that such types of analysis, forged in the crucible of the Southern urban experience, may engender a reconceptualization of suburbs in the Global North. Indeed, if one is to consider imperial histories and racialized geographies, the North Atlantic suburbs are also (post)colonial. The Suburban Enclave: A Spatial Strategy of Distinction In their analysis of suburban governance, Ekers, Hamel, and Keil (2012: 416) argue that “privatized authoritarian forms of governance” are on the rise. They note that gated communities are one manifestation of such proliferation and that gated landscapes are accordingly “a form of spatial governance.” Here, I seek to extend this argument by focusing on one specific modality of governance: distinction. The gated enclave is an example of “residential private government” (McKenzie, 2005). But it is also, as Low (2003: 390) notes, a “new spatial governmentality.” McKenzie thus argues that what is at work is “the construction of a physical and institutional pomerium, or sanctified wall, around the affluent portions of an increasingly divided society” (McKenzie, 2005: 188). Such fortified enclaves produce what Teresa Caldeira (2000: 4) has described as a “city of walls,” “a space in which inequality is an organizing value.” In previous work, I have argued that it is also necessary to interpret enclaves as the territorialization of freedom (AlSayyad & Roy, 2006: 8).

340  Ananya Roy

Pow, for example, argues that Shanghai’s gated communities must be understood as a new private order that at once “departs from communal living patterns and hegemonic state controls” (2007: 814–15). In a broader sense, gated enclaves give materiality to what Rose (1999), deploying Foucault, has termed the “powers of freedom,” the forms of governing that presuppose the freedom of the governed. In this sense, the gated enclave is an important technology of rule and of subjectivation, one that operates through the double helix of liberty and property, freedom and protection. It is worth clarifying the use of the term “enclave.” In a seminal essay, Peter Marcuse (1997) defined three separate terms: “ghetto,” “citadel,” and “enclave.” Marcuse argued that the ghetto was the “result of the involuntary spatial segregation of a group that stands in a subordinate political and social relationship to its surrounding society”; the citadel “was created by a dominant group to protect or enhance its superior position”; and the enclave was “a voluntarily developed spatial concentration of a group for purposes of promoting the welfare of its members” (1997: 228). In its more recent use, the term “enclave urbanism” has come to mean less the ethnic enclaves of which Marcuse writes and more the urban “citadel” first described by Friedmann and Wolff (1982). They introduced the term “citadel” to refer to spaces that served “the specific needs of the transnational elites and their immediate retinues who rule the city’s economic life.” But as Marcuse rightly notes, such “fortified communities” are widespread and thus no longer restricted to those “at the very top of the international hierarchy” (1997: 247). Building on Marcuse’s analytical definitions, I suggest that the term “enclave” is a useful designation for spaces of habitation that embody distinction. The work of Pierre Bourdieu is particularly important in thinking about enclaves as spatial strategies of distinction. For Bourdieu, distinction, as the “judgment of taste,” is the social practice of class power. It regulates the “economy of cultural goods” and produces an “aristocracy of culture” (Bourdieu, 1984: 1, 11). Distinction makes possible the assertion of difference. “The system of class conditions is also a system of differences, differential positions, i.e. by everything which distinguishes it from what is not and especially from what it is opposed to; social identity is defined and asserted through difference” (Bourdieu, 1984: 170–1). In this sense, enclaves can be understood as a “space of life-styles” (Bourdieu, 1984: 169) that in turn is homologous to the “social space” of differentiated classes. Here I depart from recent efforts to

Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs  341

broaden the analytical scope of gated communities. For example, Sassen (2010: xi–xii) endorses the “shift from the familiar notion of gated community to a more generic notion of urban gating.” She argues that by focusing on gated communities of the rich and privileged, we may have missed that “the poor also seek protected spaces.” I argue that in the study of urban and suburban enclaves it is not enough to consider protection; it is necessary to understand distinction. The aesthetic regulation of taste is central to Bourdieu’s formulation of distinction. In a series of essays, Pow (2009: 372) analyses the “aesthetic abundance” of residential gated enclaves in Shanghai. These types of aestheticization, Pow (2009: 372–3) argues, “actively construct gated communities as emblematic of the urban good life” and thereby make possible the “performance of elite middle-class identities … and social distinction.” The “aestheticized praxis of exclusion” – as Pow (2009: 373) terms it – enacts depoliticization by reducing class relations to “questions of lifestyle choices, consumption patterns, visual pleasures, and good taste.” Such aesthetic praxis must also be understood as a form of rule, what Ghertner (2011) has titled “rule by aesthetics.” In his analysis of the production of space in Delhi, Ghertner (2010: 185) argues that it is necessary to “expand our understanding of the epistemology of government to include attention to a more diverse array of governmental technologies, some more aesthetic than strictly calculative.” He also, quite provocatively, argues that the urban poor take up such aesthetic norms “as a basis for both locating themselves in the changing city and for framing their own world-class aspirations.” A glimpse of such desires is also provided by Pow (2009): What is also interesting is that while many of the urban poor I spoke to may ostensibly oppose the gated neighborhoods, they themselves harbor the desire to “live in one of these upscale gated estates” if they ever “strike it rich someday.” Among the urban poor interviewed, even though they may be critical of the inconvenience brought about by the presence of enclosed communities, there is also a general acceptance that rich people “who made it” are deserving of such a beautiful and exclusive living environment because they “can well afford it.” (378)

It is in this sense that the postcolonial suburb is governed through the modality of distinction and its cultural economy of aesthetic normativity.

342  Ananya Roy

Informality: Between Slum and Suburb In writing of the ghetto as a space of ethnoracial closure and control, Wacquant (2009) analyses territorial stigma as an effect of the state. As spaces regulated by distinction, enclaves too must be understood as an effect of the state, produced by state strategies of territorial enablement or “deregulatory experimentation” – a phrase I borrow from Jamie Peck’s chapter in this book (chapter 6). Here I pinpoint the role of the state through a specific modality of governance: informality. Although informality is often considered to be synonymous with poverty, I prefer to think about informality as a mode of the production of space. Such a conceptualization is of considerable relevance to our understandings of postcolonial suburbs. The variegated landscape of the postcolonial suburb, those intimate proximities of slum and suburb, are landscapes of urban informality. As the case of Nonadanga reveals, the edges of metropolitan regions are a patchwork of valorized and devalorized spaces that constitute a volatile frontier of accumulation, capitalist expansion, gentrification, and displacement. However, what the Nonadanga case obscures is that urban informality is internally differentiated. The splintering of urbanism does not take place at the fissure between formality and informality but rather, in fractal fashion, within the informalized production of space. A closer look at the metropolitan regions of much of the world indicates that informal urbanization is as much the purview of wealthy urbanites and suburbanites as it is of squatters and slum dwellers. These forms of elite informality are no more legal than squatter settlements and shantytowns. But they are expressions of class power and can thus command infrastructure, services, and legitimacy in a way that marks them as substantially different from the landscape of slums. To consider informality as a modality of governance is to thus consider how elite informalities are valorized and legalized while subaltern informalities are criminalized. Of course it is the state that often determines what is informal and what is not, thus allowing the elite “farm houses” on the edges of Delhi, or bourgeois “new towns” in Kolkata’s periphery, to function legally as appendages of the agrarian land laws, while squatter settlements throughout the city are criminalized and violently demolished. Indeed, the state itself can be conceptualized as an informalized entity. While it has often been assumed that the modern state governs its subjects through technologies of visibility,

Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs  343

counting, mapping, and enumerating, in previous work I argue that regimes of rule also operate through an “unmapping” of cities (Roy, 2003). This is particularly evident on the periphery of Calcutta, where the lack of centralized and certain knowledge about land allows the state the territorialized flexibility necessary for its dual imperatives of developmentalism (conversion of land to urban use) and populism (political ties to sharecroppers and squatters). Nonadanga simultaneously manifests both imperatives. I am arguing, then, that it is territorialized flexibility, deployed via the modality of informality – deregulatory experimentation if you will – that makes possible the ambitious frontiers of speculative urbanism so brilliantly charted by Goldman (2011). In detailing how the speculative task of making world-class cities – often at the suburban edge – implicates a dense landscape of actors – from parastatal agencies and international finance institutions to investment capital and middle-class middlemen – Goldman reminds us that the suburb is a social construction, and a fragile one at that. Political Society at the Edge The fragility of suburban governance is evident in various ways: Goldman highlights the sheer bankruptcy of models of speculation; I have already made note of the illusory character of the plan, of that which is abandoned even before it has been initiated; others highlight the struggle to maintain a territory of distinction. For example, Pow (2009: 386) documents the “small acts of everyday resistance” by the urban poor that “destabilize the aesthetic boundaries” of Chinese fortified residential enclaves. These acts of “trespassing” include vandalism, graffiti, but also practices of everyday habitation such as the hanging of wet laundry by the poor on the ornamental gates of upscale gated communities or the spray-painting of advertisements for household services on the walls surrounding these estates. This “quiet encroachment of the ordinary” – to borrow a phrase from Asef Bayat (2000) – makes impossible the hermetic closure of the enclave. Indeed, as Pow (2009: 387) notes, in Shanghai, the urban poor view the enclaves of the rich as the encroachment – the “encroachment of their neighborhoods by upscale gated communities which often meant that they had to make lengthy detours between destinations.” How then do we view the politics of the periphery? In an influential treatise on postcolonial urban politics, Partha Chatterjee (2004: 38)

344  Ananya Roy

makes a distinction between “civil” and “political” societies. Civil society is bourgeois society and, in the Indian context, an arena of institutions and practices inhabited by a relatively small section of people able to make claims as fully enfranchised citizens. By contrast, political society is the constellation of claims made by those who are only tenuously and ambiguously right-bearing citizens. Chatterjee (2004: 41) writes that civil society, “restricted to a small section of culturally equipped citizens, represents in countries like India the high ground of modernity … But in actual practice, governmental agencies must descend from that high ground to the terrain of political society in order to renew their legitimacy as providers of well-being.” The “paralegal” practices and negotiations of this political society are for Chatterjee the politics of much of the people in most of the world: The paralegal then, despite its ambiguous and supplementary status in relation to the legal, is not some pathological condition of retarded modernity, but rather part of the very process of the historical constitution of modernity in most of the world. (Chatterjee, 2004: 75)

Following Chatterjee, one can suggest that the politics of the suburban periphery is the politics of political society. Yet, I have already noted that the very category of legality and formality on which Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society rests must be questioned. Thus, Holston (2008: 228) notes that Brazilian cities are marked by an “unstable relationship between the legal and illegal.” While it may seem obvious and apparent that the urban poor are engaged in an informal and illegal occupation of land, much of the city itself is occupied through the “misrule of law”: “In both the wealthiest and the poorest of Brazilian families we find legal landholdings that are at base legalized usurpations” (Holston 2008: 207). The democratization of urban space in Brazil, Holston (2008: 204) argues, is a process by which the urban poor have learned to use the law and legitimize their own land claims: “they perpetuate the misrule of law but for their own purposes.” This for him is insurgent citizenship, or the politics of the periphery. If we are to think of political society as the politics of the postcolonial suburb, then it is worth keeping in mind that such paralegal negotiations are a generalized condition. In the Brazilian case, as described by Holston, this paralegality has been appropriated and transformed by the urban poor; in the Nonadanga case in Kolkata, this paralegality reproduces the dependence of the urban poor on political regimes of populism

Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs  345

and patronage. Each is a different conjuncture of postcolonial governance, but in each the suburban periphery is a vital site of the remaking of property, power, and the public interest. Afterword: Postcolonial Suburbs In this brief essay, I have used the term “postcolonial suburbs” to signify the suburbs of cities of the Global South. This is the literal meaning of postcoloniality, as a historical condition in formerly colonized societies. But it is also possible to use the term “postcolonial” in a second sense, as a critique of stable categories of space, society, and state. It is in this sense that scholars have designated the suburbs of North Atlantic cities as postcolonial. For example, de Laforcade (2006: 401), following Stovall (2003), suggests that the suburbs of French cities must be understood as postcolonial, as spaces in which “new definitions of identity, citizenship, and exclusion are contested.” Even more provocative is Nayak’s (2010: 2370) argument that to view the English suburbs as postcolonial is to turn “the geographies of racism ‘inside out’” – primarily by interrogating landscapes of whiteness. This is the task of decentring (sub)urban theory, of not only fostering a sense of global urbanism but also of attending to the geopolitics of such globality. This too is at stake in the charting of global suburbanisms. REFERENCES AlSayyad, N., & Roy, A. (2006). Medieval modernity: On citizenship and urbanism in a global era. Space and Polity, 10(1), 1–20. Bayat, A. (2000). From “dangerous classes” to “quiet rebels”: The politics of the urban subaltern in the global South. International Sociology, 15(3), 533–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026858000015003005. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1979). Brenner, N. (2004). New state spaces: Urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780199270057.001.0001. Caldeira, T. (2000). City of walls. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chatterjee, P. (2004). The politics of the governed: Reflections on popular politics in most of the world. New York: Columbia University Press.

346  Ananya Roy de Laforcade, G. (2006). Racialization and resistance in France: Postcolonial migrants, besieged cityscapes and emergent solidarities. Working USA, 9(4), 389–405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-4580.2006.00124.x. Ekers, M., Hamel, P., & Keil, R. (2012). Governing suburbia: Modalities and mechanisms of suburban governance. Regional Studies, 46(3), 405–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036. Friedmann, J., & Wolff, G. (1982). World city formation: An agenda for research and action. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6(3), 309–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.1982.tb00384.x. Ghertner, A. (2010). Calculating without numbers: Aesthetic governmentality in Delhi’s slums. Economy and Society, 39(2), 185–217. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1080/03085141003620147. Ghertner, A. (2011). Rule by aesthetics: World-class city making in Delhi. In A. Roy & A. Ong (Eds), Worlding cities: Asian experiments and the art of being global (279–306). Chichester: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.1002/9781444346800.ch11. Goldman, M. (2011). Speculating on the next world city. In A. Roy & A. Ong (Eds), Worlding cities: Asian experiments and the art of being global (229–58). Chichester: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444346800.ch9. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Holston, J. (2008). Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Low, S. (2003). The edge and the center: Gated communities and urban fear. In S. Low & D. Lawrence Zuniga (Eds), The anthropology of space and place (387–407). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Marcuse, P. (1997). The enclave, the citadel, and the ghetto: What has changed in the post-Fordist U.S. city. Urban Affairs Review, 33(2), 228–64. http://dx​ .doi.org/10.1177/107808749703300206. McKenzie, E. (2005). Constructing the pomerium in Las Vegas: A case study of emerging trends in American gated communities. Housing Studies, 20(2), 187–203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026730303042000331727. Nayak, A. (2010). Race, affect, and emotion: Young people, racism, and graffiti in the postcolonial English suburbs. Environment & Planning A, 42(10), 2370–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a42177. Pow, C.P. (2007). Constructing a new private order: Gated communities and the privatization of urban life in post-reform Shanghai. Social & Cultural Geography, 8(6), 813–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649360701712511. Pow, C.P. (2009). Neoliberalism and the aestheticization of new middle-class landscapes. Antipode, 41(2), 371–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330​ .2009.00677.x.

Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs  347 Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511488856. Roy, A. (2003). City requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the politics of poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sassen, S. (2010). Urban gating: One instance of a larger development? In S. Bagaeen & O. Uduku (Eds), Gated communities: Social sustainability in contemporary and historical gated developments (xi–xii). Washington, DC: Earthscan. Sidaway, J. (2007). Enclave space: A new metageography of development? Area, 39(3), 331–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2007.00757.x. Stovall, T. (2003). From red belt to black belt: Race, class and urban marginality in twentieth-century Paris. In S. Peabody & T. Stovall (Eds), The color of liberty: Histories of race in France (351–69). Durham: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822384700-017. Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/​ 9780822392255.

This page intentionally left blank

Conclusion Suburban Governance: Convergent and Divergent Dynamics roger keil and pierre hamel

This book has concerned itself with suburban governance both as a conceptual terrain and as an object of empirical study. This short conclusion is designed to name and summarize the lessons we can learn from the volume’s vast thematic and geographic spread. We begin with a brief reiteration of the dominant lines of thought presented in each chapter. In the opening section, a conceptual chapter by Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel, and Roger Keil explicated and developed the main ideas for the book. It provided both a normative (definitional) and critical discussion of the chief terms that underlie the project pursued in this volume: “governance,” “suburbanization,” and “suburbanisms.” The chapter laid the groundwork for what followed in two respects. First, it developed a conceptual framework for the country and regional case studies that form the core of the book. Second, it pushed beyond the conceptual boundaries of the terms at its base. In this sense, it provided the basis for the – shorter – conceptual essays that accompany the geographical case studies. It set up governance in two important ways. It asked, first, how suburbs are planned, designed, conceived, and created through self-built, state-led, and private-led development, and further proposed to understand governance through three intertwined modalities involving the state, capital, and emergent forms of authoritarian governance. Second, it advocated extending the governance inquiry beyond the initial creation of suburbs to encompass all aspects of the processes of twenty-first-­ century suburban life (suburbanisms) and post-suburbanization. This sweeping agenda notwithstanding, Robert Young’s contribution in the next chapter in this section reminded us of the importance of retaining a focus on the actual decisions (and non-decisions) made by state and

350  Roger Keil and Pierre Hamel

non-state actors that drive and influence suburbanization and suburbanisms. His plea for recognizing the primacy of politics and the political in shaping the (suburban) lives we live succinctly indicated the direction of the chapters that followed. The authors of the individual chapters made ample and innovative use of the terminology proposed in the opening essay, and the modalities of state, capital accumulation, and authoritarian privatism also influenced the structure of most of the overview tables provided in the geographic chapters. “Suburbanization” and its derivative terms “suburbanism” and “suburb” have commonly been associated with a history of decentralized urbanization that springs in ideal-typical form from the combination of liberal capitalist democracy and a commitment to the centrality of property rights. With an original impetus from the British experience (discussed in relation to its Western European neighbours in chapter 7), suburbanization as it is commonly understood has had its clearest manifestation in the formerly British colonies and settler societies in the United States, Canada, and Australia – the examples reviewed in section 2. Two assumptions were made there. First, in these countries, the detached house at the suburban fringe was not just a distant dream (as it appeared to be in many societies around the globe throughout the twentieth century, even those that housed their population mostly in apartments), but was a built reality, with a large percentage – in some regions and time periods even the majority – of housing units constructed as single-family homes on previously undeveloped land on the outskirts of towns and cities. The centrality of the notion of property ownership coincided with institutional and cultural conditions under which the suburban way of life could thrive in a particular built environment. Typical components of that way of life included a political form (fragmentation); an economic structure (a virtuous cycle of mass production and consumption triggered by Fordist economies of scale); financial institutions (a mortgage system geared towards single-family home ownership) that were usually underwritten by central governments and administered by lower-level governments; a cultural disposition towards living on and near the land (arcadian and homesteading ideals co-generative of settler societies more generally); and an optimistic belief in the limitlessness of resources (energy, water, land). The second assumption was that the prototype of the AngloSaxon ideal is most clearly seen in the United States, an assumption examined in chapter 3 by Jan Nijman and Tom Clery and in chapter 6 by Jamie Peck. In the United States, more than anywhere else, a

Conclusion 351

stereotypical image of suburban form and life developed during the twentieth century in such a way that, even today, the term “suburb” evokes images of 1950s and 1960s sitcoms (or their nostalgic remakes in the form of the successful current TV series MadMen). While the overarching theme of the project on Global Suburbanisms is a critique of the hegemonic American notions of suburbanization, suburbanisms, and suburban, the American case is a good and necessary place to start, in part because the majority of the literature on suburbs refers to the American case. The two chapters on Canada and Australia that round out the section provided important declinations on the Anglo-Saxon experience and perhaps corrections to the stereotype – paving the way for meaningful links to be made to different competing experiences of contemporary suburbanization. From a focus on suburban governance in Anglo-Saxon settler societies, section 3 turned to cases that show significant variation from the supposed “norms” of (sub)urbanization. These are cases that have been in more or less direct “conversation” with the Anglo-Saxon model through urbanist theory and praxis. The English greenbelt and garden city ideas, for example, had an influence beyond their original town planning context in the United Kingdom. Dating from the 1930s, the epochal significance of the Charter of Athens, which prescribed functional separation, as well as the modern planning ideals that followed were both universal in intent and specific in form of built environment and governance. The largely state-driven high-rise suburbanization in Western European (and Canadian) welfare states was similar in intent, process, and outcome to the peripheral housing estates in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. Chapter 7 by Nick Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento and chapter 8 by Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev explored both common ground and divergent developments in Western and Eastern Europe, respectively, during the past few decades. Chapter 9 by Sigrun Kabisch and Dieter Rink then documented a counter-trend exhibited by the shrinkage that has now become a dominant feature of (sub)urban governance on the peripheries of East European cities. But alternative types of suburban development with longstanding histories are not found only in Europe. The Latin American case scrutinized by Dirk Heinrichs and Henning Nuissl in chapter 10 provided insight into an interesting and distinctive tradition of suburbanism that, unlike the welfare-statist version in Europe, has lately featured authoritarian privatism as the main modality of suburban governance. Chapter 11, by Tom Sieverts, concluded section 3 with

352  Roger Keil and Pierre Hamel

a return mainly to the European example, focusing on forms of governance that are emerging in response to the specific legacies of Europe’s largely post-suburban metropolitan landscape. Sieverts maintains that in the Zwischenstadt of Europe, the governance of suburbanization must lend itself to a recognition of aesthetics and cultural strategies in an environment commonly considered “unsightly” and closed to emotional and sensual understanding. For Sieverts, the governance of our post-suburban reality hinges on the success of such strategic planning and design. The idea of emerging models that underlies section 4 of the book does not intend to replicate the common and widely criticized tendency of the Western and Northern traditions in urban studies to conflate the dominance of European and American modes of explanation with their normative priority. The cases presented in this section are not to be understood as versions of previously discussed “normal” forms of suburbanization and governance but as endogenous and autonomous forms of peripheral urbanization that have now come to be the most dynamic and quantitatively most recognizable forms of producing urban settlements on a global scale. Chapter 12 on Africa by Robin Bloch, chapter 13 on India by Shubhra Gururani and Burak Kose, and chapter 14 on China by Fulong Wu and Jie Shen illustrated vastly diverse urban experiences on one continent and in the two largest countries in the world. These chapters provided original insights into a fascinating set of developments that are still unfolding before our eyes. While these developments are called “emergent” here, they are not exactly new, having been preceded by thousands of years of urbanization in one form or another. They are “emergent,” though, in the sense that their new forms of urbanization, which we have noted as largely suburban, are appearing at an unprecedented rate of speed. Both in pace and quantity of urbanization, the world has seen nothing like what characterizes (sub)urbanization in Africa, China, and India. What is emergent here is not just a mere addition to existing – classical or alternative – forms of suburbanization and governance but an entirely new mode of urbanization, one that defies simple categorization, typology, and, especially, subordination to existing Western models of understanding. Modalities of suburban governance in Africa, China, and India, therefore, point to emerging forms of life on this planet in a thoroughly urbanized society where most life we call “urban” exists in the sprawling, low and high density, formal and informal, self-built, state-driven or privately constructed, suburban expanses that cities in those regions consist of.

Conclusion 353

In chapter 15, Terry McGee offered a historical and geographical retrospective summary of the emergence of a new type of global capitalism that has brought a variety of new forms of suburbanization in its wake. Engaging with the foundational work of Lefebvre and Sassen on the production of urban spaces and places of flows, McGee outlined a framework for the governance of urban mega-regions in the Global South and East in light of various competing scenarios. In chapter 16, concluding section 4, Ananya Roy focused on those “assemblages of suburban governance” in the Global South and added the modality of “distinction” to the canon of explanatory concepts. In explicating the governance of the postcolonial suburb, she proffered “a critique of stable categories of space, society, and state” that has characterized our understanding of suburban governance in a world hooked on the normative prioritization of the specific (and under-complex) example of the traditional Western process of suburbanization. So, what can we take from this global tour d’horizon? Returning to our original proposition of three competing and colluding modalities of suburban governance, we can conclude that all three are present, to varying degrees, in each of the regional cases studied. The state has classically enabled and limited certain types of developments in suburban environments through economic incentives, direct intervention (e.g., planning or infrastructure provision), policing, and services. Gov­ ernments at all scales remain present as important actors in those places where the state has been traditionally involved in shaping the urban reality – in Western Europe and in Canada, in particular. The most pervasive form of suburbanization through state-led governance is present in China, where local state entrepreneurialism plays an increasing role in the development of suburban land. State activity, however, is coupled with one of the fiercest forms of capital accumulation and is productive of some of the most authoritarian forms of privatism ever seen on this planet. The traditional Anglo-Saxon cases – the United States, Great Britain, Australia, as well as Canada to a degree – continue on a trajectory that sees suburban governance mostly aligned with the waxing and waning powers of the market. Even after the financial meltdown of 2008, accumulation through the production of suburban space continues (almost) unabated. When we say “almost” we refer specifically to the increased formal adaptations through New Urbanist and sustainability-inflected versions of suburbanism that have replaced some of the more vulgar and wasteful forms of sprawl of the past two decades and that aspire instead to more compact and dense structures

354  Roger Keil and Pierre Hamel

and forms. The Anglo-Saxon, market-driven models of suburban governance are now joined on a worldwide scale by aggressive suburbanization machines in India, China, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, where massive accumulation strategies are based on the sprawling roll-out of the “American” model as a universal form of development. In Western Europe, countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain continue to work through the lingering pain that that strategy inflicted on their economies through speculative overbuilding on their cities’ peripheries in the 1990s and early 2000s. What are the emerging processes of suburban governance? There is a continued tension between the urge for regional governance (see, for example, Keil, Boudreau, Hamel, & Kipfer, forthcoming) and the pervasive tendency for suburban polities to assert themselves as independent entities separate from their core cities, from each other, and from regional government institutions. Fragmentation, political idiosyncrasy, and institutional individualism reign supreme in many of the new suburban territories in the world’s “cities in waiting.” In many parts of the world, suburbanization and post-suburbanization processes present a mixture of formal and informal, institutionalized and spontaneous, state, market, and private forms of governance. New political interests are being shaped by political economies of land that are newly invented and articulated with arcane land-use practices, along with novel (if often mannerist and derivative) built forms; gross social, spatial, and service inequities; and new, in-between proximities whose political potential are just beginning to unfold. Bloch, in exemplary fashion, details the opportunities and constraints that lie in such procedural openings in the vastly diverse African experience, while Gururani and Kose, as well as Roy and McGee, comment on the overwhelming breadth of new political space, novel processes, and varied outcomes we are to expect. What are the emerging themes of suburban governance? Shelter and jobs are important, especially in developing nations where suburbanization is still produced by majority rural-to-urban migration. Mobility infrastructures, primary and secondary schooling, and taxes remain high on the agendas of suburban politics. The environment, economic (especially commercial) development, and community safety are always big issues. As well, the experiences of suburban shrinkage and poverty, post-suburban in-betweenness, and increasing diversity have now become major subjects of suburban governance. Informality in suburban development continues to be part and parcel of all regional

Conclusion 355

trajectories and necessitates more inclusive forms of suburban gov­ ernance. In many parts of the world, though, informality continues to be met with strong interventionist measures by the local state to create order on an urban fringe that is seen as out of control. From this divide stem new demands reminiscent of the traditional register of struggles for the Right to the City, or “participation, empowerment, and accountability,” in the words of Gururani and Kose (in chapter 13). It is also the main site for the formulation of a new meaning of a postcolonial suburban politics that redefines political society, as Roy has phrased it in her contribution. We then arrive, as she says, at the “suburban periphery [as] a vital site of the remaking of property, power, and the public interest.” Are there new actors in suburban governance? Suburban governance everywhere is firmly linked to the development and sustainability of financing institutions, be this through savings and loan companies, regular bank credit, or mortgages. In Africa, India, and China, as well as in the countries of Eastern Europe, mortgage markets had to be developed in order to carry the task of financializing land and financing construction. Institutional innovation and individual entrepreneurship are part and parcel of this fundamentally capitalist set of practices that are now pervasive in suburbanization processes around the world. Further­ more, in the past, we could surmise that suburban governance was firmly entrenched in the logics of the political economy of urban growth. Growth coalitions, growth machines, and urban regimes, while focusing primarily on central municipalities in the Global North, have also regulated and facilitated suburban governance beyond the conventional city limits elsewhere. Lately, this terrain has been extended to include the in-between areas of urban regions (see Young & Keil, 2014). Dear and Dahmann (2011) have already challenged our understanding of centrality and peripherality in suburban governance. The consequences are profound. New actor constellations arise from the booming “ethnoburbs” and “arrival cities” on the outskirts of cities around the world (Saunders, 2010). Depending on the circumstances, the effects of state-led suburban governance could lead to more spatial justice (Soja, 2010) (as it ostensibly did in Toronto during the formative years of the Municipality of Metropoli­tan Toronto) or to gross inequalities (as happened in the ­racialized and classed areas of many U.S. cities, or in the recent past in Toronto) (Hulchanski, 2010). The accumulation of capital continues to act as a second modality of suburban governance. Property capital,

356  Roger Keil and Pierre Hamel

in collaboration with growth-oriented municipal governments, has continued to push the residential frontiers of urban areas outward in an aggressive manner (Logan & Molotch, 1987). Global firms usually get their way in locating their headquarters, back offices, and branch plants close to the suburban infrastructures that are ostensibly, yet deceptively, sold to (or rather paid for by) local voters and taxpayers as primarily designed to serve their interests. Universities, colleges, and school boards play a major role in structuring suburban spaces and investments in their infrastructures (Addie, Keil, & Olds, 2014). The roles of capital and of the state are intertwined. Private development capital and developers have played a significant role in both suburban growth and suburban governance. The third modality of suburban governance is authoritarian and private. Far from naturally increasing the likelihood of democratization (in contrast to government), current forms of governance are often built on through authoritarian, if not coercive, technologies of power. We can view the three modalities of suburban governance as somewhat compatible arenas in which various instruments and technologies of suburban governmentality are being produced. Remarkably, the state has mostly acted in symbiosis with the property industry in pushing suburbanization as a self-propelling outcome of governance that, in turn, produces expectations about different models of suburban life. Lately, suburbia has occasionally shed its image of an open and liberated domain close to nature and has assumed the look and feel of a camp: enclosed and sequestered, fenced and secured. The constraints on the organization of urban and metropolitan space inherited from the industrial system of production remain present everywhere in North America, as in the rest of the Western world. However, it does not follow that these spaces are all characterized by conformity. From a political standpoint, we can surmise that there is a gap between local governance – involving community organizations and associations for the improvement of living conditions – and metropolitan governance (excluding, in general, the voluntary sector), which is oriented towards the economic competitiveness of cities (Fontan, Hamel, Morin, & Shragge, 2008). Specifically, there is a lack of links or relations between the practices of community economic development on the one hand and the development strategies deployed on a metropolitan scale – as observed in Montreal, Toronto, Boston, and Pittsburgh – on the other (Morin & Hanley, 2004).

Conclusion 357

It is possible to argue, as we have elsewhere (Keil, 2013), that the “urban century,” as ours has been labelled, is really defined by an expansion of metropolitan peripheries. In large parts of the world, this continues to mean primary urbanization of rural populations on the outskirts of major centres. Indisputably, China (where the government has plans to create settlements for at least another quarter-billion peasants in suburban mega-cities), India, and Africa lead the way with an unprecedented wave of primary rural-to-urban migration that will transform not just these countries and continents forever but will shift the balance of populations, economies, and powers farther from the North and West to the South and East of the planet. Yet in an equally breathtaking simultaneity, those first-time urbanites will be neighbours to established yet rapidly changing post-suburban landscapes that are revolutionized under the dictates of a neoliberalized, globalized, flexible regime of accumulation. While the cities of the Global South still expand at the margins and require provision of primary, basic collective consumption services, infrastructure, and institutional innovation, they are already folding in on themselves and demanding immediate attention as urban quarters, internationalized business districts, and mature neighbourhoods. The solid difference between original suburbanization and post-suburban realities as explored in this book melts into air. REFERENCES Addie, J-P., Keil, R., & Olds, K. (forthcoming). Beyond “town and gown”: Higher education institutions, territoriality and the mobilization of new urban structures. (Submitted to Territory, Politics, Governance). http://www​ .tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21622671.2014.924875?journalCode=​ rtep20#.U8VE-qi3tXA. Dear, M., & Dahmann, N. (2011). Urban politics and the Los Angeles School of Urbanism. In D.R. Judd & D. Simpson (Eds), The city revisited: Urban theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York (65–78). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Fontan, J.-M., Hamel, P., Morin, R., & Shragge, E. (2008). Continuities and changes in social movements in Montreal: Lessons from the 1960s/1970s and post 1980 transition. Paper presented at the UAA Annual Meeting 1968 revisited: Cities 40 years later, 23–6 April. Baltimore.

358  Roger Keil and Pierre Hamel Hulchanski, D. (2010). The three cities within Toronto: Income Polarization among Toronto’s neighbourhoods, 1970–2005. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Keil, R. (Ed.). (2013). Suburban constellations: Governance, land and infrastructure in the 21st century. Berlin: Jovis Verlag. Keil, R., Boudreau, J.-A., Hamel, P., & Kipfer, S. (Eds). (Forthcoming). Governing cities through regions: Canadian and European perspectives. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press. Logan, J., & Molotch, H. (1987). Urban futures: The political economy of place. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Morin, R., & Hanley, J. (2004). Community economic development in a context of globalization and metropolization: A comparison of four North American cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(2), 369–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00524.x. Saunders, D.D. (2010). Arrival city. The final migration and our next world. Toronto: Alfred A Knopf. Soja, E.W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Young, D., & Keil, R. (2014). Locating the urban in-between: Tracking the urban politics of infrastructure in Toronto. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. http://www.ijurr.org/details/article/6337451/ Locating_the_Urban_Inx2010Between_Tracking_the_Urban_Politics_of_ Infrastructure_.html

Author Biographies

Robin Bloch is a professionally trained urban and regional planner with more than twenty years of international professional/practitioner experience in urban, metropolitan, and regional planning, spatial and land-use planning, urban and regional economic development, and urban environmental planning and management. He is the principal consultant for GHK Consulting. His work has incorporated the full spectrum of the project cycle from project identification and formulation through implementation, quality assurance, and the monitoring and evaluation of individual projects and programs. He also has longrun international experience of policy making and of urban, regional, and economic development strategy and planning at local, regional, and national government levels. Bloch is also research affiliate at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town. Most recently he published “Dubai’s Long Goodbye” in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Currently, he is serving as project manager on the preparation of a Global Handbook on Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the World Bank/Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and the Disaster Risk Management Global Expert Team. The handbook provides an operational guide on how to effectively manage the risk of floods in rapidly urbanizing settings in the context of a changing climate. Bloch is also a co-applicant of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Elena Chou is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her areas of research interest focus on the intersections between “race” and racialization, identity and representation, cultural studies, and media and popular culture, particularly as

360  Author Biographies

they pertain to the identity and representation of the Asian diaspora, specifically in Canada but also more generally in white-settler and other immigrant receiving societies. Tom Clery is a Madrid-based educator with a Master’s degree in geography from the University of Miami. His research concentrates primarily on issues of urban inequality and cultural representation in the United States. He has published in the International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research and won the 2011 Urban Studies award for the Best Graduate Paper on Miami from the University of Miami. Michael Ekers teaches in the Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto. His current research investigates the politics of urban cycling with specific interests in the tension between cycling as a new form of urbanized conspicuous consumption and social movements focused on cycling infrastructure. Ekers received his DPhil in geography from the University of Oxford in 2010. His dissertation explored the cultural politics of reforestation labour and forested landscapes in British Columbia, Canada. Alongside these projects, Ekers has a continued interest in the governance of urban-­ rural relations and, in particular, in the joint regulation of urban unemployment, rural relief work, and resource landscapes. Articles related to these different projects are published in journals such as Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Geoforum, Antipode, Space and Culture, and BC Studies. Lastly, Ekers has extensive experience teaching courses focused on urban-regional environments and the governance of suburban spaces. Shubhra Gururani is an associate professor of social anthropology and associate director of the York Centre of Asian Research at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her research lies at the intersection of political ecology and science and technology studies and ethnographically explores the everyday practices of gender, place work, and care through which nature is made and remade. She is currently studying the politics of urbanization, sewage, and urban natures in peri-urban India, with a focus on the Millennial City – Gurgaon on the outskirts of New Delhi. Her papers have been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, the International Journal of Social Sciences, and Gender, Place, and Culture. Her previous work has focused on the politics of conservation and the history of forestry and social movements in the Indian

Author Biographies  361

Himalayas. She is a co-applicant of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Pierre Hamel is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université de Montréal. He is also affiliated to CÉRIUM, an international studies centre at the same university. His research interests focus on three themes: (1) urban development and urban policies; (2) collective action and social justice; and (3) institutional regulation of social and economic inequalities. Hamel has published extensively on social movements, urban politics, governance, and local democracy and is the editor of the sociology journal Sociologie et sociétés. His publications include Cities and Urban Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-written with Louis Guay, and Ville et débat public. Agir en démocratie (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008). He is a co-applicant on the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Dirk Heinrichs is a senior researcher, Institute of Transport Research, German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Berlin. He currently coordinates a DLR research initiative on Transport and the Environment. Between 2005 and 2010, he led the Risk Habitat Megacity project, a collaboration of the German Helmholtz Association, universities in Latin America, and the U.N. ECLAL with a focus on urban sustainable development in the region. His research focuses on the governance of suburban development in Latin America and Europe. Dirk is also working on urban adaptation to climate change. In this capacity, he is a member of several climate networks such as the Urban Climate Change research Network (UCCRN) and the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) core project of the International Human Dimensions Program (IHDP). Heinrichs’s recent publications include “Urban Sprawl and New Challenges for (Metropolitan) Governance in Latin America – the Case of Santiago de Chile” (Revista EURE), with Henning Nuissl and Claudia Rodriguez Seeger, and “Fresh Wind or Hot Air? Does the Governance Discourse Have Something to Offer to Spatial Planning?” (Journal of Planning Education and Research), co-authored with Henning Nuissl. He is a collaborator on the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Sonia Hirt is an associate professor in urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, U.S.A. Her focus as a scholar and teacher is on exploring the social meanings of the built environment. She aspires

362  Author Biographies

to help enhance the quality of urban environments, first by developing a richer understanding of the social processes and cultural values that influence their evolution, and second by provoking critical debates within the urban planning profession. In this sense, her work has both a theoretical and an applied perspective. Hirt has published extensively on urbanism in post-socialist Eurasia. She is the author of 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). Her research has been funded by organizations such as the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Association of University Women, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a co-applicant on the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Louise Johnson teaches Australian studies at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. She has researched the gendered nature of suburban houses and shopping centres, changing manufacturing workplaces, as well as the dynamics of Australian regional economies. Her most recent work has examined Geelong, Bilbao, Singapore, and Glasgow in Cultural Capitals (Ashgate, 2009), looking at how the arts have been revalued and urban spaces remade by the creative economy. She is currently researching how to build better suburbs, the nature of master-­planned suburban communities, waterfront renewal, migrants in regional centres, and postcolonial planning. Sigrun Kabisch is head of the Department of Urban and Environmen­ tal Sociology at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany. Additionally, she is professor of urban geography at the University of Leipzig. Her research interests include the parallel growth and shrinkage of cities and the associated societal and demographic causes and consequences. She is currently conducting an interdisciplinary research project on urban transformations focusing on the interplay of resource efficiency, quality of life, and resilience. For the past thirty years she has studied the dynamics of large housing estates at the fringes of East German cities. Furthermore, she has expertise in international comparable studies concerning urban development and climate change impacts on cities. She published the volume Residential Change and Demographic Challenge. The Inner City of East Central Europe in the 21st Century (together with her colleagues Haase,

Author Biographies  363

Steinführer, Grossmann, and Hall: Ashgate, 2011). She is the principal editor of the volume Vulnerability, Risks and Complexity. Impacts of Glob­ al Change on Human Habitats (together with Kunath, Schweizer-Ries, Steinführer, and Hogrefe, 2012). She was engaged in the Risk Habitat Megacity project conducted in Santiago de Chile and the correspondent volume (Springer, 2012). Currently she is part of the editorial board of the forthcoming book Urban Vulnerability and Climate Change in Africa (Springer, 2015). Roger Keil is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. He researches global suburbanization, cities and infectious disease, and regional governance. He is the principal investigator for “Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century” (2010–17). A recipient of the President’s Research Excellence Award in 2013, he is the editor of Suburban Constellations (Jovis, 2013). He has previously published In-between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability (edited with Douglas Young and Patricia Burke Wood: Praxis(e) Press, 2011); Changing Toronto: Governing the Neoliberal City (with Julie-Anne Boudreau and Douglas Young: University of Toronto Press, 2009); Networked Disease: Emerging Infections and the Global City (edited with S. Harris Ali: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008); Leviathan Undone? The Political Economy of Scale (edited with Rianne Mahon: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), and The Global Cities Reader (edited with Neil Brenner: Routledge, 2006). Burak Kose is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University, Toronto, Canada, and is affiliated with the City Institute at the same university. He holds BA degrees in political science and international relations and sociology from Bogazici University, Turkey, and an MA degree in social and political thought from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Burak’s academic interests are in urban studies, development studies, and political ecology as well as Marxist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories. His research areas are developmental and post-developmental geographies of urbanization, political ecologies of planetary urbanization, urban-rural relations and accumulation by dispossession, neoliberalization of urban governance and planning and the politics of land and housing in squatter settlements, and urban and rural social movements with a focus on the Middle East and South Asia.

364  Author Biographies

Atanas Kovachev is dean of the Faculty of Landscape Architecture at the University of Forestry and Landscape Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is also a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and a member of the Bulgarian Society of Architects, the Society of Urbanists, the National Academy for Architecture, and the Nation­ al Council of Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education in Bulgaria. Kovachev teaches courses in ecology and environmental protection. His research interests are in the theory and history of architecture and landscape architecture, ecological problems and solutions, sustainable development, green-space planning, and recreational planning. He is the author of some 150 scholarly publications, including the following textbooks: Urban Design/Planning (1999), Contemporary Urban Planning (2000), Territorial Development (2000), The Green Spaces of Sofia (2001), and Foundations of Urban Planning Theory and Practice (2003), all published in Bulgarian, and some also published in translation in six other languages. He is one of the lead authors of the current Master Plan of Sofia and of about fifty other master plans in Bulgaria and other countries. Terry McGee has taught at Victoria University (Wellington, New Zealand), the University of Malaya, the University of Hong Kong, the University of British Columbia, and the University of New South Wales. Throughout his research career of more than fifty years, he has focused on the urbanization process in Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia, concentrating on four main areas: First, the processes of rural-urban migration to Asian cities as part of the patterns of urban-rural linkages. Second, the processes of labour force formation in Asian cities, with a major emphasis on the economic activities in the informal sector. Third, the processes of spatial growth in Asian cities, with a focus on the outer zones of cities and the conflict between rural and urban activities in these areas. Fourth, the policy challenges of Asian urbanization, in particular food supply for urban areas, poverty problems, and the challenges posed for government and governance, as well as sustainability and livability, by environmental change, global economic volatility, and rampant globalization. He has published more than forty books, reports, and monographs and more than 200 articles. He received the award for “Scholarly Distinction in Geography” in 2000, the President of Vietnam’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Vietnamese Social Sciences in 2004, and the Vautrin Lud International Prize in Geography from the International Geographical Union in 2009. McGee is now carrying out research on regional sustainable development in urbanizing

Author Biographies  365

regions of Malaysia and Indonesia. He serves on the advisory board of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Jan Nijman is the director of urban studies at the University of Amsterdam. His interests include comparative urbanism in geographical and historical contexts, engaging with questions about city-state relations and the urban effects of globalization. His main empirical work has been on Mumbai, India, and on Miami, U.S.A., funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Nijman’s most recent publication is Miami: Mistress of the Americas (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). His professional honours include the Nystrom Award for best doctoral dissertation in geography in North America (1991) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003). He is a co-applicant of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Henning Nuissl is a full professor of applied geography and town planning at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is also a research fellow with the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ in Leipzig, Germany. His areas of interest include suburbanization, urban sprawl, and land-use change; social geography; and urban and regional governance. Henning’s recent publications include “Fresh Wind or Hot Air? What Spatial Planning Can Gain from the Governance Discourse” (Journal of Planning Education and Research) with Dirk Heinrichs; “Dispersión urbana y nuevos desafíos para la gobernanza (metropolitana) en América Latina: El caso de Santiago de Chile [Urban Sprawl and New Challenges for (Metropolitan) Governance in Latin America – the Case of Santiago de Chile]” (Revista EURE) with Dirk Heinrichs and Claudia Rodriguez Seeger; and “The Economic Approach towards the Containment of Land Consumption” (Environmental Science and Policy) with Christoph Schröter-Schlaack. Jamie Peck holds a Canada Research Chair in the Department of Geography, University of British Columbia. He is an economic geographer, with research interests in urban theory, policy, and politics; labour geography and labour-market restructuring; neoliberalization; theories of socio-economic regulation and governance; and economic restructuring. His publication record includes nine books and more than 200 research articles, translated into more than a dozen languages, including Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford University

366  Author Biographies

Press, 2010). Peck’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund of New York, NSF, SSHRC, ESRC, and the European Commission. The recipient of Guggehneim and Harkness fellowships, Peck has held visiting positions at Melbourne, Johns Hopkins, Witwatersrand, Oslo, Nottingham, Queen’s University (Belfast), Amsterdam, and the National University of Singapore. He is a co-applicant on the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Nick Phelps is a professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, Univer­ sity College London. He has a range of interests that cover economic and urban geography and planning internationally. His recent interests focus on the distinctive development of, politics in, and planning challenges facing post-suburban communities internationally. He has long-­standing interests in understanding the evolution of city-region economies. His recent work in the United Kingdom has focused on the politics and planning processes underlying the production of urban sprawl. Phelps’s publications include An Anatomy of Sprawl: Planning and Politics in Britain (Routledge, forthcoming) and International Perspec­ tives on Suburbanization: A Post-Suburban World? (Palgrave-MacMillan, in press), co-edited with Fulong Wu. He is a co-applicant on the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Dieter Rink is senior scientist in the Department of Urban and Envi­ ronmental Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig. He is also an honorary professor at the University of Leipzig. His main research topics are urban sociology, focusing on issues such as suburbanization, shrinkage, and urban governance – in particular, the role of civic actors; sustainable development; and urban ecology. His recent publications include “Shrinking Areas. Frontrunners in Innovative Citizen Participation,” The Hague, European Urban Knowledge Network (2012), and “Urban Shrinkage as a Problem of Post-Socialist Transformation. The Case of Eastern Germany,” Sociologie Romaneasca (2011). Ananya Roy is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches in the fields of urban studies and international development. She also serves as education director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and as co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center. She is the author of City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics

Author Biographies  367

of Poverty (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (Lexington Books, 2004); and co-editor of The Practice of International Health (Oxford University Press, 2008). Her most recent book is Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (Routledge, 2010). In 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Teach­ing Award, the highest teaching honour University of California at Berkeley bestows on its faculty. Also in 2006, Roy was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Mentors award, a recognition bestowed by the Graduate Assembly of the University of California at Berkeley. Most recently, she was named 2009 California Professor of the Year by CASE/ Carnegie Foundation. She serves on the advisory board for the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.” Jie Shen is an assistant professor of urbanization and development at the School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University. She received her PhD in city and regional planning, Cardiff, U.K., in 2012. Her research interests focus on China’s urban and regional development, especially suburbanization and suburban development. She has published papers in Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Geography, and Environment and Planning A. Thomas Sieverts is a partner in S.K.A.T., Architekten und Stadtplaner, Bonn, Köln, which began in 2000. He was the professor of urban design at the Technical University Darmstadt from 1971 to 1999, and during that period worked in Britain as a professor at the School of Town Planning, University of Nottingham, from 1984 to 1989. Prior to S.K.A.T., Architekten und Stadtplaner, he ran a professional planning office in Bonn from 1978, engaged in public consultation, urban design, town planning, and housing. He is the author of Zwischenstadt (1997; now in a third edition, 2001), with a French edition (2003); an English translation as Cities without Cities: An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt (2004); and a Japanese edition (2006). This book deals with the dissolution of the compact historical European city and with the treatment of a completely different and new form of the city, which is spreading across the world: the urbanized landscape or the landscaped city. Sieverts calls this the Zwischenstadt, meaning the type of built-up area that is between the old historical city centres and the open countryside, between the place as a living space and the non-places of movement, between small local economic cycles and dependence on the world market.

368  Author Biographies

Amparo Tarazona Vento has completed her PhD in planning studies at the Bartlett School of Planning (University College London). Her doctoral research explores the motives behind urban regeneration, within the context of the growing attraction shown by cities around the world to physical renewal as a key strategy for addressing urban economic and social decline, and for positioning themselves favourably on the global economic stage. Her main area of interest is the restructuring of urban governance and the contested politics of urban regeneration, with a focus on the processes and actors, the practices of power through which they are instituted, and their interplay at different levels. Prior to beginning her PhD, Tarazona Vento practised as an architect and urban designer in Valencia (2001–2) and in Madrid (2005–7). From 2002 to 2004 she worked for the Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Madrid where, in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, she was involved in the elaboration of the Spanish Building Code. Kieran Williams holds a Master in Environmental Studies degree from the planning program at York University. Along with his involvement in the “Global Suburbanisms” Major Collaborative Research Initiative, his current research work is focused on multilevel governance, urban growth, and housing policy. Williams completed his undergraduate education at the University of Lethbridge, and holds a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Western Ontario. Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. He has published many papers on urban spatial structure, urban housing, and land development, and is working on Chinese urbanism and urban development, urban and regional governance, urban poverty, and social spatial differentiation. He is among the top fifty most cited human geographers in the world according to the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI, ‘h-index’). His research includes China’s urban development and planning and its social and sustainable challenges. He is co-editor of Restructuring the Chinese City (Routledge, 2005), Marginalization in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and International Perspectives on Suburbanization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); editor of Globalization and the Chinese City (Routledge, 2006) and China’s Emerging Cities (Routledge, 2007); and co-author of Urban Development in Post-Reform China: State, Market, and Space (Routledge, 2007) and Urban Poverty in China (Edward Elgar,

Author Biographies  369

2010). He has twenty-five years’ experience of Chinese urban system planning, urban strategic planning, and master planning. He advises on urban and regional development for local governments in China. Robert Young is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Multilevel Governance. He is currently leading a large research project on public policy at the municipal level, funded mainly by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Young has previously published on politics in Atlantic Canada and on industrial policy and free trade, and has also studied issues regarding secession, both comparatively and in the case of Canada. He is the author of The Secession of Quebec and the Future of Canada (1995) and The Struggle for Quebec (1999). He is the co-editor of Canada: The State of the Federation 2004 – Municipal-Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada (2006) and of Foundations of Governance: Municipal Government in Canada’s Provinces (2009). Young is co-director of the Political Economy Research Group at Western. He sits on several academic advisory committees and is a fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute and of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations. In 2003–4 he was president of the Canadian Political Science Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative “Global Suburbanisms.”

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Page numbers with f refer to figures and photographs, and page numbers with t refer to tables. The ­subentry about refers to introductory or sum­ mary information. A page range following a main entry refers to the chapter pages. Abuja, Nigeria, 263f, 272f Accra, Ghana, 258–62, 266 Adelaide, Australia: history, 110; infrastructure, 117; manufacturing decline, 123; public housing, 118–19 Africa, 253–77; about, 13, 253–4, 274; civil society, 271–3; demographics, 255–7, 260, 357; environmental issues, 258; example (Ghana), 258–62, 266; income inequalities, 256–8; literature on, 253–4; new forms, processes, and themes, 352, 354–7; research needed, 269, 271–2, 274; rural-to-urban migration, 257; terminology, 253–4, 269, 275n2 Africa, authoritarian privatism: decentralization, 271–3;

democratization, 271–2; new suburbs, 274; residents’ associations, 273; terminology, 269 Africa, capital accumulation: about, 270–1; economic growth, 255–8, 263; foreign investment in, 255, 258, 264, 266, 270; globalization, 255; new suburbs, 255–6, 262–3; owner-financed housing, 266; private-led development, 262, 264–6; public-private partnerships, 273; remittances from diaspora, 258–9, 266–7; transnational housing, 266–7 Africa, infrastructure: about, 274; deficiencies, 258; funding, 270; nodes as anchors, 261–2, 264 Africa, physical characteristics: about, 13, 253–4, 274; diversity of, 13, 27, 253; gated communities, 274; informal settlements, 257–8; large-scale estates, 261–3, 265–6; new cities, 262–4; new suburbs, 254, 257, 259f, 261–4, 268f; owner-built housing, 266–7; private-led development, 262, 264; retail projects, 266; self-built, 261,

372  Index 262; sprawl, 267; terminology, 254; transnational housing, 266–7 Africa, state role: about, 271–4; decentralization, 271–3; democratization, 271–2; incentives, 264; institutional weaknesses, 258; planning, 258, 273–4; regulation, 13; research needed, 254, 271; terminology, 254; traditional land tenure, 13, 267–8, 273 Africa, urban cores: demographics, 257; economic growth, 255; megacities, 257; new cities, 262–4; polycentric forms, 262; poverty, 258, 262 African Development Bank (AfDB), 256, 258, 269 Albania, 186 Alberta, Canada, 85, 88, 101–2 Andrusz, Gregory D., 192 Angel, Shlomo, 260 Argentina: gated communities, 221–2, 232; infrastructure funding, 229; literature on, 220 Arriagada, Camilo, 228–9 Ashburn, Virginia, 132 association-governed communities (AGCs), 73–4, 74t, 142–3. See also gated communities Athens, Greece, 160, 163, 164 Atkinson, Rowland, 38 Australia, 110–29; about, 10, 110–11, 125, 126t; cultural meanings, 10, 116, 125; demographics, 117; history, 10, 110–16, 119; literature on, 125; migration, 113–14, 116–17, 119, 122; neoliberalism, 111, 122–3, 125; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; race, class, and gender, 111–13, 116–17, 119, 122;

social and spatial polarization, 111, 123–5; stereotype of suburbs, 110, 116f, 120–1, 125 Australia, authoritarian privatism: about, 126t; master-planned estates, 123–5 Australia, capital accumulation: about, 10, 126t, 353–4; financial deregulation, 118–19; foreign investment in, 123; history, 111–14; infrastructure industry, 114–15; manufacturing decline, 123; mortgages, 114; neoliberalism, 122–3, 125; owner-builders and local builders, 113–14, 115, 119; private-led development, 111, 113–15; property ownership, 350; state support for home ownership, 118–19; Vampyre Index, 124 Australia, infrastructure: history, 110–15, 120; local jurisdiction, 117; privatized, 114–15; state role, 113–15, 121–2; transportation, 110–11, 120 Australia, physical characteristics: about, 10, 116f, 125, 126t; disadvantaged localities, 112, 124; history, 113–17, 119; master-planned estates, 123–5; public housing, 117, 118–19; self-built development, 113, 117, 119; single-family homes, 10, 110, 112, 115, 116f, 119–20, 122, 125, 350–1; social and spatial polarization, 111, 123–5; sprawl, 111, 115–16, 122 Australia, state role: about, 115, 125, 126t; history, 111–16; home ownership support, 118–19; jurisdiction, 116–19, 125;

Index 373 migration policies, 116–17; neoliberalism, 122–3, 125; planning, 120–2; political debates, 124–5; public housing, 118–19; social services, 111, 125; taxation and multiple homes, 123–4 Australia, urban cores: history, 110, 120; infrastructure, 112; planning, 120–2; polynucleated cities, 120; specialization, 120 Austria: authoritarian privatism, 169; social housing, 161, 169 authoritarian privatism as modality: about, 29, 37–41, 353–7; gated communities, 37–9, 142–3, 339; modality, defined, 29; neoliberalism, 168; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; political decision-making processes, 49–53, 330–3, 331f; stakeholder-based organizations, 37; state role, 37, 38; terminology, 24. See also suburban governance, modalities of Badcock, Blair, 123 Bähr, Jürgen, 217 Ballas, Dimitris, 158 Baltimore, Maryland, 61 Bangalore, India, 293 Barcelona, Spain, 164, 165, 170 Batra, Lalit, 286–7 Bayat, Asef, 343 Beauregard, Robert A., 25 Beijing, China: development zones, 314; new towns, 309, 315f; registration of migrants, 318 Belgrade, Serbia: garden cities, 178, 179f; history, socialist period, 182f; history, post-socialism, 188f; reno­ vations, 193n5; retail space, 188–9

Benjamin, Solomon, 293 Berlin, Germany, 193n6, 211 Birch, David L., 67 Blandy, Sarah, 38 Blatter, Joachim K., 166 Blinnikov, Mikhail, 38 Bloch, Robin, 359; on Africa, 13, 253–77 Bodnar, Judit, 184–5 Bogotá, Colombia, 219f, 227f boomburbs, 5, 20, 132 Bordeaux, France, 159 Borsdorf, Axel, 217 Boston, Massachusetts, 60 Bourdieu, Pierre, 68, 340–1 Bourne, Larry, 84 Brampton, Ontario, 83 Bratislava, Slovakia, 193n4 Brazil: “City Statute,” 225; gated communities, 221–2, 229; infrastructure, 229; legal and illegal structures, 344; literature on, 220; poverty, 344; rural-urban migration, 218 Bremen, Germany, 166 Brenner, Neil, 332–3, 338 Britain. See Great Britain British Columbia, Canada: public transit, 93–4; regional planning, 86–7. See also Vancouver Brossard, Quebec, 99f Bruegmann, Robert, 162 Bucharest, Romania, 178, 180, 193n4 Budapest, Hungary, 186, 193n4 Buenos Aires, Argentina, 216, 229–30 Bulgaria: home-ownership patterns, 181; privatization of socialist-era complexes, 200; recreational zones, 183; sprawl, 186 bungalows: American dominance,

374  Index 160; Australia, 122; Canada, 98; colonial roots, 27, 160; Western Europe, 165 Bunting, Trudi, 84 Burstein, Meyer, 137 Butcher, Sian, 253–4 Calcutta. See Kolkata, India Caldeira, Teresa, 338, 339 Calgary, Alberta, 88, 101–2 California: gated communities, 39; industrial suburbs, 61; single-­ family homes, 64f, 65f; suburban land-use mix, 71f Canada, 80–109; about, 9–10, 80–1, 88t–89t, 100–2; American and European influences, 10, 80–2, 84, 101; census classifications, 81, 84–5; civil society, 99; cultural meanings, 93, 97; demographics, 81; environmental issues, 86; ethnic and racial diversity, 82–3, 98–100; history, 29, 35, 81–2, 100–1; immigration, 82, 98; neoliberalism, 83, 94, 102; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; population concentration, 101–2; poverty in suburbs, 82–3, 98–100; race, 82–3, 98; regional character, 101; research questions, 80; social inequality, 98; terminology, 84–5, 100–1 Canada, authoritarian privatism: about, 10, 89t, 97–9; gated communities, 10, 97; lifestyle and status, 97–8, 99f Canada, capital accumulation: about, 88t, 95–7, 353; CMHC financing, 31, 81–2, 89–90, 92–3; construction standards, 92;

development charges, 95–6; development industry, 92–3, 95–8; foreign investment in, 97; neo­ liberalism, 83; new commercial developments, 97–8; property ownership, 350; public-private partnerships, 96–7 Canada, infrastructure: about, 93–5; funding, 95–6; jurisdictional issues, 93–5; neoliberalism, 94; public-private partnerships, 96–7; transportation, 93–4, 96, 97 Canada, physical characteristics: about, 88t; gated communities, 83; high-rises, 82–3, 89, 99, 351; in-between cities, 83, 98–9; self-built development, 82, 92; single-family homes, 82, 89; spatial segregation, 98; sprawl, 86, 87, 89, 94, 96; stereotype of suburbs, 350–1 Canada, state role: about, 10, 88t, 89–90; development charges, 95; federal home ownership incentives (CMHC), 10, 31, 81–2, 89, 92–3; infrastructure funding, 94; jurisdiction, 81, 93–5; multilevel governance, 84–6, 95, 102; neoliberalism, 83, 102; planning, 86–7, 92–3, 96; property taxes, 89–90, 94, 101; public-private partnerships, 96–7; regional economic development, 85; suburban resurgence, 83–4; zoning, 92–3 capital accumulation as modality: about, 29, 33–7, 40–1; crisis tendencies, 34–6; financial capital, 35–6; incentives, 35; literature on, 33–4; modality, defined, 29;

Index 375 neoliberalism, 34, 36; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; pol­ itical decision-making processes, 49–53, 330–3, 331f; power relations, 36–7; state’s role in, 34, 35–6, 40–1, 51–2; terminology, 24. See also neoliberalism; suburban governance, modalities of Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman), 130, 135, 136, 139, 146 Cardiff, England, 170 Chakrabarti, Poulomi, 288 Charney, Igal, 85 Chatterjee, Partha, 290, 343–4 Chennai, India, 288 Chicago, Illinois, 73 Chicago-school neoliberalism. See Friedman, Milton; neoliberalism Chile: gated communities, 221–2; infrastructure funding, 229; literature on, 220; private-led development, 228–9; social housing, 218; state-led development, 218. See also Santiago de Chile China, 303–24; about, 14, 303–4, 318t–320; civil society, 305, 343; cultural meanings, 305, 312; demographics, 307, 357; environmental issues, 313; history, 27–8, 303–4, 306–7, 311; new forms, processes, and themes, 352, 354–7; rural-to-urban migrants, 307; rural-urban divide, 14, 304–6; terminology, 303, 304–6; urban poor, 343; urban shrinkage, 201 China, authoritarian privatism: about, 311–13, 318t–319, 353; gated suburbia, 311–13, 320; homeowners’ associations, 313,

320; informal private rental housing, 317, 320; property management companies, 312, 313, 320 China, capital accumulation: about, 310–11, 318t, 319–20; demolition for new development, 319; diversified land use, 14; investment in Africa, 255, 264, 270; land and economic growth, 306–7, 308–11, 315–16; property markets, 14, 313, 316; rural land rights, 308; “small-property-right” housing, 319–20; state entrepreneurialism, 14, 305–6, 308–11, 314–16, 320, 353; urban migrant villages, 319 China, infrastructure: deficiencies, 318–19; history, 306; informal migrant villages, 317; public transport, 307, 309, 315; state funding, 309, 315 China, physical characteristics: about, 305–8, 318t; apartment developments, 304; density, 317; diversity of, 14, 27–8, 304, 319–20; formal land development, 312–16; gated communities, 37, 304, 311–14, 314f, 320, 343; history, 307; industrial development, 306–7; marketing strategies, 308, 312–14, 314f, 320; new towns, 14, 308–12, 315f; rural land rights, 316; security issues, 305, 311–12; self-built development, 308; sprawl, 155, 314; upper-market villa compounds, 305, 312–16; urban migrant villages, 14, 304, 308, 316–19, 317f China, state role: about, 318t, 319–20; absence of services, 318–19; administrative annexation, 309;

376  Index development controls, 310–11; economic development zones, 307, 314–15; entrepreneurialism, 14, 305–6, 308–11, 314–16, 320, 353; history, 305–7; incentives, 309; industrial decentralization, 306–7; land revenue, 304, 308–9; planning, 309; social control, 318–19; tax-sharing systems, 310 Chongqing, China, 327 Chou, Elena, 360; on Canadian suburbs, 9–10, 80–109 citadel, as term, 340 cities without cities (Zwischenstadt), 5 city of walls. See gated communities Ciudad de Panama, Panama, 229 Civco, Daniel L., 260 civil society: acts of everyday resistance, 343; civil versus political society, 344; inclusion in decision-making processes, 330–3, 331f; insurgent citizenship, 344; state decentralization, 32; terminology, 24, 328, 344 Clery, Tom, 359–60; on United States, 9, 57–79 Colombia: literature on, 220; new megaprojects, 227f; social housing, 219f Congo: foreign investment in, 270 Coral Gables, Florida, 70 Couch, Chris, 162 Cox, Kevin, 32, 34, 316 Coy, Martin, 229 critical urban theory, 225 Croatia: sprawl, 186 Croydon, London, England, 160 cultural meanings: about, 12–13, 352; automobiles, 62, 64; Bourdieu’s distinction, 68, 340–1, 353; freedom

and ownership, 80; gated communities, 341; globalization and Western ideals, 189; nature and identity, 163; self-determination, 130; stereotype of suburbs, 57–9, 350–1. See also United States, cultural meanings cultural meanings and aesthetics, 239–50; about, 12–13, 239, 247–9; aesthetics, 239, 242–4; aesthetic strategies, 243–7, 246f; construction processes and meaning, 248; cultural events, 243–5, 247–8; current values, 241; day-to-day activities, 247; design quality, 12, 241–2; example (Emscherpark), 240, 241f, 245–7, 246f; historic sites, 239, 244; large-scale development agencies, 240–2; literature on, 240; other cultures and existing traditions, 247; planned versus unplanned events, 248–9; radical transformation of space, 248; regional planning, 240; renaturalization processes, 245–6; research questions, 13; sensual-­ emotional attachment, 12, 242–4, 352; spaces without fixed functions, 247; special-purpose organizations, 241; and state governance, 240–2; traffic elements opened for new activities, 248; types of spatial-cultural relations, 247–9; unsightliness, 239, 242–3, 246, 352 Czech Republic: banking industry, 191; planning, 190–1; privatization of socialist-era complexes, 200; recreational zones, 183; renovation of socialist suburbs, 185;

Index 377 state-led development, 200; urban shrinkage, 212. See also Prague Davis, Mike, 5, 29–30, 39, 141 Davison, Graeme, 112 de Laforcade, Geoffroy, 345 Delgaudio, Eugene, 133 Delhi, India: aesthetics of space, 341; informal alliances, 293; participatory governance (Bhagidari), 280, 283, 286, 287–8; public-private partnerships, 289 De Mattos, Carlos A., 225–6 demographics: economic inequality trends, 334; and political decision-­ making processes, 52–3; population trends, 202, 334, 357 Denmark: cultural meanings, 163; urban shrinkage, 212 Dijon, France, 159 Dikec, Mustafa, 168 Dodson, Jago, 124 Dorset, England, 163 Dortmund, Germany, 246f Doveton, Melbourne, 117 Dowling, Andrew, 158 Dresden, Germany, 211 Dupont, Véronique, 281 Eastern Europe: about, 11–12, 177, 187t, 192–3; civil society, 191; cultural meanings, 189, 191–3, 200; demographics, 180, 202; EU influences, 184, 190, 191, 192, 205; globalization, 189, 191, 192; list of countries, 193n2; neoliberalism, 184; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; rural-to-urban migration, 178, 180, 183–4; terminology, 183, 189, 193n1,

193n3. See also East Germany (former), urban shrinkage Eastern Europe, capital accumulation: about, 11–12, 187t; building industry, 187, 189; economy, 184–5, 187, 189; and globalization, 189, 191; history, before socialism, 178; history, socialist period, 180; history, post-socialism, 184–5, 200; market forces, 184; mortgages, 191; neoliberalism, 184, 189; private-led development, 184–5, 190, 200; “retail revolution,” 188–9, 191–2; state-led development, 180–1, 182f, 183, 185 Eastern Europe, history: about, 11–12, 177, 192; before socialism, 177–8, 179f; socialism, 178–84, 182f, 192, 199–201; post-socialism, 184–92 Eastern Europe, infrastructure: history, before socialism, 178; history, socialist period, 183; parking, 189; public transit, 181, 183 Eastern Europe, physical characteristics: about, 185–92, 187t, 199–201; apartments, 181; garden cities, 178, 179f, 180; gated communities, 37, 187–8; home-ownership patterns, 181, 184–5; industrialized building methods, 181, 182f; middle-class private homes, 187; new towns, 183; office space, 189; planned communities, 181, 182f, 187–8; post-socialist suburbia, 185; private-led, 185; recreational zones, 183, 186, 190; renovations, 185; “retail revolution,” 188–9, 191–2; second homes, 183, 190; self-built development, 178, 180,

378  Index 183, 185, 186, 192–3; sprawl, 185, 186, 191; squatter settlements, 186, 192–3; standardized estates, 181, 182f, 183, 185, 191, 193n5; state-led development, 199–201; upper-­ class private homes, 186–7 Eastern Europe, state role: about, 11–12, 187t, 189, 192; decentralization, 184, 190; and globalization, 189, 191; history, before socialism, 177–8; history, socialist period, 180–4, 182f; history, post-socialism, 184, 189; housing loans, 191; inaction, 190; incentives, 190; industrialization for geopolitical superiority, 180; local governments, 190; planning, 178, 183, 184, 189, 190; regime change (1989), 189; residency permits, 183–4 Eastern Europe, urban cores: forced urbanization, 180; history, before socialism, 178; history, socialist period, 180, 184, 199–201; urban preference, 180 East Germany (former), urban shrinkage, 198–215; about, 12, 198–9, 210f, 211–12; causes and processes, 201–5, 211–12; demolition, 206–8, 208f, 209; economic decline, 205, 206–7; future trends, 202; global investors, 209, 211, 212; large housing estates, 206–9, 211; population decline, 203, 205–6, 211; post-Second World War state-led development, 199–201; private-led development, 205–6; renovation of socialist suburbs, 185, 193n5, 206–7; research questions, 12, 198; state-led restructuring, 206–9, 210f, 211;

terminology, 198–9; unification, 205–6; vacant buildings, 204f, 206–7f economy, global: crises, 34, 35–6, 41, 353–4; financial capital, 35–6; globalization, 41; trends, 333–4. See also capital accumulation as modality; neoliberalism edge and edgeless cities, 5, 20, 25 Edmonton, Alberta, 85, 88 Ekers, Michael, 360; on modalities of governance, 8–9, 19–48 Eko Atlantic, Lagos, 264 Emscherpark, Ruhr district, Germany, 240, 241f, 245–7, 246f enclave, as term, 340. See also gated communities England, terminology, 59. See also Great Britain environmental issues: inclusion in decision-making processes, 330–3, 331f; new themes, 354; smart growth, 143–4; sprawl, 22; trends and projections, 334 Essen, Germany, 244 Estonia: housing loans, 191; privatization of socialist-era complexes, 200; sprawl, 186 Ethington, Philip J., 4, 125, 172 Europe: demographics, 178, 202; diversity of suburbia, 27; post-­ Second World War state-led development, 199–201; state’s role, 30; urbanization, history, 178; urban shrinkage, 201–2. See also Eastern Europe; Western Europe European Union: compact cities, 190, 191; environmental issues, 162; influence on Eastern Europe, 184, 190, 191, 192, 205; influence on

Index 379 Western Europe, 160–1, 162; regional plan requirements, 190; sustainable development, 191; urban shrinkage, 212 everyday lives: acts of resistance, 343; dialectical processes, 329; distinction and assertion of difference, 68, 339–41, 353. See also civil society; cultural meanings; suburbanism exopolis, 5, 20 fenced communities. See gated communities Feng, Jian, 27 Figueroa, Oscar, 229 Filion, Pierre, 84, 85 Finland: cultural meanings, 163; land-use regulations, 162 Fisherman’s Bend, Melbourne, 117 Fishman, Robert, 59, 67–8 Fleischer, Friederike, 304 Florida, 70 Forster, Clive, 120–1 fortress cities. See gated communities Foucault, Michel, 36, 41 France: authoritarian privatism, 168–9; banlieues, 30, 158, 160, 167–8; competition between nations, 166; cultural meanings, 163; deindustrialization, 168; dominance of urban cores, 159; employment nodes, 159; grands ensembles, 30, 161, 181, 200; local coordination, 166–7; neoliberalism, 168; postcolonial suburbs, 345; sprawl, 163; state’s role, 30. See also Paris Frank, Thomas, 132

Frankfurt, Germany, 158, 168 Freetown, Sierra Leone, 259f, 262, 268f Friedman, David, 136, 146–7 Friedman, Milton: Capitalism and Freedom, 130, 135, 136, 139, 146; career, 134, 137–8; day of honour in Loudoun County, 133–4; deregulation, 138–9; and Keynesian ideas, 135–6, 139; neoliberalism, 135–6; popularization of ideas, 139–40; school vouchers, 138–9; small government, 134–9; Tiebout’s influence on, 136–8, 146. See also neoliberalism, Chicago-style Friedman, Patri, 147–9, 148f Friedmann, John, 340 Garreau, Joel, 70, 131–2 gated communities: about, 37–41, 74t, 142–3, 339–41, 356; acts of everyday resistance, 343; authoritarian privatism, 37–9, 142–3, 339; Bourdieu’s distinction, 339–41, 353; cultural meanings, 37, 341; history, 37, 73–5; neoliberalism, 38, 40, 142–3; and political decision-making processes, 52–3; political power in states, 38; powers of freedom, 39–40, 339–40; race, 39–40, 142; security issues, 39–40, 74, 169, 341; social contract weakening, 38, 40, 41; social exclusion and segregation, 38–41, 338, 339–40; statistics, 73, 74t, 142; terminology, 340; trends, 38 Geelong, Australia, 117 Germany: authoritarian privatism, 168; competition between nations, 166; cultural meanings, 205–6;

380  Index demographics, 205; integrated housing systems, 161; land-use regulations, 162; large housing estates, 200–1; large-scale development agencies, 240–1; local coordination, 166; private-rented housing, 161; regional planning, 240–1; retail space, 193n6; social housing, 168; space and time disparities, 158; state-led development, 200–1; unification, 205–6; urban shrinkage, 202; “zones of deportation,” 168. See also East Germany (former), urban shrinkage; Emscherpark Ghana: about, 13, 254; demographics, 258–60; economic trends, 258–9; foreign investment in, 258–9, 270; infrastructure, 261–2; new suburbs, 254, 260–2, 270; remittances from diaspora, 258–9, 266; self-built development, 266; traditional land tenure, 267–8 Ghertner, Asher, 290, 341 ghetto, as term, 340 Ghosh, Arshana, 288, 289, 293 GI Act (United States), 31 Gladwin, Thomas N., 335 Glasgow, Scotland, 170 globalization: and neoliberalism, 145, 189, 326; and political decision-making processes, 52–3; spread of capitalism, 189, 326 Global North: reconceptualization of suburbs, 14, 338, 339 Global South: false universalism of U.S. model, 26–8, 351; informal alliances and governance, 294; megacities, 278; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7;

research questions, 279, 294; state role in informal housing, 29–30; trends, 357. See also postcolonial suburbs Global South, mega-urban regions, 325–36; about, 14, 325–7, 333–5, 353; civil society, 328, 329–30; compact cities, 333; cultural meanings, 326; decision making, 328, 330–3, 331f; demographics, 325, 328, 330, 334; economic trends, 333; environmental issues, 330, 333, 334; everyday lives, 329; hierarchies of regions, 327; hybridity and fragmentation, 326–7; infrastructure, 326, 333, 334; intermediate cities, 327–8; “late development transition,” 334; Lefebvre’s processes, 14, 328–9; models of suburbanization, 325–7; neoliberalism, 326; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; polynucleated systems, 333; regulation, 14, 330; social and economic diffentiation, 326–7; terminology, 14, 327–9; towns and hamlets, 327–8; urban cores, 326. See also postcolonial suburbs Global Suburbanisms Program (GSP), 253–4 Goldman, Michael, 343 governance: about, 23–5, 29; as contested site, 6, 33, 49–50; “good governance,” 23–4; government versus governance, 328; modality, defined, 29; neoliberalism, 24; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; planning, politics, and policy roles, 24; political decision-making processes, 9, 49–53,

Index 381 330–3, 331f, 349–50; terminology, 23–5, 49–51. See also suburban governance, modalities of Graham, Stephen, 28 Grant, Richard, 266–7 Great Britain: authoritarian privatism, 11, 168–70; colonial influences, 27; construction industry, 161; cultural meanings, 59, 163, 200; demolition, 167; dual housing system, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168–9; fiscal competition, 166; new towns, 167, 168, 170; owner-occupation, 161, 169; philanthropic estates, 170; physical characteristics, 158; planning, 162; postcolonial suburbs, 345; private-led development, 165; self-built development, 164; social housing, 11, 166, 168–70, 200, 351; state-led development, 165–7, 200; terminology, 59; urban cores, 59; urban shrinkage, 212 Greece: automobility and rail, 159–60; edge city office complexes, 159–60; informal development, 163, 164 Guangzhou, China, 317f Gurarani, Shubhra, 360–1; on India, 13–14, 278–302 Gurgaon, India, 291f, 295f, 298n8 Haila, Anne, 310 Halifax, Nova Scotia, 87 Halle, Germany, 211 Hamel, Pierre, 361; on Canadian suburbs, 9–10, 80–109; on dynamics of governance, 15, 349–58; on modalities of governance, 8–9, 19–48 Hanlon, Bernadette, 31, 64

Hannover, Germany, 166 Harris, Richard, 100, 253, 275n2 Harriss, John, 288, 293 Harvey, David, 35, 36, 316, 338 Hauser, Susanne, 240 Havel, Vaclav, 191–2 Hayden, Dolores, 60, 62, 63, 66 Heidelberg, Melbourne, 118 Heinrichs, Dirk, 361; on Latin America, 12, 216–38 Hidalgo, Rodrigo, 225 Hirt, Sonia, 30, 361–2; on Eastern Europe, 11–12, 177–97 Holston, James, 339, 344 homeowners’ associations. See authoritarian privatism as modality Huang, Youqin, 311 Hungary: housing loans, 191; privatization of socialist-era complexes, 200; renovation of socialist suburbs, 185, 193n5; sprawl, 186; urban shrinkage, 212 Huriot, Jean-Marie, 159 Husock, Howard, 144, 146 Hyderabad, India, 32 Immergluck, Daniel, 35 India, 278–302; about, 13–14, 278–81, 295, 296t, 297; civil society, 283, 287–8, 339, 343, 344; class, caste, ethnicity, place, and gender, 280, 283, 288, 289–90, 337–9; cultural meanings, 290–1; demographics, 278, 281, 357; dispossession and displacement, 13–14, 281, 287, 293, 337–9, 342–5; diversity of suburbia, 27; environmental issues, 287, 291; inequalities, 13–14, 280; informality, 297, 342–3;

382  Index middle-class power, 280, 284, 288, 290–1; new forms, processes, and themes, 352, 354–7; power relations, 297; research needed, 281, 297; research questions, 278, 279, 294; terminology, 278–9, 280–1, 294, 297, 298n4; urban poor, 288, 290–1, 297, 337–9, 342–5 India, capital accumulation: about, 13–14, 296t, 354; economic liberalization, 278, 284, 294, 295, 297; foreign investment in, 286–7, 290, 294, 295; incentives, 290; informal alliances, 280, 292–4, 297; land mafias, 14, 293–4; land markets, 286–7, 297, 337, 343; private-led development, 286–7; public-private partnerships, 283, 287, 289–90, 294 India, infrastructure: high-tech industry services, 290; inequalities, 284, 289; informal alliances, 280, 292–4, 297; infrastructure-led development, 32; national urban renewal mission (JNNURM), 285–7; public-private partnerships, 287, 289–90, 294 India, physical characteristics: about, 13–14, 281, 296t; bungalow, 160; development zones (SEZs), 297, 298n6; gated communities, 291; high-rise housing, 291f, 295f; information technology parks, 32; mixed housing and land use, 281; sprawl, 354; squatter settlements, 280, 337–9, 342–3; urban villages, 281–2, 282f India, state role: about, 13–14, 295, 296t, 297; ambiguities, 285, 293; Constitutional Amendment Act

(CAA), 279–80, 282–5; decentralization (1992), 282–5, 294, 297; development zones (SEZs), 297, 298n6, 338–9; evictions of urban poor, 337–9, 342–5; informal alliances, 292–4, 297, 342–3; judicial power, 297; land registries, 287, 343; middle-class power, 280, 284, 286–8, 290–1; municipal councils and corporations, 282, 285; national urban renewal mission (JNNURM), 280, 285–7; participatory governance (Bhagidari), 280, 283, 286, 287–8; planning, 286, 287, 294; public-­ private partnerships, 283, 287, 289–90, 294; Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), 286, 287–8, 290–1; town councils, 282, 284; transitional areas, 282, 284–5, 290, 298n4; urban local bodies (ULBs), 282–3, 293, 298n5; village councils, 284–5; ward committees, 283, 284 Indonesia: gated communities, 39–40; governance coordination, 332 informality and formality: about, 327, 342–3; class power, 342; diversity of suburbia, 327, 342; formal versus informal binary, 297; new themes, 354–5; production of space, 342 information technology: meaning in virtual world, 239; and political decision-making processes, 52–3; relocation of firms and capital accumulation, 34; security without isolation, 75; technoburbs, 11, 68, 131–4, 141 infrastructure: for forms of development, 28; high-tech services, 32;

Index 383 inclusion in decision-making processes, 330–3, 331f; mobility, 31–2, 35; new themes, 354; state’s role, 31–2; urban cores, 35 International Building Exhibition (IBA), Emscherpark, Germany, 240, 241f, 245–7, 246f International Finance Corporation (IFC): investment in Africa, 270–1 Ioffe, Grigory, 184 Ireland, 161 Italy: owner-occupation, 161; self-built development, 164; state-led development, 200; urban shrinkage, 202 Jackson, Kenneth T., 5 Jacobs, Jane, 68 Jakarta, Indonesia, 39–40, 332 Janoschka, Michael, 217 Japan: polynucleated city cores, 334–5; urban shrinkage, 201, 202 Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), 280, 285–7 Johnson, Louise, 362; on governing Australia, 10, 110–29 Judd, Dennis R., 7 Kabisch, Sigrun, 362–3; on urban shrinkage, 12, 198–215 Kamleithner, Christa, 240 Kampala, Uganda, 265, 266 Kaunas, Lithuania, 193n4 Keil, Roger, 363; on Canadian suburbs, 9–10, 80–109; on dynamics of governance, 15, 349–58; on modalities of governance, 8–9, 19–48 Kemeny, Jim, 161, 169

Kennedy, Lorrain, 32 Kenya: economic development plan, 264; foreign investment in, 270; new cities, 264, 270; new suburbs, 262; retail projects, 266; transnational housing, 267 Keynes, John M.: neoliberal critiques of, 11, 38, 40, 135–6, 139; prediction on socialist transitions, 184 Khartoum, Sudan, 264 King, Anthony D., 27 Knox, Paul L., 142, 320 Kolkata, India: evictions of urban poor, 337–9, 342–3, 344–5; mapping of, 343; new towns, 342; participatory governance, 288; public-private partnerships, 283, 289 Korea: urban shrinkage, 201 Kose, Burak, 363; on India, 13–14, 278–302 Kovachev, Atanas, 364; on Eastern Europe, 11–12, 177–97 Kruse, Kevin M., 69–70, 72, 186 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 328 Kumasi, Ghana, 261 Kunstler, James Howard, 68 Lagos, Nigeria, 263–4 Lakewood, California, 64f Lama-Rewal, Stéphanie T., 279 Lang, Robert E., 38, 70–2 Langley, Paul, 36 Las Vegas, Nevada, 73 Latin America, 216–38; about, 12, 216–17, 232–4, 233t; critical urban theory, 225; demographics, 218; environmental issues, 222f, 224; history, 217–20; literature review, 12, 220–3, 222f, 225, 232, 234n1;

384  Index migration, 218, 221, 223; neoliberalism, 222, 224, 225–8; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; research questions, 220; social divide, 221–2, 222f, 231; terminology, 216, 220, 225–6; urban shrinkage, 202 Latin America, authoritarian privatism: about, 12, 230–3, 233t; civil society inactivity, 231–2; gated communities, 221–2, 222f, 230–2; homeowners’ associations, 230; private management, 230 Latin America, capital accumulation: about, 12, 222f, 226–30, 233t; foreign investment in, 222, 224, 228; history, 224; neoliberalism, 222, 224, 225–7; private-led development, 218–22, 228–9, 233–4; private-sector dominance of, 226–34; privatization of state-owned companies, 222; public-private partnerships, 225, 229 Latin America, infrastructure: highways, 220, 221, 229–30; history, 217–20; literature review, 222f; private infrastructure, 230; public funding, 226, 229–30; public-private partnerships, 229 Latin America, physical characteristics: about, 12, 233t; gated communities, 37, 219–21, 226, 229, 231–2, 233–4; history, 218–20; large-scale housing complexes, 218–21, 224, 226, 227f, 228–9; literature review, 222f; renovations, 218; security issues, 221–2, 222f, 233; self-built development, 218; social divide, 220–1, 231; social housing, 218,

219f, 224; squatter settlements, 218, 223 Latin America, state role: about, 12, 222f, 223–6, 233t; decentralization, 225–6, 232; history, 218, 223–4; inactivity, 223, 232; investment incentives, 229; literature review, 222f; neoliberalism, 225–8; planning, 222, 225–6, 229–30; private-sector dominance of, 226–33; social housing, 218, 219f, 224 Latin America, urban cores: history, 217, 223–4; literature review, 222f, 225; planning, 223–4; revitalization, 224–5; urban shrinkage, 217–18, 224–5 Latvia: housing loans, 191; sprawl, 186 Lefebvre, Henri: meaningful space, 243; right to the city, 225; spatialization processes, 14, 328–9, 353; urban revolution, 20, 22 LeFurgy, Jennifer, 38 Leipzig-Grünau, Germany, 203f, 204f, 208f, 211 Leontidou, Lila, 163 Leven, Charles, 137 Levittown, New York, 27, 65–6 libertarianism: anarcho-capitalism, 136, 146–7; offshore suburbanization, 147–9, 148f Libertun de Duren, Nora, 229 Lippmann, Walter, 138 Lipsitz, George, 31 Lisbon, Spain, 164 Lithuania: housing loans, 191; privatization of socialist-era complexes, 200 Ljubljana, Slovenia, 193n4

Index 385 Logan, John, 229 London, England, 160, 165–6 Los Angeles, California: gated com­ munities, 39; industrial suburbs, 61; single-family homes, 64f, 65f; suburban land-use mix, 71f Loudoun County, Virginia, 11, 131–4, 141 Low, Setha M., 37, 38, 39, 311, 339 Lusaka, Zambia, 265–6, 270, 273 Lynch, Kevin, 240 Lyon, France, 159 Ma, Laurence J.C., 307 Mabin, Alan, 253–4 MacDermid, Robert, 95 MacLeod, Gordon, 24 Madrid, Spain: fiscal competition, 166; gated communities, 169; mixed modes of governance, 170; private-led development, 165; suburban renewal, 170, 171 Magnusson, Warren, 41 Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) on Global Suburbanisms, 7–8 Malawi, 262 Malaysia, 327–8 Manitoba, Canada, 86–7, 90, 91f Marcuse, Peter, 340 Markham, Ontario, 83 Maroussi, Greece, 159–60 Marvin, Simon, 28 master-planned communities: Australia, 123, 125; China, 312–13, 314f; Eastern Europe, 187, 188f; history, 73; privatized governance, 38; retirement communities, 73; wealth disparities, 40. See also gated communities

Mazierska, Ewa, 158 McGee, Terry, 364–5; on mega-urban regions in Global South, 14, 325–36, 353 McGirr, Lisa, 5 McKenzie, Evan, 143, 339 McManus, Ruth, 4, 125, 172 McSpurren, Kathleen, 84 mega-urban regions: compact cities, 191; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; polynucleated systems, 88. See also Global South, mega-urban regions Melbourne, Australia: history, 110, 114–15; infrastructure, 114–15; manufacturing decline, 123; neoliberalism, 122–3; planning, 120–2; public housing, 118–19; self-built development, 113 metroburbia, 5 Mexico: demographics, 218; literature on, 220 Mexico City, Mexico, 218 Mississauga, Ontario, 83, 91f modality, as term, 29. See also sub­ urban governance, modalities of Moldava, 185 Molotch, Harvey, 229 Mombasa, Kenya, 266 Montreal, Quebec: affluent enclaves, 100; governance coordination, 94; infrastructure modernization, 93; new commercial developments, 98; new suburbs, 99f; population concentration, 101–2; regional planning, 87, 94 Moscow, Russia: gated communities, 38; industrialization, 180; retail space, 193n6; upper-class private homes, 186

386  Index Mt Druitt, Sydney, Australia, 118 Muller, Peter O., 67 Mumbai, India: development plan, 283–4; informal alliances, 293; participatory governance, 288; public-private partnerships, 289 Nairobi, Kenya, 264, 270, 273 nation states, as term, 41n1. See also state as modality Nayak, Anoop, 345 Nefedova, Tatyana, 184 neoliberalism: about, 11; authoritarian privatism, 168; critiques of Keynesianism, 11, 38, 40, 135–6, 139; entrepreneurial self, 36; gated communities, 40; and globalization, 145, 189, 326; impact of, 20, 26; and political decision-making processes, 52–3; self-determination, 11, 40, 145; social inequalities, 37 neoliberalism, Chicago-style, 130–52; about, 130–1, 134–6, 139–40; anti-urban sentiments, 141; choice versus control, 138–9, 140, 145; civic participation, 142; crabgrass governance, 139, 140–4; decentralization, 136–9, 146, 147; deregulation, 138–9, 142, 146; example (Loudoun County), 11, 131–4, 141; gated communities, 142–3; history, 136–41; lack of internal restraints, 146; new forms of governance, 143–4; political culture, 140–2, 146–7; private versus public, 140; race and class, 141–2; secessionism, 144–5; small government, 130, 134–9, 143, 147; smart growth issues, 143–4; urban

subgovernance, 145; voter migration, 130, 137–40, 146. See also Friedman, Milton Netherlands: cultural meanings, 163; greenfield development, 162; integrated housing systems, 161; local coordination, 166; social housing, 161; urban shrinkage, 212 New Delhi, India, 282f, 293 New South Wales, Australia: public land authorities, 122; self-built development, 119; single-family homes, 116f, 121f. See also Sydney New York City, New York, 68 Nigeria: new cities, 263f–264; new suburbs, 262, 272f; transnational housing, 267 Nijman, Jan, 365; on United States, 9, 57–79 Noisy-le-Grand, Paris, France, 160 Nonadanga, Kolkata, 337–9, 342–3, 344–5 non-governmental organizations. See authoritarian privatism as modality; civil society Norway, 162, 163 Nova Scotia, Canada, 87 Nuissl, Henning, 365; on Latin America, 12, 216–38 Offe, Claus, 6 Ontario, Canada: commuter rail, 93–4; greenbelt, 24; immigrant populations, 83; manufacturing, 101; population concentration, 101–2; property development charges, 95–6; subdivisions, 91f; toll highways, 97. See also Toronto Ottawa-Gatineau corridor, Ontario/ Quebec, 101–2

Index 387 Palos Verdes, California, 65f Panama City, Panama, 229 Parent, Jason, 260 Paris, France: automobility and rail, 160; banlieues, 160, 167; “Disney­ fied” centre, 167; grands ensembles, 30, 181; migrant communities, 160 Parsons, Nick, 158 Peck, Jamie, 365–6; on Chicago-style neoliberalism, 11, 130–52 Pennsylvania, 59–61 Peru, 220 Phelps, Nicholas, 366; on Western Europe, 11, 155–76 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 59–61 Phillips, Kevin, 141 planned communities. See ­master-planned communities Poland: housing loans, 191; privatization of socialist-era complexes, 200; sprawl, 186; state-led development, 180, 200 political society, as term, 344 postcolonial, as term, 345 postcolonial suburbs, 337–47; about, 339, 353; acts of everyday resistance, 343; civil society, 339; distinction and assertion of difference, 339–41, 353; diversity of suburbia, 342; evictions of urban poor, 337–9, 342–3, 344–5; example (Nonadanga evictions), 337–9, 342–3, 344–5; gated com­ munities, 338; informality and formality, 342–3; insurgent citizenship, 344; legal and illegal structures, 344–5; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; security issues, 341; terminology, 338, 345, 353; urban poverty, 338.

See also Global South, mega-urban regions post-suburbia, 5, 20, 28, 68 Pow, Choon Piew, 340, 341, 343 power relations: capital accumulation, 36–7; neoliberalism, 36; political decision-making processes, 49–53; subprime mortgage crisis, 36 Prague, Czech Republic: Havel on, 191–2; history, before socialism, 178; planning, 190–1; socialist-era housing estates, 193n4; upper-­ class private homes, 186 private authoritarian governance. See authoritarian privatism as modality public-private partnerships (PPPs), 37, 289–90 Quebec, 101–2. See also Montreal Rascaroli, Laura, 158 Redfern, Sydney, Australia, 112 Resident Welfare Associations, India, 286, 287–8, 290–1 restructuring processes. See urban shrinkage Richmond, British Columbia, 86f Rink, Dieter, 366; on urban shrinkage, 12, 198–215 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 229 Robinson, Ira, 333 Roitman, Sonia, 232 Romania: forced urban migration, 180; before socialism, 178; socialist-era housing estates, 193n4 Rome, Italy, 164 Ronneberger, Klaus, 168

388  Index Rose, Nikolas, 340 Roy, Ananya, 366–7; on postcolonial suburbs, 14, 26–7, 337–47, 353 Ruhr district, Germany, 240, 241f, 245–7, 246f Russia: gated communities, 38; history, industrialization, 180; investment in Africa, 270; retail space, 193n6; summer cottages, 183; upper-class private homes, 186; urban population, history, 178 Ryan, James, 138–9 Rybczynski, Witold, 144 Sabatini, Francisco, 221, 228 St Petersburg, Russia, 180 Salcedo, Rodrigo, 221 Samuelson, Paul, 137 Santiago de Chile, Chile: infrastructure funding, 229; planning, 230; private-led development, 228–9; urban shrinkage, 216, 217–18 Sao Paulo, Brazil, 218, 339 Sassen, Saskia, 325–6, 329, 341, 353 Scandinavia, 163 Schneider, William, 140 schools and school boards: neoliberalism and participation, 142; new themes, 354; school vouchers, 138–9; sub-local governments, 76 Scotland, 170 Seasteading Institute, 147–9, 148f Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, 261 Sellers, Jeffrey M., 167 Serbia. See Belgrade Seremban, Malaysia, 328 Shanghai, China: development zones, 315; economic development, 309; gated communities,

340, 341, 343; packaged suburbia, 312–13, 314f Shanin, Andrey, 38 Shen, Jie, 367; on China, 14, 303–24 Sheppard, Stephen, 260 Short, John Rennie, 31, 64 shrinkage. See urban shrinkage Sidaway, James, 338 Sierra Leone: new suburbs, 259f, 262, 268f Sieverts, Thomas, 245, 367; on cultural meanings and aesthetics, 12–13, 239–50 Simioni, Daniela, 228–9 Sipe, Neil, 124 Slovakia, 186, 191 Slovenia, 191, 193n4 smart growth issues, 143–4 Sobolev, Nikolay, 38 Sofia, Bulgaria: history, before socialism, 178; retail space, 188–9; socialist-era housing estates, 193n4; upper-class private homes, 186 South Africa: demographics, 257; gated communities, 37; mortgage markets, 271 Soviet Union (former): consumer goods, 193n6; cultural meanings, 200; history, industrialization, 180; population trends, 202; post-­Second World War state-led development, 200; privatization of housing, 200; squatter settlements, 186; summer cottages, 183; urban preference, 184. See also East Germany (former), urban shrinkage Spain: fiscal competition, 166; gated communities, 169; mixed modes

Index 389 of governance, 170; owner-­ occupation, 161; planning, 169; private-led development, 165, 169; security issues, 169; self-built development, 11, 164; suburban renewal, 170, 171 Sparke, Matt, 145 sprawl: about, 5, 155; state’s role, 30; suburbanization, 22 stakeholder-based associations. See authoritarian privatism as modality Stanilov, Kiril, 190–1 state as modality: about, 29–33, 40–1; and authoritarian privatism, 37; capital-state relations, 34, 40–1, 51–2; as contested site, 33, 40, 51, 338; forms and levels of, 30, 51–2; home ownership incentives, 31–2; inactive and weak states, 51–2; and localism, 5, 29, 52–3; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; political decision-making processes, 9, 49–53, 330–3, 331f, 349–50; race, class, and gender issues, 31–2; scale and objectives, 32, 51; social contract weakening, 38, 40, 41; sovereignty, 50–1; state-led development, 28; terminology, 24, 29, 41n1, 51, 338. See also suburban governance, modalities of Stovall, Tyler, 345 suburb: Harris’s defining qualities, 253, 275n2; origin of term, 59 suburban governance, modalities of: about, 3–9, 19–21, 40–1, 353–7; authoritarian privatism, 9, 37–40; capital accumulation, 9, 33–7; defined, 29; false universalism of

U.S. model, 26–8, 351; forms of, 25; governance as contested notion, 6, 33, 49–50; histories of theory, 26–8; landscapes of, 26–8; literature review, 19–21; misalignment of institutions, 26; modalities of, 8–9; neoliberalism, 26; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; political decision-­ making processes, 9, 49–53, 330–3, 331f, 349–50; private-led development, 28; processes of, 20–1, 25–6; research questions, 5–6, 21; self-built development, 28; state-led development, 28; state role, 9, 29–33; suburbanization, terminology, 22; terminology, 5–7, 22–6, 29, 49–50, 350; theoretical concerns, 7; urban studies, 4–6. See also authoritarian privatism as modality; capital accumulation as modality; state as modality suburbanism: about, 22–3, 36; literature on, 162–3; terminology, 4, 22–3, 125 Sudan, 264 Sugrue, Thomas J., 69–70, 72 Sweden, 161, 163 Switzerland, 161, 244 Swyngedouw, Erik, 23–4, 37, 168 Sydney, Australia: Aborigine ghettos, 112; history, 110, 112–15, 120; infrastructure, 114–15; manufacturing decline, 123; neoliberalism, 122–3; planning, 120–2; self-built development, 113; single-family homes, 121f, 122; transportation, 114 Sýkora, Luděk, 186, 190–1

390  Index Tallinn, Estonia, 193n4 Tamale, Ghana, 261 Tarazona Vento, Amparo, 368; on Western Europe, 11, 155–76 Teaford, Jon C., 5, 82, 140 technoburbs, 11, 68, 131–4, 141 Tema, Ghana, 260 Thiel, Peter, 147 Tiebout, Charles, 136–8, 146 Tirana, Albania, 186 Tokyo, Japan, 334–5 Toronto, Ontario: CMHC’s influence, 31; ethnic diversity, 82; governance coordination, 95; high-rises, 10, 89; history, 94; “in-between cities,” 93, 98–9; infrastructure, 93–6; jurisdictional issues, 95; new commercial developments, 98; office space, 96; planning, 85, 90, 94, 96; population concentration, 101–2; poverty in suburbs, 82, 98; regional planning, 89, 90, 94; self-built homes, 82; sprawl, 96; “suburban metros,” 94; suburban resurgence, 86 transnational housing, 266–7 Turkey, 25 Tysons Corner, Virginia, 70, 132 Uganda, 262, 265 Ukraine, 185 Ulladulla, Australia, 116f United Kingdom: owner-occupation, 161; urban shrinkage, 212. See also Great Britain United States, 57–79; about, 9, 57–9, 74–5, 76t; crime, 68–9; demographics, 63, 68–9, 72–3, 74t, 144–5; false universalism of U.S. model, 26–8, 351; literature on, 58,

69–70; migration, 62, 63, 69; neoliberalism, 11, 72, 75; new forms, processes, and themes, 354–7; poverty in suburbs, 5, 68–9, 338; race and ethnicity, 31, 57, 58, 65, 69–70, 141–2; social class, 65–6, 68, 69–70, 142; terminology, 59, 63. See also neoliberalism, Chicago-style United States, authoritarian privatism: association-governed communities, 72–4, 74t; private sub-local governments, 73–5 United States, capital accumulation: about, 35, 74–5, 76t, 353–4; corporate domination, 66; history, 60–2, 66–7; local boosterism, 35; office parks and commerce, 70–2; property ownership, 350; race, class, and gender, 31, 36–7; subprime mortgages, 34–7, 69 United States, cultural meanings: aesthetic devaluation of suburbs, 68; “American Dream,” 58–9, 60, 63–4; anti-urban sentiments, 63, 141, 163; Bourdieu’s distinction, 68; frontier and destiny, 60, 64–5, 145; heteronormativity, 31; pas­ toral ideal, 60, 63, 67; stereotype of suburbs, 9, 57–9, 65, 68, 75, 350–1; variety, 75 United States, history: about, 57–9; history, nineteenth century, 59–61, 62; history, early twentieth century, 60–3; history, 1945–1970s, 63–9; history, twentieth century,1980s on, 69–72; history, twenty-first century, 71–5 United States, physical characteristics: about, 74t, 76t; bungalow’s

Index 391 origin, 160; displacement, 66; diversity of, 61–2, 70, 74–5, 142; edge cities, 70–2; exclusivity and homogeneity, 62, 70, 72; gated communities, 37, 73–4, 74t, 142–3; history, 62, 66–7; industrial suburbs, 60–1; informal settlements, 66; land-use mix, 71f; metropolitan transformations, 144–5; office space, 67, 70–2; polycentric versus edgeless areas, 70–2; public housing, 66; self-built development, 62, 66; single-family homes, 60, 62–7; sprawl, 155; stereotype of suburbs, 9, 57–9, 65, 68, 75, 350–1; technoburbs, 11, 68, 131–4, 141; trailers/mobile homes, 66–7, 70; urban shrinkage in “rust-belt,” 201–2 United States, state role: about, 72–4, 76t; federal home ownership incentives (FHA), 31, 65, 66; fragmentation, 72–4; history, 60–1, 72–4; “passive deregulation,” 35; scale and objectives, 32; subprime mortgages, 34–7, 69 United States, urban cores: about, 74–5; anti-urban sentiments, 63, 141, 163; crime, 68–9, 74; gentrification, 69–70, 74; history, 63, 69–74; poverty, 68–9; smart growth issues, 143–4; trends, 72–4 urban cores: critical urban theory, 225; cultural meanings, 326; jurisdictional fragmentation, 35; privileging of, 326; symbol of industrialization, 59; transportation, 35; urbane, as term, 59 urban gating, as term, 341. See also gated communities

urban shrinkage: about, 12, 198–9, 211–12; causes and processes, 201–5, 211–12; demographic changes, 204, 211; future trends, 202; research questions, 12, 198; sprawl, 155, 202; state-led restructuring, 206–9, 210f, 211–12. See also East Germany (former), urban shrinkage U.S.S.R. See Soviet Union (former) Vampyre Index, 124 Vancouver, British Columbia: infrastructure federation, 95; new suburbanism, 86f; as polycentropolis, 88; population concentration, 101–2; public transit, 93–4; regional planning, 86–7; transportation planning, 95 Vicino, Thomas J., 31, 64 Victoria, Australia, 119, 122–3 Victoria, British Columbia, 86–7 Virginia: edge cities, 70; technoburbs, 11, 68, 131–4, 141 Volkova, Lyudmila, 38 Wacquant, Loïc, 342 Walker, Richard, 316 Walks, Alan, 84, 85 Warsaw, Poland, 193n4 Washington, D.C., suburbs: low taxes and rapid growth, 141; median income, 133; smart growth issues, 144; technoburbs, 11, 131–4, 141 Webster, Chris, 311 Weinstein, Liza, 293 West Bengal, India, 284, 293 Western Europe, 155–76; about, 11, 155, 156t–157t, 158, 171–2;

392  Index cultural meanings, 162–3; demographics, 202; disparities in time and space, 158–9; environmental issues, 162; EU influences, 160–1, 162; globalization, 159–61; migration, 160; neoliberalism, 168, 169; regional comparisons, 11, 59; regional integration, 159–61; research questions, 171–2; welfare models, 160–1. See also European Union Western Europe, authoritarian privatism: about, 157t, 168–70; gated communities, 169; security issues, 169; social housing, 11 Western Europe, capital accumulation: about, 157t, 161–2; cons­ truction industry, 160; fiscal competition, 166; international integration, 160; private-led development, 165–6; state-led development, 199–200 Western Europe, infrastructure: automobility and rail, 159–60; deficiencies, 165, 166; transpor­ tation networks, 159–60 Western Europe, physical characteristics: about, 30, 156t; affordable apartments, 30; bungalows, 160; discontinuous development, 158; dual housing system, 162, 165; employment nodes, 158, 159; garden cities, 160; gated communities, 37, 169; global influences, 160; internal national heteroge­neity, 11; new towns, 160, 167; owner-occupation, 161, 169; polycentric patterns, 158, 161; private-rented housing, 161; public housing, 167;

security issues, 169; self-built development, 11, 164, 165, 169, 170, 186; single-family homes, 199; social housing, 11, 161, 166, 200; sprawl, 30, 155, 162 Western Europe, state role: about, 11, 30, 156t; fiscal competition, 166; funding, 161–2; local governments, 161–2, 166–7; planning, 162, 164; regional tier, 167; regulation, 162; state-led development, 165–6, 199–200; static boundaries, 167 Western Europe, urban cores: about, 155; dominance of, 30, 159; employment nodes, 158 West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 59–61 Wiese, Andrew, 69 Williams, Kieran, 368; on Canadian suburbs, 9–10, 80–109 Windsor-Quebec City corridor, Ontario/Quebec, 101–2 Winnipeg, Manitoba, 86–7, 90, 91f Wolff, Goetz, 340 World Bank: investment in Africa, 270–1 Wu, Fulong, 368–9; on China, 14, 27, 303–24 Wyly, Elvin, 36 Young, Robert, 369; on decision-­ making processes, 9, 49–53, 349–50 Yugoslavia: building materials and design layout, 193n5; history, socialist period, 183; self-built development, 180; state-led development, 180; summer cottages, 183

Index 393 Zambia: developer-built estates, 265–6; foreign investment in, 270; new suburbs, 262; planning, 273 Zhao, Yanjing, 311

Zhou, Yixing, 27, 307 Zimbabwe, 273 Zunino, Hugo M., 225 Zurich, Switzerland, 244 Zwischenstadt (cities without cities), 5