Donald McNeill

The Politics of City-Region Planning and Governance Reconciling the National, Regional and Urban in the Competing Voices of Institutional Restructuring

Issues relating to the governance of urban areas and regions have become of increasing interest to academics and policy analysts. In the global economy, urban and economic development matters are being interpreted within the governance framework. As a consequence of the lack of a formal statutory metropolitan political focus within the UK over the last 30 years, much of this debate has invariably focused on one scale: the city or the local. But the New Labour Government’s political and administrative restructuring of the institutions and regions of governance is reconfiguring the city development issue onto another level. In future, it will be possible to view the urban governance issue from the perspective of a much broader framework, involving issues relating to urban policies within institutions operating at the regional level. This article is intended to chart the development of a push towards city-region planning and governance in the UK. It focuses specifically on political and institutional restructuring as a catalyst to a reconceptualization of the urban problem, and assesses four key components that have engendered this sense of strategic policy making over the last few years: central government funding opportunities through partnerships; the emergence of regional planning; the creation of regional development agencies with an urban remit; and opportunities provided by European Union funding mechanisms. The article concludes by outlining possible future directions for city regions and identifies where future research is required.

McGuggenisation? National identity and globalisation in the Basque country

Abstract This paper examines recent debates about the globalisation of cities and regions through a discussion of the recent opening of a Guggenheim Foundation art gallery in Bilbao. Through an analysis of the political context surrounding the project, I aim to explore the role of cities as crucibles for the negotiation of globalisation, and in particular how this relates to national identity. In the paper I set out several layered narratives which try to capture the significance of this event for Basque political identity. After discussing issues of globalisation, political strategy and European territorial restructuring, I explore the following: first, the process of ‘McGuggenisation’ and its consonance with ideas of global cultural imperialism; second, the ‘indigenisation’ of the Guggenheim by the Basque political elite, a strategic engagement with globalisation; third, the contestation of the museum by particularist radicalism. In summary, the Guggenheim event is seen as a collision between Basque extremism, modernising ‘bourgeois regionalism’, and the interests of a museum poised to become a global art corporation, providing a context for examining theories of globalisation in the European city.

THE AIRPORT HOTEL AS BUSINESS SPACE

Abstract. This article seeks to contribute to debates about the mobile nature of contemporary economic practice, through a discussion of some key themes in the evolution of airport hotels as business spaces. It argues that despite being emblematic of a hypermobile business elite, the nature of hotels as business spaces requires careful unpacking. The article begins by discussing the evolution of the airport hotel, charting the shift from basic lodging standards to recent developments of five star airport hotels. It then seeks to explain the locational geographies of airport hotel development, in response to these new trends. Finally, the article describes how the business traveller is conceived of and (speculatively) catered for by airport hotel operators and designers within a discourse of connectivity, before providing some counter‐examples of how such claims fail to address the hotels place within the complexity of airport spatial organization.

The Mayor and the World City Skyline: London's Tall Buildings Debate

Political leaders are renowned for their attempts to leave their impression on the urban landscape. Ken Livingstones period in office as mayor of London has been marked by his attempts to substantially increase the number of tall buildings in the city. This paper examines some of the debates that have erupted between conservationist bodies (including the very influential English Heritage) and the mayor, developers, and several London boroughs including the City of London Corporation over proposed new skyscrapers. It considers where the power to shape Londons aesthetics lies, and whether this is, or can be, democratically accountable.

Office Buildings and the Signature Architect: Piano and Foster in Sydney

In this paper I examine the growing trend in commercial office development of the use of globally operative ‘signature’ architects, famed design leaders who are sought out and contracted to provide design products in cities far from their head office. The engagement of two leading international design firms—Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Foster and Partners—by Australian developers for new Sydney office towers (Aurora Place and 126 Phillip Street, respectively) is analyzed in detail. I identify three areas where the design of office buildings is seen to make a commercial difference: in lubricating the planning-approval process in sensitive urban contexts; in adding value to the building through reconciling urban context and architectural form with commercial development rationalities; and in selling the interior space of the building to prospective commercial tenants.

Globalization and the ethics of architectural design

What ethical considerations are involved in the design and production of contemporary architectural icons, such as Rem Koolhaas’ China Central Television headquarters and Richard Rogers’ Heathrow Terminal Five? In this article, Donald McNeill explores the range of ethical issues facing high‐profile architectural firms who compete for commissions from clients in the global architectural marketplace. Through illustrative studies of projects which raise questions of political, environmental and civic responsibility, McNeill considers the degree to which architects are compromised by clients, the extent to which ethical considerations permeate architecture as a profession, and the ability of architects to intervene in broader debates about urbanity and society. A stronger engagement with ethical considerations is required if architectural practice is to be more than a professional screen for the activities of corporate and government clients.

The redevelopment of Olympic sites : examining the legacy of Sydney Olympic Park

This paper examines the redevelopment of the site of Sydney’s 2000 summer Olympics, locating it within debates over the legacy of these events. The paper describes some of the key stakeholders involved in the redevelopment and planning of the site. It provides an overview of the regulatory context and governance bodies that have structured the space since the staging of the Olympics, then identifies two key areas of private-sector involvement, in event space and in business development, where tensions emerged over how the site should best be governed.

Governing a city of unicorns: technology capital and the urban politics of San Francisco

San Francisco is now widely considered to be the most important city in the world for the location of new technology start-up firms, especially high valuation “unicorns,” and is increasingly seen as both a locational and metaphorical extension of Silicon Valley. In this paper, I trace some of the political strategies and tensions that have accompanied the city’s prominence in this area, and in particular the distinctive role of technology and venture capital in the political economy of urban development. The paper has four empirical sections. It describes (1) the political machinations surrounding the 2011 and 2015 municipal elections, which saw the election of Ed Lee as Mayor with significant support from individual technology investors such as Ron Conway and Marc Benioff, and accompanied by various “tech-friendly” policy shifts; (2) the foundation of the “tech chamber of commerce” sf.citi as a means of enhancing the policy influence of the tech industry in San Francisco; (3) the introduction of a low taxation regime in the city’s Central Market area that has attracted technology companies such as Twitter as tenants; and (4) the urban policy tensions associated with the evolution of new “sharing economy” firms such as Uber and Airbnb, which have aggressively challenged municipal regulations in the taxi and property rental fields. Throughout these machinations, we can see a reshaping of capital fractions, with venture and angel capital increasingly involved in reengineering the labor, housing, and public transport markets of the city in order to circumvent the accumulation problems that tech investors had suffered in the earlier dot.com failures.

Hotels as Civic Landmarks, Hotels as Assets: the case of Sydney's Hilton

Abstract In this paper, we examine the role that hotels play in the urban economies of central business districts (CBDs). To illustrate this, we explore the biography of the Sydney Hilton, an iconic modernist building which opened in 1975 and was recently totally refurbished and rebranded. We argue that hotels can be understood as civic landmarks, where localised business elites and the local state coalesce to ensure their successful construction, and where commercial activity is understood within an ideology of civic pride. Within this context, however, the design and appearance of hotels is driven by both their use value and exchange value. We trace a biography of the Sydney Hilton through three phases of its operation, considering its place within the backdrop of the reconstitution of Sydneys CBD, and the broader urban economy. We conclude that the refurbishment of the Hilton can thus only be understood by considering wider issues of corporate brand, asset ownership and the requirements of the local state.

In Search of a European Edge Urban Identity Trans-European Networking among Edge Urban Municipalities

Transnational networking has come to the fore as a strategy for coping with the increasingly stringent fiscal climate in which European municipalities have had to operate in the last two to three decades. New funding streams for policy development and implementation have emerged with the Commission’s financing of trans-European local authority networks. In this paper we consider the formation of a shared European identity and the nature and content of interauthority networking activities, drawing upon the example of one newly formed network - the edge cities network. Here we make use of original empirical material drawn from three case-study edge city municipalities - Croydon, Getafe and Noisy-le-Grand. We find that a weak form of shared European edge urban identity has developed to date, and that the direct and indirect benefits of networking are not all that they might be. There is some evidence that longstanding national traditions of interorganizational working and administrative arrangements have exerted an influence on the networking activities of at least one of these edge urban municipalities. In this respect, transnational networking meshes with aspects of local entrepreneurial coalition building which are often imbued with a sense of interlocality competition for private and public investment.