Frank Moulaert

Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large–Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy

This paper summarizes the theoretical insights drawn from a study of thirteen large–scale urban development projects (UDPs) in twelve European Union countries. The project focused on the way in which globalization and liberalization articulate with the emergence of new forms of governance, on the formation of a new scalar gestalt of governing and on the relationship between large–scale urban development and political, social and economic power relations in the city. Among the most important conclusions, we found that: •Large–scale UDPs have increasingly been used as a vehicle to establish exceptionality measures in planning and policy procedures. This is part of a neoliberal “New Urban Policy” approach and its selective “middle — and upper–class” democracy. It is associated with new forms of “governing” urban interventions, characterized by less democratic and more elite–driven priorities. •Local democratic participation mechanisms are not respected or are applied in a very “formalist” way, resulting in a new choreography of elite power. However, grassroots movements occasionally manage to turn the course of events in favor of local participation and of modest social returns for deprived social groups. •The UDPs are poorly integrated at best into the wider urban process and planning system. As a consequence, their impact on a city as a whole and on the areas where the projects are located remains ambiguous. •Most UDPs accentuate socioeconomic polarization through the working of real–estate markets (price rises and displacement of social or low–income housing), changes in the priorities of public budgets that are increasingly redirected from social objectives to investments in the built environment and the restructuring of the labor market. •The UDPs reflect and embody a series of processes that are associated with changing spatial scales of governance; these changes, in turn, reflect a shifting geometry of power in the governing of urbanization.

Towards Alternative Model(s) of Local Innovation

This paper introduces a Special Topic on social innovation in the governance of urban communities. It also seeks to widen the debate on the meaning of social innovation both in social science theory and as a tool for empirical research on socioeconomic development and governance at the local level. This debate is organised around ALMOLIN-i.e. alternative models for local innovation as utilised in the SINGOCOM (social innovation in governance in (local) communities) research. The first section explains the role of social innovation in neighbourhood development and how it is best addressed from theoretical, historical and experience-oriented viewpoints. The second section provides a survey of the definitions of social innovation in a variety of social science fields, while the third section mobilises various strands of literature that will be of use for the analytical refinement of ALMOLIN. Section four illustrates how ALMOLIN is used as an analytical tool for empirical research. The final section shows some avenues for future research on social innovation.

The social region - Beyond the territorial dynamics of the learning economy

The purpose of this paper is to launch a debate on a broader meaning of the term ‘innovation’ and its significance for local and regional development. Innovation and related economic and social categories have been at the centre of policy discussions on the future of the European economy and society. Reflections on the innovative and learning region (Territorial Innovation Models; TIMs) have underpinned regional and local development policies. Yet dissatisfaction with the technologist and market-competition-led development concept of the TIMs is growing and today its shortcomings are well known. But to formulate an alternative based on a different ontology requires a multidimensional reflection on the pillars of territorial development. The first section briefly refers to the critical evaluations of the literature on regional innovation and the so-called Territorial Innovation Models. The second section returns to basic questions about the meaning of regional economic development and innovation. It puts forward community development based on social innovation as an alternative to market-led territorial development. The third section examines the consequences of the community ontology for the definition of a number of basic concepts. Categories such as capital, knowledge, learning, evolution, culture and so on receive a different meaning in a model where the economic is only one dimension of the overall dynamics of community development. The fourth section integrates the role of power relations and the articulation between various spatial scales and institutional settings into the community-development approach. The final section dwells on the consequences of this community-oriented territorial approach for contemporary research agendas on local and regional development policies and strategies.

Survey 15. A Regulation Approach to the Geography of Flexible Production Systems

In recent years the Regulation School has shown its merits in the analysis of the regional and urban geography of economic restructuring under contemporary capitalism. This restructuring has left many industrial regions in the midst of a profound socioeconomic crisis. At the same time, new territorial production complexes accomplish or promise economic prosperity in certain regions or subregions. In this way, new spatial networks of economic and social agency are shaped, and movements toward spatial concentration or deconcentration of economic activities, accompanied by particular forms of industrial relations, are promoted. The intention in this paper is to focus on the determinants of the socioeconomic and spatial processes at work in the construction and dissolution of regimes of accumulation and their corresponding modes of regulation as they characterize historical epochs in long-term economic development. More precisely, the intention is to explore the sociospatial dynamics of technological change and innovation during the transition from Fordist to flexible (or post-Fordist) accumulation and regulation. In the first part of the paper, the ‘regulation approach’ (the approach used by the French Regulation School) is proposed as a theoretical–methodological scheme for the analysis of concrete changes in spatial organization during a given historical epoch. In the second part, this approach is illustrated in terms of the current global (rc)organization of capitalist production in social space. In the third part new directions are proposed in which the regulation approach might be further explored.

Knowledge infrastructure, innovation dynamics, and knowledge creation/diffusion/accumulation processes: A comparative institutional perspective

Building on the main results from the TSER reports reviewed in the VALICORES project, this survey article focuses on the Knowledge Infrastructure (KI) and on the institutional-spatial dynamics that characterize innovation and knowledge creation/accumulation/diffusion processes within the developing knowledge-based economy and society. Its aim is threefold. Firstly, the paper seeks to disentangle some crucial issues linked to the nature of the KI and the various agents it involves, their patterns of behaviour and forms of interaction, and their roles in knowledge and innovation processes. The second aim is to determine the extent to which institutional and spatial configurations shape knowledge and innovation dynamics in the European context. Finally, the article advances an analytical framework which could help the understanding of the dynamic interplay of institutions, strategies and spatial scales in the structuring and the deployment of the KI.

Social Cohesion: A Conceptual and Political Elucidation

This article aims to clarify the concept of social cohesion by embedding it within a dynamic, multiscalar and complex understanding of socioeconomic development in the city. Section 1 gives a European perspective on the relationship between differing views of social cohesion and urban policy and how its relation to competitiveness is inherent to contemporary EU cohesion discourse. It examines the ambiguity of policy orientations that seek an answer to this failing functionalisation. Section 2 unravels the complexity and multidimensionality of social cohesion as a problématique. It systematises social cohesion as an ‘open concept’, distinguishing between its socioeconomic, cultural, ecological and political dimensions. Section 3 offers ways of accommodating the tensions and contradictions between cohesion and competitiveness inherent in capitalist market economies, and argues in favour of a progressive neo-structuralist approach, capable of laying out policies to make cities more inclusive for all inhabitants in all their uniqueness and diversity.

Rediscovering Spatial Inequality in Europe: Building Blocks for an Appropriate ‘Regulationist’ Analytical Framework

Regulation theory is of Marxian inspiration, has been strongly influenced by historical analysis and institutionalism, and can be applied to the study of accumulation in and regulation of societies in all eras, of capitalism. But these features of the theory have not prevented many geographers from applying it primarily to the study of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. Moreover, many of them have narrowed the research agenda even more by focusing on the feasibility of fashionable but economistic ‘flex spec prof high-tech’ production models for the development strategies of privileged areas. Research efforts have drifted away from the study of ‘undefended cities and regions’. This evolution is, I believe, all the more deplorable given the creation of the Single European Market, with its permissive social charter and the spatially biased reorganization of the structural funds of the Commission of the European Communities. In this paper a methodological viewpoint is defended which contends that progress in the social sciences can be accomplished only through the confrontation of experience and action-orientated research needs with existing theoretical frameworks capable of leading the research in the right direction. Then, an examination is made of the research needs of agents (policymakers, planners, academics, and so on) involved in action which is orientated towards achieving greater intraspatial and interspatial equality in Europe. The extent to which regulation theory is capable of guiding such research, given the ideological influences as well as theoretical refinements it has undergone, is discussed, and it is concluded that further improvements to regulation theory could make it more appropriate for action-orientated research in socioeconomic geography. This conclusion is illustrated for the application of the analysis of socioeconomic development in depressed areas.

NEW VIEWS OF INNOVATION SYSTEMS: Agents, rationales, networks and spatial scales in the knowledge infrastructure

The objective of this first survey paper is to improve the theory of innovation systems from the perspective of the ‘Knowledge Infrastructure’ with its wealth of public and private agents, including research and technology organizations, universities and consultancies. It is argued that analysing these institutions as part of the knowledge infrastructure will significantly further the theory of multi-agent innovation dynamics within innovation systems. The paper considers the evolution of innovation dynamics over the last 30 years and focuses on the contributions of the EU RTD Framework Programmes on innovation theory. It highlights the role of new types of agents, new kinds of organizational, institutional and cultural innovation as well as the process character of innovation dynamics.

Introduction: Problematising urban social cohesion: a transdisciplinary endeavour

Conceptualising, exploring and operationalising different meanings of social cohesion to make them useful for studying the dynamics of `cities and social cohesion in urban Europe: that is what this Special Issue aims at. It is based on research on `Social Cohesion in European Cities within the FP7-SSHProject Social Polis, the first social platform funded by the EC SSH programme

Euralille Large-Scale Urban Development and Social Polarization

Has large-scale urban regeneration in general and Euralille in particular affected the social and economic harmony of the Lille Metropolis, the largest northern agglomeration of France? To answer this question, the impact of large-scale urban development projects on real estate, housing and job markets is evaluated. It is found that Euralille plays in the first instance an emblematic role in the economic development and social reconstruction of the Lille community. Its impact on socio-economic ‘re-zoning’ of the metropolis is however far from just symbolic. It has set the trend to a new type of corporate estates, it has disturbed the construction cycle of new offices in other parts of the urban region, and it has taken the lead in the creation of a ‘middle-market’ retail system attracting customers from far beyond the Lille agglomeration to its shopping arcades. Moreover, together with other downtown real estate initiatives, it has fuelled the displacement of lower-income housing to cheaper areas of the Metropolis.Has large-scale urban regeneration in general and Euralille in particular affected the social and economic harmony of the Lille Metropolis, the largest northern agglomeration of France? To answer t...