Mike Raco

Delivering Flagship Projects in an Era of Regulatory Capitalism: State-led Privatization and the London Olympics 2012

Much of the urban studies literature on the London Olympics has focused on its social legacies and the top-down nature of policy agendas. This article explores one element that has been less well covered — the contractual dynamics and delivery networks that have shaped infrastructure provision. Drawing on interviews and freedom of information requests, this article explores the mechanisms involved in the projects delivery and their implications for broader understandings of urban politics and policymaking. It assesses contemporary writings on regulatory capitalism, public–private networks and new contractual spaces to frame the empirical discussion. This article argues that the London Olympic model has been characterized by the prioritization of delivery over representative democracy. Democratic imperatives, such as those around sustainability and employment rights, have been institutionally re-placed and converted into contractual requirements on firms. This form of state-led privatization of the development process represents a new, and for some, potentially more effective mode of governance than those offered by traditional systems of regulation and management.

Urban Sustainability, Conflict Management, and the Geographies of Postpoliticism: A Case Study of Taipei

The concept of sustainability has been used by city governments worldwide to promote urban development. For some the term represents an archetypal postpolitical construct that enables urban populations and policy makers to confront collective problems in a consensus-driven way. In short, it enables a new conflict-free politics to emerge within cities. This paper uses the example of Taipei, Taiwan to explore how sustainable development agendas in a postcolonial city, which has a relatively young democratic system, are articulated and with what effects. It examines the utility of recent postpolitical writing as an explanatory frame for contemporary political changes. It documents how and in what ways postpolitical agendas have been established and how they have been used to nullify conflict by shifting attention away from grassroots concerns over globally oriented developmentalism.

The privatisation of urban development and the London Olympics 2012

‘On the Olympics she [Tessa Jowell] was telling me it was an enormous opportunity. Think of the impact on our young people, on fitness, on sport, on the country’s self-belief. I would say but suppose we get beaten by the French and I end up humiliated? One day when I had finished saying this to her in graphic terms, sitting in the Downing Street garden . . . she looked at me reproachfully and said “I really didn’t think that was your attitude to leadership. I thought you were prepared to take a risk. And it is a big risk. Of course we may not win but at least we will have the courage to try” . . . Oh, OK, we’ll go for it.’ (Tony Blair, 2010, p. 545)

The New Localism, Anti-Political Development Machines, and the Role of Planning Consultants: Lessons from London's South Bank

Abstract This paper draws on a study of the politics of development planning in Londons South Bank to examine wider trends in the governance of contemporary cities. It assesses the impacts and outcomes of so-called new localist reforms and argues that we are witnessing two principal trends. First, governance processes are increasingly dominated by anti-democratic development machines, characterized by new assemblages of public- and private-sector experts. These machines reflect and reproduce a type of development politics in which there is a greater emphasis on a pragmatic realism and a politics of delivery. Second, the presence of these machines is having a significant impact on the politics of planning. Democratic engagement is not seen as the basis for new forms of localism and community control. Instead, it is presented as a potentially disruptive force that needs to be managed by a new breed of skilled private-sector consultant. The paper examines these wider shifts in urban politics before focusing on the connections between emerging development machines and local residential and business communities. It ends by highlighting some of the wider implications of change for democratic modes of engagement and nodes of resistance in urban politics.

Geographies of abstraction, urban entrepreneurialism, and the production of new cultural spaces: the West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong

During the 1990s and 2000s understandings of urban politics have become dominated by narratives of neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism. Considerations of, and even interest in, the diversities that exist in the specific politics that shape place developments have often been relegated to a matter of secondary interest when understood in relation to broader structural global forces. This is particularly significant as urban development projects have become increasingly bound-up with cultural programmes, many of which are embedded in the social relations of places, yet are often dismissed as subservient to global, fast-track development logics. This paper draws on a study of the politics surrounding the development of one of Asias largest culture-led urban development projects, the West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong. It explores the complex relationships between contemporary development discourses and historically embedded postcolonial subjectivities and policy legacies. It uses the evidence to argue for more nuanced interpretations of change, and calls for a stronger focus on the concrete relations in and through which policy abstractions are formed.

Some simple tools for communicating the biophysical condition of urban rivers to support decision making in relation to river restoration

This paper illustrates a set of simple tools that may be used to assess and communicate the biophysical condition of river and riparian habitat in urban catchments. The tools are based upon information collected using the Urban River Survey (URS), a habitat survey designed for application to 500xa0m stretches of urban river corridor, and comprise (i) a series of aggregate indices, (ii) three classifications relating to the materials, habitat and vegetation characteristics of urban river stretches, which contribute to an overall score, the Stretch Habitat Quality Index (SHQI), and (iii) two environmental gradients which define a URS matrix of engineering:habitat associations. This toolkit may be used to gather and exchange knowledge about urban river habitat quality to a wide range of specialist or non-technical stakeholders and local community members. It may be used to provide information at the catchment and reach scales to support stakeholder discussions and decision making relating to initial site selection for restoration works; to post project appraisal; and to track changes in river character across space and through time. Example applications of the tools are provided using URS surveys undertaken on tributaries of the River Thames within London in comparison with an archive of previous surveys from three other urban river systems. These tools are being validated in London as part of a larger interdisciplinary research project that is testing the suitability of this type of approach in the context of the London Rivers Action Plan, Water Framework Directive, and urban green space regeneration.

Neoliberal Urban Policy, Aspirational Citizenship and the Uses of Cultural Distinction

Drawing on the example of the UK, this chapter argues that the principal aim of neoliberal urban policy is to create less welfare dependent, more entrepreneurial, and responsible citizens through the establishment of new urban cultures and high-aspirational urban spaces. The chapter begins by discussing the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of distinction. It then moves on to an assessment of British urban policy and the recent turn to a discourse of ‘aspirational citizenship’. It explores its uses as both a description of, and an explanation for, growing socio-economic inequalities in cities. In this way, the chapter argues, policy not only reproduces inequalities but also provides an individualised explanation for their existence and perpetuation. The chapter concludes by highlighting future research avenues and the value in re-thinking the cultural politics of neoliberal urban policy.

The 2012 Olympic Learning Legacy Agenda – the intentionalities of mobility for a new London model

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the emergence of a Learning Legacy Agenda (LLA) in the wake of the London 2012 Olympic Games as a governmental tool for the dissemination of urban development and infrastructure project delivery best practice. Focusing on the inception, coordination and implementation of the LLA we outline the intentionalities of mobility that underpin its formation and appropriation and suggest how this points to the emergence of a new “London model” of development and governance. Three intentionalities of knowledge capture, public duty and extra-local salience are unpacked to demonstrate the range of ways in which the bureaucratically initiated LLA banner has been used by various development actors and organisations to validate their existing practices. The case study of the LLA as an institutionalised governance apparatus is used to analyse the impact of specific forms of social relations on the ways in which “models” are produced, what their content consists of, how dominant agendas and narratives co-evolve with the priorities of an assemblage of actors and the processes of selective abstraction used to curate particular messages and forms of fixed and potentially mobile knowledge, yet dubious claims of “learning”.

The politicisation of diversity planning in a global city: Lessons from London:

This paper explores the politics of diversity planning in one of Europe’s most socially and economically divided and globally oriented cities: London. The analysis draws on Latour’s writings on modes of politicisation to examine the processes and practices that shape contemporary urban governance. It uses the example of diversity planning to examine the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of urban politics. It shows that on the one hand diversity is represented in pragmatic, consensual and celebratory terms. Under prevailing conditions of contemporary global capitalism, the ‘what’ of diversity has been politicised into an agenda for labour market-building and the attraction of ‘talented’ individuals and foreign investment. However, at the same time this celebratory rhetoric represents part of a wider effort to deflect political attention away from the socially and economically divisive impacts of global models of economic growth and physical development. There is little discussion of the ways in which planning frameworks, the ‘how’ of diversity policy, are helping to generate new separations in and beyond the city. Moreover, despite claiming that policy is pragmatic and non-ideological, the paper shows how diversity narratives have become an integral part of broader political projects to orientate the city’s economy towards the needs of a relatively small cluster of powerful economic sectors. The paper concludes with reflections on the recent impacts of the vote for Brexit and the election of an openly Muslim London Mayor. It also assesses the broader relevance of a Latourian framework for the analysis of contemporary urban politics.

Critical urban cosmopolitanism and the governance of urban diversity in European cities

This paper draws on the findings of a cross-national European Union project, named DIVERCITIES, that analyses the relationships between narratives and meanings of the term ‘diversity’ and their influence on the governance and planning of European cities. It is widely argued that there is a growing dissonance between the policy narratives and agendas found in metropolitan cities and amongst national governments. The former are characterised as being more pragmatic, tolerant and open in their approaches than the latter who, in many instances, have adopted more assimilationalist and nationalist rhetorics and policies. In exploring these governance dynamics, the paper builds on the work of Delanty to argue for a methodological approach grounded in what he terms critical cosmopolitanism, or a focus on the dynamic interactions between global and local influences on governmentalities and policy priorities. Much of the writing on critical cosmopolitanism has focused on questions of identity. This paper expands the concept and assesses its applicability to understandings and interpretations of urban politics and governance, through the lens of diversity narratives and the ways in which they are ‘fixed’ to broader political projects by regimes in different contexts. It argues that a range of meanings are being attached to ‘diversity’. In some instances, the term acts as a focus for more progressive forms of intervention. In others, however, it is being used to justify divisive forms of growth politics or acts as a lightning rod for existing discontents. The paper concludes by reflecting on the impacts of recent anti-globalisation and immigration politics across Europe and the fragility of existing fixes and policy assumptions.