collected snippets of immediate importance...


Wednesday, December 2, 2009

jennifer robinson, global and world cities (2002)

(531): thesis: "My concerns in this article extend beyond the poor fit of these popular categories, though. I would like to suggest that these widely circulating approaches to contemporary urbanization — global and world cities, together with the persistent use of the category ‘third-world city’ — impose substantial limitations on imagining or planning the futures of cities around the world."

(532): ok, very important that she has acknowledged this: "Of course, the cities I am concerned with are most emphatically on the map of a broad range of diverse global political, economic and cultural connections, but this is frequently discounted and certainly never explored within these theoretical approaches."

(532): this is where the anti-orientialism becomes problematic (let's look at critiques of chakrabarty, for example): "My contention is that ‘urban theory’ is based primarily on the experiences and histories of western cities — much as Chakrabarty (2000) suggests that the theories and categories of historical scholarship have been rooted both in western experiences and their intellectual traditions. And, like him, I want to suggest that restructuring the terrain on which different kinds of cities are thought within urban studies could enhance the understanding of cities everywhere."

(534-535): seems to be deriding world-cities approach for economism, but debatable whether this is a tenable rejoinder, on principle and in the abstract: "Rather, in considering the dynamics of the world economy in relation to cities, a structural analysis of a small range of economic processes with a certain ‘global’ reach has tended to crowd out an attentiveness within urban studies to the place and effect of individual cities (King, 1995) and the diversity of wider connections which shape them (Allen et al., 1999)... Perhaps more importantly, this methodology reveals an analytical tension between assessing the characteristics and potential of cities on the basis of the
processes which matter as viewed from within their diverse dynamic social and economic worlds (which, of course, always stretch way beyond any physical edge to the city), or on the basis of criteria determined by the external theoretical construct of the world or global economy (see also Varsanyi, 2000). This is at the heart of how a world cities approach can limit imaginations about the futures of cities, which I will return to below."

(536): ok--this point, certainly, seems fairer: "Mirroring the world city emphasis on a limited range of economic activities with a certain global reach, as well as its categorizing imperative, the global city approach has a similar effect, dropping most cities in the world from its vision. If the ‘global city’ were labelled as just another example of an ‘industrial’ district (perhaps it should rather be called: new industrial districts of transnational management and control), it might not have attracted the attention it did. But on the positive side, some of the consequences for cities in poorer parts of the world might have been avoided."

(537): this, too, is far, but we have to be careful about consigning 'universalism' to the dustbin: "But it is the leap from this very restricted and clearly defined economic analysis, to claims regarding the success and power of these few cities, their overall categorization on this restricted basis, and the implied broader structural irrelevance of all other cities, which is of concern. These theoretical claims and categorizing moves are both inaccurate and harmful to the fortunes of cities defined ‘off the map’."

(537): important, but what is the point of an observation like this? is it really in doubt that africa is in crisis (and that even south africa, which is probably one of the countries being referred to, here), is also in severe crisis? it's one thing to argue for the method to be re-applied, better (which may be what she is arguing, in fairness). but we have to agree, at least, that it's entirely another to s5ay that the notion of situating these countries in the context of global economic shifts is inadmissable: "For many, the 1980s and 1990s have been long decades of little growth and growing inequality. It is, however, inaccurate to caricature even the poorest regions as excluded from the global economy or doomed to occupy a slow zone of the world economy. Africa, frequently written off in these large global analyses, has had a very uneven growth record."

(538): agreed--"It is one thing, though, to agree that global links are changing, some are being cut, and that power relations, inequalities and poverty shape the quality of those links (see, for example, Halfani, 1996). It is quite another to suggest that poor cities and countries are irrelevant to the global economy."

(539): this is relevant, even if it might not have the consequence she outlines (are we really trying to dispute the 'power' of the global north? in other words, you can take the question of 'can the subaltern speak?' way too far.): "And most importantly, perhaps, but seldom mentioned, the particular ‘global economy’ which is being used as the ground and foundation for identifying both place in hierarchy and relevant social and economic processes, is only one of many forms of global and transnational economic connection.8 The criteria for global significance might well look very different were the map-makers to relocate themselves and review significant transnational networks in a place like Jakarta, or Kuala Lumpur, where ties to Islamic forms of global economic and political activity might result in a very different list of powerful cities"

(540): here is a problem--is the argument, then, that they are not really as bad as they seem? i am perplexed. "In the same way, then, that global and world city approaches ascribe the characteristics of only parts of cities to the whole city through the process of categorization, mega-city and developmentalist approaches extend to the entire city the imagination of those parts which are lacking in all sorts of facilities and services. Where the global city approach generalizes the successful locales of high finance and corporate city life, the developmentalist approach builds towards a vision of all poor cities as infrastructurally poor and economically stagnant yet (perversely?) expanding in size. Many other aspects of city life in these places are obscured, especially dynamic economic activities, popular culture, innovations in urban governance and the creative production of diverse forms of urbanism — all potentially valuable resources in the quest for improving urban life"

(540): seems to me like there's a confounding going on--you can be relevant to economic growth, with a population condemned to poverty: "But while cities have been seen as distinctive sites for (transnational) interventions in the form of targeted development projects mostly at the neighbourhood level, the city as such has been considered broadly irrelevant to economic growth."

(541-542): i'm very, very confused--is she advocating this? or just observing that this makes the city more important? i think it is the latter, but there is some ambiguity "Urban development initiatives at the end of the 1990s have dovetailed with substantial administrative decentralization in poorer countries to produce a set of policy proposals focusing on promoting urban economic development at a local level... In this case it is decentralization, democratization, tighter aid and policy control by IFIs, as well as new forms of economic liberalization which have contributed to the growing emphasis of development practice in poorer countries on recognizing the city as a significant site of developmental planning"

(542): i can't help but lament that all this has a deeply reformist bent: "This is not simply to more accurately represent and understand cities, but to contribute to framing policy alternatives which can encourage support for a diversity of economic activities with a wide range of spatial reaches, rather than prioritizing only those with a global reach."

(545): see this, also -- are we talking about economic potential that the establishment would love? "Cities thus remain attractive locations for business activity across a range of sectors and offer an environment that enables economic production and innovation. This is to make a case for the broad economic potential of all cities."

(545): and more--to an extent this is fair, but isn't it more appropriate to see this 'social webs' in their larger context, as survival strategies?: "To the extent that it is a form of economic reductionism (and reductionism to only a small segment of economic activity) which sustains the regulating fiction of the global city, this spatialized account of the multiple webs of social relations which produce ordinary cities could help to displace some of the hierarchizing and excluding effects of this approach."

(546): in sum: "From the viewpoint of global and world cities approaches, poor localities, and many cities which do not qualify for global or world city status, are caught within a very limited
set of views of urban development: between finding a way to fit into globalization, emulating the apparent successes of a small range of cities; and embarking on developmentalist initiatives to redress poverty, maintain infrastructure and ensure basic service delivery. Neither the costly imperative to go global, nor developmentalist interventions which build towards a certain vision of city-ness and which focus attention on the failures of cities, are very rich resources for city planners and managers who turn to scholars for analytical insight and assessment of experiences elsewhere. It is my opinion that urban studies needs to decolonize its imagination about city-ness, and about the possibilities for and limits to what cities can become, if it is to sustain its relevance to the key urban challenges of the twenty-first century. My suggestion is that ‘ordinary-city’ approaches offer a potentially more fertile ground for meeting these challenges."

(547): this is the odd theory-practice confounding: "Categorizing a group of cities as ‘global’ on the basis of these small concentrated areas of transnational management and coordination activity within them is metonymic in that it has associated entire cities with the success and power of a small area within them (Amin and Graham, 1997, and as Sassen, 2001, acknowledges). In the process a valid line of analysis has reproduced a very familiar hierarchization of cities, setting certain cities at the top of the hierarchy to become the aspiration of city managers around the world."

(549): are you serious?! this is the positive project? "For example, Benjamin (2000) reports on economic clusters in Bangalore which embrace a range of diverse but interconnected activities. Simone (2001) suggests that ‘ephemeral’ or temporary public spaces enable actors from all sorts of sectors, involved in all sorts of different enterprises to meet together for a while and explore the potential interactions across a range of resources and contacts often kept apart in city spaces. Such studies and examples extend the classic uni-sectoral western industrial cluster model, and extend ideas about how proximity in cities can support creativity. This should offer some significant food for thought for both academics and policy-makers."

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