CRP 2000 FINAL EXAM

The Promises and Pitfalls of Contemporary Urbanism

Arturo Igancio Sanchez

Title
Redefining Growth: from transient to resilient urbanism
Name
Barry Beagen
REDEFINING GROWTH: from transient to resilient urbanism

Introduction

The industrial era was driven by the assumption that our resources are limitless.
The production of goods also means the production of markets, then the production of
consumers. In the hyper-capitalist model, national growth is often associated the Gross
Domestic Production (GDP) or quantity of consumption. At the level of the urban
environment, growth is often associated with real estate developments, new malls, retail
centers, Olympic parks, cultural institutions and international expositions. Logan and
Molotch describe this contemporary view as the view of the city as a “growth machine”.
The meaning of growth is, however, much denser and more complex than is outlined by
contemporary media or society. Within the context of a globalized and capitalist economy,
there has been a misunderstood propaganda of symbolic growth. Symbolic growth is
characterized by manifestations such as large government expenditures on physical
infrastructures, urban revitalization, tabula rasa developments and increase in
entertainment or retail spaces. In the increasingly fast-paced economy, Fanstein laments,
“economic composition of places seems to have become less and less permanent”, more
transient. As a result, cities struggle to respond and often result with a negative
compromise of neoliberal policies.

The notion of transient urbanism is an aggregate of hyper-capitalism, globalized

economy that is mobilized through neoliberal campaigns in American cities. Capital and
political investments are often directed towards pure economic growth or symbolic growth
rather than real growth. This results in often short-term solutions or responses to urban
problems that lacks foresight. The conditions of contemporary neoliberal cities are also
“transient” in a way that they are often structurally vulnerable to global economic shifts.
These transient factors – ideology, culture and economic models - accelerate or move
faster than physical infrastructures, population, demographic compositions and often
times political will. As a result, cities suffer from negative consequences such as uneven
development, unsustainable shrinking cities, political decentralization, economic injustice
and displacement of the urban poor.

Fainstein calls for a “new strategy for growth” so as to counter declining urban
conditions. This new “strategy” should fall short of a “One Size Fits All” model but more of
a dynamic process that emphasize resilience over transient forms. The definition of
resilience in cities is foresightedness and the ability of systems to persist, adapt and
change to external forces. In the resilience model, authorities, regimes or institutions act
as the immune system of the urban environment. They act to diagnose persistent
problems or new problems that is created by the polarized global economy. When
institutions take a neoliberal stance or a conceited dedication to pure economic growth,
the city becomes vulnerable to the virulent attacks of the volatile global economy. As
Fainstein suggests, cities need to “escape from total determination by outside forces” and
find “a formula that will limit capitalist hegemony within both the workplace and the
community”. The argument towards resilience can be made through a discursive approach
as well as looking at current progressive movements and direct actions being applied.

The Creation of Transient Urbanisms

In analyzing urban restructuring, Fainstein developed two dichotomous yet

interdependent frameworks - the global approach and the inside-out approach. The former
locates the city within a totality – the global economy. Global forces both affects the city’s
inner workings and at the same time the city chooses to respond in the same manner. In
the inside out approach, cities are understood through their “historic economic base”,
“urban diversity” and political strategies shaped by particularities of the locality. The
interplay between the two models has resulted major structural changes in urban
environments. Unfortunately, the conflict of interests between the global and local has
wrought various problems and led to the creation of transient cities.

In order to understand the historical production and its contemporary manifestation,

we have to first analyze the global context of the transient city. At the height of U.S.
imperialism, industries moved or decentralize to global-peripheral zones where it is close
to both untapped markets and natural or labor resources. This results in abandonment of
historic industries in most US cities. The abandonment of industries in the city also meant
disinvestment, and thus the “hollowing out” of urban cores. In addition, education or labor
skills do not respond fast enough to the almost instantaneous shift of the global market.
As a result, the disenfranchised urban spaces have to continue supporting a large pool of
blue-collar workers or workers with obsolete (in terms the globalized economy) skills.
Because the “neoliberal city”, as Hackworth has described, is highly dependent, not on
governmental revenue distribution such as federal funds, but on taxes from private wealth
institutions, the leftover demography of labor in these cities may not necessarily generate
the needed economic revenues for revitalization. In the local context, the Keynesian state
interventionist was in a decline during the Reagan era. The focus on “hard-work” and
meritocratic rewards tinged with Social Darwinism created an atmosphere that
undermines the welfare state. The decline was also propelled by economic factors such as
the inflation caused by the move of global cities such as New York City towards a more
managerial or service-oriented role. As a result, deliberate political decisions were made to
reduce federal funds from cities and decentralize state control. Hackworth argues that this
removal of funds, although allowed for greater local autonomy, has resulted in
“entrepreneurial cities”. These entrepreneurial cities tend to increase privatization and
deregulation in order to achieve “good business climates” making them fertile for global
investments.

These attitudes are often powered by the notion that the city is or has to be a “growth machine”.
In the advanced capitalist state, economic growth overshadows any progressive reform and becomes an
ideological hegemony. Logan and Molotch contended: “elites use their growth consensus to eliminate
any alternative vision of the purpose of local government or the meaning of community”. Hence, there
is a correlation between uneven distribution of wealth and power to political determination of a city.
The elites were able to activate structural changes, often to their interest - the global market and
speculative projects that reap high returns. Similarly, the political elites achieve their gains by amassing
public support through symbolic growth projects such as transportation infrastructures and the media
in addition to “sympathetic policies”. This focus on a market-based development results in the
vulnerability of urban formations to global economic shifts. Unfortunately, the trend will likely to
continue with the diminishing voice of local citizens, especially of those in the lower end of the socio-
economic spectrum.

The combination of the above conditions, globalization, neoliberalization and persistent focus
on symbolic growth has manifested in typically uneven urban restructuring that can be described as
transient, outlined here by Hackworth: (1) Suburbanization and exurbanization of the elites, (2)
Revalorization and gentrification of the inner core and, (3) Devalorization of the inner suburbs. In the
theory of uneven development, there are two sets of mutually dependent and self-reifying processes.
They work in tandem to result in a systematic “trickling up” of wealth distribution rather than the
intended benign “trickling down” of capitalist apologetics. The following analysis will focus on the
second urban restructuring – the revalorization of the inner core – as a locus of argument for the
creation of transient urbanisms.

The first process is the global market that is increasingly dominant over local economies.
Because of the susceptibility of localities under a neoliberal climate, cities respond by creating globally-
and economically-focused infrastructures such as Central Business Districts (CBDs), Special Economic
Zones (SEZs) and such. This increases the rents of areas, which are usually located in the city center.
Internationalization of the economy leads to increase in competitors in the tertiary sectors. This inhibits
the growth of local regimes that are moving towards the service industry. The presence of multi-
national, cookie-cutter and efficiently deployed corporations can eke out smaller, local businesses into
peripheral zones. As a result, the city center is dominated by the global.

The second process is the hegemony of the elites. Because the globalized economy and the
growth machine are both supported and run by the elites, urban developments often cater to them. This
leads to urban formations that support their economic endeavors - which is global - and their lifestyle.
The latter results in the commoditization of even the service industries and propel the rise of the
“creative class” and the “experience economy” which are actors of gentrification or valorization of the
inner core. These actors reify uneven wealth distribution by spreading unaffordable utopias and
produces transient spatial productions that respond quickly to globally derived demand and ideology.
Their characteristics are best explained in Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave” and Fredric Jameson’s analysis
of Los Angeles in “Postmodernism: the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”.

The cyclical process outlined persists today and will continue to manifest in the overgrowth of
the elite sector that symbiotic underdevelopment of overall well-being of the society. The neoliberal
climate limits investments in social welfares such as public housing, public spaces and community
development programs. Fainstein also attests to the current condition where “urban landscapes [has]
become the product of impersonal market forces, dominated by the interest of the capital.” The
devolution of the state, growing autonomy of the real estate market and mass privatization of urban
experiences is making social change and bottom-up economic growth increasingly difficult. However,
the autonomy of the public also has a bifurcated result of producing contestants or oppositions to the
neoliberal or globalizing regime.

Towards a Resilient City

At the end of the book, Hackworth argues that in order to counter or rework
capitalistic neoliberalism in its discursive and material manifestation, there is a need to
cajole political institutions into the potentially new direction. And this can only be done
through discursive methods: “Any resolution, alternative, or counter to neoliberalism,
must by necessity be a contested political one, and the crucial first step is winning the
discursive right to claim that viable and progressive alternatives are possible.” His book
also outlines the various efforts that are attempting to counter the hegemony of neoliberal
productions as well as their ideological and pragmatic limitations. Fainstein argues for less
polarized bipartisan ideologies. She urges the left and its progressive ideals to become
more active rather than “dismissing them (capitalist or conservative policies) on moral
grounds”. She is calling for a more active direct approach than a passive discursive
approach. She also suggests that the left has to “come-to-terms” with entrepreneurial
modes of production rather than the historic nostalgia over Ruskinian artisan
manufacturers that cannot effectively stimulate growth. Cities are embedded in the
national ideological, institutional and fiscal constraints. Local progressive forces have to
understand their connection to the world-systems while understanding the particularities
and uniqueness of each locale. Cities cannot operate in political isolation in order to truly
progress towards a resilient reform.

Architecture theorist and historian, Colin Rowe, wrote “Collage City” as a response
or critique to the utopian coerciveness of modernism. He argues for a looser and diverse
urban form that can embrace history and future together. The notion of the ‘fox’ is more
effective than the ‘porcupine’ – the former is the “collage” and the latter stubborn
modernism – can inform planning and policy development as much as it can inform
design. As an extension to Colin Rowe’s “collage city”, there should also be a “collage” of
processes that both Hackworth and Fainstein hover about. The discursive approach is not
to find a new model that is a grey area between liberals, conservatives, leftist or right
wing politics. But it is to convert ideologies to agencies. Agency, in this sense, is the
pragmatic emphasis on solving pertinent problems rather than the focus on assessing
whether a decision made fits a certain ideology or not. Within this framework of “collage”
and “agency”, urban planning and policies have to begin by redefining growth as not
purely economic growth. Economic growth is but a subset and not a measure of all other
growths. This model calls for a planning for resilience rather than transient modes of
economic adaptation, ideological adoption and political response. As suggested by
Fainstein, “entrepreneurship by urban progressive coalitions thus requires that they aim
not only at stimulating local investment but also at building a national movement for
growth with equity.” Resilient growth consists of a more complex mix of social, ecological
and economic factors rather than a reductive notion of a burgeoning market economy.
Resilience factors include the diversity of cultural, ethnic, economic and political
institutions, equitable growth and ecological sustainability.

Another step towards resilience is the reevaluation of the role of institutions and
planners. Government or local authorities should act as a facilitator of the collective, not
one that is acting upon an institutionally derived will or knowledge. Participation and
empowerment of local citizens is key to informing better democratic decisions. The
discursive argument can only be carried through or has to be supplemented with direct
action and interaction at the everyday and the level of neighborhoods, collectives and
specific individuals. The logic of Calculus can be applied in planning or an analysis of
urban problems: as the number of discretized elements increases, the greater an
approximate it is to the ideal model. Instead of focusing on symbolic ideologies, there is a
need to move into greater and less rationalized dynamic systems of analyzing
phenomenological values. Urbanists such as Jane Jacobs, John F. C. Turner and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty have promulgated the idea of a more microcosmic and localized process of
interaction or socio-political action.

In recent times, such dynamic, non-hegemonic, decentralized model can be seen in

a growing “perfect information” that is becoming more accessible to politicians and
planners alike. The advent of the Internet revolution or Information Age has evolved to
open-sourced networks where social capital, social networks and knowledge capital
coalesce into a new form of socialism. For example, SeeClickFix.com allows citizens to post
local urban problems and complaints online. A user, in this case a planner or local
politicians can access the information without passing through bureaucratic details. Using
the continually expanding and increasingly extensive networks, planners can reach
information more efficiently. As such, there is an unexplored field of opportunities to
increase citizen to citizen interaction, formation of local organizations and
entrepreneurship, local systems (cultural and economic) that is impermeable to global
markets but at the same time contributive.

The resilient city is not out of reach. However, it requires a unified effort towards
addressing the problems of the urban environment. Planners have to recognize the
increasing role of social and cultural capital in determining the success of a city.
Institutions have to understand that they are the mediators of the collective. Both are
recombinant systems in the immune system of the city. The immune system has to move
towards a solution-oriented goal of active diagnosis rather than a passive reactionary
mode. Moreover, increasing the participation and the voice of local citizens can strengthen
the mesh of networks that connect individuals to institutions and regimes to the global
totality as well as the understanding of it.