Neo-Liberal City

Question 1

At the ideological level

Answer 1

The neoliberal doctrine builds on the assumption that the efficiency of economic, political and societal relationships are optimised when individual actors are freed as much as possible from formal obligations, being allowed to rationally pursue their own interests within the framework of a minimum set of norms and regulations.

Question 2

Marglin and Schor, 1991

Answer 2

At the origins of the rise of neoliberalism there is the end of an era of intense and apparently unlimited economic growth known as the ‘global age of capitalism’.

Question 3

From the 1960s onwards

Answer 3

The surge of social and racial tensions, leading to violent riots and uprisings in the ghettos and the deprived neighbourhoods of the US alongside the shaping of a broader ‘urban crisis’ highlighted the structural weaknesses of the Fordist-Keynesian capitalism.

Question 4

Castells (1972)

Answer 4

Offered a systematic theorization of the relationship between the urban process and contemporary capitalism. According to Castells, the capitalist city, the economic system is organised around the dialect between production, consumption and the derived element of exchange.

Question 5

David Harvey

Answer 5

Concentrated his analysis on the role of finance and of land rent as drivers of urban economic development and socio-spatial transformations. In his view, the capitalist city grows up as a consequence of investment in the built environment.

Question 6

Peterson (1981)

Answer 6

In his view, in order to survive and expand their fiscal base, cities struggle over the attraction of firms and residents; in doing so, local governments are compelled to put policies at the enhancement of growth competitiveness before those aimed at wealth distribution. Peterson believed that cities differ from national states for more limited autonomy allowed to governments.

Question 7

Two reservations about Peterson’s central thesis

Answer 7

First, the idea of a pro-growth logic as an immanent quality of local dynamics under capitalist conditions expressed a rigidly structuralist interpretation of the urban process, which overlooked the active role played by individuals and social groups known as ‘actors’. Second Peterson’s analysis did not grasp the fact that the rise of a pro-growth agenda should be understood as a consequence of the crisis of the Keynesian mode of regulation of capitalist economies.

Question 8

Since the 1970s

Answer 8

Urban scholars gave rise to a strand of research and thinking which placed renewed emphasis on economic growth, understood as a source of wealth accumulation and also a driver of widely conceived politics of urban and regional development.

Question 9

Harvey Molotch

Answer 9

Suggested looking at the capitalist city as a ‘growth machine’ Molotch argued that the imperative of urban economic growth attracts a number of competing interests and related public-private partnerships take shape in support of projects of renewal and broader strategies of urban economic development.

Question 10

David Harvey, 1988

Answer 10

Accurately illustrated the causes and the effects of the process of change in the sphere of local government. Harvey distinguished between the ‘government’ and ‘governance’ of cities and regions anticipating a coonceptualization that became widely accepted within the field of urban studies.

Question 11

David Harvey - government

Answer 11

Identifies a hierarchial and ‘managerial’ governing style founded on the primacy of the public sector and aimed at redistributing city revenues through the provision of services to dorms and households.

Question 12

David Harvey - governance

Answer 12

highlights the decentralised of governing importance of private partnerships and related processes of negotiated decision-making.

Question 13

Since the 1990s

Answer 13

The discursive and material forces of globalisation exerted a growing influence on the evolution of urban entrepreneurialism and the trajectories of economic development and socio-spatial restructuring.

Question 14

Urban neoliberalism in the global south - privatisation of important public services, the closure of a number of state-owned corporations, and the bankruptcy of manufacturing industries has has serious conequences

Answer 14

on local societies, leading to rising unemployment rates and generating novel forms of exclusion from the labour market. Also the expansion of the informal, underground economy, job losses, the shrinkage of the state sector, the fall in living standards etc.

Question 15

Urban neoliberalisation in the global North - Reagan thatcher decade

Answer 15

Have seen the reformulation and reframing on novel discursive basis of neoliberalism as politico-economic discourse and as a policy practice.

Question 16

Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2002)

Answer 16

Provided an influential interpretation of the shift from an unconditionally deregulatory policy rationale, definable as ‘roll-back neoliberalism’, which categorised the Reagan-Thatcher regulation of capitalism, to a renewed neoliberal approach, more positive and ‘constructive’ aimed at rebuilding the capitalist state on an entrepreneurial bases.

Question 17

The strength or urban neoliberalism rests on

Answer 17

its capacity to incorporate all sorts of urban problems and issues into the seductive domain of spatial competitiveness and economic growth.

Question 18

Neoliberalization has succeeded in

Answer 18

Reproducing and ‘territorializing’ itself in apparently efficient and even creative ways, and, in doing so, it has drawn on the contribution of a variety of powerful agents and intermediaries: technocratic elites, think tanks, global consultants etc.

Question 19

Politics of the mime

Answer 19

Tony Manero - Santiago film shot - the man has to cope with a decaying and scary urban environment, where the informal economy and illegal activities proliferate, and where social ties and forms of solidarity appear to be absent. In this context, Raul practices the bodily imitation of his American hero, of his ways of dancing and dressing, his monologues etc