Listen to the episode:

You can find the shownotes through this link.

---

Are you interested in contemporary urban concepts, like sustainable and resilient city, and their political premises?

Our summary today works with the article titled The political premises of contemporary urban concepts: the global city, the sustainable city, the resilient city, the creative city, and the smart city from 2018 by Tali Hatuka, Issachar Rosen-Zvi, Michael Birnhack, Eran Toch, and Hadas Zur, published in the Planning Theory and Practice journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how these urban concepts compare. This article presents their juxtaposition and the possibility of them becoming prescriptive for decision-makers and developers.

[intro music]

Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

[music]

Cities are in global competition for human and financial resources. Some cities want to improve their positions with the implementation of vision which incorporates innovation and success and prosperity – in the public’s imagination. Some of these concepts have already been used in strategic planning, these are: the global city, the sustainable city, the resilient city, the creative city, and the smart city. These ideas are abstract in the literature, but in practice they are often presented as concrete frameworks. This paper investigates this transformative process – what and how these ideas change in their transformation from theory to practice.

The global city generally seems to be an analytical tool. It wants to capture a new economic form that is situated in cities and inter-city relations. This approach illustrates the increasing integration of the global economy in major cities and the new roles that cities play in national economies. Some have become major financial centres in which strategic cross-border networks, transactions and function are concentrated. Moreover, this concept creates a hierarchy among cities based on their linkages to the global economy and global society, creating political projects. The global city is spatially dense and creates new social hierarchies with class divisions, mostly championed by the private sector and IT companies and major cities with cosmopolitan ambiance. Tokyo, New York, London, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv and Dubai were brought up as examples for the global city.

The sustainable city concept focuses on the search for balance between human activity and the environment, in order to establish a more ecologically responsible form of human existence. This approach raises the stakes and rights of current and future generations. This concept addresses cities as urban ecosystems within wider economic, social and spatial systems. So spatially it focuses on the transformation and management of urban infrastructure, like transportation, sewage and parks, and the preservation and regeneration of urban elements. Physically, the sustainable approach advocates for compactness, density, mixed land use, greening, and urban food-production, among others. It also says that the environmental quality of cities is inextricably linked to social equality and justice. The sustainable city is embedded in public values, such as democratic participation, and it depends on the collective efforts of the city. Chicago, Vancouver, Dholera were mentioned as trying to create sustainable cities.

The resilient city, first developed for disaster risk reduction, imagines the urban area completely capable of withstanding and rebounding from disruptive natural and human threats and challenges, such as climate change, economic crises, pandemics or terror attacks. Spatially, urban planning plays a central role in making cities more resilient by shaping the built environment through land use management and the prediction and anticipation of risks, uncertainties and ways of coping. The resilient city also promotes smart growth, compactness and high density as a means to combat urban sprawl, with flexibility and adaptability. Although central and local governments are still perceived as major actors, this approach supports the decentralisation of responsibility and demands self-reliance. New York, Seattle, Rio de Janeiro and London have ideas to become resilient cities.

The creative city is based on the idea that economic competitiveness is more tied to the ability to attract, cultivate and mobilize creative assets, rather than materials and natural resources. The creative city has economy in its core and it is typically organised around production systems, like fashion, design and film industries but also microelectronics and biotechnology. The creative class not only generate income but also contributes to urban regeneration, cultural amenities, entertainment and a city’s lifestyle which attract tourists, investment, and a mobile skilled labour force. Spatially, this concept focuses on ethno-culturally diverse downtowns, often catalysing revitalisation and regeneration of previous industry sites. However, this approach re-legitimises regressive social redistributions within the city highlighting the creative class only. Shanghai, Houston, Austin, and Toronto want to become creative cities.

The smart city, also known as the intelligent, information, or virtual city, suggests that technology is a central feature in cities that can spark urban regeneration and increase urban efficiency. This idea is based on the techno-utopian belief that IT is imperative to solve the challenges of urbanisation and sustainable development, which just fascinates city authorities. At the heart of the smart city are new cyber systems that collect ever-increasing amounts of data from various sources and use them to improve planning, upgrade infrastructures, and track and enhance their operations to offer better services at lower costs. Cities adopt so-called smart city policies and assume that smartness attracts businesses, enhances efficiency and leads to more informed and thus more useful residents. The physical and spatial aspects are quite vague, while socially it must encompass the development of smart citizens and communities, at least according to the scholars. New York, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Santander, Singapore, Songdo, and Dubai were examples for efforts to become smart cities.

These concepts undoubtedly share some commonalities and are associated with liveability, competitiveness, economic growth, the drive to promote business and the drive to promote human capital. The shared spatial aspects include density, compactness, mixed use and infrastructure development. These spatial principles are addressed differently in these concepts in scope and actors. The sustainable and resilient concepts address environmental changes and social dynamics, while the global, creative and smart concepts focus on development that enhances efficiency and capital growth.

It appears that these concepts can be perceived as economically and politically complementary rather than competing. Economic competitiveness forms the foundation of most of the concepts and represents an overarching principle. This is why cities simultaneously employ ideas like these to enhance their image and economic growth. Politically, the majority of the concepts further entwine relations between the city and the government through the development of space, capital and technology. These concepts are ideologies that not only influence urban spatiality but also support the current political economy and the distribution of resources.

So how do these initiatives compare in reality? The authors found three recurring aspects while investigating the transformation of these ideas from theory to practice. First, regardless of the crucial differences among the concepts, cities often embrace several concepts simultaneously when devising social policies, designing municipal services and initiating thematic projects. The smart city is not independent from the resilient city. However, theory still keeps investigating these concepts individually, often losing the big picture. The gap in the literature needs to be bridged with exploration of municipalities in practice rather the individual concepts.

Second, these concepts tend to be used in an idealised way and as promotional vehicles, to attract more businesses and residents. The idea of sustainable has been deprived of much of its ecological and social substance. These dynamics are changing the theoretical conceptualisations on the ground. This nature of practice represents an distortion of the ideal, a morphed version of the vision. The role of theory here is to respond to these morphisms critically but also constructively, suggesting revisions to practices and visions.

Third, the use of these concepts by urban planners and policy-makers is often adjusted to fit the neo-liberal economy and politics of cities with only focusing on the prescriptive dimensions of the concept- This results in the concepts losing their original meaning or normative ideas because they are adopted to the economic and political climate of the city. The global, sustainable, resilient, creative and smart cities have become place-marketing ideas and are thus extremely limited in their ability to fight inequality. This explains why these concepts has been perceived as successes but probably not result in structural change. A possible and constructive way to address critically these trends is by perceiving all five concepts as one – as an eclectic toolbox that offers a range of experiments, institutional initiatives and political projects.

If it can be agreed that the different concepts are prescriptive ideas, an eclectic toolbox used and supported by governmental institutions, then the first step is to enhance a critical approach in practice by encouraging cities and planners to develop one strategic synthetic plan that describes and assesses implemented dimensions from the urban future concepts. Such a synthetic strategic plan will also help determine what has been done and what needs to be done. Using particular ideas associated with an urban concept is a conscious, normative decision, rather than a natural process. And this process needs to include the investigation of how such ideas will influence the people’s lives.

[music]

---

What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

---

[music]

Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Urban futures, like the global, sustainable, resilient, creative and smart cities are individually presented in the literature, while in practice they are used together, so there is a gap for researchers to bridge.
2. These ideas can lose their cores and meanings in implementation because they are morphed to the specific city’s economy and political structure – these can be cured with constructive criticism and revisions.
3. These concepts should be in the planners and decision-makers’ toolbox rather then prescriptive ideas, to use them for real change in urban areas with attention to how they will affect people’s lives.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Which of the ideas do you support?
2. Which of these ideas do you see in your city being implemented?
3. Which of these ideas would you like to see more in your city?

[outro music]

---