Istanbul: the making of a global city between East and West

From the outset global cities have been primarily seen as outcomes of changes in global economic capitalism. This has led to critical responses arguing for the need to consider more centrally the role of politics in global city formation, and in particular the need to critically analyse city-state relations in varying geographical contexts. Three dominant strands of critique have emerged: a literature on state rescaling (primarily based on experiences of North American and Western European cities), a literature on developmental states (on East Asian cities) and a literature on postcolonial urban theory (primarily on cities in the Global South). Although these approaches all argue for a re-focusing on the role of the political in global city formation, they do not easily fit other geographical and geopolitical contexts. This thesis aims to contribute to the debate by focusing on the case of Istanbul as Turkey s emerging global city. Based on semi-structured interviews, this research challenges some key assumptions of global cities research, state rescaling approach, developmental approach and postcolonial urban theory through the case of Istanbul. It also provides a critical conceptual understanding of Istanbul s globalisation, argues the role of actors in global city making and will demonstrate that contrary to what is generally claimed in the literature, the relationship between Istanbul (city) and Turkey (state) could be assessed as more harmonious rather than tension-filled. Furthermore, the research goes beyond revealing the points where Istanbul conforms or does not conform to the existing approaches, and addresses the very recent academic debates between those who believe that we need new theories to understand the dynamics and impacts of the actual global urbanisation and those who suggest that instead of calling for new theories there is a need to examine and improve the existing approaches. To do that, my research develops an alternative conceptualisation -- the in-between city - that might cover the cities located in the region spreading from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. The argument behind this concept is that owing to their intersectional positions between East and West, and the continual links between their imperial and global periods, cities such as Istanbul, Vienna, Budapest, St. Petersburg or Moscow, present more hybrid characteristics in comparison to the cities categorised by the existing approaches

The "Paris Problem" in Toronto: The State, Space, and the Political Fear of "The Immigrant"

The Paris Problem in Toronto addresses contemporary debates on place-based urban policies in the immigrant neighbourhoods of Western metropolitan centers. Taking the ideologically constructed figure of the immigrant seriously, I emphasize the need to examine the relational formation of urban and imperial policies and politics of intervention. Focusing on Toronto (Canada), a city celebrated for its diversity management and tolerance, the central thesis of this dissertation is that the material force of the ruling classes political fear of non-White working-class populations and neighbourhoods is central to the formation of place-based urban strategies. This political fear feeds upon a territorialized and racialized security ideology that conceives of non-White working-class spaces as potential spaces of insecurity, political disorder and violence. It is based on this security ideology and its link to race riots that the Paris problem has become a common reference point in policy circles in Toronto since 2005. I show how this territorialized and racialized security ideology is camouflaged within a liberal humanitarian ideology that renders non-White working-class spaces as spaces simultaneously in need of securitization and tutelage. Such a rendition parallels the perceptions of ungoverned spaces in the war on terror. I examine major place-based social development policies (Priority Neighbourhoods, Toronto Strong Neighbourhood Strategy 2020), place-based housing redevelopment policy (Tower Renewal), and national and urban policing strategies, providing the first comprehensive socio-historical analysis of place-based urban policy targeting non-White poverty in Toronto that began in the 1990s. I have traced the ideological formation and transformation of major policy techniques like mapping and policy concepts such as: poverty, security, policing, development, empowerment, social determinants of health, equity and prevention across various scales and temporalities. Instead of eradicating or reducing poverty, the goal of such policies is to constitute a liberal post-colonial poor, one who is eminently less threatening to the political stability of imperialist capitalism. My research shows that the state can mobilize place-based policy as a modality of neo-colonial pacification. Not reducible to a product of neoliberalization, such a policy recomposes colonial relations of domination by moderating violence and pacifying perceived threats to the existing order

The discourse, governance and configurations of polycentricity in transitional China: a case study of Tianjin

Polycentricity has been identified as a prominent feature of modern landscapes as well as a buzzword in spatial planning at a range of scales worldwide. Since the Reform and Opening-up Policy in 1978, major cities in China have experienced significant polycentric transition manifested by their new spatial policy framework and reshaped spatial structure. The polycentric transformation has provoked academics’ interests on structural and performance analysis in quantitative ways recently. However, little research investigates the nature of (re)formation and implementation of polycentric development policies in Chinese cities from a processual and critical perspective. This research interprets the underlying meanings and rationality of polycentric development strategy in planning discourse and explains how concrete centres within the polycentric system are created, governed and materialized to facilitate the implementation of polycentric policies in the special context of political system, spatial planning system and socio-economic conditions in China. Referring to existing literature of polycentricity and theories of urban space, this research develops a novel theoretical framework, which holds that polycentricity is produced by the articulation of state power, planning profession and produced space. The research is founded on an embedded case study of Tianjin based on empirical data derived from interviews with stakeholders and secondary data. Through a discourse analysis of four Tianjin City Master Plans, discourses of ‘polycentric urban settlements’, ‘functional polycentricity’, ‘polycentric growth nodes’ and ‘nested polycentricity’ are identified, which are deployed in different ways with variegated composition of spatial elements. Moreover, rather than being mere technocratic practice, the production and legitimation of distinct discourses is essentially an articulation of multi-scalar power involving various stakeholders, which is disguised and justified by the planning profession. The findings demonstrate that polycentricity is a malleable concept and its fluidity creates space to accommodate consensus or to allow the play of contested interests and policy experiments. Based on that, this research further selects centres in Tianjin Binhai New Area Core Zone, Wuqing District and Dongli District as embedded cases to explore how the polycentric development policy is implemented in practice. The empirical findings from local perspective show that these centres are created or formed according to different contexts and logics, and they are consolidated by employment of a portfolio of tools and instruments such as new planning and urban design, establishment of financial and development corporations, exclusive preferential policies, manipulation of public sector, land development and institutional innovation. Correspondingly, these centres have experienced distinct development trajectories and shown different spatial outcomes from the perspectives of urban form, functional composition, and spatial identity. It is suggested that significant gaps and contradictions exist between spatial visions and actual development, which poses challenges for sustainable development

A City Divided: A GIS-Informed Study of Urban Planning in Amman, Jordan

Amman, the capital of Jordan, faces an impending infrastructure crisis. The city is plagued by water shortages, a lack of affordable housing, extreme traffic congestion, and dwindling open space. Over the past seventy-five years, several urban planning commissions have attempted to address these issues through policy change and other municipal directives. These plans help illustrate the different forces at play in constructing the city—whether they be the residents themselves, city officials, or international consultants. All the plans use neighborhoods as a primary metric for measuring need and organizing development. Likewise, all the plans focus on the importance of green and open space within those neighborhoods. Despite the work and resources devoted to urban plans, a gap remains between the vision expressed in these documents and the physical reality of the city. This research explores the relationship between top-down and bottom-up forces on the city’s urban identity through a GIS-led analysis

Globalization and inter-local cooperation : the mediating roles of local contexts in the global North and South.

There is an area of scholarly interest which argues that globalization brings about the need for collaboration among local governmental units in order to address common challenges. According to Brenner and Swyngedouw, globalization also results in rescaling because it redefines spatial and political frameworks, and thus transfers powers to actors beneath and beyond the nation-state. Inter-local cooperation is a form of rescaling since it reconfigures territorial boundaries and results in either decentralization or centralization. This research explores the implications of globalization for inter-jurisdictional collaboration, as modified by local factors. It focuses on two city-regions in the Global North and South respectively (i.e. Chicago, Illinois and Accra, Ghana). Specific research questions are: (a) What is the nature of globalization in Chicago and Accra given their unique local contexts?; (b) How do local factors mediate the implications of globalization for regional cooperation in the two metropolitan areas?; (c) What are the ramifications of globalization for rescaling in the two city-regions, given their respective local contexts? The qualitative inquiry is exploratory in nature and relies on secondary data, discourse analysis, and interviews. It finds that because of their different levels of strategic importance in the global economy, Chicago serves as a headquarter location for multinational corporations, while Accra plays host to subsidiaries or local branches of such corporate entities. As a result of Chicago’s strong private sector and history of civic engagement, globalization has resulted in a fluid, voluntary, and informal approach to regionalism characterized by resistance to annexation and political fragmentation. In the case of Accra, governmental institutional restructuring associated with the global era has created an administrative, directed, and formal approach to regionalism, associated with territorial expansion and centralized bureaucracy. The research shows existing works by scholars such as Brenner and Swyngedouw do not sufficiently account for the mediating roles of local contexts, particularly in the Global South, when analyzing the implications of globalization for regionalism

Knowledge economy challenges for post-developmental state: Tsukuba Science City as in-between place

This paper examines the planning) history and current planning challenges facing Tsukuba Science City. Drawing on original empirical material, it suggests that Tsukuba can be seen as an in-between place in three respects. Tsukuba began life as an instance of the international garden-campus-suburb orthodoxy surrounding science spaces, and now falls somewhere in between an independent city and a suburb of greater Tokyo. Tsukuba’s predicament in this regard is intimately related to the broader policy challenges facing Japan as it transitions from a developmental to a post-developmental state. Chief among these challenges is effectively inserting a science city like Tsukuba into an increasingly globalised ‘New Argonaut’ market for skilled labour. I make use of Appadurai’s notion (1996) of ‘scapes’ to interpret Tsukuba as an in-between place but also to highlight the practical challenges of it securing a central position within the global science landscape of modernity

Great Transformations : The Political Economy of Megaproject Development in the Manila peri-urban periphery

This chapter examines the inter-scalar governance dynamics of market-oriented city-building projects that are proliferating in the Manila mega-urban region, in the midst of the longest-running property boom in the Philippines\u27 post-dictatorship history. Specifically, it examines local governance transformations that have been catalyzed by the two largest of these ventures: the 1,180-hectare Alviera green township by Ayala Land Inc., and the 9,400-hectare Clark Green City project of the parastatal Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA). Situating the analysis of these projects amidst trends in neoliberal urban governance, it finds that the development of these ventures has witnessed the formation of new constellations of power and urban governance, often through the deployment of exceptionalist and scale-manipulating strategies of intervention. Such processes, to wit, have seen one project developer assume de facto acting government status for its host municipality, while another has positioned itself as a strong-state steerer of private sector operations to achieve slum-free urbanization. Yet despite these differences, uncanny parallelisms between both proponents machineries of power and institutional boundary-setting practices are observed. Beyond the Philippines, the examined dynamics may also help illuminate city-building initiatives in other developing countries that have systematically neoliberalized their economies, and democratized and decentralized their state apparatuses

Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia

Indonesia’s commitment to reducing land-based greenhouse gas emissions significantly includes the expansion of conservation areas, but these developments are not free of conflicts. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of agrarian conflicts in the context of the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and forest carbon offsetting in Indonesia, a country where deforestation is a major issue. The author analyzes new kinds of transnational agrarian conflicts which have strong implications for global environmental justice in the REDD+ pilot province of Jambi on the island of Sumatra. The chapters cover: the rescaling of the governance of forests; privatization of conservation; and the transnational dimensions of agrarian conflicts and peasants’ resistance in the context of REDD+. The book builds on an innovative conceptual approach linking political ecology, politics of scale and theories of power. It fills an important knowledge and research gap by focusing on the socially differentiated impacts of REDD+ and new forest carbon offsetting initiatives in Southeast Asia, providing a multi-scalar perspective. It is aimed at scholars in the areas of political ecology, human geography, climate change mitigation, forest and natural resource management, as well as environmental justice and agrarian studies

Place Branding as a Mode of Urban Governance and Verticalisation: The Case of Tokyo and New York

This thesis explores how place branding activities are amalgamated into the urban governance policies and how skyscrapers are weaved into this process by studying two of the top ten most vertical cities in the world: Tokyo and New York. Fascination with building up towards the sky is nothing new. Yet what is new is that skyscrapers are becoming as part of place branding strategies which are seeping into urban governance practices. Concepts of place branding, urban development, spatial planning and governance are now being discussed and understood as significant elements of the same process where branding informs configurations and development of urban landscape in order to attract inward investment, work force, people and corporations. In this aspect of branding, skyscrapers not only play a visual and promotional role but also constitute a strategic importance in shaping urban skyline. Through this study, the author, while acknowledging the inequalities, the segregations and the gaps within the complexities of the social and economic fabric of the urban cannot be reduced down to such megastructures, also seeks to navigate into hypernormalisation of skyscrapers and their implications on urban governance