Rethinking mobility at the urban-transportation-geography nexus

Building on the main sections of the book, this concluding chapter identifies four thematic areas for future research into the urban-transportation-geography nexus as follows: (1) the everyday experience of transport and mobility in the “ordinary city”; (2) the environment and the urban politics of mobility; (3) connected cities and competitive states; and (4) transportation mobility and new imaginaries of city-regional development

Economizing imaginaries of city-regionalism as politics of city-regionalization

In this chapter, we seek to provide some conceptual clarifications regarding the interrelationship between the concepts of ‘city-region’, ‘city-regionalism’ and ‘city-regionalization’. These relations have not been properly addressed in research that has otherwise carefully examined the various city-regional processes that bring together the private and the public, and the urban and the regional. Moreover, we argue that the analysis of city-regionalism warrants attention as regards economizing imaginaries of city-regionalization, that is, to the ways in which imagined territorial structures of the state and governance facilitate the realization of putative economies of scale and scope on the part of their economic and political proponents.Peer reviewe

City regionalism as geopolitical processes: A new framework for analysis

This paper sets out a new conceptual framework for investigating how city regionalism is constituted as a variegated set of geopolitical processes operating within and beyond the national state. Our approach highlights: 1) the different forms of territorial politics through which city regionalism is conjoined with broader visions of the national state; 2) the material and territorial arrangements which support such a conjuncture; and 3) the political actors enabling city regionalism and the national state to come together within a geopolitical frame of reference

The global infrastructure public-private partnership and the extra-territorial politics of collective provision: The case of regional rail transit in Denver, USA

Drawing upon a case study of regional transit in Denver, Colorado, this article describes and accounts for the emergence of the global infrastructure public-private partnership (GIP3) as a novel extra-territorial mechanism for financing and delivering transportation infrastructure projects across large metropolitan regions in the United States (US). Unlike traditional locally-funded public-private partnerships, a GIP3 involves a global (i.e. extra-territorial) consortium of private sector construction firms and investors which enters into a long-term contract with a regional public agency to finance, operate, maintain and deliver strategic investments in transportation infrastructure. In 2004, Denver region voters approved a sales tax increase to fund the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD)’s US$4.7 billion FasTracks programme, a 122-mile extension of light and commuter rail along six corridors. Faced with a shortfall in regional funding, the Denver RTD subsequently entered into a contract with a GIP3 consortium to finance and deliver the Eagle P3 project, a major component of the FasTracks system to Denver International Airport. The article argues that future research on GIP3 contractual agreements needs to consider the local control of infrastructure assets and the integrity of supporting regional collaborative governance arrangements

Re-evaluating the changing geographies of climate activism and the state in the post-climate emergency era in the build-up to COP26

A key aim of much climate activism is to enhance climate ambition and hold local and national governments, as well as global governance forums like the United Nations (UN), to account for the ways in which they implement and monitor climate policy across society to reverse long-term climate change. In recent years new local forms of climate activism, particularly at the urban scale, have taken a more prominent role in this. Although place-based, such local forms of climate activism are at the same time multi-scalar in orientation and strategic focus. This is particularly true in the UK where climate activism has prompted a number of local councils to declare climate emergencies, providing a mechanism by which they can become locally accountable in the delivery of their climate action plans, whilst at the same time holding national government to prior and future commitments to global climate governance. Using interview data with experts working on climate emergency declarations research across the UK, we critically discuss four key themes that have underpinned and catalysed the changing geographies of civil-state relationships within the climate emergency and what this may mean for future global climate governance under the UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COP). We argue that decision-makers at COP26 need to take greater heed of the significance of this new broader urban climate activism and its role in geopolitically mobilising more equitable, democratic and inclusive forms of climate governance which give citizens and civil society more credence within global climate policy decision-making processes that have been up to now, dominated by national state discourses

City-regionalism as countervailing geopolitical processes: The evolution and dynamics of Yangtze River Delta region, China

In many countries, national governments deploy city-regionalism not simply as a domestic policy tool but also as a geopolitical device enabling the internationalization of state territory and economy. Focusing upon the evolution of Yangtze River Delta (YRD)region in China, this paper offers new insights into the close associations between Chinese city-regionalism and the geopolitical orchestration of national development. Rather than conceived as an inevitable outcome of contemporary globalization processes, the development of YRD region is instead examined against the changing geopolitical dynamics and national objectives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)from 1949 to the present day. In the early phase of CCP rule, the development of regional urban centres, such as Shanghai in YRD region, was an instrument of national territorial integration and class unity. Following economic reforms in the 1980s, the formal designation of YRD as a city-region reflected the Chinese state's aspiration for accelerated economic growth and the internationalization of the domestic economy. Now confronted with widening regional inequalities, the Chinese state has greatly expanded YRD region to incorporate peripheral cities and provinces for the sake of regionally coordinated development. Even as YRD transforms into a global city-region, Shanghai seemingly separates itself functionally and discursively from the rest of the region. In departing from contemporary post-Westphalian or hyper-globalist perspectives on the rise of global city-regions in a stateless world, the paper provides a new interpretation of Chinese city-regionalism as a case of countervailing geopolitical processes at work within and beyond national state borders

Property relations and the politics of the suburban living place in the post-communist city : transition stories from Tirana, Albania

One well-known feature of capitalist forms of urban development in North America and Western Europe is the emergence of a politics of the suburban living place, the spatial appearance of which seems to be separate from class and political tensions arising in urban society at large (Cox 2002). Recognised features of such a politics include efforts by homeowners to secure use values in the living place and thereby enhance exchange values (Logan and Molotch 1987), exclusionary political practices originating in the neighbourhood or suburb (Cox and Johnston 1982), and demands for local improvements in education and other public services; demands which might eventually lead to the creation of separate local jurisdictions in the suburbs (Cox and Jonas 1993). It might be expected that suburban areas in post-socialist states undergoing a transition to capitalist property relations likewise experience all sorts of tensions around the living place, which in turn give rise to claims for territorially separate structures of suburban government or governance