Contesting density: beyond nimby-ism and usual suspects in governing the future city

Density is often a major focus of contestation in imagining the future city. The built form of the future city, including its height and density, is a crystallization of current and projected urban growth, as well as a realization of policy ambitions. However, also determinant of future built form are present capacities to extract value from urban development, on the part of both private and public actors. This tight ‘nexus’ of concerns and interests drives the specific heights, densities and public space provision of the future city. This paper considers, on what grounds today’s urban residents might be drawn into a battle for the quality of the future city

Beyond variegation: the territorialisation of states, communities and developers in large-scale developments in Johannesburg, Shanghai and London

Large-scale urban development projects are a significant format of urban expansion and renewal across the globe. As generators of governance innovation and indicators of the future city in each urban context, large-scale development projects have been interpreted within frameworks of “variegations” of wider circulating processes, such as neoliberalisation or financialisation. However, such projects often entail significant state support and investment, are strongly linked to a wide variety of transnational investors and developers and are frequently highly contested in their local environments. Thus, each project comes to fruition in a distinctive regulatory context, often as an exception to the norm, and each emerges through complex interactions over a long period of time amongst an array of actors. We therefore seek to broaden the discussion from an analytical focus on variegated globalised processes to consider three large-scale urban development projects (in Shanghai, Johannesburg and London) as distinctive (transcalar) territorialisations. Using an innovative comparative approach we outline the grounds for a systematic analytical conversation across mega-urban development projects in very different contexts. Initially, comparability rests on the shared features of large-scale developments – that they are multi-jurisdictional, involve long time scales, and bring significant financing challenges. Comparing three development projects we are able to interrogate, rather than take for granted, how wider processes, circulating practices, transcalar actors, and territorial regulatory formations composed specific urban outcomes in each case. Thinking across these diverse cases provides grounds for rebuilding understandings of urban development politics

Urban regeneration and sustainable housing renewal trends

Urban planning, affordable houses and protection of the cultural natural heritage are important elements to be considered in the design of sustainable urban realities. Homes for One Pound, Granby Four Streets CLT, Homebaked CLT, Make Liverpool CIC and Engage Liverpool CIC are examples of successful initiatives oriented to foster urban regeneration by promoting environmental quality and social cohesion

Extracting Value, London Style: Revisiting the Role of the State in Urban Development

The focus of urban politics in many contexts has shifted from municipal regimes ‘competing’ for circulating capital to a wide range of actors, including states, competing to extract value from the built environment. Analyses of the role of states in urban development therefore need to be revisited. To do this in a way which can support a global perspective in urban studies that is alert to the great diversity of state forms and urban outcomes, we propose starting not from assumed globalizing processes such as neoliberalization or financialization, in which urban politics is then brought in as ‘context’, or as ‘variegations’ on an overarching and already conceptualized process. Rather, with a comparative imagination in mind, we want to draw attention to the diversity of the politics of the extraction of value from developments, as a starting point for expanding our understanding of the role of states in urban development. The case of a large‐scale urban development in London—Old Oak Park Royal—exposes an idiosyncratic regulatory regime characterized by significant territorial fragmentation and intensifying reliance on highly delimited planning gain incomes to support all the costs of the development, including substantial infrastructure and welfare provision. This regulatory regime has direct implications for the built form, and motivates a sharp formulation of state interests and capacity in relation to value extraction. The complex negotiations between state actors and developer teams lead to a blurring of the roles of these actors in shaping built forms. In such a context, the state may assume roles and perform functions associated with securing ‘public’ benefit. But, partly in their efforts to achieve this, state actors also intensify the function of the developer to generate the resources needed to realize state interests. The case study presented invites a broader review of the role of the state in urban development