New Urbanism as Urban Political Development: Racial Geographies of 'Intercurrence' across Greater Seattle

While New Urbanism is now subject to a range of theorizations from different perspectives and disciplinary approaches, it is rarely framed as part of a society’s overall political development. This article explores New Urbanism through recently 'cosmopolitanized' and 'urbanized' theories of American Political Development (APD). For many years, APD scholars like Skowronek and Orren have emphasized the conceptual importance of 'intercurrence,' which refers to the simultaneous operation of multiple political orders in specific places and thus to the tensions and abrasions between these orders as explanations for change. Urban scholars have engaged with these ideas for some time, particularly in studies of urban politics and policy regimes, but APD's influence on urban planning theory and practice remains underdeveloped. This article takes up this lacuna, applying select APD ideas, notably intercurrence, to understand how multi-scalar governments develop space though New Urbanist theories of place-making, with special attention paid to race. Examples from metropolitan Seattle are used to illustrate (if not fully elaborate) the article’s overall arguments and themes

The spatiality of informal sector agency: Planning, survival and geography in Black Metropolitan Cape Town.

One of the most significant urban phenomena over the past thirty years has been the rapid, widespread and originally unanticipated growth of informal sector activities. While it is now recognised that such activities have substantially transformed cities across the world, their urban geographies remain under-studied, especially in the fast-changing South and with special reference to planning practice. This thesis addresses this surprisingly large lacuna through a detailed account of the planning for, and survival within, Black Metropolitan Cape Town's informal food distribution system. The discussion shows that, to date, this planning experience has proven profoundly difficult and uneven, notwithstanding the relatively progressive nature of the interventions themselves. Why, exactly. Why has this particular experience been so difficult. More, why has it been so uneven. Where has it succeeded, where has it failed, and in what sense. Finally, what can we learn more generally from these successes and failures. Extant theorisations of informal sector development planning emphasise class, state or land use variables. Rather than argue "against" these variables, this thesis argues "across" them (and others), hypothesizing the importance of the configurations - the spatialities - that dialectically connect various scales of heterogeneous relations. It is not simply that "space matters"; it is that the constitution of how space is actually produced in real places matters. Ultimately, this thesis explores the implications of this spatial hypothesis for planning theory and practice and for informal sector development. The discussion is advanced through a framework of theoretical inquiry derived principally from the work of Henri Lefebvre, Bruno Latour and Michel de Certeau. Specifically, the narrative architecture of the thesis is built around Lefebvre's central claim that urban space is "produced" through three, intimately related modalities or "moments" - representations of space, spatial practices and representational spaces. Investigating each of these moments in succession, but also binding them together, the discussion deploys Latour's "constructivist" ontology of the actor-network as a central analytical and metaphorical device. More, de Certeau's attention to strategies, tactics and the local state's attempt to capture and direct "belief" is also used to explore the developmental geographies associated with planning and survival as major empirical processes shaping the post-apartheid city

Blue Collars in Green Cities: Exploring Transit Oriented Manufacturing

The theme of Blue Collars in Green Cities seeks to advance inclusive urban economies by confronting longstanding tensions between planning for urban sustainability and planning for urban industry. The legacy of industrial pollution and the erosion of industrial jobs have contributed to perceptions of urban industry as incompatible with vibrant green city visions and healthy urban environments. Consequently, various forms of urban sustainability planning—land use, transportation, economic development—have either ignored or actively discouraged industrial sectors. The resulting antagonisms between industrial interests and sustainability advocates threatens to stall progress in both areas. The 2020 MACP Studio project starts from the assertion that the representation of urban industry and sustainability as incompatible is both inaccurate and unnecessary; it then aims to identify creative new visions for the ‘green city’ by linking two avenues of research and practice that are commonly addressed separately: urban industrial planning, and transit planning. The term guiding this Studio course—Transit Oriented Manufacturing—is not one that currently exists in planning research and practice. It is a new term, introduced by the instructors as a way to open new space for thinking about planning for transit and industry simultaneously. Working with a new term in this way has clear tradeoffs. On one hand, it can stimulate curiosity, new ways of thinking, and new forms of planning practice. On the other hand, it can be challenging to work with a new term that requires definition and explanation and that lacks an existing body of scholarship and examples of practice. The students in this Studio deserve recognition for their work defining, exploring, and ultimately making a foundational contribution to a new area of research

Planning, Manufacturing, and Sustainability: Three Research Themes

This thematic issue explores the role that revived emplacements of manufacturing and "blue-collar" work play in the search for more effective models of urban sustainability, drawing on intriguing developments in different cities of different sizes in different Western societies - the UK, Germany, Switzerland, the USA, and Australia. Rather than see industry as a "problem" for green city strategies, our point of departure considers what role manufacturing and "blue-collar" work can (and do) play in the search for more effective models of urban sustainability. The articles included here deploy a range of research methodologies, albeit with a predominant emphasis on qualitative case studies, to raise key challenges for urban and regional industrial planning. This editorial provides some overarching context and commentary on the topic and specifically discusses three synoptic themes that emerged most prominently from the collection of articles: the difficulty (and importance) of identifying and illustrating the practical sustainability benefits of local manufacturing; the complexity of advancing "conspicuous production" in the urban context; and the need to broaden industrial politics and planning in order to better utilize existing industrial spaces and enhance the role of production in the city. These themes help to capture emerging trends and challenges in the field while providing foundations for future research

Smart City-Regional Governance: A 'Dual Transition'

This paper introduces the concept of ‘dual transition’ in relation to the notion of ‘smartness’ in city-regional governance. This consists of two intersecting dimensions, a broader change in political-economic and societal circumstances which surround city-regions, and a more detailed, local change towards ‘smartness’ in policy practices. Although ‘smart’ seems to have become a somewhat ubiquitous adjective in urban policy, it seeks to project policies that seek to go beyond a one-dimensional ‘growth agenda’ by addressing also the multifaceted quest for social, economic and environmental sustainability. The underlying shift in discourse, rationality and suggested policy responses in both dimensions may be captured by the concept of ‘transition’ in relation to policies and governance. Originally developed in conjunction with broad political-economic regime change, such as post-authoritarian democratisation, the idea of ‘transition’ has also been applied to the more specific concept of sustainability as ‘sustainability transition’

Enhancing Big Ideas Through Regional Planning: Cross-Jurisdictional \u27Value Added\u27 in Washington State

This paper argues that enhancing multi-jurisdictional planning - i.e. regionalism in various forms -- should be at the center of how we ameliorate most of our major developmental challenges. Put another way, efforts to improve the planning profession’s contribution to concerns like “climate action,” “economic development,” “social equity,” “local government capacity,” and so on, all require more attention to stronger regional planning processes. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first section, we develop the over-arching theme that experiments in regionalism longer refer to significant institutional-structural reforms - in particular, to consolidation or centralization of planning authority -- but instead to far less threatening, more politically viable, and also less ambitious efforts to build incremental, horizontal collaborations that frequently lack much formal authority because they rely heavily on voluntary reciprocity. We then turn to a lengthy discussion of five different regional planning experiences in Washington State: (1) efforts by the Yakima Council of Governments to making homelessness a “cross-cutting” regional issue; (2)Walla Walla’s efforts to strengthen regional watershed planning; (3) a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the Columbia River Gorge Commission; (4) a critical reflection on the importance of tribes in regional planning and possible future dynamics in the Whatcom-La Connor-Swinomish area; and (5) a discussion of recent efforts in the Olympia-Thurston County to coordinate local climate action through enhanced regional collaborations. The final section of the paper recapitulates the main ideas and offers preliminary suggestions as we move forward

Smart City-Regionalism in Seattle: Progressing Transit Nodes in Labor Space?

In recent decades, the four-county Seattle city-region has built one of the few ‘containment’ regimes in the United States. Metropolitan development policy is organized around growth management and transport principles that seek to ameliorate the ecological, economic, and social effects of both suburban sprawl and economic segregation. In addition to regionally-coordinated urban growth boundaries, which implode new growth back to already serviced lands, planning for regional sustainability therefore also includes strategic efforts to improve extant jobs-housing imbalances through major transit investments in key urban centers. This paper considers Greater Seattle’s recent policy experiences with planning transit communities from the perspectives of the regional labor market and state policies organized around sustainability. The paper explores the critical concern that while agglomeration economies continue to produce a variety of employment centers across metropolitan space, relatively scarce public transit investments might be directed invariably to edifying economic centers populated by social elites who already enjoy multiple mobility choices

Metropolitan Geographies of US Climate Action: Cities, Suburbs, and the Local Divide in Global Responsibilities

Planning for climate change is now occurring at multiple, sometimes interlocking scales of ecological governance and policy formulation. Within the context of this journal\u27s past calls for fresh work on the \u27spatialities of (un)sustainability\u27, particularly around climate action, this paper examines new geographies of local climate policy within six major US metropolitan regions located in six different smart growth states. The methodological assumption of the paper is that these putatively pro-planning states in the USA should provide a particularly fertile legal and policy arena within which metropolitan-scale action might emerge. Focusing empirically on the US Mayors Climate Action Agreement, though, the discussion highlights an uneven local geography of planning for global climate change, with central cities apparently accepting responsibility and, in general, suburban municipalities concomitantly free-riding. Policy and research implications of these metropolitan geographies of (in) action are discussed in light of the extant literature on cities, planning, and the governance of climate action

What\u27s Smart Growth Got to Do With Smart Cities? Searching for the \u27Smart City Region\u27 in Greater Seattle

The us-based smart growth planning policy movement both preceded and arguably provided an important conceptual antecedent for later smart city research. However, the empirical relationships between the two programs are insufficiently developed. This paper reviews smart growth in Greater Seattle, arguing for more research on how the two concepts might in fact relate to one another within the context to a wider regional development sensitivity. The paper concludes that the smart city-region could arguably replace both smart growth and smart cities in future urban research. Copyright © FrancoAngeli N.B: Copia ad uso personale