Sustaining Cities: Urban Policies, Practices, and Perceptions

Introduction

1 In one of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons, a distant mushroom cloud looms and cars jam the street as people flee the conflagration. Unfazed, a dog focuses on what’s in front of his nose. “And then Jake saw something that captured his attention.”1 From my experience with selectively attentive canines, this rings true. And it is also true for the many human Jakes for whom urban matters are at best peripheral. But this human inattention is changing. Now that cities are facing the combined disasters of failing infrastructure, devalued housing, and high unemployment, the question arises: how can cities survive? Sustaining Cities offers a collection of essays that focus our attention on current urban problems while suggesting how they can be solved. And the essays reveal how urban planners, architects, novelists, and filmmakers tap the unique and complex character of cities in these tumultuous times. In 2003, the Global Cities volume in this series examined globalization ’s effect on cinema, architecture and urbanism.2 Sustaining Cities likewise views cities through a multidisciplinary lens. The intervening years have provided a lengthened perspective with which to judge the impact of global phenomena. Here, the essays are grouped in sections covering urban policies, practices, and perceptions, respectively, yet the volume encourages readers to create new cross-disciplinary connections. Indeed, forging new Linda Krause Introduction i links—among urban stakeholders, as well as between citizens and their communities—is a recurrent theme. The volume begins with urban policy, in a section titled Market Rules. As explored in these essays, this title refers both to the dominant role of supply-side economics and to the specific ways in which markets are manipulated. In “Sustainable City: Crisis and Opportunity in Mexico,” urban and regional planner Alfonso Iracheta places urban planning policy (and the lack thereof) in the context of sustainability. He sees the Northern Hemisphere’s opposition of development versus sustainability as a false dichotomy. Iracheta notes that, in wealthier nations, public policy often seeks to modify development through programs supporting sustainable growth; in poorer countries, by contrast, public policy encourages insufficient and badly conceived development that creates environmental problems. Further, the concept of sustainability must be understood in a broader context, one that encompasses energy conservation, socio-spatial equality, integrated land-use strategies, and participatory governance. Where social actors once sought less government and more market, they are now looking for policy changes, broader involvement of all stakeholders, and policies rooted in current local conditions and issues. Toward the close of the essay, Iracheta’s “New Principles for Urban Planning and Governance in Mexico” offers a path to a more equitable and sustainable urbanism. If such equitable and sustainable urbanism is the goal, then public policy in American cities also deserves scrutiny. In her essay “Hostage Cities: Unsustainable Competition for Corporate Investment ,” urban studies theorist Linda McCarthy reveals how communities have entered into an unhealthy competition to attract corporations to their towns and cities. What may have begun as investment incentive programs to aid stricken cities by giving linda krause 2 corporations preferential tax treatment in return for jobs has become at best a zero-sum game, at worst a shakedown. In a competitive global economy, cities must court national and multinational companies, but the contest is often rigged. McCarthy shows how local politicians support unquestioned (and unquestionable) assumptions about corporate investment, and are themselves implicated in the continuation of unsustainable economic policies. Indeed, even if unsuccessful in their bids to attract new investment, local politicians and developers often benefit from the competition for corporate investment. Using case studies from the Milwaukee area, McCarthy traces the intricate maneuvers used to lure corporate support. These tactics and lessons apply to hard-pressed urban areas throughout the country. U.S. municipalities, unlike European ones, have greater autonomy and can determine local investment and tax policy, but this autonomy, McCarthy notes, comes at a price. With no federal or supranational authority to intervene in the community’s interest, cities are at the mercy of the corporations. And, as globalization has been defined in part as “a process driven by the logic of corporate profitability,”3 it may be questioned whether what’s good for GE is in fact good for municipalities. While rust-belt Milwaukee labors to attract investment, sun-belt Phoenix basks in it. At least, until the 2008–2009 economic meltdown . Phoenix and other fast...