Beyond the City Limits: Urban Policy and Economics Restructuring in Comparative Perspective

9. Beyond the City Limits: A Commentary

CHAPTER 9 Beyond the City Limits: A Commentary Saskia Sassen The central question in organizing this volume is whether differences in national political systems and in nationallocal relations explain the diversity of forms assumed by economic restructuring and local responses to it. At least three general conclusions can be drawn from these essays. First, notwithstanding the diversity of forms that economic restructuring has assumed in specific localities and the diversity of policy responses , these chapters mostly show that larger translocal economic forces have far more weight than local policies in shaping urban economies. The cases examined here are by no means simple , self-evident instances of this proposition. Fainstein asks what conditions made possible a convergence in urban policies between two such different cities as New York and London. She finds that in both, urban politics have become centered on economic development and withdrawn from broader public welfare objectives. Central to the main explanation for this convergence are the im237 Copyrighted Material 238 REFLECTIONS pact and the constraints of economic restructuring. Hill, in examining production systems in the auto industry in the United States and Japan, finds that national and international interests of capital are a major factor in shaping outcomes for the two key locations of this industry-Detroit and Toyota City. Finally, Preteceille shows that finance and other aspects of economic restructuring came to dominate the agenda of the socialist government in France and found their way to many localities, bringing back private enterprise after the nationalizations of the earlier years. Second, these essays show that national policies are more influential in shaping cities than local policies. This is evident in Hill's discussion of the Japanese auto industry and in Parkinson's examination of the United Kingdom. Parkinson notes that the central state has taken away power from the boroughs in London and put a large number of administrative entities in charge of areas the boroughs used to control. Among the measures implemented to curtail the power of boroughs are rate capping (limiting revenues available for spending), compulsory letting (requiring private contractors to bid for public services), and selling public housing to private buyers and voluntary associations. The new administrative units, on the other hand, have considerable power to implement agendas aimed at economic growth and efficiency as defined by dominant business interests. This is also, to some extent, evident in France, where Preteceille shows how changes in the national agenda of the socialist government toward finance and privatization influenced many local municipalities. It is clearly evident in the United States, where the reduction of funding to localities has had significant impacts on local governments. At the same time these papers show that national policies have not escaped the influence and constraints of economic restructuring and global forces that are part of it. Third, a few of the chapters show that under certain conditions local governments or local initiatives can resist the tendencies of economic restructuring and of national political objectives. These specific conditions include the citizens' coalitions fighting the "growth machines" described by Molotch, the municipalities run by leftist governments in France described by Preteceille, and several cities in the United States and the United Kingdom, descnbed by Clavel and Kleniewski, that resisted the overall tendenCopyrighted Material Beyond the City Limits 239 cies of economic restructuring by implementing progressive or mainstream agendas for economic growth. In showing the limitations cities confront in addressing or responding to major economic forces and national politics, the collection accomplishes two important objectives. It establisheswith considerable authority, given all the authors' long-term work on the subject and the diversity of cities and countries covered-a current picture in which (a) economic forces carry much greater weight than local politics in determining the shape of local development ; (b) because of differences in national political systems, economic restructuring can assume different forms in different countries; and (c) the natural tendency of these economic forces, if left alone, is to override local concerns and undermine the socioeconomic conditions of significant sectors of the population. Second, these chapters have thus cleared the shelf and provided a beginning for an inquiry into what spheres of local development can be objectively and ideologically relocalized. The globalization of the economy and its detrimental effects on local politics increasingly rob localities even of the notion that local politics matter. The chapters by Molotch, Preteceille, and ClaveI and Kleniewski raise these issues. At a time when major...