Urban Politics

Préface d’Augustin Berque
Un siècle de banlieue japonaise apporte une réflexion inédite sur les processus d’urbanisation de l’une des sociétés de consommation les plus avancées de la planète, dans un pays dont la population doit, de surcroît, souvent faire face à des désastres naturels. De la fin du 19e  siècle aux temps présents en passant par la crise de Fukushima, l’histoire de la production de l’espace nippon retracée ici nous permet de saisir l’évolution du rapport des Japonais à l’urbain et à leur milieu.

Dans ce contexte, la formation du tissu urbain banlieusard qui entoure les villes, et notamment la capitale, est un phénomène particulièrement éloquent.
Au Japon, logements publics et sociaux n’allant pas de pair, il est essentiel de saisir les motivations d’une réflexion liée au logement populaire en banlieue. Quelles sont les conséquences foncières, sociales et culturelles de la transformation de l’espace imposée par les politiques planificatrices de la seconde moitié du 20e siècle? Un siècle de banlieue japonaise présente les premières initiatives externalisées dans le domaine du logement, les influences occidentales et les prises de position qui ont donné naissance au processus de création de la banlieue japonaise, ainsi que les grands mouvements d’idées sous-jacents.

Afin d’illustrer les résultats concrets de ces phénomènes, l’auteure examine en profondeur la situation des cités de loge-ments publics japonaises, qui exprime certes la mise en œuvre de la modernité dans l’aménagement spatial, mais entraîne également des réalités socioculturelles difficiles. De la naissance du noyau urbain de Tôkyô aux emprunts à l’Amérique de l’après-guerre, de la vague du bunka à l’apogée de Kôdan (l’organisme public du logement), en passant par l’évolution inexorable d’un village où les traditions disparaissent progressivement, Cécile Asanuma-Brice nous présente la poétique et la politique de l’urbain nippon. Elle nous invite de manière spéculaire à nous interroger sur la production de l’espace urbain occidental.

Table des matières
Remerciements | 11

Préface d’Augustin Berque | 13

Introduction / Au paroxysme de
la société de consommation | 15

PARTIE I / NAISSANCE DE VILLE ET STRUCTURATION DE L’ALENTOUR

De la naissance d’Edo à la formation d’une culture d’habiter propre à la périphérie urbaine | 25

Chapitre 1 / Une organisation urbaine au rythme des plateaux | 27
Chapitre 2 / Le rôle des transports dans l’étalement urbain de Tôkyô | 53
Chapitre 3 / L’ère du Bunka 文化 | 71

PARTIE II / FORMATION D’UN SYSTÈME DE LOGEMENT PUBLIC  ET TRANSFORMATION DU MODE DE VIE EN PÉRIPHÉRIE

Naissance d’une préoccupation publique sur la question du logement social
au Japon | 85

Chapitre 1 / L’émergence de la question du logement ouvrier | 87
Chapitre 2 / Du logement d’entreprise à la ville d’entreprise Shatakugai 社宅街 | 95
Chapitre 3 / Lorsque le logement devient une préoccupation publique | 111

PARTIE III / QUAND LA BANLIEUE PERD SON LIEU

Aux prémices de la métamorphose banlieusarde | 129

Chapitre 1 / L’après-guerre 1945-1955 : mise en place des organismes de production et de gestion des logements pu-blics et évolution du cadre juridique | 131
Chapitre 2 / De la modernité | 143
Chapitre 3 / Les influences américaines | 149

PARTIE IV / L’ORGANISME PUBLIC DU LOGEMENT (KÔDAN JÛTAKU)

Naissance et décadence | 157

Chapitre 1 / 1955, début de la période de haute croissance | 159
Chapitre 2 / À nouvelle forme d’urba-nisme, communautés nouvelles | 167
Chapitre 3 / Les années 1980 : kôdan, apogée et déclin | 179

PARTIE V / VAGABONDAGE PÉRIURBAIN, DU TERRITOIRE
À LA CHOSE CONSTRUITE

Chapitre 1 / La formation de la banlieue fasuto-fûdo (ファスト風土 ) | 195
Chapitre 2 /  L’inadaptation de la ville-objet de consommation au territoire: le séisme de 2011 | 205

Conclusion / Du local au global, quand la domination de l’appareil  organisationnel détruit ceux pour qui il a été mis en place | 215

Annexe / Si la banlieue nous était contée… par ses habitants | 221
Bibliographie | 227
Glossaire | 243
Index des lieux | 247
Sources iconographiques | 249
Crédits | 253

In the face of a housing crisis rooted in commodification, there is growing alignment within both activist and scholarly circles over the need to reverse this trend and move toward decommodification. There is work left to be done, however, in conceptualizing how to get there. Housing and tenant groups challenge the logic of extraction through their day-to-day struggles in privately-held rental housing. The policy priorities of this movement are rooted in housing justice. By giving tenants more power over where they live through rent regulation, eviction protections, robust code enforcement, and other forms of legal recourse, these policies make real estate speculation less profitable. In parallel, there is a growing call for social housing conversions through both public takings and private land and property acquisition to realize a vision of housing that prioritizes decommodification, deep affordability, and democratic management. But how do these visions of housing decommodification relate to one another? In our forthcoming project Pathways to Social Housing in New York, we draw out connections between these different strategies, outlining a broad collection of policies that together can present a road to housing decommodification, both within our state and elsewhere around the country. In particular, we argue that to decommodify urban property, we need to fight not only for policy and funding which transfers land and housing to social ownership, but also for policies that make extractive and predatory housing models less viable and organizing more feasible. We need a strategy that incorporates both social housing and housing justice.

Abstract:  This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class-ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”-based rather than in class-sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

This book is the first of its kind to use historical studies and architectural research to outline Shanghai’s pragmatic developments dominated largely by its politics. Professor Reinhard Goethert from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described it as “a well-thought-out perspective in understanding the amazing transformation of urban Shanghai” and “an excellent foundation for exploring contemporary city-building issues.” In praise of this book, Delft University of Technology Architecture Professor Gregory Bracken, who is also an expert on Shanghai urban studies, writes: “This book is a timely and intelligent examination of Shanghai’s recent urban transformations.” The book has been in circulation since 2009 and been used in architectural, urban and environmental studies courses at MIT, Harvard University and New York University.

Demonstrations and protests were relatively infrequent in Baltimore's distinctive racial politics, but the city's black activists helped to develop two most effective instruments of the nation's civil rights movement -- litigation and lobbying.

Southeast Asian cities have long been produced as the ‘exemplary centres’ of the region, shaped in various and overlapping ways by the imperial gaze, nationalist visions (and their democratised versions), and by the familiar blueprints of international capital. Through such exemplary visions, the region’s cities have been designed to cultivate collective memories and subjectivities, as well as to project power and authority. In addition, and often as an integral result of the realisation of grand visions, regional metropolises are also dynamic sites of rapid urbanisation, of contested processes of expropriation and eviction, and places of dissent and resistant subject formation. Further, impoverished urban populations increasingly suffer environmental discrimination and bear the worst of the effects of contamination and climate change, while at the same time, discourses of hygiene, criminality, and uninhabitability are employed to denigrate the urban poor and their environments...

Elected officials routinely do not reflect the racial diversity of the citizenry. In Latin America, these descriptive gaps are particularly pronounced. A growing number of studies investigate the causes of racial disparities in representation, however, extant research largely focuses on national assemblies. In this paper, I extend this well-trod line of research to an understudied context, local elections. Using a dataset that covers mayoral elections in Brazil, I demonstrate that multiple factors hinder Afro-Brazilians, who comprise a majority of the Brazilian population, from winning public office. I show that barriers to candidate entry, resource disparities between white and Afro-Brazilian candidates, and race-based preferences among voters contribute to racial inequality in political representation. These results indicate that members of marginalized racial groups often must overcome multiple barriers to achieve electoral success.

У статті аналізуються міські соціальні рухи та їх потенційна участь в локальній політиці. Поряд з іншими місцевою владою та бізнесом пропонується розглянути міські соціальні рухи в якості впливово політичного актора міських режимів. Вказується на важливість врахування різних контекстів при дослідженні міських рухів, наводяться дослідження європейських науковців з приводу особливості посткомуністичного простору в аспекті політичного активізму. Запропоновано типологію міських рухів відповідно до сфери функціонування та аналізуються типології окремих європейських дослідників.

Les machines politiques sont un phénomène lié à l’immigration irlandaise aux Etats-Unis entre les années 1870 et 1950. Les machines sont des organisations conçues pour gagner les élections en mobilisant des clientèles dans le cadre de relations personnelles et de solidarités ethniques. La mobilisation des clientèles passe notamment par la distribution d’emplois publics. Le débat historiographique porte sur le rôle joué par les machines auprès des immigrés pauvres. Le cas des machines montre l’intérêt que revêt le clientélisme pour étudier les trajectoires spécifiques d’intégration des groupes immigrés dans la société américaine.

Depuis quelques annees, un interet croissant pour les ecoquartiers se manifeste chez les elites urbaines. A travers l’analyse du projet New Islington a Manchester, cet article cherche a comprendre le role joue par la realisation de ces quartiers dans les demarches de developpement urbain. En replacant ce projet dans le contexte des politiques urbaines conduites au Royaume-Uni, l’article cherche a isoler les logiques a l’œuvre dans les usages repetes de la notion de « ville durable ». Les ecoquartiers, bien que contribuant a l’approfondissement des politiques urbaines d’environnement, apparaissent insuffisants pour repondre a l’« ideal » de la ville durable. En circonscrivant les innovations et ameliorations a des zones reduites de la ville, ils participent a l’accentuation de la differenciation du traitement des espaces urbains.

City-based citizenship (city-zenship) and its ecological ramifications increasingly inform people’s social and political lives, rendering the link between ecological citizenship and political city-zenship a topical subject for analysis. The questions analyzed here are: How can and how do citizens of cities promote sustainable urban development? What are their goals and motivations? And how do these forms of engagement reflect the theory of ecological citizenship in cities? The research is based on semi-structured and in-depth interviews with environmental and political activists in German and Israeli cities. The analysis indicates that the city is a meaningful political arena for ecological citizenship, with distinct patterns of political participation in relation to a city’s particular identity. However, political participation in cities is not independent of the state, but dependent on the political and civic rights enshrined therein.

Experimentation has become an increasingly dominant and celebrated practice in urban governance. Used by planners and policy-makers seeking to manage and organize a positive transition to a ‘better’ world, experiments are generally seen as desirable and even necessary to achieve this goal. The quintessentially political nature of this approach to urban change, however, remains insufficiently addressed in planning and policy literature. This paper argues that experimental agency entails a set of political biases and normative assumptions that deserve to be problematized. Critically building on the analytical insights of evolutionary theory, we develop a critique of experimental action, arguing that experiments express a ‘politics of niches’ which occur across three processes: the creation, selection and retention of emergent practices within established institutional orders. Using empirical evidence from contemporary practices in Amsterdam, we sketch four trajectories of niches: death, marginalization, assimilation and transformation. We conclude by reflecting on the political implications of experimentation for urban theory and practice.

This article focuses on the key contributions made by Adolph Reed Jr., focusing on his efforts to " restore the political " to analysis of urban politics and race. Reed's position resists the lamentable tendency to " naturalize " political phenomena through abstractions such as the rational, utility-maximizing individual; the unitary city interest; and notion of a corporate black interest. In particular, Reed brings into sharp relief the deficiencies of Paul Peterson's " city limits " idea and the widely popularized notion that African Americans share a " collective racial interest. " I offer an interpretation of Reed's work that suggests, notwithstanding the centrality of critique in his work, that he offers an optimistic vision that opens up the possibility of alternatives to neoliberalism and its attendant ills.

El presente trabajo explora el fenómeno de edificación en altura en las comunas de la Región Me- tropolitana de Santiago entre los años 1990 a 2014 a partir de un análisis conjunto de los datos de la Encuesta de Edificación (1990-2001) y del Formulario Único de Estadísticas de Edificación (FUEE) (2002-2014), ambos diseñados e implementados por el Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE). Sus resultados permiten identificar un proceso de polarización en las alturas construidas que pueden ser asociadas a formas construidas diferentes, casas y edificios. La proliferación y concentración de estos últimos propone desafíos significativos en el gobierno a las comunas pericentrales de la región e inspira considerar la forma construida como problema urbano diferente al de la vivienda y de la residencialidad.

The Informationally Ecological City. Innovativeness and Information Ecology in Revitalization
In:
Technologiczno-społeczne oblicza XXI wieku, ed. Damian Gałuszka, Grzegorz Ptaszek, Dorota Żuchowska-Skiba, Wydawnictwo LIBRON – Filip Lohner, Kraków 2016, pp. 135-157.

[Polish below]

The paper concerns an original term ‘the informationally ecological city’ in the context of innovations and urban revitalization. The term is based on the concept of information ecology, which recognizes the informational space as the ecosystem of modern society and tries to protect the information environment. It is therefore implicitly linked to the smart city vision. In view of the social aspect of revitalization, the practical purpose of information ecology is to counter a digital division. Whilst not much attention is paid in Polish official documents to revitalization of information space, in the author’s opinion it is necessary to include sustainable development of information in urban and social renewal.

Keywords: information ecology, smart city, revitalization, social renewal.


STRESZCZENIE

Artykuł jest poświęcony autorskiemu pojęciu „miasto ekologiczne informacyjnie”, zastosowanemu w kontekście innowacji i rewitalizacji miast. Termin powstał w oparciu o koncepcję ekologii informacji, która uznaje przestrzeń informacji za ekosystem nowoczesnego społeczeństwa i dąży do ochrony środowiska informacyjnego. Pośrednio wiąże się on zatem z ideą smart city. Ze względu na społeczny aspekt rewitalizacji praktyczny cel ekologii informacji stanowi przeciwdziałanie wykluczeniu cyfrowemu i chaosowi w dostępie do informacji. Podczas gdy w Polsce w oficjalnych dokumentach niewiele uwagi poświęca się rewitalizacji przestrzeni informacji, według autora artykułu zrównoważony rozwój informacji powinien zostać włączony do procesu odnowy społecznej w miastach.

Słowa kluczowe: ekologia informacji, inteligentne miasto, rewitalizacja,
odnowa społeczna.

This paper develops an analytical framework that can serve to analyse the genesis and evolution of institutions that instantiate urban policy. To this end, two theoretical approaches are integrated: the state theoretical regulation approach and the governmentality approach. Although these approaches depart from different ontological and epistemological starting points, the research tools that they have developed are largely complementary. Therefore, in
concrete research, a framework that combines elements from both approaches could yield important empirical insights. Urban policy in the Netherlands is analysed to illustrate some of the theoretical and methodological propositions that have been developed.

En este artículo se busca desvelar la estrategia espacial del proceso de urbanización del capitalismo global, extendido a través de la construcción de una marca cultural que ha llevado a Cuenca (Ecuador) a especializarse en el consumo improductivo del espacio como una centralidad de ocio, ocultando dispositivos de extracción de los excedentes inmobiliarios mediados por la industria turística y la llamada extranjera a una vida de retiro. Se realiza un análisis espacio-temporal multivariante del parque inmobiliario de la ciudad en tres momentos (2006, 2010 y 2016), así como la revisión de la planificación pública junto al comportamiento del sector privado, que enlazan la revalorización inmobiliaria con una carrera de acumulación de capital simbólico colectivo promovida por la burguesía local desde los años 80, pasando por la rápida especialización de la oferta de retiro para extranjeros, que ha llegado a situar a Cuenca en el podio mundial del rentismo cultural.

Over the past 25 years, the Brussels neighbourhoods confronted with the greatest difficulties have benefited from substantial public funds intended to renovate and revitalise them: 550 interventions on the built environment, 1730 housing units created, 130 elements of local infrastructure built, 850 socio-economic actions carried out and a large number of roadways and squares redesigned. Created in 1993, the “Neighbourhood Contract” rapidly became an emblematic tool of the Brussels public action and imposed itself as a structural and structuring policy. Beyond the many projects and actions implemented, there is also an entire social world that took shape around this project and that is composed of political actors, administrative agents, experts, associations and citizens. This publication traces the deployment of the Neighbourhood Contracts in Brussels over the past 25 years by means of an immersion in the discourse, imagination, steering, execution and administration of a long-term public action, recorded at different moments in its lifetime. The 14 situations that have been selected compose the sociological chronicle of an urban policy, from its birth to its current state of development, which today raises important questions. The text that concludes the work is the occasion for the author to question the “time perspectives” of the advocates and detractors of the Neighbourhood Contract, and to stir a public debate about the continuation or transformation of urban policymaking in Brussels.

Toronto, like many cities worldwide, has significantly grown and changed in recent decades. But the transformation in Toronto has been especially sudden and dramatic. Its historic Victorian political culture, averse to public amusement and supportive of bourgeois virtues like thrift, family, and homogenous community, has been joined by new themes of individuality, public personal expression, and cultural diversity (Lemon 1984). Traditional self-conceptions like “Toronto the Good” and “Hogtown” now jostle and merge with “Toronto the Could,” “Creative City,” and “Visit Toronto, See the World.”
This chapter uses two case studies to explore how local politics have been affected by these changes. One highlights the politics at stake in cultural work and consumption. In the case of the West Queen West Triangle, a vibrant independent art scene, supported by city officials, politicians, and influential media figures and professionals, sought to resist and alter proposed condominium developments that threatened to turn one of the city’s core post-industrial employment districts into a “bedroom community for the suburbs.” The other highlights the politics of residence and community. In the case of the Wychwood Barns, neighbors clashed over whether to rehabilitate abandoned and dilapidated streetcar repair barns into artist live-work space, an environmental educational center, and a farmers market or to demolish it for a traditional grass and trees park.

Holes in The Whole seeks meaning and reasons for the existence of the city. It demonstrates the urgent need to expand the sphere of urban activity - to define the city not only as a territory of exploitation, but as space of human existence in its fullest dimension. The book defines the conditions under which the city can develop as an entity without falling into the trap of arrogant self-sufficiency. It identifies the mechanisms that promote independent fragments, including people, neighbourhoods and regions, so that they are not random, unsystematic bunches, but stable (yet flexible) structures.

Thanks to Heather McLean (University of Glasgow) we’re able to present here a superb series of engagements with Brenda Parker’s Masculinities and Markets: Raced and Gendered Urban Politics in Milwaukee. Published last year as part of UGA Press’ “Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation” series, the book explores how gendered approaches affect the landscape of urban politics:

Pandemi ortamının en önemli getirilerinden ve sorunlarından biri “eve iş getirmek” ifadesiyle özetlenebilir. Başka bir anlatımla, iş mekanının göçebeleşmesi gibi bir olguyla yüz yüzeyiz. Bu metin söz konusu meseleyi ve değişen iş yaşamını tartışıyor. Şimdilerde kapitalist çalışma düzeninin en çarpıcı kırılma noktalarından birine tanıklık ediyoruz.

Cities are increasingly important arenas of civic activism, especially in form of so-­‐called neighborhood initiatives and grassroots urban movement. As research presented here shows, conceptual and symbolic " battles for space ", usually associated with city planning processes, were crucial for the emergence of grassroots' urban initiatives in Poland. As a result of intensive networking, urban activists became an important and highly visible lobby group, especially in the context of their relations with local governments, influencing not only political decisions, but also the functioning of local as well as national administration. Nowadays in Poland the grassroots urban movement is one of the most visible factors affecting public administration practices concerning planning and development, pushing for innovations and participatory mechanisms in all spheres of urban policy.

Bij de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van 14 oktober 1918 verraste de monsterscore van de stadslijst. Bart Somers en zijn stadslijst aten iedereen op. De formule van de kartellijst bleek een nog groter succes dan iedereen verwacht had. Nochtans is zulke formule van een stadslijst niet nieuw en niet uniek. Het presenteren van kandidaten van uiteenlopende opinies aan de kiezer op één lijst gebeurde al zeer frequent van in de negentiende eeuw, in heel het land en op alle bestuursniveaus. De strategie achter een kartellijst gaat ervan uit dat de kiezer op de persoon gaat stemmen, niet op de partij. Specifiek aan de stadslijst in 2018 was ook de focus op de lokale kwesties. De verwijzing naar de nationale partij en politiek werd bewust geminimaliseerd. De kartellijsten zijn ook een poging om de versnippering van het politieke landschap tegen te gaan, die zich door de ontzuiling vooral sinds de jaren 1980 doorgezet heeft.

De ideologisch overeenkomsten tussen het links-liberalisme en het politiek ecologisme blijken sterker dan op het eerste gezicht zou vermoed worden. In Mechelen stond het progressief of links-liberalisme al sinds het einde van de negentiende eeuw veel sterker dan in vergelijkbare steden. Het heeft zich tegen het einde van de twintigste eeuw opnieuw sterk ontwikkeld. Bart Somers, de liberale burgemeester van Mechelen sinds 2001, is er de verpersoonlijking van, zeker met zijn rolmodel van integratie. Daarmee tracht hij in een stad met 138 nationaliteiten een stedelijke gemeenschap te vormen. Tegelijk belijden meerdere leiders van Groen! zich bewust en openlijk het links-liberalisme, de Mechelaar Kristof Calvo voorop.

Vanaf 1994 leek de periode voorgoed voorbij dat de twee grootste partijen – van sociaaldemocraten en christendemocraten – elk een score van 40% en méér haalden en met elkaar comfortabele monstercoalities aangingen, met slechts een onbeduidende oppositie. Veelkleurige coalities waren er het onmiddellijke gevolg van. De nood aan kartelvorming van partijen na toe. De volgende verkiezingen probeerden de politieke leiders diverse formules uit.

Telkens bleek het presenteren van enkele sterke figuren de kracht van de formule. Ook de symbiose van het liberalisme, met een originele aanpak van de diversiteit van de stad, en het groene gedachtengoed, geassocieerd met een links-liberale insteek, was een sterke troef. De twee politieke ideologieën bleken complementair en vulden elkaar aan. Dat was goed te merken tijdens de campagne en in het gevoerde en het geplande beleid. Het palmares van het beleid van de voorbije achttien jaar onder burgemeester Bart Somers werd algemeen gewaardeerd en straalde vooral af op de Open VLD en op de stadslijst die Somers aanvoerde. Dat Bart Smers bovendien in 2017 de World Mayor Prize won en de titel van "de beste burgemeester ter wereld" handig uitspeelde als de verdienste van alle Mechelaars, streelde het imago van menig kiezer.

Kartellijsten hielden in het verleden stand zolang die een meerwaarde leverde voor elk van de partners: bestuursdeelname en veel mandaten. Groen! scoorde erg goed en het is de vraag of de basismilitanten akkoord blijven gaan om het wagentje te koppelen aan dat van de liberalen. De partij had in de rest van het land bewezen dat het op eigen benen ook mooie resultaten kon halen. Omgekeerd moesten de meer conservatieve liberalen zich kunnen blijven verzoenen met de linkse koers van de groenen. Na de verkiezingen filosofeerde de Vlaamse pers over "de blauw-groene motor" in Mechelen. Was dat de voorbode van een ruime beweging in heel Vlaanderen of België, die ook de federale regeringsvorming zou sturen? Want zeven maanden later, op 26 mei 1919, zijn er de verkiezingen voor het Europees, federaal en Vlaams parlement. Bart Somers hield de boot beleefd en voorzichtig af. Mechelen is geen eiland en "de gemeenteraad is het parlement niet". Tenslotte moeten, ondanks de ideologische overeenkomsten, ook heel wat verschillen overbrugd worden.

In recent years, the world has seen the emergence of a number of urban projects which, under the banner of experimentation, have promoted alternative models of city-making capable, in theory, of creating sustainable built environments. Among these supposedly experimental models, the smart city and the eco-city stand out in terms of geographical diffusion, and are hailed by their advocates as the mark of an innovative urbanism based on a scientific approach to urban development. Through the analysis of Hong Kong and Masdar City, examples of a smart-city agenda and an eco-city project respectively, this paper questions the sustainability of so-called smart cities and eco-cities, by investigating the extent to which they are developed in a controlled and systematic manner as their developers claim. More specifically, the paper counterclaims mainstream understandings of smart and ecological urbanism, arguing that what are promoted as cohesive settlements shaped by a homogeneous vision of the sustainable city, are actually fragmented cities made of disconnected and often incongruous pieces of urban fabric. Theoretically, these claims are discussed through the concept of Frankenstein urbanism which draws upon Mary Shelley's novel as a metaphor for unsuccessful experiments generated by the forced union of different, incompatible elements.

Conventional models of clientelism often assume poor voters have little or no choice over which local broker to turn to for help. Yet communities in many clientelistic settings are marked by multiple brokers who compete for a following. Such competition makes client choices, and the preferences guiding such choices, pivotal in fueling broker support. We examine client preferences for a pervasive broker—slum leaders—in the context of urban India. To identify resident preferences for slum leaders, we conducted an ethnographically informed conjoint survey experiment with 2,199 residents across 110 slums in two Indian cities. Contra standard emphases on shared ethnicity, we find residents place heaviest weight on a broker's capability to make claims on the state. A survey of 629 slum leaders finds client-preferred traits distinguish brokers from residents. In highlighting processes of broker selection, and the client preferences that undergird them, we underscore the centrality of clients in shaping local brokerage environments.

The privatization of basic needs provision has seen a related and increasing reliance on corporate-community partnerships in serving the “last mile.” These relationships often seem promising because they suggest mutual benefit—corporations expand their customer base, while communities gain access to improved services. Indeed, the success of Manila’s water privatization project hinges in large part on the two utilities’ partnerships with community-based organizations to extend services to low-income areas.

Despite the promise of mutuality, Manila has seen localized contestations over this setup, as some communities sense disparities between their terms of access and those of households that are directly served by the utilities. However, rather than being targeted at the utilities, those challenges largely focus on the small providers—paradoxically, it is the community-based cooperatives and entrepreneurs that are accused of capitalistic exploitation. By distancing themselves from low-income communities, the utilities become relatively intangible, state-like entities, their financial motivations obscured from ordinary citizens. In contrast, community-based organizations are at the frontline—collecting payments, monitoring for theft, and seemingly earning profits at the expense of their neighbors. Corporate-community partnerships thus create an uneven terrain of empowerment, cooptation, and politicization, refocusing debates at a local level. In so doing, they alter the ways in which citizens view public, private, and community entities, complicating the public/private binaries that often dominate debates on privatization.