Whose Urban Renaissance? An International Comparison of Urban Regeneration Strategies – Edited by Libby Porter and Kate Shaw

BOOK REVIEWS

Nicholas Blomley 2010: Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow.New York: Routledge.

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht 2009: Sidewalks. Conflict andNegotiations over Public Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

‘Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets’. This widely quoted passagederives from Jane Jacobs’ well-known book The Death and Life of Great AmericanCities (1993: 37). And although it says ‘its streets’, Jacobs regarded the streets’sidewalks in particular as the most essential urban public space; for her, they were sitesof chance encounters that led to social control and safety. Both books reviewed herecontribute to the growing literature on public space across a range of academic fieldsby making precisely this particular — often overlooked — element of urban form thesubject of their investigation. However, each offers a different perspective and focus.Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht provide historical insight into howconflicts over competing uses and meanings of the sidewalk have been negotiated. Indoing so, they draw in particular on case-study research from five US cities: Boston,Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Seattle. The authors think of urban sidewalks ascontested public spaces and thus focus on people’s multiple uses of the sidewalk, theencounters between them, the various meanings ascribed to the sidewalk and whathappens upon it. By contrast, Nicholas Blomley draws attention to one specific use ofthe sidewalk, namely its functional use of pedestrian flow. He makes a plea for therecognition and a better understanding of this technical and pragmatic view of thesidewalk, which he notes profoundly permeates municipal practice, political discourse,law and regulation, and for which he has coined the term ‘pedestrianism’.Pedestrianism, then, considers sidewalks not as social (cf. Jacobs) or political (cf.Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht) spaces, but as spaces of pedestrian flow instead,devoid of meaningful encounters. In fact, if encounters between street users are anissue at all, they ‘are framed simply as moments of collision’ (p. 106) that should beeliminated by design or law. In the next part, I will discuss the books separately andin greater detail, before briefly concluding with a general discussion of some of theimportant issues raised.

Sidewalks. Conflict and Negotiations over Public Space is divided into five partscomprising 12 chapters. The introduction and chapter 2 constitute part I. After theintroductory chapter, in which Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht discuss the relevance,focus and aim of their inquiry, the authors devote the first part of the book to the historyand evolution of urban sidewalks. They briefly discuss international examples of earlysidewalks before providing an insightful account of how sidewalks in the United Stateshave historically accommodated distinct uses, and how municipal governments haveincreasingly sought to turn the sidewalk into an orderly space for unobstructedmovement. Using Los Angeles as a case study, the authors convincingly show that streetsand sidewalks increasingly came to be perceived as a public benefit, leading to‘municipal ordinances that favor efficient movement and prohibit other social, economic,and political uses of the sidewalk’ (p. 33).

Part II draws attention to the sidewalk as a stage for seeing and being seen.This part focuses on fleeting encounters among strangers in public spaces, rightlyarguing that such encounters can be meaningful, even if the encounter is just anobservation:

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Volume 36.3 May 2012 628–42 International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchDOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01130.x

© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA

As urbanites see others and are seen by others, they develop and display identities, indicatingsimilarities and differences through fashion and spatial practices, as well as claiming the rightto be included in a diverse crowd (p. 38).

Chapter 3 is concerned with the everyday sidewalk activities, like walking, strolling,promenading, shopping and hanging out. It discusses how (unwritten) rules of publicbehavior have been defined, challenged and changed over time. Chapter 4, then, looks atevents interrupting everyday street life, such as parades, pointing out issues ofterritoriality, recognition, equal citizenship and commercialization. In addition, threekinds of parades are described in greater detail: suffrage parades, the hidden carnival andsecond-line parades, and the gay pride parades.

Part III concentrates on disruptions on the streets and sidewalks. It discusses howmicro-political acts of dissent (chapter 5) — such as refusing to step aside on thesidewalks — and major political events (chapter 6) — such as public protests andpicketing — may (intentionally) confront established social norms and challenge socialhierarchies, illustrated again by several historical and contemporary examples.

The three chapters that constitute part IV shed light on sidewalk activities that are notintentionally disruptive (like most — but not all — of the political practices described inthe previous part), but can still result in conflicts over the use and meaning of publicspace as it concerns competition over specific sites. This is ably illustrated in the authors’historical analysis of the nature of and the municipal responses to conflicts over streetvending (chapter 7), homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks (chapter 8) and theplanting of street trees (chapter 9).

The last part (part V) is about regulation and control of the sidewalk. An interestingchapter 10 explores the related notions of disorder, discomfort and danger. The authorsrightly argue that various forms of disorder — such as panhandling or loitering youths —are increasingly perceived as problematic and equated with danger (whether or notincivilities are actually dangerous) in order to justify public space controls. Chapter 11,then, investigates some of the design and regulatory strategies that cities use to governtheir sidewalks (that the authors find rely on the logic of unimpeded movement and theinterests of abutting properties). In conclusion, chapter 12 outlines some criticalquestions about public space and the interactions taking place there within theframeworks of ‘privatization’, ‘rights’, ‘quality-of-life issues’, and ‘safety and security’(p. 267–70). Throughout the book, and particularly in this final chapter, it becomesclear that the authors are concerned with promoting a just city, asserting that: ‘If weseek security to such a degree that we remove the possibility of chance encounters,spontaneous interaction with strangers, and conflict, we eliminate a quality for which weturn to public spaces’ (p. 272).

The second book reviewed here, Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation ofPublic Flow, consists of nine reasonably short chapters and begins with a description ofan anti-poverty protest in Vancouver in 2002 — which became known as ‘Woodsquat’ —and the city authorities’ response to the situation (using the full force of the law tocompel the protestors to remove their encampment). The Woodsquat dispute is referredto a couple of times in the course of the narrative and serves as an example of a particularform of urban governance of which this book seeks to make sense, namelypedestrianism. A definition of the concept is given early on:

Pedestrianism understands the sidewalk as a finite public resource that is always threatened bymultiple, competing interests and uses. The role of the authorities, using law as needed, is toarrange these bodies and objects to ensure that the primary function of the sidewalk issustained: that being the orderly movement of pedestrians from point a to point b (p. 3).

So, in the light of this logic, the Woodsquat activists were regarded as obstacles topedestrians making their way through the urban space. Blomley argues that the City ofVancouver’s attempts to remove the protestors should therefore be considered as actionin the name of pedestrian flow, and not as a veil for its desire to purify or homogenize thepublic space.

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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36.3© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited

Through a review of some of the prevailing scholarly perspectives on the sidewalk, theauthor clearly reveals the ways in which pedestrianism departs from and conflicts withsuch views (chapter 2). It is striking, however, that no reference is made to Lyn Lofland’s(1998) work. With her conceptualization of public space as a social realm, determined bythe social interactions taking place there with various meanings, Lofland’s perspective onpublic space could not have been further away from the one which Blomley centers on.

According to Nicholas Blomley, prevailing understandings of the sidewalk — despitetheir differences — share a focus on the interactions taking place there and a recognitionthat such interactions can be meaningful. These views regard the sidewalk ‘first andforemost, as a space of and for people, engaging, encountering and negotiating withothers . . . [and] ideally, as serving valued shared ends’ (p. 28). Examples of such ‘valuedshared ends’ may be: sociability, safety or social justice. The author uses ‘civichumanism’ as an umbrella term for such views. Pedestrianism departs from such civichumanism through its reduction of the sidewalk to a means of moving from A to Bwithout being interrupted by obstacles — whether that may be people or things. Forpedestrianists, a beggar and a bus stop are considered as similar — and therefore treatedequally — insofar as they are both potential obstructions. Moreover, pedestrianists stressthe judicial equal treatment of all individuals — whether poor or rich: ‘The majesticequality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg aggressively in the streets’(p. 98). Under the assumption that ‘[t]he sidewalk is not a site for the realization ofindividual rights, but a conduit for purposeful, directed flow’ (p. 12), the sidewalk shouldbe kept free. As such, Blomley asserts, pedestrianism appears to be a very powerful andapolitical rationality that effectively deactivates civil rights claims. However, althoughthe practice of pedestrianism may be apolitical, ‘it can have ethically worrisome effects’(p. 109), as Blomley rightly argues.

The ways in which pedestrianism contrasts with prevailing views and deactivatesrights-based claims to public space become even more clear — though a little annoyinglyrepetitive at points as well — in the next chapters, when the author describes howpedestrianism is used by civil engineers (chapters 3 and 4), judges (chapters 6 and 7) andpoliticians (chapter 8). In doing so, the author draws on primary and secondary sourcesfrom several North American cities (primarily from Vancouver). This makes me wonderto what extent this new logic of pedestrianism has a wider resonance: Do we also find thisdominant logic widely held amongst engineers and judges in countries other than theUnited States and Canada? My guess would be that in many European countries theprofessional discourse relies less heavily on notions of pedestrianism. However, thisseems to be a question in need of further investigation.

For reasons not clear to me, the author thought it was logical to put the chapter on thehistorical emergence of pedestrianism in the middle of the book (chapter 5), betweendescriptions of the lenses through which civil engineers and judges respectively view thesidewalk. This chapter takes the reader back to the late nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, when sidewalks in the modern city became increasingly perceived as areas ofdisorder and chaos ‘with machines and people anarchically mixed, and space randomlyappropriated for political organizing, popular amusement and commercial activity’ (p.62). It was this perceived chaos of the sidewalk that resulted in the spatial separation ofusers and the advancement of pedestrian flow.

The closing chapter (chapter 9) outlines some directions for further research, stressingthe need to take pedestrianism seriously and to ‘engage with pedestrianism on its ownterrain’ (p. 111):

While pedestrianism characterizes the sidewalk according to a unitary public, with a clearlydefined interest in circulation, we can perhaps begin to explore the evident diversity ofpublicness, and the multiple interests and conceptions of the sidewalk at work (ibid.).

Blomley continues by suggesting that studies might reflect upon the significance ofwalking along and encountering other people on the sidewalk. In this sense, he makes aplea — if I understand him correctly — for a shift from how street users are related to

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democratic rights to how street users are related to each other (i.e. a focus on encounterswithout the translation of such encounters and the experiences that come with it into thearenas of participation and democracy).

A common thread running through both books is their concern for the usually taken-for-granted urban sidewalk, and what role it plays or is expected to play. NicholasBlomley shows how city authorities understand their sidewalks in a very straightforwardway: as spaces of flow. In pursuit of this, sidewalks are regulated in such a way that theyfoster uninterrupted movement, thus without encounters between people. Blomley’spublication is not always easy reading and could have followed a more logical structure(the fact that there are errors in the ‘overview of contents’ guiding the reader tosubsequent chapters unfortunately does not help). However, his work can be appreciatedfor bringing something new to public space scholarship. The book will appeal to allscholars researching the sidewalk, and stimulate discussion and questions across thesocial sciences.

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht adopt a more comprehensiveapproach with their focus on the conflicts over public encounters and interactions. Forthem, the sidewalk ideally serves political ends. As the sidewalk is indeed a highlyregulated space, they caution against over-regulation, pointing to the consequences:unequal citizenship entitlements. Their work should be applauded for its attempt toprovide understandings of how meanings come about and conflicts are played out on thestreets. However, I believe that the authors do not provide powerful conceptual andcritical analyses, and that their theorizing on this topic remains rather limited.Notwithstanding these objections, their publication should be much appreciated for itsincorporation of historically changing understandings of the role of the sidewalk in urbanlife. The book is well organized and pleasantly written, with several fascinating examplesof what kinds of struggles over public space have occurred throughout history. As such,it represents an interesting read for a wide range of scholars concerned with public space.

There is one last point I want to make with regard to future research on public spaceand what happens in it. In the closing chapters of both books, the authors present theircases for making encounters on the sidewalk subject to closer scrutiny, as discussedabove. Near the end of their book, Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht write: ‘Themoments of interaction that take place on sidewalks are complex and include more thanthe immediacy of the interaction’ (p. 267). I could not agree more, and believe there issignificant scope for further research that is sensitive to the complexities and processesof the street, thereby providing more empirical theory-building on this topic.

Saskia Binken, Delft University of Technology

Jacobs, J. (1993) The death and life ofgreat American cities. Modern Library,New York.

Lofland, L. (1998) The public realm. Aldinede Gruyter, New York.

Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert 2009: Banished: The New Social Control in UrbanAmerica. New York: Oxford University Press.

This book presents a harrowing analysis of modern-day banishment, the phenomenonwhereby ever-expanding swaths of urban space are demarcated as zones from which thedispossessed, the disreputable and the ‘disorderly’ are legally excluded. Focusing on theostensibly progressive city of Seattle, Beckett and Herbert draw upon an impressive arrayof data — including police and court records, legal and archival materials and interviewswith judges, attorneys, police officers, social service providers and the banishedthemselves — to document both the practice and the consequences of this increasinglywidespread technique of social control and neoliberal poverty management.

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Banishment is underpinned by a collective disdain towards the homeless, whosenumbers skyrocketed in the early 1980s as a result of the proliferation of precarious jobspaying very low wages combined with the steep reduction of federal support for low-income housing. As Seattle embarked on massive redevelopment efforts to fashion itselfinto a gleaming postindustrial tourist destination, downtown business associations andanti-crime organizations campaigned to rid the streets of discomfiting scenes of abjectpoverty. The popularization of the ‘broken windows’ theory of policing furtherlegitimized the political framing of homelessness as a ‘disorder’ that needed to beeradicated, thereby paving the way for the enactment of the civility codes, which targetparticular behaviors, and the further innovation of exclusion orders, which targetparticular individuals. Banishment, the authors argue, constitutes the ‘twenty-first-century replacement’ (p. 14) for loitering and vagrancy laws, which the Supreme Courtinvalidated nearly half a century ago.

Beckett and Herbert investigate three specific tools of banishment, each of whichmandates the removal or displacement of the unwanted and unwelcome from urbanspace. The first is off-limits orders, such as ‘Stay Out of Drug Areas’ (SODA) or ‘StayOut of Areas of Prostitution’ (SOAP) orders. SODA orders, for example, are imposed onnearly all those convicted of felony drug offenses, as well as on defendants as a conditionof pre-trial release. The dramatic increase in SODA orders has been coupled with a hugegeographic expansion of the zones in which they are enforced, so that by 2005 roughlyhalf of Seattle had been demarcated as a SODA zone. The second tool is parks exclusionlaws, which permit the police to exclude persons from any and all public parks for anextended period of time on the basis of a minor infraction (such as sleeping or beingpresent in a park after hours). By 2005, over 90% of parks exclusion notices bannedpeople either from an entire park zone or from all city parks. The third tool of banishmentinvolves innovative applications of trespass law, whereby the police act as agents ofproperty owners and restrict access to places that are typically open to the public. Policeofficers can stop and issue trespass admonishments for no reason other than deemingsomeone to be lacking a ‘legitimate purpose’ for being there (p. 51). So common is thispractice of spatial exclusion that, in 2005, Seattle’s police department issued nearly10,000 criminal trespass admonishments, making trespass cases one of the largestcategories of cases filed in court.

The consequence of this new regime of social control is that it makes daily life moreonerous for those lacking stable housing arrangements by severing their legal access toareas of the city, hindering their spatial mobility and intensifying their involvement withthe criminal justice system. Beckett and Herbert discover that the banished rarely complywith their exclusion orders due to the fact that they rely upon — for their material andmental survival — the social and institutional resources that can be found within thesezones. Although cast as zones of iniquity by city officials and police officers, these parksand neighborhoods are quite simply ‘home’ to many of the poor, offering pertinent socialservices, income-generating opportunities, makeshift shelter arrangements and safespots for gatherings with acquaintances, friends and family. Given the strength of theirpractical, affective and social ties to these spaces, the banished spend their days ‘duckin’and dodgin’ (p. 118) the police, constantly and inevitably finding themselves in and outof jail. All the while, they carry the psychological burden of knowing that, as onerespondent put it, ‘you’re no longer socially acceptable . . . you’re not really a memberof society’ (p. 124).

Banishment, the authors unequivocally conclude, is a tremendous policy failure, bothfutile and counterproductive. To the extent that it renders those whom it targets invisible,it does so not by shuffling them to another portion of the city — which is, sadly butsurely, the most it could ever hope to achieve — but by relentlessly bouncing them in andout of jail. Banishment fails to address the underlying structural problems of poverty,joblessness and homelessness that generate the ‘disorders’ it aims to displace. Theauthors thus call for the banishment of banishment, the implementation of a harm-reduction and housing-first agenda, and the construction of a more inclusive,

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tolerant and empathic political discourse concerning the socially and economicallymarginalized.

All who are concerned about the punishment of the poor and committed to themovement for the ‘right to the city’ should read this phenomenally important, accessibleand agenda-setting book.

Gretchen Purser, Syracuse University

Ruth D. Peterson and Lauren J. Krivo 2010: Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crimeand the Racial–Spatial Divide. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Reading this elegant little book, one is struck by how the social sciences are stuck insecond gear when it comes to questions of race, segregation and crime. If it were not fortheir compendious bibliography and excellent review of the literature as well as theirmethodological sophistication, one might think that the authors had been asleep for thelast 30 years, for what they tell us — almost channeling Massey and Denton (1993) —is that the stew of residential segregation, racial prejudice and poverty in the USAproduces high and disparate rates of crime for blacks by comparison to whites, as theylive in ‘divergent social worlds’.

The authors’ distinctive contribution is that they have a better sample than all the otherstudies that have come to similar conclusions. Their data set is bigger and more inclusive,sourced from 91 cities across all parts of the country, socio-demographic data from 9,593census tracts (which they call neighborhoods) and reported crime rates from the relevantlaw enforcement agencies. This prodigious effort matches well the total figures for allUnited States cities with populations over 100,000. Most of their analyses are confinedto 8,931 census tracts in the 87 cities for which they have the most complete data. Theydiscover that there is ‘a hierarchy in which predominantly white neighborhoodsexperience by far the least crime and African American areas by far the most crime,although this pattern is clearer and more stark for violent crimes than for propertyoffenses’ (p. 45).

As one can see from the above, most of their carefully constructed findings arepredictable. To their credit, they include Mexican Americans in their analyses. Theyshow that, compared to whites and blacks, the experiences of Mexican Americancommunities are somewhere in the middle.

Most interesting to this reviewer was an analysis showing that, even in the case ofblack neighborhoods with higher economic levels that are more comparable to whiteneighborhoods, the black neighborhoods experience higher crime rates. They partlyexplain this by building on Mary Patillo’s (1999) ethnographic study of a Chicagoupper-working-class/lower-middle-class black community that faced distinctiveproblems, surrounded as it was by more typical African American low-incomecommunities. The authors’ excellent analysis of neighboring communities for eachgroup largely substantiates Patillo’s point.

On the theoretical level, the authors conclude that the basis for understanding differentcrime rates is structural — the result of racialized conditions that combine segregatedlocation with economic conditions. Although not explicit, the emphasis on structuresuggests an entry into an argument about structure versus culture in understanding themassed disadvantages in racially segregated urban communities. The authors are quiteexplicit in wanting to emphasize structure over individual action.

As suggested above, we have seen this kind of analysis before, and consequently thisreport does little to add to our understanding of the issues at hand. Further, it deniesagency to the individual participants. The people who live in these neighborhoods dohave choices, albeit in a circumscribed world. For example, after growing up in suchplaces, many African Americans have decided to live in integrated residential contexts

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(Ellen, 2000), and large numbers have made it into the social class Mary Patillo andKaryn Lacy (2007) describe. Even in my heavily segregated city of Chicago, the clerksat the Post Office are almost all African American, as are the bus and subway drivers Iencounter. These aren’t great jobs, but they provide the opportunity for a decent life (andone could multiply similar categories and opportunities).

This is not to deny the facts represented in this volume, but rather to suggest that it istime to move on. If one wants further documentation of what we as scholars alreadyknow, this is a fine book. But if one wants to know something new that both advances thefield and provides fresh ways of thinking about policy, one needs to look elsewhere.

Richard P. Taub, University of Chicago

Ellen, I.G. (2000) Sharing America’sneighborhoods: the prospects for stableracial integration. Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge, MA.

Lacy, K.R. (2007) Blue chip black: race,class and status in the new black middleclass. University of California Press,Berkeley.

Massey, D.S. and N. Denton (1993) Americanapartheid: segregation and the making ofthe underclass. Harvard University Press,Cambridge, MA.

Patillo, M. (1999) Black picket fences:privilege and peril among the black middleclass. University of Chicago Press,Chicago.

Libby Porter and Kate Shaw (eds.) 2009: Whose Urban Renaissance? An InternationalComparison of Urban Regeneration Strategies. London and New York: Routledge Studies inHuman Geography.

In this edited collection, Porter and Shaw contribute to the literature on urban regenerationprocesses by enquiring into alternative outcomes to gentrification. They are not happy withthe way term ‘urban renaissance’ is used by planners and policymakers: despite thepositive ring, outcomes do not generally work in favour of urban equity. The starting pointfor their argument is that the gentrification literature does not adequately assess thepossibility of government acting beyond the interests of the producers of gentrification, orthe alternative contributions from local communities and social actors opposinggentrification. The editors have asked researchers looking at 21 cities the followingquestions: (1) can regeneration occur without gentrification; and (2) who has benefited andwho has lost in the urban transformation of a particular regeneration process, and withwhich strategies? The book is organized into five parts: ‘On Urban RenaissanceStrategies’; ‘On Local Limits of Regeneration Strategies’; ‘Grass-roots Struggles’; ‘Onthe Possibilities of Policy’; and ‘New Theoretical and Practical Insights for Urban Policy’.

Part I, ‘On Urban Renaissance Strategies’, comprises six cases. In Istanbul’s recentstate-led gentrification (part of a strategy to make the city into a global player), a newlycreated planning authority bypassed existing city plans. The winners here are privatedevelopers while the losers are low-income residents. Johannesburg’s process ofgentrification is causing displacement of a majority of poor residents from the centreas the city government sheds its welfare services responsibilities. Riyadh is anothercase of state-led gentrification promoting market-oriented land development with noinvolvement of the local community, with local residents experiencing a shortage of jobopportunities and adequate and affordable housing and services. In Mexico City attemptsby the metropolitan authority to address the issue of sustainable development andregeneration of the city centre have been frustrated, but there is nonetheless an ongoingprocess of expulsion of working-class families. In these cities there is no political spacefor citizens’ resistance or counter actions. This is in contrast to Florence where citizenschallenged the transformation of Piazza Ghiberti in the city centre, but lost the battleagainst private actors in a public–private partnership (despite the left-wing leanings ofthe local administration). Finally, in England (Northamptonshire), we see the effects

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of well-organized lobbies of house builders and developers who pressed the UKgovernment to obtain planning concessions. In this case the county council acted asa broker, convincing subordinate local authorities of the desirability of attractinggovernment funding for growth plans using the notion of ‘sustainable communities’. Inall these cases, local communities are negatively affected. Although interesting inthemselves these descriptive cases break little new theoretical ground.

In part II, ‘On Local Limits of Regeneration Strategies’, three illuminating cases (allfrom Germany) are presented. In Leipizig the context of overcapacity and low housingdemand, coupled with weak markets and fragmented interests between local landlords,has prevented the success of urban renaissance (demonstrating that public resources canhardly compensate for the failure of markets). In the Ruhr Valley, the ambitious IBAEmscher Park project, including environmental regeneration and employment initiativesas well as housing construction, created an image of success that opened the door forgentrification of some places while socioeconomic decline continued in others. This is anexample of how the problems of an old industrial region were overshadowed by thediscourse of identity and image, thereby reinforcing a highly uneven geography. Berlin’sKreuzberg district is a well-substantiated case of urban regeneration through culture, inwhich pre-existing creative communities have been used as an interim tool for upgrading.Although displacement is not happening yet, neighbourhood participation has beensuperseded by public–private partnership and the subculture is turning into a brand.

The six cases comprising ‘On Grass-roots Struggles’ explain ways citizens haveorganized to influence urban regeneration unevenly in terms of theoretical insights andengagement with existing debates. Wisconsin’s Green Bay provides a story of ademocratic participation process riddled with tensions, but from which emergescreativity. The cases of Barcelona and Rome illustrate the difficulties of maintainingunity among different opposition actors seeking to transform official plans for urbanregeneration. These two cities are experiencing culture-led gentrification, and theanalysis of Rome in particular demonstrates the importance of ‘permanent redefinitionsof creative struggles’ (p. 45) and of the pursuit of a variable geometry of tacticalalliances. Accounts of resistance to urban renaissance in Birmingham’s Eastside and inToronto detail the development of organized citizens’ coalitions and possibilities ofinfluencing policy. These analyses provide insight into the power of communitysolidarity and identify windows of opportunity that can be created through interactionwith government agencies. Generating public debates on how parts of the city couldtransform are seen as small but important gains on the road to gentrification. Finally,Colomb’s sharp analysis of community empowerment in London reiterates thecomplexity of the local state’s role in gentrification processes. She also provides a goodexample of organized local residents creating a sophisticated structure to ensure goodrepresentation of the local community in the decision-making process.

‘On the Possibilities of Policy’ presents six cases: Salvador de Bahia, Barcelona,Melbourne, Amsterdam, Berne and San Francisco. The authors show that someprogrammes for urban regeneration have been modified by residents’ pressure on localauthorities. The gain so far in Salvador de Bahia is avoidance of eviction. In Barcelonait is subsidizing prices for businesses in order to restore the local commercial fabric. Thisshows that there is room for positive outcomes when activists and officials actuallyinteract and think along the lines of promoting the ‘right to the city’. Some initiativescome from progressive administrators — such as imposing a tax on private developers asa construction prerequisite in San Francisco in order to finance low-cost housing units,or the institutionalization of subcultures through subsidies to maintain a creativebreeding ground in Amsterdam. What these cases convincingly show is that local policyframeworks constitute complex machinery, and that institutions in which decisions aretaken are not uniform in the way they provide room for organized citizens to influencepolicy and for creative managers to implement it. Contradictory policies can occur whendifferent levels of government, and different departments within these governments, havecompeting objectives, as Shaw relates in the case of Melbourne. In sum, all the authors

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demonstrate (without making it explicit) that politics matters, as improvements spelledout by and for communities coincide with progressive coalitions being in localgovernment. The challenge is whether progressive policy can be sustained over timebeyond the oscillations of real estate development, as Cohen and Martí write withreference to San Francisco.

In the last two chapters the editors use the different cases to develop their owncategorization, allowing them to systematize and contrast local experiences along thelines of the engines of gentrification (state, tourism, culture, correcting market failure)with different outcomes. Libby Porter draws the conclusion that smaller day-to-dayplanning management of inner cities is more conducive to their transformation thanmega-projects. In the final pages of the book Kate Shaw discusses urban regenerationpolicies, looking at the cycles of investment and disinvestment. She argues that minimalfluctuations over longer periods of time causes less damage when reinvestment is donein ‘use’ rather than ‘exchange’ value as has happened in several cities including Berne,Berlin and Amsterdam (among others). Contrasting cases are the cities in the globalSouth, where social polarization and democratic deficits prevail.

This book represents a penetrating look at how urban regeneration policies develop indifferent cities. Beyond the insights offered in the discussion at the end of the book, amore didactic frame would have been achieved by moving more of the analysis to theintroduction, thereby allowing individual authors to engage in greater detail with thetheories the editors address.

Marisol García, Universitat de Barcelona

Jennifer L. Hochschild and John H. Mollenkopf (eds.) 2009: Bringing Outsiders In.Transatlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation. Ithaca, NY and London:Cornell University Press.

In Europe as well as in North America, public debates concerning questions ofimmigration and the integration of immigrants have been fierce. All too often thediscourse is driven by right-wing parties and politicians. When we think of currentimmigration legislation, the Danish restrictions on family unification come to mind, asdo the Arizona immigration law and the xenophobic (often racist) German ‘integrationdebate’ headed by populists like Thilo Sarrazin. The overall picture, however, is complexand fragmented. Within the European Union, the US and Canada, immigrants encountera variety of (national) political settings and tendencies, and often we can even identifycontradictory developments within the same country, including differences betweenlocalities, immigrant groups and policy areas.

Jennifer Hochschild and John Mollenkopf have gathered 19 case studies andcomparative analyses, looking at a particular aspect of the current dynamics aroundimmigration and integration: the pathways of political incorporation of immigrants inEurope and North America. What are the legal and institutional differences between theUS and various European countries concerning the participation of immigrants inpolitics? How are immigrants and their interests represented in local and nationalpolitics? What are the mechanisms of political inclusion and exclusion, and how doimmigrant communities respond to them?

The book is organized into seven thematic sections, each comprising severalcontributions, including sections on immigrants’ local and national political opportunitystructures, immigrants’ political structures beyond the state, and immigrants’ politicalresources and strategies. The contributions cover a wider range of countries, cities andcases, ranging (to name but a few) from immigrants’ political participation in Swissmunicipalities (Gianni D’Amato), through urban politics in New York and Los Angeles(John Mollenkopf and Raphael Sonenshein) to ethno-religious mobilizations in Britain

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(Tariq Modood). Drawing some preliminary conclusions from a comparative andtransatlantic perspective, the editors state that ‘the second generation [of immigrants] inEurope is in the process of being constructed as a new and disfavored minoritygroup . . . Europe may be creating new forms of distinction and discrimination and thepolitical incorporation of the second-generation immigrants may prove harder, slower,and less complete than in the United States’ (p. 14).

Besides offering rich empirical details and inspiring conceptual frameworks, the bookalso invites dissent and discussion. Christian Joppke, for example, reviews the situationof Muslim immigrants in Germany and France, arguing that ‘multicultural policies havefailed to bring about the socio-economic mainstreaming of migrant ethnics [stet], feedinginstead their separation into marginal parallel societies’ (p. 118). Jan Willem Duyvendak,Trees Pels and Rally Rijkschroeff discuss multicultural policies in the Netherlands, andin contrast conclude that ‘many migrants were fully or partially integrated’ (p. 135). Theytake direct issue with Joppke, claiming that the dominant idea that multicultural policieshad completely failed is empirically wrong. In the Dutch case, the authors arguethat ‘society appears to be losing its ability to cope with cultural differences’(p. 137). The ‘progressive monoculture of the Dutch majority’ (p. 138), and notmulticulturalism, turns out to be the crucial obstacle to complete integration ofimmigrant (and especially Muslim) minorities.

In her article, ‘Lost in Translation’, Lorraine C. Minnite drives the critique of thedominant scholarly discourse even further, noting that political incorporation theories arethemselves highly problematic: ‘they are plagued by theoretical gaps, internalinconsistencies, and historical distortion of facts’ (p. 54). Concerning ‘group dynamics inthe political sphere’, to give just one example, she argues that ‘political incorporationtheories . . . have nothing to say about the prior question of what makes a group a groupin politics . . . Instead, emergent political groups appear already formed and internallycoherent on the assumption that processes of group formation are prepolitical’ (p. 55).Interestingly enough, Minnite’s critique actually challenges many of the authors andtheir contributions to the book itself.

Bringing Outsiders In offers important insights into current processes of politicalincorporation of immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic. In their introductory article,the editors do a superb job in offering a conceptual framework for the differentcontributions to the book; in their final chapter they masterfully bring the various casestudies together, drawing precise and careful conclusions. However, one of the mostoutstanding qualities of Bringing Outsiders In is that it avoids simple answers. Instead,the book calls on the reader to weigh the arguments, it stimulates scholarly and politicaldebate, and it explicitly invites further research in the field of comparative migration andintegration studies.

Henrik Lebuhn, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Alexander Hamedinger and Alexander Wolffhardt (eds.) 2010: The Europeanization of Cities:Policies, Urban Change and Urban Networks. Amsterdam: Techne Press.

The Europeanization of Cities provides a timely assessment of the complex interplaybetween Europe and its cities; it also poses many unanswered questions. By exploringthe extent to which the European Union and cities alter one another, this collectiveendeavour contributes to current debates on Europeanization and domestic change.Drawing on the general literature on Europeanization and following Marshall’s (2005)work, Hamedinger and Wolffhardt argue that urban Europeanization — a specificphenomenon defined as ‘the interplay between actors and institutions on the Europeanand the city level, which leads to changes in local politics, policies, institutions,arrangements, discourse, actors’ preferences, values, norms and belief systems on both

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levels’ (p.28) — contributes to the understanding of evolving forms of governance in theEU. Rather than suggesting a common explanatory framework, the editors rely on themain findings of the Europeanization literature in order to explore the breadth and depthof the relationships between cities and Europe. Europeanization is a process (rather thanan outcome), leading towards further differentiation rather than homogenization, and isco-shaped by two competing, yet intertwined dynamics (top-down versus bottom-up,vertical versus horizontal). In addition, the editors argue convincingly, the focus on citieslocks Europeanization dynamics and the increasing use of soft modes of governance atEU level into new avenues of research.

The volume is divided into two parts, a structure which reflects the analyticaldistinction made in the introduction between vertical and horizontal Europeanizationdynamics. Without being able to do justice to each of the 11 chapters, a quick overviewof these highly heterogeneous contributions highlights the growing role of Europe for anincreasing number of cities. First, the reader is introduced to the vertical dimension ofurban Europeanization processes. Mboumoua and Wukowitsch both question the extentto which the URBAN 1 and 2 programs have contributed to shaping urban regenerationpolicies at the domestic level (top-down dynamic), a process primarily structured bylocal preferences, practices and power relations. In their analysis of the strategiesdeveloped in Budapest (Tosics), in Dutch cities (Dukes) and in European cities moregenerally (Güntner and Calandrino), the authors show, on the one hand, the extent towhich these cities have adapted their politico-administrative structures in order toincrease their ability to ‘download’ European input (policies, funding, frames) and, onthe other hand, how they actively engage in national and/or European cities networks inorder to contribute to European policymaking by ‘uploading’ information and knowledge(bottom-up dynamic).

The second part of the book is devoted to the horizontal dynamics of urbanEuropeanization, and in particular to the involvement of cities in networks of all shapesand sizes. Based on an analysis of urban policy discourses, Atkinson and Rossignoloargue that networking contributes to the diffusion of a European model of urbanintegrated development. In addition, Dühr and Tedesco both insist on the increasing useof non-regulatory tools by the European Union, an evolution which tends to exacerbateexisting asymmetries among cities and does not necessarily increase cities’ impact onthe EU.

Apart from these empirical findings, what else can we learn from the TheEuropeanization of Cities? On the one hand, the contributions’ strong empirical (attimes thickly descriptive) basis sheds some light on the complex interplay betweencities and Europe. But on the other hand, the wide scope adopted by the contributorsto explore the breadth and depth of past and present relationships between cities andEurope, using their own categories, variables and explanatory frameworks —discourse, learning and networks theory to name a few — undermines the consistencyof the book. As an example, each author uses a different understanding of the notionof Europeanization, and (more importantly) some of them tend to contradict theapproach suggested by the editors in their introduction by considering Europeanizationas an outcome rather than a process. One can only wonder at the use of ‘Eu-ization’,an interesting neologism that conveys both the idea of Europeanization and Europeanintegration, two phenomena that have long been analytically differentiated by EUscholars for the sake of clarity. In addition, contributors refer to a ‘European model ofurban development’ or a ‘European model of urban integrated approach’, withoutdemonstrating its existence or clarifying its relationship to European urban programs,initiatives and financial instruments. Finally, some contributions maintain a certainambiguity as to their purpose: at best, they remain purely descriptive; at worst, theyflirt with policy recommendations.

In spite of the editors’ claim of the inherent heterogeneity of a ‘patchy’ researchagenda on urban Europeanization, readers are left to their own devices when identifyingeach chapter’s contribution to the book’s collective endeavour — namely demonstrating

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the specificity of the notion of urban Europeanization. More importantly, however, thebook fails to demonstrate the notion’s contribution to the analysis of change, as well asto the wider debate on Europeanization. Several explanations can be suggested here,some of which are mentioned by the editors themselves in their excellent conclusion.First, the issue of causality raises serious empirical and methodological challenges, andhas been a hotly debated topic in the literature on Europeanization for the past decade.The contributors are somewhat uneasy on this issue. Indeed, the changes observed inLille, Budapest and Ljubljana cannot be directly associated with the European Unionitself, and in some cases these changes result (unsurprisingly) from a combination ofinternationalization, globalization and privatization processes, not to mention changes atthe national level. Although one cannot expect this volume to provide a definitive answerto a much wider debate, it would have greatly contributed to the empirical value of thiscollective endeavour to address the matter collectively.

In addition, drawing yet again upon the literature on Europeanization, the relationshipwith domestic change is not a straightforward one. Indeed, inertia and resistance mightwell be considered as possible outcomes; and needless to say, urban Europeanizationprocesses do not just open up opportunities for the weak and the orphaned, but mightreinforce existing oligarchies — wherever these are present — levelling the playing fieldof institutional change. Finally, although the attempt to further explore the relationshipbetween urban Europeanization processes and the increasing use of soft modes ofgovernance appears to be a promising research perspective, the book fails to address anirrefutable trend: Europe matters more and more for cities — as a problem-solver, analternative, a stage, a threat and a duty, as shown by the contributors — yet it seems asthough cities matter less and less for Europe. Although cities may have won a discursiveargument, the idea of a European urban policy has not been given an expression matchingits initial ambition, nor has it been able to usher in a more robust set of assumptions inorder to avoid treading on conceptual thin ice.

Charlotte Halpern, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques — Politique publique,Action publique et Territoires/Sciences Po Grenoble

Marshall, A. (2005) Europeanization at theurban level: local actors, institutions andthe dynamics of multi-level interaction.

Journal of European Public Policy 12.4,668–86.

Jennifer A. Jordan 2006: Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin andBeyond. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Symbolic places are remembered and forgotten, but their genesis is embodied ina cultural frame. American sociologist Jennifer Jordan’s micro-study Structures ofMemory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond is concerned with thecommemoration of the Nazi era’s physical remnants in Berlin. Contributing to the series‘Cultural Memory in the Present’ (edited by Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries), this bookcombines historical, economic and legal contexts in its analysis of culturalmemorialization in the second half of the twenty-first century. In order to illuminatespatial production in particular, 200 sites in the greater Berlin area are examined, usinga comparative approach blending archival research with qualitative interviews andsecondary sources. These complex data provide the basis from which to consider fourspecific factors, used as the theoretical framework for six chapters. Land use, landownership, memorial entrepreneurs and the broader public resonance are asserted asdeterministic factors for the emergence of a memorial place.

In the first chapter, Jordan presents a range of key issues related to her research: inanalysing memory and forgetting, she considers on the one hand a total erasure of the

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past, and on the other a perfectly conserved city museum, depicting Berlin on the scaleof these absolutes. She acquaints the reader with the problematic cultural term ofauthenticity — ‘historical events alone are not sufficient to create a memorial space’(p. 15); if a site is ‘authentic’ this does not causatively lead to memorial status — andclaims that authenticity is a key issue in memorial practices in Berlin.

Chapter 2 contains a less structured chronological overview of memorial practicesin Berlin from 1945 until German reunification. In an overly broad focus, the authorstresses the impact of changing aesthetic forms, official events and citizen involvementon architectonic memory in both West and East Berlin. Jordan highlights a period ofdemolition and the use of temporary materials after defeat in 1945, characterized by alack of state-regulated memorial culture. Following separation into western and easternparts, during the 1950s and 1960s most former Nazi sites were destroyed in WestBerlin, whereas the eastern government incorporated former communist resistancesites into their anti-fascist ideology. A growing number of grassroots initiativesin geographically isolated West Berlin and the work of local historical memorialentrepreneurs are said to be among the factors explaining a growing pedagogicalhistoriography during the 1970s and 1980s, not to mention the onslaught ofarchitectonic construction, described as the ‘material effects of anniversaries oncultural memory’ (p. 41).

How did the German Democratic Republic’s physical remnants of Nazism interrelateto the mechanisms of a burgeoning real estate market in the reunified Berlin of the1990s? In chapter 3, the narrative appears stronger when concentrating on the politicalimpacts of memorials established before the fall of the Berlin Wall: the author namesmodified memorials that ‘better fit the parameters of post-1989 remembrance’ (p. 60) anddiscusses the removal of statues, citing a largely unchanged eastern memorial setting.Highlighting similarities and differences, Jordan presents four sites: a former Jewishretirement home, a memorial stone of the GDR era, memorial plaques in the centraldistrict and a gypsy prison camp in an outer district of Berlin, all described in a vividmanner and compared to the conceptual model.

What about newly built spatial markers dating from after reunification? Chapter 4covers five examples of post-1989 memorial construction on publicly owned land;Bebelplatz, a square where a Nazi book-burning took place in May 1933, theMemorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe — both memorial sites which may befamiliar to a broader public — and also less famous sites like the Koppenplatz, theRosenstraße and the Blind Trust exhibition, each so-called ‘forgetting places’ whosenarratives are worth reading. Further on, Jordan turns to unmarked sites includingsynagogues, torture cellars and forced labor sites (analysed in chapter 5). Again, theauthor stresses the distinction between public and private property, arguing thatprivately owned places are more likely to fade into the urban landscape (p. 151). Thestory of the hidden torture sites stands out because it deals with residents’ civiltestimony, a topic that can be expanded to an international comparative scope toinclude, for example, Argentina’s ‘concentration camps’ surrounded by residentialhousing.

There are books the world doesn’t need. This is not the case with Jordan’s work,especially because of the emphasis on the fate of forgotten places. She has establishedthat a few sites disappeared post-1989 and some new ones were created in the 1990s. Sheprefers stressing political negotiation to using the political economist’s binaryterminology of market and memory. She strengthens the importance of differentiatingbetween district, state and federal government levels of responsibility. But is this workreally a ‘basis for a new theory of the production of urban memorial space’, as declaredin chapter 1 (p. 17)? The answer cannot be an unequivocal approval. The four specificfactors work well to illustrate patterns of place making. That (memorial) space is aproduct of social negotiations is not new, being well known ever since Lefebvre’s triadof spatial categories appeared. Jordan’s ethnographical study is very useful for getting anoverview of Berlin’s encounter with its Nazi past, but I would not consider this research

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canonical for emerging new theoretical categories related to the notions of collectivememory and spatial production.

Julia Binder, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Karen Tranberg Hansen (ed.) 2008: Youth and the City in the Global South. Bloomington andIndianapolis: Indiana University Press.

For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s human population lives inurban areas. In most parts of the ‘global South’ the majority of urban dwellers are young.Yet, as Karen Tranberg Hansen notes in this volume, young people have rarely beenconsidered as lead actors in the urban South, while recent scholarship has often failed toexamine issues of youth and the city together. This volume is the result of a four-yearinterdisciplinary and multisite research project which aims to dig deeper into ourunderstanding of ‘youth in the city’ and ‘cities of youth’. The volume focuses on casestudies in Recife (Brazil), Hanoi (Vietnam) and Lusaka (Zambia), exploring urban youthfrom three different continents in a comparative approach.

One of the most compelling aspects of this book is the cautiousness with which theauthors approach and design the methodological and theoretical framework of this book.Funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the projectbrought together researchers from Copenhagen University and all three of the countriesinvolved. The authors are aware of the challenges of cross-national research,experiencing different opportunities and constraints in interacting with young people atthe three selected sites, especially in Hanoi (where the political context determined theircontact with interviewees). Although the authors all employ ethnographic methods in acase-study approach, they are also conscious that the four relevant disciplines —anthropology, geography, education and media studies — conceptualize issues of ‘youth’and ‘cities’ in different ways.

The first part of this volume deals with these questions of methods and concepts,highlighting the complexity of the two main research themes. While Anne LineDalsgaard and Karen Valentin describe the background of the research project in thecontext of interdisciplinary research, comparison and cross-national collaboration,Tranberg Hansen demonstrates in the introduction that ‘youth’ is not a clearly defined lifestage, but rather has to be analysed in relational terms, stressing the social, economic andpolitical contexts as well as young people themselves. This underlines the generalapproach in this volume, which aims to draw attention to young people as importantplayers in the urban South. Accordingly, the city is also depicted as ‘a space ofinteraction that brings people together’ (p. 11), and many of these people are young.Researching into the city in the global South therefore means investigating ‘the urban’and ‘the global’ through local understandings and experiences.

The second part of the volume includes three contributions on Recife, Hanoi andLusaka. These studies show that ‘youth’ can have many meanings in one and the samecity, depending on the social environment. While many young people may desire to bepart of a world of consumerism driven by a global market, the authors stress the socialinsecurity often overshadowing young people’s lives. At the same time, each city isspecific. Dalsgaard, Mónica Franch and Russel Parry Scott depict Recife as an urbanenvironment of extreme inequalities. Only the uncertainty of ‘dropping below’ the classstandards or of becoming ‘marginalized’ is shared by most young people. In Hanoi,Valentin argues, meanings of youth are strongly determined by marked generationalhierarchies and youth organizations (such as the Communist Youth Union which drawsyoung people into politically informed social activities). In Lusaka, the main concernamong young people is jobs; a common fear is HIV/AIDS. Tranberg Hansen describes,however, how young people have also created their own urban spaces of social

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expression, whether in religious organizations, involvement in NGOs or in a vibrantmusic scene.

The third part examines parallel themes from across the three cities. This partdemonstrates that urban places matter. Young people experience the city differently ifthey are at home, at school or involved in leisure activities. Katherine V. Gough considersthe central meaning of the home. For young people it is a place for living and learning.It may often be a cramped place, and not always safe. For many, establishing a home oftheir own is a challenge. But there are also case-specific particularities, such as inVietnam, where the eldest son is expected to stay ‘at home’, or in Lusaka, where AIDShas resulted in many youth-headed households. Ulla Ambrosius Madsen shows howschool may become another ‘kind of home’. In her case studies in Recife and Hanoi, shenotices generational tensions negotiated at school, while school in Recife or Lusaka canbe ‘a safe alternative’ to the street, a ‘shelter’ where young people enjoy enhanced socialstatus as students. Reading Norbert Wildermuth’s contribution one could argue thatmedia serve the production of further ‘homes’. They connect young people to the world,such as in Hanoi through satellite television and the internet, provide them with scriptsfor a more promising life, such as Brazilian telenovelas and sports programs, or simplymake them feel better, listening to music radio broadcasts in Recife or Lusaka forexample.

This is a book in which young people have a voice. Many quotes from interviews andstories of their lives provide insights into their everyday life experiences. The volume isnot about gangs, violence or rebellious youth. It is a book about ‘ordinary youth’ in threedifferent cities. One might criticize the fact that selection of some of the topics may havebeen determined by the DANIDA funding scheme, picking up in particular issues whichare of direct interest to development politics. Moreover, in its case-study approachfocusing on the actors themselves, the authors consider ‘young people in cities’ morethan ‘cities of youth’. But beyond these minor critical remarks, this volume demonstrateshow we can make sense of what Jennifer Robinson has called ‘ordinary cities’ in a veryconcrete way, and yet still in a global perspective; and in this sense, this book is veryinspiring for all those wishing to understand more about youth and the city in the globalSouth.

Susann Baller, Basel University

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Documents

Whose Urban Renaissance? An International Comparison of Urban Regeneration Strategies – Edited by Libby Porter and Kate Shaw