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Title
Redefining Growth: from transient to resilient urbanism
Name
Barry Beagen
REDEFINING GROWTH: from transient to resilient urbanism
Introduction
The industrial era was driven by the assumption that our resources are limitless.
The production of goods also means the production of markets, then the production of
consumers. In the hyper-capitalist model, national growth is often associated the Gross
Domestic Production (GDP) or quantity of consumption. At the level of the urban
environment, growth is often associated with real estate developments, new malls, retail
centers, Olympic parks, cultural institutions and international expositions. Logan and
Molotch describe this contemporary view as the view of the city as a “growth machine”.
The meaning of growth is, however, much denser and more complex than is outlined by
contemporary media or society. Within the context of a globalized and capitalist economy,
there has been a misunderstood propaganda of symbolic growth. Symbolic growth is
characterized by manifestations such as large government expenditures on physical
infrastructures, urban revitalization, tabula rasa developments and increase in
entertainment or retail spaces. In the increasingly fast-paced economy, Fanstein laments,
“economic composition of places seems to have become less and less permanent”, more
transient. As a result, cities struggle to respond and often result with a negative
compromise of neoliberal policies.
Fainstein calls for a “new strategy for growth” so as to counter declining urban
conditions. This new “strategy” should fall short of a “One Size Fits All” model but more of
a dynamic process that emphasize resilience over transient forms. The definition of
resilience in cities is foresightedness and the ability of systems to persist, adapt and
change to external forces. In the resilience model, authorities, regimes or institutions act
as the immune system of the urban environment. They act to diagnose persistent
problems or new problems that is created by the polarized global economy. When
institutions take a neoliberal stance or a conceited dedication to pure economic growth,
the city becomes vulnerable to the virulent attacks of the volatile global economy. As
Fainstein suggests, cities need to “escape from total determination by outside forces” and
find “a formula that will limit capitalist hegemony within both the workplace and the
community”. The argument towards resilience can be made through a discursive approach
as well as looking at current progressive movements and direct actions being applied.
These attitudes are often powered by the notion that the city is or has to be a “growth machine”.
In the advanced capitalist state, economic growth overshadows any progressive reform and becomes an
ideological hegemony. Logan and Molotch contended: “elites use their growth consensus to eliminate
any alternative vision of the purpose of local government or the meaning of community”. Hence, there
is a correlation between uneven distribution of wealth and power to political determination of a city.
The elites were able to activate structural changes, often to their interest - the global market and
speculative projects that reap high returns. Similarly, the political elites achieve their gains by amassing
public support through symbolic growth projects such as transportation infrastructures and the media
in addition to “sympathetic policies”. This focus on a market-based development results in the
vulnerability of urban formations to global economic shifts. Unfortunately, the trend will likely to
continue with the diminishing voice of local citizens, especially of those in the lower end of the socio-
economic spectrum.
The combination of the above conditions, globalization, neoliberalization and persistent focus
on symbolic growth has manifested in typically uneven urban restructuring that can be described as
transient, outlined here by Hackworth: (1) Suburbanization and exurbanization of the elites, (2)
Revalorization and gentrification of the inner core and, (3) Devalorization of the inner suburbs. In the
theory of uneven development, there are two sets of mutually dependent and self-reifying processes.
They work in tandem to result in a systematic “trickling up” of wealth distribution rather than the
intended benign “trickling down” of capitalist apologetics. The following analysis will focus on the
second urban restructuring – the revalorization of the inner core – as a locus of argument for the
creation of transient urbanisms.
The first process is the global market that is increasingly dominant over local economies.
Because of the susceptibility of localities under a neoliberal climate, cities respond by creating globally-
and economically-focused infrastructures such as Central Business Districts (CBDs), Special Economic
Zones (SEZs) and such. This increases the rents of areas, which are usually located in the city center.
Internationalization of the economy leads to increase in competitors in the tertiary sectors. This inhibits
the growth of local regimes that are moving towards the service industry. The presence of multi-
national, cookie-cutter and efficiently deployed corporations can eke out smaller, local businesses into
peripheral zones. As a result, the city center is dominated by the global.
The second process is the hegemony of the elites. Because the globalized economy and the
growth machine are both supported and run by the elites, urban developments often cater to them. This
leads to urban formations that support their economic endeavors - which is global - and their lifestyle.
The latter results in the commoditization of even the service industries and propel the rise of the
“creative class” and the “experience economy” which are actors of gentrification or valorization of the
inner core. These actors reify uneven wealth distribution by spreading unaffordable utopias and
produces transient spatial productions that respond quickly to globally derived demand and ideology.
Their characteristics are best explained in Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave” and Fredric Jameson’s analysis
of Los Angeles in “Postmodernism: the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”.
The cyclical process outlined persists today and will continue to manifest in the overgrowth of
the elite sector that symbiotic underdevelopment of overall well-being of the society. The neoliberal
climate limits investments in social welfares such as public housing, public spaces and community
development programs. Fainstein also attests to the current condition where “urban landscapes [has]
become the product of impersonal market forces, dominated by the interest of the capital.” The
devolution of the state, growing autonomy of the real estate market and mass privatization of urban
experiences is making social change and bottom-up economic growth increasingly difficult. However,
the autonomy of the public also has a bifurcated result of producing contestants or oppositions to the
neoliberal or globalizing regime.
At the end of the book, Hackworth argues that in order to counter or rework
capitalistic neoliberalism in its discursive and material manifestation, there is a need to
cajole political institutions into the potentially new direction. And this can only be done
through discursive methods: “Any resolution, alternative, or counter to neoliberalism,
must by necessity be a contested political one, and the crucial first step is winning the
discursive right to claim that viable and progressive alternatives are possible.” His book
also outlines the various efforts that are attempting to counter the hegemony of neoliberal
productions as well as their ideological and pragmatic limitations. Fainstein argues for less
polarized bipartisan ideologies. She urges the left and its progressive ideals to become
more active rather than “dismissing them (capitalist or conservative policies) on moral
grounds”. She is calling for a more active direct approach than a passive discursive
approach. She also suggests that the left has to “come-to-terms” with entrepreneurial
modes of production rather than the historic nostalgia over Ruskinian artisan
manufacturers that cannot effectively stimulate growth. Cities are embedded in the
national ideological, institutional and fiscal constraints. Local progressive forces have to
understand their connection to the world-systems while understanding the particularities
and uniqueness of each locale. Cities cannot operate in political isolation in order to truly
progress towards a resilient reform.
Architecture theorist and historian, Colin Rowe, wrote “Collage City” as a response
or critique to the utopian coerciveness of modernism. He argues for a looser and diverse
urban form that can embrace history and future together. The notion of the ‘fox’ is more
effective than the ‘porcupine’ – the former is the “collage” and the latter stubborn
modernism – can inform planning and policy development as much as it can inform
design. As an extension to Colin Rowe’s “collage city”, there should also be a “collage” of
processes that both Hackworth and Fainstein hover about. The discursive approach is not
to find a new model that is a grey area between liberals, conservatives, leftist or right
wing politics. But it is to convert ideologies to agencies. Agency, in this sense, is the
pragmatic emphasis on solving pertinent problems rather than the focus on assessing
whether a decision made fits a certain ideology or not. Within this framework of “collage”
and “agency”, urban planning and policies have to begin by redefining growth as not
purely economic growth. Economic growth is but a subset and not a measure of all other
growths. This model calls for a planning for resilience rather than transient modes of
economic adaptation, ideological adoption and political response. As suggested by
Fainstein, “entrepreneurship by urban progressive coalitions thus requires that they aim
not only at stimulating local investment but also at building a national movement for
growth with equity.” Resilient growth consists of a more complex mix of social, ecological
and economic factors rather than a reductive notion of a burgeoning market economy.
Resilience factors include the diversity of cultural, ethnic, economic and political
institutions, equitable growth and ecological sustainability.
Another step towards resilience is the reevaluation of the role of institutions and
planners. Government or local authorities should act as a facilitator of the collective, not
one that is acting upon an institutionally derived will or knowledge. Participation and
empowerment of local citizens is key to informing better democratic decisions. The
discursive argument can only be carried through or has to be supplemented with direct
action and interaction at the everyday and the level of neighborhoods, collectives and
specific individuals. The logic of Calculus can be applied in planning or an analysis of
urban problems: as the number of discretized elements increases, the greater an
approximate it is to the ideal model. Instead of focusing on symbolic ideologies, there is a
need to move into greater and less rationalized dynamic systems of analyzing
phenomenological values. Urbanists such as Jane Jacobs, John F. C. Turner and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty have promulgated the idea of a more microcosmic and localized process of
interaction or socio-political action.
The resilient city is not out of reach. However, it requires a unified effort towards
addressing the problems of the urban environment. Planners have to recognize the
increasing role of social and cultural capital in determining the success of a city.
Institutions have to understand that they are the mediators of the collective. Both are
recombinant systems in the immune system of the city. The immune system has to move
towards a solution-oriented goal of active diagnosis rather than a passive reactionary
mode. Moreover, increasing the participation and the voice of local citizens can strengthen
the mesh of networks that connect individuals to institutions and regimes to the global
totality as well as the understanding of it.