Globalization and Urban Implosion

This volume discusses complex urban interventions, starting with the analysis of different cases. Reference is made to big cities of central Europe. The proposed methodology starts from the Complex Urban Investments Tools (CoUrbIT) model (Chap. 2), then moves to an integrated analysis of the cases, in order to present a homogenization of the literature and a comparison of information (Chap. 3). Between the homogenization/comparison and the treatment of the selected eight cases, a chapter is dedicated to the participation of civil society actors and the socio-political foundations of the management of urban redevelopments (Chap. 4). Finally, eight case studies of big cities¹ are analyzed in Chap. 5. Recent considerations regarding the case studies, especially in the European context, underline how useful they were within the culture of the New Public Management (Osborne, 2000; Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; van der Meer, 2007) to create forms of bottom-up social participation in urban renewal projects that were stimulated also by Communitarian programs (Christiaens, Moulaert, & Bosmans, 2007; Novy & Hammer 2007). The structuring of the cases treated in this volume only partially falls within this stream. It is possible to find a trace of this approach in some cases (e.g., the German cities) and not in others (e.g., the Italian cities). This is not because of the fact that there was a change in the action of public bodies, but to the fact that different models of urban intervention are analyzed within different Communitarian programs but not centrally. However, the main feature of the CoUrbIT model is the individuation of obsolete urban functions and their replacement with new ones, which are then indirectly addressed to relate to the European funds that contributed so much to the development of the European urban growth culture of the 1990s (Novy & Hammer, 2007).

CoUrbIT is based on an interpretative model for the process of urban transformations (see Fig. 2.1). It uses a systematic breakdown of the components of the urban reality in order to better explain the actual urban complexity. Urban systems can very often represent the engine of an economic relaunching, whereas their decline represents an element of economic stagnation. The interpretative model is based on the following elements Functions Urban models Actors: public administrations, private operators, and public-private partnerships (PPPs) Tools Drivers: the subject or the network able to manage the dynamics of competitive advantage

The whole volume consists of the analysis of some big cities of central Europe, where some complex urban interventions are examined (see Fig. 1.1 and Table 3.1). This chapter has the target of homogenizing the case studies and creating a unique field of comparison between heterogeneous situations. The treatise has the purpose of finding some specific points in the different cases and their impact on the general model presented. Similar (or assimilable) Communitarian “rules” are particularly interesting elements, as well as a new urban competition that derives from globalization, through which an attraction or a loss of value, and therefore of competitive advantage, can occur to one city’s advantage and to another city’s detriment. All these things lead to a treatise developing within two different sections: homogeneity of the treatise (Sect. 3.1) and impact with the proposed model (Sect. 3.2). Several elements have been considered and it has been attempted to reorganize them by some specific points. An effort has also been made, besides the case studies, to consider some incidents that could be related to the cases. In view of eight cases of metropolitan areas, therefore, twelve different incidents have been added with the aim to activate a benchmark between the main case and other situations considered homogeneous to it. The eight cases refer to four European countries,¹ located in central Europe, selected on the basis of their size: almost all are metropolitan areas with the highest number of inhabitants and the highest population density in their respective countries.

Can the participation of civil society actors improve the planning and management of re-development and regeneration schemes? Can such participation mobilise social capital in ways that complement the provision of political and financial capital to achieve successful outcomes? Or does more civil society participation impede the management and implementation of complex schemes? Before tackling these questions, they have to be contextualised in the much broader socio-political shifts in the triangular interaction of the state, business, and civil societies. Traditional centralised decision making and implementation of urban and local economic planning are being replaced by new schemes of governance spreading from the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ societies of North American and the United Kingdom through Western Europe. It could even be claimed that, in some domains, governance through polyarchy is supplanting either the monopolistic authority of state and local government or, in other cases, narrower, ‘corporatist’/social partnership triads of government, business, and trade unions. The EU is in the process of adding ‘civic partners’ to its conventional reliance upon governance through the social partners of labour and capital (Frazer, 2005). Business involvement in redevelopment is not new but now its role is changing; from that of contractor or adviser to more active funding, planning, and management of schemes. Such business involvement has a much longer pedigree in the United States (Reushcke, 2004). However, since its adoption by the neo-liberal, Thatcherite and ‘third way’, New Labour governments in Britain, it has been augmented by policies for inclusion of ‘communities’ and civil society associations to help reverse the decline of both urban economies and social vitality. A pragmatic, efficient case for the direct involvement of business in financing or management of redevelopment schemes can easily be made. However, the participation of community and civil society groups is more difficult to define and justify.

The eight treated cases and the reasons for their inclusion have already been explained. In the analysis of each case, a systemic approach has been followed, through a decomposition of the elements in homogeneous and comparable topics, as shown in Fig. 5.1. The main objective has been to make possible the comparison with the CoUrbIT model and, if possible, between the different elements. The most important decompositions concerned three basic elements: the history of the case; the public administration and local government involved in the intervention; and the private actors involved in the rehabilitation. Two elements have been added: the contest of the intervention, with the aim of better understand the historical background; and the framework of public and private intervention and the PPP-model applied, which will be better defined later on. The main objective, following the CoUrbIT model, has been to re-conduct the changing social and economic functions within the history and the context of the case, linking them also with all other variables. The history of the case represents the real dissertation and essence of each case. The following steps represent some specific investigations. The urban models characterizing each case have been identified as the independent variables able to influence the treatment of all the components and sub-components, Where the social component is predominant (i.e., in the Berlin case), the treatment of a subcomponent, as for example the design (subsection, “Designer” in Sect. 5.1.4.1), is not applicable since it is not consistent with the specificity of the case. The section “Designer” in Sect. 5.1.4.1 is more consistent with the urban renewal’s physical change than the revitalization’s social and economic change. Therefore, avoiding the treatment of that subcomponent can have a precise sense in explaining the CoUrbIT urban model that is referred to (Dalla Longa, 2007).

The aim of this book was to introduce a model and to go into depth through the use of case studies. Their importance in the comparison with the model has been explored. The definition of a specific list of contents for the treatment of the case studies (see the section that introduces the cases) had the aim of underlining the identification of some subjects and re-constructing their action. In the case studies method there is the willingness of underlining the passages from functions, urban models, PPPs (an aspect around which are organized the major part of the treatment and considerations), tools and drivers. Globalization and competitiveness of the city are the elements that served as the basis to construct the dynamic of the CoUrbIT model. We are still convinced that the unsolved theme of how the obsolescence of parts of the city happens, especially in what we define implosion, is significantly linked to globalization and neo-competitiveness of the cities in an international context. An open question still remains the relationship between the central city and that part of the city which ramifies from the center of the city to the region, the substitution of obsolescence in terms of balance between production and consumption. All this represents an important question for the future of the city’s government. This means evaluating private and public action, the activation of new forms of public-private relationship where the autonomy of every single subject is redesigned, as well as the autonomy so far known of the central government.