Changing cultures of urban competitiveness: Towards a new urban politics of carbon control?

Andrew E.G. JonasUniversity of Hull

ESRC seminar series on 'Changing Cultures of Competitiveness', 17th April 2009Lancaster University

Acknowledgments: British Academy

Overview

• Cultures of urban competitiveness and the New Urban Politics• Urban competitiveness as hegemonic project• Climate change and carbon control: implications for cultures of

urban competitiveness• A new culture of urban governance based on New Urban

Environment Politics (NUEP)• Infrastructure and politics of mobility• The challenge of constructing cross-class and sector alliances• The role of the (territorial structure of the) state• Chicago and Seattle examples

Cultures of urban competitiveness

The New Urban Politics• Crisis of Fordism and the mobility of

industrial and finance capital• Urban growth coalitions and inter-

territorial competition• The role of the state, grant regimes

and ‘rules of the game’• Place promotion• Emphasis on capital mobility but at the

expense of knowledge of local-global dependence and environmental interests

• The search for an ‘urban sustainability fix’ in the 1990s (e.g. Manchester and Leeds)

Ecostate restructuring, climate change and carbon control regimes

Source: Figure 5 from Chicago Climate Action Plan, 2008, page 9.

Urban infrastructure

Research shows that there is a compelling economic advantage to pursuing activities that lower [fossil fuel] emissions... For Chicago’s city government alone, the projected infrastructure costs of climate change are nearly four times higher under the higher emissions scenario than they are under the lower emissions scenario (Chicago Climate Action Plan, Climate Change and Chicago: Projections and Potential Impacts (Summary of Final Report) http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org/ accessed 1/12/08, page 30).

New Urban Environmental Politics

New eco-culture of urban competition

• Inter-urban competition• Carbon-offsetting the urban

growth machine• Grant regimes, Obama and

cap and trade• Urban place promotion (Look

– no more emissions!!)• Low-carbon urban political

alternatives – transition towns• An urban politics of mobility

Seattle: MetroNatural

or S(outh) L(ake) U(nion) T(rolley)?

Andy Jonas: This is a very leading question but do you think that there is a ... new politics of mobility that is driven by quite interesting tensions around competitiveness and sustainability... Puget Sound Regional Transportation Activist: So really - that’s a great question. It really depends on what level of government you are talking about. The level of support for better choices and increased mobility, which I really take to mean better sidewalks, better bike lanes, better transit service, not just a local bus service but also a kind of regional high capacity transit service, is more strongly supported at local level than it is at state level, and the interesting thing about that fact is that if you talk to folks at state level they are very interested in sustainability and they are very interested in the environment and they want to do all those things. [But] there’s disconnect there between those decisions and desires and the on the ground -- decisions being made about our transportation and infrastructure. So there’s a pressure there on how do we maintain our competitiveness in the economic sense, how do we move freight, how do we move people, how do we not inform our constituents everyday that the traffic is our number one problem here in the state (Personal interview, September, 2007).

Final thoughts

• NUEP seems to ‘fit’ comfortably alongside NUP and cultures of urban competitiveness

• Urban growth elites want to join “race to the top” and demonstrate climate change leadership (e.g. London and the Olympics)

• Role of the state crucial (e.g. Obama urban policy and “cap and trade” emissions regulation)

• But beware of liberal reformist views (Walker and Large, 1975)• The global and local geographies of the city do matter – spatial variations in

oil-dependence and energy-extensive urban forms• Opportunities to reconnect the politics of urban development and the living

place• New counter-cultural low-carbon urban alliances and coalitions are possible