Global cities

"This paper discusses the changing urban policy framework in Turkey through a detailed analysis of a unique coupling of neoliberalism and Islamism. In this, rather than political projects with clear ultimate ends, both neoliberalism and Islamism are approached as distinct political rationalities aiming to reconfigure all aspects of social life. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party has successfully established networks of economic and political interdependence (or has tapped into existing networks) by appeasing both the emergent Islamic capitalist class through lucrative contracts and business-friendly reforms, and the urban poor through gracious gestures ingrained in traditional Islamic community values and morality. The working of this co-articulation is examined in the case of an urban renewal project in a peripheral
neighbourhood in Istanbul."

This paper examines how opportunity structures for learning, income, and status emerge in a global space shaped by local stakeholders aspiring for strategic positions in international competition. The case-study of Hong Kong suggests that moving up the pyramid of college and university degrees provides opportunities for higher income and reduces turbulence in times of global recessions and layoffs. However, low socio-economic status students are more likely to sustain their upward movement if their learning experiences are enriched with boundary-crossing competencies provided by studies abroad, foreign language training, cross-disciplinary programs, etc. While outbound mobility enhances opportunities for upward mobility, it also challenges the established cultural patterns of learning. This paper discusses the tensions and ties between outbound and upward mobility by analyzing local–global disequilibria in human and institutional agencies of higher education working across social, economic and political boundaries.

Přehledová studie se zabývá proměnami městského prostoru pod vlivem globalizace, post-industrializace a neoliberalistické ideologie od 70. let 20. století. Hlavní pozornost je věnována problematice kamerového dohledu a vzniku specifických prostorových forem, které souvisí se snahou o zabezpečování města. Na tyto jevy je nahlíženo ze dvou vzájemně se doplňujících perspektiv. Panoptická perspektiva vychází z M. Foucaulta a jeho pojetí mocensko-prostorových vztahů. Hlavní důraz je kladen na charakteristiku fyzických prvků prostoru, jejich vývoj a dopad na celkovou podobu města. Druhý badatelský proud vychází z konceptu města jako růstového stroje, který zavedl H. Molotch. V souvislosti s přerodem městské správy v městský podnikalismus se badatelé začali zabývat především mocenskými, politickými a ekonomickými zájmy elit, které nalezly své vyjádření v rozsáhlé revitalizaci městského prostoru a zavádění kamerového dohledu. Práce kriticky analyzuje oba přístupy a jejich přesahy. Zároveň s jejich pomocí vytváří komplexní obraz vybraných charakteristik současného veřejného i privatizovaného prostoru s důrazem na otázky spojené se zaváděním kamerového dohledu.

The "Greek crisis" was officially inaugurated on May 2010 with the loan the Greek government took from the IMF-European Union-European Central Bank troika, the largest a country had ever taken (€110 bn). Since then, the social implications of this crisis have been dramatic. The form and the scale of social phenomena observed today in Greece and particularly in Athens--e.g., extreme poverty and inequality, profound police violence, organized racist violence--are unprecedented for the country. Nevertheless, a diachronic examination of some socio-spatial aspects of Athens reveals that the social character of the current crisis has been taking shape for some time. This article aims shed light on the social shape of the crisis by outlining three such socio-spatial dimensions as they materialized in the case of Athens during 1990s and 2000s: first, the emergence of new forms of social exclusion and inequality; second, the vast project of urban (re)development and the new spatialities it produced, and third the emergence of novel forms of political and xenophobic violence.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

Ignacio Priego interviews Zahira Asmal, managing director of THECITY, an agency that develops projects in the areas of city making, design and architecture. With long experience of working on good city-making practices between South Africa and Brazil, she reflects on how the world, 'even after the World Cup, is very ignorant about South Africa'.

"Through ENOUGH, I want to change the terms of pedagogical discussion in a fundamental way. We need to do so to renew the capacity for historic development in education. And to do so in education, we need to go far beyond education, for it is not a separate sector of life, but an important element in the strategy of modernity pursued over the past 500 years. We need to question the shibboleths of modernity and learn to prize STABILITY relative to CHANGE, the COMMONS relative to the MARKET, and ENOUGH—neither too little nor too much—relative to MORE.

I believe that beneath a thick hide of surface imperatives, many people are eager to engage in sustained reflection about basic principles in the conduct of life. What will break through the hide? In the face of such a question, we should especially prize the possible, not the predictable. I fear too many writers end up not saying what they think because they feel it imperative to produce a predictable success. Someone my age begins to realize that “publish or perish” points to deeper realities than hackneyed prudence for young academics. A serious writer, as a person, embodies beliefs and values, and wants to give these a cultural vitality reaching beyond the writer’s immediate influence, further in both space and time. The ethos of academic and commercial publishing favors those who can predictably reach a specialized niche now, but that ethos is fast going into flux. Predictions falter. I’m ready to test the possible."

"""Deleuzian thinking is having a significant impact on research practices in the Social Sciences not least because one its key implications is the demand to break down the false divide between theory and practice. Deleuze and Research Methods brings together international academics from a range of social science and humanities disciplines to reflect on how Deleuze’s philosophy is opening up and shaping the methodologies and practices of empirical research. The book emphasises doing research and, in clear and accessible ways, each contributor demonstrates how engaging with Deleuze’s work is re-shaping their research process; from asking new questions about the relationship between theory and methodology, to exploring the conditions under which they conduct research, to thinking through research effects/affects.

Readers will gain crucial insights into cutting-edge Deleuzian methodologies, making the book essential for students, academics and teachers interested in how Deleuze is informing social science research."""

This paper uses the work of Michel de Certeau to think about the spectacles produced by the unusual negotiation of the urban skyline, spectacles which work to embody otherwise alienated and alienating sights and sites. From the activities of Phillipe Petit in New York in 1974, when he wire-walked between the World Trade Center towers, to the images of Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), and the current opportunity to walk over London’s erstwhile Millennium Dome thanks to the Up at the 02 initiative, architectural icons can be appropriated in ways that directly relate their immense spatialities to human coordinates, interrupting the abstract monumentality of the contemporary urban skyline. The purpose and meaning of these interruptions is, however, shown to be habitually co-opted by strategic frameworks and ruling powers.

In the new era of competition among cities – globally – Istanbul has become once again the focus of Turkey's economic development effort. The dissolution of the Soviet Bloc and the growth of economic and cultural linkages between the Turkic-speaking states, plus the turbulent dynamics of the Middle East, have created a new macro-regional environment. There is no other major city centre to compete with Istanbul in a vast area stretching from the Balkans to the Caucasus, the Ukraine to Lebanon. Istanbul's size, history and location meant it was bound to play an increasingly prominent role as regional trade, networks and incomes became more interconnected. Although Istanbul is not the formal capital of Turkey, it is far and away Turkey's largest and most important urban concentration. As such, the Turkish state has allocated it central role in its vision for economic and cultural transformation. This paper traces the footprints in Istanbul of the unfolding ‘project’ of Turkish integration with the world economy. Following a brief outline of the history of the city since the nineteenth century, it focuses on recent attempts to reposition the country in the global arena, and highlights their ramifications for the urban form of Istanbul.