Tag Archives: cities

Reading about cities

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The essays in Patrick Keiller’s [amazon_link id=”1781687765″ target=”_blank” ]The View From The Train[/amazon_link] will appeal to anyone who enjoys the psychogeography genre – Iain Sinclair’s [amazon_link id=”0141014741″ target=”_blank” ]London Orbital[/amazon_link] etc – and I do. They are more interested in the economics of cities, and particularly inequality and public space, than many of the other psychogeography books, however. There is overlap for example with Anna Minton’s [amazon_link id=”0241960908″ target=”_blank” ]Ground Control[/amazon_link] and Lynsey Hanley’s [amazon_link id=”1847087027″ target=”_blank” ]Estates[/amazon_link]. Yesterday I wrote about the observations Keiller makes on ports and on housing. Although I don’t agree with all he says, it’s very interesting.

[amazon_image id=”1781687765″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The View from the Train: Cities and Other Landscapes[/amazon_image]   [amazon_image id=”0141977396″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Floating City: Hustlers, Strivers, Dealers, Call Girls and Other Lives in Illicit New York[/amazon_image]

I must be in a cities mood, as I picked up and have now started reading Sudhir Venkatesh’s [amazon_link id=”0141977396″ target=”_blank” ]Floating City[/amazon_link], which is an ethnographic approach to globalised, financialised, unequal New York City. As I’ve got flights today and tomorrow, I should be able to report back soon.

The revolution will not be disintermediated

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I’m on the road this week, University of Manchester, BBC North, and the Festival of Economics in Bristol. My book companion is Rebecca Solnit’s [amazon_link id=”1595341986″ target=”_blank” ]Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness[/amazon_link], a collection of essays. It’s as brilliant as any fan of her writing would expect.

[amazon_image id=”1595341986″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness[/amazon_image]

One essay, The Butterfly and the Boiling Point, is about the many little causes of popular rebellions that accumulate until, suddenly, large-scale protest erupts on the streets and in public squares. The title alludes to the the idea in complexity theory that the merest flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world can change the path of a hurricane on the other side of the globe. Small causes turn into big consequences. But in thinking about political movements, there are many butterflies and their flaps have no consequences until there are enough separate little causes that the boiling point is reached.

Solnit discusses why popular rebellions in 2011 happened where they did – Tunisia, Egypt – but could not happen in the US. “It is remarkable how in other countries, people will simply one day stop believing in the regime that had, until then, ruled them.” Fear evaporates. There is a sudden shift in consciousness. She argues that it could be because the US lacks “symbolically charged public spaces.” The capital city isn’t a centre, and many other cities lack centres. “Revolution is an urban phenomenon,” she writes. “It’s all very well to organize on Facebook and update on Twitter, but these are only preludes. …. You need to be together in body for only then are you truly the public with the full power that a public can possess.”

The revolution will not be disintermediated?

Forbidden places

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Bradley [amazon_link id=”1781685576″ target=”_blank” ]Garrett’s Explore Everything: place-hacking the city [/amazon_link] is an ethnographer’s account of his time as a member of a loose group of urban explorers, based in London but making forays into Paris and the US. Urban exploration means going into places you’re meant to keep out of – ruined buildings boarded up at the tame end, through construction sites, the roofs of skyscrapers, and the Underground and sewers at the more dangerous end. And it is dangerous. A few people die. There are arrests – especially in London, where surveillance is so extensive and official paranoia runs far higher than elsewhere. (This closure of urban space is the subject of Anna Minton’s [amazon_link id=”0241960908″ target=”_blank” ]Ground Control.[/amazon_link])

Now, there is nothing I’d like to do less than climbing out onto the arm of a crane at the top of a building like the Shard while it’s under construction – I am, after all, a middle aged economist with vertigo, not a young urban explorer. However, I found this book very interesting and understand the itch the activists have to ‘hack’ these forbidden places. It’s partly the comtrariness aroused by being told not to do something, partly the serious politics of challenging the authoritarian tendencies that have been installing CCTV all over and privatising urban public space.

The pictures in the book are amazing – vertigo-inducing in themselves, the socisl science jargon that creeps in only mildly irritating. Urban explorers are obviously people whose politics and experiences put them in a minority – which makes it all the more interesting to have a window into their attitudes and experiences. And it’s well worth reflecting on what the shutting away of so much space is going to do to our cities over the years.

As a fan of Victorian infrastructure, I especially enjoyed reading about the forays into Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers. The book claims the cost was equivalent to £234 billion now. I haven’t checked, but if true, it’s hard to believe they would get built these days.

[amazon_image id=”1781685576″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Explore Everything[/amazon_image]

World cities

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Notice of a new title to join the literature on the economies of cities, [amazon_link id=”1118609743″ target=”_blank” ]The Making of A World City: London 1991 to 2021 by Greg Clark[/amazon_link]. He writes:

“In [amazon_link id=”1118609743″ target=”_blank” ]The Making of a World City: London 1991 – 2021[/amazon_link] I have sought to draw on over 25 years of experience working within London policy and economic development organisations, and on interviews with around 100 leading thinkers about the past, present and future of London, including commentators and leaders in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore, and São Paulo.

London’s path to becoming a leading world city is not well understood. The assumption is that the Big Bang, London Docklands, the EU, or global finance is the key explanatory factor. The reality is richer and more surprising. The book sets out in clear detail both the catalysts that have enabled London to succeed and also the qualities and underlying values that are at play: London’s open-ness and self-confidence, its inventiveness, influence, and its entrepreneurial zeal. London’s organic, unplanned, incremental character, without a ruling design code or guiding master plan proves to be more flexible than any planned city can be.”

[amazon_image id=”1118609743″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Making of a World City: London 1991 to 2021[/amazon_image]

I’m looking forward to reading it, especially having commissioned relatively recently Bridget Rosewell’s [amazon_link id=”1907994149″ target=”_blank” ]Reinventing London[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”1907994149″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Reinventing London (Perspectives)[/amazon_image]

A while ago I posted a list of books on urban economics, and this literature keeps growing (no doubt there were many omissions from the list too). It is a subject whose time has come – the politics is slowly catching up with the economics. Recent days have brought news of an impending significant devolution of powers from Whitehall/Westminster to Manchester. It’s a first step in decentralising one of the most centralised OECD economies, and part of the global relocation of economic activity as a network around key urban hubs. Perhaps I’m biased, but among all the UK cities other than London, I think Manchester has the best shot at growing into a world city.

A couple of sessions at the upcoming Festival of Economics in Bristol touch on this broad theme – as do other Festival of Ideas events this autumn.

It’s the society, stupid

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There is one other thought prompted by re-reading Jane Jacobs’ [amazon_link id=”039470584X” target=”_blank” ]The Economy of Cities[/amazon_link]. She has an almost by-the-by section about the changes in the mass media of the day, the switch in readership away from mass circulation national daily newspapers to mass television capturing the national audience and more local, often suburban, newspapers. TV was the disruptive technology of the day, and audience habits changed. The argument Jacobs makes is that the technology wasn’t so much the cause of the transition as the enabler of it. The driving force was the growth of the suburbs, and the social changes that went alongside it.

I don’t know enough US media history to evaluate this properly, but it’s surely a good reminder that technology always, but always interacts with social change. Knowing that’s true in general has been at the heart of my work since the 1990s, but at a time of exciting and rapid technical change (pace Robert Gordon), it’s easy to forget to central role of social change in specific cases. Including the changes happening now in media habits.

[amazon_image id=”039470584X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Economy of Cities (Vintage)[/amazon_image]