A New Delhi every day: multiplicities of governance regimes in a transforming metropolis

In this article I demonstrate the coexistence of multiple urban governance regimes in Delhi, India. While formal urban governance is geared toward transforming Delhi into a “world-class” city, I present original research that shows how the everyday governance of urban space in three very different areas of Delhi is determined by relations among non-state actors. These regimes foster access to space for street hawkers on an everyday basis while they allow powerful local interest groups to collect rent and influence flows of people and commodities. I argue that, in contrast to formal electoral politics, these governance regimes emerge from a parallel politics of everyday interactions, negotiations, and transgressions. Although the emancipatory potential of these regimes should not be overstated, they do offer street hawkers limited contingency to improve their access to urban space. This article contributes to a growing body of work on urban governance by showing how multiplicities of governance regimes coexist and determine how and by whom urban space is used in a metropolis in the global South.     

Nonprofit Foundations and Grassroots Organizing: Reshaping Urban Governance*

Collaborative urban governance has increased the role of community organizations in local decision‐making processes. These organizations need financial resources in order to participate in urban governance. In this article, I examine the impact of foundation grants on the relationships and agendas of four community organizations in one neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawing on interviews, observations of organizations, and archival research, I demonstrate that in the 1990s, nonprofit foundations had a significant impact on the formation of new organizations and on their agendas in the neighborhood. Foundations are, therefore, an important player in urban governance, shaping a “neighborhood policy regime.”     

Digitizing the Dragon Head,Geo-Coding the Urban Landscape: GIS and the Transformation of China's Urban Governance

While local governments have been one of the major user groups of GIS, there is still little research on how GIS development in local government might be intertwined with urban governance, particularly in non-Western contexts. Drawing upon insights from GIS implementation, critical GIS, and governmentality studies, this article seeks to bridge this gap by examining the implications of Chinese urban government GIS practices amidst China's changing urban governance. Through an in-depth case study of Shenzhen, this article analyzes how urban GIS has been transformed from a practice involving internal organizational workflow automation, into a more active dimension of the governance of urban spaces—reflected in the expanding practice of “geo-coding” the urban landscape. “Geo-coding” here refers to a broadly defined spatial practice of carving and reconstructing a rational urban space. GIS practices have constituted a particular form of geographic rationality that seeks to govern at a distance while simultaneously regulating the urban environment, intersecting with the broader transformations of China's urban governance. These GIS developments have been largely government-centric rather than citizen-centric, yet they provide possibilities for new forms of spatial knowledge production for citizen participation in urban governance.     

Nonprofit Foundations and Grassroots Organizing: Reshaping Urban Governance

Collaborative urban governance has increased the role of community organizations in local decision-making processes. These organizations need financial resources in order to participate in urban governance. In this article, I examine the impact of foundation grants on the relationships and agendas of four community organizations in one neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Drawing on interviews, observations of organizations, and archival research, I demonstrate that in the 1990s, nonprofit foundations had a significant impact on the formation of new organizations and on their agendas in the neighborhood. Foundations are, therefore, an important player in urban governance, shaping a “neighborhood policy regime.”     

Cross‐border Urban Governance in Hong Kong: The Role of State in a Globalizing City‐Region*

The rapid development in the Hong Kong‐Pearl River Delta (PRD) city‐region has taken place alongside complicated cross‐border governance. The framework of time‐space envelopes (TSEs) is adopted for a study of cross‐border governance in Hong Kong, especially in the role of the state, that is, the Hong Kong government, in cross‐border urban governance. This article argues that tension‐ free regional integration has never existed due to a complex governance network. The shift from “cross‐border protectionism” to “cross‐border free trade zone” in Hong Kong's cross‐border urban governance since 2001 is a result of the rearticulation of the state cutting through the geoeconomic and geopolitical TSEs.     

Fiscal geographies: “Placing” taxation in urban geography

As the state’s primary means of both redistributing wealth and incentivizing private investment, tax plays an outsized role in a range of critical urban processes, including (re)development, gentrification, financialization, and local and regional governance. We argue, through reference to existing literature in urban and economic geography, as well as our own research on taxation and the state, that urban scholarship could benefit by close and careful engagement with taxation and the tax system. We term this new vein of research “fiscal geographies” and see it as offering potential for more nuanced study of urban political economy, politics, and processes.     

The Permeable City: Toronto's Spatial Shift at the Turn of the Millennium

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between urban governance restructuring, and global, national, and local action through a case study of the Toronto city‐region. The Toronto city‐region recently underwent a massive reorganization of its governance structures, functions, and jurisdictional boundaries. This restructuring raises questions about why these changes occurred at this particular juncture in the region's history. Why did the city that had always been known in the academic and political discourse as the “city that works” stop “working”? What global and national forces might have accounted for such a radical restructuring? And what did local action contribute? These questions are explored in both historical and contemporary contexts by drawing on insights from regulation theory, urban regime theory, and an analysis of Canada's changing fiscal federalism. This approach informs the role that institutions — regardless of their origin or territorial scope — play in sustaining a local accumulation system, and how this “local” accumulation grounds a national regulatory mode and regime of accumulation. The approach also explores the relationship between regime and regulation theories in the context of policy formation and institution building. The study concludes that the current policy set is incapable of resolving the region's crisis tendencies. Notwithstanding external forces, the current policy set is not inevitable. Globalization does not predetermine all spatial‐economic outcomes.     

城市化进程中的“去领域化”与“再领域化”:兼议城乡治理——对广州市江口村的分析

领域化是当前政治地理研究的核心概念和理论。城市化将农村区域划入“城市”之中,城市局限往往通过土地扩张来解决,地方和国家等不同行动者呈现出不同尺度的领域化和去领域化的策略。本文以广州一个正在城市化的村落为例展开历时态研究,并得出以下结论：首先,城市化中的“领域化”和“去领域化”第一层次为土地,国家根据法律以及城市依据自身发展需要将土地纳入城市范畴;其次,第二层次为围绕利益空间的“领域化”和“去领域化”,伴随着地方政府、企业、村集体、村民等的策略,不同主体和话语开始进入并协商博弈;第三层次为地方认同,竞争性的“再领域化”促成地方认同的产生和变化。这三个层次的不一致性导致了不同时期治理方式的差异和治理困境的产生。本文从领域化理论视角深入探究尺度政治如何在城市化过程中产生和得以体现,以及不同城市化发展时期和城市空间转变中的城乡边界动态变化、村落自我调整的复杂过程以及城乡融合过程中的治理挑战,最后给出政策思考和建议。     

中国城市老工业园区更新的空间治理机制研究——多层次视角的分析框架

城市老工业园区更新中的空间治理涉及多元主体博弈与产业用地发展权重构问题,是当下城市研究的重要学术议题。本文以转型理论中多层次视角的形势、体制与利基为立足点,深层次挖掘城市更新中空间治理转型创新的演化过程与内在机制,提出一种不同层次多种因素间相互作用、动态演化下理解中国老工业园区更新空间治理的方法。该解释框架被应用于上海上钢十厂园区更新转型中,通过关注2004年后两次更新转型的过程和机理,研究发现：上钢十厂的更新转型是由宏观外部形势、空间利基创新、空间体制转型三个层次互动而实现的,上钢十厂两个阶段的更新均在产业转型、城市发展需求变化等宏观形势下诞生创新“新奇”,政府、社会团体或企业等空间治理行为主体共同参与推动“新奇”合法壮大并形成利基,在空间资本积累、产业类型转换中,驱使空间体制成功转型,其本质是利基层的空间创新“新奇”在宏观形势或空间体制要素的影响下解构重塑空间体制的过程。城市更新促进了老工业园区产业转型,提高了环境品质、土地利用强度和经济效益。多层次视角能结合城市更新中空间治理的外部环境、内在驱动因素和演变过程等多方面,有助于从动态演化维度理解城市更新空间变迁及转型治理的内在机制。     

多元主体视角下大城市边缘区空间治理结构、机制及路径研究

随着新型城镇化和乡村振兴战略的深入推进,大城市边缘区空间治理对于实现城乡均衡发展具有重要意义。多元主体协同共治是国家治理体系及治理能力提升的明确要求,论文基于多元主体视角,对大城市边缘区空间治理理论框架模型、结构、问题、机制以及路径进行了深入探究。随着大城市边缘区治理主体由单一主体向多元主体协同转型,城乡空间逐渐向均衡状态发展。在治理结构上,大城市边缘区空间治理结构逐渐由单中心结构向多中心网络结构转型。治理问题上,多元主体对大城市边缘区空间资源争夺造成物质空间混杂、社会空间分异以及空间权力不均衡3个方面问题。从机制角度分析,多元主体遵循各自的空间治理需求和逻辑对大城市边缘区实施相应的治理机制。基于多元主体协同,提出大城市边缘区空间治理优化路径。最后,总结大城市边缘区空间“治理结构—治理问题—治理机制—路径优化”递进式研究框架,以完善多元主体视角下大城市边缘区空间治理理论与实践分析研究。     

地方感的塑造与乡村治理：潮汕宗祠案例

采用网络资料收集、深度访谈和问卷调查等方法,对潮汕宗祠的地方意义、情感互动和内生效用展开分析,探讨了潮汕宗祠对地方感的塑造作用及其与乡村治理的内在关联。研究发现,潮汕宗祠作为同姓宗亲地域联系和情感连结的物质空间载体,通过其蕴含的地方文化、宣传展演和节庆活动等构建乡村地域的情感依恋与价值认同,进而形成地方依恋和地方认同。此外,潮汕宗祠通过建筑的形式扎根于地方,并作为乡村地域的异质性空间重构着乡村的地方性,并赋予乡村空间更多的文化内涵,以塑造乡村主体的共同价值和情感认同。诚然,潮汕宗祠的地方意义是通过多主体的共同缔造来实现的,以历史文化、个体记忆和物质资本等塑造自身的地方、民族的地方和跨界的地方。研究基于地方感和乡村治理的视角,强调物质文化载体的社会建构作用,探索乡村文化空间与乡村治理的互动,在实证层面回应了文化治理的积极意义。就现实意义而言,文章通过对潮汕宗祠地方性和根植性的讨论,旨在为乡村文化空间的营造、文化自信的建立和乡村治理提供一定的参考价值。     

Alternative and Virtual Rurality: Agriculture and The Countryside as Embodied in American Imagination

Affection for agrarian livelihoods and rural and small‐town environments has long been held by residents in many of the world's “more developed” countries. Although the rural proportion of the U.S. population has shrunk to a minority over the last century, fondness for rurality continues to manifest itself in a number of ways. Attachment to the rural ideal or rural idyll can be considered as attachment to the idea of a type of place, rather than specific place attachment. Based on literature, field observation, computer searches, and data from the U.S. Census of Agriculture, connections to idea(l)s of rurality apparent in popular culture are identified and illustrated. These include rural and agricultural tourism, small‐scale farming and large‐lot rural subdivisions, urban agriculture, farmers’ markets and community‐supported agriculture, creation of housing developments around farm activities, and rural‐named housing and business developments. Idealized relationships with rurality call upon health and well‐being, connecting to nature, aesthetics, privacy, and respect and nostalgia for rural livelihoods.     

RURAL PLACE ATTACHMENT IN HISPANO URBAN CENTERS*

ABSTRACT. Continued rural‐to‐urban migration has helped motivate cultural geographers, long suspected of having a rural bias, to include urban areas in their purview. Patterns of gender, class, ethnicity, and commercialization have proved to be fertile subjects for research, but the elastic links between rural and urban places are not yet well understood. Hispanos, despite intense feelings of loyalty to their rural villages, moved en masse to cities in the 1940s. By the 1950s a majority of Hispanos were living in regional urban centers of the upper Rio Grande country, where wages were higher and employment was secure. This Hispano experience is a crucible for examining how urbanites' attachment to rural places is manifested in various cultural expressions brought from country to city: painted murals, burial preferences, popular music, and irrigation ditches. Understanding threads of rural culture that have been incorporated into the urban fabric in turn leads to clearer comprehension of the emotional attachment that urbanites have for rural areas and a better appreciation of the complexity of the urban cultural environment.     

Evolving Spatial Form of Urban‐Rural Interaction in the Pearl River Delta,China

Much of the development literature and the theory of urban transition have been based on an arbitrary division of production space into city and countryside. Despite growing recognition of the need for an integrated approach to urban‐rural relations, controversial issues related to the definition and measurement of the phenomenon remain unresolved. This case study of spatial transformation in China's Pearl River Delta analyzes with greater precision the geographic extent and functional attributes of a zone of urban‐rural interaction located outside and between major metropolitan centers. This zone has been the spatial focus of industrial and commercial development, although most of its population remains officially classified as “agricultural.” The peri‐urban zone was initially left behind by the central cities in terms of its contribution to the regional economy. After a decade of postreform development, this zone has moved ahead of the central cities and become the region's main destination for in‐migrants and foreign investment. The growth of the zone of urban‐rural interaction outside the central cities has absorbed a significant amount of the increased urban population, but it has not brought about a reduction of regional economic inequality because of the persistence of a backward economy in the periphery. Theoretical questions are raised concerning the validity of several fundamental assumptions underlying the conventional model of urban transition.     

Public places and empty spaces: dislocation,urban renewal and the death of a French plaza

This article examines the dislocations produced when competing understandings of public space come into contact. Focusing on Montpellier, France, where an urban renewal program has seen portions of the city-centre renovated, the article considers the breaking apart of a North African commercial cluster under the guide of French heritage protection. Arguing that such action is tiedto municipal urban politics and wider trajectories that place diverse identities in a separate category, I trace the process through which a plaza encompassed in the urban renewal program has been labelled as “empty” and “dead” space. Suggesting that the relocation of a well-used outdoor food market is an instance of public space being deliberately emptied of its social and civic function, I argue that such sites are better defined as “municipal spaces”, entities that are firmly in the realm of the state, rather than ones within the purview of diverse publics.     

中国乡村治理的新视域:基于现代性与认同互动的角度

乡村发展与乡村振兴倚仗于良好的乡村治理。从本质上认识乡村治理,需要把乡村治理放置于中国发展的时代背景下加以考量。目前中国出现的种种乡村发展问题和治理乱象,某种意义上是传统中国乡村在遭遇迅速现代化过程中的各种“不适”之后的必然反应。从现代性与认同的互动关系的理论视角出发,采取问卷调查与深度访谈的质性研究方法,重点探讨现代性进入乡村后的诸种遭遇,聚焦现代性对乡村4种类型治理主体的影响过程与作用机制,具体表现为村干部的角色认同从“当家人”向“代理人”转变;作为“资本下乡”的主体,返乡创业企业主难以站在村民的立场推进乡村治理;外出务工人员因为思想分化、凝聚力差,成为乡村治理的阻梗;留守者因为“能人”的标准发生变化在乡村治理过程中发挥的作用有限。最后,着重分析村民基于自身身份认同的角度是如何面对和调试现代性,从农民文化认同、治理主体性形塑和外部支撑条件等方面提出优化当代中国乡村治理的主要路径。     

Mine your data: open data,digital strategies and entrepreneurial governance by code

Investment in the release of open data has become increasingly central to the implementation of smart city programs by governments around the world. Though originally arising out of a push towards “open government” and the pursuit of more transparent decision-making by public authorities at multiple scales, open data programs have more recently been adopted by municipal governments to support entrepreneurial goals of enhanced competitive positioning and attracting investment. As urban scholars now subject the smart city project to critical scrutiny for its role in advancing urban entrepreneurialism, this article considers the relevance of the open data agenda as it shapes wider understandings of the smart city. In particular, I address the collection of policy practices, aspirations, stakeholders and entrepreneurs active in framing the opportunities and values of open data for urban governments. Both the momentum of support for open data, along with a recent shift in the rhetorical aspirations of the open data movement away from the values of openness and transparency and towards a more confined focus on value generation, raise important critical questions for urban geographers concerned with the nature of urban governance in an age of big data.     

中国城市市辖区的空间结构及演化机制

本文提出了市辖区6种空间结构类型：圈层式、组合式、并排式、独立式、包围式及飞地式,并总结了6种类型的主要特征。通过对中国市辖区分布格局及演变分析,发现城市规模等级越高,市辖区数量越多、人口密度越大。6种类型城市分布情况为圈层式结构城市集中在东部地区,组合式结构城市在东北地区分布最密,独立式结构城市大多分布于中西部,包围式结构城市中部地区最多,并排式和飞地式结构城市在全国分布比较均衡。市辖区空间结构的一般演化路径为“独立式-并排式-组合式-圈层式”,圈层式结构会继续优化,通过“内城合并、外城扩张”向第三、四圈层发展。文章最后分析了增设、拆分与合并市辖区三种行政区划调整方式的影响因素及作用机制。     

Brainstorming, Modified Logframes and the Conversion of Research Hypotheses into Field Questions: Reflections from Team-based Fieldwork in Eastern India

This paper considers some practical problems associated with organising large‐scale comparative field research in eastern India. The focus of the paper is on the use of brainstorming and “modified logframes” as two means by which hypotheses about the working of the local state from the point of view of the rural poor could be turned into concrete field questions. The paper is less concerned with ethical and positional issues relating to team‐based research in “the tropics” (on this, see Williams et al., 2003a) than with the equally important if apparently more prosaic issues relating to the flawed but necessary search for objectivity and rigour in comparative field studies.     

Growth coalitions in declining cities: casinos,redevelopment, and inter-urban competition

Casino development is a popular strategy for urban redevelopment in declining cities. I examine the process of casino acquisition in the former Canadian automotive capital, Windsor, Ontario – one of the first cities in North America, outside of Atlantic City and Las Vegas, to host a resort casino. Drawing on 20 interviews with urban elites and the local news media, I explore the interplay between a local growth coalition and State interests in the development of Casino Windsor. To capture maximum revenue for provincial coffers, provincial interests used competition between economically depressed cities to co-opt the Windsor casino alliance’s project . Windsor’s urban elites, however, continue to “talk” urban entrepreneurialism, perpetuating the myth that municipal entrepreneurialism was an effective strategy for this struggling city. These findings suggest that the importance placed on the entrepreneurial capacity of local growth coalitions in urban redevelopment studies may be misplaced, especially in peripheral and declining cities.