The persistent water problems of Lima,Peru: Neoliberalism,institutional failures and social inequalities

The contingent relation between water governance and nature neoliberalization has defined most interventions in the water sector around the world in recent years. In the case of the Peruvian capital Lima, the provision of water and sanitation services in the last two decades has been the object of investments and institutional reforms strongly influenced by economic neoliberalism. This essay examines the evolution of these neoliberalizing tendencies, noting the internal disputes, necessary adjustments and underlying problems of water sufficiency in the metropolitan region. The empirical results suggest that, rather than a straightforward process, the neoliberalization of water in Lima has advanced according to political opportunities and technico‐operational constraints. The water reforms implemented in the 1990s – when the goal of privatization met political opposition – can be contrasted with the more recent phase in the 2000s, when more flexible mechanisms, such as public‐private partnerships, have facilitated public acceptance. Despite the renovation of the infrastructure, the modernization of the water sector has failed to address persistent water management problems, namely the discriminatory treatment of low income residents, the chaotic expansion of the metropolitan area and the risk of future water shortages.     

Urban agriculture and the sustainability fix in Vancouver and Detroit

Both Vancouver, British Columbia, and Detroit, Michigan, have significant and growing urban agriculture movements. In this article, I follow recent work investigating the connection between urban agriculture and neoliberalization to determine how these local governments have used urban agriculture in narratives of economic development to selectively pursue a sustainability fix. I analyze how different regimes of local governance have influenced the urban agriculture movements, leading to local, hybridized fixes that adapt to different material and discursive contexts in each place. I argue that in both cities, urban agriculture has radical potential as a grassroots response to economic and environmental injustice, but has also been enrolled as a device by the local state in which the primary goal of sustainability planning becomes enhanced economic competitiveness. Pursuing an agenda of food justice requires examining the larger context and effects of municipal involvement with food movements.     

The new Caribbean complexity: Mobility systems, tourism and spatial rescaling

The Caribbean region is being respatialized, rescaled and reterritorialized in the face of contemporary processes of neoliberal development, shifting mobilities and spatial restructuring. Drawing on the field of mobilities research, this paper argues that new transregional approaches to spatial dynamics are needed to describe the complex, polymorphic, and multiscalar geographies in the neoliberalizing Caribbean. It first analyzes how new spatializations of Caribbean mobilities are part of larger transnational processes of urban restructuring. It then examines how neoliberalizing policies have promoted the 'opening' of once publicly owned infrastructures such as ports, airports, and telecommunications, contributing to a rescaling of Caribbean territoriality. Finally it considers how tourism mobilities associated with the cruise ship industry and private luxury property developments facilitate interlocality competition and outside access to the region while circumscribing local access and mobility rights. The paper proposes a postcolonializing island studies that recognizes the complexity of contemporary Caribbean rescaling and the subtle ways in which modernized built environments and infrastructures of mobility and connectivity contribute to the weakening of island-state sovereignty, territorial integrity and democratic citizenship.     

Reconsidering neoliberal urban planning in times of crisis: urban regeneration policy in a “dense” space in Lisbon

In this article, I contribute to recent debates about the concept of neoliberalism and its use as an explanatory concept, through the analysis of urban planning and regeneration policy in Lisbon amidst crisis and austerity. Suggesting a look at neoliberalization from a threefold perspective—the project, governmentalities, and policymaking—I analyze how current austerity-policy responses to the European economic crisis can be understood as a renewed and coherent deployment of neoliberal stances. The article presents implications for urban planning in Lisbon and thus suggests an exploration of the negotiations and clashes of hegemonic neoliberal governmentalities and policies with the local social and spatial fabric. For this exploration, I select a “deviant” case—the Mouraria neighborhood, a “dense” space in which the consequences of policies diverge sharply from expectations. In conclusion, I suggest that neoliberalization (in times of crisis) should be understood as a coherent project compromised by a set of highly ambiguous governmentalities, which bring about contradictory policymaking at the local level.     

Resource economies and neoliberal experimentation: the reform of industry and community in rural British Columbia

This paper argues that the current literature on neoliberalism in advanced capitalist societies has concentrated primarily on urban issues, and has thus failed to see resource economies and regions as theoretically significant sites of neoliberal reform. Using research from British Columbia, Canada, we argue that resource regions are often targets of intense neoliberal experimentation. The neoliberal project in British Columbia involves an extreme shift in state policy from a strong Fordist-Keynesian programme to recent efforts to 'liberate' corporate actors from non-market social and spatial obligations (to environment, labour and community). We argue that such policy shifts have exceptional consequences in resource regions due to strong and direct state influence in corporate-resource and community-level economies. We draw several theoretical lessons from this research for the mainstream literature on neoliberal reform.