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Cities of PowerAdministered Urbanism

Sociology 126 5 Mar 2001

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Preliminary

1] Questions & Answers

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Previewing Today

Global UrbanCommunities

Weeks 7-9Cities ofPower

1. UrbanNeo-Liberalism

2. GlobalEconomicChanges

3. AdministeredUrbanism

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Today, We Will Learn About:

1] Administration By Design

2] Building Urban Utopias3] Administration As

Urban Governance

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Administration by DesignManaging Unruly City Places

Challenge of Public AdministrationIAttempts to manage the social complexity &

diversity to benefit people who live in cities

IFrom operations of the state, through

those of a range of institutions (churches,voluntary & social org.), to the sharedpractices & understandings of city life

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Urban Design & Political PowerIDesigns incorporate social relations

of power, producing landscapes ofcontrol & social hierarchies

I

Urban planners rationally controlsocial complexity through recording,quantifying, & mapping urban spaces

I

Architects reshape built environments

Administrationby Design (cont)

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1920s New Delhi: instant colonial capital,symmetric streets, divided city

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Reinterpreting Urban FormsIUrban design expresses the

predominant social relations in a cityIIt seems as if urban designs fully

determine how we live in cities, but inpractice it is the ways in which peopleimagine & use the built environment that

gives those designs their lived meanings

Administrationby Design (cont)

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Building Urban Utopias

Remaking Cities in the Image

of Planned Utopias (Le Corbusier)IAbout good cities without social disorders

through escape, vision & planning

IChanging layout of cities & providing clear& more logical forms of social segregation

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BuildingUrban Utopias (cont)

From Utopic Theory to PracticeILa Corbusier influenced direction of govt

intervention & slum removal in cities

IModernist vision ofbuilt envir. to city developers

& budget constrains: City grids (90o), Central-areas/rings/loops, High-rise buildings, and

Separating road-pedestrian & work-home-park

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ICriticize for sanitizing urban vitality,for approaching neighborhoods as if they

were architectural problems & works of art,and for producing less protected spaces &more fear & violence

I

Rejecting grand plans by govt does notsolve the problem of administration; market& privatized solutions also generate social

inequalities (gated comm.; suburban exclusions)

Building Urban UtopiasCriticizing the Utopians & Beyond

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AdministrationAs Governance

IThe dismissal of grand rational plans& market solutions as strategies for ordering

urban life is the first step to consideringalternative means of urban administration

I

However, the agenda of present urbangovernance gets shaped predominantly by big

business, land developers & political leaders

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AdministrationAs Governance (cont)

IEmergence of economic growth coalitions(strategic political alliances) as the

dominant politics of urban developmentIOn way a shared agenda of growth gets

fostered is through urban promotion &place-making in a global context (selling

the city as seen through the Olympics)

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AdministrationAs Governance (cont)

Governance Through Growth Regimes

IWorks through negotiation, the formationof urban growth partnerships; highlights

political inclusion & exclusion

IGrowth regimes ignore the everydaystruggles & conflicts over space & resources

by marginalized/excluded groups

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Summary

Globally, traditional approaches to

city administration and governance

emphasize the need to controldisordered urban populations & to

develop good cities so to imposesurveillance & technical rationality

and foster growth regimes

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Discussion Question

In what ways can we administrate

cities democratically by building on

the complexity of overlapping socialrelationships, without ordering

urban spaces through uniformity &standardization, and without intensifying

social cleavages & exclusion?

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Reading SurveyYou may refer to

your reading notes but

not the course reader