Perspectives in
Metropolitan Research
Self-Induced Shocks:
Mega-Projects and Urban Development
Self-Induced
Shocks:
Mega-Projects
and Urban
Gernot Grabher and Joachim Thiel (eds.)
Development
Content
Joachim Thiel/Gernot Grabher/Constanze Engelbrecht
Urban Mega-Projects as Self-Induced Shocks:
Introduction to the Collection
9
Photo Series I
Andrea Bosio
I’ve Never Been There
16
Mega-Projects: Urban Development
Oliver Ibert
Out of Control? Urban Mega-Projects between
Two Types of Rationality: Decision and Action Rationality
31
Deike Peters
Urban Mega-Projects and Reversibility:
The Re-Railing of Los Angeles
50
Photo Series II
Jamie McGregor Smith
Borrow, Build, Abandon
72
Mega-Projects: Large-Scale Events
Walter Siebel
Mega-Events as Vehicles of Urban Policy
87
Gernot Grabher/Joachim Thiel
Mobilizing Action, Incorporating Doubt:
London’s Reflexive Strategy of Hosting the Olympic Games 2012
99
Martin Müller
Mega-Shock, Mini-Outcome:
Russian Authoritarianism and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi
118
Photo Series III
Marc Ohrem-Leclef
Olympic Favela
138
Mega-Projects: Management and Markets
Willem Salet/Luca Bertolini/Mendel Giezen
Complexity and Uncertainty: Problem or Asset in
Decision-Making of Mega Infrastructure Projects?
155
Leonore van den Ende/Alfons van Marrewijk
Rebalancing the Disturbance:
Shock-Absorbing Platforms in Urban Mega-Projects
177
Yijiang Wu/Andrew Davies/Lars Frederiksen
The Birth of an Eco-City Business: Arup’s Dongtan Project
201
Preface of the
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin
and Gerd Bucerius
Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Vol. I: Self-Induced Shocks: Mega-Projects
and Urban Development
More than half the world’s population lives in cities and metropolitan areas. This
makes metropolitan studies, urban development, and urban planning some of the
most fascinating research fields of our time. This alone was reason enough for the
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius to organize a summer school on this topic
in 2008; this was carried out with the HafenCity University Hamburg, the
Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies (HU Berlin), and the Center for Metropolitan
Studies (TU Berlin). A publication presenting the school’s results sparked
off this new series.
The ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius would like to see Hamburg become an
international center of research on the future of urban areas and urban life. In order
to bring in many different perspectives on this research topic, the ZEIT-Stiftung
has initiated a visiting scholars program in cooperation with the HafenCity University.
It is scheduled to start in autumn 2015 and will bring experts in urban
planning, postdoctoral researchers, and young scholars to Hamburg to foster exchange
and dialogue between various cities and between various academic and
non-academic fields.
The foundation hopes that this volume will provide a basis for future studies on
Perspectives in Metropolitan Research. This first book, Self-Induced Shocks:
Mega-Projects and Urban Development, will hopefully lead to many comments and
critical responses, just the right thing to kick off a new series!
Hamburg, June 2015
Prof. Dr. Michael Göring
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius
6 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Editorial Note
Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
With the world facing increasing levels of urbanization, questions about the development,
challenges, and embodiment of large cities are becoming more pressing.
In order to find reasonable solutions, a highly differentiated approach to the metropolis
of the future is essential. The search for much-needed answers to social,
architectural, technical, urban-planning, building, and closely related questions demands
different theoretical and empirical methods in research and design.
The HafenCity University Hamburg aims to contemplate and make concrete question
of what the future of metropolitan areas could and should look like. A systematic
interdisciplinary as well as transdisciplinary approach is required for coping
with the future. With this approach in mind, the idea arose for a publication that
uses varied perspectives from metropolitan research.
This present publication represents the start of a series that reflects on the planned,
built, surveyed, and lived surroundings in urban areas and links these to social, economic,
political, and cultural aspects. Providing unconventional, specialized topics,
the series Perspectives in Metropolitan Research explores these developments. Each
topic is discussed in a process-oriented manner, which is supplemented by policy
implications and suggestions for taking action. Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
is neither a traditional publication of architectural, artistic, or engineering
research nor an exclusively cultural or sociological series but rather an exposition
that aims to connect and inaugurate surprising and relevant perspectives in metropolitan
research.
Perspectives in Metropolitan Research is a joint project of the HafenCity University
Hamburg [HCU] and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin & Gerd Bucerius foundation. The series
will release one volume annually with rotating guest editors.
Professor Gesa Ziemer
Vice President for Research, HCU
Self-Induced Shocks: Mega-Projects and Urban Development
7
8 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Urban
Mega-Projects
as Self-Induced
Shocks
Introduction to the Collection
Joachim Thiel/Gernot Grabher/
Constanze Engelbrecht
Introduction
The leaning tower of Pisa is probably one of the most famous buildings in the
world. It also epitomizes the predominance of Italian cities in Europe during the
first centuries of the second millennium. The tower, though, is more than simply a
prominent structure from a particular era in European urban history. It embodies
the culmination of a larger complex of buildings around the cathedral, “located on
the edge of the existing city” (Benevolo 1993, p. 32). The whole ensemble was erected
during the twelfth century, conceived as “the centre of a new city of unimaginably
grand scale and dignity” (pp. 32-33). The project was to restructure the medieval
grid of the city and to consolidate Pisa’s fame as a “second Rome” (p. 32) that reflected
its major political, economic, and cultural role at that time.
The strategic urban complex, however, remained an “uncompleted project [left]
isolated at [the city’s] north-western corner” (p. 32-33). The ambitious idea of reorganizing
the physical pattern of the city eventually did not materialize. This was
Self-Induced Shocks: Mega-Projects and Urban Development
9
I’ve Never Been There
Andrea Bosio
Andrea Bosio
Been There
Similar to radio and TV in the nineteen-fifties, the internet in the
last decades has propelled a fundamental transformation of our
modus vivendi. Being both product and medium of the global era,
it has hugely sped up the exchange of information. The web facilitated
the circulation of news and knowledge and, thereby, paved
the way for rapid knowledge sharing. While Web 1.0, popular until
the nineteen-nineties was almost exclusively based on static websites,
in the more recent Web 2.0, interaction is the basic ingredient.
Phenomena such as Napster, YouTube, and Facebook — to
name but a few — have literally changed our lives. Expanding our
personal networks, watching videos, and listening to music have
never been so easy or immediate.
Google satellite and Google street view are crucial components
of this transformation. The two software tools have mapped
the entire planet from different perspectives. Particularly Google
street view allows many of our cities to be visualized from the
perspective of an average-height human. The Googlemobile,
equipped with a photographic camera on its roof, takes 360° photos.
It silently drives down busy and quiet streets, immortalizing
the urban reality meter by meter. The lens mounted on the
Googlemobile captures buildings, vegetation, animals, things, and
people — nearly always unknowingly. The results are then sent
back to the US company's servers and inserted into the API navigation
system.
Computer users start from a geographic position selected
from the vertical satellite view and can “descend” to ground
level — or, rather, to approximately two meters above the
ground — and see the views collected by the cars on their worldwide
mission. What is more, one can then surf the images on the
16 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
| I've Never
screen with a mouse or keyboard: one can travel along a street, go
back, turn around to look at something or zoom in on a detail, all
making it possible to explore reality at 360°. One can visit almost
an entire city while sitting comfortably in front of a screen.
What could previously only be achieved by personal in situ experience,
picturesque postcards, or numerous photo reports today
is only as far away as a mouse click, thanks to computers and
new-generation smartphones. A large slice of the planet, mainly
the urbanized areas, has literally been broken down into millions
of frames, collected arbitrarily without choosing a specific subject,
and recomposed with software into one continuous surfable vision.
The picture of the surroundings is created via a mechanical
photographic-mapping method. The adoption of specific technology
and its equally precise application allow us to visualize the
attained result on a monitor and surf the images. We are able to
experience the reality in an objective and non-interpretative portrayal.
This is a new way to enjoy a new image of reality.
I have always used Google’s satellite and street view system to
view cities and principally to identify the urban drift areas featured
in some of my photographic projects. In these cases, I use
software as if it were a map made of pictures to find my way
through the reality of direct experience. This is also the approach I
adopted for the photographic project presented here. However, on
this occasion, the subject of my shots was the representation of
the city supplied by Google street view on my computer screen. I
treated this new pixelated reality as a territory for exploration
and managed to compile a true photographic record of it by selecting
different points of observation in this virtual space. I photographed
the city without ever actually being there.
Andrea Bosio | I've Never Been There
17
EXPO 1967 | Biosphère | Montreal, Quebec, Canada
28 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Los Angeles Music Center | Walt Disney Concert Hall | Los Angeles, California, USA
Andrea Bosio | I've Never Been There
29
Urban
Urban Mega-Projects
and Reversibility:
The Re-Railing of
Los Angeles
development
Deike Peters
Reversing Course in the Automobile City: The Mega-Project of Re-Railing Los Angeles
Any urban mega-project is by definition a high-stakes intervention. Yet flagship
mega-projects such as new sports stadiums, fancy museums, or redeveloped
waterfronts — all projects mainly designed to boost a city’s entertainment and cultural
appeal — are different from infrastructural mega-projects such as revitalized
rivers, urban expressways, and subway or airport expansions in that the impacts of
the former are more localized, causing them to compete against each other, whereas
the impacts of the latter are typically more cumulative, with long-term consequences
for urban prosperity. Transportation mega-projects are especially crucial
for a city’s long-term development prospects because urban economic success and
urban mobility are invariably — and unfortunately negatively — intertwined. Traffic
is the one problem that always gets worse when a city does better economically,
with high levels of road congestion typically indicating increased economic activity
and success.
50 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Looked at differently, transportation mega-projects have the
potential to thoroughly reverse deeply ingrained beliefs about the
nature and character of a particular city or neighborhood. Some
of the most consequential planning decisions in urban history
have to do with what kind of transportation infrastructure to invest
in and which modes of transportation to favor. This chapter
accepts the proposition that mega-projects constitute hierarchical
interventions in cities that set important dynamics in motion.
Mega-project researchers often speak of “points of no return” and
of “path dependencies” once decision-makers have committed
themselves to a particular set of large-scale investments. But contrary
notions of reversibility are rarely investigated.
In this chapter, I pose the provocative and partially hypothetical
question whether decades of mega-investments into freeways,
highways, and single-purpose boulevards can be undone by similarly
large-scale investments into alternative transportation infrastructure.
More specifically and less speculatively, this chapter interprets
the twenty-first century quest to “re-rail” the Los Angeles
metropolitan region as a multipart mega-project comparable to
the city’s previous multipart mega-project of littering the region
with countless freeways in the second half of the twentieth century.
Throughout the twentieth century, Los Angeles was considered
a poster child for car-oriented development and low-density suburban
sprawl. Starting in the nineteen-fifties, many freeways
were built to crisscross the entire urban region. Ample parking
was provided for all new housing developments and workplaces.
But is Los Angeles doomed to follow this path of automobile dependence
indefinitely or is it reversible? And what role do rail megaprojects
play in the quest to change course? And what other factors
are important in order for LA to successfully transform and
remake itself? When the international team of architects and urban
designers tasked with developing the new master plan for
LA’s iconic Union Station was asked to envision the site’s surroundings
in the Year 2050, they came up with a “visioning board”
depicting the historic Mission-revival-style station building (see
Figure 1) dwarfed by modern high-rises and enhanced by abundant
green spaces along the freeway and the river (see Figure
2) — certainly a far cry from the much humbler, more concretefilled
reality of Union Station’s surroundings today (see Figure 3).
Meant of course to be more inspirational than realistic, the architects’
vision is indicative of the new generation of images of Los
Angeles as a transformed metropolis, complete with a strong rail
Urban development
51
80 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Jamie McGregor Smith | Borrow, Build, Abandon
81
Large-scale events
Mega-Shock,
Mini-Outcome:
Russian
Authoritarianism
and the 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sochi
Martin Müller
Introduction
Mega-events are frequently desired by politicians, city planners, business lobbies
and property owners alike. They are coveted for their ability to expedite largescale
transformations and bring into host cities money that would otherwise not
flow there. Hosting a mega-event allows cities and countries to temporarily suspend
regular planning and due legal process and introduce a state of exception
(Coaffee 2014; Sánchez and Broudehoux 2013). The event’s immutable deadline,
the world’s attention turning to the host location, and the contractual requirements
for hosting the event force consensus and speed upon cities instead of disagreement
and slack.
The self-induced shock of mega-events makes it possible to push large projects
through — airport expansions, sweeping redevelopments of whole neighborhoods,
new train and bus lines, waterfront redevelopments — that would
have dragged on or languished in the drawers of planning offices (cf. Grabher
118 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
and Thiel 2014; Häußermann and Siebel 1993). To do so, the selfinduced
shock often suspends regular checks and balances on
government actions. Environmental impact assessments, project
tenders, referenda, quality assurance, social cost-benefit analyses
— many of these are considered expendable under the tight
deadlines of mega-events or they are sidestepped when preparations
fall behind schedule.
Authoritarian regimes are often thought to be the better hosts
for mega-events. Both the IOC (International Olympic Committee)
and FIFA (Fédération Internationale du Football Association) have
underscored the benefits of authoritarian regimes, for example,
providing security more easily (Pound 2004) and doing away with
the long-winded process of decision-making (Reuters 2013). Authoritarian
regimes can more easily bend or bypass existing rules
and regulations and raise and deploy large sums of money and
construction workers without quibbling. Democratic legitimation
is weak in authoritarian countries, where politicians do not depend
on voters to re-elect them; thus mega-events are not subject
to the same degree of public accountability. In other words, government
fiat replaces the vox populi.
This contribution looks at how well authoritarian regimes are
indeed able to organize mega-events — and with what potential
impacts. It does so by examining the case of the 2014 Winter
Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. 1 One of the biggest events in 2014,
not just in Russia but in the world, the Sochi Games broke a series
of records. They had the highest number of participating nations
(88), the highest number of athletes (2,873), and the highest number
of events (98) of any Winter Games. At USD 1.26 billion, they
also produced the highest revenue from broadcasting rights ever
(IOC 2014). Less than three decades earlier, the 1988 Winter Games
in Calgary were barely half as large, which exemplifies the tremendous
growth of the event. But the one record that Sochi will
be remembered for is a more dubious one: the most expensive
Olympic Games ever — Summer or Winter. The figure most frequently
cited for total costs is USD 51 billion (RUB 1,526 billion), although,
as we will see below, the actual costs are at least USD 55
billion. This mind-boggling figure underscores the transformative
potential of the Winter Games in Sochi.
The Olympic Games in Sochi were more than a mere sports
event. The large amount of funds spent on it and the priority it
enjoyed in Russia were meant to expedite regional development
in one big push, building state-of-the-art infrastructure and
1 This paper draws in part on Müller, M.
(2014).“After Sochi 2014: Costs and
Impacts of Russia’s Olympic Games.”
Eurasian Geography and Economics
55.6: pp. 628–55.
A Swiss National Science Foundation
Professorship (PP00P1_144699)
supported this work.
Large-scale events
119
Cost
Costs
Planned
[2007]
Actual
[2014]
Overrun
(nominal) Funding Source After-Use
USD million
TOTAL 12,287 54,914 347% -- --
Operational Costs 1,648 4,249 158% -- --
Organizing Committee 1,391 2,327 67% ca. 75% private --
Security 257 1,922* 647% public --
Capital Costs 10,638 50,665 376% mostly public --
Sports-Related Capital Costs n/a 11,894 n/a
Direct Sports-Related Capital Costs 1,052 7,532 585% mostly public --
Coastal Cluster
Olympic Stadium 51 631 1131% public concerts, World Cup 2018
Large Hockey Stadium 164 336 105% public multi-purpose stadium
Small Hockey Stadium 24 116 382% private national sports center for
children
Curling Arena 11 24 113% state-secured loan multi-purpose stadium
Speed Skating Oval 28 246 790% state company tennis academy
Figure Skating Stadium 38 270 610% public velodrome?
Main Olympic Village 66 772 1061% state-secured loan apartments
Main Media Center 246 1,274 417% public exhibition center
Olympic Park 328 n/a public recreation, Formula 1
Mountain Cluster
Biathlon and Cross-Country
Complex
12 2,478 20759% state company training center
Bobsleigh Track 120 249 107% public training center
Ski Jumps 29 298 922% state-secured loan training center
Snowboard and Freestyle Park 21 113 430% state-secured loan training center
Alpine Skiing 240 396 65% state-secured loan ski resort (Roza Khutor)
Main Mountain Village 44 599 1251% state-secured loan hotel, apartments
Sports-Related Supporting
Infrastructure
n/a 4,362 n/a mostly public --
Non-Sports-Related Capital Costs n/a 38,771 n/a mostly public --
Combined Railroad Link n/a 10,546 n/a public severely reduced rail service
Other Projects n/a 28,225 n/a mostly public --
122 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
This categorization makes it possible to distinguish between direct
costs (operational and sports-related capital costs) and indirect
costs (non-sports-related capital cost).
Adding up these costs produces a figure higher than the frequently
reported USD 51 billion: the total costs linked to the 2014
Sochi Olympics were just under USD 55 billion (RUB 1,652 billion)
(see Table 1). 2 More than 90% of the costs were capital costs, indicating
the large share of construction for these Olympics (see Figure
1 for an overview of the most important construction projects).
Indeed, such a high proportion of capital costs as a share of
total investments was previously only reached by Tokyo for the
Summer Games of 1964 (Liao and Pitts 2006). Even in Beijing,
which spent about USD 40 billion for the Summer Games in 2008
to effect major urban transformations (Smith and Himmelfarb
2007), this ratio was only about 65%. It is these capital costs of
USD 51 billion that have been reported as total costs, ignoring operational
costs, which add more than USD 4 billion to the total.
But are all costs of Table 1 attributable to the Olympics? Organizers
and state officials have maintained that not all expenditures
were occasioned by the event. According to them, the true cost of
the event was USD 7.1 billion (RUB 214 billion), which is meant to include
just the sports-related venues (Channel One 2014; Russia
2 For conversion from rubles (RUB) into
US-Dollars (USD), the average exchange
rate from the date of awarding the
Winter Olympics (July 4, 2007) to their
conclusion (February 23, 2014) is used
for all conversions in this chapter,
except where indicated otherwise, so
as to smooth out exchange rate
fluctuations. This is USD 1 = RUB 30.08.
In all cases, the original ruble values are
also reported, to allow readers to apply
different exchange rates.
Table 1 (previous page): Breakdown of
total budget by type of cost (operational,
sports-related capital, sports-related
supporting infrastructure, non-sportsrelated
capital) [all costs in nominal USD
at average exchange rate of USD 1 = RUB
30.08] * Security costs are a minimum
estimate from 2011; no current data has
been published.
Figure 1: Map of post-Olympic Sochi with key infrastructure and coastal and mountain clusters
Large-scale events 123
150 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Marc Ohrem-Leclef | Olympic Favela
151
Management
and Markets
154 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Complexity and
Uncertainty:
Problem or Asset in
Decision-Making of
Mega Infrastructure
Projects?
Willem Salet/Luca Bertolini/Mendel Giezen
Introduction
The planning of mega infrastructure projects epitomizes the tension
between current planning approaches and planning objects
that are subject to extreme complexity and uncertainty. The inadequacy
of current approaches to the planning of mega infrastructure
projects has been extensively documented in international
literature (for example, Altshuler and Luberoff 2003; Flyvbjerg et
al. 2003; Priemus 2007b; Priemus et al. 2008). However, there is
much less consensus on how to improve on this. The aim of this
chapter is to start to investigate and establish the features of a
planning approach more suited to the complexity and uncertainty
that characterize mega infrastructure projects. We begin by
drawing up a definition of mega infrastructure projects and by
identifying one particular sort of mega-project as the subject of
This chapter builds on empirical research
pursued in the framework of a global
research program on decision-making in
infrastructural mega-projects: the Omega
Centre for the Study of Mega-Projects in
Transport and Development (Bartlett
School of Planning at University College
London). The program is sponsored by
Volvo Research and Educational
Foundations (VREF). It was originally
published as a journal article in the
International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 37.6
© 2012 Urban Research Publications
Limited. Published by Blackwell
Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main St,
Malden, MA 02148, USA
Management and Markets
155
is highly problematic (Kreiner 1995; Söderlund 2013; Engwall 2003). Academics coming
from sociology, public administration, psychology, and anthropology have introduced
perspectives in which mega-projects are perceived as temporal, organizational,
and social arrangements that should be studied in terms of their context,
culture, conceptions, and relevance (Kreiner 1995; Packendorff 1995; Lundin and Söderholm
1995). In these studies, mega-projects are perceived as non-routine — requiring
special authorizing, funding, revenues, land acquisition — and regulatory
actions carried out by two or more levels of government. Furthermore, they are initially
controversial, proceeding slowly and passing different electoral and business
cycles for which public-private cooperation is needed (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003).
Such projects generally require complex construction integration and technology
and resource and material management characterized by a long time frame and
numerous interfaces among multiple contractors and third parties (Greiman 2013).
While contractual arrangements seek to address the many interests at stake,
they do not fully capture the complexity of the multiple fragmented subcultures at
work as mega-projects are politically sensitive and involve a large number of partners,
interest groups, citizens, and other stakeholders (Hodgson and Cicmil 2006,
Bresnen et al. 2005). Therefore, mega-projects cannot be delivered with closed governance
systems; instead, it is necessary to pay explicit attention to the context as
an interpretive framework for the environment(s) of organizational actors in mega-projects
(Eng wall 2003). Context is important as humans manifest an immense
flexibility in their responses to the environmental forces they encounter, enact, and
transform (Geertz 1973). It concerns specific aspects and circumstances such as history,
ideology, fields of action, and technical infrastructures, within which cultural
patterns are developed and reproduced, that is, which drive or legitimize an assignation
of meaning (Van Marrewijk et al. 2008).
Old versus New Urban Mega-Projects
Leher and Laidley (2008a) make a distinction between so-called old and new urban
mega-projects in urban development. In the “great mega-project era” of the nineteen-fifties
and nineteen-sixties (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003, p. 8), urban megaprojects
were monolithic constructions, such as the Big Dig in Boston (Greiman
2013). This old generation of urban mega-projects has received strong criticism
(Merrow et al. 1988) for paying little attention to citizen participation and for exceeding
planned costs, falling behind schedule, and failing to deliver in the terms
used (Flyvbjerg et al. 2003).
Since their post-World War Two beginnings new urban mega-projects have
evolved (Fainstein 2008). These new urban mega-projects take the form of vast
complexes characterized by a mix of uses, a variety of financing techniques, and a
combination of public- and private-sector initiators (Lehrer and Laidley 2008).
The construction of new transportation infrastructures or the extension of existing
ones are examples of new mega-projects (Diaz Orueta and Fainstein 2008).
180 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
These urban mega-projects involve transforming urban space — its built form
and its specific land use(s) — with the intention of changing social practices in
these urban landscapes (Van Marrewijk and Yanow 2010; Lehrer and Laidley 2008;
Del Cerro Santamaría 2013).
Importantly, new urban mega-projects are often undertaken by state actors
operating in collaboration with private interests in the pursuit of developing city
regions within a competitive global system (Lehrer and Laidley 2008; Del Cerro
Santamaría 2013). A distinction has to be made between US and European cities,
as US city development is more driven by for-profit investments, while European
city development is driven by public money (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003). A study
of thirteen large-scale urban development projects in twelve European Union
countries showed that urban mega-projects are almost all state led and often
state financed (Moulaert et al. 2003). Contractually, however, these mega-projects
are often defined in terms of public-private partnerships, in which there is structural
cooperation between public and private parties to deliver an agreed outcome
(Van Marrewijk et al. 2008). While these contractual arrangements seek to
address the many interests at stake in complex mega-projects, they do not fully
capture the complexity of the multiple, fragmented subcultures at work in a project’s
culture (Van Marrewijk et al. 2008).
Participation of Citizens in Urban Mega-Projects
Protests and resistance have forced project implementers to change implementation
processes. In Europe, mega-project implementers have learned to expect and
respect citizen opposition and to increasingly adapt their interventions and decisionmaking
processes to preempt or defuse claims against their proposals (Dewey and
Davis 2013; Diaz Orueta and Fainstein 2008). Planners and politicians now adopt an
“everyone gains” rhetoric of both economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability
and the paradigm of “do no harm,” which represents the idea that mega-projects
should only proceed if their negative side effects are negligible or significantly
mitigated (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003; Lehrer and Laidley 2008).
Increasingly, participation in urban mega-projects is organized by new forms of
real-time monitoring and of distributed participation in planning and decisionmaking;
utilizing diffusion of information and communication technology also
plays a role (Whyte 2003). Although interactive and communicative methods have
been introduced in the planning practice (Healey 2010), less attention has been
paid to their role in the execution practices. Differing patterns or rhythms of visual
practice are important in the evolution of knowledge and in structuring social relations
for ideal communication. Hence, to improve their performance, practitioners
should not only consider the types of media they use, but also reflect on the pace
and style of their interactions (Whyte et al. 2007).
In the organizing of urban mega-projects, issues of power, politics and conflicting
interests are prevalent (Clegg and Kreiner 2013). Given the interdependency
Management and Markets
181
The Economist (March 21, 2009) to call Dongtan the “City of Dreams.”
In contrast, the Masdar project designed by Foster and Partners, a
leading architectural practice, has moved from planning to construction
and initial operation.
This chapter describes Arup’s efforts to develop an ecologically
and economically sustainable design for Dongtan. Regarded
as an experiment to create a carbon-neutral city from scratch
and a prototype for the future of all cities in China, the Dongtan
project aimed to deliver long-term ecological sustainability,
economic vitality, and prosperity. Dongan is situated just north
of Shanghai in sensitive wetlands on Chongming Island at the
mouth of the Yangtze River. Its first phase of development, a marina
village of 20,000 inhabitants, should have been completed
in time for the 2010 World EXPO in Shanghai. Under the original
plan, 80,000 people would inhabit the city’s environmentally
sustainable neighborhoods by 2020 and 500,000 by 2050. The
planned city covered 630 hectares, about the size of New York’s
Manhattan Island, included a transportation bridge, tunnel,
and port to accommodate fast ferries from the mainland and
Figure 1: Compact City: Arup’s Vision of
Dongtan (Source: Arup)
202 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
the new Shanghai airport, a leisure facility, an education complex, space for
high-tech industry, and housing (see Figure 1). Two major ecological goals of the
project were to generate zero carbon emissions and cut average energy demands
by two thirds by creating a unique city layout, energy infrastructure, and building
design.
The Dongtan project was taking place in a unique context [see Box 1: The Dongtan
Project Context]. China was undergoing the most rapid urbanization experienced
in history. In 2009, McKinsey Global Institute forecasted that by 2025 an additional
350 million people would become urban residents in China, and the country
recognized that a new form of urbanization that ensured smart and environmentally
sustainable growth would be crucial in the coming years. According to one
study, in 2009 there were thirty sustainable urbanization projects at various stages
of development throughout China (Joss 2010). As Peter Head, Arup’s former Director
of the Planning and Integrated Urbanism group, emphasized in an interview,
“China is moving in the direction of eco-cities because it sees this as a route to create
a sustainable economic future” (Brenhouse 2010).
Designing the world’s first eco-city involved an intense process of exploratory
learning to discover how to achieve a client’s ecological, social, and economic
sustainability targets. Arup created a large multidisciplinary, geographically
dispersed, collaborative project team to develop the radically new urban design,
integrate new or proven technologies, and address diverse user requirements
from residents, businesses, and government bodies. The master plan for the
Dongtan project, developed between 2005 and 2009, was a launch pad for Arup
to develop design and project capabilities that would be required if they were
to move quickly into the emerging eco-city market in their overall striving toward
world leadership in sustainable urban planning. Initiated in 2005, the
Dongtan project involved a combination of public transportation, waste recycling,
and renewable energy. While the Dongtan project was underway, Arup
used the knowledge gained to develop a portfolio of integrated eco-city design
solutions, ranging from new sustainable urban development to mixed-use urban
interventions in existing city developments. Participating in Dongtan and
the early eco-city projects in China provided Arup with an opportunity to experiment
with new technological combinations, gain a leading position in sustainability,
and actively shape the emerging global market for sustainable urban
planning.
This chapter focuses on how Arup addressed the challenges of establishing the
Dongtan project and developed the resources and capabilities to develop a radically
new design and planning approach. Despite the delay, Arup was able to use the
lessons learned on the Dongtan project to build an eco-city design business. We
describe how Arup’s efforts to win new projects for eco-city clients around the
world were underpinned by institutional efforts to gain legitimacy as the market
leader by actively defining and shaping the new market.
Management and Markets
203
Authors
Luca Bertolini is a Professor of urban and regional planning at
the University of Amsterdam. His research and teaching
focus on the integration of transport and land-use planning,
on methods for supporting option-generation in the
planning process, on concepts for coping with uncertainty
in planning, and on ways of enhancing the interaction
of theory and practice. Main publication topics include
planning for sustainable accessibility in urban regions,
conceptualizing urbanism in a network society, and applying
evolutionary theories to planning.
Andrew Davies is a Professor in the management of projects in
the School of Construction and Project Management, the
Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College
London. Previously he held positions at the Science Policy
Research Unit (SPRU) within the University of Sussex at the
University of Amsterdam, and Imperial College Business
School. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Business
School, Oslo and a Visiting Professor at LUISS Business
School, Rome. Currently, he is conducting research on how
complex and high-risk mega-projects are organized and
managed, and on how capabilities are created and applied
to generate innovation and flexibility in mega-projects.
Constanze Engelbrecht is a researcher in urban and regional
economic studies at HafenCity University Hamburg
(HCU). Previously, she worked as a concept developer
at the School for Digital Transformation in Hamburg,
managed an EU-funded project on innovative policies for
urban regeneration, and was a Research Assistant at the
Institute of Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical
University of Berlin. Her current research is concerned
with new forms of knowledge production and addresses
open knowledge ecologies and collaborative knowledge
production in virtual communities.
Lars Frederiksen is a Professor (mso) in the department of
business administration at Aarhus University, Denmark
where he leads the Innovation Management Group. He
was awarded his PhD from Copenhagen Business School,
Denmark and then worked for more than four years at
the Imperial College Business School, London. Frederiksen
specializes in the management of innovation and technology
with particular emphasis on innovation strategies,
knowledge creation and search, user innovation in communities,
and innovation in project-based organizations.
More recently, Frederiksen has ventured into studying the
mobility of entrepreneurs and the growth and survival of
new venture teams. Empirically, Frederiksen focuses on
industries such as software, roads and water, engineering
consulting, and entertainment (music and film).
Mendel Giezen is an Assistant Professor in urban environmental
governance at Utrecht University. Within this field, he
currently is involved in projects on adaptive decision-making
and the planning of spatial interventions, the up-scaling of a
low-carbon urban development, and international municipal
climate networks. He also works on smart city governance,
looking at how new technologies can be applied for urban
environmental governance, and on the implementation in
the Dutch Caribbean municipalities of a decision-support
system for the management of invasive species.
Gernot Grabher directs the research unit urban and regional
economic studies at the HafenCity University Hamburg
(HCU). Previously he held positions at the University of
Bonn, King’s College London, and the WZB Social Science
Center Berlin. Currently, he is conducting research that explores
how social networking sites reshape socializing and
innovation, how the sharing economy transforms urban
life, and how cities can learn from rare events.
Oliver Ibert is the head of the research unit on dynamics of
economic spaces at the Leibniz Institute of Regional
Development and Structural Planning (IRS) Erkner; he is also
a Professor of economic geography at the Freie Universität
Berlin. He held previous positions at the Universities of Bonn
and Oldenburg. His current research interests encompass
different forms and practices of organizing creative processes,
the geography of user-led innovation, and time-spatial
dynamics of innovation processes in different sectors of the
economy and in urban and regional planning.
222 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Martin Müller is the Swiss National Science Foundation Professor
in the department of geography at the University
of Zurich and a Senior Research Fellow at the University
of Birmingham. His research focuses on the planning and
impacts of mega-events and on natural disturbances, such
as insect infestations, in protected areas. He has just completed
a major project on the Sochi 2014 Winter Games
and is now looking at the World Cup 2018 in Russia.
Joachim Thiel is a Senior Lecturer and postdoctoral researcher
in urban and regional economic studies at the HafenCity
University of Hamburg. His main research interests include
large-scale projects in urban development, particularly with
regard to learning processes, as well as geographies of labor
markets in creative industries. Prior to his current job, Thiel
worked as head of the strategic development unit in the
presidential office of HCU for four years.
Deike Peters teaches environmental planning and practice at
the Soka University of America. Immediately before that,
she taught comparative urbanization at USC’s Price School
of Policy and directed the DFG Emmy Noether Group on
Urban Megaprojects at the Technical University Berlin.
Educated as an urban planner in Dortmund, Hamburg, and
New York City, Peters’s recent core research focus has been
on the complex decision-making around large transport
infrastructures, particularly rail stations.
Willem Salet is a Professor of urban and regional planning at
the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of
Amsterdam. From 1998–2003, he was the scientific director
of the Amsterdam Research Institute of the Metropolitan
Environment. Salet has chaired the program group in urban
planning since 1998. He has held various functions in the
Association of European Schools of Planning and was
the President of AESOP from 2011–2013. Salet specializes
in urban studies, institutional planning theory, urban
governance, and cultural and legal institutions. He has
coordinated many studies in national and internationally
comparative research.
Walter Siebel is an Emeritus Professor of sociology at the
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. His research
focuses on urban and regional studies, particularly on the
sociology of housing, social integration, and the culture
of cities. Siebel is author, co-author, and editor of numerous
publications related to these research areas. Together
with Hartmut Häußermann, for example, he edited the
volume Festivalisierung der Stadtpolitik (Festivalization
of Urban Policies) and contributed to the book with a
programmatic chapter.
Leonore van den Ende is a PhD student of organizational
anthropology in the department of organization sciences
of the VU University Amsterdam. Her PhD research
focuses on the practice and meaning of transition rituals
in the context of complex infrastructure (mega-)projects.
She has published in the International Journal of Project
Management.
Alfons van Marrewijk is a Professor in business anthropology
in the department of organization sciences at the VU
University Amsterdam. His academic work focuses on the
everyday life of complex mega-projects. He is the editor of
Inside Mega-Projects: Understanding Cultural Practices in
Project Management (CBS Press, forthcoming) and co-editor
of the International Journal of Business Anthropology.
Van Marrewijk has published extensively in international
journals including the Scandinavian Journal of Management,
International Journal of Project Management, and Culture
and Organization. He currently runs a research program that
aims to provide in-depth understanding of mega-projects.
Yijiang Wu is a Research Associate in business model innovation
in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group, Imperial
College Business School. He also holds management and
consultancy positions in several private businesses. Wu has
a hybrid academic background at the intersection of
engineering, business, and innovation. Previously his
research focused on how professional service firms develop
capabilities and institutionalize new practices in emerging
markets. Currently he is conducting research on business
model innovation in the context of ICT innovation, fostering
smart city initiatives across health, transportation, and built
environment sectors in the UK.
Contributors
223
Photographers
Andrea Bosio is an Italian architect and professional freelance photographer
specializing in buildings and urban landscapes reportage. He has gained
experience in diverse fields through commissioned work (for architects and
magazines) as well as through personal projects on urban research. His work has
been published in several international magazines, including, among others, AA,
Area, Domus, Arca, Wallpaper,* and Vice Magazine, and also featured in various
locations, such as Paris, Grenoble, Berlin, Barcelona, and Milan. He recently took
part in the Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with the Space Caviar group.
Jamie McGregor Smith is a contemporary documentary photographer based in
London. His work explores themes of social and industrial change, often
exploring the detritus of industry left behind by the social and political impact
of shifting modern economies. Among others, his personal projects have
recorded the remains of the once global Stoke-on-Trent potteries industry, the
site of human exodus and industrially defunct city of Detroit, and man-altered
landscapes in “Ironopolis,” which explores what remains of the once industrial
powerhouse of Middlesborough, England. McGregor Smith’s professional
commissions see him documenting architecture, design, and development for
global publications and agencies.
Marc Ohrem-Leclef was born in Dusseldorf, Germany. After studying Communication
Design at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences in Germany he
relocated to New York City in 1998, founding a commercial photography
business. Concurrently, Ohrem-Leclef has created immersive photographic
portraits of communities—whether they are formed by bloodlines, social
circumstance, or cultural movements. Ohrem-Leclef’s work has been exhibited
in Germany and the US and featured in numerous international publications,
among them AMERICAN PHOTO Magazine, DER SPIEGEL, Vogue, Die Zeit. Most
recently OLYMPIC FAVELA (2014), a hard-cover book of photographs from his
current project was published by Damiani, including a text by Luis Pérez-
Oramas (MoMA, New York), reviewed by ARTnews, Slate, BBC.
224 Perspectives in Metropolitan Research
Change language