ancient cities

910 Urban Policy
creation of gated communities of one sort or
another.
If the origins of contemporary urban policy are
to be found in the trials and tribulations of welfare
states and the urban spaces of the global
North, then its present state is much more globally
framed. This is reflected in what has come to
be called the new conventional wisdom. According
to this increasingly dominant policy understanding,
the driving force of individual and collective
welfare for those living in urban areas is to be found
in the competitive success of the cities. Such success
relies on the existence of good governance and an
inclusive social and economic environment. In policy,
this is translated into a clear set of understandings
(expressed, e.g., in the publications of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development), which make it clear to the cities of
the global North that unless they improve their
competitiveness, they will be overtaken by the
megacities of the global South, particularly those
of India and China. Meanwhile in the global
South, the World Bank and related institutions
emphasize the need to draw on the entrepreneurial
skills of slum residents.
In its contemporary formulation, urban policy
highlights the way in which economic and social
policy have become entangled so that they are considered
mutually dependent.
The Urban in Urban Policy
The changing form of urban policy confirms the
increasing centrality of space and place to the
postwelfare world. Even if urban (social) initiatives
continue to attract significant state funding, a focus
on urban competitiveness redefines traditional services
(such as education), which become aspects of
the competitive process (e.g., by delivering the right
sort of skilled workers), and also points to a particular
way of understanding the urban.
Urban policy’s origins lie in a fundamental
understanding of the urban as a problem, whether
as a site of racial conflict, inner-city decline, slums,
industrial pollution, deindustrialization, crime, disorder,
and threat, or as a symbol of alienation and
lack of neighborliness. Some of these factors continue
to resonate today. For example, in the United
States an appeal to the urban agenda is often an
attempt to return to policies focused on the needs of
the urban disadvantaged rather than the priorities
of the suburbs. But the emphasis of urban policy in
practice has shifted. In this context, cities are seen as
cultural centers defined through iconic architecture
and are expected to be centers of the creative and
knowledge industries and the “drivers” of competitiveness.
Instead of pulling down the slums and
replacing them with modernist projects, it is slum
upgrading that attracts attention.
Throughout the history of urban policy, the
“urban” has been regularly interpreted and reinterpreted.
Cities have been imagined and experienced
as threatening dystopias in which the threat of
crime, the end of community, the experience of
division, and the symptoms of industrial decline
come together in increasingly unpleasant ways.
Those visions have been reflected and reinforced in
urban policy. At the same time, cities have been
seen in utopian terms, bringing together culture,
interaction, and new forms of community, creativity,
and investment to generate a new world of
competitive success. Those visions, too, have been
reflected and reinforced in urban policy. The ability
to call on different ways of imagining the city has
enabled urban policy to adapt to the ever-changing
political, economic, and social qualities of cities.
Allan Cochrane
See also City Planning; Governance; Local Government;
Metropolitan Governance; Urban Planning
Further Readings
Cochrane, A. 2007. Understanding Urban Policy: A
Critical Approach. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Euchner, C. and S. McGovern. 2003. Urban Policy
Reconsidered. Dialogues on the Problems and
Prospects of American Cities. New York: Routledge.
Geyer, H. S., ed. 2008. International Handbook of Urban
Policy: Contentious Global Issues. Northampton,
MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Savitch, H. and P. Kantor. 2002. Cities in the
International Marketplace. The Political Economy
of Urban Development in North America and
Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
UN-HABITAT. 2006. The State of the World’s Cities
Report 2006/7. The Millennium Development Goals
and Urban Sustainability: 30 Years of Shaping the
Habitat Agenda. London: Earthscan.