City-Regionalism as a Contingent 'Geopolitics of Capitalism

Bibliographic Data

ID3948725
AuthorsAndrew E G Jonas (0000-0003-2402-4130, University of Hull, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume18
Issue2
Pages284-298
Publication date2013-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2012.723290
OpenAlexW2001978297
LanguageEN
Citations received61

This paper argues that it is intellectually unsustainable to separate the new economic geography of city-regionalism from its geopolitical context. The neo-liberal competition state is centrally implicated in how the city-region scale is politically orchestrated so as to bolster international competitiveness. Yet the diversity of national and sub-national forms of city-regionalism cannot be attributed to economic development considerations separately from ongoing struggles around the collective provision of social and physical infrastructure. Drawing upon selected examples from the United States, the paper demonstrates how city-regionalism expresses the contingent geopolitics of capitalism. Its overall aim is to advance theoretical knowledge both of the internal political geography of the competition state and of its external territorial relations. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Sami Moisio and Anssi Paasi for inviting this contribution and to participants at the workshop on 'Changing Geopolitics of State Spaces' at the University of Oulu in September, 2011, for comments on an earlier version. The reviewers' comments were helpful in prompting some further revisions. Notes 1. See, for example: J. Harrison, 'From Competitive Regions to Competitive City-Regions: A New Orthodoxy, But Some Old Mistakes', Journal of Economic Geography 7 (2007) pp. 311–332; T. Herrschel and P. Newman, Governance of Europe's City Regions: Planning, Policy and Politics (London: Routledge 2002); A. E. G. Jonas and K. Ward, 'Introduction to a Debate on City-Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (2007) pp. 169–178; A. J. Scott, 'Globalization and the Rise of City-Regions', European Planning Studies 9 (2001) pp. 813–824; 2. A. J. Scott (ed.), Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001) especially the 'Introduction'. 3. J. Robinson, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (London: Routledge 2006). 4. K. Ward and A. E. G. Jonas, 'Competitive City-Regionalism as a Politics of Space: A Critical Reinterpretation of the New Regionalism', Environment and Planning A 36 (2004) pp. 2112–2139. 5. On the rise of the competition state, see B. Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Blackwell 2002); and C. Hay, 'Re-Stating Politics, Re-Politicising the State: Neoliberalism, Economic Imperatives and the Rise of the Competition State', The Political Quarterly 75 (2004) pp. 38–50. For a discussion of the role of infrastructure in the competition state, see P. G. Cerny, 'Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization', Government and Opposition 32 (2007) pp. 251–274. 6. For recent examples, see J. Harrison, 'Networks of Connectivity, Territorial Fragmentation, Uneven Development: The New Politics of City-Regionalism', Political Geography 29 (2010) pp. 17–27; P. McGuirk, 'The Political Construction of the City-Region: Notes from Sydney', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (2007) pp. 179–187; S. Moisio, 'Beyond the Domestic-International Divide: State Spatial Transformation as Neo-liberal Geopolitics', in P. Aalto, V. Harle and S. Moisio (eds.), International Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) pp. 149–177. 7. J. Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House 1984). 8. R. Florida, Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life (New York: Basic Books 2008). 9. S. Elden, Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2009). 10. D. W. Harvey, 'The Geopolitics of Capitalism', in D. Gregory and J. Urry (eds.), Social Relations and Spatial Structures (London: MacMillan 1984) pp. 128–163. 11. H. Lefebvre, H. 'Reflections on the Politics of Space', in N. Brenner and S. Elden (eds.), State, Space, World: Selected Essays, Henri Lefebvre (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1970/2009) pp. 167–184. 12. P. Saunders, Social Theory and the Urban Question (London: Hutchison 1981). 13. See K. R. Cox and A. E. G. Jonas, Urban development, Collective Consumption, and the Politics of Metropolitan Fragmentation. Political Geography 12 (1993) pp. 8–37. 14. J. Allen and A. Cochrane, 'Beyond the Territorial Fix: Regional Assemblages, Politics and Power', Regional Studies 41 (2007) pp. 1161–1175. 15. See, for example, N. Brenner, 'Decoding the 'Newest Metropolitan Regionalism', in the US: A Critical Overview', Cities 19 (2002) pp. 3–21; N. Brenner, New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (New York: Oxford University Press 2004). 16. See, for example, D. Cowan and N. Smith, 'After Geopolitics? From the Geopolitical Social to Geoeconomics', Antipode 41 (2009) pp. 22–48. 17. On this point, see A. E. G. Jonas, 'Region and Place: Regionalism in Question', Progress in Human Geography 36 (2012) pp. 263–272. 18. See Harvey (note 10). 19. D. Ancien, 'Global City Theory and the New Urban Politics Twenty Years on: The Case for a Geohistorical Approach to the (New) Urban Politics of Global Cities', Urban Studies 48/12 (2011) p. 2482. 20. K. Morgan, 'The Polycentric State: New Spaces of Empowerment and Engagement?', Regional Studies 41 (2007) pp. 1237–1252. 21. On the strategic spatial selectivity of the state, see M. R. Jones, 'Spatial Selectivity of the State? The Regulationist Enigma and Local Struggles Over Economic Governance', Environment and Planning A 29 (1997) pp. 831–864. 22. J. Harrison, 'Stating the Production of Scales: Centrally Orchestrated Regionalism and Regionally Orchestrated Centralism', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (2007) pp. 922–941. 23. See McGuirk (note 6). 24. See , accessed July 2012. 25. Moisio, 'Beyond the Domestic-International Divide' (note 6) p. 171. 26. S. Moisio, 'Towards Attractive and Cost Efficient State Space: The Political Geography of State Transformation in Finland', World Political Science Review 4/3 (2008) Article 2, available at . 27. See H. Leitner, C. Pavlik, and E. Sheppard, 'Networks, Governance, and the Politics of Scale: Inter-Urban Networks and the European Union', in A. Herod and M. W. Wright (eds.), Geographies of Power: Placing Scale (Malden, MA: Blackwell 2002) pp. 274–303. 28. According to Nicos Poulantzas, the internationalisation of capital is more likely to lead to the internal fragmentation of state territory than to the 'internationalization of the state'. See N. Poulantzas, 'The Internationalization of Capitalist Relations and the Nation-State', in J. Martin (ed.), The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law and the State (London and New York: Verso 1973/2008) pp. 220–257. City-regionalism could in theory underpin either of these state territorial tendencies. 29. Cox and Jonas (note 13). 30. Mainstream economists have theorised infrastructure as a public good collectively delivered in part or in whole across cities and regions by the state or local branches thereof but in doing so overlook the wider capitalist geopolitical context. See, for instance, C. Tiebout, 'A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures', Journal of Political Economy 64 (1955) pp. 416–424. However, to regard any recent growth in state infrastructural expenditures as evidence of neo-Keynesian thrust in state activity would be just as problematic especially given the ongoing variety of locally mixed public and private delivery modes. From a state-theoretical perspective, infrastructure resides somewhere in between the Keynesian state and the competition state as seen in their purest or most abstract forms. 31. See, for example, S. Graham and S. Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (London: Routledge 2001); M. Hodson and S. Marvin, ''Urban Ecological Security': A New Urban Paradigm?', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33 (2009) pp. 193–215. 32. See Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Infrastructure to 2030. Volume 2: Mapping Policy for Electricity, Water and Transport (Paris: OECD 2007) p. 13, available at , and for trends in capital investment in infrastructure as a percentage of total state expenditures since 1990, see Figure 1.1, p. 24. 33. N. R. Pierce, Citistates: How Urban American Can Prosper in a Competitive World (Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press 1993); M. Pastor, P. Dreier, J. E. Grigsby III, and M. Lopez-Garza, Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Prosper in a Competitive World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2000). 34. For a state-centred analysis of the new regionalism in California, see A. E. G. Jonas and S. Pincetl, 'Rescaling Regions in the State: the New Regionalism in California', Political Geography 25/5 (2006) pp. 482–505. 35. I use 'State' to distinguish this sub-national level of government in the US from the national (Federal) 'state'. 36. R. Florida and A. Jonas, 'US Urban Policy: The Postwar State and Capitalist Regulation', Antipode 23 (1991) pp. 349–384. 37. The Denver example is based on unpublished research conducted with Andrew Goetz and Sutapa Bhattarcharjee at the University of Denver. The Boston city-region case study draws on A. E. G. Jonas, A. While, and D. Gibbs, 'Managing Infrastructural and Service Demands in New Economic Spaces: The New Territorial Politics of Collective Provision', Regional Studies 44 (2010) pp. 183–200. For further details of the Greater Los Angeles example, see A. E. G. Jonas, S. Pincetl, and J. Sullivan, 'Endangered Neoliberal Suburbanism? The Use of the Federal Endangered Species Act as a Growth Management Tool in Southern California', forthcoming in Urban Studies. 38. Ward and Jonas (note 4). 39. See, for instance, S. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press: Princeton 2006); Cerny (note 5)

Capitalism · Democracy · Economic geography · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Geopolitics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Cross-Border Cooperation and Integration · European Union Policy and Governance · Global Urban Networks and Dynamics · Law

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