Infrastructure, City-Region Development, and Africa's Territorial Spaces

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Innocent Chirisa ◽  
Gift Mhlanga ◽  
Abraham Rajab Matamanda
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
National Level ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
City Region ◽  
Good Case ◽  
City Regions ◽  
Management And Development ◽  
Development And Management ◽  
The City ◽  
Broad Understanding

The chapter seeks to investigate, explore, and document the management and development of infrastructure in city-regions within the context of Africa. The specific objectives guiding the chapter are to explore the significance of the city-region concept in Africa, to examine the state of and approaches to infrastructure development in selected city-regions in Africa, to assess the approaches that have been used to facilitate the success of the such city-regions as the Gauteng in South Africa with regards infrastructure development and management, and to draw the lessons and positive implications for planned infrastructure development in city-regions in Africa. Hence, the Gauteng City Region provides a good case because the city-region is of utmost significance to the local, regional and national level. Specifically, data were gathered through a desktop approach wherein various plans and city visions will be critically analyzed to have a broad understanding of the issues on the ground.

City-region governance in transitional contexts: the case of the BRICS

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Philip Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Extended Period ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
City Region ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Abstract The bulk of the scholarly literature on city-regions and their governance is drawn from contexts where economic and political systems have been stable over an extended period. However, many parts of the world, including all countries in the BRICS, have experienced far-reaching national transformations in the recent past in economic and/or political systems. The national transitions are complex, with a mix of continuity and rupture, while their translation into the scale of the city-region is often indirect. But, these transitions have been significant for the city-region, providing a period of opportunity and institutional fluidity. Studies of the BRICS show that outcomes of transitions are varied but that there are junctures of productive comparison including the ways in which the nature of the transitions create new path dependencies, and way in which interests across territorial scales soon consolidate, producing new rigidities in city-region governance.

City regions and the cities within them: Connecting two overlapping scales

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-98
Author(s):  
John Sturzaker ◽  
Alexander Nurse
Keyword(s):  
City Region ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The City ◽  
Collective Goals ◽  
Regional Agenda

This chapter charts the demise of the regional agenda and the shift towards city-regional thinking which has underpinned much of the recent devolution agenda. Considering the similarities to the metropolitan architecture of the 70s and 80s, this discusses the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships through to Combined Authorities. This sets the scene for a broader discussion of the Devolution Deals being agreed at the city region level. In doing so, the chapter takes a broader look at how city regions function and, in particular, how districts can cooperate towards collective goals. This draws down recent examples from the emerging devolution deals, including how new metro-mayors are exercising their powers within their city regions, as well as lessons that can be learnt from the now nearly 20-year-old London Mayoral post.

The new political economy of city-regionalism: renewed steps in Glasgow

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
David Waite
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Local Control ◽  
City Region ◽  
Targeted Interventions ◽  
Dominant Theme ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City

The resurgence of city-regionalism has been a dominant theme in sub-national policymaking over the last decade. Underpinned by narratives of growth engines waiting to be unlocked through greater local control coupled with targeted interventions, city-regions are now a privileged spatial arena in the UK for seeking economic development agreements with higher orders of government. This chapter brings into focus Glasgow’s experience of city-regionalism and notably the re-emphasis brought about by the City Deal. In doing this, multiple political tensions hinging on a series of local, national and UK-wide relationships are sketched out. The chapter - in referencing the wider city-region literature and taking cognisance of the local post-industrial trajectory - poses a series of considerations concerning how and in what form city-regionalism may evolve in Glasgow.

scholarly journals State-rescaling and re-designing the material city-region: Tensions of disruption and continuity in articulating the future of Greater Manchester

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Hodson ◽  
Andrew McMeekin ◽  
Julie Froud ◽  
Michael Moran
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
City Region ◽  
National Space ◽  
Future Design ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The City

In a context of globalisation, the emergence of city-regions and the politics and dynamics of their constitution has been debated for almost two decades. Recent writings have extended this focus to seeing city-regions as a geopolitical project of late capitalism where the state takes a critical role in the re-design of city-regions to make them amenable to international competition and to secure strategic inward investments in the built environment and infrastructure. We explore this issue in the context of state redesign of sub-national space in England and focus on Greater Manchester, as the de facto exemplar of ‘devolution’ to English city-regions. We argue that though re-scaling in Greater Manchester is a long-term historical process this has been punctuated by the UK state’s process of ‘devolution’ since 2014, this has involved a re-design and formalisation of Greater Manchester’s governing arrangements. It has also involved invoking a long dormant role for city-regional planning in articulating the future design of the material city-region over the next two decades as an attempt to formalise and continue a pre-existing, spatially selective growth trajectory by new means. Yet, the disruption of new hard governing arrangements also provides challenges to that trajectory. This produces tensions between, on the one hand, the pursuit of a continuity politics of growth through agglomeration, material transformation of the city-region and narrow forms of urban governance and, on the other hand, a more disruptive politics of the future of the city-region, its material transformation and how it is governed. These tensions are producing new political possibilities and spaces in the transformation of Greater Manchester. The implications of this are discussed.

scholarly journals Growth, exclusion and vulnerability: evaluation of the socio-spatial transformation of post-apartheid Pretoria-Tshwane (South Africa)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Horn
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
Spatial Integration ◽  
City Region ◽  
African City ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The City

Apartheid left South African city regions with two major challenges: social integration at a city level and spatial integration at a regional level. The task to finds solutions to these problems was left to municipalities, the lowest level of the three trier government system introduced after 1994. This article critically evaluates the success of the post-apartheid municipal government of Pretoria-Tshwane to address the said challenges in the reorganization of the city region over a 25-year period. The paper starts with a reconstruction of the apartheid city to display its socio-spatial contrasts and to define the challenge of integration and compaction. The investigation is based on literature, census information and observation. The main finding is that the progress made with the integration of the city at both scales is being neutralized by demographic trends, choice of association, urban sprawl, uncertain management, the scale of aspirations, unrealistic expectations and, most of all, municipal incapacity. The failure of the local government of Pretoria-Tshwane to achieve the said goals points to the inefficiency of the current approach that obligates municipalities with the complete task to rectify the dichotomies of the apartheid city system within their regions.  It is advocated that additional governmental entities be implemented to support local governments with the planning and re-development of post-apartheid city-regions.

scholarly journals Da metrópole à cidade-região: na direção de um novo arranjo espacial metropolitano?

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Nunes Coelho Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Global Scale ◽  
Spatial Process ◽  
City Region ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Time Compression ◽  
Planning Framework ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Este artigo tem como objetivo abordar a configuração da cidade-região – enquanto um ente geográfico em processo de fortalecimento – e os processos socioespaciais diversos que a compõem. A cidade-região é entendida como a área metropolitana mais concisa somada de seu entorno imediato, incluindo uma série de centralidades de pequeno e médio porte no alcance dos processos de metropolização. A urbanização extensiva é um processo socioespacial chave por trás da formação da cidade-região, que também se relaciona à compressão espaço-temporal presente de forma heterogênea nestas regiões urbanizadas. Privilegia-se uma perspectiva teórica acerca do tema, propondo uma morfologia da cidade-região, visando esclarecer sua relação com os processos econômico-espaciais contemporâneos (sobretudo no que diz respeito à restruturação produtiva). Dois elementos territoriais principais compõem esta extensão do tecido urbano para além das áreas metropolitanas: a exopolis e a cidade industrial pós-fordista. O regionalismo competitivo se manifesta neste contexto como uma prática hegemônica de planejamento, tanto na escala regional quanto na escala das diversas localidades inseridas neste processo.Palavras-chave: cidade-região; pós-fordismo; expansão metropolitana; urbanização extensiva; condições gerais de produção Abstract: This article summarizes a theoretical discussion on the formation of the city-region (as a privileged spatial scale) and the social spatial processes behind it. The city-region is here understood as the more concise metropolitan area added to its immediate hinterland, included as an outer ring in the reach of contemporary metropolization processes. The concept of extended urbanization is a key social spatial process behind the formation of city-regions, which also relates to the space-time compression which manifests itself heterogeneously across these urbanized regions. Two major territorial elements are at the forefront of the production of space in these areas: the exopolis and the post-fordist industrial city – and both these elements need a certain level of physical proximity to the metropolitan core. This new spatial fix inserts itself in the contemporary race towards territorial entrepreneurialism, in two major trends: a competitive regionalism, which involves city-regions competing with one another in the global scale; and with places inside these areas also inserting themselves in the strategic planning framework. Keywords: city-region; post-fordism; metropolitan expansion; extended urbanization; general conditions of production.

scholarly journals Priority sectors in city regions? Some issues from a study of the Cardiff Capital Region

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 576-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Crawley ◽  
Max Munday
Keyword(s):  
City Region ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Capital Region ◽  
Functional Regions ◽  
Economic Development Policy ◽  
Special Support ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The City ◽  
Selection Of

The City Region is becoming the spatial focus for economic development policy across many parts of the European continent. But these functional regions have taken on a new impetus in the UK with the introduction of ‘city deals’ aimed at improving network and coordination of actors in local authorities. One of the goals of city regions is to improve industrial policy particularly lacking since the abolition of many of the Regional Development Agencies across the UK. However, city regions in developing policy appear to be following in an unquestioning manner the industrial priorities of earlier institutions, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of the identification of priority industry development sectors. Too often the selection of industries and clusters for special support has been undertaken in an unquestioning manner. In this paper we focus on the case of the Cardiff Capital Region. We review approaches to identify priority sectors in this case and the problems associated with this policy approach.

Spatial inequality in the city-regions in the Yangtze River Valley, China

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 672-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huan Li ◽  
Yehua Dennis Wei ◽  
Elfie Swerts
Keyword(s):  
Yangtze River ◽  
Yangtze River Valley ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Spatial Inequality ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
City Region ◽  
Spatial Form ◽  
State Sector ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The City

The city-region has emerged as an important scale of state spatial strategy in China to promote equitable and sustainable development. This study investigates the spatial inequality of city-regions in the Yangtze River Valley (YRV) in terms of population, land, GDP and productivity, and examines changing patterns and factors of GDP per capita. We find that the spatial form of the YRV is typical of city-regions in China, where population density and productivity around mega-cities are much higher and decline from the low to the middle and upper reaches of the YRV. We also find that inequality across city-regions is high, and that most inequality is due to differences within city-regions. We find that the YRV is driven by capital-intensive and labour-intensive growth, with an emerging significance of productivity. Our analysis reveals the significance of institutional factors, including the processes of marketisation, globalisation, decentralisation and urbanisation in regional development. Moreover, the importance of the non-state sector in economic growth has been increasing, while the role of globalisation has been declining.

scholarly journals Rescaling employment support accountability: From negative national neoliberalism to positively integrated city-region ecosystems

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Whitworth ◽  
Eleanor Carter
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
City Region ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Support Programme ◽  
Integrated Employment ◽  
City Regions ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Employment Support ◽  
First Time

Waves of successive Devolution Deals are transforming England’s landscape of spatial governance and transferring new powers to city-regions, facilitating fundamental qualitative policy reconfigurations and opening up new opportunities as well as new risks for citizens and local areas. Focused on city-region’s recently emerging roles around employment support policies the article advances in four ways what are currently conceptually and geographically underdeveloped literatures on employment support accountability levers. Firstly, the paper dissects weaknesses in the accountability framework of Great Britain’s key national contracted-out employment support programme and identifies the potential for city-regions to respond to these weaknesses. Secondly, the article highlights the centrality of the nationally neglected network accountability lever in supporting these unemployed individuals and advances this discussion further by introducing to the literature for the first time a conceptual distinction between what we term ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ forms of these accountably levers that currently remain homogenised within the literature. Crucially, the argument sets out for the first time in the literature why analytically it is the positive version of network accountability that is the key – and currently missing at national-level – ingredient to the design of effective employment support for the priority group of ‘harder-to-help’ unemployed people who have more complex and/or severe barriers to employment. Thirdly, the paper argues from a geographical perspective that it is city-regions that are uniquely positioned in the English context to create the type of positively networked integrated employment support ‘ecosystem’ that ‘harder-to-help’ individuals in particular require. Finally, the discussion situates these city-region schemes within their broader socio-economic and political context and connects with broader debates around the lurching development of neoliberalism. In doing so it argues that whilst these emerging city-region ecosystem models offer much progressive potential their relationship to the problematic neoliberal employment support paradigm remains uncertain given that they refine, embed and indeed buttress that same neoliberal employment policy paradigm rather than fundamentally challenging or stepping beyond it.

scholarly journals Engaging ‘Future Generations’ in Meaning Making through Visual Methods: An Alternative Approach to Defining City-Regions

2021 ◽  
pp. 391-416
Author(s):  
Lorena Axinte
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Youth Engagement ◽  
City Region ◽  
City Regions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The City

AbstractCity-regional planning has gained significant attention and funding in the UK, as national and local authorities decided that an intermediary level—the city-region—would be the appropriate one to drive economic development. Nonetheless, city-regions have long been criticized for their undemocratic and closed structures, enlarging the engagement barriers especially for young people. Encouraged by Wales’ innovative legislation, The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, this research tried to fill the gap in the city-regional youth engagement literature. Specifically, it asked: How could a research project stimulate a conversation with the future generations about the areas where they live, and how could it encourage meaningful reflections on previously unfamiliar concepts, such as city-regions? Two creative participatory research methods, web-mapping and Photovoice, helped explore young people’s lived experience within a newly created administrative layer—Cardiff Capital Region. Results show that despite failing to emancipate the participants’ voices and needs, the two methods employed helped to attract participants, facilitated the understanding of the city-region concept and enabled young people to reflect on their surrounding environment.

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