.post-industrial city

For this text about post-industrial cities, I felt it would be better to show sa part of a work from a specialist in this area, due to the fact that it would be easier and better to understand this topic. The part that I chose are from "Post-industrial cities: politics and planning in New York, Paris and London" from H. V. Savitch, a Brown and Williamson Distinguished Research Professor from the School of Urban and Public Affairs of the University of Lousiville. Dr. Savitch has a wide field of specialization, such as: Urban politics, planning and developing; Public policy; International and comparative urban systems. He has done work on globalization and urban development as well as the comparative analysis of cities in Europe and North America. His publications explore questions related to how cities develop strategies to shape their built environments and the impacts of territorial re-scalling on city performance.

"The rise of post-industrialism changed urban politics. Political brokerage and monumentalism could no longer suffice. Energetic and imaginative policy leadership was required. The new politics faced the task of collecting bits and pieces of the social structure in order to build a vastly more complex city. To do this, policy direction would have to replace laissez faire, and collaboration would be a better substitute for unbridled competition. Post-industrialism also required immense investment from the private sector, whose risks would be mitigated by state guarantees.
The political signs pointed toward corporatism. The drift was gradual, in some cases incomplete, and it was not always susceptible to precise measurement. But the signs were unmistakable, and today they pervade the political mood of the post-industrial city.
One of the conditions of post-industrialism is an increased competition between cities as well as between nations. The post-industrial city represents not only itself, but the aspirations of its nation. Intranational competition results in advantages for jobs and taxes. International competition entails the higher stakes of world power, prestige and leadership. More and more, distinctions are made between military and economic might, and though the post-industrial city can do little to bolster national defense, it epitomizes economic prowess.
Another condition of post-industrialism is the complexity of building a brand new physical environment. Streets, highways, reail terminals, airports, office towers, shopping malls, parks, theaters, museums, houses, hospitals, universities, and research centers need to be constructed with and eye toward the demographics of the 21st century. Construction itself is a straightforward and a matter of technical mastery. The challenge is to accomplish this smoothly while synchronizing an enormous number of transactions. Facilities need to be coordinated, finances need to be secured, and a whole new system of laws needs to be worked out. There emerges a labyrinth of negotiations between buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants, and those about to take possession and those about to be dispossessed.
(...)politicians are handed the consuming taks of making it all work. No longer can the singular role of neutral intermediary be suffecient. To make it happend, politicians and technocrats assume responsibility.
Still a third condition has been the rise of assurer goverment. Politics no longer ends after ribbon-cutting ceremonies. It continues to insure all parties against the risks of change. Investors are given long-term leases with options to buy, tenants are promised priority housing with moderate rents, citizens are provided with open spaces. The single instituition to which the disgruntled turn is the government. Politicians become responsible for the buisness failures, the destruction of community, and the personal dislocations that ensue from the new environment. Despite neoconservative efforts to reduce government, post-industrialism entices its expansion. Issues that at first glance appear resolvable become pregnant with further issues. Involvement begets further involvement and obligations multiply.
Moreover, the obligations put before politicians are often contradictory.
Whatever formula urban politicians have adopted, they must engage the social and economic system. Passive politics and the politician as "caretaker" are absolete. Post-industrial politicians must exercise power on theire own and must harness it to public purpose. These purposes involve a certain amount of planning. It can be short-term, peicemal planning or it can resemble a long-term comprehensive strategy. But once an already built environment is given the challenge of post-industrial change, planning is inevitable. The thrust for change and the planning that ensues from it help generate the policy outputs of the post-industrial city."


Manuel Madureira e Silva