Globalisation, Governance and City
Development: East London
Sue Brownill

• Two key questions the network is seeking to address;
– How is urban governance responding to challenges of globalisation, equity and climate change?
– Are different, more flexible forms and practices of governing capable of meeting such challenges emerging? The search for the just and sustainable city.
• These raise broader issues and questions about how we characterise and understand governance :
– How can we use the differing experiences and understandings in the two countries to build new ways of looking at the relationship between governance, equity and sustainability; theory coproduction
– What forms and practices of governance and policy making are emerging on the ground in the UK and Brazil?
– What can we learn from these?

• Exploration of dynamics of city development strategies on the ground; focus on East London
• Complex, dynamic and shifting situation - suggests challenge is not just a search for particular forms and scale of governance
• Examine in relation to ideas of flexibility, hybridity and assemblages- notion of development projects as condensing and combining different governance strategies, publics, spatial scales, political discourses.
• In turn raises questions about how we understand city developments and how we plan and put ideas into practice

• Canary Wharf and
LDDC
• The London Plan
• Some Alternatives
• Implications of localism
• Some reflections

Canary Wharf; Securing London’s Role as a
World City?
• Discourse of addressing market failure in East London
• Promoting London as a financial centre
• Hierarchical, exclusionary governance

• Local labour agreements during construction
• Construction skills centre funded
• Skillsmatch- local job agency
• Centre for Vocational
Excellence in financial services at local colleges
• Corporate Social
Responsibility – community liaison officer
• Isle of Dogs Community
Foundation

The LDDC in the 80s?
No, New Labour in
2006

A Different Narrative? Livingstone’s
London Plan
By 2020, the aim is for East London and the London Thames Gateway to be a new kind of exemplary, sustainable world class urban quarter, avoiding the mistakes of new town and other past development policies.

• Vision of competitive, global city;
– to develop London as an exemplary, sustainable world city based on the three balanced and interwoven themes of strong, long-term and diverse economic growth, social inclusivity and fundamental improvements in the environment and use of resources (GLA, 2004 p5)
• Polycentric – sustainable use of brownfield; sub-regions
• Strategic flexibility
• Value capture; social housing and planning gain
• Directive
• ‘Business privilege’ (Thornley)
• Other key policies; congestion charge and transport
• But could it balance different objectives?

• Massey (1997) sees in Livingstone’s London the possibility of a new territorial politics and a different configuration of local/global relations.
Livingstone/Chavez
• Not a victim of globalisation- relational perspective
• This means places become ‘a field of multiple actors, trajectories, stories with their own energies – which may mingle in harmony, collide, even annihilate each other’ p22

• Johnson elected 2008; London Plan Revisions
– London should excel among global cities –expanding opportunities for all its people and enterprises, achieving the highest standards and quality of life and leading the world in its approach to tackling the urban challenges of the 21 st century, particularly that of climate change
• Contradictory rescaling of governance
– Centralising; London-wide LEP, greater powers
– De-centralising, more ‘flexible’ towards Boroughs,
TIFs etc

• Selling of bid on basis
of regeneration of
East London
• But doubts over whether this will fully materialise and who will benefit

• Other more localised developments point to alternative dynamics; different discourses of development, different ways of planning as well as different governance forms
• Rich Mix Centre Bethnal Green; reconceptualising globalisation
– TELCO – challenging globalisation and polarisation

• London to some extent atypical as still has regional governance
• Other places reveal differing experiences, governance arrangements and local dynamics
• Manchester
– City region
– ‘team Manchester’ growth coalition
– Does localism lead to different outcomes?
• Oxford/shire
– LEP
– City
– Local initiatives

• Complex situation; can’ t ‘read off’ outcomes from forms or scales of governance
• So does governance matter?
• Yes, but.....
• Need to explore development strategies and projects in terms of combinations, hybridities or
‘assemblages’ of
– different political discourses,
– modes of governance( hierarchical, participatory, cogovernance)
– spatial scale
– publics

• Means contradictory potential depending on dynamics
• But potential for opening up spaces and adding to the mix
• Raises questions about how we plan
• Nature of the organisations involved
• Skills and role of planners and publics