How Cities Learn. Astrid Wood

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How Cities Learn - Astrid Wood


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the Great employed Dutch architectural models in St. Petersburg (Healey 2013). In the early 20th century, cities shared their experiments with electricity, gas, sewerage and water services (Dogliani 2002; Gaspari 2002; Kozinska-Witt 2002; Saunier 2002; Vion 2002). These exchanges became a “precious resource” to subvert or strengthen local policy decisions (Saunier 2002: 519). These “transboundary connections” (Saunier 2002: 510) were often a method of “intergovernmental diplomacy” (Saunier 2002: 509), with scholars suggesting that these collaborations advanced urban development (Healey and Upton 2010; Saunier 2002; Saunier and Ewen 2008; Sutcliffe, 1981).

      The South African city’s propensity to apply foreign planning models is rooted in its history, where urban design and transportation innovations were imported from the colonial metropole. Colonialism created an atmosphere conducive to the temptation of imitation, in which the local environment lacked “genuine ties with the world surrounding them” (Mbembe 2004: 375), and instead linked itself to classical aspects of European cosmopolitanism. This is evident in architectural form: various technical and political interventions including “prefabricated iron-fronted shop buildings, barrel-vaulted arcades with prismatic glass skylights, cast-iron gas lamps, electric lighting, telephone wires…” (Chipkin 1993: 22), as well as horse-drawn trams and railroads. This “overseas cultural traffic” (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004: 362) flowed through colonial relationships with London, Paris and New York. During the emergence of professionalized planning, universities trained colonial planners in modernist techniques, later applied across the colonial world. In South Africa, town planners studied in London after the Second World War and, through these exchanges, developed what became classic apartheid planning mechanisms (Wood 2019a).

      Today, the South African urban landscape is reflective of a global convergence of policy knowledge, and several ostensibly South African policies are also evidenced elsewhere: approaches to growth management, informal settlement upgrading, sustainability, and even securitization and gated communities (Bénit-Gbaffou et al. 2012; Morange et al. 2012) migrated from North America, Brazil and Europe, and were adopted in South African cities because of their success elsewhere; city improvement districts (elsewhere, business improvements districts) are located in precincts across Cape Town and Johannesburg, as well as in Amsterdam, London and New York (Didier et al. 2012; Morange et al. 2012; Peyroux et al. 2012) and city development strategies, in particular Johannesburg’s 2040 Growth and Development Strategy, are considered best practice and duplicated globally (Robinson 2011). While the regularity by which South African cities learn of and implement policies from elsewhere is evident, the process of, and rationale for, learning and adoption demands further theoretical unpacking.

      A focus on BRT adoption provides an opportunity to reinterpret both the historical and contemporary South African city as a site of “mimicry” and “mimesis” (Mbembe 2004). Mbembe (2008: 7) suggests “if there is ever an African form of metropolitan modernity, then Johannesburg will have been its classical location”; and Robinson (2003: 260) concludes, “Johannesburg is an antidote to [a] divisive tradition in urban studies and a practical example of how cities can be imagined outside of the global/developmentalist division”. Mimicry, however, does not occur simply because reforms from elsewhere are better, but rather because the very action of copying may accelerate local policymaking. Nevertheless, Mbembe argues that even cities “born out of mimicry are capable of mimesis”, by establishing “similarities with something else while at the same time inventing something original” (2004: 376). This helps explain how South African cities learn of a policy or practice from elsewhere, transfer it across boundaries, and localize it to suit the South African city.

      How Cities Learn contributes to efforts to transform transport geography into a more inclusive and global endeavor, by examining the production and distribution of transportation knowledge in the global south. In a related project, we argue against the continued dominance of northern transportation models and best practices, and instead highlight locally derived experiments in both the global north and south (Wood et al. 2020). This means not only featuring the achievements of cities that are “off the map” (Robinson 2006), but also de-centering the locations in which best practice is solidified and sent forth. A decolonial approach to transport geography challenges its technocratic objectivism and mathematical modeling, which limit the promotion of southern experiments. Transportation scholars have begun to engage with these strategies – for instance, a special issue featuring urban mobilities in the global south (Priya Uteng and Lucas 2018) – but much more needs to be said of transport geography from, of and by the global south.

      This book employs “policy mobilities” (Peck and Theodore 2010a; McCann and Ward 2011) to contribute to transport geography by examining how policymakers address issues of mobility and immobility, and how these decisions are made in reference to similar practices taking place elsewhere. It explains the process by which BRT has been embraced, encompassed and even at times excluded by local policy


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