Neo-liberalism Changing spatio-temporal relations and an indiscernible hand

March 2011

Pablo Alejandro Abrecht

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Contents

1. Introduction

2. Neo-liberalism and an indiscernible hand

3. Entrepreneurship, meta-governance and changing spatio-temporal relations

4. Conclusion

References

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1. Introduction

Contradicting principles at the core of the current dominant ideology (MacLeod, 2002) should

raise a fundamental concern about neo-liberalism. As a pragmatic combination of liberalism

and conservatism (Allmendinger, 2009), the liberal idealization of free-market mechanisms

exalted by Hayek, coupled with an overarching respect for individual rights, provided for a

minimal role of the state. On the other hand, conservative authoritarian policies seem to

contradict the very essence of individual liberties and free markets. A neoliberal ‘project’

appears to embrace freedom and markets, while actually needing control and intervention “to

manage its contradictions and to secure its ongoing legitimacy” (Peck and Tickell, 2002, 396).

This review essay will briefly highlight some key particularities of neo-liberalism, such as the

consolidating ‘moments’ of this ideology and the globalization phenomena so closely related to

it. The focus will then turn to address critical debates associated to changing spatio-temporal

relations (Jessop, 2000), and how these affected the planning discipline.

2. Neo-liberalism and an indiscernible hand

A key particularity of this neoliberal project is how it operates in also contradicting temporal

phases. Peck and Tickell (2002) provide a clear description of neoliberal ‘moments’, and

accurately distinction between an early destructive ‘roll-back’ moment, which sought to

dismantle the previous anticompetitive welfare-state institutions, and the successive

consolidating and creative ‘roll-out’ moment, which required interventions to extend the

neoliberal project. This kind of operation does not appear to be randomly executed, but on the

contrary, it highlights an extremely rational premeditation.

An additional particular concept associated with this hegemonic ideology is an all-

encompassing globalization phenomenon, referred by Jessop (2000, 323) as “various actors’

attempts to promote global coordination of activities in (…) different functional subsystems”.

Jessop further highlights the heterodox regulatory system and dominance it generates, and

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argues that “globalization is a ‘chaotic conception’ (…), it does not emanate from, nor is it

initiated from” (Jessop, 2000, 356). It is difficult to expect that such a concerted effort,

supported consistently in key academic, government, institutional and business environments,

would not have an underlining origin and objective.

Furthermore, Jessop (2000, 356) argues for a treatment of “globalization as an emergent

feature of the capitalist economy as a whole”, while on the opposite, it seems to be a key

strategic element clearly defined and supported in the ‘roll-back’ agendas of power

decentralization, economic liberalization, and global deregulation imposed by top global

institutions. These neoliberal agendas and particularities are summarized in table 1 below, in

relation to the neoliberal moments described by Peck and Tickell, and the globalization

phenomenon referred by Jessop.

Table 1: Neoliberal Moments (Peck and Tickell, 2002) and Globalization (Jessop, 2000)

As an arguable synthesis, neo-liberalism shows a rational origin and seeks a coherent end. It is

being consistently imposed, and the political system is instrumental to an apparent

‘indiscernible hand’ within the capital economy. In accordance with Beck (2000), neo-liberalism

is a form of ‘high politics’, and exists as a form of ‘coercion project’, although it cannot be

reduced to ‘institutional condensates’ (Peck and Tickell, 2002), because of its inherent ‘diffused

power’ (Hardt and Negri, 2000).

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3. Entrepreneurship, meta-governance and changing spatio-temporal relations

Planning as an ‘intervention discipline’ generally conflicts with the free markets embraced by

neoliberal thinking, although Hayek as a key spokesperson for liberalism assigns a particular

role to town planning as a practical tool to correct an imperfect land market, including state-

related interventions associated to planning such as ensuring the rule of law, provision of

infrastructure, and arbiter of disputes (Allmendinger, 2009).

Hence, there appears to be a widespread recognition that planning plays a role in addressing

market failures and externalities, in addition to fundamental functions related to infrastructure

and legally-based regulation. Some extremist views with an apparent absolute belief in the

market’s perfect self-regulatory mechanisms persist: “Planners would need to concern

themselves only with trunk-line infrastructure planning because anything below that level

could be privately supplied by developers” (Gordon and Richardson, 2001, 148). Despite this

minimization of the planners’ role, the planning discipline shifted into a more neoliberal-

oriented, competitive-based and market-driven approach.

Entrepreneurship

Focusing on the implications of the neoliberal project in spatio-temporal relations, Harvey

(1989) stresses the transformation in urban governance from a ‘managerial approach’ based

on local provision of services, facilities and benefits for urban populations during the 1960s, to

an ‘entrepreneurial approach’ in the 1980s, mainly generated by inter-urban competition and

the quest for local development and employment. As a key critical debate, this

entrepreneurial-driven urbanization generated a new physical and social landscape, including

major implications to the planning discipline.

Looking at the distributive consequences of ‘urban entrepreneurialism’, Harvey (1989, 12-13)

argues that it usually generates greater polarization, since investment “amounts to a subsidy

for affluent consumers, corporations, and powerful command functions to stay in town at the

expense of local collective consumption”, hence contributing to increasing disparities in wealth

and income, as well as to urban impoverishment, designing “urban fragments rather than

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comprehensive urban planning”, and shaping “a dual city of inner city regeneration and a

surrounding sea if increasing impoverishment”.

In connection to the neoliberal moments, while globalized economies were initially forced to

open to the capital economy pressed by liberalization, de-regularization and decentralization

agendas, so cities were also opened to the capital economy. As highlighted by Peck and Tickell

(2002, 393), geographical inter-local relations were being remade in competitive,

‘commodified’ and monetized terms, and cities became “perhaps the most visibly denuded

victims of roll-back neo-liberalism”.

Entrepreneurial-driven urbanization and the neoliberal roll-back moment also created certain

constraints in urban capitalism, since “elite partnerships, mega-events, and corporate

seduction become, in effect, both the only games in town and the basis of urban subjugation”

(Peck and Tickell, 2002, 393). But as argued by Harvey (1989, 16), cities may now also

“dominate the historical geography of social life”, giving place to the now successive regulatory

roll-out phase of neo-liberalism.

Related to the implications of entrepreneurial-driven urbanization in the planning discipline,

the system now demands a market-supportive role of planners. As stressed by Griffiths (1986,

5) “the tension between the market principle (private decision making for private gain) and the

planning principle (collective decision making for collective needs) began to show through”,

and planners are increasingly becoming facilitators involved in the processes of bargaining with

applicants, in connivance with the political system.

Meta-governance

Similar to the regulatory and power-diffusing effects of globalization, an also all-encompassing

concept emerged at the local-regional scale. Looking at the governance arrangements of the

Thames Gateway, Allmendinger and Haughton (2009, 618) argue that there is “an intriguing

usage of strategic and delivery interventions at scales other than those of the statutory

planning system (local and regional), as planning activities necessarily learn to work within

complex multilayered, fluid, and sometimes fuzzy scales of policy and governance

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arrangements”, which they refer as meta-governance, “a difficult to discern set of processes by

which the rules of the game are imposed” (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2009, 631). The

combined effects of meta-governance and globalization are linked in table 2 below, along the

temporal development of the neoliberal moments.

Table 2: Neoliberal Moments (Peck and Tickell, 2002), Globalization (Jessop, 2000), and

Meta-governance (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2009)

Once again, the neoliberal project diffuses power and makes the economic and political

interests difficult to discern, since this inherent complexity usually hides the agendas and

accountability of previous more transparent approaches. Within meta-governance, who is the

‘hand’ behind the actual decision-maker? What are the intrinsic interests of the decision-

making stake? One of the main concerns related to this ‘creative’ roll-out type of outcome in

private-public partnerships, is that “bargaining and discussion with the private sector take

place outside democratic arenas (…), this is not a transparent, accountable development

process but one which claims its legitimacy through its managerial success” (Newman and

Thornley, 1995, 243). Some theories, such as the ‘growth coalition’ and the ‘urban regime’,

seek to address the impacts on urban governance of informal as well as formal institutions,

although they appear to underestimate the power of economic interests (Cox, 1991).

In the search for alternatives, local autonomy is hardly achievable given that “local liberalisms

are embedded within wider networks and structures of neo-liberalism” (Peck and Tickell, 2002,

380). On the other hand, Peck and Tickell’s proposal to ‘reform macro-institutional priorities’

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seems to be unrealistic given an overarching and indiscernible hand that permeates those

macro-institutions.

An opportunity to finally recognize these presently intriguing interests arises from identifying

the real ‘steering positions’ in combination with the ‘factual operators’ behind this project of

high politics, in order to expose origins and objectives of this neoliberal agenda, and to displace

it through more transparent, democratic and representative stakeholders (Mathews, 1999).

4. Conclusion

Behind an engineered theory replenished of constructive values and appealing words, the

neoliberal project appears to be a calculated agenda leveraging on the forces of economic

capitalism and political arm-twisting. Neoliberal moments show clear and coordinated

objectives aimed at coercive mechanisms and multi-scalar/multi-spatial diffusion of power

delivered by the all-encompassing phenomena of globalization and meta-governance.

Within a voracious and competitive environment, entrepreneurial-driven urbanization is

transforming cities into increasingly polarized and fragmented ‘dual spaces’, subjugated by the

capital economy but also subtly dominant of social life. This entrepreneurial approach

considerably affects the planning discipline by mainly displacing the role of a spatially visionary

and socially reconciling planner into a now complex and confusing role of free-market

facilitator.

It is argued that the original and positive ideals of liberal thought centred on freedom and

rights can be reinstated by the detailed identification and the further democratic replacement

of an indiscernible hand currently steering and permeating intra-local and extra-local spatio-

temporal relations.

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References

Allmendinger, P. (2009), Planning Theory, Palgrave, Basingstoke

Allmendinger, P. and Haughton, G. (2009), ‘Soft spaces, fuzzy boundaries and metagovernance: the new

spatial planning in the Thames Gateway’, Environment and Planning, 41, 617-633

Beck, U. (2000), What is Globalization?, Polity Press, Cambridge

Cox, K. (1991), ‘Questions of abstraction in the new urban politics’, Journal of Urban Affairs, 13(3), 267-

281

Engels, F. (1995) (originally 1845), The Conditions of the Working Class in England, Penguin Classics,

London

Gordon, P. and Richardson, H. W. (2001), ‘The Sprawl Debate: Let Markets Plan’, The Journal of

Federalism, 31(3), 131-149

Griffiths, R. (1986), ‘Planning in retreat: Town planning and the market in the eighties’, Planning

Practice and Research, 1(1), 3-7

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000), Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge

www.angelfire.com/cantina/negri/HAREMI_unprintable.pdf – accessed 25 Mar. 11

Harvey, D. (1989), ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance

in late capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler, B 71(1), 3-19

Jessop, B. (2000), ‘The Crisis of the National Spatio-Temporal Fix and the Ecological Dominance of

Globalizing’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(2), 323-360

MacLeod, G. (2002), ‘From Urban Entrepreneurialism to a “Revanchist City”: On the Spatial Injustices of

Glasgow’s Renaissance’, Antipode, 34, 602–624

Mathews, R. (1999), Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society, alternatives to the market and the

state, Comerford & Miller, London

Newman, P. and Thornley, A. (1995), ‘Euralille: ‘Boosterism’ at the centre of Europe’, European Urban &

Regional Studies, 2 (3), 237-246

Peck, J. A. and Tickell, A. (2002), 'Neoliberalising space’, Antipode, 34, 380-405