Introduction: Time and infrastructure in the sick suburbs

This chapter examines the temporalities of infrastructure at the intersection of health, disease, and urbanization, especially peripheral, or extended, urbanization. At the start of 2020, we were set to study the life of people living with dementia (PLWD) in Toronto's immigrant suburbs. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic made that research temporarily impossible, we pivoted in our collaboration to the effect of COVID-19 on the urban peripheries of Toronto and Milan (Biglieri et al, 2020). This chapter draws from these two disparate research themes to present a rearticulation of our thinking around the ‘forever time’ that PLWD in suburbs may feel, and the presentism and ad hocism of the pandemic response. To make the connection between people experiencing the chronic, degenerative condition of dementia with those that suffered acute infection from COVID-19, we look at the suburban landscape of care in the Toronto region through a lens of infrastructural temporality.

Our analysis engages the theoretically distinct but intrinsically linked perspectives of understanding infrastructure through a temporal analytic and seeing time itself as an infrastructure. Although neither approach is new per se, we argue that reading across them allows us to examine inequalities across both time and space and to understand the massive differences in how socially constructed times influence and condition the way infrastructures ‘materialize’ (Besedovsky et al, 2019; Coutard, this volume). In this chapter, we deploy a temporal analytic to examine how (sub)urban inequalities are created and perpetuated, especially for marginalized populations. Accentuating the temporal exposes structural inequities in regional infrastructures that are often hidden through performative and repetitive political discourses and processes that assign stereotypical roles and expectations to such places as inner cities and suburbs and the actors that inhabit them. Suburban landscapes, for instance, are often seen as lacking in ability to adapt to climate change and other systemic challenges but tend to remain both extensively burdened with infrastructure (from airports to waste dumps) and perpetually infrastructurally ill-equipped to deal with the growing ‘urban’ problematiques posed by suburban maturation and change.

Our book details and documents the impact of austerity governance on a selection of cities. Yet for some commentators, cities and urban spaces remain the ‘new theatres of struggle’ in our contemporary condition (Hamel, 2014). This chapter critically assesses the forms of social and political resistance that emerged across the eight cities in our study. Building on themes introduced in Chapters 1 and 2, it argues that cities serve as crucibles for a diverse set of political contestations, responses and initiatives, but they exhibit differential capacities to shape their environments. Indeed, it demonstrates the complex ‘mix’ of political traditions, institutions, socio-economic structures, practices and ideological systems that come together to constitute the city as a political engine. In so doing, we draw particular attention to the shifting locus of resistance to austerity across communities and neighbourhoods. Our analysis and evaluation suggest that the future projection of cities as ‘spaces of hope’ rests on the twin challenges of ‘scaling up’ neighbourhood protests into broad and anti-systemic political projects, while reinvesting in the construction of progressive relations with the local state that open local spaces of manoeuvre to challenge national regimes of austerity.

Against this background, we turn first to our initial presentation and discussion of the eight cities, focusing on Melbourne, Barcelona and Nantes, whose distinctive characteristics provide the parameters for the analysis of all the cases. We then examine and describe the cases of Athens, Baltimore, Dublin, Leicester and Montréal, analysed here as in Chapter 1 through the lens of austerity realism. Finally, we focus on the cities of Barcelona and Nantes, which we deem to be exemplary cases of cities that have most contributed to social and political change, both in terms of the development of creative governance arrangements, and with respect to the social movements and political groups that have emerged within and beyond the official spaces of politics. Our characterization and evaluation establish the potentials, limits and contingency of new urban struggles and politics, whose forms are shaped by a concatenation of variables at multiple levels of analysis, and we conclude by setting out the challenges faced by these incipient and in many cases fleeting forms.

Introduction

The reality of austerity in our eight case study cities and elsewhere has been strongly shaped by a phenomenon, long studied by geographers and recognized across the social sciences as well as by practitioners in policy making, politics and activism: social, political and institutional spaces are structured through a hierarchy of spatial scales that is not pregiven but socially constructed. Emphasizing scale in this manner confirms an intuitive assumption we make on a daily basis – when we go to work from our home, or when we go on vacation – that ‘spaces across the world differ from one another’ (Brenner, 2009: 27). What might sound trivial, is an important marker in the way we understand the world around us. How, then, does scale matter specifically? We all know the concept of scale from the ways we use a map or a measuring tape. In this colloquial usage, we presuppose that there is a natural quality to the concept: we rely on its truth as given. If you use a map for a cycling trip, and its scale tells you that one centimetre on the map represents ten kilometres, you assume that if you plan a trip represented by five centimetres on the map, it means that the distance you will travel is, in fact, 50 kilometres in reality (never mind the hills and valleys).

While this ‘natural’ understanding of scale underlies its use in this chapter, we add to it the notion that scale in social life is, for the most part, not a given but socially constructed. Being part of the general vocabulary with which we seek to understand the uneven spatial development of modern society, scale reveals its true explanatory power when we realize that it is a plastic concept that is subject to interpretation and negotiation. When we use scale in this manner, we refer to ‘the vertical differentiation of social relations among, for instance, global, supranational, national, regional, urban and/or local levels’ (Brenner, 2009: 31). We say: scale is socially constructed and use participles such as ‘scaling’ or ‘rescaling’ to refer to the more or less intentional activity to shape this ‘vertical differentiation.’ Political decision makers and activists refer to the scale of government at which they want their action to count: the nation state, the region, the county, the municipality.

Introduction

Economic migration flows, accelerated by globalization, have substantially increased the cultural and ethnic diversity of Western societies with high GDP economies. As a large part of these migration flows are motivated by the aspirations of those living in the Global South, or the majority world, to improve their living conditions in more economically prosperous countries, the result in the host societies is not only a substantial increase in ethnic and cultural diversity, but also greater social challenges in accommodating difference as well as the policy challenges of addressing socio-spatial inequalities that already exist in cities. The rapid growth of inwards migration not only poses a formidable challenge from the point of view of intercultural relations, but also for the social and spatial cohesion of the destination societies. The resulting inequalities add to the racialized geographies of the early 21st century in many Western countries. The different kinds of migrants coming from the Global South – labour migrants, refugees, asylum seekers – and the places in which they concentrate, together with the local disadvantage created by histories of racism and colonialism of the last century, are amongst the most vulnerable to the dynamics of social marginalization and stigma. These dynamics have been exacerbated in many Western cities since the 2008 Global Economic Crisis (GEC) and the introduction of austerity policies discussed throughout the book.

This chapter discusses the way that (neoliberal) austerity has impacted social, racial and cultural inequalities and the ability of collaboration to support more inclusive democratic cities or resist exclusions. The basic premise is that cities play a fundamental role in the dynamics of social inclusion or exclusion of economic migrants and other racial and ethnic minorities, and in the way that societies cope with the challenge of recognizing and accommodating cultural diversity. This is due to at least three phenomena: first, cities are the places where the vast majority of the newcomers settle and where the greatest cultural and racial diversity can be found; second, cities concentrate a wide array of services and infrastructures and are the site of policy that creates or removes opportunity for the social inclusion of migrants and minorities – for example schools, social services, health and community centres, sport and cultural facilities, parks and squares, urban revitalization, public transport or migrant settlement services;

The 2008–2009 Global Economic Crisis (GEC) created an opportunity, eagerly seized by many national governments and international organizations, to impose a prolonged, and widespread period of austerity. Austerity is widely recognized to have done enormous damage to social, cultural, political and economic infrastructures in cities and larger urban areas across the globe (Davies, 2021). As the GEC was also the first such crisis in what is widely considered ‘the urban age’ (Brenner and Schmid, 2015), (COVID-19 merely the latest and most intense), austerity measures were chiefly administered through municipal and regional mechanisms. A great deal has been written since the crisis, about the way austerity was experienced, governed, resisted and urbanized. This volume considers these issues anew, by reflecting on the multi-faceted and shape-shifting concept of ‘collaboration’. It draws from research funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council titled Collaborative Governance Under Austerity: An Eight Case Comparative Study, led by the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity at De Montfort University in the UK City of Leicester. Research was conducted over three years (2015–2018) in the European cities of Athens, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester and Nantes, North American cities of Baltimore and Montréal, and the Australian City of Greater Dandenong, part of the Greater Melbourne metropolis.

Our objective in this volume is to reflect on the theme of collaborative governance, considering this from the perspective of resisting austerity, or otherwise finding ways to circumvent or move beyond it. As a research team, we have a range of political views, but all share egalitarian sympathies articulated in the following chapters. None of us are convinced of conservative, neoliberal or neoclassical justifications for austerity, and we deplore the assault on public goods and social solidarities that have occurred because of them. Many sources attest to the way austerity intensifies a spectrum of inequalities (Hastings et al, 2017). Nor are we convinced of the economic dividends meant to flow from austerity. These either did not materialize at all after the GEC, led to renewed and unsustainable speculativebubbles, and/or further amplified disparities. With respect to our views on austerity, we are also guided by the perspectives of respondents in the eight cities, as well as the recent discursive turn away from austerity on the global stage, accelerated by the imperatives of COVID-19 (e.g. United Nations, 2020).

A central message emerging from the volume is that while austerity may sometimes be instrumentally rational for profit-seeking corporations and governments wanting to position their countries as low-regulation, low-cost capital havens, it is always a political choice and never a necessity. It is invariably a disaster from the standpoint of equality, solidarity and social justice, except when it runs into inventive and indomitable forces capable of subverting it. Such forces clearly do emerge. They come from the urban histories, traditions and memories of place, which catalyse new approaches throughout local states, economies and civil societies. The book shows on the one hand how damaging austerity has been in squeezing the capacity of local states to think and act outside the box of fiscal and legal constraint. On the other hand, however, it attests to the openness of the future, potentialities for change and, in certain conditions, for the privations of austerity to produce new demands, practices and solidarities. This is to suggest that the urban governance of austerity is ‘ambivalent’ (Enwright and Rossi, 2018), fraught with danger and opportunity. The coalitions, alliances and governing mechanisms created in cities make a significant difference.

As we explained in the introductory chapter and in Chapter 5, collaboration became a prominent idea in the global governance of cities, especially in the decade before the global economic crisis. States and groups of citizens and economic agents have always worked together in greater or lesser harmony, but the idea of collaborative governance gained currency as a virtue, a perceived strategy for resolving crises, mobilizing resources and potentially forging new expressions of solidarity through the crises of Fordism-Keynesianism and in response to the disorienting and fragmentary effects of neoliberalism. As a value-laden concept, it permeated academia, business and public policy in equal measure, while being greeted with scepticism among those who saw it as a flanking measure to neoliberalization (Davies, 2011). The research shows that in some ways, the age of austerity vindicated critiques of ‘collaborative governance’ as a medium of governmental control or ‘responsibilization’. State-driven collaboration in the face of harsh austerity proved to be gestural, shallow and transient (Dublin and Leicester) or reinforced the power of elites (Athens).

Chapter 1 focuses on how the eight cities encountered, worked with and against austerity in the period after the GEC. It begins by providing a flavour of the histories and traditions which contribute to explaining how austerity was experienced and mediated. It then turns to a discussion of Athens, Baltimore, Dublin, Leicester and Montréal, where more-or-less harsh forms of forms of austerity were implemented in the decade after GEC. It then looks at the three cities which, in different ways, provide a contrast with the story of austerity. These are Barcelona, Melbourne and Nantes. It is from these cities, primarily, that positive lessons emerge for charting governing directions beyond austerity. Chapters 2 and 3 build further on these reflections.

Urban histories and traditions

The eight cities are rooted in very different political systems and traditions. For example, the military coup in Greece (1967–1974) and the Francoist dictatorship in Spain (1939–1975) created highly centralized administrations characterized by repression and the suppression of civil society, which nevertheless survived underground and played crucial roles in the democratic transitions of the 1970s. In contrast, the modern welfare state elsewhere emerged much earlier, for example in Australia or in the United Kingdom after the Second World War, to prevent recurrence of the Great Depression and in response to political demands raised by the working class. While we do not analyse governance trends through the twentieth century, these examples capture something of how the scope for democratic practices, like participation, varied in the aftermath of the war.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s the cases had converged to some extent, fitting the model of contemporary capitalist welfare states in different ways (for example Fordist, neo-Fordist or peripheral Fordist). At different points in the 1980s and 1990s, they all experienced periods of retrenchment and restructuring, pursuing marketization agendas that clashed with previous welfare policies and institutional settlements. Some pursued structural adjustments to financial and governance systems in concert with multilateral organizations like the EU and others were influenced by the close ties between Ronald Reagan (USA) and Margaret Thatcher (UK), who enforced (and encouraged abroad) policies of industrial retrenchment, weakened the powers of unions, restructured state apparatuses at all scales (see Chapter 4) and squeezed municipal resources.

Our research concluded some time before the outbreak of COVID-19, but we suggest that many of the insights drawn from it, about austerity and collaboration, will be useful in considering ways forward from the pandemic. In the first instance, it seems clear that austerity made COVID-19 an even more iniquitous disease than it would in any case have been, with cities and urban peripheries the heart of both contagion and suffering (Biglieri, De Vidovich and Keil, 2020). The disease has unsurprisingly had a multitude of impacts on our cities, often linked to austerity. We therefore conclude further with an Afterword from the eight, including reflections on developments since the end of the research, impacts of COVID-19 and possible signs that it might be possible to ‘build back better’.

Athens

The socio-political traits of Athens are changing quickly, influenced by developments in the national economy, as well as by distinct local responses to the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. At the national level and after years of austerity, the long-sought balanced budget was eventually attained by the Greek state in 2017. As a result, Greece exited the bailout programme in August 2018, and has hesitantly attempted to borrow in the international bond markets. Post-bailout Greece has gained back a degree of political and financial independence, avoiding the direct in situ inspection and authorization of its policies by creditors. More permanent forms of monitoring, however, as well as austerity, are still very much in the picture.

Beyond periodic Eurozone assessment of Greece's public finances, the country is still under ‘enhanced surveillance’ status (EU, 2017). This form of monitoring will continue for the foreseeable future, or, as stated in the respective documents ‘for as long as a minimum of 75% of the financial assistance received from one or several other Member states … has not be repaid’ (EU, 2013). More so, since austerity failed, completely and expectedly, to address the debt strand of public finances, which skyrocketed from 126 per cent in 2010 to 176 per cent in 2017 (Eurostat, 2019). In this light, creditors responded by broadening the austerity canvas.

Introduction

As the introductory chapter explained, collaboration was popularized as an idea across much of the globe in the 1990s and 2000s, including the Global South, and was considerably influenced by international actors and donor non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as ideas circulating through nation states about modernizing public governance and management. From the basis of multiple definitions and mixed practices of collaborative governance, this chapter explores trends found through the comparative study of our eight cities, in the decade after the GEC. We aim to examine the impact of austerity on localized collaborative structures of policymaking. Specifically, the chapter elaborates three dimensions where interesting comparisons and contrasts were identified: in discourse, in agency and in the spaces utilized to facilitate alliance building and joint working. Trends in discourse, agency, and spaces of collaboration after the GEC are linked to the historical events and traditions highlighted in the introductory chapter.

Collaboration as a state-led discourse

With the exception of Baltimore (Pill, 2020), the state played a leading role in fomenting collaborative governance discourses across the cases, though not necessarily an exclusive role. There were three cases in which the dominant discourse about governance was crafted strongly at the national level: Athens, Dublin and Leicester. All three cities had a heavily centralized mode of governance which defined local relational dynamics more compared with the other cities in this study. While local democracy rescaling and devolution of responsibilities have been part of reform programmes across these centres stemming back to the 1980s (see Chapter 4 for more detail), budget cuts have at the same time meant that local governments were not equipped to absorb new responsibilities, including the leadership of participation. In turn, the weak position of local governments meant that national governments (and their financiers) continued to set policy parameters and collaboration was narrowly conceived at the local level as a necessary mode of policy delivery, though not of policy definition.

Post-GEC, austerity provided an opportunity to reframe governance discourses in a way that consolidated and extended the reach of neoliberal restructuring, including accelerating processes of decentralization, wage freezes, employment terminations and greater emphases on partnering with NGOs with an ability to attract resources and deliver services with efficiency dividends.

This chapter seeks to better understand how austerity governance has been experienced in the eight cities, from the perspective of the local state. As earlier chapters demonstrate, austerity governance is a real challenge for cities and local states, which can often have competing priorities and imperatives. This is because traditionally, local managers and elected politicians are more inclined than those of the upper tiers of the state to listen to and be responsive to the residents of their local constituencies, because they are closer to them. Consequently, the principles and rules in municipalities for managing public budgets are usually more responsive to social demands. However, if the democratic local state is a political unit, with at least some autonomy to enact its values and citizen preferences, it is also subject to a range of structural and contextual constraints. These include cultures and practices of neoliberal marketization and the level of resources available through transfers and taxation. In that respect, local state managers and elected representatives are caught in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they seek to respond to the needs and priorities of their constituents while, on the other, they operate within the constraints set by national priorities of neoliberal marketization and cuts to resources. This leaves them looking two ways, trying to overcome continuous contradictions, conflicts and uncertainties that arise from this difficult positioning.

In addition to these immediate and contradictory demands on local officials, questions of local state power are strongly connected with urban culture. This idea can be captured, at least in part, through the concept of ‘mémoire du lieu’ (memory of place), as defined by Todd (2017: 468). This ‘mémoire du lieu’ frames the way local actors perform and build collaboration, and is an important component of local culture which, in turn, informs popular preferences. Thus, local culture, local preferences and pressures arising from the national and international sources discussed in the previous chapter all combine to set conditions in which local states operate in juxtaposition with market and civil society forces. The compromises reached are therefore partly the result of different strategies of civil society resistance that have proven more or less effective in promoting local autonomy and social solidarity.

Introduction

At first, the virus causing COVID-19 spread from Wuhan in much the same way as its predecessor, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), did in 2003: through the network of global industrial and financial centers that define the structure of the world economy. But the trajectory of COVID-19 turned out to be more complex: the new virus proliferates nearly everywhere, including in urban peripheries that have characterized recent urbanization trends. The environments of COVID-19 transmission in the global urban peripheries coalesce into multifaceted and complex geographies characterized by health care system (in)equality, lack of infrastructures, overcrowding, low-wage labor, racism, vulnerability of age/living in an institution, and so on. While posing a major challenge to public health systems around the world, the pandemic has thrown the contemporary challenges for the responses to outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases into sharper view, especially with reference to the accelerated extension of urban processes and forms into regions that had previously not been urbanized. But twelve months into the pandemic, as it has now rolled over most settled regions around the world, places in the global urban world and the spaces between them have generated complex, and often contradictory, outbreak and reopening narratives.

Urbanists have weighed residential density, degrees of informality, transportation modes, housing form, availability of park space, and a host of other factors in determining patterns in the proliferation of COVID-19. Social scientists have pointed to race, class, age, disability, and gender as important determinants. Students of public policy and institutions have pointed to insufficiencies in public health pandemic preparedness and catastrophic negligence in long-term care homes. Labor researchers have highlighted the lack of state regulation and oversight at precarious workplaces such as meatpacking plants, in the agricultural sector, and in long-term care homes. How those factors add up across cities and urban networks specifically will be important to understand as this pandemic continues and as the urban world prepares to face the next, possibly still unknown, contagion that will pose a systemic threat. Put simply, the health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic is highly associated with processes of urbanization and globalization but in nonlinear and unpredictable ways.

We follow the virus to the Italian metropolis of Milan and the Canadian urban region of Toronto. Milan was the European epicenter of the first wave, next to the Spanish capital of Madrid.