Governing Globalizing Cities, Reshaping Urban Policies
Résumé
What happened to urban policies? Rumours and evidence of retreat or even death of urban policies
have been documented in line with the restructuring of the nation state, globalisation processes and the neo
liberal turn of many public policies: large public investments in social housing is for instance at low ebb
(Harloe 1995). By contrast, urban policies seem to be everywhere, ―new‖ urban policies in particular,
whatever that means, seem to flourish even at every level. Against the view that globalisation is sweeping
everything and determining the faith of cities, a set of literature attempts to show that state and cities have
still a major say in the structuring and organisation of cities, hence a role for politics and institutions in
relation to social groups, and economic relations constrained and articulated to different sets of pressures
(Saraceno 2002; Marcuse & Van Kempen 2002; Moulaert 2002; Jessop 2002; Le Galès 2002, Brenner
2005, Harding, Forthcoming). Urbanization is reaching new high in the contemporary world with the rise
of mega cities beyond 15 million inhabitants such as Calcutta, Los Angelès, Cairo, Tokyo, New York,
Bombay or Seoul. Beyond the modern metropolis, researchers try to make sense of those large urban areas:
postmetropolis, global cities, global city-regions. Processes of globlisation, including transnational
migration, architecture, financial transactions, transport flux, or dissemination of technological innovations
contribute to the rise of mega cities in different part of the globe. The puzzle of contemporary urban
policies has to be studied in relation with two trends : 1) the development of multilevel governance and
2) during the current ―Urban moment‖ (Beauregard & Body-Gendrot 2000; Healey, Khakee, Motte &
Needham 1995), globalising cities are growing, gaining inhabitants (not everywhere,) and they are seen,
for the time being to be gaining momentum to be again place of cultural innovation, economic
development, places for different kinds of projects and attempts to implement new modes of governance of
multiculturalism. (First paragraph)