PEM Seminar Series -Prof Andy Pike, Newcastle University Newcastle Upon Tyne: Financialising city statecraft and infrastructure
| Dates: | 19 February 2020 |
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| Times: | 13:00 - 14:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Manchester Urban Institute |
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| Speaker: | Prof Andy Pike |
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Abstract:
Are we reaching the limits of transformation frameworks and archetypes in explaining changes in the funding, financing and governing of urban infrastructure? While the distinctions of Harvey’s managerial and entrepreneurial forms have proven enduringly useful, the current conjuncture presents a testing moment for understanding and explanation. New archetypes are emerging in the wake of the 2008 crisis – including those categorised as ‘financialised’, ‘asset price’, ‘speculative’, and ‘austerity’ – in attempts to interpret contemporary urban infrastructure provision. Yet, such ideas are often presented as twists on the existing conceptions and are struggling to engage the messy mutation and variegation of governance forms. This contribution takes up the idea of ‘statecraft’ as a way of taking a more agency-oriented perspective to investigate the operation and practice of governing urban infrastructural provision. Recovering the ideas of Jim Bulpitt from British political science and critically reviewing recent urban and regional work on statecraft, a conception of city statecraft is articulated to remedy recent accounts where the idea is invoked but not specified or developed and to extend analysis of sub-national governance beyond Bulpitt’s ‘low politics’ of local government. Rather than constructing new typological categories and transition schema, this formulation tries to support conceptualisation and theorisation of forms of city statecraft more capable of explaining the socially and spatially uneven mixing, mutating and hybridising ways in which urban infrastructure governance is unfolding in particular geographical, temporal and institutional settings.
Speaker
Prof Andy Pike
Organisation: Newcastle University Newcastle Upon Tyne
Biography: Andy Pike is the Henry Daysh Professor of Regional Development Studies in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS), Newcastle University, UK. His research interests, publications and research projects are focused on the geographical political economy of local, regional and urban development and policy. With colleagues, he is author of the recent book Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure (Elgar, 2019). He has undertaken research projects for the OECD, UN-ILO, European Commission, UK Government and national, regional and local institutions. He is a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Travel and Contact Information
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G.030/31, Arthur Lewis Building
Architecture and Planning
Manchester
