ABSTRACT
This process has been the result of an entanglement of factors. But it has been especially fostered by the globalization and financialization of the economy largely driven by a neo-liberal approach that has led to a strong rhetoric relative to the role of cities as economic actors in the global arena, and which are supposed to compete among themselves (Taylor, 2003). From this perspective, urban policies have been even more oriented to economic competitiveness through different “neo-liberal tools of urban government” (Halpern et al., 2014), such as the promotion of international events, infrastructures for connectivity, urban renewal, sustainability policies, cultural interventions. However, although these measures have often been quite successful in attracting the creative class, talents, foreign investments and new populations to cities (Musterd, 2010), they have also fostered new forms of inequality, especially in terms of labour market structure and spatial inequalities between social groups able to afford very expensive housing and other populations evicted from the city or concentrated in the most deprived areas of the urban context. At the same time, at national and local levels, welfare policies have exhibited a trend towards inertia or retrenchment, especially in the current situation of economic crisis. Austerity policies have even exacerbated, and not reduced, the social dualization taking place in the labour and housing markets (Emmenegger et al., 2013). Although in this regard European cities still largely differ since welfare services are still mainly provided at the national level of government,
they have undergone a general trend of decreasing financial support provided by national governments in order to protect the most disadvantaged groups (Ranci et al., 2014). Even cities more dependent on their own revenue base have not been able to afford social and redistributive policies because higher taxation to support welfare would have driven out capital investment (Fainstein, 2010). For this reason, European cities once known as the “cities of welfare”, like Copenhagen, have progressively adopted more neo-liberal policies oriented to economic competitiveness (Andersen and Winther, 2010). In this framework, the aim of this book is to describe the tensions among factors related to economic competitiveness and social inequalities in European cities and to discuss their implications for urban policy, thereby furnishing a new understanding of the transformations affecting the European social model at an urban level. The book is based on original research carried out in six large European cities characterized by high levels of globalization and a leading economic role in their respective national contexts: Barcelona, Copenhagen, Lyon, Manchester, Milan and Munich. The cities considered have a number of characteristics in common: they play a central, if not dominant, economic role in their respective national economies; with the exception of Copenhagen, they are not the capitals of the nation-state in which they are situated; they are of large urban size (being the second or third largest cities in their respective countries); they exhibit a strong tendency to globalization and are embedded in transnational urban networks. Their selection makes it possible to control for one of the decisive factors of social integration identified in previous research (Kazepov, 2005; Ranci, 2011): the coverage and generosity of welfare programmes. The six cities considered pertain in fact to different welfare models: the Social-Democratic regime (Copenhagen), the Liberal regime (Manchester), the Corporatist regime, including both the Francophone (Lyon) and the German (Munich) variants, and the Mediterranean regime, with its two variants: Spanish (Barcelona) and Italian (Milan). Finally, these cities are highly globalized and competitive in their own national contexts and within the European scenario. At the same time, they are peculiarly different from global mega-cities and capitals, such as London and Paris, on which research on global cities has mainly focused (Sassen, 1991; Hamnett, 2003; Fainstein, 2010; Maloutas and Fuijita, 2012; Tammaru et al., 2016). Not only is their size significantly smaller than that of a mega-city, but also their multilevel interdependence, both at local and regional-national scales, is noticeably more relevant. While mega-cities have become relatively independent bodies within national configurations and have developed a relatively high autonomy in respect of their urban regions, our “second national cities” are still entrenched within their national or regional settings and have built up their own economic success on assets that are mainly based on their local context. This book intends, therefore, to contribute to re-balancing the dominant scholars’ consideration of urban globalization, providing a better understanding of the impact of globalization occurring in medium-to-large cities. To sum up, our investigation aims to answer some key questions: What are the main challenges faced by medium-to-large cities for developing competitiveness
and preserving social integration? What have been the main economic trends in these cities, and how have they impacted on social and spatial inequalities? How have these problems been defined in the public discourse on these cities? To what extent have the issues of social integration and economic competitiveness been combined in local political agendas? What has been the impact of the current crisis, and what have been the reactions at the city level? Four crucial aspects of the interconnection between economic performance and social integration will be considered: increasing social inequalities within the cities in relation to the specificity of their local production regime; the tradeoffs between local interests protection and the capacity to attract global flows of financial and human resources; new social morphologies emerging in these cities as a consequence of their globalization; the integration of immigrants and ethnic minority groups (EMGs) in the labour market. All these cities have undertaken large-scale urban projects and policies intended to promote their international functions and to attract foreign investments and high-quality human resources. We will consider the extent to which globalized economic functions have been performed independently of the social context, and we will show how these impacts have differed among the cities considered, and how they essentially depend on the distinctive development pattern of each city. The role played by local policies will be examined in this context by focusing on policy fields in which cities play a crucial role. In this regard, two policy issues will be investigated as crucial, both for the impact on the social integration of cities, and for the importance of the role played by local actors: how to deal with housing affordability problems arising as a consequence of increased land value, and how to create new employment of good quality in terms of pay and stability.
