ARI · Springer Asia Series

The Rise of Progressive CitiesEast and West

Mike DouglassRomain GarbayeK. C. Ho Editors

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Mike Douglass • Romain Garbaye K. C. HoEditors

The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West

ISSN 2367-105X ISSN 2367-1068 (electronic)ARI - Springer Asia SeriesISBN 978-981-13-0208-4 ISBN 978-981-13-0209-1 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0209-1

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EditorsMike DouglassDepartment of Urban & Regional PlanningUniversity of Hawaii at ManoaHonolulu, HI, USA

K. C. HoDepartment of Sociology and Asia Research InstituteNational University of Singapore Singapore

Romain GarbayeUniversité Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3Paris, France

For John Friedmann (1926–2017), dear friend, mentor, founder of urban planning education and continuing inspiration for generations of urban scholars, planners and practitioners.

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Editor’s Acknowledgements

This book is the result of two meetings organized by the editors in February 2015 in Singapore and in May 2015 in Paris. We acknowledge the generous funding pro-vided by the NUS-USPC Grant. This grant enabled the research groups from the two universities to advance initial working drafts and get helpful comments from the group in the Singapore meeting. The authors then had a chance to work on these comments and presented a polished paper in the Paris meeting. Other forums pro-vided an opportunity to get feedback and elaboration on key issues explored in the book. We highlight in particular “Making a Progressive City: Seoul’s Experiences and Beyond” organized by the Seoul Development Institute in October 2015. This meeting included policymakers and academics and provided an important platform for understanding how policies contribute to the making of progressive cities. On the Paris side, the editors are grateful to the president of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, Carle Bonafous-Murat, as well as to the successive vice presi-dents for international affairs, Emmanuel Fraisse and Sébastien Velut, for their sup-port. On the Singapore side, Mike and KC want to thank the programme staff at the Asia Research Institute and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy for working efficiently to organize the February 2015 meeting. Special acknowledgement is extended to Yves Cabannes, head of the Development Planning Unit at University College London, who worked with us and several of our authors on their chapters. Pierre Clavel, whose path-breaking books on progressive cities in the United States served as an inspiration to us, continued to give us critical insights that greatly helped us move forward in our research. We also want to thank Hui Ying at the Asian Research Institute, NUS, for her steadfast assistance in copy-editing the papers, chasing down missing references and ensuring the format is consistent across all 14 chapters.

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Contents

Part I Holistic Perspectives on the Progressive City in Concept and in Practice

1 The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Mike Douglass, Romain Garbaye, and K. C. Ho

2 The Rise of Progressive Cities for Human and Planetary Flourishing: A Global Perspective on Asia’s Urban Transition . . . . . 23Mike Douglass

3 A Progressive City in the Making? The Seoul Experience . . . . . . . . . 47Myung-Rae Cho

Part II Inclusion and Distributive Justice

4 Including Migrants and Ethnic Minorities, the Cautionary Tale of British Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Romain Garbaye

5 Housing Policies in London, 2000–2016: Policies for a Progressive World City? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79David Fée

6 Progressive Localism and the Moral Economy: Lessons from the London Living Wage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Corinne Nativel

7 Participatory Budgeting and Progressive Cities: Are London and Paris Listening to Their Own Voices? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Cécile Doustaly

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8 Land Reform, Participatory Governance, and Grassroots Democracy in Progressive Chengdu, China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137Fangxin Yi

9 The Promises and Perils of US Local Labor Ordinances . . . . . . . . . . 151Jean-Baptiste Velut

Part III Conviviality: Neighbourhoods, the Commons, Heritage and the Environment

10 Toward the Progressive Scene: Creative Activism in Marseille and Istanbul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169Jérémie Molho

11 Governance with a Creative Citizenry: Art Projects for Convivial Society in Japanese Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185Motohiro Koizumi

12 Cities of Protest and Cities of Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203K. C. Ho

13 Progressive Solutions to Urban Woes: Arts and Culture as Tools for Urban Revitalization in Busan, South Korea . . . . . . . . . . 217Yu-Min Joo

14 Progressive City Surakarta? Learning from Community-Based Initiatives in Urban Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233Rita Padawangi

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Contents

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Contributors

Myung-Rae Cho Korea Environment Institute, Sejong-si, South Korea

Mike Douglass Department of Urban & Regional Planning, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

Cécile  Doustaly AGORA Research Centre, Université Cergy Pontoise Cergy (Greater Paris), France

David Fée Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Cergy (Greater Paris), France

Romain Garbaye Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, Paris, France

K. C. Ho Department of Sociology and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Yu-Min  Joo Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Motohiro Koizumi College of Sociology, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan

Jérémie  Molho Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Corinne Nativel Université de Paris Est-Créteil (UPEC), Créteil, France

Rita Padawangi Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore

Jean-Baptiste Velut Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, Paris, France

Fangxin Yi National University of Singapore, Singapore

Part IHolistic Perspectives on the Progressive

City in Concept and in Practice

3© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 M. Douglass et al. (eds.), The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West, ARI – Springer Asia Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0209-1_1

Chapter 1The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West

Mike Douglass, Romain Garbaye, and K. C. Ho

1.1 Progressive Cities in a Global Urban Era

With the global urban transition accelerating into the twenty-first century, cities are fast becoming the loci of public decision-making over a broad array of issues about the human benefits and consequences of planetary urbanization (Brenner and Schmid 2014). In an era of rising inequalities and high levels of social, economic, and political turbulence around the world, contestations over who has the right to be included in the governance of cities and what aspirations are to be pursued are appearing everywhere. Cities are also increasingly socially and culturally complex, magnifying the diversity of claims being made on urban governance. Can cities engage their many voices in public decision-making processes to identify and equi-tably resolve these claims? Can they be steered away from the negative trends and impacts already associated with urbanization? Can cities be transformed in ways that generate more caring and nurturing relationships with the natural environment? In other words, can cities become wellsprings for human and planetary flourishing? These are the overarching questions that bring together the chapters of this book.

M. Douglass (*) Department of Urban & Regional Planning, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USAe-mail: michaeld@hawaii.edu

R. Garbaye Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, Paris, Francee-mail: romain.garbaye@univ-paris3.fr

K. C. Ho Department of Sociology and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singaporee-mail: sochokc@nus.edu.sg

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Asia’s accelerated urban transition over the past half century has been a major contributor to the rise of cities and intercity networks that are now spatially articulating the world system. Problems facing cities in Asia are manifold, and the pace of urbanization is increasing their compounding effects ahead of solutions devised for them. With its largest urban regions increasing in excess of 200,000 people per year, issues of inclusion, justice, associational life, and the state of the environment are magnified by economic crises, devastating environmental disasters and social conflict (UNESCAP 2016). In the contexts of heightened global move-ments of capital, people, and resources flowing into and through cities, large shares of urban populations continue to face great difficulties in securing daily life spaces for livelihoods, basic goods and services, environmental resilience, and the convivi-ality of social life. As foreign workers from other Asian countries provide increas-ingly large shares of low-wage labor in higher-income economies in Asia, questions of inclusion loom larger around ethnic and cultural divides.

In the West, continuing flows of international migration in already multicultural urban settings are contributing to the onset of “superdiversity,” i.e., diversity appear-ing in the multiple dimensions of migration, socioeconomic or educational statuses, and the fluidity of linguistic, cultural, religious, or ethno-racial identities in the com-plex and evolving urban cultures of twenty-first-century cities (Vertovec 2006; Keith 2005). In both Asia and the West, increasing diversity that challenges cities to engender a shared ethos in a progressive cultural milieu has emerged to become among the most critical crosscutting issues today (Keith 2005; Nagy 2014; Molho, Chap. 10). Recognition of the potentially destructive conflict arising from the absence of social and governance mechanisms to ameliorate regressive responses to diversity has appeared in recent reformulations of the cosmopolitan ideal that have steered it away from its earlier attachments to modernity and its view of creating a universal citizen in a harmonious world of agreements among nation-states extol-ling basic human rights for all. From a progressive city perspective, an alternative grassroots cosmopolis focuses on the city as a realm in need of new ways of not only of mutual accommodation but also of urban vitality through participatory gover-nance processes (Sandercock 1998; Sandercock and Lyssiotis 2003; Douglass 2009).

In response to these tendencies, the search has begun for progressive cities that are capable of expanding the right to the city for citizens and noncitizens alike in the pursuit of social and spatial justice through inclusive and participatory public decision- making (Lefebvre 1991; Harvey 2008; Marcuse 2009; Soja 2011; Friedmann 2011). By turning attention to local government-civil society relations, these approaches hold in common an intended corrective to the idea that unfettered economic growth through global competitiveness will create cities in which human-ity flourishes. This burgeoning shift in ideas about urban societies and governance highlights the growing need for alternative conceptual frameworks to pro-growth or developmentalist visions of the city in an era of global neoliberal ascendancy. The aim of this book is to contribute to these efforts through empirical examinations of real-world experiences of cities in Asia, Europe, and the United States that explore emerging progressiveness and the challenges they confront.

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A point of departure for addressing our comparative research is the observation that both within and among countries, cities exhibit striking differences in their capacities to form progressive modes of governance. Further, as the twenty-first century brings a historic turning point at which more than half of the population in the world lives in urban places, some cities are forming networks for collaborative intercity associations of governments that are putting forth shared progressive urban agenda about the future of the world as a human habitat (e.g., Local Progress.org). These networks include nongovernment and civil society organizations as well. The transcendence of these networks beyond individual cities and national borders cou-pled with intercity flows of people, goods, and decision-making authority provide a clear rationale for focusing on cities and systems of cities as realms of political deliberations and action.

As a sign that cities are being recognized as key sites of policy-making, the European Union has actively promoted the development of intercity networks to foster the circulation of policy ideas and benchmarks in a variety of critical fields, including equality of opportunity and migrant integration (Caponio and Bokert 2010). In Asia such urban alliances across national borders are as yet rare (Douglass 2013). They are further stunted by the ascendant neoliberal ideology of ultra- competitiveness among cities for global capital (EIU 2012; Khoo 2012) that divides rather than unites cities for common causes and uses borders in ways that inhibit freedom of social interaction. Nonetheless, as the authors brought together in this book detail from specific city experiences, in Asia, too, a significant number of cit-ies are now engaged in progressive reform of governance. Some city mayors in Asia have also become international leaders of progressive agenda for such causes as reducing anthropogenic impacts on the environment (Cho, Chap. 3).

Given the wide variations in performances of cities, those identified as progres-sive can be seen as comprising a subset of cities that share similar attributes in terms of their drivers and the types of objectives they pursue. Concerning drivers, the rise of progressive cities is most frequently associated with relatively long histories of grassroots activism and the formation of a civic culture that promotes the common good. At particular points in time, this activism finds ways to go beyond contesta-tions against the state to make alliances with agencies in city governments, which are further enabled when they can work to select the mayor who shares their orienta-tion. These and other traits also have variations among them in terms of the particu-lar forms of government and processes of governance that have emerged.

All governance institutions are also subject to the dynamics of change emanating from larger institutional and structural scales operating at national and global scales. When self-empowerment and processes of inclusion from below mix with impulses of national and corporate interests from above, progressive governments are invari-ably composed of coalitions and assemblages that have unprogressive as well as progressive factions in them. Given all these contingencies, no one model or pro-gressive pathway can be predetermined. Nonetheless, as cities learn from each other, similar tools are being shared. These include innovations such as participa-tory budgeting, social economy, sharing economy, community currency, collective land tenure, (re-)making the commons through open markets and public spaces,

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participatory art festivals, environmental protection, and community-based urban agriculture, to name a few (Cabannes 2004). The cases brought together in this book cover many of these new directions and illustrate how localities can make signifi-cant differences through progressive urban governance.

The multiple contrary conditions confronting progressive movements would seem to indicate that in a corporatizing global age, progressive governments are fragile, and their prospects are tenuous. Yet while in some cases progressive cities might appear for only a brief period due to extraordinary constellations of events that prove not to be extendable, in other contexts progressive governance has gained a level of resilience to endure through longer periods of time (Clavel 1986, 2010). Moreover, today cities in the West are leading progressive causes for such critical issues as raising minimum wages, reducing carbon emissions, and providing social housing, while national governments fall behind in tackling them (Barber 2013; Bloomberg and Pope 2017; Fieldman 2011). In the United States, progressive city governments are also joining hands to form national networks (Goldberg 2014; Meyerson 2015). In Asia, too, as national governments are showing themselves to have flagging capacities to gain trust needed to mobilize societies for the common good (Duara 2014), some cities are moving into the forefront of political reform (Cho, Chap. 3).

As previously noted, responses to the growing understanding that cities and urbanization are moving ever further off course have produced a number of frame-works that are put forth as alternatives to unbridled globally driven economic growth as the high road human and environmental well-being. Sustainable cities, liveable cities, eco-cities, and smart cities are among the principal alternative frameworks advanced in recent years. While each has variations, they also have dominant modes occupying mainstream thinking, and in practice many have diminished rather than advanced progressive causes such as inclusion, distributive justice, social life, and even environmental sustainability (Fainstein 2005; Caprotti 2014; Robertson 2016; Arcadis 2017; UNWCED 1987). They also have moved governance into depoliti-cized managerial realms of citymaking that privilege elites, the wealthy, and public- corporate partnerships (Khoo 2012; ADB 2014) over participatory community-driven approaches that include marginalized populations. As argued by Schragger (2013), the current conditions of cities, rich and poor, are not determined solely by eco-nomic factors but also and most importantly are the outcomes of political choices. The central task, therefore, is to bring politics back into discourses on alternative pathways into the future.

Critiques of prevailing frameworks have generated countermovements that, in using the same vocabulary, have moved in more progressive directions. Many have emerged from cities rather than from national or international development agencies (Lees, 2014). For example, the concepts of “social sustainability” are put forth in London with a core principle that “marginal and poor groups should not dispropor-tionately bear the costs of public or private activities or policies” (Manzi et al. 2010, quoted by Lees 2014: 149). And the role of enlightened community organizers is essential in pushing forward progressive changes in London’s municipalities (Nativel, Chap. 7). In Rio de Janeiro, a critique of the 2016 “New Urban Agenda”

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devised at the Habitat III global assembly in Quito has generated a collective move-ment that sets forth an alternative vision that includes “the search for equity, the just distribution of costs and benefits of urbanization, and the social function of owner-ship and property,” including the importance of public space (Robertson 2016). In stating that the New Urban Agenda “does not fit the reality of exclusion, regression and rights violations lived by populations daily,” it focuses on the “right to the city” as a basic approach to human rights and a platform for action that radically departs from the narrow formulation of urban policy and planning through public-private partnerships. Concern is also raised that unless it is clearly elaborated, the focus on security risks justifying repression or “criminalization of diverse expressions of citi-zenship.” We concur with these critiques, which we seek to extend in this volume, incorporating while also continuing to reformulate their contributions.

1.2 Research on Progressive Cities

Cities that are more progressive than others have surely existed throughout history. Among the well-known periods of time in the West is the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century in the United States and Europe when cities played impor-tant roles in countering the “Gilded Age” of extreme concentrations of wealth and corporate-government collusion (Douglass, Chap. 2). Our interest here is the post-colonial world following the end of World War II when the sovereign nation-state system became universal and cities within nations began to rise as key levels of governance. Although Europe and the United States have longer histories of cities as subnational political units, doing research on progressive cities in much of Asia before the end of the twentieth century would have been exceptionally limited by several factors, including low overall levels of urbanization, which were under 20% in many countries and very limited local government autonomy and capacities.

Adopting a post-World War II starting point, Pierre Clavel’s seminal 1986 publi-cation on progressive cities in the United States during the 1969–1984 provides a foundation for further theorizations. His lucid exposition on the ways in which grassroots mobilization for inclusiveness and justice led to progressive government actions revealed that in an era that saw the reactionary ideology of neoliberalism become global, alternatives to pro-growth politics were possible at levels of city governance even while national polities swung in opposite directions. However, research under a “progressive city” rubric did not take off during the ensuing decades up to the global recession of 2008, which galvanized worldwide contestations against the state and corporate economy. The Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, both of which rose to a world stage in 2011, and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement from 2014 can be seen as a few of many manifestations of expressions of collective human agency aspiring for what can be generally termed more progres-sive forms of governance that called upon entitlement claims for justice, the right to the city, and basic human rights as the moral high ground for political reform.

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By about 2015, the term “progressive” begin to gain new currency in its use to characterize “leftist” political movements and politicians alike. However, programs of research on progressive cities has to date remained quite limited (Clavel 2016). The time is at hand to revitalize this research. In composing our framework, we first draw from Clavel’s research and related concepts about human flourishing in “the good city” (Friedmann 2000), the “just city” (Fainstein, 2005), and the right to the city (Lefebvre 1991) – all of which focus on the two dimensions of inclusion and distributive justice. Given that what constitutes justice fundamentally depends on whose voice is included in public decision-making, inclusion and distributive jus-tice go hand in hand.

Inclusion and distributive justice are typically oriented toward material aspects of the city such as housing, collective consumption, living wages, and health and welfare more generally (Friedmann 2000; Fainstein 2005; Harvey 2008; Soja 2011). In placing human flourishing as a central focus, we draw from our research and independent reportage on social discontents provoking mobilizations for political change around the world to add two other dimensions of equal importance in con-ceptualizing the concept of a progressive city, namely, conviviality and sustaining the environment. As further elaborated in Chap. 2, conviviality includes various dimensions of the day-to-day sociability of city life as well as celebrations such as street parties or carnivals that have social use values that, while they can secondarily produce an urban economy, are essential to human flourishing in their own terms (Peattie 1998). In the end the ultimate objective of progressive citymaking is to provide for the (re-)construction of a society and polity founded on social relations that transcends the reductive straightjacket of market and financialized transactions. We assert that the most appropriate scale for this engagement is the city.

While contexts vary between and within the Western world and Asia, a compara-tive exploration of similarities and differences among cities in different settings can aid in better understanding the dynamics of the twenty-first century global urban transition. Given the wide variations among cities, progressive cities can be seen as a subset of cities that have in common certain qualities in their mix of governance structures and processes, which are also subject to dynamics of change through time. In some cases, progressive cities might appear for just a brief period due to extraordinary constellations of events that prove not to be extendable. In contrast, others have gained a level of resilience to endure over long periods of time. In all cases three parameters are suggested as key factors for the emergence of a progres-sive agenda in a given urban context.

One shared characteristic is a high level of governance capacity, which often includes the decentralization of public decision-making authority to the city level, significant budgetary autonomy, and the existence of institutionalized mechanisms for participation in governance. European cities have most of these elements in place, although they continue to evolve within highly nationalized spaces in which debates and mobilizations that take place at the local level often reflect the continu-ing influence of central and higher levels of government and, in the case of the European Union, higher levels of government. Highly centralized countries such as

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France have experienced decentralization since the 1980s along with the rise of mul-tilevel policy networks and local governance regimes (Le Galès 2003; Pinson 2009).

Across Western Europe, central governments have worked in partnership with local government and other local interests for decades as part of various styles of urban regeneration programs (Tallon 2010). This is also the case across Mediterranean countries where new forms of urban governance in the context of Europeanization and economic globalization coexist with traditional patterns of decision-making (Seixas and Albet 2012). Local democracy is a long-standing tradition in West European contexts, despite variations between the specific styles, depth, and impact of local democratic participation across countries, between different cities within nations, and despite growing concerns in recent decades about political and social threats to local democracy.

Among European liberal democracies, Britain is one of the most directly affected by the deep changes that have affected urban governance since the 1980s. British cities have been at the leading edge of experiments which have led to greater inclu-siveness of ethnic minorities in the political system (Garbaye, Chap. 4). The rise of new approaches to local governance hinging on the adoption of New Public Management managerial techniques, followed since 2010 by the “Big Society” Agenda of Prime Minister David Cameron which advocates the rolling back of state-financed public services at the local level and their replacement with citizens’ voluntary engagement, has made it a prime example of shifting configurations of center-locality state-society relations and local democracy in an era of neoliberal dominance. Decentralization in the United Kingdom also takes on fundamental issues of secession as well as severe reductions in funding from the central govern-ment to local governments.

In the United States, which is founded on federal system of local autonomy, states and cities have a wide latitude of decision-making power in basic areas of health, education, and welfare. From the Nixon Presidency in the 1970s to the pres-ent, the “New Federalism” further devolved responsibilities to local government, with block grants from the national government substituting for funding for specific program areas (Barron 2001). While its stated intention is to enhance local auton-omy, several weaknesses pervade its practices. In particular, the “drift and dysfunc-tion of the national government” in the twenty-first century (Katz 2014) have removed it from being a partner with local governments, including assisting col-laborations among localities. Unfunded mandates given to local governments by the national government have also put great stress on local fiscal capacities, which has meant that low-income populations living in cities experiencing economic down-turns have not received levels of assistance that governments are committed to pro-vide (Super 2005). A net result of these changes in center-local relations is that differences among localities have widened in terms of both capacities to govern and policy agenda. On the one end of the spectrum are cities that have united under progressive policy agenda and at the other end are cities that retrench into agenda that seeks to dismantle redistributive and social welfare programs.

The devolution of powers to municipal levels of government and the capacities of cities to govern in Asia are still partial and vary substantially from country to

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country. At one end of the spectrum, India is proclaimed to be the largest democ-racy in the world, with cities functioning under powers delegated to them by state governments. From the late 1990s, South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia have each experienced substantial political reform in establishing elected democratic government. In contract, many others continue to have highly centralized govern-ments, appointed rather than elected governments, and few mechanisms for par-ticipatory governance (Wong 2004; Butcher and Velayutham 2009; Murphy and Hogan 2012). Of interest in the case studies in this collection is the finding that even in countries in which substantial democratic reforms have yet to appear, local governments are more susceptible to public pressure for progressive actions than are central governments. As the case of Chengdu shows, for example, such participatory programs as participatory budgeting can occur in settings that might not be thought to be candidates for such actions. However, where democratic reforms and devolution of government to municipal levels have occurred, open-ings for the formation of progressive city governance are fundamentally enhanced.

Another key driver in the rise of progressive cities is civil society mobilizations and coalitions that contribute to building and reproducing progressive political cul-tures through time. This continuity arises from what can be called the social and cultural sedimentation of many experiences in mobilizing for specific causes that create shared identities around ideas of the common good and conviviality of asso-ciational life. It also involves learning how to move from resistance to socially pro-gressive projects. Resulting civic cultural continuities can persevere for decades and more, as they transcend cycles of radical mobilization around hot issues and con-figurations of party political competition and the life of mayoral administration in power.

A third dimension of progressive urban governance is the move from progressive projects and programs to transforming government institutions, laws, and regula-tory processes to allow civil society to seek redress through rather than against governance processes. For example, radical antiracist militant networks in British cities in the 1970s and early 1980s often morphed into municipal anti- discrimination units and municipal departments in the late 1980s and the 1990s (Shukra 1998). Likewise, in Seoul under Mayor Park Won-soon, many institutional changes have been made to greatly expand legal and other institutionalized processes of direct civic participation in governance processes (Cho, Chap. 3).

Tracing the three key processes of grassroots mobilizations; building a larger urban culture that can act as an umbrella over ethnic, class, gender, and generational divides; and transforming governance institutions through legal and other means comprise the major dimensions for research that attempts to answer the question of how can we trace the prospects of progressive movements through time. From these combined perspective, we posit that the roots of progressive cities must, to a great extent, preexist the appearance of progressive governments. In Europe, the United States, and Asia, urban political orientations typically appear to have arisen from local political cultures with deep historical roots. Observed differences between “blue” and “red” cities and local governments have long histories of being either socially progressive or conservative or even regressive.

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In support of this argument, Yap (2013) finds that progressive governments that are able to build a culture of political trust with constituents are more likely than other governments to continue to receive popular support in times of economic decline and hardship. The ability of local government to solidify feelings of belong-ing in local identities through inclusive symbolic policies such as multiculturalism or other patterns of institutionalization of “communities” have also been viewed as a means to shore up trust and acceptance for local institutions. This type of effort at building legitimacy may however be also associated with new modes of control of local populations (Flint and Robinson 2008). Such findings further suggest the need to initiate more research on political alliances and political culture.

Focusing on institutional transformations beyond projects or programs brings to the fore a large body of theory and debates that go well beyond the notion that sus-tained economic growth is sufficient to generate good governance (Nag 2012). The alternatives include, but are not limited to, Marxian and structuralist formulations to growth coalition, public choice theory, and regime theory (Gendron and Domhoff 2009). They also invite consideration not only of ideas about inclusion and justice but also about reconstituting the conviviality of city life, as a crucial element in building shared identities and civic culture, and regulating human appropriation of nature as a commodity.

All of the above insights into the rise and resilience of progressive cities call for longitudinal research on the long-term histories of cities, beginning with historical episodes that predate but often lay foundations for cumulative processes of building from initial successes the social capacities to carry forward through time. Recognizing how turbulent the political terrain can be as many layers of causalities interplay with local social, political, and economic processes, the surprise is that, at least in some cases, progressive forces can prevail through time, even if they are constrained by necessities to form coalitions with less progressive elements. From this observation, we find that research is equally needed on the capacity to resist attempts to co-opt progressive synergies by pro-growth coalitions and national gov-ernment interventions that seek to control them (Imrie and Raco 2003).

While in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe, local political alli-ances are able to separate themselves to varying degrees from national political organizations, throughout most of Asia, national political parties routinely move into local elections and other politically charged moments in ways that can under-mine localized progressive coalitions. Despite these differences, however, in all of these cases, the revolutionary advances in social media and informational societies (Castells 2000) increasingly counter any idea that politics can be locally contained. For this reason, research on networking among progressive cities that can reach a scale to speak on equal footing to cities caught up in neoliberal policy agenda, and the political economic forces behind them, is also a paramount research question (Douglass, Chap. 2). This book is designed to bring together preliminary research on each of these questions and issues.

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1.3 Structure of the Book

Cities are now key elements of a truly global system, with deep and growing eco-nomic, political, and social interconnections among them. Given the worldwide ascendency of neoliberalism and the associated need for an alternative agenda, any concept of a progressive city must speak to cities regardless of regional or national or local context. By way of initiating new research on progressive cities globally, the following chapters cover cities in ten countries in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Each explores both the processes that have led to the emergence of progres-sive cities and the outcomes that they have achieved, whether successful or not.

1.3.1 Holistic Perspectives on Progressive Cities in Concept and Practice

The book is divided into three sections. Part I includes chapters that present over-views and holistic conceptualizations and practices in making progressive cities. Following this chapter, Chap. 2 by Mike Douglass sets forth a conceptual frame-work for research on progressive cities. His main theme is that thinking about and taking action in the ongoing global urban transition need to focus on human flour-ishing as the central purpose. He posits that supporting human flourishing through urban governance processes rests on four “pillars”: inclusion, distributive justice, conviviality, and sustaining the environment. Each interplays with the others in dynamic, open-ended ways that call for attention to processes of engagement in governance as well as to outcomes. He calls for continuous scanning of impacts of actions taken in one pillar on the others. Creating green spaces for environmental improvement by dispossessing low-income households of the land they occupy and raising minimum wages that then result in consumption patterns that worsen the environment are examples of misguided sector planning that prevails in urban gov-ernance in most cities.

In Chap. 3 Myung-Rae Cho draws from all the pillars of the framework in Chap. 2 to provide an illuminating story of Seoul, which from 2011 rapidly shifted from a neoliberal governance regime to a progressive one following the unexpected resig-nation of sitting mayor and the election of a new mayor who had been an urban activist but had never held a public office. Given that the first direct democratic elections of mayors in South Korea only began in 1995, the accomplishments in progressive policy implementation in Seoul are remarkable in terms of broadening citizen participation in governance.

Concerning inclusion, from the end of 2011–2014, more than 100,000 Seoul citizens became engaged in forms of participatory policy-making with city gov-ernment. Under the banner, “welfare is the endowed right of citizens,” Seoul has also moved to fulfil promises of justice in both the economy and public goods and services by establishing a welfare minimum covering income, housing, social

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caring, education, and health with particular focus on underprivileged popula-tions. Sharing economy, social economy, cooperatives, social housing, and regen-eration of marginalized hillside communities are among the many other tools used to pursue a more just city. The city of Seoul has also adopted a wide range of participatory programs aimed at making it a convivial “fun city.” Human cre-ativity and innovated were stated as important dimensions of actions taken to establish cultural hubs, small libraries, community museums, art workshops, and open theaters, among many others.

A major contribution of Cho’s study is in showing how the progressive actions taken in one area contribute to those advanced in others. Cho argues that enhancing the conviviality of city life brings together cultural identities with creativity and positive engagement in governance that, in turn, further collaborate for distributive justice and the environment. Concerning the environment, Seoul’s many layers of citizen engagement came together to achieve an impressive reduction in energy use by the equivalent of one nuclear power plant in just 2 years.

1.3.2 Inclusion and Distributive Justice

Moves toward progressive governance invariably call for expanding avenues of inclusion in governance, especially for minorities and marginalized and disadvan-taged people. From a variety of issues and perspectives, all of the cases in this vol-ume give attention to the question of inclusion. Romain Garbaye (Chap. 4) pursues it in his search for the progressive multicultural city among British cities. His focus on migration illuminates how urban populations are becoming more diverse in ways that can magnify social divides along race, ethnicity, income, and other differences. As noted above, the sustainability of progressive urban regimes requires the con-struction of a sense of cohesion and mutual trust that is inclusive of all urban popu-lations, regardless of their origin or background. Migration and ethno-racial diversity pose a challenge to this objective because it is often associated with pat-terns of spatial segregation, discrimination, stigmatization, and sometimes intereth-nic tensions and violence. European cities have been experimenting for decades with various approaches to the construction of a sense of inclusion for all, from multiculturalist policies in the 1970s and 1980s, shifting in the last decade to “inte-gration” policies.

Britain shows this evolution in its shift from “multiculturalist” policies to “com-munity cohesion” that occurred after urban rioting in the north of England in the summer of 2001 and also reflects responses to 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the London bombings of 2005. Community cohesion was meant as a new approach to preventing the repetition of such disorder surrounding ethnic and religious differences and to fostering harmonious local identities by plac-ing a new emphasis on intercultural work, interfaith dialogue, and civic participa-tion locally. Community cohesion thinking has been particularly influential in policy debates on the inclusion of Muslim communities in British cities, which

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reflect higher-level dynamics of political change and world events (Garbaye 2005). In underscoring the findings that progressive political regimes have emerged from successful politicized struggles between city and central governments, Garbaye also cautions that in recent years the debate over inclusion has been appropriated by notions of social cohesion and dampened by overall downsizing of the public sector in the provisioning of collective consumption.

David Fée’s (Chap. 5) research on London’s housing policy and spatial segrega-tion parallels Garbaye’s analysis by examining London’s marketing efforts to por-tray it as an inclusive progressive city. He shows how two recent mayors attempted to portray their housing policies as socially minded, despite severe constraints on their capacity for action in the context of rampant gentrification of formerly afford-able neighborhoods and an unfavorable national policy context. The question of local autonomy looms large here as a precondition for the establishment of urban policies geared toward inclusiveness and well-being. Fée’s study also reveals how contextual differences among cities complicate comparisons and can also make pro-gressiveness a relative rather than absolute concept that is always politically contingent.

As with Fée’s study, in addition to expanding inclusion in governance for demo-cratic practices, several of the chapters point inclusion directly toward achieving distributive justice. Corinne Nativel (Chap. 6) investigates issues of justice in her analysis of London’s “Living Wage Campaign” in the context of national austerity urbanism. The campaign can be viewed as a rights-based transformation toward a moral economy. In the context of this markedly unequal city, which has experienced increasing social polarization brought, in part, by large migration flows of low-wage workers and the thriving financial industry, the need to reinvent citymaking on pro-gressive bases is vividly demonstrated. In the context of an austerity agenda domi-nant at the national level in Britain, Nativel’s exploration of this campaign compels us to ask several key questions: How can progressive experiments appear in one of the centers of financial globalization? What are the drivers of its success, and on this basis how can the urban context of the global metropolis become a site of resistance against national neoliberal dominance?

Research on London and Paris by Cécile Doustaly (Chap. 7), and on Chengdu by Fangxin Yi (Chap. 8), assess the adoption of participatory budgeting (PB) as a mechanism to include communities and other local organizations in public decision- making by giving portions of municipal budgets to their discretion to spend (Cabannes 2004). This approach has been adopted in more than 2000 cities around the world following its innovation in Brazil in the 1990s. While each of the experi-ences reveals how PB programs differ with regard to sizes of budgets, types of organizations they include, and scale, they all speak to the processes and objectives of combining inclusion with distributive justice as a routine of participatory local governance.

The case of Chengdu provides a rare use of PB to empower peri-urban rural vil-lages to directly participate in implementing policies aimed at balancing rural and urban levels of welfare and well-being. Other policies aimed at reducing rural-urban inequalities include a locally instituted process of land reform giving greater security

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of tenure to rural households. Land ownership and compensation for government taking of rural land for urban expansion have been a long-standing source of conten-tion in China. In this case, rural-urban differences in household incomes are reported to have been reduced due to tenure reform initiated by local government.

Jean-Baptiste Velut (Chap. 9) assesses the metropolitan regions of the United States through the lens of Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city to explore the question of inclusion and distributive justice. In looking at issues of social and envi-ronmental rights, anti-discrimination, and civil society-state consultation processes, he analyzes the potential for American cities to become micro-level cradles of alter-native economies based on democratic mobilization and disruptive politics in the American context, often described as the cradle of neoliberal globalization. In his search for the drivers of alternative urban politics, he finds that localities are often more capable than national government to incorporate civil society movements into progressive urban policies, noting that variations among cities are pronounced.

1.3.3 Conviviality: Neighborhoods, the Commons, Heritage, and the Environment

Conviviality, which can be understood as the vitality of a city expressed through everyday associational life (Chap. 2), provides the focus for the concerns over inclu-sion in Jérémie Molho’s (Chap. 10) case studies of Marseille’s “Yes, We Camp” campaign and Istanbul’s “Gezi Commune.” He coins the term “progressive scene,” which he defines as spatial clusters of social and cultural activity emerging from the mobilization of creative activists that create “political awareness and stimulate new forms of participations, and experiments in alternative visions of the city.” “Yes, We Camp” involved creating spaces for camping in the city as a way to promote innova-tive participatory engagement in citymaking. He amply illuminates the understand-ing that the conviviality of people meeting people and flourishing through mutual validation is fundamental to the idea of the city and its value as a “theatre of social action” (Mumford 1961). Both cases show that the conviviality of social life in urban spaces is desired for its own worth, and because of this understanding in soci-ety, the commons, public, and green spaces in which people can flourish at arms distance from government and business can also become sites where moral claims against state and economic interests are made (Daniere and Douglass 2008; Douglass et al. 2010).

Motohiro Koizumi’s study of art projects in Japan (Chap. 11) brings to the fore the importance of conviviality in uplifting society in a situation of drastic depopula-tion. Japan had been experiencing rural depopulation for several decades, and from 2006 the entire nation slipped into an unprecedented and chronic absolute popula-tion decline with a rapidly aging society that is now affecting towns and cities as well. From 2010 to 2015, the national population declined by one million. From a peak of 128 million in 2006, government projections show that by 2060 Japan’s

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population could be just 87 million, a number that is only slightly higher than the 83 million in 1950 (Trading Economics 2017). Nearly half will be over age 65. Even by 2015 only a handful of cities, notably those around Tokyo, still experienced population growth. This move into a “demographic winter” poses immense social as well as economic problems for the country. Among the social concerns are loneli-ness, high suicide rates, and people dying alone (Allison 2012).

Koizumi uses the experience of Chiyoda Ward in Tokyo, in which the govern-ment actively supported community-driven art projects, to show how local social engagements through participatory art projects provide a sense of personal worth and meaning in life to counter the trends of social anomie accompanying Japan’s severe population decline. Art projects refer to cultural movements, art festivals, or art exhibitions that do not use museums and art galleries but rather develop in social spaces such as downtown areas or rural districts, sometimes in old Japanese-style houses or in closed schools and factories. From 2000 onward, these art projects began to replace the construction of art galleries and museums as people discovered engagement in making art to be more fulfilling than viewing it in dedicated build-ings or living social life online without actually meeting other people. These art projects are most prominent in towns and cities that have moved away from top- down government provided art venues to supporting civil society organizations to create spontaneous engagements in art projects that “strengthen the relationship between people and community.”

K. C. Ho’s (Chap. 12) study of the Tangpu sugar mill community in Taipei dis-closes the same phenomenon of people joining together not for economic or mate-rial gain but for their conviviality through shared history, identity, and sense of place. As concluded by Ho, the Tangpu Cultural Park that resulted from community mobilizations to turn a derelict sugar mill into a museum, which was supported by democratically elected local government, created rather than merely emerged from a sense of neighborhood. While many of the residents engaged sugarcane process-ing together in the past, cane production had passed into history. Mobilizing to restore the mill as a museum and new center for associational life had the effect of recreating a sense of shared identity and renewed practices of meeting together as neighbors.

Progressive government and urban activist support of Tangpu in Taipei strikingly contrasts with Ho’s comparative study of the Mahakan Fort heritage community in Bangkok. With the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority pursuing its project of preserv-ing a historic fort with origins tracing back to the founding of Bangkok in 1767, the existence of a community that has also occupied the area since the early Bangkok era is at stake. The government plan is to remove the community and its housing to make way for what it sees as a more appealing park. At the same time, the commu-nity presents itself as the caretaker of the historic site, and it has created its own history museum of Mahakan and their settlement. It also performs a unique musical folk drama and produces specialized crafts that are rich contributions to Thailand’s arts heritage. This story brings attention not only to issues of the right to the city but equally to the city as living heritage and placemaking that transcends the idea that residents are only interested in economic gain or material progress.

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Yu-Min Joo’s study of artisanal art and craft in two neighborhoods of Busan (Chap. 13) highlights a well-known dilemma about art and music scenes that arise in declining or abandoned areas. In summary form, when they are discovered by the corporate economy, they begin to suffer from three dismantling processes: gentrifi-cation that makes living in the area unaffordable for the artisans; buyouts of produc-tion sites by larger-scale businesses, including chain stores, which turn the area from a neighborhood of collaborating producers into retail shops selling (imported) copies and simulations; and government zoning and other regulations seeking to standardize areas for mass tourism.

However, in the cases presented by Joo, artists and other actors worked with resi-dents to build strong cooperative neighborhoods that have been able to empower themselves to resist these destructive forces. Moreover, in a city known for its con-servative neoliberal governments, in this case it funded Gamcheon, a hillside slum turned art community, to allow it to renovate their own homes and build their own galleries, restaurants, and other shops run by the community. The result has been a prospering neighborhood that still retains the conviviality of neighborliness, inter-generational caring, and mutual learning for new skills in art and craft-making. Likewise, the downtown declining neighborhood of Totatoga, which was once the heart of the city that became the quarters for migrants to settle during the Korean War, was rejuvenated by first reviving the cultural spirit of togetherness led by out-side artists who joined with the community for a cultural renaissance around the production of art. As Joo states, “being creative and open-minded, the artists also carry out a number of spontaneous projects that engage local residents and shop owners.”

Several chapters bring environmental issues into their research. Molho’s (Chap. 10) research on social mobilizations in Marseille and Istanbul clearly reveals a strong environmental dimension. In rejecting the appropriation of culture as an instrument for economic growth, the artists and architects in Marseille who initiated “Yes, We Camp” through crowd funding and municipal funding had the purpose of using and promoting ecologically sound construction through their campsite proj-ect. This and related initiatives became translocal as they spread to other cities. Mobile vegetable gardens were part of the project, as was recycling of building and other materials, and reuse of water for plants.

Whereas the Marseille experience was successful in inserting progressive ele-ments into the public sphere of governance through civil society mobilizations, including those focused on symbiotic relations with the environment, the Gezi com-mune’s efforts in similar directions in Istanbul did not fare well. State violence against the spreading Gezi Park uprising put an end to it. But while it was alive, its creative activism included planting trees and enhancing human-nature relations in opposition to the impending elimination of the park to be replaced with a shopping mall. The opposition party had adopted many claims from the movement into their platforms, but it was kept out of the newly elected government in 2015. As with other movements covered in the following chapters, saving the environment was just one of the motivations for the Gezi Park resistance, which included claims for human rights, democracy.

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