Austerity urbanism
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13604813.2012.734071
ISSN1470-3629
Autores Tópico(s)Urban Planning and Governance
ResumoAbstract Austerity budgeting in the public sector, selectively targeting the social state, is a long-established trait of neoliberal governance, but it has been enforced with renewed systemic intensity in the period since the Wall Street crash of 2008. The paper develops the argument that these conditions are defining a new operational matrix for urban politics. Examining some of the leading and bleeding edges of austerity's ‘extreme economy’ in the USA, the paper seeks to locate these developments in the context of mutating processes of neoliberal urbanism, commenting on some of its social and spatial consequences. Keywords: Austerityneoliberal urbanismextreme economy Acknowledgements Versions of this paper were presented in the ‘City Axioms’ lecture series at Stockholm University, at the Glasgow University conference, ‘In, Against and Beyond Neoliberalism’, at the University of Illinois at Chicago's ‘Neoliberal Urbanism’ symposium and at the Georg Simmel Think & Drink colloquium at the Humboldt University, Berlin. I am grateful to the organizers, interlocutors and audiences at these events for their comments and suggestions. Josh Askers, Brett Christophers, Phil O'Neill, Andrew Shmuely, Kevin Ward and Elvin Wyly provided insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the paper. And thanks to Nik Theodore and Neil Brenner, as my approach to these questions draws on our jointly developed work, though the specific claims and interpretations here are my responsibility alone. Notes Calculated on the volume of user lookups (see http://www.merriam-webster.com). The runners-up in 2010 were ‘pragmatic’, ‘moratorium’, ‘socialism’ and ‘bigot’. On the 2011 count, austerity was no longer the most-searched word—perhaps its meaning was becoming self-evident—but it remained in the top five, surrounded on all sides by baleful signifiers of the political–economic zeitgeist: ‘pragmatic’, ‘insidious’, ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘vitriol’ and ‘après moi le deluge’. As Adam Gopnik (Citation2012, p. 18), has wryly observed, ‘To the American right, anything that goes wrong in Europe does so because Europe is wrong, and not because of austerity, because austerity is right.’ On prisons, see Steinhauer Citation(2009) and Davey Citation(2010); on policing and other service cutbacks, see Cooper (Citation2010, Citation2011a, 2011b), McKinley and Wollan Citation(2010), and Lowenstein Citation(2011). On these cases, see McKinley Citation(2008), Walsh and Zezima Citation(2011), Tavernise Citation(2011), Walsh Citation(2012) and Medina Citation(2012). For critiques of the financial ‘coup’ in Benton Harbor, see http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10702/protests-benton-harbor-follow-martial-law-enforcement and http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/December-2011/Annals-of-Benton-Harbor-Riots-Race-and-Jack-Nickalus/; for Colbert's satirical celebration of Michigan's fiscal autocracy, see http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/385702/may-09-2011/the-word,-autocratic-for-the-people The Mayor had been telling the city's unions that the prospect of a state takeover through emergency-management proceedings was ‘more than a threat’, maintaining that the current level of payouts for employee health insurance and pensions was simply ‘unsustainable’ (quoted in Guarino, Citation2011, p. 2). Rick Snyder, Message from the Governor, http://www.michigan.gov/detroitcantwait (accessed 8 April 2012). Cheyfitz, K. (2012) ‘Returning light to Detroit’, Detroit News, 12 April, http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120412/OPINION01/204120327/Commentary-Returning-light-Detroit?odyssey=mod!newswell!text!FRONTPAGE!. Above and beyond its clearly deleterious local consequences, this raises the unpalatable prospect of Detroit sliding down yet another league table, the newly unveiled ranking of cities by ‘light-based regional product’, in which urban economic capacity is calculated on the basis of light emissions, captured by satellite data (cf. Florida et al., Citation2012). See ATR Citation(2011), Korbe Citation(2011), Fraley Citation(2012) and Nichols Citation(2012). Norquist, a leading figure in the ‘leave us alone’ coalition, heads Americans for Tax Reform in Washington, DC. For the pledge, see http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge-a2882. Governors of the following states are signatories of ATR's Taxpayer Protection Pledge: Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. Today, more than 1100 state office-holders are signatories. At the federal level, the pledge has been signed by 238 of 242 House Republicans and 41 out of 47 Senate Republicans. Skubick, T. (2012) ‘Gov. Rick Snyder still not “breaking bread” with GOP's tea party base’, MLive.com, http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/03/tim_skubick_gov_rick_snyder_st.html On ALEC, see Williams Citation(2010), McIntire Citation(2012) and http://alecexposed.org. On ALEC's work in Wisconsin and the ‘Cronon affair’, see Cronon Citation(2011), Medvetz Citation(2012) and William Cronon's blog at http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/ See CBPP (2011) ‘The state budget crisis and the economy’, http://www.cbpp.org, McNichol et al. Citation(2012) and Williams et al. Citation(2011). In contrast, 17 states have raised sales taxes, 13 have raised personal income taxes, 17 have raised business taxes and 22 have raised excise taxes. Many states have also deregulated long-established controls on the sale of alcohol and gambling, and even on the purchase of fireworks, not as a matter of political choice but as a result of extreme budget pressures (Economist, 2012a). Nixon declared that, ‘After 40 years of moving power from the States and the communities to Washington, D.C., we have begun moving power back from Washington to the States and communities and, most important, to the people of America’, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4327#axzz1qzy3Ghk1. See also Biles Citation(2011) and Harvey Citation(2012). On the politics of the tea party, see Zernike Citation(2010) and Skocpol and Williamson Citation(2012). On the Republican Party's anti-tax fundamentalism, see Graetz and Shapiro Citation(2005) and Kabaservice Citation(2011). This position congealed during the Clinton presidency, the signature achievements of which, after all, were NAFTA, welfare reform and deficit reduction (see Pollin, Citation2003). Not coincidentally, this tends to overlap with tea-party demands, which selectively target government spending on those groups seen as lazy and unproductive ‘others’, such as minorities, immigrants and the poor, while remaining largely silent on the question of fiscal transfers to the tea party's own social base, in the form of social security and retiree healthcare, which is considered to have been ‘earned’, in contrast to ‘welfare’ (Skocpol and Williamson, Citation2012). Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chair of the House Budget Committee, has become the talismanic figure here (see Cantor et al., Citation2010). The fiscally extreme ‘Ryan budget’, which dramatically cuts taxes and entitlements en route (supposedly) to deficit reduction, continues to be seen as electorally treacherous for the Republicans, but it nevertheless establishes the coordinates against which alternative proposals, including those of the presidential candidates, are scored. On the Ryan budget, see Draper Citation(2012) and Skocpol and Williamson Citation(2012). The City of Chicago raised $1.16 billion in this privatization project, which was used to plug holes in the near-term budget. Parking fees were almost immediately quadrupled, while the number of metered streets increased dramatically. See Harris, A.M. (2009) ‘William Blair sued over its advice on Chicago parking meter privatization’, Bloomberg, 17 September, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-17/william-blair-sued-over-its-advice-on-chicago-parking-meter-privatization.html; Bergen, M. (2012) ‘Chicago, ugly urban parable of privatization’, Forbes, 3 January, http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/01/03/chicago-ugly-urban-parable-of-privatization/ See Dumke, M. (2010) ‘Spreading the privatization gospel’, Chicago Reader, http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2010/02/09/spreading-the-privatization-gospel; Goldsmith, S. (2010) ‘More on Chicago parking meters’, Governing, 19 January, http://www.governing.com/blogs/bfc/More-on-Chicago-Parking.html Additional informationNotes on contributorsJamie Peck Jamie Peck is at the Department of Geography, University of British Columbia.
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