Reconstructing Urban Economics

Towards a Political Economy of the Built Environment

Franklin Obeng-Odoom

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781783606627
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Neoclassical economics, the intellectual bedrock of modern capitalism, faces growing criticisms, as many of its key assumptions and policy prescriptions are systematically challenged. Yet, there remains one field of economics where these limitations continue virtually unchallenged: the study of cities and regions in built-environment economics. In this book, Franklin Obeng-Odoom draws on institutional, Georgist and Marxist economics to clearly but comprehensively show what the key issues are today in thinking about urban economics. In doing so, he demonstrates the widespread tensions and contradictions in the status quo, showing how to reconstruct urban economics in order to create a more just society and environment.

PART ONE

ESTABLISHING PRINCIPLES FOR URBAN PROGRESS

1 | SCAFFOLDING THE PRINCIPLES AND VALUES OF RECONSTRUCTION

Introduction

At the end of the Second World War, C.D. Harris and E.L. Ullman wrote an important article in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences seeking to understand ‘the nature of cities’ generally but also in the context of post-war transformation (Harris and Ullman, 1945). If seven decades ago this was an important theme, it has become even more so now in a more urbanised world enmeshed in periodic economic crisis and climate change. Thus, in a recent contribution to the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Allen Scott and Michael Storper (2015, p. 1) note that there ‘has been a growing debate in recent decades about the range and substance of urban theory’. Such a debate is evident in the major urban studies journals. For instance, in Regional Studies, Jamie Peck’s (2015) annual lecture, ‘cities beyond compare’, drew a lengthy response by Jan Nijman (2015) in the same journal. The common features of all this debate are pluralism, interdisciplinarity, indeed transdisciplinarity, and the need to appreciate the peculiarities and similarities of diverse cities across the world.

A similar debate is not so evident in mainstream urban economics, however, as research by Davidson and Gleeson (2013) shows. Is it the case that mainstream urban economics, especially as understood, taught, and researched in the built environment, is so watertight and adequate that no major reconstruction is needed? If not, what should the reconstruction be? After what values, where and how, and in what ways can the reconstruction be applied? The aim of this chapter is to try to respond to these questions or point to how these questions can be answered. The chapter argues that it is necessary to blast open the closed theoretical tunnel from which cities are understood in the built environment and build in its place a transdisciplinary watchtower based on institutional political economy, Marxist urban political economy, and Georgist political economy foundations. This theoretical composite or analytical framework, the chapter shows, can usefully be based on a pluralist set of values including postcolonialism. The justification for this reconstruction is based on (a) the inability of the mainstream urban economics framework to grasp the complexity of the built environment; (b) the many internal contradictions of the mainstream urban economics approach; and (c) the combined force of institutionalism, Marxism, Georgism, and postcolonialism as an alternative.

The rest of the chapter is divided into three sections. The first looks at the nature of the built environment and urban economics, stressing the complexities of the former and its oversimplification by the latter. The next section begins the search for alternatives. It is centred on an exposition of institutionalism, Marxism, Georgism, and postcolonialism, while the final section offers an alternative framework or the scaffolds of a reconstruction towards a political economy of the built environment.

The built environment and urban economics

There are competing notions of built environment. One regards the built environment as anything that is different from the raw environment or the interface between nature and culture and how this changes over space and time (Moffat and Kohler, 2008). Yet the existence of nature in cities, cities in nature, and the talk of the ruralisation of the urban (Kos, 2008) would suggest that the built and natural environments are interconnected and interlocking. Social relations and the social production of built forms constitute yet another way of viewing the built environment as are the anthropological conceptions of built forms in cultural, societal, and social relationships. There are also those who view the built environment in terms of design, architectural, archaeological, and ethnoarchaeological forms or simply as forms of social organisation (Lawrence and Low, 1990). From these perspectives, the built environment is sometimes considered as a social, planned, architectural, and design symbol.

From a political economy perspective, however, the built environment is a complex social system. It is created for various uses and purposes and under varying conditions and modes of production. While aspects of the built environment will have aesthetic value, use value, and sentimental value, under the capitalist mode of production there is a tendency for even non-market forms of the built environment (e.g., mosques, churches, and cemeteries) to assume the features of commodities (Harvey, 2006, pp. 232–238). Thus, the built environment under the present mode of economic organisation plays a role in production, exchange, and consumption (see also Lefebvre, 1974/1991). For productive purposes, the built environment is either a stimulant or direct player in the process. In turn, the built environment for production is a highly heterogeneous social system. Likewise, there is a heterogeneous built environment for exchange such as urban land transport, and a variety of built environments for consumption such as houses and eateries, sidewalks, and shops (Harvey, 1978). The transport network, to Harvey, is a built environment with many faces. Aside from its exchange role, the transport built environment can serve both consumption and production functions. In between these poles, the built environment is key to the circulation and exchange of capital. The built environment is not one ‘thing’: it can be roads, bridges, houses, and offices, but it can also be the rail network, sewers, hospitals, churches, and schools. They are all different and are differently produced, of course, but they do work together to give a particular built form (Harvey, 1978; 2006, pp. 232–238).

The relatively immovable nature of the built environment, the centrality of the built environment to the functioning of economies, and the commodification of the built environment give rise to, or emphasise, certain unique qualities of the built environment. For instance, investment in the built environment can be hard to untangle, and hard, if not impossible, to move around too. In turn, location and hence land constitute a crucial aspect of the built environment. Similarly, together and separately, the location and relationship of neighbouring facilities work collectively to create certain values. In turn, the urge to appropriate, expropriate, and reappropriate is generated within the built environment as is the generation and distribution of rent (Harvey, 1978; 2006, pp. 232–238). In short, property is a major fulcrum for analysis in the built environment where the forces of change and inertia, and economic and social drivers, intermingle with political tension at national, regional, and international levels.

However conceptualised, the academic disciplines that usually deal with the built environment are planning, architecture, (real) property economics, land management, and construction studies. Geography deals with the built environment too, of course, but it is usually seen as a member of the ‘social science’ disciplines (or physical science, in the case of physical geography) rather than as a field of study in the built environment. The Centre for Education in the Built Environment lists the core areas of the built environment as architecture and landscape education, planning, housing and transport education, construction, surveying, and real estate education.1

So, in this book, when I refer to built environment ‘educati...