Beyond variegation: The territorialisation of states, communities and developers in large-scale developments in Johannesburg, Shanghai and London

Abstract

Large-scale urban development projects are a significant format of urban expansion and renewal across the globe. As generators of governance innovation and indicators of the future city in each urban context, large-scale development projects have been interpreted within frameworks of ‘variegations’ of wider circulating processes, such as neoliberalisation or financialisation. However, such projects often entail significant state support and investment, are strongly linked to a wide variety of transnational investors and developers and are frequently highly contested in their local environments. Thus, each project comes to fruition in a distinctive regulatory context, often as an exception to the norm, and each emerges through complex interactions over a long period of time amongst an array of actors. We therefore seek to broaden the discussion from an analytical focus on variegated globalised processes to consider three large-scale urban development projects (in Shanghai, Johannesburg and London) as distinctive (transcalar) territorialisations. Using an innovative comparative approach, we outline the grounds for a systematic analytical conversation across mega-urban development projects in very different contexts. Initially, comparability rests on the shared features of large-scale developments – that they are multi-jurisdictional, involve long time scales and bring significant financing challenges. Comparing three development projects, we are able to interrogate, rather than take for granted, how a range of wider processes, circulating practices, transcalar actors and territorial regulatory formations composed specific urban outcomes in each case. Thinking across these diverse cases provides grounds for rebuilding understandings of urban development politics.

Introduction: Generating concepts of ‘the urban’ through comparative practice

“…Especially where numerous processes converge in ‘contexts’, there is potential to identify alternative explanatory dimensions through comparative reflection (Hart, 2018). Rather than simply strengthening existing analyses or assuming cases feed back into shaping already identified processes, comparative practices inspired by the rich fullness of urban contexts can help to assess claims to ‘family resemblance’ across cases (Peck, 2013; Robinson, 2022; Robinson et al, 2022). The multiple (and diverse) elements entailed in each case might open out to define different social processes altogether than those which originally inspired the comparison (Wilson, 2004).…”

“…Such comparisons can expand the relevance of key concepts for global urban studies, attending to a diversity of forms of governance, urban actors and urban processes beyond those which have conventionally informed urban theory (Shatkin, 2017). Shared features might include urbanisation processes or certain mechanisms, such as those associated with distinctively urban dynamics, for example, land use, agglomeration or territorial governance/regulation (Robinson, 2014; Robinson, 2022; Robinson et al, 2022; Schmid, 2015; Storper and Scott, 2016).…”

“…Robinson et al (2022) find a different starting point for comparative analysis in the shared feature of large-scale urban developments. Found in many cities around the world, all large-scale developments face challenges of multi-jurisdictional governance, mobilising significant financing and managing lengthy project cycles.…”

“…Beyond thinking with connections and relations, then, comparative tactics which launch conceptualisation from distinctive urban territories are essential, and potentially most innovative. Robinson et al (2022), Niranjana (2022) and Teo (2022) propose methods which take forward the potential for open comparative experimentations based on understandings of urban outcomes as specific and distinctive, building conceptualisations from grounded empirical observations and cautious extension of insights across heterogeneous urban contexts (see also Lancione and McFarlane, 2016; Schmid et al, 2018).…”

“…In this volume, authors explore openings from different starting points. Thinking conjuncturally (Leitner and Sheppard, 2022), starting with apparently contingent urban outcomes rather than wider processes (Haas, 2022; Montero and Baiocchi, 2022; Niranjana, 2022), or seeing the urban as ‘specific’ or ‘diverse’ (Robinson et al, 2022; Teo, 2022) frame different opportunities for comparative experiments. Differing approaches both draw certain contexts into comparative reflection, and set some limits to what makes for productive comparisons within that perspective.…”