Economic Restructuring and the Rise of Urban Social Movements

Abstract

The rise of social movements in postwar American cities has been associated with economic reorganization and urban redevelopment. But we argue that although economic change in the cities and social migration motivated by national economic forces provided the objective conditions within which movements arose, specifically political factors were determinative. The first part of this article explores in theory the linkages between economic change and social mobilization. It concludes that urban movements must be under-stood within the context of both routine urban politics and national political events. Using New York City as a case, we go on to show that before and after the national black movement of the 1960s, popular urban protest was commonplace, yet was channeled and contained by the political system. Thus, in recent years, despite enormous economic reorganization and decline in the situation of the lower classes in New York, urban movements have not arisen. Rather, communal protest is isolated, institutionalized in various mechanisms for citizen participation, and results, at best, in a few concessions. The final section of the article assesses the possibilities of social action rooted in urban movements. It argues that only a national movement and political party can establish the context for powerful mobilizations at the urban level.

Reflective images: the case of urban regeneration in Glasgow and Bilbao

“…But what is there to be imitated? Fainstein and Fainstein (1985) remark that since the 1970s there has been a congealing of growth visions around vague notions of high technology, command and control, and advanced producer services futures. This seems to have been the case in Glasgow and Bilbao.…”

Struggling for the Right to the (Creative) City in Berlin and Hamburg: New Urban Social Movements, New ‘Spaces of Hope’?

“…New social movements were characterized as a form of collective action not defined by (or centred on) relations between capital and labour, which had been at the core of ‘old’ social movements. Urban social movements (USMs) for their part have been defined as a ‘type of social movement rooted in collectivities with a communal base and/or with the local state as their target of action’ (Fainstein and Fainstein, 1985: 189). Castells (1977) initially posited that USMs would play a crucial role in altering social relations, through alliances with labour movement organizations and political groupings, but later modified his argument by arguing that the local focus of urban movements precluded fundamental structural changes (Castells, 1983).…”

When Cultural Workers Become an Urban Social Movement: Political Subjectification and Alternative Cultural Production in the Macao Movement, Milan

“…Urban social movements in the 1960s-1970s were typically politicized within the context of leftist, student-based, and pacifist mobilizations; they operated within the Keynesian city context and had the traditional factory as their birthplace and target (Castells, 1983). But the interlinked phenomena of globalization, industrial restructuring, the changing role of local governments, and transformed labour conditions have radically transformed social movements' demographic composition, organizational models, and guiding values (Fainstein and Fainstein, 1985;Marcuse, 2009;Mayer, 2011;Nicholls, 2008). Today's movements represent a fragmented landscape and show new types of alliance between socially different groups that feel threatened-materially and/or ideologically-by the dismantling of welfare states and the priorization of urban growth politics.…”