Relational Comparisons: The Assembling of Cleveland's Waterfront Plan

Abstract

This paper uses the ongoing attempts to redevelop the Cleveland waterfront to reveal the relational comparative geographies that are present in a number of contemporary urban revalorization strategies. It draws on archival papers, semistructured interviews, and the local grey literature to make three contributions to the existing urban-global studies literature. First, the paper argues that many contemporary waterfront and other similar redevelopment schemes are inherently comparative, with a significant amount of seemingly territorial politics and urban policy making characterized by actors' engagements with places elsewhere. Second, it shows that the framing of urban policy through relational comparisons is an established practice in many cities and that current redevelopment plans should be understood as informed by previous rounds of relational and territorial policy making. Third, it points to the importance of consultants in the current era -as examples of actors of transference -in shaping not only redevelopment plans but also the framing of the city in relation to other cities. ---No one public improvement is more important to the City of Cleveland than the development of her lake front in accordance with the best possible plan (Hopkins, 1927, p. 21) What we do with our great assets … will reshape Cleveland for decades to come (Jackson, 2010, quoted in Breckenridge, 2010 2 IUFThe regeneration of urban waterfronts is one of the key urban design and planning stories of the late twentieth century (Dovey, 2005, p. 9)

Post-war planning and policy tourism: the international study tours of the Town and Country Planning Association 1947–1961

“…Here, research has examined the experiences of mobile planning consultants (Cook & Ward, 2012b;Rapoport, 2014); planners on lecture tours (Amati & Freestone, 2009); and planners who have emigrated to work in different national contexts (Gregory, 2012). This focus on the mobility of both individual actors and of associated expertise has parallels with the literature on "policy tourism" which analyses a set of activities such as conferences, fact-finding trips and walking tours where "best practices" are presented, discussed and, in some cases, experienced first-hand and up-close (Cook & Ward, 2011, 2012aCook et al, 2014;González, 2011;Wagner, 2014;Ward, 2011).…”

“…Increasingly interdisciplinary in nature (Cook, forthcoming), this work originates in human geography and now involves those in cognate disciplines such as architecture, anthropology, planning and political science. It has focused on a number of areas of urban policy: creativity (Peck, 2012;Prince, 2012Prince, , 2014, drugs (McCann, 2008), economic development (Cook & Ward, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, sustainability (McLean & Borén, 2014;Temenos & McCann, 2012), transportation (Wood, 2014) and welfare reform (Peck & Theodore, 2001, 2010b. Under the rubric of urban policy mobility studies, this set of literatures has explored how and why certain models have, in the words of Pow (2014, p. 288), been given a "'license to travel' that enables [them] to secure a pool of receptive audiences worldwide."…”

The Emergence and Spread of Ecourban Neighbourhoods around the World

“…Jessop [53] notes that critical comment on urban regeneration initiatives is fundamentally contradictory in almost all cases, insofar as critical analysis identifies particular failures in major projects, for example, but can simultaneously identify successes, specifically and most often "in terms of creating a … spectacle that could seemingly attract new postindustrial investment" [54] (p. 789). Numerous concerns are also raised with regard to the ecological performance of ecourban neighbourhood development.…”

Practising Comparison: Logics, Relations, Collaborations

“…They have also begun, with some overlaps with the concerns of this book, to unpick some of the challenges that face those interested in developing different, potentially more productive and potentially more reflexive forms of comparative practice. This includes asking how comparison might become 'thicker' , more relational Cook and Ward 2012), and/or more modest, postcolonial and attentive to modalities of difference (McFarlane and Robinson 2012;; and others in the Comparative Urbanism Special Issue).…”

“…How might comparison, with its universalist historical baggage, be squared with contrasting approaches that have in some quarters been accused of relativism (see the various discussions in the special issue on comparative relativism, in particular Lloyd 2011;Holbraad 2011;Smith 2011)? Meanwhile, in what is sometimes referred to as 'comparative urbanism', a number of authors have stressed that comparison would benefit if it became more adventurous and attentive to relational complexity. This might be achieved by moving away from the orthodox comparison of only large cities or nationstates, or towards understanding the rich variety of more complex relations and relationality informing a given urban setting (Cook and Ward 2012;Gough 2012;McFarlane and Robinson 2012;. And, in a recent collection that aims to 'thicken comparison' ), a range of authors discuss the difficulties of doing comparison, while frequently noting comparison's creative, transformative, and potentially pedagogical effects.…”