New publications by Pierre Hamel, Roger Keil, and Fulong Wu

 

Cadernos Metropole published "Governance in a emerging suburban world" by Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil.

The abstract is as follows: "Cities are increasingly defined through their peripheries. This observation is the result of what has been explored by urban researchers worldwide. Suburban development, with diverse modalities of governance – through the state, capital accumulation and private authoritarianism – is transforming city regions in an unexpected way. The diversity of spatial forms shaping urban/suburban development is part of a peripheral growth bringing in a new scale for understanding urban issues, the metropolis or the city region. The paper is subdivided in four parts. First, we take into account the expansion of suburban spaces in order to highlight the new urban issues emerging at a city regional scale. Second, we look at framing the mechanisms of suburban governance. Then, after paying attention to the Canadian situation, we compare the model of suburban governance in Anglo Saxon settler societies to other forms and/or models of suburbanization prevailing in other parts of the world."

Antipode published "The suburb as a space of capital accumulation: The development of new towns in Shanghai, China" by Jie Shen and Fulong Wu.

The abstract is as follows: Drawing attention to the governing role of capital accumulation and its interaction with the state, this study examines the dynamics of the new wave of suburbanization in China, which is characterized by the development of new towns. New towns essentially function as a spatial fix in China's contemporary accumulation regime. Rather than resulting from capital switching from the primary to the secondary circuits, new towns help to collect funds for the leverage of industrial capital and thus simultaneously sustain both circuits. Meanwhile, the development of new towns is also a process of territorial development, in which municipal governments expand the space of accumulation under strengthened fiscal and land controls and develop a metropolitan structure. Underlying the specific form and dynamics, however, is the worldwide trend of capital switching from declining manufacturing industries in developed countries to the new investment frontier in developing countries.