Who is the Liveable City For?

This posting is the start of a critique I will be developing this year about the fundamentals of planning and governance in Auckland. This one considers the powers of our elected local government representatives, and, using a critique of planning in Barcelona, suggests that the driving force for Auckland planning has little to do with the what Auckland councillors, board members, and ratepayers might think or want.

Local Government Powers....

We sometimes kid ourselves that we are free, and that we live in a free society.

Auckland Councillors and Local Board members might easily convince themselves they are free to debate and discuss Auckland City, develop a vision freely, and make plans that will be implemented enhancing citizen abilities to make the most of their own freedom, as they live their lives, working and playing in Auckland.

But a moment's thought should dispel that. For example:

• Local boards have no power. They are "an unincorporated body" and are not "a local authority, a community board, or a committee of the governing body" and "must undertake any responsibilities or duties that are delegated to it by the governing body (Council) or Auckland Transport". 
• Auckland Transport decisions are actually driven by Central Government's Policy on Land Transport
• The Auckland Council cannot perform any function or exercise any power that the Local Government Act has conferred upon Auckland Transport (and there's a lot of these)
• .... and the list goes on....

These are obvious restrictions and limitations written in law on the powers of Auckland Council and Local Boards and their members. Others are less obvious, but reflect and impose the will of central government. For example, take a look at s.10 of the Local Government Act:

10. Purpose of local government

(1) The purpose of local government is—
(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and
(b) to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.

(2) In this Act, good-quality, in relation to local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions, means infrastructure, services, and performance that are—
(a) efficient; and
(b) effective; and
(c) appropriate to present and anticipated future circumstances.

Gone is the language and comprehensiveness of sustainable development for local government with economic, social, environmental and cultural objectives. Instead the emphasis is on efficient, effective and appropriate infrastructure, services and regulatory functions.These words are there to control councillors, board members and council staff. Stick to the basics. Austerity and discipline. Which is not all bad, but discipline can be directed in ways that might not be so obvious.

Central Government Policy for Local Government

Probably the best place to look for the underlying political drivers and desires that are fundamental to understanding Central Government local government reform is National Party policy on local government.

It's local government policy in 2011 is headlined:

“Building a Stronger Economy....

National will encourage regional
economic growth by working with councils across regions to eliminate barriers for firms and businesses to grow and expand..."

No mention of communities and ratepayers in this local government policy text. Emphasis is clear. The small print explains further:

Building local growth
Good, effective local government is important. It contributes to our plan to build a brighter future, grow a stronger economy, and create real jobs with higher incomes. It provides the essential local infrastructure our businesses and communities need to prosper. National is encouraging an efficient local government sector that supports a growing economy and brings benefits to taxpayers, ratepayers, and communities....

 NB, this is National's local government policy. You can see that it is all about economic growth and economic efficiency. It notes that "National" is: encouraging an efficient local government sector that supports a growing economy...

So how is it "encouraging" that sector? One mechanism is through further Local Government reorganisation carried out by the Local Government Commission. And this is much more explicit about the rationale for restructuring local government in New Zealand.

Legislation requires, that "in considering possible changes to local government:

.....the Commission must be satisfied that its preferred option....
will facilitate, in the affected area, improved economic performance, which may (without limitation) include—
(i) efficiencies and cost savings; and
(ii) productivity improvements, both within the local authorities and for the businesses and households that interact with those local authorities; and
(iii) simplified planning processes within and across the affected area through, for example, the integration of statutory plans or a reduction in the number of plans to be prepared or approved by a local authority...."

From this we readily deduce that these are the outcomes from local government that are preferred, desired, and required by central government, which is seeking by hook or by crook to discipline, direct and control the functioning and priorities of New Zealand councils. Of which Auckland Council is the biggest.

Economic restructuring and city governance

Now I'm going to introduce neoliberal politics. But don't groan. New Zealand has been experimenting and adopting neoliberal economic ideas since Rogernomics in the late 1980's. To ignore this influence on your country and the way it affects the running and governance of cities would be silly. Surely.

I quote from research work by Matthew Jacobson entitled: "Producing Neoliberal cities and citizens". While it is partly based on urban development and governance changes in Barcelona, it talks about urbanisation changes in cities around the world over the past 30 - 40 years. It analyses how those urban changes have been influenced by neoliberal economic ideas - which can be used to discipline, shape and control political and planning decisions. I think it is useful to share some of this thinking here, because it helps us all understand and anticipate shifts and changes that might be just around the corner - or here already - in Auckland. How can you sensibly govern or manage a city if you don't take the time to understand the major influences that are acting upon it.

The key ideas for Auckland in the quoted text are contained in the three lists - which you will see if you quickly scroll down. I suggest you read the lists (which are about changes in Barcelona) and note the similarities with what is happening - on your watch - in Auckland. But it does help to put the lists in context:

The shift .... to neoliberal economic logic in the last 30-40 years in a majority of the Western countries of the world has meant there have been significant shifts in how urbanization in the cities has developed. These shifts have brought about changes in the forms of politics and governance in which the city (promotes or encourages) capital accumulation strategies. In other words, neoliberalizing the city also has involved neoliberalizing the citizen. To move forward, neoliberal urban restructuring has meant changes in the ways in which city governments have had to convince and legitimize as well as control city populations....

Neoliberalism (is described) by critical geographers as having gone through an initial phase in the 70´s and 80´s under the leadership of Thatcher and Reagan and then a new phase in the 1990´s in which it became much more interventionist in the sense that in contrast to the early model of reducing government restrictions on trade, the new form is much more directly involved in restructuring and controlling various forms of relations and particularly directions for the development....

Brenner and Theodore summarize that “the overarching goal of such neoliberal policy experiments is to mobilize city space as an area both for market-oriented economic growth and for elite consumption practices”.....

...urbanization is not only a material process but involves attempts to (promote and encourage) certain ways of thinking ... which marginalize others. Examining these ....  is important to grasp how power relations themselves are actually being (re)produced.

How to create a neoliberal city?

Create a system of interrelated and associated administrative hierarchies, laws, popular and intellectual discourses, and histories which work to:

1. Convince popular culture that globalization (in the form of the increasing domination and power of multinational corporations ...) is inevitable, outside of the control of nations, cities, and city populations and that there are only two options: be successful or fail in terms of competing in the ‘free market’.
2. Promote the illusion to the population that the ‘free market’ means they are ‘freer’. Like good magicians give them lots of choices which actually forward your interests (usually profit interests) that you selected for them and they will think they are ‘free to choose’ and never consider who decides what the options are or that they are supporting your accumulation of wealth.
3. Create the popular belief that a central aspect of being successful and having a good quality of life for the residents is creating city spaces which attract large scale foreign investments in the form of built environment, multinational corporation headquarter and operation centers, and tourism.
4. Create histories about the city which make neoliberal colonial/capitalism the natural evolution of advanced societies as the most progressive and well adapted form of social relations in terms of all areas of society including; the protection of the environment and management of resources; technological development which improves the quality of life for all; education, health, and social welfare.
5. Make poverty illegal in the city and a result of poor immigrants who want to take advantage of the rich countries success and steal and cheat to do so. Make colonialism a historical event which was an unpleasant but necessary by-product of European civilizations advancement and success. Make the domination and exploitation of multinational corporations in the ‘former’ colonized parts of the world, a simple matter of capitalism's Darwinian rationalization called ‘survival of the fittest’, and then create ‘aid’ organizations funded by the same multinationals to show that they are part of the ‘solution’ rather than the problem.
6. Promote the city government as democratic, based in popular support, and has as its central priority the improvement of the quality of life for all residents above all other concerns or interests.
7. Give the impression that the public and private sector actually share the same interests and that profits motives and public welfare actually can work together harmoniously to create the ‘best’ city for those that live there. Then create powerful public/private ‘development’ corporations ... and take over poorer historical areas to turn them into privatized ‘chic’ business areas or living areas for the employees. Carefully designate a small proportion of these areas to newly constructed block social housing managed by private property developers with a large percentage of public funds.
8. Take over and manage the renovations that are open in the city with a few goals in mind:

a. Call them ‘public space’ and give the impression that the city and police are the best managers to ensure these spaces are attractive, useful, clean, and ‘peaceful’. Under no conditions let the residents of these areas gain the impression they have the right, ability, or capacity to decide and manage what happens in the open areas or plazas where they live.
b. Make sure that residents learn to deal with all social problems by calling the city police or complain to city officials rather than form their own associations and get the impression they can form communities where their problems can be discussed and dealt with through relationships.
c. Target poorer historical areas of the central city and make them into theme attractions for tourists.
d. Make plazas and other open areas places which are controlled and regulated under newly establish civic norms where you make illegal a series of behaviours that a lot of residents don’t like to live around (peeing and prostitution) which then lets you police and regulate the spaces to keep them happy places for tourism to pass and spend money.
e. Build large cement areas where there are no places for gardens or play areas such as basketball or soccer.
f. Create areas where you can have large scale private functions such as ‘merchandise’ sales, small booths filled with tourist items, artist performances which are regulated and controlled by the city with no political content.
g. Decrease as much as possible spontaneous socializing, play, or most importantly political encounters.

So that's what you might do if your objective is to neoliberalise a city and its citizens, so they are more ready to play ball when the big investors and developers come to Auckland with their proposals. This is a set of suggestions for conditioning Aucklanders and training them.

More explicit urban development policy objectives are also summarised in the Jacobson text:

Neoliberal transurban tendencies towards reflexive and entrepreneurial city governance (Peck and Tickel, 2002):
1. The normalization of a ‘growth first’ approach to urban development, reconstituting social –welfarist arrangements as anticompetitive costs and rendering issues of redistribution and social investment as antagonistic to the overriding objectives of economic development.
2. The pervasive naturalization of market logics, justifying on the grounds of efficiency and even ‘fairness’ their installation, as the dominant metrics of policy evaluation.
3. Through a combination of competitive regimes of resource allocation, skewed municipal-lending policies, and outright political pressure undermines or forecloses alternative paths of urban development based for example, on social redistribution, economic rights, or public investment. This produces a neoliberal ‘lock-in’ of public sector austerity and growth-chasing economic development.
4. Putting the cities in positions where they are pressured to actively-and-responsively-scan the horizon for investment and promotion opportunities, monitoring ‘competitors’, and emulating ‘best practices’, lest they be left behind in this intensifying competitive struggle for the kinds of resources (public and private) that neoliberalism has helped make (more) mobile.
5. Narrowing urban policy repertoire based on capital subsidies, place promotion, supply-side intervention, central-city makeovers, and local boosterism.
6. Creates a situation where national and transnational governments funds increasingly flow to cities on the basis of economic potential and governance capacity rather than manifest social need.
7. Regressive welfare reforms and labor-market polarization, for example, are leading to the (re)urbanization of (working and non-working) poverty, positioning cities at the bleeding edge of processes of punitive institution building, social surveillance, and authoritarian governance. 

You will recognise some of these "tendencies" in Auckland Council and Central Government local government policies now. More are likely to come to New Zealand as the incorporation of, and tacit acceptance of these ideas consolidates.

So: Who is the Liveable City really For?

While the rhetoric of Council and Mayor and Auckland Plan might be interpreted as meaning that the liveable city is for its citizens, most of the initiatives that are being taken are to make Auckland a safe and attractive place for investment (for foreign and local investors and for central government infrastructure investment), to promote and stimulate economic growth. That is fundamentally what the Liveable City is for. And then it is assumed that there will be local benefits from this investment. That's the 'trickle down' effect.

You might disagree with a lot of what these academic researchers have written, but it might make you think differently, and you might consciously make decisions about these matters, rather than just being another disciplined and well-behaved cog in the growth machine.

Kia kaha

(Useful references:
Read more of Jacobson's work.
Peck, Jamie and Tickell, Adam (2002) ‘Neoliberalizing Space’. Antipode. Volume 34, Issue 3, pages 380–404.
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik (2002) Cities and the geography of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’. Antipode. Blackwell publish: MA, USA
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik (2002) Spaces of Neoliberalism: urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Antipode: UK.)