Abstract
The urban geographical imagination has long been occupied with understanding the ways in which urban policies and places are formed. This edited collection offers a significant contribution to this occupation through bringing together an exciting array of voices to open up, explore and reflect upon how urban policy and place-making are increasingly influenced by `elsewhere'. This as cities become ever more tightly embedded in global networks of economic, cultural and political connectivity (Jacobs, 2012, p. 412). Travelling through these networks, the chapters of this collection are stitched together by their illustration and examination of the focal argument of the book policymaking must be understood as both relational and territorial, as both in motion and simultaneously fixed, or embedded in place…the tension between policy as relational and dynamic, on the one hand, and fixed and territorial, on the other, is a productive one. It is a necessary tension that produces policy and places (cf Harvey, 1982) (p. xv).
The presentation of the theoretical architecture of assemblage around which this argument is orientated, and the difference that this makes, form the focus of the editor’s introduction to the collection. Here, in developing their earlier work (see McCann and Ward, 2010), the editors demonstrate confidence in embracing a notion of assemblage and detailing what it offers to conceptualising urban policy and place-making. In particular, they value assemblage’s bearing towards thinking through processes and practices of formation while also being sensitive to the bringing into relation of the near and far (p. xvi). For McCann and Ward, this facilitates a conceptualisation of urban policy-making that is qualitatively distinct from the political science literature on policy transfer due to its attention to why and how “policies are subject to change and struggle as they are moved” (p. xxiv). It is at this point that the role of political economy in this framing is clarified; it is in the playing-out of the necessary tension (see earlier quote), it is the assembling of urban policy and places—the moments of policy translation, mutation and change—that are infused with power and politics. This necessary and productive tension is evoked throughout the collection.
The collection brings together seven chapters, each orientated around a specific case study that illuminates a particular process of assembling policy and places. The detailed colouring and diversity of the empirical content is a strength of the book—stretching from Massey’s (ch. 1) discussion of the London-Caracas agreement of 2006-2008; to Ward’s (ch. 4) focus on the mobilisation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs); to Keil and Ali’s (ch. 6) examination of the 2003 SARS outbreak – and, moreover, serves to highlight how mobile policies have penetrated multiple spheres of urban life. Given such range the chapters are subtly organised into three sections: the first section provides an angle of vision that would usually be found towards the end of a collection as Massey (ch. 1) and Robinson (ch. 2) begin to unpack and critically engage with the scene-setting of the editor’s introduction. Massey highlights the space for alternative, progressive forms of relation between the near and far within the logic of the neo-liberal system, while Robinson argues for a more global assessment of policy mobility that stretches beyond Western and nation-centric narratives. The second section sets about story-ing two forms of urban policy and their translation and mutation through time and space. Peck (ch. 3) offers a historical tracing of ‘creativity’ in urban policy-making through comparing how it is differently mobilised by Richard Florida (2002) and the Greater London Council (GLC), while Ward (ch. 4) provides a more spatial tracing of the mobilisation of BIDs. The final grouping is more loosely composed around geographies of health and global connectivity and infrastructure. In chapter 5, McCann demonstrates the making of drug policy in Vancouver as composed through the mobility of ‘parts’ of ‘elsewhere’, the focus on health continues into Keil and Ali’s (ch. 6) discussion of the complex governance of the 2003 SARS epidemic and the playing-out of the near and far through the ability of local territories to govern ‘global’ phenomena. In the final chapter, McNeill continues the focus on global connectivity through his linking of the geographical growth of airport management groups and the infrastructural provision of airports to neo-liberal development models. Despite this diversity, the chapters hold together convincingly because the theoretical messages offered in the introduction are weaved through each chapter. Albeit, the extent to which each chapter embraces the conceptual grammar of assemblage fluctuates, with some alternative theoretical perspectives being utilised: Robinson’s (ch. 2) use of governmentality and Peck’s (ch. 3) use of policy ecologies. This, however, further strengthens the link and conversation between the empirical and theory of the collection. Here I would second Allan Cochrane’s comment in the foreword that: “one thing that makes this such a powerful book is how theory and practice, theory and evidence are so convincingly entwined throughout” (p. xi).
In concluding the collection, the editors note that: “this book marks not the ending, but the beginning of a sustained intellectual endeavour” (p. 168). This collection will add to the number of minds joining this endeavour, but there are paths emerging from the book that demand further examination. In particular, I was frustrated at the limited reading of assemblage offered and would argue that there is a need to further stretch and develop the relationality/territoriality characterisation to include the wider modes of relationality that characterise assemblage thinking. Here, the relations between the discursive and performed; affective and material; and the human and non-human (see McFarlane, 2011), while emerging at certain points through the collection, could be fruitfully elaborated upon. For example, while the editors acknowledge that the conceptual framing of assemblage has facilitated the broadening of the agents of transference, there is a tendency through the collection to neglect the role of non-human agents in the assembling of policy and places: policy documents, physical models, visualisations and images circulate and affect others. Thus, a more robust engagement with the wider competencies of a notion of assemblage has the potential further to illuminate the assembling of urban policy.
This collection makes an important contribution to the discipline as it marks an emerging body of work around assemblage thinking and the contemporary urban condition. Moreover, it is theoretically and empirically informed and stimulating—it’s a page-turner. As a result, it should be considered essential reading for those engaged in understanding contemporary urbanism and the politics of policy and place-making. As a closing comment it seems apt to agree, again, with Allan Cochrane’s opening to his affirmative foreword Sometimes a book comes along that requires the reader to think about the world in different ways … capturing something fundamental about the times in which they are written … their insights provide the foundation on which whole new research agendas come to be built and new understandings developed. This is one of those books (p. ix).