Emerging policy responses in shrinking cities: Shifting policy agendas to align with growth machine politics

Abstract

This paper examines growth machine politics operating in shrinking cities. Instead of de-growth politics logics emerging in shrinking cities, the paper finds, through an empirical study of Zonguldak, a shrinking mining city in Turkey, a politics that is better described as another variant of growth machine politics. Invigorated by the difficulties encountered in the implementation of state-driven growth agendas, and the subsequent reactions of local stakeholders, Zonguldak’s emerging policy agenda maintains a distance from the discourse of growth and instead adopts such themes as ecology, industrial heritage, quality of life and liveability when reframing and deploying a variety of conventional practices to make the city attractive for investment. In so doing, a broad coalition of diverse local interests are effectively brought together, and this paper suggests that these dynamics characterise a politics that is better described as adaptive response to align with growth machine politics. To explore this, the paper builds on an exploratory research design that complements secondary and documentary data analysis of the city’s economic and population trends and key policy and planning documents with an analysis of unstructured interviews with local policy makers and focus groups with local stakeholders.

Keywords

Shrinking cities growth machine politics de-growth growth coalitions urban governance mining cities

Introduction

Policy responses to urban shrinkage have attracted great interest among researchers, who have on the whole concluded that it is growth machine politics that drive urban policymaking in shrinking cities, yet challenge it by highlighting the problems and failures of policies aimed at revitalising, redeveloping and regenerating shrinking cities (Bernt et al., 2017; Hollander and Nemeth, 2011; Hospers, 2014; Mallach et al., 2017). Several studies have argued that policy responses that abandon the objective of growth are necessary for the management of the challenges of urban shrinkage and the alleviation of the negative consequences (see Hollander et al., 2009; Mallach, 2017; Wiechmann, 2008). Interestingly, the “traditional growth-at-all-cost” (Audirac, 2018: 14) approach has recently been given up in a number of shrinking cities (Hollander and Nemeth, 2011; Hospers, 2014; Schindler, 2016), where new agendas are being followed with the aim of enhancing liveability, as in Youngstown (Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012), improving quality of life, as in Detroit (Schindler, 2016) and increasing community well-being, as in Vitry-le-François (Béal et al., 2019).

These recent developments are important in that they do not befit the growth machine politics that have long driven urban policymaking in shrinking cities, leading researchers to interrogate the relevance of the past approach under the changing circumstances. Authors such as Coppola (2019) and Camprag (2018) view emerging responses as an alternative agenda, while Parr (2015) mentions the prospect of more sustainable, equitable and socially just urbanisation. At its most extreme, Schindler (2016) claims that this tendency has resulted in the emergence of “de-growth machine politics”, which is important, in that it suggests a complete departure from growth machine politics propelled by the exigencies of shrinkage, crisis and austerity.

These views, however, contrast those of Rosenthal (2013), who noticed in Cleveland that the practices that emerged as part of the new agenda may be part of a temporary strategy, and Rhodes and Russo (2013), who noted that there had not been a complete divergence from the principle of growth in Youngstown. Among the other notable studies on the subject, Akers (2015) noted a continuation of the market orientation that supported growth machine politics in Detroit, while Audirac (2018: 18) advised caution in situations where agendas that focus on growth have been relinquished, as the emerging practices are likely to be “… part and parcel of the repertoire of technical, political, and discursive practices inherent in austerity urbanism”.

It follows on from these discussions that while the recent change in policy responses has already received considerable attention, we still do not fully comprehend how exactly current urban policy-making is being shaped in shrinking cities. To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon under the changing circumstances, further studies are needed of the recent changes in policy responses in shrinking cities, and of the emerging policy agendas and governance practices.

To this end, attention is directed towards the experience of Zonguldak – a mining city in Turkey. As Martinez-Fernandez et al. (2012) underline, mining cities have some distinctive features that differ from those seen in shrinking cities where the specialisation was in manufacturing. They must define a new path of development, but have limited capacity to do so, being primarily “linked to the complications of dependence on a main [mining] corporation” (p. 256), “whose strategies determine, to a great extent, [their] future developments” (p. 245). While some cases have transitioned to a technological innovation-driven growth path, relying on their existing capabilities, or have identified a new path of growth based on information and communication technology (ICT) industries (Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012), for many others, as Blanco et al. (2009) note, putting into practice such ambitious growth-oriented strategies has not been easy. It is in this context that Zonguldak may provide a unique perspective to the following questions: In what ways do policymakers respond to the limited contributions of policies that are focused on growth and the rising discontent among certain social groups with the outcomes of these policies? What are the conditions that trigger policy change? Do emerging policy responses suggest alternatives to growth? If not, in what ways does the growth machine endure in shrinking cities?

In exploring these questions, the paper builds upon an exploratory research design that makes use of multiple methodologies. Secondary data analysis of the city’s demographic and economic trends and documentary analysis of key policy documents and plans provided an understanding of the city’s trajectory of de-industrialisation and shrinkage and the adopted policies. These analyses were complemented with open-ended, unstructured interviews with local policymakers, a workshop and three focus group meetings with local stakeholders and allowed us to unravel the changing policy agendas and to gain an understanding of the different perspectives of, and attitudes towards, the adopted policy agendas and brought diverse stakeholder concerns into focus.

The results suggest that, even though a change in policy responses to shrinkage seems to be taking place, the notion that policy agendas pay less heed to growth does not necessarily mean a departure from growth machine politics. Instead, Zonguldak’s policymakers have found new ways of aligning with Turkey’s state-driven growth politics by avoiding the discourse of growth and the practices that have characterised the legacy of Turkey’s state-driven growth machine politics; taking up such themes as ecology, industrial heritage, quality of life and liveability when reframing and deploying a variety of conventional practices aimed at turning the city into a site for investment. This change, which proved to be effective in restraining those who are critical of past policy agendas, and in bringing together a broad coalition of diverse local interests, we suggest, constitutes yet another variant of growth machine politics.

The paper begins with an overview of policy responses to urban shrinkage, followed by a description of the research design and methodology. The third section provides a background on Turkey’s neoliberalisation process since 1980, which has played a vital role in the shrinkage of various cities. The section that follows focuses on Zonguldak, and details how Turkey’s changing neoliberal agenda has played out in the city. Specifically, it describes the growth-oriented policy frameworks imposed upon Zonguldak during the different phases of Turkey’s neoliberalisation, and explores the obstacles faced in their implementation. Set against this context, the fifth section begins by exploring the manner in which the state-driven growth agenda is questioned by local stakeholders, before directing attention towards the emerging policy responses and pointing to shifts in policy agendas and governance practices. Finally, the conclusion offers a reflection of the unsettled debate on whether these new developments truly constitute a move away from growth machine politics.

Policy responses to urban shrinkage: An overview

Over the last few decades, a central strand of research on shrinking cities has sought to document the policy responses that have been put in place to deal with the consequences of the processes of urban shrinkage (Bernt, 2009; Couch et al., 2012; Joo and Seo, 2018; Mallach et al., 2017; Rink et al., 2012; Wiechmann, 2008; Wiechmann and Bontje, 2015). As underlined by many researchers, including Audirac (2018) and Mallach (2017), the policies and strategies applied to date have aimed mainly at relaunching growth in shrinking cities. According to Rink et al. (2012), several shrinking cities in Eastern Europe have sought to stimulate economic growth by attracting (foreign) private investment, and to this end, have put in place large-scale urban projects to facilitate the reuse of vacant and derelict land and demolished vacant buildings (Bernt, 2009). Furthermore, cities have also drawn on tourism strategies to revitalize economically depressed areas, to create employment in the services sector and to attract capital (DiGaetano and Lawless, 1999; Mazar, 2018; McCarthy, 2002). These strategies have been heavily shaped by coalitions between local elites, municipalities and regional governments, and have attempted to mobilise city space to re-attract capital, to increase property values and to stimulate growth. According to these studies, growth coalitions have played a key role not only in sustaining consent for these neoliberal redevelopment projects, but also for mobilising the local elite, whose interests may otherwise conflict (Mazar, 2018). Hence, by drawing upon such concepts as “urban regimes”, “growth coalitions” and “urban entrepreneurialism”, scholars have analysed how urban shrinkage is governed under neoliberalism, putting forward the idea that growth machine politics drive urban policymaking in shrinking cities.

That said, enacting the growth machine is not easy under conditions of shrinkage. In many shrinking US cities, including Cleveland, the state had to cope with a catastrophe in the private market (Rosenman et al., 2014), while in Germany, national government agencies had to come up with policies to deal with the specific problems faced by housing companies in shrinking cities (Bernt, 2019). In several cities in Germany, the implementation of these projects necessitated negotiations with state-level governments (Bernt, 2009), while in others, such as Windsor in Canada, the state has been more interventionist in determining or even dictating how these projects are implemented (Mazar, 2018). Mallach (2017: 112) suggests that the revival of state interventionism in response to urban shrinkage is a reflection of “… the recognition by many local policymakers as well as some national policy thinkers that neoliberal solutions held out little hope for shrinking cities …”, which underscores the gap between what neoliberalism rhetorically claims and what it actually does, and supports the thesis that neoliberalism requires the constant support of the state (Bourdieu, 1998; Campbell and Pedersen, 2001; Giddens, 1998). In other contexts, such as in Daegu, South Korea, state interventions have been taken to a new extreme, with the state dictating growth-oriented policies in the fight against urban shrinkage (Joo and Seo, 2018), which is a point that will be discussed later for the Zonguldak context.

In many cases, however, the involvement of the state as the lead actor in growth coalitions rather than market actors has been challenging. First, despite the backing of the state in assuming the risks of redevelopment, the ability of local actors to attract capital has been limited, and as Mallach (2017: 112) shows “… private sector-led redevelopment was unlikely to ameliorate their abandoned property problems”. In other cities, growth coalitions have had little inﬂuence on redevelopment, due particularly to the interventionist attitude of the state (Mazar, 2018). Second, the extent to which policy agendas can be pursued through growth coalitions is questionable. As Bernt (2009: 754) suggests, local politics have been more dependent on national government resources than on private investment, resulting in “grant coalitions” rather than “growth coalitions”. Third, the sustainability of growth coalitions is debatable, which Schindler (2016) exemplifies with the collapse of the inter-scalar growth coalition in Detroit as a result of the city’s bankruptcy and irreversible growth.

Hence, despite the backing of policies by the state, growth machine politics have failed to alleviate the problems of shrinking cities. Rhodes and Russo (2013) show convincingly in the case of Youngstown the ineffectiveness of the pursuit of growth and of state interventions that expect private capital to come up with solutions to the problem of disinvestment. Mallach (2017) and Audirac (2018: 14), too, underline the failure of the prevailing policy practices in “saving … shrinking cities”, while others go further, arguing that they actually contribute to urban shrinkage rather than bringing it to an end (Hollander et al., 2009; Özatağan and Eraydın, 2014; Wiechmann, 2008).

It would be fair to say that growth has become increasingly harder to achieve due to crisis and austerity, forcing new agendas. Wiechmann and Pallagst (2012), for example, identify Youngstown as the first shrinking city in the United States to break free of the growth machine and develop a plan that emphasised a smaller but liveable city with an enhanced quality of life. Schindler (2016: 820), on the other hand, shows how Detroit’s bankruptcy and irreversible growth have led local actors and extra-local elites to pursue policies aimed at improving quality of life in the city rather than simply “augmenting the value of land and spurring economic growth”. Similarly, a recent study by Béal et al. (2019) shows how anti-growth, progressive policies that seek to improve community well-being are also in evidence in Vitry-le-François, France. Looking at this wealth of evidence, it would seem that growth has lost its pertinence in emerging policy practices. Camprag (2018: 1) suggests that “the focus on growth objectives [is] turning towards alternative agendas”, and Coppola (2019) and Parr (2015) concur. At its most extreme, Schindler (2016) claims that this tendency has resulted in the emergence of “de-growth machine politics”, which is important, in that it suggests a new agenda that is receptive to equity and sustainability, and hence a complete departure from growth machine politics.

These views, however, are in contrast with those of Rosenthal (2013), who opined in the case of Cleveland that the practices that emerge as part of the new agenda may be more of a temporary strategy that is likely to be abandoned once the city re-attracts investments. In Youngstown, Rhodes and Russo (2013) noted that the smaller but liveable city vision did not represent a complete divergence from the principle of growth and private investment, while Akers (2015) highlighted the persistence of market orientation as the driver of urban growth politics in Detroit. All of this evidence, together, coupled with that put forward by Hackworth (2015), prompted Audirac (2018: 18) to raise a note of caution that emergent practices are likely to be “… part and parcel of the repertoire of technical, political, and discursive practices inherent in austerity urbanism”.

As can be concluded from the above discussions, further deliberation of the recent changes in policy responses to shrinkage, and closer attention to the newly emerging policy agendas and governance practices will contribute to a thorough understanding of urban policy making in shrinking cities. In this paper, we suggest that this requires knowledge not only of the adopted policies and strategies, but also the conditions under which the growth agendas faded away and the different perspectives and motivations of stakeholders within the emerging policy agendas.

Researching changing policy agendas in Zonguldak

Our case study of Zonguldak builds upon an exploratory research design that makes use of multiple methodologies. First, key policy documents and plans relating to the city’s development at various spatial scales were collected, supported by secondary information on the city’s demographic and economic trends. Together, these data aided the investigation of Zonguldak’s trajectory of de-industrialisation and shrinkage, as well as the adopted policies. The data failed, however, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the conditions under which the growth agenda receded, nor of the introduced strategies or perspectives and motivations of different stakeholders, which led us to make use also of supporting qualitative data.

For the case study, first, open-ended, unstructured interviews were conducted with four municipality officials, two officials from the governorship and one expert from the regional development agency (see List of Interviewees, online Appendix A). We used the interviews to gain a thorough understanding of the local dynamics of shrinkage and the policies adopted in different periods, and to comprehend the perspectives of policymakers, as well as the motivations behind the present and future actions.

As a second step, a workshop was organised on 11 September, 2017 during which the views of different stakeholders on the past and present policies adopted in response to shrinkage were heard. The workshop was attended by 41 participants, including representatives of various public institutions, chambers, professional organisations and non-governmental organisations, and was supplemented by three focus groups meetings (FGMs). FGM 1 was organised on 3 April, 2018 with the participation of 11 people involved in developing and enacting economic development policies and practices. The second FGM was organised on 11 September, 2018 with the participation of 11 people engaged in the development and enacting of urban development policies and practices. The aim of FGM 3 (February 22, 2019) was to gain insight into the newly introduced interventions and practices, and to identify any possible policy shifts and motivations, with the involvement of seven participants (see List of Participants of the Workshop and Focus Group Meetings, online Appendix B).

The interviews, workshop and focus group meetings were useful in unravelling the changing agendas, and allowed us to gain an understanding of the reflections of local stakeholders on the policies applied in response to shrinkage in Zonguldak. Furthermore, the interactions between participants revealed different perspectives of, and attitudes towards, the adopted policy agendas, and brought the participants’ concerns into focus. It was unfortunate that participation in FGM 3 was limited due to the local elections taking place at the time.

The following sections will present the research findings, but first we will break down Turkey’s specific neoliberalisation path since the 1980s, and its role in the production and management of the dynamics of deindustrialisation and shrinkage.

Turkey’s experience with neoliberal policies

Several authors, including Boratav and Yeldan (2006), agree that 1980 was the starting point of Turkey’s economic liberalisation. It is possible to identify two phases of neo-liberalisation in Turkey. The first phase (1980–2000) saw the application of a neoliberal agenda that favoured market-based development, which was followed by the second phase (2001 onwards) that drew on the constant support of the state (Bourdieu, 1998; Campbell and Pedersen, 2001; Giddens, 1998). This epitomised the dual nature of neoliberalism, with the left arm made up of the “spending ministries” while the right arm was the “agents of austerity, privatization, deregulation and marketization” (Peck, 2010; Wacquant, 2010).

In the first phase, from 1980 to 2000, major structural changes were made, paving the way for a shift from developmentalist to neoliberal economic policies. The national economy was liberalised and articulated with the global markets (Boratav and Yeldan, 2006), while developmentalist import-substitution based policies were mostly washed away by the broad waves of privatization and deregulation (Şenses, 2012). The sharp turn towards “market-based neoliberalism” included the liberalisation of trade and interest rates, the privatization of State Economic Enterprises, wage controls and free flows of capital. The market-based neoliberal policies were supposed to compel existing industries to follow export-oriented strategies, but actually resulted in triggering exports only in specific labour-intensive sectors. The privatisation and closure of the state economic enterprises that accompanied these policies had a negative effect on both certain workforce groups, especially those working for state enterprises, and on cities with weak economic bases, and those specialised in uncompetitive manufacturing activities, among which Zonguldak could be counted.

While the policies of the governments of the time can be defined as weakly regulated neoliberalism and wild financialisation, they were spurred by populist motivations. In the 1980s, to quell the dissent against the state's neoliberal economic policies, the government at the time passed a law on mass housing (No. 2985, 1984), approved legislation to regularise illegally built housing (gecekondu areas), and on that basis, initiated several housing projects. Moreover, they made several changes in the institutionalisation of certain state functions through so-called local governance reforms,¹ which led to “the emergence of entrepreneurial local governments acting as market facilitators and the privatisation of municipal services …” (Buğra and Savaşkan, 2014: 12). The justification for these changes were their potential to attract foreign capital (Ekinci, 1994; Keyder and Öncü, 1994), and their ability to integrate Turkey into the global economy through privileged metropolitan areas, especially Istanbul.

Turkey’s neoliberal policies witnessed a qualitative shift following the 1999–2001 crisis that hit the Turkish economy and the banking system. Earlier attempts to instil market-based and export-oriented growth practices and entrepreneurial urban governance became entrenched in the crucial role played by Turkey’s EU candidacy following the Helsinki Summit. Rather than relying on market dynamics alone, however, the conservative centre-right JDP (Justice and Development Party) government decided to take a more active and interventionist role in policy making, signifying a shift towards “regulated neoliberalism”, aiming to consolidate decision-making power in the hands of central state institutions to assure market rule (Eraydin and Taşan-Kok, 2014; Kuyucu, 2017). This was sustained in the years that followed, but under a policy model that resembled “neoliberal populism”. As Akçay (2018: 7) notes, this new model “complemented privatization with a partial welfarism, which amounted to a series of measures designed to blunt the force of liberalization by providing income supports and easier credit to poor households”.

Crucially, this model was hinged upon the expansion of the real estate market to attract both the local and international capital investment that was needed in the aftermath of the crisis. This established the construction sector as the engine of economic growth, serving to legitimise the socio-political and institutional change the government was striving for. To facilitate and guarantee the expansion of the real estate market, the government put its stock in a high degree of centralisation, particularly in urban governance. First, new legislation concerning illegal settlements (gecekondu) was introduced; and second, a Municipality Law was passed (Law No. 5393) authorising municipalities to implement “transformation projects” in the neglected parts of cities in partnership with the Mass Housing Administration (TOKI). These two legal reforms opened up land for new construction projects within urban areas or on the urban periphery, and soon after, several amendments were made to expand the rights and responsibilities of TOKI, serving to facilitate the activities of this central state authority. Moreover, new laws were enacted that transferred numerous planning rights from municipalities to a range of central government bodies.² All of these reforms strengthened the hand of the state, giving it the power to frame and direct local policy agendas, to determine projects that were (arguably) in the strategic interest of the nation and to govern through state-driven coalitions.

Turkey’s specific path of neoliberalisation favoured metropolitan cities at the expense of others. Firstly, the enduring disparities between the east and west of the country increased, with two-thirds of the population concentrated in the advanced west, accounting for 82 percent of the national GDP, and with a GDP per head 23 percent above the national average (41% the EU average).³ It also changed the overall population dynamics of urban settlements, with 40.8 percent of cities witnessing a population increase between 2010 and 2012, most of which was disproportionately concentrated in a small number of large cities. In contrast, 59.2 percent of cities saw a fall in population, predominantly from the smaller cities (ADB Group et al., 2019: 58; Cadavid et al., 2017). In 2012, 7.8 percent of Turkey’s population lived in shrinking cities (Cadavid et al., 2017), one being Zonguldak – a city in north-western Turkey that owes its existence to coal mining.

Neoliberalisation of the economy and Zonguldak: From growth to shrinkage

The consequences of Turkey’s neoliberalisation path can be easily observed in Zonguldak. The city developed as a pole of industrial growth under the state-led industrialisation efforts of the 1940s when coal mining was nationalised and brought under direct state control, and when the Turkish Charcoal Enterprise (TTK) was established to oversee all coal mining operations in the country. The import-substitution industrial policies of the 1960s and the establishment of the nearby state-owned iron and steel enterprises further contributed to the city’s development as an industrial growth pole and paved the way for urban expansion. However, the market-led economic development policies introduced at the beginning of the 1980s had a devastating effect on the city, with the restructuring of the TTK in particular impacting on coal production in the Zonguldak coal basin, which declined from 8.5 million tonnes in 1975 to 2.4 million tonnes in 2000 (TTK, 2018). Consequently, employment in the mining sector contracted, from around 42,000 workers in 1980 to around 34,000 in 1990, and then to 19,000 in 2000 and to 12,000 in 2004 (Şengül and Aytekin, 2011).

The weakening of the TTK and the rising unemployment gave way to a labour strike and a massive march to Ankara in 1990–1991. The march was suppressed, but the plans to close the entire coal basin were initially withdrawn, although the gradual phasing out of coal production continued throughout the 1990s (ibid.). As a result, after enjoying decades of significant growth, the contribution of the industrial sector to Zonguldak’s economy contracted at an annual rate of 4.7 percent between 1987 and 2001 (Şengül and Aytekin, 2011), while unemployment rose from 4.6 percent in 1990 to 5.2 percent in 2000 (Işın, 2009). After decades of population growth, the province of Zonguldak, which includes both the city of Zonguldak and its rural surroundings, lost its population at a rate of 2.0 percent per year between 1980 and 1985, and 7.4 percent per year between 1995 and 2000 (Şengül and Aytekin, 2011). The city of Zonguldak was the most severely affected, recording a population decline from a peak of about 118,000 in 1985 to just over 116,000 in 1990 and to 104,000 in 2000 (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Urban Population Change, The City of Zonguldak, 1985–2018. Source: authors’ calculations based on population data from the Turkish Statistical Institute, www.tuik.gov.tr

State-driven policy making in response to shrinkage

Up until the Ankara march, there had been no specific policies enacted to tackle Zonguldak’s economic downturn. In 1992, in an attempt to quell the unrest that was bubbling under the surface, the state launched a university-based urban economic development drive that would contribute to the diversification of the coal-dependent economy of Zonguldak and create employment. The opening of the university contributed to the revitalisation of the real estate market in the city, as the housing stock especially around the university campus was given over to student housing or refunctioned for retail or commercial use. This market-led studentification process prevented one of the most devastating consequences of shrinkage: abandonment. Despite these efforts, however, there was only a limited return of jobs, which one respondent in the present study attributed to the fact that the “private job market failed to develop in the city due to the dominance of public institutions, in particular the TTK” (Participant 3, Head of the Department of Strategic Development, Zonguldak Municipality, FGM 3), which discouraged the students from staying in Zonguldak after graduation. As a result, by the early 2000s, the City of Zonguldak had become beset by problems of economic restructuring and poor quality of life (Ersoy and Şengül, 2001) and difficulties in attracting employment, recording an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent in 2000 (Işın, 2009).

Reinstating growth through state-led entrepreneurialism

In the early 2000s, the state sought to encourage economic growth in Zonguldak through the diversification of the coal-dependent economy by playing a direct interventionist role. Consensus among Zonguldak’s local and regional policymakers and the state was achieved, encouraging private sector investments into the energy sector. To ensure the mobilisation of these investments the state put in place a set of extraordinary measures that permitted the expropriation of private land, that relaxed environmental rules and regulations, and that exempted such projects from environmental impact assessments, backing them with credits and financial guarantees (Adaman and Akbulut, 2019; Akbulut, 2019; Erensü, 2017). As a result, the region has seen the construction of seven new imported coal fuelled-thermal power plants, three new hydroelectric power plants and one biomass plant since 2010,⁴ all of which were presented as being in the strategic interest of Turkey’s energy independence, although being dependant on imported coal.⁵ The coal-fuelled energy investments – both existing and planned – have been publicly criticised as detrimental to public health and the environment, spurring resistance and reactions from activists and local communities alike. One outcome of these protests has been the establishment of the “Liveable Zonguldak Platform” in 2013 – a grassroots platform formed to lobby against the construction of new thermal power plants in the region and the prevention of the associated air, water and soil pollution.⁶

The plans for the city also included a number of mega projects that the state claimed were strategically important for bringing prosperity to the region. In particular, the Filyos Valley Project⁷ was launched in 2010 following the enactment of a decree-law designating the boundaries of the project and earmarking the private property of many small-scale rural landowners in the basin for expropriation. The project was exempted from environmental assessment processes (BAKKA, 2013) as a means of attracting large-scale investments into, among others, the energy sector, backed by state incentives. Going against rising environmental concerns, the project was referred to as Turkey’s gateway to the Black Sea, promising employment for 12,000 people (BAKKA, 2010), and thus promising to alleviate the unemployment and outmigration problems besetting the region. To ensure the success of the Filyos Project, the state also defined several large-scale transportation investments throughout the region that included the construction of an airport and various motorways, and the improvement of the existing railway network. The pace of implementation, however, has been slow due to the numerous court cases opened against the project⁸ and the financial difficulties of the state, leaving most of the planned projects half complete or as yet unlaunched, and hence “failing to bring about any significant change on the local economy” (Participant 11, Chair, Chamber of Architects Zonguldak Branch, FGM 2).

Processes of state-led urban (re-)development

Deindustrialisation and shrinkage have also had significant effects on the financial situation of the city of Zonguldak, which saw a drop in tax revenues due to the demise of the mining sector, as underlined by Interviewee 2 (Deputy Mayor, Zonguldak Municipality, April 2018). The revenue received by the city of Zonguldak from the state, distributed on the basis of its (shrinking) population, has also dropped, and so the city has become financially dependent on other centrally assigned budget revenues. To make matters worse, municipal budget deficits have seen significant increases as a reflection of the obligatory cuts to centrally assigned revenues due to arrears in payments to state institutions, further restricting the capacity of the municipality to deal with the problems of shrinkage. Under these conditions, the urban redevelopment projects promoted by the state aimed at enlarging the real estate markets and stimulating construction activities were welcomed by the municipality for the benefits they would bring in the form of “revenues from property and services taxes” (Interviewee 2, Deputy Mayor, Zonguldak Municipality, April 2018), signifying a new era of consensus between the municipality and the state.

However, revitalising the urban economy through real estate and construction has proven to be challenging due to the local contingencies that shape the city’s growth trajectory. For one, the city of Zonguldak has a unique property ownership pattern, with 39 percent of the land within the municipal boundary owned by the Treasury, 8 percent by the municipality and various state-level governments, and by the TTK – which controls the underground mining operations. This leaves only 13 percent for private ownership (Interviewee 3, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, April 2018), paving the way for the development of unregistered residential areas (gecekondu) on land with high subsidence risk.⁹ The “amnesty act for urban development” (No. 2981/3290/3366) enacted in 1985 allowed the municipality to produce 17 urban redevelopment plans that would regularise gecekondu settlements, presenting this urban re-development path as a strategy for the “improvement of unregistered urban neighbourhoods on subsidence areas and for overcoming squatter development” (Interviewee 2, Deputy Mayor, Zonguldak Municipality, April 2018). The idea was that by promoting the development of a residential real estate market in Zonguldak, new residents would be attracted to the area and outmigration would be reversed. However, the municipality encountered many problems in its implementation, such as the many court cases raised against the redevelopment plans and new centralisation measures that superseded local re-development plans.¹⁰ All of these obstacles “brought planned redevelopment to an end and left [only] three redevelopment projects completed” (Interviewee 3, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, April 2018).

While redevelopment remained limited, throughout the late 2000s the Housing Development Administration (TOKI) initiated various projects in Zonguldak that stimulated construction activity. That said, a closer look at the projects initiated and completed by TOKI on publicly owned land in Zonguldak reveals that they far from met the initial targets, although the state provided exceptional advantages to developers that maintained close relations with the ruling party through public-private partnerships.¹¹

State-driven growth agenda in question

All of this evidence reveals the difficulties encountered in enacting state-driven growth agendas. Throughout the 2000s the city regained only one-third of the population it had lost, reaching a population of 109,000 in 2011, and the peak population threshold of 118,000 was never reached. Indeed, by 2018, the population had declined again to 105,500 (Figure 1). Notably, the ability of state-driven policies to favourably alter the course of Zonguldak’s development has been increasingly called into question. Several of the participants in the present study questioned the over-reliance on the state and criticised “the attitude of waiting for the state to resolve Zonguldak’s enduring problems” during the Workshop, as voiced by Participant 15 (Chairman, Zonguldak Environment Protection Association). In a Focus Group Meeting, one of the participants stated:

the specific regulations [enacted by the state] in the past to protect coal mining have strict rules that have long prevented change in the city’s course of development. They have hampered policymakers in implementing projects that would improve the quality of life in the city (Participant 4, Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Rehabilitation, Zonguldak Governorship, FGM 3).

Another argued that “state-driven policies prevented the city from independently initiating and implementing new projects” (Participant 1, Expert, Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, FGM 3) “[due to the] authorisations required from the TTK and other state-level departments and institutions” (Interviewee 7, Expert, BAKKA, February 2019).¹²

The application of the past policy agendas imposed upon Zonguldak has also raised important questions with regards to the minimal attention afforded to environmental issues and the liveability of the city. As one participant noted, “I will leave when there are more power plants; Zonguldak will not be a liveable city” (Participant 29, Expert, TEMA, Zonguldak Branch, Workshop). The same discourse was shared by the “Liveable Zonguldak Platform”, made up of representatives of various civic institutions, associations and non-governmental organisations working in solidarity for a “liveable Zonguldak”. Concerns were also expressed about traffic congestion, parking problems and the lack of open spaces, and many of the participants of Focus Group Meeting 3 complained about the low quality of life in the city. Also criticised were the urban redevelopment processes that, it was claimed, increased densities and worsened the quality of life of the local community:

The city turned into a concrete jungle. The urban redevelopment that was meant to improve the quality of urban life completely destroyed the lives of the residents (Participant 6, Zonguldak representative, Chamber of City Planners, Zonguldak Branch, FGM 3).

Shifting policy agendas and forging a local coalition

How have policymakers reacted to these challenges and local concerns? To begin with, attempts have been made to respond to the kinds of problems raised by participants in ways that are suggestive of a change in policy agenda. Specifically, it has become a priority of the Special Provincial Directorate of the Administration of the Governorship (SPDAG) since 2018 to spearhead a range of cultural, industrial heritage, tourism and recreation projects¹³ that, in the words of the General Secretary of the Governorship, “designated Zonguldak’s projected path of development” (Zonguldak Valiliği, 2018: 5) around a tourism-based strategy.

Obviously, this is a strategy that has been conventionally adopted in many deindustrialising cities over the past decades (DiGaetano and Lawless, 1999; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012; Mazar, 2018; McCarthy, 2002; Rink et al., 2012). However, one of its key aspects is that it is premised, at least discursively, on new themes. The Secretary General of the SDPAG stressed that through such projects they “uncover and respect the city’s natural and historical assets and reinterpret them for tourism purposes” (Zonguldak Valiliği, 2018: 5). The Governor highlighted that “the projects encompass all types of eco-tourism – other than those that would have a harmful effect on nature”, stating that “[its natural assets] render Zonguldak a centre of attraction for nature lovers” and that the governorship is “bringing to the attention of the public and potential entrepreneurs an inventory of projects that will change the countenance of Zonguldak” (ibid, p.3). It would thus appear that Zonguldak’s governorship is seeking to stimulate the marketing of the city to attract visitors and investors by driving forward a conventional agenda, yet reframing it by incorporating environmental and heritage rhetoric into the stated goals,¹⁴ echoing what Akers et al. (2019) and Béal et al. (2019) observed in Cleveland and Vitry-le-François.

Although spearheaded by the Governorship, other stakeholders have embraced the move and showed willingness to be part of it, the Municipality of Zonguldak being one of them:

This has resulted from a combination of factors that include the municipality’s incapacity to stand behind the projects it had developed, the agency of the Governor and the latter’s financial power. The mayor simply said that ‘we cannot implement these projects; you do them’ (Interviewee 4, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, February 2019).

Hence, as part of this agenda, the Municipality of Zonguldak “developed some recreational and various industrial heritage projects connected to the city’s industrial past. It was us that prepared them, but it seemed like it was the SDGA that did it” (Interviewee 3, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, April 2018). In another interview, it was stressed that “[The projects] were developed one after another, infused into the urban plans and moved towards implementation” (Interviewee 4, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, February 2019).

The same applies to the Regional Development Agency (RDA), BAKKA:

We draft projects¹⁵ that are likely to be included in the [governorship’s] tourism master plan to prevent impracticable projects that are likely to be proposed by others, and provide grants to those who are likely to implement them. The management board of the RDA is composed of the Governorship of the three provinces that make up the Region, the municipal and provincial governments, and the presidents of the chambers of industry and commerce, providing a perfect platform for partnership between the most powerful agents in the Region. They reach consensus, and we plan and provide grants as the local governments lack the necessary financial resources (Interviewee 7, Expert, BAKKA, February 2019).

As these quotes suggest, the projects set forth as part of the new agenda have brought Zonguldak’s policymakers, including the Municipality of Zonguldak, the RDA and the TTK (which owns the vast majority of the land and industrial heritage buildings in Zonguldak) into dialogue with the Governorship, with the intention of taking a share of the earmarked funds. As the Secretary General of the SDPAG noted, “[The SPDAG] provides support to projects prepared by other [institutions]” (Zonguldak Valiliği, 2018: 5), which is a point that is also illustrated in the following quote: “The SPDAG provided financial support for the restoration of the municipality’s theatre/cinema” (Interviewee 4, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, February 2019). This reflects the forging of what Bernt (2009) calls a “grant coalition”, which is somewhat remarkable, as Zonguldak has long been characterised by a legacy of conflictual politics:

There were times when the interests of the municipal government conflicted with those of state-level governments; and times when governors acted like mayors and shrugged them off. In such cases, when a mayor is a strong person, conflict is inconsequential (Interviewee 7, Expert, BAKKA, February 2019).

This legacy of conflictual politics “caused primarily by property problems (property rights of the TTK and other state-level departments)” (Interviewee 1, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, May, 2017), was in contrast to the new situation, as reflected in the following quote: “the whole process is very friendly” (Interviewee 4, City Planner, Zonguldak Municipality, February 2019). It was also highlighted that “Earlier projects [developed by local stakeholders in the city] could not be implemented due to political conflicts. Hence, the helping hand of an outsider was necessary” (Interviewee 5, Director of Social and Cultural Affairs, SPDAG, April 2018), which in this case was the new Governor. According to that same official, “The new Governor is a mastermind who has a vision [that includes] culture, arts and tourism”.

It is precisely this “vision”, through which a conventional policy framework was reframed, that helped the new agenda gain considerable attention among local stakeholders with diverging interests. Among these are those who called into question the growth agenda that had long underpinned policy frameworks, and those who put the issues of quality of life and liveability at the forefront. Most of the members of the NGOs, who had been highly critical of the previous policies, claimed that Zonguldak was in need of new interventions to improve the environmental quality and the living conditions of the residents, and accepted that the cultural, industrial heritage and recreation projects set forth by local policymakers could improve the quality of life and liveability of Zonguldak.

All these recent developments indicate a change in urban policymaking in Zonguldak. Although the logic behind the emerging agenda remains, what is notable is that it avoids the discourse of growth and such contested practices as urban transformation, redevelopment and renewal that have characterised Turkey’s state-driven growth machine politics. Instead, it embraces, at least discursively, issues connected to ecology, industrial heritage, quality of life and liveability when reframing a variety of conventional practices, to make the city attractive for investment. It is worthwhile noting that this had the appearance of a powerful strategy, in that it attenuated the reactions against the ongoing state-driven projects imposed upon Zonguldak, and effectively brought together a broad coalition of diverse local interests.

Concluding remarks

Recent literature highlighting the problems and failures of most growth-oriented policies in shrinking cities has introduced two contrasting perspectives. The first suggests that the “traditional growth-at-all-cost” (Audirac, 2018: 14) approach has been abandoned in several shrinking cities, interrogates the relevance of growth machine politics under changing circumstances, and considers emerging practices as a transformative shift that will lead to a more sustainable, equitable and socially just urbanisation (Camprag, 2018; Coppola, 2019; Parr, 2015; Schindler, 2016). In contrast, the second view suggests that the emerging policy agenda does not necessarily imply a complete divergence from growth machine politics (Akers, 2015; Audirac, 2018; Rhodes and Russo, 2013; Rosenthal, 2013). While these general discussions are useful, there is still need for a thorough understanding of the recent policy changes, not least because both the shrinkage process and the responses to it are context-dependent.

This paper has attempted to contribute to the shrinkage debate by directing attention to the experience of Zonguldak, coming from a country where there is a lack of scholarly attention to studies of shrinkage. In an attempt to decipher the changes in policy agendas and governance practices, we have not only drawn upon existing data and key policy documents and plans, but also amassed the different views and motivations of various policymakers, institutions and NGOs with the help of a qualitative research approach. An analysis of the policy responses enacted in Zonguldak based on this comprehensive data set reveals that the recent trend of paying less heed to growth is invigorated by the difficulties encountered in the implementation of state-driven growth agendas since the 1980s, and the reactions of local stakeholders against them. The paper has also paid close attention to emerging policy agendas, posing the question of whether this policy shift indicates a departure from growth machine politics. We find that rather than bringing in an alternative to growth and neoliberal intervention, Zonguldak’s emerging policy agenda makes use of conventional strategies, but blends them with new discursive practices. First, there is a tendency to avoid the discourse of growth and the contested practices that have characterised Turkey’s state-driven growth machine politics. Second, such themes as ecology, industrial heritage, quality of life and liveability are emphasised in an attempt to reframe a variety of conventional practices. Accordingly, what has emerged in Zonguldak may seem to differ from the ambitious policies adopted in other shrinking mining cities, such as those that mobilise multinational companies to stimulate technology and innovation-driven growth, as in Sudbury (Canada) and Mount Isa (Australia), and those that revitalise the declining economy through flagship tourism projects, as in Yubari (Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012). In essence, however, they are guided by a logic that is compatible with prevailing policy frameworks, aside from the introduction of a discourse that appeals to the stakeholders who were critical of the previous policy practices imposed by the state. Indeed, our account of the views and motives of policymakers has revealed that the strategy applied in Zonguldak aimed to stimulate the marketing of the city, seeking to improve its image so as to attract visitors and investors alike. The third, and perhaps most important aspect of Zonguldak’s emerging policy landscape are the enduring problems related to shrinkage and the limited contribution of state-driven policies to changing the course of Zonguldak’s development, which have forced both policymakers and stakeholders with diverging interests to embrace the reframed conventional policy framework, effectively paving the way for a broad coalition of diverse local interests in a city that has long been characterised by conflictual politics. Although some of the representatives of NGOs or semi-public organisations who questioned the state-driven growth agenda believed it not to be what they were looking for, they conceded that it was better than the previous agendas, suggesting that the local coalition that emerged may well be delineated as a negotiated compromise under the present conditions.

All of this evidence suggests that even though a change in policy responses to shrinkage seems to be taking place, it can be understood that policy agendas that give less emphasis to growth does not necessarily mean a departure from growth machine politics. Instead, Zonguldak’s policymakers have found new ways of aligning with Turkey’s state-driven growth politics. The findings also highlight that the deployment of discursive strategies is one of the ways in which the growth machine adapts to changing circumstances. Similarly, Berglund (2020) found in the case of Detroit that narratives that highlighted the benefits of growth to the city were abandoned, while Béal et al. (2019) identified a tendency to avoid speaking about rightsizing, instead embracing a discourse around the green economy in Vitry-le-François. Furthermore, Akers et al. (2019) showed how environmental rhetoric was used to reframe rightsizing strategies in Cleveland. All of the above evidence, together with the evidence of the present study, indicate that it is often through changes in discursive practice that the growth machine persists under conditions of shrinkage. In the light of this evidence, we suggest that the present case study supports the position that the emerging policy responses to shrinkage constitute yet another variant of growth machine politics (Akers et al., 2019; Audirac, 2018; Berglund, 2020; Rosenman and Walker, 2016), and that the growth machine ideology is thus sustained (Bernt et al., 2014; Hackworth, 2015; Radzimski, 2018; Rosenman et al., 2014).

It should be noted here that the emerging policy agenda and the new coalition forged around it are both vulnerable, and that their ability to change Zonguldak’s course of development for the future is questionable. Our findings and evaluations of the dynamics of urban policymaking in Zonguldak suggest that the city’s future development path is likely to be driven by state-level policies rather than by local dynamics alone.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-epn-10.1177_0308518X20975032 - Supplemental material for Emerging policy responses in shrinking cities: Shifting policy agendas to align with growth machine politics

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-epn-10.1177_0308518X20975032 for Emerging policy responses in shrinking cities: Shifting policy agendas to align with growth machine politics by Güldem Özatağan and Ayda Eraydin in EPA: Economy and Space

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper is based on a research conducted as part of the 3S RECIPE-Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Fostering Resilient Cities in Inner Peripheries of Europe project, funded by JPI Urban Europe ERA-NET Co-fund Smart Urban Futures, Project no. 693443, 2017–2020.

Notes

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