Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
societal context features. Recognizing and solving these issues will increase the ef-
fectiveness of the new approaches to a just city.
3.6.1
Restricted Urban Powers
Most cities, unless they are city-states like Singapore, have far less legislative and
taxing powers than the national states within which they are located. Hence their
ability to enact broad redistributive measures, such as the welfare policies found in
most western democracies, are, in practice, relatively limited. However city gov-
ernments often act as partners with the state in welfare policies, or as agents of the
state for policy delivery, while some, as seen in the discussion on New Regionalism
in Chap. 2, have acquired more powers from the state, sometimes by a new charter
that defines their new rights. In addition, most cities in the developed world today
are financially challenged, given their limited taxing powers, obligations to provide
many services and the increasing pressure for infra-structure renewal and mainte-
nance. Indeed, they depend on higher levels of government—such as national, state
or provincial jurisdictions—for the money to provide many services. So despite the
potential utility of the policies designed to create more just decision-making in the
public sector, and perhaps providing some basic needs, the major effective redis-
tributive justice measures still operate at the national state level in most countries.
Hence there is a need to integrate, or at least to relate, more of the Just City literature
to the redistributive justice policies at a state level with those at an urban level.
3.6.2
Territorial Issues
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Localism
Most Just City policies are also limited because of the spatial restriction of their
powers, which apply only to the area of control by the municipal government and
even this is usually under the jurisdiction of a higher authority, such as a province,
state or national state. Even if one city designs and implements some new progres-
sive and just policy there is no guarantee that the policy will apply to other juris-
dictions, since the administrative authority of a city stops at its borders. Certainly
new administrative units, such as the various types created under New Regionalism
(Wheeler 2002; Scott
2005
) described in Chap. 2, may create policies for larger
spatial entities, such as those composed of a central city and its surrounding re-
gion of separate municipalities. However, even these will be spatially restricted.
Nevertheless, there is a pressing need to recognize the common interests of gov-
ernments within urbanized regions and to ensure that problems are dealt with at
a regional level. Historically, towns and cities often banded together, designing
policies for mutual benefit, such as the medieval Hanseatic League, although these
were mainly for defence or commercial advantage. Although there are relatively
