Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
among conservatives, that since the wealthy saved and invested more, it was aggre-
gative savings that led to growth. However Keynes's (
1936
) argument that it was
aggregative consumption, not savings, that was the key to growth, gained political
support. This helped to justify income redistribution measures, which stimulated
economies through the resultant spending of this extra state-provided income. Yet in
the developing world progress in redistributive policies was slow. Ravallion (
2013
)
has argued that by the 1990s, the development of new economic models revealed
that high levels of poverty reduced subsequent growth in developing countries,
since it led to limited spending and a waste of potential labour who could not find
jobs. This evidence, along with the growth of redistributionist ideas, has helped
justify the development of many more poverty alleviation measures in developing
countries, such as Brazil's Bolsa Familia policy of conditional cash transfers to poor
families, so long as their children go to school and are vaccinated.
The political freedom of liberties and the right to participate in the decision-
making that created representative democracies did not lead to equality in econom-
ic terms, or in decision-making power beyond the initial vote. Vestiges of the old
hierarchical orders remained because of their control over capital and land. More-
over, the spread of the capitalist system, especially with the industrial and com-
mercial revolutions of the late twentieth century, created even more inequalities,
since the new relationships of production were dominated by the owners of capital
and the new technologies, adding to the numbers and dominance of a relatively
small and wealthy elite. Despite the advances in social justice provided by the es-
sentially progressive measures in western democratic countries, the 1960s saw the
beginning of a new questioning of the results of the policies. The civil rights and
feminist movements in particular showed that people of colour and women had not
shared in many of the advances, which eventually led to new legislation to improve
their prospects. Young adults led counter-culture protests (Koszak 1969) about the
dominance of a consumer society, with its over-emphasis on work and the unequal
structure of rewards in organizations. Dissatisfaction was also expressed about the
top-down nature of so many of the public planning decisions, traditionally based
on utilitarian grounds in which the policies were based primarily on the maximi-
zation of benefits. This approach favoured developments that created the highest
subsequent tax returns to the city or profits to developers, and ignored the poor
and those most affected by development schemes, who were often left worse off.
In addition, questions were increasingly asked about the planning and implemen-
tation of policies, traditionally carried out by professionals with little effective
input from the public at large—specialists who were assumed to act in the pub-
lic interest. However, it was increasingly recognized that these so-called experts
were not unbiased; they favoured the wealthy or the powerful, and, as in the case
of the many disastrous high rise social housing projects, made flawed decisions.
Peter Hall, in his classic survey of planning movements in western cities, also
noted that these changes were carried out by what were assumed to be benevolent
states and municipal bureaucrats, a consequence that the many anarchists and com-
munitarians who pioneered many early planning ideas “
would have hated
” (Hall
