City, Regions and Social Cohesion

Beschreibung

This presentation aims at a broader understanding of social cohesion in urban and regional development by a scale-sensitive analysis which overcomes current post-democratic and fragmented policy making. Parting from the current world crisis in its financial, economic, ecological and social dimensions, this presentation contextualizes the challenge of cohesive socio-economic development beyond conventional approaches of social and socio-cultural policies. World-wide economic dynamics, which have to be grasped in its profoundly political dimensions, are decisive for all attempts at urban and regional cohesion. Urban research has assumed a global perspective in line with the World-City-approach which has led to a deficient understanding of economic development inclined towards a sole logic of international capital as well as supply-side explanations. Within this framework social cohesion was reduced to a specific problematique of curing the wounds caused by neoliberal modernisation. This has played down social policy to repairing damages caused by a proclaimed eternal socio-economic order ("There is no alternative") based on private property, market economy and competitiveness-oriented policy making. In the city, it was real estate and finance capital - the most advanced and mobile forms of capital – embedded in neoliberal discourse which dictated the rules of a game with often negative effects on social cohesion. The financial crisis revealed within a very short time span the theoretical errors underlying this approach. Ongoing dominance of a supply-side erspective has resulted in neo-mercantilist strategies of competitiveness with the reduction of wages to mere costs, overlooking its crucial importance as the source of purchasing power. Locational competition between cities, regions and nations has resulted in export-winners like Germany who have suffocated production in the European periphery in the South and East, leading to huge current account deficits.

Zeitraum	6 Apr. 2009 → 8 Apr. 2009
Ereignistitel	RSA-conference: Understanding and Shaping Regions: Spatial, Social and Economic Futures
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International