Urbanism, cities and local self-government
By: MAGNUSSON, Warren
.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Toronto : IPAC, Spring 2005Canadian Public Administration : the journal of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada 48, 1, p. 96-123Abstract: This article explores the relationship between urbanism, cities and local self-government to identify some key issues for contemporary public administration. State-centric political theory marginalizes urban analysis, but the latter enables us to see the world in a different way. Understanding ourselves as urban is to see that conventional political categories seriously misrepresent the conditions of our lives. Various thinkers like Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift and Michael Peter Smith have suggested ways of building on contemporary urban analysis, but it is still a struggle to overcome the spatial imagination that we have inherited from conventional political theory. This poses particular problems for any new urban agenda, since questions of local autonomy have yet to be properly posed. Gerald E. Frugs analysis of the issue of civic autonomy is helpful in this regard because it highlights the philosophical assumptions that lie behind our fears about the misuse of local authority. Foucauldian discussions of governmentality reveal the way self-government works as a strategy to control populations by liberating them. Local self-government is thus an ambiguous and dangerous ideal but not for the reasons usually supposed. It is in any case the practice implicit in urbanism as a way of life. The key constitutional issue today is how to recognize that practice and regulate it appropriately
This article explores the relationship between urbanism, cities and local self-government to identify some key issues for contemporary public administration. State-centric political theory marginalizes urban analysis, but the latter enables us to see the world in a different way. Understanding ourselves as urban is to see that conventional political categories seriously misrepresent the conditions of our lives. Various thinkers like Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift and Michael Peter Smith have suggested ways of building on contemporary urban analysis, but it is still a struggle to overcome the spatial imagination that we have inherited from conventional political theory. This poses particular problems for any new urban agenda, since questions of local autonomy have yet to be properly posed. Gerald E. Frugs analysis of the issue of civic autonomy is helpful in this regard because it highlights the philosophical assumptions that lie behind our fears about the misuse of local authority. Foucauldian discussions of governmentality reveal the way self-government works as a strategy to control populations by liberating them. Local self-government is thus an ambiguous and dangerous ideal but not for the reasons usually supposed. It is in any case the practice implicit in urbanism as a way of life. The key constitutional issue today is how to recognize that practice and regulate it appropriately
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer
There are no comments for this item.