Globalization, Neoliberalism and International Homogeneity in Architecture and Urban Development
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Informationen zur Raumentwicklung Heft 5/6.2010 417 Paul L. Knox Globalization, neoliberalism and international Kathy Pain homogeneity in architecture and urban development 1 Introduction In a globalizing economy, architecture and ties associated with organizing the finance urban design have an increasing role in fa- and investment and creating and managing cilitating the circulation and accumulation flows of information and cultural products of capital. While design schools continue to that collectively underpin the economic propagate Mies van der Rohe’s famous dic- and cultural globalization of the world.3 tum that “Form Follows Function”, the real- Meanwhile, global cultural shifts have come ity in the world’s great cities is that “Form to place a premium on consumer experi- Follows Finance”.1 Design and its cousin, ence, celebrity and spectacle, and “place” branding, helps sell everything from build- has become increasingly commodified.4 ings to cities. Cities themselves are now crit- In this context, developers understand that ically inter-linked by global flows of finance, design – especially by “star” designers – can mobilized by the interactions of a range of add significantly to exchange value. Witold agents and ‘fixed’ in a variety of real estate Rybczynski notes that “in the 1970s and infrastructures. In the globalized economy 1980s, developers, led by Gerald Hines and that has been evolving for the past 40 years, George Klein, commissioned A-list archi- the world as a totality has become an arena tects such as Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, and of exchange and cooperation (as well as Kevin Roche to build office towers. These conflict), with increasingly dense and in- class-A buildings derived their prestige in terconnected flows of ideas, values, images, great measure from their design quality. and lifestyles. Certain cities have come to The difference today is that employing a occupy key roles in this global economy. As famous architect is not only about adding Allen Scott notes, not every individual city design value, it is also about adding cachet, everywhere in the world is flourishing, but since individual architects have achieved “there is a distinctive group of metropolitan a much greater measure of celebrity than areas that are now forging ahead on the ba- in the past.”5 In practical terms, the cachet sis of their command of the new economy, of “starchitects” can make a decisive differ- their ability to exploit globalization to their ence in three ways: in lubricating the plan- own advantage, and the selective revitaliza- ning-approval process in sensitive urban tion of their internal fabric of land use and contexts; in adding value to the building built form.” 2 The term “world cities” is of- through reconciling urban context and ar- Prof. Dr. Paul L. Knox ten applied to these places because of the chitectural form with commercial develop- Metropolitan Institute School of degree of their key roles in organizing in- Public and International Affairs ment rationalities; and in selling the interior 123C Burruss Hall fluencing, and integrating space and soci- space of the building to prospective com- Virginia Tech ety beyond their own national boundaries. mercial tenants.6 Meanwhile, cities have Blacksburg, VA 24061-0178 Since the mid-1970s, the key roles of world been broadly recast within a new political USA cities have been concerned less with the or- economy that is now dominated by neo- E-Mail: [email protected] chestration of trade and the deployment of liberalism. Urban governance has become Prof. Dr. Kathy Pain imperial power and more with transnational concerned more with providing a “good University of Reading corporate organization, international bank- business climate” than with the traditional School of Real Estate & ing and finance, fashion, design and the concerns of civil society.7 A key part of pro- Planning media, and supranational government and viding a good business climate, for many of Henley Business School Whiteknights, Reading the work of international agencies. World the globalizing cities in Europe, is the pro- RG6 6UD cities have consequently become the sites motion of urban design, iconic architecture, United Kingdom of extraordinary concentrations of activi- and trendy cultural quarters. E-Mail: [email protected] Paul L. Knox, Kathy Pain: Globalization, neoliberalism and international homogeneity 418 in architecture and urban development 2 Toward homogeneity in the built interacts with other globalized economic environment activities in the construction of real estate markets. Synergistic relations among finan- To what degree has all this resulted in ho- cial and other “advanced producer services” mogeneity in the built environment? This – including the real estate and design pro- article examines changes in the built en- fessions, which are key drivers of the con- vironment of globalizing cities in Europe. temporary world economy and its “City”- Guggenheim and Söderström suggest that scapes – have been identified in the City of there is an increasing international homo- London by Peter Taylor and co-authors,12 genization of the appearance of the built and are present in other major European environment of large cities as a result of business cities.13 the combination of several factors: “market The significance of finance in shaping -ur liberalization (capital), international migra- ban development in Europe was observed tions (people), cultural globalization (ideas), as early as the 1960s and 1970s, notably urban entrepreneurialism (images), and in “The Property Boom”, written by Oliver changes within architecture and planning Marriott14 and “The Property Machine” by (the rise of global offices, “starchitecture”, Ambrose and Colenutt.15 Such work pin- intensified exchanges within the professi- pointed a decisive shift in the relationship on and new design technologies, journals, between investment funds and property models, types).”8 We examine each of these development before information and com- factors in relation to the globalizing cities of munication technology (ICT)-facilitated Europe. The net result, we suggest, is a se- globalization became prominent. These ries of changes to the landscapes of these publications drew attention to the power of cities, changes that tend to result more in finance capital in reshaping urban develop- the convergence of metropolitan form than ment, which had until then been seen as a in differences or distinctiveness. Among the mainstream role of public sector planners principal outcomes, we argue, are property- and architects. A turning point for cities led regeneration through large-scale urban had been established – the transformation redevelopment schemes, new-economy of urban development into a financial in- hubs, ubiquitous office towers, cultural vestment business. quarters, “semiotic districts” and “brand- scapes”, gentrified neighbourhoods and pa- From the 1980s onwards globalization and ckaged suburban landscapes. liberalization16 have dramatically increased the exposure of European cityscapes to Market liberalization: The mobility of capital markets that are transnational and capital and the globalization of real estate global in scope. The role of world or ‘”glo- and construction bal” cities17 as bases for advanced-services Progressive liberalization of national finan- firms with worldwide office networks brings cial markets since the 1980s and 1990s has to the fore the complex interrelationships constituted an insidious global driver in city between global finance, economic globali- real estate construction, interacting with zation and urban design. Today, financial, more evident processes of structural eco- real estate and design services are interna- nomic transformation.9 Command of global tional suppliers, creating and shaping glo- finance was the defining feature of “world bal cityscapes; and they are themselves glo- cities”, as noted by John Friedmann in bal city “users”. Together they create both 1986.10 However, the specific interdepend- the demand for office buildings and sup- encies between processes of financial and porting infrastructures18 (mixed-use retail, economic globalization in the operation of entertainment, restaurants, etc.) and organ- city property markets have, until recently, ize their supply, thereby adding a global di- been understudied. Three decades on, Co- mension to the web of actor interrelations lin Lizieri’s 2009 analysis of major world in the local development process identified cities indicates that international finance – by Patsy Healey.19 The global consolidation “investment, wholesale and merchant bank- of retailing, food and entertainment into in- ing, bond markets, equity markets, foreign ternational chains with transnational port- exchange, derivatives markets, asset and folios of real estate is also generating a new wealth management”11 – not only remains kind of commercial client for starchitec- their key distinguishing attribute, but also ture. This increasing interlinkage between Informationen zur Raumentwicklung Heft 5/6.2010 419 finance, business and professional design globalizing professionals, employees of the services at a global scale is explicitly evident likes of Arup (a global engineering, design, at the Marche International des Profes- planning, and business consulting firm) sionels de l’Immobiliers (MIPIM) property and Cushman and Wakefield (a global real fair held annually in Cannes, where the top estate research, investment, and consulting real estate and architecture