Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future, by Michael Oluf Emerson and Kevin T. Smiley. New York, NY: NYU Press, 2018. ISBN: 9781479800261; 256 pp. $30 paperback.

《Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future, by Michael Oluf Emerson and Kevin T. Smiley. New York, NY: NYU Press, 2018. ISBN: 9781479800261; 256 pp. $30 paperback.》

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作者: Hillary Angelo

来源: CITY & COMMUNITY,Vol.18,Issue1,P.421-423

语言: 英文

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作者单位: University of California

摘要: In Market Cities, People Cities, Emerson and Smiley argue that cities can be classified as “market cities” or “people cities” with corresponding families of “covarying” characteristics (6). Market Cities prioritize economic growth and individualism and have high inequality, low trust, more environmental problems, smaller municipal government, lower taxes, and more philanthropy. In contrast, People Cities prioritize quality of life for all, and have lower inequality, stronger and more centralized government, cleaner environments, and significantly more public services. The majority of the book establishes these ideal types through an in‐depth comparison of Houston and Copenhagen, two cities that “epitomize” the opposite ends of this spectrum (3). The chapters are divided into two parts—“How it Happens,” and “Why it Matters”—intended to describe the genesis and consequences of either type of city, though the first half really documents these two narratives in action among residents and local elites and the second the covarying differences in various arenas of urban life: transportation and land use, environment and economy, diversity and trust. A final empirical chapter offers a quantitative comparison of 79 European cities, addressing concerns about the influence of national/regional differences by showing substantial levels of variation even within the same continental context. I found it an intriguing and challenging book. Intriguing because Emerson and Smiley's distinction, as a heuristic, makes a lot of intuitive sense. The book makes the point that even within a global system of “neoliberal” cities there is significant variation in urban priorities and outcomes, at least along this spectrum. It is personable in tone and appears to be written with policymakers in mind—and they will find it useful! Emerson and Smiley put social democratic cities on the map for American urbanists, and, importantly, provide a vocabulary and space for a policy discussion that could overcome what the authors describe as “closed system” city narratives that naturalize particular paths and priorities and make it hard to see alternatives (160). They show that cities have different priorities, and that those priorities can at least to some extent be set and changed at the urban scale. Practitioners will also appreciate their discussion of the characteristic problems and pitfalls of each: inequality and lack of trust in Market Cities; sensitivity to differences and market pressures in the case of People Cities. And yet, for these same reasons the book may be challenging for academic audiences. It oversimplifies a bit too much—readers may cringe at reading about “humans” being “urban” and “cities” having “choices.” But more importantly, we might desire more complex explanations for the differences the authors identify. As Emerson and Smiley acknowledge, Market Cities and People Cities are really shorthands for clusters of characteristics that vary based on (among other things) the national context, history, geography, and local economy and politics of particular cities. But the authors do not really attempt to parse out these different factors or their role in producing either city type. For example, Chapter 1 offers a fairly straightforward history of Copenhagen and Houston, rather than explaining how and why the two came to embody each type, such as by tracing historical path dependencies, or outlining common relationships between these factors, or describing shifts in city priorities over time. The final chapter includes a fascinating table that classifies 30 European cities on a spectrum from “Strong People” to “Strong Market” cities (169), but because the book's focus is on establishing the two types and subsequent differences, here, too, the authors mostly gloss over the differential role any particular factors might play in producing cities of different types. The authors are clear that their goal is to offer a “perspective on urban variation” that could guide future research, rather than explain that variation themselves (177). But it is unclear how useful the Market Cities/People Cities distinction is, or what explanatory power it has, without understanding what factors tend to be most relevant in producing each type, or important axes of variation. Efforts to establish the types also cause them to make some unnecessary and incorrect empirical generalizations, such as: “Market Cities are sprawling and People Cities are dense” (87). Clearly cities like London, as they acknowledge, and New York, are dense Market Cities that have robust public transit—which leads one to ask: Why should this be the case? Is sprawling Houston the rule or the exception, and is it sprawling because it is a Market City or because of its history of land use and development? And, while they play down the importance of national differences, the fact that there are no strong People Cities in the United States seems significant, and well worth dwelling on. Another consequence of the focus on establishing the city types rather than exploring variation is that the book has a way of making urban change sound like a rather simple “choice” between priorities (2). Perhaps it really is that simple—in which case I would have loved to see the authors develop an argument about the power of local priority setting—but the book doesn't do much to explain, to policy makers, social movements (who, surprisingly, do not appear until the conclusion), or academic audiences, why it might be difficult or impossible to “choose” a different path. For instance, the authors explain Houston's non‐action on climate change as a result of its being a Market City, with an antipathy to large‐scale projects, centralized planning, or market disruptions characteristic of that city type (135). Yet, as their discussion of ExxonMobil's local and national activities reveals, Houston is also a case where the composition of the local economy, demographics of the local population, entrenched fossil‐fuel interests, national political context, and deliberate misinformation campaigns are central to understanding how and why these patterns might be extremely hard to change, even if local actors began arguing for a shift to People City priorities. Related is a certain ambiguity surrounding correlation versus causation. A secondary and less developed argument in the book is that each of these ideal types “creates an emergent effect… that exists above and through the institutional mixing that creates it” (8). The authors describe each type as an “ethos” that, throughout the book, sometimes seems to “produce” specific city characteristics, and sometimes only to covary with them. Based on the data presented, the latter claim is convincing, but more would have to be done to substantiate the former. Houston's lack of centralized planning, pro‐growth economic environment, and individualized attitude are not the results of its cultural ethos as a Market City. Rather, we call it a Market City because of these interests and priorities of its population. In the end, the authors don't take a stand on whether they are “for” Market Cities or People Cities (178), instead arguing that people should know that they have a choice, and know the risks associated with each type. They go out of their way to maintain scholarly objectivity and especially to be “fair” to Market Cities, highlighting their greater philanthropic activity, individual opportunity, and social difference, and residents’ equal satisfaction with each (158). But I could not help but think of Brenner, Marcuse, and Mayer's (2012) work on the People Cities side, or Florida's (2014) on the Market Cities side—both of which the authors cite—as blueprints for either set of priorities, and wonder what is gained by sidestepping these normative questions.