Community Governance, Critical Cosmopolitanism and Urban change: Observations From Taipei

1
Community Governance, Critical Cosmopolitanism
and Urban change Observations From Taipei

• Mike Raco
• Kings College London

2
Introduction

• Government through community
• Conceptual questions
• Empirical questions
• Focus on cosmopolitanism and critical
  cosmopolitanism
• The case study of Taipei (Taiwan)

3
The Rolling-Out of Community-led Governance

• Meta-narratives (cf. Meadowcroft, 2000) and
  development politics
• Concept of good governance and links to social
  and economic development
• Advanced liberalism
• Extension of neo-liberal government and the
  decline of the KWS

4
Cosmopolitanism

• Globalisation and the emergence of zombie
  states (Beck, 2002)
• The 2nd phase of (post-national) modernity
• Dis-embedded individualisation
• The new community and citizen-led (urban)
  politics?

5

• we should suspend the assumption of the
  nation-stateto make the empirical
  investigation of local-global phenomena possible
  (Beck and Sznaider, 2006 p.9)

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Cosmopolitanism

• 2 aspects
• Empirical questions about the form and character
  of politics in different places and what the
  translation/interpretation of post-national
  politics means in different places
• To what extent is cosmopolitanism a totalising
  construct in itself?

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Critical Cosmopolitanism

• Delanty, Mitchel Dean
• See cosmopolitanism as a way of justifying the
  universalism of modern western thought and
  political designs aimed at world governance
• The continued significance of political projects

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Critical Cosmopolitanism

• A focus on critical cosmopolitanism shifts the
  emphasis of research on to internal development
  processes within the social world rather than
  seeing globalisation as the primary mechanism
  (Delanty, 2006 p.27)
• Thinking about spaces of cosmopolitanism and
  politics

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The Politics of Urban Development in Taipei

• Japanese imperial rule (1894-1945)
• Japanification and the rolling out of planning
  reforms
• Chiang Kai-Shek and the coming of the Kuomintang
  (KMT)
• The Developmental Model and the modernisation of
  the planning system

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The New Urban Planning in Taipei

• The emergence of community-led planning in the
  city
• Neighbourhood Planning of the 1990s
• 2005 Strategy A Viable Community, A Liveable City
• Communities as both the subjects and objects of
  the new frameworks
• Emphasis on sustainability, globalisation, active
  communities and citizens etc.

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The New Urban Planning in Taipei

• But new agendas directly linked to wider
  political projects
• Attempt to re-establish control in context of
  enhanced social mobility
• Constant tension between embracing and rejecting
  new forms of modernity
• The importance of elites and experts
• Reflects interaction of multiple agendas and
  scales

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The New Urban Planning in Taipei

• Ostensibly new post-national, global and
  cosmopolitan set of agendas
• But also linked to national and metropolitan
  political projects
• Enhanced politicisation of community
• Focus on local and national agendas

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Regenerating Wan Hua

• Inner urban neighbourhood undergoing major
  regeneration
• Area of 194,000 people, 36 villages
• New housing, changing community structure,
  enhanced presence of creative workers and more
  affluent groups
• Complex institutional structures (of
  decision-making and delivery)
• The politicisation of key posts and battles
  between DPP and KMT

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Regenerating Wan Hua

• Community politics taken on defensive character
• Empowerment is primarily concerned with
  grass-roots concerns
• Identity politics strongly attached to
  neighbourhood
• Little evidence of new cosmopolitan politics and
  identities
• Politics of institutional and community
  competitiveness over resources

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Conclusions

• No simple, linear sense of new cosmopolitan
  politics
• Critical cosmopolitanism, linked to political
  projects
• Trying to re-conceptualise debates over community
  inclusion in policy processes
• Developing new case studies