Robin Hambleton

Professor of City Leadership, Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, University of the West of England, Bristol and Director of Urban Answers

www.urbananswers.co.uk

Presentation to the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference

Oxford Brookes University, 9-11 September 2014

Inclusive place-based leadership: moving beyond neo-liberalism

Inclusive place-based leadership: moving beyond neo-liberalism

A presentation in five parts:

• Prelude: Leading the Inclusive City

• Place-less power and place-based power

• Framing the power of place

• The New Civic Leadership

• Implications for planning research

Part 1:

Prelude: Leading the inclusive city

Leading the inclusive city

A new book to be published by Policy Press (University of Bristol) in November 2014

Tackling injustice – the central challenge for public leadership

Leading the Inclusive City is a values-driven book

The definition of the inclusive city used in the book is as follows:

‘The inclusive city is governed by powerful, place-based democratic institutions. All residents are able to participate fully in the society and the economy, and civic leaders strive for just results while caring for the natural environment on which we all depend’

Utopian, yes. But it is ‘realistic utopianism’ to use Susan Fainstein’s phrase (The Just City Fainstein 2010 p 20)

Innovation Stories in Leading the Inclusive City

There are seventeen Innovation Stories in Leading the Inclusive City:

1) New York City 9) Curitiba

2) Bristol 10) Guangzhou

3) Chicago 11) Freiburg

4) Swindon 12) Copenhagen

5) Enschede 13) Melbourne

6) Langrug 14) Hamamatsu

7) Auckland 15) Toronto

8) Malmo 16) Portland

17) Ahmedabad

Part 2:

Place-less power and place based power

Place-less power in a global era

Globalisation has resulted in a spectacular growth in place-less power in the last thirty years…

Place-less decision makers disregard the consequences of their decisions for particular places. This has devastating consequences for people living in particular places

Neo-liberalism involves granting place-less decision makers unprecedented power

Place-based decision makers have a commitment to improving the quality of life of communities living in ‘their’ place

This highlights a distinction between different kinds of private sector organisations: the predators and the producers

Where are the feelings?

Urban and regional development has neglected how people feel about ‘their place’ – the dominance of economic perspectives has obscured the importance of a key dimension in public policy

Michael Sandel (2012) has argued that we have drifted ‘from having a market economy to being a market society’

Sandel argues, correctly, that there are moral limits to markets

Emotions, feelings, identity, attachment, solidarity – these are key elements in urban experience and they are centre-stage in place-based leadership

They should receive more attention in planning research if injustice in the modern city is to be addressed

Part 3:

Framing the power of place

Framing the power of place

Part 4:

The New Civic Leadership

Defining leadership in new ways

• The origins of leadership theory are military

• Early dominance of ‘command and control’ thinking – the ‘city boss’

• Moves towards ‘facilitative’ leadership have grown

• Understanding how to lead when you are not in control is now critical for civic leadership and for urban planning

• My definition of leadership:

Shaping emotions and behaviour to achieve common goals

Source: Hambleton R. (2007) in Governing Cities in a Global Era Palgrave. p174

Realms of place-based leadership and Innovation Zones

 

Place-based leadership in context

A process model of civic leadership

Part 5:

Implications for planning research

Issues for consideration/discussion

• Place-based power – is it a useful idea? And do the four forces framing place-based agency make sense?

• There are five realms of place-based leadership – plausible?

• Innovation Zones connecting the realms – from improvement to co-creation of alternatives. Planners as orchestrators of innovation?

• Planning theory and education – leadership (both theory and practice) has been seriously neglected (read ignored) by planning scholars. Why is this?

• Can public leadership be given more attention in future planning research? I hope so

Some sources…

Balducci A. and Mantysalo R. (eds) (2013) Urban Planning as a Trading Zone. New York: Springer

Hambleton R. (2015) Leading the Inclusive City. Place-based innovation for a bounded planet. Bristol: The Policy Press

Keohane N. O. (2010) Thinking about leadership. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press

Sandel M. (2012) What Money Can’t Buy. London: Allen Lane

Thank you for your attention!

More international examples and further analysis of leadership themes:

www.urbananswers.co.uk