IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v56y2019i9p1711-1728.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Victims of their own (definition of) success: Urban discourse and expert knowledge production in the Liveable City

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny McArthur

    (University College London, UK)

  • Enora Robin

    (University College London, UK)

Abstract

The notion of ‘liveability’ has endured for over 50 years within policy discourses, shaping urban strategy and planning across the world. This Debates paper examines the current state of liveability discourse. Liveability is unpacked to consider the rhetorical work that it does to frame urban problems, select and order concepts and build narratives that shape policy action. Liveability discourse has a dual role: it defines normative goals for a city and also reifies and demands particular forms of expert knowledge to justify and maintain its discursive power. This power is created by connecting the vague rhetoric of the ‘liveable city’ to expertise represented in liveability rankings and indicators. The experiences of apparently ‘liveable’ cities show how liveability discourse creates a representation of the city that is in contrast to the experience of many residents. The use of aggregate metrics and reliance on indices generated from undisclosed data sources and ‘expert judgement’ obscures the differentiated quality of life and everyday experience for urban populations. Therefore, liveability discourse has exerted and maintained stronger discursive power to undermine urban livelihoods than to improve them, due to the phenomena and qualities that it conceals. Liveability’s distinct type of discursive power must be recognised and mobilised to support a counter-narrative that reconnects urban policy with everyday urban life.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny McArthur & Enora Robin, 2019. "Victims of their own (definition of) success: Urban discourse and expert knowledge production in the Liveable City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(9), pages 1711-1728, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:56:y:2019:i:9:p:1711-1728
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098018804759
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098018804759
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098018804759?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. EUGENE J. McCANN, 2007. "Inequality and Politics in the Creative City‐Region: Questions of Livability and State Strategy," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 188-196, March.
    2. Ash Amin, 2013. "Telescopic urbanism and the poor," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 476-492, August.
    3. Michael Neuman & Angela Hull, 2009. "The Futures of the City Region," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(6), pages 777-787.
    4. Harm Kaal, 2011. "A conceptual history of livability," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(5), pages 532-547, October.
    5. Michel Callon, 2010. "Performativity, Misfires And Politics," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(2), pages 163-169, July.
    6. Donald McNeill, 2011. "Fine Grain, Global City: Jan Gehl, Public Space and Commercial Culture in Central Sydney," Journal of Urban Design, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 161-178, May.
    7. Alex Schafran, 2014. "Debating urban studies in 23 steps," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 321-330, June.
    8. Tali Hatuka & Issachar Rosen-Zvi & Michael Birnhack & Eran Toch & Hadas Zur, 2018. "The Political Premises of Contemporary Urban Concepts: The Global City, the Sustainable City, the Resilient City, the Creative City, and the Smart City," Planning Theory & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 160-179, March.
    9. Enora Robin & Frances Brill, 2018. "The global politics of an urban age: creating 'cities for all' in the age of financialisation," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-5, December.
    10. Brian W. Conger, 2015. "On Livability, Liveability and the Limited Utility of Quality-of-Life Rankings," SPP Communique, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 7(4), June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clara Irazábal & Paola Jirón, 2021. "Latin American smart cities: Between worlding infatuation and crawling provincialising," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 507-534, February.
    2. Vahid Javidroozi & Claudia Carter & Michael Grace & Hanifa Shah, 2023. "Smart, Sustainable, Green Cities: A State-of-the-Art Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-28, March.
    3. Katherine Perrott, 2020. "Does New Urbanism “Just Show Up”? Deliberate Process and the Evolving Plan for Markham Centre," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 388-403.
    4. Rachel Bok, 2021. "Wayfinding in the Long Shadow of City Benchmarking: Or How to Manufacture (an Economy of) Comparability in the Global Urban," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 381-384, March.
    5. Robert Martin, 2021. "AV futures or futures with AVs? Bridging sociotechnical imaginaries and a multi-level perspective of autonomous vehicle visualisations in praxis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-15, December.
    6. Enora Robin, 2021. "City Benchmarking, Globalized Urban Scholarship and the View from Above: Reflections on a Few Absences," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 378-380, March.
    7. Agata Gawlak & Magda Matuszewska & Agnieszka Ptak, 2021. "Inclusiveness of Urban Space and Tools for the Assessment of the Quality of Urban Life—A Critical Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-13, April.
    8. Michele Acuto & Daniel Pejic & Jessie Briggs, 2021. "Taking City Rankings Seriously: Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 363-377, March.
    9. Enora Robin & Laura Nkula-Wenz, 2021. "Beyond the success/failure of travelling urban models: Exploring the politics of time and performance in Cape Town’s East City," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(6), pages 1252-1273, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michele Acuto & Daniel Pejic & Jessie Briggs, 2021. "Taking City Rankings Seriously: Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 363-377, March.
    2. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    3. Raimbault, Juste & Le Néchet, Florent, 2021. "Introducing endogenous transport provision in a LUTI model to explore polycentric governance systems," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    4. Bear, Laura, 2020. "Speculations on infrastructure: from colonial public works to a postcolonial global asset class on the Indian Railways 1840-2017," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103445, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Andrea Pollio, 2020. "Architectures of millennial development: Entrepreneurship and spatial justice at the bottom of the pyramid in Cape Town," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(3), pages 573-592, May.
    6. John Paul Catungal & Deborah Leslie & Yvonne Hii, 2009. "Geographies of Displacement in the Creative City: The Case of Liberty Village, Toronto," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(5-6), pages 1095-1114, May.
    7. Roberta Comunian & Alessandra Faggian, 2011. "Higher Education and the Creative City," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Åke E. Andersson & Charlotta Mellander (ed.), Handbook of Creative Cities, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Emre Tarim & Arie Gozluklu & Gulnur Muradoglu, 2023. "The American spirit: The performativity of folk economics in global financial markets," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 1906-1927, November.
    9. Gusti Ayu Made Suartika & Alexander Cuthbert, 2020. "The Sustainable Imperative—Smart Cities, Technology and Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-15, October.
    10. Nevado-Peña, Domingo & López-Ruiz, Víctor-Raúl & Alfaro-Navarro, José-Luis, 2019. "Improving quality of life perception with ICT use and technological capacity in Europe," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    11. Jean-Paul D. Addie & Roger Keil, 2015. "Real Existing Regionalism: The Region between Talk, Territory and Technology," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 407-417, March.
    12. Yang Liu & Jiajun Qiao & Jie Xiao & Dong Han & Tao Pan, 2022. "Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Rural Revitalization and an Improvement Path: A Typical Old Revolutionary Cultural Area as an Example," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-24, October.
    13. Franciely Velozo Aragão & Daiane Maria de Genaro Chiroli & Fernanda Cavicchioli Zola & Emanuely Velozo Aragão & Luis Henrique Nogueira Marinho & Ana Lidia Cascales Correa & João Carlos Colmenero, 2023. "Smart Cities Maturity Model—A Multicriteria Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-20, April.
    14. Shilpi Mittal & Jayprakash Chadchan & Sudipta K. Mishra, 2020. "Review of Concepts, Tools and Indices for the Assessment of Urban Quality of Life," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 187-214, May.
    15. Michele Acuto, 2014. "Dubai in the ‘Middle’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(5), pages 1732-1748, September.
    16. TREMBLAY, Remy & CHICOINE, Huges, 2011. "Urban And Regional Creative Class Theories," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 11(1).
    17. Sunmin Jun & Mengying Li & Juchul Jung, 2022. "Air Pollution (PM 2.5 ) Negatively Affects Urban Livability in South Korea and China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-20, October.
    18. Tarini Bedi, 2016. "Mimicry, friction and trans-urban imaginaries: Mumbai taxis/Singapore-style," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(6), pages 1012-1029, June.
    19. Grazyna Karmowska & Andrzej Sobczyk, 2020. "Analysis of Szczecin Metropolitan Area’s Growth Potential," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(4), pages 931-946.
    20. McFall, Liz, 2014. "Devising Consumption: cultural economies of insurance, credit and spending," OSF Preprints at2nv, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:56:y:2019:i:9:p:1711-1728. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.