Generative and Regulative Issues in Urbanization ...

ARTICLES

MARTHA W. REES Agnes Scott College ARTHUR D. MURPHY Georgia State University

Generative and Regulative Issues in Urbanization: To Plan or Not to Plan THIS INTRODUCES A SET of six articles discussing propositions about two kinds of planning, labeled by Douglas Uzzell "generative planning" and "regulative planning." Governmentally sponsored Third World planners have for years promoted urbanization, and now many developing countries have more urban population than can be absorbed by industrial growth. These people attempt to meet their needs through informal economic activity and generative planning. The articles in this issue report on situations in Peru, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, and Hong Kong, [planning, urbanization, economy, informal sector]

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NTHROPOLOGISTS HAVE COME A LONG WAY from studies of isolated groups. After World War II, changes in the world economy caused high rural migration to the cities, especially in the Third World, but also to First World cities. Many anthropologists followed their "tribe" to the city (Fox 1977; Eames and Goode 1977; Gulick 1989), and urban anthropology was born. Subsequently, the realization that urban populations were fast becoming the majority has led to theoretical and empirical research on both immigrant and native urban groups. These studies often re-created the community or tribal case study, but many others have combined methods seen as more sociological with those of traditional community and comparative studies. The context in which urban anthropologists work is one of hyperurbanization in the Third World (see Castells 1979) with all of the concomitant social problems, a situation increasingly found in the United States as well, given the urban fiscal crisis and immigration from the Third World. In this context, urban anthropological studies often focus on adaptive and survival strategies of the urban 107

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poor (e.g., Alonso 1980; Lomnitz 1977; Hackenberg, Murphy, and Selby 1984; Murphy and Stepick 1990; Selby, Murphy, and Lorenzen 1990; Mangin 1970; Velez-lbanez 1983). Increasingly these strategies have resulted in the government becoming the provider of the social services necessary for the reproduction of the urban work force, what Castells (1979) calls "collective consumption." Necessarily, then, we have been led to the study of the state, and policy planning. Uzzell's papers on generative and regulative planning (1987 and this issue), and feedback from others, provide a tentative explanation for what we have seen in other contexts. Uzzell said that distinct economic and political sectors undertake planning in essentially different ways. The government, or the formal sector, undertakes top down, regulative planning that seeks to make reality conform to a set of ideal forms. The informal sector or popular groups do generative, on-the-spot planning to adapt to changing conditions and goals. In this issue we present data from a wide variety of cases interpreted in light of Uzzell's categories. We have tried assiduously to avoid formal/informal sector (see Roberts 1990) as critical criteria for distinguishing generative from regulative planning. That distinction becomes less useful as formal-sector enterprises (e.g., factories) increasingly engage in "informal" activities (e.g., with cottage-industrial production, putting-out systems, and barter systems), and as informal-sector operations are increasingly drawn into the web of government regulation and taxation. The questions we seek to answer are: Do generative and regulative planning occur? If so, under what conditions and where? This leads us to an analysis of the role of the government in planning. The specific question we ask is: Under what circumstances do we have governments permitting, encouraging, or allowing generative planning to take over? Who does it—the government itself, or pressure groups? This also leads us to the question of popular movements for social change. In the Third World, urbanization is characterized by hypergrowth, caused mainly by the decomposition of rural society with the growth of industrial agriculture (Singer 1973). In the United States, urbanization is characterized by a new international division of labor (Portes and Walton 1981), in which Third World populations have become the underclass. The resulting urban economic structure has created a situation where cities in both the Third World and the United States suffer from a deficit of social services (e.g., transportation, housing, medical services, etc.). Since the private sector does not find it profitable to provide these services for any but the most wealthy, the government has stepped in to regulate urban growth, to provide necessary services, and to manage the crisis (Topalov 1979). Where the government cannot or will not step in, popular movements often arise (Castells 1979). The primary mechanism the government uses is regulative planning, and, as a result, we have seen the number of planners and plans increase dramatically. It has been said that the number of pages and volumes of government plans in Mexico have increased geometrically, in proportion to the debt. The question arises then: What is planning and what do plans imply about the role of the government in resolving social contradictions (in this case between the needs of urban populations and the lack of money to satisfy those needs)?

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Historically, academics, like planners, viewed the government as outside the object of study. Its intervention into the systems was an exogenous, independent variable. This attitude was consistent with planning ideology, which saw spontaneous and dramatic urbanization as anarchic. Both the Left and the Right saw the government as the entity that should intervene either to protect the interests of private capital or to protect workers from domination. For years, Third World government planners promoted urbanization. As a result of the historical experiences in Great Britain and the United States (Roberts 1978:ch. 1), urbanization was once thought to be a stimulus for development and industrialization. Policies in developing countries, such as the industrialization of agriculture, encouraged urban growth through migration (Singer 1973; Hardoy 1972). It is now clear that urbanization in developing countries is neither a precursor nor a concomitant of industrialization or development. Rather, many developing countries have more urban population than could ever be absorbed, even by the most optimistic expansion of industry. This population finds (or invents) informal-sector employment (or underemployment) in the city. Urban policies and legal systems that permit or, at least, do not inhibit the formation of squatter invasions have encouraged or accommodated this kind of urban population growth (Hardoy 1972). Today, in the context of the reordering of the world economic system and labor market from nationally based economies to a truly international market, similar processes are occurring in many urban centers of the United States. Generative as opposed to regulative planning may, in fact, become the norm in the First as well as in the Third World. This set of papers began as a response to and discussion of the propositions raised by Hemando de Soto in El Otro Sendero (1986) and Uzzell in his paper, "A Homegrown Mass Transit System in Lima, Peru: A Case of Generative Planning" (1987). Uzzell, in his 1987 paper and its refinement (this issue), argues for two kinds of planning: generative—information-based, step-by-step planning with feedback, characteristic of the informal sector; and regulative—more coercive, formal-sector planning. In the case of Lima's microbus drivers, he demonstrates how their generative style of planning enables them to meet the everchanging needs of the urban system; a flexibility not matched by formal-sector planners and their regulative-planning style. He and de Soto imply that future economic growth in the Third World will occur when this creativity on the part of the poor is allowed to flourish without government interference, a position which has been associated in Latin America, and particularly in Peru, with the New Right, that is, one-time Peruvian presidential candidate Vargas Llosa. The five articles that follow Uzzell's begin with the basic propositions presented by him at a session titled "Interventions in the Informal Sector: A Clash of Planning Styles," which he organized for the 1988 meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Tampa, Florida. The articles present various cases that can be seen as applications of greater or lesser agreement with his model. Winter, Morris, and Murphy present a series of cases demonstrating how planning occurs at the household level. They demonstrate that individual household planning is generative (especially among households whose major source of income is from the informal sector) as they attempt to deal with the day-today vagaries of their economic situation, and regulative for long-term plans.

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Murphy and Hackenberg present a case study of generative planning by the government in Panama in response to regulative planning by international organizations and foreign governments. In this case, the local-level government takes on the characteristics of Uzzell's microbus drivers as it attempts to deal with local-level changes that represent life and legitimacy to it, but are of little concern to international institutions. Higgins and Coen present a case in which the government has "thrown in the towel." Much like what is happening in Eastern Europe, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua simply stated that, given its inability to solve the country's economic problems, it was better to foment democratic structures at the grass roots to address the everyday needs of the people. This is a case where the government cannot intervene to provide services but it did support generative action. Alan Smart, looking at the provision of housing in Hong Kong, argues that while government planning may be regulative it is often shaped by people's demand for input. It is a case where generative behavior (demonstrations and political action) can have a significant impact on planners. Prince and Murphy present a case where a government uses regulative plans and generative planning in order to reduce costs. The government gives up control, and actually regulatively plans for generative planning. It should be pointed out, however, that generative planning for the provision of basic social services means that people do most of the work involved for free. The fequ/o system of volunteer community labor, common in Mexico, and used to build parts of the water system described in Prince and Murphy's article, is a case in point: free labor built the infrastructure for collective consumption (transportation and other social uses). Private enterprise benefits from this infrastructure, but does not contribute to its construction. It becomes clear from the articles presented in this issue that both generative and regulative planning occur. It is also clear that the nature of governments, their variable willingness and/or ability to provide for the social reproduction of labor, is an important factor in the degree of generative as opposed to regulative planning found in any system. This might be a good place to insert a note on terminology regarding states and governments. In this and the succeeding articles, we tend to refer to specific governments as quite changeable, while state structures are more or less permanent. In the literature, the state often refers to that set of institutions which, regardless of temporary partisan shifts, constitutes the dominant regulatory force in society (Gramsci 1975). Whether one uses stafe or governmenf depends on whether one feels that different governments within one regime are substantially different from each other, a condition which may change from issue to issue and year to year. In Mexico, for example, it has been argued that the dominant political party, the PRI, is not in fact a party, but is the state. The same is true in many other places, arguably in the United States as well. The response to Uzzell's question, "Can Formal Planners Do Bricolage?" (this issue), is not a clear yes or no. In the context of the modern state we find multiple responses by individuals and planners. Perhaps the word "behavior" is more adequate to these adaptations than "planning." People and governments undertake behaviors that, in a Lamarckian sense, help them to adapt to their cur-

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rent environment. Just as culture is a faster way of adapting than relying on genetic processes, so is generative behavior faster than regulative behavior. When dealing with such issues as formal versus informal sector or regulative versus generative planning it is useful to paraphrase a folk saying offered by a former president of Mexico: "it is neither black nor white, but just the opposite." Like many other explanations and theories held near and dear to our hearts, we are forced, by the nature of the complex modern world, to admit that both positions have validity, that there is no one determinant. The question that remains before us is to determine under what conditions which position operates. In the context of the increasingly international economic order, in which instead of importing raw materials from the Third World to produce in the core, goods are manufactured in the periphery, informal activity is growing everywhere. In terms of planning and planning behavior, this means that generative behavior is becoming more common and is often encouraged by (formerly) strictly regulative institutions. Where governments have lost power, many have been forced to relinquish control (Adams 1975); here is where we would expect to see governments encouraging or responding to generative forces (i.e., Mexico, Sandinista Nicaragua). Individuals usually behave generatively: in Mexico (Winter, Morris, and Murphy), where the system cannot provide employment, individuals devise generative strategies to survive. There are various reactions to this lack of control. In Sandinista Nicaragua, as in Mexico, where the government cannot provide services (Higgins and Coen), it actively fomented generative behavior. In Panama (Murphy and Hackenberg), the government participates generatively in adapting regulative plans. Finally, Smart and Prince and Murphy illustrate cases in which the government is either forced to adapt generatively by popular movements or does so in order to co-opt local populations. In fact, we see popular movements arising all over, although they vary in their degree of success and in the amount of government support. In conclusion, we find that lots of people and institutions are behaving generatively; perhaps because of the realization that generative, informationbased, grassroots behavior is more realistic and, thus, more likely to be successful. Planning, in the regulative sense, is an activity undertaken by the government when economic conditions are positive, and which becomes increasingly generative with decreased resources. Regulative planning, then, is a control mechanism that breaks down with crisis, under pressure from the government itself (Nicaragua, Panama) or from popular movements (Mexico, Hong Kong).

Acknowledgments. We would like to thank the various authors who contributed to this issue. Their patience as we asked for re-writes and interpretations has been outstanding. We especially thank Doug Uzzell, who organized the session at the 1988 meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology that led to this issue. Although previous commitments kept him from participating in the editing of this issue, he has been a constant guide. Alvin Wolfe's patience and support made it all possible. Finally we thank Jeanie Fitzpatrick, who helped in the final preparation of the manuscripts, no easy task when dealing with ten authors and three operating systems.

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Singer, Paul 1973 Economi'a Politico de la Urbanizacion. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Topalov, Christian 1979 La Urbanizacion Capitalista. Mexico: Edicol. Uzzell, Douglas 1987 A Homegrown Mass Transit System in Lima, Peru: A Case of Generative Planning. City and Society 1:6-34. Velez-lbanez, Carlos 1983 Rituals of Marginality: Politics, Process and Culture Change in Central Urban Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.