May 16, 2013 - of an export market for Cuban sugar, traded to COMECON in exchange for necessary ... market processes that structure capitalist cities.
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SOCIALIST CITIES? Eric Sheppard
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Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 Tel: 612-625-5840 Fax: 612-624-1044 shepp001@ tc.umn.edu Published online: 16 May 2013.
To cite this article: Eric Sheppard (2000) SOCIALIST CITIES?, Urban Geography, 21:8, 758-763, DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.21.8.758 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.21.8.758
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SOCIALIST CITIES?
Eric Sheppard Department of Geography University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 Tel: 612-625-5840 Fax: 612-624-1044 sheppOOl @ tc.umn.edu
The critique of "spatial science" engaged in by radical geographers in the 1980s argued effectively that space was a social product, rather than a metric of existence. In this view, spatial organization should reflect the political economic context. Since urbanization is, to a significant degree, a way of organizing human settlement in space, a logical conclusion of this argument is that a distinctive form of urbanization—the socialist city— should result from a distinctive mode of production, socialism. Briefly, the literature on the socialist city initially emphasized a distinctive urban form, with modernist high-rises on the urban fringe and large public spaces, and minimal spatial and social inequality, only to subsequently begin to deconstruct this ideal (particularly the ideal of equality). Yet, as Joseph Scarpaci reminds us, there still are attempts to list the distinguishing characteristics of a socialist city, characteristics that persist (at least for a while) as countries make the transition to a more market-driven political economy: lower levels of urbanization; more restricted qualities of urban life; and the absence of both a high-density CBD and high-income, low-density residential suburbs. Perusing these four papers, the reader is left with an overall impression of difference, not unity. Is this because of different foci of the papers, reflecting distinctive "postsocialist" paths taken in the four countries, or because the very idea of the socialist city was always problematic? The logical move from recognizing the socially constructed nature of space to deducing a distinctive urban form from the mode of production was always tenuous. It was based on three assumptions: that a unitary mode of production (socialism) existed, that such a mode of production is determinant (at least in the last instance) of societal processes, and that each national territory could be treated as an autonomous unit of analysis. There is no need to rehearse here debates about whether the socialist modes of production in the "second world" prior to 1989 were variants on a common form, or whether indeed they were socialism at all. Nor is it necessary to discuss again the merits of economic determinist versus overdetermined theories of social change. Claims about the socialist mode of production and about economic determination in the last instance have been questioned at length, implying in turn questions about a unitary socialist city. However, the third issue has received less attention and that is the focus of my comments here. I will suggest that, while there are considerable differences in emphasis across the four papers, they each explicitly or implicitly question the idea of the unitary socialist, or postsocialist, city. I will argue that they do this by teasing out how differences in geographic situation create national and local differences in urbanization processes occurring under broadly 758 Urban Geography, 2000, 21, 8, pp. 758-763. Copyright © 2000 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.
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similar socialist or postsocialist regimes. In the process, I believe, they eschew simple definitions of the socialist city in favor of a geographical perspective that can provide a more nuanced account of what urban life is like under such regimes. A focus on situation is taken in order to avoid explanations that focus entirely on the national mode of production. John Agnew cogently has argued that focusing on nation states as the presumably natural unit of analysis creates a "territorial trap" for international relations that prevents it from taking on board a more nuanced geographical perspective (Agnew and Corbridge, 1995). I have argued that, even in geography, there is a tendency to focus on the contingent characteristics of a place—its site—to the detriment of how it is situated relative to processes operating in other places and at other scales (Sheppard, 1996). Yet paying attention to situation is essential to making social theory more adequately spatial, and thereby geographic; it avoids the assumption that explanations are simply national, or simply local, and it avoids the dangerous tendency to ascribe success or failure solely to the characteristics of places and their residents (a tendency associated with Eurocentrism and modernist development theory). It is clear that the form taken by urbanization under state socialist regimes1 has depended on forces external to those regimes (i.e., on their situation within the evolving global economy) and not just on national characteristics. But situation operates at multiple scales. I will suggest in what follows that some of the differences highlighted within and between the four papers also reflect differences in the situation of particular cities within the national and international urban system. Focusing first on the scale of the nation state, influential forces external to the nation have included the adoption of Western European modernist architecture and urban form in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1930s—Bauhaus sensibilities adapted to socialist functionalism. Within the state socialist sphere, they also include international processes of homogenization, notably the influence of Soviet urban planning in the 1960s and 1970s on the morphology and architecture of cities from Beijing to Zanzibar and Havana. Differences in international situation also have posed distinctive challenges to socialism, postsocialism, and urban planning, as a result of distinctive situations occupied by state socialist regimes from the core regions of Europe to the semiperiphery of China and the peripheral locations of Vietnam and Cuba (peripheral in a Wallersteinian sense, but at the same time all too close to the claimed sphere of United States influence). Differences in situation in the state socialist era are compounded in the postsocialist era, during which all of these countries have opened up in varying ways to a larger range of supranational processes than before. David Smith and Joseph L. Scarpaci note that the differences in urbanization levels and urban lifestyles between Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) were reduced after unification, in a country that was largely isolated from the external forces that had stimulated growth and "westernization" in presocialist Saigon. Under doi moi, a political and geographical opening of the country to market forces is both accelerating growth in Ho Chi Min City relative to Hanoi and creating a bipolar concentration of urbanization in these two cities because of their geographic concentration of foreign investment. They also link the sustainability of this concentrated urbanization to these external forces. In this view, it is as much the opening of the country to foreign capital flows as the change in regime that is driving the pace and nature of urbanization. The two major cities are replaying their colonial role as entrepots and are experiencing rapid inmigration (exceed-
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ing economic opportunities and creating impoverishment) and environmental deterioration. The authors highlight the environmental costs of foreign investment and rapid industrialization, but one should add to this the environmental risks faced by new urban immigrants occupying socially and environmentally marginal land. Under this new political economy, disparity among rich and poor is widening, and social services are strained. Christopher Smith documents the rapid increase in rural-urban migration within China, accelerating the pace of urbanization. This is linked to a more active engagement in the international economy, with special economic zones now existing in or near the majority of Chinese metropolitan areas, despite the continuing national regulation of place of residence. Some of the quasi-illegal "non-houkou" migrants who have carved out a presence in Chinese cities themselves avoid these restrictions by securing a niche in global markets. I visited one such community on the southern edge of Beijing that supports itself by making leather coats and jackets marketed to Eastern European buyers. This provides the economic means to survive their marginalization by city officials, to provide for the health care and education that they do not qualify for, and to pay off officials. It also gives political clout to keep officials at bay, because they are participating actively in the opening of the economy touted as central to the "four modernizations." Such success stories reinforce further migration and urbanization and further concentration of growth on the urban fringe. Joseph L. Scarpaci's paper highlights the flip side of the shifting configurations of global situation after 1989. In the case of Cuba, the end of the Soviet Union meant the end of an export market for Cuban sugar, traded to COMECON in exchange for necessary industrial inputs—most obviously oil but also machinery and industrial goods. The ongoing refusal of the United States to allow trade with Cuba, along with the pressure placed by the United States on other first world countries and European firms to minimize investments in or trade with Cuba, has meant that Cuba has been forced into a form of selective closure to supranational market forces. This is unique among countries that became socialist after 1945 and reflects Cuba's unique geographic situation—its closeness to the United States. The result has been some fascinating experiments with self-sufficient organic agriculture and low-technology preventative medicine, but also a lack of equipment and of investment funds in sectors other than tourism (tourism being a source of foreign direct investment that substantially can escape the ire of the American economic embargo). This underdevelopment has compounded a long-standing neglect of Havana and its urban infrastructure, a legacy of earlier attempts by the Castro regime at what Scarpaci calls an antiurban bias: rural industrialization and other measures designed to reduce urban primacy focused on Havana. Revitalizing Habana Vieja includes massive investment in tourist infrastructure, and less support for social programs and local residents' needs than one might expect in a socialist city. Yet the need to create an environment attractive to foreign tourists has resulted in efforts at historic preservation in Havana, and the form that this is taking reflects external forces—despite Cuba's selective closure. Preservation work is in the hands of a unique state-owned company that (in the absence of other sources of funds) is supposed to be self-financing—to generate profits in international currencies by operating tourist-oriented businesses, which were placed under its control for this purpose. UNESCO designation of Old Havana provided national and international political legitimacy for this historic preservation. Finally, Scarpaci argues that the market-oriented logic of this pro-
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cess is creating a dynamic of historic preservation that ignores the needs of less-well-off residents in this district. The complicating impact of international situation on the viability of the idea of the socialist city has been compounded by the all too brief history of what were supposed to be socialist regimes—a history that perhaps is too short to have generated much distinctive geography except in Russia. For example, it is remarkable that, while the East German regime undertook a systematic and sustained effort to transform class structures and urban form, it maintained records of pre-war private land ownership that enabled an easy transition back to private land ownership, often by the original owners, and to the land market processes that structure capitalist cities. The impact of situation on socialist and postsocialist cities also operates at the subnational scale; the size and form of cities in any socialist national political regime vary depending on the role played by, and the situation of, that city within the national (and international) urban system. For example, Joanna Regulska shows that the privileged position of Warsaw creates higher political participation (voting) by Warsaw residents in national politics and lower participation in local politics. Nonpolitical NGOs are more active in Warsaw, perhaps substituting for local politics in the creation of social capital there. They benefit from access to national political power but also, with other social movements, find themselves under greater scrutiny by national and international organizations because they are in Warsaw. A peculiar form of "antipolitics" by the electorate reflects distrust that Poles hold about the state. Christopher Smith draws out similar considerations in China. Different degrees of penetration of international capital (favoring coastal cities closely linked to the international economy), different situations within the geographical streams of rural-urban migration, and different positions in the political hierarchy of Chinese regions and cities all influence the very different degrees of transformation of Chinese cities. The mushrooming skyscraper estates of Shen Zhen (a huge special economic zone between Guangzhou and Hong Kong) and the Pudong district of Shanghai (seeking to regain its presocialist dominance as gateway to the core regions of the capitalist world economy) contrast with the relatively measured pace of growth in the old inland capital (Xi'an) or the current political capital (Beijing). As the economic reforms transform China from a self-sufficient and internally oriented society to one that is externally oriented, inland and coastal cities are differentially effected. The four papers not only examine how the size, growth, and form of cities is changing under the transition from state socialism to whatever comes after it, but also in various ways raise the question of how urban life is changing. While one might try and capture all these changes with phrases like "greater freedom" or a "richer urban lifestyle," such terms tend to conceal more than they reveal. It is clear that the distinctive ways in which urban lifestyles are changing in this transitional era stressed in these papers depend again on situation. In the case of Warsaw, Joanna Regulska's concern is with processes of democratization, the growth of civil society, and the meaning of citizenship. In part, this reflects the focus of her research program on local politics, but it also reflects the situation in Poland. There is considerable discussion about whether Poles are achieving the increases in material welfare promised by Jeffrey Sachs and the Harvard school, and certainly the path has been rockier than its proponents predicted. Yet things are better than they were. Poland's position within the European economic realm, a core region of the
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global economy, means that material welfare is above average by global standards and by comparison with the situation of the other three case studies. The national historical context of the Solidarity movement's successful struggle against the state socialist regime also is one in which a focus on rooting urban futures in a vibrant civil society, to some degree divorced from formal electoral politics, seems sensible. In addition, if Poland is like other former COMECON countries, economic conditions are generally better in the capital city. In this geographic context, a focus on political liberalization as the key to improved urban lifestyles in Warsaw is understandable. In China, Christopher Smith focuses on how the opening of society to external influences has corresponded with the return of informal trading and street life. He notes that greater freedom of movement and leisure time provide short-term rewards "that make life worth living and the future worth dreaming about." In Vietnam, David Smith and Joseph L. Scarpaci note that the internal and external opening to market forces is resulting in similar dynamics in Vietnam's two large cities, specifically increased trading activities, increased migration to urban areas, and increased inequality in welfare and access to urban services: "The result is a distorted transitional urban development process in which the benefits of growth are unevenly spread spatially, socially and in terms of sustainability." These two cases are evaluated differently, but they share a situation quite different from that of Poland; that of being located within the periphery of the global economy. Socialism in the global periphery has faced problems similar to those of capitalism in the periphery; material standards of living remain below the global average. Under these circumstances, prospects of improved material welfare in cities may outweigh the concerns about democratization emphasized in the Polish case. Whether the differences between the more optimistic perspective of Christopher Smith and the more pessimistic one of Smith and Scarpaci reflect different degrees of real material progress by the less well off, the greater degree of state control over the local and national economy and of national self-sufficiency in China, or contrasting views by the authors about the costs and benefits of a transition from socialism cannot be answered here. In both cases, however, the degree of political resistance to the remnants of socialism would seem to depend on the material benefits of life for the increasing number of people moving to cities in this period of transition. In addition, it is reasonable to suspect that prospects for urban life will vary by city within each country, depending on site and situation characteristics of those cities. Cuba's own distinctive situation creates distinctive problems for urban life under a transition away from state socialism. Its peculiar mix of enforced selective closure together with an increased influence of market forces has created a volatile mixture, in a society that achieved standards of social welfare for the majority of its citizens that well exceeded those for the average citizen of China and Vietnam. On the one hand, there is a certain political unity in the face of externally induced adversity among Cubans cut off from possibilities of significant help from (or mutual exchange with) former state socialist and capitalist countries alike. On the other hand, the general degeneration in material standards of living and in access to urban services for the vast majority that has accompanied the hardships of selective closure creates resistance against state-led market-oriented development initiatives that undermine material welfare, such as in the case discussed by Scarpaci. In a region where expectations about material standards of living are relatively high, state-led actions that undermine welfare are particularly likely to undermine loyalty,
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weakening the national political regime, and accelerating a transition that may be even more problematic than those of Eastern Europe. NOTE 1
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I use "state socialism" simply as a label to describe these regimes, not a well-defined theoretical category. A commonly used alternative is "really existing socialism," but that is clumsier. LITERATURE CITED Agnew, J. and Corbridge, S., 1995, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy. London, UK: Routledge. Sheppard, E., 1996, Site, situation and social theory. Environment and Planning A, Vol. 28, 1339-1342.
