Political Geography of Cities and Regions: Changing Legitimacy and Identity

189 Pages·2022·14.767 MB·English

by  Kees Terlouw

Political Geography of Cities
and Regions
This monograph presents a novel typology of relational and territorial perspectives
on legitimacy and identity. This typology is then applied to two different political
and historical contexts, namely the trajectories of the metropolitan region
Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the metropolitan region Ruhr in Germany.
The historical discussion spans 500 years, providing valuable depth to the study.
T aken as a whole, the book provides a new perspective within the territorial-
relational dichotomy and the geographies of discontent debate. Its key insights
are that identity and political legitimacy are embedded in history and that both
relational and territorial perspectives on these issues are time and place dependent.
T his book will be stimulating reading for advanced students, researchers,
and policymakers working in political geography, human geography, regional
studies, and broader social and political sciences.
K ees Terlouw is Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Geography
and Spatial Planning at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
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For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
series/RAIRESP
Political Geography of Cities
and Regions
Changing Legitimacy and Identity
Kees Terlouw
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Kees Terlouw
T he right of Kees Terlouw to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
A ll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
T rademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
B ritish Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
L ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
N ames: Terlouw, Kees, author.
Title: Political geography of cities and regions : changing legitimacy and
identity / Kees Terlouw.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge
advances in regional economics, science and policy | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022010604 (print) | LCCN 2022010605 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367678159 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367678166 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003132967 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political geography—Europe—History. | Regionalism—
Europe—History. | Cities and towns—Europe—History.
Classification: LCC JN94.A38 R438558 2023 (print) | LCC JN94.A38
(ebook) | DDC 320.54094—dc23/eng/20220422
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010604
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010605
ISBN: 978-0-367-67815-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-67816-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13296-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003132967
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures x
List of tables xi
Preface xii
1 Introduction: looking beyond national populism 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Anti-urbanism: from national populism to local resistance
identities 1
1.3 Metropolitan regions and the neoliberal dogma of urban
competitiveness 5
1.4 Studying the legitimation of the governance of cities and regions 8
2 The relational and territorial perspectives 12
2 .1 Introduction 12
2.2 From small genetic differences to opposing moral systems 13
2.3 Jane Jacobs systems of survival 15
2 .3.1 The commercial syndrome of the relational perspective 16
2.3.2 The guardian syndrome of the territorial perspective 16
2.3.3 The symbiotic and parasitical relations between the systems
of survival 16
2.4 From morality to identity 20
2.5 Legitimising spatial governance 22
2.5.1 Institutional framework 24
2.5.2 Consent 26
2 .5.3 Justifiability 28
2.6 Territorial and relational: two perspectives, one society 31
3 Early modernity and urban autonomy 34
3.1 Introduction 34
vi Contents
3 .2 Territories and urban regional linkages in pre-modern times 35
3 .2.1 The revolt of the Dutch elite against the Habsburg
Empire 36
3 .2.2 Declaration of Dutch independence 38
3 .2.3 From freedom from Spain to the freedom of the seas 39
3 .3 The governance of the Dutch countryside by the urban elite 41
3 .3.1 Urban manorial estates 41
3 .3.2 Volkert Overlander: urban merchant and lord of the
manor 42
3 .4 Duisburg: from an autonomous merchant city to Prussian territorial
control 43
3 .4.1 The rise and decline of Duisburg as an autonomous city 44
3 .4.2 The integration of Duisburg within the Prussian
territory 45
3 .5 Conclusion: did the emerging relational transform the territorial
perspective? 47
4 Industrial modernity: integrating cities in
the national territory 50
4 .1 Introduction: from territorial protection to social security 50
4 .2 Justifying territorial regulation 50
4 .2.1 Mercantilism: maximising territorial resources 51
4 .2.2 Regulating production through consumption: the invisible
hand of the market 51
4 .2.3 Justifying national industrialisation: Friedrich List 52
4 .3 The development of the German state and industrialisation: from
liberalisation to the territorialisation of everything 54
4.3.1 The political fragmenting of an integrated industrialising
Ruhr region 55
4.3.2 Krupp: identifying with the company and the nation 56
4.3.3 The downscaling of control: company towns securing workers
in garden cities, Rheinhausen 57
4.3.4 The upscaling of control from the company town to the
Ruhr region 62
4.3.5 The rescaling the governance of the Ruhr region: upwards
to the federal state and downwards to amalgamated
municipalities 63
4.4 Amsterdam and the formation of the Dutch territorial state 64
4.5 Industrial modernity: the territorialisation of the state, the economy,
and society 66
Contents vii
5 Late modernity: from territorial regulation to
competition 70
5.1 Introduction 70
5.2 The delegitimation of industrial modernity: the failures of the
welfare state 71
5.3 The falling from grace of the housing icons of industrial
modernity 73
5.3.1 Purmerend: from quantitative growth of housing to
qualitative liveability 73
5.3.2 Rheinhausen: breaking the bond of steel 76
5.4 Legitimising the society of singularities in late modernity 80
5 .4.1 The rise of the educated urban middle classes 81
5 .5 Conclusion 83
6 Metropolitan regions: competitiveness justifying
the new institutional framework 85
6.1 Introduction 85
6.2 Urban competitiveness 85
6.2.1 The rise of the metropolitan region 87
6.3 From the national regulation of the Randstad to promoting the
competitiveness of the metropolitan region Amsterdam 89
6.3.1 The Randstad: from regulating housing to stimulating
urban competitiveness 90
6 .3.2 The emergence of the metropolitan region Amsterdam 91
6.3.3 The competitiveness agenda of the metropolitan region
Amsterdam 92
6.3.4 Regional landscape and urban competitiveness: Park
Brederode 94
6.4 Restructuring the Ruhr region: metropolisation around heritage
parks 98
6.4.1 Celebrating de-industrialisation: the IBA Emscherpark as
the central park of the metropolitan region Ruhr 99
6.4.2 Landscape park Duisburg Nord 101
6.4.3 Institutionalising the metropolitan region Ruhr 110
6.5 Conclusion 112
7 Challenging the metropolitan region: local
resistance identities 115
7.1 Introduction 115
7.2 Identifying with the Ruhr region? 115
viii Contents
7 .2.1 Ruhr region divided by the Rhineland and Westphalia and
engulfed by NRW 116
7 .2.2 The negative identity discourse on the Ruhr region:
uprooted workers and pollution 117
7 .2.3 The newly educated middle classes supporting the post-
industrial identity discourse of the Ruhr region 118
7 .2.4 Those left behind in deindustrialised towns in the Ruhr
region 119
7 .2.5 Ruhr cities: inside the metropolitan region, but outside the
regional identity discourse 120
7 .2.6 Herten 120
7 .3 Metropolitan housing overwhelming the ramparts of the local
identity of Muiden 121
7 .3.1 Muiden’s hypermarket as spectre of uncontrolled
urbanisation for national spatial planning 123
7 .3.2 The gunpowder factory powering the local community 124
7 .3.3 The closure of the munitions factory 124
7 .3.4 Local opposition to the doubling of the size of the village of
Muiden 125
7 .3.5 The new urban village 128
7 .4 Villages in Katwijk regulating urbanisation: externally, all for one,
internally all against each other 132
7 .4.1 The urban threat from Leiden and Amsterdam 132
7 .4.2 Amalgamating villages to protect their village identities from
uncontrolled urbanisation 133
7 .4.3 Urbanisation in the form of an extra village 133
7 .5 From village to villages: West Betuwe 134
7 .5.1 A local growth coalition in Geldermalsen 135
7 .5.2 Averting the threat of a twelfth village with refugees 136
7 .5.3 Embracing dozens of extra villages to protect against urban
influence 138
7 .5.4 “We the people . . .” 140
7 .6 Conclusion 142
8 The resurgence of the territorial perspective:
universal villagism and localised territorialisations 145
8.1 Introduction 145
8.2 From horizontal to vertical villagism 145
8.3 From vertical villagism at the backdoor to national populism at the
front door 147
8.3.1 The winner takes it all: the precariat falling behind 149
8.3.2 Spatial segregation and polarisation 150
8.3.3 Regional communities 151
Contents ix
8 .3.4 Urban communities 152
8.4 Political polarisation 152
8.5 The territorialisation of global environmentalism 154
8.5.1 Global territorialisation 156
8.5.2 The greening and territorialisation of the metropolitan region
Amsterdam 156
8 .5.3 Buiksloterham: icon of a new inclusive metropolitan region,
or just another gentrified waterfront enclave? 158
8.5.4 Self-enclavisation? 160
8.6 Conclusion 162
9 Conclusion: the cycle of dominance of the territorial
and relational perspectives 164
9.1 Opposite perspectives 164
9.2 Symbiosis or dangerous hybrid 164
9.3 Conflicts take different forms in different spatial contexts 165
9.4 The evolution of the perspectives and their elements 166
9.5 Cycle of dominance in legitimating governance 166
Index 169