The dynamics of contingency: neoliberal redevelopment governance in Chicago and Buenos Aires

Sternberg, Carolina

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/31099 Copy

Description

Title

The dynamics of contingency: neoliberal redevelopment governance in Chicago and Buenos Aires

Author(s)

Sternberg, Carolina

Issue Date

2012-05-22T00:27:46Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Wilson, David

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Wilson, David

Committee Member(s)

• McLafferty, Sara L.
• Chhatre, Ashwini
• Margheritis, Ana

Department of Study

Geography & Geographic InfoSys

Discipline

Geography

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Neoliberal governance
• contingency
• cultural economy
• urban restructuring
• Buenos Aires
• Chicago
• Latin America
• United States (US)

Abstract

Neoliberal redevelopment governance has been ascendant worldwide in the last two decades and has come to profoundly influence mainstream urban politics. This project seeks to understand these formations from a comparative vantage-point, focusing on the global cities of Chicago and Buenos Aires. The study critically interrogates these governances to determine the degree to which they have significantly different institutional affiliations, operations, and outcomes. At issue is an important notion in the theorizing of these governances: contingent neoliberalism. While nascent research has suggested the possibility of a strong contingent aspect to these governances, its specifics remain under-explored. The intellectual merits of this project thus rest on a novel focus: the study of contingent urban neoliberalism. Current work on contemporary urban governance in the west, to date, peripheralizes the centrality of contingency. Common sets of institutions, interests, programs, and motivations are seen to permeate and characterize these governances across the enormous diversity of places (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Hackworth, 2007; Peck 2001). My study, in contrast, probes the nuances of these features to reveal their rich specifics and place-rooted basis. Using a cultural economy frame, my goal is not to marginalize the influence of structures that embed within capitalist economies and societies. Indeed, this is a foundational part of my study. However, I chronicle the inseparability of local-ness, place rootedness, historical specificity, human agency, and political variability that poignantly embeds within the human made operation and effects of locally circulating structures.

Graduation Semester

2012-05

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/31099

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Carolina Sternberg

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