IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v54y2017i9p2039-2055.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban crisis: The genealogy of a concept

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Weaver

Abstract

The term ‘urban crisis’ emerged in the USA in the 1950s. Ever since the term came into popular use, it has been mobilised to advance a range of political and economic interests. Utilising a genealogical approach, this article traces the evolution, uses and abuses of the concept. It suggests that the various meanings attached to the term are rooted in two overarching frameworks. While one finds the origins of urban crisis in structural, primarily material, forces, the other sees the crisis as grounded in culture and immorality. The article argues that the concept was deployed in the 1950s and 1960s to justify government intervention of various sorts to stimulate economic growth. However, it finds the fiscal crises of the 1970s gave rise to a dominant understanding of urban crisis that promoted the spread of urban neoliberalism.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Weaver, 2017. "Urban crisis: The genealogy of a concept," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2039-2055, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:9:p:2039-2055
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098016640487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098016640487
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098016640487?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. Ståle Holgersen, 2014. "Urban Responses to The Economic Crisis: Confirmation of Urban Policies as Crisis Management in Malmö," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 285-301, January.
    2. Peck, Jamie, 2012. "Constructions of Neoliberal Reason," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199662081, December.
    3. Katz, Michael B., 2013. "The Undeserving Poor: America's Enduring Confrontation with Poverty: Fully Updated and Revised," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199933952, December.
    4. Jamie Peck & Nik Theodore & Neil Brenner, 2013. "Neoliberal Urbanism Redux?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3), pages 1091-1099, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Jason Slade & Malcolm Tait & Andy Inch, 2022. "‘We need to put what we do in my dad’s language, in pounds, shillings and pence’: Commercialisation and the reshaping of public-sector planning in England," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(2), pages 397-413, February.
    2. Crispian Fuller & Karen West, 2017. "The possibilities and limits of political contestation in times of ‘urban austerity’," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2087-2106, July.
    3. Carolina Sternberg & Matthew Anderson, 2014. "Contestation and the local trajectories of neoliberal urban governance in Chicago’s Bronzeville and Pilsen," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(15), pages 3198-3214, November.
    4. Mace, Alan & Holman, Nancy & Paccoud, Antoine & Sundaresan, Jayaraj, 2015. "Coordinating density; working through conviction, suspicion and pragmatism," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 56768, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Mia Hakovirta & Johanna Kallio, 2016. "Children’s Perceptions of Poverty," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 9(2), pages 317-334, June.
    6. Leigh Johnson, 2013. "Index Insurance and the Articulation of Risk-Bearing Subjects," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(11), pages 2663-2681, November.
    7. Gabriel Schwake & Haim Yacobi, 2024. "Decolonisation, gentrification, and the settler-colonial city: Reappropriation and new forms of urban exclusion in Israel," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(4), pages 618-638, June.
    8. Sikka, Prem, 2015. "The corrosive effects of neoliberalism on the UK financial crises and auditing practices: A dead-end for reforms," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 1-18.
    9. Beatriz Bustos, 2015. "Moving on? Neoliberal continuities through crisis: the case of the Chilean salmon industry and the ISA virus," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1361-1375, December.
    10. Harald Bathelt & Sebastian Henn, 2014. "The Geographies of Knowledge Transfers over Distance: Toward a Typology," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(6), pages 1403-1424, June.
    11. Erica Kohl-Arenas, 2015. "The Self-Help Myth: Towards a Theory of Philanthropy as Consensus Broker," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(4), pages 796-825, September.
    12. Talia Margalit & Adriana Kemp, 2019. "The uneven geographies of post-political planning: Objections to urban regeneration projects in peripheral and central Israeli cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(4), pages 931-949, June.
    13. Gordon MacLeod, 2013. "New Urbanism/Smart Growth in the Scottish Highlands: Mobile Policies and Post-politics in Local Development Planning," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(11), pages 2196-2221, August.
    14. Anders Lund Hansen & Henrik Gutzon Larsen & Adam Grydehoj & Eric Clark, 2015. "Financialisation of the built environment in Stockholm and Copenhagen," Working papers wpaper115, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    15. Alistair Kefford, 2021. "Actually existing managerialism: Planning, politics and property development in post-1945 Britain," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(12), pages 2441-2455, September.
    16. Nick Bernards, 2019. "Tracing mutations of neoliberal development governance: ‘Fintech’, failure and the politics of marketization," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(7), pages 1442-1459, October.
    17. Naoise McDonagh, 2021. "Credit Guidance for a Desired Economy: An Original Institutional Economics Critique of Financialization," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(4), pages 675-693, December.
    18. Never Brent & Westberg Drew, 2017. "Moving to Need: The Effect of Federal Contracts on Service Provider Location," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 147-164, September.
    19. Erin Hatton, 2017. "Mechanisms of invisibility: rethinking the concept of invisible work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(2), pages 336-351, April.
    20. Margalit, Talia & Mualam, Nir, 2020. "Selective rescaling, inequality and popular growth coalitions: The case of the Israeli national plan for earthquake preparedness," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).

    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:54:y:2017:i:9:p:2039-2055. 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.