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Against accountancy governance: Notes towards a new urban collective consumption

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  • Andy Merrifield

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, power brokers of our urban system assumed other managerial roles, other controlling roles more market-driven, more fiscally prudent. They started to recede from public view, dabbled with privatization, with contracting-out service delivery, doing it at minimum cost. After a while, this dabbling with the public budget became damn right babbling: entrepreneurial managers turned into managerial entrepreneurs and soon into middle-management technocrats, each with their own private hegemony of meaning. Before long, a new nobility assumed the mantle of political and authoritative power, a para-state of accountants and administrators, of middle managers and think-tank 'intellectuals', of consultants and confidants who reside over our privatized public sector, filing the paperwork and pocketing the rents and fees, together with the interest payments and bonuses, in our ever-emergent rentier and creditor society. This paper critically investigates the sweeping changes that have transformed urban governance since the 1970s.

Suggested Citation

  • Andy Merrifield, 2014. "Against accountancy governance: Notes towards a new urban collective consumption," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4-5), pages 416-426, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cityxx:v:18:y:2014:i:4-5:p:416-426
    DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2014.939463
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    Cited by:

    1. Anne Vogelpohl, 2019. "Global expertise, local convincing power: Management consultants and preserving the entrepreneurial city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(1), pages 97-114, January.
    2. Melissa Heil, 2023. "The politics of owing: Accounting, water disconnection, and austerity urbanism in Detroit," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 41(3), pages 485-503, May.
    3. Sara Hinkley, 2017. "Structurally adjusting: Narratives of fiscal crisis in four US cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2123-2138, July.

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