The Death and Life of Neoliberal Urbanism

In the decade and a half since the financial crisis of 2008, we have witnessed the withering of neoliberalism, whether in the form of the Keynesian banking bailout, revanchist austerity, the triple hit to global commerce by Brexit, the pandemic, and the policies of the recent American presidents, or the emergence of a financialised, ‘rentier’ economy, as economist Thomas Piketty has called it. The restructuring of capitalism has shaped urban processes, policies and doctrines, whether through austerity urbanism, as geographer Jamie Peck called the urban policies of mid-2010s, by the urbanization of the outer city, or through the emergence of the ‘financialised city’.

This research project looks back at the diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism, ranging from Jacobs’ ‘spontaneous city’ to the current ‘liveable city’, from the emaciation of planning to the proliferation of enterprise zones and BIDs. It demonstrates that neoliberal urbanism consists of a multiplicity of doctrines and processes, which are often contradictory or, in some cases, outright adversarial. The project also looks beyond neoliberalism to the years that followed the financial crisis, to the emergent new forms of post-neoliberal urbanism, development and redevelopment, including the widespread demolitions of council housing estates in London, the financialization of the city, and the long term restructuring of the city. This research traces the processes that are currently remaking the city within an emerging economic framework, which has been termed ‘new state capitalism’, and offers a rigorous critique of their form and destination.