Public Value in the Late Modern City

Neoliberalism appears to have contributed to increased inequality, urban poverty, economic exclusion, and deprivation. More importantly, neoliberal thinking provides insufficient tools for understanding the nature of the social consequences of global and national free-market policies, and is even less equipped to produce the means to tackle them. Taken to the level of urban governance, this implies that urban boosterism and streamlined competitiveness policies may not provide the answers to the fundamental problems faced by cities. It could be hypothesized that we need more balanced perspectives, reinterpretations, and refocusings in order to meet such daunting challenges. In this chapter, we will address this issue by discussing alternative views of economic growth and their implications for urban policy and governance.