Setting the Scene: The Geographies of Urban Governance

This chapter sets the context for the discussions on the geographies of urban governance in this book. It highlights the current themes of urban governance and how the recent wave of globalization has changed the geographies of urban governance in nine ways – by shaping dominant discourses about societal organization; through changing the goals, opportunities and arenas of urban development; by making cities prominent actors in transformation processes through decentralization and economic and capitalistic production; through the shift towards fragmented cityscapes; by enhancing a network society stimulated by increased digitalization, informatization, spatialization and ubiquitous computing; through the great acceleration in resource use, ecospace pollution and causing global climate change; through rescaling, but also re-territorialization; by changing the power of cities; and by transforming the drivers of change at various spatial levels. The geographical approach unpacks place as context; space as being absolute, relative and/or relational; scale as spatial, temporal, jurisdictional and institutional; and human-environment interactions. The governance approach examines the opportunities and limits of governance beyond government within the context of changing geographies. Together they help understand the variety of socio-spatial configurations and patterns in cities. The book examines current governance patterns from the perspective of inclusive development, which is seen as including human wellbeing and protecting ecosystems. In doing so, it tries to understand how governance can contribute to the development of just and resilient cities.


Introduction
Cities have always been important nodes in processes of globalization. They are central as the loci of empires, at least going back to the period when the Romans declared urbis et orbis : Rome and the world as being one. Cities were central to the fi rst and second expansion of Europe across the globe from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries (Rich and Wilson 1967 ). While some writers (e.g. Sassen 1991 ) suggest that 'global cities' are a twentieth-century phenomenon whose global status is predominantly defi ned by the movement of capital, the globalization of cities has been intensifying across a long history (Bordo et al. 2007 ) -the longue durée in the language of the Annales School. Despite this long-term process, there are a number of changes that suggest a qualitative shift in the globalization process in the last four or fi ve decades (Harvey 1995 ). First, the global pattern of the concentration of people in cities (urbanization) has increased dramatically in the last and present century. Second, this has coincided with the consolidation of nation states as the pre-eminent political polity across the globe (Swyngedouw 2000 ). Third, major cities have become nodes in urban, national and global economies, with all the tensions across scales that such multi-level regionalism entails. They are engaged in actual and virtual relations of production, consumption, exchange and communication, supported and promoted by a revolution in electronic mediation and codifi cation (Castells 2010 ).
In the current era of rapid urbanization, neoliberal capitalism and digital technologies cities are, more than ever, becoming the locus of wealth and power as well as of poverty and marginalization (Rakodi 2008 ;Baud et al. 2008 ). Specifi c impacts of current globalization patterns reshape cities and their interactions and relations with other cities worldwide, through space and across scale (see Sect. 1.2). This requires a new understanding of urban governance, which merges the major themes in the urban governance debate with a geographical perspective . We thereby understand urban governance as the multiple ways through which city governments, businesses and residents interact in managing their urban space and life, nested within the context of other government levels and actors who are managing their space, resulting in a variety of urban governance confi gurations (Peyroux et al. 2014 ). Such confi gurations are evolving fast in cities across the globe and increasingly stretching beyond city boundaries (see Chaps. 3 ,4 and 5 ). These patterns are simultaneously shaped by differences in place , space, scale and human-environment interactions , as well as shaping these. The constructive and critical spatial approach taken in this book is what we refer to as 'the geographies of urban governance'.
Until recently, studies on urban governance focused on specifi c regions in the global North or South, but increasingly more global approaches are being taken on common urban challenges. This book follows that trend, while being unique in (a) merging most of the aforementioned urban governance themes with a geographical perspective, (b) covering the state-of-the-art of urban governance literature, (c) covering theories, instruments, methods and practices which very few other books presently do, and (d) taking a strong cosmopolitan meta perspective -meaning that it does not focus on any specifi c country or region, but hopes to have relevance in various contexts. While fi lling a gap in urban governance literature and covering a broad set of themes, we do not, however, claim to cover the entire fi eld of urban geography. Major themes in urban studies, such as gentrifi cation (see Box 1.2 ), housing, segregation, gender, demographic issues or spatial planning, fall beyond the scope of this book.
This book specifi cally seeks to address the question: what is the state of contemporary knowledge regarding the geographies of urban governance? In addressing this question, we provide an analysis of theories, instruments, methods and practices of urban governance, adopting four cross-cutting themes that run through the book. This chapter fi rst looks at how present day globalization is transforming the geographies of urban governance and we argue that it does so through nine mutually reinforcing ways (see Sect. 1.2 ). We then elaborate on the geographical perspective -arguing that it implies an analysis of the geographical dimensions of place , space , scale , and human-environment interactions (see Sect. 1.3 ). This is followed by the discussion of the concept of (urban) governance and how it relates to the geographical perspective (see Sect. 1.4 ), with a more in-depth discussion following in Chapter 2 . Then we turn to the concepts of sustainable and inclusive development and how these relate to the geographies of urban governance (see Sect. 1.5 ). Finally, we conclude with a brief elaboration of existing visions of the future city (see Sect. 1.6 ).

Themes of Urban Governance and Globalization: Globalization Transforms the Geographies of Urban Governance
Themes of urban governance scholarship have co-evolved over time with globalization trends. Globalization, in the sense of increasing transboundary interactions, can be traced back to even before the colonization efforts of the sixteenth century and occurred in several waves (Robertson 2003 ). Current globalization, characterized by hyper capitalism and technological revolutions, is understood as the growing intensity of economic, demographic, social, political, cultural and environmental interactions worldwide, leading to increasing interdependence and homogenization of ideologies, production and consumption patterns and lifestyles (Pieterse 1994 ;Sassen 1998 ). Globalization is shaping and being shaped by the geographies of urban governance in nine different but self-reinforcing ways. First, it is shaping the dominant discourses that underlie the way societies, cities and the global community are organized. On the one hand, there is a shift in focus from government to governance, which has implied growing involvement of the private sector, citizen and grassroots involvement in steering urban affairs, requiring more participatory approaches (see Chaps. 2 and 7 ) and new institutional arrangements like publicprivate partnerships (e.g. Baud and de Wit 2008 ;Koppenjan and Enserink 2009 ;Marin 2009 ;Read and Pekkanen 2009 ). This shift is itself rooted in the swarm of discourses such as neoliberal capitalism, neo-institutionalism and neo-realism on the one hand, to sustainable development, the green economy and inclusive development , on the other hand, which all provide the background within which conceptions of cities are being developed -the global city (Sassen 1991 ), the ordinary city (Robinson 2006 ), the just city (Koonings and Kruijt 2007 ;Fainstein 2010 ;Uitermark 2011 ), the sustainable city (Satterthwaite 1999 ), the smart city (Hollands 2008 ;Kitchin 2014 ), the inclusive city (Young 1990 ), the ludic city (Stevens 2007 ) and so on (see Box 1.1 ).
Second, globalization is implicitly and explicitly transforming the goals, opportunities, limits and arenas of urban development and cooperation. This happens, on the one hand, through trends in global economics (e.g. trade, labour migration), fi nance (e.g. banking), social and cultural issues (e.g. growing inequality, demographic shifts, protest and resistance, communication, arts and media) and environmental challenges ( climate change , loss of biodiversity and integrity of the global water system due to urbanization). On the other hand, goals and arenas change Box 1.1: Cities in the Twenty-First Century: Three Key Framings Scholars and policymakers have different visions of a city's future. The three key visions are the just city , the smart city and the sustainable city.
The just city : focused on norms, values and rights The just city concept has its roots in a normative storyline about the city and its residents; it focuses on promoting the values of democracy, diversity and inclusiveness. It promotes the rights to the city and human fl ourishing and welfare (Fainstein 2010 ;Uitermark 2011 ).
The smart city : focused on data and effi ciency The smart city (cyberville, digital city) concept is used to refer to cities whose governance increasingly depends on data from digital technologies on travel, communication, energy uses, water uses, waste fl ows, health care, suggestions and complaints from online data collection systems in order to both engage with residents and to provide the services needed by residents in a more effective, effi cient, inclusive and sustainable manner (Hollands 2008 ;Kitchin 2014 ).
The sustainable city : focused on social, economic and ecological issues The sustainable city (Satterthwaite 1999 ) integrates social, economic and ecological perspectives based on fi ve key principles: intergenerational and intragenerational equity, the no-harm principle (transfrontier responsibility) and procedural and interspecies equity (Haughton 1999 ). Sustainable cities ensure livelihood opportunities for all; a safe, secure environment for people with minimal resource use and pollution of ecosystems; and the freedom to participate in politics. through global governance efforts (e.g. UN Habitat, the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals, see Sect. 1.4), rescaling and re-territorialization and advances in digital technologies and big data . These trends and changes create new pressures on the city and their hinterlands and result in changing priorities (Douglass 1998 ;Allen 2003 ;Kitchin 2013 ;Hajer and Dassen 2014 , see Chaps. 5 , 8 and 9 ). This has implied that growing connectivity between cities has created a network of global cities which have a strategic role in global affairs (Acuto 2013 ) and whose governance requires balancing place-based responses to local needs and global-relational responses to pressures of economic globalization (McCann and Ward 2011 , see Chap. 4 ).
Third, clearly then cities are key actors in this transformation process. There is no consensus on defi nitions of cities or urban areas; they generally refer to a "large, dense and permanent human settlement" (Wirth 1938, cited in Beall andFox 2009 : 3) with high infrastructural density that brings strangers together (Archer 2013 ), thus making cities centres of multi-ethnic communities. In 1950, only 30 % of the population lived in cities; today, cities are home to 54 % of the world population and this may rise to 66 % by 2050 (UN-ESA 2014 ). By then, 84 % of the global urban population is expected to live in the global South (UN-ESA 2014 ). The number and size of cities is growing (see Fig. 1.1 ). Most of the city growth will take place in the global South; 90 % in Asia and Africa alone. In absolute terms, Asia will absorb most new urban dwellers, but in relative terms cities in Africa will grow most. While some cities may shrink and decay, most cities will grow. Mega cities (>10 million inhabitants) and especially large cities (5-10 million inhabitants) will grow faster in the global South, in particular in fast-growing economies like China, Brazil, India and South Africa  ). The fastest growing urban agglomerations are medium-sized cities (1-5 million) and small cities (<1 million inhabitants) located in Asia and Africa (UN-ESA 2014 ). The latter take up the brunt of urban growth and account for 94 % of all urban dwellers, even probably in 2025 (Birch and Wachter 2011 ). Cities are, on average, responsible for about 70 % of global GDP, but in some countries their contribution may be signifi cantly higher (Birch and Wachter 2011 ); and often cities are engines of growth (Mitra and Mehta 2011 ;Jacobs 2012 ). With growing population concentrations, the challenge of tackling poverty and marginalization is a major theme that runs through this book (Devas 2004 ;Baud et al. 2008 ;Pouw and Baud 2011 ).
Fourth, transnational migration and globalization lead to fragmented cityscape s due to the interaction between urban residents, work hubs, recreation areas, landand waterscapes. The process is characterized by uneven urbanization, urban sprawl , increasing inequality , informality and sometimes illegality institutionalized through the politics of place, space and infrastructure that affect all who live in the city and its surrounding regions (Shatkin 2007 ;Jenks et al. 2013 ). From the 1970s, it has been argued that cities impede development in rural areas (Lipton 1977 ;Bates 1988 ;Todaro 2000 ), and it is only recently that this belief is being countered (Corbridge and Jones 2006 ;Beall and Fox 2009 ). But what is key is understanding the relationship between the city, peri-urban growth and rural hinterlands and how these landscapes are linked (Archer 2013 ;see Chap. 5 ). This is related, inter alia, to the Fifth, globalization together with technical innovations has enhanced the network society (Castells 2010 , see Chaps. 3 and 4 ), and currently we see an increasing expansion of information and communication technologies, digital information and spatialization worldwide (see Chaps. 8 and 9 ). Local governments develop (spatial) ICT systems to increase their own effi ciency or use it for strategic visioning , but also to fulfi l the normative goals of transparency , accountability and citizenorientation (Roche 2014 ). Thus, the increasing digitalization of society has changed the role of knowledge management and citizen involvement in urban governance (Pfeffer et al. 2013 ;Baud et al. 2014 ), while generating a discourse on smart cities that effi ciently deal with problems of rapid urbanization through the use of digital technologies and their intelligent combination with physical and social infrastructure (Hollands 2008 ;Kitchin 2014 ). These offer technological solutions to pressing urban issues while adding pressure on cities, increasing the digital divide (Townsend 2013 ) or bringing about new divides (Batty et al. 2012 ; see Chaps. 8 and 9 ).
Sixth, globalization and capitalism have been accompanied by the great acceleration in the use of resources for production, distribution, consumption and waste disposal, in the pollution of our ecospace and in causing global change (Steffen et al. 2005 ). We may have entered a new geological epoch -the Anthropocene. This adds a new dimension to the idea of resource dependence of cities -i.e. the idea that through history cities have developed along river basins like the Nile, the Indus, Euphrates and Tigris (Archer 2013 ). Being in the Anthropocene implies that (a) some resources are limited (e.g. land); (b) some have declining economic and political viability (e.g. phosphorous needed for food production, and rare earth elements required for telephones); and (c) the carrying capacity of the Earth's ecosystem is declining. Such limited resources and ecospace can either be distributed through capitalist approaches (using pricing), hegemonic approaches (using state power), polycentric approaches (using organic governance approaches) or through sustainable and inclusive development approaches (sharing the ecospace) (Gupta 2014 ). Cities as concentrations of wealth, population, production and consumption have a massive environmental footprint and are inevitably a major cause of global change. Cumulative changes at the micro-level in cities may often lead to major changes at the global level. Ironically, however, their opportunities to address global climate change are limited; although the informal agency of city actors may appear to push for city level emission targets, this has not added up to signifi cant results as of now. Furthermore, cities concentrate life in areas that are exposed to the impacts of globalization and global change through natural and/or anthropocentric fl oods, droughts and other extreme weather events. Whether as coastal hubs (e.g. Mumbai, Boston), delta cities (e.g. Dhaka), mountain cities (e.g. Sri Nagar), desert cities or simply cities in the pathways of typhoons or at geologically fragile sites, they face multiple risks and mainstreaming disaster prevention in an effort to create resilient cities will require adaptive interactive governance (see Chap. 5 ). This global environmental change has prompted literature on governance for sustainable cities (Pugh 2000 ;Satterthwaite 1999 ;Haughton and Hunter 2004 ;Evans et al. 2005 ) and urban resilience (Tanner et al. 2009 ;Newman et al. 2009 ;Birkmann et al. 2010 ;Ernstson et al. 2010 ;Otto-Zimmermann 2011 ). Criticizing the a-historical and managerial nature of the smart cities discourse, 'smart urbanism aims at liveable, sustainable, socially just and resilient cities', to be achieved through resource decoupling (UNEP 2013 ), responsible management of material fl ows of nutrients, water, energy and waste (Ravetz 2000 ;Villarroel Walker et al. 2014 ), open and collaborative governance with citizens and entrepreneurs, and global networking for continuous learning, refl ection and adjustment (Hajer and Dassen 2014 ).
Seventh, globalization has led to processes of rescaling and reterritorializationthe spatial reconstruction and rescaling of social relations resulting from their increasing disconnection from places and territories due to globalization (Brenner 1999(Brenner , 2004 ) -and underscores the role of place, space and scale in these new spatial confi gurations (Jonas and Ward 2007 ;Parés et al. 2014 ) (see Sects. 1.2 and 1.3). Using the concepts of glocal state (Swyngedouw 2004 ) and glocal fi xes (Brenner 2004 ), it is argued that processes of globalization have led to a reterritorialization of state arrangements and state power. The rescaling is upwards to the supranational and global level as well as downwards to the sub-national, urban and even individual level. Swyngedouw argues that the globalization of capital has also reinforced the importance of location and the local. Because regions have become more important loci for the accumulation of capital, the territorial state has rescaled the organization of its power and strengthened the promising urban or industrial regions. Glocalization refers to the multiple intersections between local through to global scales, where the local is embedded in multiple and overlapping levels of governance , while the global infl uences every aspect of the local (de Haan 2000 ).
Eighth, the power of cities is changing in multiple and contradictory ways. Decentralization processes have increased city-level capacities of city authorities to develop and implement local social and developmental policies. Cities as homes of the rich, and of powerful businesses, banks, stock markets, UN agencies and NGOs, are the location from which global to local decision-making occurs (e.g. New York , London , Paris , Amsterdam , Hong Kong , Sao Paulo ). As cities have become important global nodes and loci of large events, powerful assemblages of state and nonstate actors at multiple levels have become important actors infl uencing the city, for example, in mega-projects. However, cities are also the location of confl icts between state and non-state actors, between non-state actors themselves and the locus of activities of growing gangs and gang-related violence (e.g. Nairobi, Johannesburg, Los Angeles). But although cities have considerable power, the scope of their control over global change is also limited (see point 5). There is debate about whether cities are overtaking the state in economic power or whether they are deluding themselves given their very limited steering power. Hence, also rooted in geographical literature, is the emergence of relational thinking in which cities are no longer conceived as territories, but as being embedded in global networks of connectivity and spatial fl ows (Amin 2007 ;Jones 2009 ;Ward 2010 , McKann andWard 2010 ;Jacobs 2012 ;Söderström 2014 ).
Finally, globalization with its multiple local to global aspects is transforming drivers of change at various interfaces: the urban-national-global (see Chap. 2 ), the urban-urban (see Chaps. 3 and 4 ) and the urban-rural (see Chap. 5 ). Globalization is both shaped by, and is shaping, cities and their governance. This implies that urban regions have to face the new driving forces of change, which include: • local driving forces such as local cultures and histories, production, consumption and lifestyle patterns, new and old security challenges and confl icts over resources, as well as mega (infrastructural) projects which accommodate and/or exacerbate social inequality and increase pressure on the ecosystem and its ability to provide services; • local-regional driving forces such as changing demographics (increasing urban population; rural-urban migration and rising concentrations in peri-urban areas) and urban-to-urban infrastructures and related tensions; and • global driving forces such as climate change , the fi nancial crises, geo-political tensions and growing migration and refugees, all of which have non-linear, uncertain, teleological impacts on society.
Understanding how this plays out in different cities worldwide is the subject of comparative urbanism (Robinson 2004 andNijman 2007 ;McFarlane 2010 ;Ward 2010 ;McFarlane and Robinson 2012 ) that seeks to build a cosmopolitan urban theory that cuts across the traditional divide between Northern and Southern cities through comparative research of diverse yet globally connected cities.

The Geographical Perspective
The previous section combined the nine themes that are dominant in urban governance with the perspective of how globalization affects cities and their governance. Together, they emphasize the changing and competing goals, visions and discourses that shape urban spaces and city life; the economic and political dynamics; the changing characteristics of being part of a network society and having fragmented cityscapes ; the rising and yet limited power of cities; and the rising ecological footprint of the city; as well as its growing vulnerability to local through to global confl ict and crises. These are the critical trends within which The Geographies of Urban Governance is set.
Urban governance includes the role of city governments and non-state actors in managing life in the city within the context of glocal governance . While urban governance is not a new subject and there are many scholarly efforts to elaborate on this theme, we advance by also including the geographical perspective . This has four key features: a focus on place, space , scale and human-environment interactions .

Place
Place is a "meaningful site that combines location, locale, and sense of place" (Cresswell 2009 : 169). Location is the exact point in space or the 'where' of place. Place is also characterized by material characteristics and the meaning attached to it. Urbanization and urban governance is by no means a 'Northern' or 'Southern' issue. Yet over the past decades, the fi eld of urban studies and urban governance has developed along these lines. Understandings of global or world cities hierarchically order cities into centre versus periphery, modern versus primitive and global versus non-global dichotomies (Sassen 1991 ). With a strong focus on economic significance and modernity/development/wealth, this ordering ranks cities in the global North higher than cities in the global South (Robinson 2006 ). Moreover, where urban theory on modernity focused on cities in the global North, studies on cities in the South were framed mainly in concepts of poverty and development (Robinson 2006 ). However, a global comparative perspective is emerging starting from a point that urban issues have a more global nature and that all cities are sites of transformation. Cities take their shape through local social, cultural, political and economic conditions and their interactions with those at other levels. This builds on 'ordinary cities', a postcolonial framework to urban studies, emphasising complexity and the diversity of city life without attaching a ranking to it and drawing on examples from around the world (Robinson 2006 ). It is this approach to diversity that we take here and as such it is acknowledged that some urban issues and governance issues will be more prominent in some places than in others. We analyse cities according to their socio-economic context (e.g. in low-income, medium-income or high-income countries), their cultural-political character and historical context (e.g. (post)colonial background, dictatorial, democratic or failed state context). Within this context, the notion of the right to the city (Harvey 2003 ) becomes increasingly importantincluding for women (see Box 1.2 ). This is articulated in the literature as the right of residents to collectively create and shape the city; not just accessing the amenities provided by the city, but shaping how these amenities are provided and thereby shaping communities within the city.

Box 1.2: A Woman's Place is in the City!
"A woman's place is in the city" is the title of a seminal article by the feminist geographer Gerda Wekerle, published in Antipode in 1984. "Questions of urban policy, land use, housing and transportation are being newly defi ned as women's issues and the legitimate focus of the women's movement" (Wekerle 1984 : 11). The title is a descriptive as well as a normative statement: women belong to the city and the city belongs to women. In a detached analysis Wekerle demonstrated that women played an important role in the gentrifi cation process in the United States -the process through which particular neighbourhoods near the city centre are upgraded in terms of household income, improved housing stock, and new consumption spaces, usually by yuppies (continued) (young urban professionals) and yupps (young urban professional parents) (Boterman 2012 ;Karsten 2014 ). Wekerle demonstrated that female-headed and dual-earner households were over-represented in redeveloped inner city neighbourhoods: women who combined paid work with care work preferred to live in these neighbourhoods because of short home-work distances, the availability of public transport and other services, and local support networks of likeminded households. At the same time, Wekerle's article was a passionate plea to change cities and city planning practices in a femalefriendly manner: "Cities are still planned by men for men. While the lives of women have changed radically, the urban environment in which they live has not" (Wekerle 1984 : 11).
Thirty years later in another continent, Wekerle's analysis and ideals still appear to be relevant. Female-headed households and symmetrical families that more or less equally share the division of paid and unpaid work between the partners are over-represented in the big cities of the Netherlands (de Meester 2010 ; Boterman and Bridge 2014 ; Karsten 2014 ). They challenge urban planners to create cities that support symmetrical families with work and services nearby, attractive and safe public spaces, playgrounds for children and a transport system that prioritizes public transport and cycling. There is one difference that Gerda Wekerle could not foresee: fathers and mothers moving their two or three children around in a cargo bike (Fig. 1.2 ).

Space
Space is a more abstract term referring to an absolute or Euclidean space that can be measured by its coordinates; a relative space that is defi ned by the objects and relations that are situated in the space; and/or a relational space as the product of interrelations between objects (Elden 2009 ). Here we take a more Lefebvrean approach to space supporting that space is produced and not existing 'out there' (Lefebvre 1991 ;Soja 1996 andMassey 2005 ). It can only be understood in the context of a specifi c society or several societies. A distinction is therefore made between material space (i.e. the physical or abstract space produced through spatial practices and reproduced in everyday life); conceived space (i.e. representations of space produced by discourses of power and ideology, codifi ed symbols, etc.); and representational space (i.e. the lived and mental space of users in everyday life, infl uenced by wider social, economic and political processes) (Lefebvre 1991). This book refl ects on how governance practices produce urban space and are produced by the city, i.e. through spatial practices, representations of space and representational spaces (e.g. Chap. 8 ).

Scale
Scale encompasses "the spatial, temporal, quantitative, or analytical dimensions used to measure and study any phenomenon", and differs from levels which are "the units of analysis that are located at the same position on a scale" (Gibson et al. 2000 : 218). The geographical or spatial scale can range from place, to landscapes, through regions, to the global level (Cash et al. 2006 ). These scales are not linear and thus the levels are essentially arbitrary. Other scales and their levels include temporal scales (daily, seasonal, annual, changing patterns over time), jurisdictional/administrative scales (municipal, provincial, national, intergovernmental), institutional scales (operating rules, laws/regulations, constitutions) and networks (family, kin, society, trans-society) (Cash et al. 2006 ). In addition, a distinction can be made between a conceptual scale (how and why do cities exist in a particular place), time scale (what are the changing patterns over time), the scale of drivers (what are the drivers of urbanization, how do regions and systems of cities collaborate), and more generally, on what scale do city governance , markets, stocks and services, and neighourhoods operate (Malpezzi 2011 ). The geographical refl ections in this book discuss how governance operates at different scale levels and how governance practices at different scale levels infl uence each other. Moreover, we examine how governance practices vary in cities according to their size (small, medium-sized, large, mega).

Human-Environment Interactions
Studying human-environment interactions is at the core of human geography. It questions how human behaviour shapes the ecosystem and its services and vice versa, how ecosystems impact on human behaviour. In moving away from physical environments, to discuss ecosystem governance , this book intends to take a more innovative approach. Ecosystem governance takes a systemic approach, looks at 'environmental goods' as opposed to 'environmental bads', and faces different systemic boundaries which may or may not align to local boundaries (the problem of fi t). Sometimes it is diffi cult to scale up actions from city level to beyond or scale down from national to city level, as the contextual factors are so different. However, environmental fl ows are not reciprocal by nature and this is a challenge for governance. As with international law which has diffi culty in governing nonreciprocal challenges, where problems are caused by the city but there are no equal and reciprocal challenges caused by the surrounding rural areas, it becomes diffi cult for governance approaches to impose a unilateral responsibility on the city especially in the context of the weaker power of rural areas (see also Chap. 5 ).

A Cosmopolitan, Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspective
A geographical perspective lends itself for integrative analysis and allows for the incorporation of results of other disciplinary approaches such as economics, law, politics, sociology and where necessary the natural sciences. We thereby consciously take a cosmopolitan perspective, which implies a moral stand towards global democracy based on human rights and social justice (Held 2004 ) and a comparative perspective that looks at how governance efforts work or fail in specifi c contexts.

The Governance Perspective
Since the 1960s there has been a push towards greater public participation in decision-making processes. With the rise of the non-state actor -corporations, NGOs and civil society organizations in the 1970s and 1980s, there was empirical evidence of other social actors actively participating in governance processesleading to the broadening of government to governance. In this same period, there was growing emphasis on the decentralization of government tasks and the rise of subsidiarity -decision-making at the lowest possible level -as a principle. This has led to a paradoxical situation in which, although problems were globalizing and the driving forces of these problems were often global, the power to deal with this was being reduced. At the same time, global discourses (see Sect. 1.2) were also infl uencing local level policies, sometimes in favour of, and sometimes against, inclusive development . Multiple theories of governance have since emerged (see Chap. 2 ). Urban governance is increasingly trying to govern place, space , and scale . However, urban governance is often divorced from urban study disciplines. While governance calls for an interdisciplinary approach in which planning is an integral part of the entire governance process, there have been compartmentalized urban studies focusing either on planning, architecture, inclusive development , or human geography. Urban studies, furthermore, have not taken the relations with other governance levels adequately into account. In relation to human-ecosystem challenges, the focus initially was on ensuring that water and sanitation was taken care of through planning systems at least in the developed countries. Subsequently the focus was on developing nature spots and green belts as a way to deal with both the recreational needs of the urban rich as well as the need to deal with urban pollution. Many cities in the North now focus on developing adaptive cities that can cope with shocks (ecological as well as economic and social), smart cities (cities that can be managed through the use and integration of digital technologies and big data sets), just cities (cities that deal with their domestic social issues, environmental vulnerabilities and economic opportunities) and sustainable cities (integrating the social, economic and ecological; see Box 1.1 ). Many cities in the global South now have to leap frog ahead to fi nd a way to become adaptive, smart, just and sustainable while still meeting priority planning issues -such as drinking water and sanitation services.
The expected, but also planned urban growth presents urban governing agents with major demands in particular in the area of housing (including utilities such as water, electricity), environmental health (sanitation, waste, air quality, pollution, climate change ), infrastructure (including mobility), economic opportunities, and social and political inequality . Analyses of urban governance practices that address these issues stress the limited funding, human capacities and legal responsibilities of local governments (see Chap. 7 ); the strong infl uence of a powerful private sector and other actors operating at various levels (Klaufus 2010 ); and complex and contradictory understandings of citizenship in these cities. We critically assess the potential and limits of governance in diverging contexts. We examine the limits and the opportunities of city level governance in dealing with the driving factors and challenges that emerge at global level and therefore take a politics of scale perspective (Swyngedouw 1997(Swyngedouw , 2004Gupta 2008Gupta , 2014. We look at how city networks , both within and among cites, shape, reshape and perpetuate patterns of development, inequality and sustainability (see Chaps. 3 and 4 ); explore the role of digitalization, informatization and spatialization therein (see Chaps. 8 and 9 ), but also elaborate shifting actor coalitions and changing patterns in stakeholder participation and network building (see Chaps. 4 and 7 ). In examining city governance , we also examine the relationship between formal and informal governance and the new cultures of informality (McGuirk 2000 , see Chaps. 3 and 9 ).

Sustainable Development
This section defi nes the sustainable development concept as used in this book (see Gupta and Thompson 2010 and Gupta and Baud in press for an overview).
Sustainable development is a multi-scalar concept, being used primarily at the global to national level, but increasingly also at urban levels (Satterthwaite 1999 ;Marcotullio and McGranahan 2007 ). It is a multi-dimensional concept (economic, ecological and social goals) in an inter-temporal context (future and current generations) with a strong North-South dimension to it -a dimension that recurs continuously in global political debates (Gupta and Baud in press ). However, the challenge of trade-offs between the three goals and between the welfare of the current poor versus ensuring wellbeing for future generations of the rich play out equally strongly at city level. In other words, while the rich in the cities wish to protect the city for future generations of well-off urbanites, the poor wish to address their current interests fi rst. These trade-offs become all the more marked in the context of the dominance of the neoliberal paradigm.
The social dimension of sustainable development focuses on the goals of social justice, democracy and human wellbeing creating the vision of a 'just city' but also a 'liveable city'; a city in which basic human needs are met and the rights to the city are recognized, and where the provision of and access to civic amenities (health, police services, etc.) and infrastructure (roads, water, etc.) is equitably distributed across the city.
The ecological dimension of sustainable development focuses on the notion of cities that can close substance cycles and have a low ecological footprint . Such cities are able to undertake policies with respect to the urban microclimate, provide water and sewers to cities, and deal with waste production, city air pollution and health epidemics. Second, such cities need also to be resilient to economic and ecological shocks including climate change. Third, the sustainability of a city needs to be seen in the context of all fl ows and assets beyond city boundaries (see Chap. 5 ).
The economic dimension examines the possibility of city residents to have gainful employment within the city context, the ability of the city to manage its resources and to develop the city further. The dominance of the neoliberal paradigm in many cities of the world has affected the purchase of real-estate at the cost of the local poor, raising the prices of land and rented property (Zoomers 2010 ).
Sustainable development is an increasingly elusive concept. It gained enormous popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s but lost momentum when it became a concept that was considered to be "about everything and thus about nothing" (after Kok 2004 ) and which was used rather arbitrarily. Recently, we see a renewed interest in the concept as it is seen as countering the dominance of the growth paradigm by pushing for recognition of the social and ecological dimensions; a consequence of the realization that we may now be living in the era of the Anthropocene . The Circles of Sustainability , for example, create opportunities to develop a sustainability profi le for each city ( http://www.circlesofsustainability.org/ ). Moreover, the United Nations will be following up on its Millennium Development Goals which end in 2015 with Sustainable Development Goals which aim to create a common commitment for the global community to deal with social and ecological issues while aiming for development. One of these goals aims at sustainable cities; but many of the other goals will have implications for cities as well ( www.Sustainabledevelopmentgoals.org ).

Inclusive Development
The politics of achieving sustainable development has implied that it is increasingly being split up into the concepts of green economy , inclusive growth and inclusive development . These concepts try to at least unite two of the three dimensions of sustainable development. We focus here specifi cally on the concept of inclusive development (see also Sect. 5.4). We see this concept as being a countervailing discourse to that of neoliberal capitalism and is justifi ed for normative, legal, economic, security and political reasons (Gupta 2014 ). Inclusive development combines the social and ecological pillars of the sustainable development concept, but also the collaboration of different governance actors and the recognition of their knowledges (van Buuren 2009 ;Peyroux et al. 2014 ). With its origins in social justice and human rights concepts at the individual/community level (Gupta and Thompson 2010 ), the focus on development indicators and entitlements at national level, and the right of developing countries to develop at international level, inclusive development is seen as a way to channel attention to the most marginalized in local through to global society (Sachs 2004 ). Thus inclusive development, as opposed to inclusive growth combines social aspects, ecological dimensions and inclusive economics (welfare and wellbeing).
Inclusive development (Chatterjee 2005 ;Rodríguez-Pose and Tijmstra 2007 ;Rauniyar and Kanbur 2010 ;Jiang 2011 ;Huang and Quibria 2013 ) has three key dimensions: (a) a substantive dimension ; (b) a relational dimension ; and (c) an evolving dimension in the context of the Anthropocene . Each of these can be applied in the urban context. The substantive dimension calls for a focus on marginalized people and sectors in terms of place, space and context -e.g. on concentrations of poor in urban poverty spots (Baud et al. 2008 ); equal opportunities for participation (see Chap. 7 ) and using technical, scientifi c and local knowledge (see Chaps. 7 , 8 and 9 ); the recognition of formal and informal/customary rights which may co-exist (see Bavinck and Gupta 2014 ); the understanding of how infrastructure and spatial planning can empower or disempower people in the context of space and place (Cook 2006 ;Kennedy et al. 2014 ); the need for capacity building (Chatterjee 2005 ); and action learning to stimulate the self-help capacity and participation in urban governance of the most marginalized (Chambers 1988 ; Sanz 2014 ). The relational dimension calls for re-examining implicit and explicit power relations in the urban context, creating redistributive mechanisms for crosssubsidizing the urban and urban-rural poor, actually redistributing public goods such as social and infrastructural benefi ts (Sachs 2004 ;Rodríguez-Pose and Tijmstra 2007 ;Lawson 2010 ) and dealing with public bads (e.g. environmental problems and the local impacts of climate change). Finally, the relational aspect calls for understanding and dealing with the drivers of inequality (historical patterns of unequal assets exacerbated by modern formal rules and/or globalized processes). The Anthropocene dimension of inclusive development calls for sharing the ecospace that we have on Earth (Gupta 2014 ). Inclusive development cannot be addressed by the market as the price parameter is often outside the reach of the poorest, thus calling for policy intervention.
In practice, instruments for inclusive development include a normative framework of human rights, the rule of law, the promotion of equity, legitimacy, legality, effectiveness, participation (see Chap. 7 ) and accountability . It includes goals such as the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals , contextualized at local level. It includes an array of instruments and infrastructure (see Chap. 6 ) and supporting spatial knowledge management  to enhance life in the cities.
Evolving rural-urban migration patterns will lead to a shift in the location and nature of poverty and exclusion and this will shape urban-rural landscapes (Chap. 5 ). Population infl ow into cities is currently growing at the rate of 200,000 people per day (UN Habitat 2013 ) and cities of the South are unable to meet the continuously growing demand for basic services and urban infrastructure for the poor leading to mutually reinforcing cycles of exclusion. The growing income inequality in cities worldwide, the inability of state authorities to provide the public goods needed by people, the entrance of new players (NGOs, CBOs and the private sector) in infrastructure and basic services provisions from water and energy through to security is changing urban societies. Ironically, criminal gangs both use the lack of rule of law to fl ourish and are increasingly also providing civic amenities in their own way to control local people (Jaffe 2012 ). Will the growing number of people coming into the cities be able to continuously assert their right to the city or will fi rst-comers create barriers for late-comers? Our book takes a perspective rooted in the concept of inclusive development. This inevitably implies a focus on confl icts in the city and a focus on how the neoliberal paradigm has led to exclusive developments in some parts of the city at the cost of others.

Conclusion
This book explores the concepts of governance (see Chap. 2 ), networks in urban governance (see Chaps. 3 and 4 ), the governance of rural-urban landscapes (see Chap. 5 ) and the instruments of governance (see Chap. 6 ). In examining the tools of governance, we look at participatory governance (see Chap. 7 ), managing spatial knowledge (see Chap. 8 ) and the potential and limits of big data (see Chap. 9 ). With a look to the future, we then pay special attention to scenario building (see Chap. 10 ).
The last chapter tries to bring together the different elements discussed in this book into an integrated storyline about the geographies of urban governance .
Cities are, and life in the cities is, changing. The distinction between on-line and off-line life is getting blurred and residents have increasingly multiple loyalties and needs. The increasing production of continuous data streams from multiple sensors and technological innovations requires governance actors to re-think and re-work conventional work processes and practices. Urban transformations are thus changing and challenge the landscape of urban governance in the Anthropocene .
Following up on Robinson's ( 2006 ) ordinary city approach, which argues against the dichotomy between development, modernity and urban hierarchies, we argue that the future city is diverse but just and lives within its ecological limits -our choice for an inclusive city in both developed and developing contexts rejects the notion of cities as hubs of uncontrolled economic development and concentration of wealth and power.