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Cities, Vol. 12, No. 2, p. 83, 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain

Editorial

Public city, private city

With this issue, Cities presents the first of two collections of articles that deal with the broad ques- tion of public intervention in urban areas. The first is edited by Sofia Giles Leonard, whose own introduc- tion to the papers follows mine. The second collec- tion has come about more serendipitously and pre- sents a group of four unsolicited yet complementary papers that all deal with aspects of the local econo- mic development process in Great Britain. This compilation will appear in the August issue of the journal.

It seems appropriate to refocus upon the question of public intervention at a time when the calls to roll back the frontiers of the state appear to be intensify- ing. Privatization has swept across China and the former Soviet Union, and conservative administra- tions in the United States and Europe continue to wrestle with fiscal crisis and a public disdain for the achievements of government. A recent edition of The Urban Age notes that in 50 nations, some $70 billion worth of public assets were sold during 1992 alone and, astonishingly, that 70% of Albania's GDP will be generated in the private sector by 1996 (Volume 2, Number 4, p. 2; p. 8).

Obviously enough, cities are in the centre of such debates; they contain the infrastructure (such as housing) and the services (such as waste disposal) that can be attractive to investors. Yet, insofar as they often contain concentrations of low income and welfare-dependent families and there exist other problems that need expensive fixes, such as the decay of roads and sewer lines, the importance of public investment remains. As Richard Batley notes, the question is, consequently, not whether the state should intervene but how it should do so (ibid. p. 3).

The importance of presenting the work of urban planners and others is underlined by the recent exhibition of the work of Rem Koolhaas at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, undertaken in conjunct ion with the Office for Metropol i tan Architecture in the Netherlands. As the Curator of MOMA, Terence Riley points out, Koolhaas pro- vides an important antidote to current dismissals of

the city as an artificial unit by celebrating that artificiality. Moreover, this is an approach that rec- ognizes that the spontaneity of the city is a large measure of its importance for both residents and investors. The role of the public architect lies, literally, in 'planning the unplanned' by 'defining the public realm and . . . the space in which, what we call the public, is activated' (Riley, Threshold in Contemporary Architecture, 1994, p. 2).

There is much to be quizzical about in this exhibi- tion. The buildings seem to offer up a quick techni- cal fix that is reminiscent of the architectural exces- ses of the 1950s and 60s. Yet one cannot but applaud the efforts to create public space 'that counters the withdrawal from real space represented by cyber- technologies, while militating against the withdrawal from real time represented by attempts to simulate the appearances of the preindustrial city' (ibid. p. 3). Instead of the architectural whimsy that has made regeneration synonymous with gentrification, these are large, gritty and instrumental constructions that straddle public and corporate needs. Typical is a proposal for a site in Yokohama which tries to reshape a produce market (used only between 4a.m. and 10a.m.) so that it can incorporate successive uses during the city's diurnal rhythm. Even the configuration of the exhibition is indicative: most was in the Museum but other displays were to be found in nearby subway stations.

This century has been defined in large measure by different forms of large government - those operat- ing in capitalist societies and those developed in the command economies. It now seems clear that the end of the century will be defined by efforts to redefine, and reduce, the nature of state interven- tion, and this will have particular implications for urban areas. Neither of the collections to be pub- lished here can provide definitive blueprints for the future of public intervention, but they do present good e x a mp l e s of how this d e b a t e can be approached.

Andrew Kirby

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