Urban Democracy and the Local Trap

Mark Purcell

[Paper first received, June 2005; in final form, November 2005]

Summary. This paper argues against the local trap—the tendency to assume that the local scale ispreferable to other scales. The local trap is an important problem in the recent explosion ofresearch on urban democracy and citizenship. The paper highlights one strain of that literature,the work on ‘the right to the city’. It is argued that the right to the city is highly susceptible tothe local trap, although it is not inherently so. As we continue to search for innovative new ideaslike the right to the city that can help to democratise cities, it is critical to think carefully andstrategically about scale.

Introduction

Recent work in political economy has paidextensive attention to the processes ofneo-liberal globalisation (for example,Yaghmaian, 1998; Kelly, 1999; Peck, 2001;Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Gough, 2002;Leitner and Sheppard, 2002; Smith,2002; Tickell and Peck, 2003) and there hasbeen particular interest in the way theseprocesses have affected urban space andurban governance (Jessop, 2002; Jones andWard, 2002; Keil, 2002; Kipfer and Keil,2002; MacLeod, 2002; Swyngedouw et al.,2002; Wu, 2002). Much of this workconcludes that one consequence of urbanneo-liberalisation has been that capital hasmore power to produce urban space withrespect to ‘the public’, however, defined.Thus there is a pervasive (if not thoroughlyexamined) sense that urban neo-liberalisationthreatens urban democracy. Partly as a resultof this literature, there has been much interestrecently in new ways to democratise thedecisions that produce urban space (Berryet al., 1993; Hipsher, 1996; Brown, 1997;

Beauregard and Bounds, 2000; Brodie, 2000;Amin and Thrift, 2002; Friedmann, 2002;Fung and Wright, 2003a, 2003b).

This paper fully supports this new attentionto democracy and citizenship in cities.However, my goal is to present a cautionaryargument that I hope can help us to moveforward as effectively as possible. As we dis-cover, narrate and invent new ideas aboutdemocracy and citizenship in cities, it is criti-cal to avoid what I call the local trap, inwhich the local scale is assumed to be inher-ently more democratic than other scales. As Iwill try to make clear, the local trap is extre-mely prevalent, especially in leftist academiaand activism. It appears to be almost habitamong many traditions to prefer a priori thelocal scale. The paper argues against thelocal trap. It contends that it is dangerous tomake any assumption about any scale. Scalesare not independent entities with pre-givencharacteristics. Instead, they are socially con-structed strategies to achieve particular ends.Therefore, any scale or scalar strategy canresult in any outcome. Localisation can lead

Urban Studies, Vol. 43, No. 11, 1921–1941, October 2006

Mark Purcell is in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Washington, 410 Gould Hall, Box 355740 Seattle,Washington, WA 98195-5740, USA. Fax: 206 685 9597. E-mail: mpurcell@u.washington.edu.

0042-0980 Print=1360-063X Online=06=111921–21 # 2006 The Editors of Urban Studies

DOI: 10.1080=00420980600897826

to a more democratic city, or a less democraticone. All depends on the agenda of thoseempowered by a given scalar strategy. Thepaper does not reject the local scale, therefore;it argues that we should reject the local trap.

The paper argues against the local trap inthree ways. First, I develop a theoretical claimusing a social-production argument from scaletheory in geography. Secondly, I review oneparticular subset of the urban democracy litera-ture, that concerned with ‘the right to the city’,to illustrate how the local trap can tempt demo-crats and how it can create important demo-cratic problems. Thirdly, I present a brief casestudy from Seattle that explores these issues inthe context of an empirical example. Thepaper concludes by rejecting the need for a par-ticularly urban democracy, without abandoningthe quest for greater democracy in cities. BeforeI turn to my argument against the local trap, Itake a moment to sketch the neo-liberalcontext that has made it imperative to pursuegreater democracy in cities.

Neo-liberal Globalisation and Democracy

The recent interest in urban democracy and citi-zenship arises in part out of a widespreadconcern about neo-liberal globalisation: theincreasing functional integration of all peopleand places in the world into a single, laissez-faire and capitalist political-economy. Theconcern is that neo-liberal globalisation isundermining democracy (Falk, 2000; Murphy,2000; Castles, 2001; Goodhart, 2001). It isimportant to be clear at the outset that ‘democ-racy’ has many interpretations. The dominantinterpretation of liberal democracy, forexample, can be seen as compatible with econ-omic globalisation, as when neo-liberals advo-cate the spread of the formal institutions ofliberal democracy as part of their vision.However, from other perspectives, such as par-ticipatory, social, deliberative or radical democ-racy, neo-liberalisation produces importantdemocratic problems. Social democrats decrythe erosion of state policies of social insuranceand economic redistribution and the associatedgrowth of material inequality at all scales.These economic shifts have

meant that the very social and materialbasis for greater political equality—centralto the very idea of [social] democracy—has been undermined in many countries(Gill, 1996, p. 215).

Moreover, for deliberative democrats likeDryzek (1996), the neo-liberal emphasis of thefree market has promoted consumer identitiesover citizen identities. Rather than deliberativedemocracy’s ideal of citizens seeking thecommon good, neo-liberalism values whatWalter Parker (2003), resurrecting the term’soriginal meaning, calls ‘idiots’—individualsmyopically pursuing only their self-interest.

In addition to these more general anti-democratic trends, we see also the increasinginfluence of institutions designed to be offlimits to democratic control, such as centralbanks, WTO, IMF and the World Bank(Dryzek, 1996, p. 6). As participatory demo-crats like Fung and Wright argue

Deregulation, privatisation, reduction ofsocial services, and curtailments of statespending have been the watchwords,rather than participation, greater respon-siveness, more creative and effectiveforms of democratic state intervention(Fung and Wright, 2003b, p. 4).

The way to resist neo-liberalisation, this lineof argument contends, is to democratisedecisions “by setting up participatory instru-ments of nonelite empowerment and publicaccountability both inside and outside thestate” (Nylen, 2003, p. 120). Here, forexample, the ‘participatory budgeting’ exper-iment in Brazil has been an important modelfor critical reflection (Baiocchi, 2003).

Many in urban studies have applied thismore general argument about neo-liberal glo-balisation specifically to urban governance(Jessop, 1997; Brenner, 1999; MacLeod andGoodwin, 1999). This large body of researchdemonstrates that for cities the need toremain globally competitive increasingly dic-tates urban policy decisions, narrowing theoptions open to decision-makers (Dryzek,1996). As a result, urban governing insti-tutions have been restructured so that they

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are better able to respond to the needs ofcapital. They are becoming less a democraticforum for citizens to make decisions andmore a tool to ensure that the area competeseffectively for capital investment. This shiftis a problem in the eyes of all democratic tra-ditions, even the liberal one. In this climate,democratic decision-making is seen as slow,messy, inefficient and less likely to producethe kind of tax reductions, infrastructurespending, insurance reforms and businessderegulation that attract and keep capital inan increasingly competitive global economy.As a result, governing institutions are beingincreasingly ‘streamlined’ so they are lessaccountable to the public (Hoggett, 1987).Thus institutions like public–private partner-ships, appointed competitiveness councilsand quasi-public agencies are increasinglymaking decisions that were formerly madeby elected officials directly accountable tothe public. In short, this literature finds thatthe decisions that shape the city are increas-ingly being transferred away from democraticcitizens and towards corporations (Keating,1991; Brownhill et al., 1996; Peck, 1998;Ward, 2000; Tickell and Peck, 2003).

To be sure, this dynamic is variable acrosstime, space and policy area. Increasingly,neo-liberal policies have even been respondingto their democratic deficits by advocating moredemocratic decisions.1 I discuss this dynamicin more detail elsewhere (Purcell, 2004). Butit is not the point of this paper to defend fullythe thesis that neo-liberalisation threatensdemocracy. Rather, following the literatureabove, I set as the background to my discussionthe premise that the structural trend is for theneo-liberal project to move urban governanceaway from democratic decision-making.

Urban Citizenship, Democracy and theRight to the City

The growing democratic problems that neo-liberalisation has produced have been animportant impetus for an explosion of researchon the theme of democracy (Held, 1995;Axtman, 1996; Benhabib, 1996; Brown, 1997;Mouffe, 1999; Young, 2000; Goodhart, 2001;

Decker, 2002). A closely related theme hasbeen studies of citizenship (Hammar, 1990;Smith, 1995; Yuval-Davis, 1997; Linklater,1998; Soysal, 1999; Mitchell, 2001). Manyauthors have focused specifically on how thesethemes play out in cities (Staeheli, 1994; Flyvb-jerg, 1998; Bender, 1999; Beauregard andBounds, 2000; Isin, 2000b; Sassen, 2000;Turner, 2000; McGuirk, 2001; Swyngedouwet al., 2002; Secor, 2003). A small butgrowing sub-section of the urban work hasbecome fascinated with the concept of ‘theright to the city’ as one important principlethat can inform our thinking on democracyand citizenship in the city (Friedmann, 1995;Rights to the City, 1998, 2002; Holston, 1999;Dikec, 2001; Souza, 2001; Mitchell, 2003;Purcell, 2003; Staeheli, 2003).

I will focus my argument on the right to thecity as a way to illustrate in depth the problemof the local trap, but I mean my caution againstthe local trap to apply as a theoretical principleto the entire literature on urban democracyand citizenship. The work on the right to thecity has introduced an exciting new set ofideas into the debate. However, very little ofthis work develops the concept explicitly(Purcell, 2002). One important problem withthis lack of engagement is that, left unexa-mined, the right to the city leads easily intothe local trap. It entices us to prioritise theinterests of local residents over wider publics.As we respond to urban neo-liberalisation bydeveloping new ideas and practices of democ-racy in the city, it is critical to be aware of andto avoid the local trap, because it presents animportant danger to both democracy andsocial justice. In order to discuss the relation-ship between urban democracy and the localtrap more fully, I start by developing a betteridea of just what the local trap is and what itlooks like in academic research.

The Local Trap

The local trap was first named and critiquedby Brown and Purcell in the context of thedevelopment studies literature (Brown andPurcell, 2005; Purcell and Brown, 2005). Itrefers to the tendency of researchers and

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activists to assume something inherent aboutthe local scale. The local trap equates thelocal with ‘the good’; it is preferred presump-tively over non-local scales. What is definedas good can vary widely. In the democracy lit-erature, of course, democratisation is theprimary good. But locally trapped researchalso desires more sustainable, just or cultu-rally diverse cities. The manifestations of thelocal trap vary from positive assertions thatthe local is preferable to passive and oftenunconscious assumptions. These assumptionsusually conflate the local as a strategy withparticular goals, such as the good outcomesjust mentioned.

The local trap is a pervasive problem on theleft, in both academia and activism.2 It rangesbeyond the work on urban democracy and citi-zenship. For example, my own work with col-leagues has explored the problem of the localtrap in both international development studiesand urban food systems (Born and Purcell,forthcoming). In international developmentstudies, a leading alternative to the neo-liberal ‘Washington consensus’ has been acall to democratise development decisions.This alternative, preferable though it may beto the neo-liberal hegemony, frequently fallsinto the local trap. The assumption is thatlocalising decision-making will democratiseit and that democratisation will result ingreater social justice and ecological sustain-ability (for a more detailed examination, seeBrown and Purcell, 2005). This logicalstring involves numerous assumptions thatare extremely common in the literature onenvironment and development. First, localis-ation is conflated with democratisation, eventhough localisation can just as easily lead totyranny and oppression (as with states’ rightsand slavery in the US South). Secondly,‘local people’ are conflated with ‘the people’of democracy’s popular sovereignty, eventhough ‘the people’ can be (and have been)defined at a range of scales. Thirdly, ‘commu-nity’ is commonly conflated with ‘local-scalecommunity’, even though communities existat all scales. Fourthly, and following fromthe assumptions above, local ‘community-based development,’ is then conflated with

‘participatory development’ even thoughlocal-scale community control does notnecessarily lead towards greater popular par-ticipation. And fifthly, the modifier ‘local’ isregularly used to stand in for more specificideas such as ‘indigenous’, ‘poor’, ‘rural’,‘weak’, or ‘traditional’, even though there isnothing essentially local about any of thesecategories (for a detailed literature review ofthe local trap in development studies, seePurcell and Brown, 2005).

Similarly, activists and academics who areinvolved with food systems and security inthe US and Britain often fall into the localtrap (Born and Purcell, forthcoming). Here, adual conflation occurs. The capitalist, corpor-ate, industrial food system is conflated with itsmost extensive of operation, which is global.Because a core value of the literature is tooppose this conventional food system, manyare led to assume that any global-scale foodsystem is inherently undesirable. Manyassume that there is something about the glob-ality of the dominant food system (rather thanits capitalism or industrialism or corporatism)that is problematic. As a consequence, local-scale food systems, since they are not global,are assumed to be inherently desirable.Local food is conflated with just organic,sustainable, secure, fresh, or healthy food.

The same kind of problem is apparent inrecent studies of urban democracy and citizen-ship. The very notion of a particularly urbancitizenship or democracy creates (or perhapsreflects) an inclination to privilege morelocal scales (in the sense that the urban ismore local than the national or the global).This inclination is merely a tendency, not alogical necessity. Examining urban citizen-ship or democracy can be the result of anempirical focus rather than a political prefer-ence. Nevertheless, the literature on urbancitizenship and democracy is marked by thelocal trap in important ways. To be sure, thedegree to which authors are conscious of thequestion of scale varies significantly through-out the literature. Some make a positive casefor preferring the local scale, some do solatently and some are beginning to grapplewith the empirical fact that local-scale

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arrangements do not always result in moredemocratic or more just outcomes. None, tomy knowledge, offers a theoretical solutionto the local trap by starting explicitly fromthe assumption that there is nothing inherentabout scale, a solution I develop below.

The local trap in the urban democracy lit-erature is founded on the assumption thatdevolution of authority will produce greaterdemocracy. It is assumed that the more loca-lised governing institutions are, the moredemocratic they will be. More specifically,the assumption is that the more autonomylocal people have over their local urban area,the more democratic and just decisions aboutthat space will be. Again, the force withwhich this argument is articulated variesfrom person to person. This tradition includesresearch on democracy and citizenship at theneighbourhood level (Berry et al., 1993;Fung, 2004), on ‘community-based’ develop-ment and planning (Fainstein and Fainstein,1995; Mesch and Schwirian, 1996; Green-berg, 1999; McNulty, 1999; Gittell et al.,2000; Green and Haines, 2001; Wells, 2002;Murphy and Cunningham, 2003; Smock,2003; Diers, 2004) and on governing insti-tutions more generally (Council of Europe,1985; UNDESA, 1992; Pratchett, 1999,2004; Weir and Beetham, 1999; Madon andSahay, 2000; Aigner et al., 2001; Hambletonet al., 2003; Latendresse, 2004; Speller andRavenscroft, 2005). While some have begunto question if localised decision-making isnecessarily good (Peterman, 1999; Mohanand Stokke, 2000; Boudreau, 2003), the pre-vailing wisdom follows Latendresse’s (2004,p. 40) logic about Montreal, that “by decentra-lizing power to the boroughs, the Montrealmegacity created some of the necessaryconditions for a greater democratisation ofurban life”. The assumption that decentralisa-tion is necessary for democratisation is theessence of the local trap.

In terms of the local trap, the communitydevelopment literature is perhaps the mostworrisome tradition. As in the internationaldevelopment literature, this body of work rou-tinely assumes community to mean a verylocal-scale group, often no larger than a

neighbourhood. The prevailing sensibility isthat communities should control their owndestiny and so decision-making should belocalised as much as possible. Green andHaynes, for example, argue that

a key element [of community development]is the allocation of development decisionsto the local level, where relationshipsbetween economic development, theenvironment, and social needs are mostvisible (Green and Haynes, 2001, p. 6).

Chaskin and Abunimah note two importantconvictions in the community developmenttradition

One is a philosophical belief in the demo-cratic process and its appropriate connec-tion to local associational action; the otheris a pragmatic belief in the ability of decen-tralized approaches to provide more con-nected, responsive, and co-ordinatedstrategic action. Combined, these tenetsreflect an adherence to a Tocquevilleanvision of locally based collective actionand a belief in neighbourhoods as real andpotential units of such action (Chaskinand Abunimah, 1999, p. 60).

From an economic perspective, a similartendency applies in the literature—as withthe pervasive concern for capturing wealthin the ‘local economy’ (Murphy and Cunning-ham, 2003). This concern is especially preva-lent outside academia, as with groups such asthe Institute for Local Self-Reliance, whichadvocates maximal self-sufficiency for localeconomies.

A more sophisticated but nonetheless pro-blematic example is the emerging agendaassociated with empowered participatory gov-ernance (EPG). Fung and Wright lay out three‘design properties’ for EPG, the first of whichis ‘devolution’.

Since empowered participatory governancetargets problems and solicits participationlocalized in both issue and geographicalspace, its institutional reality requires thecommensurate reorganization of the stateapparatus. It entails the administrative and

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political devolution of power to local actionunits (Fung and Wright, 2003b, p. 20).

Fung and Wright are not naıve, however, anddo see the potential for problems that localunits cannot address by themselves. Neverthe-less, their insistence on devolution to local-scale units represents an assertion that demo-cratisation requires localisation. Their ten-dency towards the local derives in animportant way from their association with a‘participatory’ model of democracy. Moregenerally, the emphasis on decentralisationin the urban democracy literature is partlyheir to the normative theory of participatorydemocracy associated with authors likePateman (1970), Barber (2004), Mansbridge(1983) and Putnam (1993). Participatorydemocrats draw ultimately on Aristotle toargue that people realise their full politicaland human potential only by participatingactively in political decisions. They stressthe need for face-to-face interaction, argu-mentation and negotiation so that people candevelop most fully as citizens. Therefore,they largely oppose representative democracybecause it makes the direct participation ofcitizens much less necessary. Clearly, local-scale communities are much more amenableto this kind of direct, participatory democracy.A more representative model of democracy isa practical necessity for communities too largefor effective face-to-face interaction. Thus theparticipatory tradition in democratic theoryinjects a strong tendency to assume that thelocal is more democratic than other scales.Buttressing this tendency is the work of‘associative’ democrats such as Cohen andRogers (1995) and Matthews (1989) whoregard the devolution of power to the localscale as a way to invigorate democracy(Cunningham, 2001, p. 136). CharlesLummis, perhaps the most eloquent writer inthis tradition, is also the most strident

‘Democratic centralism’ is an expressionlike ‘hot ice’ or ‘diverse unity’; justbecause you can say the words doesn’tprove that they mean something. Ingeneral, democracy depends on localism:the local areas are where the people live.

Democracy doesn’t mean putting powersome place other than where people are(Lummis, 1997, p. 18).

Those on the right are also susceptible to thelocal trap. The recent attempt by conservativehome-owners in the San Fernando Valley tosecede from the City of Los Angeles was jus-tified in part by the argument that secessionwould give the Valley local control andwould therefore be more democratic(Purcell, 2000). Secession apologists haverepeated this specious claim (Hasselhoff,2002). To say the least, giving greaterdecision-making control over their localspace to a relatively Whiter and more affluentsection of the city is not the greatest guaranteeof either democracy or social justice. In theleftist community development literature, thegreat irony of the preference for the localscale is that it plays into the hands of theneo-liberal agenda. The Republican-led with-drawal of federal-government funding fromurban development has shifted the financialand organisational burden of communitydevelopment onto locally based NGOs. Devo-lution, decentralisation and local self-relianceare exactly the vision that Nixon, Reagan,Thatcher and other neo-liberal championshave advocated (Peterman, 1999).

As I discussed earlier, part of the neo-liberal agenda is for the state to increasinglyoffload responsibility for social provisionsonto local authorities and communitygroups. Neo-liberal apologists routinelyjustify offloading by arguing that it augmentslocal control and is therefore more demo-cratic. The ‘new localism’ of the currentLabour government in Britain operates alongthese lines (Deas and Ward, 2000; Pratchett,2004). Peterman sums up the US case

If neither the government nor the privatesector were willing to be the engines ofreinvestment, then, it was argued, the onlyway to bring about neighbourhood revitali-zation was for the community itself to takeon the tasks of reinvestment and develop-ment (Peterman, 1999, p. 49).

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In many ways, community-based develop-ment is a scrambling response to the massivedisinvestment in communities that neo-liberalisation has wrought. It is verydangerous to uncritically assume, with theneo-liberals, that the resulting localisation ofdecision-making is desirable. For example,one of the cases that Fung celebrates in hisEPG work is the democratisation that tookplace in Chicago as a result of a programmeof community policing (Fung and Wright,2003b; Fung, 2004). Fung suggests that com-munity policing programmes took controlover neighbourhood surveillance away fromthe autocratic and unresponsive police depart-ment and put it increasingly in the hands of thecommunity. However, similarly detailed fieldresearch by Steve Herbert suggests a less rosypicture. He argues that community groups feelthey are being asked to do work the stateshould be doing. In Herbert’s research, localcommunities feel overextended and burdenedby neo-liberal offloading, not empowered(Herbert, 2005). Similar problems arose inthe celebrated case of neighbourhood plan-ning in Seattle. Those active in the processexpressed concern that city governmentdumped responsibility for public projectsonto neighbourhood NGOs. One activist feltthat the city was withdrawing from the neigh-bourhoods, that they “dumped a bunch of stuffback in our lap” (Ceraso, 1999).

These empirical concerns begin to revealsome problems with the local trap. Before Idevelop my case against the local trapfurther, it is worthwhile to suggest in theabstract some general problems that followfrom its assumptions. The first is the mostbasic: the assumption that local is desirableis not always true. Mounting case study evi-dence from all of the above traditions suggeststhat local-scale arrangements lead to a varietyof outcomes, only some of them good. Sec-ondly, the local trap treats localisation as anend in itself (since it is conflated with thegood), rather than as a means to an end suchas democracy, justice or sustainability. Acti-vists and academics pursuing localisationcan therefore be distracted from pursuingtheir real goal, whatever that might be. In

the worst case, this distraction will subvertthe goal, as when someone who desiresgreater democracy pursues localisation thatresults in a more oligarchical decision-making. Thirdly, the local trap obscuresother scalar options that might be more effec-tive in achieving a desired outcome. Forexample, assuming that localisation necess-arily leads to more sustainable environmentaldecisions will occlude the option of, say, aEuropean-Union-wide law that mandatesmore sustainable agricultural practices inmember-countries (Goodman, 2003).

The Case against the Local Trap

Theoretical

My theoretical case against the local trapdraws on the burgeoning scale literature inpolitical and economic geography. The keytheoretical principle in this literature is thatscale is socially constructed. While this prin-ciple is widely held in the literature, it isbest articulated by Sallie Marston’s (2000)often-cited article. The argument is that allscales are socially produced through struggle(Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Kelly, 1997).Therefore, the particular qualities of a givenscale, such as its extent, its function or itsrelationships to other scales, are not eternalor ontologically given (Smith, 1992, 1993).Rather, they are contingent: they will resultfrom particular struggles among particularactors in particular times and places. Whilethe principle of social construction hasbecome almost a truism in the social sciences,if we take it seriously with respect to scale wemust conclude in general that there is nothinginherent about any scale. We cannot assume apriori anything about the characteristics of aparticular scale or scalar arrangement. Wecannot assume that localised decision-making structures are inherently more demo-cratic than global ones. Moreover, andperhaps more unsettlingly, we cannot evenassume that a balanced multiscale arrange-ment is preferable to a single-scale one. Thatis, we cannot say before the fact that afederal scalar structure involving local,

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regional, national and global bodies indecision-making is any more democraticthan one in which all decisions are made by,say, a national-scale entity.

From the principle of social construction, itfollows that the outcomes of a particularscalar arrangement are contingent. Theydepend on the particular agendas that areempowered by the scalar arrangement. Loca-lising control over space can produce greaterdemocracy or not, or greater social justice ornot, depending on who is empowered by thelocalisation. And there is no inherent or eventendential link between the agendas of local-scale groups and the agenda of democracy orthat of social justice. The same is true ofregional-scale groups, or national-scale ones.Because scale is not an ontological entitywith particular properties, it is better seen, asErik Swyngedouw has insisted, as a strategy,as a way to achieve a particular end (Swynge-douw, 1997a). What this end will be will varyaccording to who is pursuing it. The theoreti-cal premise of social construction thus servesas a reliable corrective for those tempted intothe local trap.

Another important insight of this literature,one that both supports and complicates thefirst, is that geographical scale is both fluidand fixed. If scales are socially producedthrough political struggle, then scales andscalar arrangements are fluid in the sensethat they are always in historical motion.Swyngedouw (1997b; 2000), for example,argues particularly strongly that scale is fluidand that researchers have tended erroneouslyto think of scales as fixed and given. Theyhave assumed that each scale has both afixed extent and a preset function in theglobal political economy. This assumptionhas led us to treat scale as a latent variableinstead of an active object of inquiry. It hasprevented researchers from perceiving howscales are being continually reorganised.

Despite this emphasis on fluidity, however,others stress that the malleability is nevertotal. Scales and scalar arrangements canalso be fixed into relatively enduring andhegemonic structures for certain periods oftime. Of course, these characteristics and

process are only temporarily (not inherently)associated with a particular scale and eachscalar configuration must be continuallyreproduced through a political project. Eventhough we should expect a given scalar con-figuration—such as national-scale state sover-eignty—to be challenged and eventuallyovercome by other projects that imaginesovereignty at other scales, nevertheless adominantly national-scale sovereignty canbecome hegemonic for a time and this hege-mony can have real and important effects onthe exercise of political power (Purcell,2003). In this sense, scale is not only fluid, itis also fixed.

This partial fixity, of course, can create theconditions for a measure of ‘structured coher-ence’ in a particular context that can temptactors into the local trap (Harvey, 1982). Forexample, if in a given case neo-liberal inter-ests have successfully used a strategy of natio-nalisation to pursue their goals, those resistingneo-liberalism might come to associate thenational scale with the neo-liberal agendaand the local scale with resistance. In thatcase, such scalar associations may become aworkable shorthand for action and theassumptions of the local trap can seem tomatch reality for a time. However, even insuch cases, the local trap remains dangerous.First, structured coherence is never total andso, even if scalar assumptions tend to bevalid in a particular case, they will never bealways valid. Secondly, it is politically debil-itating to assume an equivalence between ascalar strategy (nationalisation) and anagenda (neo-liberalism), because it cedesthat scalar strategy to the opposition. Evenwhen neo-liberals have pursued a nationalisa-tion strategy, there is no reason why activistscannot also pursue an alternative nationalisa-tion strategy to resist. Lastly, the principle ofsocial construction reminds us that such struc-tured coherence is always temporary. Evenwhen scalar assumptions tend to ‘work’under conditions of structured coherence,they will always work temporarily. Any prac-tical validity a scalar assumption might haveis always being destabilised and will soon belost. Therefore, it remains imperative that all

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assumptions about scale be continually sub-jected to critical re-evaluation.

A last insight of the scale literature is thatscale is a fundamentally relational concept(Agnew, 1997; Howitt, 1998; Kelly, 1999).That is, the very idea of scale necessarilyimplies a set of interscalar relationships. A‘local’ scale, for example, only has meaningin relation to other, non-local scales. Eachscale is therefore inseparably defined by andlinked to others. The particular relationshipsamong scales are the product of social pro-duction. The principle of national sovereigntyadvocates the dominance of the national-scalestate over other state scales. It establishes aparticular relationship between the nationaland other scales. Any move towards localis-ation of sovereignty, conversely, advocates anew relationship between local and national/regional scales, as power devolves to localareas. Neil Brenner (2001) is particularlyinsistent on the relational qualities of scale.He calls for analyses that focus on the “shift-ing organisational, strategic, discursive, andsymbolic relationships between a range ofintertwined geographical scales” (Brenner,2001, p. 20). Therefore, analyses of scalemust specifically interrogate the changinginterrelationships among the various scales.

If we were to tie these three theoreticalprinciples together into a coherent methodo-logical approach, we might say that descrip-tive research on scale should interrogate howthe interrelationships among scales are conti-nually fixed, struggled over and reworked byparticular social actors pursuing specific pol-itical, social, economic and ecological goals.Normative research should critically analysewhy a particular rescaling (such as localis-ation) is better than other rescaling strategies(globalisation/nationalisation/regionalisation)for achieving specific goals (such as demo-cratisation) and these goals should be clearlyarticulated and distinguished from the scalarstrategy used to pursue them.

If we follow the scale literature and adoptthese theoretical principles, the local trapbecomes untenable. If there is nothinginherent about any particular scale, then inthe long-term we cannot associate a particular

scale with a particular goal. We cannotassume that localisation of decision-makingwill necessarily result in democratisation.Instead, localisation should raise no a prioriassumptions; it points to an on-going struggleamong competing interests. It invites inquiryto discover what actors and agendas broughtabout and were empowered by localisation.It is those actors and agendas that produce out-comes, not the scales through which theagendas were realised.

The Right to the City

One strain of the new work on urban citizen-ship and democracy evokes the notion of‘the right to the city’. This concept providesan important illustration of how the localtrap can tempt us. Many in academia havebegun to explore ‘the right to the city’ as apromising possibility (Isin, 1996; Soja, 1996,2000; Rights to the City, 1998, 2002;Sandercock, 1998; Holston, 1999; Holstonand Appadurai, 1999; Isin and Wood, 1999;Isin, 2000a; Sassen, 2000). Beyond academia,the term is also gaining greater attention. Toname just a few examples, it is being evokedin conflicts over housing (Olds, 1998; GrantBuilding Tenants Association, 2001), againstpatriarchal cities (UNCHS, 2001; City andShelter et al., n.d.), for participatory planning(Daniel, 2001) and against social exclusion incities more generally (Buroni, 1998; Cities forHuman Rights, 1998; Worldwide Conferenceon the Right to Cities Free from Discrimi-nation and Inequality, 2002).

Unfortunately, however, few in or out ofacademia have offered a detailed expositionof just what the right to the city would entailand they have not developed what benefitsor detriments it might have for the enfranch-isement of urban residents. To be clear, thiswork is innovative, stimulating andwelcome. However, it falls short of a carefulexposition and evaluation of the right to thecity idea. We lack a comprehensive expla-nation of what the right to the city is or howit would challenge, compliment or replacecurrent rights and rights claims. Forexample, a recent conference in Rome entirely

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devoted to right(s) to the city was full ofexcellent papers. However, virtually all ofthem failed to discuss the idea in detail(Rights to the City, 2002). Moreover, eachpaper seemed to take it as a given that theright to the city was desirable.

The few who have explored the concept ingreater depth have all done so by drawingexplicitly on the formulation of HenriLefebvre (Dikec, 2001; Mitchell, 2003;Purcell, 2003). I begin this discussion bysketching a Lefebvrian exposition of theidea. In doing so, I certainly do not wish tosay that a Lefebvrian formulation is the onlyacceptable way to conceive of the right to thecity, or that we need a unified conception atall. Rather, I return to Lefebvre’s initial ideaas one starting-point for a more explicit deli-neation of the right to the city. The Lefebvrianconception, I argue, has the potential to leadscholars and activists into the local trap.

Lefebvre’s conception of the right to thecity is mostly articulated in two short works,The Right to the City and Space and Politics(Lefebvre, 1968, 1973, 1991a, 1996). Inthese volumes, he argues for profoundlyreworking both the social relations of capital-ism and the current structure of decision-making in cities. His right to the city is acall for a radical restructuring of social,political and economic relations, both in thecity and beyond. One key to this radicalnature is that Lefebvre’s right to the cityreframes decision-making in cities: insteadof limiting democratic decision-making tostate decisions, he imagines it to apply toany decision that contributes to the productionof urban space. This shift differentiates theright to the city clearly from present formsof democratic enfranchisement in liberaldemocracies, which revolve predominantlyaround the structures, policies and decisionsof the formal state. Liberal-democratic citi-zens (whose formal citizenship status isbased on nationality) have an institutionalisedvoice in the decisions of the state and theytherefore have some indirect control overany social process the state can influence.By contrast, the right to the city imaginespeople to be enfranchised with respect to all

decisions that produce urban space. Thatsimple change radically expands the scopeof democratic enfranchisement and citizen-ship beyond the state structure. Many of thedecisions that produce urban space are madewithin the state, but many more of them aremade outside it. The investment decisions offirms, for example, would fall within thepurview of the right to the city because suchdecisions play a critical role in producingurban space.

But what kind of agenda does Lefebvrehope will result from this transformedenfranchisement? The right to the city stressesthat the city must be produced so that it meetsthe needs of the users of urban space, not itsowners. Hence, he stresses the key role thaturban inhabitants must play in makingdecisions. He imagines a far-reaching claimto shift control away from capital and thestate and towards urban inhabitants. ForLefebvre, one lays claim to the right to thecity by inhabiting the city. Through theireveryday routines and rhythms of life in thecity, inhabitants come both to depend on andtruly to understand urban space. Lefebvrecelebrates these everyday routines; he ideal-ises the urban inhabitant as the legitimatesteward of urban space. The right to the cityis designed to further the interests “of thewhole society and firstly of all those whoinhabit” (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 158). He arguesthat the right to the city

should modify, concretize and make morepractical the rights of the citizen as anurban dweller (citadin) and user of multipleservices. It would affirm, on the one hand,the right of users to make known theirideas on the space and time of their activi-ties in the urban area; it would also coverthe right to the use of the center, a privi-leged place, instead of being dispersedand stuck into ghettos (for workers, immi-grants, the ‘marginal’ and even for the ‘pri-vileged’) (Lefebvre, 1991a; translated inKofman and Lebas, 1996, p. 34).

Lefebvre is clear that the decision-making roleof inhabitants must be central, but he is notexplicit about what that centrality would

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mean. He does not clearly say decisions thatproduce urban space should be made entirelyby inhabitants. But it is clear that the roleinhabitants play must be central and direct.In playing that central role, inhabitantswould ensure their right to physically access,occupy and use urban space. They have theright to “full and complete usage” of urbanspace in the course of everyday life (Lefebvre,1996, p. 179). This claim of course stands indirect opposition to the capitalist notion ofproperty rights so central to current urbandecision-making.

Lefebvre did not write expansively on thequestion of scale and his work on the rightto the city is no exception. Lefebvre’s rightto the city does not explicitly fall into thelocal trap. Indeed, in other writings (and to alesser extent in the Right to the City itself)his vision of the urban is expansive, not paro-chial (Lefebvre, 1991a, 2003). If we were tocontextualise Lefebvre’s statements aboutthe right to the city in a thorough expositionof his various other work, we might wellproduce something that effectively avoidsthe local trap. However, current work on theright to the city rarely even engages or citesLefebvre’s Right to the City; it is thereforeunlikely to offer a subtle reading of his rightto the city idea in the context of his otherwork. So, lacking such a contextualisation,for those who are currently advocating aright to the city it is only a very short stepfrom privileging inhabitants to privileginglocal residents. This step is made more tempt-ing because Lefebvre’s notion of inhabitanceas he develops it in the Right to the City andSpace and Politics is expressly quotidian. Itemphasises the routines and rhythms throughwhich inhabitants engage the city. Thisemphasis on daily, concrete experience leadsone to conceive of inhabitance and inhabitantsin local terms, to see the right to the city as theright of local people to control what happensin their local space. This would mean thatneighbourhood groups (not city-wide bodies)should decide how neighbourhood space isproduced, since they most fully inhabit thatspace every day. Or, in a larger area, itcould mean that city-wide inhabitants should

control the production of space in their city,rather than decision-making bodies at widerscales (county, state, nation, etc.). This is pre-cisely the manifestation of the local trap wesee in the development studies literature,where many conflate local autonomy withgreater democracy or justice (Purcell andBrown, 2005). It is important to reiterate thatI am not saying that Lefebvre himself wouldhave affirmed a locally trapped right to thecity. In fact, the opposite is probably true.However, there is a clear danger that theright to the city idea, with or without referenceto Lefebvre, can be mobilised in locallytrapped ways. To develop how this mightlook in concrete terms, I offer a brief casestudy of local politics in Seattle.

Empirical Illustration: Politics in Seattle

Currently, the South Lake Union (SLU) areaof Seattle is undergoing a significant redeve-lopment that exhibits many elements of therelationship between neo-liberalism anddemocracy I outline above. SLU has longbeen a fairly low-density mixture of ware-houses, car dealerships, marine-commercial,light manufacturing and, in its Cascade sub-section, residents with moderate incomes(see Figure 1). Recently, one of the city’slargest real estate development firms,Vulcan, Inc., which is owned by Microsoftbillionaire Paul Allen, purchased a significantportion of the property in the area (seeFigure 2). Vulcan’s project is multifaceted,but in large part it is driven by speculationthat a small hub of biotechnology firms inthe area will serve as a ‘technopole’ for thedevelopment of a global centre for biotechnol-ogy (Scott, 1993). Such biotechnology hubsare an increasingly common neo-liberalgrowth strategy (Larner, 2005). In the SLUcase, the technopole would be supported bya number of biotechnology firms already oper-ating in the area, as well as the University ofWashington, which has a particular expertisein biotechnology research. The technopolevision is the expressed goal of both Seattle’smayor, Greg Nickels, and Washington’srecently elected governor, Christine Gregoire.

URBAN DEMOCRACY AND THE LOCAL TRAP 1931

Figure 1. Seattle and South Lake Union.

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There is, in short, a convergence of agendasbetween the private sector and leading figuresin municipal and state government. Somehave implied the existence of corruptioninsofar as current Vulcan employees areformer staffers for the Mayor and CityCouncil (Mulady, 2004a). However, it ismore accurate to say that the agendas of theCity and Vulcan converge around the desireto create a biotechnology boom in SLU.This convergence has produced a shared

strategy that has the City and Vulcanworking closely together. Many of Vulcan’scurrent holdings were bought from the Cityat a bargain rate. Then the City rezonedmuch of that land to make it more amenableto the biotechnology vision (and consequentlymore valuable to Vulcan). Currently, the Cityis moving to commit a significant amount ofpublic money to improve the local infrastruc-ture for biotechnology, further increasing thevalue of Vulcan’s investment. Estimates

Figure 2. Vulcan Holdings in South Lake Union. Source: Mulady (2004b).

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vary as to the amount of this proposed publicinvestment. The City suggests it is around$420 000 000, while at least one activist coun-ters it is closer to $1 billion (Mulady, 2004b).To suggest somehow that graft or personalrelationships are moving the city to lineVulcan’s pockets is to miss the deep mutualbenefit that both public and private sectorsbelieve will result from a biotechnology hub.In essence, what has emerged is an informalbut nevertheless strong public–private part-nership, a common neo-liberal governancestructure for promoting an economic growthagenda.

As part of the partnership’s strategy, aclear narrative has been constructed to advo-cate the redevelopment of SLU. The narrativebegins with the story of the fragile regionaleconomy. Boeing, the region’s aerospaceanchor, is carrying out an on-going disinvest-ment that will deeply impact not onlyBoeing employees, but also the industry’smany multipliers. Moreover, the recent dot-com bust has revealed the fragility of aneconomy dependent on the unreliable profit-ability of Internet firms. In terms of economicdevelopment, biotechnology is widely seen as‘the next big thing’ and it is therefore theperfect insurance against the region’s shakyeconomy. Referring to a powerful economicsymbol in the local imagination, the Mayorpromised in a 2003 press release that biotechwill be “equivalent to another Microsoft”.Buttressing this narrative of economicgrowth, another narrative constructs theSouth Lake Union area as ‘empty’, both interms of residents and economic value. Onlya few (marginal) people live in SLU, thenarrative goes, and the businesses there arehardly central to the regional economy.Redevelopment in this empty area will there-fore cause minimal disruption but producemaximum economic benefit. Together, thesenarratives lead inexorably to the conclusionthat we must undertake a comprehensive redeve-lopment of SLU to create a biotechnologyboom for the region.

These narratives are supported by the neo-liberal narrative of global competitiveness.Because biotechnology is the hot new industry,

many cities will compete to attract biotechnol-ogy investment. If Seattle wants to create aglobally competitive hub, it cannot be indeci-sive. It has to be assertive. The city is famousfor ‘the Seattle Way’—an affinity for demo-cratic process in which public decisions areextensively debated, far more so than in othercities. In this case, the narrative goes, the citycannot afford the luxury of the Seattle Way.Not only must we redevelop SLU, we mustdo so quickly, with minimal dithering, in away that is most attractive to biotechnologycapital. The informal partnership has takenprecisely that tack: the process has been strik-ingly closed and insulated from public debate,especially in the context of the Seattle Way.

The right to the city immediately resists thesenarratives. It would offer a counter-narrativebased on the assertion that SLU is not empty.According to the 2000 census, there are about1500 residents in South Lake Union, mostly inthe Cascade neighbourhood. They are mostlyof low-to-moderate income. The area is alsohome to a number of social service agencies,mostly NGOs providing housing, drug andcounselling services. The residents and theusers of social services inhabit South LakeUnion, living out their everyday routines andrhythms there. They both depend on and inti-mately understand SLU’s space in a way thatVulcan, the City and the biotechnology firmsnever could. As the users of South LakeUnion, Cascade residents should play a centralrole in deciding how its space is produced.The right to the city would thus be the foun-dation of a claim that would oppose any redeve-lopment that gentrifies the area and squeezes outresidents of moderate income. It would notnecessarily oppose a biotechnology hub, but itwould mandate a careful consideration of howthe redevelopment was carried out: howwould the needs of current residents (especiallylow-income ones) be met? How would afford-able housing be preserved? What jobs wouldthe new hub offer inhabitants?

Against the neo-liberal instinct to sacrificesuch questions on the altar of competitiveness,the right to the city demands these questionsbe central to redevelopment discourse.However, the right to the city can also urge

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us into the local trap. It encourages an empha-sis on the rights of neighbourhood inhabitants.It thus could easily lead us to assume that localneighbourhood control over SLU redevelop-ment would be more democratic than controlat a city-wide scale. It is more democratic,the right to the city might suggest, for thosewho inhabit the space of SLU, those whodepend on it most and know it best, todecide its future. While this approach mightmeet the needs of SLU inhabitants, it may ormay not result in a democratic or sociallyjust outcome. For example, if a biotechnologyboom were to create a significant number ofliving-wage jobs, significant economicbenefits would flow to residents region-wide,even if low-income residents were displaced.Certainly, in that case there would be import-ant questions about how those benefits wouldbe distributed. But, however, they are distrib-uted, if SLU residents choose to prevent dis-placement in such a way as to undercut theboom, there is no guarantee that democracyor social justice would be served. While theneeds of Cascade residents would be met,they might prevent the creation of well-paying jobs that could benefit people acrossthe region. In that case, the interests of aneighbourhood-level low-income populationwould be privileged over the needs of amuch larger regional low-income population.3

The decision-making structure could be saidto be closer to oligarchy than democracy, asa small cadre of individuals makes a decisionthat serves their interests but not the interestsof a larger public.

Alternatively, it is entirely possible (oreven probable) that the promise of biotechnol-ogy is being overstated, that the proposedredevelopment would have little economicimpact and only succeed in displacing low-income residents and enriching Paul Allen.In that case, local neighbourhood controlcould oppose redevelopment, prevent gentrifi-cation and avoid wasting a large public invest-ment. The needs of both the neighbourhoodinhabitants and citizens across the citywould be met. A just outcome would result,but it would still not be the most democraticdecision-making process.

Therefore, the same structure of localcontrol could produce both just and unjust out-comes, depending on the unknown effects ofbiotechnology development. Localisingdecision-making authority would empowerthe agenda of Cascade neighbourhood inhabi-tants. In the case of SLU, that would mean ananti-gentrification agenda. The needs of thelocal population would certainly be met. Theneeds of the regional population may or maynot be met. If the promise of a biotechnologyboom is a chimera, localisation wouldempower an agenda of social justice withoutdemocratisation. In a different empiricalcontext, localisation might not achieve socialjustice, as when wealthy home-owners uselocal control to prevent new low-incomehousing rather than preserving it. And localis-ation could lead to democratisation as well, if,for example, neighbourhood inhabitantsgained greater say over the development of asmall strip mall that primarily served neigh-bourhood residents. In the latter case, theinterests of the larger population would beminimal and local control would not privilegea local community over larger communities.In the SLU case, while localisation wouldtend away from democratisation (in thesense of whether the entire affected popu-lation has a say in the decision), it is very dif-ficult to predict whether or not it wouldproduce more social justice. The local trapassumes that localisation is desirable, but thesituation is quite a lot more complicatedthan that.

While the right to the city makes the localtrap tempting, there is another way toimagine the right to the city in the SLU casethat would rely less heavily on scalar assump-tions. Groups of neighbourhood inhabitantsacross the city could oppose the redevelop-ment based on the massive amounts ofpublic investment it is likely to involve.Here, the argument is that public money,especially that being spent by the City, isflowing into one neighbourhood rather thanbeing distributed more fairly throughoutSeattle. It is being used to promote economicgrowth rather than the use-value of Seattleinhabitants. The right to the city would

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argue that public investment should flow toareas where inhabitants’ use-value needs aregreatest, not where economic growth potentialis highest. People in neighbourhoods likeColumbia City and Rainier Beach haveargued that they have long-standing infra-structure needs (streets, sidewalks, parks)that the City has ignored, and yet it iscommitting huge amounts to redevelopSouth Lake Union. Moreover, that investmentis not likely to meet the use-value needs ofSLU inhabitants, but benefit the exchangevalue interests of private firms. The right tothe city would argue that such publicinvestment should benefit those who inhabitthe city, not those who own its property.Under this banner, neighbourhood groupsacross the city might join in what Laclauand Mouffe (1985) call a ‘chain of equival-ence’, where diverse political groups coalescearound a shared political interest. Using theright to the city as the basis of their claim,they could press the city to involve inhabitantsdirectly in decisions on how to spend publicmoney, so that a use-value agenda could bemost fully advanced. A viable movement hasnot yet developed along these lines, but thesentiment, and therefore political potential,is there.

Such a movement would avoid the localtrap because it would not be concerned witha scalar approach to decision-making. Itwould still draw on Lefebvre’s notion of inha-bitance, arguing that the needs of propertyowners should be counterbalanced by theneeds of inhabitants across the city. But itwould not assume the needs of localCascade inhabitants to be more importantthan the needs of inhabitants in other neigh-bourhoods or inhabitants at other scales. Itwould stress the political distinction betweeninhabitant and owner, not the scalar distinc-tion between the local and wider scales. Asthis second conception makes clear, the rightto the city does not lead inevitably into thelocal trap, rather it only tempts one in thatdirection. It could also inspire effective resist-ance to neo-liberal urbanism, but only if weinsist that there is nothing inherent aboutscale.

Conclusion

The SLU case study involves an interplaybetween neighbourhood, municipal andregional scales. In this case, the local scalemeans the neighbourhood scale. Of course,the same dynamic applies when we considerthe right to the city in a wider scalar context.The entire urban region can also be the rela-tively more local scale. For example, thePort of Seattle affects Seattle-area inhabitants,but it is also critical for rural communitiesacross the Pacific Northwest, who use it toship agricultural products. The right to thecity would urge us to consider first what isbest for the urban inhabitants who experiencethe Port in the course of their daily routines.However, in decisions about the Port, if wefavour urban inhabitants over state-wideinhabitants, we are just as likely to diminishdemocracy as we are to enhance it. Thus, thespecific notion of the right to the city can bedangerous because it can impel us to prefera priori the urban scale over wider scales—apreference that is the essence of the localtrap. It therefore makes sense to talk insteadof the right to inhabit, without reference tothe scale or settlement pattern one inhabits.The essence of Lefebvre’s vision is to favourthose who inhabit space over those who ownit. It is not to favour local inhabitants overinhabitants at wider scales or, I would argue,to favour urban inhabitants over rural ones.The right to the city in particular leads easilyto a privileging of the local urban scale andthus into the local trap. In using Lefebvre’sideas to help us to imagine new forms ofdemocracy, it is critical not to privilege theurban—as a scale—a priori.

This same logic also applies to the idea ofurban democracy more generally. There isnothing inherently important about the urbanscale in creating a more democratic society.Rather, any talk of reinvigorating urbandemocracy might be better expressed as rein-vigorating democracy in cities. Because theneo-liberal agenda has been pursued particu-larly vehemently in cities, there is a particularstrategic, though contingent, need to inventradical democratic practices in cities

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(Brenner and Theodore, 2002). That does notmean the urban is inherently more importantthan wider scales (or non-urban places), onlythat it is perhaps a more strategic front atthis particular time and place. Equally import-ant in the long term is to resist neo-liberalism by developing radical democraticresistance at broader scales and in ruralplaces. The right to inhabit, freed of an over-emphasis on the urban, is a promising prin-ciple that can inspire that resistance.

Notes

1. This trend can be seen as largely the result ofthe on-going regulation of neo-liberalism incities. That is, as raw neo-liberalism createssocial discord, inequality and legitimacyproblems, it becomes necessary to developregulatory mechanisms that can managethese problems (Tickell and Peck, 2003).For example, I would argue that the meteoricrise of deliberative practices in planning(often called ‘communicative planning’), arein part a way to create a visible processwhose rules are democratic enough to legiti-mate decisions but still ensure a controllinginterest for capital.

2. It is worth noting other scalar traps on the leftas well, as with the argument that global neo-liberalism is best countered by a similarlyglobal strategy of resistance (Hardt andNegri, 2000). Similarly, socialists and socialdemocrats commonly call for re-empoweringthe national state as the best hope for the res-urrection of strong policies of social provisionand income redistribution. And many urbanscholars call for regional governance as thebest hope for challenging inequality withinthe metropolitan region (for example, Rusk,1995).

3. To complicate the evaluation further, on aglobal scale, Seattle is a relatively affluentcity. If it successfully attracts biotech invest-ment (instead of, say, Bangalore) whateverwealth is captured locally would tend toexacerbate inequality on a global scale.

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