State Reforms and Practices in Urban Development after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

This paper examines recent transformations in state organization and practices following the 2008 global financial crisis, especially with regard to urban development. It is argued that the financial crisis revealed the fallacy of the erosion of the nation state under neoliberal globalization, with its manifest resurgence as the key scale of crisis administration: nexus for both the financial rescue of the banking system and the re-scaling of regulation at the sub-national scale. After a review of recent trends in state theory in urban and regional studies, the paper describes the political geography of the financial crisis before exploring in greater detail the unfolding of spatial policy and institutional change in two contrasting cases: Birmingham in the UK and Medellín in Colombia. In both cases, evidence is provided which indicates renewed and probably durable processes of recentralization of regulatory powers and greater intervention in local affairs, as well as new forms of state territorial conflict.