©Rex/Shutterstock

The word “urbanism” first appeared in print in the mid-19th century. But it’s only in recent years that the term has become fashionable. Indeed, it has spawned a new type of professional: the “urbanist.” Defined by the OED as “an expert in urban life or urban areas,” such figures occupy a proliferation of roles in policymaking and academia—roles that have accompanied the boom in regeneration and property development that has characterised cities since the 1990s, especially in the US and the UK.

Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak, the authors of The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism, are prime examples of this breed. Katz is a specialist in “global urbanisation” at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, which boasts former Federal Reserve Chairs Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke among its fellows. Katz, who in the 1990s was chief of staff to the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has been instrumental in shaping American—and British—urban policy.

The cliché is that policies that start life in the US arrive in Britain some 10 to 15 years later. But the New Localism, as Katz and Nowak call it, is a rare example of a trend that has moved in the opposite direction, drawing on David Cameron’s ill-fated “Big Society.”

In reality the New Localism is a mixture of American and British ideas. Robert Putnam’s networks of “social capital”; Whitehall’s Business Improvement Districts; and Richard Florida’s contentious book, The Rise of the Creative Class. Florida argued that knowledge-workers (in design, technology, education, arts and entertainment) who cluster in hip downtown locations are the spur for economic growth.

The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism 

by Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak (Brookings Institution, £21.95

“Network governance,” “place-making,” the “entrepreneurial city,” “extracting value”: these are the Katz and Nowak buzz phrases of choice. Singled out for praise is the vast private development at King’s Cross in London—an “innovation cluster” that has attracted a Google office, an art college and high-end bars and restaurants.

YOU'VE HIT THE LIMIT

You have now reached your limit of 3 free articles in the last 30 days.
But don't worry! You can get another 7 articles absolutely free, simply by entering your email address in the box below.

When you register we'll also send you a free e-book—Writing with punch—which includes some of the finest writing from our archive of 22 years. And we'll also send you a weekly newsletter with the best new ideas in politics and philosophy of culture, which you can of course unsubscribe from at any time

Email

Prospect takes your privacy seriously. We promise never to rent or sell your e-mail address to any third party.
You can unsubscribe from the Prospect e-mail newsletter at any time.