Neoliberal Urbanism: Models, Moments, Mutations

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the connections between neoliberalization processes and urban transformations. Cities have become strategically central sites in the uneven, crisis-laden advance of neoliberal restructuring projects. However, in contrast to neoliberal ideology, our analysis draws attention to the path-dependent interactions between neoliberal projects of restructuring and inherited institutional and spatial landscapes. Accordingly, we emphasize the geographically variable, yet multiscalar and translocally interconnected, nature of neoliberal urbanism. We also suggest that cities are sites of serial policy failure as well as resistance to neoliberal programs of urban restructuring. For these reasons, urban regions provide an important reference point for understanding some of the limits, contradictions and mutations of the neoliberal project since the 1990s.