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Sydney and Lima present an interesting comparative case study. They have multiple outwardly similar characteristics including the presence of a colonial past, major ports and a diverse ethnic demographic. Explaining path-dependence however, requires an understanding of specific historical-institutional contextual factors as it is a place-dependent process.

Being Australia’s leading global city, Sydney evinces the status with highly advanced producer services linking it with an increasingly integrated world economy. Although Sydney’s modern development occurred within the last couple of centuries, its former status of a penal colony governs its particular historical trajectory. As the new capital of the British colony of New South Wales, the city quickly became the focal point for political and cultural development marked by colonial traits. Its transition from a penal colony moreover, was characterised by rapid socio-economic development aided by a number of gold rushes in the mid-19th century.

A view of downtown Sydney from the Ferry. (Photo by Ryan Wick, Flickr)

The Gold Rush attracted myriad immigrant miners, initiating the city’s long history of hosting migrants. The presently growing scale and diversity of Sydney’s foreign-born population is of particular importance. It is a gateway city for permanent migrants as well as for temporary workers who circulate from one world city to another.

The postcolonial context of Latin America also calls for specific attention. As Peru’s financial and industrial capital, Lima’s urban landscape is large and varied. Lima’s history is distinguished by alternative programs that were adopted, in order to deliberately avoid the perceived social and economic costs of the commonplace structural adjustment programs of the late 20th century. Furthermore, a study of its contemporary urban scene requires a focus on barriadas or squatter settlements. Estimates suggest that over 40% of Lima’s built environment started out of barriadas. This brings into discussion the notion of informality and its implications for the urban.

Plaza Mayor, main square of Lima. (Photo by Mariano Mantel, Flickr)

Polarisation and Spatial Segregation

Various urban processes often have overlapping causes and consequences. Inequality is one such helpful analytical starting point for comparing different urban contexts. The social polarisation thesis argues that structural changes in the labour force that accompany the emergence of global cities, result in increasing levels of social polarisation.

This thesis has been empirically tested in the context of different global cities. In Sydney, global economic forces have created an occupational structure characterised by dynamic growth in certain occupations and decline in certain others. According to Baum (1996) however, this only partially confirms the social polarisation thesis. He points to a different type of social polarisation that draws into purview both the paid labour force and the unemployed. He emphasises the gendering of work and impact of migration as contextual factors that dilute the effect of global forces. According to him, global forces combined with the actions of the welfare state and the aforementioned local factors, have resulted in social polarisation between three groups in Sydney; high income individuals with a strong attachment to the global economy, working class individuals with a weak attachment to the economy and finally individuals who are outside the employed labour force, who have little benefits to draw from the global economy.

The resulting high level of spatial inequality in Sydney has often been a cause for concern. The low-income areas are mostly segregated and highly concentrated in the fringes of the city and in suburban clusters. The widespread socio-economic segregation in Lima on the other hand, is highly fragmented and localised with ‘pockets’ of difference spread across outwardly homogenous areas. The socio-spatial segregation is made further complex by the proximity of different socio-economic groups and the increasing recourse to walled or gated communities. Numerous studies on Lima have moreover focused on the nature and desirability of barriadas.

The barriadas in Lima were originally the result of internal rural-urban migration wherein large residential communities were illegally formed and consolidated. Over time however, it is compelling to argue in favour of the positive effects of these barriadas. Beyond persuading a fundamental reorganisation of the city, they may even be considered a catalyst for growth. Moreover, they have provided housing for millions of people at affordable prices and have also employed the labour of the inhabitants. Barriadas have thus played a crucial function in addressing the infrastructural and housing problems that affect the urban poor of Lima. The polarisation processes in Sydney and Lima call into question the multi-causality of its outcomes. While global processes were partially responsible for the social and occupational restructuring of Sydney, their impact was diffused by the presence of significant local factors such as migration and gendered work. Likewise, in Lima, the period of departure from orthodox structural adjustment programmes towards a focus on rapid economic growth, encouraged the growth of poverty and inequality. Specific historical-institutional contexts created a layered and contradicting spatial inequality.

Specific historical-institutional contexts created a layered and contradicting spatial inequality. Both the cases therefore reinstate the need to distinguish between urban processes and urban forms.

Children’s dining room in a barriada in Lima (Photo by SOPEDAZ, Flickr)

Global Connectivity and Urban History

Sydney occupies an unequivocal position as a global city, according to several scholarly studies. Its integration into the world economy is aided especially by its niche in global finance apart from being Australia’s largest agglomeration of other producer services. The knowledge-based economy of the city noticeably relies on migrants from overseas and Australia alike. This is not surprising, given the world and global city hypotheses from Friedmann (1986) and Sassen (1991), respectively. Both Sassen and Friedmann stress the increasing attraction towards these cities as migrant destinations. While Lima’s profile on the Global and World Cities (2012) inventory is that of a beta city implying a lower global connectivity than that of Sydney, which is characterised as an alpha city, its economy is also fuelled by a burgeoning migrant population, albeit mostly from Peru and other Andean countries. It is interesting to also note the high migrant population employed in the informal sector. According to an estimate, former street vendors owning small business now contribute to about 80% of the region’s production of clothing and textiles (Chambers, 2005).

Businesses in Lima (photo by Mariano Mantel, Flickr)

While cities of the Global North usually have a longer scripted history than their counterparts from the South, Lima’s modern history predates Sydney by at least a couple of centuries. The industrialisation and socio-economic development of Lima was drawn out and complex, marked by hiatuses caused by political turmoils and natural disasters. Lima’s history is additionally marked by increased immigration in the postwar years and increased economic growth towards the second half of the 20th century. Sydney’s modern trajectory on the other hand, is outwardly akin to that of its sister cities such as San Francisco and Portsmouth, with deference to the postwar development of the service sector. Local historical and socio-political institutions of both cities have thus characteristically altered urban outcomes in specific manners.

Future Road for Comparisons

A comparative project of Sydney and Lima is capable of generating far deeper insights if the analysis is limited to a particular phenomenon. In this regard, the process of gentrification in both the cities presents a rich field of inquiry. Approaches to gentrification have been varied and contested, thereby setting the ideal stage for comparison across different contexts.

Consider for instance the critical work of Janoschka, Sequera and Salinas (2014) which seeks to reassess gentrification through the territorial and socio-linguistic lens of Latin American researchers. Their analysis affirms that “when gentrification expands to urban settings outside the Anglophone world, it embraces local specificities and creates symbiotic forms that embed existing discourses, practices and administrative, political and social structurings”. They further argue that the politics of gentrification is symbolic where it restricts the use and appropriation of public space. Another key postulation is their critical view of neoliberalism as the sole causal factor. While these insights furnish a suitable exploratory framework in the case of Lima, gentrification in Sydney can be related to the phenomenon of super-gentrification in London’s Barnsbury i.e., the superimposed gentrification of a previously gentrified space. The work of Bounds and Morris (2006) for instance, details a second-wave of gentrification in Sydney’s Pyrmont Ultimo. Having said that, the phenomenon can be construed as converging where one resorts to neoliberalism as an explanatory tool. According to Smith (2002) for example, gentrification is now a global urban strategy whose impulse is connected to the circulation of global capital and culture.

Conclusion: “Cities Beyond Compare?”

At this juncture it deems necessary to revisit the space between planetary and particular urbanisms as elucidated by Jamie Peck (2015), wherein he ponders over the comparability of cities. Peck calls for more constructive criticisms that not only deconstruct universalising theories, but channel the process into reconstructing the explanatory potential of theories. He advocates an urban-theory renewal, capable of generating exchanges at the interface between political economy and post colonialism, between determinism and exceptionalism. The comparison attempted here and the future scope for comparison vis-a-vis the process of gentrification thus attest to the significance of Peck’s arguments. Cities are supposed to motivate comparisons where efforts are made to check the the hegemonising potential of universal theory, and to ensure the retention of unique, differentiating characteristics.

The comparability of Sydney and Lima draws attention to important debates in comparative urbanism. While Sydney and Lima are not necessarily “beyond compare”, they do not emanate deeply homogeneous characteristics. Focusing on particular urban processes such as polarisation, spatial inequality and global connectivity, illuminates the relevance of local contexts in formulating coherent pan-urban comparisons. Particular socio-political and historical institutions of both cities affect the ways in which uniform global and urban processes generate outcomes. Comparability, whether minimal or strong, therefore helps to trace possible causal patterns, or to critically reinvigorate abstract theorisations.

References

• Boano, C., & Desmaison, B. (2018, September 19). Lima’s ‘Wall of Shame’ and the gated communities that build poverty into Peru. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/limas-wall-of-shame-and-the-gated-communities-that-build-poverty-into-peru-53356

• Bounds, M., & Morris, A. (2006). Second wave gentrification in inner-city Sydney. Cities, 23(2), 99-108. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2005.09.001

• Bradbury, B. (2018, December 06). What did the rich man say to the poor man? Why spatial inequality in Australia is no joke. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/what-did-the-rich-man-say-to-the-poor-man-why-spatial-inequality-in-australia-is-no-joke-73841

• Butler, T., & Lees, L. (2006). Super-gentrification in Barnsbury, London: Globalization and gentrifying global elites at the neighbourhood level. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(4), 467-487. doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00220.x

• Chambers, B. (2005). The Barriadas of Lima: Slums of Hope or Despair? Problems or Solutions? Geography, 90(3), 200-225.

• Hu, R. (2014). Migrant knowledge workers: An empirical study of global Sydney as a knowledge city. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(12), 5605-5613. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2014.02.011

• Janoschka, M., Sequera, J., & Salinas, L. (2013). Gentrification in Spain and Latin America – a Critical Dialogue. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(4), 1234-1265. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12030

• Peters, P. A., & Skop, E. H. (2007). Socio-spatial Segregation in Metropolitan Lima, Peru. Journal of Latin American Geography, 6(1), 149-171. doi:10.1353/lag.2007.0009

• Smith, N. (2012). New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy. Spaces of Neoliberalism, 80-103. doi:10.1002/9781444397499.ch4

• The World According to GaWC 2012. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2012t.html

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