H.S. Geyer, ed. 2009.

International Handbook of Urban Policy, Volume 2: Issues in the

Developed World. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA, USA.

ISBN: 978-1-84720-459-2. 341pp.

Industrialization has put a landmark on the transformation of cities and their vicinities

since new technologies, rapid socio-economic growth has led to the development of new

cities in the developed and even in the developing world but as a result there have been many

environmental and social challenges too which have been faced equally by the whole world.

Most importantly, cities in the developing countries have been growing at the fastest pace

where consequently urban population has been greater than the rural population.

In this series of books, H.S. Geyer along with his contributors have brought about

three volume of international handbook on urban policy which provide extensive and detailed

debate on global policy issues considering a wide range of perspectives and perceptions about

issues, vitality and economic growth of the cities.

The book which is reviewed here, International handbook of Urban Policy, Second

volume focuses on the issues of developed world. The focus of this book mostly comprises

the cities of European Union and United States of America. The book consists of four parts

with thirteen chapters which address issues of urban societies most primarily in the developed

world. The first part discusses the urban policy context, this part introduces policy contexts of

urban societies and contains only one chapter in it. Second part examines the trends of

urbanization and the evolution of these urban systems in regional, national and international

urban communities which contains three chapter in it. Third part analyses economic changes

in urban societies through geographical composition of economic resources and through their

institutional designs which contains six chapters. The last part discusses the changes of urban

demographic landscapes through labour migration and immigration which contains three
chapters. Lately urban development has become so diversified that encompasses almost every

dimension of a society either information and communication or migration or population or

global warming or aging or economics or energy etc.

Pacione introduces the policy context of urbanization which according to him is

related to the management of the urban change. He stresses upon comparative examination of

urban society’s development manifestations in different countries specifically Western

countries which mostly are a blend of macro political economies. Pacione has observed the

urban planning, structure, ideology in the United Kingdom and in the United States of

America. He focuses on the development trends of sustainable growth & progress and argues

upon the greatest difficulties and challenges for their urban policy issues which come across

as impacts of household income distribution from urban planning and restructuring. He

identified differing ideological dispositions among urban inhabitants but beside these

differences they have been successful in restructuring their urban space with the help of

public private partnership.

Heikkilä and Kaskinoro discuss the historical growth and development of

urbanization in the whole world comparing the urban growth of 1950, 1975, and 2005 and

finally the future prospect of urban growth of 2030. Along with historical background,

Heikkilä and Kaskinoro also provided the future trends of urban development which

specifically showed prevalence of growth in Europe region and mostly in America. Since the

passed decades European policy goals have been set to improve competitiveness, social unity

and territorial solidity in establishment of cities and regions. In this regard, the key element of

success was found to be the holistic strategy and planning which brought effective and

sustainable growth. In the next chapter Hermert, Geenhuizen, and Nijkamp address the role

of metropolitan cities in the growth of large economies. They also explained the importance
of communication and technology in these large urban societies of west which have rapidly

change the dimension of their knowledge dispersion. The author believed that metropolitan

cities are the running machinery of economic development and innovation which has

definitely been the case in Europe and in the USA that is most likely to continue in future too.

Trends in European and American societies have invested more in capital and knowledge

jobs. Though there has been an increasing trend of knowledge jobs in Europe but their

investment in knowledge have not been much effective relative to evolving job economy. In

the end of this chapter they have suggested some policy measures if improved can take

European economies and society higher in the rank of evolving economies which conclude

infrastructure and governance development. In the next chapter Taylor looks at general

structures of urban societies, he identified the universal hierarchy of cities among urban

societies, the cities had some territorial unity which determines economic development.

Taylor argued that there is a symmetry found in the way of urban thinking and policy pattern

which he called a standard way of thinking while this thinking is necessary for formulating

urban policy network.

D. Urban in the next chapter provides an exposition of an economic geography since

as a result of urbanization, people move from smaller place to larger cities. He analysed the

reasons for urbanization in which he stated income effect, number of goods effect and price

index effect lead to agglomeration and convergence. D. Urban stated when a worker moves

from a smaller place to larger place, he spends more on goods in the large place because he

won’t need to pay transportation cost that will enhance his buying capacity as his disposable

income gets higher. Ultimately the producer has more to produce and workers have higher

wages then as a result price index effect takes lace simultaneously with income effect. On the

other hand number of goods effect come in contrast with income and price index effect where

increasing number of workers bring more goods in the market but contrary to it the goods in
the small regions decreases. D. Urban states agglomeration takes place when income effect

and price index effect overplay the goods effect but convergence takes place when goods

effects overrules the income effect and price index effect. So, in urbanization an equilibrium

of both the effects is necessary to be taken care off.

Cheshire and Vermeulen, further discuss land markets and their regulations and the

economic consequences of urbanization. They argued that such regulations are weighed

through the country’s preferences of whether they prefer welfare of their both societies

equally or they need to plan their urban economies for balanced and efficient growth.

Unregulated urban localities lead to the problem of public goods or some times as

externalities which becomes a cause for market failures hence the welfare of societies go

undermined. So, government intervention is necessary to enhance and ensure the social

welfare of people caused by the adverse economic decision and failures of urbanization.

Geyer discusses about the continuing controversies of urban societies and further

states some of his concepts to bridge the gap between them. He examines the two opposite

dimensions of urban life style debate through urban sprawl versus urban compactness. He

states that it is not explained what exactly does a sprawl city or compact city means but in

academic literature such terms for urbanization have controversially been used. Geyer

indicates differing opinion of individuals and market forces in explaining urban locality. One

way or other the urbanization goes along the economic activities where people tend to

concentrate their living in a limited area but opposing to it after sprawl people tend to live in

the remote area where concentration converts into de-concentration, this controversy of micro

macro migration has been portrayed as a psychological phenomenon by Geyer. After

analysing the controversies of urban societies, Geyer indicated the emergence of new

urbanists which do not imply and conception but offer different ideology to different
individuals (KATZ, et al., 1994). In assessing and solving crisis of urbanization further

approach of new regionalism has been introduce which empowers the concept of regional

government and regulations in a metropolitan city to achieve the spatial objectives of urban

societies (SCOTT, 2009). Geyer provides an ideal urban model for accommodating the

realistic needs of every individual in the society, he stresses to opt for an alternative approach

to solve policy issues through dynamic, open and continued adaptability and containing the

destructive rigidities.

Moulaert and Mehmood in the following chapter discuss the Williamson’s transaction

cost theory which provides help in designing institutions and planning of those institutions in

an urbanized society (Williamson, 1981). The theory supports the argument of planning

before opting economic exchange. They argue that cost theory should not be the tools for

determining preferences of a society while institutional theories which have path dependence,

cultural mediation and social embeddedness should be used as an analytical concept instead

for spatial planning and institutional designs. Moulaert also examines the social features of

European city economies and their theoretical order in practice for development that even

after ethnic and cultural differences they have better rationality in their development

decisions. Later in the third part Carter examines the impacts of Information communication

and technology in the development of cities which mostly are of urban renaissance. In this

regard case study of Manchester city was taken into account for analysis which was based

upon the city council’s plan to convert the city territory into a digital city. Carter in this study

also explained some of the challenges and benefits of transforming the city into digital city

and concluded that digitalization of cities will require assessment of social, economic and

cultural needs of the locality and of their neighbourhood. Secondly a large scale capacity

building is required by the major stakeholder to achieve optimum benefits and finally the

strategic evaluation must be conducted for effectiveness.

 Last part of this book examines the international migration to the European Union and

to the United States of America and indicates the way forward for urban policy. The next two

chapters describe international migration. El-Cherkeh addresses the trends of labour

migration trend to Europe within the European Union and outside the EU countries. He

examined some of the main reasons for labour migration being the aging population and

labour shortage while on the other hand labour from developing countries find fascination

with high wages and lifestyle. Considering the demographic trend of most of the European

states, it is likely for EU states to rely on loose immigration legislation to attract more foreign

labour force to their markets.

David A. Plane and Lawrence Hoffman examine the scenarios of immigration in

United States of America. They analyse the U.S immigration policy and labour availability

scenarios in USA. The result reveal the identical situation of USA labour market as of

European Union. Likewise, EU market, labour force in USA heavily rely on elders and

besides aging is another cause of shortage in labour supply as baby boomer generation has

reached to its retirement age, there is labour scarcity. If compared to EU, scarcity in USA is

less than EU which has made this issue a political debate whereas security threats have also

led to comparatively limited inflow of labour supply.

In the last chapter the author, H. S. Geyer compiles the prevailing concepts of all

chapters into discussion and conclude with the changing scenarios of EU and USA which

have led to social, cultural and urban policy change in the last few decades. He states that

Europe and USA have turned into globally urbanized societies and have reached the highest

level of their urban growth while rest of world has a long way to go. He further argues that

reduction in population growth has its benefits and consequences but in urbanization context,

it has led to migration of labour force. Though legal migration is not an issue to worry but the
leading response of legal migration has been noted in the form of increase in illegal

migration. Another social drawback of illegal migration has been reported as the rate of crime

and violation increases which is a problematic phenomenon for any society (SCHROVER,

2008). Urbanization in America has been sprawling for many decade while now after

immense concentration, their policies have been designed upon de-concentrating and such

reaction to sprawl urbanization have also been reported from Western Europe too. So,

modern concepts of new urbanism (LECCESE & MCCORMICK, 2000), urban integration,

new regionalism, edge cities and smart cities have been developed as a result of urban

controversies which may reflect in the policy measure too. On the other hand developed

world need to grow their domestic population so that living cost of social security system

may be controlled and as a result migration may be retained to controllable extent.

The book successfully serves the purpose of its title and presents extensive

theoretical, practical and empirical analysis of policy issues of developed world. This book

provides interesting in-depth analysis of the demographic, economic, social, cultural and

developmental aspects of developed world specifically Europe and United States of America.

It concludes urban policy issues which are of great appeal among a readership absorbed in

urban planning, urban policy making, population studies, migration, history, geography,

political science and regional science.

References
KATZ, P., SCULLY, V. & BRESSI, T. W., 1994. "The new urbanism: toward an
architecture of community". New York: McGraw-Hill..
LECCESE, M. & MCCORMICK, K., 2000. Charter of the new urbanism. New York:
McGraw Hill.
SCHROVER, M., 2008. "Illegal migration and gender in a global and historical
perspective". Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
SCOTT, J. W., 2009. "De-coding new regionalism shifting socio-political contexts in Central
Europe and Latin America". Farnham, England: Ashgate.
WILLIAMSON, O. E., 1981. "The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost
Approach.". s.l.:American Journal of Sociology .