Drawing Insights from the Past: Analyzing Historical Planning Processes through the Lens of Path Dependence in Saint-Etienne and Sheffield

Keywords: path dependence, path dependency, temporal, historical, history, shrinking cities, deindustrialization, urban shrinkage
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 11

Abstract

While policy-makers often consider themselves as central to the success of their cities and towns, the foundations of successful development were often established a long time ago (Hall, 2004). Building a better future for cities and regions requires understanding their historical evolution; this could, in turn, also enrich geographical thought. This presentation will focus on the concept of path dependence, that is the notion that past decisions can impact outcomes over a long time period, as a central concept and explanatory tool to assess the role that historical institutional planning processes and space itself play in urban trajectories. As there has generally been a lack of temporal approaches to urban shrinkage (Döringer et al. 2019), I will present two case studies of cities that have experienced significant population loss and social and economic challenges following deindustrialization processes: Saint-Etienne in France and Sheffield in the UK. In this presentation I will operationalize the concept of path dependence by first looking at critical junctures, i.e. particular choice points created by contingent events in the flow of the cities’ history and secondly considering the institutional, socio-economic and morphological positive feedback mechanisms at these critical junctures, demonstrating how planning strategies at city level but also at regional and national level often have entrenched the difficulties of these cities. This presentation will be based on a qualitative research approach comprised of archives of policy documents, local strategies and news clippings on going back to the 1960s.