In 1993 Portland, Oregon, became one of the first cities in the world to address climate change by committing to specific, citywide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In a policy entitled the Carbon Dioxide Reduction Strategy, the city outlined its intention to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2010, primarily by channelling funds toward residential and commercial energy efficiency projects. By 2005, although unlikely to reach its initial emissions reduction target, Portland had succeeded in reducing its per capita emissions by 12.5% and, despite 27% population growth, managed to stabilize its overall emissions at 1990 levels (City of Portland, 2005). Perhaps more significantly, Portland's initiative has inspired other cities to make similar moves. By 2007, in response to appeals from cities like Portland and Seattle, over 500 US cities had agreed to cut local carbon dioxide emissions by 7% of 1990 levels by 2012. (1) The numbers involved are partly symbolic: they mimic the US's now-abrogated commitments in the Kyoto Protocol, the major international agreement on climate change. Indeed, the adoption of municipal climate change policies is intended explicitly to exert pressure on a national government that is viewed as unresponsive to its citizens' ecological concerns. (2)

Spurred by the conviction that not only financial capital but also changes in finance and changes in its relations with non‐financial activities have immense and complicated consequences for ongoing processes of urban redevelopment, this article puts the presently separate financialization and urban redevelopment literatures in conversation. The article begins with a review of the financialization literature, outlining and evaluating four different approaches to the topic and seeking to consider what, if anything, they might have to offer to an area of inquiry that has long considered finance to be a central concern. The second section examines how financial capital has been analyzed in the urban redevelopment literature since the pioneering work of David Harvey in the 1970s. The final section examines how financialization has played out in the medium‐sized port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Drawing on interviews with financiers and property developments, as well as secondary research materials, the study describes how a recent urban design process in Halifax enlisted urban images and ideas to rewrite development regulations, eliminate popular political involvement in the development approvals process, and lever open the downtown landscape to the whims of worldwide financial markets. The essay concludes that studies of urban redevelopment would indeed gain something by engaging with the financialization literature, so long as the former continue to attend not just to financial capital but also to the material and ideological mechanisms through which property is continually reproduced as a financial asset.

A constant and largely unquestioned characteristic of contemporary studies of urban movements is their conception of the activist ‘subject’— the reflective agent or ‘doer’ who participates in, and shapes, urban movements. Whereas it has become increasingly common in other scholarly research to regard the subject as a contingent, context‐specific outcome or creation, studies of urban movements have not been swayed. The latter, even as they proceed to conceptualize more and more of the urban scene in terms of malleable ‘processes’ rather than inert ‘structures’, have continued to regard the makeup of the activist subject as universal and invariable. This article, in contrast, proposes and explores a different approach. Through a review of the recent urban movements literature, a focused consideration of potentially complementary literatures, and a demonstrative case study, this article aims to show that it is possible and indeed worthwhile to examine how political subjects are contingently remade both prior to, and through, their active participation in contentious urban politics. The remaking of political subjects, it concludes, is often central to the formation and achievements of urban movements. Devoting increased attention to this process — alongside other, already‐recognized political processes — could, therefore, promote a richer, more complex understanding of activism and the ever‐changing city.RésuméLes études contemporaines sur les mouvements urbains partagent une caractéristique rarement remise en cause, à savoir leur conception du ‘sujet’ militant, individu agissant ou agent réfléchi qui participe à ces mouvements et les façonne. Alors que les autres domaines de recherches considèrent de plus en plus souvent le sujet comme un produit ou une création contingente propre au contexte, les études sur les mouvements urbains ont échappéà cette tendance. Même si elles se sont mises à conceptualiser la scène urbaine en termes de ‘processus’ malléables plus largement qu'en termes de ‘structures’ inertes, elles ont continuéà considérer le profil du sujet militant comme universel et invariable. Une approche différente est proposée et analysée ici. En examinant la littérature récente sur les mouvements urbains, ainsi que les publications susceptibles de les compléter et une étude de cas probante, cet article montre qu'il est possible, et assurément utile, d'étudier comment les sujets politiques sont recomposés en fonction des situations, à la fois avant et grâce à leur participation active à une politique urbaine controversée. En conclusion, la recomposition des sujets politiques est souvent essentielle à la formation et aux réussites des mouvements urbains. Accorder une attention accrue à ce processus — parallèlement à d'autres processus politiques déjà reconnus — pourrait donc favoriser une conception plus riche et plus complexe de l'activisme et de la ville en constante évolution.

The past 50 years have brought massive changes in the patterns of economic activity around the world. Not only has global trade increased, but, precisely because of this, many scholars suggest that local (and regional) networks of production and exchange have become more prevalent and important. The nature of local economic development has, as a result, changed quite substantially. And yet theoretical approaches to it largely have not. Fifty years after Douglass North introduced economic base theory - asserting that economies grow only through increased exports - it remains the familiar refrain, if not the basis, of local economic development theory. We think it is about time to reassess the merits of base theory as an approach to, and explanation of, local economic development. Accordingly, in this article, we review briefly North's argument for base theory and the debate it stirred up early on. Then we present two evaluations of its current relevance. The first is theoretical: we consider whether changes in the patterns of economic activity in the global north, including the emergence of local/regional networks of production and exchange and the growth of consumer services, have made it possible to achieve economic growth without increasing exports. The second is empirical: using the minimum requirements method, we examine whether the economies of Canada's cities have become more locally oriented and, if so, whether they have grown. Both evaluations indicate that economic development is indeed possible through increased local activity (although exports remain important). We conclude that it is time to consider more nuanced models of local economic development that accommodate the multiple ways in which development can be achieved.

No abstract