Suburban policy mobilities: examining North American post-war engagements with Vällingby, Stockholm

Abstract

This article calls for a detailed examination of the links between suburbia and the mobilisation of policy knowledge. With suburbanisation taking place across the world and the expanding literature on policy mobilities having little to say about the suburbs, this article begins to address this important gap in our collective understanding. It does this through a case study of Vällingby, a Stockholm suburb that captured the imagination of many planners and architects outside of Sweden during the 1950s and 1960s. Here the article considers the variegated ways in which planners and architects in North America engaged with Vällingby and used lessons learnt from Vällingby in their working practices. It focuses on the encounters with Vällingby by the New Yorkbased architect Clarence Stein as well as those involved in the planning of the metropolitan Toronto suburb of Flemingdon Park. In so doing, the article demonstrates that suburbs are important sites within the circulation of policy knowledge and that audiences elsewhere engage with such sites in a multiplicity of ways. It also challenges a perception of the USA as an exporter and not importer of suburban ideas and models.

Repoliticising national policy mobilities: Resisting the Americanization of universal healthcare

“…In a striking reversal of looking to the USA as an 'exporter' of policy models (Cook, 2018), the UK government was repeatedly forced to explicitly disassociate with healthcare models from places elsewhere: The Department of Health and Social Carerather than just NHS Englandhad been moved to distinguish international accountable care models from what was proposed in the ACO contract. Frustrated, in both senses, by the repoliticisation of accountable care, it was renamed the Integrated Care Provider (ICP) contract in attempts to distance any association with those models once championed.…”

“…In a striking reversal of looking to the USA as an ‘exporter’ of policy models (Cook, 2018), the UK government was repeatedly forced to explicitly disassociate with healthcare models from places elsewhere:International examples of organisations calling themselves ‘ACOs’ look very different in the context of different health economies and different legislative frameworks. Comparisons to other countries' health economies are misleading and NHS England has published several documents describing what an ACO might look like in the context of the NHS (Public government response to the ACO contract, 2018).…”

Intra-urban connectedness, policy mobilities and creative city-making: national conservatism vs. urban (neo)liberalism

“…Furthermore, a focus on the dialectic between territoriality and extra-local relations and their mutual constitution emphasizes its relational nature (Andersson, 2014; McCann, 2011; Ward, 2018a, 2018b). Policy is, thus, re- and co-constructed as it travels between internationally networked actors and through the learning and initiative of policymakers as a social practice (Cook, 2018; McCann, 2011; McCann and Ward, 2011).…”

Spatializing authoritarian neoliberalism by way of cultural politics: City, nation and the European Union in Gdańsk’s politics of cultural policy formation

“…Recent literature has focused on this as a key example of policy mobility (e.g. Borén and Young, 2016; Peck, 2012; Prince, 2012, 2014; Rindzevičiūtė et al., 2016) in which the formation of urban policy, and cities themselves (Andersson, 2014; Cook, 2018; McCann and Ward, 2011; Temenos and McCann, 2012), are increasingly understood as relational-territorial entities. That this is a highly politicised process has received attention in the literature, especially regarding the introduction of Floridian-style creativity policy in cities around the globe (Peck, 2005).…”