Search Results

Cities and their challenges may reshape national policies and international relations in the 21^st century. A new paradigm or policy framework to reduce uncertainty will generate investment and innovation. If managing space better is the key to solving many problems, it also highlights the limits to the macro-economic and sectoral policy frameworks carried over from the 20^th century.The advantages of a liberal, inter-connected economy must reinforce the social and environmental conditions of the places where people live, and most people live in cities and urban regions. This means accepting the degree to which modern urban economies are inter-dependent. Reducing uncertainty therefore challenges the assumption that national sovereignty is sufficient to cope with cross-border risks, which could overwhelm the Westphalian principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states.The crisis of 2008 has created more autonomy for cities and regions to take initiative, but some of the most important collective risks require more national leadership and involvement.Greater international co-operation remains possible, but unlikely until after more crises.

Using the Urban and Economic Mobility initiative undertaken by President Obama, I explore how and if race-gender is recognized in the framing of urban policy during the Obama administration. There is a distinctive race-gender dimension to urban policy. In urban areas, data suggests that poverty is both raced and gendered. The purpose of this chapter is to engage in an analysis of the relationship between race-gender and space in relation to urban policy-making. This analysis specifically looks at how Black women are treated in the urban policy-making process of the Obama administration. However, it also serves as an analysis into how Black women are understood in Black politics more specifically as it grapples with the larger question of how ideologies of gender, which often engage a rather masculinist approach, influence the quest for freedom and equality. An analysis of the Obama administration is somewhat of a proxy for an analysis of how gender, particularly Black womanhood, is treated in Black politics. As I argue, the ideologies of gender that influence urban policy, resulting in the invisibility of Black womanhood, are also prevalent in Black politics. What should Black politics look like beyond Obama?