Pm. Mcguirk, MULTISCALED INTERPRETATIONS OF URBAN CHANGE - THE FEDERAL, THE STATE,AND THE LOCAL IN THE WESTERN AREA STRATEGY OF ADELAIDE, Environment and planning. D. Society & Space, 15(4), 1997, pp. 481-498
My aim is to question the concept of an indisputable hierarchy of scal
es-global, national, regional, and local-in which processes, outcomes,
and responses can be categorised as originating at distinct and discr
ete levels. Such a concept has allowed regional and local influence to
be presented as the context in which the operation of global processe
s is fine-tuned, rather than as being a formative part of those proces
ses. I aim to apply nonhierarchical modes of thinking about scale to a
n empirical example by examining a federally funded urban development
programme in Adelaide: the Western Area Strategy, a federal initiative
, administered in a local setting by a state administration. The relat
ions between processes, institutions, sociocultural, economic, and pol
itical conditions at a variety of scales are shown to operate simultan
eously and multidirectionally in defining the local outcomes of the pr
ogramme. These relations are constitutive of scale itself. The 'local'
outcomes of policy are shown to be formulated at a variety of scales
and to be mutually constitutive of outcomes at other,'higher', scales.
Accepting the notion that scales are mutually constitutive and questi
oning the production of scale and interscale relations opens new paths
of explanation for the spectrum of economic, sociocultural, and polit
ical processes determining the nature of contemporary society and dete
rmining their concrete expression in political and social interactions
within nation-states and localities.