Case Study Selection

This section provides a brief introduction to the two case studies – London (LDN) and New York City (NYC). Chapter 3 will introduce the contemporary theories about the global city, urban politics and issues with governance, which is used as a backdrop to contextualise the case studies within a larger structure. Large cities share common features (discussed in Chapter 3), which can be described as an urban culture (Section 3.2.1). As mentioned earlier, as a researcher I spent

Individual   Tasks  

Rules  

Ties  

Roles  

Communication  

Motivation  

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Government   Support   Resources  

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Chapter 2: Methods and Methodology

time in many large cities,²⁶ including London and NYC. In terms of archaeology, in each city I have worked in, I observed similar approaches to communication, sharing information and collaboration within the archaeological community. The question that emerged was whether this had something to do with archaeologists, or whether it is the nature of working within large cities.

Global cities are generally home and headquarter to concentrations of political, economic and social power, and they become nodes in the global network. These global cities also frequently tend to be capital cities of a nation. They harbour an array of institutional and structural infrastructure. These work to deliver governance, participation and organisations of various sectors, and evolve and develop alongside international trends and developments. Regardless of ongoing power struggles between centralised and more decentralised systems of governance, global cities retain their prominent position. In order to understand how archaeology as a profession in these particular places interacts with these trends and developments (or global forces), we need to conduct a comparative study between archaeology in cities where it occupies similar niches within a hierarchy of the capital city (Noyelle & Standback, 1983; Allen & Massey, 1988; Fainstein & Harloe, 1992). In both London and NYC, archaeology falls under the planning system, for example.

Both London and NYC have been historically recognised as global nodes based on rapid expansion in population, development, services and industries (Sassen, 2001; GaWC, 1999;

Foreign Policy, 2008, 2010, 2012). They are official test-beds and exemplars of policies and structures for other booming cities around the world. Policies are first tried out in global cities to test their success or failure and then adopted elsewhere, because they offer the opportunity to observe exaggerated and strong concentrated responses locally, nationally and internationally.

While London and NYC are leading cities of the world, they nevertheless continue to struggle with common challenges faced by large cities, such as uneven impacts of growth, institutional restructurings, impacts on the urban fabric such as traffic, gentrification, poverty, pollution, urban sprawl and other aspects of development. Despite fluctuations in the hierarchical global city status, these two cities continue to dominate and maintain their reputation as the top two global cities of the world (Sassen, 2001; Zukin, 1992).

Also, the two cities have both embraced neoliberal policies. Both cities were heavily impacted by the deregulatory, economic policies of neoliberalism discernible by the mid-1970s but formalised into government policy by the 1980s. Prior to this, they both experienced the huge impact of development which overwhelmed the local community in each city. Central to this study, both London and NYC experienced a backlash from the public in regards to historic protection and preservation, and later experienced similar trajectories in regards to the professionalisation of archaeology and historic preservation, and its association with planning (see Chapters 4 and 6).

26 I have lived (and in some cases worked) in Riyadh, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, London, New York City and Los Angeles.

Chapter 2: Methods and Methodology

Both London and New York are obvious candidates for comparative study (Fainstein & Harloe, 1992: 1). They resemble each other in economic and political forces, enabling us to explore how these forces produce observable social outcomes, differences in national traditions and culture, as well as public policies. More importantly there is a clear relationship in how economic and political forces shape spatial form and social structure (see Chapter 3). Both case studies have changed dramatically through the internationalisation, deregulation and privatisation of capital as well as through the rise of technologies. They play traditional dominant roles in their national systems, while acting within a global city structure as key nodes, often considered city-states in that they relate more to the global network than to the country they belong to (although they do still act as internal nodes for connectivity, exchange, creativity and change). London and NYC are both:

…the capital of culture and information production in their respective countries; they are magnets for world tourism; they contain the principal settlements of recent immigrants; they continue to be major manufacturing centres, cores for wholesale and retail distribution, and ports for air and sea traffic, even while these functions continue to decline relatively or absolutely. Their metropolitan areas remain the largest in population in their respective nations, and thus they also comprise the largest markets for consumer products…(Fainstein, & Harloe, 1992: 2)

Brenner and Schmid (2011: 13) suggest ‘a new conceptual lexicon must be created for identifying the wide variety of urbanisation processes that are currently reshaping the urban world, and, relatedly, for deciphering the new emergent landscapes of socio-spatial difference that have been crystallising in recent decades’. Because cities are changing so rapidly, research becomes outdated much faster than before. During the undertaking of this research for example, London introduced a completely new planning framework, and New York City set up a repository. There is an increasing and constant need to keep informed about how the on-going cultural, political, technological and ecological changes impact particular places and professions, and how these impacts are shaped or limited by global forces (see Figure 14). It is the interaction between these changes that lead to the reshaping of the urban fabric. This appreciation of how politics and economics reshape our cities, and how they shape the attitudes (and consequently development) of archaeologists, is the thread that strings this study together.

Chapter 2: Methods and Methodology

Figure 14 The relationship between the environment, society, politics & global economy - all three are constrained by the limits of the global economy

The study therefore explores ‘the nature of the contemporary conditions unfolding before us, upon which to base predictions and proposals for shaping futures’ (Healey et al., 1995: 6) in the profession of archaeology.

2.3.1 The Archaeological Record

The archaeological record of both cities was not considered during the selection of each city, as the primary aim of the research is to explore how policy impacts the profession through individual perceptions. However, although little reflection is afforded to the archaeological record throughout the study, it is worth highlighting that the differences between the two cities will ultimately manifest itself in the organisational landscape.²⁷

27 For further reading: In 2013, I led a forum in Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 23(1) titled ‘The Challenges and Opportunities for Mega-Infrastructure Projects and Archaeology’ which explored similarities and differences in urban archaeology. Contributors from the US, Mexico, Australia, Turkey, Bermuda and the UK discussed the management of archaeological sites within an urban context.

Environment  &  The   Urban  Fabric  

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Global  Politics  

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Chapter 2: Methods and Methodology

The archaeology of London is both well-recognised and established, and enjoys a prominent position in the tourism industry, unlike NYC. The Heritage Lottery Fund published a report in 2013, which concluded that heritage tourism generates £26.4bm towards the UK economy (Beyrouty & Tessler, 2013). London is a key city in this contribution as four out of five tourists claim their main reason of visit is for the historic and cultural assets.²⁸ It is also one of the few cities to have four separate UNESCO World Heritage sites. While rich in cultural and natural assets, London also has ‘2000 years of easily measurable archaeological periods’, a ‘tremendously complicated archaeology with lots of periods of settlement and demolition’ (pers. comm. White, 2015).²⁹ In this situation, it is difficult – if not impossible – for a two person team, for example, to conduct excavations in central London. However, in NYC, we see a lot of two person teams excavate famous sites. This may be due to their archaeology not being as stratified and also being less complex.