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2.4.4. Scope and Limitations of case studies
Accordingly, data were extracted from multiple sources of evidence with a series of search executed in various online data base.
A qualitative content analysis is undertaken of the documents produced by public organization of respective cities. The typology of documents inspected included vision and strategy documents, comprehensive plans, action plans, project documents and funding plans. Grey literature in the form of reports, newspaper and online articles, research project deliverables and webinars etc, were analysed. The webinars attended by the researcher assisted in generation of knowledge which is further mobilised in the case study analysis. The webinars used in the section of case studies differ from the webinars mobilised in the previous sections. While the speakers of the webinars utilised in previous sections helped create a theoretical narrative and remained unfiltered from any city specific interpretations, the webinars put to use for case study were filtered by the criteria of official presence of the city representatives as a speaker in the webinar. (See for example, CHAIRE ETI, 2021; Emery & Thrift, 2021; Gorman & Dillon-robinson, 2021)
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In addition to the above, semi-structured telephonic and online interviews are planned with the designated city managers responsible for 15–20-minute city policy in all the three cities. While each city expert was asked different set of questions, the focus of the interviews was similar.
It is noteworthy to mention that the interviews will be staged after the content analysis was undertaken. This structure ensured that the hypothesis created during content analysis shall get validated thereby reducing personal biases, which may present itself as a weakness of such case study approaches (Charbgoo & Mareggi, 2018). A series of open-ended questions would be asked which shall focus on three main paradigms related to study, The FMC concept in comparison to the normative concept proposed by the respective city Applicability of the adopted concept to cities, its bottlenecks, opportunities. Finally, utility of the concept as a spatial development model for cities. The interviews would play a pivotal role in informing the analytical findings and discussion which shall follow the case study descriptions.
2.4.4. Scope and Limitations of case studies
The empirical examination undertaken in the study comes with certain general limitations. One obviously concerns the generalization of the governance context which changes across the cities at national, state, and local levels as well as socio-economic variables which represent bottom-up engagements which again change not only across the (selected) cities but also within these cities.
For example, the education and health policies across Portland, Melbourne, and Paris. Paris is comparatively welfare-oriented state with respect to the other two with strong welfareoriented school and health policies. As a consequence, less accessibility differential observed due to performance of public and private schools compared to more capitalist economies of former two cases (Elldér et al., 2018). Going by this respect, one may question
the provision of schools in proximity with respect to the actual usage of those schools due to self-selection of the residents and therefore the utility of service localization in the FMC. It is worth clarifying that the intention of the study (especially with respect to the RQ 1 and RQ 2) is derivation of prescriptive elements of spatial form i.e. identification of various urban activities and spatial organization of these activities in space. Each neighbourhood is a different place (Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021) and by large, each city is a different place, with its own socio-economic and governance aspects that shape its urban form (Medeiros, 2019). These notions become pivotal in accessibility studies specially, however, the researcher assumes a spatial perspective to these issues of access (Henckel et al., 2015; Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018). The overriding goal of the study is to demonstrate the adoption of the concept of FMC and its spatial model which guides the cities’ urban form. Thus, the study assumes an exploratory approach from spatial planning perspective. This implies that causal relationships which ask the questions of ‘why’ are not explored (Yin, 2009). Explanatory factors of the implications of the concept remain for future analysis. This also entails that the changes accompanied by COVID-19 Pandemic on socioeconomic processes and behavioural patterns assume limited considerations on the study, for example, the study does not strive to answer why cities are rapidly adopting the concept. The Pandemic dimension is also kept to minimum as these changes, although phenomenal, are yet to be consolidated and studied for their lasting impact. For the purpose of Answering RQ-3 i.e., addressing the socio-economic differential in the given territory, the author does not undertake accessibility modelling exercise, due to limited timeframe of the thesis study, rather, the analysis of strategies is guided by a ‘general assumption’ regarding the accessibility dimension and socio-economic distribution in the cities.
The ‘inner city areas’ and the ‘well-established urban clusters’ in a city are the most accessible areas and yet unaffordable. This accessibility is inversely related to the distance away from these high-density urban areas. Thus, suburbs remain the most accessible areas of the city and experience various socio-economic complexities due to composite profile of residents and built environments.
This assumption is informed by various accessibility studies undertaken by various authors mentioned in section 2.2.3 and triangulated by various accessibility studies on global cities (Bertolini et al., 2005; Curtis, 2008; Ewing & Cervero, 2010; Kasraian et al., 2019; Mulley & Nelson, 2021)
Another limitation to be specifically mentioned is related to asymmetrical data across the cases. It must be highlighted that during the formulation of this study, Paris has not yet officially inducted the FMC concept in its comprehensive plans, however, creation of the office of commissioner for FMC has been taken as an indicator for the explicit mention and adaptation of the concept at city scale. Subsequently, the analysis is developed by reconstructing and thereby contextualising the discourses of FMC with the help of- white paper on pilot project of FMC, the political campaign documents, media articles, interviews and public seminars with city representatives and experts (either associated or nonassociated with the formulation of the concept). This signifies that the qualitative investigation is subject to abductive interpretation (Schöbel, 2012) of the discourses based on observations and understanding of the researcher.
SECTION 2: CONTRASTING THE CONCEPT WITH EMPIRICAL APPLICATION
