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Towards a new epistemology ofthe urban?Neil Brenner and
Christian Schmid
New forms of urbanization are unfolding around the world that
challenge inheritedconceptions of the urban as a fixed, bounded and
universally generalizable settlementtype. Meanwhile, debates on the
urban question continue to proliferate and intensifywithin the
social sciences, the planning and design disciplines, and in
everyday politicalstruggles. Against this background, this paper
revisits the question of the epistemology ofthe urban: through what
categories, methods and cartographies should urban life
beunderstood? After surveying some of the major contemporary
mainstream and criticalresponses to this question, we argue for a
radical rethinking of inherited epistemologicalassumptions
regarding the urban and urbanization. Building upon reflexive
approachesto critical social theory and our own ongoing research on
planetary urbanization, wepresent a new epistemology of the urban
in a series of seven theses. This epistemologicalframework is
intended to clarify the intellectual and political stakes of
contemporarydebates on the urban question and to offer an
analytical basis for deciphering the rapidlychanging geographies of
urbanization and urban struggle under early 21st-centurycapitalism.
Our arguments are intended to ignite and advance further debate on
theepistemological foundations for critical urban theory and
practice today.
Key words: urbanization, urban age, postcolonial urbanism,
planetary urbanization, extendedurbanization, reflexivity, critical
urban theory, rural
Introduction: a crisis of urbanepistemologies
Adramatic wave of urban restructur-ing has been unfolding across
theplanet since the long 1980s. Follow-
ing the crisis of national-developmentalistmodels of territorial
development, the col-lapse of state socialism and the
subsequentintensification of global economic inte-gration, a
variety of contradictory urbantransformations has been under way.
Thecauses, contours, contexts, interconnec-tions and implications
of such transform-ations are widely debated, and remainextremely
confusing in the wake of the
global financial and economic crises of thelate 2000s and early
2010s. However, evenas contextually specific patterns of
urbaniz-ation endure and proliferate, at least threemacro-trends
appear to be consolidating,each of which challenges
long-entrenchedassumptions regarding the nature of theurban:
(1) New geographies of uneven spatialdevelopment have been
emergingthrough a contradictory interplaybetween rapid, explosive
processes ofurbanization and various forms of stag-nation,
shrinkage and marginalization,often in close proximity to one
another.
# 2015 Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid
CITY, 2015VOL. 19, NOS. 23, 151182,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712
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In contrast to the geographies of terri-torial inequality
associated with previouscycles of industrialization, this newmosaic
of spatial unevenness cannot becaptured adequately through
arealmodels, with their typological differen-tiation of space
between urban/rural,metropole/colony, First/Second/ThirdWorld,
North/South, East/West and soforth (see also Merrifield 2013;
Robinson2014). Today, divergent conditions ofwealth and poverty,
growth anddecline, inclusion and exclusion, central-ity and
marginality, mutually produceone another at all spatial scales,
fromthe neighborhood to the planetary.Under these conditions, new
approachesto understanding and influencing pro-cesses of uneven
spatial developmentunder capitalism are urgently needed(Peck
2015a).
(2) The basic nature of urban realitieslong understood under the
singular,encompassing rubric of citynesshasbecome more
differentiated, poly-morphic, variegated and multiscalarthan in
previous cycles of capitalisturbanization. Even though thephrase,
the city, persists as an ideo-logical framing in mainstream
policydiscourse and everyday life (Wachs-muth 2014), the
contemporary urbanphenomenon cannot be understood asa singular
condition derived from theserial replication of a specific
sociospa-tial condition (e.g. agglomeration) orsettlement type
(e.g. places with large,dense and/or heterogeneous popu-lations)
across the territory. Indeed,rather than witnessing the
worldwideproliferation of a singular urban form,the city, we are
instead confrontedwith new processes of urbanizationthat are
bringing forth diverse socio-economic conditions, territorial
for-mations and socio-metabolictransformations across the
planet.Their morphologies, geographies andinstitutional frames have
become so
variegated that the traditional visionof the city as a bounded,
universallyreplicable settlement type now appearsas no more than a
quaint remnant ofa widely superseded formation of capi-talist
spatial development (Brennerand Schmid 2014).As we have argued
elsewhere
(Brenner and Schmid 2011), the for-mation of large-scale
megacities andpolynucleated metropolitan regions isonly one
important expression of thisongoing reconstitution of
urbanizinglandscapes (see also Soja and Kanai[2006] 2014). Its
other key expressionsinclude, among others: (a) the unprece-dented
densification of inter-metropo-litan networks, requiring
colossallyscaled infrastructural investments(from highways, canals,
railways, con-tainer ports, airports and hydroelectricdams to
undersea cables, tunnels, pipe-lines and satellite fleets)
stretchingacross territories and continents aswell as oceanic and
atmosphericenvironments; (b) the restructuringand repositioning of
traditional hin-terlands through the installation ofnew export
processing zones, globalsweatshop regions, back officelocations,
data processing facilities andintermodal logistics terminals; (c)
theremaking and spatial extension oflarge-scale land-use systems
devotedto resource extraction, the productionand circulation of
energy (includingfossil fuels), and water and waste man-agement;
(d) the profound social andenvironmental transformation of
vast,erstwhile rural areas through theexpansion of large-scale
industrial agri-culture, the extension of global agro-business
networks, and the impositionof associated forms of land grabbingand
territorial enclosure; and (e) theoperationalization of erstwhile
wilder-ness spaces, including the rainforests,deserts, alpine
regions, polar zones,the oceans and even the atmosphere
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itself, to serve the relentless growthimperatives of an
accelerating, increas-ingly planetary formation of
capitalisturbanization.
(3) Closely intertwined with the afore-mentioned trends, the
regulatory geo-graphies of capitalist urbanizationhave likewise
been undergoing pro-found, rapid mutations. Since the accel-erated
expansion of industrialization inthe 19th century, the urban
process hasbeen largely subsumed within andregulated through the
hierarchicalinstitutional frameworks of consolidat-ing national
states and nationally coor-dinated imperial systems. Since
thatperiod, including within majorempires and colonial regimes,
nationalstates instrumentalized major urbanregions in relation to
the broaderproject of establishing territoriallyintegrated markets
and creating rela-tively uniform, standardized frame-works of
national territorialorganization within which industrialdevelopment
could unfold. However,the tumultuous transformations ofrecent
decades decisively shattered thisentrenched
national-developmentalistmodel of urban and territorial
regu-lation, leading to a significant reconsti-tution of inherited
geographies ofurban governance (Brenner 2004;Schmid 2003).Although
some of its elements have
longer historical lineages, includingwithin mercantile
capitalism and thecolonial empires of high industrialcapitalism,
the contemporary periodhas seen the proliferation of new
geo-graphies of urban governance that areno longer neatly subsumed
within asingular, encompassing territorial fra-mework of state
power at any spatialscale, national or otherwise. Instead,an
intensely variegated, polarized, mul-tiscalar and relatively
uncoordinatedlandscape of territorial and networkedgovernance has
emerged through (a)
the consolidation of neoliberalized,market-oriented
transnational rule-regimes; (b) the proliferation ofnational state
projects of deregulation,liberalization, privatization and
auster-ity; (c) the worldwide diffusion of place-marketing
campaigns and locationalpolicies intended to attract inwardcapital
investment into subnationalzones; (d) the establishment of a
newmetropolitan mainstream in whichlocal and regional
governmentsincreasingly prioritize economicgrowth, property-led
investment inflagship mega-projects, urban renewaland
gentrification over job creation,social redistribution, equity and
par-ticipation (Schmid 2012); (e) the con-struction of new forms of
inter-localnetworking and policy transfer to dis-seminate putative
best practices inresponse to persistent social, economicand
environmental crises withinurban regions (Peck and Theodore2015);
and (f) the ongoing explosion ofpolitical struggles over access to
thebasic resources of social reproductionsuch as housing, water,
food, edu-cation, health care and security.Under these conditions,
diverse regu-latory agencies, coalitions, movementsand actors
struggle not only to influ-ence the production of places, but
toreshape the broader institutional andterritorial frameworks
through whichurbanization processes are beingmanaged at every
spatial scale.
The terrain of the urban has thus been sub-jected to a
high-intensity, high-impact earth-quake through the worldwide
social,economic, regulatory and environmentaltransformations of the
post-1980s period.Not surprisingly, in conjunction withongoing
efforts to decipher these wide-ranging transformations, the field
of urbanstudies has also been experiencing consider-able turbulence
and fragmentation. In anapparent parallel to the
field-transforming
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epistemological crises of the late 1960s andearly 1970s, which
fundamentally challengedthe entrenched orthodoxies of
mainstreamurban sociology, positivist urban policyresearch and
quantitative urban geography,the intellectual foundations of urban
studiesare today being profoundly destabilized.Since its origins in
the early 20th century,
the field of urban studies has been regularlyanimated by
foundational debates regardingthe nature of the urban question,
often inquite generative ways. The intensification ofsuch debates
in recent times could thus beplausibly interpreted as a sign of
creativerenaissance rather than of intellectual crisis.Today,
however, the intense fragmentation,disorientation and downright
confusion thatpermeate the field of urban studies are notmerely the
result of methodological disagree-ments (which of course persist)
or due to theobsolescence of a particular research para-digm
(Marxism, regulation theory, globalcity theory or otherwise).
Instead, as thenational-developmentalist configuration ofpostwar
world capitalism recedes rapidlyinto historical memory, and as the
politico-institutional, spatial and environmentalimpacts of various
neoliberalized and author-itarian forms of urban restructuring
radiateand ricochet across the planet, a more intel-lectually
far-reaching structural crisis ofurban studies appears to be under
way.In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the epis-
temic crises of urban studies involved foun-dational debates
regarding the appropriatecategories and methods through which
tounderstand a sociospatial terrain whosebasic contours and
parameters were a matterof broad consensus. Simply put, that
consen-sus involved the equation of the urban with aspecific
spatial unit or settlement typethecity, or an upscaled territorial
variantthereof, such as the metropolis, the conurba-tion, the
metropolitan region, the megalopo-lis, the megacity, the
megacity-region and soforth. Even though radical critics such
asManuel Castells fiercely criticized establishedways of
understanding this unit, and offeredan alternative, substantially
reinvigorated
interpretive framework through which toinvestigate its
production, evolution and con-testation, they persisted in viewing
the unit inquestionthe urban region or agglomera-tionas the basic
focal point of debates onthe urban question (Castells [1972]
1977;see also Katznelson 1992). Across otherwisedeep methodological
and political dividesand successive epistemological
realignments,this largely uninterrogated presuppositionhas
underpinned the major intellectualtraditions in 20th-century urban
studies.Indeed, it has long been considered soself-evident that it
did not require acknowl-edgment, much less justification.Today,
this entrenched set of assump-
tionsalong with a broad constellation ofclosely associated
epistemological frameworksfor confronting and mapping the urban
ques-tionis being severely destabilized in thewake of a new round
of worldwide sociospa-tial restructuring. Of course, the power
ofagglomeration remains as fundamental asever to the dynamics of
industrialization; thespatial concentration of the means of
pro-duction, population and infrastructure is apotent generative
force that continues toignite waves of capital accumulation and
toreshape places, territories and landscapes atall spatial scales
(Soja 2000; Kratke 2014;Scott and Storper 2014). Despite
this,however, the erstwhile boundaries of thecityalong with those
of larger, metropolitanunits of agglomerationare being explodedand
reconstituted as new forms of urbaniz-ation reshape inherited
patterns of territorialorganization, and increasingly crosscut
theurban/non-urban divide itself (Schmid 2006,[2012] 2014; Brenner
2013, 2014a, 2014b;Brenner and Schmid 2014).The contemporary crisis
of urban studies is
thus not only an expression of epistemic per-plexity (though the
latter is still abundantlyevident). From our point of view, rather,
itstems from an increasing awareness of funda-mental uncertainties
regarding the very sites,objects and focal points of urban theory
andresearch under contemporary capitalism. Ina world of neatly
circumscribed, relatively
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bounded cities or urban units, whose coreproperties were a
matter of generalized scho-larly agreement, urban researchers
couldburrow into the myriad tasks associatedwith understanding
their underlying social,economic and cultural dynamics,
historicaltrajectories, inter-contextual variations andthe various
forms of regulation, conflict andstruggle that emerged within them
(Saunders1986). However, under contemporarycircumstances, these
basic conditions ofpossibility for urban research appear to
havebeen relativized, if not superseded.For this reason, we argue,
the question of
the epistemology of the urbanspecifically:through what
categories, methods and carto-graphies should urban life be
understood?must once again become a central focalpoint for urban
theory, research and action.If the urban is no longer coherently
containedwithin or anchored to the cityor, for thatmatter, to any
other bounded settlementtypethen how can a scholarly fielddevoted
to its investigation continue toexist? Or, to pose the same
question as a chal-lenge of intellectual reconstruction: is
therecould there bea new epistemology of theurban that might
illuminate the emergentconditions, processes and
transformationsassociated with a world of
generalizedurbanization?
Urban ideologies, old and new
Some four decades ago, Lefebvre ([1970]2003, 191, n. 3) argued
not only that a newunderstanding of the urban was required,but that
the urban was itself becoming theepisteme of our time, the
condition of possi-bility for understanding major aspects
ofcontemporary global economic, socialand political life: We can
say that the urban[ . . . ] rises above the horizon, slowlyoccupies
an epistemological field, andbecomes the episteme of an epoch
(forfurther discussion, see also Prigge 2008). Inthis sense,
Lefebvre suggested, the reconcep-tualization of the urban was
becoming an
essential epistemological and political pre-condition for
understanding the nature ofsociety itself. This proposition appears
moreapt than ever today. Whether in academic dis-course or in the
public sphere, the urban hasbecome a privileged lens through which
tointerpret, to map and, indeed, to attempt toinfluence
contemporary social, economic,political and environmental
trends.Paradoxically, however, rather than
directly confronting the radically trans-formed conditions for
urban theory andresearch, the mainstream of contemporarydiscourses
on global urbanism has embraceda strong, even triumphalist,
reassertion of atraditional, universal, totalizing and
largelyempiricist concept of the city. Within thismainstream
framework, the nature of con-temporary urban restructuring is
narratedsimply as an increasing importance of citiesto worldwide
social, economic, political andecological processes. The question
of whatcities and the urban are, and how theirconstitutive
properties and geographies maybe changing in qualitative terms, is
therebyeffectively black-boxed.The most influential contemporary
meta-
narrative of the global urban condition issurely the notion of
an urban age, whichwas first introduced several decades ago
byUnited Nations (UN) demographers, andwhich has more recently been
popularizedin public and scholarly discourses on thegrowth of urban
settlements and associatedsocial, regulatory and
environmentalhazards (Burdett and Sudjic 2006; Davis2006;
UN-Habitat 2007). According to thiscity-centric perspective, for
the first time inhuman history, more than half the worldspopulation
now lives within cities. With theputative crossing of this
threshold or mile-stone in 2007, the city is said to have
beengeneralized into the universal form ofhuman settlement; it is
now thought to rep-resent the most elemental spatial unit
forhumanitys future. Across otherwise diversediscursive,
ideological and institutional con-texts, the urban age thesis has
become aform of doxic common sense framing
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contemporary discussions of the global urbancondition. It is
repeated incessantly, mantra-like, in scholarly papers, research
reportsand grant proposals, as well as in the publicsphere of
urban, environmental and architec-tural journalism. In effect, the
assertion thatwe have crossed the fifty per cent urbanthreshold has
become the most quoted, buttherefore also among the most banal,
formu-lations in contemporary urban studies (forhistorical
contextualization and detailed cri-tique, see Brenner and Schmid
2014).As has been noted bymany researchers, the
demographic data on which the urban agehypothesis hinges are
deeply inadequate;they are derived from nationally specificcensus
agencies which define the city andthe urban using a myriad of
inconsistent,unreliable and incompatible indicators (Sat-terthwaite
2010). Moreover, within themajor strands of urban age discourse,
thecity is defined with reference to an arbitrarilyfixed population
size, density threshold oradministrative classification, which is
in turntaken as the main indicator demarcating thepresumed boundary
between urban andnon-urban areas. Even when these indicatorsare
further elaborated, for instance, withreference to commuting
patterns, catchmentareas and economic activities, the notion
ofcityness used within this discourse is still fun-damentally
empiricist. It presupposes that thecity can be defined through
(some combi-nation of) statistically measurable variablesdescribing
conditions (coded as eitherurban or non-urban) within a
boundedadministrative zone. With a few exceptions(i.e. Angel 2011),
the coherent bounding ofthe zone in question is simply
presupposedbased upon extant administrative jurisdic-tions; the
diverse economic, political andenvironmental processes that are
reworkingthe structured coherence (Harvey 1989) ofinherited urban
formations are not acknowl-edged or analyzed (Brenner and
Katsikis2014). Additionally, through its contentionthat the city
has become the universallydominant, endlessly replicable form
ofglobal human settlement, urban age discourse
drastically homogenizes the variegated pat-terns and pathways of
urbanization thathave been emerging in recent decades acrossthe
world economy (Schmid [2012] 2014).Just as problematically, by
equating theurban exclusively with large and/or densepopulation
centers, urban age discourserenders invisible the intimate,
wide-rangingand dynamically evolving connectionsbetween
contemporary shifts in city-buildingprocesses and the equally
far-reaching trans-formations of putatively non-urban land-scapes
and spatial divisions of labor alludedto above.Several parallel or
derivative metanarra-
tives of the contemporary global urban con-dition have been
popularized in closeconnection to the overarching ideology ofthe
urban age (for a critical overview, seeGleeson 2014). These
variations on urbanage discourse involve a variety of
normative,methodological, strategic and substantiveconcerns; they
include, among others, the fol-lowing main streams:
. Urban triumphalism. Several recent,popular books have
presented cities as theengines of innovation, civilization,
prosper-ity and democracy, across historical andregional contexts
(see, e.g. Brugmann 2010;Glaeser 2011). According to these
triumph-alist perspectives, contemporary citiesrepresent the latest
expressions of a time-tested sociospatial formula that has
enabledthe progressive historical development ofhuman society,
technology and governance.This set of arguments represents an
impor-tant extension of urban age discoursebecause it connects the
UNs basic demo-graphic propositions to broader, qualitat-ively
elaborated arguments concerning therole of cities in unleashing
humanitys econ-omic, social and cultural potentials.
. Technoscientific urbanism. There has alsorecently been an
outpouring of influentialnew approaches that mobilize the tools
ofnatural science, mathematics and bigdata analysis to analyze, and
often topredict, inter- and intra-urban spatial
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arrangements (Bettencourt and West 2010;Batty 2013). Such
neo-positivist, neo-nat-uralist approaches represent a revival
ofimportant strands of postwar systemsthinking in geography,
planning anddesign discourse, which had been closelyaligned with
national state projects ofurban social engineering and
territorialcontrol. Contemporary discussions ofsmart cities
represent an important paral-lel strand of technoscientific
urbanism, inwhich information technology corpor-ations are
aggressively marketing newmodes of spatial monitoring,
informationprocessing and data visualization toembattled municipal
and metropolitangovernments around the world as a techni-cal fix
for intractable governance pro-blems (Greenfield 2013; Townsend
2013).In the current context, technoscientificaspirations to reveal
law-like regularitieswithin and among the worlds major citiesoften
serve to naturalize the forms of socio-spatial disorder, enclosure
and displace-ment that have been induced through thelast several
decades of neoliberal regulatoryrestructuring and recurrent
geoeconomiccrisis (Gleeson 2014). Despite their moreelaborate
methodological apparatus andtheir capacity to process huge data
assem-blages, these technoscientific urbanismsreplicate, and indeed
reinforce, the basicurban age understanding of cities as
univer-sally replicable, coherently bounded settle-ment units. The
law-bound understandingof urbanization it embraces is used notonly
for epistemological purposes, tojustify a universalizing,
naturalisticresearch agenda, but as part of a
broadertechnoscientific ideology that aims todepoliticize urban
life and thus to assistthe cause of sound management (Gleeson2014,
348).
. Debates on urban sustainability. Anadditional metanarrative of
the contempor-ary global urban condition focuses on thekey role of
cities in the deepening planetaryecological crisis. Here, cities
are viewed atonce as the front lines where
environmental crises are most dramaticallyexperienced, and as
techno-social arenas inwhich potential responses are beingpioneered
(for critical review, see Sat-terthwaite 2004). Discussions of
urban sus-tainability are often linked to the twoaforementioned
strands of contemporaryurban discourse insofar as they
celebratecities as the most ecologically viablearrangements for
human settlement (Girar-det 2004; Meyer 2013) and/or propose
newtechnoscientific solutions for re-engineer-ing urban metabolic
processes, oftenthrough architectural and design interven-tions
under the rubric of an ecologicalurbanism (Mostafavi and Doherty
2011).In many cases, the proposed visions of afuture urban
ecological order entail theconstruction of premium
ecologicalenclaves (Hodson and Marvin 2010) thatare substantially
delinked from extantinfrastructural systems, and thus
intensifyinherited patterns of territorial exclusion.Emergent
strategies to enhance urban resi-lience in the face of climate
change andassociated socio-natural disasters containsimilar hazards
insofar as they normalizecontemporary forms of
market-orientedgovernance and associated processes of ter-ritorial
stigmatization (Fainstein 2014;Slater 2014). Research on urban
sustain-ability remains heterogeneous in methodo-logical, thematic
and political terms, andseveral scholars have recently made
impor-tant critical interventions that link this pro-blematique to
uneven spatial development,neoliberalization and struggles for
environ-mental justice (Rees and Wackernagel1996; Atkinson 2007,
2009; Elmqvist2014). However, the main thrust of recentdebates on
urban sustainability has beento promote a vision of cities as
bounded,technologically controlled islands of eco-rationality that
are largely delinked fromthe broader territorial formations inwhich
they are currently embedded. Inthis way, urban age discourse is
translatedinto a city-centric techno-environmental-ism that often
justifies and even celebrates
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the enclavization of settlement space as theoptimal means to
ensure human survivalunder conditions of deepening
planetaryecological crisis.
. Debates on megacities. One additional sub-stream of urban age
discourse has involveddiscussions of megacities, generally
under-stood as a specific settlement type that hasbeen consolidated
across the Third Worldor the global South under conditions ofrapid
urbanization, hypercongestion andresource scarcity (UN-Habitat
2007). Themegacities discussion partially tempersthe universalizing
thrust of urban age dis-course by emphasizing the specificity
ofurban settlements in poorer countries,whether due to colonial
legacies, earlierstrategies of import-substitution
industri-alization, the impacts of contemporaryforms of structural
adjustment policy or,most prominently, the proliferation ofinformal
settlement patterns withindense city cores and around
metropolitanfringes. However, in many ways, urbanage approaches
articulate directly to, andreinforce, discussions of mega-cities:
thelatter, with their pervasive crises ofemployment, housing,
public health andenvironment, are commonly representedas the
unplanned, and possibly unplan-nable, spatial units in which the
contem-porary urban transition is unfolding;they are thus the most
elementary units ofthe contemporary planet of slums (Davis2006; for
a strong counterpoint, see Roy2005). Therefore, even if discussions
ofmegacities emphasize the distinctivenessof such spaces relative
to Euro-American or Northern urbanisms and theworldwide system of
global cities, theypreserve the basic emphasis on the city asa
bounded settlement type that underpinseach of the major strands of
urban agediscourse.
These various versions of urban age discoursemust be understood
as a powerful seriesof ideological interventions into
rapidlychurning, fragmenting fields of urban
restructuring. Precisely under conditionsin which the very
foundations of urbanlife are being radically reconstituted,
suchmainstream discourses on global urbanismstrongly reassert a
universalizing, totalizingand often naturalistic
epistemologicaloutlook that subsumes all dimensions of theurban
process under the encompassing lensof cityness, understood as a
transcendentalsettlement form that has now been general-ized
worldwide. Across the diverse politico-institutional and
geographical contexts inwhich these discourses are mobilized,
theircommon wrapping is a bright universalism(Gleeson 2014, 351)
that masks the proliferat-ing crisis-tendencies and contradictions
ofcontemporary capitalism.In a striking parallel to the
long-discredited
modernization theories of the postwarperiod, the various strands
of this metanarra-tive are now being used as discursive framesto
legitimate a wide range of neoliberalizingproposals to transform
inherited urban builtenvironments. The simple message that thecity
has assumed unprecedented planetaryimportance has thus come to
serve as an all-purpose, largely depoliticized ideologicalrubric
around which, in diverse contexts,aggressively market-oriented
and/or authori-tarian contemporary projects and prescrip-tions of
urban transformation are beingnarrated, justified and naturalized.
At oncein the public sphere, in planning and designdiscourse, and
in scholarly arenas, such uni-versalizing, totalizing and
city-centric ideol-ogies serve to reassert the viability of
all-too-familiar urban epistemologies even astheir historical and
sociospatial conditionsof possibility are being superseded in
practice(for further reflection on this apparentparadox, see
Wachsmuth 2014).
Reflexive epistemological openings
In contrast to the unapologetically self-assured universalism of
urban age ideologies,the core agendas of critical urban
socialscience have become rather disjointed in
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recent years. Writing at the turn of the mil-lennium, Soja
(2000, xii) observed:
[T]he field of urban studies has never been sorobust, so
expansive in the number of subjectareas and scholarly disciplines
involved withthe study of cities, so permeated by new ideasand
approaches, so attuned to the majorpolitical and economic events of
our times,and so theoretically and methodologicallyunsettled. It
may be the best of times and theworst of times to be studying
cities, for whilethere is so much that is new and challenging
torespond to, there is much less agreement thanever before as to
how best to make sense,practically and theoretically, of the new
urbanworlds being created.
Nearly 15 years later, this statement remainsan apt
characterization of the intellectuallandscape of critical urban
studies: it is stillfilled with creative, energetic and
eclecticresponses to dynamically changing con-ditions, but it is
also still quite fragmentedamong diverse epistemological
frameworksand a wide range of ontological assumptions.Although this
situation of intellectual frag-
mentation results from some productiveforms of epistemological,
conceptual andmethodological experimentation, it is alsoproblematic
insofar as it limits the fields col-lective capacity to offer
convincing, accessi-ble alternatives to the dominant
urbanideologies of our time. Particularly in lightof the broad
appeal of simplistic urban agereasoning to scholars, designers and
policy-makers, and its continued instrumentaliza-tion in the
service of neoliberalizing and/orauthoritarian forms of urban
governanceand environmental engineering, the develop-ment of such
critical counterpositions is amatter of increasing urgency for all
thosecommitted to developing more adequateways of interpretingand,
ultimately, ofinfluencingthe patterns and pathways ofcontemporary
urbanization.One of the hallmarks of any form of critical
social theory, including critical urban theory,is
epistemological reflexivity (Horkheimer[1968] 1972; Bourdieu 1990;
Postone 1993;
see also Brenner 2009). This entails an insis-tence on the
situatedness of all forms ofknowledge, and a relentless drive to
reinventkey categories of analysis in relation toongoing processes
of historical change.Rather than presupposing a rigid
separationbetween subject (knower) and object (thesite or context
under investigation), reflexiveapproaches emphasize their mutual
consti-tution and ongoing transformation throughsocial practices
and political struggles,including in the realm of interpretation
andideology. In Archers (2007, 72) moregeneral formulation, a
reflexive approach tosocial theory involves a subject consideringan
object in relation to itself, bending thatobject back upon itself
in a process whichincludes the self being able to consider itselfas
its own object.In the context of critical urban studies, this
philosophical requirement involves not onlythe constant
interrogation of changingurban realities, but the equally vigilant
analy-sis and revision of the very conceptual andmethodological
frameworks being used toinvestigate the urban process. For any
reflex-ive approach to urban theory, therefore, thecategories and
methods of urban analysisare important focal points of inquiry:
under-standing their conditions of emergence andintelligibility, as
well as the possibility oftheir destabilization or obsolescence,
rep-resent essential, ongoing and potentiallytransformative
research tasks. Simply put,reflexive approaches to urban theory
mustconstantly subject their own categories andmethods to critical
interrogation, even asthe latter are being mobilized in
ongoingresearch endeavors.During the last decade, amidst the
deepen-
ing intellectual fragmentation of urbanstudies outlined above, a
notably reflexivestrand of critical urban scholarship has
beenconsolidated under the rubric of postcolonialurban studies. In
a wide-ranging series ofinterventions, the main protagonists of
thistradition of urban research have revealed theways in which
inherited urban epistem-ologies have been implicitly derived
from
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the Euro-American experience of capitalisturbanization. This,
they argue, has beenused unreflexively as a normalizing templatefor
(mis)interpreting processes of urbandevelopment across the global
South. Thevery recognition of such normalizing Euro-American or
metrocentric assumptionsrequires their provincialization
(Bunnelland Maringanti 2010; Parnell and Robinson2012; Sheppard,
Leitner, and Maringanti2013) and underscores the urgency of
elabor-ating alternative categories for understandingthe
contextually specific patterns and path-ways of urbanization that
have emerged, forexample, in East and Southeast Asia, LatinAmerica,
Africa or the Middle East.In general, postcolonial urban
theorists
present their work as a critique of the natur-alized
Euro-American epistemologies associ-ated with the major traditions
of academicurban social science extending from theearly
20th-century Chicago School of urbansociology to the Los Angeles
School ofurban geography and the global city theoriesof the late
20th century. However, insofar asthey call into question any model
of urbantheory that claims universal validity,
thereconceptualizations proposed in this tra-dition also offer a
theoretically reflexivecounterpoint to the ideological
totalizationsof urban age discourse. Rather than adoptinga singular
ontological position regarding theunderlying essence of cityness or
the urban,postcolonial urbanisms have embraced abroadly nominalist
approach to producingnew geographies of theorizing (Roy
2009;Robinson 2014) under early 21st-centuryconditions. Its main
orientations and com-mitments include: (a) skepticism
regardingauthoritative, universalizing knowledgeclaims about any
aspect of the urban experi-ence; (b) attention to contextual
particulari-ties and local experiences within places;(c) an
analysis of the inter-place relations orworlding processes that
constitute sociospa-tial configurations, whether within cities orat
larger spatial scales; and (d) an explorationof the diverse lines
of influence throughwhich local, apparently parochial urbanisms
(whether relating to spatial organization,design, planning or
policy) circulate beyondtheir contexts of emergence and are
therebytransformed into prototypes that are atonce implemented and
reconstituted else-where (see, e.g. Robinson 2006; Roy 2009;Parnell
and Robinson 2012; Roy and Ong2012; Mabin 2014; Parnell and
Oldfield2014).Since the publication of Jennifer Robin-
sons (2006) forceful intervention in hernow-classic book
Ordinary Cities, the coreintellectual frameworks of
postcolonialurbanism have been undergoing a period ofmaturation and
consolidation. It wouldprobably be premature, however, to
suggestthat this approach has now established afully fledged urban
epistemology or a newresearch paradigm because, as with mostother
emergent frameworks within criticalurban studies, it contains many
distinctstrands of theory-building, methodologicalexperimentation
and substantive research,as well as several competing
epistemologicalorientations (see, e.g. Simone 2009; Kipferand
Goonewardena 2013). Nonetheless,especially in light of the
pervasively frag-mented character of contemporary criticalurban
theory, the time is ripe for the theor-etically reflexive
interventions and theory-driven research forays that have
recentlybeen elaborated by postcolonial urbanists.Particularly in
the last few years, in a seriesof provocative manifestos and
agenda-setting theoretical articles, several postcolo-nial urban
thinkers have pursued the goalof systematically reinventing the
epistemo-logical basis for grappling with urban ques-tions (see,
especially, Roy 2011, 2014;Robinson 2011, 2014; Sheppard,
Leitner,and Maringanti 2013). In this way, theyrespond directly to
the question posedabove: under contemporary conditions, canthere be
a new epistemology of the urban?Our own developing investigations
of pla-
netary urbanization partially overlap with thesubstantive
research foci of postcolonialurbanism. Our work is likewise
animatedby an overarching concern to develop new
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ways of understanding emergent urban con-ditions and ongoing
urban transformations.Similarly, and in stark contrast to some
con-temporary approaches that pursue ontologi-cal or
quasi-metaphysical speculationsregarding the nature of the urban,
weendorse a nominalist approach that permitsan open-ended interplay
between critique(of inherited traditions of urban theory
andcontemporary urban ideologies), epistemo-logical experimentation
(leading to the elab-oration of new concepts and methods)
andconcrete research (on specific contexts,struggles and
transformations). It is thus ina spirit of comradely dialogue that
we offerbelow our own set of critical reflections onthe possible
foundations for a new epistem-ology of the urban under 21st-century
con-ditions. However, despite our sharedcommitment to
epistemological reflexivityand conceptual reinvention, several of
thetheses presented here stand in some measureof tension with
certain methodological ten-dencies within postcolonial urban
studies.First, because of its concern to provincia-
lize the universalizing, (over)generalizingthrust of northern
theory, much of postco-lonial urban studies has emphasized
thespecificity, distinctiveness or even uniquenessof cities beyond
the West. Although severalscholars (e.g. Roy 2009, 2014;
Robinson2011, 2014) have recently introduced produc-tively
relational concepts designed to illumi-nate inter-place
transformations, the tropeof contextual specificity pervades much
ofcontemporary postcolonial urban research,in part due to the
influence of parallel argu-ments in the fields of subaltern
historicalstudies and postcolonial cultural theory(Chibber 2013).
The appropriately decon-structive concern to speak back
against,thereby contesting, mainstream global urban-ism (Sheppard,
Leitner, and Maringanti2013, 896) thus often translates into a
meth-odological injunction to reveal the distinc-tiveness of
particular places within theglobal South, often in rhetorical
contrast toa putatively overgeneralized northernmodel, such as that
of the global or neoliberal
city (see, e.g. Seekings 2013; for critical dis-cussion, see
Peck 2015b). Many of thoseaccounts present thick
descriptionsforinstance, of everyday life and subalternstruggleas
theoretically self-evident coun-terpoints to the apparent
totalizations ofEuro-American frameworks (for a criticaldiscussion,
see Mabin 2014; see alsoBrenner, Madden, and Wachsmuth
2011).Clearly, such strategic essentialisms (Roy
2009) have been generative in both methodo-logical and empirical
terms, especially as areflexive counterpoint to mainstream
globalurban ideologies. However, they also containcertain
intellectual hazards, not the least ofwhich is the risk of
prematurely retreatingfrom essential conceptual tools, such as
thoseof geopolitical economy, state theory andregulation theory, as
outdated vestiges ofnorthern epistemologies (see also Mabin2014).
The idea of specificity is logically intel-ligible only in relation
to an encompassingnotion of generality against which it isdefined;
it is thus best understood as a rela-tional, dialectical concept,
one that presup-poses a broader totality, rather than as
ademarcation of ontological singularity(Schmid 2015a). In a
capitalist world systemthat continues to be shaped profoundly bythe
drive towards endless capital accumu-lation, by neoliberalizing
and/or authoritarianforms of global and national
regulatoryrestructuring, by neo-imperial military strat-egies, and
by various interconnected forms ofexploitation, dispossession and
socio-environ-mental destruction, contextual specificity isenmeshed
within, and mediated through,broader configurations of capitalist
unevenspatial development and geopolitical power.This context of
context (Brenner, Peck, andTheodore 2010; Peck 2015b) is not merely
abackground condition for urban development,but represents a
constitutive formationaself-forming, internally contradictory
andconstantly evolving wholein and throughwhich the
geo-positionality of local placesis inscribed and mediated
(Sheppard 2009).Theorizing the production of such multi-layered
spatial configurationsnot only
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contexts, but the context(s) of those con-textsin processual,
multiscalar terms thusremains an urgent task for contemporary
criti-cal urban theorists.For these reasons, rather than equating
the
project of postcolonial urbanism simply witha commitment to
concrete, regionally situ-ated or place-based studies derived from
asouthern positionality, it may be most pro-ductive, as Robinson
(2014, 61) has recentlyproposed, to understand such methodologi-cal
positions as interim moves anticipatingmore sustained formulations
for buildingglobal urban analyses (see also Roy 2014).The theses
presented below are intended tocontribute to that collective
project, whichwould connect the deconstructive epistemo-logical
critiques and conceptual innovationsof postcolonial urban theory to
the equallyurgent task of deciphering the evolving, andincreasingly
planetary, context of contextin which contemporary forms of
neoliberalcapitalist urbanization are unfolding acrossthe
North/South divide.This point connects to a second methodo-
logical tendency in postcolonial urbantheory from which our own
epistemologicalorientations significantly divergenamely,its
tendency to treat the city as the privi-leged terrain for urban
research. To be sure,in contrast to the totalizing, empiricist
settle-ment fetishism of urban age ideology andother mainstream
discourses of global urban-ism, postcolonial urban studies embraces
areflexively relational approach to the con-struction of cityness.
Rather than reifyingthe city as a generic, universal
settlementtype, this approach is productively attunedto the
multiple sociospatial configurationsin which agglomerations are
crystallizingunder contemporary capitalism, as well asto the
transnational, inter-scalar and oftenextra-territorial webs through
which theirdevelopmental pathways are mediated orworlded (see, e.g.
Roy 2009, 2014). Andyet, despite its sophisticated
methodologicalfoundations, the bulk of postcolonial urbanresearch
and theory-building has, in practice,focused on cities, tout
court.
In effect, even though a southern lens isbeing mobilized within
this literature toreconceptualize the geographies of theurban, its
concrete sites of investigationhave remained relatively familiar
local ormetropolitan unitsthe great populationcenters of Latin
America, sub-SaharanAfrica, South and Southeast Asia, East Asiaand
the Middle East. In a form of stubbornlypersistent methodological
cityism (AngeloandWachsmuth 2014), major strands of post-colonial
urban studies still demarcate theirresearch terrain with the same
conditionslarge, dense and heterogeneous settle-mentsupon which the
inherited field ofEuro-American urban studies has longfocused its
analytical gaze. The broader land-scapes of urbanization, which
extend farbeyond the megacities, metropolitan regionsand peri-urban
zones of the postcolonialworld, are not completely ignored
withinthis literature (as illustrated, for example, inits concern
with the geographies ofmigration). But nor, however, are
theybrought into explicit or reflexive focuswhen postcolonial
urbanists frame theirresearch agendas and conceptual cartogra-phies
(for further elaborations, see Robinson2014). We argue below that
such landscapesof extended urbanizationunderstood asfundamental
conditions of possibility forthe production of historically and
geographi-cally specific forms of citynessmust beanalyzed and
theorized centrally within anyupdated epistemology of the urban for
the21st century. Today, such zones can nolonger be understood as
elements of a ruraloutside that impacts the city and is in
turneffected by it; rather, they are now increas-ingly internalized
within world-encompass-ing, if deeply variegated, processes
ofplanetary urbanization.The epistemological orientations
presented
below are intended to contribute to the col-lective project of
illuminating the greatvariety of urbanization processes that are
pre-sently reshaping the planet. These theses areclosely connected
to our developing theori-zation of planetary urbanization, but
they
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are not intended to elaborate that analysis inany detail.
Instead, our proposals are meantto demarcate some relatively broad
epistemo-logical parameters within which a multi-plicity of
reflexive approaches to criticalurban theory might be pursued. We
aim notto advance a specific, substantive theory ofthe urban, but
to present a general epistemo-logical framework through which
thiselusive, yet seemingly omnipresent conditionof the contemporary
world might be analyti-cally deciphered, even as it continues
toevolve and mutate before our eyes, therebychanging yet again the
epistemic foundationsfor its future interpretation. This discussion
isthus intended as a meta-theoretical exercise:instead of
attempting to nail down a fixeddefinition of the essential
properties of theurban phenomenon once and for all, itinvolves
developing a reflexive epistemologi-cal framework that may help
bring intofocus and render intelligible the ongoingreconstitution
of that phenomenon inrelation to the simultaneous evolution of
thevery concepts and methods being used tostudy it. Any rigorously
reflexive account ofthe urban requires this
meta-theoreticalmoment.
Thesis 1: the urban and urbanization aretheoretical categories,
not empirical objects
In most mainstream traditions, the urban istreated as an
empirically self-evident, univer-sal category corresponding to a
particulartype of bounded settlement space, the city.While such
empiricist, universalistic under-standings continue to underpin
importantstrands of urban research and policy, includ-ing
contemporary mainstream discourses onglobal urbanism, we argue that
the urban,and the closely associated concept of urbaniz-ation, must
be understood as theoreticalabstractions; they can only be
definedthrough the labor of conceptualization. Theurban is thus a
theoretical category, not anempirical object: its demarcation as a
zoneof thought, representation, imagination or
action can only occur through a process oftheoretical
abstraction.Even the most descriptively nuanced,
quantitatively sophisticated or geospatiallyenhanced strands of
urban research necess-arily presuppose any number of pre-empiri-cal
assumptions regarding the nature of theputatively urban condition,
zone or trans-formation that is under analysis (Brennerand Katsikis
2014). Such assumptions arenot mere background conditions or
inciden-tal framing devices, but constitute the veryinterpretive
lens through which urbanresearch becomes intelligible as such.
Forthis reason, the urban question famouslyposed by Castells
([1972] 1977) cannot beunderstood as a theoretical detour, or as
amere intellectual diversion for those inter-ested in concept
formation or in the fieldshistorical evolution. Rather,
engagementwith the urban question is a constitutivemoment of
theoretical abstraction within allapproaches to urban research and
practice,whether or not they reflexively conceptualizeit as
such.Since the early 20th century, the evolution
of urban studies as a research field has beenanimated by intense
debates regarding theappropriate conceptualization of theurbanits
geographical parameters, its his-torical pathways and its key
social, economic,cultural or institutional dimensions
(Saunders1986; Hartmann et al. 1986; Katznelson1992). These debates
have underpinned andanimated the succession of research para-digms
on urban questions across the socialand historical sciences, and
they have alsobeen closely articulated to broader develop-ments,
controversies and paradigm shiftswithin the major traditions of
social theory,planning and design. In each framing,depending on the
underlying epistemologicalperspective, conceptual grammar,
carto-graphic apparatus and normative-politicalorientation, the
urban has been equatedwith quite divergent properties,
practices,conditions, experiences, institutions and geo-graphies,
which have in turn defined the basichorizons for research,
representation and
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practice. Such demarcations have entailed notonly diverse, often
incompatible, ways ofunderstanding cities and agglomeration,
butalso a range of interpretive methods, analyti-cal strategies and
cartographic techniquesthrough which those conditions are
distin-guished from a non-urban outsidethesuburban, the rural, the
natural or otherwise.In this sense, rather than developing througha
simple accretion of concrete investigationson a pre-given social
condition or spatialarrangement, the field of urban studies
hasevolved through ongoing theoretical debatesregarding the
appropriate demarcation,interpretation and mapping of the
urbanitself.The urban is, then, an essentially contested
concept and has been subject to frequent rein-vention in
relation to the challenges engen-dered by research, practice and
struggle.While some approaches to the urban haveasserted, or
aspired to, universal validity, andthus claimed context-independent
applica-bility, every attempt to frame the urban inanalytical,
geographical and normative-politi-cal terms has in fact been
strongly mediatedthrough the specific
historical-geographicalformation(s) in which it emergedforexample,
Manchester, Paris and classicallyindustrial models of urbanization
in the mid-19th century; Chicago, Berlin, London andrapidly
metropolitanizing landscapes ofimperialcapitalist urbanization in
the early20th century; and Los Angeles, Shanghai,Dubai, Singapore
and neoliberalizing modelsof globally networked urbanization in
thelast three decades. As Gieryn (2006, 6)explains, the city is
both the subject and thevenue of studyscholars in urban studies
con-stitute the city both as the empirical referent ofanalysis and
the physical site where investi-gation takes place.This
circumstance means that all engage-
ments with urban theory, whether Euro-American, postcolonial or
otherwise, are insome sense provincial, or context-depen-dent,
because they are mediated through con-crete experiences of time and
space withinparticular places. Just as crucially, though,
conditions within local and regional contextsunder modern
capitalism have long beentightly interdependent with one
another,and have been profoundly shaped bybroader patterns of
capitalist industrializ-ation, regulation and uneven
sociospatialdevelopment. The recognition of contextdependencythe
need to provincializeurban theorythus stands in tension withan
equally persistent need to understand thehistorically evolving
totality of inter-contex-tual patterns, developmental pathways
andsystemic transformations in which such con-texts are embedded,
whether at national,supranational or worldwide scales.In all cases,
therefore, theoretical defi-
nitions of the urban and the historical-geographical contexts of
their emergenceare tightly intertwined. This propositionapplies
whether the urban is delineated asa local formation or as a global
condition;the contexts of theory production mustlikewise be
understood in both situatedand inter-contextual terms. Any
reflexiveapproach to the urban question must makeexplicit the venue
of its own research prac-tice (be it a specific place, an
urbanizing ter-ritory or a broader socioeconomic network)and
consider the implications of the latterfor its own epistemological
and represen-tational framework.Such definitional debates and
theoretical
controversies are not only derived fromspecific contexts of
urbanization; they alsopowerfully impact those contexts insofar
asthey help clarify, construct, legitimate, disse-minate and
naturalize particular visions ofsociospatial organization that
privilegecertain elements of the urban process whileneglecting or
excluding others. These often-contradictory framing visions,
interpret-ations and cartographies of the urban (assite, territory,
ecology and experience)mediate urban design, planning, policy
andpractice, with powerful consequences forongoing strategies and
struggles, in andoutside of major institutions, to shape andreshape
urbanized landscapes. It is essential,therefore, to connect debates
on the urban
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question to assessments of their practical andpolitical
implications, institutionalexpressions and everyday consequences
inspecific contexts of urban restructuring.Such a task may only be
accomplished,however, if the underlying assumptionsassociated with
framing conceptualizationsof the urban are made explicit, subjected
tocritical scrutiny and revised continually inrelation to evolving
research questions, nor-mative-political orientations and
practicalconcerns.
Thesis 2: the urban is a process, not auniversal form,
settlement type or boundedunit
Across significant strands of the socialsciences and the design
disciplines, theurban is treated as a fixed, unchangingentityas a
universal form, settlement typeor bounded spatial unit (the city)
that isbeing replicated across the globe. By contrast,following
Lefebvres ([1970] 2003) methodo-logical injunction, we interpret
the urban as amultiscalar process of sociospatial transform-ation.
The study of specific urban forms,types or units must thus be
superseded byinvestigations of the relentless churning ofurban
configurations at all spatial scales.This apparently simple
proposal entails aseries of far-reaching consequences formany of
the core epistemological operationsof urban theory and
research.First, the urban can no longer be under-
stood as a universal form. Apparently stabil-ized urban sites
are in fact merelytemporary materializations of ongoing
socio-spatial transformations. Such processes ofcreative
destruction (see Thesis 3 below) donot simply unfold within fixed
or stableurban containers, but actively produce,unsettle and rework
them, and thus con-stantly engender new urban configurations.Simply
put, the urban is not a (fixed) formbut a process; as such, it is
dynamic, histori-cally evolving and variegated. It is materia-lized
within built environments and
sociospatial arrangements at all scales; andyet it also
continually creatively destroysthe latter to produce new patterns
of socio-spatial organization (Harvey 1985). There isthus no
singular morphology of the urban;there are, rather, many processes
of urbantransformation that crystallize across theworld at various
spatial scales, with wide-ranging, often unpredictable
consequencesfor inherited sociospatial arrangements.Second, the
urban can no longer be under-
stood as a settlement type. The field of urbanstudies has long
been preoccupied with thetask of classifying particular
sociospatial con-ditions within putatively distinct types
ofsettlement space (city, town, suburb, metro-polis and various
sub-classificationsthereof). Today, however, such typologiesof
urban settlement have outlived their use-fulness; processes of
sociospatial transform-ation, which crisscross and constantlyrework
diverse places, territories and scales,must instead be moved to the
foreground ofour epistemological framework. In such
aconceptualization, urban configurationsmust be conceived not as
discrete settlementtypes, but as dynamic, relationally
evolvingforce fields of sociospatial restructuring(Allen, Cochrane,
and Massey 1998; Massey2005). As such, urban configurations
rep-resent, simultaneously, the territorial inheri-tance of earlier
rounds of restructuring andthe sociospatial frameworks in and
throughwhich future urban pathways and potentialsare produced. The
typological classificationof static urban units is thus
considerablyless productive, in both analytical and politi-cal
terms, than explorations of the variousprocesses through which
urban configur-ations are produced, contested andtransformed.Third,
the urban can no longer be under-
stood as a bounded spatial unit. Since theorigins of modern
approaches to urbantheory in the late 19th century, the urbanhas
been conceptualized with reference tothe growth of cities,
conceived as relativelycircumscribed, if constantly
expanding,sociospatial units. Such assumptions have
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long pervaded mainstream urban research,and they are today
powerfully embodied inthe discourses on global urbanism promotedby
the UN, the World Bank and othermajor international organizations.
In lightof the above considerations, however, ouranalyses of urban
configurations must be sys-tematically disentangled from
inheritedunderstandings of cityness, which obfuscatethe processes
of implosion-explosion thatunderpin the production and
continualrestructuring of sociospatial organizationunder modern
capitalism. It is misleading toequate the urban with any
singular,bounded spatial unit (city, agglomeration,metropolitan
region or otherwise); nor canits territorial contours be coherently
deli-neated relative to some postulated non-urban outside
(suburban, rural, natural,wilderness or otherwise).
Conceptualizationsof the urban as a bounded spatial unit mustthus
be superseded by approaches that inves-tigate how urban
configurations are churnedand remade across the uneven landscapes
ofworldwide capitalist development.In sum, the process-based
approach to the
urban proposed here requires a fundamentalreorientation of urban
research. No longerconceived as a form, type or bounded unit,the
urban must now be retheorized as aprocess that, even while
continually rein-scribing patterns of agglomeration acrossthe
earths terrestrial landscape, simul-taneously transgresses,
explodes andreworks inherited geographies (of socialinteraction,
settlement, land use, circulationand socio-metabolic organization),
bothwithin and beyond large-scale metropolitancenters.
Thesis 3: urbanization involves threemutually constitutive
momentsconcentrated urbanization, extendedurbanization and
differential urbanization
If the urban is no longer to be conceived as auniversal form, as
a specific settlement typeor as a bounded unit, inherited
understandings
of urbanization must likewise be completelyreinvented, for they
are largely derived fromor intertwined with precisely this triad
ofnaturalized epistemological assumptions. Thenotion of
urbanization may initially appearto resonate productively with the
processualepistemological orientation emphasized inThesis 2. In
practice, however, all majortheories of urbanization are seriously
limitedby their exclusive focus on what Burgess([1925] 1967)
classically described as thegrowth of the city. This is not merely
amatter of empirical emphasis, but flowsfrom a fundamental
epistemological commit-mentnamely, the conceptualization
ofurbanization with exclusive reference to thecondition of
agglomeration, the spatialconcentration of population, means
ofproduction, infrastructure and investmentwithin a more or less
clearly delineatedspatial zone.Without denying the importance of
spatial
clusters to urbanization processes, we arguethat a more
multifaceted conceptualizationis today required which illuminates
the inter-play between three mutually constitutivemoments(i)
concentrated urbanization, (ii)extended urbanization and (iii)
differentialurbanization. These three moments are dia-lectically
interconnected and mutually con-stitutive; they are analytically
distinguishedhere simply to offer an epistemological basisfor a
reinvented conceptualization that trans-cends the limitations and
blind spots of main-stream models.Since Friedrich Engels famously
analyzed
the explosive growth of industrial Manche-ster in the mid-19th
century, the power ofagglomeration has been a key focal point
forurban research. Although its appropriateinterpretation remains a
topic of intensedebate, the moment of concentrated urbaniz-ation is
thus quite familiar from inheritedapproaches to urban economic
geography,which aim to illuminate the agglomerationprocesses
through which firms, workers andinfrastructure cluster together in
spaceduring successive cycles of capitalist indus-trial development
(Veltz 1996; Storper 1996;
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Scott 1988; Kratke 2014). Obviously, largeagglomerations remain
central arenas andengines of massive urban transformations,and thus
clearly merit sustained investigation,not least under early
21st-century capitalism.However, we reject the widespread
assump-tion within both mainstream and critical tra-ditions of
urban studies that agglomerationsrepresent the privileged or even
exclusiveterrain of urban development (Scott andStorper 2014). In
contrast, we propose thatthe historical and contemporary
geographiesof urban transformation encompass muchbroader, if
massively uneven, territories andlandscapes, including many that
maycontain relatively small, dispersed orminimal populations, but
where major socio-economic, infrastructural and socio-meta-bolic
metamorphoses have occurredprecisely in support of, or as a
consequenceof, the everyday operations and growthimperatives of
often-distant agglomerations.For this reason, the moment of
concentratedurbanization is inextricably connected tothat of
extended urbanization.Extended urbanization involves, first,
the
operationalization of places, territories andlandscapes, often
located far beyond thedense population centers, to support
theeveryday activities and socioeconomicdynamics of urban life. The
production ofsuch operational landscapes results from themost basic
socio-metabolic imperativesassociated with urban growththe
procure-ment and circulation of food, water,energy and construction
materials; the pro-cessing and management of waste and pol-lution;
and the mobilization of labor-powerin support of these various
processes ofextraction, production, circulation and man-agement.
Second, the process of extendedurbanization entails the ongoing
constructionand reorganization of relatively fixed andimmobile
infrastructures (in particular, fortransportation and
communication) insupport of these operations, and conse-quently,
the uneven thickening and stretchingof an urban fabric (Lefebvre
[1970] 2003)across progressively larger zones, and
ultimately, around much of the entire planet(see Thesis 5
below). Third, the process ofextended urbanization frequently
involvesthe enclosure of land from established socialuses in favor
of privatized, exclusionary andprofit-oriented modes of
appropriation,whether for resource extraction, agro-business,
logistics functions or otherwise. Inthis sense, extended
urbanization is inti-mately intertwined with the violence
ofaccumulation by dispossession (often ani-mated and enforced by
state institutions)through which non-commodified modes ofsocial
life are destabilized and articulated toglobal spatial divisions of
labor and systemsof exchange (Ajl 2014; Sevilla-Buitrago 2014).The
moment of extended urbanization has
been partially illuminated in classic accountsof city-hinterland
relations, which haveexplored not only the making of
operationallandscapes to support population centers,but the ways in
which the very process ofmetropolitan development has hinged
uponmassive, highly regularized inputs (of labor,materials, food,
water, energy, commodities,information and so forth) procured
fromagglomerations as well as various types ofnon-city spaces, both
proximate andremote (Harris and Ullman 1945; Jacobs1970; Cronon
1991; for discussion, see Katsi-kis 2015). More recently, accounts
ofextended urbanization have emphasized theprogressive enclosure,
operationalizationand industrialization of such landscapesaround
the worldincluding rainforests,tundra, alpine zones, oceans,
deserts andeven the atmosphere itselfto fuel the
rapidintensification of metropolitan growth inrecent decades
(Schmid 2006; Brenner2014a, 2014b; Soja and Kanai [2006]
2014;Monte-Mor 2014a, 2014b).Throughout the longue duree history
of
capitalist industrialization, the geographiesof extended
urbanization have been essentialto the consolidation, growth and
restructur-ing of urban centers. Rather than being rele-gated to a
non-urban outside, therefore,the moment of extended urbanization
mustbe viewed as an integral terrain of the
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urbanization process as a whole. Thus,without abandoning the
long-standingconcern of urbanists to understand agglom-eration
processes, we propose to connectthat familiar problematique to a
wide-ranging set of sociospatial transformationsthat have not
typically been viewed as beingconnected to
urbanization.Concentrated and extended urbanization
are inextricably intertwined with theprocess of differential
urbanization, inwhich inherited sociospatial configurationsare
continually creatively destroyed inrelation to the broader
developmentaldynamics and crisis-tendencies of moderncapitalism.
Lefebvre ([1970] 2003) capturedthis distinctive tendency within
capitalistforms of urbanization through the vividmetaphor of
implosion-explosion, a formu-lation that has been appropriated in
diverseways in recent years by critical urban thin-kers (Brenner
2014a, 2014b; Schmid, Stanek,and Moravanszky 2015). For our
purposeshere, rather than equate implosion exclu-sively with
concentrated urbanization andexplosion with extended urbanization,
themetaphor offers a useful basis for demarcat-ing a third,
differential moment of urbaniz-ation based upon the perpetual drive
torestructure sociospatial organization undermodern capitalism, not
only within metropo-litan agglomerations but across broader
land-scapes of extended urbanization.Consistent with the
process-based concep-
tualization of the urban presented in Thesis 2,the differential
moment of urbanization putsinto relief the intense, perpetual
dynamismof capitalist forms of urbanization, in whichsociospatial
configurations are tendentiallyestablished, only to be rendered
obsoleteand eventually superseded through therelentless forward
motion of the accumu-lation process and industrial
development(Harvey 1985; Storper and Walker 1989).Just as
crucially, as we suggest below(Thesis 7), differential urbanization
is alsothe result of various forms of urban struggleand expresses
the powerful potentials forradical social and political
transformation
that are unleashed, but often suppressed,through capitalist
industrial development(see Lefebvre [1974] 1991 on
differentialspace; and Lefebvre 2009 on the politics ofspace).The
creative destruction of sociospatial
arrangements within large urban centers haslong been recognized
in radical approachesto the periodization of urban
development(Gordon 1978; Harvey 1989). In suchapproaches,
successive configurations of theurban built environment are thought
tempor-arily to internalize the underlying contradic-tions of
capitalism associated, for instance,with class struggle, property
relations, over-accumulation and the political control ofsurplus
value. To the degree that inheritedbuilt environments can no longer
effectivelymanage the struggles and conflicts engen-dered through
such contradictions, it isargued, they are radically remade, or
crea-tively destroyed, until a new formation ofthe urban is
produced. In this sense, despitemajor disagreements regarding the
under-lying causes of crisis-induced urban restruc-turing, radical
theories of the capitalist cityhave already developed a relatively
elaborateaccount of the interplay between concen-trated and
differential urbanization sincearound 1850 (Soja 2000).By contrast,
we currently have only a
limited grasp of howvia what mechanisms,struggles, patterns and
pathwaysthe land-scapes of extended urbanization have
beencreatively destroyed during the history ofcapitalist
development, whether in relationto waves of concentrated
urbanization or,more generally, in relation to broaderregimes of
capital accumulation and modesof territorial regulation. The cycles
of urbandevelopment explored by radical scholarsunder the rubric,
for instance, of the mercan-tile, industrial, Fordist-Keynesian and
neo-liberal city (Harvey 1989) have only rarelybeen connected,
either empirically or analyti-cally, to the sociospatial dynamics
and crisis-tendencies within the broader landscapes ofextended
urbanization (for some suggestiveopenings, however, see Jones 1997;
Bayat
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and Denis 2000; Thompson, Bunnell, andParthasarathy 2013; McGee
[1991] 2014).However, it can be argued that the geogra-phies of
extended urbanization have likewisebeen undergoing intensive
processes of crea-tive destruction throughout the history
ofcapitalist industrial development, generallyin relation to major
waves of crisis-inducedrestructuring and political struggle
withinurban centers and the broader territorialeconomies in which
the latter are embedded(Moore 2008, 2011). Such transformationshave
been intensifying, deepening and broad-ening around the world since
the long 1980s,with far-reaching social, environmental andpolitical
consequences for the future of capit-alism, and indeed, humanity as
a whole (Luke2003).Figure 1 offers a stylized summary of the
three core moments of urbanization undercapitalism. We reiterate
that thesemoments refer not to distinct morphologi-cal conditions,
geographical sites or temporalstages, but to mutually constitutive,
dialecti-cally intertwined elements of a historicallyspecific
process of sociospatial transform-ation. Just as distant flows of
material,energy and labor underpin the everydaydynamics of large
metropolitan agglomera-tions, so too do the growth imperatives
andconsumption demands of the latter directlymediate the
construction of large-scale infra-structural projects, land-use
reorganizationand sociocultural transformations in appar-ently
remote operational landscapes. Asthe fabric of urbanization is
progressively, ifunevenly, stretched, thickened, rewoven
andcreatively destroyed, new centers of agglom-eration (from mining
and farming towns andtourist enclaves to logistics hubs and
growthpoles) may emerge within zones that pre-viously served mainly
as operational hinter-lands (Storper and Walker 1989). The
urbanfabric of modern capitalism is thus best con-ceived as a
dynamically evolving force fieldin which the three moments of
urbanizationcontinually interact to produce historicallyspecific
forms of sociospatial organizationand uneven development. A
framework that
reflexively connects the three moments ofurbanization demarcated
here may thusoffer some productive new interpretive per-spectives
not only on the historical and con-temporary geographies of
capitalistindustrial development, but also on some ofthe
socio-ecological conditions that aretoday commonly thought to be
associatedwith the age of the anthropocene (Crutzen2002; for a
critical discussion, see Chakra-barty 2009; Malm and Hornborg
2014).
Thesis 4: the fabric of urbanization ismultidimensional
The epistemology of urbanization proposedabove explodes
inherited assumptionsregarding the geographies of this process:they
are no longer expressed simply throughthe city, the metropolitan
region or inter-urban networks, and nor are they boundedneatly and
distinguished from a putativelynon-urban outside. But this
systematicanalytical delinking of urbanization fromtrends related
exclusively to city growthentails a further epistemological
conse-quencethe abandonment of several majorsociological,
demographic, economic or cul-tural definitions of urbanization that
aredirectly derived from that assumption.Thus, with the
deconstruction of monodi-mensional, city-centric
epistemologies,urbanization can no longer be consideredsynonymous
with such commonly invokeddevelopments as: rural-to-urban
migration;expanding population levels in big cities;
theconcentration of investments and economiccapacities within dense
population centers;the diffusion of urbanism as a socioculturalform
into small- and medium-sized townsand villages; or the spreading of
similar,city-like services, amenities, technologies,infrastructures
or built environments acrossthe territory. Any among the latter
trendsmay, under specific conditions, be connectedto distinctive
patterns and pathways ofurbanization. However, in the
epistemologi-cal framework proposed here, their analytical
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demarcation as such no longer hinges uponthe definitionally
fixed assumption either (a)that they necessarily originate within
specificsettlement units (generally, big cities) or (b)that they
necessarily result from the replica-tion of formally identical
urban settlementtypes, infrastructural arrangements or cul-tural
forms across the entire territory.What is required, instead, is a
multidimen-
sional understanding of urbanization that canilluminate the
historically specific patternsand pathways through which the
variegated,uneven geographies of this process, in eachof its three
constitutive moments, are articu-lated during successive cycles of
worldwidecapitalist development. To facilitate such ananalysis,
building upon Lefebvres three-dimensional conceptualization of
space(Lefebvre [1974] 1991; Schmid 2005, 2008,2015b), we
distinguish three further dimen-sions of urbanizationspatial
practices, terri-torial regulation and everyday life.
Thesedimensions of urbanization co-constitutethe three moments
demarcated in the pre-vious thesis, and together produce
theunevenly woven, restlessly mutating urbanfabric of the
contemporary world (Figure 2).
First, urbanization involves distinctivespatial practices
through which land use isintensified, connectivity infrastructures
arethickened and socio-metabolic transform-ations are accelerated
to facilitate processesof capitalist industrialization. Such
spatialpractices underpin the production of builtenvironments
within major cities as well asa wide range of sociospatial
transformationsin near and distant zones in relation to
thelatter.Second, urbanization is always mediated
through specific forms of territorial regu-lation that (a)
impose collectively bindingrules regarding the appropriation of
labor,land, food, water, energy and materialresources within and
among places and terri-tories; (b) mobilize formal and informal
plan-ning procedures to govern investmentpatterns and financial
flows into the builtenvironment and infrastructural networks
atvarious spatial scales; and (c) manage patternsof territorial
development with regard to pro-cesses of production and social
reproduction,major aspects of logistics infrastructure andcommodity
circulation, as well as emergentcrisis-tendencies embedded within
inherited
Figure 1 The three moments of urbanization.
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spatial arrangements (Brenner 2004; Schmid2003).Finally,
urbanization mediates and trans-
forms everyday life. Whether within densepopulation centers or
in more dispersedlocations embedded within the broaderurban fabric,
urban space is defined by thepeople who use, appropriate and
transform
it through their daily routines and practices,which frequently
involve struggles regardingthe very form and content of the
urbanitself, at once as a site and stake of socialexperience. The
qualities of urban space,across diverse locations, are thus
alsoembedded within and reproduced througheveryday experiences,
which in turn
Figure 2 Moments and dimensions of urbanization
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crystallize longer term processes of socializa-tion that are
materialized within builtenvironments and territorial
arrangements.Clearly, this is a broad conceptualization
of urbanization: it involves a wide-rangingconstellation of
material, social, institutional,environmental and everyday
transformationsassociated with capitalist industrialization,the
circulation of capital and the managementof territorial development
at various spatialscales. We would insist, however, on
dis-tinguishing urbanization from the moregeneral processes of
capitalist industrializ-ation and world market expansion that
havebeen investigated by economic historiansand historical
sociologists of capitalist devel-opment (e.g. Wallerstein 1974;
Braudel 1984;Arrighi 1994). As understood here, urbaniz-ation is
indeed linked to these processes, butits specificity lies precisely
in materializingthe latter within places, territories and
land-scapes, and in embedding them within con-crete, temporarily
stabilized configurationsof socioeconomic life,
socio-environmentalorganization and regulatory
management.Capitalist industrial development does notengender urban
growth and restructuring onan untouched terrestrial surface;
rather, itconstantly collides with, and reorganizes,inherited
sociospatial configurations, includ-ing those produced directly
through thesocial relations and political forms of capital-ism.
Urbanization is precisely the mediumand expression of this
collision/transform-ation, and every configuration of urban lifeis
powerfully shaped by the diverse social,political and institutional
forces thatmediate it.
Thesis 5: urbanization has becomeplanetary
Since the first wave of capitalist industrializ-ation in the
19th century, the functionalborders, catchment areas and immediate
hin-terlands of urban regions have been extendedoutwards to create
ever larger regional units.Just as importantly, however, this
dramatic
process of metropolitan expansion has longbeen premised upon the
intensive activationand transformation of progressively
broaderlandscapes of extended urbanization whichsupply
agglomerations with their most basicsocioeconomic and
socio-metabolic require-ments. The patterns and pathways of
socio-spatial restructuring that crystallized aroundthe world
during the long, violent and inten-sely contested transition from
industrial andmetropolitan to territorial formations
ofurbanization, roughly from the 1830s to the1970s, require further
investigation andinterpretation. In contrast to inherited
peri-odizations, which focus almost exclusivelyon cities and urban
form, the framework pro-posed here would permit the dynamics of
citygrowth during each period to be analyzed indirect relation to
the production and recon-stitution of historically and
geographicallyspecific operational landscapes (mediatedthrough
Empire, colonialism, neo-colonial-ism and various forms of
enclosure andaccumulation by dispossession) that sup-ported the
latter.For present purposes, we focus on the con-
temporary formation of urbanization. In ourview, a genuinely
planetary formation ofurbanization began to emerge following
thelong 1980s, the transitional period of crisis-induced global
restructuring that began withthe deconstruction of
Fordist-Keynesianand national-developmentalist regimes
ofaccumulation in the early 1970s and contin-ued until the
withering away of state social-ism and the collapse of the Soviet
Union inthe late 1980s and early 1990s. These develop-ments
established some of the basic con-ditions for the subsequent
planetaryextension of the urban fabric during the lasttwo
decadesthe deregulation of the globalfinancial system and of
various national regu-latory systems; the neoliberalization
ofglobal, national and local economic govern-ance; the worldwide
digital revolution; theflexibilization of production processes
andthe generalization of global production net-works; and the
creation of new forms ofmarket-oriented territorial regulation
at
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supranational, national and subnationalscales. These
realignments have created anew regulatory framework
encouragingspeculative urban investment, not onlywithin the
property markets and builtenvironments of the worlds major
cities,but also through the construction of vastlyexpanded urban
networks and infrastructuresof resource extraction, agro-industrial
culti-vation and logistical circulation, all of whichhave massively
contributed to the acceleratedenclosure of landscapes around the
world topermit intensified, accelerated capital circula-tion
(Harvey 2010; Merrifield 2014).In the early 1970s, Lefebvre ([1970]
2003)
anticipated this situation, advancing theradical hypothesis of
the complete urbaniz-ation of society. For Lefebvre, this was
anemergent tendency that might be realized inthe future, but he did
not speculate as towhen or how it might actually occur, andwith
what consequences. Today, it is increas-ingly evident that the
urban has indeedbecome a worldwide condition in which allaspects of
social, economic, political andenvironmental relations are
enmeshed,across places, territories and scales, crosscut-ting any
number of long-entrenched geo-graphical divisions (urban/rural,
city/countryside, society/nature, North/South,East/West). The dawn
of planetary urbaniz-ation is being expressed through
severalintertwined tendencies that have only justbegun to come into
analytical focus duringthe early 21st century, but whichurgently
require the scrutiny of criticalurban thinkers.Perhaps most
prominent among these is
the remarkable territorial expansion ofurban agglomerations,
vividly capturedthrough Sudjics (1993) notion of 100-milecities,
which has blurred and even begun todissolve the boundaries between
manymajor cities and their surrounding territoriesor erstwhile
hinterlands (Soja and Kanai[2006] 2014). Today, urban
agglomerationscan no longer be understood simply asnodal
concentrations organized around andoriented towards a single urban
core.
Instead, they must be reconceptualized asdense force fields of
nearly continuous inter-action among the various processes
associatedwith concentrated, extended and differentialurbanization
(Topalovic, Knusel, and Jaggi2013).Equally important, in this
context, are
several additional waves of socioeconomicand socio-metabolic
transformation of thepost-1980s period that have
significantlyrewoven the inherited fabric of urbanizationwhile
extending it into new realms thatwere previously relatively
insulated from itswide-ranging imprints. These include (a) amajor
expansion in agro-industrial exportzones, with associated
large-scale infrastruc-tural investments and land-use
transform-ations to produce and circulate food andbiofuels for
world markets (McMichael2013); (b) a massive expansion in
investmentsrelated to mineral and oil extraction, in largepart due
to the post-2003 commodity boommanifested in dramatic increases in
globalprices for raw materials, especially metalsand fuels
(Arboleda 2015); and (c) the acceler-ated consolidation and
extension of long-distance transportation and
communicationsinfrastructures (including networks such asroads,
canals, railways, waterways andpipelines; and nodal points such as
seaports,airports and intermodal logistics hubs)designed to reduce
the transaction costsassociated with the production and
circula-tion of capital (Notteboom and Rodrigue2005; Hein 2011;
Hesse 2013). Under theseconditions, erstwhile rural zones aroundthe
world are being profoundly transformed:various forms of
agro-industrial consolida-tion and land enclosure are
underminingsmall- and medium-sized forms of food pro-duction; new
forms of export-oriented indus-trial extraction are destabilizing
establishedmodels of land-use and social reproduction,as well as
environmental security;