J. Morgan Grove, Mary L. Cadenasso, Steward T. A. Pickett, Gary E. Machlis, and William R. Burch
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300101133
- eISBN:
- 9780300217865
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300101133.003.0003
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
This chapter lays out the concept and framework for a “patch dynamics” approach and briefly reviews its contributions to describing and quantifying patterns and changes in spatial heterogeneity of ...
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This chapter lays out the concept and framework for a “patch dynamics” approach and briefly reviews its contributions to describing and quantifying patterns and changes in spatial heterogeneity of bioecological systems. Patch dynamics emerged in ecology as an approach to understanding spatial heterogeneity. Though ecology is its original disciplinary home, patch dynamics resonates with contemporary urban social theory. Consequently, a patch dynamics approach can serve as a critical node of synthesis between contemporary social and ecological approaches for an ecology of cities. Thus, the chapter applies patch dynamics to urban systems and demonstrates how it addresses the drivers of urban systems identified in earlier chapters.Less
This chapter lays out the concept and framework for a “patch dynamics” approach and briefly reviews its contributions to describing and quantifying patterns and changes in spatial heterogeneity of bioecological systems. Patch dynamics emerged in ecology as an approach to understanding spatial heterogeneity. Though ecology is its original disciplinary home, patch dynamics resonates with contemporary urban social theory. Consequently, a patch dynamics approach can serve as a critical node of synthesis between contemporary social and ecological approaches for an ecology of cities. Thus, the chapter applies patch dynamics to urban systems and demonstrates how it addresses the drivers of urban systems identified in earlier chapters.
Kian Tajbakhsh
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222779
- eISBN:
- 9780520924642
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222779.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This book proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, the book ...
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This book proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, the book offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, it says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm. The book examines these dimensions in the work of three major critical urban theorists of recent decades: Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Ira Katznelson. It shows why the answers offered by Marxian urban theory to the questions of identity, space, and structure are unsatisfactory and why the perspectives of other intellectual traditions such as post-structuralism, feminism, Habermasian Critical Theory, and pragmatism can help us better understand the challenges facing contemporary cities.Less
This book proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, the book offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, it says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm. The book examines these dimensions in the work of three major critical urban theorists of recent decades: Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Ira Katznelson. It shows why the answers offered by Marxian urban theory to the questions of identity, space, and structure are unsatisfactory and why the perspectives of other intellectual traditions such as post-structuralism, feminism, Habermasian Critical Theory, and pragmatism can help us better understand the challenges facing contemporary cities.
Allen J. Scott
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199549306
- eISBN:
- 9780191701511
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, International Business, Political Economy
This book is about the renaissance of cities in the 21st century and their increasing role as centers of creative economic activity. It attempts to put some conceptual and descriptive order around ...
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This book is about the renaissance of cities in the 21st century and their increasing role as centers of creative economic activity. It attempts to put some conceptual and descriptive order around issues of urbanization in the contemporary world, emphasizing the idea of the social economy of the metropolis, which is to say, a view of the urban organism as an intertwined system of social and economic life played out through the arena of urban space. The book opens with a review of some essentials of urban theory. It aims to re-articulate the urban question in a way that is relevant to city life and politics in the present era. It then analyses the functional characteristics of the urban economy, with special reference to the rise of a group of core sectors such as media, fashion, music, etc. focused on cognitive and cultural forms of work. These sectors are growing with great rapidity in the world’s largest cities at the present time, and they play a major role in the urban resurgence that has been occurring of late. The discussion then explores the spatial ramifications of this new economy in cities and the ways in which it appears to be ushering in major shifts in divisions of labor and urban social stratification, as marked by a growing divide between a stratum of elite workers on the one side and a low-wage proletariat on the other.Less
This book is about the renaissance of cities in the 21st century and their increasing role as centers of creative economic activity. It attempts to put some conceptual and descriptive order around issues of urbanization in the contemporary world, emphasizing the idea of the social economy of the metropolis, which is to say, a view of the urban organism as an intertwined system of social and economic life played out through the arena of urban space. The book opens with a review of some essentials of urban theory. It aims to re-articulate the urban question in a way that is relevant to city life and politics in the present era. It then analyses the functional characteristics of the urban economy, with special reference to the rise of a group of core sectors such as media, fashion, music, etc. focused on cognitive and cultural forms of work. These sectors are growing with great rapidity in the world’s largest cities at the present time, and they play a major role in the urban resurgence that has been occurring of late. The discussion then explores the spatial ramifications of this new economy in cities and the ways in which it appears to be ushering in major shifts in divisions of labor and urban social stratification, as marked by a growing divide between a stratum of elite workers on the one side and a low-wage proletariat on the other.
Kian Tajbakhsh
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222779
- eISBN:
- 9780520924642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222779.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter examines the work of David Harvey concerning urban theory. It identifies the place that Harvey's reaffirmation of classical Marxism occupies within the discourse of Marxian urbanism and ...
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This chapter examines the work of David Harvey concerning urban theory. It identifies the place that Harvey's reaffirmation of classical Marxism occupies within the discourse of Marxian urbanism and analyzes Harvey's interpretation of urban conflict through his theory of urban-based movements as displaced class struggles. This chapter argues that by discounting the political and institutional salience of the distinction between workplace and residential community Harvey's model has two principal drawbacks. The chapter also considers Claus Offe's analysis of the two logics of collective action in the context of the problems of trade-union politics when faced with the expansion and differentiation of their traditional constituencies.Less
This chapter examines the work of David Harvey concerning urban theory. It identifies the place that Harvey's reaffirmation of classical Marxism occupies within the discourse of Marxian urbanism and analyzes Harvey's interpretation of urban conflict through his theory of urban-based movements as displaced class struggles. This chapter argues that by discounting the political and institutional salience of the distinction between workplace and residential community Harvey's model has two principal drawbacks. The chapter also considers Claus Offe's analysis of the two logics of collective action in the context of the problems of trade-union politics when faced with the expansion and differentiation of their traditional constituencies.
Kian Tajbakhsh
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222779
- eISBN:
- 9780520924642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222779.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter examines the work of Ira Katznelson in the context of a Marxian framework for the problems of identity, space, and structure. It explains that Katznelson's effort to develop a framework ...
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This chapter examines the work of Ira Katznelson in the context of a Marxian framework for the problems of identity, space, and structure. It explains that Katznelson's effort to develop a framework for Marxian urban theory took the specificity of the U.S. socio-political structure as a crucial ingredient for avoiding the pitfalls found in the work of Manuel Castells and David Harvey, and the most systematic and nuanced attempt to link class and space within the Marxian framework. It explores the history and place of Marxist and socialist discourse in American political culture and comments on the debates over the peculiarly limited nature of urban policy making in American cities and the relative absence of working-class-based urban movements and agendas.Less
This chapter examines the work of Ira Katznelson in the context of a Marxian framework for the problems of identity, space, and structure. It explains that Katznelson's effort to develop a framework for Marxian urban theory took the specificity of the U.S. socio-political structure as a crucial ingredient for avoiding the pitfalls found in the work of Manuel Castells and David Harvey, and the most systematic and nuanced attempt to link class and space within the Marxian framework. It explores the history and place of Marxist and socialist discourse in American political culture and comments on the debates over the peculiarly limited nature of urban policy making in American cities and the relative absence of working-class-based urban movements and agendas.
Neil Brenner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190627188
- eISBN:
- 9780190627201
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190627188.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory, Urban and Rural Studies
For over a century, the urban question has generated intense debate on matters of conceptualization, method, and interpretation. Since the 1990s, in the context of debates on post-Fordism, ...
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For over a century, the urban question has generated intense debate on matters of conceptualization, method, and interpretation. Since the 1990s, in the context of debates on post-Fordism, globalization, and urban restructuring, the urban question has been redefined as a question of scale. Why has this scalar redefinition of the urban occurred, and what does this mean for urban theory and research? What are its analytical possibilities and dangers? In what ways does such an approach reframe the long-standing emphasis on the “city” as the core focal point for urban studies? This opening chapter elaborates these questions in intellectual and geopolitical context, thus setting the stage for the explorations of urbanization, state spatial restructuring, and rescaling processes that follow in the rest of the book. This chapter also situates the book’s argument in relation to contemporary debates on abstraction, generalization, comparison, and contextual particularity in critical urban theory.Less
For over a century, the urban question has generated intense debate on matters of conceptualization, method, and interpretation. Since the 1990s, in the context of debates on post-Fordism, globalization, and urban restructuring, the urban question has been redefined as a question of scale. Why has this scalar redefinition of the urban occurred, and what does this mean for urban theory and research? What are its analytical possibilities and dangers? In what ways does such an approach reframe the long-standing emphasis on the “city” as the core focal point for urban studies? This opening chapter elaborates these questions in intellectual and geopolitical context, thus setting the stage for the explorations of urbanization, state spatial restructuring, and rescaling processes that follow in the rest of the book. This chapter also situates the book’s argument in relation to contemporary debates on abstraction, generalization, comparison, and contextual particularity in critical urban theory.
Kian Tajbakhsh
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222779
- eISBN:
- 9780520924642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222779.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on cities and city life. It addresses some continuing questions and dilemmas in thinking about the contribution that urbanism can make to the goals ...
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This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on cities and city life. It addresses some continuing questions and dilemmas in thinking about the contribution that urbanism can make to the goals of democracy and justice. It evaluates the prospects for urban social theory and analyzes the factors that influence the nature of the identities and actors that inhabit the city, the types of spaces that constitute the urban and the key structural dimensions that both constrain and form the context of everyday life.Less
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on cities and city life. It addresses some continuing questions and dilemmas in thinking about the contribution that urbanism can make to the goals of democracy and justice. It evaluates the prospects for urban social theory and analyzes the factors that influence the nature of the identities and actors that inhabit the city, the types of spaces that constitute the urban and the key structural dimensions that both constrain and form the context of everyday life.
Garth Myers
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781447322917
- eISBN:
- 9781447322931
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447322917.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
This book develops an interactionist urban political ecology approach to urban environments across Africa. Individual chapters focus on: analyzing the findings of planners and scholars on Africa’s ...
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This book develops an interactionist urban political ecology approach to urban environments across Africa. Individual chapters focus on: analyzing the findings of planners and scholars on Africa’s urban environmental problems; interrogating urban environmental histories; engaging with the physical-material settings and cultural beliefs surrounding them; recovering the political-environmental urban visions of African writers and artists; and building from everyday environmentalism and community activism. The book highlights alternative readings of Africa’s urban environments via case study segments on Nairobi, Lusaka, Zanzibar, Dakar and Cape Town, along with material on a variety of other cities. The primary practical, policy- and planning-oriented argument is that efforts to ‘improve’ urban environments in Africa will fail without engagement with and (re)building from the reality of diverse and complex perspectives on those environments. That leads to a more theoretical argument for radical incrementalism, following the South African urbanist Edgar Pieterse, within an interactionist urban political ecology framework. Despite the diversity of cities and environments, cities in Africa share the hot pot of environmental politics – and that demands a critical, comparative approach. The book argues for greater dialogue with ‘rural’ political ecology, a deeper historical backdrop and recognition that everyday environmentalism takes many forms in the city. In such a manner Africanized and pluralized interactionist urban political ecology could genuinely lead to broader ways for rethinking urban theory on what constitutes a city and a radical re-imagination of possibilities for producing cities around the world that are more just and genuinely socio-environmentally sustainable.Less
This book develops an interactionist urban political ecology approach to urban environments across Africa. Individual chapters focus on: analyzing the findings of planners and scholars on Africa’s urban environmental problems; interrogating urban environmental histories; engaging with the physical-material settings and cultural beliefs surrounding them; recovering the political-environmental urban visions of African writers and artists; and building from everyday environmentalism and community activism. The book highlights alternative readings of Africa’s urban environments via case study segments on Nairobi, Lusaka, Zanzibar, Dakar and Cape Town, along with material on a variety of other cities. The primary practical, policy- and planning-oriented argument is that efforts to ‘improve’ urban environments in Africa will fail without engagement with and (re)building from the reality of diverse and complex perspectives on those environments. That leads to a more theoretical argument for radical incrementalism, following the South African urbanist Edgar Pieterse, within an interactionist urban political ecology framework. Despite the diversity of cities and environments, cities in Africa share the hot pot of environmental politics – and that demands a critical, comparative approach. The book argues for greater dialogue with ‘rural’ political ecology, a deeper historical backdrop and recognition that everyday environmentalism takes many forms in the city. In such a manner Africanized and pluralized interactionist urban political ecology could genuinely lead to broader ways for rethinking urban theory on what constitutes a city and a radical re-imagination of possibilities for producing cities around the world that are more just and genuinely socio-environmentally sustainable.
Neil Brenner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190627188
- eISBN:
- 9780190627201
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190627188.003.0010
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter presents the elements of a reinvigorated approach to critical urban theory that could help decipher the multiplication of urban transformations within and beyond major metropolitan ...
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This chapter presents the elements of a reinvigorated approach to critical urban theory that could help decipher the multiplication of urban transformations within and beyond major metropolitan regions under early twenty-first-century capitalism. It also advances a systematic critique of the narrowly city-centric conceptions of urbanization that underpin influential recent declarations of a majority-urban world. In thus proceeding, this chapter introduces new layers of meaning, and additional sociospatial dimensions, to the scale-attuned theorization of the capitalist urban fabric elaborated in the book’s previous chapters, especially with reference to the spatiotemporal dynamics of extended urbanization. A central challenge, within this framework, is to connect the restructuring of major cities and metropolitan regions to the colossal, if variegated, social, infrastructural, and ecological transformations that are unfolding in the world’s industrializing hinterlands to support the restless metabolism of capitalist urbanization. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of a (reinvented) critical urban theory to the collective project of imagining, and ultimately pursuing, alternative forms and pathways of urbanization.Less
This chapter presents the elements of a reinvigorated approach to critical urban theory that could help decipher the multiplication of urban transformations within and beyond major metropolitan regions under early twenty-first-century capitalism. It also advances a systematic critique of the narrowly city-centric conceptions of urbanization that underpin influential recent declarations of a majority-urban world. In thus proceeding, this chapter introduces new layers of meaning, and additional sociospatial dimensions, to the scale-attuned theorization of the capitalist urban fabric elaborated in the book’s previous chapters, especially with reference to the spatiotemporal dynamics of extended urbanization. A central challenge, within this framework, is to connect the restructuring of major cities and metropolitan regions to the colossal, if variegated, social, infrastructural, and ecological transformations that are unfolding in the world’s industrializing hinterlands to support the restless metabolism of capitalist urbanization. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of a (reinvented) critical urban theory to the collective project of imagining, and ultimately pursuing, alternative forms and pathways of urbanization.
Philip Carter
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199280728
- eISBN:
- 9780191700149
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280728.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Social History
This chapter focuses on one specific male walker — the mysterious persona of John Gay's Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London — who imparts advice throughout the poem. It offers a ...
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This chapter focuses on one specific male walker — the mysterious persona of John Gay's Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London — who imparts advice throughout the poem. It offers a study of the walker and relates him to themes of biography in London in the eighteenth century. It depicts the walker as a self-absorbed unsociable man on the margin of urban society, interested in the self and society and how we can know others and ourselves in an urban environment, and using his status to act as a seemingly dispassionate commentator on city life. The use of diaries, urban theory, periodicals, and life-writing adds textual variety to the chapter.Less
This chapter focuses on one specific male walker — the mysterious persona of John Gay's Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London — who imparts advice throughout the poem. It offers a study of the walker and relates him to themes of biography in London in the eighteenth century. It depicts the walker as a self-absorbed unsociable man on the margin of urban society, interested in the self and society and how we can know others and ourselves in an urban environment, and using his status to act as a seemingly dispassionate commentator on city life. The use of diaries, urban theory, periodicals, and life-writing adds textual variety to the chapter.
Neil Brenner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190627188
- eISBN:
- 9780190627201
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190627188.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory, Urban and Rural Studies
A new round of debate on the urban question is today unfolding, in relation to which key aspects of inherited urban theories, including those produced in recent decades, now appear inadequate or even ...
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A new round of debate on the urban question is today unfolding, in relation to which key aspects of inherited urban theories, including those produced in recent decades, now appear inadequate or even obsolete. Against this background, this chapter considers the wide-ranging epistemological, conceptual, and methodological challenges posed by emergent patterns and pathways of planetary urban transformation, which are relativizing the inherited spatial dualisms (city/countryside, urban/rural, human/nonhuman) and scalar imaginaries that have long anchored the field of urban studies. The production of these dramatically rescaled urban spaces engenders major challenges for critical theory, research, imagination, and practice.Less
A new round of debate on the urban question is today unfolding, in relation to which key aspects of inherited urban theories, including those produced in recent decades, now appear inadequate or even obsolete. Against this background, this chapter considers the wide-ranging epistemological, conceptual, and methodological challenges posed by emergent patterns and pathways of planetary urban transformation, which are relativizing the inherited spatial dualisms (city/countryside, urban/rural, human/nonhuman) and scalar imaginaries that have long anchored the field of urban studies. The production of these dramatically rescaled urban spaces engenders major challenges for critical theory, research, imagination, and practice.
Gavin Shatkin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501709906
- eISBN:
- 9781501709715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501709906.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter defines ‘urban real estate megaprojects’ as large, integrated, master planned, and commercially driven real estate developments that seek to fundamentally transform the urban fabric. It ...
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This chapter defines ‘urban real estate megaprojects’ as large, integrated, master planned, and commercially driven real estate developments that seek to fundamentally transform the urban fabric. It analyses the implications of the proliferation of such projects across Asia for theories of neoliberalization, arguing that an analysis of the trials and travails of such projects, and their eventual outcomes, helps shed light on the role that historically formed institutions and socio-political dynamics (property rights, state landownership, customary claims to land) play in shaping the ways that market oriented modes of governance do or do not take root in a given setting. The chapter further deploys Neil Smith’s concept of the rent gap as a tool to interpret when and where state actors have sought to transform urban space through strategies of land monetization.Less
This chapter defines ‘urban real estate megaprojects’ as large, integrated, master planned, and commercially driven real estate developments that seek to fundamentally transform the urban fabric. It analyses the implications of the proliferation of such projects across Asia for theories of neoliberalization, arguing that an analysis of the trials and travails of such projects, and their eventual outcomes, helps shed light on the role that historically formed institutions and socio-political dynamics (property rights, state landownership, customary claims to land) play in shaping the ways that market oriented modes of governance do or do not take root in a given setting. The chapter further deploys Neil Smith’s concept of the rent gap as a tool to interpret when and where state actors have sought to transform urban space through strategies of land monetization.
Neil Brenner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190627188
- eISBN:
- 9780190627201
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190627188.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory, Urban and Rural Studies
The urban condition is today being radically transformed. Urban restructuring is accelerating, new urban spaces are being consolidated, and new forms of urbanization are crystallizing. How can these ...
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The urban condition is today being radically transformed. Urban restructuring is accelerating, new urban spaces are being consolidated, and new forms of urbanization are crystallizing. How can these transformations be deciphered? In this book, critical urban theorist Neil Brenner argues that confronting this challenge requires not only intensive research on urban restructuring but new theories of urbanization. To this end, Brenner proposes an approach that breaks with inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded settlement unit—the city or the metropolis—and explores the multiscalar constitution, political mediation, and ongoing rescaling of the capitalist urban fabric, from the local and the regional to the national and the planetary. New Urban Spaces offers a paradigmatic account of how rescaling processes are transforming inherited formations of urban life, the role of multiscalar state spatial strategies in animating them, and their variegated consequences for emergent patterns and pathways of urbanization. The book also advances an understanding of critical urban theory as radically revisable: key urban concepts, methods, and cartographies must be continually reinvented in relation to the relentlessly mutating worlds of urbanization they aspire to illuminate.Less
The urban condition is today being radically transformed. Urban restructuring is accelerating, new urban spaces are being consolidated, and new forms of urbanization are crystallizing. How can these transformations be deciphered? In this book, critical urban theorist Neil Brenner argues that confronting this challenge requires not only intensive research on urban restructuring but new theories of urbanization. To this end, Brenner proposes an approach that breaks with inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded settlement unit—the city or the metropolis—and explores the multiscalar constitution, political mediation, and ongoing rescaling of the capitalist urban fabric, from the local and the regional to the national and the planetary. New Urban Spaces offers a paradigmatic account of how rescaling processes are transforming inherited formations of urban life, the role of multiscalar state spatial strategies in animating them, and their variegated consequences for emergent patterns and pathways of urbanization. The book also advances an understanding of critical urban theory as radically revisable: key urban concepts, methods, and cartographies must be continually reinvented in relation to the relentlessly mutating worlds of urbanization they aspire to illuminate.
Laurens E. Tacoma
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198768050
- eISBN:
- 9780191821868
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198768050.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Chapter 5 subjects urban migration theory to further scrutiny. It is argued that, despite the voluminous literature on urban graveyard models, applications to the Roman world have been relatively ...
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Chapter 5 subjects urban migration theory to further scrutiny. It is argued that, despite the voluminous literature on urban graveyard models, applications to the Roman world have been relatively crude, taking the existence of the phenomenon as a given, and applying it as an iron law. This does not imply that it is necessarily wrong; in fact, after taking mortality and fertility into account, it is argued that both the classic version of urban graveyard theory and the revised model of decreased migrant fertility applied simultaneously. This suggests that levels of immigration were relatively high, and that the theory works relatively well to analyse migration streams to Rome.Less
Chapter 5 subjects urban migration theory to further scrutiny. It is argued that, despite the voluminous literature on urban graveyard models, applications to the Roman world have been relatively crude, taking the existence of the phenomenon as a given, and applying it as an iron law. This does not imply that it is necessarily wrong; in fact, after taking mortality and fertility into account, it is argued that both the classic version of urban graveyard theory and the revised model of decreased migrant fertility applied simultaneously. This suggests that levels of immigration were relatively high, and that the theory works relatively well to analyse migration streams to Rome.
Robert A. Beauregard
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665754
- eISBN:
- 9781452946559
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665754.003.0009
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural Theory and Criticism
This chapter uses the notion of radical uniqueness to discuss how city-based theories, regardless of the city in which they originate, are antithetical to the larger urban project. The concept of ...
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This chapter uses the notion of radical uniqueness to discuss how city-based theories, regardless of the city in which they originate, are antithetical to the larger urban project. The concept of radical uniqueness views each city as unique, and thus cannot be compared to another. With comparison impossible, only city-specific theory would remain; that is, theory focused solely on the conditions and dynamics within particular places. The chapter rejects city-based urban theories, describing them as theoretically problematic: flirting with a fictional radical uniqueness, embracing an unreflective naturalism, undermining inclusivity, distorting space and place, and abetting an uncritical theoretical pluralism even as they resist it. Too many different types of cities are omitted from such formulations. In fact, the whole approach has an exclusive quality that divides cities and theorists into those who live and write about “significant” places and those who do not.Less
This chapter uses the notion of radical uniqueness to discuss how city-based theories, regardless of the city in which they originate, are antithetical to the larger urban project. The concept of radical uniqueness views each city as unique, and thus cannot be compared to another. With comparison impossible, only city-specific theory would remain; that is, theory focused solely on the conditions and dynamics within particular places. The chapter rejects city-based urban theories, describing them as theoretically problematic: flirting with a fictional radical uniqueness, embracing an unreflective naturalism, undermining inclusivity, distorting space and place, and abetting an uncritical theoretical pluralism even as they resist it. Too many different types of cities are omitted from such formulations. In fact, the whole approach has an exclusive quality that divides cities and theorists into those who live and write about “significant” places and those who do not.
Julie Ren
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529205473
- eISBN:
- 9781529205510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529205473.003.0012
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Given the confluence of a vast body of research about urban China and the heated debates about urban theory, revisiting Park seems at first glance like an untimely, limiting tactic for setting a ...
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Given the confluence of a vast body of research about urban China and the heated debates about urban theory, revisiting Park seems at first glance like an untimely, limiting tactic for setting a research agenda. Taking Park as a starting point does not, however, dictate rules about speaking in his terms, nor does it require a re-treading of the Los Angeles School critiques of his work. Rather, it can be a valuable way to review the research on urban China in order to situate this work within greater theoretical issues. This concluding chapter reflects on the general issues of exceptionalism and methodology haunting the research on urban China. It suggests that rather than a research agenda like the one Park outlines in his essay on “The City,” perhaps the future of research demands a reconsideration of approach.Less
Given the confluence of a vast body of research about urban China and the heated debates about urban theory, revisiting Park seems at first glance like an untimely, limiting tactic for setting a research agenda. Taking Park as a starting point does not, however, dictate rules about speaking in his terms, nor does it require a re-treading of the Los Angeles School critiques of his work. Rather, it can be a valuable way to review the research on urban China in order to situate this work within greater theoretical issues. This concluding chapter reflects on the general issues of exceptionalism and methodology haunting the research on urban China. It suggests that rather than a research agenda like the one Park outlines in his essay on “The City,” perhaps the future of research demands a reconsideration of approach.
Gavin Shatkin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501709906
- eISBN:
- 9781501709715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501709906.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter concludes by assessing the implications of the analysis in the preceding chapters for contemporary urban theory and urban planning and policy practice. The analysis focuses on four ...
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This chapter concludes by assessing the implications of the analysis in the preceding chapters for contemporary urban theory and urban planning and policy practice. The analysis focuses on four common themes that emerge across the case studies: the political challenges that states face in managing the land value increment; the contestations that emerge around state efforts to destabilize non-state and non-freehold claims to land; the state strategies that emerge to delegitimize the claims and complaints of those dispossessed through urban real estate megaproject development; and the dynamics of economic and social exclusion that emerge with urban real estate megaproject development.Less
This chapter concludes by assessing the implications of the analysis in the preceding chapters for contemporary urban theory and urban planning and policy practice. The analysis focuses on four common themes that emerge across the case studies: the political challenges that states face in managing the land value increment; the contestations that emerge around state efforts to destabilize non-state and non-freehold claims to land; the state strategies that emerge to delegitimize the claims and complaints of those dispossessed through urban real estate megaproject development; and the dynamics of economic and social exclusion that emerge with urban real estate megaproject development.
Frank Gaffikin, David C. Perry, and Ratoola Kundu
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665754
- eISBN:
- 9781452946559
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665754.003.0014
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural Theory and Criticism
This chapter suggests that a notable condition of urbanism in the developing world—informality—holds resonance not only for our understanding of places registering the greatest amount of urban ...
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This chapter suggests that a notable condition of urbanism in the developing world—informality—holds resonance not only for our understanding of places registering the greatest amount of urban change, but also for ways in which such conditions find contested expression in first world cities. It discusses the conditions of the “informal city,” applying empirical examples from a diverse set of urban arenas: in the global south (Kolkata, India, Cape Town, South Africa, and Michoacán, Mexico) and in the first world (from the global yet hypersegregated city of Chicago to the deindustrial and nationalist-contested city of Belfast).Less
This chapter suggests that a notable condition of urbanism in the developing world—informality—holds resonance not only for our understanding of places registering the greatest amount of urban change, but also for ways in which such conditions find contested expression in first world cities. It discusses the conditions of the “informal city,” applying empirical examples from a diverse set of urban arenas: in the global south (Kolkata, India, Cape Town, South Africa, and Michoacán, Mexico) and in the first world (from the global yet hypersegregated city of Chicago to the deindustrial and nationalist-contested city of Belfast).
T.B. Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198092070
- eISBN:
- 9780199082704
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092070.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory
This essay underlines the significance of taking the story of South Asian cities like Bombay (now Mumbai) seriously, not merely for understanding the specificities of South Asian urbanization, ‘a ...
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This essay underlines the significance of taking the story of South Asian cities like Bombay (now Mumbai) seriously, not merely for understanding the specificities of South Asian urbanization, ‘a deviation from a historical/theoretical norm’, but also because they increasingly represent the ‘real’ world and its futures. The author calls for a rethinking of the central tenets of established urban theory, which has been based mainly on Western trajectories of urban growth and capital formation, in the light of the South Asian urban experience. Drawing mainly on historical and his own contemporary studies of Mumbai, he argues that established urban theory is particularly inadequate in understanding three interrelated dynamics in South Asia: questions of belonging and ‘right to the city’; questions of strangers and neighbourliness; and the relationship between political power and administrative authority.Less
This essay underlines the significance of taking the story of South Asian cities like Bombay (now Mumbai) seriously, not merely for understanding the specificities of South Asian urbanization, ‘a deviation from a historical/theoretical norm’, but also because they increasingly represent the ‘real’ world and its futures. The author calls for a rethinking of the central tenets of established urban theory, which has been based mainly on Western trajectories of urban growth and capital formation, in the light of the South Asian urban experience. Drawing mainly on historical and his own contemporary studies of Mumbai, he argues that established urban theory is particularly inadequate in understanding three interrelated dynamics in South Asia: questions of belonging and ‘right to the city’; questions of strangers and neighbourliness; and the relationship between political power and administrative authority.
Ray Forrest, Julie Ren, and Bart Wissink (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529205473
- eISBN:
- 9781529205510
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529205473.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment” in the American Journal of ...
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In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment” in the American Journal of Sociology. It provided an agenda for the Chicago school of urban sociology, which came to shape urban research for decades to come. Since 1915 much has changed, both in the urban world itself and in the urban research that reflects on those transformations. In today’s world of global cities, cities around the world have undergone dramatic development, and nowhere as dramatic as in China. In the world of urban research, Park’s human ecology approach has lost the appeal that it once had. Against this background, in this book specialists on urban China reflect on the relevance of Park’s article on “The City” – for cities in China, for urban research, and for questions about studying the social life of the city. The aim of the book is to take Park’s article as a point of departure for critical reflection on both the research on urban China and on the issues that Chinese cities face. The book offers readers a timely respite from the eruption of urban China research, to reflect on what the city in China contributes to urban studies more generally. Despite the shared starting point, the contributors represent a range of perspectives that would disrupt any notion of monolithic “Chinese school” while also pointing the way towards recurrent challenges, topics and approaches relevant for a contemporary urbanism.Less
In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment” in the American Journal of Sociology. It provided an agenda for the Chicago school of urban sociology, which came to shape urban research for decades to come. Since 1915 much has changed, both in the urban world itself and in the urban research that reflects on those transformations. In today’s world of global cities, cities around the world have undergone dramatic development, and nowhere as dramatic as in China. In the world of urban research, Park’s human ecology approach has lost the appeal that it once had. Against this background, in this book specialists on urban China reflect on the relevance of Park’s article on “The City” – for cities in China, for urban research, and for questions about studying the social life of the city. The aim of the book is to take Park’s article as a point of departure for critical reflection on both the research on urban China and on the issues that Chinese cities face. The book offers readers a timely respite from the eruption of urban China research, to reflect on what the city in China contributes to urban studies more generally. Despite the shared starting point, the contributors represent a range of perspectives that would disrupt any notion of monolithic “Chinese school” while also pointing the way towards recurrent challenges, topics and approaches relevant for a contemporary urbanism.
